Glass

My armour was boiling under the Mendessa sun, but what made my face red moreso was the amount of people calling my name and staring as I passed by. When we entered each home, a crowd would gather at the window, anticipating the reveal of the future Queen of Mendessa, allowing for no privacy if Cinderella ever desired it. The news travelled faster than a lightning strike, attracting more and more people from their work and towards the latest home visit, pushing and shoving each other so that they could have the best view.

This was not like an average search. We could not send hundreds of men out to search multiple homes all at once. It was to be a slow process; one by one, door by door, until every woman in the kingdom had tried on the glass slipper. And through it all - even if it took us months - the fast-travelled news had to somehow not reach the king and queen.

My entourage guarded the doors and windows of the houses, bribing away anyone who appeared to be watching for my father's sake. Emiliano wasn't foolish enough to believe my father would let even the most trusted soldiers in Mendessa alone with me. He had spies of his own; soldiers for his soldiers; guards for his guards.

"It fits! It fits!" A woman no older than myself cried out. Her father, a baker, dropped his dough to the ground and cried, holding her hand and dousing it with flour. But the slipper took effect, and tightened at her toes.

"Wait! Get it off, get it off!"

Zolin fell back as he took the shoe away, and the baker sighed with disappointment - both at the result, and at the fact that his hard-made dough was now soiled.

A large house by the docks required several entourage members to search every room, with little avail. The only woman in the house, an elderly woman named Dolores, insisted on trying the slipper despite it being obvious that her crackled voice did not match that of Cinderella. We humoured her, but yet again, the slipper would not fit.

By afternoon, I had found myself speaking to possibly more people than I had the night of the ball. But unlike that night, I strangely felt more at ease. I found it ironic, how an occasion in which I was celebrated and sought after felt so uncomfortable, and yet this rather embarrassing situation of not finding my potential future bride was more relaxed. Maybe it had been the same questions that had eased me into knowing how to answer. Or maybe just the presence of normal people was more welcoming. Here, I wasn't so much of a prize to be won, but a spectacle. This was to be my killing of the feathered serpent, but far less violent in nature. After trying another woman's foot, she told me,

"When you find her, this'll go down in the history books!"

I wasn't sure if the people I met always liked me, or if it was just an act in fear of angering my father with disrespect. As we reached a district of peasants, however, their disdain grew more obvious. They glared judgingly at the upper classes, following me to my next household, not saying a word.

When I turned a corner, a man in a hood spat at me. Rafael leaped into action and apprehended him immediately, twisting his arm and letting his hold fall. He was coated in dirt, and grimaced at the pain.

"You pigs!" He croaked, "Invading all our homes, and for what!?"

"Rafael," I said, taking in the man's silver, thinning hair, and his wrinkled, hollowed eyes, "release him."

Rafael almost looked disappointed. He released the old man, but with a slight shove into the wall. The old man looked up at me with the very same hatred, as though I had not spared him. My lip quivered a little.

"I am sorry."

He spat again, and Rafael almost went for him. The old man's eyes were aflame.

"My daughter is gone! Most of our daughters are gone! And your queen had done nothing for us!"

I walked away, but with a cold shiver through my body. I didn't know what he was talking about, or if it was anything I should even be aware of. Not even Emiliano, nor Rafael could offer an explanation.

"Crazy old bat." Rafael muttered under his breath, "Blaming us cause he couldn't look after his kid."

I disagreed with what he had said, but I avoided any debate with him.

"I want you to look into it," I told him, "if what he says is true, then I want to know is Cinderella is among those women."

Despite my worry, we continued.

We entered the home of a large family, all sharing a single room. The fireplace was unused, with pots and pans left with spoon-scrapes through their final scraps. The mould and mildew smell was dreadful, as was the smell of the filth-ridden bucket in the corner, forced next to the beds of the children. I thought of my father's palace and all its grandeur, and yet families like this were left to struggle so terribly.

When I placed the shoe on the single mother, I could not bring myself to look her in the eye. I felt a terrible twisting in my stomach which told me that all my past complaints had been selfish.

"It doesn't fit," I said, "I'm sorry."

"I knew it wouldn't." She sighed, and passed the slipper onto her eldest daughter, who was far too young to have been the woman I had danced with.

"Can I be a princess?" She asked. I didn't know how to respond, and so I stayed silent as the shoe gaped over her foot, turning into an abyss until I removed it. Her eyes brimmed with tears until her mother came to comfort her. I turned to the window, seeing the faces of a dozen people looking in, judging the woman and her home. But I, who had made the poor girl cry, was looked on with the same adoration. It altered my mood entirely, until most homes afterwards were met with few words on my part.

"Aren't you supposed to be the one they called Prince Charming?" A seamstress retorted at my quietness. I turned redder than I was before, but couldn't think of anything to say in return. It was already clear by the tightened skin on her heel that she was not Cinderella.

"Not very talkative, are you?" A man scoffed at me when Zolin reluctantly and awkwardly placed the slipper on his wife's foot. His attention turned to accusations of his wife, who yelled back at him in return, and I shrank, afraid that their violent words would soon turn onto me.

The shoe was tried hundreds of times, from women of all ages, classes, and households. By the time sunset was due, my energy had completely worn out, as had Emiliano's voice from explaining the reason for our visit to every single person in the city. Even then, we were not even halfway done with the city's population, nevermind that of beyond Mendessa City. We still had hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of people to deal with, and still within the first day, the soldiers were already beginning to show their impatience.

"Right, this'll be the last one," Rafael said, taking over the role of authority, "then this old man can rest his voice before he keels!"

Emiliano did not seem impressed at the ageist insinuation.

Despite our aching feet and heavy, exhausted bodies, we forced ourselves up a small hill towards the final house of the day. Above, the sky was turning from blue to gold and from gold to a violet-red, and yet still, the most eye-catching thing I could see was the gigantic manor before me.

The house was old fashioned but well-kept, made of white-painted brick and topped with a forest brown roof. The windows were lined with diamond shapes, exuding a natural glow from within. The further up the manor went, the darker such windows became, until the one peeking out from the attic above looked more like a pitch black hole. At each side, two large structures made of glass shone against the sun's final light. In one, a greenhouse, overgrown with ripe vegetation. In the other, a private avery, even cleaner and more colourful than my own. Hugging the entire structure together was a wall of shrubbery which smelled sweet and earthy.

Despite all its homeliness, it also felt eerily scarce, as though something was missing. It was clearly being looked after, but the feeling of being lived-in like all the other homes had been was gone. It was, in a sense, too perfect.

We passed the front gate, keeping to the sandstone so that we would not disturb the pond of geese or the impressively large pumpkin patch. I shuddered at the sight of mice scrambling away from the avery and towards the delicious pumpkins, and the lizards climbing up the cool walls and running through the freshly-cut grass.

We reached the door - an old, rustic door painted red.

At its side was a carved wooden plaque.

'Del Flores Manor'.