The Forgotten Fairytales (7 page)

“She doesn’t look like one of us.” Jen’s heavily lined eyes narrowed in on me like a bug she wanted to squash. She crossed one tan leg over the other. The bright chandelier in the throne room glistened against her gold stilettos.
Seriously, what’s with the stilettos?
Flats were much more comfortable.

I was way too tired to deal with princess drama. To top off my fabulous morning of being woken up by a gong—yep, a gong, because alarm clocks are old news—I ran into April on my way to class and she blew me off. No hello, nothing but an icy stare. I was almost sure she wanted to give me the finger.

“I agree.” Claire said. Lime seemed to be Claire’s color choice and her bracelet said, BELIEVE, over and over again in fancy script. Danielle told me this morning that Claire wasn’t a princess but a fairy. Figuring out “who” wasn’t hard—blonde hair, green clothes, bad attitude. Still, I didn’t know why the hell her mini-self was here and not daycare.

“She’s not pretty enough,” Claire added with a tiny smirk to Jen.

I blanched and opened my mouth to tell her off, but Danielle placed her hands on her hips, not letting their doubts falter her unyielding confidence in me. “Norah is plenty pretty enough, which is why I assumed she’d be a princess. She has the cheekbones.”

“And hair,” Pearl added.

“And lips.”

Jen sneered, refusing to buy their compliments. “Not the fashion sense.”

“Ankle boots are so last season.” Claire’s eyes bore into my Steve Madden boots, which were totally this season. I bought them before coming here. “So is paisley.”

The dress I wore wasn’t couture, but it wasn’t cheap! Man, I wanted to smack the stupid pixie in her pointed face. Black eyes suited blondes so well.

“Ladies,” Danielle drew their attention back to her. “Let’s waste no more time.”

As if this school wasn’t insane enough, now they—people considered to be my peers—were going to figure out where I fit in? Score.

Danielle sat on the throne in the middle of the girls and motioned for me to sit on the lone stool in front of them.

They’d yanked me out of two classes—
Transforming Princes into Frogs & Other Nonhuman Forms
and
Being Evil 101: How to Eliminate Moral Tendencies
—classes I’d rather be in because, well, they actually sounded amusing.

A book no thicker than two inches sat on the glass table beside Danielle. The spine cracked open and Danielle retrieved a quill. The thick, black feather drooped down, showing its age.

“This quill dates back to the beginning of all fairy tales and was passed down from generation to generation to the authors of our lives.” Danielle and the girls stared at the pen as if it were a god to be worshipped, when really it should’ve been tossed out. Who kept quills for so long? Better yet, who even used a quill anymore? They were ancient. Except my dad. I was pretty sure he had one.

“These are our seven ancestors. The ones who started it all.” Danielle motioned to the mural behind them.

To me, there was nothing different. It was like every other painting hung around the school. But to them, it was so much more. The faces of seven men stared back at me. All emotionless, yet stern. Their expressions held zero joy for men who created fairy tales. The girls murmured in a language I didn’t understand, bowing their heads to the seven men painted above.

Danielle lifted the quill in the air and their murmurs grew louder. A layer of sweat coated my palm and my leg jittered. Without anyone touching it, the quill floated to Beth. She sucked in a breath as the tip pressed into her skin. The scent of burning flesh rose into the air, as did smoke…from her.
Ohmigosh.
The quill was carving words into her skin.

It didn’t take long. Less than a minute later, Beth held her arm out. Crimson liquid dripped from the carvings, spelling out the name, BEAUTY. Shut.The.Front.Door.

The quill danced from arm to arm, revealing their identities—Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty, Tinkerbell, Jasmine. Each girl took the pain as if they deserved it, as if it marked them as the person they’d soon become. Afterward, pride washed over their tired, pained eyes.

“We suffer unpleasantries to show our creators love and appreciation. And now, you will, as they are the author of your life too, Norah. Today, you’ll learn your true identity. This identity will be your new life. Today, you become reborn.”

Reborn? This sounded like some freaky cult BS.

Danielle stepped off the pedestal and walked toward me, the quill laying flat over her palms. No way. No way I’d let her get close to me with that thing.

Before I had the chance to move, the two guards near the door advanced toward me. Their strong hands forced me down in the seat. My throat tensed, like a large golf ball was lodged inside. This wasn’t happening.

“It’ll only hurt for a second, Norah.” A devious grin wiped over Danielle’s lips. “We owe the blood to our creators.”

“Yeah, but I don’t do blood well, or pain, so we need to…”

The quill leapt from her hand, taking on a life of its own. Unable to register its speed, the tip punctured my skin. I yelped and thrashed up, but the guards were stronger, holding me firm in the seat. Tears seeped from my eyes. The needle tore through the flesh of my forearm, burning me like a fiery branding iron. The tip traveled, tracing different letters into my skin. A shriek soared from my mouth, a sound so unfamiliar to me, but so was the blood, darker than I’d seen in my life, pouring from the trail left behind. Except the blood wasn’t just red, it had metallic qualities to it, glittering down my arm like a sparkling waterfall,

The quill left, but the writing didn’t stop. The letters came and went, changing like the symbols of a slot machine. The faster they changed the more the pain increased. My teeth gritted together, a string of curse words flowed from my lips. Panting, I tried to grasp for air, but I couldn’t. The left side of my face numbed.

