Midnight Falls: A Thrilling Retelling of Cinderella by Jeanette Matern

Author:Jeanette Matern [Matern, Jeanette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Price World Publishing
Published: 2014-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Dusk was falling upon the hills but Ella refused to look upon it. She quickened her pace. She could not be tortured with caution or even attentiveness to the elements of nature, the sun or moon, or anything that caused her to slow in her momentum. All she could focus on was getting back to Gabriel, tearing into him for his sadistic, albeit effective, manipulation of her passions and then swearing complete loyalty to him and his calling. Ella would not be stopped; at least until the likes of Thurlow and the Hussars were wiped from the surface of the earth and caught in the tide of all things unrighteous, doomed straight for Hell.

But oh, how she wished she could look upon the sun and let the warm purple and orange hues against the sky penetrate her skin; skin made thicker with each passing second. She willed the longing away but it was impossible to ignore her periphery and pretend something so beautiful did not exist at all. It did, and Ella did not know what to make of it. So she just stopped and gazed at the splendor of another day coming to its end. A small mound of sun still lingered over the hills and it was washed in the most stunning shades of orange, which reminded Ella of the very dress she was wearing that day. It had belonged, like so many things, to her mother and Ella felt the old sorrow of missing her parents become one with that which had only recently befallen her, one enormous weight of despair.

She began daydreaming. What else was left to do? She pondered if days were at all like people. Did they too wake up in the morning and live each second to the extent of their potential, forging storms and drought, war and bloodshed just so they could maybe, mercifully, get just one second to watch a butterfly free itself from its cocoon, or watch children splashing in a river illuminated by the midday sun? And then the day would bid farewell to the world, knowing it could never come again. For no two days were the same. Was that the way it had been since the beginning?

Were days like people?

In spite of everything she’d learned that afternoon, Ella still thought back to the previous evening when she saw Gabriel and Isolda together. It was remarkable to her that she had thought very little of the incident the very next day after it happened. Perhaps not so remarkable, as Ella believed Gabriel whole-heartedly that Isolda had indeed kissed him and he broke away as quickly as he could. She’d never for a second doubted his story, even if doing so would have succeeded in justifying her seething hostility toward him. Would she have been wiser if she suspected him of deceit and far worse, just to be secure from the threat of even more disappointment? Of all the characteristics and traits Gabriel elicited from Ella, wisdom was not one of them.

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