The Unfairest of Them All

by Shannon Hale

  Briar left Melody to run over, because Briar rarely walked if she could run instead.

  “What’s up?”

  “Could you tell Hopper here how dashing he looks today?”

  “I… uh… hi, Briar… um…” Hopper stuttered.

  Briar looked him up and down. “Hmm, that is a risky fashion choice wearing shorts with a brocaded blazer, but I must say, Hopper, you pull it off. You even look kinda cute.”

  Hopper blushed red, then green, then plopped down to the floor in frog form.

  “Squeeze your charming, little self under that boat, Hopper, if you’d be so kind,” said Apple, “and fetch the boot?”

  Briar’s party atmosphere had kept Sparrow and his Merry Men around—though they were just lounging against the wall, eating pies and singing along to the songs.

  “Oh, Sparrow!” said Apple, smiling sweetly.

  “Don’t bother asking,” said Sparrow. “We don’t do floors.”

  “Or windows,” said one of the Merry Men.

  “Right, or windows.”

  “Do you do thievery?” Apple asked. “Headmaster Grimm took the heirlooms you and Maddie stuffed in your pockets and locked them in his office as evidence. I wonder if you could manage to steal them back. Of course, breaking into his office might be more than you can handle.…”

  Sparrow stood up straighter. “Nothing is more than I can handle. But be careful what you ask for, Apple White.” He put a hand on her back and dipped her low, smiling that bad-boy smile. “Or next I might steal your heart.”

  He winked at her and ran off. Apple rolled her eyes but put her smile back in place.

  It was working! Maybe her mother had been right. Apple could help fill the world with sunshine, even if things were broken now. After all, sometimes it was the cracks that let the light in.

  They only had the few hours till Maddie’s scheduled banishment at midmorning, and Apple kept herself busy, answering questions, hiding glass slippers and cobbler’s shoes so Ashlynn wouldn’t get distracted, batting her eyelashes when necessary to keep Daring motivated. But the sun kept rising outside the rapidly shrinking wall hole.

  Apple needed to fetch the headmaster, Maddie, and the faculty before they went to the wishing well for the banishment spell. But she didn’t dare leave. She couldn’t risk this group dissolving into another riot.

  Helga and Gus Crumb were wandering around the Treasury as if lost in a vast forest, wearing embroidered green clothes, knee-high socks, and hiking shoes.

  “Helga, Gus, tell me,” Apple said, watching their faces closely, “don’t you think Headmaster Grimm is royally perfect?”

  Their eyes widened slightly at the sound of his name as if in pure adoration. Apple nodded, satisfied.

  “I suspected that you support Headmaster Grimm and his plan to return this school to normal. In order to keep things as they were, we need to protect everyone’s destiny, including Madeline Hatter’s. Can I trust you to go fetch him, Maddie, and the faculty and bring them here?”

  “Vhat do you tink, my cousin Gus? Should ve do vhat de fruit girl asks?” said Helga.

  “Ja, vhy not, my cousin Helga? If she promises a treat.”

  Both looked at Apple with wide, expectant eyes.

  “Sure, I can find some candy for you if you—”

  They ran off.

  Apple was expecting the Crumb cousins to take fifteen minutes at least to track down the headmaster’s group and bring them all back, but she underestimated the motivation of candy. Just a minute later Ashlynn came running in.

  “Apple, the mice say the headmaster, Maddie, and several others are coming up the stairs.”

  “No, I thought we had a few more minutes,” said Apple. “The room isn’t finished yet, and we’re out of time!”

  “I can help with that.” Darling Charming, Daring’s little sister and Dexter’s twin, entered the room. She wore a pale blue-and-purple gown with black lace trim, and for some reason her clothes were shinier than Apple remembered. Darling smiled shyly behind a hand fan. “I want to help Maddie, too. She is so funny! So I can give you a little more time by slowing it down. Please avert your eyes for just a few seconds.”

  They all turned their backs or covered their eyes, but Apple was too curious. She opened her fingers and peeked just as Darling bent forward and then came upright quickly, flipping back her long, so-blond-it-was-almost-white hair. As her hair settled around her shoulders, Darling lowered her eyelids halfway and smiled coyly.

