by Shannon Hale
“That’s alligators,” Kitty said.
“Oh, right,” said Maddie. “Alligators. I don’t know about that crocodile, then.”
A deep bass rumbling shook the floor, as if the world were beginning to turn in exactly the opposite direction as the building it supported. More changes? Lizzie rubbed her hands together.
Cedar jumped away from the closed door. “Is that creature getting through?”
“Be reasonable. Crocodiles don’t have the thumbs necessary to open doors,” said Lizzie.
“It could be eating its way through,” Kitty said.
Cedar eyed the door nervously.
“Something is happening out on the terrace, though,” Lizzie said. “A crowd is gathering. A queen can tell these things.”
“You’re not a queen yet,” Cedar whispered.
“If I say I am, I am!” Lizzie shouted as she marched downstairs. “It is a queen’s prerogative to determine reality.”
“What’s a prerogative?” Maddie asked.
Lizzie ignored Maddie’s question, partly because she wasn’t actually sure what a prerogative was. But most of her was riddled and ant-dance-y with the worry that she might be lying to herself and the others about being ready to be a queen.
A queen worrying about others is like a baker
worried he’s making too many muffins.
As if there could be such a thing as
Too Many Muffins. Ha! WORRY NOT!
AND EAT MORE MUFFINS!
But I can’t help worrying, Mother, Lizzie wanted to say. She had yet to read a card that explained how her mother lived worry-free.
Lizzie clenched her teeth and marched toward the crowd-feeling on the terrace. And the parts of her that weren’t wormy with worry or puzzled with prerogative began to pulse with excitement.
Wonderland found me!
The sunshine seemed especially bright, warming her gold crown against her forehead. On the terrace, a podium faced rows of chairs as if set up for an event like Legacy Day. Or a coronation. Her coronation?
Lizzie lifted her nose, tightened her lips, pressed one hand against the worry in her belly, pressed the other hand against the eager beats of her heart, and smiled.
“These chairs weren’t here when we came back from the field trip,” Cedar said.
“Maybe the people setting this up were the crowd we heard,” Maddie said. “The faculty must be back! Yay!”
At Maddie’s shout, all the chairs turned and looked at them.
“Uh-oh,” said Kitty.
“The chairs set themselves up,” Cedar whispered. “What I want to know is, what was the podium telling them to do?”
An incomprehensible noise, somewhere between a shout, the crackle of a fire, and a bone breaking, issued from the podium.
The chairs nodded. And then they began to charge.
Lizzie’s stomach dropped. This was not her coronation. This was some kind of uprising.
“Run!” Lizzie yelled.
And they did.
“They’re not very fast,” Kitty said, running backward.
“What are you talking about?” Lizzie shouted, casting a glance over her shoulder. “They’re gaining on us!”
Kitty shrugged, disappeared, and then reappeared, running a few feet in front of the group. “We’re not very fast either.”
“I can’t… keep… this up,” Cedar gasped. “Not really… used to… breathing… like this… or at all.…”
Maddie held her hand.
The girls zoomed through corridor after corridor, past flighty curtains, over grumbly carpets, around mischievous benches. But the charging chairs stayed on their heels, the podium thump-hopping in front, shrieking microphone feedback that sounded like a battle cry.
“Maybe the chairs… are mad… that we’ve been sitting on them… all these years,” Maddie said between huffs and puffs.
“This… is… not… wonderlandiful,” Lizzie said.
Ahead, nearly blocking the hall, was what appeared to be a garden shed.
“Hutling!” Maddie yelled.
On hearing its name, the small cottage stood up on two chicken legs and turned to them “face”-first. There was a door. Mouth. Whatever. Only a couple of weeks ago, this offspring of Baba Yaga’s magic hut had hatched from its egg, but already it’d grown so much that when it was standing, the doorknob was too high for Maddie to reach. And the stampede of seats had caught up.
With a tremendous clacking and whacking, armchairs, easy chairs, folding chairs, and stools galloped closer. The hutling made a distressed clucking sound. It took a few steps forward, bringing the four girls underneath its shadow, like baby chicks under their mother.
“Is it going to squish us?” Cedar asked.
