by Laura Kenyon
“Is she okay?” she called to Ethan, who was folding his jacket gently beneath Grethel’s head. But before she could reach him, the sound of a tiny cry stopped her in her tracks. She spun around. A serene Hazel Wickenham was standing beside her son, cradling a red, wriggling, crying newborn infant with black eyes, curly chestnut hair, and a body barely longer than Donner’s shoe.
“Umm, who is that?” she asked, making a move to come closer but holding back. Hazel was gazing down at the baby with stars in her eyes and the sort of calm that had seemed impossible a few minutes earlier. “That’s not … I mean … Where is Rye?”
Belle pressed her lips, gave a powerless shrug, and told her that magic could do a lot of things, evidently, but it couldn’t do everything. It could summon icy winds to fight an inferno, but it couldn’t reverse the damage. It could help lost lovers find each other, but it couldn’t bring one back from the dead. It could protect a child from a traumatic assault by launching it forward in time, but it couldn’t stuff him back into his mother’s womb once he was out.
“Ruby thinks he’s in some sort of suspended growth pattern now until his ages catches up,” Belle said. “So it looks like I get to deal with those newborn cries after all—for an additional few months.”
Rapunzel gave a hesitant smile. She didn’t know exactly how to feel about this. Of course, she was thrilled that Rye would live a normal life—or at least have one less thing stacked against him from the get-go. And she understood that this pinched, ruddy creature was the same child who’d laughed at her silly faces just a few days ago. And now that she thought about it, was there really any way this story could have had an entirely happy ending without completely changing the past?
But then again, if Donner had never cheated on Belle to begin with, she wouldn’t have found her voice or started her own business or met Gray. If Ruby had never cursed Donner in the first place, Belle would never have married Donner at all, never become a queen, and probably never been even a blip on Rapunzel’s friendship radar.
Thinking about this, she finally understood why Snow found it so important to leave the past in the past; why Ethan thought one heartfelt apology was all their relationship needed to move on from his lies about Grethel; why Belle was able to forgive Donner for the things he did rather than cut him out of Rye’s life eternally. Life was a series of imperfect but irreplaceable events. Cutting out one changed not only the bad results but the good as well.
She looked up just as the wind stopped howling, and panned to her left. “Oh thank God,” she said, hustling immediately over to Grethel as Ethan helped her to her feet. She slipped her hand around the fairy’s other side. “Don’t ever do that again. You still owe me at least twelve years of nagging and power struggling, remember?”
Grethel flashed a weak grin and told her to hush up. But Rapunzel saw right through this. She saw that Grethel’s lips were the same color as her skin, that her eyes were cast down and glassy, that her knees weren’t holding weight as well as they should have. Grethel wasn’t healthy enough for this sort of stress. She thought briefly about what Belle had just said about magic’s limitations. She’d left one out. It couldn’t eradicate cancer either, at least no magic she’d ever heard of.
Slowly, they all made their way back to the baby, who was now silent and still in Snow’s arms. She had a blank look on her face, but there was far more happiness than sorrow behind it.
“I’m so sorry about your house,” Belle said, tucking a corner of the blanket under Rye’s neck. His huge black eyes focused intently on Snow, then panned a few inches to Belle.
“It’s not your fault,” she replied. “The only thing that really matters is right here. I’m just sorry he has to find a new home again.”
Silence fell as the remaining drizzle disappeared and a bit of sun broke through the clouds.
“So what do we do now?” asked Snow. “The curse may be broken but Angus has essentially put a price on all of us and Cinderella’s still missing.”
“Actually,” Ethan chimed in, pulling his phone out of his pocket, “I just got a lead on that. A colleague of mine in Ellada says he got a hold of the man who picked them up at the airport. The good news is he has no reason to think they’re in danger.”
“Great!” Belle, Rapunzel, and Snow shouted in unison.
“Where are they?”
“Let’s not waste time.”
“When Elmina gets back, she can just zip on over there and—”
“No she can’t,” Ethan said. “There’s a problem.”
“What sort of problem? So long as she knows where to go, Elmina’s powers allow her to take someone with her when she does that teleportation thing.”
“It’s called evaporating,” Hazel corrected.
Rapunzel gave her a dirty look. “Whatever.”
“It doesn’t matter what it’s called,” Ethan said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It won’t work either way. The Charmés are stuck in a town they can’t leave, and they have no reason to want to.”
“What do you mean they have no reason to want to?” Rapunzel nearly pounced on him. “They have four children who need them. They have an entire kingdom to run. They have friends who’ve been worried sick.”
“They don’t know that,” he said, giving a frustrated sigh. “They don’t remember you or their kids or Marestam. According to this guy, there’s some town on the southeastern fringe of Ellada that was cursed decades ago and still is. Anyone who crosses its borders instantly forgets everything about their life up to that point, and loses any desire to leave. Cinderella and Aaron think that’s their home now. And if anyone goes in to get them … well, they’ll forget too.”
All eyes stared either through him or into the ground. How had this become normal?
“Okay. Looks like we have another curse to break,” Belle said just as Elmina appeared between them with Dawn in tow. The latter, wearing velour pants and sneakers, looked like she was in a functioning state of shock, while the former seemed more frazzled than a mother of two-year-old quintuplets.
“I don’t even want to know right now,” Elmina said, panning vacantly over the smoke drifting off the charred cottage. Then she looked at Belle. “What did you tell Angus about Jacara’s powers?”
Belle unhinged her jaw but took a few seconds to answer. “I … I mentioned them, but I don’t think he knows a thing about the—”
“That’s not what I asked. What did you tell him?”
Belle shrugged and furrowed her brow. “I said I knew he took her powers when Dawn’s curse broke.”
Elmina pulled her right cheek between her teeth. “And you mentioned Jacara by name?” Belle nodded. Elmina’s left cheek joined in. “Anything else?”
The lines deepened across Belle’s forehead. “I said I knew he used them to steal Ruby’s powers—which I guess was wrong but—”
“That’s enough.” Elmina shook her head and panned the circle. “I think Belle was right that Angus knew nothing about Jacara’s powers a few hours ago. But he certainly knows about them now.” She pulled a newspaper bulletin out of her front pocket. “In addition to this witch hunt disguised as a state of emergency, Parliament is holding a zero hour referendum on two things tomorrow: the future of the monarchies, and the fate of magic.”
No one made a sound, not even Rye.
“Angus says that in light of the inability of either the Carpale or Braddax monarchs to uphold their duties, as well as the Tantalise monarchs’ refusal to obey federal law, the confusion over the Riverfell throne, and the likelihood that Belle was involved in the attack on the Hall of Curiosities—which he is labeling magical terrorism—the people have a constitutional right to reform their government should they so choose. And as for magic … well, he says he has in his possession a weapon that will erase it from the face of the earth in a matter of seconds.”
“It’s the orb atop his walking stick,” Ruby interrupted, her nose buried in the bulletin. “But because he doesn’t want to b
e seen as a hypocrite harboring the magic he so despises, he’s giving the public the choice to pull the trigger or let magic remain. The stone will be on display in the undamaged wing of the Hall of Curiosities until midnight tomorrow, when the polls close and all the votes are tallied.”
“Exactly,” Elmina said, plucking the paper right out of Ruby’s hand. “He might be making it up, and it might be a trap. But I don’t think we can afford to gamble on this one. We have to try and grab it.”
A flurry of ideas came forward. Most were horrible. A few were impossible. One was moderately less horrendous than all of its peers.
“Disagree if you want,” Belle said, kissing Rye on the forehead and pulling out her phone, “but I still believe there are more rational, intelligent people in Marestam than there are fear-mongering sheep.” She flashed Rapunzel an energetic smirk and then glanced at the four fairies, who’d split off into their own smaller circle and were brainstorming how to break into the Hall of Curiosities—again. “Let them handle the magic,” she told the remaining mortals. Matilda Holt’s number popped up on her screen. “We’ll take the media. After all, who can ignore the exclusive of the century?”
