Happily Ever After, Ltd. - 16. Pre-Wedding Jitters

Ryan was woken up by the crowing of at least thirty roosters from down in the village. He’d never felt so desperate for sleep before. He tried pressing cushions over his ears but it didn’t help. It sounded like the birds were right there in the room. Eventually, the roosters calmed down, but just as Ryan was on the brink of falling back asleep, someone knocked at his door.

“Go away!” Ryan shouted.

The Royal Tailors had returned and this time Ryan didn’t even try to resist. They dragged him up out of bed and pulled down his pyjama pants. Two days ago, Ryan would’ve objected to being roused from bed and stripped, but he no longer cared. He stood there, semi-conscious, while the tailors sewed his wedding suit over him.

“Today’s the day, Your Highness,” one tailor said.

“It’s a beautiful day for it, Your Highness,” tried another.

Ryan ignored all of them and, after a few more attempts at conversation, they ignored him too.

They sewed ruffles onto the sleeves of his shirt, and on the pockets and hems of his trousers. They stitched a particularly large ruffle around his neck. He stared at himself in the mirror. He looked like a daisy. If it hadn’t been so depressing, he would’ve laughed.

As the tailors were putting on the finishing touches, Bjorn came in.

Ryan must’ve looked as miserable as he felt, because he said, “Don’t worry, Your Highness. I’m sure it’s only pre-wedding jitters.”

“Go away,” Ryan said. “I’m going to marry Cinderella then get the hell out of here.”

“It won’t work,” Bjorn said. “You’re not in love with her and you never will be. You won’t get a happily ever after like this.”

“I don’t care. This is the way it’s always been.”

“The way it’s always been?” Bjorn said. “The world doesn’t work like that. Things don’t stay the same. They change. Otherwise your parents would’ve bought a wife for you by now and you’d have a slave doing your laundry.”

“But this isn’t some massive injustice. It’s a story for kids. And anyway, the world might change, but fairytales don’t.”

“Of course they do,” Bjorn said. “There have been hundreds versions of Cinderella. First of all, it was a tree that granted Cinderella’s wishes. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that the Godmother and glass slippers appeared. Then there was the Brothers Grimm version, which, as you’ve seen firsthand, was a bloodbath. Then, in the middle of the twentieth century, came the Disneyfication of it, which was more about the stupid singing mice than anything else—”

“I liked the singing mice.”

“—and then Happily Ever After went and made the story even stupider.” Bjorn sighed. “You can’t fall in love with her, Ryan. You won’t even be able to pretend.” He turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” Ryan asked. As much as he didn’t want Bjorn around, the thought of being alone was scarier.

“I’m going to the stables. I got Blanche a job there while the King’s doctors treat her mother with the fictional equivalent of morphine.”

Ryan looked at him, surprised. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”

“You can do something nice today too,” said Bjorn. “You know, I disagree with almost everything in fairytales. But actually, there’s one thing that I do agree with.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“That sometimes you should follow your heart,” Bjorn said. “It sounds stupid, of course, but in situations like this, it can work pretty well. I’m confident you’ll do the right thing today, Ryan.”

Ryan still had no idea what the right thing to do was – and his heart only told him that he was very, very scared.

*

The entire castle had begun stirring with activity at the crack of dawn. In the kitchen, bakers were rolling out the dough and the cooks were plucking the pheasants. Wagons full of flowers were being wheeled in from the market to cover every surface of the castle. The musicians had arrived and were already tuning their strings. Every inch of the castle was being polished until it shone as brightly as the coin-sun.

Of course, Dorothy was not getting her hopes up. She stood over the Core Book sipping black coffee that, after more than two days without sleep, was starting to taste like water to her. She watched the words appear on the page.

All across the kingdom, preparations were underway for the royal wedding of Prince Charming and Cinderella.

But while villagers and courtiers alike squirmed with excitement, Dorothy remained stone-faced and silent. She was convinced that something was going to go wrong at any second.

*

“Nothing is going to go wrong.”

That’s what everyone kept telling Dorothy in the months leading up to her own wedding, but she was convinced otherwise. From the moment she had gotten engaged, Dorothy had a deepening sense of dread that something would go horribly wrong.

