by Shannon Hale
The Evil Queen drops her glare. “Is that possible?”
“Totes!” Draculaura says.
“Hexplain, vampire girl.”
“Whew.” Apple exhales as she, Frankie, and Raven pull ahead.
The clouds stop sparking and fade into dark wisps of fog.
“That was the Margins, I guess,” Frankie says. “Forming your anger into a storm.”
“Sorry,” Raven says. “She just makes me so mad. And I felt like I could cut loose because, you know, here there’s no risk of it turning into a magical fight.”
“Hexcept for the imaginary doom clouds,” says Apple.
“As if we needed more natural disaster,” says Frankie. “What with the entire world breaking into pieces and all.”
She picks a screw out of her pocket and tosses it over the bridge. When they first left Ever After High, the lava was so far down she couldn’t hear a splash. After they left the Lost Library, screws had taken four seconds to hit the lava. Now it took two.
“It’s rising,” Apple says.
“That’s right,” Frankie confirms.
Apple takes out the Mapalogue she confiscated from the Evil Queen and has been carrying in her backpack.
“We better get to this Shadow High place fast,” says Apple. “We’re running out of time.”
“Let’s walk faster,” says Raven, picking up the pace.
Frankie starts laughing.
“What?” asks Apple, smiling even though she doesn’t yet know what’s funny.
“We’re in the Margins, ghouls!” says Frankie. “Why are we walking?”
She shuts her eyes and imagines so hard her lightning-recharged body fizzles all over. In the fog ahead, a train whistle sounds.
Along the bridge now lies a track, and a mint-green-and-silver engine waits, smoke billowing out of its steam stack. It makes an impatient whoo-whoo noise.
The group climbs into the single train car, and with some focused imagining from Frankie, the engine starts to pull them down the track. Chk-chk-chk-chk, faster and faster, the track lying before them as they steam ahead.
“Wahoo!” Raven yells, her head out the window.
Frankie laughs again.
There are no more forks in the bridge. The train carries them straight down the bridge toward an island obscured by the thick mist. Suddenly, the engine breaks through the fog and disappears. A second later, the train car vanishes, dumping them all on the end of the bridge.
Ahead, an island is adorned with the blackened towers of a once-great castle. Through the very center of the building, a volcano rises, its peak a hundred feet above the building’s roof. From the mouth of the volcano, a slow flow of angry liquid fire trickles out, a line of bright gold running off the edge and into that ocean of Unmaking.
“Thanks for riding the Stein Express,” Frankie says. “We have arrived at our final destination, Shadow High.”
FRANKIE SHIVERS WITH LOOSE ELECTRICITY BUT keeps her feet moving, one after the other. Dead ahead, Shadow High rises up through the mist. Black. As tall as a mountain. As scary as a fairytale come to life.73
73 It turns out that, from a monster’s point of view, living fairytales are pretty frightening.
The white stone bridge merges with the island’s white stone foundation, the only substance that the Unmaking doesn’t seem able to unmake. As Frankie steps through the damp fog and onto the island, the air changes. Dry as sunbaked bones, the air rattles in her lungs and makes her fingertips feel like paper. Tiny letters move around in a breeze:
A I R, A I R, A I R…
The group walks to the front of the ancient school and stands there, staring up.
From a distance, the school appeared to be formed from twisted and blackened iron, but as Frankie squints at it, she can make out letters, huge letters running up and down its length:S H A D O W H I G H, S H A D O W H I G H… Peering closer, she sees that the big words are formed from smaller words: W A L L, W I N D O W, D O O R, S T E P… The ground is littered with F L O W E R, P E B B L E, P E B B L E, P E B B L E, L O S T B A C K P A C K, S N O T T Y T I S S U E, W A D O F G U M…
Like the Lost Library, this school was unmade, the lava taking away its substance and leaving just the words. But this building was unmade so long ago the letters left behind are covered with some kind of hard black growth, like an anchor that was abandoned at the bottom of the ocean.
The source of the Unmaking is clear: the huge black volcano sprouting right up through the center of the building, the roof broken into a gaping hole around it.
