Rackham Arthur - Cinderella Liberator

TRUTHS and CAKES

T he fairy godmother told Cinderella that she didnt actually have to stay there and work all day every day. That very day, she put on her boots and got on one of the dapple-gray horses, and the prince got on his black horse. They rode out to the apple orchard that belonged to the kind old apple farmer. There, they stood on ladders and picked apples until they were tired and they had thirty big baskets of apples. The old apple farmer promised to introduce the young prince to the neighbors, the other farmers. And he asked the prince to come back in the winter, when they cut back the branches of the apple trees when they are bare, and in the spring, when the trees are in bloom and the bees are all buzzing around.

Prince Nevermind rode home to tell his parents he wanted to be a farmer, not a prince, or maybe a farmer-prince, but the fairy godmother was waiting for Cinderella. Go left until you get to the windmill, and then down the lane and up the alley, and you will find your cake shop. Next to it is a stable with five stalls and five dapple-gray horses inside, and the coachwoman lives upstairs from the horses.

Why didnt you tell me I was free to go earlier? said Cinderella.

The fairy godmother said, I was really busy helping some other children, and then I lost the directions to your house. Also, I am here to help people but they have to ask for help. You never asked for help until the night of the ball.

(It is true that if you want or need help, it is really helpful to ask for it.)

Nowadays, Pearlita runs a hair salon where she piles up peoples hair as high as it will go, and shes happy because shes doing what she loves. Paloma is the seamstress at a dress shop, where she makes dresses all day, because she discovered she liked making beautiful dresses even more than wearing them. They dont miss the days when they sat at home doing nothing and waiting for life to begin. They are good at what they do.

One day they went to Cinderella and said they were very sorry for how they had treated her, and that they were wrong, and could they be friends? Cinderella served them slices of cake, and later on Paloma made her some riding pants, and then Pearlita brought over some hair cream for the horses tails, and they were friends.

They became their truest selves, and so did their mother. Their mother, Cinderellas stepmother, turned into the roaring in the trees on stormy nights. Sometimes you can hear her outside, a strong wind rattling the windows and shaking the leaves off the trees, saying More and more and more , or Mine, mine, mine , and then the hungry wind dies down and she is gone until next time.

Sometimes that roaring is inside your own heart and head, and then it dies down there, too, the wind in all our heads that says we need more, we need to grab what someone else has and steal it away like the hungry wind. Everyone can be a fairy godmother if they help someone who needs help, and anyone can be a wicked stepmother. Most of us have some of that hunger in our hearts, but we can still try to be someone who says, I have plenty , or even Here, have this and How are you?

Cinderella runs a cake shop, and sometimes she sits with the people who come in to eat cake and drink a cup of tea and asks them what their dreams are, or what they would be if they could be anything they wanted to be, and what it means to be free. And then she listens, and sometimes she helps. She makes sure that everyone in the town has a birthday cake and goes to a lot of birthday parties.

Sometimes children running away from the wars in other kingdoms come to town, hungry and frightened and alone. Cinderella finds them, feeds them, and puts them to bed in her attic until she finds other homes for them and gets them started in school. She always welcomes them back in the shop with a big slice of cake and a big hug. And as she got
older she became good at understanding the wars in peoples hearts and helping them leave those behind, too. She isnt a fairy godmother, but she doesnt need magic to be a liberatorto be someone who helps others figure out how to be free.

Her mother the sea captain has come back and is proud of her. Her father the judge will be home one of these days, but her home will not be with that stepmother he was mistaken about. Someday she will get married, and so will the prince, but not to each other. Right now they are not old enough to get married, so we dont have to worry about that part of their story.

Besides, there is no happily ever after, only this bedtime story, and nighttime, and then tomorrow morning, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the spring coming after the winter, and the summer after the spring, and the earth going round the sun, and the lizards sitting on the wall in the sunlight, and the mice coming out in the moonlight to eat the cake crumbs.

A pair of glass slippers sits in the cake shop window, where they catch the sunlight, too, but Cinderella wears solid boots in which she can stand at the counter or ride a dapple-gray horse out to see her friends.

Her friends include the farmer-prince, Paloma, Pearlita, the bird doctor, the dancing teacher, the painter, and the clockmaker. They include all the people out on their farms where they grow the things the townspeople eat, and the girl who delivers the newspaper and the boy who delivers the mail and the sailors in the harbor and her mother the sea captain in the house with the tower. And all the children in the town, who love her for her cookies and her kindness and her stories about what it means to be free.

But her friends dont call her Cinderella, because she doesnt wear a dress with holes burned by cinders and ashes on it anymore.

They call her by her real name, which is

ELLA.