CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE MARK

Assorted creatures volunteer to clear the table and serve dessert. Dishes and plates are swept away by swift hands. Filomena waits in wonder, eyeing the many treats being laid out on the table in front of her. Rumple, a tiny elf, plops down a towering multi-tiered dish of cookies. She smells the oatmeal and raisins, but there seems to be another ingredient as well. Fairy dust, maybe?

The table grows heavy with cakes of all kinds: the famous tulip, but also chicory chocolate and goldberry rose. Farther down is a variety of pastries, creating a carnival of colors in the center of the table. She catches sight of small round white-and-yellow candies shaped in the form of a flower, and smiles. Lily Licks!

Sprouting from one of the cakes is a white orchid, and the cake is tall and layered like a wedding cake, only more intricate and beautiful. Filomena’s mouth starts watering at the sight of it, and she fights the urge to lick the icing from the top. She wants to try one of everything, but she knows her eyes are bigger than her stomach.

Filomena is helping herself to thirds when Alistair shows up at the table with an easy smile.

“Hey, guys,” he says cheerily. He looks at all the desserts laid out before him and rubs his palms together. “Oh, I made it just in time!”

Filomena looks up at him questioningly. “Shouldn’t you still be in bed? What about your intestine being shoved up into your throat?”

“First of all, I was worried it would twist into my heart if I jumped around. But I was cleared to go. The pixies did their thing, and I’m good as new. See?” Alistair says, doing a little jig and spinning at the end, landing with his hands out.

“All right, all right,” Jack chimes in. “Go easy, will you? You were nearly squeezed to a pulp.”

Alistair makes a face.

In the meantime, Jack gets up to grab Alistair a chair, and when he returns to the table, he squeezes it in next to his seat.

“Look, Fil!” Alistair says excitedly, pointing to the small round white-and-yellow candies she noticed earlier. “Those are the Lily Licks! You have to try one!”

“I did!” she says gleefully.

“Did you have a slice of the tulip cake, too?” asks Alistair.

“I had two,” admits Filomena, who was unable to resist the spongy confection iced with real yellow tulips.

“I need to catch up, then,” says Alistair.

As they eat, a bard picks up a lute and begins to serenade the gathering. Zera makes her way down the table and stops at Filomena’s place.

“You did well today,” the fairy tells her.

“Thank you,” says Filomena.

“There’s something about you … Your presence here cannot be a mere coincidence,” says Zera thoughtfully. “The way you cast your spell reminded me of someone, and I couldn’t think of who until now.”

Filomena feels shy.

“And then I realized … but of course! It’s just been such a long time since I’ve seen her.”

Filomena tenses at Zera’s words, and even more so when the fairy leans ever so close to her and lifts her hand to Filomena’s forehead. She can smell the lilac in Zera’s hair, mixed with the subtle scent of smoke from the fires that broke out during the battle.

Zera inches her open palm closer to Filomena’s forehead until it’s nearly touching, and she whispers, “The thirteenth fairy is missing, my sister is she. The thirteenth fairy is hiding, won’t you show her to me?”

Filomena feels something explode inside her and cries out, reaching for her forehead, which feels like it’s splitting in two.

“Uhhhh … what’s happening?”

In reply, Zera offers her a tiny hand mirror from her pocket. “Look for yourself.”

On her forehead, underneath the skin, is a luminescent mark: a tiny crescent moon surrounded by thirteen tiny stars.

“Wh-what is that?”

Next to her, Alistair edges back in his chair a bit as he points to her forehead. “Is that what I think it is?” he asks no one in particular.

“It is,” says Zera, awe in her voice. “Carabosse, what have you done?”

“What’s going on?” Filomena demands, staring fixedly at the reflection of the mark on her forehead. Is it her imagination, or does it itch a little?

“You carry the mark of the thirteenth fairy,” Jack says, his mouth twisting as if the words taste bitter on his tongue. “The fairy Carabosse.” He looks like he wants to say something more but decides against it. He also inches away from her just a little bit.

Filomena remembers Jack’s words about Carabosse. It all began with her. She was the one who cursed the kingdom and started the war. We wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for her. She’s an evil fairy, and I’m glad she’s gone.

She stares at herself in the mirror again. “Excuse me?”

“You are marked by the thirteenth fairy. You carry her power and her protection,” says Zara. “I was wondering how a mortal girl could cast spells that only those of the forest can wield.”

“But what does it mean?”

“I do not know,” says Zera. “For a moment I thought—I thought you might be her, returned to me.” She hangs her head.

“I am not Carabosse!” cries Filomena. “Never!”

“Perhaps not,” Zera says. “But you are connected to her somehow, and to me, and to the rest of us. It can only mean one thing: You, Filomena Jefferson-Cho, are one of us. You belong here. In Never After.”

“Ooooh,” says Alistair.

Jack kicks him under the table.

“Ouch!” Alistair glares at Jack. Jack glares back.

But Filomena hasn’t said a word since Zera’s pronouncement.

Because instead of excitement, all she feels is an intense and rising anxiety. “No. Absolutely not! I’m Filomena Jefferson-Cho of North Pasadena, and I want to go home!” She turns to Jack. “You promised. Take me home now.”