Just Ella (15 page)

I shouldered my pack and stepped out the back door, pulling it shut behind me. But the latch jammed, probably because of my picking the lock. I didn't feel particularly guilty
about that, and I could easily have walked away. But something made me want to shut the door good and tight on Lucille and the Step-Evils. I let my pack slide to the ground and swung the door open again, to jimmy the knob from the inside.

That's when I heard the footsteps.

“So,” Lucille jeered. “The
princess
has returned.”

I whirled around in a panic.

“You never wake up at night,” I protested.

Lucille smirked.

“So how many nights did you spend sneaking out to visit paramours? I was right—you never were anything but a piece of gutter trash. And now that prince has used you and cast you aside, just as I predicted. At least my
real
daughters listen to their mother.”

“I ran away,” I said. “I—”

Lucille looked me up and down, her glittering eyes taking in the dirt on my face and in my hair. I held my breath, fearing she'd comment upon Corimunde's dress, but evidently it was too dark for her to notice. And she was too caught up in her mockery of my morals.

“Even you're not a big enough fool to run away from a prince,” she sneered. “You'll have to come up with a cleverer story than that. But it matters not. Everyone will know what happened. You'll be the talk of the village tomorrow.” She sighed, with a pretense of compassion. “Well, only
a saint would take you back, under these circumstances, but I have been looking for a servant. . . . You may begin by fetching me my stomach elixir. That's what I came down here for in the first place. Something at supper didn't agree with me.”

My jaw dropped. She wasn't even curious. I almost felt sorry for her. Her life was so small. If I told her everything, she wouldn't be able to grasp it.

“And then,” Lucille continued, “you may scrub the kitchen floor. I want it clean by morning.”

“I am not your servant. I will never be your servant again. I hope you and Corimunde and Griselda die in your own filth,” I said.

And then I turned and ran, stooping to grab my bag as I zoomed by.

“Stop! Wait! Is that something of mine you're taking? Thief! Help, thief!”

I ran faster, the bag thumping against my back. Lucille made no attempt to follow me—I knew she wouldn't—but she screamed louder. “Stop! Thief! Help! Runaway servant!” I prayed that the neighbors were all sleeping soundly or, at least, wouldn't feel like rousing themselves for Lucille. That was a fairly safe bet.

I crashed through the back gate and into the woods beyond. I stepped into the creek that ran through our village and listened, my heart pounding. Lucille's shouts were distant now, and there were no answering bellows. I heard mostly crickets.

Trembling, I pulled my royal gown from my bag and let it
slide into the water. It caught on a rock, but then slithered forward, shimmering gold in the moonlight. The color reminded me of Prince Charming's hair. I tried not to think about how happy I'd expected to be, ever after, with everything shining around me. I watched the dress until it floated out of sight.

“Go far north,” I whispered. “Cover for me.” It suddenly struck me that north was the way to Domulia, the country the palace officials pretended I was from. Maybe someone had actually believed the story and would look in that direction first. If they found the dress, it might buy me enough time to get where I was really going.

I turned and began walking south, toward the Sualan border.

That first night was the hardest. I knew I had to cover far more territory than they'd expect me to, and I'd already wasted half the night. At first I fretted, “Will Jed really take me in at the refugee camp?” But after a few miles, my mind shut off, and all I could do was concentrate on walking—convincing exhausted muscles they would survive another step. And another. And another . . .

I stepped out of the creek when it turned westward, four miles south of my village. After hours in the water, my feet were numb, but surely the water had covered my tracks. I worried about the muddy footprints I left along the creek and stopped to wash them out behind me. Then I skulked along fence rows and forests until I saw the first glow of dawn on the horizon. I was on the edge of another village then, much too close for my taste. I could hear cocks beginning to crow, horses neighing in their stalls. I circled wide, stumbling through wheat fields. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Did I dare hide in the wheat? It wasn't
harvesttime yet, and why else would anyone investigate the field? I looked behind me at the trail of bent wheat plants. Oops. I found a path where I could leave no tracks and ran along it.

