While this was going on, what were the ball’s other guests doing? And no, I don’t mean the boring old nobles and cultivators and officials and whoever else was sitting around stuffily, engaging in convoluted and dubious political shenanigans whose full import was clear only to the initiated. I mean the real guests - Claireholm, and the Doll.

The Doll wasn’t dancing - it would, perhaps, be slightly incongruous for a stuffed toy to spin and twirl about the floor. Claireholm could dance, but had no interest in doing so. The pair had found a cosy spot at the back, in the corner, with only a potted plant to keep them company. There they hid from prying eyes, and talked.

“Tell me, what do you know about Cinderella?” The Doll asked. Claireholm had to admit with some embarrassment that he knew nothing. The Doll, far from looking put out by this, rubbed his hands with glee. He was a recluse, yes, uninterested in the ways of man, but when he had to walk those ways he could prove to be a bit of a pedant.

“It’s a wondrous story. Not the rewrite by Perrault - the older version. A girl’s mother dies, leaving her alone with only her father and beloved pet. The father remarries, but the stepmother and her stepsisters are cruel women: they torment her, force her to do all manner of menial tasks, and worst of all kill her beloved pet. The girl cries and buries the pet under a favoured tree, watering it with her tears, but continues her work. Years later the prince announces a ball, but of course though the stepsisters can go Cinderella is prohibited until such time as she can pick all the barley out of the fireplace ashes.

“After the stepmother and stepsisters leave, the heartbroken girl runs beneath the tree, and sobs out her worries to the last gift of her mother - the pet, or more properly its remains. Imagine her surprise, however, when the supposedly dead animal rises in a cloud of smoke, its very bones reconstituting themselves, and tells her she can go to the ball. From the fruit of the tree it crafts a carriage, calling forth a host of animals to pull her to the ball. Yet it offers her one warning: to have left by the apogee of nighttime, the stroke of midnight.

“Cinderella goes to the ball, and her grace dazzles all and sundry. The prince is immediately drawn to her by a strange magnetic charm, and ignoring the many dignitaries and potentates dances the night with her under the stars. Or, at least he tries to— for he was not as lucky as our young friends before us.”

The Doll broke off for a moment, eyeing Caedes and Cindy. The two were lost in each other’s eyes, as they slowly circled the ballroom floor, their movements gentle and instinctual.

“No, they danced the night away until its apogee… for at that moment a horror came over the girl’s eyes, and she ran from him. He ran after her, but failed to catch her. He did, however, find on the stair a singular slipper, dropped by her in her haste.

“The rest of the story is well-known: he sets out to find her, testing every maiden of marriageable age in the kingdom. In spite of the fantastically large number of women, not a one of them fits the slipper - no matter how small their feet are, the slipper is always too small. His journey continues until he finds a poor, dirty girl serving as a maid in an old noble house. Strangely this slipper that would fit no other fits her. The pair are married to great aplomb, and they live, we are told (and we should take such statements seriously, as a stricture), happily ever after.”

Claireholm was about to respond to this fascinating, if tragically abbreviated,(3 ~ see below) narration, when a nasally and oleaginous voice oozed into the conversation.

“Well well well, if it isn’t Claireholm Dundas. Still looking for fairies, are we?”

Claireholm had no need to look to know that the speaker was Snobinsky. This was not merely because he could identify the speaker by his voice alone: Snobinsky had an oily but emaciated appearance, and had chosen to attend in a garish red suit with ruffles, so looking would have made a highly grating experience even more unpleasant. Claireholm smiled softly at his former colleague’s words.

“No. There’s no need to - I’ve found them.”

Snobinsky sneered. “Oh really. Then I take it you wouldn’t mind pointing them out to me?”

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A childish, emasculate sort of man would take this as his opportunity for revenge, but Claireholm was a real man and had none of that pride which seeks its approval from others, or minds their displeasure. Plus, he was listening to a fairy tale.

Consequently he did not point to the fairy sitting on his shoulder, nor to the goblins who had snuck along with him and were at present soaking their feet in the punch bowl. He did not even point to the gnomes dancing a jig over the grand piano (though he had no clue what they were doing here). He simply shook his head, and motioned to the doll sitting on his shoulder.

