About Time

The castle was crowded. Cinderella stood in a corner of the ballroom on a dais. As she looked out over the crowd she saw his head and shoulders bobbing up and down in the lively Minuet. His royal highness was dancing with a blonde and blue-eyed thing that looked like she weighed no more than a feather. Cinderella shook herself and looked in the opposite direction. Why hadn’t the Prince noticed her? She knew her own fairytale by heart, and being stuck living it on repeat had made her particularly familiar with the details of it. So then why in the world hadn’t the prince spotted her yet? She’d been standing in the same place for nearly 45 minutes since her fashionably late arrival, and he still hadn’t looked her way once. This was most unusual.

The curse that made her fairy tale repeat for all eternity didn’t seem to affect anyone besides her–that is, she knew exactly which waltz would play next, since she’d been in the prince’s arms for it every night for the last 2,731 days, but the Prince himself thought he was meeting Cinderella for the first time every single evening. It was supposed to be a love story for the ages, but Cinderella had long ago given up all hope of “happily ever after.” Falling in love is a beautiful thing, until you’ve looked into the exact same pair of blue eyes every night and they were still strangers to you. And you were still a stranger to them. That was perhaps the worst part of it. For the first year she had spent every day learning all there was to know about the prince. She had done everything she could possibly think of to get him to remember her the next evening, but every attempt had been fruitless. Every evening played out exactly the same. Her afternoons were always spent getting her outfit destroyed by her step sisters, and then she would burst into tears and wait for her fairy godmother. She was completely sick and tired of crying over the same issue she knew would be resolved, but the laws of the fairytale could not be changed, and every single day she found herself fighting tears out in the rose garden. She then waited for hours while the prince dined, and dressed, and danced, and at some point around 9pm he would look up towards the dais. His eyes would light up, and he would leave his blonde and blue-eyed partner directly in the middle of the floor. The crowd stepped aside as his royal highness climbed the stairway to reach her, his hand outstretched.

Cinderella smiled shyly, and looked down at her gloves, sitting daintily in her blue tulle lap. The glass slippers ached painfully; even after all this time she hadn’t grown used to the blisters she got. They were gone the next morning of course, but that didn’t make the feeling of them coming on any better in the moment.

The prince seemed to lose his breath at the sight of her, and he barely managed to stumble out the words “may I have this dance?” Cinderella didn’t have any lines here in the fairy tale–the first night she hadn’t been clever or savvy enough to come up with anything, and now it was stuck that way; every night she gave the same stupid simper, and yes, stumbled down the stairs into the prince’s arms. She had tripped the first evening (hazard of wearing a new gown) and ever since it had been written in stone. And every evening the prince was delighted by it.

He would look deeply into her eyes while they danced to the Butterfly Waltz, and then they would go out into the garden. They would share a romantic evening wandering around the rose garden, and then, right when she was sure the prince was going to propose, the clock struck midnight, and all at once she would wake up in her own bed, the morning before the ball.

But tonight was different. Tonight it was half-past 10, and the prince still hadn’t noticed her presence.

The lateness of the hour had so discomfited her that when she suddenly became aware of the stranger on her dais she had no recollection of when he had appeared. He was dressed all in black, including black velvet gloves. He looked out over the crowd with a glazed stare, not seeming to see what played out in front of him. Cinderella couldn’t remember him from the previous thousands of nights she had spent on that exact step. This alone was enough to intrigue her. She wanted to step over, to speak to him, but she hesitated. Each time she had tried to change the exact narrative from the first night, she had immediately woken up in bed, not even being allowed to finish the night. She opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it without saying a word. Even a “hello” to this stranger could ruin this night, this wonderful night that had somehow varied in the slightest particular out of the ordinary. This never happened. 

Cinderella wondered whether the man had anything to do with the prince being absent minded. Surely one interruption in the fairy tale pattern could affect the entire evening? She had long ago lost hope of ever changing anything; she clearly wasn’t able to alter the story herself, and she didn’t know how to influence others to change it without waking up in bed 3 seconds later. But what if this tall stranger had come to disrupt all on his own? Far be it from her to keep him from changing her life in any way at all. Any variation was excessively pleasant. She knew the Butterfly Waltz inside, outside, upside-down, and backwards. She had often wondered whether she couldn’t do it on her head. In fact, she had tried it once, but within moments she was waking up right side up again, with nothing to look forward to but the same dull pair of lovely blue eyes and glass-slippered blisters.

