by Shannon Hale
“This is a special place,” Lizzie said, confident it was true.
“Hey, if that door transported us outside the school, then we’re beyond the magic barrier, right?” said Cedar. “We can go find the faculty!”
Cedar began to run.
“Stop!” Lizzie yelled. Feeling so huggable-sweet and thanky had been uncomfortable. Time to shout orders again.
Hedgehogs nosed around in the grass near Lizzie’s feet. She grabbed one and threw it, hitting Cedar’s shoulder.
“Ow!” Cedar yelled. The hedgehog dropped to the ground and scampered away. “Poor little thing! Don’t hurt it!”
It was not hurt at all, the Narrator was twiddly anxious to assure the reader. Wonderlandian hedgehogs are bred for sports and in fact frequently nap their way through a croquet game in which they are the balls.
Lizzie picked up another hedgehog.
“Stop throwing animals at me,” said Cedar.
“I’m not. You just got in the way,” Lizzie said, flinging the creature over Cedar’s shoulder. The hedgehog stopped suddenly as if it had struck an invisible wall. The air buzzed with the impact and brightened to a deep yellow. The hedgehog dropped to the ground, twitched, and wobbled back to the grass.
“Oh! We’re still inside the magic barrier,” Cedar said.
When Ever After High was normal, the heart-shaped door had sent Lizzie from her dorm to the Grove, which was on the edge of the school grounds. But it seemed even the door couldn’t transport them outside Baba Yaga’s barrier. If they were in the Grove yet still inside the magic barrier, then the barrier had made an extra bubble around the Grove to trap whatever tried to escape the school.
“Are we safe?” Cedar asked. “Can we just wait here till the teachers figure out how to fix everything?”
“Or until the monster figures out how to get in?” Kitty echoed.
“Hey, I have a signal!” Cedar said, punching numbers on her MirrorPhone. “We must be far enough away from the—Hello? Headmaster Grimm? This is Cedar Wood.”
His irritated voice crackled on the speaker for all to hear. “Miss Wood, do not bother me right now. We are very busy—watch out for that pixie!—very busy concocting a spell to banish the Jabber—we need three more cockroaches!—banish the Jabberwock.”
“Ugh! They don’t know what they’re doing!” Lizzie shouted. “Tell them an Ever Afterish spell won’t work!”
“It won’t?” Cedar asked in a small voice.
“Not the right kind of magic,” Kitty said. “I can’t believe they don’t know the only thing that can defeat the Jabberwock.”
Maddie nodded solemnly. Lizzie recited part of the poem aloud.
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree…
“The vorpal sword, Headmaster!” Cedar said into her MirrorPhone. “You need the vorpal sword, like that poem says! Only the vorpal sword can defeat—”
“The vorpal sword is in Wonderland, Miss Wood,” said the headmaster. “And all portals into Wonderland are sealed. So we will use—newt eyeballs! Rumpelstiltskin, we need more newt eyeballs!—will use a spell. Get to safety and kindly don’t interrupt me again.”
Click.
Cedar stared at the phone for some time. Kitty faded into a soft shadow. Maddie sat on the grass.
“So… so we have no hope?” said Cedar. “Raven will be a raven forever? Daring a beastie-thing? Hunter a tree? And we’ll live out the rest of our lives inside this Grove?”
Maddie took Cedar’s hand. Kitty reappeared, sitting with her back to them, but after a moment, she curled up on the grass, her head on Maddie’s lap.
“Their spell might do something,” Kitty said. “I guess.”
Lizzie was tired. The more time she spent with these girls, the more she was reminded that she felt things. Helpy things. Unselfy things. Crawling feelings like worry and hope. Burn-ish feelings like fondness and friendliness. And worst of all, sappy grabby feelings like Concern For Others.
Lizzie opened her mother’s deck of cards and found the one she was searching for:
Above all else, avoid these things: vats of poison,
Jabberwocks, paper cuts on fingertips,
and Concern For Others.
If ever you detect Concern For Others
squirming into you,
shout at people till the feeling goes away.
Or the people do.
“Off with your heads!” Lizzie shouted. “Off with all your heads! I am a princess of Wonderland and I… I… I am shouting at you!”
