“Like butter spread over too much bread?”
“Yes, like that,” she breathes. “And I confess, I was fond of my home on the mountainside. We miss it.” Her blackbird trills to her, but I hardly notice because the word home is rattling between my ribs like a stray bullet, carelessly fired. I think of my phone, fully charged but turned off, zipped in one of those inner backpack pockets no one ever opens. I think of three hands buried in the same popcorn bowl. I think of Charm’s face the last time I saw her, asking me for something I couldn’t give.
“Well.” I clear my throat, searching for levity and finding nothing but sickly sarcasm. “You have to admit, your story kind of sucked.”
“But it was mine.” Zellandine’s tone is sharper than I’ve heard before, grief-edged. She bites the inside of her cheek before adding, “I might not have chosen it, but I always chose what to do next.”
“Often on other people’s behalf, if I remember right.”
I meant it as a stinging rebuke, but Zellandine is nodding thoughtfully. “To their detriment, I think now. I was trying to save others from a fate like mine, but perhaps I was taking away their own right to choose, to make of their stories what they would.”
She gives me such a mild look that I bristle defensively. “Hey, I’m not—it’s not like that. I’m helping people fix their stories. And if they can’t be fixed, I help them escape.”
Zellandine is still looking at me with that weaponized mildness. “Oh, I don’t think any of us escape our stories entirely.”
“Prim did.”
“Did she?” I want to sneer that I don’t think Perrault or Disney ever pictured Sleeping Beauty marrying a hot butch with an undercut and a Superman tattoo, except I have this horrible sinking feeling that she might be right. I mean, I said it myself: She’s doing the happily-ever-after thing, I guess.
I raise my hands in mock-surrender, abruptly exhausted. “Well. I’m sorry about the narrative slippage. But I’m glad you were here tonight.” My chair scrapes against wood as I stand and make my way toward the steps.
Zellandine speaks just as my hand lands on the railing. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me, or how.” She turns, her eyes catching the dying red of the hearth, and in that moment I see her as she must be in other stories: the fairy who curses kingdoms, the crone who punishes ungrateful travelers, the witch who waits in the woods.
Her mouth twists, wry and tired, and she is only Zellandine again. “But I think both of us know why.”
* * *
ZELLANDINE’S BEDS ARE squashy and warm, piled deep with flannel and down, but I sleep in fitful bursts. Each time I drift toward unconsciousness I’m woken by some small noise—the scritching of skeletal black branches at the window, the distant shrieks of night birds—and left wide-eyed and panting in a pool of adrenaline. Snow White is apparently accustomed to sleeping through horror movie sound effects, but every time I look toward the queen’s bed, I catch the lambent white of open eyes before both of us turn away.
Breakfast the next morning is gray and quiet. I chase my oats in miserable circles, muffling phlegmy coughs in the crook of my elbow and refusing to wonder if they sound wetter than they did yesterday, if tiny protein buds are already sprouting along my bronchial tree like deadly Christmas lights.
The queen doesn’t look great either. There are spongy bruises beneath both eyes and her makeup is mostly smeared away, leaving her looking like a painting that sat too long in direct sunlight. Several determined freckles are poking through the remains of her face powder, forming an unexpected constellation.
Zellandine settles at the head of the table and folds her hands in a businesslike manner. “We didn’t introduce ourselves properly last night. I’m Zellandine, an old friend of Zinnia’s.”
She looks expectantly at the queen, who looks, for no reason, at me. For the briefest moment I see something raw and bleeding behind her eyes, like an unstitched wound, before she gathers the edges of herself and presses them back together. “You may call me Your Maj—”
“Eva.” I interrupt. The queen gives me a glare that’s more searching than scorching. I don’t like the vulnerable set of her eyes, another glimpse of that red wound in the middle of her, so I lean over and stage-whisper, “Short for Evil Queen.”
While she’s still sputtering, I gesture to the poor kid sitting next to me. “And this, of course, is Snow White.”