by Jodi Picoult
page 40
In a way, Oliver could argue that his whole life had led up to this moment: when he stood toe to toe with the beast that had killed his father.
The dragon’s red scales shimmered in the heat of the day. His eyes were as black as the heart of the man who’d conjured him. His clawed feet scrabbled for purchase on the bald rock of the Cape of Passing Tides. As Oliver watched, Pyro tilted back his long throat, drew in a deep breath, and bellowed a plume of fire into the sky.
Oliver’s pulse was racing. He was so close to the dragon that he could smell charred flesh and ash. This was danger, up close and personal, in a way he’d never experienced and had carefully avoided his whole life. He wondered, as he had many times during his childhood, what his father had been thinking at this moment. Had King Maurice stood, steadfast, with no fear as he brandished his sword and ran toward his death? Had his last thoughts been of his beloved wife? The son he would never meet?
I cannot get out of this alive, Oliver thought.
He reached around his neck for the compass his mother had given him. If there was ever a time to turn tail and run back home, this was it. But as his fingers closed around the small disk, he imagined his father clutching it even as he battled this same dragon. Oliver wanted to be the sort of son that his father would have been proud of. The one who faced his fears, instead of falling prey to them.
He let the compass drop back beneath his shirt.
Maybe he did not have his father’s skill with a sword, or the kind of courage that inspired epic poems and legends. But that was not the only way to win a battle.
“Wait!” Oliver cried. “I didn’t come here to fight you. I’m here to help!”
The dragon took a menacing step forward and roared. Flames singed the hair around Oliver’s brow.
He remembered a childhood story that his mother used to read to him at night. “My,” Oliver said softly, “what big teeth you have.”
The dragon proudly flashed his massive overbite, gnashing his teeth inches away from Oliver’s face.
Instead of flinching, however, in the cloud of smoky breath, Oliver just frowned. “Well,” he said, “no wonder you’re in so much pain.”
The dragon, about to swipe his tail at him, hesitated.
“Look, dental issues are nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Pyro snorted, the fiery ball igniting a tree just to Oliver’s left. “Denying it will not make it any better,” Oliver insisted. “Do you or do you not have a smoky aftertaste in your mouth?”
The dragon blinked.
“Classic symptomology. You, my friend, suffer from an impacted firecuspid. If left unattended, it can lead to scaly skin, flaring of the nostrils, charred tongue…”
With each recognizable symptom, the dragon backed away, eyes wide.
“…and untimely death.”
The dragon sat back on his haunches and clamped his mouth firmly shut.
“Lucky for you, I have some experience with orthodontia.” Oliver took a step forward. “Just close your eyes, and open your mouth wide.”
The dragon slowly, warily, opened his massive jaws.
This was the place his father had died. Holding his breath, Oliver cautiously climbed onto the dragon’s spongy tongue. He stared at the teeth, large as boulders, with bits of flesh and blood caught between them. His boot slipped, and as he fell to his knees, something winked at him. It looked like a silver filling.
Oliver narrowed his eyes and realized that it wasn’t a filling at all. It was a knight’s helmet, a piece of the armor he’d created with Orville—made of the strongest, most fireproof material in the kingdom—reduced to a shredded ball of foil.
This knight had died. Oliver’s father had died. This dragon could swallow Oliver whole. No amount of skill with words and lies and ruses could protect him from bodily harm.
As if to underscore this fact, the dragon belched, and a gust of flame rushed toward Oliver like a wave. He reached into his rucksack and closed his fingers around the fire extinguisher that the mermaids had given him.
He pulled out the metal key to activate it and carefully positioned the canister between two enormous molars. “Now,” he said, gingerly backing out of the dragon’s mouth and wiping his tunic clean of saliva, “I need you to bite down very gently.”
Pyro clamped his mouth shut. Oliver counted to three under his breath, and suddenly white foam began oozing out from between the dragon’s gums. “Ah,” he said. “I can see it’s working….”