  And suddenly everything slowed. Apple saw a dust mote trembling in a shaft of morning light, not moving. She tried to lower her hands from her face but they traveled just a couple of inches per minute.

  Meanwhile, everyone else who hadn’t looked at Darling kept moving at normal speed, which to slow-mo’ed Apple looked like super-speed.

  In the time it took Apple to say, “En-chant-ing!” the remaining tasks were finished, the wall and glass cases mended, the helmet tied back on top of the armor, the treasures returned to pedestals, and everything tidy.

  Time jumped forward again. Apple and Darling were free from the slow-motion spell just as a herd of mice came scurrying in under the door, squeaking madly.

  “They’re here!” said Ashlynn. “They’re here!”

  The door burst open. Helga and Gus led the faculty, including Baba Yaga, Gepetto, Mr. Badwolf, Rumpelstiltskin, Mother Goose, the White Queen, and Maid Marian. Maddie trailed behind, her wrists chained. A troll carried her luggage, which consisted of several hatboxes and a suitcase shaped like a giant nose. And in front of them all was Headmaster Grimm, his face as red as Cerise’s cloak.

  “What in Ever After is going on here?” he shouted.

  Apple blanched. The Treasury was in order. The witnesses were present. They were ready to do the spell and save Maddie. Except Apple had forgotten one pretty essential thing.

  Raven. Where was Raven?

  RAVEN’S FINGERTIPS WERE BLISTERED, HER shoulder ached, and her throat was as dry as Milton Grimm’s attempts at jokes. After a long night of spell practice, all she wanted was to lie down on her bed, pull the comforter over her head, and play Sleeping Beauty.

  But… Maddie.

  “No, you’re doing it wrong!” said Raven’s mother. “I told you, hold it straight.”

  “I am holding it straight,” said Raven. “It’d be easier to get the arrow through the eye socket if the dragon skull was full-sized.”

  “Be practical. The full-size skull won’t fit in the Treasury. You need to practice with it this size.”

  Raven pulled back Cupid’s bowstring. She notched the giant’s-hair-arrow, tipped with the pea, and aimed for the empty eye socket in the dragon’s skull for the hundredth time. She wobbled. Goblin guts, but was she ever tired. She released the arrow. It missed, bouncing off the skull’s forehead.

  “If you would just do exactly what I tell you to do, then everything would be better.”

  “Everything?” Raven lowered the bow. “Like the time you told me to push over that little village girl who was trying to balance on the fountain’s edge?”

  The queen stuck out her bottom lip, pouting. “A harmless prank. Imagine how funny it would have been when she popped out of the water, drenched and confused!”

  “Or the time you sent me to a picnic at the Charming family’s palace with a potion you wanted me to pour down their well? Drinking it would have turned them all into cockroaches.”

  “Again—funny. Grow a sense of humor, Raven. Besides, the potion wasn’t even permanent! They would have been back to their normal, goody-goody selves in a year or two. Or three. Probably.”

  “I didn’t want to turn anyone into cockroaches!”

  The queen shrugged. “A sense of humor is individual, I suppose. But the past is no excuse for why you’re failing now.”

  The bow felt as heavy as a house. Raven’s arms lowered. “This has been a hard day, Mother. And night. The tasks, no sleep, and, worst of all, on Maddie’s last day in Ever After I
had to ignore her.”

  “What? You’ve been upset about that? Ha! You could have talked to Maddie. I made up the silence part. I just wanted you to be focused. Besides, Wonderlandians are too mad to be trusted. You should find yourself more powerful friends.”

  “You mean… I was mean to her… for… for nothing?” Raven dropped the bow, her fists clenched and sparking with magical energy. “You’re evil!”

  “Why, yes, I am!” said the Evil Queen brightly. “Thank you for noticing. Oh my badness, but you do look simply gorgeous when you’re angry. Brightens the eyes and the cheeks! My fairest girl, I’m so proud.”

  Raven sat on the floor, resting her forehead on her knees. “I don’t care about being fairest. I just… I don’t know…”

  “You’ve been away from me too long.” The queen breathed on her side of the glass and then rubbed it clean with the sleeve of her scarlet velvet gown. “You’ve forgotten how wickedly wonderful it is to be evil. Stop wasting your life thinking about poor widdle Maddie or poor widdle anyone and just do what you want! I didn’t raise you to be good and weak, I raised you to be powerful and happy.”

