The problem with being a protagonist isn’t so much the external dangers that threaten you. When you put yourself out there, you anticipate them—the monsters, the enemies, the risk. What you don’t see coming are the dangers that feed on your insides—the threats you create for yourself.
Those, I’ve learned, are far more treacherous. For while the former can be vanquished with swords and spears, quick thinking and cunning, and training and physical strength, internal threats are not so easily destroyed. Moreover, they are born when you least expect them and grow like weeds, taking you over from deep within. So much so that by the time you notice what’s happening, it might be too late to resurrect yourself from their grip.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Then again, isn’t that how all great adventures start?
I still remember that day in the infirmary like it was yesterday, though it was actually several weeks ago when everything changed and this whole journey began.
The students from my school, Lady Agnue’s School for Princesses & Other Female Protagonists, were on a field trip with the students from Lord Channing’s School for Princes & Other Young Heroes. We were visiting Adelaide, one of two kingdoms by the sea in our enchanted, fairytale realm of Book, to learn about diplomacy. Though for me, the formal lectures given that week were buried beneath a far more important lesson, which was that your whole world can flip in an instant. And when it does you have two choices—take what the universe gives you lying down, or do something about it.
Despite the fact that I was literally lying down in a cot at the time of the incident, I’d chosen the latter. No easy task, considering where I come from.
I live in a world where people are selected to either be common characters (commons) or protagonists. If you are a common, you are not expected to be anything special; you are supposed to live an ordinary life and help make up the ensemble that highlights those of us chosen to be something extraordinary.
This might seem like the short end of the stick in terms of our realm’s division, but being a protagonist has its own set of catches. As the rebellious daughter of Cinderella, I know the cost better than most.
Depending on what type of protagonist you happen to be (princess, hero, etc.), you are expected to live up to the very specific standard that goes along with it. That’s why my kind attends the aforementioned private boarding schools. The institutions keep us in our place, streamlining us through curriculums designed to eliminate any personality traits that might deviate from what our realm’s leaders consider appropriate “main character” behavior.
If I were to provide my humble opinion on the subject in as succinct a way as possible, I would offer but two words: It blows.
Some people, like my best friend SJ, were great at accepting their roles. She was the spitting image of her mother Snow White in nearly every way. And while I knew deep down she wasn’t keen on the forced archetypes either, at least her princess-ness came naturally to her. For me, being everyone else’s idea of a perfect princess came as naturally to me as vegetarianism came to the Big Bad Wolf.
Part of me was glad for this. I didn’t want to be another glittering doll like the rest of my kind—shiny, fragile, useless. I was proud to be the bold, headstrong creature I’d grown into over the last sixteen years. I yearned to challenge the damsel in distress stereotype and become something more than a typical good princess, something better. And I figured my defiant personality was the best chance I had of getting there.
Alas, three main problems stood in my way.
First, I wasn’t even a good princess to start with. Since the very beginning, I pretty much sucked in that department. While I excelled at things like combat and snarky comments, I lacked skills my archetype deemed important, like curtsying, singing, and keeping my mouth shut. I’d spent the last few years struggling through most of my classes at Lady Agnue’s—from Damsels in Distress to Woodland Creature Fashions—and it had become evident to pretty much everyone that I was not up to par. As a result, I’d long been forced to wonder: if everyone just saw me as a screw up, then what chance did I have of defining who I was in a favorable light?
My second problem was that female protagonists weren’t allowed to be heroes. Common (non-royal) female protagonists could be “heroic,” but the best they could hope for career-wise was serving as feisty sidekicks to male heroes. If you were a princess, forget it. We were supposedly incapable of such strength.
Finally, the third obstacle I had to face was the Author and her prophecies.
Our realm’s prophet has never been seen. She lives in an off-limits part of Book called the Indexlands where she chooses protagonists and writes their futures in actual books. These books tell the schools which children in our realm to take in, and they tell the children what fates to expect.
Traditionally all princes and princesses are protagonists, so they do not need to wait for their books to appear to know they’re headed for main character school. Commons, however, have no way of knowing when or if the Author will select them as protagonists and change their lives unalterably. So they wait, but usually not for long. Common protagonist books appear in childhood or early adolescence. Except for a few unique cases, if you’re not chosen by age thirteen or fourteen, it means you’re stuck in the ensemble character class forever.
One thing all protagonists do share—whether royal or not—is the wait for their prologue prophecies. A prologue prophecy is the very first thing the Author writes in any protagonist book. These vague, typically rhyming lines are super important, for they prophesize the sum of that main character’s destiny.
SJ hadn’t received her prologue prophecy yet, but all my other friends had. For instance, Blue, the younger sister to the famed Little Red Riding Hood and another one of my best friends, received hers a few weeks ago.
While I didn’t know exactly what it said, she’d told us the gist. The main takeaway being that it sucked. Her prologue dictated she was going to have to marry our friend and fellow protagonist Jason—younger brother to Jack from Jack & the Beanstalk. This was as awkward as it was infuriating.
