Chapter 9

About five days later, around 4 p.m., the video camera at Prince Charming’s palace gate recorded a woman in a long blue Bohemian skirt exiting the palace compounds. She had a white shawl draped around her head. Golden-brown hair escaped from under the shawl, shining in the afternoon sun.

On her feet was a pair of glass slippers.

***

Dear Diary

At last.

Artemis.

***

“Do you see why it’s for the best?” asked Snow. “Oh for heaven’s sake say something! Hansel and Gretel are away. Ella has gone and married a man I love. And you don’t speak. I must do something about that. I will. Don’t worry. A bigger problem is, I don’t think Prince Charming knows I exist. He’s probably smitten with Ella and it’s happily ever after for them.”

“See, Artemis thinks I’m dead. I don’t suppose she would be too happy to know that I’m alive and kicking. I can’t do anything until father returns. And then, it would be too late.

“At any rate, I can’t think too much about Charming. He’s not worth that much time. I need to do well in the exams and they’re just round the corner. It pretty much sucks that just when I required Pied Piper’s help to develop that hack, he’s upped and left. Sure, he may be busy. In fact, I might even have upset him. I must go through my message history and see if I’ve given him any reason to block me or stop talking to me.

“Ooh, but the exams are in ten days time! I must study something. Oh for heaven’s sake quit licking my feet!”

It was true. Now Pied Piper had stopped talking to her. Of course, of course, two days is not much. Maybe he was just busy.

With Ella for example?

Those glass slippers had given her away. Prince Charming knew that nobody else’s feet fit those shoes. That had been the giveaway. It was disgusting. A newly married woman, who ran away from her husband’s place just a few weeks after their marriage, didn’t invite the society’s sympathy. Tch, tch, they said. Poor Charming. It had been obviously a bad decision. She befriended the domestic help! After all that Charming did to her. He brought her home. He dressed her, cared for her. She was never required to work hard. And to think, this girl had lived a servant’s life back at her step-mother’s house. Anybody would be thankful, but no. That’s what came of mixing with such … such, um, the masses.

It was a different matter, however, that Charming was secretly a little relieved. He had realized his mistake soon after marrying her. It’s just, she didn’t seem to want to attend those parties. They were boring, she had said. But he had to attend them. So should she have, as his wife. She didn’t seem to be able to get her table etiquettes right either. She had, for example, just a few days back used the beef fork to eat her rice. These things couldn’t have gone unnoticed for too long.

However, he was not willing to get a divorce. He didn’t have too much of an excuse, for one.

Also, the royalty never made bad decisions. If the public got to know that they couldn’t keep their marriages straight, they would never trust them to take decisions for them. A riot would follow, people would get killed, resources would go waste, and then, democracy would be established.

It would involve even more fighting. More people would die. And then, years later, they’d wonder what had been wrong with the monarchy anyway?

So where was Ella now?

That day, she had a meeting scheduled with Pied Piper for 5 p.m. at a flashy little Internet café. It would be just the downmarket joint to go unrecognized. Who, in these days, didn’t have Internet? Most people went to these little places to go unrecognized. The café owners had a little gameplan up their sleeves. They kept a copy of the bills with them. All famous signatures and everything. Rarely, when people asked to pay in cash, they would turn up their noses and say that they didn’t accept cash.

The result would inevitably be, that they’d extort money from the famous people (who were trying to go unrecognized) by blackmailing them with their signatures. It was a very simple equation. If you had gone to such a café, something was “up”.
Luckily for the café owners, most of the rich and the famous didn’t have a single gray cell to call their own.

Pied Piper was sitting at a table in the corner when Ella entered. She was not wearing the long Bohemian skirt any longer.

In its place was a short orange skirt. The white shawl was still covering her face (it must be mentioned here that almost all of the other people in the café were wearing a shawl over their heads), but it looked a little out of place. Imagine a Muslim woman, wearing a black burqa over the face and torso, but a short orange skirt down below.

Pied Piper saw her making her way towards him. His eyes slid down from her covered head to her skirt and lower. The white shawl hadn’t looked very impressive. He hoped it was not there because it had to hide something hideous.

After the initial coffee and sodas and the alcohol and a few trips to the washroom, both of them were feeling like they had known each other all along. It was time, to move somewhere else.

They finished their coffees and asked for the bill. A little robot with an apron around its waist (the nameplate said ‘Irona’) came with it. Pied Piper pulled out his wallet to pay for it when Irona said, “We don’t accept cash.”
There was nothing to do but for Pied Piper to pull out his Inter-Galactic Platinum Card.

Next on the itinerary was the house that Pied Piper was staying in.