by Jodi Picoult
I immediately sit down at the computer, furiously typing THE NEW END to the altered fairy tale that will allow Oliver out of the story—but the cursor leaps upward and begins to erase the words I’ve already written. The word NEW is the last to go, leaving THE END just the way it used to be.
“No.” I gasp, and I turn around to confirm my suspicions: Oliver’s body, which has been gradually appearing before our eyes, has vanished.
“Where did he go?” Edgar asks, looking underneath the bed and in the closet.
I don’t know why I can’t make the simple changes on the computer. Maybe it’s a strange firewall the author installed for protection; maybe it’s just some crazy virus. But this is a physical manifestation of what Jessamyn Jacobs told me: this particular story lives in the minds of its readers. It can’t be altered, because it already exists in its original form.
It is just like the time Oliver tried to rewrite the ending of the book from within its confines, just like the time he summoned me into the pages. If something isn’t part of the original version of the story, the change can’t sustain itself. Once you call something a story, it’s set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can’t be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it’s not the same story anymore.
“It’s happened before,” I explain to Edgar. “It’s like the story has a mind of its own.”
He thinks for a moment. “How good a writer are you?”
“Why?”
“Because I have an idea.” He sits down on the bed, placing his hand on the cover of the book. “You can’t change a story once it’s been told. But what if you create a new story?”
“I don’t understand.”
Edgar leans forward, excited. “Right now, Oliver is the only one who wants to change the plot. Imagine if all the characters inside that book are given a whole new play to perform. If they all buy into it, maybe the story will allow the change.”
I grab the book and open it to page 43. Oliver—white-faced and exhausted—stares up at me from the rock ledge. “You’re all right,” I whisper.
“I’m what I always am,” he mutters. “That’s the problem.”
“Edgar has an idea.” I explain the concept to Oliver.
“I don’t see why this is any different,” he says when I finish. “I’m still a character in the story.”
“But at the end of the new story, you leave,” I tell him, “and all the characters are expecting it to happen.”
Oliver sighs. “At this point, I suppose I’m willing to try anything.”
I sit at the computer, because I’m the faster typist. I look at Edgar. “So,” I say. “How does it start?”
We all get quiet. As it turns out, it’s a lot harder than any of us imagined to create something from nothing.
“How about a dog that meets a cat and falls in love even though their families are against it?” Oliver suggests.
“Okay, Romeo,” I reply. “Would you like to come out of the book as a poodle or a pit bull?”
Oliver shakes his head.
“No, I’ve got one.” Edgar’s eyes gleam. “It’s a dark and stormy night, and a zombie ax murderer is on the loose—”
“You really are your mother’s son,” I murmur.
Edgar shrugs. “Well, I don’t see you suggesting anything.”
And then, all of a sudden, it comes to me. “There’s this prince,” I say. “And he’s stuck in a fairy tale. Until a girl on the outside can hear him.”
Bending toward the keyboard, I begin to type.
page 58
Rapscullio’s footsteps thundered up the stone stairs of the tower. As he strode inside the room, a wind blew through the wide arched window. Beside it, Seraphima stood with her back to him, staring out at the ocean below.
“The pensive bride,” Rapscullio said drily, coming closer. “If you’re thinking of jumping… don’t.”
She didn’t respond, just continued to stare at the crashing waves.
Rapscullio put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing. She shuddered. His breath was at her neck. “You will learn to love me,” he commanded.
Seraphima turned in Rapscullio’s embrace. He lifted the veil that obscured her features.
But it wasn’t her face at all. “Don’t count on it,” Oliver said, and he rammed his head into Rapscullio’s belly, knocking him backward.
The villain drew his sword. “What did you do with her?”
“She’s safe,” Oliver said. “And she’s mine.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Your Highness. This is just payback, and it’s been a long time coming.”
Oliver stared at the pitted scars on Rapscullio’s face. He had never met this man before; how could Rapscullio possibly hold a grudge against him?
