by Holly Hook
The cold feeling fell out of me and I faced Eric. He was kneeling, cradling his bloody ankle, and breathing heavily. Behind him, the yard was empty and the gate wide open on the dark street. Cars started and took off. A tree across the street was shifting. Turning thicker. Darker. The evil was spreading past Eric's yard. It might spread through the entire town or beyond and it would be full of things like the toxic carpet and the deadly brambles.
No one would stand a chance.
"You controlled those thorns," Eric said. "You told them what to do."
I nodded. "I did." There was no denying it. "Are you okay?"
Eric stood there and shook his head. "Mara--who are you?" He slapped one hand to his forehead. "I've known you for a long time but the memory's blurry. I think...I think I knew you in Fable." He walked in a circle. "I'm not dealing with this. This isn't what I think this is."
I gulped.
The story had fallen. I had done this. The world was filling with things that might kill Eric. Tears filled my eyes. I'd never meant for this to happen.
And now people might die. Again.
I had to come clean, even if that meant Eric would hate me.
It was better than him being dead.
"Eric," I said. "Is there any way to reverse this darkness?"
He faced me. "The only way to do that is to make whatever story I'm in end the way it should."
I let a tear fall. I was showing weakness and I hated it.
"Is that true?"
He nodded. "Things were bad in Fable when I left it, but I heard that making a story end the way it should is the only thing that will chase the darkness back. Alric owns this now." He waved around at his yard and at the grass, which was blackish even in the porch light. "I can't believe he found a way to spread into this world, which is supposed to be safe for us Legends who manage to escape."
I took a step back.
The only way to stop this would be to save Sara.
And get her and Eric back together.
I started to walk away.
"Mara. Come back. What's going on?" Eric asked. He followed me.
I whirled around on him. "You want to know?" I asked. "I'll tell you." I checked the yard to make sure the brambles weren't returning. "Alric messed with your memories. Sara is Snow White and you're the prince who was supposed to revive her after she got poisoned with the apple. I'm the horrible person here." I felt angrier as I said it and I feared I would choke Eric next. "I guess I'm the jealous one who wanted her out of the way because she stole you from me. I loved you first, but I guess she wins because she looks better than me or something. I didn't know who I was until a few minutes ago when Alric took Sara away. He made me think he was on my side. The guy even stole my magic mirror. And now the only way we're going to get rid of this darkness is to get Sara back. But I'm just as bad as he is. Good luck with that."
Eric balled his fists as the floodgates of his real memories opened. Redness rushed to his cheeks. He was furious at me and he had every right to be. I hoped he wouldn't try to attack. I could defend myself. Very well.
"You know," he said. "That sounds right. I have seen you before. And Sara. I suppose you're glad she's gone?" His voice rose with every word.
"I am and I'm not," I said. "You're not happy and you still hate me, so what good is that? This all sucks. The only person who won here is Alric."
Eric's expression softened and he stared at me for a long time. "Mara," he said. "I never thought someone like you would tell the truth like that. You could have fooled me for a really long time, with my memory messed with and all."
"Well, I wasn't going to let those brambles hurt you. And more stuff will try to hurt you if this place stays dark." It killed me inside to say it. "We have to get to Fable and get Sara back."
"But how? Portals don't open often. Not until midnight. We need to find a place that reminds us of fairy tales and then wait for the clock to strike twelve." Eric waved me to the gate. "You know any places? I wasn't planning on going back there for quite a while."
I stood there in the yard. "This story ending the way it should means I have to die."
Eric put his hand on the side of the open gate. "No, you don't."
"You think Sara is a perfect princess?" I asked. "After you two get together she's supposed to dance me to death in some iron shoes. Sorry, but that doesn't sound like a great way to go."
Eric gulped. "Sara wouldn't do something like that."
"I have a volume of fairy tales in the house if you want to see."
"I don't think we should go back in there. It was the poison apple I saw on the floor, right? She bit into that. I don't think my kissing her is going to help like you think it will. People think kisses are the magic cure in Fable, but that's just a myth. It usually takes something more powerful than that. So unless you know anything that can remove curses, we might be stuck." He was shouting again.
I didn't back down. We just stared at each other for what felt like hours.
"Well? You made the apple!"
His words stabbed into me. I had made the apple. I'd even been holding it in my memory, right before Alric caught me and took it away. I must have been seeking out Sara in Fable.
In Fable, at least, I was an evil, evil person.
And I didn't want to go back there and meet my former self.
"Wait," I said. "I might have something. Remember Foods?"
Chapter Thirteen
Haven House was still boarded up, but getting in would be no problem. I was full of dark magic, after all.
"You're saying lettuce is going to help Sara?" Eric asked as we stood on the side of the road.
"It turned Nort and Joey back. It might be able to remove the poison."
I checked up and down the street. None of the darkness and evil had made it to this side of town yet. So far, it was all back in the rich neighborhood, where trees were growing thick and dark and brambles sprung up along houses.
But I had the feeling it would spread out here before daylight.
By morning, there would be a death toll.
