Frightful Fairy Tales (10 page)

They began to play. The stranger was cold and distant and arrogant. He easily won every game but never displayed the slightest satisfaction. Finally, Felix gambled away the very last of his money, his possessions, and even the ramshackle hellhole he called a home. As he was about to rise and leave the table, the stranger stared directly into his eyes.

The gaze of the stranger mesmerized Felix. He thought of his loving and loyal daughter at home, and he was filled with a desperate desire to win back what he had lost at all costs.

“What sort of creature are you?” asked the sad and beaten father. “I have never seen the likes of you in my life, and I fear I’ve lost my home and property to the devil.”

“I am not the devil, and I don’t intend any evil,” claimed the stranger. “I am the Duke of the Elves, and I own riches beyond comprehension. I put this purse to wager; in it are many rare and precious jewels and gold. It is magic and will refill three times. I will wager this and all that you previously lost this evening if you roll the dice again.”

“But I cannot!” exclaimed Felix in despair. “I have absolutely nothing left.”

“There you are wrong,” said the Duke. “In your home you still have a pearl beyond price. Gamble your daughter; and if you win, you shall keep her and all that I have laid before you. If you lose, I will take her.”

“Give me a moment to decide!” cried Felix.

“Your moment is up,” said the Duke coldly.

“I will wager Ezmerelda. Heaven help me!” said Felix at last.

Felix and the Duke each threw the dice and the Duke won. Felix pressed his palms to his eyes and burst into tears. When at last he lifted his head, all the riches had disappeared from the table. He looked for the Duke but saw nothing more than a red vapor disappearing up the chimney.

When Felix returned to the shack that evening, Ezmerelda was gone: only her little black-buckled shoes remained.

While her father was out, she sat at the table doing piecework for a local seamstress and worrying about her father when a group of strangers came to the door, whispering indecipherable things. They wore dark cloaks and she could not tell whether they were men or women. They threw a cask over her and then carried her swiftly away. Ezmerelda was overwhelmed with fright.

While the evil elves carried her inside the pitch dark cask, she peered through a small hole to see that she was traveling faster than she’d ever gone before. Straight ahead was a wall of granite, and just as she thought she would be smashed to pieces, the rock magically split open and a doorway appeared. She was hurtled down into the earth. She heard rocks and roots scraping against the cask but could not see anything.

Suddenly the cask opened and she fell sprawling to the floor in the midst of laughter. Strange people clothed in fine silk and velvet surrounded her. They were extraordinarily pale and thin, and their ears were pointed. Before her stood a man in red velvet.

He handed her a brooch in which lay a golden rose made from her great-grandmother’s blond hair. She remembered this brooch from her childhood; she had been told it had belonged to her dead mother. She clutched it desperately, asking, “Where did you get this?”

“I won it from your father,” he responded. You may keep this pathetic trinket, because I know it has sentimental value to you. This will be the one souvenir of your former life. Your father gambled you away, and now you shall be my scullery maid. Mrs. Bent will show you to the servants’ quarters. Mrs. Bent! Come straightaway!”

Mrs. Bent was a plump, flustered old woman in a maid’s uniform. Ezmerelda recognized her as being human. Under the cold gaze of the Duke, Mrs. Bent grabbed Ezmerelda by the forearm and dragged her up a decrepit wooden spiral staircase to the servants’ quarters.

It was here that she received a scullery maid’s uniform and a corset made from lead. She was not given shoes. Mrs. Bent explained Ezmerelda’s duties: emptying the Duke’s chamber pot, mending his clothes, and scrubbing the stone steps leading to his lavish home.

Time passed but Ezmerelda did not give up hope of escape. She knew every nook and cranny of the Duke’s home at this point--as well as his habits and some of his financial affairs--although he tried to keep it all a secret from her. She listened at the keyhole and sifted through his belongings.

One evening as she cleaned the hallway outside the Duke’s locked door, she heard an ethereal tinkling sound inside the Duke’s room. She knelt and peered through the keyhole. She saw the Duke sitting in an easy chair with his back to her. Before him was a luminous lady with the brilliant wings of a moth. She wore golden shoes encrusted in garnets.

