All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother

I no longer believe that people are born without virtue. It gets beaten out. Misfortune threshes our souls as a flail threshes wheat, and the lightest parts of ourselves are scattered to the wind.

I was a candle that had never known a flame, and now that the flame was lit, I softened and glowed in a way I had not known was possible.

Our fascination with feminine beauty is elemental. It is said that men wish to possess the princess and women wish to be the princess, but I believe that is only part of the truth. We are drawn to extraordinary beauty mindlessly and purposelessly; we flutter on dusty moth wings toward the effulgence with no understanding of why we do it. Perhaps when we see a woman with the aspect of an angel, our souls are tricked into following her, mistaking her for a guide to paradise. The opposite, of course, is also true.

Being strong does not disqualify you from being beautiful.

Imagine what ideas are locked up in the hearts and minds of women who simply lack the tools to express them.

I was a mouse trapped in a corner, looking for a crack to flee through but despairing of finding one.

You speak of love? Love is a sickness that causes men and women to do stupid things, the sorts of things that leave them sad and broken when the fever passes.

society has strong opinions about what is beautiful and what is not.

Rich only matters if he marries you," I said grimly. "Handsome matters not at all.

Because misfortune does not wait idly by until we are prepared for it.

The stories we tell ourselves have great power.

I wonder sometimes if the thoughts that flock my nightmares are abandoned memories coming home to roost.

As I watched her drowse, tears filled my eyes. I was seized with the fear that she would die, that I would lose her. Angels are not meant to dwell in the world of men. I was never meant to have anything so good.

I could not see the rats, scuttling in the shadows, or hear the crunching of termites, feasting on rafters and braces. I could not feel the ivy, ripping at stone, turning towers into sand. I knew nothing yet of the cloying sickness of relations in that house. To me, the manor was simply beautiful. I was, after all, a child.

Despite our rarefied circumstances, we have no control of our destinies.

What man who owns the kingdom's best horse would consent to ride a mule?

Joseph walking beside them with an expression of grim determination. He was a guard for the Holy Family and a decoy to prevent the devil from identifying Christ.

Get on, then," he said. "Make me beautiful.

When my daughters left my body at birth, their roots remained behind, entwined in the flesh of my heart, wrapping tighter and deeper as they grew tall and strong in the light of the world. The blood in my veins sang their names with each heartbeat, and I did not know how to survive being torn from them.

In one of the sermons I remember best, Mother Elfilda compared the Virgin Mary to an onyx, the precious stone that opens up to receive a drop of dew when the sun shines on it. After nine months it opens again and another onyx falls out, leaving the original stone unchanged. Mary remained pure, untouched, even as God forced Joseph to wed Mary.

It has been a relief to escape the judgment and spitefulness we faced at court. I am certain that Ella has done nothing to promote stories about her ugly stepsisters and selfish stepmother, but she is so radiant, so simple and cheerful, and we are her shadows. In order for her to embody beauty and goodness, we have to be darkness and perversity. This is the way of mankind, and it has always been so, since God cast us out from the Garden of Eden. We can only know virtue by understanding vice; we would be animals otherwise, living, mating, breeding, and dying in a world without righteousness or sin.

I knew how it bothered them to see their stepsister behaving like a baby; they wanted me to force Ella to stop sniveling and accept her punishment bravely. In that moment, however, I felt nothing but pity. For all her beauty and cleverness, Ella had a deformed wing, which she hid by never trying to fly. Charlotte and Matilda, like common wrens, flitted competently about their business. They could not imagine that something so ordinary could be out of reach for their exotic and much admired stepsister.