All that is left behind is a fine slipper made, impossibly, of glass. (A mistake, folklorists - learned people - say. A mistake, it was meant to be mouse fur. The softest of mouse fur, gray; in the movie it is singing mice who save her. Not glass.)
You know this tale. You've heard it in a thousand shapes and forms, how her mother was dead, her step-mother a monster; how she slaved in the ashes escaping from the fire. How she hid her beauty behind a mask of grime and soot, like those moths whose wings shift color to match their surroundings, for camouflage.
You've heard it a thousand times: the cruel step mother, the dead father, the two ugly stepsisters (who were afflicted more by the ugliness in their souls than that of their appearance, though after a moment with each the Prince saw no difference; they don't tell that).
They always tell about the slipper, how it went from softest mouse fur to fragile glass. How it gleamed on the steps after she had gone, cold and austere and silent.
When it was lifted the glass caught shadow and light both like captured smoke wings of caged birds. When it was held in his hands the light slid down the clear contours of sharp, pure glass like a star, no different from the hundreds of other stars, suddenly drawing attention to its lovely pale fire.
Once upon a time. You've heard the beginning.
And the clock struck midnight. You know the end. Maybe they had been dancing or talking; it doesn't matter, because she runs. All that she leaves is a slipper made of fine, breakable glass.
The Prince went to each and every household, looking for the girl whose foot fit the slipper. You know that too: how one of the sisters cut off her heel, the other cut off her big toe, cramming over-sized feet into the shoe, desperate. Glass is meant to be pure, clear: the blood slid like oil off water from its surface, poured out when the Prince was afraid that the sisters' blood had clouded the secret held in glass forever.
The secret held in glass forever: that is what he thought would happen. That is what he thought, until the shy, dirty girl with a tangled mop of hair walked out of the room like a shadow and he noticed her.
And once he noticed her it was like magick at work. Except it wasn't magick at all. She said to the harsh music of her stepsister's laughter, in a voice like the delicate tangles of ash and soot and soft gray fur floating in the air from her fires:
"Let me try the slipper."
And they were married in great estate.
You'll hear from some stories that she forgives her stepsisters, who drop down on their knees and beg, sincerely sorry for all those slaps across the face just because they'd felt like slapping somebody, for all those times they mocked her hair, her hem singed by cinders, and the name. Cinder. Maid. Servant. Slut. (You'll maybe notice that they were sorry only because they were caught.)
You'll hear that on the day of the wedding each sister waited outside the church door to beg forgiveness, that the birds pecked out their eyes with hard, wet red beaks.
And they lived happily ever after.
And that's when the story ends, except it doesn't.
What you might hear is how this story is about negative transformations. That all girls expect a prince to walk into their living room, sit on the love seat near their parents while their little sibling looks on, holding a slipper made of glass in his hand. How the prince only loved her because she wore fine and fancy clothes, because she had the slipper made of glass, because she was skin beautiful instead of deeper than skin. How there are no such things as fairy Godmothers and history is cruel to pass this story down, because hope is unbearable when captured in unattainable expectations. Because hope is unbearable when it is gone, like the boyfriend or rock idol you were obsessed with. How girls should not try to be something they are not and girls should not think that happiness lies that way. Cinderella Complex. There's an entire book about it.
And I don't know about any of that. It might be true.
But there's something that they forget to tell, lying by omission.
They forget that she walked into that ballroom which was filled with all the eyes of the kingdom and great ladies and great lords who wore their riches and perfumes from palaces in the Arabian Nights. That she was alone. They see only the gown, of stars, the slippers, of glass, the crown, of tears, the skin, so fine, the eyes, so clear, the throat, bared, the poise, so lovely, the beauty, her gown which dazzles. The unbreakable glass slippers which lend her a grace beyond her own. (Because she must step lightly, or else. In another tale maybe her grace would feel like she's walking on knives or like each step might break the glass and transform it: let's talk about negative transformations.)
That's what they all saw, even her jealous sisters: the fine, fine lady.
But she felt like she was in somebody else's clothes when she paused in the door at the stop of the stairs and looked down at the dancers. They did not fit her: too fine, too grand, too far from who she was herself, and naked. Imagine her fidgeting with her fan or her sleeve or her skirt, a luxury of cloth she'd never had. Looking at her pale, clean fingers and uncomfortable in somebody else's skin. Wanting to find a place to sit out of the way and watch her night of dreams spin by.
The Prince, perhaps bored amid all this splendor, his life, saw that the clothes didn't fit, that she was uncomfortable.
And he asked her to dance anyway.
Moral: "If you put a peacock feather on a sparrow the sparrow is still a sparrow."
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