“Um…” said Cedar.
Lizzie’s blood was up now. Enough feeling things Mother had forbidden her to feel. And enough waiting. A queen, even a queen-in-waiting, does not wait. Especially if you’re a mad queen. And Lizzie was mad.
“I am going to fix this ridiculousness, as it appears no one else will, so things can return to as they were and I don’t have to crawl with worry and feel burn-ish and battle Concern For Others!” Lizzie shouted.
The Narrator could tell that Lizzie was not really angry, just anxious, but did not make the observation aloud. Just as she didn’t observe how the meticulous tending of the Grove revealed just how desperately Lizzie missed Wonderland.
“Wonderland!” said Maddie. “Someone of Wonderland would understand better than Headmaster Grimm.”
Kitty admitted, “I’ve been trying to phone the White Queen without luck.”
“Same with my dad,” said Maddie. “But there is someone in Wonderland I sometimes talk to.”
“What? Who?” Lizzie still felt choked by that unfortunate hope-ish thing perched in her chest. “Tell me at once! How dare you keep a someone of Wonderland a secret from your future queen!”
“There’s a book I sometimes find that has a letter in it,” Maddie said. “When I write back, the letter-writer responds, and I just know the writer is in Wonderland because he or she writes such Wonderlandish things. The book was in the library once. At other times inside a stocking, on top of a chimney, at the bottom of a bucket of frogs, beneath a bag of marshmallows…”
“Tales of wandering un-books is exactly what we shouldn’t be wasting time on,” Lizzie said, pacing. She had to solve this by herself, but she couldn’t think when everyone was nattering on so.
“What does the letter writer write?” Cedar asked.
Lizzie realized they weren’t going to hush up, so she stalked off to gather a few hedgehogs. Hedgehogs always got people’s attention.
“The first letter just said, ‘My ears itch,’ ” said Maddie. “Another said, ‘Clap your hands if you can read this.’ ”
One hedgehog, two… Lizzie would need at least three, one for each of them. Maybe some extras in case she missed.
“I wrote a letter about all the things in Wonderland I missed,” said Maddie, “and the letter writer told me how things are now. It made me feel less homesick.”
Lizzie grabbed one of the hedgehog balls and cocked her arm back but was stopped by a thought. It was not an Off with your head! kind of thought. Nevertheless, inside Lizzie’s head, beneath her red-streaked black hair and impressive gold crown, it felt big and important and as wonderful as Wonderland.
“Maddie?” Lizzie dropped the hedgehogs, and they scampered away. “Do you think this mysterious Wonderlandian might know how we could get the vorpal sword?”
“Ooh, that is a big and important and wonderlandiful thought, Lizzie!” Maddie reached into her hat and pulled out a small leather-bound book with the title Hutch and Housing for Hare and Architect.
“Ah-ha! Here it is!” said Maddie. “What luck! It’s never been in my hat before.”
Maddie flipped through the pages and came to a small red envelope. Lizzie grabbed it and tore it open. The letter was handwritten and stamped with a bunny paw print at the bottom.
“ ‘Life in a poisoned land is actually less poisonous than it is lonely,’ ” Lizzie read. Her voice tr
ipped over the word lonely, the word going as wobbly as her middle. She touched the bunny paw print. “Very well, then. Let’s put this leather-bound postman to the test. Someone, fetch paper and pen!”
Maddie rummaged in her hat and managed to find scraps of notepaper and a pen.
“Cedar, you will scribe for me, as you do the Artsing and the Craftsing,” said Lizzie.
Then she dictated in her most queenly voice:
Book Letter Person/Animal/Thing—
Your princess requests knowledge. Knowledge of the type and ilk and substance of which one would seek when longing to rid oneself of a pesky pest. Namely, a Jabberwock. We need the vorpal sword in Ever After. But how? And wherewith? And ho-hum? Respond immediately.
Lizzie Hearts, Your Princess of Hearts, etc.
“Um,” Cedar said, a little nervously. “Have you ever written a letter before, Lizzie?”
“Of course I have,” Lizzie said, fairly certain that wasn’t true. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Cedar held her breath as if afraid to let the truth out.