The dragon began wheezing. His mouth opened, but instead of a burst of flames came a sad, weak cough. Like any cornered animal, Pyro began to lash out with his claws and his tail, slicing the air. Oliver leaped out of the way, hiding behind a rock as the dragon retreated down the hill to the ocean.
When he heard the dragon’s cry growing fainter, Oliver edged forward. Pyro’s head was beneath the surface of the water, and he was drinking greedily to flush out the taste of the chemicals. While he was submerged, Scuttle and Walleye crept from their hiding places and threw their nets over Pyro, trapping the dragon, who let out a feeble snarl. Then Captain Crabbe emerged with a huge tank. “Now, now, my friend, you won’t feel a thing.” He placed a tube into the dragon’s mouth and released laughing gas into the beast’s lungs. Pyro’s overbite softened into a drunken smile. His huge eyelids drooped, and his roar dissolved into loud, smoky hiccups. Then he collapsed, creating a small earthquake around him.
Oliver started walking away from the dragon’s lair, a victory route his father had never taken.
OLIVER
THE NEXT TIME DELILAH OPENS THE BOOK, I FIND myself in a place I’ve never been. Missing are the bureau and mirror and the pink bedspread I am used to seeing in Delilah’s bedroom. I climb to the edge of the page, trying to see more of this new location. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere I used to come to a lot when I was little. My fort.” Delilah steps away so that I can see better. The walls are made of wooden slats, and there is a poorly sawed window. Shelves are filled with tin cans containing colored pencils, pennies, and stones. A stack of newspapers crowds a corner, their edges curled with age and humidity.
I must say, I am not impressed. I have never seen a fortress in such disrepair. “It’s a wonder the enemy didn’t sack you ages ago,” I murmur.
“No, but the neighbor’s dog came pretty close one time,” Delilah says. “It’s not a real fortress. It’s a pretend one.”
“Why would you pretend to be at war?”
“Because that’s what kids do,” Delilah explains. “You’ll see, when you’re here.”
At those words, we both grow silent. It’s time to try to write me out of this fairy tale.
“I brought you here on purpose,” Delilah says. “I thought it would be safer.”
“How so?”
“Well… for one thing, we don’t know how loud this is going to be…. Second, if my mother hears me talking to a book one more time, I’ll definitely be locked up.” She hesitates. “And third, if it does work, I don’t think she’ll be too thrilled to find a strange guy in my bedroom.”
“Good thinking,” I say. I look down at the copy of the fairy tale I took from Rapscullio’s bookshelf. In spite of its brush with fire, it is in perfect condition, healed of whatever scars and burns it once bore.
“So now what?” Delilah asks nervously.
“I guess I need to rewrite the ending.” But now that the moment has arrived, my heart is pounding. What if this doesn’t work, and instead of appearing in Delilah’s world, I resurface in another book—one whose story I don’t even know? Or stuck within the barrier that exists between my world and Delilah’s? What if rewriting the story just creates a new book, and I find myself in the same situation, but one layer deeper and that much harder to escape?
And even worse, what if it does work, and Delilah decides she doesn’t want to be saddled with a clueless former fairy-tale prince who doesn’t know the first thing about real life? What if the
reality of me pales in comparison to the guy she’s been imagining?
“What are you waiting for?” Delilah asks.
And perhaps, most frightening of all, what if I start this and it ends me? What if the place I go to is not her world or my former world, but nowhere at all?
I look at Delilah’s face, at the way she bites her bottom lip. I want to taste that bottom lip. I want her. None of these risks compares to the horror of staying here and knowing I never took the chance to be with Delilah.
“Right.” I reach into my tunic and pull out a piece of charcoal, which I tucked into a pocket after my last scene with Pyro—it’s simply not practical to carry around a quill and ink in one’s clothing—and I sharpen the edge against the cliff where I’m standing. “Here goes,” I say, and I flip to the last page of the book.
Studiously avoiding the illustration on the facing page, I slide the charcoal across the words THE END.
