by Shannon Hale
Apple puckers her bright-red lips and pecks him on his cold green cheek. He doesn’t turn into a prince, but his cold green cheeks do turn warm pink.
“Ribbit,” he says shyly, and jumps from her hand into the pond to go tell his friends about his Best. Day. Ever.
“Apple White,” says Raven as they walk on together, “you are the nicest person I’ve ever known. How can you still be friends with me when all I do is mess everything up?”
“Raven Queen,” says Apple, “you do not mess everything up.”
“I can’t be evil like my mom,” says Raven.26 “But ever since I refused to become the next Evil Queen, a lot of outrageous stuff has happened. Like, big, bad, dangerous stuff. Crazy stuff.”27
26 In Ever After, all the children of famous fairytale characters are supposed to follow in their parents’ footsteps and live out their destined stories. And… I’m trying so hard not to fangirl all over this story. The Raven Queen! And Apple White! Sooo hard to be professional right now, for reals.
27 If you missed this stuff, you can read about it in some books my parents helped narrate.
“And you think it’s your fault?” asks Apple.
“Well… maybe? Yeah?” Raven twists a purple lock of hair. “Maybe my choice is a little snowball that keeps rolling till it turns into an avalanche.”
“That’s too much to put on yourself, Raven.”
Raven shrugs. “I just need to hocus focus on my studies, keep my head down, and stay out of trouble.”
“Well, I applaud your commitment to your education,” says Apple. “See you at lunch!”
Apple continues on toward Princessology 201, held in a glass tower by the sports field, while Raven takes the stairs down to the Dark Sorcery class cellar.
Baba Yaga is sitting cross-legged on her floating stool up in front of the class as Raven drops an apple on her desk and hurriedly takes a seat. Last time she was late, Baba Yaga turned her into a snail for the entire class period.
The ancient teacher eyes the apple.
“Are you trying to poison me, Ms. Queen?” asks Baba Yaga. Her skin is yellow and thin, wrinkled like old paper, her gray hair long and knotted with strings, shells, bones, and other interesting things.
“What?” Raven says. “No, Madam Baba Yaga, I… I mean, I just thought…”
“Pity,” Baba Yaga says with a sigh. “I thought you were finally coming around and embracing your evil.”
She opens a desk drawer, knocks the apple into it, and slams it shut. From inside the drawer comes a sound like a dozen ravenous beetles tearing into a meal.
The other students begin to whisper excitedly to one another.
“What was that?”
“I told you she had a pet!”
“Now I know where to put my lunch on days when they serve nine-day-old peas porridge in the Castleteria.”
Baba Yaga quiets them with a stare of her ice-blue eyes.
“I found your essays on the practical uses for Dark Magic at unbirthday parties to be insanely disappointing,” Baba Yaga says in her dry voice. “So today we’re going to—”
A tremor rolls beneath their feet. The stone floor and walls of the cellar classroom groan. A great iron cauldron tips over and tumbles down the aisle.
“Whoa!”
“Hey!”
“What in Ever After was that?”
“An earthquake?” says Raven.
Baba Yaga sniffs the air, her nostrils quivering. “I smell… heat. Electricity. And wrongness. Not a normal earthquake.” She pulls a knotty stick out of one of her many pockets, waves it in the air, and chants a spell.
Thrown stone tone now be shown.
Spot the birthbomb
that spawned
yon earth moan.
The old sorceress’s eyes widen. She gasps. Her lips tremble. And in a raspy whisper, she says, “What is Shadow High—” before falling off her stool in a dead faint.
Raven and several other students jump up from their seats. Raven holds the teacher’s hand.
“Madam Baba Yaga, are you okay?”
A second tremor rolls through the classroom, knocking over Baba Yaga’s collection of glass unicorns. An ogre in the back row yelps with fear.
Raven is just about to go fetch Headmaster Grimm, when suddenly the sorceress opens her eyes.
“What are you doing?” she shouts. “Unhand my hand, Ms. Queen. Everyone, back to your seats, or you’ll be spending the rest of the day as invertebrates!”
