by Bach, Shelby
“It’s about a girl who marries a bear,” Mom told me eagerly. “When she finds out that he’s really a prince in disguise, a troll princess kidnaps him, and the girl has to go find the four winds to figure out where he is and rescue him. I’m sure you remember.”
A vague memory stirred. “Wasn’t that one of my picture books?”
Mom nodded excitedly. Lena looked at me with a questioning look. She wanted to know whether or not I wanted her help explaining.
I shook my head just a tiny bit. Not yet.
If Mom found out I spent the afternoon trying to stop a girl from bleeding to death, she would never let me go back on Monday.
“That’s creepy,” Amy said.
“It’s romantic and exciting and an inspiration to young adventurous girls everywhere,” Mom said, offended. (She meant me, by the way. And maybe Lena.)
“She marries a bear,” Amy pointed out icily. “I don’t believe in fairy tales.”
But Lena and I exchanged another glance, and a smile grew on our faces. It was a lot more fun to keep secrets from my family when there was someone to help me keep them. Someday, I would totally burst Amy’s bubble.
“I do,” Mom said, “but I think they’re a lot more messy and complicated than people give them credit for.”
“Does that mean we’re watching the movie?” Amy asked, making a face.
“Well, it’s not like there’s anything else on,” Mom said stubbornly.
So we watched the movie. Mom fell asleep halfway through, the pig and cow oven mitts stuffed under her head like a pillow. When the end credits rolled, Amy sent me and Lena to my room and then concentrated on Mom.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Amy told Mom softly, shaking her shoulder.
“She works too hard,” I told Lena as we ran up the stairs. “She probably could sleep for a hundred years.”
Lena grinned. “If you run down and kiss her, she might be a Character yet.”
“Yeah, right—I don’t think Mom thinks of me as her ideal Prince Charming.”
We laughed, really hard. Amy frowned and made shooing motions. Still giggling, we ran the rest of the way.
“It was nice of you to go back for second helpings on the brownies.” I flopped on the bed and burrowed under the covers. I wasn’t sure I could sleep after all that sugar. “Mom is a terrible cook. Someday, we’ll break it to her.”
“I like your family.” Lena sat on her bed—a twin I never used except sometimes to throw my book bag and dirty clothes on.
“Thanks.” With an embarrassed sort of grin, I beat my pillow into a more comfortable shape. “I like them too.”
“I didn’t realize that you were one of those Landons, the Hollywood kind,” she said, half-accusing. “You never said.”
“I kind of thought you knew.” I didn’t know what else to say. It would’ve been too awkward to thank her for not making a big deal out of Mom.
Lena tugged the blankets free from under the mattress. “They would be proud of you, you know. If you told them.”
That was why she brought up fairy tales. She wanted to feel it out—warm them up to the idea. Maybe I could tell Mom—someday.
“Even Amy,” Lena added with a small smile, “after she got over the shock.”
Lena wanted me to tell them. Her grandmother had been telling Lena, Jenny, and George stories about Madame Benne since they were born. Keeping secrets was probably weird for her.
“I’ll tell them. Eventually. After I have my Tale.” It wouldn’t matter as much then if Mom pulled me from EAS.
“What Tale do you want?” Lena rolled over onto her stomach and hugged her pillow. “You never talk about it.”
“Nothing where I sleep for years, waiting around for some random guy to come and kiss me,” I said, hating my name with a passion. When Lena started laughing, I was surprised and kind of hurt. “What? If I’m going to all the trouble of suffering through Hansel’s class, I want to use my sword.” Not to mention all my extra practices.
“It’s not . . . that.” Lena gasped for breath between fits of laughter. “But when . . . we asked Adelaide”—here, Lena laughed twice as hard—“she said, ‘Anything where I get kissed.’ . . . No wonder you two don’t get along,” she added, and I laughed too.
I guess we were too loud, because the door opened. Amy poked her head in. “What is going on in here? Did you two sneak in some laughing gas or something?”
“No,” I said, trying to stop giggling. “We’re just talking.”
