Chapter Nine

Everyone in on the balcony gaped at me, looking like the children they were all dressed in pajamas. But my dark eyes were fixed on that annoying little Hatter.

Hey! I'm not annoying!

"You have interfered one too many times in my plan, Hatter," I hissed.

Madeline collapsed in pain, her breathing labored, her limbs trembling.

"Ah!" I screamed, falling to the ground as the words became true. He was so much stronger now that we could see him.

"Maddie?" Raven whispered, kneeling next to me.

"And you!" I exclaimed, my eyes spinning to her. She fell back in shock, crawling back to Apple's arms. "You have ruined everything! Can you never be happy? Satisfied? No! You're a selfish insolent child!"

"I…I don't," she stuttered, shaking her head.

"You weren't happy as a villain. That I can understand. You're ending was unhappy," I drawled. "But when you had everything you could ever want: a prince, a castle, a Happily Ever After, you still refused it! Why?"

"Because…" Raven stood slowly. "Because I wasn't free. And even if I would've been given things, that doesn't mean they made me happy. I never wanted to be trapped in a life I didn't choose, good or bad."

"Then be free."

Raven started slipping along the balcony, pushed by a strong wind.

"No!" I shouted, watching Raven's slippers slid along the marble tile. She slid to the edge and rocketed straight off.

"Then she catches the edge!"

"What?"

Raven's pale fingers wrapped around the ledge of the balcony, her dangling over a chasm. Cedar and Cerise ran over, beginning to hoist her over.

"But if you wanted to given Raven a happy ending why did you make me…a villain?" Apple whispered, her misted eyes turning to me. I had to stifle a laugh at seeing her, the final nail in my plan's coffin. She was so small, so helpless. Like a baby bird who was stuck in her nest.

"I thought that would have been obvious. You, Apple pie, were practically predestined for manipulation and selfishness. You force people into lives they hate, try to show everyone that it's alright to blindly trust leaders, and you constantly promote yourself as some hero. You're not. You're a girl only looking out for herself. Add in the fact that you're so scared of an undetermined life and you made the perfect Evil Queen."

Apple fell to her knees, hands shaking. "No…no, no, no."

"Now, back to the little Hatter."

But I was starting to stand, shaking off the pain.

Wrong. Madeline was now on her back, eyes rolled back, as the pain rendered her immobile. She couldn't even make a sound.

"Maddie!" Raven shouted as her annoying friends hoisted her over the edge. She started to run to her but her stuck to the tiles. She couldn't move!

That shouldn't have happened! You're changing everything!

"Narrators control the story," I said, leaning over to glare into Madeline's aqua eyes. "So I'm simply controlling."

I surveyed the group of teenagers with their useless Headmaster hiding behind his podium. "You know, I think I'll just rewind this tale again. But this time I'll lock you and Cheshire and that idiot Giles together in the Vault of Lost Tale. That way you'll never interfere with the story!"

No!

But Madeline was in too much pain to do anything. I opened my palms to the skies and midnight black ink began to rain down.

"Destiny true, the destiny for you. Change the course of time, send it back till one hears the chime. Clock strike twelve, then you're through, no more destiny for you!" I chanted as the students started to run from me. The clock's hands sped up, spinning faster and faster to twelve. So close….

They stopped?

"What? No! They struck twelve!"

Uh…they're not moving.

"Move! Move, you stupid hands!" I whirled around to Madeline. "What did you do?"

"She didn't do anything!" a booming voice announced. I spun around and saw… "Oh no."

The Narration Board! Three narrators, each representing the first three genres: tragedy, comedy, and epic! All of them came out of a huge ball of light glowing in the sky, the three of them wearing robes in different metallic colors, hovering in the hair above the balcony. As soon as they appeared the inky rain stopped and my pain ended. I sucked in a breath and sat up while the evil narrator started to run.

"Pen! Stop!" the narrator in silver cried out, holding out his hand. The evil narrator (Pen, I guess) froze mid-stride.

"Wowza!" I gaped as the board landed next to me. The bronze one smiled at me. In fact, I think she couldn't stop smiling.

"We're so sorry for all the trouble he's caused," she apologized. "Be sure that his banishment will be even more extreme. We're going to send him far away, to a land without fairytales."

"I didn't even know there was a land like that," I replied, glancing at Pen. He was still frozen. "But what will happen to our story?"

"It will go on," the gold narrator assured me, his eyes still pinned on Pen as the silver narrator put chains on his arms. "A new narrator, an unbiased one, will tell the stories worth telling."

"How did you reverse his spell?" the bronze narrator asked.

(This is annoying. I'm just going to call them Bronzey, Silv, and Goldy, okay? Okay!)

"Apple did. She didn't sign the book," I replied. "I didn't even think she liked me in the upside downy story."

Bronzey smiled and hugged me. She smelled like old pages and tea. "You and your friends are real heroes, Madeline."

"It is rather impressive," Goldy agreed, stroking his chiseled chin. "I've never met anyone so uneducated in the ways of narration who could narrate whole chapters, much less stop Pen."

"Probably just got lucky," Silvy grumbled, dragging Pen behind him like a piece of furniture.

"Perhaps not," Bronzey mused and turned to Goldy. "Epicus, do you think maybe we could offer her something in return? Perhaps…a scholarship? It'd be a shame to not try."

(Ah, so Goldy was actually Epicus. I can't tell stuff like that since I'm not a real narrator)

"But what if you could be?" Epicus asked.

"Huh? Did you just…?"

"Yes, we can hear everything you're narrating," Silvy grumbled. "And my name's not Silvy, it's Tragoedia."

"Madeline, we oversee the School of Narration. Would you like to attend?" Epicus asked.

I blinked in surprise.

"A school of narrators? Why that sounds just positively hat-tastic!"

A door scrapped open and we turned to see the students opening it, looking to see what had happened. Leading them was Raven who breathed a huge sigh when she saw I was okay. As I met her violet eyes, I could feel my choice weighing on my tongue.

"It sounds hat-tastic but I belong here," I replied. "Thank you for your offer."

"We understand," Epicus said and handed me a shiny gold pen. "This will draw a door to the school if you ever change your mind. But if you use it you are bound to stay there for one semester."

"So no fun visits," Bronzey told me, hugging me one last time. "And I rather like Bronzey. I might change my desk card to say that."

And just as quickly as they had come, they were gone, disappearing into their ball of light with Pen.

"Maddie?" Raven asked hesitantly as the students approached me. "Are you…? Are we…?"

"We're okay!" I declared and hugged her. "The nasty narrator's gone and now we're free to choose our own stories!"