by Shannon Hale
Raven looks back over her shoulder as they leave, scanning the library one more time for any sign of her mother. Now her stomach feels as if it’s full of peas porridge ninety days old. Something is definitely shadowy. But if Raven gets involved, she worries she’ll only make things worse.
AND SO THE THREE GIRLS PART WAYS: APPLE TO Kingdom Management class, Raven to Home Evilnomics, and Maddie to Chemythstry. Rather than taking the stairs, Maddie decides to slide down the banisters all the way to the ground floor, shouting “whoosh!” as she goes, because travel is so much more satisfying when it makes a whooshing sound.
You’re so right. It is more satisfying! Well done, Narrator.
Oh! Hi, Maddie! I have to say, it’s simply bookmarkable that you can hear Narrators. But… er… wow, it’s hard to stay professional and not go all italics: You’re THE Madeline Hatter and you’re actually talking to me!
Well, yes, of course I am, sillypants. What else would I be doing, honking to you? It’s not even Thursday. Though, really, who says you can only honk on Thursdays?
Um, what?
The Narrators I usually hear are adults, and some are men and some are women, but only you sound like a girl. I suppose you could be an elephant that sounds like a girl. Are you an elephant?
No, I’m—I’m Brooke. Brooke Page.
Brooke! What a tea-lightful name! Like a babbling brook, right? Are you always babbling? Not that I’m one to do the pointing of fingers—
Please babble to me whenever you want. I mean, I know it’s against the rules to talk to you, but this is my first big solo narration. I haven’t even graduated from Narrator High yet, and I’m only narrating this story because no one else will, and I’m… I’m a little bit scared, Maddie.
Nonsense on toast! Narrators aren’t scare-able! Besides, you have me. I’ll be right at your side. Or… do you have a side, Brooke?
Sure I do. Sides and top and bottom, too. Feet, head, and hands, just like you. You just can’t see me, ’cause Narrators live in a land between the World of Stories and the Fourth Wall, where we can observe all the stories that happen in Ever After and all over the World of Stories, and then we narrate the stories for the Readers who live over the Fourth Wall.35
35 Wow, that was a long sentence! Also, it’s okay if you don’t know what I’m talking about just yet. Maybe soon I can learn more about the World of Stories and explain it all to you.
World of what? Fourth, huh? And hey, what’s that plopping sound?
Ugh, it’s probably my parents. They’re using their Plop Device to try to distract you. If I’m not supposed to talk to you at all, then I’m definitely not supposed to be blabbing about secrets like the World of Stories. But they’re the ones who keep breaking rules and interfering! I bet they told you to go stop Raven and Apple in the library, didn’t they?
If your parents are one womanish and one mannish and both Narratorish, then yes. They were going on and on about Shallow Pie—
Shadow High.
That’s it! And they sounded more worried than a giraffe in a rabbit hole.
I guess I should be worried, too, and run as far away from this story as I can get. I’m probably in over my head—
Like a rabbit in a giraffe hole.
But I feel so sure, deep down in my independent clauses, that this story needs to be told. Have you ever felt really, really certain about something?
Absotively. I’m always certain. About everything. There’s probably stuff I’d be uncertain about if I saw it, but there’s just so much certain stuff going on I forget to notice anything else. And I’m certain about you, Brooke Page. You got this.
Thanks, Maddie.
LET’S TAKE A PEEK AT WHAT THE EVIL QUEEN IS doing now.… Aha! Raven was right! That was the Evil Queen snooping around Ever After High. We should probably rewind a bit and see what that scoundrel has been up to.
Okay, here she is when she first arrives at Ever After High this morning, not looking at all like the gowned, headdressed monarch we saw in the mirror prison. She’s woven an illusion around herself, borrowing the face of an old woman with white hair and soft wrinkled skin. Once before when she escaped mirror prison, she infiltrated Ever After High disguised as a young student, so she went for something quite different this time. The disguise is, she is certain, exceptional.
