She began to wish she’d never lost that shoe.

Oh sure, it was a fairy tale at first, but after the first few months of endless dancing, mindless nattering with the ladies of the court, and fingers sore from embroidery, Cinderella was thinking scrubbing floors for the cruel stepmother wasn’t so bad after all. She’d had time to herself then. Thoughts of her work didn’t follow her back to her straw pallet in the cellar at night. She’d had her friends the mice and birds.

Now people watched her every move from the moment she got out of her fluffy feather bed in the morning. The last mouse she’d seen had sent her maids to shrieking and been squashed by an overzealous page. Prince Charming was an utter bore, a trait tempered only by his continual absence.

She sighed and gazed out the high window of her bedchamber across the hills and valleys over which Prince Charming would someday rule. “Oh, Fairy Godmother, if only you could help me now,” she said.

<br/> “Come sit with me on the bed, Fairy Godmother. No, a little closer to the bedpost. What’s that? Oh no, the ladies of the court aren’t really all that bad, I suppose. Yes, yes, you’re very right. No… Oh, nothing, no worries. There, all done.” She looked up at Fairy Godmother, who wore a puzzled look on her face.

“What’s all this about, dear?”

Cinderella had tied Fairy Godmother’s feet to the bedpost with a silk scarf. “If Prince Charming is so wonderful, you live with him,” she said firmly. She gave Fairy Godmother a shove back onto the rumpled bedclothes and wrestled her wand out of her hand.

“But… Dear, I… that is…” Fairy Godmother sputtered.

“Bibbity Bobbity Boo,” said Cinderella.

And she lived happily ever after.