by Shannon Hale
“Anyone else feel like the whole world’s been turned upside down?” asks Raven.
Apple, Draculaura, and Frankie all raise a hand.
Frankie’s hand falls off. Apple shrieks.
“My dad is the Mad Hatter of Wonderland!” Maddie yells from atop a chair.
“Of course he is,” Frankie says, getting out a needle and thread for the umpteenth time today. “And your mom is probably the Cheshire Cat.”
“Well, not hexactly. She’s Kitty’s mom!”
“Right,” Frankie says, turning to Raven. “So who’s your mother?”
“That’s… a long story.”
“The Evil Queen!” Maddie says helpfully. “The Greatest Evil Ever After Has Ever Known.”
Raven notices that the chair Maddie is standing on is one of five around a table set with teacups, saucers, a steaming teapot, and plates of sandwiches that most definitely weren’t there a few minutes before.
“Whoa, Maddie, where did you get a tea party?”
Maddie laughs so hard she falls to the floor, holding her belly and rolling around. She can barely speak through the laughs. “‘Maddie… where did you get… a tea party’… so funny… best joke ever…”
Half an hour later,47 everyone is sitting around the table, drinking cups of fairy blossom tea and chatting. They’ve gotten past the “Wait, fairytales are real?” and “Wait, monster stories are real?” parts of the conversation and are trying to understand how they can be from different worlds that somehow don’t connect.
47 Sorry, I had to take a snack break.
“Hexcept through magic,” says Raven.
“Yes, that’s right!” says Draculaura. “Whatever force pulled us here, it smelled like magic.”
“I didn’t notice any smell,” says Frankie.
“I smell it whenever I turn into a bat,” says Drac. “It’s like after-rain—”
“But also a little, um, tangy?” says Raven.
“Exactly! Like tangy after-rain smell,” says Drac, “but with, like, sprinkles of something sweet—”
“Kinda like a baking cake—”
“Yeah, like a fruity-flavored cake that’s baking in a tangy after-rain oven.”
“Hexactly!”
Raven and Draculaura laugh at the same time.
Also at the same time, Frankie and Apple reach for a crustless cucumber sandwich. Their hands bump.
“Sorry,” Apple whispers back, pulling her hand away quickly. She’s afraid of making Frankie’s hand pop off again.
“It’s okay,” Frankie whispers back, pulling her own hand away just as quickly.
They don’t make eye contact.48
48 Awkward!
“Oh wait,” says Raven, her laugh dying. “If magic pulled you here, then… Oh curses, maybe it was my—”
“We don’t know it’s her, Raven,” says Apple.
“That woman was in the library, she did some spell, and then she was gone. What if it was my mom? Where’d she go?”
“You think she switched places with us?” says Draculaura. “What would your mom do if she got to Monster High?”
“Wait, you’re from Monster High?” asks Raven. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense, ’cause she was reading about it just before she disappeared—”
“She’s in mirror prison, Raven,” says Apple.
“Okay, okay.” Raven sighs. “I know I’m not supposed to do this, but… I just need to be sure. Apple, would you mind helping me?”
They plod over to Grimm’s standing mirror. Raven chants a spell, and Apple hacks into the Mirror Network. Once past the security, Raven swipes at the glass and connects to the mirror where her mother is supposedly imprisoned. But the cell is empty.
Raven sits on a chair, her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“Is it bad that the mirror isn’t working?” Draculaura says. “I totes can’t see my reflection, either. Putting on mascara is tricky, let me tell you.”
“Raven wasn’t trying to see her own reflection in the mirror,” Apple says. “She was trying to see her mother.”
“It’s my fault,” Raven says.
Maddie examines a sandwich. “No, I don’t think so. How could it be your fault that the sandwiches taste like the inside of a hat, Raven? It’s science. When a sandwich sits in a hat for any number of hours, it will naturally absorb the surrounding hatness—”
“No, I mean that Draculaura and Frankie are stuck in Ever After,” says Raven. “It’s my mom. I know it. She did this. I ignored it. I didn’t stop her.”
“Stuck?” says Frankie. “There must be a way to get home.”
