Saving Fable

by Scott Reintgen

  “You lying sack of good-for-nothing—” Indira was so mad she could barely think straight. It wasn’t like she was going to hit Peeve, but she must have looked plenty threatening, because Ms. Lobasso stepped forward, placing herself between the two of them.

  “Indira Story,” Ms. Lobasso said with a raised voice. “If you so much as move from that tile, I’ll make sure you never come back to this school again.”

  The teacher disappeared back into the bathroom as Indira fumed. It was an ugly trick to play on someone, and she realized that Peeve had wanted her to react that way. The angrier she looked, the guiltier she’d seem. Indira was going to be expelled. Peeve had pinned it all on her. A minute later, Ms. Lobasso led Peeve out of the bathroom. Actual tears were rushing down the traitor’s cheeks. “I’m feeling dizzy,” Peeve confided to Ms. Lobasso.

  The furious teacher led her past Indira before turning around sharply. “You will remain right where you’re standing until I return. We’re going to have a good, long talk with the principal. And another one with your mother. You are in a lot of trouble, Ms. Story.”

  Behind the teacher’s back, Peeve turned. Her face was still streaked with very real-looking tears, but she was grinning wickedly. She winked once, and Indira knew she’d lost.

  The scene vanished. White walls appeared.

  Indira had a single moment to remind herself of several things:

  I lost the first scene.

  I was supposed to lose the first scene. Peeve had the advantage.

  I’m supposed to win the next one.

  A darkish sky blinked into being. She was running down a narrow city street in pursuit of a fleeing figure: Peeve Meadows. The famous thief had stolen an amulet from the Markesh Library, and Indira was the only one who could get it back.

  Hearing Indira’s footsteps, Peeve darted to the right. She skidded down an alleyway and into the open square beyond. City folk had parallel parked their dragons alongside the main thoroughfare. Indira’s quarry had already climbed atop one of them. With a whispered curse, Peeve forced a golden dragon to spread its shimmering wings.

  Bad choice, Indira thought.

  Peeve was a talented thief, but no one could fly like Indira could. The freckle-faced girl locked eyes with Indira as the stolen dragon swept her up into the gray-blue sky. Indira didn’t hesitate. She leaped aboard the nearest parked dragon.

  “Every cage has a key,” she whispered.

  Fuchsia wings swept wide. The dragon sniffed twice and launched itself into the air. She felt the wind snatch at her hair and cloak. The dragon continued its ascent, and she spotted the golden dragon in the distant gray. Peeve clearly didn’t know anything about dragons. She had hopped aboard a Destriant. The breed was built for show and size, not for speed. And they were far too glittery to be lost in the clouds.

  Indira’s own beast was smaller and sleeker, and its translucent wings beat twice as fast. Before long, the speck of gold grew larger and more distinct. She could see Peeve glancing back nervously. Indira set a hand on the hammer at her hip. If it came to an aerial attack, she wanted to be ready. Ahead, Peeve veered right. Another mistake. Indira’s dragon anticipated the move and cut the corner off the thief’s flight pattern. With a few more sweeping wingbeats, they were in shouting distance. Peeve leaned over her beast. There was panic in her eyes.

  Good, Indira thought. She knows she’s outmatched.

  The dragons crossed over a pair of rivers. Indira closed the gap, and with a great crash her dragon caught hold of the other’s flank. Wings snapped out, and both beasts fell with stomach-turning spirals. Indira saw Peeve nearly lose her grip before managing to right her dragon and pull away at the last second. Indira’s beast had had a taste of the fight now, though, and they harried the other dragon’s flank a second time. Not knowing what else to do, Peeve urged her creature into a descent. Indira could see a town glittering in the forests ahead.

  She couldn’t let Peeve land, not if the thief had help arranged.

  And Peeve always arranged help.

  It was clear: she’d have to board them in the air.

