Salutations! I will finish the last challenge here, I can't believe my story is almost at an end. I will miss getting to write in this world.
Thanks to all my guest reviewers, you guys made my week!
Disney owns Cinderella, I just wanted to tweak Kit's story.
Reviews make my heart sing, as do favorites and follows.
From last time
"Ready"
The boys drew the bows back.
"Aim" The boys pointed their arrows to the sky.
"Fire!" Three arrows shot into the sky.
Kane and Kurt's arrows flew over the castle walls and starting falling to the ground.
Kit's arrow soared to the woods and went down somewhere in the middle.
The three boys looked at their father.
He stood up from his throne. "My best wishes to you boys, I trust and hope your arrows will be found by wonderful women, who will help you be the best you can be."
He gestured for them to go. Kane and Kurt both shoved Kit to the ground before walking briskly to find their arrows.
Kit got up and took off running into the woods.
"Poor simpleton, how will he ever find a suitable bride in the woods?" Julius laughed mockingly, thinking he was talking to the king's deaf ear. "Perhaps he can marry a frog or a toad."
"I trust Kit will do his best." The king answered sternly.
"Ah, I mean, yes sire." Julius stammered out before running to help Kane find a bride. Kane would be the heir if he had to knock the king out to do so.
Kane took off running once he was out of sight of the castle and was relieved to see his arrow hadn't been found yet.
He snatched it up, just as a Julius came into view.
"Where is this bride you told me about?" Kane questioned. "She is so beautiful such that every man will be envious right?"
"Of course, your highness." Julius assured him. "Her name is Hannah, she is the only princess from the Southern Isles, twin sister to prince Hans."
They walked along the rode to her carriage. Julius had arranged for her to be waiting there.
She stepped out of the carriage at Kane's demand, "Princess Hannah, come out and meet your future king."
She was a gorgeous girl, with auburn hair and green eyes. Her hair was elegantly twisted up in a knot. Her dress exactly matched her eyes and she wore emeralds at her ears and throat. Her complexion was flawless. But she had a calculating look in her eyes and a wicked touch to her blood red lipstick grin. Her nose was turned up, both from genetics and from her snobbery. She wore long black gloves and held out her hand.
"Prince Kane, I presume." Her voice was syrupy and coy.
"Yes, milady." Kane kissed her hand and grinned, she would be a child bride, easy to control with bribes and her looks were good enough to make people jealous.
She smiled all the while thinking, soon you will be eating out of my hand...I will be the true ruler, but if you are good to me, I won't need to arrange any accidents for you.
Kurt stomped off to his arrow. It was untouched when he got there. He scowled and looked around.
He spotted a noble girl walking with her chaperone from the market. Her servants were weighed down with bags.
"Wench!" He bellowed. She had curly platinum blonde hair, was a bit on the plump and blessed with generous curves. Her dress was a violent shade of pink and covered with lace and feathers.
She would do fine, he thought.
She jumped and looked around as he walked up to her.
"Will you take this arrow and be my bride?" Kurt held out the arrow.
"Are you a prince?" She asked, skeptical tilt to her head.
Kurt puffed out his chest. "Yes."
"Ooooh!" She squealed so loudly that all the birds left the trees. "Yes yes yes!" She clapped her hands and jumped up and down. Was it her lucky day or what? She found a prince to marry and a muscley one to boot. He could carry her and all of her shoes when she went shopping and oh wouldn't the other girls be so jealous.
"My name is Katherine but every calls me Kitty. Oh, I just so excited, a prince! Ooh, and can you image the clothes? We will have to work on your wardrobe some...
Kurt smiled as she clung to his bicep, chattering all the way.
He would win for sure with her generous bosom and large bustled dress, she was a voluptuous woman, one any man would say was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom.
Little did he know, but Kit's arrow landed close to the entrance of the woods where Cinderella could be found.
When he went to pick it up, he noticed something strange. There was a whole host of animals sitting on the edge of the woods, watching him.
Even the plants seem uneasy, if plants could be uneasy.
He looked around and then back at the animals. "Can I help you?"
They stared back but moved closer. A several birds fluttered around his head and some field mice ran to his feet.
"Is it about Cinderella?" Kit questioned. "Is she in trouble?"
The birds flew faster and the mice jumped on his boots and then darted to the forrest and then back to his boots. The tree branches started waving wildly.
Kit's heart tightened and his breath grew short. "Show me the way."
He hoped he wouldn't be too late. Fear and panic wove themselves into his mind as he tried to think what could've happened to her. Was she beaten again? Was she trapped?
He began to move faster and faster until he was sprinting through the woods.
He came to an abrupt stop stop when he heard the melody of the song she had sung earlier. It sounded a bit different this time around. She had to be a different bird, but it was more than that.
She sounded...weary and sad...like she was dying...but she couldn't be!
