Edgar #3
Captain Crabbe draws himself up. Just one glance and his two crewmates scatter above deck. We follow and stand at a distance below the sail, watching the fireworks between them ignite.
“Do either of ye two numbskulls care to tell me how our key wound up on the bottom of the ocean floor?” the captain yells.
Scuttle and Walleye exchange a glance—well, as best they can, since Walleye’s gaze goes in two different directions. “Well, Cap’n, it’s like this….” Scuttle swallows hard. “We dropped it in the ocean.”
Captain Crabbe sighs. “Do ye ken how hard it is to find decent help around here?” he mutters. “Now that we have the key, perhaps we should test it by lockin’ the both of ye up for a few hours.”
“We didn’t mean to,” Scuttle says.
“Aye,” Walleye agrees. “We just wanted to see if it would float.”
As they bicker, I spot Everafter Beach gleaming in the moonlight a few hundred yards away. I nudge Jules with my shoulder. “Feel like a swim?” I murmur, crawling onto the ship’s gunwale and holding out my hand.
She grabs it so I can pull her up beside me. “I thought you’d never ask,” Jules says, and together, we jump.
It is a longer swim than I thought. By the time we reach the beach, we’re both out of breath. Jules rolls onto her back, letting the surf wash around her, too tired to inch her way to a drier spot. I lie with my cheek pressed into a scallop shell.
“Why didn’t you just ask that pirate to drop us off?” Jules pants.
“Mmmmpht thkkkng,” I say, my mouth full of sand.
It takes me a few minutes to catch my breath, and when I do, I get to my feet and walk to higher ground, sinking down on the beach. I grab a chunk of coral curved like a candy cane. “A perfect J.”
“Huh?” Jules has come to sit beside me.
“My mom and I used to walk the beach on Cape Cod, looking for coral shaped like Es and Js.” I toss it to her. “J for Jules.”
She turns it over in her hands, like a small glowing bone.
“I’m worried about my mom.” I look away.
“I miss her. I mean, I see little bits of her everywhere. Queen Maureen uses her scone recipe. Her favorite flowers—daisies—are the only ones that grow in the unicorn meadow. And…” I point to the coral in Jules’s hand.
“Well. That. But it’s not the same, you know? ”
Jules hugs her knees to her chest. “It’s kind of like that with my sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“Had,” Jules says. “Her name was Sofia. I’m an expert at death.
” She rolls the coral between her palms. “I was six when my mom got pregnant, and I was so excited about having a sister that I asked, like, a hundred times a day when she was going to get here. Finally my dream came true. Sofia came—four months early. She only lived a couple of hours. I know it wasn’t my fault, but sometimes I still think…
if I hadn’t wanted her here so badly…if I hadn’t wished quite so hard…
would she be alive?” Jules dashes her hand across her eyes.
“This is so stupid. I don’t even know why I’m telling you. ”
“No…I’m glad you did,” I say. “It’s kind of nice to know I’m not the only one who’s messed up.”
Jules laughs. “You’re more messed up than I am.”
“You’re right,” I agree. “Because I’m actually kind of psyched that we didn’t find a portal in the pirate ship.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.” I turn, meeting her gaze. Her eyes are as dark as the night. “All I could think, when the key turned in that lock, was that you were about to go…and I wasn’t ready to give you up yet.”
Gathering every shred of courage I have, I reach for Jules’s hand.
Just like the last time I touched her, in the unicorn meadow, she instantly pulls away. “No!” she yelps. “Edgar—I’m sorry….I just…can’t.”
I feel my cheeks burn. Jeez, how repulsive am I?
“I mean, you’re really hot and everything…but it seems so weird and wrong. I mean, you look identical to my best friend’s boyfriend.”
My jaw drops. “You think I’m hot?”
Her mouth tips up in a half smile. “Don’t be getting all cocky, now.”
“So the problem here is that I look like Oliver?” She nods. “Then close your eyes.”
Her lashes drift shut, and I lean forward.
I am pretty sure I am about to throw up.
My heart is literally rattling my rib cage, it’s beating so hard.
What if I do this wrong? What if my nose winds up in the wrong place?
What if I miss her mouth? Why didn’t I think about Googling this, or steal my mom’s Cosmopolitan magazine when I had the chance?
Enough, Edgar, I tell myself, an internal pep talk. Don’t think. Just do.
And then wonderfully, miraculously, I’m kissing her.
Jules melts against me and my arms go around her. I’m afraid to move, because if I do, I’m going to wake up. So instead I just keep my lips on hers until I start to see stars in the corners of my eyes, because I’m running out of air.
