Of Sorcery and Snow (41 page)

“Tell her, Mildred,” said Rapunzel. “It is time.”

I was sure the Director would refuse. She
never
took orders from Rapunzel.

But the Director slid the book away from Rumpelstiltskin's fingers, opened it where the bookmark was, and set it down in front of me. Lena and Chase leaned in on both sides, reading with me:

And underneath was an illustration of a girl and boy on top of some gold coins, and the green-and-gold dragon getting ready to eat them. My first day at EAS.

That was how long they'd been keeping the truth from me.

My hands trembling, I reached for the book and turned pages, not bothering to read when it had so many pictures. There we were, the three of us, camped out in Matilda Searcaster's desk, reading the Snow Queen's letter. There was the Snow Queen talking to Jack in the Glass Mountain. Chase and me falling from the beanstalk. The snowflake throwing stars hanging from the ceiling in EAS's kitchen. The West Wind, trapped in that glass vial. The goblin vault in the Hidden Troll Court. The staircase of talking stones. The Mia doll chasing me, Chase, and Ben to the throne room.

I stopped there. I didn't want to see any illustrations from
this
quest. I didn't need to see myself slay Mark or the Snow Queen execute Hadriane.

“The Canon meeting at the Fairie Market,” Chase said, practically spitting he was so mad. “You were voting not to tell us.”

“Yes.” The Director obviously didn't regret making that decision. “And the day you left on Lena's Tale, I put the secret in the Pounce Pot.”

I still didn't understand. “Why does it just say my name? What Tale
is
it?”

“It's an Unwritten Tale,” said the Director. “A Tale without precedent. It follows no guidelines, because no Tales that occurred previously compare to it. Lena was the last in a long line of Jacks, but you are the first and only bearer of this Tale.”

“In the history of the Ever Afters, only one other Character has gotten an Unwritten Tale,” Rumpelstiltskin explained.

“The Snow Queen,” Lena breathed.

All that time I'd wondered, but what we shared was so simple: We both had Tales no one had seen before.

“My sister's Tale was called ‘The Tale of Solange de Chateies,'” said Rapunzel gently, “so we knew right away that your Tale was Unwritten as well.”

Solange de Chateies—I hadn't realized that the Snow Queen even
had
a last name.

“The magic clinging to the Tale bearer of an Unwritten Tale is much stronger than the magic around an ordinary Tale,” the librarian continued. “Thus, like Solange's Tale, Rory's Tale has made changes in all the Tales around her. Time frames expand or shrink. Endings change. Two Tales overlap, or even combine.”

Like “The Snow Queen” and “The Pied Piper.”

“So that's why
my
Tale took five days, not four? And we managed to steal all three—” Lena gasped. “That's why I got my Tale so soon after Rory came to EAS! Her Tale sparked mine, right?”

The Director nodded wearily. “Yours and your brother's. The first of
many
Rory's Tale has ignited.”

“Then why didn't Chase's start?” Lena asked, like she was hoping to shoot a hole in their theory, to prove it wasn't me. “I mean, between all those sword practices, I'm pretty sure he
hangs out with Rory even more than I do. Her Tale should have sparked his too.”

Oh no. For the first time, I glanced at Chase, and he looked so
lost
.

This was pretty strong proof that he wasn't ever going to get a Tale. And from the resigned looks on the grown-ups' faces, I was pretty sure they thought the same.

It wasn't fair for me to wish that my Tale had never started when Chase wanted one so badly.

He shrugged it off. “It doesn't matter. But
when
were you planning on telling us? You could have at least given us some tips on the Snow Queen or the last Triumvirate, but we had to learn
everything
the hard way.”

“I had hoped to wait and tell you when you were older,” the Director said, and now
she
sounded upset. Not in a
you're so dis
respectful
way, but in a
I have really bad news
sort of way. “But the time frame has shortened in the past week. When the Tale first appeared, its beginning cited ‘four years' as the time frame, but . . .”

