Protagonist Bound

by Geanna Culbertson

  Blue was flopped down on her bed pouring over a scattered pile of open literature. If the girl’s prologue prophecy was bothering her, it was difficult to tell. Aside from the day it actually appeared, she hadn’t shown any signs of dismay. In fact, Blue hadn’t mentioned it once since receiving it several weeks ago, and rather seemed to be pretending like nothing had changed in the slightest.

  It was a weird reaction for her to have. She was so distraught about the prophecy the day she’d received it that I would have thought she’d be complaining about it nonstop. Even girls at school who were happy with what their prophecies said, tended to speak of nothing else in the weeks immediately following their bestowment. But, for whatever the reason, Blue was staying silent.

  Naturally, SJ and I had followed her lead by not bringing up the matter either. We weren’t about to rub salt in the wound. Still, the behavior bothered me as I truly didn’t know how she could suppress such agony. Out of the corner of my eye, I studied my friend from across the room with both curiosity and concern.

  At the moment Blue seemed perfectly content to be absorbed in her plethora of books. Her eyes were currently scanning excitedly across a particularly large, fancy copy with weathered pages and a shiny bronze cover.

  To each her own, I guess.

  On the other side of the room, meanwhile, SJ was deeply focused on reading her special potions book. Unlike Blue, whose hair resembled a bird’s nest the way it was bunched up on top of her head with a large scrunchie, SJ’s hair was still tightly and intricately woven behind her. She literally didn’t have one hair out of place—even after a full day of school. And while Blue and I had long changed into our pajamas and were spread out on our comforters like cats, SJ remained in her gold-colored day dress and sat with such perfect posture at her desk it would have made statues feel self-conscious.

  At that point my unceasingly ladylike best friend got up from her seat and made her way across the room to retrieve a fresh jar of ink from our shared bookshelf. Once she’d passed out of my firing zone I continued to launch dart after dart at our target board. Although, when SJ turned around to head back to her desk, she stopped in her tracks and properly took notice of how I was spending my study hours.

  “Crisa,” she sighed at my lollygagging. “You are wasting time.”

  “SJ, I’m working on my aim. That is most certainly not a waste of time,” I said, throwing another dart at the board.

  It landed just barely outside the vicinity of the bullseye and I scowled at the target in frustration.

  “Well, I suppose you do need more practice . . .” my friend said with a hint of teasing in her tone.

  SJ walked over to my bed, picked up a dart, and gave me a “watch and learn” look. Then she threw it across the room and it landed right in the center of the bullseye. My eyes widened in shock.

  “How did you do that?”

  “What?” she shrugged. “Can a girl not have other hobbies besides singing to animals?”

  I opened my mouth to ask another question, but SJ waved me off before I had the chance. “On to more important matters, Crisa. Practice needed or not, you really should be studying,” she chided as she went back to her desk.

  “I am studying,” I retorted as I fired off another dart—trying to replicate SJ’s surprising accuracy. “I am studying the art of doing nothing of particular importance. Frankly, I think Madame Lisbon would be terribly impressed; it is very damsel-in-distress behavior. She may even give me extra credit.”

  SJ was not amused; she took studying, no matter how silly the subject, very seriously. Blue, however, laughed at the remark and seemed to think the budding conversation was worth breaking her homework concentration for.

  “You’re so right, Crisa,” she grinned. “Your level of purposelessness right now is downright exemplary. Madame Lisbon and damsels in distress everywhere would be proud.” SJ’s mouth curved into a smile as she shook her head at the both of us. Then she noticed the big, bronze book that Blue had been focusing on so intently.

  “Blue, what are you reading?” she asked.

  “Oh, um, it’s a collection of Snow White adaptations from some of the other realms,” Blue said as she picked up the text proudly and held it up for SJ to see.

  Contrary to what might be expected, Blue was actually a huge fairytale history nut. The irony of it was pretty funny really. While my rebellious friend hated the limitations and absurd consequences fairytales and fairytale life imposed on her, she was absolutely fascinated by them nonetheless.

