On the verso was a map of Frell. There was our manor, bearing the legend, “Sir Peter of Frell.” My fingers traced the route to the old castle and on to the menagerie. There was the south road out of Frell, the road we were on now, far beyond the map’s boundaries, far beyond the manor of Sir Peter of Frell.
The right-hand illustration showed Father’s coach, followed by three mule-drawn wagons loaded with goods for trade. Father sat atop the coach with the driver, who was plying his whip. Father leaned into the wind and grinned.
What would the book show me next?
A real fairy tale this time, “The Shoemaker and the Elves.” In this version, though, each elf had a personality, and I came to know them better than the shoemaker. And I finally understood why the elves disappeared after the shoemaker made clothes for them. They went away to help a giant rid herself of a swarm of mosquitoes, too small for her to see. Although the elves left a thank-you note for the shoemaker, he put his coffee cup down on it, and it stuck to the cup’s damp bottom.
The story made sense now.
“Your book must be fascinating. Let me see it,” Hattie said.
I jumped. If she took this from me too, I’d kill her. The book got heavier as I handed it over.
Her eyes widened as she read. “You enjoy this? ‘The Life Cycle of the Centaur Tick’?” She turned pages. “‘Gnomish Silver Mining in Hazardous Terrain’?”
“Isn’t it interesting?” I said, my panic subsiding. “You can read for a while. If we’re going to be friends, we should have the same interests.”
“You can share my interests, dear.” She returned the book.
Our journey taught me what to expect from Hattie.
At the inn on our first night, she informed me I had taken the space in their carriage that would otherwise have been occupied by their maid.
“But we shan’t suffer, because you can take her place.” She cocked her head to one side. “No, you are almost noble. It would be an insult to make a servant of you. You will be my lady-in-waiting, and I shall share you with my sister sometimes. Ollie, is there something Ella can do to help you?”
“No! I can dress and undress myself,” Olive said defiantly.
“No one said you can’t.” Hattie sat on the bed we were all to share. She lifted her feet. “Kneel down and take my slippers off for me, Ella. My toes ache.”
Without comment I removed them. My nose filled with the ripe smell of her feet. I carried the slippers to the window and tossed them out.
Hattie yawned. “You’ve only made extra work for yourself. Go down and fetch them.”
Olive rushed to the window. “Your slippers fell into a bucket of slops!”
I had to carry the stinking slippers back to our room, but Hattie had to wear them until she was able to get fresh ones from her trunk. After that, she thought more carefully about her commands.
At breakfast the next morning she pronounced the porridge inedible. “Don’t eat it, Ella. It will make you sick.” She loaded her spoon with oatmeal.
Steam rose from the bowl before me, and I caught the scent of cinnamon. Mandy always put cinnamon in her porridge too.
“Why are you eating it if it’s bad?” Olive asked her sister. “I’m hungry.”
“Yours looks all right. I’m eating mine even though it’s vile”—her tongue licked a speck of cereal off the corner of her mouth—“because I need nourishment to take charge on our journey.”
“You’re not in ch—” Olive began.
“You don’t fancy your porridge, miss?” The innkeeper sounded worried.
“My sister’s stomach is queasy,” Hattie said. “You may take her bowl away.”
“I’m not her sister,” I said as the innkeeper disappeared into the kitchen.
Hattie laughed, scraping her spoon around her empty bowl for the last remnants of porridge.
The innkeeper was back with a plate of thick brown bread studded with nuts and raisins. “Perhaps this will tempt the lass’s stomach,” he said.
I managed to take a big bite before a lady at the next table called him away.
“Put it down, Ella.” Hattie broke off a corner of the bread and tasted it. “It’s much too rich.”
“Rich food is good for me,” Olive said, reaching across the table.
Between them my breakfast disappeared in four bites.
That swallow of bread was the last food I had on our three-day trip, except for Tonic. Hattie would have deprived me of it too, except she sampled it first. And then I relished her nauseated expression when she swallowed.
