The Thrice Named Princess by Robert Allen Lupton

Midnight! The first thing to go was the tiara. It changed from diamonds into a tattered headscarf before Cinderella could catch her breath. The clock struck the second stroke announcing the new day. Cinderella ran for the door.

Her gown was next. It lost its beauty as the enchantment faded. The ragged shift left a train of ashes and dust behind it.

Cinderella hesitated at the top of the stairs outside the castle’s entrance. Her coach was gone. A large pumpkin was broken on the cobblestones. An ancient mule and a handful of mice shared the bounty. Cinderella stumbled on the first step and kicked off her crystal slippers. One shattered on the stone stairway, but the other one landed in a rose bush.

Cinderella’s dream vanished with the sun. She cooked breakfast for her stepmother and her stepsisters. She spent the rest of the day the same way she’d spent a thousand days before. Household chores are endless.

Prince Charming was accustomed to having his own way and his own way now included Cinderella. He found the crystal slipper and searched his kingdom until he found her. He ordered her stepmother and stepsisters imprisoned. He escorted Cinderella to the castle and asked for her hand in marriage.

Cinderella said yes and the wedding was scheduled.

The night before the marriage, the stepmother, an evil witch, changed herself and her two daughters into rats. The three scampered through the sewers seeking safety. Cinderella’s stepsisters, who’d never met a crumb of food they wouldn’t eat, were so fat that they were trapped in the sewers. As far as anyone knows, they still are.

The stepmother took the form of a seamstress and while pretending to help fit Cinderella’s wedding dress, pricked the bride-to-be with an enchanted needle. Under the cover of darkness, she spirited her away. She couldn’t allow Cinderella to marry the Prince. She was a black witch. Witchcraft isn’t free. Everything has a price. The price of witchcraft is a smut, a stain, on the soul of the user, but the stepmother had bonded with Cinderella and used the girl as a shield. Cinderella was so good, so sweet, and so pure, that the witch’s smut was contained. The first kiss of true love would dissolve the bond between Cinderella and her stepmother and the years of accumulated smut would destroy the witch.

No, she couldn’t let Cinderella marry the Prince.

Prince Charming was distraught. He searched far and wide. He used all his horses and all his men, but Cinderella was not to be found. He lost weight. He refused food.

One night he dreamed, and in his dream, a beautiful winged woman appeared to him.

“Prince Charming, I’m Cinderella’s fairy godmother. She lives. Her stepmother, who is a witch, escaped your dungeon, stole her away, and imprisoned her in a remote and lonely tower. I can only visit you in dreams. I can’t take you to her, but follow the witch. Follow the witch.

The next day, Prince Charming dressed in the clothing of a wandering mercenary, functional leathers, though stained and patched, a sword, the blade razor-sharp, though chipped in places, and boots, unpolished and scuffed. He followed the witch through the woods.

She led him to a tall tower in a remote meadow. The Prince circled the tower. The entrance was sealed with stone and mortar. He didn’t see a way inside.

The witch shouted, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

The Prince caught his breath. Cinderella leaned out of the open window high above them. “Mother, my name isn’t Rapunzel.”

“Child, your name is what I say it is. Rapunzel sounds akin to repugnant and your face is repugnant to all. Your behavior has cursed you with ugliness so powerful that your face will make people die in fear. That’s why you have no mirrors. It’s death if you look upon your own face. Now, let down your hair.”

Cinderella, or Rapunzel as her stepmother insisted on calling her, pushed her hair out the window. The locks flowed and cascaded like a waterfall. The stepmother tied the food baskets she’d carried to Cinderella’s raven locks and then she climbed her stepdaughter’s hair. She slipped through the window and pulled the long tresses and baskets after her.

Prince Charming watched as Cinderella reappeared in the window and cast her locks outward. The strands billowed in the breeze and drifted to the meadow grasses.

The witch climbed down. “Rapunzel, pull up your hair. I’ll return with more food in a fortnight. Take care that no person sees less they die from the shock.”

The witch waited until Rapunzel’s long hair disappeared into the tower window and then she vanished into the forest. Prince Charming took her place under the tower window and shouted. “Cinderella, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

Cinderella looked down and quickly covered her face. “No, Prince Charming, I’ve been cursed and my face is ugly beyond belief. Go away.”

“I saw your face when you spoke with your stepmother, the witch. She lies! Your beauty is unchanged. Even were it not, I would still love you. Your face causes me happiness, not despair. Let down your hair.”

And she did.

Prince Charming climbed to the window. Cinderella tried to hide her face, but Prince Charming convinced her to look at her reflection on the blade of his polished sword. She beheld her face, filled with the same sweetness, kindness, and beauty that the Prince admired. “Yes, my mother lied to me.”

“Let down your hair. Let us leave this place, return to the castle, and be married. I will find your stepmother, the witch, and punish her as she deserves.”

“Willingly, My Prince. But if I let down my hair, you can climb down, but I can’t. What shall we do?”

The Prince thought. “We’ll tie your hair to the table. The table won’t fit through the window. You climb down first and I’ll follow.”

