Genre: horror, fairy tale short story
Author's Note: An adaptation of the Armenian fairy tale “Cinderella” by Susie Hoogasian-Villa from 100 Armenian Tales and Their Folkloristic Relevance (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966), 240-244.
We were so very hungry.
Mother didn’t want us to starve. She didn’t want us to be disgraced either. We offered to get money. “No matter what we must do,” we said. We would not put little sister through such things. We would do it ourselves. We were prepared to take action. But Mother said no. She said, “I would prefer that you kill me and eat me than bring dishonor to this home.”
So you see, we had no choice.
And we were so very hungry.
Small sister, sweet sister. Little sister, come! we said. Come eat. But she wailed, she cried, she refused. “I will not eat my mother’s flesh,” she said. She threw away the last gift our mother gave us. Little sister scorned our mother’s sacrifice.
Not us, no. We ate. Mother gave up her own body so we could survive another week. We revered in the generosity of her. The kindness. The selflessness.
We appreciated every bite.
Why did we not sell our dresses and our jewels, you ask? Why, we could not sell them. How would we survive? How would we get by even one day in a world that values our shape, our ornaments, over our thoughts? If we sold our appearance, what else have we?
And we were right, yes, we were right.
The king put on a wedding party for his son not two days later. Yes, the prince was to be married, he had a bride. But the king did not. The noblemen who would laugh and bellow over drink did not. With our dresses and our jewels, the decorations we kept, we could woo a suitor. We could be safe again. We would never go hungry again. Mother’s sacrifice had saved us.
We invited little sister to the feast. Food! Delicious food. Food so rich you could burst. We made ourselves pretty, we adorned ourselves with lace and jewels. We asked little sister why she was not in her finery as well.
“Why should I go with you?” she said. “You killed my mother and ate her!”
The cuff on the head was only natural. Little sister didn’t understand. Little sister disdained the second chance we had been given.
She forgot that it was our mother too.
She forgot that we were so very hungry.
We went to the feast. What a feast! We became near sick on the decadence. It was so long since we tasted roast pig, pheasant, fresh bread. We wrapped pieces of pig in napkins and hid them under our petticoats. We smuggled rolls of bread. We even saved a cherry tart—cherry was little sister’s favorite. Surely, she would see reason once we returned with these spoils.
The noblemen were abundant. Bachelors we approached with lilting steps and furtive glances. We laughed at their attempts at humor, we giggled when they put their gaze on us. We did everything right. But no use. A beautiful girl swirled in as though she walked on clouds.
The court was mesmerized. Her face was as pure as the night sky, and she wore the most radiant blue dress. It out-sparkled the crystal chandeliers. It outshone the moon. She held the attention of every man in the ballroom, and we could not even hate her for it, for we were mesmerized too.
When we returned home, we told little sister. We could not contain our awe. We unburdened our dresses with the food we had collected and set it out in front of little sister. Eat, we said. You must, surely you are as starved as we are. And we continued to tell her of the celebration, of the beautiful girl who shone like the stars.
When we awoke the next morning, the bread was stale, the meat had flies. The tart was untouched on the table.
Why would she reject this? Why would she turn away our offers of food? She did not even seem hungry. How could she not be hungry when we near fainted at the smell of the feast?
Perhaps she did not like it. Perhaps she wanted the pheasant, not the pig. We resolved to fix this the next night.
We again dressed in our best clothes, we again asked little sister to accompany us, and again she said, “Why should I go with you? You killed my mother and ate her!” and the blow came again, as naturally as it had before. After all we had done for her, how could little sister put this reminder on us?
She was our mother too.
But we were so very hungry.
We went to the ball. We twirled our hair and smiled demurely. We ate so little, even though our stomachs were cavernous. We tapped the corners of our mouths with our napkins. We did everything proper women should do, to no avail. The beautiful girl arrived again, and she sparkled even brighter than the night before. She sparkled like diamonds and sapphires.
We stole away with pheasant breast and a loaf of bread; we carefully stowed a piece of delicious cherry pie within our arms. We returned home and presented the spoils to little sister. Once more, we told her of the beautiful girl, of how she attracted even the king’s attention.
She ate nothing.
The third night we asked her to come once again. We hoped she would. We wanted her to be merry, to eat and drink and dance. No more of her days would be spent weeping once she tasted the life we were working so hard to procure.
But little sister said, “Why should I go with you? You killed my mother and ate her!”
Perhaps we hit a little hard. Perhaps we shouldn’t have lost our temper. We only wanted to make her see, see the sacrifice that had brought us here, see the effort we put in every night to find a husband who could provide for us.
We wanted her to see how hungry we were.
That night, we tried to get closer to the beautiful girl. She radiated grace like an angel. If we were within her halo, maybe we could find suitors of our own. But she was too bright. She glittered and shone. She was so bright we had to look away.
The fourth night, the final night. Our last chance. Our last hope.