"Where's it at, then?" Eric asked.
"In the garden. I didn't destroy it like I did the purple lettuce," I said. "What time is it?"
Eric checked his phone and glared at me again. "Eleven forty-five."
"Go grab the lettuce," I said. We weren't even pretending to be nice to each other. Even after Sara came back, that would never happen again.
I would never have Eric.
Maybe I'd never been meant to have him at all. I'd be lucky to survive this. In order to, I'd have to kill that jealous queen inside of me.
I wondered what would happen to me after that.
Who I would be.
Eric vanished into the garden and returned a minute later with a head of the bright green lettuce. "I can't believe this stuff," he said. "It's all warm and tingly. Almost like it's full of light magic."
He handed me the head of lettuce. He was right. I hadn't touched it before, but as I held it, it filled my arms with a warm tingling.
I'd created this, too.
Maybe I was capable of doing more than evil.
"Portal," Eric said. "We need a portal. Alric will have taken her to his castle first since that's where he has the magic mirror. I think he has some other place where he stores people and whole villages in glass coffins, but as far as I know, no one else has ever found it. If we don't catch up with him tonight, we'll never find Sara."
A shudder raced through me.
We had one chance.
"The mirror," I said. "There's a mirror inside that he used to come through into Haven House last night." I thought of the downstairs bathroom one.
It was the only chance we had.
The two of us rushed the front door at the same time. If the dwarves were still here, we were screwed. Eric and I jammed our shoulders into the plywood as I cradled the lettuce. It refused to break.
“You have magic,” Eric said. “You break this open.”
I faced the door and imagined it cracking in two, but it refused to budge. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “I don’t remember how I used magic before.”
“Well, something has to work. You used it to make that poison apple.”
I hoped I would never remember how I did that. It wasn’t a talent I wanted to use again. If this was the result, I’d never use my magic again. I bristled and faced Eric. Cold swept through me. My magic was coming back, riding on my anger. “Would you shut up?” I asked.
And then the plywood cracked right down the middle.
We froze and I faced it. The crack split the board and both pieces fell off the door as if Alric himself had done this. The cold inside vanished as I stared at the door.
“Hello?” Eric asked, leaning in. “My mother runs this place. She might be in there.”
Stephanie. She was Eric’s mother the whole time.
Her reading my dream journal revealed who I was. It was when Sara had remembered, too. My entries had made them both remember who I was.
That was it. When I was in Fable, I wasn’t coming back here. Ever.
“Mom?” Eric asked, but he was met with only silence.
“I hope Alric didn’t do anything to her,” I said.
“She never abandons Haven House,” Eric said.
“But Sara’s not here anymore. She has no reason to stay. Maybe she left.”
“She wouldn’t have done that without telling me.”
I waited to hear any dwarf footsteps, but none came. “You had better go in there first,” I said. “They won’t want to hurt you.”
Eric gave me a dirty look and ducked into Haven House. He scrambled around inside, turned on some lights, and came back out. “Clear,” he said. “The dwarves are gone. I have no idea where they could have gone. Maybe they went out looking for Sara.”
“You’re telling the truth?” I asked. Now that Eric knew what had happened, he didn’t need me anymore.
“Truth,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you, Mara, even though I should. I might need you to hold off Alric once we get to Fable. The mirror will take us right to his castle. It’s where all mirror portals go. And he’ll be there. I don’t have magic. You do. But if you screw this up, I might change my mind.”
I about withered inside. I struggled for words but they wouldn’t come. For once, I didn’t have a comeback.
“Look, Mara. If you honestly want to help reverse this mess you’ve caused, stand between me and Alric. Keep him away from me while I cure Sara. Maybe, just maybe, I won’t consider you a complete failure if you do that. I’ll take the lettuce. I don’t want your magic corrupting it.”
“My magic made that lettuce.”
Eric stepped into the kitchen and waved me in. I followed, waiting to be ambushed any second, but no dwarves came. We walked to the downstairs bathroom. The mirror still hung there, unbroken.
Eric checked his phone.
We had seven minutes.
“This doesn’t feel very magical,” he said. “We need this to feel magical for a portal to open. Do you have any candles?”
“Sara does,” I said. I rushed upstairs, waiting for the dwarves, but no one came. In fact, the steps had burn marks, probably left over from Alric’s fight with the dwarves. The dwarves who were just trying to protect Sara. I ran into her room, grabbed the taper candles she displayed on her dresser, and ran back downstairs. I was still alive.
I didn’t deserve to be.
“Here,” I said, tossing Eric Sara’s lighter. I set a candle up on either side of the mirror and Eric lit them. I went out and turned off the kitchen light and the glow from the candles filled the bathroom, casting a circle on the ceiling. We were almost there.
In minutes, I might be facing Alric.
And I might not come out alive.
But I was going to get in his way. Big time.
The house creaked somewhere and the linoleum under our feet warped. Eric jumped and closed the bathroom door behind us. “I think the darkness just got here,” he whispered. “Those brambles might be outside the house.”
