Almost Midnight: Three Classic Fairytales

By Ceinwen Langley

Meet Ella, a young woman who has lost everything; Hans, a boy doomed by his father's greed to live as a monster; and Nameless, a lonely mermaid who yearns to be loved. Each seeks their happily ever after, but wishes and magic will only get them so far.

Almost Midnight takes three beloved fairy tales and retells them with new twists and turns, uniting them through the powers of love, courage, hope, and the magic of midnight. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ceinwen Langley
• Release date: Feb 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9780992474034

Book preview

Copyright © Ceinwen Langley 2016

www.ceinwenlangley.com

Illustrations by Ben Sigas

www.bendrawslife.tumblr.com

ISBN # 978-0-9924740-2-7

Cover design and interior formatting by ebooklaunch.com

All rights reserved.

First published in 2016 by

Feed the Writer Press.

For John and Tracey,

my fairy godparents.

Table of Contents

CINDERSOOT

HANS MY HEDGEHOG

THE MERMAID

Also by Ceinwen Langley…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CINDERSOOT

Once upon a time, on the outskirts of the winter city, there lived a little girl named Ella. She did not live a luxurious life, or even a particularly comfortable one, for Ella and her parents were poor.

They earned their meagre living in the barren woods outside the city, gathering fallen sticks and twigs and selling them for kindling at market. They made enough from this to rent a small room with a fireplace, and every week to buy a little flour and yeast and butter and cheese. Every night, when Ella and her parents returned from a long day in the woods or at the market, they would gather together in front of their small fire and eat and gossip and talk of the future.

‘One day, our lives will change,’ her father said. ‘Soon I might be able to afford an axe, and then I will cut and sell firewood, which is worth more than kindling. Or I might apprentice to a woodcutter or to a builder. Then we could have a house and food and new clothes.’

‘Our lives are fine,’ her mother replied. ‘We have a home and food and clothes already. It could be worse, my dear Felix.’

‘Right you are, my darling Marie,’ he said quickly, putting his arms around his wife and his daughter. ‘But it could also be just a little bit better,’ he whispered loudly to Ella, making them all laugh. Later, when the embers ebbed low, they all three slept together beneath one threadbare blanket, never minding the cinders and soot that marked their skin.

But though Ella loved her parents very much and did not mind working hard nor waking up with ash in her raven hair, she couldn’t help but wish her father’s words would come true. Day after day, she watched from their spot in the marketplace as other little girls wore warm shoes and smart dresses and clutched teddy bears tight to their chests.

‘I wish I could wear such a pretty dress and shoes,’ she told her mother. ‘And travel in a carriage and have servants to work for me and money to spend on whatever I like.’

‘Oh, Ella,’ her mother said, disappointed. ‘You have a dress already to keep you warm and shoes to keep your feet dry and money enough to keep you fed. You mustn’t forget the blessings already bestowed on you by wishing for something more. Our lives could be so very much worse.’

Ella looked down at her tattered brown dress and thin shoes, sewn by her mother in the dim light of the fire. She thought of the children who sat around the edges of the marketplace, begging for coins and scraps. Guilt gnawed at her stomach and burned behind her eyes, for they were not so lucky to have a mother and father to look after them, or a fire to sleep by, or food to nourish them, or a roof to keep them safe and dry.

‘I’m sorry, Mama.’

Her mother stooped and gathered Ella into her arms. ‘No, my little Ella, I’m sorry. I did not mean to upset you. But we are what we are, and I don’t want you to waste your life hoping for something that cannot be.’

‘But Papa does,’ Ella said. ‘He wishes for an axe.’

‘And every day he is disappointed. Do you see?’

And though Ella did not quite understand, she nodded. From that day on she tried her very best to ignore the girls in their pretty dresses and easy lives and concentrated on helping her parents gather and sell the kindling that kept them fed and clothed and housed.

Many years later, when Ella was twelve years old, a knock came at the door of their little room. A fine-looking man in a feathered hat stood on the other side, a faint curl on his lips and a message in his hand.

‘Is this the home of Felix, grandson of Felix?’ he asked.

‘It is,’ Ella’s mother said, ‘though he is out buying flour. I am his wife.’

‘Then I will leave this in your care,’ the man said, handing her a square of thick paper stamped shut with a silver seal. He bowed and straightened his hat and was gone.

‘What is it, Mama?’ Ella asked, eyeing the silver seal. It almost glittered in the waning daylight.

‘We shall have to see.’

‘But who would send Papa such a beautiful-looking letter? Who could afford to send such a man? What could it say?’

Ella’s mother returned to sweeping away the soot that clung to every corner of the room. ‘We shall have to see, Ella.’

‘But Mama, aren’t you curious at all?’

‘No,’ her mother said. ‘We will find out as soon as your father returns. What’s the use in wondering?’