Finally, just as the sun appeared, I came to a ramshackle barn that obviously had been abandoned years before. I shoved my way in, praying for soft hay. There was none, only a row of barrels. I rolled one over on its side and crawled into it, pulling my dress around my feet.

I fell asleep instantly and didn't wake until dusk.

I followed that pattern—traveling by night, sleeping by day—for so many days, I lost count. I slept in haystacks, corncribs, caves, and once, when no better option showed up, on a tree limb. That choice almost proved disastrous, because I started rolling off the limb whenever I nodded off. I didn't get much sleep that day, and was stumbly and stupid the following night. But mostly I slept well. My body didn't protest the reversal of day and night at all, probably because I'd been working by night in the dungeon, as well.

By the third night, I began waking long before dusk, which allowed me to work on the second part of my plan: studying the medical and agricultural books. In my mind I played over and over again the scene of me arriving at Jed's refugee camp. I wouldn't beg. I would state my case calmly and clearly: “It is a risk to you to have me here, but I can be very useful too. I can treat the wounded people; I can teach them how to grow more food. And nobody will recognize me now.”

I was sure of that. I left burrs in my hair and dirt on my face, like camouflage. And Corimunde's dress—which did, indeed, sport roses the size of cabbages—quickly grew so ragged and dirty, the pattern was barely visible.

Nobody saw me. I saw nobody, except at a great distance, in the dark. And then I always hid or got off the path to avoid them. By day I sometimes heard voices. I always woke in a panic, fearing they belonged to the king's soldiers, come to find me. But each time I was wrong, and I fell back to sleep listening to children playing games, women gossiping as they picked elderberries, men boasting as they scythed hay. The voices made me feel lonelier still. I had been an outsider at the castle, I had been an outsider with the Step-Evils; even as a child, happy with my father, I had known we were different from all the other families. Would I ever find where I belonged?

Sometimes, walking through the night, I thought back on the choices I'd made and where they'd led me, and somehow I did not regret any of them. Promising to marry the prince had turned out to be a bad idea, but life in the castle had certainly been an experience. I'd met Mary, who was the truest friend I could ever hope for, and I'd met Jed, who . . .

I didn't let myself examine my feelings for Jed. All I could hope for was that he'd save my skin. Whenever I started thinking about him, I forced myself to concentrate on reviewing medical treatments. “How do you treat snakebite?” I quizzed myself. “What's the best way to set a broken arm?”

But as the days passed, I longed to have someone to talk to about my life: past, present, and ever after. At first I thought of Mary, who always listened so devotedly, but listening wasn't all I wanted. I wanted advice. I wanted someone older and wiser. More and more, I wished that, before Lucille had caught me that night I escaped from the castle, I'd had the sense to go next door and talk to my former neighbor, Mrs. Branson, who in the midst of taking care of her brood had given me all the mothering I'd ever gotten. “What is love, anyway?” I wanted to ask. I'd obviously been wrong about what I felt for Prince Charming, since it had soured so soon. Would I recognize real love if I ever found it? Did I even want it? It seemed easier to go through life the way my father had between my mother's death and Lucille's arrival: devoted to knowledge, not emotion. (How do you treat snakebite? What's the best way to set a broken arm?) But didn't I want my life to be something more than easy?

You'd think, with all the time I had to ponder everything, I'd have come up with some answers. But all I accomplished was to walk by night, sleep by day, and learn medicine and agriculture.

And then came the day I heard soldiers.

At sunup that day, I had chosen a hiding place in a meadow along the road. I knew it wasn't the safest spot, but nothing else was available, and the grass was so tall, it didn't look like anyone ever scythed it. I'd just hoped no one picked that day for the first cutting.

Judging by the position of the sun, it was just after noon when I woke to the tramping of feet.

“Company, halt!” Dozens of feet pounded the ground at once. “Fall out!”

