Disclaimer: Into the Woods is the property of Sondheim. I am not that esteemed gentleman.

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They are all sit around the hearth of a new house, the firelight casting flickering shadows, like ghosts of trees in haunted woods. The girl, leaning against the side of a chair, watches them, hand twitching, from time to time, towards the knife in her apron pocket. Jack’s eyes are on the window, on the darkness falling, like a burial shroud over the green bosom of the land. He is sprawled on the rug of the fire like a puppet with its strings cut.

The Princess has curled in a chair by the fire. She smiles and coos at the child in her arms, voice quiet yet chirpy, like a sparrow. The child gurgles back, and speaks random monosyllables. The Baker, in the other chair, wipes his hands on his apron, smoothes it over his knees, avoids looking around.

He dislikes the firelight, at times, because the flames leap unexpectedly and illuminate things that should remain in the dark. Things that should have remained in the woods, away from his son, away from tomorrow’s bread rising in the oven, away from whitewashed walls, away from the future.

The logs crackle, and send up a shower of sparks. The Princess’s face is illuminated, and the Baker suddenly finds her lovely. He furrows his eyebrows and fists his hands on his knees.

The Baker knows she’s beautiful. She is a princess. All princesses are beautiful, like tiered wedding cakes. They’re beautiful because they are so untouchable in their white icing, so pure and elegant, and so far beyond him.

But there are times when she’s lovely, and the Baker finds it strange.

His wife was lovely, like a glazed pastry. She was lovely when she was rolling out bread dough, humming. She was lovely when she smiled at him in the woods, the hair as yellow as corn draped around her neck. She was lovely when her walk became ungainly, and the torso of her dress bulged out. She was lovely when she first held their child and pressed him to her breast. She was lovely when her hair fell unbound around her shoulders, and she kissed him in the darkness.

But suddenly, suddenly, the Princess was lovely.

He didn’t mean to notice it. But he kept catching glimpses of it when he tried not to. When her white, soft, princess hands are grimy with dirt from the garden, or red and raw from cleaning, she is lovely. When she speaks to the birds and feeds them crumbs from her chapped hands, she is lovely. When she gets up in the darkness, hair unbound, to hold the baby, or the girl, or Jack to her chest and croon lullabies when nightmares cause them to cry out, she is lovely. When she sits here, next to him, her shadow merging with his on the floor, his child cradled in her arms, she is unbelievably lovely, and the Baker has to look away and remind himself: ‘My wife is buried in the footprint of a giant. We argued, and then she died.’

That is why he sometimes continues to bow, though she flushes and pulls him up. That is why he calls her “Princess” though Jack and the girl call her Cinderella. That is why he never argues with her, just nods and does what she asks.

Pensively, the girl asks, “How do you talk to birds?”

The Princess looks up from his child with a small smile. “It’s not talking to them that’s the tricky part. It’s listening to them.”

“Would a chicken make a good pet?” Jack asks hopefully.

“I do not believe I’ve ever talked to a chicken,” the Princess replies, slightly bewildered by this turn of the conversation.

The Baker has no idea and says as much, though he does add that chickens are hard to catch and get into grain and flour and bread.

For a moment there is silence, broken by the howl of a far- off wolf.

“There are wolves out there,” Jack notes.

“There are always wolves,” the girl adds. This seems to remind her of something, and she asks, “What did the birds tell you, when we were fighting the giant?”

They don’t talk about the death of the giant. They haven’t for nearly half- a- year.

The Princess freezes and she is beautiful again in the stillness of her figure and sudden paleness of her skin. The Baker feels relieved, but strangely alone. She studies the face of his child, and then looks up at the Baker.

Her eyes say, ‘I’m sorry.’

Her eyes say, ‘You don’t want to know.’

Her eyes say, ‘Let them keep their illusions.’

Her eyes are lovely. The Baker flushes and awkwardly holds his hands out for his son.

