awoke to the smell of bacon.
At first this delighted me. But then my eyes widened when I remembered that our host was a pig.
With great haste I jumped up from the floor and raced into the kitchen. Chauncey was rinsing his arm in the sink. When he saw the panic on my face he gestured to a pan on the stove. “Settle down. I just burnt myself while I was cooking.”
“Oh,” I said sheepishly.
Feeling a bit embarrassed, I walked over to the side window. As I yawned, I noticed my reflection; the bags under my eyes were enormous and my hair was bird’s-nest-shaped at best. I rubbed my eyes and looked past the unflattering image to the paling sky above the trees.
I’d been up late last night. We all had. None of us could really sleep considering everything we’d just been through.
SJ and the others stayed up making light conversation. Blue talked about the first time she ever wrestled a bear. Jason spoke of his apprenticeship last summer mastering an underground form of kickboxing called Fing Wa. And SJ described the array of portable potions she was still carrying around with her, explaining how their color signified the type of enchantment contained inside.
The silver potions temporarily froze things. We’d used a few yesterday to freeze that dragon over Century City. But SJ made it clear that that much power was not to be consistently relied upon. The only reason yesterday’s potions had managed an effect that large was because we’d gotten them inside the dragon’s mouth, which set off a chain reaction by combining with the creature’s blood, blah blah blah.
SJ explained that part in much more detail, but I was too tired to listen. Bottom line, the dragon was a very specific case and ordinarily the silver potions could only freeze an area between two and twelve feet in radius (depending on exposure and power of impact).
The other potions SJ was presently packing were jade, red, and yellow. The jade ones emitted a potent slime that glued people where they were standing. Red—as previously demonstrated—emitted fiery explosions. And yellow was a weird body-switching potion. Shoot it at someone and that person would temporarily switch bodies with the next living being he or she touched.
SJ had made four copies of that potion just in case. I didn’t see how they would be terribly useful. But she was the master potionist, so she could brew whatever kind of portable concoction suited her.
While my three friends kept each other’s minds occupied with casual chatter, I too had stayed up, but on my own and off to the side. I felt awkward talking to SJ. As they shared stories, reminisced, and exchanged memories, I lay on Chauncey’s wooden floor beneath a flannel blanket and counted the tiles on the ceiling, the questions in my head, and the insecurities burning inside of me like splintered wood.
Daniel remained silent all evening too—keeping to himself like he always did.
Unlike me, I gathered this wasn’t due to any form of residual internal conflict. Rather, it was probably just another symptom of his strong conviction to remain aloof.
Late into the night, when the others had finally fallen asleep, I noticed him taking out his golden pocket watch. He’d had that thing for as long I’d known him, but he never took it out when he thought anyone was around to see. I supposed he thought the coast was clear, but I hadn’t fallen asleep yet.
Chauncey’s fire shone off the pocket watch’s shell. Daniel stared into the contents concealed within. I wondered what they were. He always had that watch with him and kept its meaning a secret from everyone. So I gathered whatever was inside was both immeasurably important and immensely personal.
The late night taking its toll on the lot of them, my friends and Daniel were still sleeping as Chauncey worked over his stove. I was tired but had no trouble coming to the conclusion that being half-awake in this kitchen was way better than going back into the living room where I’d risk waking up the others or having more nightmares.
My night’s sleep had been jam-packed with awful dreams. They were growing so clear now that it was becoming harder to write them off. And this development was just the tip of the iceberg. As of two nights ago, I was beginning to contend with a factor that made the dreams all but impossible to forget. I was becoming a regular character in them.
In my latest nightmares the dream version of myself had faced two enemies. Based on my past interactions with them, I wasn’t sure which posed more of a threat to my actual well-being. Just as I wasn’t sure which caused greater disturbance to my subconscious one.
After falling asleep I found myself opening my metaphysical eyes to the sight of Lena Lenore. The leader of our realm’s Fairy Godmother Agency—Book’s Godmother Supreme—was a fuzzy image at first.
I was lying on the silver carpet of her Fairy Godmother HQ office. There were hundreds of glittering ice shards on the floor. My body felt drained like a thousand leeches had just gone to town on me.
I hesitantly lifted myself onto my forearms, swallowing the pain and blinking hard to bring the scene, and the woman, into focus.
