by Shelby Bach
“Now. We have only about three minutes before the Director gets healed and takes over.” I pointed at the exit.
They followed me to the shore outside, and I knelt in the sand. The Water of Life had worked on Ben’s enchantment, and on Bryan’s. As long as mermaids weren’t completely different from humans, it might just work for Chatty.
“You guys are covered in glass.” Lena brushed a fine, clear powder off my shoulders. “What did you do? Punch through every wall in the Glass Mountain?”
I filled up the eyedropper. “Not all of them.”
“Just the outer one,” said Ben.
“Oh,” Lena said, impressed and jealous. “I can’t believe you guys went to the Glass Mountain without me. Again.”
Chase grinned. “That’s the last time Rory and I visit the Snow Queen without you, I promise.”
“Yeah, you could have definitely taken my place,” said Ben.
“Here it goes!” Unscrewing Chatty’s lid, I held the eyedropper over the top and counted out five drops. It started to steam. “Lena, quick—good or bad sign?”
“Pour it! If she re-forms inside, she could get hurt!” Lena dumped out the bottle before I could tell her how hard it had been to spoon Chatty in there the first time.
But a mermaid splashed headfirst into the waves, her powerful cobalt tail lashing out hard. Ben fell over. I couldn’t tell if he had actually gotten hit or if he was just surprised.
Then Chatty sat up in the shallows, still wearing the faded green T-shirt she had been wearing that morning. “Look! I’m not dead! Or sea foam!” She pressed both hands to her face, checking to make sure she still had two eyes, two lips, and a nose. A beige glob came away with her hand. She sniffed it delicately. “Who thought I needed an oatmeal facial?” Then she spotted Ben, who was staring at her tail. She dove under with a little “eeep.”
“Right,” Ben said. “Well, I wouldn’t want to see me either.”
“I was going to ask her for some of her hair,” Lena said, so disappointed that I knew she’d wanted to use it for spells.
But Chatty came back up, her face clean. She was fine. She wasn’t even missing any body parts.
“Hey,” said Ben.
“Where’s Mia?” Chatty asked, clearly not happy with him.
Ben wiped his palms on his bloody jeans. “Turns out she’s evil.”
Lena gasped. “She was?”
“Puppet. Controlled by the Snow Queen,” explained Chase swiftly.
“I knew it. She kept snooping in my workshop,” Lena said, like this was an obvious sign of villainy.
“Oh.” Chatty tried not to smile and failed. Then she looked exactly like she did right after she had pulled some sort of prank. “Well, then.”
“So,” Ben said awkwardly, “have I said I’m sorry yet?”
Chatty cupped a hand behind her ear. “Could you repeat that? Mermaids are kind of hard of hearing.”
I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said louder.
“Dude, she’s messing with you. Mermaids hear fine,” Chase said, and Chatty stuck her tongue out at him.
“I have a question,” Ben said. “What’s your real name?”
“I have fifty names. It’s a mermaid thing.” She rolled her eyes. “But my sisters call me Sherah.”
“I’m not calling you anything but Chatty,” Chase said.
“See if I answer,” the mermaid shot back.
We were safe. I sat back on my heels, my hands twisting in my shirt to hide how much they were shaking. We were more than safe. We had saved EAS.
Relief turned my bones to liquid, and I breathed out slowly.
Lena saw my face. She hugged me so hard her shoulder pressed into my windpipe. “It’s okay now, Rory.”
But I was barely listening. The door to the infirmary banged open. The Director glided out, clutching a bathrobe around her as elegantly as a fine silk coat. You could tell by the tilt of her chin that she felt better, and that she was back in charge.
“Take her to the dungeon,” she told the Characters coming out behind her.
Then Hansel and Stu walked out, fully recovered too, ushering Rapunzel between them. This time Rapunzel didn’t struggle. Her head hung low, her hair trailing over the ground like a cloak, picking up stray leaves.
She looked so defeated. She looked so different from her sister. It was suddenly hard to remember why I’d suspected her in the first place.
