Between the lines

OLIVER

MY ARM IS ACHING. AS DELILAH HAS BEEN TYPING, I’ve written the entire story by hand with a small lump of coal on the rock wall, committing it to memory. Not that this is very difficult. After all, I’ve been living it.

When at last we’re finished, Delilah leans in to the page. “Good luck,” she whispers. “See you on the outside.”

We’ve talked about it, and I know I’m on my own for this part: she has to stop reading the book and close it, so that I can gather all the characters together and tell them the new story. I see the sky spread and darken as Delilah shuts the cover. Then I take a deep breath and run a finger along the sentences I’ve scratched into the rock.

I climb down from the ledge on page 43 and start hopping the gaps between the edges of the pages, crossing through the Enchanted Forest and the unicorn meadow. I will find Frump and ask him for his help. He’s the only one who can rally the masses as quickly as I need it to be done, and I know I can count on him for his support.

But first, there’s one more person I need to see. I find Queen Maureen in the rose garden behind the castle, pruning her beloved bushes. For a moment I hang back, watching the way she gently lifts the heavy head of a rose and strokes the petals. She was never really my mother, but she was the closest thing I had to one, and I’ll miss that tenderness that comes so easily to her.

Taking a deep breath-it’s now or never-I untuck my shirt, let it hang from beneath my tunic, and muss up my hair. Then I stumble into the queen’s line of sight.

“Oliver?” she says. “What happened to you?”

I collapse in front of her, pretending to catch my breath. “The Creator,” I gasp. “The one who made our world? She summoned me.”

Her eyes widen. “She summoned you?”

“Yes.”

“Goodness.”

“I know.”

She hesitates. “Is that why you started to disappear on the beach?”

“Exactly,” I say. “She sent me back here with a message for everyone in the kingdom. Apparently the story we’ve been living-it’s not the real story. Just part of a larger one.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Queen Maureen says.

“I have to leave,” I tell her.

“But you just got here!”

“No-I mean, I have to leave the book. It’s the way the ending goes, in the bigger story.”

She thinks about this. “But you’ll come back again, every time the book is opened?”

God, I hope not. Did Delilah even consider that? “It’s complicated. I’m going to explain it to everyone, on the beach. Frump is going to round them up for me.”

“Then why did you come to talk to me privately?”

“Because,” I confess, “you’re one of the people I’m going to miss the most.”

Her eyes shine with tears, and she opens her arms so that I can step into her embrace. I hold her tight, finding it hard to imagine that this might be the last time I ever do so.

Queen Maureen pulls back a little bit and looks me in the eye. “If I’d ever had a real son, Oliver,” she says, “I would have wanted him to be just like you.”

* * *

As we walk toward Everafter Beach, we are joined by others responding to Frump’s call: the flitting fairies, who buzz in my ears, filling my head with questions; the trolls, stomping with each footstep. Rapscullio comes out of his lair with a piece of embroidery in hand; Seraphima is still wearing a robe and slippers.

The last to arrive are the mermaids, who swim up to the shore and lie in the shallows with their hair floating out behind them like colored capes. “Why the big rush, Frump?” Marina asks.

Beside the sailors, Pyro is blowing smoke rings that Orville waves away from his face.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Frump announces. “And mythical creatures. I’ve called you here at the request of Prince Oliver, who has a very important announcement to make.” He wags his tail, turning the floor over to me. “Good luck, Ollie,” he says quietly, for my ears alone.

I stand up, suddenly nervous. “Perhaps you all were a bit confused by what happened the last time the book was opened,” I begin.

“Ye started disappearin’!” Captain Crabbe says. “We all noticed!”

“Yes, well, it was sort of a surprise to me too,” I lie. “I was being pulled into the Otherworld.”

A collective gasp rises from the crowd. “You mean,” Sparks says, “the audience?”

“Even more important,” I reply. “The Creator. The person who dreamed up the world we live in.”

“Is it a man or a woman?” Ondine asks.

“A woman,” I reply.

She smirks at her sisters. “Told you so.”

“Is she beautiful? I bet she’s beautiful,” Ember says with a sigh.

I think of Jessamyn Jacobs. “I didn’t really notice. I was too busy memorizing the new script.” I pause for dramatic effect. “The one I’m supposed to tell to all of you.”

“I don’t understand,” Biggle mutters. “We have new lines to memorize?”

“Well, only to some extent.” I look over the crowd. “It turns out that our whole story has been a piece of a larger one. The real story is about a prince in a fairy tale-”

“That’s you!” Seraphima gasps.

I force a smile. “Good guess! As I was saying-a prince in a fairy tale who is trying to escape.”

“From the kingdom?” Scuttle says, scratching his head. “I’m not sure I understand…”

“No, from the book. Into the Otherworld.”

“But that’s impossible,” Orville insists. “This is the only world that was given to us.”

“Yet we all agree that someone, somewhere else, was living in a totally different place and time when she wrote this world for us to inhabit, right?” I say. “After all, we’ve never met her, and yet we’re all here. That proves that there always has been a second world. It’s where everyone who reads the book is, while they’re reading.”

I watch the crowd as they process this theory. Frump, assessing their reactions, interrupts the uneasy quiet. “I say that we let Oliver tell us the new story!”

Others nod. Even those who are still reluctant to believe that they haven’t known the whole truth all along are drawn in by the power of words, by the thought that there’s a new tale to be told. “I second the motion,” Queen Maureen says.

With everyone’s eyes upon me, waiting to hear their future, I start to speak. “Just so you know,” I begin, “when they say ‘Once upon a time’… they’re lying. It’s not once upon a time. It’s not even twice upon a time. It’s hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.”

* * *

When I am done, there is absolute silence.