He entered a clearing and saw a flock of swans swimming slowly around the edge of a pond. He set his bow and arrow done and quickly ran toward the edge.
Out of nowhere, a beautiful (but wrong somehow) women appeared in front of him, accompanied by two croaking toads.
"You're far from home are you not?" She asked and Kit paused for a moment, curious as to what she was doing.
"Yes" Kit answered laconically, his instincts screaming not to trust this woman.
"You'd best be on your way, I'd hate for misfortunate or an accident to befall you, so deep in the woods, and all alone little prince."
The witch seethed inwardly, how had she let a boy fall in love with Cinderella? This just wouldn't do. And this boy was one of the princes to boot! Though he was the simpleton prince, so maybe she could trick him.
"But I heard such sweet singing, it makes me want to tarry a little while longer." Kit's face was resolved, he wasn't going anywhere until he found Cinderella.
"Oh?." She smiled, with mischief in her eyes. "I do know what you are looking for though."
Kit paused his scanning of the forrest. "You do?"
The witch disappeared and reappeared behind him.
"Yes, she is in the form of a swan today, for whatever reason." The stepmother dropped her facade. Her face became very cold and calculating.
She had turned her daughters into swans earlier as a precaution, it cost her some of her beauty, her hair greyed and wrinkles appeared but it would be worth it to throw the prince off the scent.
She had to get Cinderella to show her the spring, and having this boy reject her could do it, the despair at losing love would hurt her so much, the spring would open up if she got anywhere close to it, good magic was so easy to fool that way.
Kit looked at the three swans. They all seemed beautiful and graceful.
But only one had warm, kind brown eyes. He held out his arm to her and she arched her neck around it.
"This one is Cinderella." Kit declared proudly.
The witch was furious, that spell had cost her ten years of her life and the simpleton had figured it out.
The plants around them died suddenly, with the grass going brown and the leaves and flowers wilting away and even the trees starting to rot as she rubbed her hands together.
She sneered after Kit appeared alarmed by the death of the plants. "Why would you want a half breed, a freak of nature, animal by day and girl by night? How could she rule by your side" The witch had grown desperate and was barely keeping her face and voice controlled, how had the boy figured out the real Cinderella?
Kit stood up slowly and squared his shoulders.
"I want her for her courage, for her kindness, for the joy that she has toward life, for her lovely ability to dream. Ever since I met her, my life has been changed. She opened my eyes and had faith in me that no one since my mother has had. She accepted me as a humble apprentice, she knows the real me and I want to spend my life with the real her."
The witch's face darkened as Kit made his vow of true love to Cinderella. She raised her hands, and they started to glow with an eerie green light as the animals around them dropped to the forrest floor, dead.
"You want to know the real her? Ha!" She pointed her hands at the swan and after a puff of smoke, Cinderella appeared in her human form.
Cinderella collapsed to the ground and Kit rushed to her side.
"My dear, what has happened to you?" He saw the bruises and the dried blood and his own blood began to boil.
"Ha ha ha." The witch cackled. "Cinderella was a naughty girl and didn't share with her family."
Lightening cracked and struck around the clearing, creating a circle of green fire.
"You, you did this to her!" Kit had never been so angry in his life, his fear forgotten in the face of the danger and harm to Cinderella.
"Yes, oh the poor dear begged me to stop. If only you had found her sooner." The witch taunted as the sky grew darker with her magic.
Kit looked around for his bow and arrow. He had to get get the witch's attention and get her to take him seriously.
The witch noticed him searching and scoffed. "Foolish boy, no mortal weapon can defeat me!"
She threw a stream of dark magic at him and knocked him down hard. She conjured up ropes and bound him and then had the ropes turn to snakes. When Kit managed to kill the snakes using a rock, she shrieked with displeasure and through a whirlwind at him, that he barely managed to avoid.
Though the witch kept using her magic to try to thwart him, she continued to fail as Kit didn't stop fighting, but Kit was tiring faster than her.
Soon, she looked like an old crone and Kit was covered in bruises, with a sprained ankle, and sore ribs.
Still she taunted him. "Simpleton, really your name suits you. Always messing up, being the odd one out, never doing anything right. Your father loves your brothers more than you. You think you've won the challenges?" She spit on the ground and the ground sizzled.
Kit stopped moving at that, shocked and hurt to his core.
"Oh yes, I know about them, I knew about everything but your visits till just now." She smirked but the effect was lost as she was missing some teeth now.
"Stupid boy, you weren't enough to make your mother stay. Your father never even bothered to pay attention to you." Her voice grew more terrible. "How could you ever hope to be king one day, how could you ever be enough to save her?"
Kit's head dropped, he knew she was trying to dissuade him but her words were what had been floating around in his head ever since that fateful day where he earned the nickname. They seemed to gorge themselves deep inside and he felt so exhausted with fighting that he fell to his knees.