“I would love to, but perhaps at a later time. I’m discussing the true meaning of fairy tales with this children’s toy just at the moment, and plan to discuss some children’s rhymes with it later.” (This was true: he had always wondered about the deeper significance of such esoteric masterpieces as Hickory Dickory Dock and Jack Be Nimble. Why was he jumping over a candlestick? And surely it was better to jump high than to jump swiftly - even if he moved at supersonic speeds, if he failed to clear the flame he was still in trouble.)

The Doll did nothing, hanging limply on Claireholm’s suit jacket. His buttons gleamed dully on his frayed and stained stitching.

Now it is all well and good to bully and harass someone when they are trying very hard to hang onto their dignity, and it is even better to do so when you have pierced their heart and left them despondent. But when a fellow responds to your provocations by doing backflips about you in clown shoes it can leave one a little at a loss, and so it need not surprise us that the great Snobinsky merely flapped his jaws like a fish, eventually departing from sheer bewilderment.

When they were sure he was gone, the pair continued their discussion.

“It’s all very fascinating to be sure,” Claireholm said, “but what does it mean?”

The Doll pulled a teapot and teacup out of thin air, pouring himself a cup. He offered another to Claireholm, who thanked him but declined - he already had a glass of punch. (The goblins had told him they were meticulous when cleaning themselves, and he trusted them implicitly - why would spirits of trickery lie?)

“Scholars have long noted the repetition of Otherworld motifs in at least two elements of the story, the animal spirit coming forth from the bones and the loss of the slipper: but they have failed to uncover the full import of these motifs, chiefly because they are quite insistent that Cinderella is a story about a young girl journeying to the underworld, in the form of the king’s castle.”

Claireholm snorted, and the Doll chuckled. “They are half-right: but then why does Cinderella not lose her slipper when she enters the castle, but when she leaves it?”

There was a burst of laughter from Cindy as Caedes whispered something in her ear, prompting a soft smile from Claireholm. He spoke to the Doll. “But of course, the underworld is not the same as the otherworld.”

The Doll nodded, pouring himself another glass of tea. “Naturally. At first, I simply dismissed the underworld thesis as a classical instance of academic confusion, and it was only later - too late - that I began to appreciate it, when I confronted the problem of the scattered barley: for that trick was a popular method of warding off the undead.”

Claireholm was silent for a moment, as the full weight of that primordial epic - passed down for twenty thousand years - fell upon him.

“I see you figured it out. Cinderella is not the story of a poor girl who encounters the magical and is led to the lands of the dead: it is the story of a girl too dead to live, who encounters the magical and is led, through love, to life. Yet it is only as she flees that palace of glamour at that fell stroke of midnight - paradoxically, the most magical moment of the day - that she loses her shoe, and enters the Otherworld.”

The Doll fell silent. He had explained enough; too much, perhaps. The rest he would leave up to Claireholm. The conductor ruminated over his words.

“Why tell this to me - I, who know nothing of magic?”

“You know nothing of magic, or you do no magic?” The Doll asked, settling himself into a more comfortable position on Claireholm’s shoulder.

Claireholm said nothing, and continued to think. Finally he seemed to come to a conclusion.

“Clearly, a matter for another time. For now, I think I’ll go over to Mayor Rella and chat. It has been too long since last we’ve spoken - and anyways, the poor man is wilting away over there.”

And under the lights of the ballroom, two middle aged men spoke of things that had happened long ago.

(3) The proper telling of Cinderella is as an eight hundred page dramatic epic. Nothing less can give the story - with its depth, its brilliance, its insights, its profundity, and its majesty - the justice it deserves. That being said, this is not the place for a just retelling, as I told the Author when I edited out forty-seven thousand, three hundred eighty-four words on such disparate themes as ‘the joyfully ineluctable impossible’, the metaphysical import of dresses, the Prince opposite the Hunter, and the significance of Cinderella’s suffering (thereby saving you an equal amount of suffering - you’re welcome). ~ Editor