Their sounds weren't so organized after that. The soldiers seemed to be stomping all over the place. I froze as I heard some of them scrambling up the bank near me.

“. . . thought they'd march us straight to Suala all this morning—”

“This probably is Suala now. We probably lost half the territory while we were away.”

So these soldiers weren't looking for me. They were simply on their way to fight Suala. But why were they climbing toward me?

Pssss.
I heard the sound of several bladders being
relieved at once. Oh. I was safe as long as I didn't get wet.

I hoped the soldiers would go back to the road when they were done, but they didn't. They flopped down on the ground nearby and began ordering people around.

“See, I told you there'd be peasants around here,” one muttered. Then he shouted, “Peasant, bring us a feast.”

“F-feast?” a trembling voice replied. “We have no feast, only common food, and not much of that. You soldiers have taken it all—”

“Feed us or else!”

I don't know what the soldier did—drew a sword? grabbed the peasant by the neck?—but the peasant immediately began stammering, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

The soldiers laughed.

In a short while, I began to smell the irresistible aroma of cooking meat. Since I'd been living on stale bread, hard cheese, and the odds and ends of fruit I could pick up along the way, my mouth began watering almost unbearably. It was torture to listen to the soldiers smacking their lips and chewing and belching. Finally, though, I heard one proclaim, “Aye, peasant, I knew that you could find a way to feed us. Fine vittles, I must say.”

“Ought to be,” the peasant mumbled. “That was all we had stored for the winter.”

“Oh?” the solder said, as if he truly cared not. “Then I suppose we owe you something. How about a story?”

“A story?” Perhaps only I could tell how hard the peasant was trying not to sound scornful.

“Aye. We have been at the prince's wedding—”

It was a good thing I was already lying down, because that statement would have knocked me to the ground. What could he mean? I knew Prince Charming was the only prince around. How could he have found someone else so fast? I didn't love him, and was glad not to be marrying him, but still . . .

Evidently one of the peasant women was practically as stunned as I was.

“You haven't!” she declared. “Bunch of filthy fighting men like yourselves wouldn't be invited to any royal wedding.”

“Were too!” the soldier countered. “We were the royal battalion. One of them, anyway. There were one hundred rows of us marching with the prince's carriage and another hundred with the princess's.”

“Did you see the princess?” the woman asked wistfully. “Was she beautiful?”

I peeked through the grass and saw the woman asking the questions. She was old and toothless, her hair hidden in a kerchief, her shoulders stooped with years of hard labor. She couldn't have been waiting for the soldier's answer any more eagerly than I was.

“We were too far back,” the soldier said. “And she had a veil over her face.”

“There were those flowers too,” another soldier reminded him.

“Yeah, they had these bunches of flowers all over the place, blocking our view.”

Not to be deterred, the woman asked, “What kind of flowers?”

“How am I to know? I'm a soldier, not a gardener.”

“Orchids,” someone else contributed.

The first soldier wasn't done speaking.

“But I'll tell you, even if I didn't see her, I know that princess must be about the most beautiful woman ever. Did you hear the story about her? She was just this commoner living with her cruel stepmother and stepsisters after her father died. And then the prince gave a ball and the stepmother wouldn't let this girl go.”

I got chills. I could hardly listen.

“Cinderella, everyone called her, because she had to sleep in the cinders and was filthy all the time—”

That's not true! I wanted to protest. Only Corimunde and Griselda called me that. And it was Cinders-Ella, anyway. And I took baths more often than either of them, so I was hardly filthy. . . . I pressed my lips together to make myself stay silent.

“So, after her stepmother and stepsisters left for the ball, Cinderella lay weeping in the ashes, and suddenly her fairy godmother appeared.”

I lay numb for the rest of the story. I'd never heard all the details before, only whispered bits and pieces at the palace and the abbreviated tale Jed had told me. In its entirety, the story was even more ridiculous than I had supposed. Why in the world would I have had mice as friends? And if I already had a horse, why would my supposed fairy godmother bother turning the mice into horses? The absurdities went on and on.