by Shannon Hale
The lake of lava is dotted with half a dozen outcroppings of white rock, most barely big enough to stand on. But in the center Raven sees the one Draculaura is talking about. And while bigger than the others, it is not so big you’d feel comfortable jumping on it in the middle of a lava lake.
“I could fly it over, maybe,” Bat-Drac squeaks.
Draculaura is big for a bat, but the chisel is more than half her size.
The others reach the top of the volcano.
“Whoa,” Frankie says, peering in.
“That… does not seem safe,” Apple says.
“The bat should fly the chisel in,” says the Evil Queen.
“There’s no way she could carry it, Mother,” says Raven.
“I have a black ribbon from my headdress I’m willing to sacrifice,” the Evil Queen says. “Just tie the chisel to the bat’s body.”
Draculaura twitches. “I… er… guess we could try that.”
“No,” says Raven.
“Then send the walking abomination,” says the Evil Queen.
Everyone stares at the queen.
“The… Frankie,” she amends. “If Frankie falls in and loses an arm or leg, we just get her another one, stitch it on, no loss.”
Frankie hugs herself, and Apple puts a protective hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll do this,” Raven says. “This whole thing is your—is our family’s fault. We have to fix it.”
“Well, if my magic were working properly, certainly,” says the Evil Queen. “But I am not equipped for walking on lava, so one of them will have to use their dubious skills.”
“I can see my house from here!” Maddie shouts.
Raven snorts a surprised laugh. But then it turns out Maddie can see her house from there. They all can. The Margins are narrowing, and the fog is thinning. From high atop the volcano, they have a view of Book End, the village that has been Maddie and her father’s home since they left Wonderland. On a separate island approaches the unmistakable outline of Ever After High.
“Oh no,” Draculaura says.
On the opposite shore of the volcano, another shape, another island creeps nearer: a forested hill, and on it the terraces and spires of a school.
“Monster High,” Frankie says.
From every side they come, individual lands, pulled irresistibly closer to Shadow High, all the lands of the World of Stories coming back together. Lands of forest, lands of deserts, lands entirely underwater. Houses and villages, farms and cities, and schools.
More schools! One resembles an ancient temple, built of white marble with tall pillars atop a huge and craggy mountain, lightning flashing at its peak. Another is candy-colored and bright, surrounded by a snowy landscape, and in the sky above it soars a kind of open carriage pulled by eight flying moose—or something moose-like. The girl seated inside it is dressed in a white-trimmed red suit and shouts, “Ho-ho-ho!”
“Oh curses, did you hear that evil laugh?” Apple says. “It came from those flying moose. Or mooses. Is it moose or mooses? Meese?”
“Please,” scoffs the Evil Queen. “‘Ho-ho-ho’ hardly qualifies as an evil laugh.”
“That sounded like Santa,” Frankie says. “‘Ho-ho-ho’ is kind of his catchphrase.”
“What is a Santa?” Raven asks.
“Santa Claus. Guy with a beard who rides around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer,” Draculaura says. “Gives out presents.”
“He sounds fairy nice,” Apple says.
“But those particular ‘ho-ho-hos’ didn’t sound like a man’s,” says Drac. “They sounded like a girl’s.”76
76 I’ve heard rumors that Santa Claus has a daughter! I wonder if it was her.
Raven forces her attention away from all the new lands and looks down. With the trenches between the lands so narrow, the Unmaking lava rises up, lapping like surf on their shores. There are hundreds of islands, places she had never imagined, places behind places, all closing in. And the closer those places get to Shadow High, the higher the lava climbs.
“Oh nose! I loved that bridge,” Maddie says. The lava has crept over the edge of the Book End island and completely disassembled a B R I D G E on its shore.
Raven needs to act now or everything she’s ever loved, everything anyone has ever loved, is going to be destroyed. She stands, teetering on the edge of the volcano, and concentrates.
I fight for flight
that all might not fall
to endless night.
Eyes closed despite the risk of falling, Raven repeats the words until, in sputtering bursts, she feels the tingle of magic around her body, and her feet leave the ground. It’s not full power, but perhaps the nearness of Ever After is boosting her magic a bit. She begins to rise.
