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I put a hand upon his arm. “I know,” I said softly.

Raoul reached up, put his hand on top of mine. Even in the depths of winter, Raoul’s hands are always warm. I think it’s because of all the fires he keeps, banked down, inside himself. He gave my fingers a squeeze, then let his hand drop away. I picked up the hoe, ready to get back to work.

“Rilla,” he said suddenly. “Look up.”

Before me stretched the great blue arm of the ocean. The surface of the water flashed like fire. I sucked in a breath. Beneath the brim of my sunhat, I lifted a hand to shield my eyes.

“What is that?” I asked, and I could hear the urgency in my own voice now. “Something’s not right. The sea glitters like . . .”

“Like metal,” Raoul’s voice cut across mine.

I let the hoe slip through my fingers then, never heard it hit the ground. I could think of just one reason for the sea to do that.

“Soldiers,” I said. “Armor. How many ships are there, can you tell?” I could not, for my eyes had begun to water.

Raoul took my hand in his, then our feet stumbled
in our haste as he tugged me to the end of the row. Half a dozen more paces and we could have jumped right off the edge of the land.

“Seven,” he said. “Five hulks and two galleons”

“Five hulks,” I whispered, and just speaking the words aloud brought a chill to my heart.

Though the double-decked galleons with their glorious sails were the undisputed masters of the sea, it was the ungainly, flat-bottom hulks with no sails at all we feared the most. These were the ships that could bring the greatest number of soldiers to our shores. Five may not seem like such a great number to you, but the ships were large and our land is small. And there had been no soldiers for nearly twenty years now.

“What flag are they flying, can you see?” I asked, as I dashed a hand across my cheeks in annoyance, hoping to clear the water from my eyes.
Maybe they’re not coming for us, at all,
I thought.
Perhaps they’re going somewhere else. Somewhere far away.

Raoul was silent for one long moment. “A white flag,” he said at last. “In the center, a black swan with a red rose in its beak, and a border of golden thorns.”

“No,” I whispered, as the earth seemed to sway beneath my feet, for this was the one we feared most of all. One not seen in our land since before I was born, since the marriage of our king and queen had taken place to put an end to bloodshed. “No.”

“I can see it clear as day, Rilla,” Raoul said, and I
took no offense at the sting in his voice, I knew all too well that it was not for me.

“Will they try to land here, do you think?”

Raoul shook his head. “We are not important enough a place, and our shore has too many rocks. They will make for the capitol, the court, and go farther down the coast.”

“I wish all this would stop,” I exclaimed fiercely, the words out of my mouth in the exact same moment I thought them. “I wish that I could find a way to stop it.”

This is the third most powerful kind of wish there is: the one you make unbidden, not to your heart, but from it. Only knowing what it is you wish for as you hear own voice, proclaiming it aloud.

No sooner did I finish speaking than I felt the wind shift, blowing straight into my face, tickling the long braids I wore tucked up beneath my sun hat, then tugging at them hard enough to make the hat fly back. With a quick, hard jerk, the leather chin strap pulled tight against my throat.

“So do I,” Raoul said softly.

At his words, the air went perfectly still. Raoul and I stood together, hardly daring to breathe. Then, ever so slowly, the wind began to shift again. Its force became strong, picking up until my skirts streamed straight out to the left, flapping against my legs. Below us, the surface of the water was covered with whitecaps. Galleons and hulks alike bucked like unbroken horses.

“The wind is blowing backward,” Raoul said, his voice strange.

“It can’t do that,” I answered. “It never blows in that direction off our coast, not even when it storms.”

“I know it,” Raoul said. “But it’s blowing in that direction now. We wished to find a way to make the fighting stop, and now the wind is blowing backward. We did that. Did we do that?”

“I don’t know. But I think we should get out of the wind. It has an unhealthy sound.”

“Old Mathilde will know what to do,” Raoul said.

Hand in hand, pumpkins and weeds both forgotten, we turned, and raced for the great stone house.

By the time Raoul and I reached the house, Mathilde was gathering each and every living thing and shooing it inside. The rabbits were put into their hutches, the chickens onto their nests, the dogs summoned from the courtyard. Being out in such a wind could do strange things to living beings, Old Mathilde called over its unnatural voice. The wind blowing backward can make you forget yourself.

Once we were all safely indoors, I worked with Old Mathilde and Susanne, who ran the kitchen, to make a fine dinner of chowder and cornbread from the last of our fresh ears of corn. All the rest had already been dried, in preparation for the winter. By the time the meal was ready, the sun was setting. We gathered around the great trestle table in the kitchen for supper—all but Raoul, who took his out to the stables, announcing his intention to stay with the horses until the wind died down.

As if to make up for the fact that he was not always comfortable with people, Raoul was good with animals of all kinds. Perhaps because it had been a horse which had carried him to us in the first place, he loved the horses best of all.

Well into the night the wind blew, until I longed
to stuff cotton into my ears to shut out the sound. None of us went to bed. Instead, we stayed in the kitchen, our chairs arranged in a semicircle around the kitchen fire. Old Mathilde worked on her knitting, her needles flashing in the light of the coals. Susanne polished the silver, as if there might yet come a day when someone would arrive who would want to use it. Her daughter, Charlotte, darned socks. Joseph and Robert, the father and son who helped with the orchards and grounds, mended rope. I sorted seeds for next year’s planting, wondering what might actually come up.

