Fairest of All (Whatever After #1) (8 page)

w
e are hiding behind a tree. Waiting.

“She’s off!” I say, finally, as Evil Evelyn’s carriage rides away. “How long do we have before she comes home?”

“She’s usually gone for about an hour,” Snow says. “So not long.”

Evil Evelyn is on her way to see her masseuse. Snow said she goes twice a week to get a back massage. Apparently being evil is stressful.

We ride Yopopa the horse toward the castle gate. Luckily he’s a giant horse and all three of us fit on his back. I’m at the rear, Jonah is in the middle, and Snow is holding the reins. Jonah begged for front place, but there’s no time for Snow to teach him how to steer and stuff. I want to go home. Now. Enough is enough!

Except …

“Maybe we should wait,” I say. “Maybe we should try something else to fix your story.” Enough is enough, but I still feel bad for her. It’s not her fault she’s so shy that she blew her chance to ride off with the prince and live happily ever after.

And it’s not her fault her story got messed up in the first place.

“Absolutely not,” she says. “You need to be home with your parents. Besides, how do you know I won’t get my happily-ever-after anyway? I can keep coming up with ideas on my own, you know.”

“But —” I say.

“No buts,” she says.

Wow. Is this really meek little Snow talking? She’s getting tougher!

“Okay,” I say. But I still feel bad.

“Okay,” Snow says, and we trot toward the ginormous castle.

“I can’t believe you grew up here,” I say with a whistle. Or a kind-of whistle. Whistling is hard.

“What do you mean?” she asks as she steers Yopopa away from a bird.

“This place is huge!”

She shrugs. “Well, it
is
a castle.”

And it is. A giant, beautiful castle. With guards and a drawbridge and a moat.

The drawbridge is huge. Like, twenty-five feet across and ten feet wide. And it’s hanging from the castle door with big chains. I wish we had a drawbridge at home. All we have are bushes and an old screen door that creaks. Although it would make having friends over a lot more difficult.

We are trying to break into a castle. What are the chances this works?

I was worried it might be too dangerous for Snow to come with us, but she said she wanted to help. Plus, she’s the one who knows her way around the castle. And anyway, the queen’s not even here. As for the rest of the people in the castle, we’re not exactly sure what they think happened to Snow. Do they think she’s dead? Do they think she’s in hiding? Who knows what Evil Evelyn’s told them.

We decided to disguise Snow just in case. Enid has a pink pointy hat that we used to cover her hair, and I coated Snow’s very red lips with a dusting of flour. Plus, she’s wearing my limegreen pj’s instead of a dress. It’s not as good as the queen’s disguises, but it should do.

We are ready. Snow even packed us
another
picnic of stew sandwiches. Blah. For lunch and dinner. Jonah is carrying them in the borrowed satchel again. They’re kind of stinky.

We pull up to the guard standing by the bridge. Luckily the bridge is still down, since the queen just left.

“That’s Arnaldo,” Snow whispers, pointing at the guard.

Arnaldo is very large. Very, very large. And he’s using a sharp-looking weapon to scratch his extremely bushy black eyebrows.

“You,” he barks at us. “Why are you here?”

My knees shake. “We’re the new decorators?” I say, except it comes out as a question.

Okay, so I lied. Not nice, I know. Lying is bad. But we need to get into the castle, and this seems like the best way. Snow said decorators were always going in and out of the palace, so we decided that if we told them that’s what we are, no one would look twice.

Arnaldo glares at us. Then he glares more at Snow. He is definitely looking twice. Five times at least. “Hmm,” he mutters.

My stomach free-falls. He recognizes her.

“Hmm,” he mutters again. We are so busted.

“Go ahead,” the bushy-eyebrowed Arnaldo finally says. “But leave your horse here.”

Phew! I guess my pajamas-and-pointy-hat disguise worked. We’re in!

We tie Yopopa to a tree by the bridge. Then we cross the drawbridge and approach the palace.

There’s a massive round gold knocker on the door.

“I’m nervous,” Snow whispers. “I can’t believe I’m back here. And I can’t believe Arnaldo didn’t recognize me.”

A pretty, dark-haired maid in a gray uniform answers the door.

“It’s Madeline,” Snow whispers. “She’s the maid. She knows me, too.”