“I won’t let you get away with this,” Oliver said.
Rapscullio’s lips twisted in a mockery of a smile. “Why, that’s exactly what Maurice said, just before I released the dragon on him. Like father, like son.”
Oliver fell back a step. “You… you knew my father?”
“Correction,” Rapscullio said. “I killed your father.”
Suddenly Oliver’s vision swam in a red tide. He couldn’t think, he could only feel. He understood, in that crystalline instant, that courage wasn’t something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn’t a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more.
He drove forward, moving with pure adrenaline, and threw himself at the villain.
The skirts of Seraphima’s gown were suddenly a hindrance to his speed and agility; what had seemed like a fantastic plan to trap Rapscullio suddenly wasn’t so splendid anymore. Rapscullio swung his sword, cutting through the layers of tulle and nicking Oliver’s shoulder. “Your father took from me the one I loved most in this world,” he panted. “So now I’ll return the favor.”
Oliver dodged the next blow. The sword struck the wall, sending sparks flying. He rolled, tangling in this unfamiliar dress, and then tripped Rapscullio so that he fell facedown on the stone floor. Rapscullio grabbed Oliver’s boot and pulled him down.
Oliver wrapped the veil around Rapscullio’s wrist, trying to draw his sword arm back so that the weapon would fall. But in a match of sheer strength, Rapscullio had the upper hand. He slammed Oliver’s elbow against the floor, forcing his release.
Free again, Rapscullio swung at Oliver, landing blows to his face and chest. Oliver rolled away, dazed and reeling, and staggered to his feet. It was enough of a pause for Rapscullio to leap up and point his sword at the prince’s neck. “So, boy,” he said, sneering. “Now what?”
Oliver took one tiny step back. The sword point bit into his neck, drawing blood. Rapscullio forced Oliver to take another step in retreat, and another, approaching the wall. In a moment, Oliver would have nowhere left to go.
Promise me you won’t fight, his mother had said. Anyone or anything.
It was one thing to outsmart a dragon or trick a troll, to bargain with a pirate captain or compromise with mermaids… but how could he win a sword battle, when he didn’t even carry a sword?
Rapscullio drew back his blade, his eyes wild. “Goodbye, Prince Oliver.” He lunged forward, intent on driving his sword through Oliver’s heart.
Call it coward’s instinct, call it brilliant, call it whatever you like: Oliver ducked.
With no body to plunge his sword into, and an open window in front of him, Rapscullio fell forward, scrabbling for a moment on the slick granite of the sill before falling out.
Oliver sank to his knees, gasping. But before he could even feel relief, he sensed a tug on the skirt of Seraphima’s wedding gown and realized that the last thing Rapscullio had grabbed on to for purchase was his clothing. Oliver found himself tumbling out the window too, hurtling down a sixty-foot drop to the jagged rocks below.
OLIVER
MY ARM IS ACHING. AS DELILAH HAS BEEN TYPING, I’ve written the entire story by hand with a small l
ump of coal on the rock wall, committing it to memory. Not that this is very difficult. After all, I’ve been living it.
When at last we’re finished, Delilah leans in to the page. “Good luck,” she whispers. “See you on the outside.”
We’ve talked about it, and I know I’m on my own for this part: she has to stop reading the book and close it, so that I can gather all the characters together and tell them the new story. I see the sky spread and darken as Delilah shuts the cover. Then I take a deep breath and run a finger along the sentences I’ve scratched into the rock.
I climb down from the ledge on page 43 and start hopping the gaps between the edges of the pages, crossing through the Enchanted Forest and the unicorn meadow. I will find Frump and ask him for his help. He’s the only one who can rally the masses as quickly as I need it to be done, and I know I can count on him for his support.
But first, there’s one more person I need to see. I find Queen Maureen in the rose garden behind the castle, pruning her beloved bushes. For a moment I hang back, watching the way she gently lifts the heavy head of a rose and strokes the petals. She was never really my mother, but she was the closest thing I had to one, and I’ll miss that tenderness that comes so easily to her.