Naturally, Dorothy had approached her wedding planning with the same efficiency that she approached her work. She kept lists and tables and registers, all of which were kept in neat folders on her desktop. But all of this preparation did nothing to dispel the dark cloud she felt hovering over her. She was still sure that something awful would happen that would ruin not only the day, but her entire marriage.

“You’re so sensible about everything else,” Burnham had pointed out at one point. “It’s ironic that you can’t see how irrational you’re being about this.”

Dorothy had booked the wedding venue at a winery out in the valley. The ceremony was to take place in a cellar, surrounded by flowers, candles and wine barrels, and the reception was to be upstairs in a large ballroom that overlooked the vineyards. The winery was well-known for hosting perfect weddings but Dorothy kept phoning the venue, each call more ridiculous than the last.

“Yes, you’ve still got the booking,” the manager said patiently, “and yes, our chefs are still booked ... No, I’m sure they won’t be killed in car crashes on their way here. Yes, the road does have a few bends, but they’re all very good drivers.”

Dorothy checked the weather forecast even a month in advance. Sunshine was predicted, but that was of no comfort to Dorothy. She kept refreshing the meteorology website, expecting the forecast to suddenly change to floods and thunderstorms.

But when the date of the wedding finally arrived, nothing did go wrong. The day was cloudless and still, but not unpleasantly hot, and everything ran like clockwork. Dorothy’s hair and make-up was flawless, and she managed to avoid staining or tearing the dress en route to the venue. Burnham had also adhered dutifully the list that Dorothy had prepared for him.

During the ceremony, they both recited their vows during the ceremony without reading from cue-cards, which Dorothy had always considered tacky and insincere. There were no embarrassing sobbing noises from either of them, or from the guests, just tasteful applause. During the reception, nobody made any embarrassing toasts. Dorothy’s speech – a curt shopping-list of thank yous – went off without a hitch, while Burnham’s toast was both hilarious in his gentle teasing of his bride’s perfectionism, but also heart-warming in his sincere declarations of love for her.

Everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves. Everyone, that was, except for Dorothy herself. Each phase of the wedding had gone according to plan, but for Dorothy, the day was passing by in a strange, disorientating blur. She had been told over and over to make sure that when the day arrived, she “took it all in”, but everything she saw and heard seemed distorted somehow, as though she was experiencing it from underwater.

After the cake-cutting, Dorothy finally managed to extricate herself from her guests and excused herself for her first bathroom break of the evening. She slid the lock in place. She felt instant relief at being alone.

Dorothy went to the basins and looked at her reflection in the large mirror. She did not recognise the woman looking back at her. Her face had an almost extraterrestrial smoothness. Her dark hair, usually pulled back tightly, was falling over her shoulders in hundreds of carefully curled ringlets. There were even flower petals in it. All day, people had told Dorothy how beautiful she looked, and now she saw what they meant. What they meant was that she looked nothing like herself. They hadn’t told Dorothy that she was beautiful. They’d said how beautiful she looked tonight, in voices of utter surprise.

She tried to take a deep breath but the dress was too tight around the middle. Actually using the bathroom was also not an option; the dress had more layers than an onion and it would’ve taken at least three people to gather all the fabric up.

Dorothy knew her absence would soon be noticed, so she turned to leave. But then something made her stop. She could hear voices. She looked up and saw a small window open above the basin. Outside was the back veranda with metal chairs and an ashtray, where the few smokers in the party had been directed to go.

Dorothy recognised the speakers at once. It was Christina, a friend from Dorothy’s first year at university, and Christina’s loud friend Jen. Dorothy wasn’t especially close with either of them, but she’d had to cast the net widely to fulfil her half of the guest quota.

Dorothy heard the click of Jen’s lighter.

“Don’t you dare blow any of that smoke on me!” Christina said. “I just had this dress dry-cleaned twice.”

“Twice? Why twice?”

“Your vomit stains from Tina’s birthday.”

“God, I was disgusting that night,” Jen said. “But anyway, what was I saying before? Oh yeah, her. She’s horrible.”

“She’s not horrible,” Christina said. “She’s just never had much patience for people. I was actually really surprised when I heard she was getting married. She never seemed like the type. She’s one of those people who lives for their jobs. She’s going to run that company one day. It’s kind of inspiring.”

