by Shelby Bach
The only problem with this plan was Chase himself. His arm snaked around my shoulders, and I was pretty sure he’d thrown a glamour over his face. “You’ll freeze on your own.”
My trembling stopped. Smiling, I leaned into him. “How did Lena take down Searcaster?”
“Sleeping enchantment,” he said, as we watched our friends speed toward us. “She supercharged the leftover spindle from my Tale and stabbed Searcaster in the foot with it.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to get him to smile again. “My friends’ jobs were way more impressive than mine. Technically, all I really did was carry something.”
“Yeah, right. You thought we were famous before, but after this . . .” Chase grinned, just like I’d hoped he would. “We’ll go down in history.”
Yep. He sounded more like himself.
“It’s over!” Lena was closer now. She was practically skipping with joy. “They don’t even have a leader with the Snow Queen and Searcaster gone, but they’re all surrendering! If I had any magic left over, I would figure out how to cast fireworks!”
he kids in our grade and the human Itari fighters joined us before we trudged back to the portal.
The rest of the news came in fits and starts.
“I didn’t want to kill Searcaster,” Lena told me. “I mean, we already knew the Snow Queen’s death would create a huge blast. The second spindle still had a sleeping enchantment. Pricking her forced the enchantment past her defenses. She was guarding just against magical attacks, so a physical one took her by surprise. She almost squished George when she fell. He’d been coming to help me.”
When I asked Chase if all the pillars were dead, he said, “Everybody but Jimmy. He aimed for me and accidentally beheaded Ori’an. Jimmy will probably bleed out soon, though. Ripper really tore him up.”
I wondered how Matilda had taken her husband’s defeat. I didn’t see her anywhere on the battlefield, but I was sure we’d see her again.
Lena handed me a dragon scale, and I chanted the heating spell. Chase didn’t move his arm from around my shoulders, though. A huge smile grew on my face and didn’t budge.
Light—good, old-fashioned sunlight—revealed the mess in the valley. All the snow was churned up, most of it bloody.
We’d been up all night. Fatigue hit me, and then I really was glad Chase’s arm was keeping me steady.
Jenny pounced on George and Lena, telling them how dangerous that was, and how proud she was of them, and how they needed to get their behinds through the portal back to EAS. Jenny, Gretel, and the elves would sweep the area for the wounded. Anyone who could walk was not a priority.
We all happily let her boss us around. We joined the line waiting to enter the portal.
Forrel and the twins were ahead of us. The soldier had a gash on his arm. Ima reminded him anxiously to keep pressure on the wound, and a smile flickered around Forrel’s mouth, like he’d suffered much worse but he kind of enjoyed getting fussed over. Ben told us that we’d missed a real treat, seeing the mermaids fight. Chatty was “poetry in motion,” according to him. When the twelfth graders stepped into the line near the back, George excused himself to go to Miriam. He dipped her backward and kissed her so intensely that people whistled and cheered. Lena was louder than everyone else.
Chase watched them like he was taking notes. I pretended not to notice.
When it was our turn, we stepped through the portal into the EAS courtyard. The elves had hacked a few burnt branches off the Tree of Hope, but no one had taken them away. People were sitting on them.
“Rory!” Dad yelled when he spotted me.
Chase removed his arm. I missed it instantly—not the warmth anymore, but his solidness. I glanced at him before I turned to my family. He was looking right back at me.
Mom nearly bowled me over with the force of her hug. Then she kissed my face all over, like she’d done when I was small. Maybe that should have embarrassed me, but I just smiled.
Mrs. LaMarelle squeezed Lena so hard that it looked like she couldn’t breathe. Lady Aspenwind had arrived too, trying hard not to cry and failing miserably. Dad fished a tissue out of his pocket and passed it over. Lady Aspenwind didn’t realize what it was for, so Chase had to take it, nodding his thanks and explaining to his mom in rapid Fey.
Then Dad was hugging me too. “I think we should just all pile on,” Brie said, and then I felt her arm circle around us from Dad’s side, and then Amy’s from Mom’s end. Dani contributed to the group hug with a spit bubble.
