No one ever talked to Little Ella because no one could ever get her name straight. Was it Little Mozzarella? Or Little Chinchella? Little Fineyoungfella? Who could remember? Because her name was so confusing it was easier to ignore her, and so everyone pretty much left her alone.
She lived in a cottage on the edge of the Grey Forest with her uncle, a poor carpetbagger. From before dawn until after dusk her uncle would toil, stuffing people's carpets into great burlap sacks till his palms bled with the ragged labor. Sometimes his lord would give him a few clods of dirt for the day's efforts, and sometimes his lord would give nothing. On those days when the the poor uncle came home empty-handed, he and Little Ella would have no supper but would go to bed hungry that night instead. (The poor carpetbagging uncle was actually quite wealthy (being the proud owner of one thousand and three bricks of gold), but he didn't think it right that a poor carpetbagger and his niece should enjoy supper if said poor carpetbagger hadn't earned any dirt that day.) And so it went for Little Ella: sometimes silence and supper, sometimes silence and no supper. As for Little Ella's father, he was a long lost doughnutmaker.
Then one day, right out of the blue, everyone started talking to our heroine!
While she was out watering the cactus garden at daybreak, the feather-dove and the tar-vulture, who were conjoined twins and who were in the habit of sitting and munching cactus berries with their cappuccino, both decided to say, "Good morning." Little Ella was taken aback that anyone should speak to her (and so early in the morning at that!), but she soon regained her composure and had an ever-so-friendly chat with the twins as they finished their breakfast. When they were done wiping the tips of their respective beaks with the tips of their respective napkins, they ascended as one, and before soaring away together they said in unison, "Take care and see you there, Little Faretheewella, for today you cross the Grey Forest."
A little later, as Little Ella was fetching water from the well with her bucket alongside a crowd of fellow bucketed and fetching villagers, a hot air balloon from France floated over and landed on the steps of the village hall. The villagers, having never before seen a hot air balloon, decided that the hot air balloon, being so new and so fangled, must need be a monster. In a frenzy of common cause they ran to club the monster with their buckets, leaving Little Ella alone and not a little flustered over such abrupt manners.
After the villagers had beaten the last puff from the balloon and had gone home to celebrate, a fluff-squirrel skipped out unnoticed from the passenger basket and shuffled over toward the well and behind Little Ella, who was still busy trying to get a bucket of water so that she could mop her chimney. The fluff-squirrel slapped his cheek and then another to catch Little Ella's attention and then he whispered or, rather, shouted, "No!"
"No, what?" asked Little Ella, turning to face the squirrelly fluff-squirrel.
The fluff-squirrel explained that, no, one shouldn't mop one's chimney but should, rather, sweep it as the water from a mop would turn all the ashes soupy and gooey. Little Ella countered that she might prefer cleaning up soup and goo to cleaning up ashes. The fluff-squirrel argued that a chimney was simply meant to be swept and not mopped.
"But, good sir, do you not but beg the question?" protested our heroine.
The fluff-squirrel explained frankly (i.e., in French) that sweeping one's chimney was, aside from being proper, easier because there was no mop water to be fetched. Little Ella, monolingual, asked him to repeat in English what he had said. He did so, and Little Ella eventually conceded that sweeping up one's ashes was, indeed, a much easier cleaning method than mopping up one's ashes. The fluff-squirrel then went on to explain that a bit of ashy soup-goo, if desired, could be achieved by drooling into the ashes and that such a paste proved to be an excellent dubbin for one's boots. Before bidding Little Ella adieu and scampering off into the hedges, the fluff-squirrel, his downy cheeks nearly bursting with bon vivre and his polished French accent floating in the air like fine confectioners' sugar, said, "Watch your step, Cinderboots, for in the Grey Forest one cannot see the sun!"
A little later still, as Little Ella swept the chimney, a slime-frog hopped onto the window sill and asked, "Why are you so sad and dull, Little Salmonella, when you could be lunching with the princess?"
Little Ella wondered how anyone could be eating lunch at that time of morning, and so, clearing her throat, she said, "Tell me, good Mr. Slime-frog, how could I be lunching with the princess when it's now so long till lunchtime?"
