By: Summer Chu

Cecilia knew she was beautiful. She knew a long time ago when men would look at her for longer than they should have, lingering on her face and her body, examining every bit of her and finding that she was truly beautiful through and through. Usually, the men would turn their heads away. They knew that they could not have her. After all, she was the princess of a huge southern kingdom. Most of her childhood was a happy one, only occasionally punctured by her father’s temper which was large enough to tear down the entire kingdom. The King was known for his anger and he was never kind to Cecilia or his wife, the Queen. During the day, her mother would spend as much time as possible away from the palace, preferring to be in the hills and the woods with Cecilia, dancing and laughing away the days. But, at night, the Queen was completely the King’s. Cecilia didn’t understand it until she was taken away.

When she was 12, her father toured the kingdom to make speeches and impress on the people who the power on the throne was. To Cecilia’s horror, he took her along to show off to the people, using her as a reason for the people to love him. That meant long days in a small carriage with her father and all his anger. Those days were terrible. Her father would often make snide remarks about her looks, her personality, all her problems, and everything that was wrong with her mother. He would talk about how he was going to sell her off into marriage in a few months, exactly when she turned twelve, and how he would pick her husband. He wanted one that would pay a lot and also a man with a great reputation that would further his own reputation. He rattled off all these different requirements, going on and on, and finally, Cecilia realized that he wanted her husband to be just like him. Her life would be just like her mother’s, stuck forever to a man that would never care about her in any way. She had to get out of there. So, in the next stop, at her father’s next speech, she packed all her things including almost all the food in the carriages headed into the woods.

Cecilia walked for a good hour. She knew that on the other side was a small town where she could lie low at for some time. She felt pumped up with adrenaline, feeling it flow through her veins, not at all knowing what she was getting herself into, knowing only she was naive about what the real world was like. After some time, she finally thought about her mother and stopped in her tracks. What would the queen do without her daughter? Just stuck in the big castle, all alone except for the King who abused her. She stood there, indecisive. Her mother needed her, but she would want Cecilia to get away from it all-get away from a life of chains and torture. Just as she was making up her mind, she felt something grab at her mouth, cover her lips with gray cloth, and hit her and the back of her head.

That was 20 years ago when she was taken and made into a prostitute for nearly 5 years. Now, she doesn’t quite remember all the details after all the years of trying to remove it from her mind. All she remembers was the abuse, the women who would end up broken all over, and so, so, so many men, their faces all blurring into one. After escaping, she rode for days, eventually stumbling to a little shop in the eastern kingdom far away from her original home. There, she became a seamstress. The former princess would cover her face in a veil so men would never see her face and know how beautiful she was. She was scared every single day that it would happen again.

It was in this little shop that she met the king of the eastern kingdom. He came in to get a dress for his daughter embroidered, dressed very plainly and not looking like the king at all. Cecilia didn’t recognize him, but the second he talked about his daughter, she felt an instant. He would talk about this girl like she was an actual person, not just a pretty thing to be shown at. He treated Cecelia with kindness even without having seen her face. A few days after he had left the shop with the newly embroidered dress he came back, saying that his daughter loved the dress and that she wanted another one. When she finished the second one, he asked her out to dinner. She agreed and found out that he was a widower at the dinner, which was one of the best of her life. She slowly fell in love with him over multiple dinners and eventually even showed her face to him. Still, he fell in love with her for her personality and they got married.

Those months before their marriage seemed like a blur, a fun, adrenaline-filled blur, but then when he died just three months after they had gotten married, Cecilia wished so much that it had been so much longer than a blur. She spent less than a year with him before he died and now, she was left with a stepdaughter that hated her. Cecilia’s grief swallowed her up completely for at least a year after his death, but Snow White, the princess she embroidered the dress for, fell into a depression that lasted so much longer.

Cecilia tried to help her in all the ways she could but Snow White just wouldn’t listen to her, blaming her for her father’s death. She claimed that because he died right after they got married, Cecilia killed him to take over the kingdom. So, Snow White did everything to spite Cecilia. At the age of twelve, she was already sneaking out of the palace with assorted nobility and dancing away nights at bars and pubs. When Cecilia found out, she freaked out, scared that someone would take her like they took Cecilia herself. Snow White was just as beautiful as she was, if not more and Cecilia knew she had to take matters into her own hands. She decided to send Snow White away, away from the people who might want to take her and hurt her until she had healed from the pain of losing her father and could think straight again.

Cecilia had convinced a friend of Snow White’s, the huntsman to bring her into the forest and to the home of the seven dwarves whom Cecilia had befriended years and years ago. They had agreed to let her stay and try to make her happier through the nature around the house like Cecilia had been happy in nature with her mother all those years ago. Cecilia knew that Snow White wouldn’t go if she knew that Cecilia wanted her to go, so she made sure that Snow White didn’t know anything about this plan. So, she went.

Cecilia would visit from time to time pretending to try to convince her to come back home, but only actually went to see if she was getting happier. She actually was. Each time Cecilia visited, Snow White would be more and more glad to see her. When Cecilia was finally deciding to bring her back to the kingdom after around 8 months had passed, she came to the dwarves’ house to find that Snow White had been poisoned. They didn’t know by who or what had happened, all they knew was that Snow White died holding a poisoned apple in her hands. Cecilia brought her body back to the kingdom in a coffin made out of precious jewels and held a huge funeral for her.

Now here Cecilia is, 35 years old, with everyone she ever loved dead or gone from her life, nothing left to do, but to give up and wait for death as well.