Reading all the books in the world couldn’t have prepared Filomena for the descent into not just another world, but a world she has seen so vividly in her imagination. She wasn’t even ready—or willing—for the departure. She took not just a leap but a lunge of faith, if you will. One giant leap for Filomena-kind. A footstep fueled by fear and desperation. A moment in time she can never take back. A chapter in a life story that if told would never be believed.
By the way, how late is it now? Her poor parents—she hopes her mom has anxiety medication on hand.
There’s no time to think, because as she falls through the void, she feels what she can only describe as galaxies encompassing her. But words don’t exist in this plane, only thought and image and memory. The word stop might come to mind, if she still has one.
She was swallowed into a tree.
And just as quickly another tree spits her out.
When she tumbles from the portal, she lands on the ground with a thud, falling hard on her backside. Ouch!
Her cheeks burn, thinking of the many times she’s fallen before.
Oh, has she fallen!
There was the time she fell spectacularly in gym class during dodgeball when she was trying to, well, dodge the ball. Isn’t that the point?
She’s heard about her slow-motion stumble and subsequent fast-forward lurch so many times that she could have written a book about it, thus becoming the third and youngest author in the family. However, she’s chosen to spare herself further embarrassment by not elaborating on her “epic spill” (as it went down in history), and instead listening humorlessly to tales told by her peers about it, complete with tear-filled eyes and fits of laughter.
And that was just one incident. She’ll keep the others to herself, thank you.
She surveys her surroundings for any witnesses who may crack jokes about this later. But Alistair and Jack aren’t laughing; they’re dusting themselves off and making sure they have all their limbs.
Jack walks over and extends his hand, which she gratefully accepts. “You all right?” he asks her as he helps her to her feet.
“Yes, I think so. Are you?” Filomena responds, inspecting him for blood or obvious injury from the burns he suffered in the ogre attack mere moments before they arrived here.
“Fine, thanks. Nothing a little pixie spit can’t fix,” he says with a grin, shaking a tiny bottle in front of him before putting it back in his pocket.
“Cool,” says Filomena.
Once she’s standing upright, she takes a deep breath and looks around. So this is Never After. This is Never After! This so makes up for the thirteenth and final book never being published. Understatement of the century.
She’s here.
Inside the pages of the book.
Living the pages of the book.
She’s here!
In Never After!
It’s glorious! It’s incredible! It’s like she’s walked onto a movie set, except everything is real, not just a prop. It even smells better here, like just-baked bread and fresh strawberries. It smells clean and new and sparkling. It’s … like a fairy tale. The land of fairy tales. Where dreams live happily ever after, er … never after, because as the author explains, there’s never an after here.
The dew glistens like diamonds on the grass; each petal on each flower is a precious marvel. There are colors here that she’s never seen before, colors that don’t exist in the spectrum back home. Is that a yellow-pink? An indigo-cinnamon?
Then she sees more: a structure made of golden straw, clearly an abode of sorts. If the wind blew … Wait a minute—she recognizes it from somewhere. The dwelling next to it consists of sturdy wooden sticks. The third, made of red and brown bricks. She claps her hands as three quarreling pigs walk out of the brick house. “Now, when he arrives, you need to get to my house immediately,” the pig in a banker’s suit and tie says, chiding his laconic brothers—one wearing a caftan (straw dude) and the other in plaid flannel and jeans (sticks) just like from the books.
Filomena looks around for the Big Bad Wolf, a slight panic building in her chest. She’s far too young to be mauled or eaten! But she’s distracted when she finds what looks like the Three Bears’ cottage close by. The dead giveaway is the three chairs sitting out front: one small and hard; one a bit too large and pillow-y and cloudlike; and one, in the center, whose size and cushioning look … just right. She sniffs the air for a whiff of porridge, then continues to look around.
Nearby sits a tall tower with a peaked roof and an open window at the very top. Its beams are tree trunks wrapped in moss and vine. Filomena waits for Rapunzel to let her hair down, hoping to see if it can actually touch the ground. The top of the tower is so high, probably at least eighty feet in the air. But Rapunzel is keeping her hair to herself today, it seems.
Farther away is a decrepit and seemingly abandoned castle, left to the elements, except from behind its walls comes a terrible roaring. The castle of the Beast! Filomena shivers. She hopes Beauty is on her way to save him.
Filomena turns around again. From this hillside, she can see so many castles all over the landscape—one by the sea, one by the forest, one by the city. Would those be the mermaid princess’s, Snow White’s, and Cinderella’s?
Alistair eventually disrupts her examination and thoughts by making an obvious coughing noise, and she briefly wonders how long she’s been standing there, lost in wonderment.
“Still think it’s not real?” he asks with a cheeky grin.
Filomena considers the question before finally saying, “No, I no longer question whether it’s real. I do, however, question what has been real my whole life.”
It’s too late to worry about how her parents might react to her lateness. The deed is done. She’s already gone somewhere they’ll never be able to find her. Forget about being grounded; when she goes back, she’ll never be able to leave home again.
“So?” asks Jack, eyes merry.
“It’s marvelous,” she tells him.
“Welcome to Never After,” he says.
“Now go home,” says Alistair. A pause. “Just kidding.”