“You’re stories to us,” says Apple. “Stories in a book. There’s no Monster High in Ever After.”
“Or in Wonderland, either,” says Maddie with a heavy sigh. “Such a shame. Monsters always make things more interesting.”
“We can’t find your home on a map,” says Apple. “It’s not like you could just walk there. How can we help you get back? How is it even possible that there are multiple worlds at all?”
Raven’s stomach hurts. And it’s probably not from the hat-flavored sandwiches.49 When she thought she saw her mother, she should have gone straight to Headmaster Grimm, even if he hasn’t exactly been on Team Raven lately. Even if he might not have believed her. She should have risked it in order to stop her mom. And now these girls are far from home and stuck, perhaps, forever after.
49 Not completely, anyway.
THE EVIL QUEEN STANDS IN THE DARK FRONT hall of Monster High, her gown impressively spiky, her headdress magnificently spooky, her wicked hands held out in a most commanding way. Her voice booms.
“Monsters! Heed me, your ruler, your mentor, your queen! Stand and quake in my terrible presence!”
“Um…” says Woolee, twisting a lock of her long fur. “What does mentor mean? Isn’t that a kind of candy?”
Her friend Gob whispers loudly, “So she wants us to eat her? Seems a bit much.”
“Sorry, lady,” says Deuce Gorgon, walking past her. “No offense, but I can’t be late for Casketball practice.”
“No,” the Evil Queen says, positioning her fingers in just the right way for a mind-control spell. “What you need is… to do my bidding!”
The snakes coiling in a Mohawk out of Deuce’s head roll their eyes at the Evil Queen.
“Whatever, dude,” Deuce says.
“Hssss,” say his snakes.
“You!” the Evil Queen shouts, pointing at Bonesy. “Skeleton thing! Come hither!”
Bonesy shakes his head with a dry rattling sound. He holds up a skeletal arm in a talk-to-the-hand gesture and keeps walking.
“This is absurd!” she says. “You are creatures of terror! You are monsters! How dare you disobey me?”
The front hall empties until only the large purple transparent blob of a goblin is left. Gob smiles at the Evil Queen, opens something that might be a mouth, and burps.
“That is just repulsive,” says the Evil Queen.
Gob laughs and then shambles down a coffin-lined hallway, making a shlump-gwee noise as he goes.
The Evil Queen grumbles. “This is clearly not Shadow High.”
“What is this… Shadow High you speak of?” asks Moanica D’kay from behind her. Her voice has a roughness to it, as if she’s just awoken from a very long nap.
The Evil Queen whirls. She is not accustomed to being surprised.
Moanica walks slowly up a staircase. Her skin is gray, her arms akimbo as if she is about to strike a pose. Purple hair streaked with yellow-green adds to her sallow complexion, and the Evil Queen is certain that she’s not currently alive—not in the traditional sense. Movement behind her gives the impression that there are more things in the shadows.
The Evil Queen casts a necromancy spell. “Corpse Girl,” she calls. “To my side!”
Someone behind her yelps, but the girl herself just smiles.
“I prefer to be called Moanica,” she says. “And whatever spell you’re
casting, it isn’t going to work on me.”
The Evil Queen reaches out a hand and, with visible effort, clenches it and pulls it back. As she does, a teenage zombie boy stumbles out of the shadows and shuffles helplessly toward the Evil Queen.
“No?” the Evil Queen says. “My power may be diminished, but it is far from gone.”
“Zomboy! Stop!” Moanica shouts.
“Nevertheless,” the Evil Queen says, snapping her fingers. The Zomboy falls to the ground, looking dizzy. “It appears taking over this world would be pointless. It isn’t what I’m looking for.”
“Taking over…?” Moanica shoves the rising Zomboy behind her. “What are you looking for?”
“Oh, world domination,” says the Evil Queen, examining her fingernails. “Control put back into the hands of those who aren’t afraid to wield the power of evil over milquetoast do-gooders—that sort of thing.”
Moanica’s smile seems real for the first time. “You know, spiky-hat lady, I think we can help each other out. What do you need?”
“Books,” says the Evil Queen.