  I guess maybe it was a “knowledge is power” kind of motivation? Seriously though, you could ask her any question about any version of any fairytale and she would know the answer. With all the research and readings she’d immersed herself in over the years, she probably knew more about the combined trinkets in the Treasure Archives than the majority of the school’s staff put together.

  “Blue,” I chimed in. “Haven’t you read Snow White about a million times? How interesting could so many adaptations be?”

  “Actually, a lot more interesting than you’d think.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I scoffed.

  “No really,” Blue said eagerly as she sat up and pulled the fat, fancy book onto her lap. “For starters, did you know that, like, all versions of Snow White mention the poisoned apple, but only a couple mention the poisoned corset and poisoned comb that the witch tried to use on her first?”

  “Well, can you blame them?” I asked sarcastically. “Death by a fashion appliance or a grooming tool is not nearly as exciting as death by fruit.”

  SJ put the jar of ink on her desk and crossed her arms.

  “Ha ha, Crisa,” she chided. “Judge while you can, but one of these days the Author might just write a story where some enchanted knickknack gets you into a great deal of unwarranted trouble.”

  I smirked and hopped off my bed in response. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll probably get taken down by something really lame, like a poisoned toe ring or a magic paperweight.” I picked up a paperweight from my desk, feigned a fainting spell, and dropped to the floor dramatically. “Total ka– ka– karma,” I choked as I pretended to die.

  I opened my eyes and grinned at my friends.

  Blue was laughing openly, snorts and all. SJ had her hand to her mouth—trying to stifle her “unladylike” guffaws. But after a moment she couldn’t hold them in any longer either and laughter burst from her like water from a dam.

  “Knowing you, you won’t need the Author to write you into trouble, Crisa. You’re fully capable of getting into it on your own,” Blue joked, shaking her head.

  I picked myself up from the floor, dusted off my fluffy, green pajama pants, and plopped down on my friend’s bed beside her. “Thank you, Blue. I both appreciate and resent that. Anyways, sorry I interrupted. You guys both have my total attention now. Tomfoolery aside, SJ, what does your mom have to say about this whole comb-corset-poison business?”

  “Well,” SJ began, “my mother told me that, like the apple, the corset and the comb were both products of dark magic. But more than that, they were each enchanted via a potion to look so beautiful and appealing that, if you got close enough, they would make you want to use them even if common sense dictated otherwise.”

  “Like high-heeled shoes,” I suggested.

  “Exactly,” SJ continued. “However, while the effects of the apple could not be reversed because she had ingested it, the deadly magic of the other objects could be. The comb’s venomous, magical powers easily wore off when it was removed from her hair, and the corset’s poison shut down when it was unfastened. So unlike the apple, which required true love’s kiss to reverse, these were all relatively easy spells to break. Bear in mind, though, my mother was still lucky to survive them.”

  “Why’s that?” Blue asked SJ, her eyes as big as croquet balls with excitement. She was a sucker for a good story. And this was, after all, a classic.

  “Well, simple to break or not,” SJ said reluctantly,
“a person only has so much time to be saved from that kind of dark magic. If a spell’s window of opportunity closes and no one has come to the rescue, the poison finishes the job and . . . kills them.”

  The atmosphere turned ominous and somber then. No one spoke for a few minutes as we reflected on the seriousness of SJ’s story.

  In retrospect, it was easy to joke about seemingly silly things like death by an apple, a shoe made of glass, or hair so long you could climb it. But, the truth was that ridiculously impossible things happened all the time in life (especially to people like us) and a lot of it really was no joke.

  SJ’s mom was almost killed multiple times by her crazy, jealous, former beauty-queen stepmother. Blue’s sister was swallowed up whole by a wolf and would have spent eternity in his digestive tract with her grandmother if that hunter hadn’t come along. And my mother—my kind, patient, couldn’t hurt a fly mother—lost both her parents by age nine and, protagonist or no, was treated like an abused shut-in for the majority of her teenage years. Pretty intense stuff when you thought about it.