“We’ll hold the court-martial next week, once things have settled down,” the Director added.
“Oh, right,” said Chase with a deep sigh. “We need to sort this mess out.”
“Hey!” I ran across the courtyard. “You have the wrong person!”
Rapunzel looked up slowly. The circles under her eyes were so dark it looked like she was the one with the black eye, not me. But she still smiled a little. “Rory, you will listen: The one they call Chatty, she—”
“We took care of her. Check this out. Hey, Chatty!” Chase waved back toward the water.
“I told you! I’m not answering to that name!” Chatty shouted back.
“See?” Chase said. “The Little Mermaid swims again.”
“Wow. The Tales are changing,” said Stu, but he was looking at me when he said it. “They’re combining now.”
Oh. He meant that I was changing them.
“Rory, yes, you and your friends have been heroic once again.” The Director sounded kind of irritated about it. “And your loyalty to Rapunzel is touching, but I’m afraid that there are certain schemes at work that you can’t possibly understand—”
I clenched my fists. “I think I understand pretty well, Director. I’ll understand better after I break that Pounce Pot. You remember the Pounce Pot, don’t you, Director? You, Sebastian, and Solange went on a quest for it?”
Lena gasped. “What?”
The Director paled, very slightly, and Chase groaned. “Not now you won’t. Since you brought it up, she’ll move it someplace we’ll never find it.”
“Mildred, I have told you, time and again,” said Rapunzel softly. “The children will always find a way to learn what concerns them.”
“Silence. You are still a suspect,” the Director snapped.
“No, the Snow Queen planted Mia here to poison everyone,” I said again.
Hansel was apparently having trouble following this conversation. “The new kid?”
“The one who isn’t here to defend herself?” the Director said wryly.
Chase nodded. “She was a puppet with a very fancy glamour on her.”
“The Snow Queen was acting through her,” I said. “Sometimes she was inside Mia, and sometimes I think she was on autopilot, so she seemed kind of off.”
The idea clearly terrified Lena. “That’s very complicated magic.”
“But you don’t have any evidence?” The Director had no intention of taking us seriously.
“You have three witnesses—” I started, furious.
“Actually, we do. But Lena needs to get it off this.” Chase pulled out an M3, the same one he had been messing with in the Snow Queen’s throne room. I thought he’d just been muttering to himself, but—
“It was a spell? You were recording?” I asked Chase. “That’s brilliant.”
Chase grinned. “I have my moments. Many of them, actually.”
Lena glanced at the grown-ups, clearly embarrassed. Then, flipping the mirror open, she whispered in Fey, “Please, please don’t be botched. Come on, mirror, it’s time to watch.”
The Snow Queen’s face appeared on the screen. “Oh, dearest Rapunzel,” said Solange’s image, and Rapunzel herself flinched. “My most loyal servant.”
During her sister’s speech, Rapunzel had the look on her face that she got sometimes around the Director: not defending herself, not smug—just stubborn. I had thought before that it was the look a teenager gives her mother, but it wasn’t. Rapunzel looked at the Director the way Chase, Lena, and I dealt
with Jenny. We did whatever we had to do to get her off our backs.
All Rapunzel wanted was to get out of her sister’s shadow.
“You see—” the Director began indignantly, as soon as the Snow Queen got to the part that went, “I’m delighted that she managed to poison everyone else, too.”
“Wait for it,” Chase said.
“You’re lying,” the M3 said with my voice.
“Yes, I am. But this is still what Mildred will believe,” said the Snow Queen’s image happily. “Mia poisoned you all, right under Rory’s and Rapunzel’s noses.”
Wearily, the Director gestured to the two guards. Hansel had already released Rapunzel, but Stu took a little longer, too distracted by the magic mirror to notice that the Director had called off the arrest.
“Sorry.” The Shoemaker hurriedly dropped Rapunzel’s elbow, dragging his eyes away from the M3. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“She’s scary,” Lena whispered, huddled up against me. She had never seen the Snow Queen either. “The way she looks at you, and talks . . .”
“She draws your attention and holds it,” said Rapunzel solemnly. “And next she draws your devotion. Her words sear themselves in your memory. That is why she is so dangerous.” She looked straight at me. “Her words are often her most destructive weapons.”
Yeah, I knew what she meant now.
“Turn it off. I’ve seen enough,” said the Director, so sharply that Lena hastily whispered the off spell and surrendered the M3 into Mildred Grubb’s waiting hands. “I’ll review it later. Now we have more pressing matters.”
“Ben’s other Companion,” Rapunzel reminded me quietly.
“Kenneth,” I said quickly. “He’s a rock right now. On the staircase leading up to the spring.”
“We will send Jack. Where is Jack?” The Director said sharply. “Our champion should have been here to defend us during this dark time.”
Sarah Thumb came winging out on Mr. Swallow, who landed on the Director’s shoulder. “He still doesn’t know we were poisoned. You wanted him to continue on his dwarf city tour, so no outsider would suspect anything was wrong. We can call him back.”
“Yes, the danger is past. Call him back. Jack can go. He’ll need two rings of return—”said the Director.
“And the Water of Life,” Chase interrupted. “Mia said the Water of Life would break the enchantment. I mean, the Snow Queen said it through her puppet,” he added uncertainly, “so it might be true . . .”
“No, that’s right,” said Lena.
“If we must send a second quest to retrieve a fallen Companion, our champion is more than equal to the task,” the Director said smoothly.
“Did you guys think to get some dirt?” Lena asked me.
From my pocket I pulled out what I’d grabbed while we’d waited for the West Wind.
“Perfect! Give me five minutes and I’ll make a transport.” Then Lena noticed the Director scowling at her. The transports had been so helpful that I had completely forgotten that Lena was supposed to stop experimenting. Her shoulders hunched up, the same way they did before Jenny told her off. “They’re disposable now, Director. They only have enough magic for a one-way trip. It’s not a real portal.”
“Fine. Lena shall do this spell. Stu, you shall shadow her and make sure it’s suitable.” The Director was so good at giving orders that she could change direction in just a few seconds. “Chase and Rory, you’ll come to my office. You shall give a full report on the events of the week, so that I may debrief Jack when he arrives.”
“Actually, Rory should probably go home,” Sarah Thumb said. “My bed was right beside the infirmary phone. Her mother has been calling every half hour.”
My stomach sank to my toes. I was going to be in so much trouble.
“Chase, then, to my office.” The Director crossed the courtyard in long strides.
Chase obviously thought he’d gotten the suckiest task. He stomped after her.
“And then we’ll do that thing,” Lena whispered, cupping her hands so I could drop the Atlantis dirt into them. “The thing we talked about before the feast.”
I stared at her, drawing a complete blank. “The feast was a really, really long time ago, Lena.”
“Not for me,” the Shoemaker said with a rueful grin. “I feel like I just lay down in the infirmary two seconds ago. I slept more getting poisoned than I have in the past year.”
“The party,” Rapunzel said with a tiny smile. “Chase’s first.”
“Surprise birthday party!” I said.
“But after the transport spell,” the Shoemaker said.
“Okay, going.” And then Lena sprinted across the courtyard toward the workshop, equal to any Kid Olympics runner.
I grinned. She was feeling better.
“God, does that girl operate at anything other than top speed?” Stu muttered, following her. “Lena, maybe you should take it easy. You’ve been poisoned all week.”
And then it was just Rapunzel and me. I remembered how I had acted the last time we were alone together, and I squirmed with shame.
“Is she mad at you because you took over while she was sick?” I asked, watching the Director sweep past the amethyst door into her office, Sarah Thumb and Mr. Swallow on her shoulders and Chase following behind.
“I upset her the day we met, centuries past, and I have found other ways to upset her in all the years since,” Rapunzel said. “But my relationship with the Director is my problem, as is my relationship with my sister. You should remember this even if the Director and Solange tell you otherwise.”
So she wasn’t mad at me. I felt twice as guilty. “Rapunzel, I’m really sorry I didn’t trust you.”
“Rory, you do not need to apologize. It is natural of you to suspect those closely associated with a villain who has tried to kill you many times,” Rapunzel said. “In fact I should apologize to you. If I had been aware that no one had told you, I would have explained long ago.”
So we had both been standing here feeling guilty about the same thing. “I was totally sure you were the bad guy when the mother of the four winds said you told the goblin priestesses to amp up the mirror vault.”
Rapunzel’s eyes lit up, flattered. I guess that was later than she’d expected. “You understand why I asked them to do this, don’t you?”
“Yes. So I could tell everyone else the stones weren’t real.” I didn’t mention that it obviously hadn’t worked for Kenneth.
Rapunzel drew her hair over her shoulder and began rebraiding it. “No. I assumed that you would need no help among the stones, because I had seen you stop Chase from turning his head. But I knew that you would face Solange and speak with her. It is dangerous to listen to my sister.”
I’d kind of already known that. Madison was the same. It was just a lot harder to dismiss whatever the Snow Queen said. She acted so sure. She spoke so confidently you questioned everything you knew.
“She would have stopped me if I hadn’t survived the mirror vault first,” I said.
“Yes. But just as we all have wishes that drive us, we all have doubts that hinder us. Not just you. Not just Chase and Lena,” Rapunzel said. “Everyone. Even Solange.”
“The Snow Queen has doubts?” Then I bit my tongue, worried that Rapunzel would think I was pumping her for information again.
“What did she want from you, Rory?” Rapunzel asked.
“She wanted to stop me from stopping her,” I whispered.
Rapunzel nodded. “But you did stop her. Having once been a hero herself, she knows the strength of them.” Was she really saying what I thought she was? That the Snow Queen was afraid of me? “Unfortunately she will try again.”
The idea made me feel so tired, so defeated already. I closed my eyes for a moment. How much had Solange learned about us, spying through Mia? How much had I given away?
Rapunzel dropped a cool hand on my head. “Rory, you have done much, and you are becoming known as someone who makes the impos
sible possible. You freed the West Wind from a being much stronger and more powerful than you. You retrieved the scepter of the Birch clan. You created happy endings to several different Tales—Ben’s, the Little Mermaid’s, Bryan’s. You stormed into the Unseelie Court and forced its prince to do your bidding, something the Fey will never forget.”
I winced. “I guess I didn’t make us any friends, huh?”
“You are assuming that Fael is popular in the Unseelie Court,” Rapunzel said, smiling. “But Rory, you are fast becoming a legend in your own right—at a very early age, just like my sister.”
The Snow Queen had tried to kill everyone at EAS, and I’d stopped her. With Chase’s and Lena’s help, I’d been a match for her at least twice in my life, but was that actually something to brag about?
I was the direction your life was headed, she’d said.
“Rory?” Rapunzel said.
“If I stop her the same way she stopped Evil King What’s-His-Face, what’ll stop me from becoming just like her?” It scared me to hear my voice shaking.
Rapunzel smiled her tiniest smile. “If it had been Solange in the mirror vault, if she had heard Sebastian and Mildred say what you heard Chase and Lena say, she would have turned back. Solange would have let her friends die for betraying her, but you wanted to save yours more than you wanted them to love you.”
She said this like it was some sort of big truth, but I didn’t get it. “So?”
“So you will never become a villain like the Snow Queen. It’s not in you,” Rapunzel said. I wished I could feel as sure as she sounded. “I know I cannot convince you to trust yourself, this will be the desire that drives your life. But beware: Some will not believe you when you declare that you will grow up to be Rory and not Solange the second.”
I guess Rapunzel understood this more than anyone.
“But some will.” Rapunzel touched my left hand, where I was unconsciously twisting my new ring. “Myself, Chase, and Lena especially.”
That did make me feel slightly better.
“I just want to bring everybody through the war safely,” I whispered.
“Please don’t wish for that,” Rapunzel said, stricken. She must have seen me lose someone.
