Baking, dusting, sweeping, mopping – each passing hour brought chore after chore for Fiamma. Once, she dreamt of receiving a break. Then, a thank you. Finally, nothing save hollow golem-like movements, inelegant yet precise; a testament to the woman who once was. Somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind, she wondered about the birds and the hunter-prince who had all at once come into her life and left it in an instant. A day most peculiar, but one with a glimmer of something interesting, something that tickled her heart and made it flutter.

  “Cinderella!” Prudence’s shrill call echoed throughout the house, accompanying the ringing bell that made Fiamma’s head pound.

  Fiamma called in return, “Just a minute!” as she finished plating supper. It was meager: braised chicken breast with a simple salad of greens, tomato slices, and something like croutons… if they only had the spices required to make them proper. Holding two plates and a third on her arm, she walked backwards out the kitchen and off to the dining room. There, she found her stepfamily seated.

  “Took you long enough,” Prudence quipped, setting the small bell down on the table.

  Honor frowned deeply at the offering. “Chicken again? Cinderella, can’t you get some steak or something?”

  Fiamma stared for a moment at Honor, then set each plate before the women gathered. “To have steak, we’d have to kill Mianesse, and if we kill Mianesse, we would have no milk, and then no butter or cheese.”

  Virtue betrayed no emotion as she examined the plate set in front of her. The way she rose from her seat made Fiamma flinch back and lower her head. “Mother, I apologize. This is all we had left. Our flock is–”

  The older woman removed her high-heel and held it in her hand by the arch, leaving the heel uncovered. With swift, repetitive motions, she began to pound Fiamma’s side and back with the shoe. The hollow look returned and she went still while her stepmother took to beating her for no reason she could discern.

  “What is going on?”

  The moderate voice of Clement Underwood brought momentary relief to Fiamma, accompanied by Virtue stopping. “I’m disciplining our daughter.”

  “The room smells of iron,” he said. Fiamma lifted her head a little to look at her father. He had middling brown eyes and dark brown, nearly black hair. Only a few inches taller than Virtue, he could be described as being of average height. Hints of beard and mustache in patchy splotches were across his face. His footsteps drew closer and he lifted his daughter’s face. “Pitiful girl. At least your face is unharmed.”

  “Why does that matter?” Honor asked, piercing her chicken with a fork and lifting it to her lips like it were a poultry lollipop.

  “The only use for this girl is to marry into a better family, to help pay off our debts.”

  “Debts? Daddy, I thought you paid–” Fiamma began shakily. He released her cheek and looked down at her with a baleful gaze.

  “Do not make me strike you.” He addressed his wife and stepdaughters, ignoring Fiamma now. “Yes, we have debts again. Business fell through, and the tax collector demands his due.”

  “We really will have to marry her off, won’t we,” said Virtue with a frown.

  “Wouldn’t I be a better choice?” asked a confused Prudence. “I am far more beautiful, far more graceful and elegant, far more… well, everything. Cinderella is– well, you see her.”

  Virtue got her shoe back on and went to Prudence, stroking her hair tenderly. “Darling, no, not you. You are to marry grandly and do us proud. We are merely looking for someone wealthy to take on this pissant.”

  Honor looked on and asked through her mouthful of chicken, “Is marriage really all that great?”

  “Marriage is marriage,” said Clement. He looked to Fiamma. “Cinderella. My food? Where is it?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Fiamma left to the kitchen. Alone, she looked down at the food. Her father came home earlier than expected. Usually he was gone for weeks, but with business falling through… there was nothing to be done about it. She took the plate of food she had prepared for herself, hidden in a shelf.

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  Her stomach rumbled.

  He wouldn’t notice a single leaf missing from his salad, would he?

  Daddy sees everything, the memory of his voice said in her mind. A chill went down her bruised and somewhat bloodied back as she recalled the last time her father spoke those words. The strikes were not like with Virtue. Her beatings were almost merciful in comparison.

