Stepsister

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “My goodness, Felix. There must be hundreds of them,” Ella said, standing up to admire them.

  “Just over two thousand,” said Felix.

  Isabelle walked to a shelf and picked one up. He was a fusilier, complete with a torch. He looked war-weary and haggard, as if he knew he was going to die.

  “These are beautiful,” said Ella.

  Felix, who was now heating up a pot of cold coffee over some glowing coals in the small fireplace, shyly thanked her.

  “You must’ve been working on them for years,” said Ella.

  “Ever since I left the Maison Douleur.”

  “You put a lot of emotion into them. I can see it,” Ella said. “Love, fear, triumph, sorrow, it’s all there.”

  “It had to go somewhere,” Felix said, glancing at Isabelle.

  Ella winced, as if his words had cut her. She abruptly rose from her chair, cupped her elbows, and walked to the window. Then she whirled and walked back again, as if she was trying to get away from something.

  “Ella? Are you all right?” Isabelle asked.

  Ella started to reply, but her words were cut off by the sound of hooves clopping over the cobblestones. It carried up from the street and in through the open window. Felix, Isabelle, and Ella traded anxious glances.

  “Soldiers,” Isabelle said tersely. “What if they’re going door to door?”

  Felix risked a glance out the window. The tension in his face softened. He smiled. “Not soldiers, no,” he said. “But maybe saviors.”

  Isabelle was out of the door and down the stairs in no time.

  She’d rushed to the window to see what Felix was talking about and had spotted Martin. He was pulling a wagonload of potatoes. Hugo was in the driver’s seat. Tavi was sitting next to him.

  Isabelle ran in front of the them, waving her arms. “Why are you in the village so early?” she asked. It wasn’t even dawn yet.

  Tavi explained they had to go to the army camp first, deliver the potatoes, return to the farm, milk the cows, and then bring another load to the market.

  “Colonel Cafard was so furious when you took off that Tantine made him a gift of the potatoes. To help the war effort. And to keep him from throwing us all in jail. My mother was up fuming about it half the night. Thanks a lot, Isabelle,” Hugo said.

  Isabelle ignored his grousing. “You’ve come in the nick of time,” she said. “We need you.”

  “Who needs us?” Tavi said, looking around.

  “The village of Saint-Michel. The king. All of France. And Ella.”

  “Ella?” Tavi echoed.

  “Enemy soldiers are trying to kill her. And me.”

  She quickly explained what had happened since she’d left them. Tavi and Hugo listened; then Tavi, eyes sparking with anger, said, “We have to stop them. They can’t do this. They won’t do this.”

  “Come upstairs. Hurry,” said Isabelle.

  Tavi climbed down out of the wagon and rushed to Felix’s room. Hugo quickly tied Martin to a hitching post and followed her.

  “Ella, is that you?” Tavi said as she entered the room.

  Ella nodded. Tavi’s habitually acerbic expression, the one she used to keep the world away, softened. Her eyes glistened. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she whispered. “I never thought I’d get the chance to … Oh, Ella. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Tavi,” Ella said, reaching for her hand.

  “Hey, Ella. Nice boots,” Hugo said shyly, staring at the huge, battered cast-offs she was wearing. “Should I bow or something?”

  “Maybe later, Hugo,” Ella said.

  “We need to get Ella and Isabelle out of here before the whole village wakes up,” Felix explained, handing out cups of hot coffee. “What if we hid them in the wagon, under the potatoes, and headed to a camp that’s loyal to the king?”

  “According to the map I stole, the nearest one is fifty miles away,” said Isabelle. “Martin wouldn’t make it.”

  Ella had released Tavi’s hand; she was sitting at the table again, looking out of the window, a troubled expression on her face.

  Hugo said, “Could we use Nero?”

  Isabelle shook her head. “He’s never pulled a wagon. He’d kick it to pieces.”

  Ella covered her face with her hands.

  For the second time, Isabelle noticed her distress. “Ella? What’s wrong?” she asked, putting her coffee down.

