by Shannon Hale
Brooke smiles. She believes she can. Her parents hope she can. And though they are very, very, very, very, very worried, they are still narrating her. They are narrating her at this very second because they believe she can do it, too.
At the edge of town, Brooke enters the Grammar Forest, hopping over root words and ducking under the dangling participles. A breeze weaves through the trees, pushing fallen nouns into piles on the ground. Verbs hop, wiggle, and march by, and Brooke leaps over them. Adjectives float like seed puffs, sticking to anything they touch. She brushes several adjectives out of her hair and runs faster.
At last, coming out from under the foreshadows of the forest canopy, Brooke sees it. The Fourth Wall. The great wall runs the stacks’ length of the World of Stories, creating a barrier between this world and the Readers’ World. It is white, like the stone land under Shadow High, like the bridges in the Margins, a foundation that is and always will be.
Brooke climbs the Fourth Wall.
The wall is uneven, and there are places to grab with her fingers and tiny holes for her toes.
Soon she is high, much, much higher than her mother would like. So high that her father’s heart is pounding hard with worry, and he’s sweating like a buffalo.
And then her foot slips.
No, Brooke! Be careful! If she falls, it’s a long way down.
Brooke spots some adjectives still stuck to her from her run through the Grammar Forest. She peels the word sticky off her arm and places it on the bottom of her shoe. Now her shoe sticks to the wall. It’s the extra lift she needs.
She pulls herself to the top of the wall and looks over.
The land of Readers! Mostly she can see only fog over the world—thick, white, seemingly solid, like the kind that fills the Margins.
“Of course,” she says. “Just like in the Margins, magic spells don’t work in the Readers’ World, but imagination is extra powerful.”
She stands up on the narrow top of the Fourth Wall. Through the fog she thinks she can see buildings, streets, houses. And when she squints, she sees people. Busy. Everyone so busy, moving and living and working and studying and just being. It’s the land of Readers, and yet not many of them are reading, not right at this moment, when she so desperately needs them. She hopes there is at least one. One with a book open, ready for a story.
Brooke clears her throat.
“Ahem. Halloo! Hey, uh, Reader! I need you. We need you. Raven, Apple, Frankie, Drac, and Maddie need you. Even the Evil Queen needs you! They’re stuck. It’s not supposed to go like this. Ms. Direction is cheating, you see. She broke the rules. She’s trying to bring on The End before the heroes have a chance to finish the story. Can you help?”
Brooke listens. No response.
“I said, can you help?”
Reader, answer her! Yes, you. You are the Reader. Please say yes now so Brooke can hear you. She needs to know you’re listening.
Please?
…
Through the fog, Brooke hears a faint “YES!”
“Yay!” says Brooke. “Thank you! I need you to help change the story. I don’t know what will work. I just know that the heroes are stuck and they’ve done all they can. Can you do the rest? If you think up a way for them to escape Ms. Direction and imagine it, you’re so powerful that you can actually make it happen. I have some ideas. Go to the next chapter if you’re willing to try.”
OKAY. THERE MUST BE SOME WAY OUR HEROES can overcome Ms. Direction, if she weren’t cheating like a big meanie! Reader, I’m going to give you some options, and you choose what you think should happen next in the story.
Who do you think will be the key to overcoming Ms. Direction?
If Raven is the key, click here.
If Frankie is the key, click here.
If Maddie is the key, click here.
Ms. Direction told Raven to sit down but not to be quiet. That means Raven can still speak!
If Raven asks her mom for help, click here.
If Raven asks Draculaura for help, click here.
Frankie can’t get up off the floor. She can’t speak. But her right hand is loose. She wiggles it, and the hand comes free.
If Frankie sends her hand over to Apple, click here.
If Frankie sends her hand around the school, click here.
Maddie can speak. She can move. But Ms. Direction commanded her to have a tea party forever. Maddie is having a horriblicious, baffle-worthy idea: A forever tea party might not be as splendiful as it sounds, not when Unmaking is bubbling up out of the trenches between lands. Not when her friends look as sad as a sandwich left out in the rain. And certainly not when the Evil Queen keeps hogging all the pretend tea cakes!
