The Last Ever After

by Soman Chainani

  “Over my dead body,” bellowed Hort, who stuck his head out from around the corner.

  Hester glared back, demon twitching. “That can be arranged.”

  Hort muttered something obscene and vanished behind the wall.

  Hester saw Dot goggling at her. “What now?”

  “Did you just defend me?”

  “Only because you look so stupid in that crown,” Hester grumped.

  All the girls laughed, even Dot.

  “What’d I miss?”

  They looked up at Tedros, licking yogurt off his fingers.

  “Ugh. The old ball and chain,” Hester moaned.

  “Nice to see you’re as awful as always, even when you’re working for our side,” said the prince.

  “Let’s go,” said Hester to her coven-mates as she stood up. “The smell of spoiled prince makes me sick.”

  Anadil and Dot followed her, but not before Tedros swiped at Dot’s head and snatched back the crown.

  He waited until the witches were out of earshot and peered down at Agatha. “I don’t, uh, you know . . . smell, do I?”

  “Hester thinks Reaper is cute,” said Agatha.

  “Point made.” Tedros sat down next to her, still in his grass-stained shirt and ragged breeches, but he’d taken a bath, because his hair was wet and he smelled of the tea-scented soap Guinevere kept by the tub. He leaned over and fixed the crown back on her head.

  “I knew you’d do that,” Agatha sighed. “I’m not even a real queen, Tedros. For one thing, you have to be crowned king first—”

  “I will be in a week.”

  “If we’re alive, which is looking more and more doubtful,” said Agatha. “And even if you are crowned king, I’m too young to be a queen . . . officially, I mean . . . you know . . .”

  “No one’s asking you to be official. Yet,” said Tedros, straightening her crown. “But you are my queen. No one but you. And I like seeing you wear it. Because as long as you do, I know you still love me. And given our history of miscommunication, physical cues are helpful.”

  Agatha snorted.

  “This is where you tell me how I can show my love,” Tedros prodded.

  “Uh, romance isn’t really my thing,” said Agatha, resting her head on his shoulder. “Every year, there’s a Valentine’s Day dance in Gavaldon. One year, I got so annoyed by all the couples I set off a flaming skunk bomb and cleared the place.”

  “I hope they punished you for it.”

  “They were too scared I’d boil their children in a witch stew.”

  Tedros put his arm around her. “Remind me never to give you something for Valentine’s Day.”

  Through the archway, Agatha could see Guinevere in the dining room, collecting dirty dishes by herself.

  “There’s nothing I’d want anyway,” she said. “Only gift I’d ever want is to talk to my mother one more time.”

  Tedros looked at her.

  “Though if you could find a time to talk to your mother, just the two of you, that would mean nearly as much,” said Agatha.

  Tedros looked away. “I think I’ve come far enough on that front.”

  “You asked me for a way to show your love,” said Agatha. “I didn’t know it had limits.”

  Tedros didn’t answer and Agatha didn’t press him. Soon both of them were asleep in each other’s arms.

  By three o’clock, Merlin’s hat had finished floating around the den, serving coffee and tea, and one by one, everyone began to drift back to the dining room, where the wizard was sitting at the head of the table. No one sat with him. Instead, the old heroes hugged the walls and the young students crouched on the floor, engaged in idle chatter, while the wizard just waited patiently. When an ominous silence fell, the old heroes quickly began filling it with stories of how they’d survived these past two weeks.

  Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, for instance, had bunkered with the mermaids of Neverland, while Cinderella and Pinocchio had hidden in Rapunzel’s tower, reasoning that if Rapunzel was already dead, then the old villains certainly weren’t going to frequent the place.

  “Her tower is a museum now, like Snow’s house, so there’s a rope that lets tourists climb all the way inside,” said Pinocchio. “Shoulda seen Ella climb, swinging and slamming against the tower like a wrecking ball. Kept whistling for birds to help, but with all her squawking and cursing, they just stood back and let nature take its course—”

  “If nature took its course, you’d be firewood,” Cinderella snarled.

  Hansel and Gretel had used a similar strategy, for they’d returned to their witch’s old gingerbread house, also an Evers’ landmark now.