She breaks away from me, gasping. “It’s always the quiet ones,” she murmurs.
I wonder if I ever would have met Jules if I’d stayed in the real world. If the magic between us has to do with fiction, or if it would have happened no matter where we were introduced.
I wonder if she’s wondering the same thing.
I lie down on the sand, looking up at the stars, Jules’s head pillowed on my arm, smiling so hard I think my skin is going to crack.
This has been a good day.
“I used to be able to find the Big Dipper,” I say, “but I’m pretty sure my mom knew nothing about astronomy, since these stars look totally random. Do you know any constellations?”
Jules freezes. “I, um…someone recently tried to show me a few, but I can’t remember them exactly.”
I shrug. “Then let’s make up our own.” I point to the sky. “That one there? It’s called the Rocker. See how it looks like a chair?”
She grins. “Oh yeah, I totally see it. And over to the left, with the two eyes and the jagged mouth? That’s the Joker.” Suddenly she sits up. “Edgar,” Jules says. “Do you see what I see? There’s something wrong with that star. It looks…flat.”
I peer into the sky. Against the velvet of the night, one of the Joker’s eyes is twinkling. The other, though, is not shining back at us. It’s lifeless, dull.
It looks more like a hole punched through the sky than a star.
Or in other words: a portal.
The hammering is deafening. The trolls are nailing together the tallest ladder I’ve ever seen, but it starts in the middle of the ocean, because this particular star—of course—is not directly over the beach.
As a result, this is an engineering marvel requiring the coordination of the trolls, who are designing the mechanism; Captain Crabbe, whose boat serves as the platform for the ladder; and the mermaids, who are frantically swimming against the current to control the wave patterns buffeting the ship.
Jules and I swung by the castle for a change of clothes before gathering our building committee.
To my shock, in my bedroom wardrobe, there were no spacesuits anymore—just rows of tunics and tights.
It took ten minutes for Jules to convince me to walk outside, and even now I can’t believe I’m dressed like freaking Robin Hood.
“How much longer?” I ask Biggle as he moves past me with a claw hammer in hand. Dawn is practically clawing at the edge of the night. What if the stars fade before we have a chance to reach this portal? What if we wait till tonight and it’s gone?
Biggle snorts at me. “We’re on the last plank,” he says. “We’ve used up all the wood that’s available. Any more and we have to start cutting down the Enchanted Forest.”
I can’t even imagine how pissed off the book would get at us if we started to raze the trees.
Trogg calls down the all clear. Captain Crabbe gives the base of the ladder a hard jerk. “Looks sturdy,” he says.
“Hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Jules says with a laugh, lifting up the edge of her gown. Her combat boots have vanished, and she’s wearing these ridiculous little slippers that look like they have all the protection of a sock. “Because I’m not climbing in these.”
“I’ll be just fine,” I lie.
I put my foot on the bottom rung, feeling my boot slip, and hoist myself up, starting to climb.
The ship rocks beneath my feet, and the ladder lurches from side to side.
I’m climbing in total darkness, which is actually a blessing, because if I could see below me, I’d never make it.
The splashes of the mermaids’ tails and the voices of the trolls fade as I get closer and closer to the top edge of the book.
And yet it seems like no matter how far I climb, I never arrive.
Finally I reach the top of the trolls’ ladder.
I grab on for dear life as it swings from left to right, nearly pitching me off.
I crane my neck, staring at the stars. One of them is definitely different from the others.
It’s five-pointed, white, outlined in yellow.
While the other stars wink like diamonds, this one stays still and muted, as if it’s been glued into place.
I go up on my toes and stretch as far as I can with my right hand, but I’m still several yards away from even brushing the edge of it.
I briefly consider whether I could reach it with a sword and cut it loose or take one of the trolls’ clubs and swat it from the sky.
But even if I were able to reach it with a weapon of sorts, I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t damage it in the process.
Reluctantly I begin to shimmy down the ladder, until I am again standing on the rolling deck of Captain Crabbe’s ship.
“Let’s see it, laddie,” he says.
“I couldn’t reach it,” I admit.
“How about Rapscullio?” Jules suggests. “He’s taller, isn’t he?”
“He’s not twelve feet taller,” I point out, and I turn to the trolls. “There really isn’t any more wood?”
Snort shakes his head. “As it is, we dismantled the castle outhouses.”
“You might want to remedy that,” I say. “Preferably before Queen Maureen wakes up.”
“So we’re out of luck?” Jules asks. “There’s no one tall enough to grab a star?”