Finally, like a clock striking twelve, everything froze. My vision blurred, swaying back and forth. Voices hummed like a train far, far away. The people who once held me back were gone. I gasped for a breath and stared at my arm.
Nothing.
No name, no words, zilch.

And then everything fell black.

A string of voices barreled into my head at once, along with a constant throbbing.
Please let this be a dream.
This had to be a dream.

A clammy hand touched mine and I flinched, my eyes popped open, preparing to scream as Danielle stared back at me. Her pale blue eyes were glossy and weak. A trace of unhappiness overtook her face and for a second, she showed me a weakness I hadn’t been sure existed within her.

“Thank God.” She let out a breath. On the other side of her was Pearl. “Go get the nurse. Tell them she’s awake.” Pearl scampered, her feet soundless on the floor.

I had no clue where I was besides on a bed in some kind of clinic. Across from the bed was a long counter, resembling something you’d see in a doctor’s office.

“Where am I?” Chills bit at my skin, the pounding in my head refused to subside. “What happened?”

“You’re in the infirmary. I’m afraid you passed out,” Danielle bit her lip. “This has never happened before.”

Using the edge of the bed for support, I sat up. Nothing made sense. My memories came in flashes like a dream and then it hit me. Jerking my arm up, I stared at the blank skin, as clean as a painter’s fresh canvas.

The door opened and the nurse entered. She sanitized her hands and Danielle shifted out of the way, cowering in the corner like a worried parent, though I had a sinking feeling she was more worried about me not having a name on my arm than my health. She didn’t stick around long. Once the nurse ordered me to sit up, Danielle darted out the door.

The cool, round end of the stethoscope pressed against my back. “Breathe.”

One breath hurt, not too bad, but something felt off. My chest felt heavy, my body like I’d been beaten up.

“How do you feel?”

“Weak.”

“That’s to be expected. Your body went into shock. Health-wise you’re fine. You may experience lightheadedness, headaches, weakness, and possibly labored breathing. The best medicine is rest and fluids.”

I nodded, soaking in her words as best I could. “Can I go now?”

“Not just yet.” She scribbled on the paper and left the room, closing the door all but an inch. I sat back and tried to breathe through the steady pain. God, I wished Dad were here. He’d tell me a horrible joke that made no sense as he always messed up the punch line. His brows would tense and his left eye always did this funky squinty thing as he tried to think of what the right word was. For someone who wrote stories, his memory of hearing them sucked. He never could quite get the stories right at night, mixing Goldilocks and the Three Bears with The Three Little Pigs.

“I don’t understand. The quill never fails,” Danielle’s hushed voice pierced the quiet air through the partially opened door. My eyes flew open.

“Are you sure the quill touched her?” a woman whispered back. “There’s no proof.” Lifting the sleeve of my white blouse, I stared at my forearm. A clean canvas. Untouched. Yet the pain still lingered.

“Letters scribbled up and down but didn’t form any words, and then it disappeared.” Fear crippled Danielle’s usual confidence.

I leaned forward in the bed and poked my head past the curtain to the left where Danielle, Madrina, and two others—a man and woman—stood.

“You don’t think... You don’t think she’s
her
do you?” the woman asked, her hair the colors of strawberry shortcake, and skin chalk pale. From the pants suit to her chunky heels, everything she had on was pink. Color overload. “We’ve never had an Unknown before.”

“This is quite the travesty. The council had their suspicions when they received word of her arrival. Now this?” The man tapped the end of his black cane on the ground. His back faced me, so I saw nothing but his short, round body. He, too, was in a black suit. “This will not please them. Not. One. Bit. I, for one, do not want to be in the way of Queen Nyssah’s wrath when she learns of the girl.”

A breath caught in my throat and I ducked back, my heart hammering in my chest so hard, I wondered if I’d pass out again.
There was a queen?
Not that I should have been surprised.

“It’s too early to tell
who
she is. We needn’t worry Queen Nyssah till then. Agreed?” Madrina cleared her throat and they muttered yes.

“And the other one, the sister. What is she to all this?” The pink woman asked.

Danielle let out a low chuckle. “She is nothing I can’t handle.”

Madrina glared at Danielle, as if she should have kept her mouth shut. “The sister is not a problem. Now, if you’ll be on your way. This is neither the time nor place to discuss this further.”

Chunky heels beat against the floor and somewhere nearby a door slammed shut. Danielle cursed and Madrina assured her everything would be fine. But the part of my brain that wasn’t foggy told me it wouldn’t be. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. In a world of fairy tale characters, I couldn’t be labeled. Worse than that, I had a sinking feeling no one would accept that truth.

The eraser tip of my pencil beat against the table as Professor Peach paraded in front of the class in her gown the shade of an orange creamsicle. I hadn’t heard a word she’d said all period, then again, a class titled, “The Art of Perfection” hardly held my attention to begin with.