  “Zombie witch is stupid but not so stupid to think we go back to her house,” explained Hansel. “My idea, of course.”

  “Your idea! Only thing you did was eat half the roof!” Gretel barked.

  Agatha noticed Hester gnashing her teeth as she listened to this. . . . Suddenly Agatha’s eyes flared, remembering the witch’s defaced portrait in the School for Old. “Hester, that’s your house!” she whispered. “Your mother was that witch! She’s alive—somewhere in the Woods—”

  “She’s not alive, Agatha. She’s a zombie under the School Master’s control,” Hester hissed. “I’m not stupid or sentimental enough to think whatever dead-eyed goon he’s brought back from the grave is my mother.”

  “Hester, I know you pride yourself on being strong,” Agatha whispered worriedly, “but how can you just sit here with them talking about her like that? They killed her!”

  Hester glowered at her. “The biggest mistake a villain can make is to get caught up in revenge. Hansel and Gretel were two hungry kids trying to survive in the Woods. Mother thought she’d captured another pair of greedy, gluttonous brats, only to grossly underestimate them. Hansel and Gretel killed her because they had to. It wasn’t personal.” She glanced back at the old siblings. “Doesn’t mean I can stand the sight of ’em, of course. But it also doesn’t mean their story has anything to do with mine anymore.”

  Agatha could see Dot and Anadil gazing at Hester with awe, and for a moment, Agatha wondered whether in this room of heroes young and old, Hester was the greatest hero of all.

  “Shouldn’t have been so mean to her before,” Dot whispered to Agatha. “Must be hard having me as a friend when I’m the kinda girl her mother used to eat. I mean, if I’d gone to her house that day instead of Hansel and Gretel, her mother would still be alive. Gretel saved Hansel ’cause she loved him, where I’d have ended up alone and cooked to a crisp. That’s why I’m not an Ever. Don’t have anyone who’d care enough about me to save me.”

  “That’s not true,” said a voice.

  Dot turned to see Hester looking right at her.

  “That’s not true at all,” Hester said.

  Dot blushed.

  Agatha forced her attention back to Jack and Briar Rose’s story, if only to hide a sniffle.

  On they went, each hero regaling the room with raucous tales of survival—Red Riding Hood, Princess Uma, Yuba and the White Rabbit—until twelve had gone and only one remained. Then, and only then, did the room fall silent for good.

  Slowly everyone turned to face the head of the table, their smiles gone.

  Merlin took off his hat.

  “Seven days,” he said. “That’s as long as the sun will light our Woods, based on Yuba’s calculations. Seven days. If we wish to survive beyond them, we have no choice but to attack the School for Evil and the School Master knows it. He knows Good will always fight for life. And I’m afraid we have no choice but to fall into his trap.” The wizard sighed. “At the same time, so many of our fellow heroes have been slain in the Woods that the shield over the Reader World is barely intact. If any one of our old League members die, I suspect it will fall at last. The School Master will invade their world and claim the secret ending he’s been after all along. An ending he believes will destroy Good forever.”

  For a moment, no one spoke, taking this in.

>   “I don’t understand. Isn’t killing these two duffers enough?” asked Cinderella, pointing at Agatha and Tedros. “It’s their fairy tale. Why does he need the Woods Beyond?”

  “It’s a good question and I wish I knew the answer,” said Merlin. “Though I have no doubt he’ll kill Agatha and Tedros too when the time comes.”

  Agatha and Tedros exchanged tense looks.

  “I think it’s clear the School Master wants this fairy tale to be so cruel, so Evil, that Good has no power left beyond it,” said Merlin. “He’s already rewritten so much of our past. Now he’s after our future. He believes that whatever ending he has planned will make Evil invincible.”

  “And you have no idea what that ending is, Merlin?” Princess Uma pushed.

  “Only an inkling and nothing I would share,” said Merlin. “Until I know for sure, however, our only hope is to catch Sophie and make her destroy that ring.”

  Agatha felt nauseous, trying to remember her best friend was leading the enemy now.

  “So how do we do that?” asked Red Riding Hood.

  Merlin smiled. “We charge the school, of course.”

  The old heroes eyed each other warily. “Well, which Ever kingdoms are joining us?” asked Jack. “We’d need Maidenvale, Gillikin, and Avondale at the very least—”

  “None,” said Merlin.

