THE CROWN OF TERROR PAST

THE SHELL INSIDE STILL LASTS

THE ITEM YOU SEEK, A TOY OF THE WEAK

MAJESTY DOWNED, RUN AGROUND IN TOWN

TO ECHO NOW NAUGHT BUT HAPPY SOUNDS

RAVEN WALKED ALL OVER BOOK END. The riddle said, “run aground in town,” and in that she hoped it was literal. Book End was the only town around. She snooped through narrow alleys where so little sunlight filtered between the roofs that the fairy streetlamps stayed on all day. She jogged through residential areas with town houses fit so tightly together they resembled books on a shelf. She stalked open streets lined with pumpkin houses, giant shoe houses, and crooked houses at the end of crooked paths. And all the while Raven repeated the riddle to herself, but nothing caught her eye.

The only place she didn’t wander was Book End’s Main Street, where the Mad Hatter’s Haberdashery & Tea Shoppe sat mostly empty and totally sad. Raven couldn’t bear to see Maddie again and not say, or think, a word.

Usually she and Maddie would hang out together on a weekend like today, chatting over late breakfast and tea and then going shopping or heading to the Enchanted Forest and hanging with Nevermore and picking flowers and other ingredients for teas.

And now, she just didn’t know. Maybe she was evil after all, if doing what she thought was right only ended up making people suffer.

No, she thought stubbornly. This wasn’t her fault. All she had wanted was to choose her own life, her own destiny. Raven sighed. She couldn’t be blamed for everything getting out of control, right? Was it her fault that people saw what she did and—

Never mind! Solve the cursed riddle for Maddie. She needs you now.

What the hex was a “crown of terror past”? An actual crown? No. Crowns were never really crowns in riddles. They were always hats, or kings or queens, or things that sit on top of stuff.

Raven heard laughter echoing down an alley. Little kid laughter. That counted as “happy sounds,” so she followed it to the playground.

She found a bench and sat. It was one of those candy benches that had become popular in parks a few years back. Raven remembered that her dad let her eat an entire peppermint armrest from a park bench near their castle. This one was old, though. All the good bits had been eaten off or were now so calcified that you’d break your teeth if you tried. She adjusted, and her skirt stuck a bit.

The playground had the standard castle play set, with a candy-cane climbing pole that everyone licked on the way down. Raven was amazed now that she’d never gotten sick doing that, or sprained her tongue or something. There were a giant boot playhouse, a slide that looked like a tongue lolling out of an ogre’s head, a small merry-go-round spinning all around a mulberry bush, a mini glass tower kids could save one another from (or save themselves, as Raven used to when she was little).

In the center was a huge climbing dome, only this one wasn’t a spiderweb shape like normal, it was molded to look like the skull of a dragon. She walked up to the play skull and touched it. She’d lived with her mother long enough to be able to recognize the feel of actual bone. This skull was the real deal.

Raven laughed out loud, and a couple of parents nearby eyed her warily. She ignored them and did a little happy dance.

“That’s the Evil Queen’s daughter,” she heard someone whisper.

Let them whisper all they wanted. She’d solved the riddle! The “crown” was the head, the “terror” was the dragon, the “shell” the skull. And the children were using it as a “toy.” But Raven’s giddy feeling turned into a cringe when she took a step back and realized it would take a team of horses to pull it free. Besides, how could she get it up to her room unseen? Let alone fit it through the door. She needed help, and that was exactly what her mother had said she shouldn’t have.

Just then Nevermore flapped down on her leathery wings and landed next to her. Even though she was in her more polite large-dog-size, parents scattered, screaming.

“The Evil Queen’s daughter!” someone yelled. “And her evil dragon minion!”

“Woofie,” came a small, excited voice from somewhere near her knee. A tiny girl, probably no older than two, had toddled up to Nevermore. She had her hand out, and Nevermore nuzzled it. “Woofie,” the girl said again, giggling.

“Azure!” called a voice.

Cedar Wood came running up. She was smiling, the wood of her face supple and full of movement. Her face and arms were a warm brown and showed the delicate curves of wood grain, and her dark brown hair was full of wavy curls. She wore her casual day-off clothes—lederhosen overall shorts with a paint-splattered T-shirt beneath.

“Hi, Raven!” said Cedar.

