Chapter 4

Having never spent much time around children, Adelle had never seen the error of her assumption that the actives of the dollhouse were much like children. It was how she honestly imagined childhood was, not able to remember her own childhood clearly.

Ella changed all of that. Ella, this amazing, truly alive, little girl. Gentle, loving, fiery at times, angry and hurt and stubborn and wilful. Ella who delighted in learning new things every day. Ella, so resilient and yet so easily damaged. Ella was nothing like the brain dead actives that wandered the dollhouse each and every day.

These maternal feelings towards Ella took her by surprise. She had never pictured herself as the motherly type. Somehow, this small person looking up to her with trusting eyes as if she held the power to fix every wrong thing in the universe, somehow that melted her heart in a way no one else had even come close to doing.

Adelle doesn't remember ever being that small, that innocent, that trusting. Doesn't remember staring up at an adult with arms outstretched. Doesn't remember falling scraping her knee and running crying for someone to comfort her.

Adelle hadn't known the first thing about being a mother to a small girl. She loved Ella, desired to please her, longed for Ella to love her back. But she had no idea how to go about this. Her usual ways of dealing with people, power, money, manipulation, seemed to fall short.

She had tried to buy the child's love, giving her a pony of her own, which Ella adored. But it hadn't stopped the child asking incessantly about her mother and her aunty Liv. And Adelle wanted to scream at the child 'But, Ella, I'm the one who is here with you. Your mother left you for dust, and I'm the one here giving you everything a little girl could ever want.'

Adelle told herself just to hire a nanny, to just bury herself in her work and forget the child. If the little girl didn't know a good thing when she found it, that was her loss. But Adelle just couldn't do it. Couldn't turn away from those heartbroken tear filled eyes, that trembling lip. So she instead she reached her arms out to Ella, an instinct. And the child had scrambled frantically into her embrace. Tears forming in her own eyes, Adelle had promised Ella that everything would be alright. That she would always take care of her and never leave her.

Day by day Adelle and the little girl grew closer. Ella loved her, respected her, revered her. Adelle caught the little girl in her bedroom, wearing Adelle's high heeled shoes, trying to fasten her hair with Adelle's hair clip.

"What are you doing?" Adelle asked, amused.

"I'm going to be just like you when I grow up." Ella told her.

There was something so beautiful and yet so frightening in that statement. And while she was flattered, she wanted to tell Ella "Oh that's the last thing you want to be, sweetheart. You don't want to be like me, or like your mother. Your Aunty Liv, that's who you want to be." But she held her tongue.

Adelle spoiled the girl rotten. Showered her with gifts, all of which Ella accepted gratefully. But nothing made the little girls eyes light up like the simple things.

"Read to me?" Ella had asked on one of their first nights together.

Adelle had been confused. "Can you not read for yourself? Did no one teach you?"

"I can so read!" The child was quick to protest. "But it's more fun if someone reads to you. Aunty Live reads to me every night. And sometimes I read to her too. We can take turns if you like?" Ella offered.

Adelle's mind was filled with images of Olivia with this little girl, curled up, book in her hands as Ella nestled sleepily in her embrace. It made her jealous. She wanted to be that for the little girl too. And so awkwardly Adelle sat next to Ella on the bed, and the child settled trustingly in her arms. And Adelle had never felt more at home than that moment, Ella's heart beating next to her own. And it caught her completely by surprise.

Night after night they read all manner of stories. One night they had been reading Rapunzel. As Adelle made a move to turn the page, Ella's hands stopped her. The child sat staring at the picture, tracing her trembling fingers over the image with a troubled expression in her eyes.

"Ella, what's the matter? Don't you like the story?" Adelle asked her.

"Just thinking. " Ella answered. And as only a small child would do so unguardedly, she then divulged her every last thought to the person in closest proximity.

"How awful. To be locked away like that." Ella mused.

"But we haven't got to the ending." Adelle protested. "It will be alright, you'll see."