So while everyone else is in class, Moanica sneaks the Evil Queen into Dracula’s office. Moanica sniffs and tiptoes around. The Evil Queen runs a fingertip over a massive oak desk, inspecting it for dust.
“Dracula is teaching now, so we have a few minutes,” whispers Moanica.
“The vampire Dracula?” the Evil Queen says, one thin eyebrow raised in a perfect arch.
“Yes!” Moanica hisses. “I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but in this world you need to be quiet when you’re sneaking.”
The Evil Queen’s eyes flash red at the insolence of the girl. That this lesser creature would give her orders makes her grind her teeth.
“Ah,” the Evil Queen says, understanding. “You are afraid.”
“Yes, because we’re not supposed to be here.”
“But what could you, a zombie, possibly fear?”
“Well, the guy who owns this library, for one,” Moanica says.
“Yes, of course. Dracula. The lord of this realm. Surely he would rend you limb from limb for invading his sanctum sanctorum.”
“His… um… what? Er… no, he’d probably expel me from school, though,” Moanica says. “And that would mess up all my plans!”
“Expel…?” The Evil Queen resists an urge to clap a hand over her face in frustration.
“I don’t see any alarms or traps or anything,” Moanica whispers. “So look around, but hurry!”
Hurry? The Greatest Evil Ever After Has Ever Known doesn’t jump to anyone else’s clock, thank you very much! But the process does go much more slowly than she’d prefer. Unable to magically absorb the knowledge in the room, she instead must flip through each book one by one.
Moanica peeks out the office door at her posse of Zomboyz she left as guards.
“For the love of decomposition… Dracula is coming. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Go distract him,” says the Evil Queen.
A voice echoes from the hall. “Zomboyz, I didn’t see you in class today! Did you wish to speak with me about anything?”
“Too late,” whispers Moanica. “What if he comes in? We need to hide!”
The Evil Queen casts a cloaking spell, but her choked magic creates an actual cloak that settles on her shoulders.
“I may not be a zombie,” Dracula is saying, “but I am interested in your brains. You might even say deadicated. Get it?”
The Evil Queen repeats the spell. The cloak changes from red to gray. So. Irritating!
“Over here,” whispers Moanica. She pulls out a bookcase and stuffs herself behind it.
“Hmph,” says the Evil Queen. The space is too narrow for her awesome spiky shoulder pads, but she squeezes in as best she can.
The door opens. “Draculaura, are you in here?” Dracula’s voice calls. If he looks too closely, he will discover them. The Evil Queen clenches her fists. It has been a long time since she has had to fight a creature with her bare hands. She seems to remember a good deal of slapping.
And then there’s the sound of Dracula’s footsteps leaving, and the door shuts behind him. Moanica exhales. The Evil Queen is only slightly disappointed to have missed an opportunity for a slap fight.
“That was close,” says Moanica.
The Evil Queen creeps from her hiding place and unbends the spikes on her shoulder pads. The books she was reading (Wuthering Frights, A Tale of Two Beasties, and a reference guide titled The Monster Manual of Vile) are no longer on the table. Dracula must have put them back on the shelf. And he left behind an ornate wooden box.
“What is this?” the Evil Queen asks.
“Um, a box?” says Moanica.
The queen examines the box, alert for traps, and then opens it.
“Are you familiar with this?” the Evil Queen asks.
Moanica edges closer, a scroll in her hand. “Oh… yes! That’s the Monster Mapalogue. Or at least part of it. There’s a necklace bit to it, too.”
The Evil Queen taps a fingernail on the wooden map. “This,” she says. “Have you seen this hexact map before?”
“Well, there’s Monster High,” she says, pointing with the scroll she’s holding, “and over there is the cemetery where I used to live, but I’ve got no idea what that ‘Ever After’ thing is. Never seen those other places on a map before. I can’t even read them.”
The Evil Queen stares at the map. A shame most of the lands aren’t labeled. It is much easier to use magic on things if you know their names.
“What do you suppose Wanderland is?” Moanica asks, pointing at the map again with her scroll. “Maybe people there just wander around confused all the time.”
“Wonder, not wander. But you’re mostly right,” the Evil Queen says. She notices Moanica’s pointing tool. “What is that?”