CHAPTER NINE
We passed through rich farmland on the final day of our journey to Jenn, the town where our finishing school was located. The day was hazy and warm, and I was almost too hot to be hungry. Hattie had energy for only one command: to fan her.
“Fan me too,” Olive said. She had worked out that if Hattie told me to do something, I would do it, and if she directed me to do the same thing, I would do that too. Hattie hadn’t explained my obedience to her. She didn’t bother to explain much to the slow-thinking Olive, and she must have enjoyed keeping the delicious secret to herself.
My arms ached. My stomach rumbled. I stared out the window at a flock of sheep and wished for a diversion that would take my mind away from lamb and lentil salad. My wish was granted instantly as the coach took off in a mad gallop.
“Ogres!” the coachman yelled. A cloud of dust hid the road behind us. Through it I made out a band of ogres, kicking up the dust as they chased us.
But we were outdistancing them. The cloud was receding.
“Why do you run from your friends?” one of them called. It was the sweetest voice I had ever heard. “We bear gifts of your hearts’ desires. Riches, love, eternal life …”
Heart’s desire. Mother! The ogres would bring her back from death. Why were we tearing away from everything we most wanted?
“Slow down,” Hattie ordered unnecessarily. The coachman had already reined in the horses.
The ogres were only yards behind. Untouched by their magic, the sheep were baa-ing and bleating their fear. Briefly their noise covered the honeyed words and the spell broke. I remembered that the ogres couldn’t revive Mother. The horses were again whipped to a gallop.
But the ogres would be beyond the sheep in a minute and we’d be at their mercy again. I shouted to Hattie and Olive and to the coachman and footmen. “Yell so you can’t hear them.”
The coachman understood first and joined my voice with his, shouting words I’d never heard before. Then Hattie began. “Eat me last! Eat me last!” she shrieked.
But it was Olive who saved us. Her wordless roar drowned out thought. I don’t know how she drew breath; the sound was unending. It continued as we passed the outlying homes of Jenn, while the ogres faded from sight and while I recovered from my fright.
“Quiet, Ollie,” Hattie said. “Nobody is going to be eaten. You’re giving me a headache.”
But Olive didn’t hush until the coachman stopped the carriage, came inside with us, and slapped her smartly across the face.
“Sorry, miss,” he said, and popped back out.
Finishing school was in an ordinary wooden house. Except for its enormous ornamental shrubs pruned into the shapes of wide-skirted maidens, it might have been the home of any not-so-prosperous merchant.
I hoped the lunch portions were generous.
The door opened as we drove up, and an erect, gray-haired lady strutted down the walkway to our carriage.
“Welcome, young ladies.” She swept into the smoothest curtsy I’d ever seen. We curtsied in return.
She waved a hand at me. “But who is this?”
I spoke quickly, before Hattie could explain me in a way I didn’t want to be explained.
“I’m Ella, madam. My father is Sir Peter of Frell. He wrote a letter.” From my carpetbag I extracted Father’s letter and the purse he’d given me.
She tucked the letter and the purse (after weighing it exp
ertly in her palm) into her apron pocket.
“What a lovely surprise. I am Madame Edith, headmistress of your new home. Welcome to our humble establishment.” She curtsied again.
I wished she’d stop. My right knee cracked when I went down.
“We just had lunch.”
So much for generous portions.
“And we are sitting down to our embroidery. The young ladies are anxious to meet you, and it’s never too soon to start being finished.”
She ushered us into a large sunny room. “Young ladies,” she announced, “here are three new friends for you.”
A roomful of maidens rose, curtsied, then resumed their seats. Each one wore a pink gown with a yellow hair ribbon. My gown was stained and wrinkled from the journey, and my hair was probably limp and unkempt.
“Back to work, ladies,” Madame Edith said. “Sewing Mistress will help the new pupils.”
I lowered myself into a chair near the door and stared defiantly at the elegance around me. I met the eyes of a girl about my age. She smiled hesitantly. Maybe my look softened, because her smile grew and she winked.
