They reached the bridge that led over the river separating the school grounds from the Village of Book End. They both stopped.
“Please understand,” said Raven. “I need to know what happened to Bella Sister when she didn’t sign. I can’t sign until I’m absolutely sure it’s the only reasonable choice, okay?”
“Who dares to cross my bridge?” came a throaty voice from down below.
“An innocent girl with no ill intent,” Apple and Raven recited automatically.
“Leave the toll and be quick!” shouted the troll.
Apple and Raven had their coins ready and left them on the bridge post as they crossed. On the other side, Apple took Raven’s hand.
“We share a story,” she said. “If you change anything in your story, you change mine as well. Whatever you’re doing, whatever you learn, I want to help. We’ll do this together, okay?”
Raven rubbed her face and wished she could just zap Apple with some magic that would send her away and out of her hair. But what Apple asked was fair. Raven nodded.
“So…” Apple asked, fluffing her hair. “What adventure are we off to?”
“Finding Old Man Winters,” said Raven. “He lives on Cobblers Alley.”
The girls stepped onto the cobbled road. Dozens of small buildings nestled close together on Book End’s Main Street, cozy as books on a shelf. Stores took up the ground floors, apartments in the upper stories. The warm, comforting smell of porridge blew out from the open door of the Three Bears Café, mixing with the chocolaty breeze from Hocus Latte Café. Mannequins in the front windows of the Gingerbread Boutique modeled the latest fashions. Raven could see Ashlynn Ella inside the Glass Slipper setting up a display of shoes, boots, slippers, and flip-flops. Raven was tempted to slow and window-shop, but she kept a quick pace toward Cobblers Alley.
The street there was barely wide enough for Apple and Raven to walk shoulder to shoulder, everything in shadow. Even in daytime, the street lanterns sputtered with light. Raven slowed to read mailboxes, scanning for the name Old Man Winters.
“I think that’s him,” Apple whispered.
Raven looked up. In an open space between buildings waited a drowsy green park. A white-haired man sat in a gazebo, stooped over to sprinkle crumbs for the pigeons. He wore a pale blue suit, roughened by time at the cuffs and hems. His skin was as pale as snow. His beard drooped from his chin and curled up like a cat at his feet.
“Excuse me, Old Man Winters?” Raven asked.
He looked up sharply. “Who is it? What do you want?” he asked. His voice was coarse and high.
“We’re so sorry to disturb you, sir,” said Apple. “Actually, you and I met once many years ago when you attended the Snow Ball at my home. I am Princess Apple White.”
“Ah, yes, I remember,” he said, relaxing slightly.
“And this is Rav—”
Raven shook her head slightly. She had a feeling this man might not want to help the Evil Queen.
“—my friend,” said Apple. “We were wondering, do you remember—”
“I remember everybody and everything, and it’s not easy, you know, keeping all that in this here noggin.” He rapped his knuckles on his head.
“Yes, I can imagine,” Apple said softly. “We heard of a lost tale about two sisters. Did you know them? Do you remember Bella Sister?”
Old Man Winters frowned and leaned back. “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Yes, I remember, and I’m the only one who will. When Bella didn’t sign the Storybook of Legends, her story ceased, and she disappeared.”
“Right then?” Raven asked. “The moment she didn’t sign, she just poofed?”
“I don’t know!” said the old man, straightening. “I wasn’t there, was I? But she was never seen again. Neither she nor her sister. Cruel, if you ask me, condemning her sister along with her.”
Apple looked at Raven as if asking whether that was enough.
“Do you know how we can learn more about her?” Raven asked.
“If you think I know everything, then you’re wrong!” he snapped, his beard bouncing on his chin. “That is, I know more than anyone else, which is everything I know! But not everything that there is, is it?”
Raven looked at Apple. Apple smiled kindly at the man.
“Not everything, perhaps, but enough,” Apple said. “If you have any idea of who we could ask for more information—”
“Hmph, maybe when she disappeared, she left her things behind,” he said. “Maybe you could find them somewhere in the school, and that will help. Now, that’s all I’ve got to say. Look, your friend scared my pigeons away!”