"Well, my dear," answered the slime-frog, "it's always lunchtime at the palace. And what's more, it has been prophesied that on this day Princess Fiendish, the land's beloved monarch, shall lunch with a subject. And I, for one, don't see why her dining companion shouldn't be you."
"But why, sir," asked Little Ella, "should I, among all the princess' subjects, be chosen?"
"Because you have a gold brick with which to pay homage," replied the slime-frog.
And so she did have! Little Ella got her uncle's crowbar and pried loose from the chimney one of its bricks. She put it into her backpack along with her notebook, and she made off for the palace on her scooter, kicking-'n'-going like the wind.
She scooted all morning, and by noon she found herself in the densest thicks of the Grey Forest, which lay in great sprawling gloom between her uncle's cottage and her palatial destination.
Little Ella stopped to catch her breath and tie her shoelaces, which had come undone as done things are wont to do. She could see the whish and shimmer of the forest cat moving from tree to tree.
She could feel the mist of the chocolate eclairdeloons who sat atop their sylvan perches and spat at the vanilla, swiss cheese moon. She could hear the cry of the wild panika, who screamed to see the sun, and the bonking of all the harks and mollies and tanies and joms, who kept crashing into each other as they fluttered about through the wood's grim umbrage. The seething agitation of the forest made Little Ella begin to worry. How could someone so deep in the wood ever make it to lunch on time? And what were the consequences of arriving late to the palace for lunch?
Just then a burly owl swooped down and alighted at her feet, huffing and puffing, his barrel chest heaving and hoing with the strain of his weighty flight. They had a conversation, which went like this:
Burly owl: Hmmm…and who might you be?
Little Ella: Whom.
Burly owl: Hoo. Hoo.
Little Ella: Well, uh…whom wants to know? Who'd you expect, anyway? Do you have a coping saw?
Burly owl: First, I'm Commander Burly Owl. Second, I was expecting an insurgent. And, third, yes: "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I'm on a mission, you see. Our princess is worried about a rebellion, and I'm to warn all the subjects that they cannot win.
Little Ella: Why would the subjects rebel?
Burly owl: Because they believe that they can win. Princess Fiendish has declared that rebellion is about knowing that one is losing and that if these hooligans can't rebel properly then they mustn't rebel at all.
Little Ella: And these rascals, do they dwell here in the Grey Forest?
Burly owl: I imagine so. Trouble always starts amidst the seamy simmer and just as surely longs to reach the gleamy glimmer. And such is my job, by royal appointment, to confine any undesirables to this dark wood lest they disturb the splendor of the palace. What time is it?
Little Ella: I was just going to ask you that.
Burly owl: Oh. (Burly owl looks skyward, then realizes that in the Grey Forest one cannot see the sun and, so, pulls a pocket watch out from his spotted vest.) I say, it's lunchtime!
Little Ella: And what time is it at the palace?
Burly owl: Why, my dear, it's always lunchtime at the palace. Since you seem so harmless, I'll leave you to be on your way. But if you run into any of those rapscallions of who I speak, you tell them that Commander Burly Owl says, "There's no free lunch!" Hoo. Hoo.
And, with that, the burly owl spread his august wings and lifted his rotundity up and away through the forest, huffing and puffing and heaving and hoing all the while.
Little Ella was left standing there scratching her head and thinking how funny it was that it be lunchtime there in the forest as well as at the palace and yet there be so much space between the two like times. The fairy godmother of fallacious reasoning took pity on our heroine and, lo, Little Ella found herself magically transported to the gates of the palace.
The great golden gates were pulled back for her by the royal guardsmen, and she proceeded through to the palace grounds. There were fireworks flaring and brass bands blaring, doings and dazzlings of the grandest order. A turbaned easterner was walking on hot coals while swallowing swords of flame. A stetsoned westerner was roping doggies with one hand as he tossed cow cookies with the other.
