"Mother, I can't take it anymore!" Sissy shrieked as she slammed her teacup down, sloshing burning liquid all over the table.
"Ow! Watch it you pig-faced oaf, your manners are revolting!" Prissy shrieked back, wiping some of the tea that had splashed onto her slender, white wrist.
"Girls, girls, please." Mother touched a delicate finger to her temple. "You're giving me a headache so early in the day."
"But mother! We've endured enough. We've sold most of our good ball gowns already, and now our matching sapphire necklaces! This cannot be borne!" Sissy brought her fist down on the table at each exclamation, her golden ringlets bouncing on her rosy cheeks.
"Mother, I agree, this is too much! I hate it! I hate being poor! Phanny!" Prissy screeched, her own golden ringlets bouncing about.
At the sound of her name, Phanny stood up from where she crouched scrubbing the floor just outside the door (to better listen in) and rushed in to wipe down the spilled tea.
"Yes, dears, I don't much like it either. But we've got no choice but to keep selling all your gowns and jewels one by one. Unless you're ready to do as I'd advised." Mother sharpened her clear blue gaze on the two women, who have suddenly gone still and quiet.
"But, mother, Mr. Boone? That old boar? I can't possibly marry him," said Sissy.
"Neither can I! He's positively revolting!" Prissy said, "Besides," she continued, raising a slender brow at the girl wiping the table at her elbow, "I'm not the one he fancies."
Sissy, quick to catch her twin's meaning, snorted. "That's right. The fat rich man fancies the dirty housemaid."
The twins, finding this statement so impossibly funny, could no longer hold in their laughter, and burst into loud horse-like giggles.
Phanny, realizing she'd already mopped up all the tea, stepped away from the table, clenching the damp rag in her hands, and as she always does in the face of their ridicule, shrank into herself.
They were beautiful, she always thought. They really were. Prissy and Sissy and Mother. Under the right lighting, Mother could look like the missing triplet. With soft, golden curls crowning their heads, and their milky white complexion, and their sparkling, blue, calf's eyes, they looked like angels.
And it wasn't just the way they looked. Even with their meanness, or perhaps because of it, they seemed so vibrant and bright and bubbling over with life. So unlike dull, gray, silent Phanny, with all her sunshine drained away a long time ago.
"Why so quiet, Phanny darling? Isn't it so just like a fairytale? The poor abused maid getting swept away by the rich merchant to his fancy mansion?" Sissy said, before they again fell all over themselves in laughter.
"Enough, girls!" Mother's sharp voice whipped through the laughter in an instant, quieting the room.
Phanny felt, rather than saw, Mother's cool gaze study her. It never failed to chill her, meeting that silent regard.
"You're dismissed, Phanny. I'm sure you've got a hundred things to do."
"Yes, Madam." Phanny said in her tiny voice with her head down, ignoring the sounds of suppressed snorting coming from her stepsisters.
She walked out of the room and stood in the hallway, Mother's voice trailing after her.
"No matter how you feel about Mr. Boone, he could be the one to lift us out of this dreadful situation. He's visiting again this afternoon, so you two must be on your best behavior."
✦ ✦ ✦
Now, don't be misled.
Even in Fantasyland, fairytales of the kind that Phanny reads about in her book, are the stuff of legend. There are trolls and goblins and fairies and witches and even dragons, and one kind of magic or another, yes, that's true.
YOU ARE READING
Once Upon a Time in Fantasyland
Adventure𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧. Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, lived a beautiful maiden, who was brave, and bright, and loved by all who knew her - she wished. The heroine of this story is not quite all those things. Timid, c...