Jason was a cool guy and everything, and we were all really good friends, but no one should be forced to marry someone they didn’t pick out for themselves. And the fact that Blue—my cloak-wearing, knife-wielding, independent, fearless, heroic dear friend—didn’t have a say in such an important part of her future was maddening.
But that’s life. Protagonist life, anyways. You’re dealt a hand and you play it. No one ever thinks about folding or requesting a change in the cards. No one until me, that is.
Which brings us back to that afternoon in Adelaide’s infirmary.
When my prologue prophecy appeared that day, it revealed that I would live a boring, subservient life and marry the intolerable Prince Chance Darling. In response I didn’t just reject the hand the Author assigned me, I swept the cards off the table completely, refusing to participate in the game any longer.
In a mad, brilliant, beautiful moment of inspiration, I decided that I would find the Author and get her to rewrite my fate. And in an equally delirious, wonderful moment, I convinced my friends to come with me.
As a result, SJ, Blue, Jason, Daniel (ugh, Daniel), and I had run away from school on a quest to do just that.
The Indexlands were protected by an extremely powerful In and Out Spell, one of four in Book that kept people from entering in or out of specific locations. These spells had been cast by the Fairy Godmothers, so we’d gone to visit my mother’s former Fairy Godmother (and my own regular godmother), Emma, to see if she knew how to break it. Lo and behold, she did. And now we did too.
Emma told us that in order to break the In and Out Spell around the Indexlands we needed “Something Strong, Something Pure, and Something One of a Kind.” More specifically, we needed three elusive items that fit that bill:
• A Quill with the Might of Twenty-Six Swords,
• The Heart of the Lost Princess,
• And a Mysterious Flower Beneath the Valley of Strife.
Which brings us to the here and now. The here being the sky—me and Blue riding on Pegasi; the others inside a carriage pulled by three more amazing flying horses—and the now being sunset—the day after we’d left our respective schools, and only an hour after fleeing our realm’s capital, Century City.
The good news at this point was that we had acquired the first item on our enchanted shopping list. The quill in question now resided safely within Blue’s boot. Plus, we’d eluded a giant dragon that had attacked the city during our visit and had come very close to roasting us like lamb on a spit.
The bad news was a much longer catalogue. Given that collecting the first item to break the In and Out Spell had almost gotten us killed in a myriad of colorful ways, I had a bad feeling about finding the next two. Because while the five of us were all capable and formidable in our own ways, a lot of equally formidable factors had just been introduced.
I inadvertently shivered at the thought. As our group of five flew toward the fading cherry-colored horizon, I could still feel cold steel against my throat. Twilight may have been falling, but the memory of Arian and his sword was sharp as the midday sun.
Arian had presented himself as the head of a team of antagonists charged with hunting down protagonists whose prologue prophecies posed a threat to them.
This was a disturbing notion, especially since I’d learned that I was one of their targets. It was also extremely confusing.
Although Arian claimed he was hunting me because my prologue prophecy posed a threat to the antagonists, as far as I knew there was no indication in my prophecy as to why. The destiny I’d read in my book was beyond doldrums.
For me, becoming Prince Chance Darling’s obedient, elegant wife was a fate worse than death. But I could see no reason why the antagonists would take issue with it. It just didn’t make any sense. And while we were on the subject, neither did Arian himself.
Despite the boy’s new role in my life—hunter, enemy, theoretical executioner—what I found most puzzling about his existence was the fact that he was the boy of my dreams.
No, I don’t mean like that.
Yes, the twenty-year-old antagonist had fiercely dark, wavy hair that offset his black eyes, and the physical form and sword prowess of your above-average Lord Channing’s hero. But that was so not where I was going with this.
I meant to say that he was the boy of my nightmares.
I’d suffered from viciously real dreams for years. However, it wasn’t until recently that their content had begun bleeding into my reality. Arian was one such example. His voice, his presence, had permeated my sleeping consciousness for some time; I just hadn’t known it. The moment I’d come face to face with him in Century City, though, I’d recognized him. Without ever having met him, Arian had been in my head for months now.
I still didn’t know how or why this was possible, but I did know that I was not prepared to talk about the matter openly. As such, I hadn’t told my friends about my second encounter with Arian when our group had gotten separated in the capital and I’d run into him, nor what he’d said to me during that confrontation.
Granted, my crew hadn’t had much time for discussion since fleeing the city. But regardless, I knew I wanted to withhold the information from them. And in acknowledging this compulsion, I felt a subtle shift in the way I regarded my friends.
I mentioned earlier that there were three main problems that stood in my way to breaking the expectations of my princess archetype and becoming something better. However, I didn’t realize at this point in my journey that a fourth, much more toxic obstacle was about to reveal itself. And unlike the other problems (which were all external threats), this fourth one would come at me from a source I never thought I’d have to guard myself against, and one that was much more powerful:
Me.