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No Cinderella
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Once upon a time...
--- Anonymous
The first time the poor girl saw the prince, he winked.
She hid her face behind a blush and a fan. After all that was appropriate. She was no Ashputtel, no Cinderella, no Yeh-Shen or whatever name is now put on the traditional children's fairy tale. Her gown wasn't magical, she had no glass slippers and there certainly wasn't a golden-eyed fish waiting for her at home between the genteelly rotting pillars of rosewood and her grandmother's shadows of hate.
She was just the lowly granddaughter of a woman who, really, the Court ladies gossiped, married completely beneath her. And paid the due price.
The Fire Court was harsh on those who broke the spider-web of rules and protocol in which the nobility lived.
When she next looked up, he was surrounded. Like bees to an exceptional honey pot, the debutantes of the Season were hanging on his arms, their dark eyes glittering up at him, onyx gemstones on white silk. Trills of laughter sounded on his lightest word and he laughed too. A deep chuckling sound, a little hoarse like he had a cough.
That brought more women over to him and the poor girl in the corner tilted her fourteen-year-old head in distant fascination, a botanist examining the behaviour of some exceptionally curious ants. She wondered if they knew the gossip that swirled around the golden-eyed form of the Prince. That he was supposed to have bedded nearly every woman from here to the Earth Kingdom City of Iron, Etarai. She wondered if they cared.
Then she looked around. Wall hangings of stylised flames hung everywhere, thin gold wire twisted into the red threads and glittering in the light of the lamps. She winced, shoulders covered in (cheap, scratchy) silks hunching up around her jaw as she remembered the long hours of agony she had spent in her childhood, twisting the cruelly stiff gold wires around the all-too-easily broken thread. All behind closed doors and used to teach humility and quietly supplement the family's income.
Seven gold pieces for a pound of that twisted gold thread. Twenty pounds in each hanging. Most noble families could afford one, perhaps two at a push.
In this room alone, the Royal family had seventeen.
The ladies. They don't care. Who would when faced with marriage into such wealth?
One pale finger (pad a little roughened still despite her mother's best efforts with the skin-softening gum butter) ran down the not-quite-smooth edge of the silken embroidery. She wondered if she had twisted some of the golden thread that was woven into this adornment. She hoped not.
Impulsively, like a bird responding to a silent cough, she turned her head.
He had turned too. The ladies were dragging him away and he was enjoying it, listening politely to their wittering, twittering inanities about the glorious moon view that could be found in the Southern garden. But still he turned back. A grin flickered across his face like flames when he saw her eyes on him.
Hello.
It was then she knew that she would marry him. Ashputtel would marry her Prince.
When they met next, it was she who winked first.
Unfortunately, the wrong person caught it.
That was not how the story went. But, she supposed with a sigh, as she knelt low in reverence, there had to be a villain in every story.
The wrong person began to pester her. He engaged two dances, the maximum allowed to any (any) gentleman. He pressed his hand in the small of her back and smiled at her. Once she thought it tried to go lower, to flatten against her skin in a leering way.
She smiled, a debutante's smile, and stood on his foot.
Like a proper villain, he swore. Loudly and with great creativity.
She looked on, another mild smile on her properly trained face. Fairytales never contained such words, she was sure.
At the same Great Ball, she finally spoke with him.
The right person. Ashputtel's prince.
Unbeknownst to her, they were standing by the same window her grandmother had chosen nearly fifty years ago when she had broken the heart of the Crown Prince. Staring at the same stars, the same night sky. Nearly everything was unchanged in all those fifty years. The North Star was an inch or two and a million light-years to the left of its previous position. That was all.
He bowed. She knelt low; her head bowed this time.
"My lady."
"My Prince."
"You may rise, if you wish."
"And if I don't?" Impertinent. The Court ladies and his miserable grandmother would be shaking their heads in disgust.
He laughed. Golden eyes glowed in appreciation. "You will have very sore knees and I…"
"You, my lord?"
"I will be forced to relinquish the pleasure of your hand for the next dance."
She glanced up and pursed her lips. He stared at them unashamedly. A hedonist already in the making. "I think I shall rise."
Another chuckle. "A wise choice."
She rose. Graceful like a deer, he thought. In fact the comparison was more apt than he realised. Her long black hair, slender limbs and delicately crafted face all brought that shy, exquisite animal to mind. But it was her eyes that betrayed her.