The office was just how I remembered it—pink walls, black chandelier, glass desk with a leather chair behind it. Lenore, too, was exactly how I recalled her. The forty-something woman possessed a beautiful face, a regal stature, and a cold sharpness in her eyes that put any of these shards of ice to shame.
I tried to speak, but the words were dry in my throat. And my head was too dizzy to think straight.
Lenore said something to a massive Fairy Godfather standing in the corner. He had a crewcut and a tan face. His muscles bulged with apprehension when the Godmother Supreme snapped at him.
Looking down, I discovered my arms were clothed in the sleeves of a cobalt dress. The fabric was soft and strange. Spreading from the wrists to the underside of my elbows, a tiny star pattern ran down the sleeves in the pattern of the veins I surely had beneath my skin. The design was elegant and slightly off-putting, much like the woman who suddenly grabbed me.
Lena Lenore was beside me now. She’d bent over and grasped my chin in her smooth, manicured hand. Her long pink fingernails grazed my cheeks like small knives, and she forced me to look at her.
Despite the aching in my body, the hatred I felt for her burned even more intensely. Lenore had kept me apart from Emma for ten years. She and her higher-up Godmothers had been conspiring with our realm’s ambassadors to manipulate protagonist selection. And in the brief introduction we’d had last month, she’d basically threatened my friends and me to learn our places and stop messing with things we couldn’t control.
“Answer me, Crisanta,” Lenore hissed.
I locked my gaze with hers and detected frustration and anger in her expression. Those ardent hazel eyes were the last image I held from this scene. I blinked again and I was in a different place but with the same enemy.
This time, however, I was watching from a distance.
Dream me and Lenore were in the infirmary at Lady Agnue’s. It was night and the windows were open, allowing a biting winter air to breathe through. The white lace curtains fluttered, the moonlight outside making them take on an even more ghostly palette.
The Godmother Supreme had her back to one of the windows. The icy air should’ve made her cold, but she seemed unfazed by its touch. Not a goose bump could be seen on her arms, both of which were exposed due to the sleeveless nature of her sleek, silvery pink dress.
Lenore strode away from the window. Dream me got up from her cot and crossed her arms. She was wearing a floor-length, black silk robe. I’d only ever seen such a robe once when Princess Marie Sinclaire had come down with a life-threatening case of toadstool fever and been bedridden for weeks. That was the kind of robe the infirmary kept on hand for long-term patients; its silk was made from enchanted silkworms found in the kingdom of Coventry.
“You don’t scare me, Lenore,” dream me said as the woman sauntered over.
“Well you scare me, Crisanta Knight,” Lenore replied coolly. “And you know what I do with the things I fear? I make sure they never see the light of day.”
Lenore drew closer. The sound of her heels against the stone floor caused an echo in the otherwise deserted room. Dream me stood her ground, but I could tell it was difficult. She seemed tired and weak. The flames of the candles in the room quivered like they were nervous.
The Godmother reached for her right hand. Dream me reacted quickly and went for something in the folds of her robe. As Lenore removed the silver ring from her finger, dream me produced a sparkling hairpin. Both accessories instantly transformed into wands, only mine kept extending until it was in the shape of my spear. The two women regarded one another, their individual weapons glowing ominously.
The scene changed again with a flash and I was left observing a new pair of mortal enemies: dream me and Arian. They were squared off somewhere dark. I figured it was outdoors based on the way the wind was rushing around them.
One minute I was watching them fight—a brutal, vehement combat that made my pulse quicken to the speed of a hummingbird’s heart. Then before I knew it my consciousness was absorbed inside my dream form again.
I didn’t have time to digest the convergence. Arian swung at me, and I ducked. I jabbed at him and he came at me with increasing force. The contorted sounds of fast winds and grinding metal whirred around us. The void we fought in was intermixed with disorienting flashes of silver and starlight.
Suddenly Arian grabbed me. He had me by the throat and—sweeping my leg out from under me—slammed my body to the floor.
My head hit metal. When I opened my eyes I expected to see him bearing down over me, but instead a blaze of light consumed my vision. All of a sudden I was dangling from something precarious. Everything around me was a blur, but I gathered from the way I was holding on for dear life that I was somewhere high above the ground.