Suddenly I am flying head over heels through the pages, struggling to hold on to the charcoal and the copy of the fairy tale. Branches from the Enchanted Forest strike my face, stinging; a rogue comma hooks the edge of my hose and rips a hole; I am plunged into darkness and back into light; I am dragged through water and wind and fire, and finally land facefirst on the sand of Everafter Beach.
I push myself up onto my elbows, spitting out a mouthful of dirt and wincing at the ache of every muscle in my body. Surrounding me are all the characters awaiting my wedding to Seraphima. I sneak a glance at the book I’m still holding—and see that I have not fully crossed out the words. Grabbing hold of the charcoal, I strike the last letter in THE END.
“Oliver!” Frump barks. “What are you doing?” But even while he is speaking, I can see the edges of his shaggy ears and the point of his tail becoming transparent as he disappears. I swing my head to the right, just in time to see Seraphima reaching her hand out desperately toward me as she too fades away. Each of my friends in this story vanishes, leaving behind a white silhouette and utter silence, until there is just me, sprawled on the beach, and blank holes in the shapes the characters used to be.
“Good Lord,” I whisper, and just then, the entire beach drains of pigment, until I am completely surrounded by nothing at all.
I am still holding the book and the sliver of charcoal. With shaking hands I spread the page flat and write:
And he lived happily ever after with Delilah Eve McPhee.
As soon as the last letter of Delilah’s name is complete, the white space before my eyes begins to burn, opening in the center the way a flame eats its way through paper. The white curls back, revealing every color and inch and stitch and knot of the ratty old fortress into which Delilah had brought me.
That growing flame of color burns away a bit more of the white, and I begin to see Delilah’s shocked face. “Oliver?” she says.
But then her voice fades, like Frump’s did before, until it sounds like she is speaking to me from the opposite end of a long tunnel. The holes in the white space begin to narrow, closing themselves so that I can no longer see the tin cans with their colored pencils or the stack of newspapers in the corner. Frantically I look down at the open book in my lap and watch with horror as the last letter I’ve written, the e in McPhee, unravels itself from the tail to the loop, and then quivers and disappears. The same happens with the previous e, and the h and the P and so on, until my revised ending has been completely erased.
Then there is a slam of force against my chest, knocking my breath out of my lungs and causing me to see stars. When I get my bearings again, I’m in Seraphima’s arms, and all around me the characters from this story are cheering and clapping and celebrating my new marriage.
Or in other words, I’m right back where I never wanted to be.
* * *
Before Delilah and I can talk about what went wrong, her mother calls her. I hear Delilah say she’ll be back as soon as she can, but I don’t acknowledge her. Instead I accept the congratulations of the pirates and offer pecks of consolation to the mermaids, who are in tears, and all the while I am praying that Delilah will close the book and free me from this recurring nightmare.
The minute she does, Frump yells, “Cut!”
I grab him by the collar. “Where’d you go? And why did you come back?”
“Go?” Frump shakes his head. “Buddy, I think you’ve got sunstroke. No one’s gone anywhere. We’ve been watching the wedding like always,” he says with a grimace.
“But I saw you vanish… and… and… everything went white…”
This must be how Delilah feels, when nobody believes a word she’s saying. How could no one remember the beach evaporating? And where did they all disappear to?
Their memories have been wiped clean, I realize. Just like always, the book’s reset itself. It is as if that last scene I was trying to rewrite never happened.
And that’s probably for the best, because otherwise, they’d want to lynch me.
Frump looks at me strangely. “You might want to go to Orville and get that checked out.”
Before I can respond, a tree smacks into me from behind. Or so I think, until I turn around to find Snort—the shortest troll—clapping me on the shoulder. He pushes me aside so he can talk to Frump. “Boss,” the troll says, “I’m having a little trouble giving my character credibility in the last scene. Am I still holding a grudge against the prince, or do I just plain want to kill him?”
“It’s a happy ending, Snort.”
The troll furrows his brow. “So, then I want to kill him?”
