Read Ella's Wish for Free Online

been a heavy burden to bear—and another horse would then need to be purchased at a cost she couldn’t afford.
    New driving horses were always a gamble of sorts.
    “We can drive anything,” Eli and Monroe often boasted, but she doubted their tale.
    All the horses they ever drove had been hand selected by Daett, and so they didn’t qualify as evidence for Eli and Monroe’s theories.
    “Will you come along to the sale barn and select mine?” Ella had asked her dad.
    “You know I would,” he said, shaking his head, “but I just can’t get away today. Eli can go along, though.”
    “Yah, I can take care of it,” Eli said, delighting his father.
    “Like I trust you,” Ella had told him with a touch of sarcasm, but he came anyway, sure of his prowess.
    “That one,” Eli said, pointing toward a high-spirited gelding prancing into the ring, led tightly by its handler. “It will outrace the best of them on Sunday evenings. It will last you for years with plenty of speed and stamina.”
    “I told you I don’t trust you,” Ella had said much to his chagrin. Thankfully there were other opinions available. She left Eli and walked across the bleachers to where Daniel stood with his dad.
    “What do you think?” she had asked the man who would have been her father-in-law. “I need a good driving horse, and Eli’s got some high-spirited thing in mind for me. I don’t want one that runs away from me or won’t go when I want it to either.”
    “We just saw a nice gelding back in the barn. Number 305,” Daniel said, and his dad nodded in agreement. “The price may go a little high, but the horse is worth every penny.”
    “Like a good man,” Daniel’s dad said. “I think you’re right son.”
    Ella had followed Daniel’s advice, to the consternation of her brother.
    “Every other horse will pass that one on the road,” Eli said, his nose turned up while she bid.
    Ella smiled at the memory. He, of course had been wrong. The little gelding had plenty of speed.
    Ella finally found the ax and walked back behind the house. Daniel had been so right about the horse. How could he, then, be so wrong about my feelings? Have I ever thoughtlessly encouraged him? Last night the question had seemed answered, but now the strangeness of it all came to her again. She stopped and looked long at the dawning sky. My relationship with Daniel has always been that of a brother—Aden’s brother. Never have I given him reason to think otherwise .
    Ella sighed, placed the first piece of wood on the chopping block, and brought the ax down. The world is a strange place, and people don’t always do what I expect them to do. God doesn’t always do what I expect, and so how can earthen vessels, as the preachers says, be held to a higher standard? She opened up the little doorway on the side of the house and tossed the pieces of wood inside. They landed with a thump.
    Clara’s faint voice called from inside, “Shall I start the fire?”
    “You’ll be needing kindling,” Ella hollered back. “I’ll split some in a minute.”
    “Yah,” Clara answered.
    With her ax in hand, Ella carefully took little slivers off the sides of a block of wood. Her left hand held the block firmly in place as her thumb and fingers wrapped around the side. The ax rose and fell, and she trembled slightly. She had always disliked chopping kindling. One slip and the ax struck one’s hand, laying the flesh wide open.
    Dora and Ella could have left the cutting of kindling to their dad or to Eli and Monroe, but they chose to do it themselves. It was a part of their world and, thus, worthy of mastery. Still, Ella’s hand twitched with fear, even after all these years. The ax was so large, the wood piece became ever smaller, and her hand was always just inches away.
    After a few more chops, she finished and tossed the little pieces through the doorway. She then walked around the corner of the house and set the ax inside the porch. She stopped for a moment