The stranger raised an eyebrow in her direction. “I see you’ve noticed the prince is running late this evening.” 

She dared not risk a word. She didn’t even look at him as he continued.

“Who is that blue-eyed girl he dances with each night?”

Her name was Celia, and she was extremely dull. Cinderella had heard her speaking at the punch table once, and she seemed to have no conversation besides idle gossip of the prince (that was all untrue according to her own research) and the dowries of each of the ladies he had most recently been seen with. By her count on a night somewhere in the 300s, he had been seen with 18 ladies in the last month, and Celia swore she would be the 19th and last. She always concluded her tete-a-tetes with “19 has always been my lucky number, you know.” 

Cinderella said none of this, and silence reigned between the stranger and herself.

“You know, she looks like Cinderella is supposed to look. Blonde and blue-eyed.”

She couldn’t help herself. Her shock was utter and complete. “Her?? Cinderella? In all my life I’ve never been so insulted! I’ve spent the last 2,731 nights here, reliving each day with abject horror, and in all that time I have been Cinderella. How dare you come here, to my fairytale, and insinuate that I’m not myself!”

Once she paused long enough to take a breath she was rather surprised to find that she was still there, on the dais, shouting at the stranger. She’d rather expected the day would start over as soon as she started to speak.

“There, you see? Something is very wrong here. And I think you’re it.” The stranger had turned and was looking directly at her. No one else seemed to have noticed her tantrum a moment before. 

“You sir, where did you come from? How did you get in here? Over 2,000 nights I’ve been here, and I’ve never seen you before.”

He raised an eyebrow again; it seemed to be something of a habit with him. 

“You’ve now mentioned twice the number of days you’ve been imprisoned here. You’re on the right track. It’s about time.” He winked, and laying a finger aside of his nose he faded away into the shadows. Before she could think, Cinderella ran forward into the dark corner where he had vanished, looking for a hallway, a trapdoor, anything pointing to where he might have gone, but only cold, white stone met her eager fingertips.

She vaguely noticed that the Minuet had ended. She was still going over and over the corner where the man had disappeared with her gloved hands, when she noticed the crowd had come to a hush.

The prince was climbing the steps towards her, his hand outstretched. She knew her role, and not wanting to lose her opportunity to investigate this particular evening further, she smiled shyly down at her gloves, and tumbled beautifully into the prince’s arms. As always, his brow furrowed in concern for a moment, but once she was righted he managed a shy smile. The dance began, and as she twirled and recited her lines with a porcelain smile, her mind was hard at work. 

What had he meant by that comment? It was about time for what? How dare he imply she wasn’t the real Cinderella? What could he possibly have meant about prison? Of course, she’d often felt that her fate to relive the fairy tale over and over endlessly was some sort of prison, but nothing she could do had gotten her out of it. She had decided it was beyond her power even to speak her own words once she got to the ball. It never seemed to matter exactly what she did during the day. The only requirement was that she have a dress for her stepsisters to tear apart. There had been days, especially in the first thousand nights, when she had gotten distracted trying to learn about the prince, and trick herself into loving him more, or convince him that he loved her less, anything of that sort really. She’d lost track of time often during those days, and had found that it never got to be past 5pm until she had a dress made. Once her mother’s dress was finished the evening was set in absolute stone, and anything she did to change how things had unfolded that very first night, had caused the day to reset.

The Butterfly Waltz ended and Cinderella mentally returned to the ballroom. This was the tricky part. Her dialogue with the prince had been strained at first, but as time went on she had become more comfortable with it. In order not to get shut out of the evening she had to be carefully maintaining the awkward and uncomfortable silences they had had the first time. It was not nearly as easy as one could hope. If she got even slightly routine about the whole thing she lost her sense of simple surprise about the Prince’s kind gestures to a peasant girl, and everything would reset. She was determined not to let her mind wander from the stranger, but in order not to lose this night she had to set him aside for the next hour.