Frump sighs. “I don’t care what you’re thinking. Just look happy while you’re thinking it!”
To my right, Socks and Pyro are locked in deep discussion. “You know the illustration puts on ten pounds,” Socks says.
“So true, so true,” Pyro replies.
“That’s why I’m on a no-carb hay diet,” Socks admits. “It’s doing wonders for my waistline.”
Ducking my head so that I won’t have to field any invitations for a game of chess or a swim with the mermaids, I slip away from Everafter Beach.
What happened back there?
Everything seemed to be working. Why did it stop?
I have walked halfway to the wizard’s cottage before I even realize where I’m headed. Perhaps Frump is right—maybe all I need is one of Orville’s potions to set my head straight again.
He lives in a rickety old cottage that looks, now that I think about it, something like Delilah’s fortress. Outside, hanging from the beams of the porch, are bundles of drying herbs and wind chimes made of rusty spoons. I knock on the door and hear an explosion and a crash inside.
“Orville?” I yell.
“Everything’s fine!” the wizard responds. “Just a slight backfire!”
A moment later he opens the door. His skin is blackened with ash, in stark contrast to his snowy beard and wild cloud of white hair. “Ah, my dear boy. Don’t tell me the queen sent you. I promise I’ll get around to the Fountain of Youth potion by the end of the month….”
“The queen didn’t send me,” I say. “I need your help, Orville.”
“What can I do for you?” the wizard asks, stepping aside to invite me in.
It’s hard to believe that he can see well enough in the dim light to concoct his potions. There are books upon books, old tomes so dusty that I find myself coughing uncontrollably. A table sits in the center of the room, missing one of its legs—which has been replaced by a stack of grimoires. On its surface are several large cast-iron cauldrons, each with a spoon that is stirring itself. “Orville,” I say, “I think that one’s boiling over.”
The wizard turns to see a thick, glowing green ooze bubbling over the edge of one pot. He gasps, sticks his hand in a jar of eyeballs, and tosses three into the mix. Immediately, the liquid hisses at him.
“What the devil is that?” I ask.
“Jealousy,” Orville says, gesturing at the contents of the cauldron. “Nasty, foul stuff.” He wipes his hands
on his apron, leaving behind two glowing palm prints. “Now, Prince Oliver, what’s your fancy?” He grins, gesturing to the floor-to-ceiling shelves full of glass canisters, all labeled carefully in Orville’s spidery writing: STRENGTH. PATIENCE. BEAUTY. GIGGLES.
I rub the back of my head, making my hair stand on end. “I blacked out a little while ago. Frump thought maybe you’d have something that could make me… I don’t know… a little more focused.”
“Ah, certainly,” Orville says. He starts moving jars, handing me a container of serpent’s teeth and another of dragon claws as he rummages. “I know it’s around here somewhere,” he mutters, and he climbs a dodgy ladder to the top shelf, knocking down a long, gauzy spool of memory and a cobalt blue shaker full of fairy dust, which overturns in a fit of glitter and sends us both into paroxysms of uncontrollable sneezing.
“If you can’t find it,” I yell out, “I’m happy to make do with a couple of leeches….”
“Aha!” Orville cries. He clatters down the ladder, holding a muslin sack. He unties the drawstring and shakes a handful of iridescent clamshells into his palm. Choosing one, he pries it open with a knife to reveal a pair of perfect white pearls inside. “Take two of these and call me in the morning,” he says cheerfully.
I put the pearls into my pocket just as there is a fiery explosion across the room. The heat blasts me flat onto my back on the floor and sends Orville flying. He ends up tangled in the wrought-iron candelabrum that hangs from the ceiling. “Excellent! It’s ready!” Orville says.
“What’s ready?” I ask, sitting up.
“Just a little something-something I’m trying out.” Orville walks toward a black pedestal that looks a bit like a birdbath but is filled with purple, hazy smoke. He rubs his hands together with glee, then extracts a chicken egg from his apron pocket. “Cross your fingers,” he says to me as I come to stand beside him.