  Indira whispered the command in the ear of her beast and they swept above the golden dragon. Gliding smoothly, she urged her mount alongside and slightly above their quarry. Peeve kept glancing up, but she made no move to turn or dive in a different direction. She seemed set on making it to the little town at any cost. Indira had boarded hundreds of dragons over her career as an investigator. The leap was instinctual for her now.

  Her own dragon steadied its beating wings, gliding lower and closer. With a little grunt, Indira pulled out her hammer, set her feet, and leaped. The motion shook her senses. A sudden drop of her stomach. A stretch of soundlessness as she flew through the air. And then rising panic as she saw Peeve smiling. The girl twisted her beast into a perfect roll. The golden dragon turned under Indira’s mount, and Indira was falling.

  Her hands scraped against sliding scales. She caught hold of the creature’s tail, but the momentum shook her grasp free. She fell. Too fast. Way, way too fast.

  The ground rushed up to meet her.

  White walls again. The scene vanished. Her thoughts came like lightning strikes:

  I lost the second challenge.

  Peeve knew I was going to jump.

  How did she know?

  There was a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  I lost my challenge.

  Her surroundings fluttered to life a third time. She was on a bleak little island. Her younger sister, Peeve, was struggling with a fire as she hunted through their ship’s wreckage for useful supplies. “It’s not working,” Peeve called.

  “Of course it’s not working,” Indira snapped back. For some reason, she felt very impatient with her little sister. After all, it was her fault they had crashed here. “If you hadn’t fallen asleep, we wouldn’t be stuck on this stupid island.”

  “It was after my shift!” Peeve looked up angrily from the unlit fire. “I was trying to be nice. I was trying to let you get some extra sleep, Indira.”

  “Whatever,” Indira said. “Just get the fire started.”

  “You do it,” Peeve said impatiently. She tossed the twigs, but Indira’s hands were already full, so they snapped painfully against her neck and arms. Indira dropped her supplies and rushed Peeve, all the anger and frustration of being abandoned on an island boiling over. They rolled in the sand until she had her pinned. She gave her sister’s collar a good shaking.

  “We’re stuck out here, Peeve,” she said. “If you don’t carry your weight, we’ll die out here. Start the fire.”

  “All right, all right,” Peeve shot back. “Get off me.”

  Indira let her up and took a few steps toward the jungle. How were they possibly going to survive here? Strange sounds echoed out from the darkness. Even the shapes of the trees looked foreign and ominous. She had to think. They needed to get help, and they needed it fast.

  A soft twang sounded. One note followed by two, on into a rhythm. Indira turned around. Peeve was watching her, playing a song that sounded almost like a lullaby. Indira was about to tell her to quit wasting time, that the noise might attract unwelcome attention, but…the words didn’t come. She blinked. Her arms felt heavy all of a sudden.

  Peeve maintained eye contact. The song snaked under Indira’s skin, coaxing her muscles to relax until she couldn’t even stand up straight.

  “You never really listened to me, did you?” Peeve’s words somehow sounded like a bedtime story. “You never actually saw any of my practice sessions. So you have no idea what I’m capable of with this little guitar.”

  Indira’s head sank down in the sand. She was watching Peeve’s hands move easily from note to note, the guitar pick gliding so effortlessly. It all made her feel so tired.

  “Feeling sleepy?” Peeve whispered. “Go ahead.
Fall asleep. I’m going to use that coin in your pocket. I’ll use it to call for help. Your mentor gave it to you, didn’t he?”

  Indira’s eyes were closing. She realized, before falling asleep, that Peeve had followed her through the streets of Fable. The flash of color she’d seen after Deus vanished had been Peeve, watching and waiting, learning all about Indira.

  “Go to sleep now,” Peeve sang. “Go on to sleep, little bird.”

  Indira fell asleep…

  …and awoke with a startling jolt. A furious magic had split the sky in two. She saw strange lights that reminded her of the Author Borealis. Dawn? Somehow it was already dawn. Indira saw in the distance that a floatplane had landed off the coast. Indira could just make out Peeve’s form as she boarded the plane.

