“You . . . you do?”
“You never die in your dreams.”
I close my eyes. No matter what I do to convince my mother of the book’s magic—whether that’s cutting myself with a sword and letting the wound heal, or jumping off a cliff and landing safely on my feet—she’s going to think this is a dream, and it might as well be. After all, this entire story came from her imagination.
Suddenly I realize exactly where I have to take her.
The copyright page is a sea of white ice, as far as the eye can see. My shoes slip as I pull my mother behind me, teetering, trying to balance in the slant of the italics. The copyright symbol is a tiny divot that grows as we get closer—the only marker to let me know we’re getting anywhere at all as we walk. Overhead, text hangs so low that I keep smacking my forehead against the tails of they’s andg’s andp’s.
The closer we get to the copyright symbol, the more the ground seems to slope. I’ve been to this page since Seraphima was sucked out of the book—but the vortex was sealed shut. I still don’t really know what made it open that first time. I only know I’m going to do my best to make it happen again.
It’s an optical illusion, but the whole page is shaped like a cone, with the copyright circle at the very bottom. Because of this, by the time we reach the bottom, my mother is struggling to keep from falling forward on top of me. “Grab hold,” I tell her, reaching down to grasp one edge of the letterc. She follows my lead, and immediately the circle shifts to the left.
“I think we have to turn it,” I say, and I put all my weight into pulling clockwise. Inch by inch, with a screech, the wheel unlocks and finally pops open like the hatch of a submarine. I look at my mother. “Jump,” I tell her, and I disappear through the hole.
She lands lightly in a crouch beside me and slowly stands, in awe of what she sees. There are shelves of bound papers and thrones draped with cobwebs, a giant man-sized birdcage. There are baskets full of broken glass hearts and corked bottles stuffed with rolled-up notes. There’s a dragon’s tooth the size of my head propped against the wall, and a wagon wheel. In the corner, a cello is playing itself.
“Welcome to your imagination,” I say.
I don’t think my mother hears me. She is walking through the obstacle course of assorted objects, lightly touching them as she passes. Her hand stills on the statue of a leopard cast in gold. “It was a jealous leopard,” she murmurs, “who begged awitch to make him the most prized animal in the kingdom. Because of his selfishness, she turned him into precisely that: a golden statue.” She walks up to the birdcage. “Mad science experiment gone wrong: the bird became the master.” Then she runs her hands through the basket of bottles. “A man goes off to war. He marches upriver with the army and sends a love letter in a bottle every day to his wife, who lives at the mouth of the stream.” She touches the cello that still plays. “A human boy falls for a muse, but the only way he can impress her is with a magic cello created by the gods that never ceases to play. The muse adores his music . . . and eventually the musician himself . . . but he can never let go of the cello’s bow in order to hold her, because she will realize he is a fake.” Finally she reaches for the portrait I saw the last time I was here: King Maurice, holding a baby. It might as well be a photo of my dad and me, dressed up in costume. My mother turns, her face filled with wonder. “These were all my stories,” she murmurs. “The ones I never wrote down.”
“You used to believe in the impossible,” I say. “Couldn’t you do it again?”
I shove aside a feather boa and a bearskin rug to reveal a pristine ivory desk with a quill pen and an endless curl of parchment. I pull one of the empty thrones closer to the desk, holding it out so my mother can sit.
Gingerly she picks up the quill and, for the first time in years, begins to write again.
Leaving my mother behind on the copyright page, I begin to wander through the book. It’s like I’m seeing the scenery with new eyes. Suddenly the borders of the book don’t feel confining; my tights don’t even chafe. Everything’s possible, just because I’ve managed to get my mom inside here.
I don’t realize how far I’ve walked until my feet sink into the sand of Everafter Beach. For a moment, I just stand at the shore, watching the sun paint the clouds pink and splatter the sky with orange and red.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
Turning around, I realize I’m not alone. Seraphima sits a distance away, her knees hugged to her chest.
“Yeah,” I reply.
“It’s my favorite time of the day,” Seraphima says.
“Sunset?”
“No,” she answers. “Night.”
Darkness settles, and the stars come out, as if the sun has shattered into thousands of pieces. Seraphima’s face tilts toward the sky. “Before Ollie left, he showed me something,” she confesses. She points to a bright, twinkling star. “That one’s Frump.”
I open my mouth to tell her that Frump hasn’t turned into a ball of gas but then think otherwise. I mean, if it makes her happy . . .
“I miss him,” Seraphima whispers. “I really, really miss him.”
In the moonlight, I can see that she’s been crying.
I don’t really know what to do with a crying girl. I pat her back awkwardly, trying to make her feel better. The distance between Seraphima and Frump is pretty insurmountable, just like the distance between me and Jules.
Jules.
“I have an idea,” I tell Seraphima, holding out my hand to help her up. “Do you trust me?”
She hesitates, but only for a second. I lead her off the beach, past Timble Tower and the Enchanted Forest and Orville’s cottage, around the outskirts of the castle, and over a rocky ledge to Pyro’s cave. “Stay here,” I tell her, and I lean into the gaping entrance and whistle. There is a puff of smoke and my eyes tear. The ground shakes as Pyro wriggles his way onto the ledge of the cavern.