  “You are all so kind to me. So good,” Ella replied, lowering her hands. “Isabelle, you saved my life. But I … I don’t deserve your kindness.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Isabelle said. “You deserve that and more. You—”

  “No, listen to me!” Ella cried. “You apologized to me, Isabelle, back in the Devil’s Hollow, and now you have, Tavi. And that was brave of you both. Very brave. And now it’s my turn to be brave. As I should’ve been years ago.” The words came out of her mouth as if they were studded with nails. “Isabelle, earlier you asked me to forgive you and I said you didn’t know what you were asking. I said that because I’m the one who needs to be forgiven.”

  “I don’t understand …” Isabelle said.

  “The note,” Ella said, her voice heavy with remorse. “The one Felix left for you in the linden tree. You said Maman found it and destroyed it, but you’re wrong. I’m the one who found it. I took it and burned it and ruined your life. Oh, Isabelle, don’t you see? I’m the ugliest stepsister of all.”

  Isabelle sat down on Felix’s bed. She felt as if Ella had kicked her legs out from under her.

  Ella had destroyed the note. Not Maman. Ella. No matter how many times Isabelle repeated this to herself, it still made no sense.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I was jealous, too.”

  “Jealous? Of whom?” Isabelle asked.

  “Of you, Isabelle. You were so fearless, so strong. You laughed like a pirate. Rode like a robber. And Felix loved you. He loved you from the day my father brought you, Tavi, and Maman to the Maison Douleur. He was my friend and you took him away.”

  “I was still your friend, Ella. I was always your friend,” Felix said, wounded.

  Ella turned to him. “It wasn’t the same. I didn’t jump over stone walls on stallions. I didn’t race you to the tops of tall trees.” She looked at Isabelle again. “You and Felix were always having adventures. They sounded so wonderful and I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear that he liked you better than me. Couldn’t bear to be left behind. So I made sure I wasn’t.”

  Isabelle remembered how upset Ella would get when she and Felix rode off to the Wildwood and how relieved she always was when they returned. I should be angry. I should be furious, she thought. But she wasn’t—just deeply, achingly sad.

  “I was so sorry afterward,” Ella continued. “When I saw how miserable you were. But I was too afraid to tell you what I’d done. I thought you would hate me for it. But then everything changed between us and you hated me anyway.”

  Ella got up, crossed the room, and sat down next to Isabelle. “Say something. Anything,” she pleaded. “Say you hate me. Tell me you wish I were dead.”

  Isabelle exhaled loudly. Raggedly. As if she’d been holding her breath not for seconds, or minutes, but years.

  “It’s like a fire, Ella,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Jealousy. It burns so hot, so bright. It devours you, until you’re just a smoking ruin with nothing left inside.”

  “Nothing but ashes,” Ella said.

  Isabelle closed her eyes now and sifted through those ashes.

  Everything would have been different if Ella hadn’t burned Felix’s note. She wouldn’t have lost Felix. Or Nero. She wouldn’t have lost herself.

  She thought about the day Felix left, and the years that had come after. The music tutors and dancing masters. The dress fittings. Sitting for hours at her needlework, when her heart longed for horses and hills. The excruciating dinners with suitors looking her up
and down, their smiles forced, their eyes shuttered as they tried to hide their disappointment. The aching loneliness of finding that nothing fit. Not dainty slippers or stiff corsets. Not conversations or expectations, friendships or desires. Her entire life had seemed like a beautiful dress made for someone else.

  “I’m sorry, Isabelle. I’m so sorry,” Ella said.

  Isabelle opened her eyes. Ella’s hands were knotted into fists in her lap. Isabelle reached for one. She opened the fingers, smoothed them flat, then wove her own between them.

  She was sorry for so many things. She was sorry for her mother, who had always looked to mirrors for the truth. She was sorry for Berthe, who cried when she was mean, and Cecile, who didn’t. She was sorry for Tavi writing equations on cabbage leaves.

  She was sorry for all the grim-tale girls locked in lonely towers. Trapped in sugar houses. Lost in the dark woods, with a huntsman coming to cut out their hearts.

  She was sorry for three little girls who’d been handed a poisoned apple as they played under a linden tree on a bright summer day.

  Ella stood.

  She crossed the room and knelt by Tavi’s chair.