He asked her a question. She bowed once more and told him her name.
"A bear!"
A flash of pride pulled her chin up. "May I ask my Prince, why not?"
"I was just… surprised." But now, looking really, he wasn't. Eyes that he had previously likened to flames now glowed with the warm, comforting light of… well…
A bear.
A smile twitched on the full lips. He watched it, curiosity lifting his attention. "My grandmother chose it."
"Ah. Yes." And from those four words, a veil of discomfort descended down on the couple hidden by the heavy silk drapes.
"Lady Ta Min, yes?"
She bit her lip, recognising the faux pas. "Yes, my Prince." More formal than he had known her yet. The age-old coldness of their families silenced them.
Bu some mutual agreement, they turned and began to gaze out at the stars once more. There is peace to be found in the heavens, both thought, that cannot be discovered on Earth. Perhaps it is the immensity of the velvet-soft night or the stars that shine like pinpricks of pure light. Or perhaps it was just the loneliness one can find there. No one to look over your shoulder, no fears of appearances. You can be yourself among the stars.
She spoke quietly, more to herself than to him. "The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance."
He glanced at her; in surprise more than anything. He had been told that the Jan were little more than peasants now, their wealth gone with the death of the Avatar. "You've had a classical education, my lady."
She inclined her head and did not tell him the truth. That she had only become a lady in the past two years, ever since her father had struck a sudden vein of wealth through the manipulation of the stock markets. That the classical education had been more gleaned from the musty old scrolls of her dead grandfather (the normal one, the scholar) than from any well-bred, spit-and-polished finishing school in the Royal City.
The stars were examined again.
"How could one not have loved her great… still…eyes." His voice was soft, persuasive and utterly sincere. To the untrained ear, he was being entirely original.
One plucked and arched eyebrow rose. "The same poem, my Prince?"
The poor girl had trained her ears well.
He laughed. "A hit, my lady." One pale hand was raised. Silvery burns scorched across the square, edges of the palm. "May I have this dance?"
She lifted her hand. It glowed milk-white in the moonlight and he reached up to grasp it.
She shook her head and closed her fingers into a light fist. "It would be scandalous."
"Do you fear scandal… Ursa?"
A smile. "I fear nothing… Iroh."
Laughing, he led her onto the floor.
10th Day of the 6th month, twenty-sixth year of Fire Lord Azulon's reign,
From His Royal Highness, Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, the Rising Sun, the Eternal Flame,
To the honourable Lady Ursa of the House Jan.
Tonight I write the saddest lines.
To think I do not have her…
12th day of the 6th month, twenty-sixth year of Fire Lord Azulon's reign,
From Lady Ursa of the House Jan,
To His Royal Highness, Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, the Rising Sun, the Eternal Flame.
Do you know no other poetry, my lord?
16th day of the 6th month, twenty-sixth year of Fire Lord Azulon's reign,
From His Royal Highness, Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, the Rising Sun, the Eternal Flame,
To the honourable Lady Ursa of the House Jan.
Do you, Ursa?
20th day of the 6th month, twenty-sixth year of Fire Lord Azulon's reign,
From Lady Ursa of the House Jan,
To His Royal Highness, Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, the Rising Sun, the Eternal Flame.
Shed a tear for Twickenham Tweer,
Who ate uncommon meals,
Who often peeled bananas
And then only ate the peels.
Shall I continue, Iroh?
21st day of the 6th month, twenty-sixth year of Fire Lord Azulon's reign,
From His Royal Highness, Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, the Rising Sun, the Eternal Flame,
To the honourable Lady Ursa of the House Jan.
Agni preserve us all…
Throughout that long hot summer, Ursa received one hundred and six notes and letter from the palace.
Abiding by the strict protocol impressed on her by her chaperon – an overpoweringly gracious spinster of battle-ship build – she returned only one hundred and five. A lady cannot appear too eager.
Abiding by her own will, she kept every single one of the one hundred and six letters. Even the unimportant ones. The ones scribbled on scraps torn from official documents, the illegible ones. Even the one where the ink was smeared and smudged. It had been raining that day, he'd explained.
I would have shielded these words with my very soul. Unfortunately, souls are not waterproof.
She'd laughed then. She laughed one hundred and six times during that summer.
But if she was now living the fairy-tale life, then she had to deal with the other characteristics so common in fiction.
Namely, the villain of the piece.
