Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (10 page)

“Too scary,” said the other two triplets together.

“But Rory faced a dragon. That shows guts,” said Lena, and if I had felt less nervous, I would have smiled.

“Must’ve been the other new kid. The boy. He looked freaked out the second he got here,” Chase said, and everyone nodded.

“Are you going to keep me in suspense?” I asked, half-joking, mainly because I didn’t want anyone to guess I was starting to freak out myself.

“No.” Puss-in-Dress leaped out of the girl’s lap, her white tail lashing. “Your orientation isn’t over quite yet.”

“I’ll take her,” Chase said quickly.

“Me too.” Adelaide’s smile looked way too sympathetic to be real. I wondered if there was any way I could request the feline tour guide instead.

“You guys go tell Miriam,” Chase added, and Lena watched us go anxiously.

Adelaide led the way across the courtyard in the setting sun.
We came to an old-fashioned door made out of dark wood, black ribbons hanging off its frame and rippling in a wind I couldn’t feel. With Adelaide on the lookout, Chase pulled out a skinny metal tool and picked the lock.

My heart banged in my chest, and I gripped the hilt of my sword tightly in my sweating hands.

Finally, the door swung open. “You’re not scared, are you?” Chase whistled a loud cheerful note, and torches flared from bronze fixtures hanging from the ceiling. “It’s just a wall.”

The wall was made out of marble, five times as tall as I was and as long as the dragon George had killed the day before. It was covered in names, columns of them etched into the stone and gilded, like the markers you see sometimes in national monuments.

“This is the memorial to the Failed Tales,” said Adelaide gravely.

Chase scanned the last column. “It looks like seven Characters have died on ‘White Snake’ quests in the past century.”

A lump clogged my throat.

“Stop it, Chase. You’re scaring her,” Adelaide said. “Rory, it’s not that bad.”

But there were so many names—thousands.

“Most of the deaths in the last few centuries happened in the war,” Adelaide added. “It’s really been so much better since the Director started implementing all of her new policies. She’s the reason why we take Companions on our Tales now. Safety in numbers, she says. Instead of being executed if you Fail a Tale, your Companions help you escape. That kind of thing.”

“And we rehabilitate a lot of the villains nowadays,” Chase added. “That helps too.”

That wasn’t comforting. It just made me worry that Rumpelstiltskin could still be a problem.

“Yes, before the Director started, we lost three out of five Characters. Now, the death rate is . . .”—Chase examined the wall thoughtfully—“less. I’m pretty sure.”

Then they left me.

I stared up at the wall, counting names. My gaze stopped at the last column, only half-full, and even though I didn’t want to, it was easy to imagine “Rory Landon” in the same curly letters.

•  •  •

I was still stunned when the bell rang again. Time to go home. I walked back out to the courtyard on leaden legs.

I didn’t want to know that over half of all Characters Failed their Tales. I didn’t want to think about how many of us might die. But I couldn’t stop a little voice in the back of my head from screaming,
And you still want to go back for Day Three? Are you nuts?

Right before I reached the red door, Ellie caught up with me and pushed an envelope into my hand. “With all the excitement, we almost forgot to give you this. The Director wanted to make sure you had it before you went home.”

“Thanks,” I said automatically and headed through the dark hallway.

But I definitely wasn’t crazy. Which meant that I needed to figure out how to explain all this to Mom and Amy.

I trudged out to the driveway.

Behind the windshield, Amy scanned the whole place—from the shingles on the roof to the bushes in the front garden—with a skeptical frown. She clearly didn’t think it looked like much.

Amy wasn’t alone in the car. Mom sat in the passenger seat. She never came to pick me up.

Suddenly, it clicked: Maybe Mom
was
a Character. Maybe she had come to get me, because she knew that I would be
really
freaking out after orientation.

I dashed across the yard, over the sidewalk, to the car, and threw open the back door. “Mom, I—”

“Shh,” Amy said quietly.

Mom pointed to the cell phone on her ear with an apologetic grimace.

“Interview,” Amy mouthed.
“EW.”

Or maybe not.

“I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working with Mike,” Mom said into the phone. That meant she was promoting the film from three moves ago, which would be released in a week.

Sighing, I threw my backpack on the seat and climbed in, closing the door as quietly as I could. It figured. Mom couldn’t get out of work early unless she had some sort of PR excuse. Her world didn’t revolve around me.

Of
course
I was going back. I couldn’t remember the last time people saw
me
and not just my parents’ daughter whenever they looked at me.

If I didn’t go back to EAS, where would I find any real friends? School? Yeah, right.

So, I just turned the envelope over. It was addressed to “Aurora” in gold calligraphy. I made a face (no one ever called me by my full name) and opened the letter.

Dear Ms. Aurora Landon,

Welcome to Ever After School. We are so pleased that you have joined our fine establishment, and we hope that your time here with us will be both memorable and nonfatal.

Looking through our records, we can report finding the following Tales in the last five generations of your family:

•
The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was (paternal grandfather)

•
Cinderella (mother of your maternal grandmother)

•
The Garden of Paradise (great uncle of your paternal grandfather)

•
The Goose Girl (great aunt of your paternal grandfather)

The first one had to be a good Tale, if Chase wanted it,
but
I would never recover from my disappointment if the most exciting thing I ever did in my Tale was lose a stupid shoe. Even if it was made of glass.