Sewing Mistress approached, bearing a needle, an assortment of colored thread, and a round of white linen marked with a design of flowers. I was to follow the outline and stitch the flowers in thread. The cloth could then cover a pillow or the back of a chair.
After she explained what to do, Sewing Mistress left me, assuming I would know how to do it. But I had never before held a needle. Although I watched the other girls, I could not thread it. I struggled for a quarter hour till Sewing Mistress rushed to my side. “The child has been raised by ogres or worse!” she exclaimed, snatching it away from me. “Hold it delicately. It’s not a spear. One brings the thread to it.” She threaded the needle with green thread and returned it to me.
I held it delicately, as ordered.
She left my side, and I stared stupidly at my task. Then I stuck the needle into the outline of a rose. My head ached from lack of food.
“You have to knot the end of the thread and start underneath.” The speaker was the lass who had winked at me. She had pulled her chair next to mine. “And Sewing Mistress will ridicule you if you sew a green rose. Roses have to be red or pink, or yellow if you’re daring.”
A pink gown similar to the one she wore was spread across her lap. She bent her head over it to make a tiny stitch.
Her dark hair was plaited into many braids that were gathered and woven into a knot high on her head. Her skin was the color of cinnamon with a tint of raspberry in her cheeks (I couldn’t help thinking of food). Her lips curved up naturally, giving her a pleased and contented air.
Her name was Areida, and her family lived in Amonta, a city just over the border in Ayortha. She spoke with an Ayorthaian accent, smacking her lips after the letter m and pronouncing her l’s as y’s.
“Abensa utyu anja ubensu.” I hoped this was Ayorthaian for “I’m pleased to meet you.” I had learned it from a parrot.
She smiled at me ecstatically. “Ubensu ockommo Ayortha?”
“I only know a few words,” I confessed.
She was miserably disappointed. “It would have been so nice to have someone to talk to in my language.”
“You could teach me.”
“Your accent is good,” she said doubtfully. “But Writing Mistress teaches Ayorthaian to everyone, and no one has picked it up at all.”
“I have a knack for languages.”
She started to teach me right then. Once heard, always remembered is the way with languages and me. By the end of an hour I was forming short sentences. Areida was delighted.
“Utyu ubensu evtame oyjento?” I asked. (“Do you like finishing school?”)
She shrugged.
“You don’t? Is it terrible?” I asked, reverting to Kyrrian.
A shadow fell across my neglected sewing. Sewing Mistress picked up my pillow cover and announced dramatically, “Three stitches in all this time. Three vast, messy stitches. Like three teeth in a toothless gum. Go to your room and stay there until it is time for bed. No supper for you tonight.”
My stomach growled so loudly that the whole room must have heard it. Hattie smirked at me. She couldn’t have planned better herself.
I wouldn’t add to her pleasure. “I’m not hungry,” I announced.
“Then you may do without breakfast as well, for your impertinence.”
CHAPTER TEN
A maid showed me to a corridor lined with doors. Each one was painted a different pastel color and had a card affixed to it announcing the name of the room. We passed the Lime Room, the Daisy Room, and the Opal Room and stopped before the Lavender Room. The maid opened the door.
For a moment I forgot my hunger. I was in a cloud of light purple. Some of the purples blushed faintly pink, others were tinted pale blue, but there was no other color.
The curtains were streamers, undulating from the breeze made by the door closing behind me. Beneath my feet was a hooked rug in the design of a huge violet. In a corner stood a clay chamber pot, disguised as a decorative cabbage. The five beds were swathed in a gauzy fabric. The five bureaus were painted with wavy stripes of pale and paler lavender.
I wanted to throw myself on a bed and cry about being so hungry and about everything else, but these were not beds onto which one could throw oneself. A purple chair was placed next to one of the two windows. I sank into it.
If I didn’t succumb to starvation, I would be here for a long time, with hateful mistresses and with Hattie ordering me about. I stared out the window at Madame Edith’s garden until exhaustion and hunger produced a kind of stupor in me. In a while, I slept.
