Oliver
I know something is wrong. I knew it the moment Edgar told me to say hello to Jessamyn and I saw the wires and tubes hooked up behind her, as if she were one of Orville’s experiments.
I knew from the look on Delilah’s face before she closed the book, telling me she would explain everything as soon as she got a chance.
Love isn’t what you expect it to be. You imagine being drunk on happiness, but the truth is, you worry all the time.
Is she ill? Hurt? Might she meet someone else?
There’s a moment when you realize that you’ve gotten everything you wished for.
And right on its heels is the understanding that this means you have so much more to lose.
By the time I feel the ground shift under my feet and the book beginning to open, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy, imagining all manner of horrors.
To my surprise, however, Delilah doesn’t open the book to our usual page. I find myself springing through the story, until I am flung hard into Orville’s copper cauldron. He winces in empathy. I sit up gingerly, only to have Humphrey smack into my face and send me sprawling on my back.
Socks trots onto the page, panting. “Mmm. Feeling that cardio,” he says.
The scene swims before settling into place, and I glance up surreptitiously to find Delilah—in the company of Jules and Edgar.
“Are you all right?” I ask Delilah. “What’s going on? And don’t bloody close the book on me this time.”
“I’m fine,” Delilah assures me. “But Jessamyn—she’s not. She’s very sick, Oliver. She’s not going to live much longer.”
I watch Socks and Orville process this information. “Like Frump?” Socks asks after a minute.
“Not exactly,” Delilah says. “Because this time we know it’s coming.”
I look up at her. “And you think you can stop it?”
Edgar is the one who answers. “I think we can,” he replies.
I know what he is going to say before he even says it. And I am holding my breath, hoping that if Edgar plans to bring his mother into the book permanently, he also means to join her.
Because then I get to leave.
We listen as Edgar outlines his plan: if Jessamyn enters the book, she will automatically heal. Just like it made Jules’s hair begin to turn blond and Frump become a dog again, the story will do what it has to do to make her fit the role of Queen Maureen—who is blissfully, absolutely healthy.
“But you scoured the pages,” Orville points out, “and you only found that single star biscuit when you were looking for an escape.”
“We may not need another portal,” Edgar explains. “My mother swears she didn’t write that intentionally into the book. She said it was just a wish that happened to be in the right place at the right time, basically.”
“It’s a puzzle,” Delilah says. “We only have to figure out what all the swaps had in common.”
“The first was Edgar and I. We didn’t have any special shortcut, unless one counts the revised plot.
” I glance at Delilah. “And since you and I were never able to get me free using Rapscullio’s easel or ripping the pages or writing me out of the plot, we know there must have been some key point that made the difference. ”
“An equal trade,” Orville says. “A body for a body. Oliver, you couldn’t leave the story no matter how badly Delilah wanted you to—because there was no one to take your place.”
“Right. But both Edgar and Oliver were willing to make the switch. When Seraphima came out of the book,” Delilah points out, “Jules got dragged in unwillingly.”
“Maybe the wishing doesn’t have to be two-sided,” Orville suggests.
“Then why wouldn’t I have been able to get out on my own?” I ask. “Why didn’t a stranger get sucked in?”
“I was the only one reading the book,” Delilah points out. “And I did it in secret, because I was so embarrassed to be reading a kids’ story.”
“Which meant that there wasn’t any male near you who could be pulled into the story in my place,” I finish.
Socks whinnies faintly. “I don’t mean to be a bother,” he asks, “but why did Humphrey wind up here?”
“He was with us when the book was open,” I say. “We were all watching Orville cast the wishing spell on Frump.”
Orville nods. “What this tells us is that for permanence’s sake, the story wants a replacement similar enough to the original character to be able to mold them in the same image.”
“Then how come when I wished to be with Oliver all those times, I didn’t accidentally switch places with Seraphima?” Delilah asks.
Before any of us can respond, Humphrey wanders to the far corner of the page and begins to lift his leg. “No!” I shout. “For heaven’s sake, Humphrey, we don’t do that here! There are rules in this world.”
Humphrey’s ears droop. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pack my things and go. Actually, I don’t have any things. I’ll just go….”