And so they did. Once they were on the ground, Prince Charming cut her hair with his sword. He bowed, touched his forehead to her hand, and they hurried to his castle.

The stepmother returned a fortnight later and found Rapunzel’s tresses blowing in the wind. She climbed into the empty tower and saw the hair tied to the table. She cursed and climbed back down. At the foot of the tower, she discovered two sets of footprints, Rapunzel’s and a man’s. She surmised what had happened. “The Prince. It’s the Prince again. He’s taken her. I need her goodness. It balances my evil and protects me.”

She raised her hands and chanted. The dangling wind-blown hair vanished in a puff of smoke. She clenched her fists and the tower tumbled down. “Vengeance, my pretties. I’m coming for you both,” she said to the wind.

Prince Charming and Cinderella planned to wed in three days. The Prince posted soldiers at the stepmother’s house and guards surrounded the castle. Once burned, twice shy.

The next morning, the witch disguised herself as a chambermaid and entered Cinderella’s turret chamber. She helped the bride with her hair and makeup. “Dearie, you look pale. Have you eaten? You must eat something. It wouldn’t do to pass out during the ceremony.”

Cinderella looked in the mirror. “I do need a bit more color in my cheeks,” she said and reached for the rouge. “I didn’t sleep at all. I don’t think I could eat a thing.”

The chambermaid reached into her apron and removed an apple. She shined on her apron.

“I saved this for my lunch, but you need it more than I do. Just a bite.”

“I couldn’t.”

The chambermaid had tears in her eyes. She blinked them away and said, “You wouldn’t hurt an old woman’s feelings. Just a bite. I can tell everyone that I fed the Princess on her wedding day.”

“Well, just one bite, and then you can help me dress.”

Cinderella took one bite of the apple and swooned. The chambermaid shifted into the stepmother. She wrapped Cinderella in a quilt, carried her to the window, transformed herself into a gigantic raven, clutched the quilt with her feet, cawed triumphantly, and flew away.

The Prince was distraught. That night he had restless dreams. The fairy godmother appeared to him and in his dream, they talked.

“Prince,” she said. “You do a poor job of taking care of my goddaughter.”

“I found her twice and saved her once. I love her. I’m doing the best I can.”

“She won’t be safe until you marry her. The witch, her stepmother, has ensorcelled her with a sleeping trance and hidden her deep in the dark forest. A troop of miners, dwarves every one of them, guard her sleeping body. The dwarves are good men, but they fear the witch and do as she commands. Go to her. Wake her.”

“How do I wake her?”

“A kiss. Kiss her awake.”

The Prince’s lips tingled. “Last time I followed the witch to the tower. How do I find Cinderella this time?”

The fairy godmother put her finger on the Prince’s lips. “Quiet. Sleep, my Prince. Time enough tomorrow to find her. It will be easier this time. Just follow your heart.”

The Princess dressed in his finest clothes and rode his finest horse into the forest. He never hesitated about which way to go. He felt a small tug on his heart whenever there was a choice to make. He found a small cottage in the deep woods. The setting sun highlighted the smoke rising from a crude stone chimney. He dismounted and turned toward the door.

“Not so fast!” said a small man armed with a pickaxe. Six other men of similar stature and brandishing shovels and hoes stood with him. Their faces, blacked with dust from the mines, looked forbidding in the twilight.

Prince Charming removed his gauntlets and laid his sword on the ground. “I mean no harm. I seek my stolen bride, the Princess Cinderella. My heart tells me that she is here.”

The little man waved his pickaxe angrily. “No Cinderella here. We have a maiden, sure enough, name of Rapunzel, left in our charge by a mean and spiteful woman. Told us to protect her from the likes of you.”

The Prince's heart grew larger with hope. “The two are one and the same. I don’t want to fight. Let me see her. If she’s not my love, I’ll leave. Please.”

The little men huddled and talked. The one with the pickaxe said. “Looking won’t do no harm. Leave your sword on the ground. We call her Snow White because her skin is as pale as newly fallen snow.”

“Well,” said the Prince. “She was locked inside a tower for a long time.”

The small bedroom had a very low ceiling and the Prince had to stoop to enter. A dwarf lit a bedside candle. It was Cinderella, and she was as beautiful as ever.

A dwarf said, “She hasn’t woken up.”

The Prince dropped to his knees and kissed her. Her lips were ice cold at first, but they grew warm. Her arms reached around him and she kissed him back.

With that kiss, love’s first kiss, the connection with the witch was broken. All the accumulated smut, the price of her evil magic from which she’d shielded herself with Cinderella’s goodness and righteousness, came flooding back. It tarnished her soul and then it blackened it. The witch withered from the inside out. She shrank, screaming and moaning, to the size of a small roach. A spider carried her off.

Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White, the Princess with three names, married Prince Charming the very next day. The fairy godmother slept well that night. No need to visit anyone in their dreams.

And they lived happily ever after.

Robert Allen Lupton was a commercial hot air balloon pilot for 40 years. He runs and writes every day, but not necessarily in that order. Over 200 of his stories have been published in anthologies, print magazines, and online magazines. He has three novels, six short story collections and three edited anthologies in print.