  “I’m so sorry, Tavi,” she said. “What I did hurt you, too.”

  “It’s all right, Ella,” Tavi said, rising. She pulled Ella up and hugged her. Isabelle joined them. The three stood for a moment, locked in a fierce, tearful embrace.

  Then Ella turned to Felix. “I need to apologize to you, too,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Your life would also have been different if I hadn’t stolen the note.”

  “Oh, Ella,” Felix said, taking her hand. “I’m sorry you thought I wasn’t your friend anymore.”

  Ella turned to Hugo next. “You wouldn’t even be here now if it wasn’t for me,” she said to him. “In this room. In this mess …”

  Hugo shrugged. “Actually, my life kind of got better. The last few weeks, with you two around”—he nodded at Isabelle and Tavi—“have been really awful but exciting, too. I mean, what did I have before you came? Cabbages, that’s about it. Now I have friends.”

  Isabelle hooked her arm around Hugo’s neck and pulled him into the embrace. He tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. He hastily patted Isabelle on the back, then extricated himself. She knew he wasn’t used to affection.

  “We better get going. We have to find a way to get Ella to safety and the maps to the king,” Hugo said. “And that’s going to become a lot harder once the sun is up.”

  “We’ll need an armed escort,” Tavi said hopelessly. “Our own regiment. No, make that an entire army.”

  Isabelle was quiet. She was slowly walking around Felix’s room, eyeing his shelves. His bureau. The mantel. Then she turned to the others and said, “We don’t need to find an army. We already have one.”

  “We do? Where is it?” Tavi asked.

  Isabelle picked up a carved wooden soldier from a shelf and held it out on her palm.

  “Right here.”

  Hugo blinked at the little soldier on Isabelle’s palm. He forced a smile.

  “You can lie down, you know. On Felix’s bed. If you’re tired, you can rest,” he said.

  Isabelle shot him a look. “I’m not tired. Or crazy, which is what you really mean. I’m serious. There’s a fairy queen. She comes and goes as a fox and lives in the hollow of the linden tree. She has strong magic.”

  “A fairy queen …” Hugo said, raising an eyebrow.

  “It’s true, Hugo,” Ella said. “She came to me one night when my heart was broken and asked me what I wanted most. I told her, and she helped me get it. How else do you think I got to the ball?”

  “I’ve seen that fox,” Felix said. “When I was a boy. Her fur is red like autumn leaves. She has deep green eyes.”

  “She turned mice into horses and a pumpkin into a coach,” said Ella.

  “She could enchant these carved soldiers and turn them into real soldiers. I know she could,” said Isabelle. “All we have to do is get them to the linden tree.”

  “But how?” Tavi asked, turning in a slow circle. “There are so many of them.”

  “Two thousand one hundred and fifty-eight, to be exact,” Felix said.

  “We would have to find cases or trunks to put them in. Do you have any?”

  “No, but we have plenty of coffins,” said Felix. “I bet two of them would get the job done.”

  “We could use Martin and the wagon to transport them,” Isabelle said. “We’d just have to unload the potatoes.”

  “Then let’s unload them,” Ella said decisively. “We have an enemy to defeat. A king and a country to save. And traitors to capture.” She smiled grimly. “And then hang, draw, and quarter.”

  Both of Hugo’s eyebrows shot up. He scratched under his cap. “You’re different, Ella. You’re not the girl I remember. I guess it’s true what they say. What doesn’t kill you—”

  “Makes you the queen of France,” Ella finished. “Let’s go,” she added, glancing out Felix’s window. “Hugo’s right. It’s going to be a lot harder to sneak two thousand soldiers to a fairy queen in broad daylight.”

  Felix opened the gates to the work yard, and Hugo backed the wagon into it as quickly as he could.

  Working together, the five unloaded the potatoes, heaping them on the ground. It was decided that they would load the coffins into the wagon first, then carry the wooden soldiers down from Felix’s room in crates, baskets, bedsheets—anything they could find.

