When it came time to part ways, Jack took Elsinora by the hand. “Will I see you again?”
Elsinora knew that if they weren’t immediately slain by the guards, they’d likely be executed by the royal court. Best-case scenario, they’d get life in the dungeon. But maybe Marguerite and Gwendolyn would be in neighboring cells. In truth, that sounded kind of nice. A happily-enough-ever-after.
“Probably not,” she said, and kissed Jack lightly on the cheek.
Jack and the dwarfs set off. The three Wickeds stood together under a hazel tree, saying their farewells.
“I just want to tell you,” Elsinora began, her voice thick with emotion. “These days with you . . .” She could not go on, as the tears had arrived. Gwendolyn took one of her hands, Marguerite the other.
“Have totally changed my life,” Gwendolyn continued.
“Whatever happens next, whatever they write about us, we know our truth,” Marguerite finished.
The trumpets heralded the arrival of the princes. Now was the moment they had been waiting for. The stink bombs went off; the crowd began shrieking. The royal guards abandoned their posts and ran into the chaos. The Wickeds dropped each other’s hands, pulled out their weapons, and stormed the tent.
And that’s when they saw us.
10.
Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. We are Elizabeth, Fontaine, and Suzette, the daughters of Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, respectively. And as it happened, when the Wickeds charged in to murder our mothers, we were already wishing them dead.
What had our mothers done to anger us so? Well, Rapunzel was adamantly refusing to let Suzette marry her boyfriend of three days, because, she said, binding yourself to someone you’d just met, no matter how thick his hair or great his fortune, was not a recipe for happiness. And Cinderella was forcing Elizabeth to work in the scullery—the scullery!—insisting that it was important for girls to have a trade to fall back on, because wealth could disappear as easily as beauty. And Snow White had pulled Fontaine from the Miss Kingdom pageant, claiming that no daughter of hers, no matter how pretty and fair, was going to compete for awards based solely on looks.
“We have come to exact revenge!” the Wickeds announced after they entered the tent, but no one paid them any mind. So the Wickeds just stood there, listening to us scream at our mothers. They heard Suzette scoff at Rapunzel: “It doesn’t matter what you want, because Daddy loves me best and he’ll let me marry whoever I want!” They heard Elizabeth threaten Cinderella: “I’m going to tell all the kingdom what a wretchedly cruel mother you are for making me toil like a servant.” And they heard Fontaine accuse Snow White: “You don’t want me to compete in the pageant because you’re jealous that I’m young and beautiful, and you’re not!”
The familiarity was jarring. But not as jarring as the sight of the princesses themselves—not fresh and perfect as the Wickeds remembered them, but older, wearier, as they remembered themselves being at that age.
As they watched the girls rail and the mothers recoil, the Wickeds saw the scene for what it was: another chapter of the same old story, written, still, by someone else’s invisible hand. Their fury flared anew, but it was not aimed at the princesses, who they now understood were not the foes that needed vanquishing.
“Stop it!” the Wickeds called, their voices somehow both imperious and kind. “Stop this at once!”
The three of us finally noticed the interlopers. “Who are you?” we asked disdainfully, for, like most teenage maidens, we disliked being told what to do.
Though the Wickeds were still disguised as men, our mothers, their eyes wide not with fear but with regret and, perhaps, hope, recognized them immediately. “Those are your grandmothers,” Cinderella said.
“And our mothers,” Rapunzel added.
“Mothers?” Gwendolyn, Marguerite, and Elsinora said at once, voices soft and tremulous. It had been so long since their daughters had called them that.
“What are you doing here?” Snow White asked, a tear cutting a track through her face paint.
“Have you come to save us?” Cinderella asked.
“Again?” Rapunzel added with a knowing look toward Marguerite.
“Again?” Suzette asked. “What do you mean, again?”
“All in good time,” Marguerite replied, looking at Rapunzel with tears in her eyes.
“Will someone please explain what the duck is going on?” Fontaine demanded.
The stink-bomb chaos had died down, and the trumpets sounded again. A page poked his head into the tent. “Minor disruption. All cleared up now. Are Your Majesties ready?”
“Are we ready?” the princesses asked their mothers.
“I think we are,” the Wickeds replied.
The nine of us stepped out of the tent. In one direction, we could see it all: the glittering castles, the adoring crowds, the distinguished kings, the handsome princes. Life as we had known it. Life as we had never thought to question.
On the other side were open fields, unfamiliar woods, a world we hadn’t even conceived of until that very moment.
“What’s going to happen to us?” we asked.
Our mothers glanced at our grandmothers, and our grandmothers turned to us.
“We don’t know,” our mothers admitted.
“Only one way to find out,” our grandmothers said, grasping first our hands and then our mothers’, binding the three generations into a chain, bendable, yet strong.
And then, together, we ventured off the page and into the unknown.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Stomping Ground Photo
Gayle Forman is the number one New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay, which was adapted into an award-winning film, as well as the Just One series and I Have Lost My Way. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Elle, Time, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.