  Meanwhile, here we were. For now, we were just three girls sitting in a room doing homework. But we didn’t know how our stories were going to turn out. Blue had already gotten her prophecy and was trying to process the loss of control she had over who she was. And any one of us could’ve been next.

  In truth, none of us knew what travesties or tragedies would shake up our lives in the years to come, or even when. Sitting here, waiting for some higher power to tell us what came next—it felt like we were all just biding time.

  Thoughts like this hung in the air a little while longer as we temporarily allowed the fears of the future we normally suppressed to creep from the corners to the forefronts of our minds. Thankfully though, SJ abruptly broke the silence a minute later—forcing back the depressing atmosphere like sunshine driving away an embankment of fog.

  “Blue, did you know that not one Snow White adaptation gets the names of the dwarves correct?” she stated matter-of-factly.

  “No way,” Blue countered, her mind snapping back to the present as she started flipping through the bronze book like a madwoman.

  “No, really,” SJ went on excitedly. “Their real names are: Fred, Joe, Jamie, Mike, Bill, Stan, and Alejandro.”

  “You’re making this up,” Blue insisted as she kept turning the pages in her book— frantic at the possibility of not knowing everything about everything.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to them argue.

  Only Blue was bold enough to literally challenge Snow White’s daughter on Snow White—a challenge she seemed to be relishing by the way. And as SJ lectured her on how ludicrous an idea it was that anyone, even dwarves, could have adjectives for first names, my fears and worries were once again pushed to the back of my mind where they belonged.

  It was good to have friends.

  Something Fishy

  reedom!

  Well, temporary, restricted freedom . . . but freedom nonetheless.

  Midway through fall semester the cumulative student body of Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s customarily took a joint field trip to one of the two kingdoms by the sea. It was a week-long venture intended to be an opportunity for our schools to bond and for us students to learn about diplomatic relations.

  That was all fine and dandy by my account, but what I was looking forward to was a few days away from this ivory-towered prison.

  It was quite a sight really—the dozens and dozens of carriages lined up in the school’s driveway. The In and Out Spell had been lowered earlier in the day and now our entire school entranceway was more clogged than rush hour in Century City.

  Pairs of horses in armor so intricate you’d think they were war heroes stood in front of each vehicle. Unlike the richly colored carriages, the horses were all white—standard issue for protagonists. In the distance I also saw several massive livestock carriers following our parade along with sixty armed knights on black horses spaced out amidst the whole fleet.

  Overkill much?

  SJ, Blue, and I patiently waited for our carriage to arrive. Mauvrey and I had already exchanged insults that morning. And, while she had probably won that round, the three of us were now being thoroughly entertained by the embarrassing scene my nemesis was causing on the front lawn. Evidently her carriage was the wrong shade of pink and clashed with her luggage.

  From across the crowd, Jason and Daniel spotted us and started to make their way over. This was the first time Blue had seen Jason since receiving her prologue pang, so SJ and I watched her steadily as they approached, waiting to see how she would react. Surprisingly though, there was no measureable reaction at all. She greeted him like nothing was different and the two exchanged their typical high five.

  Hm. I guess if she can keep it together with her new boyish-obstacle, so can I. Daniel and I did have some kind of truce going, right?

  “Hello, Daniel,” I said when he reached us.

  Daniel nodded his head toward me. “Knight.”

  This seemingly ordinary exchange actually got more of a rise out of Blue than her meeting with Jason had. Her eyebrows shot up with curiosity.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she interjected. “What’s going on? What happened to this great rivalry I’ve been hearing so much about? Crisa said you guys couldn’t stand each other.”

  “Blue!” I objected.

  “Oh, come on. I was super stoked to see the two of you duke it out.”

  “Well, sorry to disappoint but Daniel and I have declared a truce,” I said, although it came out as more of a question than a statement.

