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On the morning of the rodeo, Linda lay in bed staring at the ceiling and listened to the footsteps above it. Her stepsisters were up there, shuffling around, talking, their voices muffled.
After they left, her plan was to first ask her stepmother if she could take the SUV to Helena, but she knew there was a solid chance the woman would refuse. She had a clear backup plan though, which was to walk to the stables and take the car. She would have to do it without asking, of course.
She assumed that her sisters would at least bother to feed the horses and maybe even turn them loose for the day, but that most of the time at work they would spend doing what they always did, which was sitting in the office, brooding. This would make it easy for her to make a clean getaway with the car.
The rodeo would go late and Linda wouldn’t make it back in time to pick them up, which meant, since they were incapable of walking, their mother would have to come get them and they could all scream at each other on the ride home.
The girls would pull their hair out, shrieking and blaming their mother and the world for the injustice, but it was never part of the deal that Linda wouldn’t take the car and she had intentionally kept quiet about it. In fact, she was surprised her stepmother had not asked her about how she was planning on getting to Helena, but somehow it had gone unmentioned and she would take advantage of that fact.
Linda waited quite a while after she heard the girls drive off before she headed up the stairs. She wanted to be sure they weren’t going to find some excuse to come back home, interrupting her chance to talk to her stepmother alone.
When she poked her head above ground, she found that the house seemed empty. Assuming her stepmother was upstairs, sleeping late, she made herself breakfast and made some for the woman. Bringing it up to her room, thinking she could put herself on the woman’s good side with the food, she knocked, opened her door, and found that no one was there.
There was no way, she thought, that the three women would leave her alone in the house intentionally. They were too paranoid about Linda stealing their makeup or committing other petty, unforgivable crimes against them. But when she looked out onto the driveway from the upstairs window, pulling the drapes aside, she saw that the black SUV was nowhere to be seen.
She hadn’t really planned on this turn of events but it didn’t change much. Out of her two plans of action, she guessed that it was to be car stealing. And also makeup stealing because they were right about her.
Before any theft could occur, she figured she might as well enjoy a long shower and the freedom of an empty house. She had several hours before she had to leave for the rodeo and, even though it was a long walk to the stables where she would acquire the car, there was time to spare.
After standing under the hot water for a while, working horse shampoo through her hair, she returned to her room and hung the dress on a hanger in the open to look at what she would be wearing. Even down in the damp basement where she was sure there were only dingy, yellow light bulbs, the dress somehow still managed to sparkle here and there in sharp, miraculous white.
She held the earrings up to the dress and imagined what she would look like in it, slightly concerned that she would be a little overdressed for a rodeo, but it was a sunny day and she would have boots and a cowboy hat to make it all make sense.
She headed up the stairs to creep around and use whatever products she pleased to do her hair and makeup. Sitting down in front of her stepmother’s large vanity on a soft stool, she checked the woman’s mascara brush to make sure there wasn’t some kind of evil lice in it and got to work.
With the help of various moisturizers, scents, colors, creams, and cover-ups from her sisters and stepmother, she completed a look that she was happy with and then replaced everything carefully so that no one would notice. With any luck, she wouldn't run into any of her stepfamily members with the evidence on her face.
Slipping into the dress and finding it fit as perfectly as ever, tucking tightly into every corner and curve of her body, she put on her boots, hat, and earrings and looked at herself in the mirror. She felt pretty, seeing herself made up. She couldn’t help it, regardless of her doubts, but there was a melancholy feeling eating away at her happiness. It was only the engrained presence of her absent stepsisters and stepmother, and the guilt and self-doubt that years of their abuse had caused to accumulate in her brain like clutter in the back of a closet. With a sigh, she released it and ignored it, leaving it for another time.
She had to leave anyway, so she took one last look, turning from side to side, and headed out the door.
Her phone, car keys, and other things bounced around in a tiny messenger bag she had thrown around her neck. She was not used to being without pockets of any kind and, in a way, felt naked without them, but it was hard to feel anything but fabulous in the snug fit of the dress, walking along quiet lanes without sidewalks past approving neighbors.
A man that she recognized passed her on foot, walking briskly, hunched over with his hands in front of him as if he had somewhere to go. As he came closer, she confirmed without a doubt that it was one of the men that had helped her paint the barn, though they did not acknowledge each other, and Linda felt a little disappointed that it turned out he was no more than some guy, going about his way like any other. She had hoped and suspected there was somehow more to it than that.
As the top of the red barn crested a long, sloping hill she was coming over, she subconsciously slowed her pace and became alert, wanting to go unseen by her sisters for a multitude of reasons.
But as the hill dropped away and the parking lot came into view, her pace quickened again as she noticed something curious: there were no cars in the lot.
Removing her phone from her bag, she checked the time just to be sure and confirmed that it was only about noon.
“They must have gone somewhere for lunch,” she said aloud and took a horse trail through the field, arriving at the barn and tucking away inside it.
Entering the barn, Linda discovered that her sisters hadn’t even bothered to feed the animals.
“Come on, guys,” she said to them in their absence.
As she waited for them to return, she fed the horses, being careful not to dirty her white dress, though she couldn’t help but pick up some amount of dirt and dust and decided to quit where she was. She stood for a while looking at Carl, who was being dramatic with his eating, letting her know that his breakfast had come late, shoving his head down in the food and chewing as if he had been starved.
“Please, Carl, It’s not like you’re wasting away,” she reminded him.
Linda glanced cautiously out a window at the parking lot and the office but there was no sign of anyone.
Meanwhile, the rodeo grounds in Helena had been open since the morning, alive with cars lined up for parking spaces and cowpoke shopping for folk art and beef jerky at the pop-up booths outside the arena. The rodeo itself was set to start soon, maybe had already begun, but there was no cause for worry because bull riding, being the biggest draw and the crowd favorite, was always the final event.
Her messenger bag started buzzing.
I’m getting the jitters, Linda. Where are you? Blake texted.
She hadn’t mentioned anything to him about the stakes that were now fully entangled with his performance at the rodeo, and didn’t want to worry him for fear of setting him off his game, but felt obligated to compel him just a little bit.
Blake, I really need you to win a check today. She messaged him.
Then get here! He wrote back, and she felt a sickness in her stomach as she looked out the window again, and again saw no sign of anyone.
Leaving the horses behind, she made her way to the office and tried to peek inside. There were no lights on and no people.
Walking out past the arena, past the parking lot, to the entrance of the driveway where the old stagecoach was displayed, she pulled open the mailbox and found, to her dismay, that the mail from this morning was still inside.
Now, she was really worried.
Getting the mail in the morning was one of the few productive things that her sisters did regularly and consistently. This meant that there was a very good chance that not only had her sisters not come to work that day, but that they weren’t coming at all.
She had the feeling that maybe she hadn't outsmarted her stepmother after all, leaving the car out of mention.
Linda looked up and down the road, wondering what to do.
“Fairy godmother?” she said out loud, rotating around, looking for the woman.
Linda headed back to the barn where she could sit down and she tried calling both of her sisters but they didn’t answer or call her back. She called her stepmother but had the same results. After a while, she tried again and realized that she was only succeeding in passing time, which was a commodity that she was running out of.
She didn’t know what to do. There she was, fully dressed and done up, standing in a barn that would be smelling up her clothes and hair beyond recovery if she were headed anywhere other than a rodeo.
She texted Blake, but only confirmed that the rodeo was now underway, moving along through events, and that he wanted her there.
It was quiet at the stables. No cars passed and the horses mostly remained still, waiting for something to happen next, just as Linda was. She heard a humming sound that sounded human and stepped outside the barn.
Halfway across the field, she saw her fairy godmother emerging from the woods on a horse trail, humming a tune to herself. Linda breathed a nervous sigh of relief.
As the woman made her way closer, she carefully struggled over a large stick that had fallen across the horse path so as not to trip. Seeing the stark reality of the situation, Linda couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed by it.
Obviously, she had never believed that this strange old bag lady was a magic fairy, but she didn’t like being forced to put the possibility completely to rest. It was bad enough that it turned out the man who had helped her paint the barn was not a field mouse turned human or something else unbelievable, and now she was seeing with her own eyes that, clearly, this woman could not fly on fairy wings or appear and disappear out of nowhere like she sometimes seemed to.
Though she was quite strange, there was nothing more to her than what was right in front of Linda. The disillusionment that came with this knowledge she couldn’t help, and she believed that, sadly, eventually all the mysteries surrounding the woman would be solved.
But she still had faith in the old lady, and they had agreed earlier that she would help Linda get to the rodeo. Her weird tricks had come through before. Linda waited for her in the entrance of the barn so that, when they met, the woman could be out of the sun.
“I’m surprised to have you not sneaking up on me for once,” she said to the woman when she was close enough.
“I don’t always sneak up on you.”
