The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani
Callis put the bowl in front of Agatha. “No one likes toad soup cold.”
Agatha bucked up. “Look, I know it’s crowded with him here. But Tedros and I can get work in the village. Think about it, if we save up enough, maybe we can all move to a bigger house, maybe even something in the cottage lanes.” Agatha grinned. “Imagine, Mother, we could actually have living neighbors—”
Callis fixed her with a cold, brown stare and Agatha stopped talking. She followed her mother’s eyes to the small, slime-crusted window over the sink. Agatha pushed out of her chair, bowl untouched, and grabbed a wet dishtowel from the rack. Pressing against the glass, she scraped at the gray smear of dust, grease, and mildew, until a stream of sunlight pierced through. Agatha backed away in surprise.
Down the snow-coated hill, bright red flags billowed from every lamppost in the square:
“Witch?” Agatha choked, gaping at a hundred reflections of her own face. Beyond the square, the colorful storybook houses, decimated by attacks from the Woods, had been rebuilt as monotonous stone bunkers. A phalanx of guards in long black cloaks and black-iron masks carried spears, patrolling the cottage lanes and forest perimeter. Dread rising, Agatha’s eyes slowly fell on the spot where her and Sophie’s statues once glistened near the crooked clock tower. Now there was only a raised wooden stage, with a giant pyre made of birches, two flaming torches fixed to the scaffolding, and a banner of her and Sophie’s faces hanging between them.
Agatha’s stomach dropped. She’d escaped a public execution at school only to find one at home.
“I warned you, Agatha,” her mother said behind her. “The Elders believed Sophie a witch who brought the attacks from the Woods. They ordered you not to go after her the night they surrendered her to the attackers. The moment you disobeyed them, you became a witch too.”
Agatha turned, her legs jellying. “So they want to burn me?”
“If you’d come back alone, the Elders might have spared you.” Callis was sitting at the table, head in hands. “You could have taken punishment, like I did for letting you escape.”
A chill went up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother, but there were no wounds or marks on her hooked-nose face or gangly arms; all her fingers and toes were intact. “What did they do to you?” Agatha asked, terrified.
“Nothing that compares to what they’ll do to you both when they find him.” Callis looked up, eyelids raw. “The Elders always despised us, Agatha. How could you be so stupid to bring someone back from the Woods?”
“The s-s-storybook said ‘The End,’” Agatha stuttered. “You said it yourself—if our book says ‘The End,’ this has to be our happy ending—”
“Happy ending? With him?” Callis blurted, jolting to her feet. “There is a reason the worlds are separate, Agatha. There is a reason the worlds must be separate. He will never be happy here! You are a Reader and he is a—”
Callis stopped and Agatha stared at her. Callis quickly turned to the sink and pumped water into a kettle.
“Mother . . . ,” Agatha said, suddenly feeling cold. “How do you know what a Reader is?”
“Mmm, can’t hear you, dear.”
“A Reader,” Agatha stressed over the strident cranks. “How do you know that word—”
Callis pumped louder. “Must have seen it in a book, I’m sure . . .”
“Book? What book—”
“One of the storybooks, dear.”
Of course, Agatha sighed, trying to relax. Her mother had always seemed to know things about the fairy-tale world—like all parents in Gavaldon who had feverishly bought storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s Storybook Shop, hunting for clues about the children kidnapped by the School Master. One of the books must have mentioned it, Agatha told herself. That’s why she called me a Reader. That’s why she wasn’t surprised by a prince.
But as Agatha glanced up at Callis, back to her, pumping water into the kettle, Agatha noticed that the pot was already full and overflowing into the sink. She watched her mother staring off into space, hands clenched, pumping water faster, faster, as if pumping memories away with it. Slowly Agatha’s heart started to constrict in her chest, until she felt that cold sensation deepening . . . whispering that the reason her mother wasn’t fazed by Tedros’ appearance wasn’t because she’d read storybooks . . . but because she knew what it was like to live through one . . .
