The Council of Mirrors (17 page)

“Bad news, Your Majesty. That book of fairy tales you tried to bury me in was full of magical weapons. I managed to acquire a few in the last four hundred years. Take this suit of armor I wear—enchanted by Merlin himself. As long as I wear it, no human can kill me. Now put away your card tricks. The Master has need of me, and I’d like to kill my traitorous brother while I have some free time.”

The Wicked Queen floated over the crowd. The whites of her eyes were swallowed by blackness and tiny bolts of lightning buzzed around her body. “Card tricks? You don’t get a name like the Wicked Queen doing card tricks.”

She blasted him with a green rocket that sent him slamming into the ground once more. Still, Atticus recovered quickly.

“Woman!” he said. “If you could kill, me you would have done it long ago, instead of locking me in that book.”

“Mother, what is he talking about?” Snow asked.

“Not now, honey, the grown-ups are talking,” Bunny said.

The queen stretched out her arms. She shouted “Gladius!” and a flaming sword appeared in her hands. She struck at Atticus. He smirked and then launched into a savage and unrestrained attack. He slashed with his blade, forcing the floating witch
farther and farther back. Bunny retaliated, her sword clanging against Atticus’s blade. Each strike sent red-hot sparks flying in all directions.

“I need a sword!” Charming said. His own was lost in the fighting.

“Coming right up,” Daphne said, and slipped her hand into her pocket. She took out the fairy godmother wand once more, and with a flick of her wrist Charming was in a full suit of armor with a sword in hand.

“I don’t need the armor!” Charming groused, pulling off the helmet and tossing it aside.

“Sorry, it goes with the outfit,” Daphne said.

Charming charged into the fight, slashing at Atticus.

“So the baby brother dares to pick up his sword?” Atticus said. “How you can defend your actions is beyond belief. The arrogance!”

Swords flew.

One flashed past Sabrina’s head and she felt it slice off a chunk of her hair. A second later she and Daphne were whisked into the sky. Puck had saved their lives again.

“I rest my case!” Puck said.

“Fine. I sometimes need your help,” Sabrina said.

“Sometimes?”

“Don’t push it, bug face,” Sabrina said. “There’s my mom and dad. Put us down there.”

Once they were on the ground, Henry and Veronica pulled them into their arms. Veronica’s face was wet with tears and seeing her daughters sent a fresh flood down her cheeks. “Let’s get out of here now, kids.”

“But what about Charming and Ms. Lancaster?” Sabrina said, turning back to watch more of the brutal fighting.

“They can handle themselves,” Henry said.

Goldilocks rushed to the family. “Come quick. It’s Mr. Seven.”

Henry, Veronica, Sabrina, and Daphne followed the woman through the mob. A crowd was gathered in an alley near the old bicycle shop. Mr. Seven lay in the center, Nurse Sprat hovering over him. He looked pale and tired. A bandage was wrapped around his belly, but a red stain was spreading through it. Morgan le Fay sat on the ground next to him, holding his hand. Seven leaned up with some pain and kissed his wife. “I love you, Morgan.”

The witch held on to his hand and would not let go. “I love you too! But everything is going to be fine. We’ll just postpone the honeymoon.”

“Tell Mordred I want him to look after you,” he said.

“You’re going to look after me, darling. That’s your job,” she said.

Sabrina couldn’t stop staring at the blood. There was so much. “I tried everything I can,” Nurse Sprat said. “Nothing is helping.”

Snow White rounded the corner. The beautiful teacher knelt beside Seven. “Take care of Charming, Snow,” the little man said. “He needs you.”

“I will,” Snow said through tears.

The queen and Charming joined the group moments later, exhausted from their fight. Snow jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around her boyfriend.

“We managed to fight him off,” Bunny said, “but he’ll be back. We should get our friend here back to your castle.”

Nurse Sprat shook her head.

Charming stepped forward and knelt down next to his companion. “Nonsense! If you think dying gives you an excuse to tell me what you really think of me, you can save it, Seven. You’re going to recover and it will be very awkward later.”

“William Charming, you are my friend,” the little man said.

Charming’s face turned red. He fought back tears with as much force as he must have used to fight back dragons.

“It has been my pleasure to look after you,” Seven continued.

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Charming said with a chuckle.

Sabrina watched Seven lock eyes with the queen. “I’ve done everything I could to protect him from the truth, Your Majesty,” Mr. Seven said. “But it seems it has come nonetheless.”

“What are you talking about?” the prince said.

The queen sighed and leaned over Mr. Seven. “You have done your job well. You were the right choice,” the queen said.

“I appreciate your saying so, Bunny,” Seven said, then looked at his wife. “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, Morgan. And I have been alive a long, long time. I’ll be waiting for you.”

And for the last time in his life a grin spread across his face. And then he was gone.

Those gathered wept for their friend. Morgan shrieked and Mordred did his best to comfort her. Charming took his friend’s hand and quietly prayed. And Sabrina and Daphne cried until there were no more tears to spare.

When Snow could finally speak, she stepped over to her mother and seized her hand. “You are going to tell me the truth.”

The queen nodded. “Yes, I am.”

ctober 18 (part 2)

We buried Mr. Seven by candlelight next to Briar Rose’s grave. Morgan sobbed and her son struggled to keep her on her feet. Their love was short but intense and I feel very bad for her. It doesn’t help that the decorations from the wedding are still hanging on everything. No one has the heart to take them down
.

