A Pirate and a Princess - pt 9

Ch. 9 - The Slipper

The next day, word of the royal proclamation had spread through the entire kingdom: whoever fit the slipper would marry the Prince, and be princess and future queen. The Duke was charged with the task of taking the slipper to every household and trying it on the foot of every young lady.

The Prince, who had seen Jim's apparently close relation with the mystery girl at the ball, had ordered the Duke to take the boy with him, since he claimed to have some idea where to find her. Jim, now back in his old spacer clothes, rode in the carriage with the Duke through the town. "Where is it do you think we should look first?" the Duke asked the boy.

"The Tremaine house," Jim answered. "She'll be there. I know she will."

At the Tremaine house, Lady Tremaine had prepared her two daughters for trying on the slipper once the Duke arrived. She was determined one of them would marry the Prince, giving her a ticket to life in the palace. But she had noticed strange behavior from Cinderella, and had suspicions. The mystery girl who had saved them from the pirates had seemed strangely familiar to Lady Tremaine.

So she snuck up to Cinderella's room and locked her inside.

Cinderella did not resist; she did not even shout out or hammer on the door. She did not want the Duke to try the slipper on her foot, because she did not want to marry Prince Chartreuse. It was as simple as that. If what Jim had told her was true, then it should have been Prince Charming who asked her to marry him. But she didn't know how she would have felt about him, and she would never know now.

But she absolutely would not marry Chartreuse, and so her stepmother had probably done her a favor by locking her in her room.

She could hear the Duke arrive downstairs; she heard his voice, and the voice of someone else familiar. Could it be? She pressed her ear to her door. It was Jim!

She hammered at the door and called his name, but he couldn't hear her from downstairs. She banged her fists on the door with all her might, and then slid to the floor, exhausted and in tears. She might lose him again; he might never know she was here.

Then she heard scurrying noises coming up the stairs toward her room; she peered out the keyhole to see Jaq and Gus hurrying up the stairs, with Morph flying behind them. Jaq and Gus were carrying the key to her room! They had come to rescue her!

Then Lucifer the cat appeared on the stairs, chased away the mice, and pounced on the key. Cinderella shouted at him, but to no avail. Lucifer batted at Morph, but he flew higher in the air above his reach. Then Morph flew straight at the keyhole of Cinderella's door, and shape-shifted into the exact form of the key. He fit into the lock and turned with a click. Cinderella opened the door and ran out of her room. "Oh thank you!" she said to Jaq, Gus, and Morph. "Thank you so much!"

She ran down the twisting staircase, shouting at the top of her lungs, "Jim! Jim, don't leave!"

Jim was in the sitting room, watching with raised eyebrows as one stepsister after another tried to cram her foot into the glass slipper. He couldn't believe what levels they were willing to stoop to. "Please, ladies!" he interrupted, grabbing the slipper away from Drisella before she could break it by trying to shove her foot in. "I think that's enough." He turned to the Duke beside him. "There should be another girl here."

"Is that true, Madam?" the Duke asked Lady Tremaine, who was watching like a hawk. "Have you any other young ladies in the household?"

"There's no one else, Your Grace," she answered with a cold glare at Jim.

Jim's eyes narrowed in a fierce glare back at her.

Then everyone's head swiveled toward the staircase as the sound of running footsteps approached. "Jim!" a voice shouted, then Cinderella appeared at the foot of the stairs. She froze, realizing everyone was staring at her, but her eyes drifted to Jim's. She was back in her servant's clothes, but he thought she was just as beautiful, maybe more.

The stepsisters erupted into protests, but the Duke said, "My orders were every maiden! Come, my child," he said, holding out his hand for Cinderella's. "Come try on the slipper."

"Oh, no thank you," Cinderella said politely. "It's not my slipper."

"You are the first maiden yet to protest trying it on," the Duke said in surprise, "but I have my orders, miss! You must try it on, by the King's command!"

Jim watched in silence as the Duke firmly guided Cinderella to a chair. She sat down, looking confused at Jim. She was wondering why he didn't say anything. Was he just going to let her try on the slipper? He knew it would fit. Did he want her to marry the Prince then? Did he no longer want to take her with him? Did he not love her? She was suddenly hurt and distraught, and in her emotional confusion she let the Duke approach her eagerly with the slipper in his hand.

Her stepmother reached out her cane and tripped the Duke, who went stumbling to the floor.

Everyone gasped as the shoe fell from the Duke's hand. Their eyes followed it as it fell to the floor, as if in slow motion, and shattered like a small supernova on the floor, throwing out thousands of miniature glass stars that scattered like a comet shower. The Duke was clearly horrified, but Cinderella gave an inward sigh of relief. Now there could be no proof in the world that she had been the mysterious girl at the ball, and she would not be forced to marry Prince Chartreuse.