“The hutling is my buddy! We play hide-and-seek all the time,” Maddie whispered, “Don’t tell, but I trick the hut every time by hiding inside it.” Maddie snickered.
The crowd of chairs had stopped before the hutling, confused, turning back and forth.
“Can’t they see us?” Cedar whispered. “We’re right in front of them.”
“Of course they can’t,” Lizzie said, sure she was right. Or pretending to be sure. She wasn’t entirely sure of the difference at this point.
The hutling started to walk away.
“Stay with it!” Lizzie said, shuffling to keep up.
Kitty’s ears pricked up. “Did you hear that? Like breaking glass, but… windier.”
“Breaking wind?” Maddie asked, giggling.
“Wind and broken glass? It couldn’t be a… a shardstorm,” Cedar whispered.
Lizzie had only heard fables about shardstorms—the frightening weather events that occurred when a great deal of magic mirrors broke all at once. Surely they were as imaginary as polka-dotted unicorns, as flying mushrooms, as hideous bunnies. Nobody ever saw them, because they were supposed to fade or collapse as soon as they were confronted with their own reflection, and reflections were everywhere in Ever After. Yet who knew what was possible in this change-up, mess-around, come-undone school?
The ringing and crackling and tinkling and whooshing grew louder. And louder. The air began to buzz, the sound of ten thousand clocks striking midnight at the same time.
“Shardstorm!” Lizzie yelled. “Run!”
THE GRIMMNASIUM DOOR THRUST OPEN.
“Quick! Come inside!” shouted a haggard, but still dashing, Daring Charming.
The sound of breaking glass raged behind them. The Raven-raven soared through the open doorway of the Grimmnasium after the hutling. Cedar was about to follow but was struck from the side. A folding chair pounced on top of her, folding and unfolding its seat menacingly. About to kick the thing off, Cedar felt herself pale (for real) at the sight behind the chair.
A tornado of mirror glass the size of a mature oak tree rounded the corner and spun down the hall. It was beautiful, the way the light reflected off each individual piece of sharpened glass, and Cedar found herself wondering what colors of paint she’d use to create the scene on canvas.
The chair leaped off her and charged the storm. And was instantly shredded to bits.
Lizzie shook her fist at the disintegrated chair. “That will teach you to unceremoniously tackle the personal acquaintance of a royal heir to Wond—”
“Come on!” Maddie said, pulling Cedar and Lizzie inside the Grimmnasium. Glass shards began pelting the metal doors just as Daring slammed them shut.
He turned to the girls with a brilliant smile, leaning against the door casually as if not one bit worried about the screaming shardstorm pelting the other side of the door.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Daring said. “A pleasure to save you.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes.
“Can it get through that door?” Cedar asked.
Daring gave the door a hard slap. “Dwarven metal. Tough stuff.”
Cedar was shivering from her noncreaky toes to her soft shoulders, her new, real body confused by new, real bruises forming fr
om that rogue chair attack. She found herself wondering if maybe there was a way to bypass being regular skin or wood, and get turned into dwarven metal instead.
“But I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, enchanting lady.” Daring kissed the back of Cedar’s hand. She felt the warmth of his lips, and mother-goosebumps scattered across her arm. “New here? I’m Daring Charming, but the girls just call me Prince Daring Charming.”
He winked.
Lizzie rolled her eyes again. Cedar wanted to roll her eyes, too. After all, she’d never been one to bat her eyelashes at Daring or sigh whenever he slew dragons or lifted heavy objects or buttered his bread in muscle-flexing, manly motions. Still, she’d never felt the needle-thin tap dance of mother-goosebumps across real skin. She’d never experienced this warm, pleasant rumble in her belly and dizzy, tingling confusion in her head. If a simple kiss on the hand from Daring Charming could produce such sensations, what would her whole life be like now that she was real? Maybe she didn’t want to be wood—or dwarven metal. Despite pain and fear, realness had some charming perks.
“That’s Cedar, you gooseberry brain,” said Lizzie. “She changed.”
“She’s not the only one,” said Daring, gesturing.