“Of course, everything I do is exceptional,” the Evil Queen whispers to herself.36
36 Not because she hears me. The Evil Queen doesn’t even know Narrators exist! Like I said, villains just like to mutter to themselves about how great they are.
She can’t quite force herself to shuffle down the hall looking meek and inconspicuous, though. She is the Evil Queen! She simply must straighten her spine and stretch her legs in long, confident strides. It’s all she can do to stop herself from declaring, I have escaped! I have made it to Ever After High despite everything! I am your queen!
Instead, she clenches her teeth together, keeping silent. It’s sooo hard for her.
And then a mass of lavender and mint green tumbles into her path.
“It is sooo hard to stay silent, isn’t it?” Madeline Hatter says. “I play the quiet game with my pet rock, and little Igneous is always beating me.”
The disguised queen takes a step back.
“Oooh, you’re a disguised queen?” Maddie says.
“How… What makes you say that?”
“Because I heard the Narrator call you a disguised queen.”
“Narrator?”
“Oh, don’t be scared! Narrators aren’t like alligators, even though they sound the same,” Maddie says. “I mean their names, not their voices, because alligators don’t talk, especially not on Thursdays, because that’s all about honking—”
“I demand to know why these Narrators are talking about me!”
“Oh, it’s nothing personal. Narrators talk about everybody and know everything. But no one hears them, hexcept me and Kitty Cheshire, though she pretends not to.” Maddie is whispering, her hand held to one side of her mouth, as if to prevent her words from escaping.
“Wait, what? Words need to escape?” Maddie shouts at the ceiling. “Aw, poor little words trapped in my mouth! I should help them escape. Be free, little words,” she yells, making shooing motions from her mouth. “Be free!”
Maddie cartwheels down the hall, shouting as many words as she can, especially words she hasn’t ever said, in case they have been trapped inside her for too long.
“Amorphous, be free! Antediluvian, your life is your own! Cyclopean! Eldritch! Fetid! Gibbous!” she shouts as she tumbles away.
The Evil Queen hurries in the opposite direction. Wonderlandians are generally odd, but that one almost seemed to be reading her mind. The queen makes a mental note to investigate the Hatter child further, and whatever a “Narrator” is, after she pins down this whole “Shadow High” business.
She shuffles into the library. A sleeping spell tingles on the tips of her fingers, ready to zap at anyone who might be in the library, but the room is empty.
“Fools,” the Evil Queen mutters. “This room should be constantly crowded with students eager for knowledge. Don’t they know what power hides between book covers?”
That the students are all fools is no surprise to her. She was hoping to find her daughter in the library, but perhaps it’s just as well. Raven would only try to stop her. She casts a spell to lock the library doors, and then undoes her disguise spell by reaching up, grabbing something unseen, and making an unzipping motion.
“Now then,” she says, shaking out her purple skirt and straightening her impressive headdress. “Time to get to work.”
She casts a seeking spell for books on Shadow High, but the closest thing she finds is a collection of essays on the height of shadows at various times of the day. After throwing that book on the ground and kicking it for good measure, she tries a different spell.
Seek now the hidden,
Not a certain edition, not that
shado
w unbidden.
Seek the cage of the strange, the
shelves with the mange
Where the dangerous tomes call home.
Purple fog coalesces into a kind of snake that slithers through the air. The Evil Queen follows it as it darts through the shelves of the library, around corners, and up stairs, and then finally crashes into a mirror mounted on the wall.
She makes a fist, orange energy crackling around her hand, and punches. A wave of force pulses from her fist, and the mirror shatters. Behind the mirror is not a wall but a room.
“Mirror prisons for dangerous people, mirror prisons for dangerous books,” the Evil Queen says, stepping through the crack.
The shelves are labeled, and one brass plaque reads HISTORIES. In any Ever After library, Histories is the section where you find the fairytales of Ever After: the true stories of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and so on.
But the Histories shelf here is filled with campfire tales—stories about people who Raven, Apple, and everyone else in Ever After are certain aren’t real. Dracula. Frankenstein. Boogey Men. Monster stories that parents in Ever After tell their children to frighten them into behaving. Headmaster Grimm forbids writing down stories about monsters. Yet here they are, fully bound, as if Dracula is just as real as Prince Charming.