If Maddie invites Ms. Direction to join the tea party, click here.
If Maddie tries to narrate the story herself, click here.
“Mom,” Raven whispers. “Our magic is dampened here but not gone. Grab my hand so we can combine our power. Let’s try Arabeth’s Spell of Silence?”
If the Evil Queen nods in agreement, click here.
If the Evil Queen turns away, click here.
Draculaura is curled up in Raven’s hand, her small, leathery wings wrapped around her body like blankets.
“Drac,” Raven whispers, “she commanded us all to sit down, but you’re not sitting. You’re a bat—you can’t sit down. Blink if you think you can move.”
Bat-Drac blinks her small black eyes.
If Raven tells Draculaura to use her bat sonic squeals on Ms. Direction, click here.
If Raven gives Draculaura the chisel to fly up to the volcano, click here.
Frankie’s green hand taps Apple’s white one. Apple startles, glances at Ms. Direction, and quickly composes herself. She looks back at the rest of Frankie and makes a “what now?” expression.
If Frankie mimes singing, click here.
If Frankie’s hand gestures toward the chisel, click here.
Frankie’s hand runs behind Ms. Direction and begins to explore the school. Everywhere, everything is made up of letters. Frankie’s fingers start to pick letters from their word chains and build new words.
If Frankie’s hand builds the word wire, click here.
If Frankie’s hand builds the words wide hole, click here.
“Wow, this is the best tea party ever,” says Maddie, smiling extra huge. “Isn’t it, Evily Queenie?”
The Evil Queen can’t speak, but she nods, her eyes wide as she sips nothing from her teacup.
“Why, I haven’t had this much fun since we played cupcake croquet in the Castleteria. Ms. Direction, come and join us!”
Query: Madeline Hatter invites me to a tea party? asks Ms. Direction.
“Oh yes, come and sit and have tea and cakes. Now, tell us about your day, your favorite colors, and if you had the choice, whether you’d prefer to have an elephant trunk or a spider monkey tail.”
Ms. Direction looks down at her H A N D S.
Confession: The Ms. Direction who was, long ago, would have loved to have a tea party with Madeline Hatter.
She plops down on the F L O O R and her M O U T H changes into a S M I L E.
“Move down, move down, make room for Ms. Direction!” says Maddie.
The Evil Queen hands the ancient Narrator a teacup. And suddenly, everybody can move freely.
click here.
“‘Then I’ll do it myself,’ Maddie says.”
Question: Pardon? asks Ms. Direction.
“Oh, right!” says Maddie. “Um… open quote then I’ll do it myself comma close quote Maddie says.”
Follow-up question: Is Madeline Hatter attempting to narrate?
“Madeline Hatter, known by her friends as Maddie, and by some mice as ‘the great furless giant,’ finishes her tea party.”
Statement: This will not do, says Ms. Direction. The tea party goes on forever.
“Maddie giggles. ‘Tea parties are parties; they are not forevers,’ she says.”
Assertion: This is
impossible. You are not the Narrator. You are a character. The Narrator cannot be a character. A character cannot be the Narrator.
“Maddie laughs because Maddie has been both a character and a Narrator before, so this is the possible kind of impossible. ‘Ms. Direction?’ Maddie asks. ‘Are you the Narrator of this story or a character in it?’”
Paradox: Ms. Direction is… I… am neither. I am both?
“And so then Ms. Direction got so confused that her letters got all scrambly and her powers got all scampery and nobody had to do what she said anymore,” Maddie narrates.
click here.
With an effort that brings beads of sweat to her forehead, the Evil Queen puts down her teacup and reaches out. Raven puts Bat-Drac in her lap and takes her mother’s hand. Her heart beats hard and fast, and she feels so much love for her strange, evil mother right now it’s like her chest is a whole warm pumpkin pie. Together, they speak aloud the words of the spell:
A cloak, a shell, a silence spell.
