Drawtober 2024: Monster

It is always awkward when one is caught with one’s hand in the proverbial cookie jar. And Ella, her face and neck and chest coated with red, was elbow-deep in a cookie jar of an entirely different kind. The King was very thoroughly dead (most of his vital organs having disappeared down Ella’s throat), and Lucinda was standing in the doorway with an expression of shock on her face. In that moment, the fog of hunger lifted from Ella’s thoughts. Instead, she found herself deeply, deeply ashamed.

“Ella?” Lucinda said, taking a cautious step in and closing the door. “Are you all right?”

Ella tried to wipe her face with her hands, but only succeeded in smearing the blood further up her cheeks. She tried again, her movements growing frantic. She wanted to cry. She had never, ever wanted Lucinda to see her like this. Ella was no elegant, unchanging blood drinker. Her hunger was brutal and monstrous, and now it was unveiled before the one person who cared about her. Lucinda would find her disgusting. She would summon the guards—dear god, what had Ella done—

A hand, gentle but firm, wrapped itself around her wrist. Ella looked up to find Lucinda kneeling beside her, holding her hands still. There was no pity or disgust on Lucinda’s face. She merely looked concerned as she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and began wiping away the gore on Ella’s cheeks.

Once she had finished, Lucinda sat back on her heels, her expression grave. “Did he hurt you?” she asked.

Ella almost laughed. The King’s corpse was cooling on the floor beside them, and Lucinda wanted to know if he had hurt her?

“What are you doing here?” she asked instead of answering.

“Looking for you. When you weren’t at home, I thought…I feared the worst.”

“The worst?”

Lucinda made a face. “I know you think I don’t know much of the world, Ella. But I’d heard the rumors. One does not immediately seek out a new bride after one’s first wife’s death without gossip getting around.”

Ella opened her mouth, then closed it again. She felt like a fool. She had assumed that Lucinda wouldn’t be able to protect herself. That her stepsister would not be wise enough to figure out through conjecture what Ella had determined only with hard proof. But Lucinda had always been the smarter of the two of them.

“Now,” Lucinda said, “did he hurt you?”

“No. But he did hurt Peter.”

“The boy by the door? I checked him before I interrupted you. He’s alive. Just unconscious.” Lucinda glanced down to the King’s body. “All that said, we should get both you and Peter out of here. You did just murder the King, after all.”

Ella nodded, then looked around for her foot. It lay not far away. The icy, delicate shoe had entirely melted by this time, but she really didn’t mind as she popped the bone back into place, wrapping it up with some fabric torn from her petticoat. The join felt wobbly and ill-fitting, but she didn’t have time to do a better job.

Lucinda, meanwhile, hoisted Peter easily off the floor and over her shoulder. “I have a carriage waiting.” She hesitated. “Is…do you have a place you can lie low for awhile? I don’t think Mother will let you come home.”

Something cracked in Ella’s long-dead heart at that. Home. How long had it been since that house had been home? Even before her father’s death, it had felt more like a stage prop to her existence. A place where she pretended to still be alive, still be her father’s little girl. And since her father’s death, even the comfort of illusion had vanished. She had only stayed for Lucinda, and it seemed Lucinda had never needed her to.

“Will you be all right without me?” Ella asked. She hated how small her voice sounded. Even she knew the real question she was asking. Not, “will you be all right without me,” but “will I be all right without you.”

Lucinda’s face softened. She gently set Peter down again before coming to Ella and pulling her into a tight hug.

“You will always be my sister,” she whispered. “No matter where you are or who you eat.” She leaned back, eyes shimmering with bloody tears. “I think we both need to find out what existence can be beyond that house. Don’t you?”

Swallowing, Ella nodded. Lucinda was right. It was time to let go.

“I have a place I can stay, I think,” she said finally. “But first, I’ve got to find a pumpkin.”

#

In the end, finding Erasmus wasn’t too hard. He had been rolling forlornly around the castle, herding the six black mice ahead of him. As the sky paled with dawn, Ella scooped up pumpkin and mice and took them with her in Lucinda’s carriage.

