by Shannon Hale
“Whoa,” Raven says, stepping backward. “There’s lava down there. Like, bubbling volcanic lava!”
Apple and Frankie peer over.
“I saw it when I was flying over,” Draculaura says, staying right where she is. “But I didn’t want to talk about it, because, you know, scary.”
“Maybe let’s go single file from now on,” Frankie suggests.
Raven agrees, and the girls continue on.
“I wonder if my mother’s magic isn’t working out here, either,” Raven says.
“Probably,” Frankie responds, “if she’s anything like you.”
Raven stiffens.
“Ix-nay on the om-may,” Apple whispers.
“Was that a spell?” Draculaura asks. “I thought only Raven could do spells!”
“It was pig latin,” Frankie says.
“Pig latin?” Draculaura says. “I have so many questions!”
“She was saying not to mention my mom,” Raven says. “But don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I totes get it,” Draculaura says. “Like, if the Normies back home knew my dad existed, they’d assume he was evil, but he’s the sweetest guy ever.”
“Yeah,” Raven says, “hexcept my mom really is evil. If not for her, we wouldn’t even be here. You guys would be safe in your school. Maddie would be home. Everything would be fine.”
“But I would never have met you, Raven,” Draculaura says. “And that would be a shame.”
“Thanks, Drac. I just wish it had been under less… apocalyptic circumstances.”
Ahead, the bridge forks in two directions. Frankie checks the compass and leads them to the left.
“Okay… I’m trying to work this out,” Frankie says. “Even though she’s technically evil, does your mom still love you?”
Does she? Raven certainly hoped so when she was little. And now? She’s not sure anymore. She doesn’t care, she tells herself, but her heart makes a twisting sensation. Raven tries to conjure a true image of her mother in her mind, analyze it for signs of real, genuine maternal affection. But before she can find a way to sum up her relationship with her mother, a dark figure saunters down the bridge toward them. Not exactly the Big Bad Wolf, but all the same Raven wishes for Cerise’s red cloak.
“What in Ever After is that?” asks Apple.
“Nothing in Ever After,” says Raven. “We’re not in Ever After anymore.”
“You all sound like chubby, little chitterbirds,” the Evil Queen snaps, her figure resolving out of the mist. “My, I used to love a good roast bird with mustard and pickles!”
Apple makes a noise in her throat like a frog that has swallowed its own tongue. Raven can barely breathe.
“Mother?” Raven says. “What are you—?”
The Evil Queen barrels over her question. “What are you wearing, daughter? You don’t have a spike on you anywhere! For the sake of my eyeballs, invest in some decent shoulder pads!”
“But—” Raven begins.
“Anyway, my little green friend, of course I love my daughter. In my own, evil way. Isn’t that what you would say, Raven?” The Evil Queen is nearly upon them, but she seems to be growing taller. She’s like a frightening, sparkly giantess. “And another thing… Wait, who are you again?”
“I… I’m your daughter, Raven,” she says in a quiet voice.
“Hmm”—the Evil Queen examines her nails—“your name no longer pleases me. You should change it to Beatriz von Witchiest. Or maybe Imma Gunna Rule. Where are my goblin servants? Come hither, minions, and carve a sculpture of your queen out of ice! No, wait… out of watermelons! No, make it cream cake!”
“Is she usually this chatty?” Frankie asks Apple.
“I… I guess,” Apple says. “But when I imagine her, she’s a lot more—”
A crash of deafening thunder sounds, and from the fog-stained sky the Evil Queen descends… a second Evil Queen. Only this one is glowing and is the size of a small house.
“What the what?” Draculaura yells. “How many Raven’s evil moms are there?”
The queen on the bridge does nothing to indicate she has noticed her giant flying twin and continues to talk, commanding absent minions to build her a throne made of ripe peaches and ordering Raven to change her name to things like Missy McEvilton and HeaddressFan217.
The sky Evil Queen raises her hands, a giant ball of fire forming between them. She screams as she hurls the fire straight at Apple.
“No!” Raven shouts, diving to push her friend out of the way. They fall onto the bridge, fire singeing the air inches above them.