Amy looked from me to Lena and smiled, glad that I was having fun. “Well, just don’t wake up your mom. Good night, girls.”
“’Night, Amy!”
“Good night!”
She closed the door, and Lena and I listened to her footsteps on the stairs, waiting until she reached the first floor before we started talking again.
“What Tale do you want?” I asked in a whisper. “You never talk about it either.”
“Well,” Lena said slowly, “I do want a Tale. It doesn’t need to be a famous one, though. What I really want is to be an inventor like Madame Benne.”
“Really?” That was impressive. I didn’t think much about what I wanted to be when I grew up. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to make movies, but Lena was already making magic mirror walkie-talkies. “How long ago was she alive?”
“Here. I’ll show you.” Lena climbed to the end of the bed, where she had left all her stuff, and she dug to the bottom of her backpack and pulled out a book—a fancy one bound with leather. Madame Benne: Genius Inventor or Fey Traitor? was gilded on the spine. It was very worn. She flipped to a dog-eared page near the end and passed it to me. “It’s there in the appendix.”
It was a genealogy chart, starting with Madame Benne’s birth in 927 AD and ending with Tobias Freeman in 1919. At the bottom, several more generations had been penciled in, with George, Jenny, and Lena LaMarelle squeezed in at the very edge of the page. I recognized Lena’s tiny, precise handwriting.
“You wrote in here?” I tried counting how many generations there were between Madame Benne and Lena, but I lost count at twenty-one. Then I flipped to the front. The bookplate said, very clearly, PROPERTY OF EVER AFTER SCHOOL, NORTH AMERICAN CHAPTER, REFERENCE ROOM. DO NOT REMOVE. “You stole a book and then you wrote in it?”
“She’s my ancestor,” Lena said. “And Gran wouldn’t let me pick out the Table of Plenty next week if I didn’t know so much about her and her inventions.”
I had hurt her feelings. So it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to point out that since she had a photographic memory, she didn’t need to keep the book. “I’m impressed you can trace your family tree back that far. I can’t even remember my great-grandparents’ names.” I closed the biography and passed it back to her.
Lena returned it to her bookbag, smiling a little. “It did take some doing.”
She took off her glasses. It was the first time I had seen her without them. She was very pretty, just as pretty as Adelaide. She had the smooth dark skin, high cheekbones, and full lips that all the LaMarelle siblings shared, but her eyes seemed much more gentle than Jenny’s. Or maybe that was just a sign that Lena couldn’t focus on me without her glasses on.
She set her glasses on the nightstand and slid deep under the covers. “Rory, who do you have a crush on?”
That was definitely a change in subject. “Nobody. Why?”
Lena didn’t answer, but no one brought up the subject of crushes at a sleepover completely out of the blue—not unless you secretly wanted to talk about the boy you liked.
“Lena, do you have a crush on someone?” I asked.
“No,” Lena said, too quickly.
“You do! Tell me who it is!”
“I said that I don’t,” Lena said firmly, sounding a lot like Jenny. “Besides, you aren’t telling either.”
“But I really don’t have a crush on anyone,” I protested.
Lena ran her hands over the covers and didn
’t say anything.
She would probably tell me if I guessed. I ran through the possible candidates. Not Chase. Too mean. But the triplets were a possibility. In fact, when one of them touched her, the day her mirrors exploded, she had acted suspiciously weird.
“Kyle. It’s Kyle,” I said decisively.
“Oh, no! Is it that obvious?” Lena moaned and pressed her face into her pillow.
She had wanted to talk about it. I did what I could, since I was failing in friend duties by not gushing about a crush of my own. “No, that was just a guess. But really, I think he’s the best of the triplets—of the whole sixth grade, actually.”
Wrinkling her nose in embarrassment, Lena groped at the lamp, but without her glasses, she couldn’t find the light switch. I turned it off for her and did my best not to laugh.
She didn’t say anything for so long I was pretty sure she had fallen asleep. I didn’t mind. Some girls change crushes almost as often as they change clothes, without really caring who knows about it, but Lena wasn’t that way. Me finding out was a big deal.
