Not Your Heroine

By Zoe Cannon

They tried to be Strong Female Characters. It didn't work out.

 

The plucky tomboy who disguises herself as a man to rescue the beautiful princess. The headstrong girl who flees an arranged marriage to find her own path as a mercenary. The ruthless assassin tamed by love.

 

You know the stories. So do these women. They tried their best to be the spirited heroines we all know and love.

 

But sometimes the plucky tomboy finds out the beautiful princess is kind of a wimp.
Sometimes the mercenary's meek sister is the truly dangerous one.
Sometimes the assassin loves her work too much to give it up.

 

Sometimes a heroine has to make her own story.

 

This collection contains the following stories:
Why Cinderella Skipped the Ball
Black Roses
A Mere Wife
Ships, Sheep, and Happy Endings
Better Than Me
Ugly Girls

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Cannon
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201783648

Book preview

Not Your Heroine

A Fantasy Collection

Zoe Cannon

© 2023 Zoe Cannon

http://www.zoecannon.com

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Introduction

Like a lot of people my age, I grew up on stories of strong female characters.

No, scratch that. I grew up on stories of Strong Female Characters. There’s a difference. A strong female character is just a female character with depth and agency. A Strong Female Character, on the other hand, is a cultural attempt to atone for past storytelling sins—as long as no one has to work too hard at it. She exists to let the audience know the person who created it believes in all those newfangled ideas like women are people, preferably with the minimal amount of effort. Throw in a few traits that scream strong (which always seems to mean masculine traits—funny thing, that), add a stock narrative arc, and stir. Presto: one Strong Female Character.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. I certainly wasn’t thinking in those terms as a kid. I loved, admired, and adventured along with the heroines I grew up with. And don’t get me wrong, they were miles better than the swooning damsels they replaced.

But as much as I loved all the strong heroines out there, eventually I couldn’t help but notice that however much their stories beat the drum of women can do anything, the definition of anything seemed awfully narrow sometimes.

For one thing, why were there only two types of girls in the world: damsels in distress and plucky tomboys? For that matter, why did so many of those plucky tomboys grow up to embrace their feminine side? And if great deeds mattered more than good looks, why was everyone so dang beautiful? Was it only okay to rebel against gender norms if you could look great while doing it?

And hey—what’s up with all the stonehearted lone-wolf heroines being tamed by love? Male lone wolves don’t need to be cured of their stoneheartedness by the end of the story, I’m just saying. They don’t always need to find love by the end, either. But a female character does. I guess. For some reason.

I love strong heroines. Always have, always will. I even love some of those stock Strong Female Character tropes people like to complain about. (Yeah, characters with feminine traits should absolutely be allowed to be strong, but I’ll read about that tropey hypermasculine female warrior any day of the week.)

But I won’t lie, sometimes they can start to feel like just one more box.

And I’m not a fan of living in a box.

The characters in these six stories are all about breaking out of boxes—whether it’s the role of the passive fairy tale heroine, the classic strong-heroine narrative arc of that plucky tomboy running away to become a warrior, or those last lingering traditional feminine ideals that even the strongest of female characters rarely questions. Like how the way to ultimate fulfillment for a woman is through love. Or how all women should be beautiful, or should at least want to be.

I hope you enjoy adventuring with these strong women. I sure did.

Why Cinderella Skipped the Ball

The thing about fairy godmothers is that they always have an agenda.

Mine, for instance, was dead-set on convincing me to go to the ball and win the heart of the prince. And was it any wonder? If I married a prince, someday I would be queen. Someday not too long in the future, judging by the state of the king’s health. When that happened, I would be both very powerful and very grateful to her for making it all happen. Not only that, I would always know that what her magic had given me, her magic could take away. That was a lot of incentive to give her all the royal favors she could ever ask for.

But your stepsisters are both going! she protested, standing smack in the middle of the exact section of floor I was trying to scrub. As we speak, your stepmother is measuring them for dresses. She has a plan to sneak them into the palace so they can pass themselves off as noble ladies long enough to charm the prince. All so she can take advantage of her position someday as the mother of the queen!

You, on the other hand, would never dream of such coldhearted scheming, I muttered. I waved to the side with my washrag, sending droplets of muddy water across the floor. Move over, will you?

Do you really want to risk one of your stepsisters becoming queen instead of you? she demanded. She still didn’t move her feet.

I shrugged. Sure, why not? If one of them is off living in the palace, that means she’s not here, bossing me around. If I’m lucky, maybe they’ll all move in with her, and I’ll be free of all three of them. I swiped the muddy rag perilously close to her pristine silver boots, hoping she would get the hint. If nothing else, while they’re all off at the ball together, I’ll have a free night.

You can’t tell me you’re happy here, cleaning up their messes day after day! She reached down and snatched the rag out of my hand. Not when your heart’s pain cried out to me so loudly!

I scowled. Now that just wasn’t fair, trying to use my emotions against me. I have my bad days. Doesn’t everyone? But I’ve been working nights down at the pub, while my stepmother and stepsisters are asleep. Before long, I’ll have enough saved for a berth on a ship. The thought of them living in filth once I’m gone—because I can’t imagine one of them lifting a finger to clean up after themselves—is more than enough to get me through until then.