The Prince took her arm and they wandered out into the moonlight. The royal gardens were set out in a maze. They always went counterclockwise once they got inside it, and Cinderella could find her way very well now around each of the strangely carved bushes and seemingly random statuary. The prince was droning on about his father in the same old way he always did. Only, in the middle of his rant, something caught her ear. “He doesn’t have much time left. I’m worried his rush to find me a bride is as much a desire to secure the kingdom before his death as it is a wish for my happiness.” She wasn’t quite sure what about his statement bothered her. She was well aware of the events that had led to the ball. But she had somehow already made it past several very large changes in the narrative this evening. She didn’t dare to ask him to elaborate and risk losing this rare gift. He rambled on.

She had let herself get a little ahead of him as they walked. She had discovered somewhere in the 1400s nights that as long as he still opened all the garden gates for her, and waved the guards away at the same moments, she could walk ahead of and ignore him as much as she pleased. The only caveat was that if he thought he needed to repeat himself or ask her something regarding her whereabouts it threw off the script and the night would end. 

Tonight she was at least 10 feet ahead of him when she heard it. A faint scratching coming from the right. She turned and the prince turned with her. She didn’t have time to stop, the night could end any moment since she was now deviating from the script, and she had to know what the scratching was. She felt something within her pushing her onwards. The man, the prince waiting too long to start the waltz, his comment about his father. Suddenly it struck her. “It’s about time,” the man had said. The Prince had said his father was out of time. She thought back to the larger structure of the gardens. The sounds were coming from their right, leading them back where they had come from…back in a clockwise direction. Time always stopped and started at specific points, for example, this day would end at midnight, like it had every day for 2,731 days. But what if she could stop it? She had not stopped her mad dash towards the scratching sounds in all this. She could hear the Prince huffing a little behind her. She stopped and waited for him. He turned the corner, slightly flushed from trying to keep up with her. “Dear lady, I do apologize. Do you hear those strange sounds?” 

She braced herself for the dizziness she always felt right before the night ended earlier than it was supposed to.

It never came.

“Lady, are you quite well?”

She opened one eye, and looked down at him. He was kneeling by her, gazing earnestly into her eyes. He looked decidedly more interesting when she didn’t know exactly what was going to come out of his mouth next. The scratching continued, and this time they both ignored it. His script was completely off-kilter, he was saying things of his own accord!

Suddenly, she was seized with a fit of madness. How much farther could she push her luck? She asked the question that had been on her mind since the stranger disappeared.

“Do I look like Cinderella to you?”

His eyes, already filled with concern, now looked confused as well. 

“Cinderella m’lady? Is that your name? If so, ‘tis the very fairest in all the land, as are you. Time seems to have no effect on you at all.”

She turned her head sharply. “Why did you say that?” she demanded.

He blushed slightly. “Deepest apologies my lady, it seems I have been too forward.” He made to let go of her hand, but she gripped his harder. “No no, the compliment was well meant and well said. I mean why did you say that about time? Have we met before?”

She tried to keep the urgency out of her voice, but didn’t quite succeed.

The clock began to strike midnight.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

Only 9 more strokes before this whole fascinating night would be over, and there was still so much she needed to know! 

She shook herself and repeated her question. “Your highness, I apologize for my fastidiousness, but I absolutely must know; have we met before?”

The moment he spent considering her question felt like an eternity.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

Finally he answered, looking at her anxiously. “Please don’t be upset my lady, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen your face before. But this is far worse than that. I don’t think I’m even the Prince you think I am.”

She momentarily lost count of the chimes the clock had left. She was in utter shock. Maybe she wasn’t Cinderella, and maybe this wasn’t her Prince Charming. Maybe there was more to life than all of this. Her mind raced ahead. Every night the prince was on one knee telling her he loved her when midnight struck. Perhaps if she could just get him to actually propose this evening she could find out what lay on the other side of this midnight.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

She took a deep breath. “Your highness, I’m madly in love with you. You may not know me, but I have spent the last 2,731 nights studying you. Surely you would not find such devoted love in any other maiden of the land. Every night we come to this garden and you almost propose. Every night the clock strikes midnight before you choke out the words, and I go back to a life of insignificance and drudgery. If you are not the prince, perhaps you can do what he wouldn’t.”

She looked him boldly in the eye. He seemed dazed, confused, even. 

“Your majesty, there is little time.”

Bong.

He opened his mouth. A strange look of determination she had never seen before came over his face.

Bong.

“Will you marry me?”

Her “yes” was swallowed up in the final stroke of midnight, and he kissed her.

She held tight to him as everything around her turned not into the morning daylight she had expected, but a dark blackness, sweeping them both away with no recourse or escape.