Between the Lines (25 page)

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room, missing one of its legs—which has been replaced by a stack of grimoires.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.

He drops the egg into the purple smoke, but I never hear it hit bottom. Instead, the smoke rises into a tall
column and forms a lavender screen. After a moment, a chicken materializes upon the smoky display.

“I… I don’t get it,” I say.

“What you’re looking at,” Orville explains, “is the future.”

Or the past, I think. After all, what came first—the chicken or the egg—

Orville interrupts my thoughts. “Pretty ingenious, don’t you think?”

“But that… you can’t…”

“Let’s try something else.” The wizard glances around the shack and then plucks a caterpillar off the lopsided window frame. He drops it into the mist, and a moment later, a butterfly made of violet smoke rises in a spiral from the pit of the pedestal.

“Orville!” I cry. “That’s incredible!”

“Not bad for an old guy, huh?” He elbows me, then reaches up to pluck a hair from his head. “Here goes nothing….”

He drops his own hair into the mist, and a moment later, there he is, clear as can be—if a little more wizened and lined in the face. This future Orville is bent over a cauldron that suddenly explodes in a purple blast.

“Yessir,” Orville says. “Looks entirely accurate.”

“I want to try. I want to see
my
future.”

The wizard frowns. “But why, Oliver? You
already know what happens to you. You live happily ever—”

“Yeah, yeah, right. But still. You never know. I mean, will I live in the kingdom or move away? Have kids? Start a war? I just want some details….”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea….”

Before Orville can stop me, I yank a hair out of my head and toss it onto the pedestal.

For a long moment, there is nothing but a swirling lavender whirlpool. Then a geyser of mist sprays toward the ceiling, raining down in a dome. Inside this snow globe made of smoke, I can see myself.

The first thing I notice is that I’m not wearing a tunic.

I’m not carrying a sword or a dagger.

And I’m not standing in a scene from this fairy tale.

Instead, I am dressed just like the people in the photographs I’ve seen in Delilah’s house. I’m sitting in a room that reminds me of Delilah’s bedroom… except different. There is a fireplace, for example, that Delilah’s room doesn’t have. And there’s a bookcase behind me, with every shelf filled. I can’t understand some of the writing on the volumes; it is in tongues I do not recognize.

Still, this looks awfully promising for a future outside this story.

Or so I think, until I see a girl walk in and wrap her arms around me. I can’t see her face from where I’m standing.

Orville suddenly rushes forward and waves his hands through the purple smoke so that the image dissolves. “Your Highness, this is obviously still in the testing stages,” he says nervously. “Still working out several glitches…”

I grab the wizard by the throat. “Bring it back!”

“I can’t, sire….”

“Do it now!”

Orville is trembling. “You won’t want to see it,” he whispers. “The person you’re with… is not Princess Seraphima.”

I pluck another hair from my head and throw it into the fountain. Again, the dome of smoke rises and the scene appears, exactly as it was a moment before. “If you touch it,” I mutter to Orville, “those frog eyes go straight down your throat.”

The girl in the purple mist wraps her arms around me. Slowly, she turns so that I can see her features.

Orville was right.

I didn’t want to see this at all.

Not because it’s not Seraphima, but because it’s not Delilah either.

*   *   *

I used to think that all I ever wanted was to get out of this stupid book. Now I realize that one must be careful what one wishes for. Getting out might not be my wildest dream—but my biggest nightmare.

I tried to write myself out of the book, and it didn’t work. I saw my future, and Delilah wasn’t a part of it. I can live without leaving this fairy tale, but I can’t live without her.

I need help. And I need it fast. And so, even with the uncomfortable knowledge that what I am about to do could hurt someone else, I begin to run toward Rapscullio’s lair.

By the time I arrive, I am sweating and out of breath. The lair is open, and there is a heavenly vanilla scent wafting out the door. I poke my way inside to find him baking sugar cookies in his kitchen. As he’s dusting the tops with pink sprinkles, I clear my throat to get his attention.

“Ah, Your Highness! You’re just in time to taste the first batch. They’re still warm!”

“Rapscullio,” I say, “this is no time for cookies. I need your assistance.”

Sensing my urgency, he puts down his spatula. “I have twelve to fourteen minutes before the next batch comes out of the oven,” he says solemnly.

I grab his hand and drag him into the library—the one where, not long ago, I tried to paint myself out of this book and failed miserably. “I need you to draw something for me.”

“Again?” Rapscullio says. “This is your emergency? You’re having an artistic epiphany?”

“Just do it,” I argue, frustrated. “I need a picture of
a young woman. I’ll tell you what she looks like, and you create it on that special canvas of yours.”

His eyes brighten. “You mean a
wanted
poster!”

Well. Truer words were never spoken. “Exactly,” I say.

“I’ve done several, you know. My masterpiece is the one I painted of the Knave of Hearts after he stole the queen’s tarts. It’s still hanging in the castle jail.”

“Great.” I sit down on a stack of books, and a cloud of dust rises around me. “Now—she has dark hair that comes down to her shoulders. It’s straight, with a bit of a curl on the ends.”

“I’ll have to start with a sketch first.” Rapscullio takes a pad and begins to scribble. “How tall is she?”

I realize I have no idea. I have no reference point for that.

“Medium height,” I say, guessing.

“And her eyes?”

“They’re brown.”

“Limpid chocolate brown, or dark-corners-of-the-soul brown?”

I shrug. “Warm brown, like honey. And her mouth…”

“Like this?”

Rapscullio shows me a tiny bow, lips pursed together, but that’s not Delilah at all. Her mouth is always on the verge of a smile. It makes her look like there’s something amazing she needs to tell me, even when it’s just
hello.