Ella: an Everland Ever After Tale Read Free

to forget he married her mother, and forget about her. Ella figured that it was more likely because if she stayed out of town and out of the townspeople’s memory, there was no one to keep her from cooking and cleaning and slaving for him and his spoiled daughters. It got lonely, but with no one in town to miss—and no one to miss her—it didn’t much matter.
    But Ella hadn’t been lying to her family; she really did need to be the one to pick out the trimmings for these particular dresses. Her sisters had ordered the fashion magazines, and picked out the material themselves on their twice-weekly trips into Everland. She’d been slaving over the three dresses for weeks now.
    These three gowns had to be perfect. This was the year, she vowed. The year that her creations finally got Eunice and Mabel noticed by some man, and married. They were desperate to be courted, and Ella was desperate to get them out of her hair. At nineteen and twenty-one, they were the belles of the area—to hear Sibyl tell it while her sisters preened. But so far no young beaus had stepped forward.
    This year, Ella planned to make them gorgeous, elaborate dresses, and fill their picnic baskets with as many delicious concoctions as she could manage. Some man in the Everland area would bid on their baskets and start courting her sisters, or she’d pull her own hair out.
    Ella would get her stepsisters married, by God.
     
     

     
     
    Everland had certainly grown since the last time she’d been to town. Of course, that’d been several years ago, and only to buy new slippers, so it was no wonder that no one recognized her. She didn’t recognize any of them, and just barely remembered the layout of some of the shops. With the railroad spur, hundreds of new people must come through Everland each year, and the town had expanded accordingly.
    Unfortunately, though, the stores were having trouble keeping up with the rush. With the Independence celebration so near, the mercantiles had been picked over. Both shops she’d visited that morning had only a few fabric trimmings left. She’d picked up a lovely half-bolt of white lace for Mabel’s pale pink confection—Papa spared no expense when it came to his princesses—but she still needed something for Sibyl and a fringe for Eunice.
    There was one place left to try. Mrs. Pedlar over at the dry goods store had reluctantly sent her this way, saying that she didn’t think there’d be any good fabric at all here, because the owner was a man, and what did he know? But Ella was desperate; she wasn’t likely to get another trip into Everland.
    So now she stood in the dusty street in her sturdy boots, looking up at the porch in front of the little storefront. The hand-painted sign proudly proclaimed it “Crowne’s Mercantile” and there were three dogs stretched out on the wooded boards. One—a shaggy mountain of an animal—panted in the heat, but the other two appeared to be sleeping. As she stepped onto the porch, though, they all lifted their heads, and one of them whined slightly.
    Mr. Heyward spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the dirt road behind her, and Ella winced at his disgusting manners. Her stepfather’s right-hand man had ridden into town beside her on his imposing black horse—which kept trying to nudge her for some reason—and had been following her around to the stores, waiting outside. She hated the man, and for more than just his casual cruelty and his lewd smirks. She hated him because he was always the one who Papa set to watching her, if she had to be out of the house. Having him beside her was the ultimate proof of her stepfather’s power over her life, and that’s why she really hated him.
    But at least Papa had let her come to town, even if it did mean putting up with Mr. Heyward’s lewd smirks, bad breath, embarrassingly naughty jokes, and the way he was always looking at her like she was some kind of tasty morsel. She was having an adventure, by Heaven, and nothing