“He returns to the Woods as soon as he wakes,” Callis said, releasing the pump.
Agatha wrenched out of her thoughts. “The Woods? Tedros and I barely escaped alive—and you want us to go back?”
“Not you,” said Callis, still turned. “Him.”
Agatha flared in shock. “Only someone who’s never experienced true love could say such a thing.”
Callis froze. The skeleton clock ticked through the loaded silence.
“You really believe this is your happy ending, Agatha?” Callis said, not looking at her.
“It has to be, Mother. Because I won’t leave him again. And I won’t leave you,” Agatha begged. “I thought maybe I could be happy in the Woods, that I could run away from real life . . . but I can’t. I never wanted a fairy tale. All I ever wanted was to wake up every day right here, knowing I had my mother and my best friend. How could I know that friend would end up being a prince?” Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “You don’t know what we’ve been through to find each other. You don’t know the Evil that we left behind. I don’t care if Tedros and I have to stay trapped in this house for a hundred years. At least we’re together. At least we’ll be happy. You just have to give us the chance.”
Quiet fell in the sooty kitchen.
Callis turned to her daughter. “And Sophie?”
Agatha’s voice went cold. “Gone.”
Her mother gazed at her. The town clock tolled faintly from the square, before the wind drowned it out. Callis picked up the kettle and moved to the wooden stove. Agatha held her breath, watching her spark a flame beneath the pot and stew a few wormroot leaves in, circling her ladle again and again, long after the leaves had dissolved.
“I suppose we’ll need eggs,” said her mother at last. “Princes don’t eat toads.”
Agatha almost collapsed in relief. “Oh thank you thank you thank you—”
“I’ll lock you both in when I go to town each morning. The guards won’t come here as long as we’re careful.”
“You’ll love him like a son, Mother, you’ll see—” Agatha grimaced. “Into town? You said you had no patients.”
“Don’t light the fireplace or open the windows,” ordered Callis, pouring two cups of tea.
“Why won’t the guards come here?” Agatha pushed. “Wouldn’t it be the first place they’d check?”
“And don’t answer the door for a soul.”
“Wait—what about Stefan?” Agatha asked, brightening. “Surely he can talk to the Elders for us—”
Callis whirled. “Especially not Stefan.”
Mother and daughter locked stares across the kitchen.
“Your prince will never belong here, Agatha,” said Callis softly. “No one can hide from their fate without a price.”
There was a fear in her mother’s big owl eyes that Agatha had never seen before, as if she was no longer talking about a prince.
Agatha crossed the kitchen and wrapped her mother in a deep, comforting hug. “I promise you. Tedros will be as happy here as I am,” she whispered. “And you’ll wonder how you ever could have doubted two people so in love.”
A clang and clatter echoed from the bedroom. The curtain drew back behind them before collapsing entirely, and Tedros lumbered through, groggy, red-eyed, and half-naked with a torn, bloodied piece of bedsheet stuck haplessly over his wound. He sat down at the counter, smelled the soup and gagged, shoving it aside. “We’ll need a sturdy horse, steel-edged sword, and enough bread and meat for a three-day journey.” He looked up at Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Hope you said your goodbyes, princess. Time to ride to my castle.”
That first week, Agatha believed this was just another test in their story. It was only a matter of time before the pyre came down, the death sentence lifted, and Tedros felt at ease with ordinary life. Looking at her handsome, teddy-bear prince who she loved so much, she knew that no matter how long they stayed in this house, they would still find a way to be happy.