  She steadied herself, and by extension, the plate she was holding. If she dropped his food that would be the end of it. She returned to the dining room and set his plate at the opposite end of the table, across from where Virtue sat. She stood off to the side, hands folded over her lap. She kept a neutral expression as she waited for any requests to be made of her or clean-up time. Her father took his seat, and Virtue took hers.

  The four of them ate. Prudence and Virtue ate with the wrong forks, Honor ate with the ferocity of a sow, and her father – the sole among them who knew how to eat with poise – opted to have his elbows on the table.

  After a few bites, he commented, “Bland.”

  “Poorly made,” Virtue agreed.

  “Yes, but so very bland.” He looked at Fiamma. “How much salt is left?”

  “We’ve run out, Daddy,” Fiamma admitted quietly.

  “What?” he asked, staring down his daughter.

  She flinched once at his voice, and a second time when he loudly slammed the silverware on the table, it clanking against the ceramic plate that he had been eating off of.

  “What did you do with it?” He asked, not looking at Fiamma.

  “I… me?” She asked, voice quiet and softer. She could feel his anger rising.

  He slammed a fist on the table that made the women jump a little. Nobody touched their food. “Yes, you.”

  I have been cooking the recipes that were left behind as long as I could with the measurements given, Fiamma wanted to say. You never leave us enough budget to buy salt, she wanted to say more adamantly. Why don’t you go buy some salt if you want it so much? she really wanted to say.

  “Cinderella. Answer me,” her father growled out as his patience wore thin.

  The tears came. “I’m sorry,” Fiamma blurted out. Anything to avoid getting hit.

  “You are to buy salt tomorrow with your portion of the food budget.”

  “I don’t have a portion of the food budget.”

  “You eat, don’t you? Tomorrow you do not. You will find a way to get us salt. Make yourself useful for a change.” A sweeping gaze across the table seemed to make him aware of his own behavior. He let out a forced, joyous laugh. “Come now, eat, eat! Our food may be bland, but we shouldn’t starve.”

  “Of course,” Virtue agreed, and everyone resumed their eating. Fiamma might have noted that Prudence and Honor were subtly trembling, and Honor rushed her food, had she not been shaking herself. Out of view of her father, nobody mentioned the fear reflecting in Fiamma’s eyes that eventually became resignation that tampened down her shaking with the reality that all this was her lot in life.

  When everyone left the room and Fiamma was by herself with the plates, she gathered them up. She took them to the basin in the kitchen and started washing them. Tears dripped from her face into the water and onto the plates below.

  What did I do? Why? Why why why? Fiamma’s mind searched and searched for an answer she could not find. She struggled with the dishes, anguish overcoming misplaced willpower. It took her twice as long to do the dishes as it normally would. It would be even later to bed because she’d need to treat her back and fix her dress before curling up next to the embers of the fireplace.

  She set the dishes away, and then dropped to her knees by the kitchen window that gave view of the garden. Fiamma folded her hands at her chest, casting her vision skyward at the faded stars and hidden Moon. The Moon usually gave relief, but tonight, its absence was a good thing; she didn’t want anyone to see her like this, and yet, there she was, existing, persisting.

  “God… Lord God… please forgive me… I have sinned, and I know I have sinned, yet I know not how. The great trials you put me through are too much. I am not a strong woman. I ask not for peace or gain, but please, allow my family to find kindness, care, and sympathy. Please. If not for me, then for themselves and the sake of their eternal souls.”

  Fiamma waited. Her mother told her sometimes God showed he was listening in surprising ways, but there was nothing. No great commotion, no sudden changes. She slowly sunk all the way to the ground until she lied on her ground, crying. “Mom… Mom, have I been abandoned? You said God is always watching and listening… Mom, please, answer me… God, Mom… somebody…”

  Fiamma spent that night on the cold, hard, stone floor of the kitchen, not knowing the passing warmth of the put-out fireplace, nor the warmth of her father’s hug, nor the warmth of her mother’s love, nor the warmth of her God’s care. She slept, dreaming of the handsome prince and the talking birds; dreaming of a day where she could grow wings and fly away, and the prince was in awe of her rather than repelled by her.

  Amongst the tears, a smile crossed her resting face, for in her dreams, she was free.