THE PRINCE BELOW STAIRS.

Prince Erasmus, a nobleman of the Russian court, treated his servants as though their lives mattered less than the furniture they polished.

He demanded long hours, paid miserable wages, and refused to pay to heat the servants' quarters. While he dined beneath glittering chandeliers, the people who prepared his meals ate thin soup in a draughty kitchen.

He especially enjoyed humiliating the young women of his household. A trembling hand or a lowered gaze amused him. He knew most had nowhere else to go, and he threatened dismissal whenever anyone hesitated to obey.

Alicia, a twenty-two-year-old housemaid, endured it until the evening he made her kneel and collect the fragments of a plate he had deliberately knocked from her hands.

He told her the replacement would come out of her wages.

That night, she walked into the forest.

Beyond the last marked path stood a crooked cottage belonging to a wise woman. Alicia arrived with bleeding fingers and told her everything.

The old woman listened without interruption. Then she took a small glass vial from a shelf.

"Put this into his food."

"Will it kill him?" Alicia asked.

"It will put him below stairs. He will have a chance to learn what that means."

The following evening, Alicia emptied the colourless potion into the prince's soup.

Erasmus finished every spoonful.

He was reaching for his wine when a strange dizziness swept over him. For an instant, he felt himself falling backwards—yet his body remained upright in its chair.

Then he was standing beside the dining-room wall.

Across the room, his own hand lifted the wineglass.

Erasmus stared.

His body drank, set the glass down, and complained that the meat was cold.

He tried to shout. Instead, a frightened woman's voice escaped his lips.

The prince looked towards him.

"What are you standing there for, girl? Clear these plates."

Erasmus glanced down.

He wore a plain servant's dress and a stained apron. His hands were smaller, their knuckles reddened by work. A dark braid rested against his shoulder.

In the polished silver of a serving dish, he saw the reflection of a young, dark-haired woman.

He opened his mouth to introduce himself.

"Yes, Your Highness," he heard himself say.

Those were not the words he had intended.

He tried again. His throat tightened painfully, and nothing came out until he reached for the plates.

His body watched him with familiar impatience.

"Be quick about it."

That night, Erasmus learned that the household knew him as Anya, a recently hired maid. Nobody seemed surprised by her presence. They gave her a place at the kitchen table, a list of duties, and a narrow bed beneath the Attic roof.

When he tried to write his true name, his fingers cramped around the pencil. When he attempted to leave by the kitchen door, his feet stopped at the threshold.

But when the housekeeper ordered him upstairs with a bucket, his body obeyed.

By dawn, he had slept scarcely three hours.

He scrubbed hearths, carried water, emptied ashes, and knelt on stone floors until his knees ached. Breakfast was a heel of bread and weak tea. Before he had finished either, somebody called for him.

He had always imagined the servants disappearing into comfortable idleness once they left his rooms.

Now he discovered what happened behind the closed doors.

There were sheets to wash in freezing water. Fires to build without enough coal. Heavy trays to carry up staircases. Meals interrupted by bells that could never be ignored.

His shoes rubbed his heels raw.

Nobody asked whether he was tired.

Worst of all was working for himself.

His old body continued its habits with dreadful precision. It lounged beside the fire, criticised the food, and found fault with everything Anya did.

On the second afternoon, he spilt a little tea while pouring.

The prince caught his wrist.

"Clumsy girl. Perhaps I should find someone more grateful for her position."

Erasmus knew that tone. He remembered using it because it made people frightened enough to work faster.

Now he stood trapped beneath it, struggling to keep his face still.

That evening, Alicia found him crying beside the scullery sink.

She placed a clean cloth within his reach.

"You'll make your hands worse if you keep washing them in that water."

He stared at her, longing to ask for help.

"I'm tired," was all he could manage.

"I know."

She took the next saucepan from the pile and began scrubbing it herself.

The small kindness hurt more than the prince's insults. Erasmus could not remember ever doing anything comparable for her.

On the third morning, no bell rang from the master's bedroom.

The valet knocked. Then the housekeeper fetched a key.

Prince Erasmus lay motionless beneath his silk coverlet.

They summoned a physician, but there was nothing to be done. The prince had died peacefully in his sleep.

From the corridor, Erasmus watched them cover his former face.

He tried once more to speak his name.

His throat closed.

Until that moment, he had believed his body was waiting for him—that the spell might end, that Alicia might relent, that he could somehow return.

Now they were discussing his funeral.

Alicia stood beside him.

"The wise woman told me," she said quietly, "that when your old body died, there would be no way back."

He gripped his apron's edge.

She looked towards the bedroom, then back at him.

"I didn't know it would happen so soon."

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then the housekeeper appeared at the end of the corridor.

"Anya. Mourners are coming. The drawing room needs cleaning."

His feet turned before he could resist.

Downstairs, the breakfast dishes still waited. The fires needed tending, and the floors would not scrub themselves.

Erasmus picked up his bucket.

Outside, snow began to fall against the palace windows. He paused beside the kitchen stove, hoping to warm his fingers before the next task.

"Come along, girl," the housekeeper called.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered.

He went back to work.