Ella Enchanted (2 page)

Father reached for my hand. His palm was moist and hot as a hydra’s swamp. I wished I had been allowed to stand with Mandy and the other servants.

I pulled out of his grasp and moved a step away. He closed the distance between us and took my hand again.

Mother’s casket was made of gleaming mahogany carved with designs of fairies and elves. If only the fairies could leap out of the wood and cast a spell to bring her back to life. And another one to send Father away. Or maybe my fairy godmother would do it, if I knew where to find her.

When the high chancellor finished, it was my task to close the casket so Mother could be lowered into her grave. Father put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me forward.

Mother’s mouth was stern, the opposite of its look in life. And her face was empty, which was awful. But worse was the creak as the coffin lid went down and the dry click when it closed. And the thought of Mother packed away in a box.

The tears I had swallowed all day erupted. I stood there before the whole court, crying in an infant’s endless wail, unable to stop myself.

Father pressed my face into his chest. Perhaps he appeared to be comforting me, but he was only trying to muffle my noise, which couldn’t be muffled. He let me go. In a sharp whisper, he said, “Get away from here. Come back when you can be quiet.”

For once I was glad to obey. I ran. My heavy black gown tripped me, and I fell. Before anyone could help me, I was off again, my knee and hand stinging.

The biggest tree in the graveyard was a weeping willow — a crying tree. I plunged through its leaves and threw myself down, sobbing.

Everyone called it losing Mother, but she wasn’t lost. She was gone, and no matter where I went — another town, another country, Fairyland, or Gnome Caverns — I wouldn’t find her.

We’d never talk again, or laugh together. Or swim in the River Lucarno. Or slide down the banister or play tricks on Bertha. Or a million things.

I cried myself out and sat up. My gown had changed in front from black silk to brown dirt. As Mandy would have said, I was a spectacle.

How much time had gone by? I had to go back. Father had told me to, and the curse was tugging at me to obey.

Outside the privacy of my tree, Prince Charmont stood, reading a tombstone. I had never been so near him before. Had he heard me cry?

Although the prince was only two years older than I, he was much taller, and he stood just like his father, feet apart, hands behind his back, as though the whole country were passing by on review. He looked like his father too, although the sharp angles of King Jerrold’s face were softened in his son. They each had tawny curls and swarthy skin. I had never been near enough to the king to know whether he also had a sprinkling of freckles across his nose, surprising on such a dark face.

“Cousin of mine,” the prince said, gesturing at the tombstone. “Never liked him. I liked your mother.” He started walking back toward her tomb.

Did he expect me to come with him? Was I supposed to maintain a suitable distance from his royal self?

With enough room for a carriage to pass between us, I walked at his side. He moved closer. I saw he had been crying too, although he had stayed upright and clean.

“You can call me Char,” he told me suddenly. “Everyone else does.”

I could? We walked in silence.

“My father calls me Char too,” he added.

The king!

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you, Char,” he corrected. Then, “Your mother used to make me laugh. Once, at a banquet, Chancellor Thomas was making a speech. While he talked, your mother moved her napkin around. I saw it before your father crumpled it up. She had arranged the edge in the shape of the chancellor’s profile, with the mouth open and the chin stuck out. It would have looked exactly like him if he were the color of a blue napkin. I had to leave without dinner so I could go outside and laugh.”

We were halfway back. It was starting to rain. I could make out one figure, small in the distance, standing by Mother’s grave. Father.

“Where did everyone go?” I asked Char.

“They all left before I came to find you,” he said. “Did you want them to wait?” He sounded worried, as if, perhaps, he should have made them stay.

“No, I didn’t want any of them to wait,” I answered, meaning Father could have gone too.

“I know all about you,” Char announced after we’d taken a few more steps.

“You do? How could you?”

“Your cook and our cook meet at the market. She talks about you.” He looked sideways at me. “Do you know much about me?”

“No.” Mandy had never said anything. “What do you know?”

“I know you can imitate people just as Lady Eleanor could. Once you imitated your manservant to his face, and he wasn’t sure whether he was the servant or you were. You make up your own fairy tales and you drop things and trip over things. I know you once broke a whole set of dishes.”