Take her sound beyond, below,
and in an eternal casket stow.
What are you do— Ms. Direction starts to say. But it’s too late. With their combined power, they managed to finish the casting. Ms. Direction is enspelled in silence forevermore.
click here.
Raven’s face turns red with anger. Even here, even now, her mother won’t help her! She speaks the spell by herself.
“A cloak, a shell, a silence spell…” It’s a simple spell that requires little magic, but the faint amount she summons up in this place isn’t enough. The enchantment of silence fizzles out of her fingers, falling like dust on the F L O O R.
Raven Queen, give up, speak not more, be silent, says Ms. Direction.
Raven has no choice but to obey.
This path has failed. Return to click here.
Bat-Drac flaps into the air with a sudden flurry of black wings and dives at Ms. Direction, swooping at her face and straight through her insubstantial H E A D.
Draculaura opens her tiny, toothy mouth and emits a sonic scream. The microscopic letters that make up Ms. Direction’s head vibrate.
Draculaura will… Draculaura will… Ms. Direction tries to speak, but Draculaura keeps screeching, and the letters that are all that’s left of the ancient Narrator keep vibrating—until they collapse into a heap on the floor.
click here.
Draculaura flaps her wings and perches on Raven’s hand. She grips the chisel in her tiny black claws and takes flight. Immediately, the weight of the chisel pulls her down. Draculaura scrambles to get airborne.
Ms. Direction’s blinkless E Y E S turn on her.
Command: Draculaura drops the chisel. Draculaura does not move. Raven picks up the chisel.
No, Raven thinks as she picks up the chisel, her icy stomach anticipating what Ms. Direction will say next. Don’t, don’t—
Raven throws the chisel into the lava, narrates Ms. Direction.
Raven stumbles out of the school and to the end of the island. The lava is so high now it bubbles just over the edge. She wants to cry when her hand tosses the chisel into the lava, where the letters C H I S E L slowly sink beneath the surface.
This path has failed. Return to click here.
Apple nods. She doesn’t look so sure, but she starts to sing a happy little tune.
“Tra-la-la and fiddledeedee, whatever will become of me?” sings Apple.
Question: What is Apple White doing?
“By Miss Muffet’s whey and curds, if only I could find some birds,” sings Apple.
Nothing lives on Shadow High’s island, and yet the echoes of the creatures who once inhabited the place hear Apple White. In through the W I N D O W come jumbles of letters in intricate patterns. As they flap past Frankie, she sees that they are made up of Bs, Is, Rs, and Ds.
The B I R D S circle Apple White, and then they fly at Ms. Direction, sharp B E A K S forward. They rustle the ancient Narrator’s letters. She bats at them with her H A N D S. But then—
Apple White starts to sneeze, says Ms. Direction. She sneezes so hard she can no longer sing.
“Little birdies come—choo! Achoo! Come here and—ACHOO!”
It is impossible to stop Ms. Direction, says Ms. Direction. And it would seem that she is right.
This path has failed. Return to click here.
Apple smiles and flips her hair. There’s so much of that glorious blond hair it shields the movement of her hand as she grabs the chisel from Raven and sticks it behind her back.
Frankie’s hand takes it from Apple with two fingers and crawls with the other three. The volcano is within sight but seems to be a world away.
Observation: Frankie Stein is a clever girl. But her hand is crawling the wrong way. Her hand will instead throw the chisel off the edge of the island and into the Unmaking lava.
Unfortunately, even Frankie’s severed hand obeys Ms. Direction.
This path has failed. Return to click here.
Frankie’s hand drags back a long, thin line made up of letters it has pieced together: W I R E, W I R E, W I R E…
Apple spies what Frankie is up to, looks at Ms. Direction, and starts to sing loudly and distractingly.
“Hey diddle diddle, the cat asks a riddle, the cow eats a prune with a spoon!”
What is Apple White doing? asks Ms. Direction, looking at Apple and not Frankie’s hand.
