by Shannon Hale
“Zomboyz,” Raven corrects.
“Zomboyz!” Maddie repeats. “Because of my special listening powers, I was questioned with spray bottles and made to divulge the location of the secret base!”
“That’s… not quite right,” Raven says.
“Of course it isn’t. Nothing is quite right, or everything would be quite boring.” Maddie nods smartly. “But there was a spray bottle.”
Headmaster Grimm holds up a finger. “No more Hattersplaining, if you please. I would like the straight story without the nonsense.”
Raven shrugged. “There was trouble,” she says.
“And it was taken care of,” Apple says.
“Spelltacularly,” Maddie adds.
“And the… er… others?” Headmaster Grimm asks. “The monster girls?”
“They’re gone,” Raven says, and her voice catches at the end, because someone else is gone, too.
Apple takes a deep breath. “They are back home. We hope. Everything is fine, Headmaster Grimm, really. Everyone is fine. All is back to normal.”
Headmaster Grimm clears his throat with a harrumph. “It had better be. Normal and fine are the glue that holds us together.”
“Headmaster Grimm!”
A little man who works as a groundskeeper for Ever After High calls from a clutch of bushes near the fountain. “The azaleas have begun to sing again! The new fertilizer didn’t work!”
“Which song are they singing?” Headmaster Grimm asks.
“‘Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers,’ I think,” the little man says. “I don’t know azalea tunes well.”
“That’s just typical,” Headmaster Grimm mutters. “On top of everything, now this.”
“All is normal,” Apple says, gently turning Headmaster Grimm toward the groundskeeper and his bushes. “All is fine.”
“Fine,” says Raven. She sighs. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Oh, Drac’s back at Monster High, I bet!” Maddie says. “Let me check. Hey, Brooke! Are Drac and Frankie back at Monster High safe and sound?”
The Narrator does not speak to Maddie, not in any real way. That part of the story, of how Draculaura and Frankie return home, has yet to be told. Moreover, the Narrator knows that any connection between the two lands, any at all, could be dangerous. Anything that might narrow the Margins between worlds could risk a lava rise and undo everything the characters worked for.
“Yeah, so Brooke says we can’t talk about it,” Maddie says. “It’s dangerous to bring worlds together… blah blah lava and so on. But she did say the story of how Draculaura and Frankie return home hasn’t been told yet, which means they do get home. So there you go.”
Madeline Hatter is awfully clever.
Raven smiles at her friend, but she wasn’t talking about Draculaura, and Apple knows it. She takes Raven’s arm, and they walk side by side up to their room.
“She saved us,” Apple says. “She saved everything. I wasn’t sure she would.”
“Me neither,” Raven says. “I think she likes… or… liked that. Oh curses. I don’t like how this feels.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s a terrible way to feel.”
“Pluuus,” Maddie says, slipping between them to take both their arms, “no one is ever really gone.”
“Not when we remember them,” Apple says.
“Not when their stories are told,” says Raven. “You know what? I wasn’t sure what I would do in the future after I graduate—”
“You mean if you decide not to do what I’ve been telling you to do all these years?” Apple asks.
“Poisoning you with an apple is still off the table,” Raven says. “No, I think I’ll write. Tell stories.”
They enter their dorm room, and Apple goes straight to her floor-length mirror. “Hey, Raven? Worth a shot?”
Raven takes a deep breath and then performs the spell that connects this mirror to the mirror prison.
The Evil Queen, spiky shoulder pads, headdress and all, is sitting inside it, looking royally cheesed off.
“Yay, Readers,” says the Evil Queen, her chin in her hands. “Thanks a lot.”
Raven laughs.
Kitty comes into their room, her purple hair wild and unbrushed, her eyes bleary. “I think I overslept. My alarm didn’t go off this morning. Has anyone seen my clock?”
IT’S MORNING AT MONSTER HIGH. THE ANCIENT building sits up on Monster Hill, mysterious and yet inviting, like a story just waiting to happen.79 The cemetery stones gleam, the roof is as shiny as a coin, the bats in the attic are humming in their sleep. Everything seems new, fresh, fixed up, and happy—in a gloriously boo-tiful way.
79 Ooh, that was a bookmarkable sentence, much better than the opening sentences I wrote in chapter 1. I really am improving!
And around the school grounds there’s a definite lack of mist. From the front steps, the view extends for miles and miles across a land that just wants to forget about that weird wall of fog that ominously descended over everything and then just as quickly disappeared again yesterday as soon as Frankie and Draculaura came home from wherever they’d been.80
80 I still write pretty long sentences sometimes. Oh well.
The two ghouls aren’t divulging those secrets as they hurry to history class.
“Hey, Drac?” Frankie clears her throat. “You know, I’ll understand if you don’t want to be my best ghoulfriend anymore. You got along so great with Raven. There are dozens of monsters at Monster High now. You don’t have to stick with me just ’cause I was the only one at first. And I know I messed up our presentation. I’m new at… at everything, trying to figure stuff out, and I just can’t be perfect—”
“Perfect?” says Draculaura. “Who needs perfect? You’re a scientist. Scientists make mistakes all the time! Thousands of mistakes before they make great discoveries. I read that somewhere.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Frankie Stein, you are a silly monster. Now, let’s do an absolutely horrific presentation together, shall we?”
Frankie smiles, but the smile drops away when they stand up in the front of the room. Once again the entire class is staring at her—some with black eyes, some blue, some red, some with eyeballs waving on the tips of tentacles. Their teacher, Mr. Rotter, folds his arms.
Frankie smiles sheepishly.
From the back row, Clawdeen Wolf gives her two claws up. Frankie smiles wider. She glances at Draculaura, who nods encouragingly. They haven’t had time to prepare a new, exciting, creeptastic presentation—you know, since they spent most of the past couple of days journeying through eerie landscapes, battling deadly villains, barely escaping with their lives, and all that.
A tiny thorn of regret twinges in Frankie’s chest. A report on Shadow High would be just the kind of earth-cracking, jaw-dropping, thrilling presentation she had hoped for all along. But Frankie and Draculaura agreed that it’s also the one thing they can’t talk about. The more people who know about Shadow High and the other lands of the World of Stories, the more likely someone will try to cross lands. Any crossing back and forth risks pulling the lands closer together. With the lands separated, the Unmaking stays down deep in the trenches.
Maybe someday someone will figure out a way to safely unite all the lands. Until then…
“Our report is on… Normie High!” says Frankie.
The class applauds politely.
Frankie and Drac take turns delivering fascinating facts about Normie High.
“In Normie High, the kids use things called ‘drinking fountains’ to drink… water!”
“Ohhhh,” says the class.
“In Normie High, their lockers are shaped like tall, skinny rectangles!”
“Aaaah,” says the class.
When they wrap up their presentation, Draculaura looks at Frankie with a raised eyebrow. Frankie nods. They agreed to a single special effect.
“The End!” says Draculaura. She presses a button on the EffecTacular.
A small burst
of fireworks brightens the gloomy classroom with purple, red, and blue sparks of light.
“Oooooh,” says the class.
Frankie smiles. Purple for Raven, red for Apple, and blue for Maddie. Draculaura smiles, too, reaching out to take Frankie’s hand, the new hand her dad attached last night. They stare at the pretty light show, smiling contentedly, until they notice that some of the fireworks sparks landed on Mr. Rotter’s desk and his papers are crackling with flames. Frankie is prepared this time and presses the SIMULATED SWAMP WATER button. The fire fizzles out with a puff of gray smoke.
Their classmates jump to their feet, claws, and hooves, applauding wildly. Mr. Rotter rolls his eyes. Draculaura laughs.
“We did it!” says Draculaura.
“It wasn’t perfect,” Frankie says.
“Eh, perfect is boring.”
THE NOISES OUTSIDE FRANKIE’S BEDROOM window usually help her sleep. Frogs croaking, witches cackling, wolves howling, and the wet, slurping footfalls of Unseen Things all combine to make a soothing backdrop to her rest. But not tonight. Tonight the frogs are too loud, the witches too annoying, and the wolves too shrill. The slow tread of Unseen Things is nice, but it isn’t enough to drown out everything else.
The electric spinning compass is on her nightstand, a memento from an adventure that is already fading from memory. The compass is useless now, of course. Raven’s enchantment has worn off. And the chisel that was in it is now far away, safe in its socket at Shadow High.
Frankie opens Apple’s backpack. Besides the Mapalogue and the Skullette, there are a few other Apple-y items: a new notebook full of crisp white paper, a sweater in case of a chill, a hat in case of sun, her outdoors-wear tiara, and a packet of unsalted nuts. On a lark, Frankie sticks the tiara in the compass and flips on the power switch. It whirs, the electric motor working just as it should. No magic now, but the soft hum of the machine is soothing, and it drowns out the louder croaks and cackles, so she leaves it on.
And after Frankie drifts to sleep, sometime between night’s depths and its shallows, a spark grows around the tiara. A soft green pulses from the compass, and if someone were watching, they’d see the glow form the barest hint of an arrow pointing west.
Shannon Hale and Dean Hale are the New York Times bestselling wife-and-husband writing team behind The Princess in Black series, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World, and the graphic novel Rapunzel’s Revenge. Shannon is also the author of books like The Goose Girl, Newbery Honor–winner Princess Academy, Real Friends, and Ever After High: The Storybook of Legends.1 Dean and Shannon are thrilled to be writing this book together, especially since “a clash of monsters and fairytales” is also an apt description for their marriage. They live in Utah, where they herd their four young children, write books, and perform in a punk rock band named Rat Muzzle.2
1 Also some other Ever After High books that my parents narrated: The Unfairest of Them All, A Wonderlandiful World, and Once Upon a Time. They are so good, but don’t tell my parents I said so, or they might get big-headed about it.
2 Um… I think they’re kidding about the punk rock band thing. Ooh, if I had a punk band, I’d call it Figure of Screech. Or maybe Scream of Consciousness. No lie, my dad is part of a barbershop quartet named the Narratones. What would you call your band?
Also by Shannon Hale
EVER AFTER HIGH
The Storybook of Legends
The Unfairest of Them All
A Wonderlandiful World
Once Upon a Time:
A Story Collection
Keep reading with Little, Brown.
Get activities, videos, reading guides, and more!
LittleBrownYoungReaders.com
Facebook.com/LittleBrownYoungReaders
Instagram.com/LittleBrownYoungReaders
Twitter.com/LittleBrownYR
Youtube.com/LittleBrownBooks
Pinterest.com/ LittleBrownYoungReaders
