Soot & Ashes

Fourteen: The Search Begins

Prince Ivan spent all of his waking hours scouring the country for his lost dishcloth. He would not rest until he had found her, proposed and wrapped his arms around her. When he found her, he swore he would never be parted from her again.

No Maiden he met looked a thing like her. None of them had her manner, her voice or her true fairness. None of them knew the difference between the gold shoe he presented and the clog she'd left behind and pretty soon he was becoming tired of the search. There were a few houses he needn't check, such as the Cinders. Of course Mary would tell him if it were possible for the very girl to be under her roof, he told himself. It seemed quite impossible anyway.

He wouldn't have found her there now even if he looked. You see Mary decided it was too risky harboring such a threat to Arabella's claim on the throne. So she had the girl taken to a prison cell. She'd mentioned something about the girl taking things that didn't belong to her and without question she was locked up in a dark cell, nursing bruises from a beating she'd expected to get after the ball.

Her future looked very dismal indeed.

The trees were blossoming over Arabella and Theodore's heads as they walked through the garden on the castle grounds. As they went, they talked, finding out what they could of the people they had to marry. It was such a beautiful day, the sun shining merrily over them, the white petals falling from out of the trees and drifting in a peaceful zephyr. Still, the two souls walking side by side felt a heavy burden weighing down on them both.

"So, what was she like... the girl you loved and lost?" Arabella asked carefully, staring up at the drifting blossoms as they were separated from their trees.

Theodore's hands were cupped behind his back, his eyes cast towards the floor. "Humble, kind...practical." He hummed, speaking as if to sigh every word. "She was sensible and pretty too."

"Just pretty?" Arabella blinked up at him. Her qualities seemed virtuous, just not what an infatuated Prince often looks for.

"Beautiful, really, but she was in rags and covered in dirt so I could only see a fraction of her true shine. But her heart was warm and caring, she worked hard and hated being idle for any length of time. She was considerate." Theodore sighed once more, coming to a stop and leaning up against one of the trees. He lifted his hand up to a blossom and plucked it, bringing it down to gaze at.

"She sounds perfect." Arabella muttered, a frown creasing her lips.

"To me, she was." Theodore replied in a somber melancholy.

"How did you meet her?" She asked, a prick in her heart as she felt so sorry for him that he'd had something perfect and then was being forced to settle for her.

Theodore bit his lip, "well, I was begging off from my Princely duties one day when I saw her." His eyes lit with a bright spark as he thought back to it. "She was all alone in the wood trying to drag an axe along she could not lift... When she tried she almost fell. I felt sorry for her and decided I'd offer to help." He admitted.

"You... a prince? Help a girl with an axe?" Arabella's eyes were wide on his face. He nodded, not even turning his attention to her.

"Yes, of course I hid that I was noble with twigs and mud so that I wouldn't alarm her too much. I couldn't stand by and let her suffer on her own." He rubbed the back of his neck, still staring at the white blossom between his finger and thumb. "So I offered to chop the tree for her and  size the wood if she'd pay me with a kiss." A wide grin pulled up the corners of his lips. "She wasn't too comfortable with the idea, she especially didn't want for me to do all the work. So she made us some lunch which we sat and ate together afterwards."

Then the Prince finally glanced up at Arabella, whose mouth was agape and her eyes wide with fright.

"I kept going back to see if she'd return. Sure enough she did and we continued in this routine. I'd ask her questions but get very little in the way of answers. So we talked about things other than ourselves and our lives when we did speak. She never even raised her voice to complain about her lot. It didn't take long to fall in love with her." His expression started to dim with the onset of the next part of the story. "Then the very dishcloth that my brother is searching for turned up instead of her and told me that my love hated nothing more than coming out to chop wood... So I..." He bit his lip, this time in regret. "I never returned."

Arabella could hardly breathe. "W-what was the name of the girl you fell in love with?" She trembled.

"I knew her as my very own little Soot."

Tired of the search, Ivan slumped himself down in a chair by the fire in the drawing room. He glanced about the red walls and golden framed portraits of Earls, Dukes, Duchesses and Barons who all had some trace to their family. He hoped the frozen judgment their faces had been painted with would make him think harder. As if their ever fixed eyes on him would press him to pull his mystery maiden out of thin air.

He huffed a sigh, sinking forward in his chair. The family pet, a great brown bear, lumbered in and laid down at the side of the chair, where his hand hung down and rested in his fur. "Oh Boris, what am I to do? She has vanished!"

To which Boris lifted his big, round head, his large black eyes moving ever so slightly to look up at him and he made the kind of bearish grizzle that sent a warm shiver through his master. "I know," Ivan commented on a heavy breath and smoothed back Boris's fur.

"I may be able to help you." A quiet voice entered the room and Ivan sat up to attention, alarmed by the stealth of his visitor.

"Arabella?!" He blinked at her.

Theodore entered behind her, his hand on her shoulder for support. "Tell him what you told me..." He encouraged.

"Your Maiden's name is Ethel Cinders." She licked her dry lips to wet them as she spoke.

"She has your name... how can this be?" Ivan frowned, standing from his chair.

"Actually, I have her name. She was Lord Cinders daughter,  I was merely his stepdaughter." Her eyes hit the floor because Ivan's face looked a red picture of different emotions, including rage.

"What are you saying? Do you know where she is? Have you known all this time?!" He yelled.

So she explained their story, right down to the last detail. Right down to her shame of keeping silent so long. "I do not know where one is, the other I fear is locked up by my mother's devices."