Cinderella Is Dead

by Kalynn Bayron

“You went into town,” Constance says to Amina. “Don’t be a hypocrite.” “I can blend in seamlessly, thank you very much, while Sophia just looks like a very beautiful man,” Amina snaps. “And what’s wrong with that?” Constance asks playfully.

“Maybe don’t try to stab every man you see,” Amina shoots back. Constance looks to me and shrugs. “It’s a habit.”

hell yeah constance

begin to pace the floor. The light from my vision and the pull at my chest, the illustrations in Constance’s book of tales, and Cinderella’s own words all fit together like a puzzle. This is how he does it. This is how he keeps himself young.

Called it

see the cotillion guests glancing at them and then looking away as they run from the dungeon. This is the one occasion where the people of Lille’s indifference to seeing its citizens in such a sad state will work to our benefit.

“You killed my friend,” I say. He looks off to the side. “Which one was that now? There have been so many.”

“You bring them here to fill the void Cinderella left in your blackened heart,” I say defiantly. “Your bitterness, this anger, it only comes from having your heart broken. Was that her crime? That she didn’t love you?” “I deserved her love!” he screams. He is unhinged, his eyes wild. “I took her out of her mundane existence and made her a queen. She should have loved me all her life for it.”

He has convinced himself that he was entitled to Cinderella’s love. He cannot see how his own actions turned her against him.

“If you are going to kill me, do it, and spare me your insufferable rantings.”

Amina flashes me a tight smile, but her eyes show me nothing but sadness. “I lied to you, Sophia. I had to do it.” The king waltzes over and plants a kiss on the top of Amina’s head. “Oh, Mother, you never were a very good liar.”

“Only tyrants deal in the sale of human beings.”

I am left just as I am, and after all this time, I know it is enough.

I see fathers with tears in their eyes. “You can keep your girls from harm,” I say. “And more important, they can be allowed to keep themselves from harm. These girls don’t want to be here tonight. Look at your children, your friends, your wives, and your daughters. Don’t do what is right because they hold those titles. Do what is right because they are people. Make a choice to change things.”

“We want a say in what happens next,” the man on the ground says as he scrambles to his feet. “You’ve sat idly by while the people of Mersailles suffered and died, and now you want a say in what happens to us?”

The council considered making changes slowly over time, but ultimately decided that the equal treatment of Mersailles’s citizens was far more important than some people’s inability to handle those changes.

Understand that what King Manford, in all his incarnations, feared the most was the will of the people he so desperately wanted to control. Do not be silent. Raise your voice. Be a light in the dark.