As if on cue, something scraped against the bathroom door. I checked to make sure nothing was coming under it. It was too dark to tell. The temperature in the bathroom was dropping and the air grew more electric. We were almost out of here. This was working.
Eric and I faced the mirror. Our reflections stood side by side. Eric’s eyes were steely. Mine, dark. They were the eyes of someone I didn’t like.
Someone who had hurt Eric just to have him to herself.
Silvery vapor filled the mirror, blocking us from view. Eric tapped me on the arm. “The portal,” he said. “We have to go through now. You first.”
I didn’t argue.
I had to go into danger. I climbed up onto the sink and reached out to touch the glass. It was vaporous, wisping around my hand, and very, very cold. As cold as ice particles.
I held my breath.
And ducked through to the other side.
Chapter Fourteen
I toppled onto a floor made of polished gray stone and lined with blood red carpets. I got my bearings and stood, whirling in a circle. I'd never seen this room before, but it was huge, with enormous torches hanging on the walls and casting firelight on everything. A large throne stood next to me, shining with gold and polished wood. A tall window looked out on a very dark forest in the distance. A long red curtain was drawn next to me, keeping half the room from view.
I rubbed my elbows where I had landed on them. The air here was different. More fresh. More crisp, but with a hint of dread that gathered in my stomach. I'd felt that before. It was as familiar as the lines on my palm. Almost a part of me.
This was Fable's dark region.
The place I had come from.
And the place I had returned to, both in and out.
I stood next to a long mirror bordered in a golden frame. It was tall enough to fit a man through it and it shimmered with the silver mist inside. On the other side of the glass, I could make out the darkened downstairs bathroom of Haven House and the closed door.
Eric was gone.
My heart sank and I thought of those brambles trying to get into the bathroom and eat him. I wasn't there to chase them away.
"Eric!" I screamed.
My voice echoed off the stone walls of the room and back at me as if laughing. Everything seemed sinister here.
But then he emerged from the mirror, toppling to the floor.
"Eric!" I said, leaning down to help him up. The blood on his pant leg had crusted now, but there was no fresh bleeding. Eric waved me away and got up on his own. He faced the mirror as if making sure nothing else was coming through it.
My mirror.
The border was made of carved vipers and roses and apples. Even carved brambles. They all twisted together in a morbid collage of death and pain. This was so much like the scribbling in my dream journal. I had carried more of me in that book than I thought.
And King Henrik had stolen it from me. And Alric had kept it.
The silver mist died, leaving the bathroom in its place. The scene remained still as the candles flickered on the other side.
"What's going on?" Eric asked.
"Mara," echoed a voice from deep within the mirror. I couldn't tell if it was male or female. "Your rival is dead. You are now the fairest in the land."
I'd heard that voice before. A chill swept over me. I knew that, when I was still in Fable, I had longed to hear those words just as much as I longed for Eric. But now they were laced with poison and hate. I could sense Eric staring at me and I waited for some blow between my shoulder blades, but it never came. He was waiting to see what I would do.
I swallowed down the regret.
And turned away.
Eric hadn't moved. He waited there with his fists balled. I was still the failure. Still the villain. That wasn't even close to changing yet.
"You know," Eric said. "I think I remember our rel
ationship here. It's coming back now that I'm in Fable again."
I allowed a bit of hope to rise inside of me.
Until Eric spoke again.
"You never let me out of the castle much."
I stood there, trying to remember. Things were coming back, like a tidal wave of memories. My huge castle, dark except for torches and purple carpets. Purple curtains. A purple bed I had tried to lure Eric into. Brambles with red flowers, flowers as red as blood. Brambles I had ordered to keep him there at all costs.
And Sara, the daughter of the former queen there. Sara, who hated the dark region and wanted to escape to the lighter one. And Eric, who I caught one night promising her that he would help her reach it.
I found them kissing in the dining room.
They fled after that.
Eric cut through my brambles with his sword and they managed to escape into the dark forest. I consulted my mirror to see where they were: in a cottage on the border of the light and dark region.
I went in search of them, but those stupid dwarves managed to hold me off with their hammers and their strength. And when I returned to my castle, my mirror was gone. Stolen by King Henrik and his magician Alric, according to one of my guards. They were getting more powerful in the next kingdom from all the gold they were hoarding.
And if I could get all that gold and my mirror back, my own power would grow.
I'd be able to get rid of Sara after all.
I went into the depths of my castle. Over the next several months, I gathered the ingredients for the poison apple. It would be a gift to Henrik and Alric. I'd kill them first. Take my mirror, find Sara, and kill her next. I dipped the apple into a cauldron of purple poison I had made from the worst ingredients in the dark region. Bramble flowers. Vipers' venom. I wanted Henrik and Alric to die and then I would take their kingdom, their gold, and their power.
And I set off towards the castle. I walked for days until I reached the border of Henrik's castle grounds.
And then Alric found me.
Made me surrender the apple.
He sent me to the other world, where Sara and Eric had already fled along with the dwarves and Eric's parents, Tom and Stephanie. Alric must have changed their memories to forget about me.