“Foolish girl!” her mother exclaims.
Raven opens her eyes and focuses on the flat rock that holds the chisel’s resting place. She glides slowly, several feet over the surface. A bubble rises in the lava. It is nothing to be concerned about, she tells herself. There are bubbles everywhere, and she only needs to focus on floating to her destination. The bubble pops, splashing Unmaking on the H E E L of her S H O E.
“Aah,” Raven says, dipping lower in panic.
“Careful, Raven!” shouts Apple.
The tingle of M A G I C surrounding her wavers, the heat from the Unmaking unmaking it. She dips lower, and, desperate, she throws the chisel high and hard toward the white rock, hoping against hope that it will land magically in the socket before the lava swallows her.
Bat-Drac is there, clinging to the back of Raven’s shirt with her claws and flapping like mad. The little bit of lift is just enough to help Raven land on one of the smaller rocks dotting the lake. What remains of Raven’s shoes, jutting over the edge into the lava, sizzles into words, and then letters, and then ash.
Barefoot, Raven scrambles higher onto the rock as she watches the chisel arc above her and fall, clearly destined to splash several feet shy of the rock. It will land in the Unmaking, she knows, and everything will be lost. And it will all be her fault.
But a large green spider streaks out, grabbing the chisel in midair. Both chisel and spider tumble to a landing on the rock. The spider relinquishes its grip on the chisel and gives Raven a thumbs-up. Not a spider. Frankie’s hand.
At the edge of the volcano, Frankie waves with a handless arm. She had thrown her own hand and had caught the chisel.
“That was splendiferous!” says Maddie.
Frankie’s hand grabs the chisel between middle and forefinger, pushing itself upright onto the three “legs” of pinkie, thumb, and ring finger. It waddles carefully to the socket and hooks the chisel into the edge. But the hand isn’t tall enough to maneuver the chisel into the socket. It pushes and wiggles and tilts and inches but makes no progress.
“This is a job for Draculaura!” declares Bat-Drac. She leaves Raven and starts to fly to the chisel, but there is a sound of terrible grinding and thunder, and the volcano shakes.
BOOM! CRACK!
A large bubble of lava pops in front of her. She screeches and falls back. Raven grabs her out of the air. The little bat is dazed, eyes darting back and forth, wings all trembly. Raven tucks her safely inside her pocket.
“What’s happening?” asks Raven.
“The islands are crashing into us!” Apple yells.
Frankie’s hand struggles to stay upright, but the weight of its burden overbalances it, and it stumbles. The chisel falls uselessly next to the socket, and the hand topples backward, over the edge of the stone, and right into the lava. The liquid swallows the hand, and a poof of smoke in the shape of H A N D floats into the air and vanishes.
“Bolts!” Frankie yells angrily from the shore.
“It’s my fault!” Raven calls. “I can fix this!”
Raven closes her eyes and begins the spell again. “I fight for flight…”
“Don’t, Raven!” the Evil Queen calls. “Narrator! Brooke!”
“That all might not fall…
” Raven continues the spell.
“Brooke, what happened to the one who first put this chisel here?” her mother asks. “What happened to that Narrator?”
“…to endless night…”
Magic sparks fly erratically around Raven, and with jerks and sputters, she begins to rise.
“Where is he?” the Evil Queen shouts.
Raven hovers uneasily, dipping and tipping as she edges toward the spot where the chisel was first placed to save all the lands from destruction. The Narrator who did that, no one knows his name, not anymore. He was never heard from again.
“Brooke says that Narrator was never heard from again!” says Maddie.
Raven glides over the lava and touches down on the white rock. She picks up the chisel.
“Raven, stop!” her mother yells. “Don’t! It’s a death sentence!”
Raven smiles at her mother. “I love you, Mother,” she says. “Be good.”
She moves to the socket, and in a flash of magical light the Evil Queen is there, pulling the chisel from her hand.