“You’re in disguise,” I remind her. “Arnaldo didn’t recognize you and neither will she.” I hope. I really, really hope.

“Can I help you?” Madeline asks.

“We’re the decorators?” I say. Again, it sounds like a question.

“Oh,” Madeline says with a frown. “We’re not expecting you for another hour.” She gives Snow a weird look. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Snow says, hiding behind her floppy hat. “We’ve never met. Never, ever. I am not a princess. I’m a decorator.”

I pinch her side. Way too obvious!

But Madeline seems to buy it, because she ushers us into the foyer.

The entire room is decorated in stripes. The marble floor is in black stripes. The ceiling has purple stripes. My slippers would fit right in. No wonder Evil Evelyn wants to redecorate. I’ve been here four seconds and I already have a headache.

“This is the room she wants to fix up?” I ask.

“No, she just did this room last month,” Madeline says.

Seriously? “Then where? Her bedroom?” Please be her bedroom, please be her bedroom. That would make our lives so much easier.

“The kitchen,” Madeline says.

Boo.

The kitchen is decorated all in red. Red sink, red table, red pots. I feel like I’m trapped in a giant bowl of cherry Jell-O.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Madeline says. “I have a lot of sewing to do. The queen’s disguises don’t make themselves, you know.”

We wait for her to leave before we sneak out of the kitchen. We follow Snow up two winding staircases.

“This is it,” she says at the end of a long, dark hallway. “Her room.” She pushes open the door and we creep inside.

Hanging on the wall is the mirror.

t
he mirror is my size and framed in gold. If I didn’t already know it could talk, I’d think it was an ordinary mirror. But then I notice a fairy carved into the bottom-right corner of the frame. Hmm. Maybe it’s not so ordinary.

I hope it knows how to send us home.

Jonah runs up to it and knocks on the glass.

At first, there’s no response, but then a loud voice from deep inside yells, “Are you trying to give me a concussion?”

The voice is definitely annoyed, but I can’t tell if it’s female or male. Two angry blue eyes glare in the reflection. There’s no nose, no lips, and no chin. Just eyes.

Jonah freezes. “Sorry,” he says in a tiny voice.

“You should be,” the mirror says. “You have to follow the rules!”

This is my kind of mirror. I can deal with rules. I turn to Snow. “What rules?”

“It likes when you address it twice and then ask it a question. Like, ‘Mirror, Mirror, how are you?’ ”

“I also like when you don’t attack me,” the mirror grumbles.

“My brother’s really sorry,” I say. “Mirror, Mirror, can you take us home?”

“Sure,” it says. “Now?”

“Wow,” I squeal, surprised.

“You’re just going to take us home, Mirror, Mirror?” Jonah asks, sounding a little disappointed. “No quest or anything?”

“Nope. You want to go, you can go right now, but only right now.”

“Why only right now?” I ask.

The mirror doesn’t answer.

I roll my eyes. “Mirror, Mirror, why only right now?”

“Because the queen is coming home early.”

Oh, no! “How early, Mirror, Mirror?”

“Soon,” it says.

“How soon?” I ask.

The front door slams. “I’m home!”

“She can’t find us here!” Snow shrieks. “She’ll kill me and throw you in the dungeons!”

“No, she’d probably just kill you all,” the mirror says. “The dungeons are already —”

It stops mid-sentence.

“Are already what?” I ask. “Mirror, Mirror?”

“Pretty full,” it finishes.

I have a bad feeling about this.

“Mirror, Mirror,” I say, “who’s in the dungeon?”

“Xavier the huntsman,” it says.

Snow gasps. “Oh, no! For sparing my life?”

“No, for spilling juice on the white carpet. Of course for sparing your life!”

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the mirror this morning,” I grumble.

“Excuse me?!” the mirror yells.

“Nothing, nothing. Mirror, Mirror, is anyone else down there?” I ask.

“Prince Trevor,” it says.

WHAT?! Now all three of us gasp.

“That c-can’t be,” I stammer.

“But it is,” the mirror says. “He came by yesterday claiming he’d been summoned by a letter. The queen thought he was attempting to overthrow her. She ordered her guards to lock him in the dungeon. Anyway,” the mirror continues, “if you two kids want to get home, you’d better hurry up. You have about thirty seconds before she gets here.”

