It is one of the more unjust facts of life that it is the child who automatically wins sympathy from outsiders in any dispute which may occur between them and their parents. It is widely believed that children hold a sort of innocent perfection, and thus are unable of doing wrong, save childish jeering and the likes. More unfair still is that step-parents are even more subject to blame when relations with the child break down. It is never the child’s fault.

I have been called many things by many different sources; wicked, jealous, cruel, vain. She in turn was described in terms of positive adjectives alone. And yet no one has questioned how balanced these accounts are. They were too choked up with sympathy, and relief at what was re-written as a hard-earned and well-deserved happy ending. Is it so wrong that I should ask for a hearing?

I married Marilina’s father when she was twelve years old. The poor man had been a widower for four years, and had shouldered the strains of managing both a kingdom and an eccentric daughter alone. I had never before been wed, and naturally had no children of my own. Indeed, I was quite unused to dealing with them, but none the less, my efforts with her cannot be criticized. I was always kind, asking her how her day went, making her cocoa before bed, even though there were servants to do that, as I believed that it would convey my affection to her. Every night, I would go to tuck her in, but she would feign sleep and lie rigidly, lying on the edges of the quilt, her eyes scrunched shut, holding her breath. I always retreated with a water-logged heart.

Her father was a soft-hearted man. The more she acted out, the more love and attention he gave her. I tried to convince him that this was not the right way to go about things, that she would end up spoiled. (In my mind, I always added “more spoiled”, but I held my tongue around him, and indeed around everyone. It would have been unseemly to do otherwise.)

It was a cold morning in spring when the letter arrived. Although it was many hours after dawn, owls were still screeching in the trees in the palace grounds, and the lake was eerily still. I believed the letter to be a respite from this air of impending evil. But it was merely a part of it, and an integral part at that.

The letter, written in painstakingly beautiful black cursive and sealed with red wax, was from my sister Reine. In it, along with the usual, expected yet tiresome pleasantries, was the declaration that she was coming for a long-overdue visit. Initially, I was near drunk on borrowed elation. However, joy always passes.

In my naivety, I failed to note the possibility of a problem until I gleefully shared the news with my husband and step-daughter over dinner that evening. She did not speak (this was not unusual, she rarely did in my presence, though I had heard her babbling animatedly to her father when she thought that I was out of earshot), but something in her eyes shifted, and, to my surprise, it sent a cold sheet of dark foreboding splintering through me.

Much and all as I love my sister, it must be said that her standards are impossibly high. I knew that I had won her respect by marrying the king (I cared little for status, but it was her all). I also knew that it would not take much for this respect to be entirely undermined. In fact, one difficult girl harboring an intense and thoroughly unjustified dislike for me may well have been enough to do the trick.

And so I went to my dear friend Andrew. He worked as a woodsman, and the more snobby of my new “friends” often told me that I should not associate with him anymore because of this. However, we had grown up together, and this is a bond not easily broken. Distraught, I crept out of the palace in disguise as an old woman, so as not to attract unwanted attention, and went to his hut in the forest to confide my worries in him. He listened attentively, being a man of few words. As is always the case with such situations, I felt much better when I had voiced my worries aloud, so much so that they barely seemed to matter anymore. As I turned my attentions to the preparations for the visit, I thought little of the girl.

On the eve of Reine’s visit, my husband came to me, his face a mask of concern. “Dearest,” he said, frowning in a way which made his blue eyes cloud over like the sea on a misty day, “have you seen Marilina?’

I returned his frown. “No dear, I can’t say that I have. Not since breakfast anyway. Though I daresay she’s either in her room ,walking the grounds, or at the market. She never seems to venture much further than that.”

He nodded, though wringing his hands. “Yes, yes, you’re right. I’ll go check the grounds again.” He went for the door, muttering “Can’t have gone far….”

He had been gone for hours before there was a knock on the door. Presuming that it was him, and that he had merely forgotten his keys, I answered it immediately, and was surprised to find Andrew standing on the doorstep, looking utterly pleased with himself.

“Well,” he said, grinning broadly, “as I expect you’ve realized by now, your little problem has been solved!”

I gasped. “You mean…”

“Yup, I’ve taken the child off your hands, so I have. Came across her out walking, and brought her to stay with some of the miners. Now you’ll have a nice calm house for your sister’s visit!”

“But her father,” I said, struggling to comprehend what was going on, “how on earth am I going to explain this to him?”