“Here, Ella. You can eat this.”
An urgent whisper pushed its way into my dream about roasted pheasant stuffed with chestnuts.
Someone shook my shoulder. “Wake up. Ella, wake up.”
An order. I was awake.
Areida thrust a roll into my hands. “It’s all I could get. Eat it before the others come in.”
In two swallows I ate the soft white roll, more air than sustenance. But more sustenance than I’d had in days.
“Thank you. Do you sleep in here too?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
The door opened and three maidens entered.
“Look! Queer ducks flock together.” The speaker was the tallest pupil in the school. She pronounced her l’s as y’s, mocking Areida’s accent.
“Ecete iffibensi asura edanse evtame oyjento?” I asked Areida. (“Is this how they behave at finishing school?”)
“Otemso iffibensi asura ippiri.” (“Sometimes they are much worse.”)
“Are you from Ayortha too?” the tall maiden asked me.
“No, but Areida is teaching me the beautiful Ayorthaian language. In Ayorthaian, you are an ‘ibwi unju.’” It only meant “tall girl.” I didn’t know any insults in Ayorthaian. However, Areida was laughing, which made it seem the worst of epithets.
I laughed too. Areida collapsed on top of me, and together we shook the purple chair.
Madame Edith, the headmistress, bustled in. “Young ladies! What do I see?”
Areida leaped up, but I remained seated. I couldn’t stop laughing.
“My chairs are not made to take such abuse. And young ladies do not sit two to a seat. Do you hear me? Ella! Stop your unseemly laughter.”
I stopped mid giggle.
“That’s better. Since it’s your first day here, I shall excuse your behavior and trust that it will have improved tomorrow.” Madame Edith turned to the others. “Into your nightdresses, young ladies. The Shores of Sleep are approaching.”
Areida and I exchanged glances. It was very cheering to have a friend.
Everyone else reached the Shores of Sleep, but I remained oceans away. I had been given a nightdress so covered with bows and frills that I couldn’t lie flat comfortably.
I slipped out of bed and opened my carpetbag. If I couldn’t sleep, I could read
. Madame Edith thought fear of the dark was to be expected in young ladies, so a lamp was left burning.
My book opened to a letter from Mandy.
Dear Ella,
This morning I baked scones. Bertha and Nathan and I will eat them for a snack before we go to bed. But I baked two extra. We’ll have to divide yours and eat them too.
I promised myself I wouldn’t trouble you by saying how much I miss you, and see how I start.
That parrot man, name of Simon, came here today with one of his birds to give you. It speaks Gnomic and Elfian. He said it wasn’t fine enough for the menagerie, but you might like it. He told me what to feed it. I never thought I’d be cook to a parrot.
I wish it would stop talking once in a while. I wonder if I have a recipe for parrot stew. Don’t worry, sweet, I would never cook your present.
Yesterday, you had a grander visitor, and received a bigger gift than a bird. The prince himself came to see you, leading a centaur colt. When I told him you were away from home, he wanted to know where you’d gone and when you’d be back. And when he heard you were at finishing school, he was indignant. He demanded to know why you needed to be finished since there was nothing wrong with you to start with. I couldn’t answer him because I’d like to ask that father of yours the same question.
I did tell him we had nowhere to keep a growing centaur. He’s a little beauty, but what can I do with him? Your prince said he’d raise him for you. He asked me to tell you the colt’s name, Apple. That made me remember my manners, and I gave him his name to eat before he left with the prince.
Speaking of leaving, your father departed the same day you did. Said he was off to the greenies, which I gathered was his disrespectful name for the elves. Said not to expect him back anytime soon.
I wish you were coming home soon. Bertha and Nathan send their love, and I send mine, by the bushel, by the barrel, by the tun.
From your old cook,
Mandy
P.S. Drink your Tonic.
I closed the book, and whispered to its spine, “Don’t erase the letter, please.” Then I drank my Tonic.
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