“Oww…” Apple groans, rubbing her head.
“Hey,” Draculaura says. “Giant flying Evil Queen disappeared. Right when Apple hit her head.”
The skies are empty of everything but fog. The talking Evil Queen is still on the bridge, though, and still talking.
“How about Spiky Shoulders ’R’ Us? No, that would be a hexcellent gift shop but not a great name for a daughter. Hmm… Doomlet Von Greatness the Third? Empress Sparklepants?”
“You know, I was kind of scared of her at first,” Draculaura says. “But after the big, glowing fireball version, this one is not so scary.”
“She appeared after I started thinking about her,” Raven says.
“Yeah, me too.” Apple rubs her head. “I was thinking how your mom seemed way scarier to me.”
Raven nods. “And then a way scarier one appeared.”
She closes her eyes. She imagines the last time she saw her mother eating. Dumplings. She was eating dumplings. She loved those things.
“Whoa!” Draculaura says. “Magic food!”
Raven opens her eyes. The chatty Evil Queen is still there. Still ranting. Only now she has a little plate of dumplings.
“Above all, choose a frightening name,” the woman instructs. She holds up a finger, plucks a dumpling from the plate, and pops it into her mouth, chewing as she speaks. “Fear… is the only… universal… currency.”
“She’s imaginary,” Raven says. “Something about this place… it’s making our thoughts real.”
“Seriously?” Draculaura squeals. “Hold on a sec.”
Raven closes her eyes and mutters, “No mother, not real; no mother, not real,” but the woman does not disappear.
The bridge shakes, and suddenly there is a giant frog, much too large to fit on the bridge, crouched behind her imaginary mother.
“Ribbit,” it thunders.
The talking queen’s expression of horrified shock makes Raven smile, and finally the queen vanishes.
“Thanks for that, Drac,” Raven says. “I couldn’t get her to disappear.”
Draculaura smiles. “It helps if you tell a story, I think,” she says. “I just started going through a story Dad used to tell me about a giant frog in the swamps that would eat unsuspecting—”
“That’s good,” Raven says. “Stop there.”
“Okay,” Draculaura agrees, still smiling.
“Ribbit,” the giant frog croaks.
“You realize, of course,” Apple says, “there is now a giant frog on our path. How do you propose getting rid of it?”
“Apple could kiss it,” Frankie says. “Maybe it will turn into a giant prince.”
“Haha,” Apple says. “Not my story.”
The frog begins to turn transparent, so that the girls can see the path beyond.
“Is it disappearing?” Raven asks.
“Not really,” Drac says. “I just imagined more of the story where the frog turns into a ghost and guards the swamp against evil.”
“But it’s still on the path,” Apple says.
Draculaura shrugs. “We’ll have to walk through it,” she says. “It’s a ghost. You can walk through ghosts. I mean, it’s rude to walk through ghosts, but it was imaginary to begin with, so I don’t think it’ll mind.”
Apple takes a deep breath. “Fine. About to walk through an imaginary ghost frog. Nothing scary here. No problem whatsoever.”
<
br /> One by one, the girls walk through the ghost frog, and it ribbits at them each time.58
58 Okay, I figured out that this weird foggy place must be the Margins. I learned about it in Focal Studies class. The Margins is the space between stories. Imagination is powerful here, so the girls should be careful about what they imagine.
THE GIRLS MARCH ON THROUGH THE DISMAL, unchanging scenery. Whatever light illuminates this place doesn’t shift—no lowering of sunlight, no shadows, just a constant dim glow from somewhere beyond the fog. It gives the place an eerie feeling, as if they are pacing under a dome, some enormous cage built to hold them. Frankie shivers, feeling well and truly caged.
“We should have gotten somewhere by now,” Frankie says. “Each of my steps is about half a meter long, and I have taken four thousand six hundred and eight. Nine. Ten.”
“You’ve been counting your steps?” Raven asks. “This whole time?”