“Wonderland,” Moanica says.
“No, you fool, the scroll,” the Evil Queen says. “Where did you get that?”
“From behind the shelf. It must’ve fallen. I hoped it was a secret book, but it’s just old wallpaper.”
The Evil Queen plucks the scroll from Moanica’s hands and unrolls the edge of a document covered in letters that are, in fact, not wallpaper designs. She traces her finger down the lines of characters. “This is another language,” she says.
“No way,” Moanica says. “I know French, and that is not French.”
“Quiet, fiend!” the Evil Queen hisses. “I’m trying to translate it!”
In proper circumstances—that is, if she were in her castle in Ever After, surrounded by magical objects and universally recognized as the magnificent ruler of all she surveyed—the Evil Queen would have been able to magically translate the document and absorb its information. But these are not normal circumstances.
Her fingers glow with dim light as she casts the translation spell, managing only a character or two before she must cast the spell again. It is like trying to read by flickering candlelight that the wind blows out every few seconds.
“What’s the title?” Moanica asks, pacing behind the Evil Queen as she works.
“‘The… Path… of… Shadow,’” the Evil Queen reads. A way to Shadow High! At last!
“Well, that’s a good sign,” Moanica says. “Ancient scroll, hidden behind a bookcase, secret knowledge. What else does it say?”
The Evil Queen continues to read. “There is a subtitle. ‘The Cautious Vampire’s Guide… to…’”
“To what?”
A muscle beneath the queen’s eye begins to twitch.
“‘To Summer Walks on the Riverside…’” the Evil Queen says through clenched teeth. “Walks on the riverside? Vampires are supposed to be evil!”
“Evil? Who, Dracula?” says Moanica. “One time I saw him knit a tea cozy.”
“Gah!” The Evil Queen throws the scroll down. Magical energy crackles around her fingertips. “I am surrounded by fools!”
A card flutters out of the scro
ll. Moanica picks it up.
“Well, it looks like Dracula is a little evil,” she says. “This scroll was checked out from some library and is, like, literally a thousand years overdue. That’s a serious fine.”
“What library?” the Evil Queen asks.
Plop.
“What was that noise?” Moanica asks.
“I don’t know,” the Evil Queen says. “You said something about a library?”
Plop. Plop.
“What is that?” Moanica asks.
The Evil Queen plucks the card from Moanica’s hand.
Plopplopplop.
“Can’t you hear that?” Moanica asks. “It’s driving me crazy!”
“Oh, I can hear it,” the Evil Queen says, reading the card. “I’m just ignoring it.”
The card in her hand is a checkout slip for the scroll, from a place called the Lost Library, and if the date on the slip is accurate, the library is ancient.
PLOP.
“Agh!” Moanica groans. “We either have to find out what that is or get out of here. I hate that sound.”
PLOP, PLOP.
“I’m growing to like it, actually,” the Evil Queen says. “Because I think it means someone or something is trying to stop me. And when someone tries to stop me, it usually means I’m on the right track.”
The plopping sound ceases, and the Evil Queen laughs. She is on the right track. She’ll continue her library hopping, then. She knows the Lost Library’s name. But who is trying to stop her?
Narrators, she thinks.50 The Wonderland child has already given her a clue. Narrators. They’re real. They’re trying to stop me. Which means… they fear me.
50 This is not good. This is so not good.
She smiles wickedly, transitioning easily into a truly magnificent evil laugh.
“Ugh,” Moanica whispers. “You are really bad at being sneaky!”
RAVEN IS NOT SOUND ASLEEP. SHE’S ALSO NOT dead asleep, sleeping like a baby, or any of the other ways Narrators describe people who are deep asleep (she’s not that, either). She is sleepy. And also extremely uncomfortable.
While Raven is generally a fan of sleepovers, the before-sleep part is the best—chatting and snacking and playing Ever After games like pin-the-horn-on-the-unicorn or Rock Bard on the MirrorStation 5. The sleeping part of sleepovers is less fun, especially tonight, when it requires trying to sleep on Headmaster Grimm’s hard office floor.
