Ella Enchanted - By Gail Carson Levine Page 0,38

the satisfaction of using my new state. However, Lucinda wouldn't have known, and I was denied the joy of obeying.

* * *

THE NEXT afternoon we prepared the broth for a fish stew with wild onions --

dinner for my guest. I was slicing the onions when a boy brought the mushrooms Father had promised.

Their carton bore the label "torlin kerru." "Kerru" meant mushrooms, but I didn't know the meaning of "torlin."

Examining the box, Mandy frowned. "Sweet, would you look up that 'torlin'

word for me?"

" 'Torlin (tor'lin), n., justice; fairness,' " I read in my dictionary. " 'Tor'lin ker'ru, justice mushrooms; induce feelings of liking and love in those who eat them; used in elvish courts of law to settle civil disputes."

"I'll torlin kerru him!"

"It doesn't matter," I said.

"It matters to me." Mandy yanked on her boots and flung her cloak over her shoulders. "I'll be back soon. Please keep the broth from coming to grief."

I stirred the soup and thought about our dinner guest. I would be glad to marry him, but would I be glad afterward? He might be cruel or dull-witted or mad.

Father wouldn't concern himself with my happiness, only with his own.

If he were terrible, Mandy could order me to be contented anyway. Or perhaps I could persuade my husband to issue the command.

Chock landed on my shoulder and pecked lightly at my ear. "!chocH !jdgumkwu azzoogH"

Lovely! An order. I had to kiss him. I turned my head and managed to kiss a wing as he flew to perch on a high shelf.

"!jdgumkwu azzoogH" he squawked again.

I approached the shelf and extended my hand. The bird obligingly hopped on. I brought him close to my face, but before I could touch my lips to a feather, he flew away to the top of a window shutter. I ran for the chair so I could climb up to him, but as soon as I was high enough, he flew off.

When Mandy returned half an hour later, I had a spoon for stirring the broth in one hand and a strainer for catching Chock in the other, and I was breathless from running from one to the other. The curse must have known I was trying to obey, because my complaints hadn't started; I wasn't dizzy or faint or in pain, but I was weeping. Chock wouldn't let me obey and be happy.

"Ella! What's afoot?"

"A-wing! What's a-wing," I corrected, starting to laugh through my tears. "Chock won't let me kiss him."

"Don't kiss the filthy creature," Mandy ordered, releasing me.

"!jdgumkwu azzoogH"

"He did it again," I said.

"Don't kiss him."

",pwoch ech jdgumkwu azzoogH" I told Chock, hoping he'd adopt my addition. I repeated it. ".pwoch ech jdgumkwu azzoogH"

He liked it. ".pwoch ech jdgumkwu azzoogH"

Much better. The new version was "Don't kiss me." I'd be delighted every time he said it.

After we put the kitchen to rights, we began to replace the torlin kerru with innocent mushrooms.

"Maybe I should eat the elvish ones."

"I don't want you hoodwinked even if you don't care."

Father came into the kitchen. "How is our dinner faring?" he asked genially.

Then his face darkened. "Why aren't you using my mushrooms, Mandy?"

She dropped a quick curtsy. "I don't know these elvish ones, sir. Maybe they're not fine enough."

I didn't want her to be blamed. "I told her to exchange them when she wasn't sure."

"I sent you to finishing school so you wouldn't be a cook's helper, Ella. Use the elvish mushrooms, Mandy."

19

MY GUEST'S name was known to me. He was Edmund, Earl of Wolleck, uncle of Hattie's friend Blossom, the uncle whose marriage she feared because it might cause her disinheritance. I suppose I should have been amused, but I was too lost in worry that the uncle would be as unpleasant as the niece.

I waited for him in the study, a half-finished square of embroidery spread across my lap. I had barely seated myself when Father opened the door.

"This is my daughter, Eleanor," he said.

The earl bowed. I stood and curtsied.

He was older than Father, with shoulder-length curled gray hair. His face was as thin as a greyhound's, with a long nose above a drooping mustache. He had a hound's sad eyes too -- brown with white showing above the lower lid and bags of skin below.

I sat again and he bent over my handiwork. "Your stitches are neat and so tiny.

My mother made the smallest stitches too. You could barely see them."

When he spoke, I saw teeth as small as a baby's, as though he'd never gotten a second set.