Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (8 page)

“The Director’s going to have to show you that one herself when she gets back.” Sarah Thumb stroked Mr. Swallow’s head soothingly as he chattered angrily at the workshop door. “Same thing goes for the dungeon—I mean, the menagerie. Last time I was there, one of the trolls tried to eat Mr. Swallow for breakfast.”

Then she pointed out the yellow and blue door that led to the dormitory for the Characters who needed to stay overnight and then the orange-gold door that led to the instructors’ quarters. “Which you will stay away from, if you want to keep all of your fingers and toes. Jack’s pet wyrm doesn’t like strangers,” she added.

On the way to our last stop, Sarah Thumb showed us a heavy wooden door studded with iron. “The training courts. Hansel’s the instructor.”

“I get to learn how to use a sword?” Philip said. It was obviously a close second to the wand he wanted earlier.

“Or a spear. Or a bow.” Sarah Thumb looked down at her list. “‘Item Number 11: We require all our Characters to study weaponry for at least one year, and we encourage further study.’”

Winging her way around the courtyard, Sarah Thumb added that for most Tales, being kind to strangers and being tricky with bad guys was all that you needed for a happy ending, that violence should be the last resort, etc.

Finally Sarah and Mr. Swallow stopped at a violet door gilded with words I couldn’t read. “Here we are! The library!”

Bookcases towered over us, almost as tall as the Tree of Hope outside. The bronze shelves were spaced at least three feet apart. Bronze ladders ran from the floor to the ceiling, welded to the bookcases. The rungs were placed very close together, like the ladders you see on playgrounds for really little kids.

Unlike the reference room, the library didn’t have any desks, or even any chairs. Everything smelled like dust and paper.

But something about it gave me déjà vu. Each shelf was full of heavy-looking volumes in every color. Blue, red, gray, brown, violet, pink, and green leather spines glittered with gold embossing. Each book was at least two and a half feet tall, and I realized with a start why they seemed so familiar—they looked exactly like the one I had seen in the mirror.

Mr. Swallow perched on a bronze shelf just above our heads.

“‘Item Number 14: Characters-in-training are not permitted into the library, but it is of the utmost importance that new Ever After School students see it once and understand its significance,’” Sarah Thumb read. “So, kiddies, this is where we store the collections. Every fairy tale since the founding—failed or finished—is stored here, all eleven centuries.”

“Eleven
centuries
?” Miriam stared up at the bookcases, awed.

Honestly, my grasp of history has never been the best. I couldn’t remember anything that happened in the ninth century. King Arthur found Excalibur, maybe?

“Well, we really only have the books since the North American Chapter was founded. The fairies have the earlier ones,” said Sarah Thumb sadly. “Our librarian keeps bugging the Fey monarchs to let him complete the library. Speaking of our librarian, he’s supposed
to be here. I hope he didn’t fall asleep in the stacks again. Hold on.” She let out another sharp whistle.

“Coming!” said a voice high above us. Near the ceiling, a man in a purple tweed suit hurried nimbly down one of the bronze ladders, carrying over his shoulder a book as big as he was. At first I thought the book was bigger than the others, but when he reached the floor, I realized that the
man
was smaller. He barely came up to my shoulder.

“This is my dear friend and our librarian, Rumpelstiltskin,” said Sarah Thumb.

I looked carefully at his wrinkled face—the huge, hooked nose and the round spectacles resting on top of them. “I know you!”

The man was so surprised that he nearly dropped the dark green book he was carrying. “Indeed?”

“I saw you in the shard yesterday!” I said. “Are you part of my Tale, then? What happens in ‘Rumpelstiltskin’?”

“A miller tells a king that his daughter can spin straw into gold,” Sarah Thumb explained, amused. “The king orders her to do it. A dwarf shows up and spins the straw into gold for the miller’s daughter, but only because she promises him her firstborn child. She saves the baby by guessing the dwarf’s name—Rumpelstiltskin.”

The words “firstborn child” sent a jolt through me, because having kids wasn’t something I thought about much, being eleven and all.

“But I’m not a miller’s daughter,” I said uncertainly.

“And you can’t have her firstborn child,” Miriam added. “She already knows your name.”

Sarah Thumb covered her mouth with her tiny hands, but we could still hear her laughing.

Rumpelstiltskin took off his spectacles and rubbed them with a
long-suffering sigh. “Honestly, you have a troubled youth, and no one ever lets you forget it.”

“You tried to steal a
baby,
” Miriam reminded him.

“I wasn’t going to steal it. I’m not a
fairy
. We had a bargain, the queen and I,” he said, shaking his head.

“You weren’t going to
eat
it, were you?” Philip said worriedly.

Rumpelstiltskin looked appalled. “Certainly not. I was lonely. That’s all. I would’ve given him back after he grew up. I thought a human boy would make a good pet.”

Philip’s eyes widened. Miriam and I stepped in front of him protectively.

“No, no, no,” Rumpelstiltskin said, “I’m quite reformed, thank you. Come along, children.”

Sarah Thumb waved us forward, still laughing, and we followed the short man to the only piece of furniture in the room, a large bronze table with a small staircase on the side. Rumpelstiltskin ran up these steps and meticulously opened the book he was carrying.

We gathered around warily.

“This is the current collection. As soon as your Tale starts, this volume lists it in the front of the book, as you see here.” He flipped straight to the end of the table of contents and showed us the only Tale listed on that page:

46.
George and the Dragon..........
349

“The Tales in this volume are still ongoing, so the book continues to write and revise the stories within,” the librarian said. “Note the page numbers.”