Very carefully, as if she was counting out her words like jewels, she says, “They told me of the Prince.” She gives back his son, and the Baker wraps him tighter in his mother’s shawl. The child burbles restlessly and manages a ‘papapapapa’.

“What about him?”

She pauses. “Something I had not… wanted to know.” Then, quietly, to herself, “They said… he thinks I died when the giant stepped on the castle. He went and married someone else, since I had died.” She stares resolutely into the fire, the color rising in her cheeks, and abruptly doesn’t seem to be a Princess.

The Baker can see that’s she’s lying. Princesses, he's sure, don't lie.

The girl scowls, props her chin on her fisted hands. “And he never came looking for you or anything? Your Prince isn’t very bright.”

“Or sincere,” the princess whispers, so softly the Baker thinks he imagined it.

“What?”

“Yes, you’re right.” She reaches out to the side and smoothes down the girl’s hair. “But he didn’t need to be. He’s a Prince, after all. He has a Steward.”

“And you don’t mind?” Jack looks up. He can be surprisingly compassionate.

For a moment, there is only the crackling of the fire, the fretful noises of a baby trying to sleep. The Baker puts the child to his shoulder and gingerly pats his back.

“Mind what?” the princess asks, knotting her hands together in her lap.

“That he hasn’t come for you.”

The princess looks at the Baker a moment, her face unreadable.

Jack pushes himself up, so that he’s on his knees. “I’ll be your Prince then. I’ve one up on him already! Or… two. I’ve slain two giants! How many has he slain?”

“None.” She reaches out and smoothes down Jack’s hair. “He has a… thing… about blood. How kind of you to offer! You would be a better prince any day. I’ve had my fill of princes though. I like staying here. With all of you.”

Jack grins, as only he can; slightly vacantly, with all the good humor and childish happiness he possesses. “We like having you. Don’t we?”

“Yeah.” The girl pushes Jack in the side, playfully. He waves his arms in a futile attempt to balance, and topples over. Innocently, she reprimands Jack. “You should really sit so you don’t topple over, Jack.”

The princess smiles. It is a truly lovely smile and the Baker feels the back of his neck heat up.

Jack looks up at him. “You like having Cinderella here, don’t you, Baker? You haven’t said anything.”

The Baker fumbles for words, flushes, squeezes his child too tight. The child begins to cry. “He always cries when I hold him,” the Baker laments, feeling the blush deepen with embarrassment.

“Here,” the princess offers, holding her arms out. The Baker leans over and gives her the child. Their arms and hands touch, tangle. The princess looks up at him and all he can think is ‘Lovely’. And then something changes.

Perhaps it’s the fact that they have to stop and try to figure out who, exactly, is now holding the baby and how, exactly, they untangle themselves. But the princess’s smile is suddenly very shy and fleetingly sweet, and the Baker suddenly finds himself wondering if he can call her Cinderella.

After a few seconds, they part, and she is holding the child to her breast, and studying the infant’s face.

The Baker leans back in his chair, feeling almost uncomfortably warm. “I do. We couldn’t have managed without you… p-princess.” He pauses, corrects himself. “Cinderella.”

Cinderella colors again, the blush unfolding in her cheeks like a flower opening its petals.

The Baker feels disloyal. He remembers the red in his wife’s hair, how it gleamed in the firelight, how her face lit up when cradled her child. He remembers she was lovely and thinks, ‘But she is lovely, too.’ The Baker doesn’t know who he’s thinking about anymore and gives up.

Later in the evening, when the child is sleeping, Cinderella stands, and takes him away. Jack and the girl have found the battered deck of playing cards and are engaged in a violent game that appears to involve more slapping than card playing.

The Baker, after a moment of terrifying indecision, stands up, skirts the game, and follows Cinderella.

She walks up the stairs (they added a second story because the princess had wanted them to have separate beds and a seperate room for their beds, and the Baker, though confused because peasant families all slept in one bed and he saw no reason why families should have different beds, hastily complied) and then waits for him at the top.

