Princess of Glass - Jessica Day George [55]
When she saw her godmother approach her with a swirling pan of liquid glass, gleaming like pink roses and gold, she felt sweat break out all over her body. Maids rushed to fan her and apply more rice powder to her damp forehead. She clenched the arms of the chair and didn’t make a sound as her godmother shaped the glass.
Taking her mind off what was happening to her feet, she thought about her gown.
She had been praying that she wouldn’t be dressed as a richer copy of Poppy again. It had made her feel a bit superior last time, but to keep doing it seemed mean.
But when she saw that she was to be gowned like a more luxurious version of Marianne, she felt her heart sink. Marianne was sweet, if a bit spoiled, and Ellen knew the girl would hate her for stealing away the young men at her birthday ball. It would be worse still to show up in Marianne’s own gown.
One look at the Corley’s face, however, her matronly smile fixed and her eyes hard, had convinced Ellen not to protest. For the masked ball she would have to be gowned differently from either girl. The whole point of it was to be unique so no one would guess who you were. And Poppy had said that she would not attend at all. Masked balls apparently caused her even more anxiety than the usual sort, something that Ellen was beginning to understand.
According to rumor, Poppy and her sisters had danced their shoes to shreds every night before the oldest two princesses had married. “Imagine what your feet would feel like if you had to dance every night,” she thought. Even without glass slippers it would not be pleasant.
When the Corley was done, Ellen looked down to see the exquisite shoes. They were like flowers of pink crystal and fine gold cupping her feet.
And they hurt more than she could possibly imagine.
The pain had been bearable last time but as the hot glass touched her stiff feet, steam rose up and she felt a cold so intense that it burned. The only bonus was that it seemed to loosen the stiffness in her toes.
Mute servants helped her out of the chair, and she swayed for a moment before regaining her balance. They fussed over her, straightening her hair and dusting rouge onto her pale cheeks, while Ellen fought the dizziness that was threatening to overcome her.
“Drink this,” the Corley had said, and handed her a goblet of something that smelled sweet and spicy at the same time.
Ellen drank, and blessed coolness ran down her body and into her feet. She could take a step, then another. The pain was still there, but remote now, and she felt her blood singing.
“Now, go and dance with your prince, my dear,” her godmother had told her with a smile. “Go and dance and dazzle them with your beauty!”
All this Ellen told Poppy, while the princess sat on Lydia’s bed in silence. It was a relief to tell someone what was happening, it was a relief to confide her fears that perhaps her godmother was not as kind as she had seemed, and it was a relief that Poppy didn’t say anything during the narrative.
But when Ellen finished, Poppy had plenty to say.
“I can’t even imagine what you were thinking, agreeing to do the bidding of some creature you had never met before in your life,” Poppy said, clucking her tongue.
“But she’s my godmother,” Ellen protested, bristling.
“How do you know that? Have you seen the christening record? Does it say ‘the Corley’ under godmother? You must have known she wasn’t mortal: normal humans don’t live in palaces that you enter through piles of ash.”
Ellen wanted to argue with this, but she honestly couldn’t. She should have been more wary, she should have asked more questions, or at least not been so quick to agree to her godmother’s requests.
“But can you really blame me?” She asked the question after a long silence between the two of them, and was embarrassed at how meek and small her voice was. “She was so kind. And everything was so wonderful. The gowns—” She plucked at the coarse wool of her blankets. “The jewels …” She closed her