Prologue
251 Words
Once upon a time, not so very long ago . . .
This story begins with a carriage that was never a pumpkin, though it fled at midnight; a godmother who lost track of her charge, though she had no magic wand; and several so-called rats who secretly would have enjoyed wearing livery.
And, of course, there’s a she-wolf too, though she didn’t know how to dance, nor did she want to marry a prince.
But it really begins with the rats.
They were out of control; everybody said so. Mrs. Swallow, the housekeeper, fretted about it regularly. “I can’t abide the way those little varmints chew up a pair of shoes when a body’s not looking,” she told the butler, a comfortable soul by the name of Mr. Cherryderry.
“I know just what you’re saying,” he told her with an edge in his voice that she didn’t hear often. “I can’t abide them. Those sharp noses, and the yapping at night, and…”
“The way they eat!” Mrs. Swallow broke in. “From the table, from the very plates!”
“It is from the plates,” Cherryderry told her. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Mrs. Swallow, that I have! By the hand of Luna Cinders herself!”
Mrs. Swallow’s little shriek might have been heard all the way in the drawing room… except the rats were making such a racket that no one in that chamber could hear anything.
- Writer