With a flourish of her arm, she levitates off the floor and onto her stool.
“You fainted… or something,” Raven says, hurrying back to her desk. “There was an earthquake and you did a spell to determine its source, but you said ‘Shadow High’ and then—”
“Shadow High?” says Baba Yaga, her lip curled with disgust. “Never heard of it. Sounds to me like you lot are trying to get out of classwork, hmm? Well, it won’t work on me! Open your hextbooks to chapter fifteen and read in silence!”
After an excruciatingly long hour of quiet, the end-of-class fairybell finally chimes, and Raven speeds out of the cellar room, up into the sparkly, shiny Ever After morning air.
She slips through the crowd of students, keeping an eye out for a mint-green-and-lavender-haired head topped with a teacup hat. She has to tell her BFFA28 Madeline Hatter about the weird thing with Baba Yaga.
28 BFFA=Best Friend Forever After. Madeline Hatter=daughter of the Mad Hatter of Wonderland and just the most hat-tastic person ever. Reader, a confession: She is my fave. *Cue fangirl scream.*
Raven takes three stairs at a time as she climbs. Maddie isn’t in her room, but Apple is just coming out of theirs.
“Apple! The weirdest thing just happened—”
“Don’t you have Study Ball now?” asks Apple. “Tell me about it while we walk. I don’t want to be late to Crownculus class.”
“Have you ever heard of something called Shadow High?” asks Raven, walking beside her.
“No,” says Apple.
“Did you… er, happen to get mother-goosebumps when I said that name?”
“Actually, I did.” Apple rubs her arms. “But probably just because it sounds kind of evil.…” Apple shakes her head, as if to clear it. “Whateverafter it is, it sounds like trouble, and just this morning you were determined to stay out of trouble. Try to think about something else. Did Baba Yaga give you a lot of thronework?”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Raven says. She will not let this perfectly normal morning turn into another “adventure” (i.e., “disaster”). Maybe if she just ignores everything—the tremor, Baba Yaga’s faint, that old woman there walking down the hall in front of them whose posture reminds her so much of her mother—
“Apple,” Raven whispers.
“I get mother-goosebumps all the time,” says Apple with forced calmness. “The earthquake was no big deal. Nothing strange is going to happen today. Nothing! We’re just—”
“Do you know who that woman is?” asks Raven. “The one whose posture is nearly identical to—”
“Your mom’s?” says Apple. “I mean—”
“You think so, too!” says Raven.
“No!” says Apple. “I just… I didn’t mean… Study Ball! We’ve got to get you to Study Ball!”
“But, Apple… what if it is her? This wouldn’t be the first time my mom broke out of mirror prison and disguised herself. What could she be up to?”
Apple groans. Even her groans sound light and lovely.
“Please,” Raven whispers. “If it is my mom and she does something horrible and I don’t try to stop her…”
“I guess ignoring a problem won’t make it go away, will it?”
Raven hooks Apple’s arm in hers, and they rush down the hall just as the woman enters the library. The huge double doors slam shut in their faces.
Raven tries the doors. Locked? In the middle of a school day? It takes her a minute, but at last she manages a spell that unlocks them.
Apple and Raven step into the eight-story library, greeted by silence and the delicious smell of ink and dusty paper. Morning light streaming through the wall of windows gilds the leaves floating softly down from the massive tree pillars. The library is completely empty. Even the Stepsister librarians aren’t at the checkout desk. A sign reads:
GONE TO FACULTY MEETING. GO AWAY.
Apple sighs. “See? Nothing fishy going on.”
“Yeah…” says Raven. “But that old woman came in, didn’t come out, and yet isn’t here, so that would be—”
“Curious,” says Apple. “Mysterious. And possibly magical. As copresident of the Royal Student Council—and your BFFA—I guess it is my duty to help you investigate. But we have to be quick about it! I can do hextra credit for Crownculus, but I cannot miss Kingdom Management. We have finals next week!”