“She’s a fucking ice queen!” Jen said. “I don’t know what he’s doing with her. Burnham is hot, and his speech was so funny. But did you hear her speech? She sounded like a robot.”

“Jen! You’re blowing smoke on me!”

“Sorry, sorry. He’s so good-looking, and nice, and funny. What’s he doing with her, when girls like us are still single?”

“Dorothy can be really funny and interesting,” Christina said. “I always liked hanging out with her at uni. She was the only other girl who seemed to actually want an education. I could have an actual conversation with her that wasn’t about boys or what we were wearing.”

Jen giggled. “Is that a dig at me? We don’t just talk about boys, you bitch.”

Christina laughed. “The problem was, Dorothy would schedule me in. Like I was a dentist appointment. She always kept one eye on the clock. She always wanted to go back into the library to study.”

“Speaking of going back.” Jen dropped her cigarette and Dorothy heard the gravel crunch under her heel as she stomped on it. “We should go back inside. I’m going to have another tequila shot and then I’m going to talk to that cute best man.”

“You are not. He’s here with his pregnant wife.”

“Since when has that ever stopped me?”

Their voices faded as they went back inside, but Dorothy couldn’t move. She was realising now what she had been so worried about, what she had been dreading in the months leading up to the wedding. She had never been worried about some silly detail, like the dress or the cake. That was just what she told everyone (including herself) as a distraction – a diversion. Dorothy’s anxiety leading up to the wedding was all about herself. And now hearing someone else say it, even through a window, she knew what it was. She had been worried that Burnham would realise she was the worst person he could possibly marry. She couldn’t be anything else. She knew she would never sacrifice or compromise anything for him. Throughout their relationship, it had always been him fitting in with her life, her demands. He’d wanted to travel more, see family; she said she couldn’t take the time off work. He’d wanted to get a bigger place; she said it wasn’t practical for her.

In that moment, she knew that the wedding had been a mistake.

Dorothy walked out of the bathroom, feeling even more distant and separate from her surroundings.

“There you are!” someone, Dorothy was too dazed to notice who, said. The person hooked their arm through Dorothy’s and led her back onto the dance floor.

Burnham saw her and grinned. She smiled back, but he could see in her eyes that something was wrong.

“You okay?” he said.

Dorothy nodded, pressing her lips together.

“You look strange. Did something happen?”

She shook her head rapidly. She was terrified that if she opened her mouth, she would make some kind of humiliatingly wet sound. Eventually, she managed to speak. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little tired.”

It was not the first lie she had told Burnham, but it was the first lie of their marriage, and it would set the scene for the next five years. She would never be able to tell him what she now knew to be true: that she was not good enough for him and never would be. That she would never be a real wife. That she would never be able to love him as unselfishly as he loved her.

At the end of the night, Dorothy was farewelling an endless queue of guests. She was told over and over how perfect it’d all been, when suddenly Christina and Jen appeared before her.

“It was a perfect evening,” Christina said, kissing Dorothy on the cheek. “You two are perfect for each other.”

“You make a lovely couple,” Jen said, her voice warm and genuine. “I hope to see more of you.”

“Thank you,” she heard herself saying, as if from miles away. “Thank you both for coming.”

In that instant, Dorothy felt something inside her harden. As one guest after another smiled and sang her praises, Dorothy was convinced beyond a doubt that she was hated by every single one of them.

*

“Prince Charming must get so bored in there.”

Dorothy was so sleep-deprived that she’d drifted off into her memories. It took her a moment to return to her present. Liam was still absorbed by his monitor. Next to him, Maria was spinning around in a chair, kicking her feet out.

“It must get so boring for him,” Maria said again. “I’ve never realised how little the prince really has to do.”

“He doesn’t have to do anything,” Dorothy said. “All he has to do is stick to the story. It’s not rocket science.”

“Well, it’s nearly time for the wedding,” Liam said, “and it looks like everything is ready to go according to plan.”

Immediately – and in Dorothy’s opinion, inevitably – a message flashed onto the computer screen.

ERROR

ERROR

ERROR

Dorothy had expected it and yet she felt as if her stomach had dropped out of her body.

“What is it?” Dorothy said.