But Ella couldn’t help wondering. Her mind ran wild, imagining what such a letter could say. Maybe the king and queen had heard of the quality of their kindling all the way from the summer city and were hiring them as the royal kindling suppliers. Or maybe a great and charitable lord or lady had seen how hard Ella worked in the market and were sponsoring her to go to school. Or maybe…

‘You must learn to be more patient, Ella,’ laughed her mother as Ella fidgeted excitedly beside the fire. ‘The letter may say nothing at all.’

But at that moment the door opened and Ella was spared from taking her mother’s advice.

‘Papa!’ Ella thrust the note at him before he even had a chance to put down the sack of flour. ‘You have a letter! Look at the seal! Look at the handwriting! Isn’t it beautiful?’

Ella’s father looked at the elegant handwriting with bemusement, his fingers leaving dirty spots on the paper. ‘I don’t recognise it,’ he said.

‘Open it and see!’ Ella urged. ‘It could be something wonderful!’

Ella’s father broke the seal, sending the silver wax crumbling to the floor.

‘It is from my great-uncle,’ he said after some time, for reading was not something he had to do often. ‘My grandfather’s brother.’

‘I didn’t know you had a great-uncle, Papa.’

Her father shrugged. ‘Nor did I.’

‘What does he say?’ Ella’s mother asked.

‘He is dying,’ her father said, squinting at the page for some time. And then his eyes went large and round, and he had to put the message down.

‘What?’ Ella asked.

‘He has a great fortune and no children,’ he said at last, when his voice and senses had returned to him. ‘He wants to leave us everything. His house in the countryside, his land, his servants, his money. All of it.’

The little family stared at each other with hearts and minds racing. Neither Ella nor her father would remember who cheered first, but the other joined in and soon they were laughing and dancing around the room.

‘No more gathering kindling,’ cried Ella’s father.

‘No more sleeping on the floor,’ cried Ella.

They stopped and looked at Ella’s mother expectantly, for she had remained still in stunned silence.

‘No more sweeping,’ she conceded with a smile and joined hands with her husband and their daughter.

They danced until they collapsed in a laughing heap in front of their small fire.

‘For the last time,’ Ella’s father said with a wide smile. ‘Tomorrow, our lives will change.’

The next morning, at first light, they packed up their few belongings and, using every last coin they had to hire a horse and cart and driver, set off with a song on their lips and joy in their hearts.

For three days they travelled, the bleak woodland surrounding the winter city giving way to green hills and babbling brooks and wild bursts of flowers. Ella fell instantly in love with the countryside, drinking in the open air and letting her eyes wander the wide horizon.

‘Look there, Ella,’ her father said, pointing to the silhouette of a city in the distance. ‘That’s the summer city, where the king and queen and all their court live.’

‘Will we live near them?’ Ella asked.

‘Yes,’ her father said. ‘And we may even join them, for my uncle has a title.’

‘What’s a title?’

‘A silly word the wealthy give themselves,’ her mother said, ‘to let everyone know how important they are.’

‘And we will be the silliest and most important of them all,’ laughed her father. ‘For who has earned it more than us?’

Ella was mesmerised by the city as they drew nearer and nearer. It was so different from the dull grey stone and narrow, twisted roads of the winter city. Here the city walls were made of limestone, decorated with a fluttering sea of coloured flags. The gates, thrown wide open in welcome, gleamed gold. Swept up in her father’s excitement, Ella imagined travelling there in a white carriage, dressed in a lovely gown and shoes, dropping coins in the bowls of beggars and befriending boys and girls her own age.

The driver clicked his tongue at the horse and put the city behind them, taking them deeper into the pleasant countryside. ‘This is it,’ he said as they approached a walled estate. ‘Chateau de Bellamy.’

The open gates of the estate were not gold like the city’s, but iron and grown over with ivy. Ella liked them even better. A cobbled road peppered with moss ran from the gates to a lovely two-storeyed house.

Ella peered curiously at the gardens as the cart rattled up the road. They were lush but overgrown, the flower beds tangled through with weeds and the orchards laden with fruit that seemed to have been picked only by birds.

‘Where are the servants?’ Ella asked.

‘My uncle is very ill,’ Ella’s father replied. ‘All of their attention must be on him.’

‘This is where I leave you,’ said the driver, pulling his horse to a halt in front of the great red doors of the house. He helped them disembark and passed down their bag. ‘Best of luck, sir.’

Ella’s father shook his hand and wished him safe journey. Then he took up their bag in one hand and his wife’s hand in the other. She in turn reached for Ella’s, and together they walked to the red doors.

‘Go on, Ella,’ her father urged. ‘Knock.’

Ella drew a deep breath, took up the heavy brass doorknocker, and let it fall three times. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The deep sound echoed around the garden, but no servant came to greet them.