I looked up and saw Arian once more. He was crouched on the platform above me. I stared into his cold black eyes and saw a scar where I’d struck him back in Century City.
He raised his sword. My heart stopped.
I didn’t remember letting go, but without warning I abruptly found myself plunging through darkness in free fall. Eternity was quiet at first as I dropped through the endless abyss, but then I heard one word: “Knight!”
Daniel was calling out to me. I didn’t know where he was; everything was lost in the void. Nevertheless, I was certain it was him. His voice was etched into my memory so deeply it might as well have been a part of my conscience.
I continued to hear him call out to me, a resonating echo that made me simultaneously resentful and relieved. As this went on, more images spun around me. Short, sharp visions of that red watering can, light pink high heels walking across a glowing floor, snow falling in the woods, wolves and torches and a theater, and then . . . Well, and then I woke up.
Given all this, you could understand why I preferred to force my tired eyes to remain open in Chauncey’s kitchen. It sure beat going back to the traumatizing world I’d just risen from.
After a minute in the warm silence I decided to help our host finish preparations for his breakfast. He had been kind enough to take us into his home. The least I could do was help him with some of the housework.
Together, he and I sliced and diced and chopped and charred various ingredients. When the food was ready Chauncey offered me a seat across from him at his quaint, handcrafted table. He offered me some of his breakfast too, but much as I loved a good home-cooked meal, I had to decline. A kale omelet with a side of sautéed truffles was not exactly how I wanted to start my morning, as I was neither a vegetarian, nor insane.
I suddenly heard a noise behind me and glanced in the direction of the living room. For a second I worried that my friends had woken up. I sighed with relief when I saw that it was just a bird at the window.
“In a fight with one of your friends?” Chauncey asked through a mouthful of his breakfast.
My head spun back around, surprised that he’d guessed correctly.
“Uh, kind of,” I said.
“It’s Little Miss Perfect out there, isn’t it?” he went on, referring to SJ. “Why am I even asking, of course it is. I could tell. It was the same with me and my brothers at first, you know—avoiding eye contact, questioning what the other said but pretending to everyone else like there wasn’t anything wrong. So what happened with you two?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “I mean, I’m just sort of going through some stuff right now and she got mad that I didn’t trust her or the others enough to be honest about it.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It’s all pretty strange and I didn’t want to freak them out.”
He looked up from his truffles. “And?”
“And nothing.”
Chauncey raised his piggy eyebrows in suspicion. I pretended like I didn’t know what he was implying but soon realized I wasn’t fooling him.
Dang, this is one perceptive pig.
After a moment Chauncey shrugged too. “Okay, kid,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me. But the way I see it, you should probably take the opportunity to.”
“How do you figure that?”
“To start with, you’re probably never gonna see me again, right?”
“Well, yeah,” I agreed. “I mean I don’t see us coming back here for our winter vacation or anything.”
“That, and there’s a pretty good chance you’re gonna get killed before you make it out of the Forbidden Forest.”
“Gee, thanks for the encouragement,” I huffed. “So what’s your point exactly?”
“My point,” Chauncey continued, “is that whatever’s eating you, you’re obviously nowhere near ready to admit it to your friends. So you might as well tell me. Get it off your chest to a complete stranger while you have the chance.”
It wasn’t a terrible suggestion. Strangers did make the best listeners at times. The problem was, I didn’t even know if I was certain about what was “eating me.”
For a long time, I’d been operating under the notion that my secrecy over things like my dreams and Natalie Poole was a path I’d taken for my friends, not because of them. However, I knew now that the matter was not so simple.
Not wanting to tell my friends the truth because it would put unnecessary stress on them was one thing. But realizing that I didn’t trust them with it felt like something entirely different.
“All right, Chauncey. Here it is,” I began slowly. “I don’t know why I didn’t trust them enough to tell them. I thought I did it because it would be better for them not to know—that I was protecting them from this giant burden I’ve been dealing with on my own, but now . . .” I shook my head. “Now I don’t know.”
The sound of Chauncey’s pensive chewing filled the room as he sat there analyzing me. When he finished his last truffle he wiped his snout with a cloth napkin and took a long sip from his coffee mug. After he’d allowed my words to hang in the air sufficiently, he smacked his lips together and pointed at me with his hoof.