A gypsy patriarch was juggling his family of eight, and all the gypsy children were juggling assorted power tools as they flew around in their respective orbits. Jesters were jesting, jousters were jousting, kebabbers were kebabbing, and a nervously gay spirit of festivity filled the air. As Little Ella approached the royal court, she marveled that life here could be so rich while life at the village by her uncle's cottage could be so poor.She soon found herself in the magnificent hall that served as the fiendish Princess Fiendish' throne room. At the end of the hall was a dais on which sat the throne on which sat the princess, raised and resplendent in her regal raiment. To her left, also on the platform, was a considerably less impressive throne on which slept a greenish-sallowish, froggy-faced young man, and to the princess' right was hung a great, iron cauldron over a fire.
The cauldron bubbled and boiled over with tar, and, as Little Ella surveyed the scene, the royal guardsmen who'd admitted her barged past her carrying a screeching, flapping vulture. Upon reaching the edge of the dais, they tossed the bound bird up toward the princess' feet and then, lying prostrate at the foot of the dais, proclaimed, "Your Majesty, the royal huntsmen have provided us, the royal guardsmen, with this vulture to present to you, our royal Highness. May you do your stern duties and save this land from such vermin."
By the time the royal guardsmen had finished speaking these words, the princess was up off of her throne, rolling up her sleeves, and grabbing the doomed bird by its neck. She began to dunk the vulture into the hot tar. As the bird squawked and squeaked and slapped and scratched, Little Ella made her way through the courtiers and up to the princess. Little Ella curtsied low and said, "I have come, grace, to lunch with thee. I have a golden brick with which to pay homage."
The princess, preoccupied with dunking the vulture, said, "Grace is in Monaco, honey. Just call me Fiendish." And then, finishing the dunking process, she turned to her chief attendant and decreed, "Let the royal huntsmen trap another vulture that the accursed thing be dipped into the cauldron!" And with that fiat the royal guardsmen went running so that the princess' word might become fact.
After the commotion subsided, Little Ella asked, "So is this, then, where the vultures are tarred?"
"On the spot, honey," replied the princess with proud satisfaction, as if she were doing the Lord's work or some noble service.
"And is it here," asked Little Ella, "that the doves are feathered and the squirrels fluffed and the frogs slimed and the owls burled?"
"Oh, good heavens, no!" answered the princess. "We only tar here. Why, if we could tar AND feather we wouldn't be in the mess we're in with the, uh, well…riffraff. For St. Michael's sake, we'd've run everyone out of town on a rail by now if we could tar AND feather. What was it that you were saying?"
"I said I'd come to have lunch."
"No, right after that…."
"I said I had a golden brick."
"That's it. A golden brick," mused the princess distantly, rubbing her chin as she considered how appropriate it would be to appropriate this golden brick from this peasant girl. After all, the gold in the royal coffers is the glory of all the land, while the gold in the chimneys of carpetbaggers and the backpacks of young bumpkins is just capital. Then, as if returning suddenly from somewhere else, someplace far away, the princess continued, "Yes, then. Lunch it is. We should go to Reddifreddi's. Yes, I imagine that Reddifreddi's will do just fine. We'll order spaghetti. Oh, and we'll have to get appetizers. The appetizers there are simply scrumptious.
They serve the most splendid Spanish spam. And the sweet Sicilian sourballs are to suffer and slay for. Afterwards, if we still have room, we should try the doughnut du jour. It's their specialty; they're famous for it! Yes, yum, then it's settled. You just leave that gold brick here and be on your way. I'll meet you there in, say, half an hour…""But, your highness, er, I mean Fiendish," interrupted Little Ella, "I haven't been to the capitol before and I've never lunched at Reddifreddi's and I'm afraid I'll lose my way if I go alone."
"Alright, then," snapped the princess. "I'll lend you an escort." And, turning to the napping frog-face to her left she barked, "Albert! Hey, Albert! Wake up and take this kid to Reddifreddi's. Chop, chop! Get the lead out! Scram!"
Albert woke with a start, rubbed his eyes, and muttered something about it being better to be a whipping boy than a greenish-sallowish, scaly slime-frog. As Little Ella placed her brick at the princess' feet, Albert got down off his throne, obediently took Little Ella's arm, and led her through the assembled, kneeling courtiers. As the two were exiting the royal hall, the royal guardsmen brushed past them with another wretched vulture, stolen from the sky to be tarred.