The pigeons were huddled on the far side of the gazebo, shivering.
Apple and Raven left the narrow alley and walked down the bright main street. A sign in the window for Rapunzel’s Tower Hair Salon advertised FREE MANI-CURSE OR PEDI-CURSE FOR NEW EVER AFTER HIGH STUDENTS!
“Thanks for helping,” said Raven. “Old Man Winters didn’t seem eager to talk to me.”
“I am here to help you, Raven! And now we look for lost things. Where could we—”
“The Tea Shoppe!” said Raven, stopping in front of the building.
Apple tilted her head. “You think Bella Sister’s long-lost possessions are in the Mad Hatter of Wonderland’s Hat and Tea Shoppe?”
“No, but Maddie is. Come on!”
Raven opened the painted wood door, and the bell rang. The shop’s walls were crowded with hats on hooks and brightly painted doors of different shapes and sizes. Even the ceiling had hats and doors. The doorless/hatless floor was packed instead with tea tables, every seat taken. It was always teatime at the Mad Hatter’s.
“Where’s Maddie?” Apple asked.
Raven was staring up. There sat Maddie, cross-legged on the wall.
“Um, what are you doing up there?” Raven called.
“Hi, Raven!” Maddie waved. “Well, we ran out of chairs, so…”
“But how are you sitting on the wall?”
“I don’t really know, and I’m not sure I could do it again, but isn’t it just so much?”
Maddie tried to take a sideways sip of tea, but the tea dribbled onto the floor. Her pet dormouse, Earl Grey, hopped off her shoulder, scurried down the wall, and lapped it up.
“Hey, Maddie, I could use some help.”
“Ooh, I love helping!” Maddie put her hands in the air and slid down the wall, shouting “Wheee!” and landing on her feet. “What kind of help?”
“We’re trying to find things an Ever After High student might have left behind a long time ago,” said Apple.
“You’re so good at finding things,” said Raven. “Remember when you found my hat?”
“Yes, it was under your bed, right where it wanted to be.”
“And my missing Evilnomics hextbook?”
Maddie looked at Apple. “Silly Raven didn’t even think to look in her backpack…”
“And my backpack?” said Raven.
“… which had fallen out the window and was dangling from a gargoyle’s nose.”
“And my lost pen?”
“Yes, it was in my hair!”
“Yeah, I was never clear on how it got there… but if you were looking for left-behind things at the school, where would you start?”
“In my hair!” Maddie said brightly. She patted her hair all over. “Nothing except the usual,” she said, holding up an ace of clubs, two tickets to the circus, a lollipop ring, and a hummingbird’s nest.
“Where else would you look?” Raven asked.
Maddie suggested her hat, the sink, under a pillow, behind her back, in Apple’s locker, under the front mat, inside a flowerpot… everywhere except the Lost and Crowned Office.
“What’d you say, Narrator?” Maddie asked.
I just made the point that you basically suggested everywhere except the Lost and Crowned Office.
Maddie wrinkled her nose. “The Lost and Crowned Office?”
“Wai
t, did you say the Lost and Crowned Office?” said Raven. “I didn’t know the school even had one. That’s a great idea! Thanks, Maddie!”
Hey, Narrator! Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narr—
I can hear you, Madeline Hatter. I can always hear you. You don’t have to yell.
Oh, okay. Hey, good job back there! I never would have thought of the Lost and Crowned Office on my own.
What in Ever After are you suggesting? I didn’t drop you a hint on purpose.
You didn’t? Well, you were unpurposefully helpful anyway. Raven seemed really happy about it.
Hmph. I have to be more careful around you. It’s my destiny to observe, not direct the story. Enough chitchat. I need to get back to it.
Can I listen?
Not unless you’re in the next scene. Which you’re not.
Oh, that’s okay, ’cause it’s teatime!
WHILE THEY WALKED BACK TO THE school, Apple worked on her MirrorPhone, downloading the Ever After High building specs.
