The Cinderella Theorem (15 page)

“What
do you mean?” International like the UN and Uganda and China?

“By
law, Levi and the other agents of Uppish Senna are not allowed to enter your
world.” Grimm straightened a few things on his desk.

“Oh.
So, this morning was illegal?”

Grimm
sighed. “Not exactly. Tandem Tallis will argue that, because your house has a
mirror phone, is on the magical mail network, and is the portal point to our
world, it is an extension of Smythe’s SFL. Therefore, Levi
was
technically
within the law.”

Nice.
It could be completely legal for Levi to come to my house. “What do you think?”

Grimm
shook his head. “I think we have to concede that Tallis has a point. Our best
plan is to work on clarifying exactly what your house is in the International
Council. Then, the next time this happens, we’ll know exactly what to do.”

“Who,
exactly, meets in the International Council? Do you meet with France and New
Zealand?”

“No.”
Grimm smiled. “The International Council is made up of just E. G. Smythe’s
Salty Fire Land, Wonderland, and Uppish Senna. But,” Grimm clapped his hands
together. “I doubt that you came in here to discuss international law. What can
I do for you?”

“I
have some questions about vanishing.”

Grimm
raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. Any particular reason this subject came up
today?”

I
hurried on. “Calo’s out, and I was studying the notes he left and thought of
some questions.”

Grimm
looked at me for a moment and smiled. “Well, ask away, then.”

“Okay.
First, when one person vanishes in a story, does everyone else vanish also?”

“Not
at the same moment, but they will. Unless they have significant ties to another
story.”

“What
does that mean?”

“Our
citizens often have siblings who aren’t the main character of the story. They’re
just there.” Grimm shifted in his seat. “For instance, Prince Harry, the prince
who rescued Rapunzel, is also the second son of the king in
The Golden Bird
.”

“I
don’t understand. How can he be in two stories?”

Grimm
smiled. “You may have noticed, Lily, that there are often three sons in fairy
tales. The story almost always involves only the youngest. The other two leave
home to seek fortune or fail to achieve the quest. But the youngest succeeds,
and there we have the story. The others are only included to make it seem more
heroic when the youngest does win. It’s standard underdog philosophy. You want
the little guy to prove that might isn’t always right, that you don’t have to
be the first born to have good things happen to you, and that
you
can do
it too.”

A
philosophy that completely ignores the principles of probability. The simple
odds are that the bigger person will win in a fight, that older children have
more experience, and that there will be things in life you
cannot
do.

Grimm
went on. “Anyway. The older two princes in
The Golden Bird
do not
succeed in the quest. The youngest son, we are told in the story, does succeed
and everyone lives happily ever after–but what do his brothers do? The second
son took a walk in the woods one day and found Rapunzel’s tower.”

“Oh.
So, let’s say Rapunzel has vanished, would this second son vanish also?”

“Anyone
only
in Rapunzel’s story will vanish within the week of her vanishing.
Harry, the second son and prince, still has a connection to an active story. He
won’t vanish, but his levels will be visibly affected.”

“In
what way?”

“He’ll
drop faster. It won’t take as long for him to fall to Could Be Happier, and it
will be harder to raise him back to Happy.”

“That
makes sense. And would Rapunzel’s tale vanish as well?”

“From
the records in your world, yes. But, because Harry’s still around, our copies
and files on those citizens in Rapunzel’s story would also still be around,
which is nice because we can use our files to try to rescue them.”

Time
for the big question. “If everyone in a tale vanishes, then the tale is gone–even
from us?”

“Exactly.
And all the files and notes made by our Happiologists vanish too; it’s one of
the reasons it’s so hard to get someone back if the entire tale vanishes. We
don’t have any history or records. That’s why
The Candlemaker’s Daughter
is still missing. We have no files on them.”

Missing?
I looked up, careful to catch all of this. “Where do the records and stories
go, when they vanish?”

“We
don’t know. Best (and most logical) guess?” Grimm suddenly looked tired. “They
go to Uppish Senna, where Tallis and his cohorts use the information to torture
their captives.” He sighed. “Imagine being faced with the things that make you
unhappy forever and ever.”
[40]

“And
all the characters in
The Candlemaker’s Daughter
vanished?”

Grimm
nodded. “It’s the only complete story vanishing we’ve had in the last millennium.
We’ve been trying to rescue Celdan and her story for over a century, but we’re
no nearer to it than we were just hours after it happened.”

I
asked Grimm a few more questions about vanishing; then I walked back to my
cubicle. I was confused and intrigued by the file on my desk. I looked at the
orange sticker.

If the
story completely vanished, why was the file on my desk?

I
had a lot of work to do, so I turned down my parents’ invitation to join them
in listening to the new Bremen Town Musicians CD. But I could still hear the
music; it floated up the stairs and made me wonder again how four animals could
make music of any kind.

I
really wanted to examine the Candlemaker’s Daughter file, but I knew that I
should at least do
some
work on my Cinderella research. Technically, the
Ella work counted as homework (Ella = research for that stupid paper) and,
therefore, took precedence over the mystery of
The Candlemaker’s Daughter
.