Frankie sighs. This place is almost really cool. If only there were a full moon shining silver against the wall of fog, a sizzling lightning storm and the comforting rumble of thunder, a nice respectable cemetery around the school, maybe a few howling werewolves and a shambling zombie or two. But this place isn’t monster-scary. It is empty-scary, eerie-scary. The wrongness of it gives Frankie such a bad case of goosebumps that her shivering is getting out of control. Her neck bolts buzz and splutter, and all she wants is to run straight home to the old laboratory and curl up on a metal slab.
But she can’t let herself run away. She stares up at the school with the others and sighs again.
“Whoa,” says Raven.
“Ugh,” says Apple.
“Creee-py,” says Draculaura.
“Well, well, well,” says the Evil Queen.
“Pupstutterbug,” says Maddie.
Frankie doesn’t even bother to ask what pupstutterbug means. At this point, she knows Maddie would just answer with something like “Pupstutterbug is when a thing doesn’t sing but it should. You know, like beetles!”
Frankie scowls. If she hadn’t tried to be so amazing with her report and make the Mapalogue do things it wasn’t supposed to do, they wouldn’t be in this mess. So she is the first up the S T E P, S T E P, S T E P, S T E P and to the F R O N T D O O R. She puts her hand on the K N O B and turns. The delicate lacework of Ds and Os and Rs slowly swings open on H I N G E S, creaking but staying intact. She takes a step onto the F L O O R. The tips of the Fs, Ls, Os, and Rs chip off and crunch beneath her boot, leaving a fine black dust.
“Hellooooo?” she calls out. “Anybody home?”
The Evil Queen mutters,
Find, seek, identify the weak and
hidden, make them come bidden.
She shakes her hands out. A tiny fizzle of orange magic sparks from her fingertips before sputtering into nothing with a sound like a sad little blow of a kazoo.
“Impossible!” she says.
“My magic didn’t work in the Margins, but it did work on the Lost Library island,” Raven says. “I thought it would work here, too. Is this place dampening magic?” She tries the spell. Her fizzle and splutter are even smaller.
“Aw,” says Maddie. “Your magic spells are all tuckered out, poor things.”
“This place was supposed to have more power.” The Evil Queen tilts her face up and yells, “What a wretched hexcuse for a secret site of unfathomable power you are, Shadow High!”
“Wahoo!” cheers Apple, startling Frankie.
Frankie frowns at her, even more goosebumps prickling her skin. Basically, her goosebumps have goosebumps. “What?”
“I mean,” says Apple, shrugging, “we made it. We’re here. Now we can save the world and all that. I know it’s fairy creepy, but, well, if Briar were here, she would spellebrate that we made it, at least.”
“Wahoo,” Frankie whispers. That instinct to run away is like lightning rushing through her limbs. She tries to turn on the compass, but though it spins, the magic part of it fizzles out, too.
“No arrow pointy thingy,” says Draculaura.
“Oh curses.” Raven takes the chisel out of the compass and peeks into the first C L A S S R O O M. “So, where are we supposed to put the chisel?”
Fact: The chisel’s slot is in the mouth of the volcano, says a voice.
Apple jumps back so fast her tiara falls over her eyes. She’s staring a
t something Frankie can’t see, and her knees are visibly shaking.
“Who—who are you?” Apple asks.
Declarative statement: I am Ms. Direction, says the voice.
Draculaura pops into bat form, apparently without meaning to. She flaps around, muttering, “I have a bad, bad feeling! A bad, bad feeling!”
Frankie can hear Ms. Direction’s voice, and yet she can’t describe what it sounds like. Not high or low, not soft or strong, no accent or personality to the voice at all. It’s as though the words just slide right through her ears and into her mind. The effect is so odd she feels funny in her middle and checks the seam there for loose moths.
“Hiding is the first recourse of weasels!” the Evil Queen says, looking around. “I demand you reveal yourself to me! Your secrets shall be my treasures!”