Everyone said a few words about Mr. Seven, even Daphne, who cried and cried. Everyone, that is, except Uncle Jake. The little man’s death seemed to open a fresh wound inside him. He stood in the back of the crowd, more upset than ever
.

Charming spoke of his old friend. I wish I had a digital recorder so I could play it back and listen again, but I’ll write down what I remember. He said, “Seven was a giant of patience and consideration. He was as quick with a smile as he was with a caring ear. He took
care of me for many years and I am admittedly a difficult man to handle. He was my friend, my counsel, and at times my brother. I hardly imagine I could have become a man without him. Good-bye, old friend.”

When it was all over, the Wicked Queen took one of the white roses from Briar’s plot and planted it on Seven’s grave. As happened when they buried Briar, it sprouted hundreds of flowers, which bloomed in the moonlight
.

Everyone is miserable, but more than that they are afraid. No one ever thinks that a friend will die, especially at the hands of someone like Atticus. Bunny has promised her daughter and the prince answers about Atticus, and she’s asked Daphne, Puck, and me to help since we had a run-in with him in the Book of Everafter. I wonder how they will take it
.

“He’s your brother,” Bunny said to the prince.

“That’s impossible!” Charming said. “I’m an only child.”

“Because that’s how I wanted you to be,” she replied.

Sabrina watched the confusion on Charming’s face. He stood up and paced around the log cabin. Snow stood back in confused paralysis.

Bunny continued. “Just listen, please. What I’m going to tell you is complicated and you need to pay attention. This is the
story of your life, William—the story of your real life. A long time ago, your parents, King Thorne and Queen Catherine, had two children—”

Charming jumped forward. “Wait—”

“Shut up!” Bunny snapped. “The youngest was you, and the firstborn was a boy named Atticus, and he was the heir to your father’s throne. Your father arranged a marriage between his kingdom and my own. It was a very common practice at the time and helped grow wealth and power. Snow was our princess.”

“But I grew up in a village,” Snow argued.

Bunny sighed impatiently. “What I didn’t know when I consented to this marriage was that Atticus was cruel and vicious. Royalty must often find themselves in loveless marriages, but Atticus was different. I soon learned he was known for killing stable hands and torturing kitchen maids, but when he turned his rage on my daughter, I got involved. William, I went to your father and begged him to stop your brother, but he refused to see the wickedness in his child. While he dithered like a fool, Atticus abused Snow in unspeakable ways. So I took matters into my own hands. I went to the Book of Everafter.”

“The book of what?” Charming said. Both he and Snow looked at the witch like she had lost her mind. “What is this bedtime story you are spinning, Bunny?”

Sabrina could tell the witch was losing patience with their interruptions. “The Book of Everafter is a magical collection of stories that was stored in the Hall of Wonders,” Sabrina explained. “Every fairy tale from Little Red Riding Hood to, well, the two of you is written in its pages.”

“We were inside it,” Daphne said, hefting the big book into Charming’s lap. “It was kooky.”

“Inside it?” Charming said. He cracked it open and flipped through the pages.

“She said it was magic,” Puck said.

“Yes, a person can go into the stories if they want to—”

“And they can change them,” Bunny finished for Sabrina. “The nature of the book allows you to change the story the way you wish it would have happened. And if the change sticks—if the Editor doesn’t change it back—it becomes history, and the changes affect the real people those stories are based upon. It even changes how the world remembers the story. In order to save my daughter, I changed her story.”

“What does that have to do with us and that lunatic who killed Seven?” Charming asked.

“The world knows Snow’s story as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but the original tale was called The Murderous Blood Prince.”

Snow gasped. “I assume that didn’t have a happy ending.”

“How did you fix it, Bunny?” Charming asked. His voice was stern and furious.

“I erased Atticus from the story—entirely.”

“Well,
erased
isn’t the right word,” Sabrina said. “More like edited.”

“Yes, that’s right. I rewrote him—or at least I tried. I went through his story and tried to write events that would destroy the evil in him and make him a hero instead, but nothing I did worked. I wrote a mentor into the story that he could learn great things from, but he slit the man’s throat. I gave him a loving fairy godmother who looked after him, and he pulled her wings off and threw her into a fire. Nothing I did could change the darkness inside him and nothing I did stopped him from murdering my daughter, so I did what writers call a page-one rewrite. I got rid of the original story and started over.”

“Well, if you got rid of him, then who was that man out there?” Charming demanded.

“Billy, please calm down,” Snow said.

“I will not calm down. My best friend was just murdered and your mother has something to do with it. Haven’t you brought enough pain on us, Bunny? First the poisoned apples and now this!”

“I deserve some of your condemnation, but I ask you to just let me finish before you throw any more insults at me.”

Charming snarled and roughly sank back into his chair.

“So I started my daughter’s story all over again, but even that was difficult. What happened to Snow with Atticus was so intense that echoes of it invaded the new story. I tried a variety of approaches. I wrote a version with your sister, Rose, where you spent the entire story dancing on flowers. I gave you a kingdom made of starlight. I even tried to make it simple and have you be a maiden on a sea voyage. But each change I made still ended in tragedy. No matter what I did, the book would not allow it to work. Each time, something horrible and unexpected would happen to you. It was as if the book were demanding that you experience pain. And then I realized what you needed was a defender—someone to rescue you from these problems—so I took Atticus’s brother, William, and made him into a proper suitor for my daughter.”