Then she whispered, “You won’t tell, will you?”
“Of course not,” I said, aghast. “I promise I won’t tell.”
Lena sighed. “Good night, Rory.”
“’Night, Lena.”
Then she really did fall asleep. I could tell, because she started to snore. Not loudly. Gently, like a cat purring. It was a comforting sound.
It took me a while to do the same. It wasn’t the afternoon’s events that kept me awake. Even though I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, I didn’t think of Evan or his sister or his friend once. I relived the sleepover, thinking about how nice it was when someone stayed the night. It had been so normal, so girly, to stay up late, watching movies and gossiping over boys, even if I didn’t have much to say. It had been a long time since I had gotten a chance to do that. Since third grade. Since Marta, who had known me from kindergarten.
I had missed it while we were traveling, and I hadn’t even known I had missed it. I had forgotten what it was like to have a best friend.
• • •
That was the night I dreamed I saw “Lena LaMarelle” on the Wall of Failed Tales.
It started out completely different. A humongous flat-screen TV played The Wizard of Oz. Adelaide was a munchkin, which she didn’t like. Chase was Glinda the Good Witch, which he hated. Lena was Dorothy, apron and all, and I ran around as Toto.
Then the giant TV morphed into the Wall, and I saw Lena’s name, carved into the stone with bubble letters, like you find doodled in binders and notebooks, with hearts all over them. Even though I knew I was dreaming, I sat crying at the base of the memorial and said, “It’s all my fault. What if she never wakes up?” The bouquet of yellow roses in my hand grew vines and crept up the Wall, sending tendrils into the stone, and I heard the crunch and crack as it broke above me.
I woke just before the pieces rained down over my head, sitting up in bed with a gasp so loud that Lena opened her eyes.
“What?” she murmured sleepily.
“Nothing.” My heart hammered so wildly that I felt vibrations in the mattress.
“Well, I don’t want to go to school,” she grumbled and turned over on her side, which made me think that she wasn’t as awake as she’d seemed.
I had to stifle a giggle, and then I was twice as worried, remembering her name in bubble letters.
The dream wasn’t telling the future. It couldn’t be.
Lying back down, I pulled the covers up to my chin with a burning stab of shame. I had been such an idiot, worrying over whether or not I would Fail my own Tale. It would be so much worse to lose my friend and know I was to blame.
It wouldn’t happen to Lena, I promised myself. No matter what Tale we had, or what villains we faced, I would make sure Lena came home in one piece.
The only problem was that if we were in danger, I didn’t know what I could do to save her.
t EAS next week, everyone couldn’t stop talking about the Fairie Market. Even Evan and his Companions.
On Monday, I saw him talking to the other seventh graders. I was sure he was filling them in on what happened in Atlantis, but when I passed him, he was just telling everyone how much Fey fudge he was going to buy during the Market. Nobody mentioned the bandage on Evan’s hand, or the bruises on Russell’s face, or the sling Mary wore over her left arm. Friday’s scare seemed to fade from everyone’s mind in all the excitement.
Jenny stopped by Lena’s study spot once every afternoon to nag.
“Remember—Gran wants a pine Table of Plenty to match the other furniture,” she told Lena at first. “And it can’t be any longer than six feet. We need it to fit in the kitchen.”
On Tuesday, she added, “The Table should specialize in blueberry pancakes and upside-down cake. We’re going to save a ton of money on groceries, but it’s not worth it if the food’s inedible. Ask the dealer for a taste test before you start talking prices. I don’t want you to be afraid to demand it if you have to. If you get nervous about bargaining, come find me. I’ll help you.”
By Wednesday, I was almost as annoyed as Lena was. “Make sure you check it for dings and scratches,” Jenny said. “Just because it’s magic doesn’t mean that Gran will let us put it in her home if it looks like junk. I’m sure there are plenty of gently used antique pine Tables of Plenty out there, if you know where to look.”