  The plane took off, gliding over the surface, before bulleting through the sky.

  Peeve was flying away to safety. Without her.

  Indira had lost.

  She heard a sigh. Looking over, she found a perfectly average man standing by the wreckage of their boat. He was holding a coin in his hand. The fingers of his other hand were dancing. Deus considered the smoky streak of the plane’s exhaust in the sky.

  “Well, that’s inconvenient,” he said.

  The scene vanished.

  Indira’s eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the stage. It was as though she had returned to the world and left her heart behind. She knew that she had failed. This fact was confirmed by the stones that the wizard had set on the middle table before the audition began.

  All three had traveled magically over to the table in front of Peeve.

  She had won every scene.

  Peeve didn’t throw her hands up in victory, but she had a satisfied look on her face that gutted Indira. It was hard to focus as the judges recounted the events in the illusions and added their own opinions. Indira didn’t look up until Brainstorm Vesulias said her name sharply.

  He wanted to make sure he had her attention; he wanted her to understand that she had options. Lastly, and most importantly, he wanted to make sure that she knew that taking the protagonist track wasn’t one of those options. She could still be considered for the side-character track, and that wasn’t so bad, according to him. He thanked Indira for her time, and she felt herself vanishing from existence as she left the auditorium.

  Indira did not remember walking out of the auditorium, or back through the halls, or toward the front of the school. She walked like someone surrounded by fog on all sides.

  “Indira?”

  The sound brought her back to reality. The same secretary who had escorted her to the auditions was looking at Indira as if she’d grown a third eyeball.

  “It is Indira, correct?” the woman asked.

  Indira nodded.

  The woman thumbed through her files. “You were chosen by Brainstorm Ketty. She’s actually trying to get a step ahead on meeting with students. Her office is down this hallway. Just walk past Hearth Hall, and she’ll be on your left. Okay?”

  Indira trudged off. She didn’t bother to glance at the bulletin boards that lined the hallways. Those activities felt distant now, as if she’d lost her invitation and would no longer be permitted to take part in them. She found the office with little trouble, knocked, and was commanded to enter.

  Brainstorm Ketty had traded the dragon-scale jacket for a houndstooth frock. Indira found that if she looked too closely at the pattern, the teeth took on a rather sharp and real-looking appearance. The backdrop of the brainstorm’s office was a huge black chalkboard. A chaos of slanting letters revealed long lists, random thoughts, and obscure references.

  Indira’s eyes skipped over the phrases:

  Dashed hope? Must define taxonomy before continuing.

  Be sure to check the Librarian Hall of Fame for leads!

  D. M. writing an Adventure story with a side of Horror!

  Before Indira could piece any of it together, the brainstorm pressed a button on her desk. The chaos was replaced by an orderly list of student names. Ketty tapped the board, scrolled down, and settled on Indira’s name. Indira could not help noticing a massive golden star there.

  Brainstorm Ketty tapped Indira’s name. It centered itself on the board, and the rest of the writing vanished. She gestured for Indira to take a seat before offering a motherly smile.

  “I’ve just received your results, Indira. I’m sure you’re bound to be disappointed. If there’s one lesson I’m learning daily, though, it’s that Fable isn’t done with me. And I daresay it’s not quite done with you, either.”

  Indira forced herself to nod. “I noticed the gold star by my name.”

  “Yes. That indicates that you’re a new student,” Brainstorm Ketty said.

  Indira felt a little let down by that. She knew she’d completely ruined her auditions, but she’d been holding out some hope that a gold star would be something good.

  “Protagonists.” Brainstorm Ketty shrugged. “Necessary, but often overrated. In my own reading, I find them to be simple reflections of the Authors who write them. The side characters are often where exploration truly happens. The Author feels a distance, and distance allows experimentation. You’ve more potential than you know, Indira Story.”