"Yeah, I guess you don't," Linda said, thinking about it.
“Is it time for the rodeo?”
“Yes! It’s already started. I’m ready to go; all I need to do is get there.”
“How are you going to get there?”
“You’re supposed to help me! That’s why I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Your sisters can’t take you?”
“No.”
“Your stepmother?”
“No, they’re all gone. You said you would help me get there.”
“I am helping you. I’m helping you think of a way to get there.”
“Okay, well I’ve thought of those ways, thanks, now we have to think of something else.”
“Well, I don’t really see any other choice,” the old woman said and then looked over both her shoulders, one by one.
Linda, seeing her do this, couldn’t help but glance around to see if anyone else was near, and then wondered with a last grain of hope if this was finally where some magic was going to happen.
It’s Cinderella time, she thought.
To her surprise, the woman raised her arm and thrust it down the neck of the raggedy shirt she was wearing, and Linda’s eyes sprung wide open when she saw a burst of light appear at the end of something long and thin the woman had ahold of under the fabric.
Linda’s mouth ever so slightly opened, eager to see what was about to emerge from the garment, and it remained open but with a different expression when the woman pulled her arm from the shirt and revealed a long, thin flashlight, which she pointed it into the barn.
Linda had no response.
“Why don’t you look where I’m pointing?” the old woman asked.
“I know where you’re pointing.”
“Look.”
Linda turned and saw a focused spot of light shining on a horse in its stall.
"A horse," Linda said with sarcastic enthusiasm.
“Now all you need is a saddle.”
Linda covered her face with her hands and the woman stopped pointing her flashlight.
"This is supposed to be like Cinderella," Linda said, massaging her eyes.
“It is!” the woman said.
“No. You’re supposed to, I don’t know.”
“Make a carriage out of a pumpkin?”
“Yes.”
“But Cinderella didn’t have a horse!”
“I think she did, actually.”
“Trust me, she didn’t.”
Linda rolled her eyes very hard. “Okay.”
“And she didn’t know how to ride, you do.”
“I can’t ride a horse there.”
“Why not? This is Montana, it’s not illegal.”
“It is illegal because they’re not my horses! If I get stopped, I could literally go to prison. Stealing horses is no joke, it’s a felony.”
“What is a police officer going to do? Check your registration?”
“I’m not going to steal someone’s horse.”
“You’re borrowing it.”
“Borrowing it without asking.”
“It’s like borrowing someone’s car without asking.”
“Borrowing someone’s car without asking is a felony!”
“It wouldn’t have to be a horse.”
The woman moved the direction of her flashlight.
“Are you suggesting I ride a mule all the way to Helena?”
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to steal a mule either.”
“It’s not stealing if he was abandoned.”
“But I’m wearing a dress and I don’t have a sidesaddle! Much less one for a mule! It’s twenty freaking miles to Helena, how would that work? I thought you were going to help me!”
“I am helping you. Come on, do you want to be like Cinderella or not? What would she do?”
“Her fairy godmother would give her a dress.”
“Her fairy godmother gave her a dress, what else?”
“She would make her a coach.”
“Right.”
“Out of a pumpkin.”
“Right.”
“I don’t have a pumpkin.”
“Do you have a coach?”
“No?”
“Are you sure?”
Linda thought about it for a moment, not seeing any possibilities at first, but the old woman was heavily implying something with a look she was giving her.
“The stagecoach?” Linda asked.
Her fairy godmother gave her a smile. Linda looked back, out the barn window to the end of the driveway at the antique stagecoach that had stood in the same spot without moving for at least as long as she had been alive, probably much longer.
“That won’t work.”
“Why not?”
Linda thought again for a moment.
“I guess it would work! But I told you, I’m not going to steal any horses.”
“Carl can pull it.”
“Do you think?”
“Are you kidding me? That’s what mules are for. If he can’t pull a cart a few miles then he belongs in the factory.”
Carl grunted loudly, almost as if in response to what the woman said, which made Linda briefly paranoid that her suspicions were correct and he had understood her insults all these years, but she wasn’t ready to accept full blown fairy tales, not just yet.
"It'll be a slow ride," Linda said.
“You’ve got time.”
“Just barely.”
“What are you waiting for?”
She was waiting for the moment when pulling an antique stagecoach down a public road for twenty miles behind a fat mule didn’t seem crazy, but that moment certainly was not coming, and a lot was riding on her being at the rodeo. It looked like maybe Carl was going get the chance to help out with his own rescue.
