“Okay, then.” He moves amiably beside me, swatting at butterflies with his tail. And then, a moment later: “Do you want to play a game? I Spy, maybe?”
“Socks, I don’t mind you accompanying me. But right now, I don’t feel like talking.”
He stops and looks at me. “I know. It feels wrong, doesn’t it? To be just the two of us?”
Thinking of Frump hurts just as much now as it did two daysago. “Yes,” I say, my voice breaking. “I suppose this will never feel right again.”
Will anything?
Socks shakes his head, so that his mane streams like silk. “What you need, Ollie, is a distraction. Something to lift your spirits. Like your surprise party!” His eyes bug out, and he grimaces. “Can you pretend you didn’t hear that?”
I smile a little. “Youwere the first choice to distract me?”
“Everyone else had something important to do,” Socks says miserably. “I tried to hang the banners, but I managed to get tangled in them instead, and Captain Crabbe had to cut me free with his sword.”
“I promise to act surprised,” I say.
“That would be really great. Especially when they show you your present, the—”
“Stop,” I interrupt. “Just . . . stop.”
Socks snorts. “Whew. That was a close one.”
“So where is this shindig?”
“At the castle,” he says. “In an hour.”
We are at the far edge of the book; it will take nearly that long to reach the castle. “I suppose we’d best get on our way.” I start off on foot, but Socks nudges me with his nose.
“Ollie?” he says. “For old time’s sake?”
I want to walk, really. The only way I have been able to even exist here these past couple of days is by wearing myself down to such a level of exhaustion that I’ve simply passed out at night, instead of pining away for what I’ve lost. But he looks so hopeful that I put my foot into a stirrup and swing into the saddle. Socks breaks into a gallop, and the world begins to flyby. The wind catches my hair, and it almost feels like the first time I rode in a car in Delilah’s world, with the windows rolled down. If I close my eyes, if I don’t pay attention to the letters hanging overhead, it’s almost as if I’m still there.
We reach the castle, and the drawbridge lowers so Socks can canter into the courtyard. He draws to a halt, his nostrils flaring.
Strung across the entryway are nearly two dozen of Rapscullio’s canvases, each painted with an individual letter, spelling outWELCOME HOME OLIVER. The stone arches are decorated with bright banners in all the colors of the rainbow—except orange. Socks follows my gaze. “That was the one I got tangled in,” he confesses.
A cake taller than I am has been wheeled into the center of the courtyard. It’s decorated with violets—Delilah’s favorite. And packed into every available corner is a character from the story. Everyone is here—even the mermaids, who are floating in Socks’s water trough.
“Surprise!” they all shout.
I glance surreptitiously at Socks, then put my palm on my chest. “Oh my goodness!” I cry. “I never in a million years expected this! How on earth did you manage to keep it a secret!”
It is possibly the worst acting job I’ve ever done, and since acting is my life’s work, this is saying quite a lot.
Queen Maureen embraces me. “Are you pleased? Is it too much?”
“It’s perfect.” I kiss her cheek. “You needn’t have made such a fuss.”
“Why, Oliver, it’s not a fuss,” she says, truly taken aback. “You’re the closest thing I have to a son.”
I realize in that instant how much I missed her. Missed all of them, really.
“Speech!” calls one of the trolls, and his brothers take up the call, smashing their clubs against the iron hitching posts.
I step onto a mounting block, not because I’m eager to deliver a monologue, but because I’d rather they not damage castle property, and I clear my throat. “Friends, I want to thank you all so much. These past few days have been hard, I know, for all of us, and it may feel as though we have little to celebrate. But instead of focusing on what we’ve lost . . . I suggest we focus on what we have.” I glance around the crowd. “Each other,” I say.
A cheer swells from the throng, and Scuttle and Walleye begin a chant to cut the cake. The fairies hover near my shoulders, plucking at the velvet of my tunic to draw me forward, toward the delicacy. Captain Crabbe unsheathes his sword. “Would ye care to do the honors, Oliver?”
