Aza becomes beautiful, but still remains self-conscious about herself. The incident does not deter her desire to be beautiful, which leads Aza to drink a beauty potion created by Skulni, the mysterious, evil creature living in a magic mirror given to Ivi as a wedding gift from the fairy Lucinda. Although she recovers, she's left with a marble pinky toe. Aza is caught in the midst of Ivi's power-hungry plotting, the affection of the king's nephew, Crown Prince Ijori, the suspicions of the choirmaster Sir Uellu (a senior official in this land of song), and her own increasing desperation to become beautiful, a desire which grows so strong that she tries a beauty spell, but instead the spell turns her to stone. Soon after Aza reluctantly accepts Ivi's offer, the castle is thrown into turmoil when King Oscaro is terribly wounded during a sporting event with centaurs because the king threw himself in front of Ivi to save her.
As Ivi cannot sing well, she offers to reward Aza with land, wealth, and riches for her family, as well as elevation to the rank of lady-in-waiting in exchange for Aza illusing a marvelous singing voice for her when she needs to sing when Aza tries to refuse, Ivi threatens to imprison her and close her family's inn. The new queen, the beautiful Ivi, discovers Aza's unusual musical gift and manipulates her. When Aza's sister, Areida, goes to finishing school, the Duchess of Olixo, an irritable guest at the Featherbed Inn, requests that Aza accompany her to the royal wedding because her companion has fallen ill. Zhamm foresees that they will meet again at some point in the future. While her hair looks black to humans, it is the lovely color htun, a dark purplish color, to gnomes. Still, Aza is flattered when a frequent visitor to the inn, a gnome named Zhamm, tells Aza that her hair is the most beautiful he has ever seen. Besides being skilled at singing, Aza can also flawlessly mimic people and throw her voice without moving her mouth, a form of ventriloquism she calls "illusing". However, Aza's voice garners as much attention as her looks, for Ayortha is a land of song, and Aza is an amazing singer.
Her prodigious size and her odd coloring – milk-white skin, dragon tongue lips, and hair that seems to be frying-pan black – are greatly at variance with the land's standards of beauty and often make her the target of stares and rude comments. The kingdom of Ayortha, the setting of the story, is the neighboring kingdom of Kyrria, where Ella Enchanted was set and the story makes several allusions to the previous work.Īza, the adopted daughter of innkeepers in Ayortha, has always hated her appearance. It uses some plot elements of the classic Snow White and is set in the same world as Ella Enchanted. Fairest is a 2006 novel by Gail Carson Levine.
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