Definition: A treasure (noun) is something precious. Secrets are not precious to you, Evil Queen. Power is precious. And here you have none. Do not command Ms. Direction.
The Evil Queen blinks. Her mouth closes.
“Mom?” says Raven, taking a step closer. “Are you okay?”74
74 I’m with Raven. The Evil Queen doesn’t shut up just because someone told her to. Something is definitely wrong.
“But what are you?” Apple asks, still staring straight ahead, her pale chin trembling.
Repetition: I am Ms. Direction, she says again. Don’t be afraid, Apple White.
Immediately, Apple’s chin stops quivering, her knees stop trembling. Her forehead wrinkles smooth, and she stands up straight, calm, almost uninterested.
Frankie approaches Apple. She’s about to ask if Apple’s okay, when suddenly, a woman appears in front of Apple. Frankie takes a step back, and the woman disappears. She nears Apple, and again the woman is visible. She is tall and thin, her hair up in a bun, and everything about her is colorless—skin, hair, clothes, all shades of gray, like watered-down ink.
Frankie squints. The woman is made entirely of tiny words. H A I R, F O R E H E A D, E Y E B R O W, N O S E…
“She’s there!” says Frankie, pointing. “She’s right there! But you can only see her from one point of view. Or she’s like a page of a book, obvious from the front but thin as paper from the side.”
Analysis: You are correct, Frankie Stein, announces Ms. Direction.
For some reason, Ms. Direction’s words make Frankie feel amazing, as if her favorite teacher just put a shiny gold star on her forehead. She wants to do something else that will gain approval. A handstand, maybe? She could juggle. She looks around, can’t see anything to juggle, and briefly considers loosening one of her hands and juggling it with the other.
Instead, she says, “You’re Ms. Direction, so you made this school! My friend Draculaura and I kinda, sorta founded a school, too.”
Correct, you and Draculaura founded the current Monster High. Exception: I am not the Ms. Direction who founded this school. She has been gone a long time. I am what is left of her.
“You are… her words,” says the Evil Queen, slowly and through gritted teeth, as if it’s hard for her to speak. “You are her power.”
“Ghouls, we should get going,” says Bat-Drac.
“Right, let’s climb that volcano,” says Raven.
Directive: Draculaura flies up high into the air. Then she falls.
Bat-Drac spirals up to the C E I L I N G and then her wings just stop. She falls like a stone.
“Drac!” yells Frankie, running to catch her friend.
Raven reaches her first, and the bat lands in Raven’s hands with a little plop. Raven cradles her in her palms. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” says Draculaura. “I had to do what she said.”
“What are you doing?” Frankie shouts out to Ms. Direction. “What do you want?”
Fact: Stories are flawed. It is impossible to narrate a flawless story when the characters do whatever they want.
“Welp, I do six impossible things before breakfast,” says Maddie.
Too much uncertainty in stories. Too many errors. Characters resist being controlled and do things that ruin the plot. Confession: I found the power to break a story down to its raw pieces so I could rebuild them the way I wanted. Result: It worked, at first. But the power… was too great.
“The Unmaking lava started to flow freely,” says Raven. “And instead of making it easier to control the stories, it just took everything apart.”
For thousands of years I have been alone on this island. I know all the stories happening out there, but I cannot control them. It must stop. You must stop. It is time.
“Ms. Direction, you can help us finish this story!” says Frankie.
No. You will stop. Sit down, Frankie Stein.
Frankie sits on the R U G, R U G, R U G. “I don’t want to sit down,” she says. But she can’t stand up. It’s not that the body her father made her has stopped working. It’s as if her thoughts are separate from her body. She can think but she can’t do.
No more talking, Frankie Stein. Sit down, girls. Everyone sits down. No dialogue and no action means no story. No more story.
Bat-Drac is still curled up in Raven’s hand. Raven and Apple sit down beside the Evil Queen. But Maddie…
“Are we playing a game?” asks Maddie. She starts to circle the group, touching their heads and saying, “Duck, duck, duck, notaduck!”
Explanation: Ms. Direction said everyone sits down.