"My lord."
"My Lady." Was there something brittle in those eyes, something not quite right? She pushed the thought aside and painted Iroh's laughing gaze into her suitor's unwelcome face.
"This is an unexpected honour. My lord."
The honour is mine entirely, my lady."
She bowed again. Ignored his eyes flickering contemptuously across the rotting pillars. "Would you enjoy some tea, my lord?"
"No." Decisive and quick. She resisted the urge to wince at his hard edges. "I regret I do not have long."
She tried a smile. "O human heart, You have no time to look back at anyone again." She meant it as a joke.
His blank look told her everything she needed to know.
He didn't understand her.
Every word she spoke flowed over him like a gracious, quiet river, drowning him in ignorance. She had a way of blinking with those large brown eyes that sent him fumbling in his boots, shy and blushing furiously. Like a boy with his first woman. Which was ridiculous. He was no boy. And she was no woman.
Not yet.
He watched her as she bowed once more. Her hair parted along the nape of her neck. A triangle of pale skin peeped out and he imagined running his hand over it. Would she jerk back? Or would she not? Surely she had to guess… Surely, she had to know. After all he was not coming to this godforsaken shack for the good of his health.
He would tell his mother. She would arrange everything. Women did that, did they not?
Soon he would have the rest of his life to understand her.
She did not like her villain.
Well, obviously. He was the villain after all.
But deep in her soul Ursa could not find it in her to like him. He was too brittle, too formal, too stiff.
She disliked his eyes too. The way they watched her, two holes boring into her back, scrutinising her face. They way they dismissed her house so casually. What a broken place.
It may be broken but she resented his impertinence in saying (thinking) so.
When he left, taking his too-hot eyes with him, she heaved a quiet sigh before straightening up once more.
There were callers to see. And she was a lady.
"I want to marry her. Please, Father."
"But, my son, your brother…"
"I love her, Father."
"A Jan?"
Silence. Firm, determined silence.
Azulon frowned. A memory crossed his mind. A childhood recollection, his father staring with desperate golden eyes at the Avatar's bride, his mother folded up with misery and hiding it all. What is it with our family and theirs? What ties us together so strongly in fate?
"Very well."
"My thanks, father."
Ursa was marrying her Prince.
Ashputtel had reached her final stage. Now she was just one bridal march away from happy-ever-after.
The veil was lowered over her eyes. Flowers – fire-lilies, the finest in the city – were thrust into her hands. She squinted down at them. Carefully, carefully. The kohl around her eyes was delicately drawn on. She did not want to smudge it.
The dew on the lilies was suspiciously bright. She touched it with one pampered fingerpad (finally soft after all her mother's efforts). It was cold too. And hard.
Diamonds. The lilies were strewn with tiny, winking diamonds. Her heart glowed slightly. He loves me. He knew she loved diamonds. He remembered.
Her mother's grateful smile swam before the mist of her veil. "My daughter, my beautiful daughter…" Kohl unashamedly running down her cheeks. The maids ran to attend her.
Her father handed her into the palanquin, his pale face glowing with happiness and relief, glowing like the sun. "Make us proud, Ursa."
I will, I will. Iroh and I will make you both proud, Papa.
They reached the palace in good time. An excellent omen, the old courtiers murmured into their silk sleeves, whispered to the embroidered dragons and nightingales. A prompt Princess meant an obedient one. It was good to see such manners in this day and age.
The Great Hall was crowded to the ceilings. Every window had been thrust open in a valiant attempt to project the call of the wedding vows to as many people as possible. It was a great day in the Fire Nation and they wanted everyone to hear.
The bride came down the long aisle left clear for her progress. Each step was measured. A pause was between each, as infinitesimal as spider-gauze. Her future husband looked down at the bowed black head and felt a surge of pride. She's mine.
She reached the edge of the aisle. Her future husband was at her side. She lifted her head, a smile the first thing on her lips. She would always smile for…
Ozai?
The villain of her fairy tale reached down and took her hand. His grip was hard with smooth skin (but there was another grip too, wasn't there, hard and rough with burn scars as silky threads across the palm and the square edge of his hand…)
"My Princess."
Make us proud, Ursa.
"My Prince."
She was no Cinderella.
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Poems used include
Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines by Pablo Neruda
Shah-Jahan by Rabindranath Tagore
Twickham Tweer by Jack Prelutsky