The Grimmnasium was a huge open room with glossy hardwood floors, bleachers, a basketball court in the center, and a running track around the edges. Today it seemed darker than normal, and unfamiliar, un-sporty objects cluttered everywhere.
“What a mess,” Lizzie said, adjusting her black gloves as if longing to get to work.
“Hunter, Dexter, and I were practicing tower-climbing when the changes started,” said Daring. “So we gathered all the students we could find to take refuge here. Rescuing those in distress—that’s what I do.”
He winked at Cedar again.
Daring began pointing out inanimate objects that had been their classmates: a pair of crystalline shoes that had been Ashlynn Ella, a heart-shaped layer cake that had been Cupid. As his arm extended, Cedar noticed a light sheen of gray fur covering Daring’s skin.
“You’ve aged a great deal since I saw you last, Charming,” Lizzie said. “Gray before your time, though perhaps not yet strangled by an octopus.”
Daring looked at the backs of his hands and laughed nervously. “Yeah. Everyone was fine when we came in here. I mean, Hunter had leaves for hair, and a rose was blooming behind Briar’s ear, but… then things got worse.”
Cedar noticed a small tree growing out of the floor. There was an ax tangled in its leaves, and its branches arched protectively over the crystal shoes. Behind it, a pink rosebush grew up one wall.
“Oh, no,” Cedar said.
“At least Ashlynn wasn’t turned into hot cinders,” Kitty said, testing a shoe’s size with her own foot. “That would be very awkward for flammable Huntsman the Tree here.”
A golden lock and a large brass egg lying by Cedar’s feet were surely Blondie and Humphrey. Cedar could sense a blister forming on her foot, but the rest of the students seemed to have changed in the opposite direction from her—less real, less human.
A wolf cub with bright red fur dashed across the Grimmnasium and rubbed her head against Cedar’s ankles.
“Cerise?” Cedar asked.
The cub wagged her tail and ran off.
An enormous black-and-white-checkered cygnet shedding loose feathers and squawking had to be Duchess.
A sleigh bell with fairy wings awkwardly flitted past Cedar, clanging mournfully.
“Faybelle?” Cedar asked, and the bell rang.
The lights in the Grimmnasium began to flash. Once, twice, three times. Then every mirror in the room flickered, and Milton Grimm’s face appeared in them.
“Students!” said the headmaster. “I am using our emergency broadcast system to broadcast a state of emergency. Ever After High has been infected with a wild magic. Madam Baba Yaga has conducted a magical analysis and believes the cause is… is… well, is quite distressing, so please prepare yourselves. We believe the Jabberwock has returned.”
Cedar gasped. The inanimate objects in the room rustled. The Raven-raven squawked and flapped around in circles.
“Baba Yaga is even now preparing a magical barrier that will completely enclose the school grounds in order to contain the Jabberwock’s infection. If you are still able, please exit the grounds immediately. In fifteen minutes, the barrier will go up, and anyone inside the school will be quarantined until we resolve the issue. Thank you.”
“Quarantined?” Daring asked.
“He means trapped,” Kitty said, her hair gaining a bit more volume than usual. Her constant smile seemed absolutely terrified. “They’re going to trap us in here! Till they contain the… the infection.”
“Wait… the Jabberwock’s infection?” said Cedar. “That beast is what’s changing everything in here? So… is it in the school, too?”
Kitty squeaked and popped out of sight.
The image of a clock replaced Grimm’s face. One hand pointed at the number three, and the second hand of the clock began to spin backward.
“Off with our heads!” Lizzie yelled.
Daring drew his sword and then paused. “Wait. What?” he asked.
Lizzie cleared her throat. “I mean, let’s move! We’ve got to get out of here! Everyone, grab as many students as you can and run!”
Daring nodded, sheathed his sword, and promptly disappeared.
“Enough disappearing!” Lizzie yelled, stamping her foot. “I have had it with the sudden disappearing!”
“Again, not disappeared,” Kitty said, reappearing. She nodded downward.
A furry creature the height of Lizzie’s knee stood with paws on hips, its sharp teeth bright white as if recently bleached. It was the cutest little beastie Cedar had ever seen, with wide eyes and tiny horns, wearing perfectly tailored mini-replicas of Daring’s clothing. It let out a squeaky roar.