Lena nodded obediently, but as soon as Jenny walked off to join her friends, she scowled fiercely. “She is stressing me out. It would be one thing if Gran let me skip school to get here when it opens, but noooo, my education is more important, blah, blah, blah. How many good Tables do they think will be left just a few hours before closing?”
But her eyes glittered behind her glasses, as impatient for Friday as the rest of us.
• • •
On the day of the Fairie Market, I rushed to the red door, and the hallway behind it was lit. That was the first time it had happened. I was so used to barreling through a dark corridor that I stopped short. At first, I thought that someone might have gotten lost, but it was only a girl—the same girl who I'd met beside the fruit tarts on my second day. I’d almost forgotten about her.
She knelt in front of the wall, where a bright lamp hung from a silver chain. It was either magical or battery-operated, because it didn’t have a plug. The girl’s silvery braid fell in a coil at the floor. All of a sudden, the purple material under her knees sprang up and started dusting stone chips off the carving with its tassels.
I jumped—I had never seen a magic carpet before—and the girl turned to stare at me. It was kind of creepy. With such dark eyes and very light hair, she looked a little more than human—like a Fey who had lost her wings.
I pointed to the metal tool in her hand. “I didn’t know this hall was still under construction.”
“I started it long before you came.” Her voice was quiet, musical, and lonely.
Her carving was only half-finished, but with the tiny precise marks already chiseled, I could make out a woman in profile and her towering crown. “She looks like a queen,” I said, and the girl nodded.
The carved queen looked familiar—a little like the silver-haired girl but with a longer face and much shorter hair.
The girl pulled her braid over her shoulder and brushed bits of stone from it. She had a scar, one that I hadn’t noticed before—a grayish-pink line that wrapped around the nape of her neck. I wondered what Tale had given her that.
She caught me staring. Her smile was slow but warm. “I like children your age. You have no idea who you will become.”
I scowled. She didn’t look that much older than me, but several EASers had made it very clear that they think the difference between being eleven and being sixteen is a big deal.
The girl pointed at the door to the courtyard. “Lena is standing beside the Tree of Hope. You’ll need to bury the ashes when she’s gone.”
I hesitated, almost positive that th
e last bit didn’t make any sense, but there wasn’t anybody else around to agree with me. Lena had told me that some Characters had a hard time after their Tale. Whatever had given her that scar around her neck had to be pretty intense.
“Go on, Rory,” she said softly, turning back to her carving. So I went through the door.
My mouth immediately fell open.
The courtyard was transformed. It was four times bigger than I had ever seen it, and a new mountain range loomed over one side. Red, orange, and yellow banners were tied to the Tree of Hope’s branches, all proclaiming welcome in all different languages. Some of the writing wasn’t even human. Stalls and tables lined a cobblestone avenue that stretched on as far as I could see. A thousand voices were talking, laughing, or shouting at the same time.
Every few seconds, one called out louder than the rest.
“Dragon scales! Fresh dragon scales! You can still smell the sulfur on them!”
“Portable carriages here, disguised to look like a pumpkin! Demonstration in ten minutes!”
“Carryall backpacks, guaranteed to hold three medium-size cars.”
Black birds the size of dogs roosted in a branch above the nearest stall. It looked like it sold feathers. Robin feathers; eagle feathers; tiny bluebird feathers; fancy peacock plumes; furry, lion-colored feathers; feathers crafted out of silver or maybe plucked from metal birds. I didn’t think anyone was watching the stall, but when I leaned forward to get a better look at a long scarlet plume that seemed to be on fire, one of the giant black birds fluttered down. When it reached the ground, a man with long black hair and a proud arch in his nose stood in its place.
“That’s a phoenix feather, miss,” he told me. “Genuine. I can produce the certification. Would you like to touch it?”
I was tempted, but Lena appeared, grabbing my arm just in time.
“No, thank you!” She pulled me away, whispering, “Ravens! Indigenous to North America. Not to be trusted.”
“He seemed nice,” I said, but Lena shook her head.
“Tricksters, all of them.” She led me out of the busy traffic, behind a silver truck parked next to the Tree of Hope.