“I slipped on ice!”

“Ice chips you spilled before you slipped on them.” He laughed. It wasn’t a ridiculing laugh; it was a happy laugh at a good joke.

“An accident,” I protested. But I smiled too, tremblingly, after so much crying.

We reached Father, who bowed. “Thank you, Highness, for accompanying my daughter.”

Char returned the bow.

“Come, Eleanor,” Father said.

Eleanor. No one had ever called me that before, even though it was my real name. Eleanor had always been Mother, and always would be.

“Ella. I’m Ella,” I said.

“Ella then. Come, Ella.” He bowed to Prince Charmont and climbed into the carriage.

I had to go. Char handed me in. I didn’t know whether to give him my hand or to let him push up on my elbow. He wound up with the middle of my arm and I had to grasp the side of the carriage with the other hand for balance. When he closed the door, I caught my skirt, and there was a loud ripping sound. Father winced. I saw Char through the window, laughing again. I turned the skirt and found a gash about six inches above the hem. Bertha would never be able to make it smooth.

I arranged myself as far from Father as possible. He was staring out the window.

“A fine affair. All of Frell came, everyone who counts anyway,” he said, as though Mother’s funeral had been a tournament or a ball.

“It wasn’t fine. It was awful,” I said. How could Mother’s funeral be fine?

“The prince was friendly to you.”

“He liked Mother.”

“Your mother was beautiful.” His voice was regretful. “I’m sorry she’s dead.”

Nathan flicked his whip, and the carriage began to move.

WHEN WE reached the manor, Father ordered me to change into something clean and to hurry down to greet the guests who were arriving to pay their respects.

My room was peaceful. Everything was just as it had been before Mother died. The birds embroidered into the coverlet on my bed were safe in their world of cross-stitched leaves. My diary was on the dresser. The friends of my childhood — Flora, the rag doll, and Rosamunde, the wooden doll in the gown with seven flounces — nestled in their basket.

I sat on the bed, fighting my need to obey Father’s order to change and go back downstairs. Although I wanted to draw comfort from my room, from my bed, from the light breeze coming through my window, I kept thinking instead of Father and getting dressed.

Once I had overheard Bertha tell Mandy that he was only a person on the outside and that his insides were ashes mixed with coins and a brain.

But Mandy had disagreed. “He’s human through and through. No other creature would be as selfish as he is, not fairies or gnomes or elves or giants.”

For a full three minutes I delayed getting dressed. It was a terrible game I played, trying to break my curse, seeing how long I could last against the need to do what I had been told. There was a buzzing in my ears, and the floor seemed to tilt so far that I feared I would slide off the bed. I hugged my pillow until my arms hurt — as if the pillow were an anchor against following orders.

In a second I was going to fly apart into a thousand pieces. I stood and walked to my wardrobe. Immediately I felt perfectly fine.

Although I suspected Father wanted me to wear another mourning gown, I put on the frock Mother liked best. She said the spicy green brought out my eyes. I thought I looked like a grasshopper in it — a skinny, spiky grasshopper with a human head and straight hair. But at least the gown wasn’t black. She hated black clothing.

The great hall was full of people in black. Father came to me instantly. “Here’s my lass, young Eleanor,” he said loudly. He led me in, whispering, “You look like a weed in that gown. You’re supposed to be in mourning. They’ll think you have no respect for your—”

I was engulfed from behind by two chubby arms encased in rustling black satin.

“My poor child, we feel for you.” The voice was syrupy. “And Sir Peter, it’s dreadful to see you on such a tragic occasion.” An extra tight squeeze and I was released.

The speaker was a tall, plump lady with long and wavy honey-colored tresses. Her face was a pasty white with twin spots of rouge on the cheeks. With her were two smaller versions of herself, but without the rouge. The younger one also lacked her mother’s abundant hair; instead she had thin curls stuck tight to her scalp as though glued there.

“This is Dame Olga,” Father said, touching the tall lady’s arm.

I curtsied and knocked into the younger girl. “Beg pardon,” I said.

She didn’t answer, didn’t move, only watched me.

Father continued. “Are these your lovely daughters?”