Taking a deep breath—it’s now or never—I untuck my shirt, let it hang from beneath my tunic, and muss up my hair. Then I stumble into the queen’s line of sight.
“Oliver?” she says. “What happened to you?”
I collapse in front of her, pretending to catch my breath. “The Creator,” I gasp. “The one who made our world? She summoned me.”
Her eyes widen. “She summoned you?”
“Yes.”
“Goodness.”
“I know.”
She hesitates. “Is that why you started to disappear on the beach?”
“Exactly,” I say. “She sent me back here with a message for everyone in the kingdom. Apparently the story we’ve been living—it’s not the real story. Just part of a larger one.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Queen Maureen says.
“I have to leave,” I tell her.
“But you just got here!”
“No—I mean, I have to leave the book. It’s the way the ending goes, in the bigger story.”
She thinks about this. “But you’ll come back again, every time the book is opened?”
God, I hope not. Did Delilah even consider that? “It’s complicated. I’m going to explain it to everyone, on the beach. Frump is going to round them up for me.”
“Then why did you come to talk to me privately?”
“Because,” I confess, “you’re one of the people I’m going to miss the most.”
Her eyes shine with tears, and she opens her arms so that I can step into her embrace. I hold her tight, finding it hard to imagine that this might be the last time I ever do so.
Queen Maureen pulls back a little bit and looks me in the eye. “If I’d ever had a real son, Oliver,” she says, “I would have wanted him to be just like you.”
* * *
As we walk toward Everafter Beach, we are joined by others responding to Frump’s call: the flitting fairies, who buzz in my ears, filling my head with questions; the trolls, stomping with each footstep. Rapscullio comes out of his lair with a piece of embroidery in hand; Seraphima is still wearing a robe and slippers.
The last to arrive are the mermaids, who swim up to the shore and lie in the shallows with their hair floating out behind them like colored capes. “Why the big rush, Frump?” Marina asks.
Beside the sailors, Pyro is blowing smoke rings that Orville waves away from his face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Frump announces. “And mythical creatures. I’ve called you here at the request of Prince Oliver, who has a very important announcement to make.” He wags his tail, turning the floor over to me. “Good luck, Ollie,” he says quietly, for my ears alone.
I stand up, suddenly nervous. “Perhaps you all were a bit confused by what happened the last time the book was opened,” I begin.
“Ye started disappearin’!” Captain Crabbe says. “We all noticed!”
“Yes, well, it was sort of a surprise to me too,” I lie. “I was being pulled into the Otherworld.”
A collective gasp rises from the crowd. “You mean,” Sparks says, “the audience?”
“Even more important,” I reply. “The Creator. The person who dreamed up the world we live in.”
“Is it a man or a woman?” Ondine asks.
“A woman,” I reply.
She smirks at her sisters. “Told you so.”
“Is she beautiful? I bet she’s beautiful,” Ember says with a sigh.
I think of Jessamyn Jacobs. “I didn’t really notice. I was too busy memorizing the new script.” I pause for dramatic effect. “The one I’m supposed to tell to all of you.”
“I don’t understand,” Biggle mutters. “We have new lines to memorize?”
“Well, only to some extent.” I look over the crowd. “It turns out that our whole story has been a piece of a larger one. The real story is about a prince in a fairy tale—”
“That’s you!” Seraphima gasps.
I force a smile. “Good guess! As I was saying—a prince in a fairy tale who is trying to escape.”
“From the kingdom?” Scuttle says, scratching his head. “I’m not sure I understand….”
“No, from the book. Into the Otherworld.”
“But that’s impossible,” Orville insists. “This is the only world that was given to us.”
“Yet we all agree that someone, somewhere else, was living in a totally different place and time when she wrote this world for us to inhabit, right?” I say. “After all, we’ve never met her, and yet we’re all here. That proves that there always has been a second world. It’s where everyone who reads the book is, while they’re reading.”
