Ella Enchanted - By Gail Carson Levine Page 0,15

patted it complacently. "Ella, you should give it to me. It would be a token of our friendship."

"We're not friends."

"Yes we are. I'm devoted to you. Olive likes you too, don't you, Ollie?"

Olive nodded solemnly.

"I believe you will give it to me if I say you must. Do so, Ella, for friendship's sake. You must."

No, I wouldn't. She couldn't have it. "You can have it." The words burst from me.

"Thank you. What a generous friend we have, Olive." She changed the subject.

"The servants were careless when they cleaned the coach. That dust ball is a disgrace. We shouldn't have to ride in such filth. Pick it up, Ella."

An order I liked. I grabbed the dust and ground it into her face. "It becomes you," I said.

But the satisfaction was fleeting.

8

HATTIE DIDN'T know about Lucinda and the curse, but she understood I always had to follow her orders. After I rubbed dust in her face, all she did was smile.

The smile meant that dust weighed little in the balance of her power.

I retreated to a corner of the coach and gazed out the window.

Hattie hadn't ordered me not to take the necklace back again. What if I lifted it over her large head? Or what if I yanked it off her neck? It would be better broken than owned by her.

I tried. I told my arms to move, told my hands to grasp. But the curse wouldn't let me. If someone else had ordered me to take it back, I would have had to.

But I couldn't will myself to reclaim it. So I made myself look at it, to become accustomed to the sight. While I stared, Hattie stroked the chain, gloating.

In a few minutes her eyes closed. Her mouth fell open, and she began to snore.

Olive crossed the carriage to sit next to me. "I want a present to show we're friends too," she said.

"Why don't you give me a gift instead?"

The furrows in her forehead deepened. "No. You give me."

An order. "What would you like?" I asked.

"I want money. Give me money."

As he'd promised, Father had given me a purse of silver KJs. I reached into my carpetbag and pulled out a coin. "Here you are. Now we're friends."

She spat on the coin and rubbed it to make it shine. "We're friends," she agreed. She crossed back to her former seat and brought the coin close to her eyes to study it.

I looked at the snoring Hattie. She was probably dreaming of ways to order me about. I looked at Olive, who was running the edge of the KJ over her forehead and down her nose. I began to long for finishing school. At least there they wouldn't be my only companions.

In a few minutes Olive joined Hattie in slumber. When I was certain both of them were soundly asleep, I dared to fetch Mandy's other present, the book of fairy tales, out of my bag. I turned away from the two of them, to hide the book and to catch the light from the carriage window.

When I opened it, instead of a fairy tale, I found an illustration of Mandy! She was dicing a turnip. Next to the turnip was the chicken I had watched her pluck that morning. She was crying. I had suspected she was fighting back tears when she hugged me.

The page blurred because my eyes filled with tears too. But I refused to cry in front of Hattie and Olive, even if they were asleep.

If Mandy had been in the coach with me, she would have hugged me and I could have cried as long as I liked. She would have patted my back and told me---

No. Those thoughts would make me cry. If Mandy were here, she'd tell me why it would be big, bad magic to turn Hattie into a rabbit. And I'd wonder again what fairies were good for.

That helped. I checked to make sure they were still sleeping; then I examined the next page. It showed a room that probably was in King Jerrold's castle, because Char was there and the crest of Kyrria was painted on the wall above a tapestry. Char was talking to three of the soldiers who had been in the ogres'

guard at the menagerie.

I puzzled about the meaning. Maybe an explanation would follow. I turned the page and found two more illustrations, neither one of Char or soldiers.

On the verso was a map of Frell. There was our manor, bearing the legend, "Sir Peter of