“Right,” Lizzie said. “Daring-beastie, can you carry Blondie?”
“Rrryes,” the little beast growled, and scampered over to the golden lock.
Cedar picked up the Cupid cake and examined the Briar rosebush to see if there was any way to safely uproot it. She glanced at the countdown clock. One minute had already passed. She blinked and looked again. The second hand on the clock was spinning faster and faster.
“We’re not going to make it!” she yelled.
“The hutling can carry us,” said Maddie. “It’s a good runner, and I’m sure it wants to get out, too.”
The hutling bobbed its roof, and its front door swung open.
Lizzie flung the Faybelle bell into the hut with a clang and clambered through the door.
Kitty clomped closer, wearing the Ashlynn shoes. “Tell me how going in there doesn’t count as that thing eating us.”
“Hutling is nice!” Maddie said, dropping Earl Grey onto her hat and pocketing the Humphrey egg before hoisting herself through the door. “It only eats wood and things like that.”
Cedar instinctively cringed, but then remembered she wasn’t wooden anymore. “Here are Cupid and Cerise,” she said, dropping off the cake and wolf cub. “But what about the others?… Hunter and Briar…”
The clock hand spun faster, filling the room with a buzzing sound.
“A tree and a rosebush won’t fit in here.” Lizzie grabbed Cedar’s arm and pulled her into the hut, the door slamming shut behind her.
The inside looked exactly like that of a small one-room cottage, complete with a tiny couch and chair, table, and fireplace, so cramped even Maddie couldn’t stand upright. Cedar crouch-ran to one of the tiny windows.
The Daring beastie was standing protectively in front of the Briar rosebush. He was gesturing frantically.
“Daring is still out there!” Cedar yelled.
The window she was looking through swung open even as the hut began to run. The little Daring monster closed one eye as if aiming, pulled back his arm, and hurled the golden lock straight through the open window, missing Cedar
by an inch. The window slammed shut, and Cedar caught a glimpse of a fuzzy Daring giving her a thumbs-up before the hutling ran out of the Grimmnasium at top speed.
“Run, hut-beast!” Lizzie yelled. “Take us beyond the grounds of Ever After High!”
Just then, the timer thundered through the school, sounding like a cuckoo clock in a great deal of pain.
CUCKOO! CUCKOOOO! CUCKOOOOOOOO!
“No way that was fifteen minutes!” said Cedar.
“Bah. Outside the school, it might have been,” said Lizzie. “Sometimes in Wonderland, time moves sideways.”
“No, no, we have to get out,” Cedar said.
The hutling had pushed its way past the broken chairs outside the Grimmnasium door and was jogging through the corridor. There was a loud frizzle and a hiss, and through the window Cedar could see the sky outside turn a deep yellow, the color of Baba Yaga’s magic. The magic barrier was up.
“We’re trapped,” said Cedar. “We need to… to… get help! Find some teachers or adults, perhaps a helpful woodsman or fairy godmother, maybe a wise old crone who turns out to be a good witch after we share some bread with her—”
“We don’t have any bread,” said Kitty.
“I have a butter knife!” Lizzie said brightly.
“You know what I mean!” Cedar yelled. Her heart was pounding, her skin felt thin as paper, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “In the stories, the brave young girls with pure hearts always get help from some wise adult person, and we need to find that wise adult person immediately!”
Kitty peered out a window. “Calm down, freaker-hosen. This doesn’t look like any story I’ve read before.”
Cedar was freaking out. Old Cedar might get sad and quiet and lonely, but shout frantically at her friends? Maybe changing into a real girl had made her loopy.
“We must help ourselves,” said Lizzie. “I am the daughter of the Queen of Hearts. I will simply rule this unruly land and squeeze it into my control. It’s already half Wonderland. Perhaps all it needs is a monarch.”
Cedar detected a slight quaver in Lizzie’s voice. Lizzie was always in control, wasn’t she? Always sure she could be in control, anyway, even if she wasn’t. Cedar took several deep breaths. This whole breathing thing was new to her, but she was finding that doing it deep and slow was much more calming than shallow and fast.
