Liesl saw the book and touched it to see if it were real. She opened it gingerly and began to read…
There was once a time when she'd believed the stories. Young and undoubting, she heard the hate come from their mouths, in scary words like murderer or crazy that were enough to make any little girl scream.
The first time it had been Grumpy. Now Grumpy was a very political man and his life held more than the accounts told by Liesl's little mother. He would begin with a scowl to speak about the poverty, the discrimination that "Her Majesty Stella Grimhidle" had failed to notice. The witty young girl was one of the only people who would listen to Grumpy without badgering him about his frequent cursing. When the angry scowl escalated into a dramatic yell she was the only one who wouldn't wince.
When her mother told the stories they were sugarcoated but filled with masked pain and fear and optimism, something Liesl could spy from so far off. The queen was an actress but she was still Leisl's mother and at any rate no one could fool Liesl.
But even though she heard the same opinion racing like blood throughout everyone she talked to she still thought that Stella Grimhidle wasn't the evil queen everyone portrayed her as and sought to prove her point. Despite her mother, Snow White's protest Liesl had gone off castle grounds unescorted besides Chestnut, her horse and rode him off to the other side of he kingdom, her mother's old castle.
"I do hope the mirror's still intact." She told Chestnut. Chestnut agreed, racing faster yet. "And yes, we're going to race through the same forest Mama did, and visit the dungeon as well, and we're going to visit the cliff Stella fell off of. We've both been eager to do so, and I've no intention of hurrying back." Liesl could feel Chestnut's smirk. They were both utterly irresponsible but Liesl was definitely the worst.
'Oh, it's nothing like I imagined.' Thought Chestnut as they came upon the palace. It was paper white with golden trims and a wishing well just by the stonesteps, still covered in pigeons, the same color as the castle, but these seemed a lot less cheerful than the ones Blanca had described. There was a field of flowers that were now overcome with dandelions and disobeyed their former boundaries, creeping into the cracks so far as the wishing well, but still staying timidly away from the forest. Liesl smiled.
"I'm so curious about the castle but this place is untouched heaven. Isn't it just storybook! I'd hate to creep inside just yet. I think we do deserve a night of bliss."
'No we don't.' Chestnut thought. 'But let's anyway.' After sleeping under the sky in the flower fields, rolling around in the far middle and making daisy chains from only the fallen flowers deep into the night and watching one lone rabbit scamper off into a too large hole they finally decided to venture into the castle. Boldly coming in first Chestnut decided to step his hooves on the unwritten 'no horses in castles' rule.
"Let's go upstairs first. We've got a lot to search." Liesl whispered. They treaded upstairs and the first room they found was Stella's old bedroom. On one wall there were multiple tremendous portrait of her in many daily tasks, each more cruel looking than the next. Liesl shrugged off the expressions on the paintings and opened up the closet, shaped almost like a woman's body. Liesl stripped out of the ridiculous frock her mother made her wear and into the rich purple cloak of her step grandmother. The friends then turned to look at the rest of the upstairs rooms, and turned to the staircase that led upwards. It was far too creaky for Chestnut to glide up it and they both recognized that fact.
"You wait here." Said Liesl in dismay. "If I find the mirror you have to help me carry it down."
'No, no.' Chestnut disagreed. 'It's too dangerous, we need to ask it questions.' At last Liesl glided up the stairs, quickly so as not to break them. Luckily there was only one room in each tower and the first one held the precious mirror.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most misunderstood of all?"
"This answer, little princess, thou does know. 'Twas the old queen, in a position so low."
"An artifact to prove her innocence. Where do I find such to prove this fact the best?" Liesl held her breath.
"In this very castle such a book is held. In the dungeon, among the library of spells."
"Thank you!" cried Liesl, not expecting such a specific answer. The magic mirror hadn't heard a thank you since Stella was young but his expression did not falter. Liesl slid down the banister and jumped off midway. Chestnut had been craning his neck upwards so he'd heard every word and was already heading downstairs.
There were two rooms surrounding the library of spells. One held a river, the other, nothing but dead bodies. One wobegone crow circled the library, feeding on the seemingly endless crumbs that sat in a dish, stale for twenty years at least.
"Hello, Diablo." She somehow knew the crow's name. "I know Stella hasn't been back. "But, please, we need your help. We need to clear her name." Diablo, who had been reincarnated from being a statue and losing yet again a new best friend looked almost hopeless.
