The Council of Mirrors (13 page)

Everyone smiled knowingly.

“He also believed, for some reason, that I enjoy being in front of a crowd.”

Everyone roared with laughter.

“Well, let me tell you, this party has been incredibly troublesome. After all, we’re only trying to build a castle, raise an army, and prepare for a war. Mr. Seven and his bride have been a terrible inconvenience.”

Suddenly, the laughter was gone. Sabrina was incredulous. Charming had a history of being selfish, but was he really going to grouse during a wedding?

“But that is love, isn’t it?” he continued. “It’s terribly inconvenient. It sweeps you up and steals your attention and slows down your work. Our labors fall behind, our friends report us missing, and everything comes to a screeching halt! Everything, that is, except what truly matters in this life—true love. We’ve all been there. We know the feelings. So when we see it in a friend,
a dear, dear friend, we throw down our work and we celebrate. We rejoice. We raise a glass. Because when we recognize it in the hearts of friends, it reminds us of how important it is in our own. Mr. Seven, you are and always have been my companion and friend. You have made me a better man, and almost on a daily basis you have reminded me that I too need to celebrate the love in my life.”

Everyone turned to Snow. Her face was rosy red and she was grinning wide.

Charming held up his glass. “So, my friends, in this lovely courtyard, let us raise a glass and celebrate the maddening, all-consuming, time-killing, terribly inconvenient magic called love.”

The crowd raised their glasses and drank, then burst into rousing applause.

Together, the crowd cleared the chairs away and there was dancing and singing and food. Where the feast came from, Sabrina could hardly guess, but somehow these runaways and refugees had prepared a spread for a hundred people. In the midst of the party Mr. Hamelin found himself a guitar, and his son, Wendell, blew on his harmonica. Sabrina watched Charming whisper something into Snow’s ear that made her giggle. She paid for the laugh with a kiss. Henry and Veronica waltzed
around the courtyard, holding sleeping Basil between them. Even Red dragged Mr. Canis onto the dance floor for a spin.

Sabrina couldn’t help but get swept up in it all. The dread of the last few months and the threat of tomorrow were pushed into a corner of her mind. As she watched the revelers, it dawned on her that the wedding was more than a party for two people coming together as one, but rather, a celebration of life and its possibilities, even in the midst of madness.

“I guess we’re supposed to dance,” Puck said, suddenly appearing beside her.

“Do you know how to dance?”

Puck rolled his eyes. “I’m royalty. That’s all we ever do.”

He took her by the hand and taught her an elaborate dance that seemed to be part waltz, part square dance. It was more theatrical than what she thought of as dancing, and it drew way more attention than she wanted, but soon the entire gathering was mimicking their every step. She pushed her embarrassment aside and surrendered to the fun of it. She couldn’t even be mad at Puck for not noticing her dress.

As the night marched onward, the crowd began to thin. People drifted off to their cabins and crawled into bed. The new Mr. and Mrs. Seven thanked everyone profusely until they were practically pushed into their honeymoon suite—
the only finished and furnished room in the castle. Veronica carried Basil and Henry carried Daphne, both asleep, back to their beds.

Soon the only people left were Gepetto, Pinocchio, Puck, and Sabrina. Sabrina was too excited from the night’s events to go to bed, so she offered to clean up the mess, and the other three joined her—even Pinocchio, though he did do quite a bit of grumbling. As they stacked chairs and picked up trash, Sabrina could still hear the music in her ears, beckoning her to spin in circles. Gepetto decided to leave the flowers where they were as a reminder to everyone of the happy time they had shared, then said good night, promising his son that tomorrow would be another busy day. Pinocchio groaned as he followed his father back to their cabin.

And then Sabrina was enveloped in a glowing light. When it was gone, she looked down and saw that her beautiful dress was no more. She was back to being filthy. Her hair was a mess and she smelled. Puck’s fancy suit was gone as well.

“It must be midnight,” Sabrina said.

“Thank goodness,” Puck said. “I don’t enjoy the feeling of being clean.”

Sabrina rolled her eyes but didn’t move. Instead, she looked up at the moon hanging over the yard.

“So . . . ,” Puck said.

“So . . .”

“Nice party,” he said. “It reminded me of Sven the Soul Eater’s thirteenth wedding. Or was that the fourteenth? It’s hard to say. He kept eating his wives. Still, I did think it was strange there wasn’t a forest fire. I’ve never been to a wedding that didn’t have some kind of uncontrollable devastation.”

Sabrina wished he would just stop talking. He was going to ruin the night with some snarky insult. She just knew it!

“By the way, when I said ‘wow,’ I was looking at you,” Puck said.

Sabrina’s face lit up in a grin. Who was this boy? He could drive her crazy with his pranks and taunts, but then, when she least expected, he could be the sweetest and most thoughtful person in the world. He was maddening and impossible to understand, but at that moment he was awfully cute. And she thought she might like to kiss him but couldn’t decide. The moment was all too perfect. Asking for more would be pressing her luck, but then again . . .

“Um . . . kind of late, isn’t it?” her father said, appearing from the shadows.

“DAD!” Sabrina cried. She could have died from embarrassment.

Puck rolled his eyes. “All right, smell you later,” he said. He was in the air instantly, flying off to wherever he slept.

“Get to bed, ’Brina,” Henry said as she turned back toward his cabin. “We’re going to put an end to this war tomorrow.”

Sabrina slipped into her room and found Daphne big-eyed and frantic.