THE MARESTAM MIRROR
Diamond Ropes and Velvet Cake
By Perrin Hildebrand, King of Gossip
SPEECHLESS.
That is the only word that can possibly describe how I felt after reading Matilda Holt’s exposé on the people who have been running our kingdoms for years. I am sure the book rights are already in the works, and feature film ideas are being tossed around behind closed doors everywhere. To summarize would be an insult to both my colleague (of whom I am now obscenely jealous) and to my readers, who I’m sure have already gobbled it up from headline to contact line half a dozen times. But far be it for insults to stop the King of Gossip from doing his job.
So … boiled down to one earth-shattering run-on sentence, here’s what you REALLY need to know: Belle’s baby was born over a week ago; Hunter and Dawn Tirion have even more marital woes than we thought; Ruby Welles cursed the King of Braddax twice in the last six years; Cinderella and Aaron Charmé aren’t giving us the cold shoulder—they’ve been trapped in a magical town that sucks up people’s memories; and whether or not Prime Minister Kane succeeds in toppling the monarchies with tonight’s vote, he’ll be either impeached, assassinated, or arrested before the next sunrise.
For details, check out Matilda’s award-worthy feature in the early edition. For public reaction, here’s what I overheard this morning at Grand Capitol Station:
Regarding Belle’s big pregnancy cover-up:
• “The poor thing! First her husband kicks her out, then her home burns to the ground, and then she has to hide her firstborn child like a canker sore? That woman should be given sainthood immediately—and probably Donner’s crown!”
• “Never thought she had it in her, to be frank. Before Donner’s scandal, that Belle was a bit of an insult to females everywhere. Not that I wish such misfortune on anybody, but I’m glad she’s finally grown some muscle. Pin me for Team Belle.”
• “I just hope this doesn’t mean we’re going to have a child king in Braddax—no, scratch that, an infant king. Look, I feel for Belle and all, but this isn’t changing my vote. The monarchies have had their time.”
Regarding the allegations that Angus Kane poisoned Donner Wickenham, covered up the Charmés ’ disappearance (or quite possibly organized it), and misused government property (a.k.a. Selladóre) for his own personal gain:
• “First, let me say that I’m skeptical of anything I read in the papers these days, so only a court of law can convince me. But if all that is true, I think Angus Kane should be held responsible for everything Donner Wickenham is on the hook for—jail time, hospital bills, emotional trauma, arson, all of it. Ruby Welles too. They should split it.”
• “No big surprise here. That rat bastard’s been angling for unrestricted power from the get-go. I never voted for him to begin with. What’s the phrase his first opponent used way back when I was in high school? Oh yeah, ‘doesn’t play well with others.’ But he certainly plays others well, ha. I’m sure there are many more iniquities where these came from.”
• “I am appalled that the Mirror would publicize such partisan nonsense on the morning of a historic, long-overdue exercise in civil liberties. Where are the opposing views? Where is the journalistic integrity? Do a couple ‘declined to comments’ really check the boxes nowadays? I swear, if today’s vote upholds the current political system, I hope this rag gets sued into the history books.”
• “Long live the crowns!”
In response to Dawn T irion’s affair with her husband’s business partner and international distillery magnate Liam Devereaux, who is actually a 332-year-old native of Selladóre:
• “This is a real life soap opera! Holy crap. I never thought I’d say this, but poor Hunter!”
• “Good for her. That walking manila envelope snatched her up before she even had a chance to see what a real modern man was like. That’s like picking house keys out of a hat and being forced to sign a sixty-year lease. Of course she wasn’t going to be satisfied. I just wish she’d given me a call. I’ve always had a weakness for redheads.”
