Gwendolyn chuckled. “Cinderella used to line up all her stuffed animals and sing songs to them.”
“Snow White was endlessly practicing her juggling,” Elsinora said. “Smashed apples all over the castle.”
And for a moment, the women lost themselves in the nostalgia for an earlier, easier time, before their daughters, and the world, turned against them.
“What age was Rapunzel when you brought her home?” Gwendolyn asked, remembering the day her husband had introduced her to Cinderella. Gwendolyn had been one of twelve sisters, and though this had contributed to the family’s poverty—and the offloading of several girls into miserable marriages to the highest-bidding lout—she’d loved that noisy sorority, and was glad for her own girls to add a new sister, and for Cinderella to gain two.
“Just a few days old,” Marguerite said.
“And is it true,” Elsinora said, “that she was payment for her father having stolen some lettuce from your garden?” She held up her hands. “No judgments. This is a safe space.”
Marguerite rose and walked to the picture window, gazing at the setting sun. When she turned around, having visited a much less happy memory, her face was hollow, haunted. “Her father did steal into my garden one night and take something dear from me,” she said. “But it was something far more precious than rampion.”
3.
They met the next time at Gwendolyn’s, a crumbling, two-story stucco house on a dusty plot of land. Gwendolyn apologized for the mess. “We used to have a handyman, but there’s no money for it, and heaven knows my husband won’t keep on top of repairs.” She gestured to a sitting room, where his snores rattled through the hallway. “His fondness for the grape is second only to his love of the dice.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve had to sell the last of my jewels to pay for my daughters’ tuition at Mr. Mole’s.”
“Mr. Mole’s?” Elsinora asked.
“A special school for the blind. Tuition is very steep. I’ve tried to get a job, but no one will hire a Wicked. I’d sell this place, but my husband won’t let me.”
“Funny, that. I thought he was dead,” Marguerite said.
Gwendolyn nodded ruefully. “Everyone does. Cinderella never mentions him. Few of the stories do. Because if her beloved papa had been there all the time, it doesn’t quite jibe with her tale of victimization, does it? The truth is, he’s weak-willed and self-indulgent, and I feared she would become the same, so I tried to be firm with her, to save her from herself. It’s what all the Tough Maiden books advised.”
She led them into a dining room where they sat down to eat the meal she’d prepared.
“This is delicious,” Elsinora remarked at the soup. “What’s in it?”
“Lentils,” Gwendolyn replied. “Back when I was young and poor, I learned to do amazing things with lentils: stews, soups, fritters. Got myself a job at the town eatery. Good money too. Enough to move out of my father’s house and avoid being married off to some drunk farmer he chose for me.”
“What happened?” Elsinora asked.
“What happened? I fell in love, with a man of means, no less. Thought my lentil days were history, all happily-ever-afters for me. But then he died, and since I didn’t have a son, just two daughters, his estate went to his nephew, who gave us six months to move out. I tried to find work, but hard times had befallen the kingdom, and I was told that a job given to a woman was one taken from a man, and I should stay home with my children. But what home? I was about to move back in with my father, when I met my current husband. A widower who seemed to dote on his motherless daughter, a sign, I thought, of constancy and integrity.”
She shook her head. “After we got married, I saw the error of my ways. He was always talking about how ‘hot’ Cinderella was, how if they weren’t related, he’d marry her,” Gwendolyn said to the other women’s groans. “I mean, Cinderella was very pretty. But girls like that do fine whether or not they can cram their feet into size-five glass slippers. It’s the less, shall we say, attractive girls who need a bit of extra help. And if fitting into a pair of tiny shoes would give my daughters a happily-ever-after, or even just some basic security, losing a toe or a bit of heel seemed a small price to pay.” She sighed. “But it didn’t work out that way.”
“I guess happily-ever-afters aren’t meant for people like us,” Elsinora said.
She didn’t know—none of us did yet—that there was no such thing as a happily-ever-after. Not for any of us.
4.
It was on the visit to Elsinora’s castle that the idea took hold. Elsinora took them on a tour of the palace, which was most magnificent: domed ceilings etched in gold, grand cupolas, cavernous, empty rooms. The portrait gallery alone was the size of Marguerite’s tower. Elsinora led them past the paintings of stern men in military regalia, their epaulets and medals glittering like gemstones, to the portrait she visited every day: the one of her as a new queen with her handsome king, and, between them, his daughter—who, back then, she’d believed would be their daughter.
“No one will ever be as beautiful as you,” the king had whispered into her ear that day. And she’d almost been convinced, letting his sweet words and jeweled gifts lull her into forgetting that before her, there had been another wife, also beautiful if the child was anything to judge by.
“Is that you?” Marguerite asked, staring at the portrait.
“That was me,” Elsinora replied wistfully. “When I was young and pretty. Which I no longer am. As my mirror reminds me every day.”
“Oh, right. Let’s see this magic mirror of yours,” Gwendolyn said.
Elsinora paused. She had never shown anyone her mirror. But she’d never had other Wicked friends before. Come to think of it, she’d never really had friends before.
The mirror hung in her sleeping chambers. It was oval, gleaming with gold leaf—a wedding present from her husband.
“How does it work?” Marguerite asked. “Do you just gaze into it?” She stood in front of the mirror and gasped. “Ugh, do I really look this terrible?”
Elsinora glanced at her friend’s reflection. Her chin definitely seemed larger, her skin more wrinkled, and she had a faint mustache that Elsinora had not noticed before.
“Let me try,” Gwendolyn said. She gaped at herself. Her hair seemed coarser, her eyes more bloodshot, and she’d sprouted several more moles. “Is this what I look like?”
Elsinora stepped in front of the mirror and saw what she did every day: a face ravaged by time, by envy, by loneliness, not a speck of her former loveliness evident. She didn’t gasp. This was just her. She was used to it.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
Every morning Elsinora woke and asked the same question, and every day she swore never to do it again. But she did, hoping this time would be different, this time the mirror would say something kind.
“Though you make this query day and night, my answer remains the same: Snow White,” the mirror replied, showing an image of Snow White, skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as night, with nary a gray strand in sight.