He paused for a moment so we could see the number change from 349 to 376 to 360. Then he stuck a bookmark between the
pages. He flipped through the rest of the book so quickly that the text blurred to gray and the illustrations slid by with a splash of color. The page he stopped on had a dragon every bit as realistic as Lena’s, right down to the yellow eyes and the long gray teeth.

Underneath the illustration, the Tale started.

Rumpelstiltskin read aloud, “‘George and the Dragon: Once upon a time, a dragon set up residence in Yellowstone. He was still too young to terrorize villagers, as he wanted to, so he made do by eating pet dogs and blowing fire at unsuspecting campers.’ You’ll find the whole adventure here,” he added, turning pages much more slowly.

On the next page, an illustration showed Miriam trapped in the hot pink tent as the dragon blew fire over her head, and two pages after that, there was one of Chase and me trapped at the back of the dragon’s lair. (To be honest, he
did
look more scared than I did.)

“As the Tale progresses, the happenings are chronicled here,” the librarian explained. “It will continue to change a great deal in the coming weeks, but it will settle soon enough. Meanwhile, this volume will continue adding Tales as they occur—fairly straightforward, but difficult to grasp if it is not right in front of you. Any questions?”

What I really wanted to ask him was why he and Snow White had locked themselves in the library to talk about me the day before, but I didn’t want Miriam to think I was full of myself. Besides, he probably wouldn’t answer honestly with three other people and one opinionated swallow around.

“Can we read it?” I asked. “George’s Tale, I mean?”

“Yeah, I want to see that dragon again,” said Philip.

“Yes, yes, of course.” Flipping to the Tale’s beginning, Rumpelstiltskin told Sarah Thumb, “The children
always
want to read the
Tales they take part in. Self-centered little creatures.”

We ignored this insult and eagerly gathered around the first page.

“The beginning’s changed!” Miriam said.

“And the illustration,” said Philip, disappointed, pointing at the new picture—an elegant woman with silvery-blond hair and a glittering crown, staring out a window. Her back was to us, her face hidden.

“I did mention that it would happen,” said Rumpelstiltskin. He and Sarah Thumb exchanged amused, tolerant smiles, as if they had gone through this routine many times before. “Even now, the book may be writing a new passage about the afternoon when George’s lady love read of his actions and swooned again over his valor—”

“I am not
swooning
,” Miriam said, annoyed.

“‘The queen grew restless in her glass prison,’” I read aloud, wanting to back Miriam up before Philip teased her again. “‘She had waited patiently for many years, and she grew tired of pretending that she was not dangerous. She sent one of her dragons to a park much favored by the human world—’”

Rumpelstiltskin slammed the book shut so quickly he almost smashed my fingers.

He and Sarah Thumb stared at each other.

“We must tell the Director,” he said, horrified.

“She’s with the mermaids.”

“We must call her back.”

“Is it that important?” Sarah Thumb asked.

“My dear Sarah, this is
Solange
we’re talking about. She—”

“Hush!” the little woman said fiercely, with a pointed glance in our direction.

We knew a secret when we heard one. “So, who’s Queen Solange?” Miriam asked brightly.

“Is she part of EAS too?” Philip said.

“Will we meet her?” I added.

“No, child,” Rumpelstiltskin said distractedly. “Hope you
never
meet her.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Sarah said, hands on her hips. “It’ll be all over EAS before the sun sets. Ignore him,” she added, turning to us. “He always overreacts.”

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t seem like the kind of guy who overreacted. He
looked
insulted at the thought.

“If—” Miriam started, but a deep ringing gong interrupted her, like the kind you hear in old churches.

“Oh, good. Saved by the bell.” Sarah climbed back into Mr. Swallow’s saddle.

Rumpelstiltskin opened the volume again. In the table of contents, a new entry had appeared under George’s Tale:

47.
Ìhe White Snatze........
372

“This is unprecedented,” he murmured to himself. “Three Tales in two days. Interesting times, indeed.”

“Who had the third Tale?” I asked.

The librarian only ran his fingers down the cover’s edge, avoiding my eyes.

“Rumpel’s already told you more than you need to know,” Sarah Thumb said as Mr. Swallow started winging down the hall. “Come on, kiddies. Tour’s over now. A new Tale has started.”

n the courtyard, Sarah Thumb and Mr. Swallow sailed over the crowd around the Tree of Hope, telling us to keep up. “You’ve never seen this. Let’s get you some front row seats,” she added. The other students moved aside so that we could get to the trunk.

A boy stood next to the podium—the same boy who had stationed himself beside the cupcake platter at the Table of Never Ending Refills. He fidgeted uncomfortably, but that might have only been because the same woman who had taken away that platter was glowering at him.

“That’s Gretel,” Miriam whispered. “I met her earlier.”

Mr. Swallow landed on the podium and chattered angrily as Sarah Thumb slid off his back.

“The bird says that you don’t have time to deal with a Tale right now. You have to tell the Director,” the boy said. “What do you have to tell the Director?”

“Well, he’s got animal speech all right,” Sarah Thumb said to Gretel. “How did he find the snake? I thought we kept it locked up in a silver Tupperware or something.”

Gretel narrowed her eyes, her mouth in a very thin line. “Evan followed me back to the kitchens and went through the fridge.”