“Hey, Cedar,” said Raven.

“How funny. When I heard all the screaming, I actually thought, ‘I wonder if Raven’s nearby.’ ” Cedar’s smile recarved itself into mortification. “Sorry! Not that you’re always making people scream in terror or anything… though you do sometimes, I can’t tell a lie. Um, shutting up.”

“Woofie,” said the little girl.

“Who’s this?” Raven asked.

“Little Boy Blue’s daughter. Sorry if she’s mauling Nevermore. She’s kind of obsessed with dragons.” Cedar took Azure’s hand. “Everything that’s happening with Maddie really huffs and puffs, you know? If I had a stomach, I’d be sick to it. I’m going to go over to her shop this afternoon as soon as I’m done babysitting Azure and help them pack. Will you be there?”

Raven shook her head. She was afraid if she talked about Maddie, she’d cry. Cedar must have noticed, because she gave her a hug.

“I know you, Raven Queen,” she said, pulling back to look at her. “And I know that if you aren’t with Maddie today it’s because you’re trying to figure out a way to save her.”

Raven pressed her lips together.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say a word,” said Cedar. “I know spells sometimes require secrets—especially from someone like me who can’t help blabbing!”

“Cedar, can I ask you something? Is all this, all the bad stuff happening with Maddie and everyone angry and the food fight and the Treasury—is it my fault? Because I didn’t sign the book?”

Cedar frowned. She was cursed to always tell the truth, and Raven feared whatever she’d say next wasn’t something Raven wanted to hear. Cedar opened her mouth.

“Never mind,” Raven said quickly, suddenly desperate to change the subject. “So, um, you’re creative.”

“What?” Cedar asked, tugging Azure away from one of the pokier parts of Nevermore.

“You’re a painter and artist, so you, like, think outside the dungeon. Can I talk something through with you?”

“Sure,” Cedar said. “Is it okay if,” she finished, pointing to Azure, who had climbed her way up to Nevermore’s back and was waving her arms.

“Fwy, Woofie! Fwy!” she shouted.

“Oh, that’s totally fine,” Raven said to Cedar, and then, to Nevermore, “Um, don’t fly.”

The dragon huffed and sat, curling her tail around herself like a cat.

“So I have this really big thing that I need to move from the village to my dorm room, but people can’t really know about it. Any ideas?”

Cedar looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “This has nothing to do with Maddie and some spell to save her, right? Right. I’m not asking. So how big is it?”

“Like.” Raven looked around, trying to find something as big as the dragon skull that wasn’t actually the dragon skull. She gave up. “As big as that play set there.”

“That is big. Well, okay, I’m just going to start saying stuff out loud. It’s how I work with my art. Try stuff out till I find something that works. Um, you could take it apart.”

Raven opened her mouth to say how that wasn’t possible, but Cedar just kept going.

“And take it in piece by piece and reassemble it. You could disguise it as a giant and roll it in on wheels, you could hire a giant to carry it, you could magic zap it into a marshmallow and carry it there. You could, um, shoot it out of a catapult, turn it into a flying machine, have Nevermore carry it for you, find a hidden relic that stops time and use it to stop time and then take your time to move it in whatever way you wanted, pour a Shrinking Potion on it (and then an Embiggen Potion after you move it), teleport it, dig a wishing well under it, talk to it and see if it will walk there on its own…”

“That’s good!” Raven blurted, holding up her hands to stop Cedar at the same moment that Azure toppled off Nevermore. The little girl landed directly in Raven’s arms, giggling.

“Enough dragon tumbling for you,” Cedar said, taking the little girl from Raven. “Is that good? I can do more—”

“That was plenty,” Raven said. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Cedar said. “Maybe I’ll see you at the shop later? And if not, I know whatever you’re doing for Maddie, you’re doing all you can.”

Cedar carried Azure off to the vine swings, while the little girl called, “Woofie, Woofie!”

“Well, ‘Woofie,’ ” Raven said to the dragon, “did anything Cedar say—”

Raven was interrupted by the sounds of screaming.

Nevermore had transformed into her full, terrifying size, crushing the bench she was perched on.

“Nevermore!” Raven shouted.

The dragon popped back to small size, and instantly everyone stopped screaming.

