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.
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.
We continue in this fashion long after the next batch of cookies has burned to a crisp, as I suggest and tweak and correct Rapscullio’s portrait. “Hurry,” I say, wondering how much time I have before Delilah opens the book again and all this hard work is lost.
“Genius takes time,” Rapscullio says. But he finally turns the pad around so that I can see it. And sure enough, there is Delilah, staring straight back at me.
“Yes,” I say, nodding.
Rapscullio is pleased with himself. “So what’s the rush?” he asks. “What did she do?”
“Do?” I say.
“What crime did she commit?”
Then I remember the ruse I’ve used to get him to draw Delilah. “She’s a thief,” I say.
It’s not really a lie, after all. Because she’s totally, unequivocally stolen my heart.