By the second week, however, the house had started to feel smaller. There was never enough food or cups or towels; Reaper and Tedros fought like demented siblings; Agatha began to notice her prince’s irritating habits (using all the soap, drinking milk out of the jug, exercising every second of the day, breathing through his mouth); and Callis had the burden of supporting two teenagers who didn’t like to be supported at all. (“School was better than this,” Tedros carped, bored to tears. “Let’s go back and you can finish getting stabbed,” Agatha replied.) By the third week, Tedros had taken to playing rugby against himself, dodging invisible opponents, whispering play-by-play, and flinging about like a caged animal, while Agatha lay in bed, a pillow over her head, clinging to the hope that happiness would fall like a fairy godmother from a star. Instead, it was Tedros who fell on her head one day while catching a ball, reopening his stitches in the process. Agatha belted him hard with her pillow, Tedros clocked her with his, and soon the cat was in the toilet. As they lay on the bed, covered in feathers, Reaper dripping in the corner, Agatha’s question hung in the air unanswered.
“What happened to us?”
As the fourth week went on, Tedros and Agatha stopped spending time together. Tedros ceased his manic workouts and sat hunched at the kitchen window, unshaven and dirty, silently looking out at the Endless Woods. He was homesick, Agatha told herself, just as she’d once been in his world. But each day, a darker anguish settled into his face, and she knew it was deeper than homesickness—it was the guilt of knowing that somewhere out there, in a land far away, there would soon be no new king to take the crown from the old. But Agatha had nothing to say to make him feel better, nothing that didn’t sound self-serving or trite, and hid beneath her bedcovers, reading her old storybooks again and again.
Gazing at beautiful princesses kissing dashing princes, she wondered how her Ever After had gone rancid. All these fairy tales had tied up so neatly and satisfyingly . . . while the more she thought about her own, the more loose ends seemed to appear. What had happened to her friends: to Dot, Hester, Anadil, who had risked their lives for her during the Trial? What had happened to the Girls, charging into war against Aric and the Boys? Or to Lady Lesso and Professor Dovey, now faced with the School Master’s return? Agatha’s chest clamped. What if the School Master started kidnapping children from Gavaldon again? She thought about the parents who would lose more daughters and sons . . . about Tristan and how his parents would learn about his death . . . about the balance in the Woods, tilting to death and Evil . . . about her once Evil best friend, left to fend for herself . . .
Sophie.
This time no anger came at the name. Only an echo, like the password to her heart’s cave.
Sophie.
Sophie, who she’d loved through Good and Evil. Sophie, who she’d loved through Boys and Girls. Sophie, who she vowed to protect forever, young or old, until death did them part.
How do you turn your back on your best friend? How do you leave them behind?
For a boy.
Shame colored her cheeks.
For a boy who can barely stand the sight of me anymore.
Agatha’s heart shrank as small and hard as a pebble. All this time, she thought she had to choose between Sophie and Tedros to find a happy ending. And yet, each time she picked one over the other, the story twisted back upon itself and the world fell out of balance more than before. Every thought of Sophie, alone in a tower with a deadly villain, brought on more guilt, more pregnant fear, as if she was trapped in a purgatory of her own making, as if she hadn’t failed by choosing a prince over her best friend . . . but in making that choice at all.
“I think about her too.”
She turned and saw Tedros at the window, watching her, his mouth trembling. “About how we just left her,” he rasped, eyes welling. “I know she’s a bad friend, I know she’s Evil, I know Filip was a lie . . . but we just left her . . . with that monster. We left all of them. The whole school . . . just to save ourselves. What kind of prince is that, Agatha? What would my father think of me?” Tears spilled down his stubbled cheeks. “I don’t want you to leave your mother. I really don’t. But we’re not happy, Agatha. Because the villain’s still alive. Because we’re not heroes at all. We’re . . . cowards.”
Agatha looked into her prince’s messy, earnest face, and remembered why she loved him. “This isn’t our happy ending, is it?” she breathed.
Tedros smiled, his old glow returning.
And for the first time since they came home, Agatha smiled too.
3
The New or the Old
“Maybe we have to close our eyes,” said Tedros.
“Or do a rain dance in pajamas while singing ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’” Agatha grumped, Reaper fast asleep in her lap. “It’s past dinnertime and I’m starving. How many times can we try this?”