'Don't worry.' Agreed Chestnut. 'You must miss her. If there's a reincarnation spell, we'll use it. But for now we need Stella's diary.'
'There's a diary?' Diablo was almost hopeful.
"Her memoirs." Corrected Liesl. "I can imagine where they end." Diablo looked pathetic. Liesl and Chestnut were searching gingerly but frantically through the books, checking each one to make sure it was really a spell book and not her memoirs in disguise. Diablo perched Liesl's right shoulder, mollycoddling the comfort that he hadn't seen in years. At last they found the book and all three were gasping, Chestnut putting his head to Liesl's shoulder in happiness and Daiblo in tears. It was there, really there.
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Stella wiped her eyes wishing she didn't look so cruel. What did it matter now? She lost the three important males in her life, one for good and two for bad. Her father. He made her into a little matchgirl, selling the matches on the street to pay for his whiskey until he died. She suspected it was alcohol poisoning. She hadn't known if she should mourn the way her mother had taught her before she died, leaving her father a brute with no one but little Stella to send off to work, to pleasure himself with. Her mother had taught her the only religion she ever knew: Judaism. It was nostalgia, like a yellowed paper, a picture of her mother in a bunched up and tattered blue dress and little Stella in brown, each forgetting her tears and sleep if only for a moment as Hannah's vile husband rushed to spend the money they earned on the weekly wine.
"And in the winter comes Hanukkah. If you're careful we can save a match and watch it burn as I say the prayer." Hannah smiled. "It's been so long. I remember once back in the ghetto we all had enough candles for the whole thing. It starts off with two and you add one each night for eight nights." Stella listened, awed. She felt so moved, wishing she lived back then. It wasn't very long before or very different but to Hannah it seemed like the world. And to her little daughter… crying inside but to Stella she offered a sad smile. She remembered what she thought her life would be. Just like her mother's. Six children, a wonderful husband. But if she had a wonderful husband there would be no Stella.
But then the memory faded away. Yes, Stella saved a match but before the right time, in the dawning of the wintry German weather, Hannah died. It was only Stella in her brown dress that she wore through the good and the bad. She remembered the day that it happened, her father kicking Hannah's body into the alley out back.
"Go, schnell!" Aloysius screamed harshly. He had never cared for Hannah and little Stella was the sole provider for his beer now. That troubled him; his body couldn't live with the alcohol but the addiction made it impossible to live without. He gave no thought to his daughter. His daughter. Those words scared both Aloysius and Stella. Thinking, wishing, always that her father, a new father, would love her and give her and Hannah a good life instead of dragging them down. There was no money for such things as medicine, only beer, bread, rent and the weekly wine. That was why Hannah died. Aloysius thought of a beautiful blonde girl who would not mind to pleasure him and would give him riches and smile at him with big blue eyes.
"Papa!" the girl would say. "You must have had a difficult day."
"Yes." He would lie simply and almost like a command. In a rush she would hand him a heaping day's pay and hurry out of her clothes…
But neither was real. There was a drunken man stained with the sour smell of ale and the other drinks, cheapened for the regulars and a young girl rushed into adulthood with a small frame and green eyes that were too large for her work worn face.
And she lived with him. He would pummel her with his fists or shove her out in the cold air but she worked hard for his beer praying that it would someday kill him.
"Am I a horrible person?" she thought, shuddering as she called out to the people, selling her wares. She was the poorest peddler. Her only customers were the sympathetic mothers, the nannies, and once, a little boy who started a fire. She was drowned in self-sympathy. Life with Aloysius was difficult to bear but without her mother it was worthless. To her father she was a Jewish pig, not his daughter. She wondered each day why he had condemned his family to a life with him if he hated them so much, why he had married Hannah in the first place. She knew the answer. It wasn't marriage; it was rape. Aloysius needed someone to leech money from, too lazy and drunken to work himself. Her bitter thoughts tugged on Stella as though casting a spell to make her cry. She came home that night choking back her tears, hoping he would still be at the tavern so she could be alone with the thoughts of Hannah, if only for a moment.
But there was Aloysius, even more sickeningly drunk than usual. He was, in fact, more sickeningly drunk than Stella had ever seen him.
"Hannah!" he bellowed. Stella froze, thinking for a quarter of an instant that her mother was really there before realizing he was talking to her. "You whore jew! A woman is supposed to be at home waiting for her husband to come! WHORE!" Stella fell to her knees, knowing not to argue that she was not Hannah. Afraid, she begged for forgiveness, putting her face to the dirt-ridden floor so as to hide her expression of rage and contempt.