  “What?” Briar Rose blurted.

  “None of the Ever kingdoms are joining us.”

  The room was very still.

  “Merlin,” said Peter Pan. “The School Master is young and strong. He has two hundred old villains who can’t be killed by anything other than fire, along with a school of young students—”

  “Leave that problem to me,” said Merlin. “In the meantime, I expect the League to work with our young heroes—Agatha, Tedros, Hort, Hester, Anadil, and Dot—and prepare them as best as you can for the villains they’ll face, given you once battled these same villains yourself. We leave for war one week from tonight.”

  “But we’re old bones!” Hansel blustered.

  “And they’re young idiots!” said Gretel. “It’s impossible!”

  “It’s idiocy!” said Cinderella.

  “It’s a massacre is what it is,” said Red Riding Hood.

  “The other option is to lay down and die,” said Agatha, launching to her feet.

  Everyone turned to her. Tedros gave her a surprised look, as if she had far more courage than him at the moment.

  Meanwhile, Agatha felt sweat puddling beneath the crown. She’d stood up before she actually had anything to say.

  But then she saw Guinevere in the corner. The old queen nodded at her with a steely smile and Agatha felt her voice again.

  “My mother died to let me live,” Agatha said, still watching Guinevere, as if she was feeding her the words. “For most of my life, I made the mistake of thinking she was clueless. I figured she was old and out of touch and couldn’t possibly know how hard it was to be young. Never paid much attention to her, just like me and Tedros discounted all of you when we first came to your cave.”

  “Discounted?” Peter heckled. “Your boyfriend called us a retirement home for the about-to-be-dead!”

  “Well, you had your own opinions about us, too,” said Agatha. “You thought what my mother did: that young people are careless and thoughtless and have it easy.”

  The old heroes grumbled agreement.

  “But in the end, my mother knew how to keep me safe,” said Agatha. “She didn’t just save me from death . . . she also sent me to you. Not to a warrior kingdom, not to a young League of Knights, but to a group of legendary old heroes she knew would protect me. And she was right, wasn’t she? That’s why I put my faith in you, no matter how little you have in yourselves or in us. Because I might not have listened to my mother while she was alive. But I’m listening to her now.”

  Agatha leveled eyes with the League. “Me and my friends will tell you everything we know about the young School Master and his new school. In return, we need you to tell us how to defeat your old enemies. Let Merlin worry about our plan for war. Our job is to listen to each other, Ever and Never, young and old, no matter how puny our army is. And if anyone doesn’t want to be a part of that army, then leave now and see how you fare in the Woods alone.”

  Merlin stood up.

  All eyes shot to him.

  “Oh goodness. I’m not leaving,” he said. “Hips are a bit stiff.”

  Laughter rippled through the room.

  Agatha saw Tedros smiling at her, his expression soft, as if her words about her mother had meant as much to him as they had to her.

  “Well then, now that our new queen has set the tone, the real work begins,” Merlin declared. He swished a finger across the table and tiny marble figurines of each member in the room appeared on top of it. “Each young student will train with an old hero . . .”

  Agatha crammed between Hester and Hort, trying to get a view of the table as Merlin paired up the figurines, announcing the training teams: Dot with Red Riding Hood, Anadil with Jack and Briar Rose . . .

  Agatha couldn’t focus. Her crown was itching terribly and she looked up, hoping Tedros was far enough away that she could take it off—

  Only she couldn’t see Tedros anywhere.

  And now that she was scanning the room, Guinevere wasn’t there either.

  She heard the front door latch in the hall and glanced back to see a boy’s shadow through the window curtain, leading his mother out to the moors alone.

  Hester elbowed her. “Pay attention.”

  Agatha spun to the table. The wizard was glaring right at her, saying something about her mentor and her assignment in the war to come . . .

  But Agatha couldn’t stop smiling, because for the briefest of moments, she felt like a war had already been won.

  28

  Who’s Helping Who

  The thing Tedros liked about girls is that they always started the conversation. Most of the time, his job was just to listen, ask questions, and try to understand what in God’s name was going on in their complicated little heads. He rarely had any idea what girls were talking about or why they made everything so torturous in their logic, so playing the role of the strong, silent type usually gave him time to catch up.