“Mother, what?” she manages to say before a wall of force erupts from her mother’s palm, flinging Raven up and out of the lake. She arcs over the edge of the volcano and crashes into her friends, Frankie and Apple scrambling to catch her.
“What is she doing?” Frankie asks.
“She tricked us,” Apple says. “She’s—”
“Mother, no!” Raven shouts. “We have to return the chisel! There isn’t any power here! Only destruction! There’s no point!”
“Oh, daughter,” the Evil Queen says, straightening her headdress. “You’re only seeing part of the picture. If the chisel isn’t returned, then destruction comes. Certainly. That’s true.”
“But—” Raven says.
“But this is power,” the Evil Queen says, holding the chisel high. “More power than anyone before has ever possessed! I hold in my hands the power to destroy Ever After. And not just our home. All lands. Even the Narrators don’t have that.”
“No! We have the power to save them, Mother!”
The volcano groans as land grinds against land, and the lava creeps up their shores, taking apart G R A S S and F L O W E R S and T R E E S. On one land, as people flee, the first H O U S E loses itself to raw letters.
The Evil Queen holds up a finger. “We don’t have the power to save them, dearie. I do. Would you have put the chisel in if I had not taken it?”
“Yes!”
“Of course you would have,” the Evil Queen says. “Which means there was no other choice for you. You were trapped. Without choice, there is no power.”
Raven closes her eyes and tries to say the spell, tries to fly again, but her tongue feels heavy and the back of her head pulses with ache.
“Don’t bother, my little Raven. It’s not fair to leave a choice such as this to you. This is a mother’s job, I think. So does the story of this world go on?” her mother asks, moving the chisel from one hand to the other. “Or does it jump forward to The End?”
She locks eyes with her daughter, and her face thaws into a smile that almost breaks Raven’s heart.
“I prefer a world in which my daughter goes on,” she says.
The Evil Queen eyes the socket and whispers something under her breath.77 Then she jams in the chisel. There is a flash of blinding light and the sound of a thousand gongs banging at once. A hot wind shoves Raven. She glances back and sees the chisel in its socket, but her mother is just gone.
77 Raven can’t hear what her mother says, but I can, so here it is: “Reader! I thought the Narrators had all the power, but I was wrong. It’s you. I know I’m the villain, but what’s a story without a villain? I’m about to do something. Whether I survive is up to you. Personally, I think you should imagine that the Evil Queen can’t die. Because that’s what I think. And I’m usually right.”
And then Raven whips through the air, rolls down the side of the volcano, and finally crashes in a painful heap at the bottom. Frankie is there; Maddie and Apple, too. Bat-Drac is starting to wake up in Raven’s pocket.
A wind blows.
“Mom!” Raven yells, starting back up the volcano. The wind pushes at her, and she stumbles, unable to make any progress.
“They’re moving apart,” Apple shouts. “The lands are moving apart!”
All the islands that had drawn close are pushing back, separating from the land of Shadow High and one another. The lava between them lowers into the trenches. A wide bridge leads from Shadow High to Ever After High, but as the island recedes, the bridge grows thinner.
“We have to go!” Apple yells over the howling wind. “Now! If we want to get home at all, we need to go!”
Still staring up at the peak of the volcano, Raven allows Apple to pull her along.
“We can’t follow you that way!” Frankie yells. “We have to go home.”
She points in the opposite direction, to a different bridge, one that leads to Monster High.
Draculaura is back in her vampire form. Raven’s eyes are already wet. Draculaura pulls Raven into a strong vampire hug.
“This was so fun,” she says, her voice cracking with emotion. “I’ll never forget you, Raven Queen.”
“I’ll never forget you, Draculaura, the daughter of Dracula. And you, Frankie Stein, Frankenstein’s daughter,” Raven says, laughing a little through her tears. “You guys are going to have lots of adventures together.”
“Wait, Maddie, what was our Narrator’s name again?” asks Frankie.
“The tea-rrific, hat-tastic, splendiful Brooke!” says Maddie.
“Thank you, Brooke!” Frankie shouts.
“Yeah, you rock, Brooke!” says Raven.
“You’re fairy, fairy brave,” says Apple. “I’ll always consider you a personal friend.”
