Soman Chainani - The Last Ever After

“I remember seeing it in a painting,” Agatha said, for Uma had presented her storybook the first day of school. “It was your happy ending.”

“Looks like it on a page, doesn’t it?” her teacher said softly. “The Storian wrote the triumph of Princess Uma for all to hear—only my prince wasn’t a part of it. I became legendary for my deep friendship with the animals, while Kaveen was endlessly taunted for arriving to save his princess too late. A princess famous for all time and her prince, a failure. No one sees that in a storybook, do they?” She paused. “He never said he blamed me, of course. But the stress slowly takes its toll, day after day, until one day you realize you’re always fighting or ignoring each other and you can’t go back to the way it was before. Your happy ending no longer feels happy at all.”

A hot rash rose on Agatha’s neck. “What happens then?”

“Then you’re both better off with someone else, aren’t you? Or even alone …” Uma’s voice cracked. “Like me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Once happiness is gone between two people, I don’t think it ever comes back.”

“But … but it has to come back!” Agatha fought. “That’s why Tedros and I came back—to be happy together—”

Uma smiled sadly. “Then you’ll have to prove me wrong, won’t you?”

Agatha shook her head. “But you’re a real princess! If you couldn’t keep your prince, then how can—”

“Does Snow White still live in the cottage?” Tedros piped, busting in between them.

Agatha cleared her throat. Uma dabbed at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “A queen in a cottage? Don’t be silly,” she pooh-poohed, walking quicker. “Snow lives in the king’s castle, the one you saw before. She’s on her own now, since the king died of a snakebite five years back and her dwarf friends are scattered in other kingdoms, rich and well taken care of. When the School Master returned, the League offered to shelter Snow at Headquarters, but she said she was quite happy in her new life and had no intention of revisiting the old.”

“What does the League have to do with Snow White’s old life?” asked Agatha.

“And why would the League protect someone whose story is over?” Tedros scoffed—

A chilling, high-pitched scream tore through the Woods.

The three Evers stopped dead, looking up at a long, eight-foot-high wall of wilting lilacs, stretching out at the end of the path.

The scream came from behind it.

“We’ll take another route!” Uma panicked. “Let’s use the— Tedros! What are you doing?!”

Tedros hustled towards the hedge. “Sounded like a girl’s cry for help.”

Speechless, Uma whirled to Agatha. “Come, follow m— Agatha!”

“If he’s going to rescue a random girl, I should keep my eye on him, don’t you think?” said Agatha.

Uma was about to level them both with a stun spell, but it was too late; they were already clawing through the lilacs. “‘Rescue them from a grave’—those were my orders,” Uma puffed as she smushed through the flower wall after them. “Not ‘chase grandstanding princes’ or ‘manage jealous girlfrien—’”

She came through and froze. Agatha and Tedros stood rigid next to her.

Nestled into the back of a clearing, Cottage White lay ahead, half in shadow, two stories of lumpy wood, with a coned, pink roof shaped like a princess’s cap. An explosion of colorful shrubs and flowers had grown untended on the roof and first-story eaves, and rain had bled the colors into the wood, so that the house had the tint of a rainbow on all its sides. In the front garden, amidst the unkempt blooms and a meeting post for tours, there were seven pairs of brass shoes laid out in a row, tarnished and dented, a tribute to seven old dwarves who’d gone on to new lives. Only now, as the three Evers stared out at fourteen shoes that were supposed to be empty, they saw they weren’t empty at all.

Before each brass pair lay a dwarf’s body, facedown in a puddle of blood. Each was dressed in a tunic of a solid color from head to toe, with matching velvet nightcaps, their tiny feet perfectly fitted into the sculpted shoes.

From the pallor of their hands and the stiffness of their legs, it was clear at once they were all dead.

“No … not … not possible—” Uma gasped, stumbling back.

“You said they were g-g-gone from here!” Agatha stuttered, recoiling against the hedge.

“For decades!” Uma choked out. “Someone must have—someone must have brought them back—”

“What monster would bring dwarves back just to kill them?” said Agatha.

Uma looked at her, blank.

“Well, whoever did it is gone,” rasped Tedros, scanning the Woods around them. He bucked up, struggling to act the prince. “I’ll, um, check if any of them are still alive.”

Uma rushed after him. “If so, we must bring them back to the League!”

Agatha stayed behind, gaping at the bodies and bright red puddles. Death everywhere: dwarves … Crypt Keeper … her mother … She spun away, bursting into chills, trying not to connect them. Heaving tight breaths, she focused on the grass under her feet, on her chapped, tingling fingers, until her mind slowed enough for her to think. Who would take all the trouble to bring seven dwarves from different places back to their old home? Who would kill them in cold blood and organize their bodies so precisely? Agatha shook her head, thinking of that horrible scream for help. Who could be so grotesque … so Evil—

Agatha’s heart stopped.

That scream.

High-pitched. Female.

It hadn’t been a dwarf’s.

Slowly Agatha lifted her eyes to Snow White’s cottage, like a moth finding a flame.

Neither her prince nor her teacher noticed her move from the hedges, nor the door creaking in the wind, as they went on from dwarf to dwarf, listening to each small heart.

By the time Tedros heard the silence of the last, Agatha was already inside.

he first thing Agatha noticed about Snow White’s house is that it smelled like Sophie. Standing in the shadowed doorway, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scent … lavender cotton candy … vanilla-coated fog …

The pink front door shivered and groaned behind her. She’d left it open and she could hear Tedros and Uma in the garden, debating what to do with the bodies. She didn’t know why she hadn’t made Tedros check the house with her; perhaps after their argument in the Woods, she wanted to do something without him … or perhaps she wanted to test if he’d even notice her gone … or perhaps she’d spent so much of the journey acting touchy and weak that she wanted to make up for it … Whatever the reason, here she was, all alone, looking for whoever made that scream.

Agatha opened her eyes. On a breath, she forged deeper into the house.

The living room had a snuggly feel to it, with a sooty fireplace facing big-armed calico chairs, a fluffy red-brown rug made out of hawk feathers, a shelf of gemstones, seashells, and animal eggs beneath a shut, slatted window, and a steep, stumpy wooden staircase in the back corner, barricaded with red velvet rope. Agatha peered at a brass plaque on the wall:

Behind the den, the kitchen was roped off, just like the staircase, but Agatha peeked in to see a dusty, deserted nook, no footprints on the floor or signs of life, except for a few flies milling around a leaky faucet.