I stand up, suddenly nervous. “Perhaps you all were a bit confused by what happened the last time the book was opened,” I begin.
“Ye started disappearin’!” Captain Crabbe says. “We all noticed!”
“Yes, well, it was sort of a surprise to me too,” I lie. “I was being pulled into the Otherworld.”
A collective gasp rises from the crowd. “You mean,” Sparks says, “theaudience?”
“Even more important,” I reply. “The Creator. The person who dreamed up the world we live in.”
“Is it a man or a woman?” Ondine asks.
“A woman,” I reply.
She smirks at her sisters. “Told you so.”
“Is she beautiful? I bet she’s beautiful,” Ember says with a sigh.
I think of Jessamyn Jacobs. “I didn’t really notice. I was too busy memorizing the new script.” I pause for dramatic effect. “The one I’m supposed to tell to all of you.”
“I don’t understand,” Biggle mutters. “We have new lines to memorize?”
“Well, only to some extent.” I look over the crowd. “It turns out that our whole story has been a piece of a larger one. Therealstory is about a prince in a fairy tale—”
“That’s you!” Seraphima gasps.
I force a smile. “Good guess! As I was saying—a prince in a fairy tale who is trying to escape.”
“From the kingdom?” Scuttle says, scratching his head. “I’m not sure I understand….”
“No, from the book. Into the Otherworld.”
“But that’s impossible,” Orville insists. “Thisis the only world that was given to us.”
“Yet we all agree that someone, somewhere else,was living in a totally different place and time when she wrote this world for us to inhabit, right?” I say. “After all, we’ve never met her, and yet we’re all here. That proves that therealwayshas been a second world. It’s where everyone who reads the book is, while they’re reading.”
I watch the crowd as they process this theory. Frump, assessing their reactions, interrupts the uneasy quiet. “I say that we let Oliver tell us the new story!”
Others nod. Even those who are still reluctant to believe that they haven’t known the whole truth all along are drawn in by the power of words, by the thought that there’s a new tale to be told. “I second the motion,” Queen Maureen says.
With everyone’s eyes upon me, waiting to hear their future, I start to speak. “Just so you know,” I begin, “when they say ‘Once upon a time’… they’re lying. It’s not once upon a time. It’s not even twice upon a time. It’s hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.”
***
When I am done, there is absolute silence.
And then, everyone starts clapping. “Bravo!” Frump howls.“Bravo!”
Even the mermaids look a bit teary. “I guess notallmen are squids,” Kyrie murmurs.
Seraphima stares down at the sand between herfeet, puzzled. “So, the whole time, I’ve actually been falling for Frump?”
I nod. “But you were too afraid to show it, because you didn’t want to hurt Prince Oliver’s feelings.”
Seraphima smiles brightly and reaches out to pull Frump onto her lap. “I think I knew it all along,” she says shyly.
“Are there any other questions?” I ask.
Socks paws at the ground with his hoof to get my attention.