It wasn’t quite the fairy tale that she would have picked out for herself, but there was something fun about the idea. She wouldn’t quite go as far as to call it “magical” as she pictured watching Carl fertilize twenty miles of country road from directly behind him, but it had its charm.
“I guess if I could get him moving, we could get there in a couple hours and I should make it just in time for bull riding.”
"Arriving suspensefully late in your horse-drawn carriage, wearing a sparkling white dress, just like a fairy tale."
“You really had this all planned out.”
“Sure,” the woman said without conviction.
“I don’t have a harness for Carl.”
“You’ve got something.”
"Yeah, I've got something," she said reluctantly. "I know there's a collar somewhere and we definitely have reins, I'm sure I can find something to harness him up with."
“That’s the spirit.”
Linda began going through the lockers; the old ones that nobody ever looked in anymore. The stables had been around for a long time and there were all kinds of tangled leather commodities left to the spiders in the dusty boxes.
Sure enough, she eventually found a harness that she could adjust to fit Carl, and she made quick work of equipping him with it while her fairy godmother explained to him what was going on.
Carl and the two women made their way out to the stagecoach and Linda looped his harness into place and tossed the reins up to the driver's seat.
“I hope this thing doesn’t break,” she said to her fairy godmother, expecting some reassuring words to give her the boost she needed to kick off this journey.
“Yeah, then you’d be stuck on the side of the road,” the woman said.
Linda nodded, her lips pressed together.
She climbed up into the driver’s seat and took the reins, looking onward to the road and the adventure ahead.
“I think Cinderella had her own driver,” she said, looking down to her fairy godmother.
“She had a lot of things.”
Mustering up an ounce of courage and hope, Linda smacked the reins down lightly on Carl’s back, hoping he would understand.
“Giddup!”
The mystery of whether all this build-up would amount to anything lingered in the air, whether this would be a victory of perseverance over adversity, ending in triumph or with something underwhelming.
That mystery was solved when Carl jumped into action and yanked on the harness, breaking a piece of the stagecoach’s tongue and axle off with it and freeing him completely from its pull. Linda watched as Carl, who was suddenly a great athlete, galloped away down the road as the sounds of the broken wood under her cracked, broke, and eventually gave way.
A wheel fell off the wagon, dropping its chassis sideways onto the ground and causing Linda to do an unflattering shuffle and roll down into the dirt, her butt and hands buried in mud on the ground.
She sat with her hands in the mud, watching Carl as he continued to trot quickly away on his little legs, eventually disappearing into the distance.
“Well. That didn’t work,” she said.
Eventually, Linda mustered the will to lift herself up out of the dirt and she pulled the side of the dress forward while twisting herself around to see the back of her outfit, hoping that somehow the magic dress had miraculously remained spotless as she fell into the mud.
Nope.
There was a huge, brown stain covering the entire seat of the dress; every crevice of the tight lace saturated all the way through to her underwear, and beyond.
Linda leaned back and sat on the broken, sideways tipping stagecoach and did not lament the ruined dress. She realized that she was not going to the rodeo anyway.
There were no tears for her, she had cried enough, and no tantrums or theatrics.
Instead, Linda sat comfortably leaning against the downed stagecoach, her muddy hands supporting her, and gave up bravely.
Carl was absolutely nowhere to be seen.
"At least we saved Carl," Linda said, looking for him.
In front of her, going unnoticed, her fairy godmother was now pacing back and forth.
She noticed the woman was troubled by something, obviously conflicted.
“Oh, phooey!” the old woman shouted.
“What?”
“Phooey!”
“Yeah! Phooey!”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just that,” her fairy godmother looked around, looking over her shoulders again, “we’re not really supposed to do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
The old woman pulled her shoulders back, stretching out, and bent her head from side to side, cracking her neck.
“Do what?” Linda asked again.
"Do things the old-fashioned way."
The woman’s hand went back down her shirt, and again a bright light lit the fabric from underneath, only this time, the woman did not reveal a flashlight.
What she held in her hand was a thin, white wand with a large, five-pointed star on the end. It was glowing brightly enough to appear to be made out of light itself, yet was not blinding or uncomfortable to look at.
“What,” Linda asked as trails of white light circled the star on the end of the wand, “is that!?”
Incredibly sharp, impossibly small points of white light orbited the star like a small diorama, but nothing was supporting them. There was only one thing that could cause such a display, but Linda wouldn’t believe it.
“What’s it look like?”