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The first 10 pages Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions.

Join Cinderella as she reclaims her birth name Charlotte and travels the Four Directions to save a Kingdom. Just a click away......

Life is like a fairytale filled with insurmountable obstacles, enormous burdens, and heart breaking tragedies. Prior to the arrival of the Fairy Godmother Cinderella’s story is composed of unfathomable grief and mind-numbing monotony…or is it?

If fairytales are templates for living a life of wonder and happiness…And who doesn’t believe in fairytales? Be honest. We are all awaiting our happy ending. Then what exactly went on in Cinderella’s life before the arrival of the Fairy Godmother? How many years did she scrub the house, run errands, cook meals, take care of the animals and gardens while living with a wicked stepmother? What goes on inside Cinderella to prepare her for the Fairy Godmother’s arrival? Are impossible circumstances the fertile ground required before the arrival of beneficent-supernatural-aide?

Here is what I think happened. After the death of her parents Cinderella was lost within her grief. She fell into the Great Silence. She scrubbed floors, dusted the furniture and washed the dishes. All the while she felt she was walking across the ocean floor in cement boots.

Cinderella’s solace was time in the woods with her dog Blackie. Together they searched out herbs and cooking mushrooms. Cinderella’s father taught her to avoid the poisonous. Her mother pointed out wild onions they used in soup. Leafy greens were summer salads or steamed over rice and topped with fish caught in mountain streams.

Bay trees, hundreds of years old, offered thick branches Cinderella climbed. She always brought down enough leaves for a wreath at the door or surrounding a single candle as the table’s centerpiece. After her parents death there was never a time when she and Blackie walked forest paths that Cinderella did not relive her life with her parents. Their memories were alive in every herb Cinderella harvested and every fish she caught.

Working in her mother’s gardens she planted and harvested the vegetable patch. Preparing the soil in spring led to countless hours weeding. Hot summer days gathering berries and making preserves gave way to cool mornings that spoke of the harvest to come. Her mother’s spirit watched over her shoulder while she was drying herbs and canning vegetables.

The rose garden was her mother’s favorite meditation spot. Pruning and trimming flowers made way for more blossoms. Cinderella utilized flowers in vases, strategically placed on tables in front of mirrors that reflected their vibrant colors, to heal the grainy tension and striations of negativity cutting through the air. The environmental turbulence of unremitting criticisms hurling throughout the house from her stepmother and her stepsisters was diminished in the soothing scent and colors of roses.

More flowers were used creating laundry soaps and body washes. Late at night if she couldn’t sleep sometimes Cinderella distilled blossoms at the peak of unfolding into diffusion oils. The alchemy of transforming roses into essential oils was calming.

In tending flower beds Cinderella sought her mother’s presence and maintained her established routines. Yes, the colorful blooms scented her home. Dried rose petals freshened linens. Oils were the fragrance added to candles. Rose hips were blended in winter teas designed to heal. But it was sitting curled up under the stone bench waiting for dawn in the rose garden that Cinderella sought to transcend the wreckage of her life. Buried under incomprehensible loss she struggled to meet the demands of the countless tasks imposed each day by stepmother. Cinderella was awkward, a stranger, in a body overwhelmed with sorrow. She was lost to the girl she had been before her parent’s death.

In the Great Silence Cinderella was buried under the difficulties of life as an outcast. She was locked out. The rest of the world continued without noticing her absence. Trapped in her grief, disoriented and fragile, she hid in shrubs to cry unseen. She was a shadow existing along the edges of light and dark, seen but invisible. She was lost within her own home taken over by strangers.

It was in caring for her parent’s house that Cinderella found some measure of meaning and purpose. If she could keep their traditions, the values they lived by, alive through tending their home by their standards maybe she could salvage a portion of their presence. In this way seasons passed.

While Blackie laid in the shade of the apple trees, Cinderella pruned and weeded. Bees hummed, dancing around her as she worked. Once a year in the fall, after lulling the bees to sleep with smoke, Cinderella extracted enough honeycomb to sweeten tea throughout the winter.

It was several seasons of pruning roses and canning vegetables before the Great Silence loosened its grip. Until then soft summer days carried rose fragrance on the hint of breeze while bees hummed around Cinderella’s still blank features.

Five times early spring trees renew their green canopy under blue skies and thickened with summer’s heat. Five times the seasons changed revealing winter’s bare branches, pristine and stark under the grey sky. Cinderella feels a kindred spirit with the tree’s loss of foliage. She too has lost the comforts of her outer life. Trapped in the Great Silence it is at once hard to care or feel and simultaneously the anguish is overwhelming.

Slowly Cinderella begins conversing with the garden and cadre of farm animals. Beginning with the stirring of power in spring, while feeding and grooming the animals, she finds she can laugh at their gentle bumps. Goats, lambs, cows, horse and pig all have their distinctive nudging. They press and snuffle against pockets looking for apples and carrots she brings them from the garden.

Slowly returning to the beauty in life, on days bright edged after rain, Cinderella follows mountain streams. Gathering moss she carefully layers the fluffiness to store in her mother’s leather bag. She rescued the medicinal bag from the trash, thrown out by her stepmother. The leather’s decorative flowers, embedded and dyed, are now faded. One day she promises herself she’ll repaint the flowers. She’ll follow the lines and curves of her mother’s design.

Lost in reverie, imagining colors, sometimes she feels her mother looking over her shoulder with a smile. It makes her heart beat fast. The moment passes in a flash leaving her shaken and so alone. But Cinderella would never trade the split-second communion for the renewed loss.

As the Great Silence loosens its grip she breathes freely. Deep in the forest, sitting with her back against a tree, at the edge of the stream, Cinderella sighs and dozes. She drifts along the edge of sleep pulling her toward a destiny she can barely remember. The warmth of summer sun softens stiff muscles. Dappled shade fragrant with Bay Laurel, the abundant leaves and tree arms create a lattice. Light shines through in greens and hazy gold. In the safety, the congruency of life embracing her, Cinderella dream walks with the Fairy Godmother. In the dream’s depths she prunes shaping dreams with her Deepest Desires.

It is Deepest Desires buffering her from the gut wrenching pain of living with people who will destroy genuine love without a backwards glance. Cinderella’s antidote to the stepmother’s cruelty is beauty and love. She weeds the gardens with love. Inside scrubbing and polishing she remembers conversations, time spent together as a family. She cleans her parent’s home, maintaining its beauty, in honor of their memory.

She walks Blackie, in the forest communing with Mother Nature. Although she knows “communing” is a laughable offense under a stepmother’s task-urgent-time-sensitive demands.

Enduring fives seasons of the Great Silence something has changed. By calling on her strengths each day; morning, noon and night she waits on a wicked family. But now Cinderella does not focus on who she serves. She is engaged in giving and receiving love. She is filled to overflowing with the Deepest Desires to love well. The kitchen is scrubbed. Furniture is polished. Rugs are beaten free of dust. Food is prepared with a prayer. The world under Cinderella’s care shines with love. In this way she is preparing to meet her Fairy Godmother.