A Grim Fairy Tale

Chapter Six

Charlotte loved her new kitten almost immediately. She cuddled him close to her chest, petted his ears, and would play hide and seek with him in the castle hallways.

"Ready or not, here I come Eli."

She carefully walked down that royal corridors, checking all the corners and behind the tapestries for where her precious kitten could have hidden himself. But he wasn't in either of those places. He had crept away through the crack made by the door that lead to Desdemona's room.

"Uh-oh." Charlotte thought when she glimpsed Eli's small grey tail from the crack. "Eli come back. You're not allowed in there."

She quickly went into the room and fetched Eli from behind the curtains. She would have left immediately but found herself distracted by the various changes that had been made to this room. First thing she noticed was that all the windows had been covered, covered as if a secret lay hidden in this room. But she had been in this room plenty of times and there was nothing to hide here. Was there?

Another thing she noticed was the large number of mirrors in the room. Some were big, some were small, some were long, and some were wide. There was one hanging an every wall and she counted about ten of them total in the entire room. Why were there so many mirrors in here? And why did have bad feeling about the biggest one?

That last change that caught her attention was that the portrait of her mother now lay upon the floor with the image slashed out while a portrait of Desdemona had taken it's place on the wall. Charlotte looked upon the ruined portrait in horror. In matters of her mother, pictures were very important to Charlotte because she had no memory of her and this one in particular had been her favorite. Her father had planned to move it to her room after the wedding but now it had been destroyed. Who would do something so horrible?

Charlotte reached out to see if she could salvage anything of the portrait but stopped when she felt a cold chill run up her spine.

"What are you doing in my chambers child?" An equally cold voice asked.

Charlotte turned and looked up to see that the owner of the voice had been her stepmother. There she stood with her serene unfeeling face and pencil style, cold eyes that stared down at the little princess.

"You are not permitted to enter this room." She said.

"What did you do to my mother's portrait?" Charlotte asked.

"I moved it." She said. "Did you really think I would want to spend everyday looking at a reminder of my husband's first wife?"

"But you didn't just move it. You ruined it."

"That was an accident. I drop it and it fell on a nail."

"I don't think a nail could have made such big tears."

"Are you accusing me of lying? Me? Your queen?"

"No stepmother. It's just..." The way she spoke and moved made the poor girl tremble. "It just  that it doesn't seem very likely that a nail did this. The tears are so big and there's more than one so I-"

"Hold your tongue!" She snapped.

Charlotte was instantly silent.

"My, my, my, what an intrusive and accusatory girl you are. Entering my chambers without permission and accusing me of being dishonest. I expected things to be little difficult between us at first but I never thought that you would behave so spitefully toward me."

"But I wasn't-"

"I do not say you could speak. I ordered you to be silent. I am queen of this castle. Those who do not heed my wishes and instantly obey my command shall be banished from the kingdom."