As they wove their way through the crooked, cobblestoned streets of the capitol, Albert and Little Ella introduced themselves to each other. They both had a vague sense that they'd met somewhere sometime ago, but neither could say for sure. After a while they gave up trying to remember and instead they chit-chatted as they walked.
"…Actually," Albert was saying, "I should be addressed as 'Prince Albert," seeing as I'm soon to wed my betrothed, the dearest Fiendish."
"Congratulations," said Little Ella.
"Yes, well, she may be difficult, but if she kisses you three times then you become a prince. I'd rather put up with her nasty moods than be a lowly slime-frog who hops around scheming for gold, which is what I used to be before she kissed me. I'm only partially metamorphosed now, but I'll be a full-fledged prince after just two more kisses. The word on the street's that you crossed the Grey Forest to get to the palace so promptly."
"Yes, I did," replied Little Ella. "I met the most stately burly owl there, a commander in the princess' police."
"Oh, yes, Commander Burly Owl," said Albert with disdain. "I know him well. What did he have to say?"
"He said, 'Hoo. Hoo.'"
"Typical," responded Albert. "That old fuddy-duddy. He never did bother with the big issues, like where and when. Ah, here we are now."
And there they were, at the entrance to Reddifreddi's, the poshest eatery in town. They informed the maitre d' that they were waiting for the princess, with whom they were to lunch. The maitre d' suffered to seat them, but he absolutely refused to serve any victuals until such time as the princess herself should arrive. He told them that they were free to sit and that they were free to watch others eat. And so they waited while other people ate, and then they waited more as other people ate some more.
While they sat, a mustachioed gentleman at the next table suavely introduced himself as Il Butten Gotti, a Florentine count visiting the land in order to pay respects to her Highness, Princess Fiendish. Little Ella related her adventures and, in doing so, mentioned the gold brick that she'd left with the princess, at which point the count jumped up, hastily paid his bill, and hustled out of the restaurant.
Little Ella was by now ever so hungry, and she asked Albert when he thought the princess might come. Albert replied that until only recently he had been just a sticky slime-frog and that, until the wedding, he was technically a mere subject and that a humble subject should presume to tell neither the future nor the princess' actions in that future. He did, however, add that he thought it was a good question and that time and space were all that mattered, at which point he fell asleep.
As Albert slumped in his chair and napped, Little Ella noticed that at the table across from them sat the feather-dove and the tar-vulture.
Through straws they sipped lemonade from a double-necked bottle, and they chewed on opposite ends of the same licorice stick. Little Ella coughed to catch their attention and asked them if they came here often and whether they thought the princess might come to lunch soon."You must mean to sup, Little Parallella," said the feather-dove.
"Yes, for here at Redifreddi's it is always suppertime," added the tar-vulture.
Confused, Little Ella asked if it hadn't indeed been prophesied that Princess Fiendish would, on this day, lunch with a subject. And the feather-dove replied, "No, I think it was that a poor doughnutmaker shall, on this day, set eyes upon his long lost daughter."
"No, no, no!" cried the tar-vulture. "It was that, on this day, the princess will lunch on a gold brick."
"You've got it all wrong," said the feather-dove to the tar-vulture, and with that they fell to bickering. As the twins argued over what it was that was supposed to happen, Little Ella came to realize that she'd been hoodwinked. Forlorn, she thanked the twins and headed off up the hill, at the bottom of which stood Reddifreddi's and over which lay the Grey Forest, beyond which was her uncle's cottage. As she climbed the hill she could still hear the heated squabbling of the feather-dove and the tar-vulture:
"…and the last time you emptied the ice cube tray you forgot to fill it up again!"
"Well, you could've done it; you were right there!"
"I'm not your maid, nor am I your keeper!"
"You're a pain in the side is what you are!"
And on and on. The twins, in the ruckus of their spat, didn't even notice that Little Ella had left, but through a small kitchen window Reddifreddi's doughnutmaker watched her tramp up the hill. And he thought of the forest beyond the hill and of the land beyond the forest. He thought of all the gold waste that had to be shipped off to that distant territory to be traded for bags of carpet which in turn had to be traded for clods of earth that had to be brought back to Reddifreddi's only to be ground into sorrowdough so that he, the doughnutmaker, could make his sad, sad doughnut.