  Indira mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

  The brainstorm sighed. “All right, I will ask you a series of questions. This will allow me to determine the best route for you to take from here. Your honesty is paramount. Lies will only muddy the waters. Just respond with whatever pops into your head first, all right?”

  Indira nodded, eager simply to get on with it. The brainstorm snatched a piece of chalk.

  “Would you rather be owed a favor by dolphins or gnomes?”

  “Uh…dolphins.”

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Gray.”

  “What’s your favorite hair color?”

  Indira blushed a little. “Red.”

  As they continued, the questions appeared in a column on the left side of the blackboard. Indira’s answers floated to life on the right. Columns blossomed with checks or x’s according to some system Indira couldn’t understand.

  “Escape through the roof or down through the sewers?”

  “Roof.”

  “Why are cows such boring creatures?”

  “They’re pampered.”

  “What do you think about kissing?”

  “Gross.”

  “What’s in the closet?”

  “Secrets.”

  “If you had to broker a deal with fairies, what welcoming gift would you bring?”

  “Candy.”

  “The contents of a mysterious vault or a lifelong supply of shoes?”

  “Vault.”

  “It was once said that man is the only creature that blushes, or needs to. Name at least one other animal that blushes.”

  “Skeletons.”

  Brainstorm Ketty leaned back. “Skeletons?” she repeated, amused. “Why skeletons?”

  Indira shrugged. “No clothes?”

  Ketty let out a little laugh as she stood and surveyed the results. Indira couldn’t see any pattern in the questions. The brainstorm used her piece of chalk to make a few extra markings on the blackboard. Dust swirled in one corner, and letters began to print themselves neatly along the borders. Brainstorm Ketty quietly totaled a sum on her fingers before turning around.

  “Well, at least your options are clear,” the woman said. “You’re definitely cut out for an adventure story. Your daring is through the roof, and you have a knack for sticky situations. I’m not sure you expected this, but romantic interest was your second highest category. I’m going to put you in the side-character track for adventure with a minor in romantic curiosity.”

  A chart appeared on the board. Her answers had earned her mar
ks in a variety of categories. She wanted to protest about the romantic-curiosity part. Sure, Phoenix was easy to have a crush on, but the last thing she felt capable of at the moment was being romantically curious about anything.

  Ketty leaned over her desk and pulled out a glittering orb. She set a sheet of paper on her desk and rolled the orb across it four times. “Here’s your schedule.”

  She handed the piece of paper to Indira:

  As Indira scanned the contents, she found little to complain about. The names of her professors were distantly familiar. The locations sounded mostly interesting, and the classes themselves weren’t so bad. She wasn’t certain she’d ever want to fall in love by page 12, but it wouldn’t hurt to know a few things about romance, would it?

  “Weaponry?” Indira asked curiously.

  Ketty gestured to her hammer. “Unless that’s a toothbrush?”

  Indira almost laughed. “I recognize the names of most of the professors, but who is Mr. Threepwood? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He owns the Talespin coffee shop. We hired him two years ago. Our first hiring of an unfinished character. It caused quite a stir until the school council realized the man can teach. I think you’ll like him. Like you, his story began with misadventure.”

  Indira frowned at that. She glanced down at her schedule again, enthusiasm all but gone.

  “Any other questions?” Ketty asked.

  “My escape class meets at ‘just one second.’ When exactly is that?”

  “Well, you know how the quote goes,” Ketty replied. “ ‘How long is forever? Sometimes, just one second.’ ”

  Indira frowned. “That’s nice and all, but it doesn’t help me get to her class.”

  “Oh, Alice’s class? Don’t worry about it. Students have a habit of showing up for her class without quite intending to. And time works a little differently here.”

  Yesterday, Indira might have been curious about what that meant, but that’s the unfortunate thing about befores and afters, my dear reader. A single day or hour or second can take the taste right out of things. So instead of asking questions, Indira simply folded her schedule and stood.