The curtains for the one large window (it had been a surprise for her, because he, Jack, and the girl agreed a princess should have a window) are pulled back, and he can see the shadows of everyone’s bed. Cinderella’s was a bed they found at the castle and then fixed, andis draped with red velvet curtains. The curtains embarrass her. He can see the rumpled bedding on Jack’s, the furs tossed over the girl’s, his own, pushed in as an afterthought, between the wall and the crude cradle he’d made for the baby. Their trunks stand like silent sentinels against the wall. He glances nervously around until he can look up at Cinderella again.

She is backlight by the moonlight, as if she has a silvery halo.

The Baker swallows. She is lovely, once again, but at the same time, beautiful, and it is unnerving.

The Baker halts on the top step and tries to speak around his sudden nervousness. “You… back there… the birds….” He focuses on the sleeping child in her arms and tries again. “What did the birds really tell you?”

He ventures a look up.

She is fussing over the baby. “Do you really want to know?”

A pause, a sudden wave of terror. He can’t think. If she lied, she must have a reason. It was better not to know, wasn’t it? But it was better to know his father was alive and had run away than to forever think his parents had died in a baking accident. The truth over lies, he determines, no matter how comforting the lies may be. “Yes.”

Cinderella holds the baby in both arms and focuses on a spot directly above his head. Her voice trembles. “The birds… they came across my Prince in the woods. He….” She stops. He thinks she has closed her eyes. “Do you remember, when you found me by mother’s grave, and said something about the Prince seducing some young maiden, and I said, ‘Not all princes do that’?”

“Y-yes.” He remembers the toppled tree, the sudden surge of pity, the tears making tracks through the dirt on her cheeks, the remorse over arguing with his wife.

“I was wrong.” Her voice is flat and at the same time cracked. “And… no.” She turns, her tattered skirt swishing behind her. “That was it. Believe me.”

Her back is rigid as she walks to his side of the room. She gently lays the baby in the cradle, looks up at the wall. “I… I came across him later.” She presses the palms of her hands to her eyes, so that her elbows stick out like bird wings,and hurries on, as if getting it out quickly will make it hurt less. “He said I wasn’t his only love. I told him to leave. I just wanted… I just wish….”

The floorboards creak as the Baker walks to her. He has no idea how to act in this situation. He tries, several times to reach out to her, but never quite manages it.

Cinderella continues on, quietly, “I didn’t know what I wished for the first time I went into the woods. I just wanted… something other than my father’s house. A life that wasn’t a nightmare. Then I came out of the woods and into a dream, and then out of the dream and into the woods and then… I just wanted something… something that was real and good and bad at the same time, not just one or the other!” She crumples into herself, and the Baker finally manages to put a hand on her shoulder.

Quite unexpectedly, Cinderella flings her arms around his neck and sobs into his coat. And it is dark, and all he can hear is her crying, and all he can feel is her trembling against him, and all he can see is her darker outline against the shadows, and her hair is soft against his face and smells like bread baking.

And then he thinks, ‘My wife is buried in a giant’s footprint.’ And then he tries to distract himself and wonders aloud, “Did… did the birds see my wife before she died?”

Cinderella stiffens against him, her forehead pressed against the side of his neck. “Yes.”

And the Baker knows that she’s telling the truth, and suddenly realizes that now, in the shadows and in the silence, for whatever reason, she can’t lie to him.

“And… how was… how did she… was she coming back? Was it quick? Do you think she forgave me? We argued before she left, and-”

“You don’t want to know,” she whispers into his coat. He can feel her tears saturating the fabric, soaking past his coat, into his shirt, onto his skin.

He is silent, but remembers how she comforts the girl when she cries, and awkwardly puts his arms around her.

Cinderella slides a hand down and automatically smoothes out the wet spot on his coat. It’s a normal response for her; clean and smooth things out. Care for everyone else and you’ll get your wish in the end.