  The coffins were simple, slender pine boxes, not terribly heavy. Felix and Isabelle picked the first one up by its rope handles, carried it out of the shop, and set it down on the wagon’s bed. Felix pushed it, trying to get it to slide in neatly under it seats, but it wouldn’t go. It seemed to be blocked by something. He was about to push it again just as Hugo and Tavi appeared, carrying the second coffin.

  “Wait! Felix, don’t!” Hugo cried. “You’ll let it out!”

  “Let what out?” Felix asked, confused.

  “The sweaty dead dog,” Hugo said as he and Tavi slid the second coffin into the wagon.

  “There’s a dead dog in the wagon?” Ella asked, confused.

  “No, it’s a cheese. Tavi invented it. It’s in a box under the seats,” Isabelle explained.

  “It smells so bad, I can’t get rid of it,” Hugo said. “Be careful, you really don’t want to knock the lid off.”

  He climbed into the wagon, shoved the wooden box over to the left side of the bed, then slid the first coffin in next to it. Isabelle pushed the second one in. They just fit.

  Everyone worked together to bring the soldiers downstairs. Soon, both coffins were full. As Felix was securing the lids, tapping a few nails into them to keep them from sliding during the trip, Isabelle went to the stables to see Nero. She would leave him there, hidden away, to keep him safe. If Cafard saw him, he would take him, and she did not want a traitor to have her horse.

  She scratched Nero’s ears, kissed his nose, and told him to be good. She didn’t know if they would make it to the Maison Douleur, or if she would see her beloved horse again after tonight. As if sensing her distress, Nero nudged at her with his nose. She kissed him again, then hurried away without looking back. Nero watched her go, blinking his huge, dark eyes; then he gave the stall door a good hard kick.

  The others, except for Felix, were already in the wagon by the time Isabelle rejoined them. She climbed in and settled herself on the back seat. Tavi and Ella were up front. Hugo, in the driver’s seat, guided Martin out of the work yard. Felix closed the gates, then swung up beside Isabelle.

  Hugo cracked the reins, and Martin trotted down the dark street. Isabelle looked up. The moon was still high, but the sky was beginning to lighten. Worry shriveled her insides.

  “Volkmar’s men are only a few miles away, and what are we doing?” she said, turning to Felix. “Hauling tiny wooden soldiers off to a magical fox who lives in a hollow inside a tree. That sounds like the craziest thing yet in a night full o
f crazy things. Ella says she told Tanaquill what her heart wanted. And Tanaquill granted it to her. Do you think it will work?”

  Felix looked at Ella, nestled in between Hugo and Tavi. Then he took Isabelle’s hand and held it.

  “Maybe it already has,” he said.

  The old farmer, bleary-eyed and grizzled, raised a hand in greeting.

  Hugo did the same, and their two wagons passed in silence.

  They’d made their way out of Saint-Michel without seeing another soul. Ever since they’d left the safety of Felix’s room, Isabelle had felt as if iron bands were wrapped around her chest. As they started toward the gentle hills that lay beyond the village, she finally felt like she could take a breath, as if they might actually make it to the Maison Douleur.

  Until Hugo swore and pointed up ahead of them. Isabelle could see the old church silhouetted on top of the hill in the thinning darkness. On the road next to it, riding fast, was a group of soldiers.

  “If we stay calm, we can get out of this,” Tavi said.

  “How? They’re going to recognize Ella right away,” Hugo said.

  He’s right, Isabelle thought. “Ella, change places with Felix,” she said. “They might not see you so well if you’re sitting in the back. Tavi, you come back here, too. We’ll put Ella between us.”

  They quickly rearranged themselves, but it wasn’t enough, and they knew it. Ella still shined like a star.

  Felix pulled a brightly printed handkerchief from his pocket. “Wrap your hair up,” he said.

  Hugo handed her his glasses. “Put these on, too.”

  Ella did as they bade her. The three girls were sitting on an old horse blanket that had been folded over to cushion the seat. Tavi pulled it out from under them and draped it around Ella’s shoulders. Isabelle spotted a clod of dirt by her feet. She picked it up, crushed it, then rubbed it on Ella’s soft hands, working it into her knuckles and nails so that they looked just like her and Tavi’s rough ones.

  “This might just work,” Tavi said.