"Oh no," the Duke was spluttering, falling to the floor, and looking regretfully at the mess of glass slivers. Jim saw a subtle wicked smile creep across the stepmother's lips. He had made his decision, and he stuck to it.

"It's alright, sir," he said to the Duke, and all eyes in the room turned to him in surprise. He stepped forward. "You see, I have the other one." And to everyone's complete shock and confusion, he pulled out the second glass slipper from his pocket.

He had decided: he would let Cinderella go. She would be better off married to the prince and living his castle, than being with him, a poor boy with no future, a pirate at that, following him aimlessly through the galaxy for the rest of their years. He would not do that to her. He would let her marry the prince, and become the princess she was meant to be.

She was staring at him, mouth ajar, sitting frozen in her chair. He kneeled on the floor before her, holding the shoe tenderly in his hands. Their eyes met, and the look in her eyes was clearly beseeching him to stop now, but there was no stopping the thing already in motion. Jim gently slipped the glass shoe onto her foot, and he knew it would fit perfectly, but he heard the others gasp in shock behind him. Cinderella took no notice of them, but continued staring dumbstruck at Jim. He looked up into her eyes with an intense look full of meaning.

"Cinderella," he said. "You're as beautiful as your name."

The room burst into an uproar around them, with the Duke cheering in relief, the stepsisters objecting in a loud frenzy, and the stepmother trying to reason to the Duke that there was a mistake, or that at least she and her daughters should be taken to the palace along with Cinderella. But Cinderella could not tear her eyes away from Jim, nor did Jim break away his intense gaze. She could tell what he was saying with that look: to not argue with it, to let them take her away. The Duke did take her away; he took her by the arm and pulled her to her feet, laughing happily to himself, and hurried away to the front door. The stepsisters followed to the doorway, still shouting in a panic, and the stepmother with a look of bitterly angry vanquish. They followed Cinderella outside as the Duke pushed her along and up into the carriage that was waiting. She seemed in a daze, and said nothing. The Duke climbed into the coach beside her and gave the word to the driver to take them to the palace. Her eyes locked with Jim's, but neither said a word, and their gaze stretched across the yard as the carriage drove off. Jim watched as the carriage rumbled away through the gates and took with it the person that he loved most in that entire world, and maybe much farther.




---
"I can't believe I let her go," Jim said dejectedly to Morph and the mice, Jaq, and Gus. He was sitting slumped over on a tree stump in the forest near the Tremaine house, with Jaq and Gus sitting on a twig looking equally depressed, and Morph hovering around his head like a black raincloud. Jim hung his head and sighed. "So I'm stuck on this planet," he said, more to himself than to his friends, "and now what am I going to do with the rest of my life?"

Morph gurgled sadly and perched on his hand. He shifted into a miniature figure of Cinderella, standing on Jim's finger, and the tiny Cinderella reached out her hand and stroked Jim's face. The vision quickly turned back into Morph, who circled Jim's head before landing on his shoulder and settling down into a depressed molten blob.

"It's only the day after she fit the shoe," Jim said to himself, "and the Prince has already proclaimed their wedding. To take place today, at sunset. That's just a few hours from now. What do you think, Morph? Should we go watch?" Morph babbled wordlessly. Jim shook his head and smiled, laughing at himself. "Morph," he said with a laugh. "I think I was actually in love with her."

"In love! In love!" Morph parroted.

"Who am I kidding?" Jim said miserably. "I still am."

Jim hung his head again, and then heard a strange sound from above, and felt a sudden wind on his face and hair, rustling the tree leaves around him. A massive dark shadow crept up to his feet and covered him and the entire ground around him. Jaq and Gus leaped to their feet in surprise, and Morph squawked excitedly and did a somersault. Jim looked up slowly and saw the ship, the R.L.S. Legacy, floating a hundred feet overhead. The massive hull of the ship drifted by like an enormous storm cloud, blotting out the sun.

"It's the ship!" Jim shouted, leaping to his feet.

"The ship, the ship!" Morph squawked.

Looking straight up at the sky, Jim saw the heads of Captain Amelia and Delbert hanging over the edge of the ship, and staring straight down at him. "There he is!" Captain Amelia shouted. "Our lost cabin boy!"

"There you are, Jim!" Delbert shouted down at him. "We've been looking all over for you! I fear we've given the natives quite a scare, but we just wouldn't leave without you!"