We tried. Oh, we tried! We ate nothing, pretending as though we were not ravenous. Beautiful women are not allowed to hunger for things, not even food. And we needed to be beautiful. Still, gentlemen paid us no mind when we hung on their arms and pretended that their breath did not reek of too much wine. We let their hands wander down our waists, we retrieved more drink and held their empty glasses for them.
It did not matter. They did not care that our stomachs were the slimmest in the court, our corsets pulled the tightest. Whalebone pressed against ribs—bone on bone. They did not care that we were available, that we would give them anything they wanted if only for the promise of three meals a day. They did not care. They were waiting for her. They wanted her, not us.
And in she swept, like a breeze, like a spring morning, like petals floating from tree to grass. The music stopped. All conversations were clipped by a gasp of awe. Impossibly, she was even more brilliant than the previous nights. She was deliciously lavish.
We were so very hungry. Such a vicious, unholy starvation. We wanted to eat her, swallow her whole, have her beauty sustain us until we could imitate her grace. We hungered for her elegance, her eye-catching features, her swan-like frame.
Guards cut her from sight. The king’s men gathered around her like begging hounds. Even within their dim company, she glowed. If the king took interest in this girl, then there was no chance for the noblemen to have her, yet they still tried to look over the heads of the guards, ignoring any woman who wasn’t her.
Our last chance, our last hope. Gone. How we had failed. How we had disappointed Mother. Did she sacrifice her own flesh for nothing? Oh, Mother, Mother! we cried. We are so very sorry. We were so very hungry. We wept and wept, for we had brought dishonor to this home.
Little sister was waiting when we returned. We hurried our tears away, told her once more of the beautiful girl at the wedding. Such a shame little sister wasn’t at the ball—this was the last day of the festivities, and now she would never see the girl. She would never see that life.
“Why should I go with you?” little sister cried. “You killed and ate my mother!”
We beat her then. We are sorry she had to suffer, but little sister would not see. Our efforts were lost on her. She could not appreciate all we had done to save her, to save us all.
All we had done, and still we failed. We went to bed with nothing.
We tried to explain this the next morning, when the king’s soldiers dragged what was left of us from our beds and into the palace. Why would they even care? Who had told them? We told of Mother’s sacrifice, how she offered herself for our consumption. We did what we must. We were so hungry.
But the king still condemned us to prison. We were so thin we could almost fit through the cell bars, but not thin enough. Never quite enough, us. Always short, always second.
We were kept from the outside world, but we were fed. Three meals a day, never once skipped. How spoiled we were! Gorging ourselves on the bread even when it was stone-hard, scarfing down the potatoes and dried meat. We cleaned the plate with our fingers each time. We were always hungry.
One hundred and twenty meals later—we kept count, we must, we had to savor every meal we were given for free—we were released. But where was there to go? We raced back home, even in our dirtied cell rags. Little sister had spent all this time alone, uncared for. Would she still be there when we returned?
However, when our street came into sight, there was no house. No home for us. A church had been erected in its place. And, out front, out in the center of things, shining in the sun so as to illuminate the lawn—Mother. A beautiful bronze statue of Mother. How had she gotten there? Had she watched over our struggles? Was she ashamed of us? Her metallic eyes told us nothing, and neither did our neighbors. We went door to door, begged to understand what had happened in our absence. But no one would answer us. They never let us inside.
Not even when we told them how very hungry we were.
The church allowed us to stay. After all, it was where our home once stood. On summer nights when it was warm, we slept beneath the statue of Mother. She would watch over us.
We picked the apples from the churchyard to fill our stomachs (never enough), we ate the bread and wine every Sunday (never enough), we ate the unwanted scraps donated by the bakeries and meat shops (never, never enough). We were still hungry.
One morning—no food that day, the shop owners had nothing, and the apples had not grown—we walked the churchyard to forget our empty stomachs. This is what we did, for if we did not keep ourselves occupied, our hunger turned desperate.
Desperate like before.
A cry from the steps of the church. We turned as a noble woman of unmatchable beauty came sweeping across the lawn to fall at our feet. She radiated purity and light. How was it that she would bow to us and not the other way around? Our words were struck away from surprise.
The beautiful woman looked up at us and said, “Don’t you recognize me, sisters?”
And we did. We recognized all of her. We saw how she glittered and shone. We saw her crying in the house, we saw her refusing our gifts of food, we saw her dancing at the feast, face lit by the adoring stares of a hundred men. We recognized her, though she had not called us her sisters for an age. It was little sister. It was her all along. How could we not have seen?
How could she not have told us?
She rose and took our hands, kissed our cheeks and smiled a smile like the sun above. She told us of the king, she told us of palaces and novelty. How much did she eat? we wondered. How many meals since we last saw her? She looked puzzled when we asked. “I don’t count,” she said. “I never have.” We were confused, but she gave us no time to think. She embraced us and said how she missed us, how she loved us, how she forgave us.
We knew, of course. We knew little sister would forgive us. She would see reason.
After all, we were so very hungry.
About the Author: Elsa Richardson-Bach is an English and creative writing major, and yeah, she uses “too many packets,” but it’s the best mug of Swiss Miss you’ll ever have in your life, so checkmate.