Her voice drifted off. I flipped back through the pages.

Once upon a time,
the first lines read,
there was a girl named Rory Landon. Though she did not know it, the fate of magic would fall into her hands during the month she turned fourteen. With it, she would meet winter, death, and despair
.

My mouth went dry.

Well, I didn't have to worry about messing up Brie's baby the way Solange messed up Rapunzel. My sister wouldn't even miss me, like Chase missed Cal. I would barely get to meet her.

“Last spring, the Snow Queen's spy snuck into the library and saw those lines. So, Solange hastened her plans to return,”
Rumpelstiltskin said, even more dry and distant than he'd been when he'd explained Lena's Tale years before. “We believe that is why the text at the beginning revised itself to ‘during the month she turns fourteen.'”

I couldn't believe he was rattling on about the time frame. That wasn't the part that stuck out the most.

“It says I meet death,” I told them, and Lena burst into tears. “In less than four months. My birthday is in July.”

“Not necessarily
your
death,” Rumpelstiltskin pointed out, but that wasn't good news. I just started worrying about Lena and Chase—about my family. “It says you meet winter followed by death followed by despair. It is hard to despair if you're not also alive.”

I shuddered.

“Not helping,” Chase told the librarian.

“But it's a possibility, isn't it?” I asked. No one answered me, not even Rapunzel, although she moved her hand to my shoulder.

“You're not going to die.” Chase sounded just as confident as he had when he'd said I would beat Torlauth. I stared at the book, wishing I could believe him. “You're
not
,” he said louder.

But when I went home and explained the truth about Ever After School, when I told my parents where I'd
really
gone, when I explained who the Snow Queen was and why she was after us, I had to tell them this too. I had to tell them about my Tale, and how it might kill me.

Tears streamed down Lena's face. She took off her glasses to wipe them, but Chase handled the situation the same way he handled most conversations he didn't like. He changed the subject. “So, what's our punishment?”

Wow,
I thought numbly.
Things have gotten really bad if that's the less intense topic
.

“Punishment?” repeated the Director, startled.

“Yeah,”
Chase said slowly, the voice he uses when he really wants to tell someone they're as dumb as a troll. “You called us in here to tell us off for going on a quest you'd forbidden, right? This is the part where you say we have to scrub all the practice dummies with a toothbrush or something.”

“It's my fault,” I reminded them, my voice sounding very far away. “It was
my
idea to go. Punish me if you're going to punish anyone.”

“What would be the point? You are filled now with the burden of Hadriane's death, the terror of your Tale's first lines, and the dread of explaining to your parents,” the Director said. “No punishment I could inflict could ever compare.”

I stared at her, wondering for one awful second if she had a mind-reading enchantment she'd never told us about. But then my gaze fell on the huge book between us.

She didn't have to read my mind. My Tale could tell her everything. And Rumpelstiltskin. And probably the whole Canon.

They'd kept all these secrets from me, and since they had that book, I couldn't even have one.

I sprinted for the door—not the one back to the courtyard, where more people would stare, but the one that led deeper into EAS.

“You couldn't have made it even a tiny bit easier?” snapped Rapunzel.

“How could I make it easier?” replied the Director, as I ran out into the hall. “The children are thinking the same.”

Then the door shut behind me.

I ran down a hall with spinning wheels inlaid in the floor, a corridor lined with doors numbered one through seven in scarlet
paint, and a long wall carved with three little pigs. I dashed across an indoor courtyard, past its gazebo and its tulips, and I sprinted down a corridor covered in murals of trees and another with dragon-scale wallpaper and another with portraits of the first Canon, and another and another.

I thought I didn't want anyone to find me, but maybe I did. When I finally stopped running, I found myself at a spiraling stone staircase, the one that led to Rapunzel's tower.

I collapsed on the bottom step and buried my face in my arms, but I didn't want to cry—I wanted to hide. I wanted to sit still and figure out what was happening to me before I faced the world again.