“I’ve never heard of a Lost and Crowned Office,” Apple said.
“I feel bad not telling Maddie about what I’m doing,” said Raven. “She is my best friend forever after.…”
Apple kept at her phone. “But she sometimes says random things and you’re not sure if she’ll out you at the wrong moment?”
Raven nodded. “My mother tried to take over Maddie’s homeland.” The Evil Queen, in her mad bid to rule everything, had poisoned the wild magic of Wonderland, polluting the land beyond repair. Maddie and a few others had managed to escape before getting infected, but Headmaster Grimm had had to seal the portal to Wonderland shut behind them. “If Maddie can be my friend, can look past who my mother is even after all she did to her home and her friends, then why can’t everyone else?”
Apple thought, You are supposed to be evil, Raven. It’s not wrong for people to see in you your true nature. But she didn’t speak the words.
“Aha! I found it,” she said. “The Lost and Crowned Office is on the dungeon level beneath the Charmitorium.”
Raven attended General Villainy with Mr. Badwolf in the cauldron room, but Apple had never been down, down, down to the dungeon level. Just walking through that dank darkness made her feel as if spiders were skittering across her skin. The ceiling was low, and Apple felt they were always getting lower, pushing toward her head, trying to bury her.
At the end of a long hallway dug out of stone, they found a door. A small wooden sign read: LOST AND CROWNED OFFICE.
Apple opened the door. She was not surprised to hear it creak. They both pulled out their Mirror-Phones and turned on a candle app, bringing flickering light into the darkness.
Like a library, every wall was fitted with shelves, but instead of books, thousands of boxes filled up the walls. Overcrowded, piles of boxes had spilled onto the floor. And objects too big for boxes lay in heaps, covered in dust: giant teddy bears, a THIS WAY and THAT WAY signpost, several carousel horses, a particularly nice boulder, and a ghost.
The ghost was thin as candle smoke and all gray from her wishy hair to her washy skirt. She had a delicate little face with a tiny nose and pointy chin. She bore three smoky fingers on each hand, and they never stopped moving, stroking the air. Like a cat on the back of a sofa, she sat perched on the top of a large chair made of seashells.
“Boo,” she said.
“Boo,” Raven and Apple said in return. It was the proper thing to say when greeting a ghost.
“Are you lost?” Apple asked. “Can we help you find your story?”
“No, thanks,” said the ghost. “I like it in here. So many treasures!” She flicked into the air and dived headfirst into a box.
“I’ve never met a ghost before,” Apple whispered. “This is all very educational.”
Apple tipped open the box lid, but the ghost was no longer inside. She shrugged and began to look over the boxes. Nothing was labeled. They would have to open each box and sort through the forgotten items, searching for anything bearing the name Bella Sister. Raven had climbed a ladder and was starting on the higher shelves.
“Why isn’t this place called the Lost and Found Office?” asked Apple.
“Maybe if something’s here, it isn’t found yet? It’s still lost.” Raven rubbed her eyes. “There are a lot of boxes.”
“Six hundred fifty-three thousand eight hundred and two,” said the ghost, swimming in and out of boxes along a shelf, her ghostly skirt swishing like a mermaid tail.
“Whoa,” said Raven.
“We’ll never… That’s… that’s too many… I mean, I never give up on anything, but, Raven? Are you sure this is really so important?” Apple looked up from the second box she’d investigated. Only six hundred fifty-three thousand eight hundred to go.
Raven called to the ghost. “Have you ever noticed anything with the name Bella Sister?”
“Maybe…” The ghost poked just the top of her head out of a box so only her gray eyes were visible. “But I really can’t let you find anything in here.”
“Why not?”
“Well, then it wouldn’t be the Lost and Crowned Office, would it?”
“I guess that’s true,” said Apple.
Raven went out the door, took down the sign, and brought it back in. She grabbed a marker from her backpack and added words:
“There,” said Raven, showing her the sign.
The ghost stuck out her thin, smoky tongue. She swam through a row and disappeared into a large box. It twitched and fell onto the floor with a thud.