“Well, we had to calculate distance somehow.” Also, the counting helps Frankie focus her thoughts and not imagine anything scary that might materialize in the fog. “How are you guys keeping track? Magic or something?”
“Um,” Raven says, “I’m not keeping track.”
Draculaura points into the fog. “Whoa, do you see that?”
“Yes,” Apple says, a touch of a groan in her voice. “It’s fog. More fog.”
“No, up ahead. I think there’s an island or something.”
The thin bridge of land opens into a wide, round patch of land.
Apple yawns, covering her mouth with a dainty hand. “Hey, Frankie, what time is it?”
Frankie instinctively pulls out her iCoffin, but the clock had stopped when they entered the Margins. “I don’t know. Why would you ask me?”
“I figured since you were counting steps, you might be counting seconds, too,” Apple says.
“That’s just crazy,” Frankie says. “Who would count seconds?”
“The kind of person who counts steps?” Apple replies stiffly, as if doing her best to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
“Well, actually,” Frankie says, not keeping the annoyance out of her voice, “I can probably figure that out. If each step takes about two seconds, and two times four thousand seven hundred and fifty…”
“Is she really going to do this?” Raven whispers to Draculaura.
“Totes,” Draculaura says with a smile.
“That’s one hundred and fifty-eight minutes,” Frankie says. “Let’s round up to one sixty for all the talking.… So it’s been just over two and a half hours. What time was it when we left?”
“Let’s just say it’s bedtime,” Draculaura says. “I think we’re all tired, and this is a good place to camp.”
“I should have brought camping stuff,” Raven says.
“I brought provisions!” says Apple, handing out princess pea–butter sandwiches and fairyberry juice boxes.
After they eat, Apple detaches the outer layer of her skirt in a flourish, leaving her to look exactly as she did before, except with a slightly less poofy skirt.
“We can use this to sleep on,” she says. “It should be softer than the stone.”
She lays out the frilly red-and-gold cloth, but it’s not big enough for four of them.
“I sleep on a metal slab at home,” Frankie says. “Stone will be just fine for me.”
“I’m good with stone, too,” Draculaura says.
Frankie knows that Drac’s sleeping coffin at home has plenty of cushions, but she also knows that her friend can sleep soundly while hanging upside down in a noisy bat cave, so Frankie supposes she’ll be fine.
The girls curl up on the skirt-blanket or stone ground and are soon asleep. Except for Frankie. It is true that she sleeps on a metal slab, but it is her slab, and it is comfortably familiar. This stone is not. But she isn’t planning to sleep. Someone needs to keep watch. After all, people dream when they are asleep, and sometimes dreams are nightmares, and in a place where thoughts can become solid things…
Frankie is congratulating herself for being such a good wide-awake guard, when her head nods forward. She gasps and sits upright. She’s no longer sitting on the stone ground: four gray walls, shelves of books, tables of gadgets, metal slab beneath her. It looks like the lab where she spent her early life, but it appears smaller now, more cramped. Frankie leaps off the slab and paces the perimeter. No windows and no door. This is her dream made real.
“No!” Draculaura screams somewhere outside the lab. “Don’t! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“Drac?” Frankie shouts back. She pounds on the walls.
“Don’t leave!” Draculaura pleads, sounding even more desperate.
Frankie takes a deep breath. “This isn’t real,” she whispers to herself. “This wall could be anything. It could be… glass.”
The stone wall of the lab grows transparent, revealing Draculaura shouting at four figures that resemble Frankie and their other ghoulfriends Clawdeen, Lagoona, and Cleo. They shake their heads in disappointment and walk away. Draculaura starts to follow them, toward the edge of the island and the fall into lava.
Frankie pounds on the glass. “Drac! It’s not real! It’s not real!”
Draculaura takes another step.
Frankie stares at her own hand. “This is not a normal hand,” she whispers. “This hand is made of solid steel.” The hand transforms, and she pounds the glass. It shatters, and then the entire glass wall vanishes and her hand goes back to normal.
Draculaura turns. “Frankie?” she says, and then looks back to the imaginary Frankie and friends in the distant fog. “Ohhh… right.”