‘How strange,’ Ella’s father said, pushing on the door. It creaked open, revealing an entrance with a grand wooden staircase. But no lights were lit, no servants waited, and there was no furniture to be seen.

‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Uncle? Anyone?’

The only answer, if it could be said to be one, was a faint cough from the upper landing. Ella’s mother and father exchanged a look, and Ella found herself being held tightly by her mother while her father dropped their bag and went ahead of them up the stairs.

The rooms of the second storey were as abandoned as the first. Their feet clicked on dusty wooden floors and bounced back at them from the bare walls. Her parents’ faces were grave, and Ella’s stomach pitched and churned with nervous anticipation. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew that something was wrong.

They found her father’s great-uncle in the master bedroom. It was as lavish as the rest of the house was empty. There were paintings of landscapes in gilded frames, chaises longues and trinkets, tables and books, and a bearskin rug staring at them balefully from the floor. And in the centre of the room, in a four-poster bed hung with golden curtains and piled with thick furs, was a man.

‘Uncle?’ Ella’s father said, peering into the bed.

The old man’s hair and beard were wispy and white, stark against his waxy skin and sunken eyes.

‘You’ve come, then,’ the old man said. His voice was paper thin, whistling through missing teeth with every breath. ‘I knew you would, brother.’

‘You are mistaken, Uncle,’ said Ella’s father, taking his hand. ‘Your brother was my grandfather. I was named Felix in his memory.’

But the old man’s mind was muddled with age and sickness and what smelled like wine. ‘You said I was a fool to marry for money, but I knew you were jealous. I could see it always in your eyes. And here, at last, you have been revealed. Lured by the wealth and title you mocked me for taking. Now, I take my revenge.’

Ella’s father released the old man’s hand. ‘What do you mean, Uncle?’

‘You have inherited the title of baron,’ the old man whispered, thin lips turned up in a cruel smile, ‘and all my debts with it. You have a title without meaning. A house without help. There is nothing for you here but dust and weeds.’

‘How could you do this, Uncle?’ Ella’s father cried. ‘I have a wife and daughter to care for! We’ve spent everything we had in coming here. We have no way of getting back to the winter city!’

But the old man had gone, his eyes dull and all the breath in his body leaving him in a final whistle of self-satisfaction.

Ella’s father looked to his family, pale and stricken. ‘I have ruined us,’ he said. ‘I am sorry."

‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ Ella’s mother said firmly, taking his face in her hands. ‘And we are not ruined. We have land to work and fruit and vegetables we might harvest to eat and sell. And better still, we have each other. Do not despair, my love. It is not the new life we hoped for, but it could be so much worse.’

Ella’s father swallowed his disappointment and anger and held his arms out to Ella, who ran inside them.

‘It’s all right, father,’ Ella said, forcing her own disappointment all the way down to the tips of her toes where she could no longer see or feel it. ‘Those fancy dresses look terribly uncomfortable anyway.’

Ella’s father laughed and kissed her cheek. ‘What man could ever hope to be as rich as me,’ he asked, ‘when none of them have my Ella or my Marie?’

~

And so, after they had committed the cruel old man’s body to the earth, the little family began their new life in the country estate.

Leaving the old man’s empty bed untouched, Ella’s mother set about mining every last furnishing that was left in the house to make a cosy home inside the kitchen. From the garden’s meagre offerings, she made soups and broths, and from the magnificent velvet and damask curtains that hung at the windows, she made clothes and shoes for each of them. Sitting together on their chaise longue in front of the roaring kitchen fire, they laughed at what lavish paupers they were.

Ella and her father spent their days in the garden, learning through trial and error how to tend long-forgotten vegetable patches and vines and orchards, harvesting rotten and ravaged fruit to make way for the new.

‘The birds keep eating everything!’ Ella complained one afternoon as they checked the apple trees. She shooed away a blackbird that hovered overhead.

‘So they do,’ said Ella’s father, rubbing his chin. ‘And we cannot sell what a bird has already taken a bite out of.’ He bade Ella wait for him and took off at a run across the garden, returning a short while later with some rat-chewed hessian sacks and flattened hay from the abandoned stable. ‘I have an idea. Help me, Ella.’

Within half an hour, they had fashioned a lumpy scarecrow.

‘He looks just like you, Papa,’ Ella teased as her father bequeathed his old, tattered coat and wide-brimmed hat to the scarecrow.

‘As he should, for he’s my brother,’ Ella’s father replied, putting a jovial arm around him.

‘Pik-pik-pik,’ said the blackbird, eyeing the scarecrow warily and flying away. Eighteen more blackbirds, nine sparrows, twelve magpies, and a fat thrush followed suit.

‘How useful you are, Uncle,’ Ella said to the scarecrow, giving him a fond nudge. And so the scarecrow was christened and installed on a post in the centre of the orchard, and before too long the trees were laden with