“Fangtastic, ghoul!” says Draculaura. “You saved the day, you know?”
“You saved the world,” says Raven.78
78 FYI, they said some other nice stuff, too, but I had to stop narrating to get a tissue. Happy tears are a thing.
“Time to go-oh, huggabugs!” Maddie calls. “Or we’ll all have to live on this terrible hatless island forever!”
Frankie and Apple hug quickly.
“If anyone ever deserved the title of princess, it’s you,” Apple says.
Frankie smiles. “Keep the monster spirit alive. And don’t let the haters get you down.”
“Here,” says Apple, tossing Frankie her backpack. “I got the Skullette from the Evil Queen when we were riding your amazing imaginary train. The Mapalogue is there, too!”
They give one another high fives, and then the girls run—Apple, Raven, and Maddie in one direction, Draculaura and Frankie in the other.
THE BRIDGE STRETCHES LIKE BREAD DOUGH before them. The wind at her back makes Raven feel as if she can run faster than ever, but it still doesn’t seem fast enough. The Village of Book End has reconnected with the Ever After High campus, but both are moving away as fast as the girls can run. And their bridge continues to thin.
“Single file!” Apple shouts, dropping behind Raven and Maddie.
The borders of the school are within sight, but Raven estimates they will be running on a bridge as narrow as thread in the next sixty seconds. She knows she should imagine something to help them, but in her panic she can’t think, she can’t think.…
“Faster!” Raven shouts.
“Did you cast a ‘faster’ spell on us?” Maddie calls from behind. “Points for quick casting, but I don’t think it’s working! I only feel as fast as regular Maddie!”
“Magic doesn’t work in the Margins!” Raven yells back.
And then the bridge snaps.
Raven knows she should be scared, but more than anything, she is angry. Like waiting in line for an hour for an ice cream cone only to have the shop close right after the person in front of her. That kind of angry. The bridge was still a good ten inches wide when it snapped. It just wasn’t fair.
And then N
evermore’s giant clawed paw catches her midfall, another grabs Apple, and a toothy snout plucks Maddie from the air, holding her by the collar.
“Good girl!” Raven shouts.
“Woo-hoo!” Maddie howls, holding her arms wide.
The dragon flies through the fog of the Margins toward the land of Ever After, rising higher and higher.
“Don’t you think you should stay low?” Apple squeaks. “We don’t have a giant bat to catch us when she disappears this time.”
“I didn’t imagine this Nevermore!” Raven shouts over the rushing wind. “She’s the real thing! Good girl, Nevermore! Good, good girl!”
Dragon and girls soar into the air over Ever After High, circle the school once, and come to a landing in the courtyard outside the main gates. The ground shudders and the fierce wind subsides. The surrounding fog vanishes in an instant, and the horizon rolls with the green hills of Ever After.
“You have a lot of hexplaining to do, Ms. Queen!” Headmaster Grimm shouts as Raven and her friends leap off Nevermore’s back.
The headmaster is marching toward them as if he intends to punish the cobblestones under his feet for poor roadway performance.
“I’m sorry?” Raven asks.
“An apology is not going to cut it this time, young lady,” he says.
“I think perhaps Raven didn’t understand what she was being asked to hexplain,” Apple says, pushing a lock of hair from her forehead and tucking it behind an ear. Despite a headlong run from a volcano and a frantic dragon ride, that single lock of hair was the only thing out of place. Her bare feet don’t even look dirty.
Headmaster Grimm throws up his hands. “Hexplain? How about we begin with your abduction of the school council copresidents?”
Raven clenches her fists. Her magic is back, crackling around her fingertips. After all she’s been through, she has a good mind to turn him into a frog.
“Oh, we weren’t abducted,” Apple says.
“I was!” Maddie shouts, grinning.
“But,” Apple says, raising a hand to stall whatever words are about to come out of Headmaster Grimm’s mouth, “not by Raven.”
“Oooh, nonono, not by our sweet little Ravenbird!” Maddie says. Her voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper. “I was kidnapped by the shambling zombibos!”