  Daniel confirmed it with a shrug—apparently still as surprised as I was that it had managed to last even this long.

  “I give it a week,” Jason chimed in.

  “I give it a day,” Blue countered.

  On that note, a guard with the roster called out Daniel and Jason’s names. Their carriage was ready and it was time for them to go. They said their goodbyes and departed, planning to meet up with us when we’d arrived at our destination.

  To my displeasure Chance Darling chose that moment to detract from my day even more than my awkwardness with Daniel or snaps of spite with Mauvrey had. The prince headed toward us—strutting with confidence like a peacock that was all too proud of his feathers. I gagged and braced myself for whatever condescending, annoying dribble was about to come out of his mouth.

  Chance smiled and bowed his head to acknowledge me and my friends. “Crisanta, you look lovely today,” he commented.

  True that. Between my gray, lace-up heeled boots, matching leggings, and long-sleeved mint dress with silver sparkly belt accentuation, I did look pretty poppin’ this morning.

  But that was aside from the point. Any compliment out of Chance’s mouth was a waste. And I’d put money down that it was just a jump and a skip away from an irritating follow-up comment.

  “What do you want, Chance?” I asked bluntly.

  “Crisanta, my dear, it is your lucky day. I have decided to give you another opportunity to be mine. There is an empty space in my carriage. Please join me.”

  Aw, there it is.

  I rolled my eyes dramatically and both my friends gave Chance a look that said, “Seriously?”

  Well, that’s what SJ’s look translated to at least. Blue’s was probably something more akin to, “Just give me one more reason and I will punch you between the eyes.”

  “Thanks,” I responded dryly. “But I think I’ll pass.”

  “Crisanta, dear, my request was not intended to be optional.”

  “Chance, dear,” I chirped—mocking his tone. “My response was not intended to be negotiable. Yet here we are.”

  Frustration did not suit Chance’s chiseled features very well. His brow wrinkled and his mouth scrunched up like a disturbed clown. After a beat he seemed to realize my position on the subject was unmovable, though. In response, he took a deep breath and bowed again.

  “Very well,” his highne
ss remarked. “But you should know, Crisanta, I always get what I want. Eventually even you shall succumb to my charms.”

  Chance turned on his heels and we watched him walk away just as unapologetically and ever-confidently as his former girlfriend—Prissy Princess Mauvrey—always did. Who, by the way, I noticed out of the corner of my eye was currently giving me another one of her world famous death glares from the other side of the driveway.

  I paid my clearly jealous mortal enemy no mind. Instead my attention was re-captured by Chance. Or rather, by Blue’s gagging at the sight of the girlie sycophants that soon surrounded him anew—drawn to his sea foam green eyes like moths to a super obnoxious flame.

  “Please let me throw a rock at him,” she huffed in disgust. I laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “Maybe next time.”

  An hour later, we were heading west through the scenic countryside.

  It was an absolutely gorgeous autumn day. Most of the forests we passed through were oblivious to the changing season and retained the lush evergreen colors they were known for in storybooks. My friends and I kept the side windows of our carriage open to fully admire this scenery we so seldom got to enjoy, and to take in the fresh, chilled air along with it.

  For most of the journey the three of us chatted and played carriage ride games, including Enchanted Forest Bingo and, SJ’s favorite, Name That Potion.

  To her dismay we had forbidden Blue from playing her favorite game, Punch-Carriage. This may have seemed mean on the surface, but it was a justifiable course of action. When we’d made this trip last year she’d picked the color beige and whenever a carriage of that color had driven by, she’d responded by jabbing one of us in the arm without exception or delicacy.

  Let me tell you, there are a lot of beige carriages out there.

  Ergo, a veto of the game seemed appropriate unless we wanted to arrive at our destination covered in bruises. Again.

  Thankfully, Blue got over our, quote, “fun-sucking decision” relatively quickly and enjoyed the ride with us nonetheless.