Cinderella spoke to him then. She had been injured by the death of some many animal friends and plant wood nymphs but she knew Kit's pain was greater than hers.
She couldn't let him go on thinking so little of himself, like she had done before he told her otherwise.
"Kit, you mustn't give up hope. For you have saved me, in more ways than you know with your kindness. I love you for your brave heart, for your open mind, for your sense of justice, for how deeply you care about your people and for how you restored my hope when it was lost!" Her eyes filled with love and a smile grace her bruised face.
As Kit's head lifted, she tried to reach a hand out to him...and then stopped as strange things began to happen.
For the spring had sensed its guardian was dying, and her champion was discouraged and awoke to heal their hearts.
Their vows of love had called it to as well, and now it was fully unlocked. For love had been the key all along.
With May Day being the next day and a love as pure as theirs, the spring was bursting to be free and their vows broke away the last barrier.
Wind whirled around the clearing, and strange lights flashed, blue and green and pink, in beautiful shapes.
The clearing soon filled with a gold light and Kit shielded Cinderella with his body though he felt the light was good.
Just as their eyes couldn't stand it anymore, the spring appeared and gurgled merrily.
Kit had never seen anything so vibrant and alive as the spring. He stared at it, enthralled, until a whisper broke him free of his enchantment.
Kit," Cinderella pleaded in a hoarse whisper. "You mustn't let her enter the spring. The fate and well being of the entire kingdom depends on it. Please...Where there is kindness, there is goodness. And where there is goodness, there is magic." She trailed off and laid her head down and closed her eyes.
"Cinderella?" Kit questioned. His mother had said that to him before and it had given him the strength to move after her death.
Now, it gave him the courage he needed to do what had to be done. It was time for good to triumph over evil, for good pure magic to save the day.
The witch stood up from her cowering and her eyes gleamed. "At last, I will be young and beautiful forever!
She turned to Cinderella. "Foolish girl, you see I have the spring's power now. I can use it for my own dreams, unlike you with your saving the kingdom and treating it cautiously. Bah. I can rule now, enslave the land, my powers will be restored! I will be-"
The witch cut off with terrible scream as an arrow protruded from her chest. Kit had used her distraction to load his bow with the arrow to find his bride and aimed at the witch. He hated to take a life, but she was too dangerous to let her live.
"Foolish, idiotic simpleton! This arrow" She made to pull it out and gasped. "This arrow can't kill me" But as she said that, she felt weaker and cold and strange.
"What is this?" She grunted as blood came out of her mouth and she fell to the ground. "Only a lover's token can kill me."
"That arrow had all of the feathers from each time I met Cinderella. I used wood from a branch from my mother's garden and I use metal from Tiberius' first horseshoes. That arrow is full of lover's token from the important people in my life. That arrow was also made with the intent to find my bride."
The witch couldn't believe it, defeated by the simpleton prince of all men. Her daughters croaked around her sadly as she died. But as flies stated to gather, they happily started eating them up, fully toads now with no memory of their lives as girls.
The plants were restored to life and the animals stood up as the stream showered the clearing with its healing waters. The fire went out and the sun came back from the cloud of darkness.
The world appeared new again, like Eden on the day of creation after the spring's healing magic.
Kit turned away from the majestic sight and looked anxiously at Cinderella.
He lifted her gently, pleading "Please stay with me, please just stay with me and open your eyes."
He walked into the spring, holding her close and hoping it would heal her, it was the only thing he could think to do.
As soon as he breathed out a "Please, my darling" and kissed her gently on the lips, the water surged up around them.
A kaleidoscope of colors surrounded them and Kit felt pure energy racing through his veins, it hurt but it felt so wonderful at the same time.
Cinderella felt like she was in every animal that ever was and would be, feeling all their hearts beat as one, feeling the life within him all. She felt the connection between all life and gasped at the love and overwhelming closeness.
They too were intimately aware of one another, like their very souls were dancing with each other, their hearts joined together and beating as one.
Just when they each felt they couldn't hold another drop, a golden light surged over them and the spring went back to merrily rolling along.
Kit stepped out of the spring, still holding Cinderella.
He noticed all of his injuries were healed and he felt the strongest he had ever felt. He felt that he could face all of the bullies and all of the loneliness that had tormented him before. He looked down at Cinderella who had been healed as well it seemed but her eyes were closed.
"Cinderella?" Kit asked tentatively, pushed some hair out of her face.
Cinderella blinked slowly and then smiled at Kit. She gasped as she realized she was healed, and she was human even though the sun was out.
'What, how, ...?" She looked at Kit but Kit had no patience for answers. He kissed her, pouring his heart into the kiss.
Cinderella surrendered and kissed him back. Warm sweetness raced through her veins and she felt almost like the spring was in her again.
When they broke apart, Kit smiled, a touch bashfully after being so forward, but his eyes gleaming with happiness.