They reached Astrid’s cottage just before dawn broke. The witch opened her door with an enormous yawn. She wore a long, incongruously pink dressing gown, and stared at Ella and her strange parade of companions for a long moment.

“Well,” she said eventually, “I suppose you’d better come inside.”

Astrid busied herself in the kitchen, fetching tea and blood and scolding Erasmus whenever he started to chase her cat—a winged, horned little beast who soon curled up in the witch’s lap. Ella and Lucinda took turns explaining the events of the evening, and Astrid examined Peter. She agreed with Lucinda that he was merely unconscious and would probably wake within the next few hours.

“The King must have used a wolfsbane tincture on him,” she said, peering beneath one of his eyelids. “Quieter than stabbing him and leaves less of a mess. But he’s a weremouse. It won’t kill him.”

Wake up he did, bleary and confused, and Ella and Lucinda had to explain everything to him all over again. By the time they were done, the sun had nearly set and Ella felt fairly dead (pun fully intended) on her feet. Lucinda, seeing how tired her sister was, stood and offered to take Peter home.

“I’d best check in with Mother,” she said with a wry smile. “And someone has to find out how the hunt for the mysterious dead girl is going, now that the King is dead.”

“Send word if anything goes awry,” Astrid said. Then, she waved Lucinda and Peter off, watching the carriage rattle down the road.

And then it was just Ella and Astrid.

The witch and the ghoul looked at each other for a while. Ella had not asked if she could stay. She wasn’t really used to asking for much.

Eventually, Astrid rolled her neck. “I’ll go make up the spare bedroom,” she said. “Why don’t you wash up?”

#

It may seem odd that so brutal a murder as the King’s never went avenged. But, as it turned out, no one much liked the King, and since most of what he had done with his time was evil experiments in pursuit of true immortality, the Kingdom operated just fine without him.

The Countess was one of the few who felt his death keenly. She didn’t care a bit what people said about him, and she proclaimed it shameful that no one seemed to care about his death. In reality, she was just disappointed that no kingly fortune would be coming her way. Her disappointment worsened to bitter anger when, a few months after the ball, Lucinda announced that she would be leaving to study at the University. She had secured a scholarship there, as well as a part-time job in the library, and hoped to advocate for other students like herself. Despite her mother’s pleading and threats, she packed her bags and left, never looking back. She stopped only once on her way out of town, to pay a visit at the witch’s cottage.

Yes, Ella was still there. She had intended to leave, but she had nowhere else to go. For the first few weeks after the ball, she hadn’t quite known what to do with herself. Most of her life had been spent in service of her step family. She didn’t know how to operate without them.

Fortunately, Astrid was not a witch to let a pair of useful hands sit idly by. She gently nudged Ella this way and that, getting her to help with the baking and the gardening and the spell crafting. As fall turned to winter, Ella found she liked to dispose of her time as she desired, instead of at the behest of her shouting stepmother. She helped Astrid whenever she could and spent her evenings reading by the fire (though, of course, not close enough to singe her hair). Eventually, she took to reading out loud to the witch after Astrid commented on how much she liked the sound of Ella’s voice. They would sit after dinner with whatever book Ella had chosen. The witch started in her own chair but, as the weeks wore into months, she found she liked sitting in Ella’s much better, as long as Ella was there, of course. And Ella found she didn’t want to leave Astrid or her cottage. When she finally worked up the nerve to tell the witch, she found that Astrid quite agreed with her. So Ella moved out of the guest room and into Astrid’s, and the question of where she was to go was never brought up again.

As to the matter of Ella’s foot. After her tumble down the tower, the thing never fit quite right. She walked with a limp for a long time, constantly carrying needle and thread with her in case she needed to reattach the limb. She tried to make it fit, she really did. But some things which are broken can’t be repaired, and nothing can remain the same forever—Ella knew this far better than the King ever had.

She had just about accepted the ill-fitting foot and the aches and the limp when, on moonlit night, Astrid surprised her with a new foot entirely. No, not one made of flesh, nor even frost. This one was made of finest dragon glass, unbreakable and flecked with tiny stars. It fit like a glove and didn’t require a needle or thread to make it stay. It felt, Ella decided after wearing it for only a few days, like coming home.