"I am sorry, Aloysius, sir. Please accept a mere woman's apology." Stella felt shame to her words, wishing the didn't have to come out of her mouth, or her mother's so many times before.
"Sorry?" he roared. "I'll make you sorry that you ever set foot on this earth!" he screamed, punching her side. The tears were escaping her now, rushing faster and faster, the blood, the bruises, the memories, and the tears. Stella closed her eyes tighter but the pain was too real, seeing the same thing happening to her mother years before. She knew what was coming; the expectation grew as her nerves acted up. At last the tension built into a single moment. Aloysius tore up Stella's skirt and pushed himself inside her. Groaning with pleasure, Aloysius was delighted that his wife had finally succumbed to him.
But Stella was pushing her nose to the cold floor as her father kneeled, still inside, shivering with fear as she was overcome with rage. But it wasn't because Aloysius had raped her but because he thought that she was her mother. How could anyone do something so horrible to Hannah?
'Oh, G-d.' Stella prayed as he let her be for the moment, still moaning. 'Please take me from this horrible place. Please show me happiness and the beauty of life.' A tear escaped the girl's eye. 'This is your daughter.' She told G-d. 'Please.' At that moment Aloysius picked her up and groped her breasts. Stella was wailing silently as she continued her prayer.
Each day for three weeks Aloysius grew more and more drunk. Stella prayed each day that begging for money to give her father so he could get more beer each day was only necessary. Each day Stella was someone new, and he would tell her to hurry because his Jew wife might be back any minute. Then for a week he could not get up and one by one his senses disappeared, his addiction growing hungrier since he could not go into the tavern. On the last day he was not moving but it was a week before Stella could come into the house without fear. That day she kicked his body into the alley just as Aloysius had to Hannah. It was years before she could go a night without dreaming of the rape but only until the day she kicked Aloysius out that Stella changed her profession. She kept the money for herself and bought good food, cloth and needles and thread. Stella learned to sew rapidly and the twelve-year-old girl began to make all sorts of accessories, like a little pouch just for a watch a woman could wear on her apron.
'I wish I'd gone to school.' Thought Stella in dismay. 'I wish I had a book.' But Stella had a Hanukkah that winter with real candles and a new dress and didn't look nearly so frail.
An old woman knocked on the door, offering a hunk of cheese in return for shelter. Stella smiled. She never had company and the only human interaction she saw was with the ladies on prices.
"Why certainly, Madame." Stella offered a curtsy and opened the door. Immediately, she began to fix a watered down coffee and sandwiches.
"An interesting meal." Remarked the old woman.
"Oh!" Stella grinned. "Thank you kindly, Madame." It never occurred to Stella that that might not be a compliment.
"You live alone?" the lady was suspicious.
"Yes." It was Stella's first hint of sadness in the conversation although to herself Stella was almost always cheerless. "And where are you from?"
"One does not ask personal questions of adults." The woman snapped quietly, sipping her coffee with disgust.
"Oh, I am sorry, Madame! Do tell me only what you wish!" Instead of anger at the woman Stella felt rage at her father for never teaching her, or at least letting her go out for more than work.
"Very well." Replied the old lady.
At that the woman transformed into a beautiful enchantress.
"You have certainly deemed yourself worthy of a prize and I have one for you indeed. You do have a better character than the prince of France!" the enchantress said in a whimsically comic way. "But what gift to bestow? You are already growing into being the fairest lady in all the land; you are kind, you do seem happy. I know, love!"
"Oh, no no no!" cried Stella. "I wish to find love on my own."
"Ah," the enchantress smiled. "A romantic. Well, I do have the perfect gift for you and it certainly shall keep a wonderful lady like you in line. It is a mirror, tremendous in size! And it answers any question you have! Imagine! Just make certain you ask the right things. You'll find it in the king's castle." The enchantress tousled her hair and twined it with her finger.
"All I want is the cheese." Remarked Stella slowly.
"Feh!" cried the enchantress. "That's poppycock. I don't care what you say; you get the mirror! And don't you dare ask me how you're to get to the king's castle. You'll find out soon enough. Oh, Stella!" the enchantress wrapped her thin little arms around the girl, her golden hair nuzzling Stella's black locks. Stella was certainly shocked but welcomed the affection, wrapping her own arms around the lady. She hadn't hugged anyone since mother died.
"Thank you so much." Sobbed Stella. "Thank you so much."