Raven whispers a spell. A ball of glowing blue fog zips around the room, confirming that no one else is here. Still, her gut nags at her, like that sensation she gets after eating peas porridge cold, especially the kind that’s in the pot nine days old. She doesn’t make a habit of eating it, by the way. Just sometimes it looks weirdly appetizing.
The ball of magic stops at a broken mirror before dissolving into glitter.
“That’s weird,” says Raven.
“Ugh,” Apple murmurs. “I have a fairy bad feeling about this.”
“Bad feeling like after eating peas porridge in the pot nine days old?”
“I never eat that stuff!” says Apple. “Well, just the one time. And, to be honest, it wasn’t that bad. But that is bad,” she says, pointing at the broken mirror.
Mirrors are more abundant in Ever After than puddles after a rainstorm. And a broken mirror is always a troubling sign.
But as they get closer, Raven can see it isn’t just a mirror. It’s a doorway. And through the cracks, she can see an empty room on the other side.
“We probably shouldn’t go in,” Apple whispers.
“Yeah…” Raven says. “But we probably will.”
From somewhere unseen, Raven hears a plop… plop…
A ROOM HIDDEN BEHIND A MIRROR?” APPLE whispers. “Please let it be nothing at all alarming. Pretty please with an apple on top?”
Raven steps through the jagged hole in the mirror doorway first. It’s more of a closet than a room, the walls lined with books so old they are mostly scrolls and parchments.
“A secret book room!” Apple says.
“Who would hide books?” says Raven.
“Someone who didn’t want them found,” says Apple, hugging her arms around her chest. “Or didn’t want them to escape.”
Raven snorts. It’s almost as if Apple thinks the books in the room could be dangerous. Books aren’t dangerous!29
29 Except when they are!
Apple points to the floor, where recent footprints disrupt the carpet-like layer of dust.
“She was in here?” says Apple.
“It’s like she vanished into thin air,” says Raven.
“Or thick air,” says Apple, waving away the thick dust from her face.
A single table is covered in dust so heavy it’s like moss growing over a fallen log. Two books lie open there, dust-free, as if recently pulled from the shelves. Apple twitches, glancing back at the entrance, then gives up and approaches the books. Raven smiles. There are a few things Apple can’t resist: warm apple cobbler with melty ice cream, a parade (any kind—the girl is simply nuts about parades), and books she hasn’t read yet.30
30 And also—apples.
“She—whoever she is; I’m not convinced she’s your mother—but she was reading these,” says Apple.
Raven picks up a scroll, open to a description of something called Monster High.31
31 It’s sooo weird how we totally know what Monster High is, but they have no idea!
“Why was my mom reading about campfire stories?” says Raven.
“We don’t know it was your—” Apple begins.
“Weird. This talks about an ancient school where mummies and vampires and zombies and other monsters are students, but not as if it’s just a story. As if those creatures actually exist.”
Apple smooths her perpetually smooth curls. “Headmaster Grimm says it’s dangerous to tell made-up stories. He believes we should be focusing on our own stories and achieving our Happily Ever Afters.”
“Maybe that’s why this book is locked up in here,” says Raven. “But why was Mom—”
Apple takes a breath as if about to disagree.
“—or whoever it was,” Raven amends, “interested in these old stories?”
The second book is more like a pamphlet. Raven picks it up with just her fingertips, afraid that even touching the ancient paper will turn it into a pile of dust.
And then, plop.
“What’s that noise?” asks Apple.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
“I don’t know. Maybe leaky pipes. Look, Apple.”
Raven holds up the parchment. Most of the words have been erased. Only a few remain, as if whoever erased the other words couldn’t quite scrub out the last few: Shadow High… power… Narrators… the breaking of the world… World of Stories…
“There’s that name again,” says Raven.
“You mean Shadow High?” says Apple. She shivers. “I’ve never heard of a World of Stories before. Sounds like some pretend tale. Narrators… Those are the voices Maddie is always talking about, right?”