Liam turned to her. “The Prince is missing.”

*

In the uppermost turret of the castle, there was a guard assigned to constant surveillance of the kingdom. He never needed to sleep or eat. He remained there, day after day, cycle after cycle, to watch for any abnormalities in or around the kingdom. If he ever observed anything out-of-the-ordinary from his post, he was commanded to raise the alarm immediately.

But nothing out-of-the-ordinary had never happened before. Cycle after cycle, the guard had watched the same scenes. Footmen went around the village, handing out invitations to that evening’s ball. Guests arrived. Cinderella came and went. The next day, the royal carriage went from house to house with the glass slipper, eventually bringing Cinderella back. Then the third day, today: the wedding.

Throughout it all, the guard stifled yawns, discreetly passed wind, and readjusted himself. Sometimes, he would find himself wishing that something exciting would happen, but that thought tended to be wiped clean from his mind as soon as he’d had it.

It had been a dull life for the guard. Until today.

*

“What do you mean, the Prince is missing?” Dorothy said. “We know that already! That’s why we’ve got Ryan.”

Maria had rushed over to the Core Book. “No, it’s Ryan that’s vanished.” She traced the new words with her finger. “Nobody can find him.”

“It gets worse,” Liam said, his eyes glued to the screen in front of him. “Cinderella is missing too.”

“Well, find them!”

“Maybe he got distracted by a tapestry,” Maria said. “He has quite a bit of spare time before the guards arrive to escort him downstairs.”

“It’s the terrorist!” Dorothy said. “He’s done something to them – locked them in a wardrobe or something!”

She joined Maria at the Core Book, watching as the words trickled across the page. All over the world, children were reading the same sentence.

Alas, both Cinderella and the Prince had vanished, and all hope seemed lost.

Then Liam leapt to his feet. “I found them!”

*

Hand in hand, they were fleeing from the castle. They’d waited for the guards to march past, before sprinting across the drawbridge. They then ran through the archery range, which was always deserted on the wedding day. They’d trampled through the box-hedges to the meadow where the royal horses were grazing. It wasn’t until they were halfway across the meadow that the guard in the turrets noticed them. Peering through his brass telescope, the guard examined the figures more closely. Through the round lens, he saw a young man helping a lady over the stile. The man was in a wedding suit, while the lady was wearing a large wedding dress with a veil trailing for many yards behind her.

There was no doubt in the guard’s mind that the Prince and Cinderella were trying to escape and so, for the first time in the history of Happily Ever After, Ltd, he reached up to the large copper bell above him. He swung the clapper back and forth, the clamour echoing to every corner of the castle.

Below, the rest of the King’s guards sprang to life, after cycles of remaining stationary at their posts. They snatched bows and arrows from the archery range, and dislodged swords from the statues of armour. In single file, they ran to the stables and leapt up onto their horses.

The castle’s wedding preparations were halted as the servants rushed out to the drawbridge to watch the action. Down in the village, children crawled onto cottage roofs and, in the hills, the shepherds climbed the tallest trees to watch temporary history in the making. This would be gossiped about until happily ever after, if that arrived. Even the King and Queen threw open their bedroom windows, with the Queen’s face only half-painted, and watched as the guards on horses vaulted the box hedges and fences, and stampeded towards the fugitives. Within moments, the guards had surrounded them completely, weapons drawn. The prince tried to push through the wall of horses, but was tackled into the mud by one of the guards. He went down easily, landing in face-first into the dirt. The bride too fell clumsily to the ground, tangling herself up in the many acres of fabric, the veil knotting around her head as she struggled. The chase was over before it had even begun.

Two guards grabbed the bride and groom by their necks and pulled them up roughly from the ground, swords drawn and arrows poised.

“In the name of His Majesty the King!” shouted a particularly pompous-looking guard. “Your Highness and your bride are under arrest! You have the right to remain … to remain … to …” He trailed off. Then he muttered, “What on God’s green earth ...”

For, even through his mud-smeared face, it was clear that the man in the wedding suit was not the prince. The man had a longer face, darker features, and a moustache. The guard recognised him as one of the footmen, dressed in the prince’s wedding suit. The veil then fell away from the bride’s head, revealing a much larger girl with a round, unpainted face. Her size had been concealed by the immense puffiness of the wedding dress she was wearing.