“They are my treasures. This is Hattie, and this is Olive. They are off to finishing school in a few days.”

Hattie was older than I, by about two years. “Delighted to make your acquaintance,” she said, smiling and showing large front teeth. She held her hand out to me as though she expected me to kiss it or bow over it.

I stared, uncertain what to do. She lowered her arm, but continued to smile.

Olive was the one I’d bumped. “I’m glad to meet you,” she said, her voice too loud. She was about my age. The furrows of a frown were permanently etched between her eyes.

“Comfort Eleanor in her grief,” Dame Olga told her daughters. “I want to talk with Sir Peter.” She took Father’s arm, and they left us.

“Our hearts weep for you,” Hattie began. “When you bellowed at the funeral, I thought what a poor thing you are.”

“Green isn’t a mourning color,” Olive said.

Hattie surveyed the room. “This is a fine hall, almost as fine as the palace, where I’m going to live someday. Our mother, Dame Olga, says your father is very rich. She says he can make money out of anything.”

“Out of a toenail,” Olive suggested.

“Our mother, Dame Olga, says your father was poor when he married your mother. Our mother says Lady Eleanor was rich when they got married, but your father made her richer.”

“We’re rich too,” Olive said. “We’re lucky to be rich.”

“Would you show us the rest of the manor?” Hattie asked.

We went upstairs and Hattie had to look everywhere. She opened the wardrobe in Mother’s room and, before I could stop her, ran her hands over Mother’s gowns. When we got back to the hall, she announced, “Forty-two windows and a fireplace in every room. The windows must have cost a trunkful of gold KJs.”

“Do you want to know about our manor?” Olive asked.

I didn’t care if they lived in a hollow log.

“You’ll have to visit us and see for yourself,” Hattie said in response to my silence.

We stood near the side table, which was loaded with mountains of food, from a whole roast hart with ivy threaded through its antlers to butter cookies as small and lacy as snowflakes. I wondered how Mandy had had time to cook it all.

“Would you like something to eat?”

“Ye—” Olive began, but her sister interrupted firmly.

“Oh, no. No thank you. We never eat at parties. The excitement quite takes away our appetites.”

“My appetite—” Olive tried again.

“Our appetites are small. Mother worries. But it looks delicious.” Hattie edged toward the food. “Quail eggs are such a delicacy. Ten brass KJs apiece. Olive, there are fifty at least”

More quail eggs than windows.

“I like gooseberry tarts,” Olive said.

“We mustn’t,” Hattie said. “Well, maybe a little.”

A giant couldn’t eat half a leg of deer plus a huge mound of wild rice and eight of the fifty quail eggs and go back for dessert. But Hattie could.

Olive ate even more. Gooseberry tarts and currant bread and cream trifle and plum pudding and chocolate bonbons and spice cake — all dribbled over with butter rum sauce and apricot sauce and peppermint sauce.

They brought their plates close to their faces so their forks had the shortest possible distance to travel. Olive ate steadily, but Hattie put her fork down every so often to pat her mouth daintily with her napkin. Then she’d tuck in again, as avidly as ever.

It was disgusting to watch. I looked down at a throw rug that used to lie under Mother’s chair. Today it had been moved near the food. I had never concentrated on it before.

A hound and hunters chased a boar toward a fringe of scarlet wool. As I stared, I saw movement. Wind stirred the grass by the boar’s feet. I blinked and the movement stopped. I stared again and it started again.

The dog had just bayed. I felt his throat relax. One of the hunters limped, and I felt a cramp in his calf. The boar gasped for breath and ran on fear and rage.

“What are you looking at?” Olive asked. She had finished eating.

I started. I felt as if I’d been in the rug. “Nothing. Just the carpet.” I glanced at the rug again. An ordinary carpet with an ordinary design.

“Your eyes were popping out.”

“They looked like an ogre’s eyes,” Hattie said. “Buggy. But there, you look more normal now.”

She never looked normal. She looked like a rabbit. A fat one, the kind Mandy liked to slaughter for stew. And Olive’s face was as blank as a peeled potato.

“I don’t suppose your eyes ever pop out,” I said.

“I don’t think so.” Hattie smiled complacently.

“They’re too small to pop.”