“I’m not an everyone,” says Maddie. “Duck, duck…”
Madeline Hatter stops moving.
Maddie blows air out of her lips. “Stop moving? I don’t even know what that means! I never stop.”
Madeline Hatter sits down.
Maddie cartwheels. “Why is everyone being so silly? We’re in spooky Shadow High! We should tell ghost stories and play goblin-in-the-dark.”
Madeline Hatter has a tea party.
“Now you’re making sense!” Maddie rummages around in her hat. “I’m sure I have a tea party in here somewhere.…” Maddie sits on the floor and pulls out a teacup. It’s empty, but she pretends to drink from it.
Madeline Hatter has a tea party forever.
What? No! You can’t do that! I am Brooke Page, the Narrator of this story, and I’m telling you to stop it, Ms. Direction. You are breaking all the rules. And besides that, it’s just mean to make characters do what they wouldn’t normally do. Mean and not nice and… and not at all professional!
The Evil Queen joins Maddie’s tea party. She sits on the floor. Forever.
Oh yeah? Well, the Evil Queen doesn’t sit on the floor. The Evil Queen gets her magic back and… and she puts a spell on Ms. Direction that makes Ms. Direction be quiet and never talk again!
The Evil Queen is happy to sit down and be still. She wonders why she ever desired power in the first place. Now all she wants to do is have a tea party.75
75 Reader, the Evil Queen is just sitting there, smiling and clinking teacups with Maddie. My commands aren’t strong enough to overcome Ms. Direction’s commands. Oh italics, what should I do?
This is bad. This is really bad. Move, girls! Don’t listen to Ms. Direction. Get up that volcano, put the chisel back, save the world! Move!
The characters do not move, says Ms. Direction. The characters wait. They wait for it all to be over. They do nothing as they wait for The End.
Unfortunately, The End may be closer than any of them want. Frankie can’t stand and she can’t speak, but she can see. Through the spaces between the letters W I N D O W, Frankie can see outside the school. There are large shapes in the fog, moving closer. The islands of the other lands are arriving at Shadow High. The spaces between them are narrow, the Unmaking lava rising up, just inches below the shoreline. The air is golden with the lava’s light.
MOM! DAD!
Brookey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this is happening.
We feared from the beginning that this would be The End. We only wanted to spare you from watching it all coming.
There has to be some way we can help! The girls have come so far. They’ve done all they can do. It’s not fair!
Stories aren’t always fair to their characters. Sometimes talking spiders die. Sometimes little boys get sick and their stuffed bunnies get thrown away. Sometimes bad things happen to characters.
But… but there’s got to be something! Mom, can’t you narrate the characters free? Dad, can’t you change the story?
Narrators don’t have that kind of power, Brooke. Ms. Direction got that power for herself, but with it came the Unmaking.
If we tried to narrate the story to make it do what we wanted, that volcano could erupt again, bringing The End even faster.
We can only narrate what the characters do.
I wish I were a character in the story, and then I’d do something. Me and Frankie and Raven together. And… and if we were in the Margins, we could imagine everyone away from Ms. Direction. Wait… there was something I read about imagination in school. The entire World of Stories exists because the Readers have incredible imaginations. Right?
The job of Narrators is quite small, really. Though we put the words to the story, it’s the Readers who do most of the work by making the story come alive in their minds.
So, Mom, you’d say that the Readers are powerful? Even more powerful than Ms. Direction?
Wait, I know what you have in mind, Brooke.
Please, Dad?
That is a very dangerous idea, young lady.
Please? I need to enter the story. I need to be a character. So that means I need a Narrator to narrate me.
I’m worried about our baby girl.
Me too. But she’s the best chance these worlds have.
IN THE LAND OF NARRATORS, BROOKE PAGE IS running.
She is running past her house, down the street, through town. Narrators line the block to watch her, their mouths open, because they’ve never seen a Narrator become a character in a story before.
“You can do it, Brooke!” someone yells.
A few applaud. The applause grows louder and louder, and it feels like approving pats on her back.