“Why are you holding your breath?” Lizzie asked.
“Oh. It’s so new. The breathing. I sometimes forget to do it,” Cedar lied. And then widened her eyes.
“Cedar?” Maddie asked. “Did you just…?”
“I just forgot to breathe,” Cedar lied again, smiling. “Also, I really like eating… um… porridge with mustard!”
Cedar folded up the letter and stuffed it in the book.
“Plus,” Cedar said, “I once buried myself in the dirt up to my neck to see if I would grow.”
“That is odd,” Lizzie said, “though I suppose a reasonable scientific experiment.”
“And I did grow,” Cedar continued, laughing with delight. “Into a giant walking tree! And I… I lived for a hundred years in the Otherlands, battling giants and baking award-winning cupcakes.”
“That explains a lot,” Lizzie said, not really paying attention. “Where is the book?”
“Right over here,” Cedar said, pointing at a spot on the grass that was just grass. “Whoa. It really was right here a second ago. I swear I’m not lying. Now.”
Maddie nodded. “It does that,” she said.
“Where is it?” Lizzie sputtered. “We need it!”
“We have to find it,” said Maddie. “It’s one of those kind of books.”
CEDAR WOOD LIED. CEDAR WOOD LIED!
The girls were scrambling around the Grove, searching for the book, but Cedar could only wander, her mind spinning and tumbling about with the thought: I lied!
Apparently, when the Jabberwock’s magic triggered her deep-rooted transformation into a real girl, it also undid that thorny honesty curse. She was free! She didn’t have to blurt and blab. She could choose her own words—she could choose her own life!
Cedar knelt down, relishing the press of the grass against her knees, the tickle of a dangling flower on her ankle. She leaned over to look for the book under a bush of white roses dripping red paint, when a thought caught inside her like a fish on a sharp hook.
If her honesty curse was undone, was her “caring” and “kindness” curse undone, too?
Cedar straightened up and let her feelings probe her fast-beating heart. No more lies. Now she would have to discover the truth. Who was she really, beneath the wooden body and cursed-to-care-ness? Without the Blue-Haired Fairy’s magic, was she still the girl who would do anything for her friends? Or, when faced with danger, would she and her tender body run away?
Cedar looked up and found Maddie looking back. Maddie, as the Narrator, knew Cedar’s thoughts. She smiled encouragingly. Cedar nodded, but her heart still beat in rapid, shallow gasps. No more lies, not even to myself. So who am I?
They scoured the Grove three times over. Cedar checked her pockets, even though they weren’t big enough to hold a book. Yet another truth fell on her, heavy as a stone—they might have to go back into that Jabberwock-infested school to find the book. The search could take forever! Lost things were always in the last place you looked.
“That’s so true, Cedar!” Maddie said aloud. “You always find things the last place you look, so let’s skip the middle part and just look in the last place.”
“You make perfect sense, Hatworm,” said Lizzie.
“Okay, let’s all decide we’re done looking after the next place,” said Maddie.
Lizzie shut her eyes. “I am done.”
“So done,” said Kitty.
“Done!” said Cedar, meaning it. Wonderland logic could be fun.
Maddie got a serious look on her face. Well, she couldn’t see her own face, but it felt impressively serious. She put out her hands and let them lead her to the Last Place. She crouched down by Cedar, unlaced Cedar’s left boot, pulled it off, and removed the book.
“Whoa!” Cedar said. “I’m feeling everything today. You’d think I could feel a book in my boot.”
She opened the letter and read:
Princess—
We were overjoyed to receive your letter! You are beamishly correct, of course. The only way to defeat the Jabberwock is with the vorpal sword, which is thrust in the left-most bole of the fourth wabe of Tumtum trees. Alas, I cannot send it to you with words. I consulted with an owl, who informed me that with just the right picture, meticulously painted in fluxberry shades, you might be able to pluck it out of Wonderland, though such has never been done. Good luck!
Lizzie threw a handy hedgehog at Cedar. “Paint,” she said.
“The letter said the sword is in Wonderland.…” Cedar said.
“So what are you waiting for?” Lizzie made shooing motions with her hands. “Go do art!”