“You know what I think, kid? I think you really are trying to protect your friends, but that’s only part of what’s going on here. I think the bigger part is that you’re trying to protect yourself from facing a much bigger, personal issue.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, crossing my arms defensively.
“Actually, it’s not,” Chauncey countered. “As a matter of fact, I read about this in Maidens’ Home Journal last month. According to their self-help section, you’re not going to trust anyone until you trust yourself and everything that comes with that. Matter of fact, now that I’m thinkin’ about it, I can boil down your problem to one thing. You wanna know what that is?”
“Fine,” I reluctantly sighed. “Hit me with your best shot.”
“Okay,” he said. “You don’t accept yourself. Plain and simple. That explains why you won’t admit any of that stuff to your friends, or to your own conscience either.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “I think you missed the mark there, Chauncey.”
“Really?” he said. “All right, prove me wrong then. Tell me what makes you, you.”
I sat up straighter—accepting his challenge. “Okay, I will. Just give me a second.”
A list of adjectives immediately popped into my head. But they were all just a bunch of miscellaneous traits like opinionated, headstrong, and snarky—not exactly character defining. Chauncey was asking for more than that.
I thought harder.
Nothing that proceeded to come to mind, though, seemed important enough to be an all-defining personal quality—not like SJ with her kindness or Blue with her fearlessness. Consequently, the more I concentrated on the issue the more I discovered that Chauncey’s claim may have been more accurate than I’d initially asserted.
I guess I really didn’t have an internal consensus about what made me, me.
My prologue prophecy would have me believe that what made me, me was the fact that I was a normal princess destined to be the ordinary and subservient wife of Prince Chance Darling. Our headmistress Lady Agnue and my archenemy Mauvrey had been trying to convince me for years that I was a terrible princess, a sorry excuse for a hero, and a damsel on both counts. My teachers thought I was spunky but naive. My classmates considered me a girl without direction or purpose—just someone who identified with being unexceptional in any role she tried to embody, be it a hero, princess, or otherwise. And as for my friends . . . Well, I genuinely wasn’t sure how they saw me. And that fact alone, I realized, made me the most uneasy.
“Just as I thought,” Chauncey said, interrupting my self-reflection. “You’ve got nothing.”
“Hang on,” I protested. “It’s not that I don’t have any idea; it just kind of depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you,” he replied fervently. “So, can you tell me or not?”
I opened my mouth to speak but found my lips without words at the ready. Embarrassed by this more than I cared to admit, I looked away.
Chauncey sighed. “Don’t beat yourself up, kid. Truly accepting yourself is one of the toughest things a person can do because there’s so much that goes into it—strengths, weaknesses, wants, fears—basically everything that you are and everything that you’re not. It’s a tall order, and one that most people struggle through life trying to fulfill. But if you really want to overcome what you’re going through, you’re gonna have to try. Because I have a feeling that in your case it’s either what’s gonna make you or break you.”
I huffed, blowing a strand of hair out of my face.
Maybe he was right.
On our way to Emma’s, Daniel had called me on my inability to be open with myself about who I was. And while I’d acknowledged this was true, I still hadn’t been able to solve the riddle of why it was true. My reaction to Chauncey’s challenge just now caused me to wonder if his assertion contained the answer. Then after a minute of reflection I was sure that it did.
He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t accept myself, at least not entirely anyways. If I did, I wouldn’t have been at such a loss for words a moment ago. I wouldn’t have been filled with so much insecurity whenever Daniel or anyone else made judgments about me. And I probably wouldn’t have been burdened with all this relentless doubt.
Hmm. I guess I need to work on that . . .
I really hadn’t expected to be fed such deep, fairly accurate advice so early in the morning, and as a result I now found myself feeling mentally exhausted. I needed a cup of coffee, or a scone. Actually, forget the coffee. I just wanted a scone.
There were no baked goods in sight, though. So I exhaled deeply and leaned back in my chair as the weight of this unsolicited self-revelation set in. “You know what, Chauncey,” I said. “Pig or no, you’re a pretty insightful guy.”
Chauncey snorted in amused response.
“Yeah? Tell that to my ex-wife.”