Andrew shifted uncomfortably, and his weather-beaten face turned vaguely puce. “Hadn’t thought of that….”

“I have to go and get her back.” I told him firmly. When he looked crestfallen, I added, “not that it wasn’t a lovely gesture. I’ll need you to stay here in case my sister arrives to an empty house.” I frowned, knowing right well what she would think of him, and consequently of me. “Just tell her you’re one of my servants.”

It was a mark of his friendship that he obeyed without protest, and I, disguising myself as an old woman once again (the girl would never willingly return home with me, loathing me as she did), set out for the miners’ home.

I made good time, and knocked on the door of the little thatched cottage, shooing away the twittering birds which seemed to flock to wherever my stepdaughter was. I could hear movement inside the house, and, shortly, a voice came seeping through the door.

“Who is it?”

I recognized her dulcet tones instantly. She always acted unbearably sweet when confronted with strangers, unless, of course, it would be to my detriment to do otherwise.It made my hatred of her seem rather unfounded as, I have no doubt, was surely her intention.

“Just an old woman, dear,” I replied, making my voice waver and crack. “I’m selling apples…”

“I’m sorry.” she replied, “I’m not supposed to open the door to anyone…”

(Note how she said that only after finding out who was there. No doubt she would have had no problem opening the door had it been that obnoxious youth to whom she had taken a fancy. He was almost as loathsome as she, masquerading as a prince so as to seduce innocent girls. Marilina, bless her soul, had not stopped to think about how he could possibly be a prince in our small town when it already had a ruler-her father- and the boy was not related.)

“Alright then dear, I understand,” I said, making my voice sound frailer, and emitting a strangled sob. “No bread for my grandchildren this evening then. How disappointed they’ll be…”

And she, maintaining the pretence of having a warm heart instead of a slab of iron in her chest, opened the door a fraction.“Well, maybe I’ll just buy one apple…”

I sighed. I’d never be able to get her home at this rate. The transaction took place through the gap between the door and its frame. She thanked me, said goodbye, and took a bite. I lingered on the step, not wanting to admit defeat.

All of a sudden, she began to cough and splutter. Alarmed, I shouldered the door open and found her, red faced, choking on the fruit. Spots were beginning to spring up on her arms. I pushed my way past her, and got filled a chipped mug, one of seven which I found on the counter, with tap water, which I forced her to drink. She stopped coughing, and I breathed a sigh of relief, but I did so too soon, for, the next moment, she had collapsed onto the ground. I took a cloth from a drawer and dampened it, dabbing it on her pale skin. Her eyelids didn’t even flutter. I sat there frantically, wracking my brains for something to do, anything, when I heard footsteps.

Looking up, I saw the miners, covered in soot, each bearing a spade or a shovel or a pick or an axe or a brush. They stared at me for an instant, but it wasn’t long before their eyes fell on Marilina, and they rushed to her side, taking in her seemingly lifeless form before rounding on me.

“You’ve killed her.” said the bespectacled one, glaring and pointing his finger at me in an accusatory and thoroughly impolite manner.

“I haven’t!” I protested, feeling myself pale. “She must have had an allergic reaction, that’s all, we just need to send for a doctor!”

They hesitated, not wanting to take my advice, but seeming to believe it to be the most sensible approach. The doctor, however, was too late.

Upon hearing this, the miners lunged for me, and I hurried out the door. They chased me all the way to the cliffs, where I eventually managed to find refuge in a cave. Believing me to have fallen to my death, they returned home.

Regrettably, I could not do the same. How would I ever face her father when knowing that I, however unintentionally, had killed his only child?

I was two towns away when I got word of what had become of her body .Apparently, that boy, whom she wrongfully believed to be a prince, had gotten wind of her death, and had gallantly rode to the miners’ cottage. Stricken, he had foolishly attempted to rouse her from Death’s clutches, not knowing how tightly it clings to the soul. Unwilling to admit defeat, or indeed, unwilling to have such beauty sunken underground, he paid the miners a hefty sum in return for the corpse, for which he had crafted a transparent coffin of sorts .Laying her body in it, he positioned her in his front hall. “Such beauty,” he said, “deserves preservation”. He seemed oblivious to the spots and blotches, and her chalky pallor.

And so that was how it ended, her forever preserved with he whom she professed to adore, me an exile from my home and my town, suspected of murder. Why then is it she who won the sympathy?