The Last Ever After. Soman Chainani

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СКАЧАТЬ Peter Pan?

      “I’m with Peter,” boomed the huge, blue-haired woman, spinning from the mirror. “Not even out of school, these little brats. Should be lickin’ our feet and beggin’ for autographs! Instead they somehow get their own fairy tale—students! a fairy tale!—and now that tale’s got its panties in a knot, wakin’ our old villains from the dead and draggin’ us straight out of our Ever Afters—”

      “Ever Afters! Ha!” chimed a gangly, high-voiced man in suspenders and beige breeches, with big, twinkly eyes, a long nose, and a full head of white hair. Tiny round scars marked all the joints of his long, tanned limbs, as if he’d once been screwed together. “First of all, Peter can barely leave his house he’s so depressed at growing up. Second, I’d never have wished to be a real boy if the Blue Fairy told me real boys end up with arthritis and bad eyes and permanent constipation. And third, Ella told me herself she preferred sweeping cinders to being a queen.”

      “When did I ever say that?” the fat woman squawked.

      “Last night,” the long-nosed man replied, looking surprised by her question. “You drank a barrel of wine and told me you miss cleaning for your stepsisters, because at least you felt useful and stayed fit and now you’re old and bored and big as a house—”

      “WHO ASKED YOU?” thundered the woman. “YOU SPENT HALF YOUR LIFE AS A PUPPET!”

      “First they get mad at me for lying. Now they get mad at me for telling the truth,” moped the long-nosed man, curling into a sofa.

      Agatha’s and Tedros’ eyes bulged even wider. “Pinocchio?” said Tedros.

      “Cinderella?” said Agatha.

      “Don’t give me that face,” Cinderella sneered back at her. “For bein’ Camelot’s supposed future queen, you ain’t much to look at yourself.” Her hawkish green eyes shot down to Agatha’s clumps. “Bet no one wants to see those feet in glass slippers.”

      “Hey now! She’s my princess!” Tedros jumped in.

      “I don’t blame you, handsome,” Cinderella smirked, voice smooth as an eel. “Your daddy didn’t have good taste in girls either.”

      Tedros looked like he’d been kicked in the pants.

      Yuba sighed. “Professor Dovey had just as much faith in Agatha as she did in you, Ella. So I suggest you treat our guests with respect—”

      “We have the respect when these two studenten fix the mess!” croaked a wild-haired, hunchbacked man in a wheelchair with owlish gray eyes and a harsh foreign accent. “Think they’re special because Storian writes their story? Well, at least our stories have end, yes? But these two change ending again and again—‘Are we heppy yet?’ ‘Are we heppy yet?’ Bah. Fools! Now see! School Master young, Evil redoing stories, and dead witch hunting me I have to kill all over again—”

      “I killed her, Hansel and I am not killing smelly witch again,” said a wild-haired woman in a wheelchair next to him with the same accent, her big gray eyes flaying Agatha and Tedros. “Your story bringing villains out of graves, your responsibility put them back.” She smiled phonily. “And I’m Gretel, since the bossy little gnome said we must introduce ourselves.”

      “Which leaves me and Briar Rose (or Sleeping Beauty for the uneducated Reader), who were planning our fairy-tale wedding until you came along,” said a freckle-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a brown tunic and white lederhosen. He was holding hands with an elegant, white-haired woman in a revealing puce gown. “Now we’re hiding from my man-eating giant and Rose’s curse-obsessed fairy—”

      “When Jack and I should be picking out a cake,” Briar Rose glared.

      “That makes seven of us who think these young twerps should sleep in the Woods,” trumped Cinderella.

      Tink squeaked.

      “Eight,” said Cinderella.

      Tedros and Agatha gawked at the gang of famous old fairy-tale heroes who just voted them out of their cave.

      “It’s why I tried to avoid you meeting Evers on the trails …” Uma yawned in the corner. “Everyone blames you for messing up the Woods.” She fell back asleep.

      “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think they’re adorable,” chirped a short, big-bottomed old woman with a dyed brown bob and a red-hooded cape. “Isn’t that what being old is for? Mentoring younger folk to get through their stories?”

      “Oh go back to granny’s, you blithering ass,” growled Cinderella.

      Red Riding Hood shut up.

      “You all act as if we don’t need our young guests,” Yuba’s voice slashed through the cave.

      Everyone twirled to see the old gnome standing in front of the moth-holed curtain hanging across the cave wall, the White Rabbit standing at his side like a magician’s assistant. “Let me remind you that one week ago, the School Master placed his ring on his queen’s finger, earning her vow of true love. That same night, the villains rose from their graves on Necro Ridge and the Crypt Keeper was killed.”

      On Yuba’s cue, the rabbit drew the curtain back, revealing dozens of storybooks spread open to their last pages, tacked to the wall with sharpened sticks.

      “Two days later, Rapunzel and her prince were kidnapped by Mother Gothel and hurled from her tower to their deaths,” the gnome declared, illuminating one of the storybooks with his staff and its gruesome new ending to Rapunzel’s story. “Then yesterday Tom Thumb was eaten alive by a giant, while Rumpelstiltskin killed the miller’s daughter who’d once guessed his name,” Yuba went on, lighting up two more storybooks with revised endings. “And today, Snow White and her seven dwarves have been murdered at Cottage White, where they once lived happily.” He snapped his staff like a whip, lighting up a last storybook with a loud crack. “All of these victims refused to leave their homes and join our League in hiding, as did many others who may soon suffer the same fate.”

      A tense silence filled the cave as Agatha took in the painting of a dead maiden and her seven dwarves—the same scene the witch had presided over as it transformed. Agatha rubbed unconsciously at the deep bruises on her forearm and wrist.

      “S-S-Snow is dead?” Pinocchio whispered.

      “Pretty, sweet Snow?” echoed Peter Pan.

      (“Wasn’t that pretty,” Cinderella mumbled.)

      The League members all gazed at Snow White’s terrible new ending, their eyes wet and scared, as if her death suddenly made the others real.

      “I saw who killed her.”

      Agatha’s voice came out before she even knew it.

      The whole League slowly looked up at her.

      Agatha slid her focus to the floor, palms clammy as she relived the scene in the glen. “It was the wicked queen in an old woman’s disguise, her ankles and legs burnt up, just like the fairy tale said. Her skin was peeling off like a corpse and she smelled like decaying flesh. And her eyes … they were bloodshot and dead, like there was no soul inside of her.” Agatha shook her head, trying to understand. “She could have СКАЧАТЬ