I laughed. My sister could grow up safe now. Solange was gone. The worry had been so constant for the past few years that I’d gotten used to the pressure, the tight feeling of suppressed panic. Now it had evaporated. I felt . . . new. I felt joy.
Then my nose started prickling, right under the bridge. I blinked hard. I refused to cry just because I was finally happy, and Hansel and Rapunzel weren’t around to see it.
“I’m supposed to bring you before the Canon for a meeting.” Sarah Thumb and Mr. Swallow had landed on the branch right above our heads. It didn’t look particularly safe, with half its wood charred black. “But I’ll pretend I didn’t see you if you want to go clean up and tend to your wounds first.”
“You can just tell the Director to wait.” I was done following the Canon’s orders for a while. “I’m taking the day off. She can yell at me later.”
“Mildred’s dead, Rory,” Sarah Thumb said gently. “The tenth and eleventh graders were having a hard time defending their portal. The Director was bringing some students as reinforcements. The Snow Queen had just sent a fresh slew of wolves. They went straight for the spearmen, who weren’t in position yet, and the Director threw herself between them.”
That was it, then. The previous Triumvirate was gone, all of them.
I hadn’t liked the Director. She was petty sometimes and controlling most of the time, but in her way, she had tried to protect us as fiercely as Hansel had. Ever After School wouldn’t be the same without her.
“So who’s in charge?” Lena said, in a tone that really meant, Who is going to yell at us in the Canon meeting?
“You?” Chase asked Sarah.
She snorted. “Hardly. The Canon still needs to vote on a new Director. I was Mildred’s deputy, which only means I get none of the authority and all the paperwork.”
“Whatever this meeting is about, it can wait,” said Lena’s grandmother, her hands on her hips. “Look at these children. They’re dead on their feet. They need breakfast, a shower, and a nap—in that order.”
Sarah Thumb raised both hands in surrender. “I just said I would look the other way if they wanted to tend to their wounds.”
“No, I’ll come.” As awesome as sleep sounded, I wanted everything to be over, and I meant everything. I didn’t want this meeting hanging over my head. “Besides, I’m not hurt.”
Everyone paused, like they didn’t know how to break it to me.
Then Amy said, “Rory, you have blood matted in your hair and a red handprint on your chest.”
I looked down and across my collarbone was the imprint of five long fingers. I hoped that was the kind of red mark that turned into an ugly bruise, not the magical kind that tended to have side effects. “Well, I feel fine. I had some Water of Life.”
“Did you?” Sarah Thumb said. “Because it’s still under strict rationing.”
Lena’s voice was hard. “Trust me. She needed it.”
Sarah backed off. “Well,” she said, “then it’s up to you.”
“I say we go. Just like this.” Somehow, Chase made that response seem like a threat. “Hard to punish someone when they look like they’ve already been punished enough.”
Mr. Swallow took flight. “You kids are so pessimistic,” Sarah Thumb said, shaking her head. “We’re grown-ups, not monsters.”
They didn’t want to punish us. When I heard their request, I just stared at Sarah Thumb and all the serious faces of the strangers sitting on the thrones.
“You want me to join the Canon?” I repeated, just to be sure I’d heard them right.
Lena squeaked from her extra-tall chair. An extremely happy squeak.
“Both of you, actually,” Sarah Thumb said. “The Snow Queen is dead. Your Tale is over. Rumpelstiltskin confirmed it. He would have brought the book and told you himself, but he took an arrow in the shoulder. Gretel’s fixing him up.”
Chase’s eyes cut to Mildred Grubb’s old chair, covered with carved roses and conspicuously empty. I guess they did have an opening now. “Pass,” he said flatly.
“No, not as ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ” said Sarah Thumb. “As ‘Jack the Giant Killer.’ Your fight with the pillars earned you a second Tale.”
“No way,” Chase said, but it was the kind of “no way” that begged to be proved wrong.
“It’s in the current volume,” Sarah Thumb said. “Your dad offered to share his position.”
“I don’t need to represent both Jacks,” said the Champion of the Canon. Proud again, like he should have been proud of his son all along.