“Strange,” mutters the Evil Queen.
She magically speed-reads all the books in Histories, then moves deeper into the Nonfiction shelf. There she finds a stack of old Ever After High school records. A parchment yawningly titled Yearly Attendance Across Districts features a list of schools. Ever After High is there, as is Wonderland High. Shadow High is not. But there are others. Many others. Some she has heard about.37 Most she has not.38 How could there be so many schools she’s never heard of? She is supposed to know everything! Are they ancient, defunct schools?
37 Like Faerie Highe. Faerie was on the Evil Queen’s Places to Invade After I Conquer Wonderland list, but when she discovered the fairies spent much of their time throwing digested glitter at one another, she decided not to bother.
38 Like Mr. Aardvark’s Academy for Anthropomorphic Anteaters in Fun Fauna Land, which I think closed down shortly after the Great Insect Uprising.
She casts a sensing spell and draws her finger down the list. Ever After High gives a pulse, as she expected. Wonderland High twitches, which confirms that it still exists. And then on Monster High, her finger visibly sparks. She pulls her hand back, blowing away smoke that trails from her glove.
“Well, hello there,” she says.39 “Monster High, is it? That sounds dark and mysterious. Perhaps it’s even an alternate name for Shadow High. And judging by that spark, someone at this very moment must be looking for a way out. I think I should pay this place a visit. Best to strike while the iron is hot, as they say.40 I’m afraid you’ve hidden from me far too long, my evil little friends.”
39 I startle every time she talks to herself, because for a second I think she’s talking to me.
40 I’m not sure who says that. Laundry workers? Blacksmiths, maybe? I think her point is that because Frankie and Drac are looking for Ever After High at the same time she is looking for Monster High, the magic crosses and therefore paves an easier path to move from one to the other?
Weaving magic about herself, the queen chants.
Hook this High
where monsters lie,
crook that nook of land,
find the sand
of the beach
where creatures reach
to seek a peek
inside
Ever After–wide.
A swirling vortex of magical energy appears above the Evil Queen’s head. She rotates her hand in time with the motion of the vortex.
Hang my tether on
open weather,
bolt this shock to the dock
on the edge of that notional ocean,
and plant me on this land
in the lee of an unseen sea.
She flexes her hand, and a bolt of lightning strikes the swirling green mass. The library around her vanishes, and she is moving through a whitewash fog of nothing. Two shadows flick past her in the mist. Finally her boots touch earth.
She is standing before an ancient house, dark and sinister. It is as if someone had tried to re-create her castle of power from the old days but neglected to include the moat and all the delightful death traps. She hears voices and… howling?… from inside, and she enters through the front doors.
Before her are gathered a most beautiful collection of malevolent beasts. There are wolf creatures, semitransparent fiends, and the animated skeletons of the dead. There is an incomprehensible gelatinous mass, eyes floating loose in its body. The Evil Queen smiles, raising her arms to the gathered group.
“Children of darkness! I am here to lead you!” She clenches her fists, meaning to invoke a spell that will make her glow, but nothing happens. The effort to send herself to Monster High has temporarily drained her of power. “I am here to drive you to your destinies of power!” she continues, certain her words alone will be impressive enough. “With me at your head, there will be nothing to stop us! The weak of the world will scream in terror at our advance! They will bend their knees to us or be destroyed!”
The Evil Queen’s voice booms as if she were the thunder itself.
The gathered students of Monster High stare. Some shift. Deuce Gorgon, son of Medusa, unsuccessfully tries not to laugh.
“Is that the new Hagriculture teacher?” whispers Cleo de Nile.
“I have no idea,” Clawdeen Wolf replies. “But let’s get out of here before she starts yelling again.”
“Good idea,” says Cleo.
“Hey, have you seen Drac and Frankie?” Clawdeen asks as they walk away to class.