I watch the crowd as they process this theory. Frump, assessing their reactions, interrupts the uneasy quiet. “I say that we let Oliver tell us the new story!”
Others nod. Even those who are still reluctant to believe that they haven’t known the whole truth all along are drawn in by the power of words, by the thought that there’s a new tale to be told. “I second the motion,” Queen Maureen says.
With everyone’s eyes upon me, waiting to hear their future, I start to speak. “Just so you know,” I begin, “when they say ‘Once upon a time’… they’re lying. It’s not once upon a time. It’s not even twice upon a time. It’s hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.”
* * *
When I am done, there is absolute silence.
And then, everyone starts clapping. “Bravo!” Frump howls. “Bravo!”
Even the mermaids look a bit teary. “I guess not all men are squids,” Kyrie murmurs.
Seraphima stares down at the sand between her feet, puzzled. “So, the whole time, I’ve actually been falling for Frump?”
I nod. “But you were too afraid to show it, because you didn’t want to hurt Prince Oliver’s feelings.”
Seraphima smiles brightly and reaches out to pull Frump onto her lap. “I think I knew it all along,” she says shyly.
“Are there any other questions?” I ask.
Socks paws at the ground with his hoof to get my attention.
“Yes, Socks?”
“Oliver, when you said I was a mighty steed in this new version—does that mean I’m maybe a little thinner?”
“You’re the best-looking horse in the kingdom,” I say. “You’re the horse all other horses aspire to become.”
He whinnies and tosses his mane, delighted.
Pyro raises one stubby arm. “I’m just not clear…. What’s my motivation?”
“You want to channel all the pain and rage you’ve felt from being misunderstood as a destructive beast, and pour that into your performance,” I suggest.
The dragon hiccups. “I can work with that.”
“Just a moment.” Rapscullio stands up, tall and foreboding, his black hair falling over his forehead and casting a shadow on his scar. “What happens to you, Oliver?”
I grin. “Well, I guess I leave the book, and live happily ever after.”
“But are you only the same size in the Otherworld that you are in this one?” Ember asks. “Then you’d be as tiny as a fairy.”
“Are you going to look like they do, or are you going to be flat?” Walleye chimes in.
My stomach turns. Actually, I don’t know the answers. I won’t until we see whether or not this works. “I suppose it’s all a mystery,” I reply. “I’ll let you know when I get there.”
There’s a soft whine, and I turn to see Frump clearing his throat. “Can we visit?” he asks quietly.
I meet my best friend’s gaze. I can’t imagine not seeing him again. “I’m not sure,” I say honestly. He ducks his snout, disappointed, and I step forward to rub him between the ears and comfort him, but before I do, Seraphima reaches out and strokes his back. This much I know: Frump will be in good hands.
Suddenly the sand begins to spit and swirl as the edges of the beach curl upward. “Places!” Frump barks. “Everybody!”
I fall page after page, coming to an abrupt halt against the stone floor of the castle. I lift my head in time to see Queen Maureen smack into her throne so hard her crown goes flying. Frump catches it in his teeth like a Frisbee. “Your Majesty,” he says, returning it.
The story starts like it always does, with me telling my mother I am headed off to find my true love. The difference is that this time, my true love isn’t waiting for me on Everafter Beach. She’s much farther away. “Wish me luck,” I murmur under my breath, hoping that Delilah is listening, and I speak my lines.
For the next hour, I go through the pages: being attacked by the fairies, falling into the ocean to be captured by the mermaids, tricking the trolls. I get kidnapped by Captain Crabbe, battle Pyro, and visit Orville to find Seraphima’s location. The other characters do their part as well. I am particularly impressed by Socks, who suddenly presents himself as a stamping, snorting white stallion. It’s as if confidence alone has made him grow a foot in height. From the corner of my eye, I watch Seraphima giving longing looks to Frump after every one of our scenes together.