Dance - Cinderella Retold

Part 3

THREE

For the most part, Jing left Mai alone. Her increasingly rounded belly made her waddle around like the ducks in the pond at the bottom of the garden, to Mai's amusement, until one night Mai woke to shrill howls as first one, and then the other of her two half-sisters were born.

Lin and Lei's cries could be heard echoing through the house at all hours of the day and night, while Jing and the servants did everything in their power to quiet the babies.

Most days, Father could be found in the courtyard, training, as he had when Mai's mother had died, once again with a deep frown on his face. The frown turned into a smile whenever Mai joined him, though, and everything seemed right in the world once more.

For six years, they danced together every morning and night, as the two screaming babies turned into troublesome toddlers before growing into girls the same age as Mai had been when her stepmother first arrived. But when a child's piercing scream broke the dawn silence, Mai laid down her wooden practice sword and dashed into the house, certain Lin or Lei had been seriously hurt.

She found a manservant holding down Lei while Jing did something to the girl's feet that only made her howl louder. Jing shouted for bandages, which a maid handed to her. Jing wrapped the strips of silk around her daughter's feet before cramming them into a pair of shoes that even Mai knew were too small for her.

Lin watched with wide eyes until the manservant let go of her sister and seized her instead. Then Lin started to cry and struggle, begging her mother not to hurt her.

Jing grabbed the girl's shoulders. "Do you want to be a lady, and find a good husband, or be doomed to be an old maid like your sister Mai?"

"I don't need a husband," Mai protested. "I promised my mother I would take care of Father, always."

"There. Do you want to be a drudge all your life, or a lady who is carried everywhere in a litter?" Jing pressed.

Lin stopped struggling. "I want to be a lady, and a bride to a handsome husband, just like in the stories," she whispered.

She climbed up beside the still-sobbing Lei and Mai watched in horror as Jing broke her daughter's toes, bent them beneath the soles of her feet and bound the whole mess up in silk bandages. Now Mai understood why the too-small shoes suddenly fit Lei again, for Lin's shoes slid on over the bandages as if she were years younger.

"There," Jing said, planting her hands on her hips. "Now, you must walk around the garden ten times before you may have breakfast. Go, go!" She shooed the girls off the bed.

Both of them cried out as they took their first steps, begging their mother to let them sit down again, for their feet hurt too much to walk.

"Ladies must have lotus feet like mine, or no husband will have you," Jing said. "You will walk, no matter how much it hurts, or you will not eat. Do you hear me?"

Both girls nodded. Holding hands, they hobbled outside.

Mai folded her arms across her chest. "How can you do such a thing to your own daughters? It is barbaric!"

When Jing turned to face her, Mai was surprised to see tears streaming down her stepmother's face. "I do what must be done, to give my girls a future. A little pain now is nothing compared to a lifetime of being unwanted. My mother spared me until my feet had almost grown too big, and I was lucky to get a husband at all. If not for the Emperor's command and your father's ignorance of court fashions, I would not have been married, for no other nobleman would have me. My daughters will have such tiny feet that even princes will marvel at them."

Mai drew herself up. "You will not do such a thing to me. If you try to touch my feet, I will make you rue the day you were born." She wasn't sure how, but she had heard a great hero in one of her father's stories say such a thing, so it must mean something very frightening.

Jing sagged, looking as haggard as though it was her own toes that had been broken today and not her daughters'. "No, I will not," she agreed. "You are too old, and your feet are too big. I should have bound your feet when I first came, but my pregnancy and the girls...I could not. You will never find a good husband now, Mai. Not with feet as big as yours. Just like your common-born mother."

"My mother was not common! She was a general's daughter, like me, and her feet were perfectly sized to suit my father!" Mai snapped.

Jing marched to the cupboard and took down a pair of shoes Mai recognised as her mother's favourite. Beside them, Jing placed a pair of her own. "Times have changed since your mother was a girl. Perhaps she could make a good marriage with feet like this, but we have a new Emperor now, and in his court, they would call her an iron lotus, fit only to marry a fieldhand."

Mai stared at her mother's red silk shoes beside Jing's tiny striped slippers. "My mother's shoes were magical. She wore those the night my father fell in love with her, she said, and she kept them. She said the ancestors had blessed them with balance in all things, so that when she wore them, her balance was perfect, too."

Jing shook her head. "You don't understand, do you? It doesn't matter how well a girl dances any more. It is all about the size of her feet. You will never marry." She thrust the shoes at Mai. "Take these huge things away. Treasure them if you must, as a memory of times that will never come again. No amount of magic in your mother's shoes will make you marriageable. When you pray to the ancestors, pray that I bear your father a son, for with no husband, you will have no children to take care of you in your old age. No one to bring flowers to your shrine once you are gone."

Jing tossed her head and minced away before Mai could reply.

Weighted down with sorrow that her stepmother could hurt her sisters so, Mai made her way back to the courtyard. Her father was nowhere to be seen and her two sobbing sisters had collapsed on the steps, in too much pain to continue their tortuous circuit. She beckoned a maid over to tend to the girls, before resuming her search for her father. He would put a stop to this, she was certain.

Mai found her father in the shrine, lighting her mother's favourite incense. Normally, she waited until he was finished praying, but her sisters' pain would not wait. "Do you know what she has done?" Mai demanded. "She is torturing the girls. Breaking their bones! They will never learn to dance as you taught me. They can barely walk! And for what? To find husbands? What husband would ask for his wife to have her feet broken when she's just a baby, long before he even meets her, so she can wear smaller shoes?"

Father shook his head. "The new Emperor is nothing like the old. Many things have changed. Jing swears to me what she does is for our daughters' future. A future I fear I do not understand any more. I will not fight when I cannot win. The court of my youth is gone, along with the Emperor I served. It is a strange new world we live in, Mai. Your mother and I sought to protect you from it, but..." He squinted at her. "Are those her shoes?"

With trembling hands, Mai surrendered the shoes to her father. "Is it true that she wore them the night you fell in love?"

"She wore these every night, and every day, too," Father said. "I never saw her in any others until we were married. They were a gift from her fairy godmother, she said, enchanted with balance. Her godmother gave them to her after she got in trouble for losing her shoes. These shoes can never be lost. They will always find their way back to their rightful owner." He glanced down. "They should fit you now. Why don't you try them on?"

Wear her mother's magical shoes? Mai's breath caught in her throat, but she did as her father told her. Slipping one bare foot, then the other into the shoes, she found he was right. They fit her perfectly.

"You will be as beautiful as your mother one day, and even more graceful, I think. When it is time to find a husband for you, I will have plenty of men to choose from, who would beg for your hand," Father said.

"I don't want a husband, Father. I promised Mother I would take care of you," Mai replied mutinously, pressing her lips together.

"That is Jing's job now," Father said with a sigh. "And her son, if she manages to bear one. You are young yet. A man might catch your eye the way I caught your mother's eye. Then, I will have no choice but to make the match you choose."

Mai looked her father in the eye. "I will never choose another man over you, Father. I promise."

Fu kissed the top of his daughter's head. "You are a good girl. Do not think too harshly of your stepmother. Your mother wanted you prepared for a different life, while your sisters will find husbands at court, like their mother did. Court life requires sacrifices that I hope you will never have to make."

He had that right, Mai thought but did not say. Not if all her ancestors and every dragon in the country teamed up to drag her to the Emperor's palace would she set foot inside the place. Especially if she had to bind bits of her body and pretend to be something she wasn't.