If you have not already done so, please take a little time this evening to read these Tales in Anderson, Grimm, and/or Lang, as there is an increased likelihood that you will have a similar Tale.

After a minor divination spell, we have discovered your mother and father have no knowledge of Ever After School’s magic and associated issues.

So Mom wasn’t a Character. She didn’t know. Which meant trying to explain would suck.

Should you choose to enlighten them, please ask Ellie for our helpful Dos and Don’ts brochure.

Best Wishes, and Best of Luck,

The Director

As Amy drove through the streets, I was suddenly glad Mom was on the phone.

It was a good thing I couldn’t tell her now. If I did, she would want a tour, and we would end up at the Wall. Then she’d pull me out of there—and that would be the last time I ever saw Lena.

The handwriting on the back of the letter was a lot messier, like it had been scribbled hastily. Sarah Thumb had certainly gotten in touch with the Director fast.

P.S. It has come to my attention that you were present when our administration learned of the Snow Queen’s involvement in the most recent occurrence of “George & the Dragon.” Please refrain from sharing this information with anyone else—here at EAS or at home. If I hear of any difficulty following these instructions, you will join me here in my office.

It occurs to me now that being new to our program, you cannot know who the Snow Queen is. She was, in her day, a significant threat, and her fame has given her name the same effect as the boogeyman. Such a fearful figure looms large in our imaginations, and we can invoke her to get our children to behave. However, she has now been imprisoned for many years. It is safe to say that she has been defanged. You should consider this incident as something rather like Napoleon sending his hounds from Elba to the coast of France to strike terror into the hearts of those who still feared him. Though she is no longer capable of any real damage, the fear that the Snow Queen inspires would be very problematic.

I hadn’t even known that the Snow Queen was supposed to be scary. The Wall of Failed Tales freaked me out much more.

I sighed. There was
so much
I didn’t know. When I told my parents and Amy, I knew they would have a million questions. Maybe it would be better if I waited to tell them—just until I knew enough about EAS to survive the interrogation.

One month,
I promised myself.
Or whenever Dad called next. Whichever comes first.

I just hoped that it would be enough time. I was ready to stop feeling so scared.

hen I threw my stuff down the next day, my backpack was so heavy that it shook Lena’s table. She looked up from the inventor’s encyclopedia she was reading.

“What’s in there?” Lena smiled. “Enchanted Stones from the Garden of Immortality?”

“Just books,” I said and stuffed my mouth with a forkful of chocolate cake from the Table of Never Ending Instant Refills (I had made one detour on the way). I started flipping through the closest volume.

Lena peeked into my backpack, reading the books’ spines. “Grimm. Andersen. Lang. Are those all the fairy tale collections in your school’s library?”

“As many as they would let me borrow,” I said, skimming “The Wild Swans.” The fear that started fluttering in my chest when Chase and Adelaide had shown me the Wall of Failed Tales hadn’t gone away when I went to sleep, or when I woke up, or ate breakfast, or went to school. I had to do
something
, and freak-out study mode was the best I could come up with. “I want to be as prepared as possible.”

“That’s dedicated . . . ,” Lena said uncertainly.

“Incredibly dedicated.” Chase slid into the only empty seat. I
didn’t like the way he was looking at me, already grinning—as if he had done something and couldn’t wait for everyone else to find out.

“Monumentally so.” Adelaide stood directly behind Chase and glanced over my books gleefully. That couldn’t be a good sign either.

“Well, don’t get
too
dedicated,” Lena said. “All the sixth graders are supposed to report to Hansel’s training courts in five minutes.”

“Plenty of time.” Chase rested his chin in his hands. “So, Rory. Why so dedicated?”

“
I’m
not going to end up on the Wall,” I said stubbornly.

Adelaide laughed, little ladylike giggles, but Chase
roared
, wiping tears from his eyes.

“I
knew
I shouldn’t have let them finish the tour yesterday,” Lena said.

I glanced from Chase to Adelaide, not sure what was going on, but absolutely positive they were making fun of me.

“Rory, what did they tell you?” Kelly asked.

“We just showed her the names on the Wall,” Adelaide said.

“
All
the names.” Chase smiled so widely his dimples showed.

Lena turned to me. “First of all, a Failed Tale doesn’t always mean dead. I bet they didn’t tell you that. Sometimes, a Character just gets enchanted or imprisoned during their tale, and we have to go rescue them.”

“Right, so of all the names up there, only maybe two-thirds died in their Tale,” Chase said smugly.

I gulped. That was still
thousands
of dead Characters. “So, what happens if you Fail your Tale and
don’t
die?”

“Nothing,” Lena said, which was very reassuring. “You can still hang out and wait to see if you get another Tale.”

“Sure, but only if you can stand the public humiliation,” Chase added with a smirk. “Remember the ninth grader who Failed ‘The Flying Trunk’ in December? He dropped out by Christmas.”

“And five years back,” called Adelaide, “an ‘Aladdin’ Failed his Tale, because he
lost his genie
. He couldn’t let it go.”