Once the twins' quarrel had deescalated, the maitre d' shook Albert awake and said, "Now that that grubby country girl is gone, I'm willing to take your order. You're Monsieur Big Al, the princess' betrothed, no?"
"Yes," answered Albert indignantly, "and that's 'Prince Albert' to you, if you don't mind."
"Yeah, sure, whatever," said the maitre d'. "Would you like to try the doughnut du jour, Monsieur Big Al?"
"That's 'Prince Albert,' already! The doughnut sounds good, and I'd like a soda as well."
"Very good, sir," said the maitre d'. "Would you prefer your soda in a bottle or in a can, Monsieur Big Al?"
"It's 'Prince Albert'! In a can."
"Well, you'd better let him out then."
"What is the doughnut du jour today, anyway?" asked Albert.
"Well," explained the maitre d', "today is a special day today, and we're serving the Doughnut of the Unfulfilled Prophecy."
"Yum," said Albert, smacking his lips. "What's that?"
"It's that twins shall, on this day, meet and break bread as one," answered the maitre d'. "And it comes with maple icing and sugar sprinkles."
"Good," said Albert, tucking his bib into his collar. "I'll take two."
By the time Albert's doughnuts were served, Little Ella had reached the top of the hill. Il Butten Gotti galloped past her, looking over his shoulder, a riding crop under one arm and a golden brick under the other. The count, you see, had managed to infiltrate the palace and steal the gold brick, and now he was escaping back to Florence with his ill-gotten booty. He planned to use the gold to set up shop as a Mafioso sourball bootlegger. The black market trade in sourballs was thriving, and Florentine gangsters were competing with the Sicilians to secure a corner on the market.
Once in the Grey Forest, Little Ella, disoriented and a little wobbly on her legs after having been nearly trampled by the count's horse, was apprehended by Commander Burly Owl and charged with being a party to subversive activities. She wound up in a forest prison camp, and she was never seen nor heard from again.
THE END
[Alternative, happy ending:
Il Butten Gotti, after having absconded with the golden brick, used his newfound wealth to patronize the starving painters and sculptors of Florence. He single-handedly fueled a rebirth of artistic endeavor that eventually spread throughout all of Italy and then continentally.
Little Ella, having been wrongly imprisoned on trumped up charges, escaped the prison camp and became the leader of a renegade band of merry insurgents. The rebels defeated the princess' police force and gained control of the Grey Forest.
The murky-dark woods, overgrown and ingrown, forbidding and foreboding, tangled and rotten, underwent some drastic landscaping. The dead wood was cleared and carted away. The weeds were pulled so that they could no longer strangle the less aggressive foliage. The trees were trimmed so that the light could stream in and smile upon all the flora equally. Roses bloomed, beans blossomed, sprouts spouted, and the forest was no longer the suffocating horror-trap it had once been. Its name was changed to the Sunny Woods of Egalitarian Goodwill.
A health plan was introduced that covered all the creatures, be they flyers or creepers or crawlers or even unemployed. Pathways were established that lead from the village to the castle, and there were caravans of acting troupes that travelled these paths, and they would entertain the bored wayfarers who would, in return, lavish the players with granola.
Back at the castle, things had changed as well. Princess Fiendish had given up her despotic ways and was now the deejay at Club Shiny Palace, which was what the palace had become. Commander Burly Owl, not entirely free of his fascist tendencies, became the club's doorman, and the throne room, once a place for kneeling, was now a floor for dancing. Also, Albert had decided that he was quite satisfied with his life as a frog, and so he had taken to leap-frogging about as the club's go-go dancer.
Every night at Club Shiny Palace there was a party to which all the subjects were invited. There was never a cover charge, and the drinks were always free. And on the dance floor each night could be seen Little Ella, her carpetbagging uncle, and her doughnutmaking father, all reunited and hip-hopping harmoniously into the wee hours of the morning.
It was true once more that no one spoke to Little Ella. But now that was because there were no trials in which to plead and no perils through which to counsel. All there was to say now was how wonderful the situation was, and that was already manifest upon their glowing, beaming faces.]