  But this was different. This was his mother. And he was the one with the storm in his head.

  Which meant he was definitely going to have to start this conversation.

  The breeze over the lush moors was brisk enough that Guinevere had to cling to her lumpy sweater, but Tedros was sweating like a mule, tugging at his shirt, wishing he could take it off. His chest pummeled like a pressure cooker and the silence between them was only making it worse. He didn’t even know where he was taking her—there wasn’t some hallowed landmark that would make this any easier—so without warning, he plopped down midstride into the grass, still fidgeting with his sleeves.

  Guinevere calmly sat down beside him.

  “When we met the Lady of the Lake, Merlin asked her to hide us the way she’d hidden someone before,” said Tedros, not looking at her. “Which means Merlin helped you escape from me and Dad.”

  “Merlin knew I was unhappy for a long time,” said Guinevere.

  “Father adored you,” Tedros shot back. “He decorated the castle with your portraits, brought you the most extravagant gifts from his quests, and lavished you with attention and affection. He never raised his voice to you or laid a hand on you or deprived you of anything and now you’re acting like he was some madman in the attic. So what if he had a few bad habits? No relationship is perfect. Look at me and Agatha—”

  “The difference is that Agatha loves you back.”

  Her answer disarmed him. Tedros exhaled. “Mother, you couldn’t have been unhappy enough to abandon your own son.”

  “I know. That’s why I stayed with your father much longer than I should have,” Guinevere replied. “Believe me when I say I was well educated in the values of Good. I’d been t
rained by a Dean far less progressive than yours to put king and kingdom first. I knew full well that no one would forgive a queen who absconds with a knight from her king’s court, and for good reason. Even if Lancelot was my true love, the idea of going off with him felt childish, selfish, and deeply Evil. I had a duty to keep my family together.”

  “Exactly,” said Tedros.

  “It wasn’t as if I could take you with me,” said Guinevere. “That’d be unfair to you, to your father, and a kingdom that needed its future king—”

  “Not just unfair, but unconscionable,” Tedros piled on.

  “Which is why I told all this to Merlin, hoping he’d condemn such sinful thoughts and force me to focus on the life I’d chosen, not the one I kept imagining.” His mother paused. “Instead he asked me if I so desperately wanted to leave Camelot, why I was still there.”

  Tedros looked at her, agog.

  “Why? Because you have a child! You have a husband! Because that’s what you’re supposed to do! How could he ask you such a stupid question! It’s a matter of right and wrong!”

  “I was even harsher,” his mother concurred. “I said only a man would have so little regard for a woman’s sense of duty. How irresponsible to think this was simply a matter of choice. I couldn’t just dump my old life and start a new one. How would I wake up every day knowing I’d left a son behind? He’s my child! He’s my blood!”

  “He needs you,” Tedros fought—

  “He needs my help,” Guinevere finished.

  Both of them were quiet, looking into each other’s eyes.

  “What did Merlin say?” Tedros asked tightly.

  Guinevere’s eyes glistened. “He just looked at me and said: ‘Who’s helping who?’”

  Tedros shook his head. “I don’t under—”

  But he did. His soul did. Tears stung his eyes, washing away his anger.

  “To stay with your father would have ruined my life. And it would have ruined your life too,” said Guinevere. “Arthur may have been a wonderful king to his people, a loving father to you, and a faithful husband to me . . . but I loved someone else, Tedros. I’d always loved someone else. And if you found out I’d clung to an unhappy marriage for your sake, you would carry that weight forever. You would know that your mother chose to disavow her own happiness on your behalf. And as much as I wanted to give up my life and stay by your side, I couldn’t make that choice for you. Not for a boy with as much courage and compassion as you. Part of your journey was to come to see your mother for who she truly was, not who she pretended to be. Most children would never get past the resentment and wither from the pain. But Merlin knew you were different. He said my leaving wasn’t just necessary for my own fate, it was the essential seed of your fate too. It would make you look closer and find real love. It would make you the king you needed to be. And even though leaving would strike us both with an indelible wound . . . one day, you would find a way to forgive me.”