ARGH! This is no good. I glance down at my watch. It’s just before six in Smithville. We need to go home already. My parents are going to be up in less than an hour! We have to go home TODAY. But the prince is in the dungeon. Because of us. It was my idea to write him a letter. It’s my fault. “We need to save the prince,” I say solemnly.

Jonah’s eyes light up. “A quest! Let’s go!”

Snow puts her hand on my arm. “But, Abby, this could be your only chance to go home.”

I can’t go home knowing someone is in a dungeon because of me. My heart thumps. “We have to save him. And the huntsman, too. We’ll get another chance to go home.”

“But —” Snow says.

“No buts,” I say.

Jonah is jumping up and down. “We have to escape before Evil Evelyn finds us!”

I turn to the mirror. “Is there another way out?”

The mirror clucks its tongue. “Mirror, Mirror.”

Seriously? There’s no time for
Mirror, Mirror
! “Mirror, Mirror,” I spit out. “Is there another way out?”

“There’s the window.”

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I whisper, hurrying to the window. I pull back the thick purple drapes and heave open the shutters. I look outside. We’re two stories high.

“Now
that’s
how you break your head,” Jonah says.

I turn to Snow. “Right now I’m kind of wishing you were Rapunzel.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. How do we do this?” I look around the room for ideas. All I see are the mirror, a wardrobe, a desk, and a four-poster bed. “Jonah, any chance you have a rope in your backpack?”

He shakes his head. “Just stew sandwiches. Hey. I’m hungry.”

“Jonah, not now.”

He looks around the room. “Let’s use her sheet!”

“Good idea,” I say, and start stripping Evil Evelyn’s bed.

“But she’ll notice it’s gone,” Snow says.

“She’ll also notice if we’re here!” I point out as I pull at the linens. “Which is worse?”

“Good point,” Snow says, and she helps me strip the bed. “Now what?” she asks when we’re done.

“She’s coming, she’s coming,” the mirror says, taunting us.

“You guys go first,” I say. “I’ll hold the sheet. Just slide down as far as you can and then jump.”

“What about you?” Snow asks.

“Don’t worry, I have a plan. Now hurry!”

Clomp, clomp, clomp.
Footsteps coming up the stairs.

We hear Evil Evelyn’s voice as she trails through the hallway. “Oh, Mirror, Mirror,” she sings. “I have a question for yooooou….”

Snow looks like she might pass out, but I push her forward. She has to go first, because she’s the heaviest, and Jonah can help me hold the sheet. Plus, I want her on the ground in case Jonah needs help. Jonah and I hold the sheet so tight that our knuckles turn white.

Snow hesitates.

“Go,” I say. “You have to move!”

“B-b-but —”

“Go!”

With a sharp breath, she goes through the window. She slides down to the bottom of the sheet and then dangles in the air about five feet off the ground. “Now what?” she yells.

“Now you jump!” I say.

“I can’t! I’m afraid!”

“You have to! Just do it!”

She closes her eyes, which I’m not sure helps, and jumps. She lands on her butt. A startled expression crosses her face, and then she smiles.

“You’re next,” I tell Jonah as I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

“But, Abby,” he says, “who’s gonna hold it for you?”

“Like I said, I have a plan. We’ll do it hammock-style. You two will hold the corners and I’ll jump into the sheet.”

His face squishes. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. What if you get hurt?”

Aw. He’s worried about me! “I’ll be fine. Go, go! We’re running out of time.”

Snow waves to him from the ground, and prickles of fear run down my spine. He’s going to be okay, right? He has to be! I give him a quick hug. He climbs out the window and slides down the sheet. Then he jumps to the ground with a huge smile.

Now comes the tricky part.

Me.

Facing each other, Snow and Jonah are stretching the sheet as wide as it can go to give me room to land.

I look down. Oh, boy. Can I really do this?

I turn to the mirror. “Mirror, Mirror, please don’t tell her we were here.”

“If she asks, I have to.”

Crumbs. We stripped the bed. She’s going to ask.

I hear the doorknob turn. She’s here! She’s coming!

I try to aim myself as best I can and —

I jump.