The Hazel Tree and the Golden Slipper

The girl’s mother had been gone a year when her father brought home a new wife. The woman arrived with two daughters of her own, and from the first evening they looked at the girl as if she were a chair with a broken leg. “You’ll not wear that silk,” the stepmother said, pulling the blue dress from her shoulders. “Kitchen cloth suits you better.” The two stepsisters took her ribbons and her little pearl buttons and pinned them on themselves, laughing. When the girl tried to eat her supper, one of them snatched the bread from her hand and threw it in the fire. “Ash girl eats ash,” she said. So the girl swept the hearth and slept in the cold cinders by the stove. Her father said nothing. He had a soft voice and a hard silence, and the silence grew until it filled the house. In the morning the girl woke grey and dusty, and the sisters called her Cinderella because of the ash that clung to her cheeks and her bare feet. She learned to move quietly. She learned to keep her hands busy and her thoughts to herself. But at night, when the house was still, she remembered her mother’s hands and her mother’s voice, and she cried into the ashes until the cinders were wet.

***

One morning Cinderella took her wooden bucket and walked out past the orchard to the churchyard. Her mother’s grave lay under the old wall, and the grass had grown long around the stone. She knelt and pulled the weeds with her fingers. “I wish you could see me,” she whispered. The wind moved in the yew tree, and she thought she heard a sound like a sigh. She remembered what her mother had told her once, long ago: plant a living thing and it will grow toward you. So Cinderella broke a hazel twig from the hedge and pushed it into the soft earth at the head of the grave. She had no water in her bucket, so she knelt and wept, and her tears fell on the twig until the soil was dark and damp. “Grow,” she said. “Please grow.” Then she went back to the house and the ashes and said nothing to anyone. But every day she returned with her bucket, and every day she watered the twig, sometimes with water from the well, sometimes with tears she could not hold back. The twig took root. It grew a green shoot, then a stem, then branches. By the end of the summer it was a small hazel tree, and a white bird came to sit in its leaves. The bird tilted its head and looked at her with one bright eye. “What do you want?” it asked. Cinderella stared. “Anything,” she said at last. “Whatever you ask, I will bring it,” said the bird. So she asked for an apple, because she was hungry, and the bird brought her a red apple in its beak. She asked for a warm shawl, and it came. And she asked for nothing more, because she did not yet know what she needed. But she knew the tree was there, and the bird was there, and that was a kind of company she had not had in a long time.

Word came to the town that the king was giving a festival for his son. Three nights of music and dancing, and every family in the land was asked to come. The stepmother heard it from a neighbor and came home smiling with her hands full of silk.

“You girls will need new gowns,” she said to her daughters. “We will have the best seats in the hall.”

Cinderella stood by the hearth with a bowl in her hands. “May I go too?” she asked. “I could stand at the back.”

The stepmother turned. Her smile went thin. “You? In those rags?” She pointed at the ashes. “You have work here. But if you can pick two bowls of lentils out of that ash by the time I return, you may come.”

She threw the lentils into the hearth and swept out. Cinderella knelt and looked at the mess. Thousands of small grey seeds, mixed with grey dust. She could not tell one from the other. So she ran out the back door to the hazel tree and stood under its leaves.

“Bird,” she said, “please. Help me.”

Two white pigeons flew down, then more, until the branches were full of wings. They hopped onto the hearth and began to work. One by one they picked the lentils from the ash and dropped them into the bowl. Cinderella sat still and did not move her hands. Before the hour was out, the bowls were full and the ash was bare.

When the stepmother came back, she saw the bowls and her face changed.

“Well,” she said. “You are quick. But you have no dress and no shoes, and you cannot dance. You will stay here.”

***

The stepmother and her daughters left for the castle. Cinderella watched them go, then went out to the grave under the hazel tree. The white bird was waiting.

“They said I cannot go,” she said.

“Then ask me for what you need,” said the bird.

Cinderella thought. “I need a dress. Something that will not shame me.”

The bird flew into the tree and came back with a gown of silver thread, and slippers of gold. Cinderella washed at the well and put them on. The dress fit as if it had been made for her. The slippers were light as leaves.

“Go now,” said the bird. “But come back before midnight. After that, I cannot help you.”

She walked to the castle and no one stopped her. In the hall, the prince saw her at the door and came straight to her side. They danced until her feet ached. He asked her name and she would not say it. He asked where she lived and she smiled and said nothing. When the clock began to strike twelve, she pulled away and ran down the steps.

At home she hid the dress in the straw and put on her old clothes. Her stepsisters came back late and talked of nothing but the strange girl in silver. Cinderella listened from the ashes and said not a word.

The next night, she went to the tree again, and the bird gave her a dress of moonlight, and she danced again, and left again before the clock struck. On the third night, the bird gave her a dress of stars, and slippers of gold, and Cinderella knew it was the last time.

The third night, the prince said nothing to anyone. But he called his stable boy and gave an order: brush the road outside the castle with tar. “Every stone and rut,” he said. “Let it be sticky as honey.” The boy did as he was told. Inside, the music played and the candles burned low. Cinderella came in her dress of stars, and the prince took her hand as if he had been waiting all his life. They danced until the room spun. She laughed at his jokes. He told her about his horse, and she told him about the hazel tree. “A tree?” he said. “What tree?” But then the clock began to strike. She pulled away and ran. Down the steps, across the yard, and onto the road. Her left slipper stuck fast in the tar. She pulled her foot free and kept running, but the golden slipper stayed behind. The prince ran after her, but he found only the slipper. He picked it up and held it like a small, bright promise. “I will find her,” he said. “I will.” The next morning, the road smelled of tar and the castle was quiet. The prince held the slipper up to the light and watched the gold shine.

***

The prince went from house to house with the golden slipper on a cushion. His herald called out: “Every maiden must try it. The one it fits will be the prince’s bride.” The stepmother heard and smiled. She pushed her two daughters forward. “They have small feet,” she said. “Very small.” The first stepsister sat down and pushed her toes into the slipper. Her heel hung over the back. “It fits!” she cried. But a white bird on the windowsill sang: “Look at the heel, look at the toe, that is not the foot that made it go.” The prince shook his head. The second stepsister tried. She squeezed and twisted, but her toes would not go in. “It fits!” she said. The bird sang again: “Look at the blood, look at the bend, that is not the foot of the girl he met.” The prince took the slipper back. Then he saw Cinderella in the corner, in her gray dress and ashes. “You,” he said. “Try.” She sat down. The slipper slid on like water into a cup. The prince looked at her face and knew her. The stepmother turned pale. The stepsisters said nothing. The white bird flew to the hazel tree and sang a long, clear note. The wedding was that week. The stepsisters stood at the back of the hall, and Cinderella walked over to them. “You may sit with me,” she said. They did. And the hazel tree grew tall on the hill, and the bird stayed in its branches, and Cinderella went back to it sometimes, just to say thank you.