Chase was glad. Not as overjoyed as I thought he would be, though. He’d talked for years about getting a good Tale, but I guess that wasn’t why he’d taken on the pillars. Finding out he was a “Giant Killer” was just a bonus.
“Well?” Sarah Thumb asked us. Lena tipped forward in her seat like she thought I couldn’t see her, nodding as hard as she could.
Chase glanced at me. He wasn’t going to choose first.
“I want to know something before I decide,” I said. “Did my Tale explain about me holding the fate of magic?”
“You don’t think carrying the heart was enough?” Chase said, only half joking.
I really didn’t. “That was just the fate of the Snow Queen.”
Sarah Thumb’s eyes gleamed. We were about to get a dose of magical theory, and I probably wouldn’t understand it. “If you had just stabbed the heart, all of the magic inside the Snow Queen would have been destroyed too. But you returned the heart first. That forced the magic back out into the world before the Snow Queen died in the explosion. If that magic had disappeared completely, it would have caused a ripple effect and started the decline of magic all around the globe—”
“Never mind the ripple effect. Who do you think had cast the heating enchantment over her whole army?” Lena burst out. “It must have been Solange. She was holding her forces hostage just like the city of Kiivinsh. Imagine what would have happened if Rory had stabbed the heart, and all of the Snow Queen’s magic—all her spells—had winked out. Thousands of people would have been stranded in the middle of the Arctic.”
“We wouldn’t have let them escape through the portals,” Sarah said, stunned. “They would have frozen to death first.”
The goblins had gone specifically for the dragons. They’d been after the scales.
“So, basically, what you’re saying is that most of the people on that battlefield—like maybe half the population of all the hidden continents—owe Rory their lives?” Chase said.
“Well. Not the witches,” Lena said. “They could handle their own heating spells.”
I was glad that I hadn’t listened to Conner.
“Do they even realize?” What Chase really meant was: Can we tell them?
“They’re going to know,” said Sarah Thumb, delighted that she’d just gained another bargaining chip in the magical world. The Director had definitely trained her.
I scowled. That wasn’t why I took the heart to Solange.
Sarah Thumb didn’t notice. “So, do you accept the responsibility and privilege of joining the Canon? Usually people don’t take so long to decide.”
Some members didn’t really get to decide, I thought, looking at Lena. Her face beamed with excitement, her body brimming with hope. She didn’t want to be the only one of us stuck in the Canon.
Chase didn’t want to join at all. He just wanted to grow up. But he hadn’t refused yet. If Lena and I were Tale representatives, then he wasn’t about to be left out.
So it was up to me.
If I was honest with myself, getting the whole Triumvirate into the Canon made sense. Between the three of us, we would be able to change some of their decision-making processes.
But I didn’t want the Canon to take credit for what I’d done. They would guilt the goblins and the trolls into doing what they wanted. They’d done it before.
I didn’t want the Canon to feel like they were in charge of me.
But the real problem would be immortality. Sure, Solange had done wrong by her sister before her Tale had even ended, but the really bad stuff had happened after she had lived longer than a normal human. I wasn’t Solange, but I would still make my own mistakes. As a regular Character, I would only have a limited number of decades to screw stuff up. That was comforting.
I looked at Lena again. The hope had drained out of her. Then she nodded, understanding.
“No,” I said.
The grown-ups weren’t expecting that. A bunch of shocked faces jerked toward me.
“Are you sure?” Jack must have known that Chase wouldn’t join unless I did.
“Maybe you should ask me again in a few years,” I said. “Maybe you should wait and see what kind of person I turn out to be before you invite another bearer of an Unwritten Tale to live forever.”
That shut everyone up. Well, everyone except Chase.
“Same,” he said, grinning.
Maybe someday, when I was a little older, I might ask if they needed another weapons instructor. Maybe Chase would try to get a job too. That would keep us in the loop, and we would get stuck in almost as many Canon meetings as Lena.
For now, I had a Binding Oath to keep. “While I’m here, I need to talk to you all about Matilda Searcaster.”