"Throw him a rope!" Captain Amelia ordered, tossing Delbert a rope. The rope was tossed down to Jim, who scooped up Jaq and Gus and put them in his pocket, and then gladly took hold of the rope and climbed up to the ship, Morph hovering after him. Amelia and Delbert pulled him over the railing, and he landed on the familiar deck.

He scooped the two mice out of his pocket and placed them on the deck. "Make yourselves at home," he told them.

"I'll assume you have a good reason for releasing rodents onto my ship," Captain Amelia said skeptically.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you," Jim said enthusiastically to both Amelia and Delbert. "I thought I would be stranded on this planet forever."

"So did we, after those pirates stole our ship," Amelia said. "Luckily, Delbert was clever enough to put a locator device on it, and keep the locator remote in his pocket."

"After they attacked the ball and were imprisoned in the dungeons," Delbert said, "it was very easy to sneak up to the palace, climb up into the ship, and take it back for ourselves. The natives were happy to see it leave; the poor primitive things didn't know what to do with it, stuck up in the palace ceiling like that."

"We did it!" Jim said, clapping them both on the back. "We fixed the ship, we got it back to ourselves, and now we can go back through the wormhole and arrive back home in no time!"

"You think we should go back through the wormhole?" Amelia asked thoughtfully.

"The boy has a point," Delbert said excitedly. "I've always theorized they must go both ways! It could cut considerable time off our trip home! Why, we might even come out at the same time as we left, so we'll have lost no time at all!"

"We can resume the search for Treasure Planet," Amelia said, "and divide it three ways among us."

"One problem with that," Jim said. The others looked at him. "I don't have the map."

"Well where did you leave it?" Amelia demanded.

"Tell me you didn't leave it with the girl," Delbert pleaded.

"I did," Jim admitted.

"Well, we'll just have to get it from her," Amelia said, making a determined fist in the air.  "Where can we find her?"

"Well," Jim said, rubbing the back of his neck, "she's actually getting married about now. At the palace."

"Married?" Delbert barked. "To who?"

"The Prince."

"But I thought you liked her!"

"I do!" Jim retorted in frustration. "I mean, I did. But I'm over her now. Sort of. At least, if I keep telling myself that, I might eventually get over her. The point is, just forget about her."

"I'm sorry, lad, but we can't do that," Amelia said in a determined voice. "I'm not leaving the planet without that map if I can help it. We're going to sail down to the palace and ask her for it, right now."

"Right now?" Jim said, flinching.

"That's right," Amelia said. "Don't just stand there. Secure the sails, Mr. Hawkins." She tossed him a rope. Jim looked at her, then sighed and went to work.

"Doctor," Amelia said to Delbert. "Take the helm, and steer us to the palace. It shouldn't be hard; you can see it right there on the horizon."

"Aye, captain," Delbert said, taking the wheel. Then he looked over to Jim with a grin. "I always liked crashing weddings when I was young," he said.

Suddenly the ship gave a great lurch beneath them, sending them stumbling into the railing. "Blast!" Amelia shouted, taking the helm from Delbert, steering the ship deftly as it lurched again, this time plunging a short distance in the air, and causing Jim to float up momentarily before sinking back to the deck. Jaq and Gus were clinging to a rope, looking terrified, as they floated up at each successive lurch. The ship was losing altitude.

"What's going on?" Delbert shrieked in panic, clinging to Amelia.

"It could be one of any number of things, Doctor," she shouted above the rushing of air as they plummeted another longer distance. "None of them very optimistic about our situation. Jim," she said quickly, looking at the boy. "Go check on the rockets; see if the fuel reserve is running out."

Jim ran quickly to the stern of the ship toward the rocket propellers, grabbing a rope as the ship took another plunge through the air. As his feet landed back on the deck, he looked at the rockets ahead of him, and in the blue glow surrounding the enormous blue flames of the rockets, his surprised eyes thought they saw the figure of an old woman, in a blue cloak, blending in with the blue rocket flames. He stared, mouth ajar, thinking it must be some hallucination brought on from too much stress. The old woman smiled at him – Jim was sure of it – and raised a slender wand in her hand, waving it gracefully in the air above the rockets.

Suddenly the rockets stopped malfunctioning – or maybe there was suddenly more fuel – Jim would never know for certain. But the ship stopped lurching immediately, and flew steady and true. The old woman faded into the ethereal glow of the rocket flames, still smiling at Jim, and vanished completely. Jim didn't understand it, but he was certain the mysterious woman had somehow fixed the ship, and saved them.

"Excellent work, Mr. Hawkins," Captain Amelia said, when he had returned.

Jim opened his mouth to explain, but thought better of it. "No problem," he said with a shrug and a smile. "Now let's go crash that wedding."