Cinderella

22.Midnight

I heard the first strike of the clock and my eyes widened in shock. I quickly pulled away from Anthony and ran. In the corner of my eye, I saw as Lele and Laney did the same. I raced up the stairs hoping they could cause enough of a distraction for me to get away.

The hallways were empty and as I raced through them, I could feel the magic fading away. I already knew that the vines on my shoes were slowly disappearing. I only hoped that the carriage would last longer.

I reached the front of the castle and the vines on my shoes had completely disappeared. They were harder to run in and I felt one shoe fall off my foot. I knew I didn't have time to grab it, so I continued to run. I quickly entered the carriage and the second I did, it began to move.

"The woods! Go to the woods. We won't make it to the house in time" I yelled to the driver. He changed direction and we barreled into the woods. The path was bumpy and at each turn the carriage threatened to fall over.

I let out a scream when the carriage was nearly sideways at one point. At another, the carriage went flying through the air after a particularly large bump. At yet another point in the short ride, a tree branch almost hit my face seeing as how the too half of the carriage was gone.

On the fifth strike of the clock, one of the horses disappeared. On the sixth, the other workers began to disappear. On the seventh, most of the carriage had faded away. When the driver disappeared on the eighth strike, I hopped on the last horse and started to ride watching as the last of the carriage faded away. On the ninth strike, my hair came undone and fell in front of my face. On the tenth, my dress started to transform back. On the eleventh, my dress was back to its original form.

I heard the clock strike midnight at last and the horse I was riding was gone. I fell to the ground once again wearing my torn up dress and I knew the spell was over. I took off the last shoe and held it in my hand. I immediately recognized where I was. I had managed to make it to the path near the waterfall. It wouldn't take me very long to get home even on foot. However, if my stepmother managed to get there before me, I didn't want to think about what would happen to me.

I sat for a minute trying to figure out if anyone had chased after me. Once I was sure that no one had followed or seen me transform back, I began to walked back to the house. I just hoped that I reached it before my stepmother. I trusted my sisters to distract everyone as I ran and it seemed they had, but I couldn't be sure if my stepmother was distracted long enough to be delayed in reaching the house.

Author's Note

Hey everyone. First off, sorry. You see, I had the third part written yesterday snd I forgot to push the publish button. As a way of making it up to anyone who was waiting for it, like retro_wonderwoman , I'm going to attempt to get a ton of chapters out between today and tomorrow. Now you may be wondering why tomorrow as well as today. Well it's because tomorrow it will have been a month since I started this story. So consider this an apology and a celebration. Maybe I'll even finish the story. Anyways, please vote and comment. Thanks and sorry again

-Panda12Panda12
P.S. The pandas are sorry too.