“The shoes are serving you well, I see,” said the Duke to the lady.

“Yes, my precious. Thank you so much for giving them to me,” she responded. "I’ve discovered that not only do they carry me through time and space, but they also carry back anything I touch,  so now I can bring you back many presents in return.” She laughed and sat on the Duke’s lap, petting his hair and kissing him.

“Nothing is too good for you, my sweet,” said the Duke. Ezmerelda scurried down the hallway into the shadows.

The next day, while the Duke was away, she found the golden shoes under his bed. “The luminous lady must have forgotten them,” she thought. She pulled them out hurriedly and slipped them on. They fit perfectly. “The glory of having shoes once more!” she cried. “Oh, how I wish I could always wear these shoes.” She heard footsteps in the hallway and knew the Duke was returning. Frantically, she tried to pry the shoes off, but they were stuck fast. “I wish these shoes would come off!" she said in exasperation. They slid easily from her feet. She realized that the shoes were not only beautiful but also granted wishes. If she had them, she could escape from the Kingdom of the Elves. She heard the Duke’s key turning in the lock; in a panic, she looked for a place to hide the shoes. Just as the door opened, she thrust them under the floorboards.

Many times she hoped to sneak into the Duke’s room and retrieve the shoes from their hiding place, but every time she went to his room, she found him there engaged in correspondence.

Later, when the Duke asked her for them, she denied seeing them, knowing they were under the floorboards all along. He reprimanded her as he struck her, saying that the fairy princess to whom they belonged would be very upset that her shoes were gone.

Hearing this, Ezmerelda denied it even more vehemently, and the Duke struck her with more force until eventually he tired of the sport. He left her with one final warning: “If I ever find you with those shoes in your possession, I will kill you in a merciless manner.” With this, he rushed away to his secret meeting, leaving her in a heap on the floor, blood weeping from her wounds. There she lay, waiting for the elves to retrieve her and thrust her into that wretched cask again.

The elves held secret meetings annually, from which Ezmerelda and the other slaves were unanimously excluded. During these times she was thrown into the cask and taken to a hollow tree, where she would remain without food and water until they remembered to retrieve her. Sometimes these stints would last for days, and she cried and twisted inside the trunk, praying for the angel of death to come free her from her misery.

Once, a long time ago, when they took her from the tree, she peered through a hole in the cask and saw them move toward a large rock in the woods near the hollow tree where they kept her. She saw a hand touch the rock with a hematite key, and where the key touched the stone, a keyhole appeared. The key turned in the lock and a door appeared. They then took her back into the elf kingdom underground. The roof of the elf kingdom was domed and held up with shining ivory pillars. The domes, she realized, were the undersides of the hills on the other side of the earth where humans and animals tread.

She thought about this now as she waited in the tree, sicker than ever from her severe beating. If only she had the key, she could escape from the elf kingdom, for now she knew the way and the means of escape. She also prayed that someone might hear her in the tree, a woodsman perhaps, wandering through the forest, and chop her from the tree with his swift, sharp axe. But to no avail: the elves had hidden her so deeply in the forest; no one ever dared go so far, because the brush and bramble were so wild and thick.

Ezmerelda heard noises outside the tree: the elves had returned to take her back to the kingdom. Once there she was allotted minimal recovery time before she was forced to return to her usual drudgery. It was during this time as she ate her gruel that she remembered the hematite key as being one of the keys she saw previously on the Duke’s set of keys. At the first opportunity, she stole this key off the ring and kept it on a string around her neck, hidden under her clothes.

The next time the elves had a meeting and took her to the tree, she completely lost all vestiges of sanity. As the elves locked Ezmerelda in the tree, she began to hallucinate. She thought swarms of insects had infested the tree and ceaselessly crawled on her and stung her. She began to howl like a banshee. Her screams stopped abruptly when she heard a reply. A man’s voice called from somewhere near her feet. “Who is making that racket? Are you a spirit haunting this mine?”