Rapunzel's footsteps were so quiet. I didn't notice her arrival until she spoke. “Mildred didn't mean it the way it sounded. She understands what it is to punish yourself. She has blamed herself for the death of her husband all these years, and being deeply unhappy, she spreads her unhappiness to others.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't even lift my head. I felt safer down there.

Rapunzel just settled on the step, waiting for me to get around to talking. It took a while, because the guilt had caught up with me too. It lodged itself, huge and tangled, in my lungs, squeezing out the air. I didn't know how to begin to unravel it.

Thank you, thank you,
Ima had said.

“You knew she was going to die. You knew I was going to lead her straight to her death,” I whispered.

“You? No, Rory,” said Rapunzel. “That is not what happened.”

“But you said, ‘to go or not to go is a decision. It rests in one person, and one person only,'” I reminded her. “That person was me. It
was
my idea.”

“You misunderstood. It was your idea, yes, but Hadriane's
decision
. You did not force anyone to come with you,” Rapunzel
said softly. “To believe that the responsibility lies with you would belittle her sacrifice. Knowing that the quest meant her own death and choosing to rescue the twins anyway—that was truly an act of great love and great strength.”

She was trying to make me feel better. It worked, kind of, but another guilty thought rose up to take its place. Maybe Hadriane had broken us out of prison, but she had always been honest with her dad, even when she was telling him something he really didn't want to hear.

Not me. Maybe the Director had been lying to me since I first arrived at EAS, but I was even worse. I'd been lying to my parents. That wasn't anybody's fault but mine.

“I'm pretty sure that Hadriane was a better daughter than I am,” I whispered.

“You could not keep your mother from worrying about Solange
and
tell her the truth of your life here. You could not give Hadriane the opportunity to save the twins
and
ensure her safety,” Rapunzel said. “Doing both is impossible. So you made a choice and sacrificed one for the other. Your guilt merely tortures you for not being able to do it all.”

Yeah, I was glad we'd saved the kidnapped Portlanders, but I also wondered . . . if I'd followed that wooden door in the prison, if I'd found out what was behind the ancient black door in my dreams, maybe I could have defeated the Snow Queen for good. Maybe I could have prevented the war that was coming, and all the deaths it would cause.

It was too horrible to say out loud—even to tell Rapunzel. Besides, she was right. I couldn't have followed the door
and
rescued the kids, not at the same time.

“Guilt is a useless emotion,” I murmured. “That's what Hadriane said.”

Rapunzel hesitated. Then she said, “That may have been true for Hadriane, who pushed guilt away, but it was also true for my sister, who never felt guilt at all. I have always taken a great deal of comfort in my own guilt. It means that I can learn from my past. Next time, I can take action to avoid doing what will make me feel that way again.”

I didn't want to think about a next time. I didn't know if I could make myself go back in July, knowing what I would face, and I was sure that selfishness made me just like Solange. “I don't want to turn into her.”

“You are making the same mistake the Canon has,” Rapunzel said. “Having an Unwritten Tale, as Solange did, does not mean you'll follow in her footsteps. You can choose not to.
I
did not. You are more like Hadriane than Solange, I think, and that is why I worry for you.”

I glanced up. Her dark eyes were full of kindness. She looked like she always looked—young and ancient at the same time, but not like the Fey did. She looked like she had seen more of the world and weathered more of its sadnesses than anyone ever should.

She did know things. She knew more than that stupid book did.

So I asked. “Am I really going to die?”

I would believe it, I might even accept it, but only if Rapunzel told me so.

“I do not know,” she said, and all my hopes of having the answers to all my questions—all of
Mom's
questions—went completely out the window. “I see great danger but not the final outcome. Perhaps that is best. I fought the Director when she hid the truth of your Tale, but she may have been right. It is hard to be happy after being warned of ‘winter, death, and despair,' and you
have
been happy. Sometimes, it
is
better not to know too much.”