The Last Ever After. Soman Chainani

      afal never slept in his chamber, so when the pen finally began to write, in the first hours of dawn, it was Sophie who was there to see it.

      She’d been ill for six nights, ever since she took his ring—so ill, with a scorching fever and bone-numbing chills that she’d yet to leave her bed. Curled up in blankets, she imagined Tedros and Agatha gallivanting about town, snacking on Battersby’s cupcakes (maybe he’ll get fat, she hoped) and watching the sunset by the lake (maybe he’ll drown), while here she was cooped in a sooty tower, sniffling and shivering like a snotty Rapunzel, and no one liked Rapunzel because she was boring.

      “You said—I could—see the school,” she’d babbled to Rafal in a sweaty fit this morning. “I want to see—Hester—Anadil—”

      “And infect them with whatever plague you’re carrying?” he teased, wrapping her in a fresh blanket.

      She’d have pressed her case, if only he hadn’t been taking such good care of her. He barely left her side during the day: sponging her forehead, feeding her bone-marrow soup, bringing her baggy, black nightdresses that she could hibernate inside, and enduring her inane blathering about Tedros and Agatha and how little or much fun they must be having, depending on whether her jealousy was at a peak or a valley in any given moment. Soon Sophie began to dread the nights, when Rafal would go away, just as she once dreaded those first mornings when she was afraid he’d come. In her delirious haze, she began to crave the marble cradle of his arms … his fresh, teenage scent … his cold touch on her burning skin … his silvery voice pulling her out of nightmares …

      “I bet you … made me sick … so I’d need you …,” Sophie slurred as he’d left.

      The young School Master looked back and smiled.

      As her fever deepened, Sophie’s nightmares grew clearer. Tonight she’d been dreaming of a pitch-black tunnel with a halo of light at its end. Floating in the dark tunnel was a giant gold ring, lined with razor-sharp teeth, spinning in midair and blocking her path. As she moved towards it, the ring spun faster, until she could see her reflection in the mirrored blur of teeth. Only, as she drew towards the ring, Sophie realized the reflection wasn’t hers at all. It was a face she’d never seen before—a strange man’s, with wild brown hair, dark, leathery skin, and a fat, hooked nose. Confused, Sophie leaned in to see him … closer … closer … until the man lifted black, bloodshot eyes, with a dangerous grin—

      Then he stabbed out his hands and slammed Sophie into the guillotine of teeth.

      Sophie gasped awake, scared out of her wits—

      She froze dead still. Someone was in the chamber. Scratching and rustling, like a black cat sharpening its nails.

      Chest hammering, she squinted into the early morning. No one there. Slowly she turned her head and to her relief, saw it wasn’t a person making the sounds, but a whirring gleam of steel. Still half-asleep, she first thought it a spindle, before she remembered spindles were for Sleeping Beauty, the lamest princess of all time and surely dead by now since she was old and old people die and Sophie wasn’t old or dead … and well, that finally got her out of bed.

      She had to blink a few times to make sure what she was seeing was indeed there: the Storian itself doing all that scratching and rustling—the pen that had dimmed the Endless Woods by refusing to write, now … writing.

      But how? she thought. The Storian had been stalled over the last page of her and Agatha’s storybook for weeks. It hadn’t moved an inch when she took the School Master’s ring. Which meant it wasn’t her ending the pen had been doubting, but rather—

      Sophie’s heart skittered. Impossible …

      Pulling her blankets around her, she tiptoed forward in her saggy black nightdress, afraid the slightest sound might disrupt it. But as Sophie grew closer, she saw the pen wasn’t writing at all, but chipping at her storybook like a bricklayer removing bricks, scraping off the last line, letter by letter, until “THE END” was fully gone. With a red-hot glow, the Storian twirled into the air, like a butterfly freed from its cocoon, and dove back down to the book, continuing the story right where it left off. The steel nib spilled ink onto brand-new pages, filled by dozens of flurried paintings Sophie could hardly follow: walls of emerald flames … guards in black masks … swan-marked tombs … a cadaverous wolf and giant … until swirls of forest green streaked across a blank sheet.

      Two lean bodies came into view, framed by the high, twisting trees of the Woods. Sophie watched the pen fill in the blankness of their faces … a boy’s slate-blue eyes and juicy lips … a girl’s flat brows and sunken cheeks … It can’t be, she thought, waiting for the Storian to slash an errant line. But every stroke made the scene more and more real, as if birthed from her own memory, until Sophie was sure this was all still a dream, for the pen was drawing two people in the Woods—two people who couldn’t be in the Woods, because they’d found a happy ending somewhere else. She pinched her arm hard, expecting to wake up in bed, but they only grew clearer: Agatha and Tedros, alive on the page, gazing at her with wide eyes, inviting her in.

      They’re … back? Sophie gasped, heart swelling. Jealousy and betrayal and pain broke away like a soft eggshell and a warm wave of hope flooded through her before she could keep it down. She caressed her two best friends, looking out of her storybook, and let herself feel what she’d been ashamed of all this time.

      I miss you, Aggie.

      I miss you, Teddy.

      Tears rising, she imagined herself in the empty space on the page between them—

      Until the Storian drew Agatha and Tedros’ hands intertwined across the gap, the two Evers following a shadow into the darkness of the Woods.

      Sophie studied their clasped fingers, no longer any room for her.

      “They’re coming for you,” said a voice behind her.

      Sophie turned to Rafal, gorgeously posed against the window like a teen rebel, clad in a lace-up black shirt and black leather pants. His ice-blue stare lingered on the storybook, but carried no surprise, as if he’d been waiting for the prince and princess to return.

      “I told you it wasn’t our ending the Storian questioned,” he said. “Turns out your friends aren’t happy without you. They think you need to be rescued from me. That your ending is with them.”

      Sophie looked back at the Storian, writing beneath the painting of Agatha and Tedros in fresh ink:

      “Love wasn’t enough for them anymore. They needed their best friend.”

      Sophie gaped at the storybook. Here she’d been, berating herself for thinking of Aggie and Tedros every spare second … when they’d been thinking of her too? She smiled at the thought, touched. Then her smile evaporated.

      “How can three people have a happy ending?” Sophie asked.

      Rafal watched her carefully. “If one person is happy alone, of course.”

      “While two get each other?” Sophie asked, frowning.

      “Oh you’d get used to it. Watching them kiss by the fireplace … sitting alone during supper while they nuzzle each other … trailing behind them on garden strolls like a puppy on a leash … settling year by year into your role as the third wheel …” Rafal glided towards her, half of his face still in shadow. “Then again, you could always meet a boy in Camelot. Not much of a kingdom anymore, but plenty of peasant boys to choose from. Sunburnt cheeks, yellow teeth, chubby backsides, not a coin in their pockets. But a nice, normal boy and isn’t that what matters?” He drew her into his arms. “A boy who lives with his old, wrinkled mother in her ramshackle house, raising goats and pigs. A boy who will give you an ordinary life, where you fry his meat and bathe old Mummy and raise sunburnt, chubby little sons …”

      Sophie