Apple and Raven ran to it, their candlelight wobbling. There was no name on the outside, but when Apple lifted the lid, she found a notebook labeled BELLA SISTER.
“Thank you, ghost!” Raven said.
It was a large box, everything in it swimming in dust. Raven and Apple coughed as they brought out folded-up clothing, ancient shoes, and school hextbooks.
“This seems like a lot of stuff to leave behind,” said Raven.
“It could easily be all her possessions,” said Apple. “When she didn’t sign, what do you think happened next?”
Apple held up a small, ragged doll. The kind a girl might have slept with since she was little. And loved so much she’d take it with her to boarding school. And never leave it behind. If she could help it.
Raven took the doll. “Maybe she… she had to leave in a hurry for some reason—”
“Poof,” Apple whispered.
Raven opened the old notebook. The leather cover was cracked, the paper yellowed. The pages were all empty except for a single drawing. It was a trollskin tree, the kind of tree that grows all in one night and then lives for hundreds of years, never getting any taller. Trollskin trees always had singular shapes—stout trunks with two expressive branches. In this drawing, there were black knotholes at the center, resembling two eyes and an open mouth. The artist had sketched an arrow pointing to the larger hole.
It seemed to be some kind of message, but Apple hoped Raven didn’t think so. Apple was ready to put this little quest behind her.
“So that’s that,” said Apple. “Right, Raven? You have to sign the book or you go poof like Bella Sister.”
Raven nodded. Apple wished she looked a little more sure.
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, APPLE STILL FELT covered in the dust and spidery feeling of the dungeon level. She hoped the field trip to the Enchanted Forest would breeze it all away.
As the troop of second-year students neared the forest, the blue-green smudge came into sharper focus as deep and colorful woods. Professor Poppa Bear, the Beast Training and Care teacher, led the way, with Headmaster Grimm beside him. The students followed them down the steep back steps of Ever After High, across the Saucy Stream on a wobbly footbridge, and into the clover meadow on the other side. Up ahead, the trees of the Enchanted Forest waited, all green and blue and golden. Bright spots of fairy light zigged and zagged through the trees, marking the trails of fairies like burning sparklers on a festival night.
>
Headmaster Grimm spoke as they walked through the meadow. “Playing your part in your story is so vital that all of nature will rise up to help you. Today an animal will be drawn to you, a companion of the woodlands, something that will aid you in your quest to fulfill your destiny.”
“This is awesome,” Briar whispered to Apple.
“All of us get pets today?” Ashlynn asked.
“Well…” Professor Poppa Bear arranged his spectacles on his furry snout and looked at his paws. He was extremely shy when addressing any girl. “Almost all. The Wonderlandians already had their pet companions when they came through the portal to Ever After.”
Earl Grey squeaked something in Maddie’s ear, and she giggled. Shuffle the hedgehog rolled around Lizzie Hearts’s feet.
“What are you sorry lot of wolf dumps looking at?” demanded Carrolloo the caterpillar from Kitty Cheshire’s shoulder.
“So, what happens?” Cedar Wood asked, still lingering back by the footbridge. “We… we walk into that forest and some creature comes out and grabs us?”
“No, silly. You do the Animal Call, of course!” said Maddie. “In Wonderland, all the children know the Animal Call. I’ll teach you!”
Maddie began to chant while crawling, leaping, and hopping around like the animals she named.
Monkey, tiger, antelope
Elephant, bunny, cantaloupe
Mousey, guinea pig, skunky-poo
Rat, turkey, chicken cordon bleu—
“Chicken cordon bleu?” asked Apple.
“Sure, sometimes food can be a pet, too,” said Maddie.
“Uh…” said Professor Poppa Bear.
Well, it was fairy, fairy strange, but magic often was, and Apple was never one to shy from a challenge. The other students were surely looking to her to lead the way.
“Monkey, tiger, antelope,” Apple began, taking the poses Maddie had demonstrated. The guinea pig pose got grass stains on her dress hem, and she wasn’t really sure why chicken cordon bleu required her to roll across the ground.