Ella Enchanted - By Gail Carson Levine Page 0,18

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."

10

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,