I
opened Ella’s file and began organizing the papers into three main categories:
Happiologists’ reports, monitor history, and copies of the story. Additionally,
I made a miscellaneous category for the leftovers, things like memos,
correspondence, and a list of related stories. The list surprised me. There
seemed to be a Cinderella story for every country: Korea, Persia, Ireland. I
paused for a moment. If all of these cultures have a Cinderella story, which is
the original? Is there an original? Are all of these Cinderellas living in
Smythe? I made a note to ask someone (not Calo) about that. It might not have
any relevance to my research or to my paper, but it seemed like one of those
things that if I didn’t already know about it whenever it came up, I’d get surprised
our-princess-knows-nothing looks.

I read
the story first. Several things caught my attention.

(1) Ella
spent the whole story crying. She cried about her mother dying, she cried all
over her mother’s grave (watering the branch she’d planted there; her tears
made it grow), and she cried when her step-mother said she couldn’t go to the
ball.

(2)
She talked to birds. Regularly. The girl needed some human friends.
That
might have helped with the crying problem in number one.

(3)
Contrary to popular belief, her slippers (in this version) are made of
solid
gold
not
glass
.

(3a)
Although, I
do
consider gold to be sturdier than glass, gold slippers do
not make any more mathematical sense than glass ones. If you were wearing gold
on your feet, they’d be too heavy to lift.

(3b)
What is the deal with gold in fairy tales? That King Midas guy turned
everything to gold when he touched it, someone could spin hay into gold or
something like that, and that girl that married the frog dropped her golden
ball into the well.  

(4)
Aven, for all of his cartography, seemed to be a bit of an idiot.

(4a)
He decided that whoever fit the shoe would be his wife, not considering the
fact that people can have the same size feet.

Then
(4b), he blindly assumed (because of his faith in the shoe) that each of the
step-sisters must be his mystery girl, even though neither of them looked
anything like the woman he danced with.

And
just when I thought I couldn’t be more annoyed by the story, (5) there was the
violence. Cinderella’s scary bird friends peck out the step-sisters’ eyes at
the wedding. Eww. According to the story, the birds pecked out one eye of each
girl on the way into the church, and one eye of each girl on the way out of the
church. Apparently, no one sought medical attention for them, and the pain and
shock of losing the first eye in no way lessened their ability to attend the
wedding. How mathematical.

I
can totally understand how Ella stays Less than Happy; her life is completely
abnormal. If she had grown up in a normal way, if she had talked to people
instead of birds, if she had worn leather footwear instead of golden, she would
be more normal and able to be happy. But that is not reality. The reality is
that she was this weird crying slave who talked to birds and put glass (or gold)
on her feet.

I
looked at the Happiologists’ reports. There were only seven. Ella hadn’t
dropped low enough to need a visit often. Calo had only been to see her twice
in his time. His reports were typical and very Calo: he got her happy, then
left her alone. I compared the dates of his visits to the printouts of her
monitor history. A week was the longest she’d maintained Happy after a visit
from him.

My
father, who was her Happiologist before Calo, also visited her twice. His
methods showed more creativity than Calo’s. Calo gave her a bird the first time
he visited and paintbrushes the second time. My father combined her love of
cleaning with her need to be useful; he asked her to come clean his office,
saying his usual maid was too busy. Another time they painted pictures of her
friendly, eye-pecking birds. She stayed Happy two weeks after my father’s
visits.

Her
first Happiologist, however, was the most successful. (Additionally, she must
have also been fictionally created, because two hundred twenty-three years
separated her second and third visit.) Miranda (the Happiologist) just went over
to Cinderella’s castle and talked to her. The report said they talked about all
kinds of things: birds, the weather, cleaning supplies, Aven, Ella’s disdain of
the need for maids in the castle (apparently, she preferred to do the cleaning
herself). Miranda wrote, “Ella seems lonely. She probably just needs a friend.
Her levels even went up a little when I mentioned I might drop by again. Also,
I think Ella needs to be doing something. Anything.” Ella was Happy for a month
after Miranda suggested that she take up painting as a career.

Questions:

(1)
If Miranda was fictionally created, and, really, living that long can only be
explained by being fictional, was she still a Happiologist? Why did Ella stop
being her client? Citizens get to choose their Happiologists. Ella seemed very
content with Miranda. What had changed?

(2)
Why were my father and Calo satisfied with only a few weeks of Happiness, if a
whole month was possible?

(3)
What happened to the painting career?

I
flipped to the front of the file folder. (Essential facts were typed on a sheet
stapled to the cover.)

Name:
Cinderella/Ella

Marital
Status: married to Prince Avenant

Children:
none

Creator/Collector:
Brothers Grimm

Address:
#35, Fourth Wood

Favorite
Color: Blue

Fairy
Godmother: Glenni

Things
proven to raise Happiness: birds, painting, cleaning, fruit salad, sleeping by
the fireplace, being useful.

There
was no listing for career or profession. I was surprised, however, to find her
fairy Godmother was Glenni.

Next,
I looked through the monitor history printouts. Ella was very consistent. She
was almost always at Less than Happy. And only rarely, did she get Happy
without the help of a Happiologist.