Bjorn and Blanche stood before the guards, both out of breath from their brief but exhausting sprint. Blanche looked rather nervous, with good reason, but Bjorn looked unashamedly, even triumphantly, wicked.

*

“A fucking decoy!”

Dorothy gripped the edges of the Core Book, her knuckles white. She stared down at the words as if she were hallucinating.

It was neither the Prince nor Cinderella that the guards had caught.

It was one of the Prince’s footmen and a milkmaid from the village.

Please let me be hallucinating, Dorothy thought desperately.

The real Prince and Cinderella were nowhere to be seen.

But Dorothy knew that this was no hallucination. She knew that the nightmare had indeed plunged to new depths, and that every little girl in the world was turning the pages of Cinderella, a Cinderella that Dorothy was responsible for, without realising that they were plummeting into a black abyss.

“This is it,” Dorothy said. In her own ears, her voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away. “This is the end of Cinderella. It’s all over. We’ve destroyed it.”

*

The King was redder and more furious than ever. He stormed out of the castle, through the archery range, and strode into the centre of the commotion in the meadow. The Queen followed closely behind, lifting her heavy gown to avoid it dragging in the dirt.

“What is the meaning of this?” the King thundered. “Speak!”

The chief guard opened and closed his mouth, lost for words. He had not been programmed to explain the unexplainable. Bjorn stepped forward, wiping clumps of dirt from his face.

“We impersonated the prince and his bride-to-be,” Bjorn said, “in order to distract your guards.”

“Well?” the King shouted at the dumbstruck guards. “Don’t just stand there! Arrest him!”

The guards moved forward to seize Bjorn and Blanche.

“Not so fast, Your Majesty.” Bjorn made the guards stop with a wave of his hand. “They can’t arrest us.”

“They can and they will!” the King said.

“But we were acting on the orders of His Highness the Prince,” Bjorn said. “Therefore, under the Law of the Land, we can’t be arrested.”

“You expect me to believe that my son ordered this charade? You’re an impostor and a liar!”

Bjorn reached into his tunic and withdrew a scroll. The Queen snatched it from him, unravelled it, and studied it closely.

“It has the royal seal,” the Queen said. “It seems this footman speaks the truth. But why would our son play such a silly game? And on his wedding day?”

“On my honour as a footman, Your Majesty,” Bjorn said, “I really could not say.”

While the baffled King and Queen fussed over what to do, Bjorn’s fingers found Blanche’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. They caught each other’s eye and Bjorn smiled at her.

Unlike Bjorn, Blanche didn’t know that she’d lived through this same day, hundreds of time over. Every other time, Blanche’s story had ended unremarkably – feeding the chickens, taking her mother’s temperature, making stone soup. Each time, as the ending neared, Blanche had a strange insight into the world around her, and her role in it – that she was irrelevant, that she was meaningless, and always would be.

But today, Blanche felt something different. She and her mother were living on castle grounds now, in servant’s quarters, which were far more comfortable than their former home. The doctors were giving her mother medicine fit for the Queen. And although she could not understand why, the Prince himself had kept asking for her help, and now a royal footman was holding her hand. And so for the first (and possibly last) time, Blanche felt something completely new. She felt that she might live happily ever after, too.

As the ending drew closer, Bjorn also felt better than he had been for any of the previous cycles. Over the mountains, he noticed that dark clouds were beginning to spill forth, and he felt a cold wind brewing. Bjorn knew that he had won.

*

“What is Ryan doing?” Maria said.

“Whatever he’s doing,” Liam said, “it’s unravelling the entire fabric of the Cinderella world. The wedding day is usually clear-skied and sunny but, today, storm clouds are approaching.”

Dorothy knew it was now the biggest catastrophe in the company’s history, by far. In the back of her mind, she knew what would need to be done when it was over, but she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it yet.

“I think I’ve found them,” Liam said then added, “The real them.”

“Where are they?” Dorothy said.

Liam squinted at the screen, then suddenly drew back, his mouth hanging open.

“Liam, where are they?!” Dorothy said.

“They aren’t just fleeing the castle,” he said. “It looks like they’re trying to flee the country.”