“You scared me,” Frankie says, pulling her friend into a tight hug.
“Where are Raven and Apple?” Draculaura asks.
Two buildings that most definitely weren’t there when they went to bed now squat on the stone: a humble cottage with smoke curling out of a chimney and a dark tower with flashes of purple light sparking from a window.
“Um… I’m guessing in there?” Frankie says.
“Let’s check the cottage first,” Draculaura says. “There might be fairytale porridge.”
“Imaginary porridge,” Frankie says.
“I’ll just imagine it fills me up. What is porridge, anyway?”
“I think it’s like soup. Or pudding. Or oatmeal,” says Frankie.
Draculaura whispers, “I’m hoping for the pudding option.”
Frankie opens the door. Inside the one-room cottage, Apple is sitting by the fireplace, her face red from crying. A woman who looks a lot like Apple except with jet-black hair towers over seven tiny beds.
“You know I love you, dear,” says the woman, “but this is a royal disappointment. To me, to your father. Frankly, I think all of Ever After is disappointed in you.”
“I’m sorry,” Apple whispers.
“I thought I raised you better,” the woman says. “But look—you burned the apple cobbler! How can you ever be Snow White if you burn the cobbler?”
“She does exist!” whispers Draculaura, gaping at the apparition of Snow White.
“No, she doesn’t!” hisses Frankie. “I mean, not right here, at least! This isn’t real.”
Apple notices the girls. “What’s going on?” she asks.
The false Snow White ignores them all entirely. “Not only did you burn the apple cobbler, but you also forgot to turn in your thronework! And your shoes are scuffed! And you smell like canned beans. You have for years. I just didn’t have it in my heart to tell you.”
“That isn’t your mom, Apple,” Frankie says, rushing to her side. “That’s… just a… um… It’s this weird place we’re in! It’s making what you dream and worry about actually happen!”
Apple narrows her eyes at the shape resembling her mother. “What a relief! I’ve never burned apple cobbler!”
She swats her hair out of her face, walks over to the now-scowling apparition, and gives it a kiss on the cheek. Snow White and the cottage vanis
h.
“Whew,” Apple says. “That was intense. Thank you. Where’s Raven?”
“Well, there’s…” Draculaura points.
“I’m going to go out on a limb,” says Apple, “and guess that Raven is in that scary, dark tower.”
The three girls each take a deep breath and then start to climb the tower’s stairs.
ANOTHER FIREBALL LEAPS FROM HER MOTHER’S hands and crashes against the stone ground. Raven rolls out of the way. This isn’t her mother. She knew from the moment she woke up to the woman gently brushing the hair from her face and sweetly asking Raven how her nap had been. Her real mother had never done that.
But Raven didn’t run away when she should have, because some tiny part of her wished this mother were her real mother.
Then the imaginary mother sprouted giant bat wings and claws, which, generally speaking, was an alarming development. By the time the imaginary mother took to the air with Raven in her claws and then locked the girl in a high tower, Raven was positively done with wishing.
Rapunzel’s tower had singing birds and visiting princes. Raven’s involved dodging fireballs. Raven is pretty good at dodging fireballs, but there’s only so much dodge-space in the topmost room of a high tower.
“If you will not join my side,” the fake Evil Queen yells, “I’ll burn the socks off your feet! You’ll never wear socks again! You. Will. Be. Sockless!”59
59 Um, probably not something the real Evil Queen would say, but still pretty upsetting, don’t you think?
A bolt of electricity zaps from the woman’s hand and narrowly misses Raven. And her socks. The energy strikes just above the room’s only door.
“Weak and clichéd one-liner, Fake Mother,” says Raven. “My real mother would have said something like ‘Lightning does ghastly things to your hair and skin, darling, so come stand by me, where your chances of being burnt to a crisp are much lower.’”
The apparition that looks like her mother cackles. “Oh my. Lightning can do such ghastly things to your hair and skin, dear.”
Okay, Raven thinks. I’m imagining her. So I have some control over what she says. And does.
“Andsocanfire!” the queen-thing blurts, casting another fireball.