  “I am happy.” Raven kept her head down, embarrassed, as she said quietly, “Happier here than I ever was with you.”

  Her mother didn’t hear. “Don’t let the inconsequential fairytales stand in your way! You do what makes you happy, no matter what.”

  Raven sat upright. “What if what makes you happy hurts other people?”

  The queen shrugged. “You think too much, Raven. Look at the natural world—do we cry and whine when a wolf kills a deer? When an eagle takes a hare? Some animals are predators, and they do as they were born to do. You were born to be a predator. You were born to rule.”

  “I don’t want to rule,” Raven said. “But… they want me to. The Rebels. They look to me.”

  “Of course they do.” The queen leaned in till her earnest eyes were large in the mirror. “Lead them wherever you want to go, and you’ll always have a devoted army at your back.”

  “I don’t know how to do it, Mom,” she said. “I’m not like you. I just want…” Raven shrugged.

  “Come here, darling,” said the queen.

  Raven scooted closer to the mirror. Her mother smiled, and Raven wanted nothing more than to be a little girl again, sit on her mother’s lap, lean her head against her mother’s shoulder, and let her stroke her hair. She lifted her hand but stopped just shy of touching the mirror.

  “You are special, Raven,” said the queen. “You are more important than most. You are my daughter. And I love you.”

  Part of Raven wanted to take her mother’s words like a potion and drink them down, no matter what that potion might do inside her—make her strong, turn her invisible, change her into a cockroach.

  “I always wanted you to be proud of me.”

  “I am proud of you, Raven. Why, look at you! Rebelling against the great Milton Grimm. Ha! You showed him. He wanted you to be evil, and so you are, but what a shock that you don’t play by his rules.”

  “But I’m not evil.”

  “Of course you are! We both rebelled against the system because wonderful, freeing evil courses through our veins.”

  “No, that doesn’t sound right,” Raven said. Her mother was so beautiful, her voice as rich as hot chocolate, dark and warm in a mug. The enticing bittersweetness of it made it hard for Raven to think.

  “Goodness is weakness. Weak and boring as peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Some actually like it cold, you know. Imagine. Now let’s get back to work. Practice the incantation again. Remember, you need to speak everyone’s name who was in the room, the day and time of the event, and the magic words before accurately shooting the arrow through the dragon skull’s eye socket.”

  “I need five, Mom,” said Raven, standing. Her thoughts felt as thick in her head as mulberry syrup.

  “What? Evil sorceresses don’t take five. You succeed because you’re willing to give everything to your craft—everything!”

  “Just five minutes.”

  Raven didn’t have enough time for a nap, and she wouldn’t risk oversleeping through Maddie’s banishment anyway. She just needed to clear her head.

  She sat at the keyboard her father had sent and began to play a Tailor Quick tune. Her fingers had stumbled over the string of Cupid’s bow, but on the keyboard they knew what to do. Her voice had caught on the words of the incantation, but a song drew them out straight. She played and she sang, and the knotted, snarly mess inside her seemed to settle, as relaxed as Maddie at a tea party.

  You look around

  And you only see what you want to see

  You come undone

  Trying to be who they want you to be

  Raven sang all three verses, searching for meaning in the words. She held out the final note and played the last chord. It was an odd song, ending on a minor chord halfway through a measure as though it were unfinished. And she liked it. The song felt as true as life.

  Raven left the keyboard and sat on the floor in front of the mirror.

  “That was…” The Evil Queen looked up as if at clouds, smiling. “That was wicked good.”

  “Thanks.” Raven took a breath. “Here’s what I think, Mom. We both rebelled because we wanted to choose our own path, not what destiny dictated. But choice and evil aren’t the same. Now that I’m free from my story, I can write my own destiny. I’m sorry, but I won’t choose evil. I won’t choose your path. I’ll find my own.”

  The Evil Queen opened her mouth as if she would argue, but then she nodded. “And if you change your mind, well, you know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Apple’s cuckoo clock cheeped.

  Raven jumped to her feet. “Is that the time? Oh, no, I’ve got to get to the Treasury.”

