Cinderella
A kind girl, a lost glass slipper, and a kingdom searched door to door
Page 1
At the edge of a town, where the cobbled lane met the open country, there stood a fine old stone house with tall shuttered windows. Once it had been a happy house. But the master had married a second time, to a proud and cold woman with two grown daughters, and when he died the house grew colder still. The woman and her daughters took every soft chair and warm room for themselves, and they gave the kindest girl in the house the hardest work and the worst of everything. Her name was Ella, but because she slept by the dying fire and was always dusted with grey ash, the stepsisters laughed and called her Cinderella. She never answered their cruelty with cruelty. On this evening she carried water across the courtyard while, behind the lit windows above her, her stepmother and stepsisters sat warm and idle.
Page 2
Inside, the great kitchen hearth was Cinderella's whole world. From before dawn she lit the fire, carried the ashes, scrubbed the stone floor, washed the plates and mended the linen, while the two stepsisters lounged about giving orders and finding fault. When her work was finally done, late at night, she had no bed of her own; she curled up on the warm stones in the chimney corner among the cinders, and that was where she slept. Yet even here she kept a small kindness alive. She fed the mice that lived behind the woodpile and gave crusts to the birds at the window, and they were not afraid of her. She hummed as she worked, because sulking would not get the floor any cleaner, and because her mother had once told her that a kind heart is a kind of courage.
Page 3
One morning a royal messenger rode down the lane and left a stiff cream card sealed with gold. The King was giving a great ball at the palace, and every young lady in the land was invited, for the prince was to choose a bride. The stepsisters shrieked with delight and fell at once into a storm of ribbons, mirrors and tempers. For days Cinderella was run off her feet lacing them into gowns, curling their hair and fetching pins, and she did it all so well and so patiently that even they could find little to complain of. When she asked, very softly, whether she too might go to the ball, the room went silent. Her stepmother looked her up and down, from her ash-smudged cheek to her wooden clogs, and the two sisters burst out laughing at the very idea.
Page 4
The evening of the ball arrived. In the front hall the stepsisters turned this way and that in their heavy gowns, powdered and perfumed and pleased with themselves, and the stepmother swept them out to the waiting carriage. The great door stood open to the cool blue night. Cinderella carried their fans and their wraps down the steps, handed them up into the carriage, and stood on the gravel as the driver cracked his whip. The wheels rattled away down the lane toward the far-off glow of the palace, the laughter fading with them, until there was only the dark house and the sound of her own breath. For the first time, alone on the empty step, Cinderella let herself cry — not because she was unkind, but because she had been left so entirely behind.
Page 5
She wandered out into the moonlit kitchen garden, among the cabbages and the bare apple tree, to cry where no one would hear. And there, where a moment before there had been only moonlight, stood a small round old woman in a soft lavender-grey cloak, with silver hair and the kindest twinkling eyes Cinderella had ever seen. She was Cinderella's own fairy godmother, she said, and she had been watching a long time. She did not scold and she did not pity; she simply asked, briskly, whether Cinderella would like to go to the ball after all. Then she set her twinkling eyes on the garden and began to give the strangest orders — to fetch the biggest pumpkin from the patch, and to look behind the woodpile for a mousetrap full of live grey mice. Cinderella, wiping her eyes, did exactly as she was told.
Page 6
The fairy godmother touched the great pumpkin with her wand, and in a swirl of golden sparks it swelled and gilded and rounded into a splendid golden coach. She touched the six grey mice, and they rose up into six fine dappled horses, tossing their manes. A whiskered rat became a round coachman with a magnificent moustache, and six lizards from behind the watering can became six footmen in green-and-silver livery. Last of all she turned to Cinderella herself, and with one gentle sweep of the wand the patched grey dress melted away into a shimmering gown of ice-blue and silver, and on Cinderella's feet appeared two slippers made all of clear glass. 'There,' said the godmother, 'but mark me well — the magic ends on the last stroke of midnight. At twelve o'clock, every bit of it becomes a pumpkin, a mouse and a rag again. Be home before then.'
Page 7
The golden coach swept up to the palace, and Cinderella stepped down into a blaze of light. The ballroom was vast, with mirrors and chandeliers and a hundred candles, and the music and dancing stopped as she entered, for no one knew who this lovely stranger could be. The prince himself crossed the whole floor to meet her and would dance with no one else all evening. He found her not only beautiful but kind and merry and easy to talk to, and the hours flew. Her own stepsisters stood close by and did not know her in the least; she even spoke gently with them and shared the fine oranges the prince had given her, so that they went home saying they had met the most gracious lady in the kingdom and never dreamed it was the cinder-girl from their own hearth.
Page 8
She was so happy that she almost forgot — and then, high in the palace tower, the great clock began to strike twelve. At the very first stroke Cinderella remembered everything: the coach, the horses, the gown, the rule. She broke from the prince with a gasp, turned and ran — down the length of the ballroom, out through the great doors and down the long marble palace steps into the night. The prince ran after, calling, but she was too quick for him. In her haste, as she flew down the steps, one clear glass slipper slipped from her foot and was left behind, gleaming, on the cold stone. She did not dare go back for it. By the time she reached the bottom the last stroke had sounded, the coach was a pumpkin, the horses were mice, and a breathless girl in a patched grey dress hurried home alone through the dark.
Page 9
The prince would not rest. He had fallen for the gracious stranger, and all he had of her was one glass slipper, so small and so fine that it could belong to no one else. He sent his herald through the whole kingdom with the slipper upon a velvet cushion, and every young lady was to try it on. Through town and country they went, from grand house to cottage, but the slipper fit no one. At last they came to the house at the edge of town. The elder stepsister squeezed and strained, but her foot was far too wide; the younger pushed and winced, but her foot was far too long. Then Cinderella, sweeping the hearth as always, asked quietly if she might try. The sisters jeered — but the herald had been told every lady, without exception, and he beckoned the cinder-girl forward.
Page 10
Cinderella sat down, and the little glass slipper slid onto her foot as if it had been made for her alone — because it had. And then, to prove it beyond all doubt, she drew its twin from her apron pocket and slipped it onto the other foot. At that very moment her fairy godmother's magic sparkled over her once more, and the patched grey dress became the shimmering ice-blue and silver gown, so that there could be no mistaking her. The stepsisters, ashamed, told her how sorry they were for all their unkindness. Cinderella, who had never once answered cruelty with cruelty, took them both by the hand and forgave them with her whole heart. She married her prince at the palace in a great and joyful wedding, and she welcomed her stepmother and stepsisters to come and live there too, so that no one she knew need ever be unkind or unhappy again. Because she was as kind in good fortune as she had been in bad, she was beloved by the whole kingdom for all her days.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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