The clocks struck ten, and then eleven, and still we heard the winds voice. As the hands of the clock inched up toward midnight, a great tension seemed to fill the kitchen, causing all the air to back up inside our lungs. Midnight is an important hour in general, but it was considered particularly significant in our house. But it was only as the clock actually began to count up to midnight,
one, two, three, four,
that I remembered what the voice of the wind blowing in the wrong direction had pushed to the back of my mind.

When the clocks finished striking twelve, it would be my birthday, and I would learn whether what I wished had come true or not.

Seven,
the clocks chimed on their way to midnight.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
And suddenly, I was praying with all my might, with all my heart.
Please,
I thought.
Let the wind stop. Don’t let it blow backward on the day of my birth.

Eleven,
the clocks sang throughout the house. And then, in the heartbeat between that chime and the next, the wind died down.

Old Mathilde lifted her head; the hands on her knitting needles paused. Susanne placed the final piece of silver back into its chest with a soft
chink
of metal.
It is just before midnight,
I thought.

Twelve,
the clocks struck. And, in that very moment, the wind returned, passing over us in its usual direction, making A sound like a lullaby.

“Oh, but I am tired,” Susanne said, as she gave a great stretch. One by one, the others said their good nights and departed. Within a very few moments, old Mathilde and I were left: alone.

“I should go and get Raoul,” I said.

Old Mathilde began to bundle up her knitting. “Raoul is fine. He sleeps in the stable half the time anyway. But you may go and get him, if you like. That way, you can both go together.”

“How did you . . .” I began, but at precisely that instant, Raoul burst through the kitchen door. In one hand, he held the lantern he had taken out to the stable.

“Why are you still just standing there?” he asked. “Are we going or not?”

By way of answer, I dashed across the kitchen and, before Raoul quite realized what I intended, I threw my arms around him, burrowing my face into the column of his throat, holding on for dear life. I felt the way his pulse beat against my cheek, the way
his free arm, the one that wasn’t busy with the lantern, came up to press me close. We stood together for several seconds, just like that.

We look so different, Raoul and I, but in our hearts, we are so very much alike. The same impatience for what we desire dances through our veins. The same need to have our questions answered, our wishes granted. To understand, to know.

And so Raoul had known what I would want to do, now that the wind was running in its proper direction and the clocks had finished striking twelve. He had known that I would never be able to wait until the sun came up to discover if my birthday wish had been granted after so long. More than this, he had given me the greatest gift he could have bestowed. With one short walk from the stable to the house, he had set his own disappointment aside.

Raoul knew already that his wish had not been granted. He knew no more about who he truly was now than he had a year ago, or than he had on the day my father had first brought him home. But still, he had come to find me, knowing I would want to visit my mother’s grave, even in the middle of the night.

During the long hours we had waited in the kitchen, the moon had risen. The cobblestones of the courtyard gleamed like mother of pearl; the great stone house shimmered like an opal in the moon-glow. The three of us went across the front, then around the corner and along the side opposite the kitchen garden. At last we reached the end of the
house and the beginning of the stone wall, just higher than a tall mans head, that marked the boundaries of my mother’s garden. Above our heads, surrounding the moon like a handful of scattered sentinels, the stars burned fierce and blue.

“I am afraid,” I said suddenly.

“There is no need to be afraid, my Cendrillon,” Old Mathilde replied. “Either what you wish for has come true, or it has not. If it hasn’t, you must simply try again. Some things must be wished for many times before they come to us.”

“Happy birthday, Raoul,” I said, as he pushed the gate open.

“And to you, little Cendrillon.”

“I’m not little,” I said. “And I bet I can still beat you in a foot race.”

And with that, we were off and running. I knew every inch of my mother’s garden, even in the dark. The rose bushes, espaliered along its walls, the stands of lilies that bloomed in late summer, the daffodils in the spring, the surprise of autumn crocus. A carpet of chamomile was springy underfoot. There was mint, pungent and sweet. Oregano, brusque and spicy. In the very center of the garden stretched my mother’s grave. The limbs of the blasted tree still raised stiffly above it, a silent testimony to my father’s rage and grief. Nobody, not even Old Mathilde, had ever been able to bring themselves to cut it down.

Please,
I thought, as I raced forward. Please was my word of choice that night.
Please let what I wish for come
true.
I reached the edge of the grave, skidded to a stop. A split second later, the light from Raouls lantern shone down upon the oblong of my mother’s grave. I fell to my knees beside it, just as my father had done.

“No,” I cried out. “No, no,
no!”

The vines I had planted were still there, and so were the gorgeous orange pumpkins. But now the vines were withered, as if a killing frost had wrapped its icy fingers around them. The pumpkins were split open. Inside, their flesh was black, the pale white seeds gleaming like fragments of bone. From the moment they had come up, all the while that they had grown, their beautiful outsides had all been concealing the very same thing: Inside, they were festering and rotten.

“I can’t do it, I won’t ever be able to do it, will I?” I sobbed, “He hates me too much. What can grow amid so much hate?”

“Just one thing,” Old Mathilde answered quietly, “Only love.”

“
Love!”
I cried. I flung myself forward then, onto the grave, digging my fingers deep into the flesh of the nearest pumpkin. I brought my hands back up, dripping and disgusting. A great stench filled the air, one of unwholesome things kept in the dark too long.

“This,” I said, as I flung the first handful from me with all my might. I scooped up more, flung it away, in a desperate frenzy now, “This and this. This is what my father thinks of me. It has nothing to do with love.”

“All the more reason that what you wish should,
then,” Old Mathilde said, and now she knelt down beside me to take my hands in hers, horrible as they were. I jerked back, but she held on tight. “There are two things in the world you must never give up on, my Cendrillon. And those two things are yourself and love.”