The Baker feels a warmth unfolding his chest, a tingling, flowering of just feeling, and Cinderella gently lay her head on his shoulder, so that her dark hair brushes against his neck.

“You don’t. It’s better to cling to what you want to be true rather than what is.”

The Baker manages, “Please.”

There is stillness. She has stopped sobbing, but her breathing is still uneven. From downstairs they can hear the girl slapping her hand down on the cards with a “Ha!”

“She was… distracted,” she begins, going back to smoothing out the wet spot, trying to rub away the stain. “She fell off a cliff, and a tree fell on her. You know that bit. The birds were scared and flew away.”

He feels like he’s peeling a scab off a wound. He knows he should stop, but he doesn’t. “How was she… distracted?”

Cinderella begins trembling again. “Please… it was… my Prince.” She fists her hand in his coat and presses her face into his chest. “I didn’t want to tell you! I didn’t want to know. She was a good person and she only wanted a child, your child, and she helped me, and she was so happy for me when I went to the ball!”

The Baker is stone still with the shock of it. “You mean….”

He puts her comments together, and tries, desperately to get five out of two and two. “So, she stumbled across the Prince seducing some young maiden, and he… he chased her off.” He could feel tears seeping into his shirt again and realized however much he didn’t want it to, two and two have to equal four. “Oh.”

Cinderella raises her tear- streaked face and searches his expression. One of her arms is still around his neck, and the other is still on his chest. His arms are still around her. He realizes again, in a vague, hazy sort of way, that she is lovely; breathtakingly, amazingly, terrifyingly lovely.

Not beautiful, lovely. Like his wife.

But not like her. Not like her at all.

“She was a good person,” Cinderella insists. “And… to some extent, he is too.”

But the Baker looks over her head at the shadows on the wall of the landing. The trees of the woods cast elongated shadows that twist menacingly. “And I had blamed myself for making her too upset to get away safely.”

Cinderella presses herself to him again, trying to push the knowledge out of his body. “I didn’t want to tell you! She was a good person. She was. And it doesn’t matter whose fault it is.”

“It happened,” he agrees. “And there is nothing you can do to change it. All that you can do now is deal with the results of someone else's wish.”

“She was a good person,” Cinderella repeats brokenly.

The Baker tightens his grip around her, and her pneumatic warmth serves to chase away the chill on his heart. “She was the mother of my child. Now I’m both father and mother, and she...”

“She loved you, in spite of it,” Cinderella murmurs, voice catching. “Just like he loved me, in spite of it.” She is quiet a moment. “Loves.”

“It’s changed,” he says, in a strangled voice, and she knows what he means.

“There’s a new depth to your love,” she whispers. “And a new ending.”

The Baker watches the shadows again. A cloud passes over the moon and they are enveloped by darkness. “And… I think, a new beginning.”

He unclasps his arms and Cinderella, shocked, steps back. They try and look at each other in the gloom, and then the Baker says, “All we’ve got is life. We’ve been through happily ever after, and it doesn’t last. We’ve been through the darkness, and that doesn’t last either. All I’ve got is a bit of both. No giants, no princes, no lies; just… just life. And… a child without a mother.”

And Cinderella suddenly, completely ceased to be the princess because she slides a hand up his cheek and fearfully, achingly slowly and sweetly, presses his lips to his.

And the Baker thinks, ‘lovely’, and wonders, perhaps this is something for the dark and for the woods, and perhaps it’s not. Was it part of the past, or the future? Was it the entrance into the woods, or the exit?

And he kisses her back and thinks, it’s wonderful.

And thinks, it was here, and though it was something from the woods, it also wasn’t, and all that really matters is that the woods have begun to loose their power to frighten when you’ve seen the worst with someone else, and then you walk on, together, to the end of the path, to the light and the hope that, somewhere, someday, you’d get out of the woods.

With the people you love. With the family you’ve made for yourself.