“Oh I’m sorry. Do you have somewhere better to be at the moment?”
Agatha watched a roach mosey by, cram under the double-locked front door, and disappear. “You have a point,” she said, and shut her eyes.
“All right,” Tedros sucked in, closing his eyes. “One . . . two . . . three!”
Agatha scrunched up her face, Tedros did too, and both of them thrust their index fingers at the other. They exhaled at the same time and opened their eyes.
Neither of their fingertips was glowing.
Tedros peered closely at Agatha’s. “You bite your nails too much.”
“Oh for crying out loud. We can’t get into the Woods unless our magic comes back,” she barked, shoving her hand in her pocket. “Magic follows emotion. That’s what we learned at school. You said it yourself! If we both make the wish at the same time, the gates should open—”
“Unless one of us is having doubts,” said Tedros.
“Then I suggest you get over them,” Agatha huffed, standing up. “Let’s try in the morning. Mother’s never this late. She’ll be here any second—”
“Agatha.”
She saw Tedros giving her that lopsided grin . . . the one that said he knew exactly what she was thinking, even if she was doing everything she could to keep it from him.
“You’re smarter than you look,” she groused, sitting back down.
“And you’re the one famous for not judging books by their covers.” He scooted next to her. “Look, if you want to say goodbye to your mother first—”
“That’ll just make the doubts worse,” mumbled Agatha. “How do you tell your mother you’re leaving her forever?”
“Wouldn’t know. My mother left me without saying goodbye,” Tedros replied.
Agatha looked at him, suddenly feeling very stupid. Tedros slid closer. “What is it, my love?” he asked. “What are you really afraid of?”
Agatha felt panic rising, something coming up she couldn’t keep down—
“What if I’m the problem?” she blurted. “Every time I try to be happy, it goes wrong. First with Sophie, then with you, and all I can think of is that it’s not us who’s broken . . . it’s me. The girl who ruins everyone’s story. The girl who’s meant to be alone. That’s why I’m afraid to leave my mother. Because what if I’m not supposed to be with you, Tedros? What if I’m supposed to end here, just like her, never finding love at all?”
Tedros froze, taken aback.
Slowly Agatha felt the air return to her lungs, as if a boulder had lifted off her chest.
Her prince traced his finger between bricks in the floor. “We only see the finished storybooks, Agatha. How do we know every Ever After doesn’t take a few tries? Think about it. Each time you left the Woods, you tried to come back to yo
Looking at him, Agatha realized how selfish and small-hearted she’d been by keeping her prince here.
“I promise,” he said, squeezing her hand. “This time, we will be happy.”
“All right, say we do get back to the School for Good and Evil,” Agatha allowed. “What’s our plan?”
“Make things right, of course,” Tedros puffed. “Rescue Sophie, kill the School Master, take back Excalibur, free the other students, and you and I go to Camelot in time for my sixteenth birthday, and coronation as king. The End.” He paused. “The real End.”
Agatha made a sound halfway between a cough and a sneeze.
“All right, Sophie can come too, if you’re going to be difficult about it,” he sighed.
“Tedros, my love,” said Agatha cuttingly. “You think we can just waltz through the school gates and kill the School Master like we’re buying bonbons from the bakery?”
“I think buying anything from the bakery would pose far more obstacles at the moment,” said Tedros, eyeing the triple-locked door.
Agatha let go of him and braced for a fight. “First off, the School Master is an all-powerful sorcerer who last we saw came back from death, turned young again, and stabbed you with your own sword. Second, for all we know, he’s killed the Evers and has everyone on his side. And third, you don’t think he’ll have guards and traps and—”
“Merlin had a saying: ‘Worrying doesn’t solve problems. Just gives you gas,’” Tedros yawned.
“I take back the smarter than you look thing,” Agatha groaned. Her cat stirred and staggered out of her arms, but not before spitting in Tedros’ lap. The prince backhanded it and Reaper fled, throwing Agatha a horrible scowl at her choice of mate.