“Cedar suggested you could carry it,” Raven said. “When you’re big, you’d be strong enough to pull it out, but there’s still the problem of how to get it through the normal-sized window of my normal-sized room.”

The dragon enlarged again, the nearby crowd picking up its scream right where it left it. Her suddenly huge wings knocked Raven over. Nevermore helped her up with the nudge of a horned nostril, and then instantly shrank down. Everyone stopped screaming.

Again, Nevermore popped big. The crowd screamed. Nevermore shrank small. The crowd sucked in a gaspy breath, preparing for the next scream.

Raven giggled. “That’s just mean. You’re scaring them out of their minds.”

She gave her pet dragon a tight hug, hoping to keep her from popping huge again, but also because she just needed a hug right then. “Just stay small for now, okay?”

Nevermore chuffed a puff of warm air into Raven’s neck. Raven pulled back and looked into Nevermore’s eyes.

“Were you trying to tell me something with all that small and then big stuff?” Her dragon just stared at her. Raven really wished she could speak dragon. “We need to shrink that skull, don’t we? Just like Cedar said. Except we don’t have a Shrinking Potion. Or an Embiggen one.”

Raven had the magic within her to do the size changing, but a spell backfiring in a playground might accidentally turn a child into a toad, or a toad into a child. Raven’s mind spun and finally stopped on a thought.

“You’re a dragon, and that skull is made of the same stuff you are,” Raven said. “Do you think if you shrank yourself while holding onto the skull, you could be the Shrinking Potion?”

Nevermore huffed again and took to the air, as large as an elephant—an iridescent black, scaly, leather-winged, and dagger-clawed elephant. Such an airborne monstrosity would fuel the nightmares of all the townspeople for weeks. They screamed, of course. The dragon landed on the skull and in a twinkle shrank to a more manageable size. And so had the skull.

Raven jumped in the air. “You did it! You blessed beast of terror you!”

Nevermore dipped low in the air, careening to one side, the shrunken skull in her talons. Her wings beat furiously and she stopped before crashing into the ground.

“Do you think you can fly it back to my room?”

The dragon bobbed her head and was off. Raven watched her soar away and felt her shoulders relax.

“Um, excuse me?” she heard a small voice behind her say. She turned to find a little boy in short purple pants and a puffy hat. “Why did that dragon steal our jungle gym?”

Children were edging toward the big, empty hole where the skull had been.

“Oh,” Raven said. She hadn’t thought through the whole stealing-from-little-kids part. Her mother would be so proud.

“I’ll have her bring it back,” said Raven. “I just need to borrow it for a bit.”

“Will the dragon come back, too?” the boy asked, eyes big as a kitten’s.

“Woofie!” Azure struggled out of Cedar’s arms and came running back. When no dragon appeared, her nose sniffled like a bunny’s and then the tears came.

“Do you think Azure could play with Nevermore?” Cedar asked. “It would make her day.”

Raven brightened. “Oh! Yes, that would be totally wicked! It might be kind of amazing for her, too, you know, getting to play with kids who actually want her around. It’s not easy when everyone thinks you’re evil all the time when you really mean no harm and don’t want to hurt—”

Raven stopped, embarrassed Cedar might think she was talking about herself.

Cedar smiled. “I think the screaming was mostly parents. The kids thought she was fairy cool. Except for the part where she took their jungle gym, of course.”

“Woofie!” Azure shouted, insistent.

“Right, I’ll hurry,” said Raven. “Um, better stand back.”

Raven had wasted too much time already solving her first riddle. The sun had passed its zenith and was sliding down into afternoon. It would take forever to walk back to her dorm.

Besides, if she did something spectacular, maybe the kids would think she was cooler than she was scary, like Nevermore. Time to risk a little spell.

She whispered the words, pointed at her own feet, and let the magical energy zip down her arms and out her fingers.

She was airborne before she realized it had worked. Sort of. She’d been hoping for a temporary flight spell. But, nope, she’d catapulted herself.

Raven would have screamed if she’d been able to suck a breath from the fierce wind rushing at her face. She shot out of Book End, zooming over the Troll Bridge. Ahead, the Ever After High castle was looming larger and larger. There was the open door on her dorm room balcony. And around it, a whole lot of hard, unforgiving wall.

Raven cursed herself for trying to show off. Fitting that she would end like a bug smashed on a hybrid carriage windshield.