“Yeah, she says she can hear them speaking,” says Raven. “She says Narrators are always telling our story, describing what we’re doing and thinking, even.”32
32 So awkward when people talk about you like you’re not even there. Hello, girls! I’m your Narrator, and I’m right here!
“Hextremely strange, even for Maddie. But what is—there’s that plopping sound again! It’s fairy distracting! Don’t you feel like you want to go figure out where it’s coming from?”
“Not really,” says Raven. “The castle I grew up in was always full of strange noises. I’ve learned to ignore them.”
At that, the plopping noises die out, like a sad little balloon giving up its last bit of air.
Raven gingerly turns over the parchment, trying to figure out what in Ever After her mother wanted from these books and to anticipate how she might protect her friends from whatever the Evil Queen has in store. She has made that her personal responsibility, but sometimes it feels like trying to stop a tsunami with a tea towel.
“Raven!”
In surprise, Raven nearly drops the paper.
Through the broken mirror bounds Madeline Hatter. Her curls look fluffier than usual; her teacup hat is tipping over one eye; her dress is a dizzying mix of stripes, dots, and assorted prints.
“Raven, you’re doing that thing again!”
“Hey, Maddie! Why are you… Uh, what thing am I doing?”
“You know, with the oh-my-golly-pops and heigh-ho-the-dairy-woes, but all wrapped up in a present with a big bow! A purple bow? Is purple your favorite color, Raven? I can’t believe I’ve never asked you that before! Oh! I just realized I walked through a mirror to get here! Am I in Wonderland?”33
33 Reader, don’t worry if you don’t understand everything Maddie says. You wouldn’t be the only one.
“Hi, Maddie,” says Apple. “We followed a suspicious woman who might be, but not necessarily is, the Evil Queen in disguise into a secret book room that has a hidden mirror door.”
“Oh,” says Maddie. “So just a typical day, then, huh?”
“Maddie, I’m really glad you’re here,” says Raven. “Strange stuff is happening. There was that earthquake, and Baba Yaga did a spell and said something about Shadow High—”
“Ah! That’s it!” says Maddie. “That’s why I came here to talk to you! I’m tickled blue you said that, because I’d already forgotten that they sent me here to this weird little room to tell you about Meadow Fly. Or was it Shallow Pie? Ooh yes. Pie. I like pie,
don’t you?”34
34 Yes! Yes, I do!
“Um, wait,” says Raven. “How did you know we were in a secret mirror-doored room in the library, anyway?”
“The Narrators told me, of course!”
Apple and Raven share a look.
“They are so frizzled and froozled and gonk-bonkers today,” says Maddie, turning in circles, “like a top spinning on the ceiling and not just ’cause it looks fun. The Narrators wanted me to tell you a very important message and made me promise with hooked pinkies and crossed eyes and bendy elbows not to forget.”
Maddie smiles up at them. Raven and Apple lean in closer. Maddie smiles bigger, as pleased as a warthog in a mudhole.
“Well?” says Apple. “What’s the message?”
“Oh! Right!” Maddie clears her throat. “STOP.”
“Stop?”
“Yep. Stop. I’m certain they said to tell you to stop. Or was it hop? It might have been hop. Hopping is more fun than stopping, generally, and the Narrators are soooo nice I think they’d like us to have fun. Don’t you think?”
Maddie starts to hop back through the mirror, then turns as if expecting the two girls to follow. “No hoppity?”
“Maddie,” says Raven. “These voices you hear. How did they know about Shadow High?”
Maddie leans in and whispers, “Because they’re the Narrators. They know almost everything. And they’re not supposed to talk to me or any of us, really. So it must be a big deal for them to break their super-special rules just to tell me about it. A big, big deal. A big pig-in-a-wig deal.”
Raven’s mother-goosebumps are back, from her scalp down to her toenails.
In the distance, a fairybell chimes.
Apple groans a delightful groan, sounding almost as light and sweet as a pixie laugh. Raven wonders how she manages it.
“Oh my fairy godmother! We have to leave now for our next class or we’ll be late.” She takes Raven’s and Maddie’s arms and walks them out of the library.
