In less than ten seconds Brunhilda and the girl with the sword have them kneeling, disarmed, and gibbering, their own weapons leveled at their throats. I lean down and give a small wave. “Hi, sorry. Where’s the chapel? We’ve got a happily ever after to stop.”
There’s a queasy second where I think they might pass out before answering, but one of them swallows against his own spearpoint and raises a shaking finger. I thank them both sincerely before Brunhilda clangs their helmets together like brass bells. They slump against the wall and I think a little giddily of the versions of this story where the castle falls asleep with its princess, from kings to cooks to the mice in the walls.
Charm takes off down the corridor and I follow, and then the five of us are flying, running down toward the wedding like last chances or last-second miracles, like twist endings in a story you’ve heard too many times.
* * *
LOGICALLY WE COULD show up at the ceremony at the wrong time: ten minutes too early, when guests are still filing into the pews, or half an hour too late, when the chapel is emptying and the princess has already been swept away by her uncharming prince.
But we’re in a fairy tale, and fairy tales have a logic all their own.
We skid around a final corner and see a pair of arched doors standing open. Ceremonial-sounding Latin drifts through them, echoing off stone walls. I tiptoe to the doorway and peer around the corner. The room is smaller than I expected, with a dozen rows of pews lined up beneath a vaulted ceiling. Morning light falls through a single circular window, gilding the bride and groom on the dais below.
Princess Primrose looks literally divine, Boticelli’s Venus with clothes. Her hair is burnished gold beneath the thinnest whisper of a veil; her gown is a rich rose the precise shade of her lips. Her face is coldest ivory.
Prince Harold looks ridiculous. He’s wearing those embarrassing medieval pants that poof out above the knee and he’s looking at Primrose the way a man might look at his favorite golf club, fondly possessive.
Charm pokes her head around me and gives a silent whistle. “That’s her, huh?”
“Yeah.” I pull back from the doorway and chew my lip. “I can’t remember if they did the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ thing in medieval times, or if it’s one of those Victorian inventions, like brides wearing white, or homophobia. Should we wait and see or—”
But Charm isn’t listening, because Charm is already moving. She strolls through the chapel doors and down the aisle like a fashion model with a bad attitude, a deus ex machina in black jeans. “Hey!” Her voice shouts back at the congregation from the arched ceiling, redoubled. The Latin chanting stops abruptly. Charm slides her hands into her pockets and shrugs one shoulder, her chin high. “I object. Or whatever.”
The silence is broken only by the slide of satin as the gathered lords and ladies swivel in their seats to look at Charm. The Superman tattoo grins back at them.
Primrose turns slowly on the dais, her face filling with a desperate, painful hope, the kind of hope that has died at least once and is rising now from its own ashes. Her eyes fall on Charm and the hope ignites, blazing hot.
I look past the princess to the throne where her mother sits. The Queen looks suitably shocked, her hand held primly before her open mouth, but behind the shock I see an echo of the same hope that burns in her daughter’s face, like reflected flames.
The guards stir against the walls, their polished armor clanking awkwardly. I guess guard training doesn’t cover bleached blonds interrupting royal weddings, because they all look helplessly up at the dais for direction.
The King recovers his voice. “What are you waiting for? Seize this trespasser!”
I nod to the other beauties still hesitating with me, just outside the door. “That’s our cue, ladies.” The ’90s heroine tosses me a spear she stole from the dungeon guards and braces her sword crosswise. The space princess draws her blaster and does something complicated with the dials and buttons on the side. Brunhilda cracks her neck to one side and gives me a small, ominous smile.
We pour into the chapel after Charm, a horde of misfits bristling with weapons. I swing my spear with all the enthusiasm my scrawny, oxygen-starved muscles can muster, which isn’t much, but it doesn’t seem to matter—the guards are so thoroughly taken aback by our arrival they appear frozen in place, their jaws hanging loose.
“Primrose, come on!” The princess gathers her vast skirts in two hands and makes it one step down the dais before Prince Harold catches her wrist. The fabric of her sleeve puckers beneath his grip, crushed tight.
Primrose spins back to face him, golden hair arcing behind her, crown askew. The perfect porcelain princess has vanished, replaced by someone angrier and wearier and far less inclined to tolerate bullshit. “Let go of me,” she spits.
If Harold had the sense God gave a dachshund, he would listen to her. He doesn’t.
Primrose closes her eyes very briefly, either gathering herself or abandoning herself, before she punches him in the face. I don’t know much about hand-to-hand combat, but it’s pretty clear that she’s never punched anyone in the face before. It’s equally clear that Prince Harold has never been punched. He reels back with a profoundly unmanly squeal, releasing her wrist to press both hands to his face and bleat.
Primrose looks sick and giddy as she turns away, even paler than usual. Her feet tangle in the vast drape of her own dress and she topples forward, but Charm is somehow already at her side, arms outstretched. She catches the princess as she falls, a knight catching a swooning damsel in a cheesy Hollywood movie.
Charm looks down at Primrose, her arm wrapped tight around her waist, and Primrose looks up at her, one hand resting delicately on her breastbone. The two of them remain that way so long I suspect they’ve forgotten the crowded chapel around us, the impending guards, everything in all the infinite universes except one another. I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight in the real world, but we’re not in the real world, are we?
I break away from the other beauties to flick the back of Charm’s head. “Let’s go, huh?”
“Right.” Charm detaches herself with some difficulty and leads Primrose by the hand. I linger long enough to glance up at the Queen and give her a final, unmilitary salute. She nods infinitesimally back, a captain remaining with her ship.
I’m turning away when Prince Harold says, his voice thick and fleshy through his swollen nose, “I don’t understand.” His eyes are on Primrose and Charm, on the place where their hands are joined together so tightly they look like a single creature.
“Well, Harold,” I say gently. “They’re lesbians.” The Prince stares back at me with the dull, suspicious squint of a man who has been mocked on previous occasions by words he doesn’t know.
“Guards!” The King bellows again, but whatever order he’s about to issue is interrupted by a soft gasp from the Queen. She appears to have fainted, contriving to drape herself perfectly across her husband’s lap.
It would be a shame to waste whatever seconds she’s bought us. I join my fellow sleeping beauties and we make our way back down the aisle surrounded by the blue sizzle of blaster fire and the clang of blade against blade. Some brighter-than-average guard has drawn and barred the chapel door, entirely failing to calculate the breadth of Brunhilda’s shoulders or the circumference of her biceps. She barely breaks her stride as she crashes through it.