The Narrator had some distance from the action and was able to see how, sometimes, Lizzie just didn’t explain things very clearly. Especially to people outside her own head.
“Cedar, we can’t get to Wonderland,” said Maddie. “But maybe if you paint the sword here in this Wonderlandish Grove, the magic of Wonderland could make it real and within our reach.”
“Really? But I can’t,” Cedar said. She pulled a leather pouch out of her skirt pocket. “I have my brushes but they’re useless without paints, and I don’t even know what it is supposed to look like!”
“It’s a sword,” Lizzie said. She pulled a butter knife out of her own pocket. “Like this, but bigger.” She held it up and closed one eye. “Also with more vorpal. Like, twenty percent more vorpal.”
“But…” Cedar looked at her hands. Her real, fleshy, soft hands. She’d never drawn anything with a real hand before. Doubt pumped through her like blood. “Well, to begin with, I’m going to need a better description than just ‘sword.’ ”
“A vorpal sword,” Lizzie said.
“It seems to me,” Kitty cut in, “that descriptions of things, especially the good ones that actually make you brain-picture something, come from Narrators.”
“Good idea,” Lizzie said. “Maddie, narrate a detailed description of the vorpal sword for Cedar.”
Good descriptions come from good Narrators. Okay, then.
“There’s a tree in Wonderland,” said Maddie. “A Tumtum tree. And it looks as trees do. You know, with the trunk and the branches and the leaves that are sometimes green. And leaves are always moving about, so they’re the unpredictable lifey part of an otherwise predictable tree.”
“Come on, Maddie, you can do it,” said Cedar. “Keep going. That was… good-ish.”
“I’m new at this, and my brain is getting tired and isn’t as springy and bouncy as it was. Plus, it’s been so long since I saw a Tumtum tree. Or anything in Wonderland.”
“Ooh, I bet other Narrators have described the vorpal sword and Tumtum trees,” said Cedar. “We should just go look for a book in the library!”
She smiled. Then she frowned. Lizzie was already frowning. Kitty disappeared and then reappeared dangling upside down from a tree so that her constant smile seemed to turn into a frown. At first, Maddie thought they mus
t be playing a frowning game and—what fun! Even a frowning game was still a game!
But then Maddie realized that they were frowning because they had to get a book from the library. And the library was in the school. And the school was mad and haunted by the Jabberwock.
Now was a moment to find out who Cedar was without the curses. She took slow, deep breaths until she felt able to say what she absotively, never-aftery wanted to say.
“I’ll do it,” said Cedar. “I’ll go out there to get the book. It’s better that you Wonderlandians stay safe in here. If the Jabberwock captures me, it can’t use me to power the permanent transformation of Ever After.”
“Cedar, your knees are knocking together,” said Lizzie.
“No, they’re not,” said Cedar.
But they were. She hadn’t realized, because in the past when her wooden knees knocked together, they made a tapping sound.
“I’ll do it,” she said again. “It doesn’t matter if I am afraid. You’re my friends, so I should do it.”
Lizzie was watching Cedar very carefully. “You are brave, ex-puppet, to offer to do what scares you. But you must stay here, make paints, and prepare. I will retrieve the written word!”
Cedar exhaled again and didn’t argue. But her real stomach flopped about, and she knew in a way that it wasn’t her imagination but what people with guts called “a gut feeling,” that this wouldn’t be the last time she’d have to make that choice. To risk her new life for her friends. Or to save her new, real life and run away.
“Hold your sea horses!” said Maddie. “If Lizzie goes, I should go with her because it will be dangerous, and that’s interesting, and Narrators are supposed to storytell the most interesting bits. But stuff will keep happening here with Cedar and Kitty that I wouldn’t be able to narrate. Good gravy boats, but this is getting more complicated than a tea party underwater!”
“I can go by myself, thank you,” said Lizzie.
“Not a fairy chance,” said Maddie. “I took a sacred oath to tell this story. And this story has two main characters: Lizzie and Cedar. A real Narrator would know what Cedar was doing when Lizzie was away, but I’m not a real Narrator and I don’t have all those powers.”
