‘Joderick, my son.’ The king was exasperated. ‘Are you quite sure of the name?’

‘Cinders.’ Joderick nodded. ‘Short for Cinderella.’

The king, the prince, their royal guard, three dozen pages and a hundred and one soldiers had been searching the length and breadth of the kingdom for three long days, and so far they’d found nothing.

They were riding through a clearing, Joderick on a pony and his father on a magnificent charger. Beautiful sunlight dappled the forest floor, yet there was nothing sunny about the king’s expression.

‘But there isn’t a single person in the land called Cinders or Cinderella and, according to our records, there never has been,’ the king said with a sigh. ‘Every single baby born within my realm is required to be presented to the royal family and added to the register to stop any of those fanciful fairies from sneaking across our borders uninvited.’

The horses stopped, and the king swung himself down from the saddle, kicking at a tussock in frustration.

‘She definitely wasn’t a fairy,’ Joderick argued. ‘She didn’t have wings, sharp fangs or creepy claws. She was a real human girl.’

‘Then why haven’t we found her?’ the king said as his horse wandered off the track to drink at a stream. ‘And what kind of person loses a shoe? I’m starting to think you’re making this girl up. It’s almost as if you want to marry one of those terrible fairies.’

Through the trees, Joderick spotted a thin stream of smoke coming from a pink brick chimney.

He remembered what Cinders had said. ‘My pink cottage in the forest …’

‘This way!’ Joderick called, pulling his pony round and charging off through the trees. ‘I think I know where she is!’