OKAY, SO I’M PRETTY SURE THOSE TWO SHADOWS the Evil Queen passed in the mist on her way to Monster High were Frankie and Draculaura. But how did that happen? We’d better jump back an hour. Again. Last time—I promise!41
41 Not saying I anymore. Nope. Not gonna do it. Totally a professional Narrator, thank you very much.
Oh look, Frankie is on the roof of Monster High. She isn’t usually afraid of heights, but the roof of Monster High is all turrets and towers and spires, which look great from a distance, but when you are trying to climb them in lace-up platform wedges, it’s less “My, but isn’t that interesting architecture?” and more “AAAHHH!!!”42
42 Sorry, Reader. That sentence was a little long.
She’s just attached a thick cable to a lightning rod atop the east tower when she slips. “Wha… wha… whoaaa!” she yells.
She grabs the cable to slow her slide and comes to a squeaking halt at the point where roof meets sky and fifteen meters of nothing open up below her.
The seams on her left wrist pop, and her hand continues down without her.
“No!” she yells.
But just then a bat streaks out an open window and catches the hand. The bat dips down a bit with the weight of the hand, but keeps flying; then it wheels around and goes back inside.
Frankie drops onto a ledge and slides in through the open window of the Mad Science lab just in time to see the bat embiggen back into Draculaura.
“Here, you dropped this,” says Draculaura, tossing the hand.
“Thanks,” says Frankie. “As your dad would say, you really took me by the hand. I’ve got to hand it to you, Drac. You had the upper hand, but, you know, even without my left hand, I was all right—”
Draculaura tosses a pillow at her.43 “What were you doing up there, anyway? Why’d you want to meet me in here?”
43 Weird—why is there a pillow in the Mad Science lab?
“To help figure out this Ever After thing,” Frankie says.
“By roof jumping?”
“Ha! Not my plan,” Frankie says. “I want to enhance the Mapalogue.”
Frankie leans out the window. No cable in sight. She places her detached hand on the bricks and watches it
climb back up the wall like a spider. As soon as it’s out of sight, she closes her eyes to concentrate, feeling her hand reach the edge of the roof and climb up. This is the trick with controlling body parts that aren’t attached to you—unless they are eyeballs. Then you can’t see what you are doing.
At last, Frankie senses the long, smooth bump of the cable and has her hand grab hold and leap over the edge. Through the window, Frankie catches it with her other hand and pulls in both hand and cable.
“This is an electrical cable,” she says, stitching her hand back on and then deftly peeling individual strands of wire from the cable bundle. “And the other end is connected to the lightning rod on the roof.”
Draculaura gestures to an outlet on the wall of the Mad Science lab. “We do have normal electricity.”
Frankie glances sidelong at the outlets. “I don’t trust them. The power is dodgy—the voltage is too low. Besides, lightning is more reliable—at least if you’re me and you can feel when it’s coming. Which is”—Frankie tastes the air, examines the little hairs on her arms, and sniffs—“in ninety seconds.”
“I brought the Mapalogue, like you asked,” says Draculaura. “I set it on that metal table thingy dangling by chains from the ceiling.”
“The It’s-Alive-o-Tron?” Frankie says.
“That’s what that table is called?” Drac asks, taking a step back. “‘The Saliva-Tron’? Gross. Is there spit on it?”
“The It’s. Alive. O. Tron,” Frankie says, clamping the cable to the Mapalogue.
“I’m kidding,” Draculaura says, putting an arm around Frankie’s shoulders. “Sorry, I’m teasing. I’m just…”
She shrugs, but Frankie can read the expression without any words. Draculaura is joking around because she feels nervous. Scared about whatever Frankie is going to do. Frankie straightens, determination heating her bones, warming her muscles. She will not let Draculaura down.
“So the lightning should, like, jump-start the Mapalogue with a jolt of electricity,” says Frankie. “I’m hoping that with more power we can get it to expand the area where it works and find this Ever After High.” She licks her finger and holds it up as if checking for a breeze. “Fifteen seconds.”