Her face darkened. Her hand tightened around the rag, squeezing filthy water out all over the section of floor I had already cleaned. She didn’t seem to notice. Why would she? With magic at her command, I was sure she had never lifted a finger to clean up after herself, either. She could have waved a hand and made this floor sparkle in an instant. I could have gone to bed early for once. But what was she doing instead? Ranting about princes and royal balls.

As your fairy godmother, she said, without so much as looking down at the mess she had caused, I am duty-bound to help you win your heart’s desire. Whether you like it or not.

I blinked. Well, why didn’t you say so?

A relieved smile lit her face. She clapped her hands together, apparently forgetting she was still holding the rag. The last remaining drops went flying, most of them landing in my hair. I knew you’d come around eventually. Now, let’s talk colors for your gown. You look like a summer to me. I’m thinking a periwinkle blue, with a splash of—

Quiet. I’m thinking. I chewed up my lip, grateful that my stepmother wasn’t here to interrupt my train of thought by sneering at what she called a vulgar habit. At last, I looked up with a grin and a snap of my fingers. I’ve got it. Make me… a dragonslayer.

My fairy godmother’s mouth snapped closed like a fish biting down on a hook. Pardon?

A dragonslayer. Slayer of dragons. I thought the word was self-explanatory, but… I mimed swinging a sword. Namely, that dragon who found himself a lair at the edge of the kingdom at the beginning of summer, and has been picking off the farmers’ sheep ever since. Give me a sword and, I don’t know, magical strength or something. If you can do invulnerability, that would be even better. Failing that, maybe some kind of fireproof—

She was already shaking her head, her lips tight. Impossible.

I’m not finished. If you give me the power to slay that dragon, everyone in the kingdom will adore me, which will give me all the power and influence I could possibly need. And I’ll still owe you.

You don’t understand. Slaying a dragon isn’t as simple as convincing a prince to marry you. To be honest, most princes aren’t too picky these days. They’ve had so many overbred dullards shoved at them since birth that if you show some evidence of possessing a personality, soon enough they’ll be eating out of your hand. As for getting you into the ball in the first place, that can be accomplished with some clever illusions. But dragonslaying is a specialized profession. If nothing else, it requires you to know how to fight. You can’t magic your way out of that one.

Well, who says it has to be me doing the fighting? I asked. What if you brought the dragon down with magic instead? I don’t care if we cheat a little—no matter who deals the killing blow, the end result will be that the dragon can’t run off with any more livestock. Fame and fortune aside, if the farms lose too many more sheep, no one will be wearing wool this winter. And I don’t know about you, but I hate being cold.

But I… I… A pink blush spread across her cheeks. I didn’t specialize in combat magic, all right? It isn’t a useful specialty for a fairy godmother. That was what my advisor told me, at least. I’m an illusionist, which is an eminently respectable specialization, even if it isn’t as flashy as… She took a deep breath and smoothed her sparkling skirts. Besides, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Do you really think any man, whether prince or pauper, is going to want you after he’s seen you covered in dragon blood?

"Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I’m not looking for a relationship right now. And when that day comes—if that day comes—I’m sure they’ll be interested enough once I’ve scrubbed the blood away and replaced it with the best armor the kingdom’s generosity can buy."

"If that day… She started shaking her head, and couldn’t seem to stop. When she had control of herself again, she continued, They won’t want a woman in cold, hard armor, no matter how fancy it is. A man wants someone soft and warm. Someone he can embrace in the moonlight." She smiled dreamily, raising her eyebrows at me as if she expected me to go all soft and mushy right along with her.

Well, then I won’t want them, either. Which solves the problem quite neatly.

Her dreamy smile fell away. Nonsense. Of course you want your happy ending! Otherwise, your heart wouldn’t have called to me in your hour of need. At that, she gave me the most pompous and self-righteous look I had ever seen. And I say this having endured many a lecture from my stepmother on how she magnanimously saved me from the poorhouse.

Right, I said. "My happy ending. Whose story is this, mine or yours?"

Yours, of course, she answered—a little sulkily, I thought.

Well, then. I pushed myself to my feet and brushed dirt from my patched trousers. My happy ending involves a new wool coat this winter, and plenty of mutton stew. And—I’ll be honest—a crowd of people cheering my name and showering me in gold. Maybe even singing about my grand deeds for centuries to come. I was fairly sure I wore the same soft, silly smile she had given me a moment ago, as the phantom echoes of voices raised in song rang in my ears. Would my victory over the dragon be best memorialized in a stirring ballad, I wondered, or a rowdy drinking song?

That’s all well and good, my fairy godmother sniffed, but I can’t give you any of that. If you can’t appreciate what I’m offering, I’m sure another client will. There’s no shortage of hearts crying out in pain in this kingdom, after all. She turned and started for the door, muttering under her breath, Combat magic. For a fairy godmother. Honestly.

Now, it was true that I didn’t want what she was so intent on shoving at me. But that didn’t mean letting her walk away was the right move. After all, a genuine fairy godmother was offering me her services. That wasn’t an opportunity a person could just turn down.

I thought you were duty-bound to help me, I called after her, careful not to be too loud about it. I didn’t want to let my stepmother and stepsisters know something fishy was going on down here.

Technically… according to the Fairy Godmother Code… that is true, she admitted through gritted teeth. "But if you don’t want my help, I don’t see what I can—"

You said you’re an illusionist, right? I interrupted.

A highly in-demand specialty for people in my line of work, she sniffed. None of my other clients have had any complaints.

Excellent, I said. "I think I know how to make this work. First