THE BRIDGE STRETCHES LIKE BREAD DOUGH before them. The wind at her back makes Raven feel as if she can run faster than ever, but it still doesn’t seem fast enough. The Village of Book End has reconnected with the Ever After High campus, but both are moving away as fast as the girls can run. And their bridge continues to thin.
“Single file!” Apple shouts, dropping behind Raven and Maddie.
The borders of the school are within sight, but Raven estimates they will be running on a bridge as narrow as thread in the next sixty seconds. She knows she should imagine something to help them, but in her panic she can’t think, she can’t think.…
“Did you cast a ‘faster’ spell on us?” Maddie calls from behind. “Points for quick casting, but I don’t think it’s working! I only feel as fast as regular Maddie!”
“Magic doesn’t work in the Margins!” Raven yells back.
And then the bridge snaps.
Raven knows she should be scared, but more than anything, she is angry. Like waiting in line for an hour for an ice cream cone only to have the shop close right after the person in front of her. That kind of angry. The bridge was still a good ten inches wide when it snapped. It just wasn’t fair.
And then Nevermore’s giant clawed paw catches her midfall, another grabs Apple, and a toothy snout plucks Maddie from the air, holding her by the collar.
“Good girl!” Raven shouts.
“Woo-hoo!” Maddie howls, holding her arms wide.
The dragon flies through the fog of the Margins toward the land of Ever After, rising higher and higher.
“Don’t you think you should stay low?” Apple squeaks. “We don’t have a giant bat to catch us when she disappears this time.”
“I didn’t imagine this Nevermore!” Raven shouts over the rushing wind. “She’s the real thing! Good girl, Nevermore! Good, good girl!”
Dragon and girls soar into the air over Ever After High, circle the school once, and come to a landing in the courtyard outside the main gates. The ground shudders and the fierce wind subsides. The surrounding fog vanishes in an instant, and the horizon rolls with the green hills of Ever After.
“You have a lot of hexplaining to do, Ms. Queen!” Headmaster Grimm shouts as Raven and her friends leap off Nevermore’s back.
The headmaster is marching toward them as if he intends to punish the cobblestones under his feet for poor roadway performance.
“I’m sorry?” Raven asks.
“An apology is not going to cut it this time, young lady,” he says.
“I think perhaps Raven didn’t understand what she was being asked to hexplain,” Apple says, pushing a lock of hair from her forehead and tucking it behind an ear. Despite a headlong run from a volcano and a frantic dragon ride, that single lock of hair was the only thing out of place. Her bare feet don’t even look dirty.
Headmaster Grimm throws up his hands. “Hexplain? How about we begin with your abduction of the school council copresidents?”
Raven clenches her fists. Her magic is back, crackling around her fingertips. After all she’s been through, she has a good mind to turn him into a frog.
“Oh, we weren’t abducted,” Apple says.
“I was!” Maddie shouts, grinning.
“But,” Apple says, raising a hand to stall whatever words are about to come out of Headmaster Grimm’s mouth, “not by Raven.”
“Oooh, nonono, not by our sweet little Ravenbird!” Maddie says. Her voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper. “I was kidnapped by the shambling zombibos!”
“Zomboyz,” Raven corrects.
“Zomboyz!” Maddie repeats. “Because of my special listening powers, I was questioned with spray bottles and made to divulge the location of the secret base!”
“That’s… not quite right,” Raven says.
“Of course it isn’t. Nothing is quite right, or everything would be quite boring.” Maddie nods smartly. “But there was a spray bottle.”
Headmaster Grimm holds up a finger. “No more Hattersplaining, if you please. I would like the straight story without the nonsense.”
Raven shrugged. “There was trouble,” she says.
“And it was taken care of,” Apple says.
“Spelltacularly,” Maddie adds.
“And the… er… others?” Headmaster Grimm asks. “The monster girls?”
“They’re gone,” Raven says, and her voice catches at the end, because someone else is gone, too.
Apple takes a deep breath. “They are back home. We hope. Everything is fine, Headmaster Grimm, really. Everyone is fine. All is back to normal.”
Headmaster Grimm clears his throat with a harrumph. “It had better be. Normal and fine are the glue that holds us together.”
“Headmaster Grimm!”
A little man who works as a groundskeeper for Ever After High calls from a clutch of bushes near the fountain. “The azaleas have begun to sing again! The new fertilizer didn’t work!”
“Which song are they singing?” Headmaster Grimm asks.
“‘Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers,’ I think,” the little man says. “I don’t know azalea tunes well.”
“That’s just typical,” Headmaster Grimm mutters. “On top of everything, now this.”
“All is normal,” Apple says, gently turning Headmaster Grimm toward the groundskeeper and his bushes. “All is fine.”
“Fine,” says Raven. She sighs. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Oh, Drac’s back at Monster High, I bet!” Maddie says. “Let me check. Hey, Brooke! Are Drac and Frankie back at Monster High safe and sound?”
The Narrator does not speak to Maddie, not in any real way. That part of the story, of how Draculaura and Frankie return home, has yet to be told. Moreover, the Narrator knows that any connection between the two lands, any at all, could be dangerous. Anything that might narrow the Margins between worlds could risk a lava rise and undo everything the characters worked for.
“Yeah, so Brooke says we can’t talk about it,” Maddie says. “It’s dangerous to bring worlds together… blah blah lava and so on. But she did say the story of how Draculaura and Frankie return home hasn’t been told yet, which means they do get home. So there you go.”
Madeline Hatter is awfully clever.
Raven smiles at her friend, but she wasn’t talking about Draculaura, and Apple knows it. She takes Raven’s arm, and they walk side by side up to their room.
“She saved us,” Apple says. “She saved everything. I wasn’t sure she would.”
“Me neither,” Raven says. “I think she likes… or… liked that. Oh curses. I don’t like how this feels.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s a terrible way to feel.”
“Pluuus,” Maddie says, slipping between them to take both their arms, “no one is ever really gone.”
“Not when we remember them,” Apple says.
“Not when their stories are told,” says Raven. “You know what? I wasn’t sure what I would do in the future after I graduate—”
“You mean if you decide not to do what I’ve been telling you to do all these years?” Apple asks.
“Poisoning you with an apple is still off the table,” Raven says. “No, I think I’ll write. Tell stories.”
They enter their dorm room, and Apple goes straight to her floor-length mirror. “Hey, Raven? Worth a shot?”
Raven takes a deep breath and then performs the spell that connects this mirror to the mirror prison.
The Evil Queen, spiky shoulder pads, headdress and all, is sitting inside it, looking royally cheesed off.
“Yay, Readers,” says the Evil Queen, her chin in her hands. “Thanks a lot.”
Raven laughs.
Kitty comes into their room, her purple hair wild and unbrushed, her eyes bleary. “I think I overslept. My alarm didn’t go off this morning. Has anyone seen my clock?”