• “There is no excuse for infidelity. She took a vow—however unfair it might have been. Upon my word, where would society be if everyone broke the rules just because they felt miserable? It would be chaos. Misery is part of life.”
• “I knew she couldn’t really be as stale and conservative as she let on. I mean, just look at her hair—there had to be a little fire on the inside too! Well, at least Regian’s queen is no longer a giant bore—not that I expect her to remain queen for much longer.”
On a few additional points:
• “If Donner had a thing with that Karen Epson person five years before they found her body—horrible story—and she left behind a five-year-old son … Well, what do you think the chances are that this kid is half Wickenham? Is it possible? What would that mean?”
• “I’m cancelling my subscription to Ruby Magazine this instant!”
• “So if Donner was both under a curse and ’roid raging while he was being such a jerk, do you think that means he and Belle will get back together if he’s better now? OMG I’d give anything to see a Donelle reunion!”
• “Crap. I think my neighbor is on the magical registry. I’m not trying to stereotype or anything, but … maybe I should sleep at my mother’s house tonight. I can’t see this ending well for anyone.”
• “I’d find it much easier to believe Donner's story if he hadn't skipped bail like that. Or if he turned himself in now to await a fair trial."
AND now for a rare reprieve from the King of Gossip whimsy:
Marestam voters have a lot to think about today. We’ve been given a bloodstained sword and the option to slit the throat of our internationally admired royal heritage. We’ve been given the power to demote five members of our beloved femme fatale sextet, making them nothing more than former figureheads with fizzling celebrity status. Yours Truly would be forced to tack on that horrid qualifying adjective each time I refered to “former” Queen Cinderella, “former” Princess Penelopea, or even “former” King Donner. And not even two years into your King of Gossip’s reign, at that! It’s a cruel, cruel twist of fate, dear universe. A cruel twist of fate, indeed.
But if that’s not enough to knock your head off and send it toppling down the East Bank Expressway, the people of Marestam are also being given the ability to do something that (rightfully) has the international community up in arms: end magic for good. Now in full disclosure, I’m doubtful that the baseball-sized orb now sitting in the unharmed eastern wing of the Hall of Curiosities actually has the power to turn magic into a myth. I find it hard to believe that our shrewd, if not calculating, prime minister had this power attached to his walking stick for the last ten years but thought it nothing more than a pretty rock.
Stil
l, it’s my duty to relay a “VERY IMPORTANT” (she insisted on all caps) warning about calling Angus Kane’s bluff. According to the now wanted, most powerful known fairy in the world, the power contained in that stone belonged to the very same fairy who cursed Dawn Tirion more than three centuries ago.
“People today can’t even comprehend how much power Jacara had,” says Elmina Goodman, “but there’s one way I can put it into perspective. If the government uses that stone to try and erase magic from existence, there’s a distinct possibility that every Selladórean who woke up in this realm and anyone who has since descended from them will die. Anyone whose life was saved by magic will die. Any evil that was toppled by magic—assuming the evil was not magical as well—will return. Jacara practiced black magic to an extent no one born in this century can possibly comprehend, and there’s no way of knowing whether such a curse will simply remove magic going forward or undo everything that it’s ever touched. It’s a butterfly effect we can’t even begin to understand. The people of Marestam might be holding the code to a nuclear bomb carrying enough ammunition to destroy the world.”
Excuse me a moment while I polish off this gin—all three bottles of it. Happy voting.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BELLE
“New count just in!” Gray called as Belle crawled around the kitchen floor on her hands and knees, wiping Beast’s dribble off the floor with a brown dishtowel. “So far it’s only eighteen percent in favor of using the stone. I knew that wouldn’t pass. I mean, I know there are far too many irrational people out there who let fear run their lives but—”
“What about the monarchies??” Belle hollered, using a kitchen chair to pull herself upright and grab a box of flaxseed crackers. Any minute now, her tiny groundskeeper cabin was going to host Griffin, Snow, Rapunzel, Ethan, and—though she hadn’t yet shared the news with her significant other—Donner.