Frankie’s hand attaches the W I R E to one of her neck bolts, runs it over to Ms. Direction, and wraps it around her A N K L E.
Apple White stops singing, says Ms. Direction.
Frankie takes a deep breath, and all that tingly, warm electricity gathers in her middle. She sends it shooting to her neck bolt, where it travels along the W I R E. The electric current rattles all the tiny letters that make up Ms. Direction. They shift and tremble, pop like popcorn, and then fall into a harmless heap.
click here.
Frankie’s hand scampers back with a string of letters pieced together: W I D E H O L E. She holds the O on her pinkie, careful not to insert it until the words are spread beneath the feet of Ms. Direction.
What is young Frankie Stein doing? asks Ms. Direction just as Frankie’s hand inserts the O into the newly formed W I D E H O L E.
Ms. Direction falls into the hole. But before she’s completely gone, she catches the lip of the words and plucks out three of the letters: I D E. Instantly, the hole vanishes, leaving Ms. Direction’s upper half sitting on the floor, the rest of her still swallowed up in the floor.
Frankie hoped Ms. Direction would fall entirely into the hole, but perhaps her efforts were good enough. Frankie tries to stand up. But her body still won’t obey her.
Ms. Direction taps the remaining letters around her into W H O L E and swallows them. Her body becomes whole again.
Statement: You cannot best Ms. Direction in a contest of words.
This path has failed. Return to click here.
You found a path that worked. But it’s not quite enough. It’s time for you to use your imagination and think through what way our heroes overcome Ms. Direction. You can take an idea from the previous pages or make up your own entirely.
So here’s the part where the story got stuck:
Ms. Direction has just commanded Frankie, Apple, and Raven to sit down on the F L O O R of Shadow High. Bat-Drac is curled up in Raven’s hand. Maddie and the Evil Queen are locked in an eternal tea party. No one seems able to resist Ms. Direction’s power and stand up. All seems lost.
They need you! Imagine or write on a piece of paper what the characters do to get free of Ms. Direction so they can head toward the volcano.
Hooray! You did it, Reader! Thank you! Now I can get back to narrating the story.
Freed from Ms. Direction’s power, the girls and the Evil Queen rush through the S C H O O L and to the volcano’s steep slope. Raven is the first to start the climb, with Bat-Drac fluttering at her shoulder.
RAVEN PANTS AS SHE RUNS UP THE VOLCANO. The slop
e is so steep she has to use her hands as well as her feet, crawl-running and feeling like a mountain goat. The volcano itself is black as ink and made up of solid letters—V O L C A N O, V O L C A N O, V O L C A N O—melted together into a rough, thick crust.
By the time she’s close to the top, she’s slowed from a goat-crawl to a snail-crawl, her breath stinging in her throat. Climbing a treacherous volcano while scared for her life turns out to be more difficult than she imagined. She stops at the crest, gasping for breath. Just over the lip bubbles a pool of bright-as-sunlight Unmaking lava.
Draculaura in bat form lands next to her.
“I can see it,” she squeaks, popping back into human form. Immediately, a R O C K gives way under her feet, and she starts to slip. Raven’s heart jumps as Draculaura tips toward the opening and the lava below, but she turns back into a bat.
“I guess I’ll keep my wings,” she says, eyeing the lava nervously. “I don’t know how you were able to get up here without falling. Climbing in heels is scary-hard.”
“Climbing in one shoe isn’t a picnic.” Apple takes off her remaining shoe and tosses it away.
“Try climbing… in heels… and a cape,” the Evil Queen says, panting, from the rear of the group.
“What did you see, Drac?” Raven asks.
“In the center of the lava pool,” Draculaura says, pointing with a wing, “there’s a flat white rock. The lava flows around it, and in the middle of the rock there’s a smallish hole.”
Raven peers over the edge. This close to the lava, she feels a strange heat, and her face prickles, but not from sweat. The very outer layer of her skin is turning into microscopic letters, each dust-size S, K, I, and N flaking off and floating away.