"I know the ending! I've read this story a hundred times!" Ella protested. "But life isn't like that, is it?" She asks.

"What do you mean sweetheart?"

"I mean happy endings." The child explained.

Adelle had been speechless. She couldn't be held responsible for shattering the girls illusions of a happy ending. But Ella was right, the world didn't work that way. Ella was a smart kid. Smarter than her mother, that was for sure.

"Real life is a little bit more complicated." Adelle attempted to explain.

"To be locked away like that, It's awful." Ella couldn't get the thought out of her head.

"Really, it's not so bad Ella. She isn't that unhappy."

"How do you know?" Ella asked with round questioning eyes.

"Well." Adelle attempted to find words the child would understand. "She has never really known any other way of life, apart from being trapped in that tower. She doesn't know what she is missing out on." As the words come out of her mouth, Adelle can't help but think of the actives at the dollhouse. Of Rachel.

"I don't get it." Confusion spread across the little girl's face.

"She is happy in the tower, she feels safe. No one can hurt her there."

"But no one is going to hurt her outside in the real world either." The child protested.

'I didn't write the damn book, Ella' Adelle wants to say. 'If you don't like it, read another one.'

Adelle takes a deep breath. "But in her head, she thinks people in the real world will hurt her. That's what she has been told. And she believes it with all her heart that terrible things will happen if she leaves the tower. She believes she is safe there. And so she is happy."

"But that was a lie, there is nothing terrible in the real world that would hurt her, is there?" Ella asks.

"Well. There are plenty of bad things in the world, and the tower is safe. So it wasn't totally a lie. And even if it's not true, it's what Rapunzel believes, it makes it true for her."

The little girl contemplates this. "So, she is happy? Locked in the tower?"

"She is not unhappy." Adelle answers.

"But if she never gets out, ever, she will never know all the good things in life. Isn't that sad?"

"Well. She wouldn't really see those good things as being good. She wouldn't understand them. She is used to an empty world of darkness. Life in the real world would make her afraid. " Adelle doesn't know if she even understands a word of her own explanation, let alone if this makes a bit of sense to the little girl.

"But the prince would show her all the wonderful things, he would show her there is nothing to be afraid of." Ella protested.

"Oh, but she wouldn't believe him Ella. She is filled with so much fear and mistrust. She would see danger in every shadow. You can't live like that."

"So she doesn't even want to be saved?" Ella asked.

Adelle was once again speechless. What kind of a moral of the story was that for a little girl?

"It's complicated." Adelle answered.

While she had been making parallels with her own life through the story, with the dollhouse, and the actives, with Rachel, it hadn't once occurred to her that the child was intelligent enough to do the same.

"Does Mommy want to be saved from wherever she is?" Ella asked innocently.

"It's just a story Ella, It isn't real." Adelle answered abruptly as she firmly closed the book. The last thing she wanted was to bring up the subject of Rachel.

"That's what Aunty Liv always says." Ella told her.

There is intense sadness in the little girls voice, yet Adelle smiles a little on the inside at the comparison to the great 'Aunty Liv.'

"If I was locked in a tower, Aunty Liv would come and save me." Ella proclaimed confidently.

'I'd save you too Ella. Some people are happy locked away in a world of self delusion. But not you, You're going to fly.'

But the child continued before Adelle has the chance to speak. "But I'm not locked away anywhere, I'm here with you. And you won't let anything bad happen to me."

"Of course I wont, sweetheart." Adelle answered quickly.

"You wont go away, like mommy?" Ella asked

"Never, Ella. I will never ever leave you."

Ella smiled. "I can't wait for you to meet Aunty Liv, when she comes to get me."

Ella had never protested that her mother was coming back, that her mother was coming to save her. But she always held firm to the belief that somehow Aunty Liv had never abandoned her.

'Foolish child.' Adelle had condemned Ella in her mind. 'Aunty Liv isn't coming to get you.

How wrong she had been.