She smiled back and said, a bit breathlessly, "But how did you break the spell? Only a prince's kiss could break the spell." Cinderella had been too overwhelmed with her injuries and the deaths to hear the witch's taunts about being a prince, she only heard the Kit's vow of love and the last bit about Kit not being enough to save her.
Kit hesitated a second too long and Cinderella's eyes went wide.
"Oh!" She made to stand up and Kit reluctantly let her. She walked a step or two before spinning back.
"But you said you were an apprentice!" Her eyes were reproachful.
Kit defended himself. "I am, just an apprentice...monarch."
"And your master is?"
"The king, my father, still teaching me his trade." Kit hoped she would forgive him for his deceit.
"So all of those unusual challenges?" Cinderella had wondered about his wide variety of tasks.
"They were to win the throne, to be the heir." Kit straightened his shoulders further. It was time.
"The last challenge was to shoot the arrow, to find a bride." His eyes were sincere and his face was very serious.
Cinderella blushed and her eyes went wide again as her heart began racing.
"I hope you don't mind but I used it to free you from the witch."
"Yes, I am grateful to you for that. I only wish she could've realized her mistakes herself." Cinderella said sadly, regretting that she had never gotten through to her stepmother.
"She treated you in a way no one should be treated." Kit insisted, remembering the whipping and how she almost died.
"Yes, I know. But I will forgive her in my heart, now that she is gone and can't hear me say it."
They were both quiet for a moment, respecting that a life had been lost even if they had no other choice, to save their world.
However, their contemplation came to end when Cinderella realized what Kit had said earlier.
"The last challenge was to find a bride?" She blushed and ducked her head.
Kit came closer to her. "Yes, but I had already talked to my father about marrying you. I wanted to rush her yesterday and ask you to be my wife with your mother's ring. But he insisted on tradition of the challenge with the arrows." The words spilled out, he was trying to ensure that she knew he wanted her for her not because of the arrow tradition.
His heart had to be loud enough for her to hear him. How could she not know she was the one? Would she still love him, a prince?
"I see." Cinderella's heart was beating fast. Did Kit still want her? So much was happening, the kiss and the spell and the spring.
"Cinderella," Kit knelt down on one knee and grabbed her hand. "Will you marry me, as a I am? A humble apprentice still learning my trade?"
"Only if you will take me as I am, a honest half wood-nymph who loves you." Cinderella put her other hand over his and pulled him to his feet.
Kit smiled before kissing her again. This one was a promise, to love and accept each other as they were.
Cinderella blushed and looked down, only to discover she had a new dress on. It was a vibrant blue, like Kit's eyes and had butterflies gracing the shoulders and the hem. The bodice was covered with sparkles and the skirt was full. Her hair was perfectly curled and shone like the sun.
"How did this happen?" She twirled around and realized that her feet were still bare, as they had been. Just as she realized this, lights twirled around her feet. When the light stopped, her feet were sheathed in glass, like sea glass.
She took a tentative step and smiled when she realized how comfortable they were.
Kit smiled at her twirling, thinking he had never seen anything so lovely and sweet and then realized his clothes had changed too. They weren't dirty anymore and all the rips had been fixed. His blue had changed to match hers and he had waves embroidered around the hem now.
"I guess the spring enchanted them too. Shall we go back to the palace and announce our engagement, milady?"
"One thing I have to do first for May Day." She smiled and walked over to the spring and started to sing.
"Lavender's blue,
Dilly dilly,
Lavenders green.
When I am King,
Dilly dilly,
You shall be Queen.
Who told you so,
Dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
T'was my own heart,
Dilly dilly,
That told me so.
Call up your men,
Dilly dilly,
Set them to work.
Some to the plow,
Dilly dilly,
Some to the fork.
Some to make hay,
Dilly dilly,
Some to cut corn.
While you and I,
Dilly dilly,
Keep ourselves warm.
Lavender's green,
Dilly dilly,
Lavender's blue.
If you love me,
Dilly dilly,
I will love you.
Let the birds sing,
Dilly dilly,
Let the lambs play
We shall be safe,
Dilly dilly,
Out of harms way.
I love to dance,
Dilly dilly,
I love to sing.
When I am Queen,
Dilly dilly,
You'll be my King.
Who told me so,
Dilly dilly,
Who told me so?
I told myself,
Dilly dilly,
I told me so."
Kit clapped as she finished and gave her a flower he found nearby.
"There, now the spring will revive the land tomorrow on May Day and the kingdom should have a prosperous harvest and the people's hearts will find hope again". Her task was complete till fall started.
Cinderella took Kit's arm and smiled at the amazed and loving look on his face as they made their way back to the castle.
Wow, I can't believe it, the last challenge is done. I will have one more chapter, with the king meeting Cinderella and the heir being announced at last.