“Have you seen it?” she asked.

“Seen what?”

“The Book of Everafter. It’s been stolen!”

he morning came all too soon. Sabrina woke her sister and they dressed sleepily. They agreed it was best to keep the missing book a secret. They were pretty sure it had to be somewhere in the castle or its grounds and it would be easier to find it themselves than start an uproar that would lead to a lot of questions about what the book was used for. They divided up the camp so that each of them would have a different section, then stepped out into the bright sunshine.

Before they took a single step, Snow White was marching toward them.

“Are you ready for your training?”

“Huh?”

“Billy thinks it might be wise, in light of the prophecy, that you learn to fight. He also thinks it might be good for everyone
to see the two of you out here at the crack of dawn preparing for war. Who better to train you than me? Remember the self-defense class I taught at the community center?”

Sabrina shrugged and turned to her sister, who was still barely awake.

Daphne grumbled. “Without breakfast?”

“We can eat during our first break,” Snow said.

“First break implies that there will be more than one, which also implies there will be time between the breaks when we are not breaking,” Sabrina said.

“Don’t be lazy, girls,” Snow said as she handed each girl a long black pole, nearly four feet in length. They were polished and smooth and heavy.

“What’s this?”

“It’s called a bo-staff and it’s very useful in a fight,” Snow said.

“It weighs a ton,” Sabrina said, trying to swing it over her head only to drop it on the ground. “And it’s clumsy.”

“That’s because your muscles are weak. When you grow stronger, your ability to use it will grow too,” Snow said. “Trust me, when I started learning martial arts I had the upper-body strength of a tadpole, but now . . .”

Snow spun the staff at an incredible speed, twirling it around her head like the blades on a helicopter. She passed it from hand
to hand, still spinning, then swung it around her back, along her arms as she ducked into a crouch. She stopped her last swing with the staff only inches from Sabrina’s nose. “I think that’s what your sister would call very punk rock.”

“My catchphrases are trademarked, Ms. White,” Daphne said with a giggle.

“You’re going to teach us to do that?” Sabrina asked.

“I am.”

“How is this going to help me stop a madman who is made out of magic?” Sabrina said. “Listen, Ms. White, I appreciate the help, but you’ve already taught my sister and me plenty of self-defense stuff. I don’t need to know how to scare someone off with a big stick.”

“I’m not here to teach you to scare someone with a big stick,” Snow said, stepping forward. “I’m going to teach you how to hit someone with it. Welcome to the Bad Apples.”

That afternoon was the most painful in Sabrina’s memory. Though Snow took it easy on her, the staff still slapped against her shoulders, knees, shins, and fingers. It was also heavy and hard to hold, so after a few hours her shoulders were burning like hamburgers on a grill. But what hurt most was how each strike her pole blocked sent a jarring vibration into her hands and up her arms, stopping at her neck. When one attack came,
it hurt so much the staff fell out of her hands and bounced on the ground.

As she bent down to retrieve her weapon, she saw that she had an audience. Nearly everyone within the walls of the castle had slipped into the courtyard to watch. Some were smiling at her, almost beaming with pride. Others were merely curious and watched without expression. Pinocchio was smirking at her, but this didn’t bother her as much as her mother’s and father’s anxious expressions. She tried to push their worry out of her mind and focus on her training. If she learned anything that day, it was that Snow knew when you weren’t paying attention, and she made you pay for it.

“Well, that was a good first day,” Snow said, taking the bo-staffs. “I’ll see you back here at five.”

Sabrina groaned. “Five!”

But Snow walked away.

“We still need to find the book,” Daphne said.

“I need to be taken to a hospital,” Sabrina said, wincing at her bruises and strained muscles.

Suddenly, Puck stepped forward with three wooden swords in hand.

“What’s this about?” Daphne asked.

“I’m your next teacher. You can call me Mr. Puck,” he said,
handing the sisters each a sword. “I’m going to teach you the art of swordsmanship—or in other words, how to totally kill someone with a sharp, pointy thing.”

Sabrina’s arms were so sore she could barely lift the weapon. Daphne was struggling as well.

“We’re too tired,” Sabrina said.

“And too beat up,” Daphne added.

Puck didn’t listen. He launched into an attack and the girls were forced to defend themselves. For ten minutes Sabrina managed to fight him off, but not before he used his wooden sword to smack her in her head, poke her in the belly, and crack her across the shins. It didn’t help that the sword, though wooden, felt as if it were cast from iron and attached to barbells. Snow’s workout had taken nearly all of her strength. She fell to her knees and surrendered.

“Get up,” Puck said as he stood over her.

“Puck, we’re tired,” Daphne cried.

“Get on your feet,” he demanded.

“What are you doing?” Sabrina said as she tried to fill her exhausted lungs. She was surprised by his attitude. She had never seen him so serious—so—so
mean
. Where was the dancing boy from the night before? Where was the Puck who she wanted to kiss?

“I’m teaching you to fight,” he said. “Pick up your sword!”

She stared up into his eyes, hoping he could see her hurt, but they were cold.

Sabrina looked to the crowd. They looked back at her like she was a turtle who had flipped over on its back and could not right itself. She could hardly blame them. She wouldn’t want her own life put in the hands of children, especially ones as abysmally normal as Daphne and her. She wanted to stomp over to them and shout that she had not chosen this path for herself. She wanted them to know that she wasn’t any happier about it than they were. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair.