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Gone were the cobwebs, the dust that had greeted me on my first glimpse of this room. Old Mathilde and I had taken down the bedhangings and the curtains to launder and iron them. We had scrubbed the floors and washed the windows till they shone. In the glow of twilight, the room looked warm and welcoming, as if its occupant had stepped out of it just minutes before. Slowly, his feet making absolutely no sound, my father crossed the room until he reached the alcove. I knew the second he saw my mother’s face. He faltered back a step, then stood as still as stone.

“She loved you,” I said from where I stood within the open door. “You can see it in her eyes. Old Mathilde told me once that a love that strong and pure never really dies. It lives on in all who live and remember, teaching them how to discover such a love for themselves. I try to imagine how I would feel if I had known a love like that, then had it snatched away. All my life, I’ve tried to understand how you could love her, and not love me.

“But when I look into her face, I cannot do it. I do not understand it at all. Constanze d’Este loved you, and all you might create together. You thought you loved her, but you loved yourself more.”

I pointed to the window behind him, and, as if
my gesture was a summons, my father slowly turned around.

“From that window, you can see my mother’s grave, the only piece of earth on all your lands where not a single living thing will thrive. But it is not my mother’s heart that is buried there. Instead, I think that it is yours.”

With a cry my father whirled back, strode across the room to seize me by the arms. He pulled me to the window, turning me so that I, too, looked down.

“I have carried the image of your mother’s grave with me for sixteen years,” he said fiercely, “Nothing I have ever done has been able to drive it from my mind, Don’t think you can stand there and lecture me. You can never understand what I have lost.”

“
You did not lose!”
I cried, as I struck his hands away. For the first time, I thought I tasted his bitterness in my own mouth,” You gave it away of your own free will. You gave
me
away. You gave away love.”

And because of it, he had wasted the span of my entire life, I thought. What might my father and I have learned together, shared together, if he had not been so swift to give up on love? Regret shot through me then, swift and sudden as the plunge of a knife straight through my heart, I staggered, and put my hand upon the windowsill. Felt my father reach to hold me up.

Oh, Mathilde,
I thought, I
see what you were trying to tell me now, that day in the kitchen so long ago.

Grief and sorrow are one and the same. But until
you feel regret for what is now forever out of reach, you do not truly mourn.

Finally, I felt my anger for my father turn to ashes, I saw the desolation in his face now. Saw the way it ran bone-deep.

“I know what you wished for me,” I said softly. “The one and only time you ever saw me until now. You wished that you might never see me again unless the sight of me could give you back the peace I stole. But I am not the true thief, father. You have robbed yourself. You have no peace because you cling to sorrow and to anger.

“You have no peace because you do not mourn.”

“No,” Etienne de Brabant answered, with a shuddering breath. “No, That cannot be right; it cannot be so.”

“Go to my mother’s grave,” I said. “Kneel down beside it. Feel the dead grass with your hand. Place your palm on the dead trunk of the tree Constanze d’Este planted as your bride. Then tell me you have no regrets. That you do not see all the things that you have stolen from us both, but from yourself most of all.

“Then do what, in my heart, I think my mother would have wished. Make a new wish for yourself.”

He released me then, his movement so unexpected that, had I not caught the back of the chair, I might have tumbled to the floor. Without a backward glance my father ran from the bedroom, down the corridor, I heard the clatter of his boots as he
hastened down the great hall stairs, the sound of the front door as it opened, then slammed closed.

Slowly, I sank down in the chair, the one in which Old Mathilde had sat the night I had been born. Gazing out the window, by the light of the moon, I saw my father stagger to my mother’s graveside. He fell down upon his knees, lifted his face up to the heavens as he had so many years ago. Perhaps it was some trick of the light, but I swear that, even from the second-story window, I saw the tracks of tears upon his cheeks. After almost sixteen years, my father wept beside my mother’s grave, while I wept to see him, looking down.

I
will make a wish for you, Father,
I thought. The fourth most powerful kind of wish there is. One you make when you discover that, against all odds and appearances to the contrary, you have not quite given up hope after all.

I
wish that the tears you shed may make what you wished for sixteen years ago come true. I wish you peace, at last.

Late that night, I heard the sound of horses in the courtyard. Long before then, I had moved through every room on the ground floor in the great stone house, placing a lighted candle in every single window, as if to guide travellers home. Outside the moon had risen, gold and full, its light bright enough to read a book by.

I changed out of my bedraggled ballroom finery into one of the dresses my stepmother and I had made over for me. With my hair braided and pinned on top of my head, a pair of sturdy and practical shoes on my feet, I felt like myself, once more.

“Cendrillon!” I heard Raoul’s voice cry out above the sound of the horse’s hooves, “Cendrillon!”

I flung open the front door, flew down the steps. He leaped from his horse to swing me around in a great circle, my legs flying.

“I knew you would know what to do,” I said, “I knew you would come.”

Raoul set me on my feet,” You lighted candles just like they do in the city,” he said, “It’s beautiful. I didn’t come alone.”

It was only at that moment that I realized there were two other horses in the courtyard, Niccolo sat
upon one. This, I might have expected. What I did not expect was that the third rider should be Prince Pascal. I felt my heart perform a long, slow somer-sault inside my chest.

“You came together,” I said. “Oh, Raoul,” I threw my arms around him once more.

“I may be an idiot on occasion,” Raoul whispered in my ear. “But at least I can admit when I’ve been wrong. Besides, you are more important than any crown. Now stop hugging me. Your prince will get the wrong idea about us.”

He stepped back. “Is Susanne still up?” he asked aloud.

“She is in the kitchen waiting for you,” I said, “If I know her, she started frying rashers of bacon the second she heard horses’ hooves in the courtyard. She took a cherry pie out of the oven not half an hour ago.”

Raoul gave a shout of laughter and sprinted for the kitchen door. Niccolo tossed a leg over the saddle and slid lightly to the ground. He came to me and caught me by the hands.

“You don’t look any worse for wear,” he said, “It gives me joy to see that you are well.”

“Thank you, Niccolo,” I said. “And I hope I will be calling you brother before too long.”

He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “I hope so too,” he replied. “Your mother and sisters send their love. They should be here sometime tomorrow. Old Mathilde is with them.”

He moved past me into the house. Now, it was
just Pascal and me in the courtyard. In the moon-light, I could see every plane and angle of his face, but I could not read what his expression held.

“You have just had a long, hard ride,” I said at last. “Don’t you at least want to get down?’

Without a word, Pascal swung down from the saddle and came toward me.

“Raoul said you would be here,” he said. “That your father would bring you home.”

“I don’t imagine that he thought of it that way,” I answered. “But Raoul was right. My mother
is
buried in this place. She died the night that I was born. All my life, my father has blamed me for this. He had to bring me here, I think, before he could truly decide what to do with me, or what not to do.”

“Where is he?” asked Pascal.

“He is gone. He sat beside my mother’s grave until the moon came up, then got on his horse and rode out the gate. I do not think any of us will ever see him again.”

“So you are quite safe,” Pascal said. “You’ve been safe for hours. You didn’t really need rescuing at all.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I’m glad that you have come.”

“Are you?” he asked. “Why?”

“Will you walk with me?’ I said, by way of an answer. “There is something I would like to show you.”

Giving me an answer of his own, Pascal offered me his arm. I took it and together we walked around
the side of the house, along its length, until we reached the gate in the stone wall that was just higher than a tall man’s head and led to my mother’s garden. I opened the latch, pushed the gate open wide. Then I led Pascal across the soft green lawn until we reached my mother’s grave.

It was covered with pumpkin vines. Pansies with brave faces. Bee balm. Every single thing that I had ever tried to grow upon my mother’s grave had come to life, watered by my father’s tears. Only the tree my mother had planted herself remained unchanged.

“This is the place my mother is buried,” I said. “Every year, on my birthday, I have made a wish here for as long as I can recall. And what I wished for was this: that what I planted here might grow and thrive. Tomorrow is my birthday. My wish has finally come true.”

“It’s beautiful,” Pascal said.

“It wasn’t,” I answered. “Not until tonight. Tonight my father mourned my mother truly for the very first time. Old Mathilde, who raised me, said my parents loved each other from the moment they met, love at first sight. She says such a talent runs in families, and I think that she is right. For I believe that my heart knew you from the moment you first held me in your arms.

“I wish to be my mother’s daughter,” I said. “I will make many mistakes, have many regrets, take many risks, but I will not do what my father did. I will not turn my back on love.”

“Are you saying that you love me?” Pascal said, and I felt the way his arm trembled beneath my fingers.

“Yes,” I replied. “I know it’s traditional for the man to speak first, especially when he’s a prince, and I know that it is sudden.”

“I think,” Pascal said carefully, “that I would like to ask you something.”

“Anything,” I said.

“Will you please sit down?”

“Sit down?” I echoed, altogether stunned.

“Yes,” Prince Pascal said. “Here, on this pumpkin.”

“Of course I will,” I said, but my heart had begun to beat with a sound like thunder. I had just told the handsome prince I’d known for less than three days that I loved him, and he had asked me to sit down upon a pumpkin. At least I knew it would be sturdy enough to hold me.

Remember what you promised yourself, Cendrillon,
I thought fiercely.
Never regret love.

“I went back,” Pascal said, as he settled me upon the pumpkin. “To the ballroom. After Etienne had called me away, I got halfway to my mother’s rooms and thought . . .”

All of a sudden, he began to pace, just outside the reach of the pumpkin vines. I felt my heartbeats begin to steady. He was not quite as composed as I had thought.

“I thought to myself,
You are an idiot, Pascal!’
he Went on. “You’ve just held the girl you love, the one you know you want to marry in your arms. And what did you do?
You let some smooth-talking courtier take you away, never mind the fact that he’s her father. So I turned around and went back, but by then you were gone.”

He stopped pacing and reached inside his coat. From an inside pocket, he removed an object wrapped in cloth. Carefully, as if what he held was infinitely precious, he pulled the cloth aside and let it flutter to the ground.

“I found this in the ballroom. You had gone, but you left this behind. And so I wonder . . .” With a graceful movement, he knelt at my feet. “I wonder if I might persuade you to try on this shoe, so that I can be certain that it fits you, and you alone. Please show me I haven’t dreamed this whole thing from start to finish.”

Slowly, Prince Pascal reached out. I put my right foot into his hand. He untied the laces of my sturdy, sensible shoe, then eased it off and set it gently on the ground. In its place, he slid on the slipper made of glass.

“Marry me,” he said. “Please say that you will marry me, Cendrillon. Love me. Let me love you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes to all of it.”

He leaned forward then, and kissed me for the second time. And as he did, I felt a band around my heart, one I had grown so accustomed to holding it in place that I no longer noticed its presence, open up, loosen its hold. And as it did, my heart flew free.

Behind us, at the head of my mother’s grave, the dead tree gave a moan. Catching me to him, Pascal
sprang up. With a great crack, the blackened bark split open. A great trembling seized the tree’s every limb, and then the bark peeled back like the skin of an onion. Revealing strong new bark beneath, glimmering pale and fresh in the moonlight.