Ella Enchanted Read Free Page B

breath and ran on fear and rage.
    “What are you looking at?” Olive asked. She had finished eating.
    I started. I felt as if I’d been in the rug. “Nothing. Just the carpet.” I glanced at the rug again. An ordinary carpet with an ordinary design.
    “Your eyes were popping out.”
    “They looked like an ogre’s eyes,” Hattie said. “Buggy. But there, you look more normal now.”
    She never looked normal. She looked like a rabbit. A fat one, the kind Mandy liked to slaughter for stew. And Olive’s face was as blank as a peeled potato.
    “I don’t suppose your eyes ever pop out,” I said.
    “I don’t think so.” Hattie smiled complacently.
    “They’re too small to pop.”
    The smile remained, but now it seemed pasted on. “I forgive you, child. We in the peerage are forgiving. Your poor mother used to be known for her ill breeding too.”
    Mother used to be known. The past tense froze my tongue.
    “Girls!” Dame Olga bore down on us. “We must be going.” She hugged me, and my nose filled with the stink of spoiled milk.
    They left. Father was outside at the iron gate, saying goodbye to the rest of the guests. I went to Mandy in the kitchen.
    She was piling up dirty dishes. “Seems like those people didn’t eat for a week.”
    I put on an apron and pumped water into the sink. “They never tasted your food before.”
    Mandy’s cooking was better than anybody else’s. Mother and I used to try her recipes sometimes. We’d follow the instructions exactly and the dish would be delicious, but never as wonderful as when Mandy cooked it.
    Somehow, it reminded me of the rug. “The carpet in the hall with the hunters and the bear, you know the one? Something funny happened to me when I looked at it before.”
    “Oh, that silly thing. You shouldn’t pay attention to that old rug.” She turned to stir a pot of soup.
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s just a fairy joke.”
    A fairy rug! “How do you know?”
    “It belonged to Lady.” Mandy always called Mother “Lady.”
    That wasn’t an answer. “Did my fairy godmother give it to her?”
    “A long time ago.”
    “Did Mother ever tell you who my fairy godmother is?”
    “No, she didn’t. Where’s your father?”
    “He’s outside, saying goodbye. Do you know anyway? Even though she never told you?”
    “Know what?”
    “Who my fairy godmother is.”
    “If she’d wanted you to know, your mother would have told you.”
    “She was going to. She promised. Please tell, Mandy.”
    “I am.”
    “You are not telling. Who is it?”
    “Me. Your fairy godmother is me. Here, taste the carrot soup. It’s for dinner, How is it?”

CHAPTER 4
    MY MOUTH opened automatically. The spoon descended and a hot — but not burning — swallow poured in. Mandy had gotten the carrots at their sweetest, carrotiest best. Weaving in and out of the carrots were other flavors: lemon, turtle broth, and a spice I couldn’t name. The best carrot soup in the world, magical soup that nobody but Mandy could make.
    The rug. The soup. This was fairy soup. Mandy was a fairy!
    But if Mandy was a fairy, why was Mother dead?
    “You’re not a fairy.”
    “Why not?”
    “If you were, you would have saved her.”
    “Oh, sweetie, I would have if I could. If she’d left the hair in my curing soup, she’d be well today.”
    “You knew? Why did you let her?”
    “I didn’t know till she was too sick. We can’t stop dying.”
    I collapsed on the stool next to the stove, sobbing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. Then Mandy’s arms were around me, and I was crying into the ruffles along the neck of her apron, where I had cried so many times before for smaller reasons.
    A drop landed on my finger. Mandy was crying too. Her face was red and blotchy.
    “I was her fairy godmother too,” Mandy said. “And your grandmother’s.” She blew her nose.
    I pushed out of Mandy’s arms for a new look at her. She couldn’t be a fairy. Fairies were thin and young and beautiful.