  “Go then, and come back and tell me all about it!” Her mother’s eyes sparkled as if she truly was excited.

  “Okay, I will,” said Raven. She stooped to shut off the mirror but hesitated. The mirror path to the prison was wicked complicated, and having Apple do it for her was kind of a pain. Maybe she could just leave the connection open for now, so she could talk to her mother after the spell—or get extra help if something went wrong. Raven took a second to smile at her mother and said again, “I’ll be back soon.”

  The queen nodded. Her smile seemed truly happy.

  Nevermore had curled up on Apple’s bed, drooling on her red satin bedspread.

  “Nevermore, sweetie, can you get the dragon’s skull and follow me?” Raven grabbed the bow, chin hair, and pea, and waved to her mother in the mirror.

  “Wish me luck!”

  “You don’t need luck,” said her mother. “You are powerful, clever, and fearless. After all, you are a Queen!”

  Raven ran down the stairs, a shrunken-sized Nevermore flying with the shrunken-sized dragon skull in her claws. Raven burst through the Treasury door to find everybody there, staring at Apple.

  “Raven!” said Apple. “Here she is. We’re ready, Headmaster.”

  “Whoa, okay,” said Raven. “We’re ready ready? But where’s—?”

  “Hi, Raven,” said Maddie. She couldn’t wave. She was standing between Baba Yaga and Gepetto, and her wrists were chained together.

  “I’m going to try to help, Maddie,” said Raven. “Cross all your crossables for me.”

  In truth, Raven wasn’t feeling all that confident, but Apple was smiling like this was going to be a piece of fig cake.

  “Raven,” Apple said with warning. “We’re not supposed to talk to Maddie.”

  “It’s okay,” Raven whispered back. “She was lying.”

  Apple groaned. “You mean I’ve spent the last several minutes frantically thinking about bunnies for no reason?”

  “Bunnies? What?”

  “Never mind. Um, ready?” Apple said, still with that confident smile.

  “Yes, okay,” said Raven.

  “I did not give you permission to—”
Milton Grimm began.

  “Please, Headmaster Grimm?” said Apple. “You said only Irrefutable Evidence could pardon Maddie, and we’re prepared to show you just that.”

  “Raven Queen isn’t capable of casting a level thirty-eight spell.” He shook his head. “You have precisely one minute, Your Majesty, and then I must ask you not to interfere with this serious school business.”

  “Thank you, Headmaster,” Apple said. She took Raven’s hands and made the most direct of direct eye contact Raven had ever experienced. Apple’s confident smile twinkled, brilliant, inspiring. “You can do this, Raven Queen.”

  And for the first time, Raven believed that she could. “Okay,” she said. Her heart was thumping, slammed unexpectedly with a tremendous amount of hope.

  She spared a glance to admire the clean and ordered Treasury and then asked everyone to stand back by the door. Nevermore placed the dragon skull before them.

  “Everyone who was here that night, please look at the skull,” said Raven.

  She spoke their names, the date and time of the event, and then the words of the incantation, hoping that they were all correct. Her mother had to relay them to her through riddles.

  “ ‘I call down evidence of pure truth,’ ” she intoned. “ ‘I call up the spirits of memory. Rewind, replay, speak up, stand out. Through the eye of a monster, let the past dance again!’ ”

  Raven secured the pea on the tip of the hair, drew back the bowstring, and aimed straight. She released. The arrow went through the eye socket.

  Out of the empty eye, pink smoke billowed, engulfing the room. When it overtook Raven, she could smell nothing. It was all illusion. The smoke pulled back into a ball spiked like the claws of some amorphous beast. The smoke claws lengthened, pointing at the eyes of Raven, Apple, Maddie, and all the other students. Then the smoke broke into a hundred pieces and took on colors and shapes. And suddenly Sparrow Hood was running into the Treasury.

  Raven almost yelled at him to stay back, but then the real Sparrow, who was still standing back by the door, said, “That’s one handsome kid!”

  Raven was watching a ghost, a memory: It looked like Sparrow, but his colors were slightly washed out, his body a little transparent. He was talking, but no noise came out. His Merry Men followed, and Sparrow began taking items and putting them into his pockets.