I
looked at my notes about her abnormal life. I looked at the Happiologists’
reports. I looked at the line graph I had quickly made to chart her happiness.
After thinking about all of these things, I got out a new sheet of paper and
made an equation.  

H
=
ln
.

Where
H
= her Happiness, and more especially, being Happy,

l
= her actual Happiness level, which is dependent upon
n, and

n
= her normalness.

So,
when you multiply
l
and
n
you get
H
. But the product,
H
,
is made up of both the monitor level
and
being normal. Raising the
amount of normal in Ella’s life could only result in her becoming more Happy.

I
would help Ella become normal. Then, she would be happier, and I could prove
for my paper that fairy tales don’t live Happily Ever After. I could prove to
Calo that the best way to raise Happiness is to help the citizens become
normal. I could prove to my parents the vital necessity of normality, and they
will stop making me do abnormal things, and everything will be like it was
before. Normal.

I
decided to call my efforts
The Cinderella Theorem
. One day, when my
mathematical brilliance is recognized all over the world, and I win the Nobel
Prize, my biography will say something like “Sparrow began her career with
The
Cinderella Theorem
, a unique study into the importance of normality.”

I
smiled. Everything was going to be perfect and perfectly normal now.

Discovering
my mathematical genius made me hungry, so I went downstairs to get some
pretzels.
[41]
As I poured the pretzels into a teacup (teacup = an easy way to transport the
salty sticks), I became aware of the music my parents were listening to. More
accurately, I became aware that my name was in the song. I stood there,
listening for a moment.

We’ll be seeing that Levi less and less,

Because of the return of our Princess…

Lily, oh yeah, Princess Lily, Lily.

I
went into the living room. My parents had moved the furniture and were dancing
together in the middle of the room.

“I’m
in a song?” I asked, disbelieving, even when faced with the chorus repeating my
name.

My
mother stopped spinning. “Yeah, isn’t it great? The BTM wrote a special tribute
for you.”

“The
BTM?”

“The
Bremen Town Musicians. The cat has some killer vocals on the second verse. Do
you want us to start the song over?” My father moved toward the stereo.

“No,
thanks,” I said, quickly. “I’ll listen another time; I’ve got a lot of work to
do.” I took my pretzels and escaped upstairs, trying to forget the sound of my
father singing along. I consoled myself by thinking that when
The Cinderella
Theorem
is finished, abnormalness like being memorialized in song will no
longer happen.

I
sat at my desk again and looked over the Cinderella stuff I had spread out. As
a reward for discovering the secret of Happiness, I decided to spend some time
examining
The Candlemaker’s Daughter
. I gathered up the contents of
Cinderella’s file and (with the notes I had made) put them back into the
folder.

This
file was much thicker than Ella’s (Regarding file thickness:
The
Candlemaker’s Daughter
>
Cinderella
). I started organizing the
contents, like I had done with Cinderella’s and immediately discovered the
reason for the thickness. Cinderella’s file only held the paperwork related to
Ella
.
None of the other characters were represented. The Candlemaker’s Daughter file
held the paperwork for everyone in the story. In addition to copies of the
story, Happiologist notes, and monitor printouts for all the characters, there
were also vanishing reports for each of them, and the essential facts sheets for
everyone were stapled to the inside of the folder.

I
decided the best place to start was with the story, so I took out a clean sheet
of paper for making notes.

Once
upon a time, a poor candlemaker lived alone with his daughter. His wife had
died when the girl was young, but the candlemaker tried to be both mother and
father to his little girl.

The
daughter, whose name was Celdan, was pleasant and cheerful, never happier than
when she helped her father in his shop. In the fall and
winter, she
kept their cottage warm and cozy. In the spring and summer, she picked flowers
and herbs to scent and color her father’s candles.

One
sunny, spring day, when Celdan was 18, she went to a hilltop to find daffodils
to dye the candle wax yellow. As she gathered the flowers and sang softly to
herself, a young man, leading a white horse, came over the hill, singing the
same song. Celdan and the young man looked at each other, smiled, and continued
singing. When the song was finished, he sat next to Celdan and introduced
himself.

His
name was Colin, he told her, and though he was a prince, he was not proud or
boastful. They talked for hours, occasionally moving to different spots on the
hill to gather more flowers. Celdan told him about life as a candlemaker’s
daughter, and Colin told her about life as a prince. When the sun began to set,
Colin helped her onto his horse and led her home. In that one afternoon, they
had quite fallen in love with each other.

Colin
stayed for supper with Celdan and her father. Since Colin was a prince, Celdan
had been a little afraid he would find the meal too simple; it was only bread
and cheese, but Colin thought it was wonderful–the best bread and cheese he’d
ever had. He wanted to stay with Celdan forever but knew he must return home
before his mother worried.

At
the door, Colin said goodnight to Celdan; her father followed him outside. The
candlemaker wanted to say something to this prince who loved his daughter, but
he couldn’t find the right words.

Colin
spoke first: "I love Celdan, sir. May I come again tomorrow and ask her to
marry me?” The candlemaker readily agreed. He had never seen his daughter so
happy, and her happiness was all that mattered to him.