Between the lines

He crossed to the table that was bolted to the floor so that it wouldn’t overturn as the boat pitched and tossed. From his spot chained to the wall, Oliver watched the captain take out a velvet roll. He untied it, spreading the fabric open to reveal pockets full of gleaming instruments of torture.

Except they weren’t daggers and thumbscrews and knives.

Last year, Queen Maureen’s tiara had fallen off while she was horseback riding through the unicorn meadow. Although it was retrieved, it was badly dented and in need of fixing. She put out a call for crown repair, and the man who came to the castle, to everyone’s surprise, asked her to take a seat in her throne and open her mouth wide.

Apparently, there were the sorts of crowns one wore on one’s royal head… and then there were the sorts of crowns that sat on one’s teeth when one had severe dental problems.

In Captain Crabbe’s velvet pouches were explorers, extractors, probes, and mirrors.

“You’re… you’re a dentist?” Oliver asked.

At first Captain Crabbe’s eyes bugged out, surprised. Then just as quickly he recovered. “Nay. I’m a fearsome pirate, and you, my lad, are an appetizer.”

“Maybe,” Oliver said, “but you’re also a dentist.”

Captain Crabbe gasped and rushed over to Oliver, clapping a hand across his mouth. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? I have a reputation on the high seas to uphold!”

“That depends on whether you let me go,” Oliver said.

“I can’t,” the captain said, shaking his head. “If I don’t feed you to Pyro, I’m likely to wind up as a meal myself.”

Oliver considered this. “What if,” he suggested, “I told you there was a way to get you around the Cape of Passing Tides… and at the same time, to find you the best dental patient you’ll ever have in your life?”

OLIVER

I’VE BEEN WAITING PATIENTLY ALL DAY FOR Delilah to get out of school and come back to me. I want to talk to her more about the fairy tale I found at Rapscullio’s. I want to know if she thinks this new plan will work better so that I won’t wind up as a flat blue stick figure in her world. I want to ask her opinion on what I should write in the book and where, since she seems to have great experience as a reader. I want to form a plan about what we’ll do if-when-I get out of here.

Who am I kidding? What I want is simply to spend time, more time, with Delilah.

I think that when you live in a world with limits, as I have-when you’ve met everyone and seen everything you’re ever going to see-you lose the hope that something extraordinary will happen in your life. Your actions and interactions will always be shades of the same old routine. But with Delilah, everything is new and fascinating. Who knew, for example, that there is a huffing sort of air gun to make wet hair dry, so that the ends don’t freeze when you’re riding on a cold morning? Who knew that there are devices that have just a single page, but with the click of a button fill that screen with new text over and over? For every question I ask Delilah, she has one for me: Are other books like this one, and do all characters exist when we’re not reading? (I have to beg off answering that, because all I know is my own experience.) When did I first become aware that I was trapped inside a story, instead of just assuming that I was living my life? (Again, hard to answer, as I have always been and always will be sixteen in here.) And then there are the questions she asks me in a whisper, when night falls and it is just the two of us in the dark: Who would you be, if you could be anyone? Where would you go?

I don’t always have a ready reply. But the mere fact that Delilah is asking is magical to me. Never before has anyone ever thought I might be anything other than what I appear to be on the page. No Reader has assumed that there are thoughts in my head other than the ones put there by an author.

Last night, Delilah asked me if I believe in Fate.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Since I just can’t accept that my destiny is to play a role in someone else’s story.”

“But what if that isn’t the case?” Delilah whispered. It was late, after midnight, and the moon had silvered half of her face. It made her look otherworldly, magical. Like someone who’d belong in a fairy tale.

“I’m not following you…”

“What if you and I were meant to be together?” she said. “What if the reason Jessamyn Jacobs wrote this story in the first place was because some higher power-Fate, Destiny, whatever-compelled her to do it, since it was the only way for us to meet?”

I liked that idea. I liked thinking that whatever Delilah and I had between us was so strong that there was no boundary between the true and the imagined, the book and the Reader. I liked the idea that although I started my life as a figment of someone’s imagination, that didn’t make me any less real.

Today, while Delilah is in classes, I’m sitting on a crooked, twisting branch in the Enchanted Forest. The fairies flutter around me, chattering. Although they do like gossip, unlike the characters they play they’re actually not nasty little creatures at all. They’re always happy to be pawns when Frump and I play chess, and they are good sports about shimmying down cracks and crevices too tight for the rest of us to pick up a dropped penny or a lost button. They’re also the strongest creatures in the story, with more strength than even the thuggish trolls, and they don’t mind helping Queen Maureen redecorate by hauling furniture up and down the castle steps. I’ve seen a single fairy roll aside a boulder that had blocked the road to the castle without even breaking a sweat.

“Glint, can I borrow your poisonberry lip gloss?” asks Sparks.

“Get your own,” Glint says. “I’m tired of you using all my stuff.” But she tosses an acorn to Sparks, who twists off the cap and dips her finger into the cosmetic. She leans toward a dewdrop to see her reflection and then swipes her tiny finger across her lips. I try to read the book in front of me, but branches block out the light. Suddenly, a hovering glow illuminates the page. I squint at it and see Ember shining.

“Thanks for that,” I say.

She flashes a brilliant smile. “No problem.”

I flip through the pages, absently wondering if in some other world, there is a cast of royalty and mermaids and pirates all racing into position so that I can enjoy my story.

I wonder if in some other world a prince is pining away for a girl he loves.

“Love?” I say out loud.

“Love?” Glint repeats.

“Did someone say love?” Ember asks.

“Love?” I hear again, followed by an echo, and another, and another, as every fairy in the forest repeats the word.

“Oh yes,” Sparks says, “I totally called this.”

“Remember yesterday, when you walked into a tree?” Ember asks.

“That,” Glint says, “is when we started taking bets.”

The fairies perch on my shoulders and arms. “Who’s the lucky princess?” Ember asks.

I have no intention of telling them; I couldn’t betray Delilah that way. “You wouldn’t know her. She’s not from around here.”

“Uh… who isn’t?” Sparks says.

All of a sudden I hear a bark from across the woods. “Frump,” I say with relief.

“I’m pretty sure Frump is from around here,” Sparks replies.

Waving them away, I hop off the tree branch and land on the ground just as Frump skids to a stop at my feet.

“Hey, buddy… you got a minute?” he asks. The look on his face is one I’ve seen before-mostly when he’s under the table begging for scraps.