The Last Ever After. Soman Chainani

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      “And let me guess: only you can make her destroy his ring,” Agatha needled.

      “Yes,” Tedros said fervently. “Because I can make her see that if she comes with us, she’ll still have a chance at true love one day, even if it isn’t with him. I can make her see how beautiful and vibrant and alive she is … how soft and clever and fun and …” He smiled, lost in his memory of her. “I can make her feel loved in a way you can’t.”

      Agatha took in her prince’s glazed smile as he stared off in space. He used to look at her the same way once. Now he was talking about another girl with that very same look.

      Tedros blinked out of his trance and saw Agatha burning pink.

      “I rescue her alone. Got it?” she said, shoving past him and trundling up the path, before she stopped and glowered back. “And if you ever dare faint anywhere near me, I’m not catching you!”

      Tedros snorted. “Princes don’t faint!”

      Agatha gritted her teeth and stormed ahead, until she caught up with her teacher.

      Princess Uma gave her a look and glanced at Tedros, muttering to himself a ways behind. “Ever Afters always look so easy in storybooks, don’t they?”

      “Sometimes I feel like he needs a real princess,” murmured Agatha.

      “Have you been a ghost all this time and I haven’t known it?”

      “You know what I mean. I feel like deep down, he wants someone pretty and bubbly and who treats him like a prince.” Agatha peeked up at her teacher. “Someone whose kids won’t look so interesting.”

      “I had a prince with shiny hair and a small nose like me and who I always put first,” Uma replied. “Ever After wasn’t any easier.”

      “You had a prince?”

      “Kaveen, Prince of Shazabah. Aladdin’s great-grandson. Saved me from a hive of bloodsucking bees during the Trial by Tale my first year. The bees nearly killed him and Kaveen lost his chance to win Captain … but in the end, he’d won me. Clarissa used to catch us hiding in the library after curfew. That tortoise was always asleep and there’s this cushy little nook behind the Love Spells shelf. Our initials are still carved into the wood.” She smiled, reminiscing. “After we were married, I was kidnapped by a warlock from Netherwood, intent on ransoming me back to my prince. Part of me knew I should wait for Kaveen to come and rescue me. But I couldn’t risk my prince’s life! Suppose Kaveen got hurt? Suppose the warlock killed him?” Uma’s caramel eyes glistened. “A white stag from the Woods answered my call for help. He ripped the warlock through his heart with his horns and battled his henchmen while I escaped. By the time Kaveen arrived, I was already free.”

      “I remember seeing it in a painting,” Agatha said, for Uma had presented her storybook the first day of school. “It was your happy ending.”

      “Looks like it on a page, doesn’t it?” her teacher said softly. “The Storian wrote the triumph of Princess Uma for all to hear—only my prince wasn’t a part of it. I became legendary for my deep friendship with the animals, while Kaveen was endlessly taunted for arriving to save his princess too late. A princess famous for all time and her prince, a failure. No one sees that in a storybook, do they?” She paused. “He never said he blamed me, of course. But the stress slowly takes its toll, day after day, until one day you realize you’re always fighting or ignoring each other and you can’t go back to the way it was before. Your happy ending no longer feels happy at all.”

      A hot rash rose on Agatha’s neck. “What happens then?”

      “Then you’re both better off with someone else, aren’t you? Or even alone …” Uma’s voice cracked. “Like me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Once happiness is gone between two people, I don’t think it ever comes back.”

      “But … but it has to come back!” Agatha fought. “That’s why Tedros and I came back—to be happy together—”

      Uma smiled sadly. “Then you’ll have to prove me wrong, won’t you?”

      Agatha shook her head. “But you’re a real princess! If you couldn’t keep your prince, then how can—”

      “Does Snow White still live in the cottage?” Tedros piped, busting in between them.

      Agatha cleared her throat. Uma dabbed at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “A queen in a cottage? Don’t be silly,” she pooh-poohed, walking quicker. “Snow lives in the king’s castle, the one you saw before. She’s on her own now, since the king died of a snakebite five years back and her dwarf friends are scattered in other kingdoms, rich and well taken care of. When the School Master returned, the League offered to shelter Snow at Headquarters, but she said she was quite happy in her new life and had no intention of revisiting the old.”

      “What does the League have to do with Snow White’s old life?” asked Agatha.

      “And why would the League protect someone whose story is over?” Tedros scoffed—

      A chilling, high-pitched scream tore through the Woods.

      The three Evers stopped dead, looking up at a long, eight-foot-high wall of wilting lilacs, stretching out at the end of the path.

      The scream came from behind it.

      “We’ll take another route!” Uma panicked. “Let’s use the— Tedros! What are you doing?!”

      Tedros hustled towards the hedge. “Sounded like a girl’s cry for help.”

      Speechless, Uma whirled to Agatha. “Come, follow m— Agatha!”

      “If he’s going to rescue a random girl, I should keep my eye on him, don’t you think?” said Agatha.

      Uma was about to level them both with a stun spell, but it was too late; they were already clawing through the lilacs. “‘Rescue them from a grave’—those were my orders,” Uma puffed as she smushed through the flower wall after them. “Not ‘chase grandstanding princes’ or ‘manage jealous girlfrien—’”

      She came through and froze. Agatha and Tedros stood rigid next to her.

      Nestled into the back of a clearing, Cottage White lay ahead, half in shadow, two stories of lumpy wood, with a coned, pink roof shaped like a princess’s cap. An explosion of colorful shrubs and flowers had grown untended on the roof and first-story eaves, and rain had bled the colors into the wood, so that the house had the tint of a rainbow on all its sides. In the front garden, amidst the unkempt blooms and a meeting post for tours, there were seven pairs of brass shoes laid out in a row, tarnished and dented, a tribute to seven old dwarves who’d gone on to new lives. Only now, as the three Evers stared out at fourteen shoes that were supposed to be empty, they saw they weren’t empty at all.

      Before each brass pair lay a dwarf’s body, facedown in a puddle of blood. Each was dressed in a tunic of a solid color from head to toe, with matching velvet nightcaps, their tiny feet perfectly fitted into the sculpted shoes.

      From the pallor of their hands and the stiffness of their legs, it was clear at once they were all dead.

      “No … not … not possible—” СКАЧАТЬ