Nothing had been decided. Sarah Thumb said that they would have to vote on any and all punishments. For now, our top priority would be finding Matilda before the Snow Queen’s followers did. Some of them might blame her. She had been my ride to the battle. But when the meeting was adjourned, Lena told us that she was pretty sure that Matilda would be okay. “She definitely helped us, and they know it. Plus, she’s a giant. Kind of hard for her to stay in hiding, especially considering she’s going to have a huge green baby soon. Do you think we’re free to go sleep now? I’m beat.”
Chase yawned. “Yeah. We can tell by the way you’re barely talking.”
Lena ignored him. “Gran’s right. Food, shower, sleep. That’s what we need.”
And that was exactly what I did. I sleepwalked home to our EAS apartment and sat at the kitchen table, where Mom had fixed my favorite, apple-cinnamon oatmeal. I almost skipped the shower to be honest, but Amy put her foot down. “Rory, your mom needs to see that that blood isn’t coming from a serious wound. Also, I don’t want to have to wash the sheets after your nap.”
Hours later, when I woke up again, I almost regretted sleeping. I shouldn’t have left Mom and Amy unsupervised for that long.
I stumbled out of my room, rubbing my eyes, and Mom said, “We’re throwing you a party.”
“What?” I wondered if I should be rubbing my ears instead. There was no way I could have heard her right.
“Just roll with it,” Amy said. “It’s too late to stop her. Lena came an hour ago, and your mom put her and that harp thing to work inviting everybody. By the way, does Lena always have that much energy? Or is it a sorceress thing?”
“A party?” I repeated, still not processing the idea.
“Well, we missed your birthday party this year,” Mom said regretfully, like we’d just gotten busy and forgotten. “So, it’s more of an end-of-your-tale celebration.”
“We don’t have those at EAS,” I said.
“Well, maybe you should,” Mom said. “Your Tale has been going on for years, hasn’t it? It’s kind of like a graduation.”
Amy leaned in closer to me. “Actually, it’s more of a Yay, I’m still alive! celebration.”
“A
my,” Mom said. Too soon to joke about it then.
“They don’t have those either,” I said, trying not to smile. “Come on, Mom—it’s not the right time to celebrate. The Director’s dead.” Rapunzel and Hansel too, but I didn’t think I could say their names without getting emotional. “The wounded haven’t healed. We haven’t started rebuilding from the attack a few days ago . . .”
Mom interrupted me. “Rory, there will always be more reasons not to have a party than to have a party, but you’ve got to let me do it. We can call it whatever you want. It can be a Welcome to high school party. It can be a Your mom is proud of you party, but it’s happening.”
I should have listened to Amy. There was no talking Mom out of it. “So what time does it start?”
Mom smiled. “You’ve got an hour.”
Amy plunked a couple boxes on the table, wrapped with paper patterned with balloons. “You can change into these.”
I stared at them. “The Snow Queen is gone, and the first thing you decide to do in the new safe world outside is . . . go shopping?”
“Don’t be silly,” Mom said. “These are birthday presents.”
“You didn’t get a chance to open them on your actual birthday,” Amy said. “Then your mom was afraid that you might wear them during a mission. You’re hard on your clothes, Rory. I don’t know if you ever noticed, but you will. In high school, you’re going to start doing your own laundry.”
We might have been discussing math homework. It was just so ridiculous and so nice, talking to my family about being a Character. All the tension was gone. It was part of my life, so they had made it part of theirs.
I should have known that it would turn into a mini makeover somehow. The gifts turned out to be a pretty green blouse embroidered with ferns or feathers or something, plus some shorts nicer than any of the others I owned.
I almost protested when I saw the green flats that Mom was determined to lend me. They always fell off when I had to go slay dragons or battle trolls. Then I remembered I was done fighting for the day. I might even be done fighting for the whole month. No one was trying to kill me. I took the shoes and slipped them on. I only added one thing to the outfit—Rapunzel’s light. It was too big to wear as a necklace, so I looped its chain around my belt, like I’d seen Rapunzel do a couple times. It rested where my sword used to be, and the weight was kind of reassuring.