“Wait,” Orville says, his eyes gleaming. “You’re on to something there, my boy. There are rules in this world. And we must play by them, as I’ve said before. Yet in a story, anything is possible. So the wish must originate here.”
I try to make a mental list of everything we’ve covered so far: If two people switch and only one of them has consented, there has to be an aid involved—a cookie, a portal, a spell, a magic lip gloss.
If, on the other hand, two people want to switch, having given mutual consent, that can happen without any physical shortcut. All it takes is the power of the wish.
I look up at Edgar. “Your mother talked to me. But did she believe you when you told her you lived inside this book for four months?”
“I don’t think so,” Edgar admits. “She thought I was making it all up. She thought you were a hallucination.”
“If she could be convinced, then from what Orville’s saying, all it would take for us to swap places would be for you, me, your mother, and Queen Maureen to want it desperately.”
Edgar shakes his head. “That’s not going to happen. She already thinks her mind is playing tricks on her.”
“Then you must find another one of your special tricks,” Orville says.
We all fall silent, because we know how much harder that is than it seems. I glance up at Edgar and see the defeat written across his features.
I think of Frump and how many times each day I wish he were still here: to laugh with me when Socks gets stuck in a mud bog, to marvel as the sunset paints the beach, to help me finish off one of Queen Maureen’s lemon tarts.
Edgar has already given up, I realize. He has already started to say goodbye.
“Right,” I say briskly, stiffening my spine. “We’d best get moving, then. We have a lot of pages to cover if we’re going to find something that will work to save Jessamyn.”
Edgar shakes his head. “It’s useless.”
“No it’s not. Even if she’s doubtful, as long as three of us are wishing for the trade, and we have a boost of magic like Seraphima and Frump and Socks had before, when they made a wish, it might work.”
“But we don’t have time to find that boost of magic,” Edgar says. “Believe me. Jules and I scoured every inch of this narrative.”
Suddenly it hits me: what if we’re looking not for a what…but rather a when?
“Delilah,” I begin. “When does magic happen in your world?”
“When you use Photoshop?” she answers.
“No. I mean, you make wishes all the time. You wished on stars, and on eyelashes, and even once on that strangely shaped bone in the chicken your mother cooked. Does one of those feel a little more lucky than the others?”
Jules and Delilah glance at each other. “Birthday,” they say simultaneously.
“When you blow out your candle,” Delilah tells me, “that’s the one wish people believe will come true.
There’s this huge buildup, because everyone’s watching you make your wish, and you keep it hidden inside and never say it out loud.
Eyelashes and shooting stars are for the little things—the wishes that don’t really matter.
Like when you yell out, ‘Wish me good luck!’ You know it won’t make a difference, but you say it anyway.
Your birthday wish, though—that’s the one you think actually might happen. ”
“What did you wish for on your last birthday?” I ask.
Delilah blushes. “A prince, to sweep me off my feet.”
“Wow,” Socks breathes, impressed. “That’s pretty close.”
“It’s my birthday next week,” I announce.
“It was my birthday first,” Edgar mutters.
“I may be eternally sixteen, chronologically younger than Edgar, but I still celebrate the occasion. We all do, in here. We just never grow older.
“Don’t you see?” I tell him. “It’s perfect. If we both ask at the same time, on the same birthday, for the same thing, surely that will be a big enough wish to bring both you and Jessamyn here.”
I’m quite chuffed to have figured this out—in the presence of a wizard, no less—but Edgar doesn’t seem enthusiastic.
“And if it isn’t,” he says quietly, “it will be the last birthday I have with my mom.”
I straighten, looking Edgar in the eye. “Then we’d best make sure it works,” I tell him.
Queen Maureen is pruning the roses in the royal garden when I find her. I snap a rose from its stem and hand it to her gallantly. “A beauty for a beauty,” I say, turning on the full force of my charm.
If I’m going to convince this woman to give up everything she’s ever known, I’d better be at the top of my game.
“Let me guess,” Maureen says. “You broke another dish?”
“Do you truly think that’s the only reason I might come to see your lovely face today? It might be a surprise for you to hear, but I actually enjoy being in your company.”
She smirks. “I’m betting on the broken plate.”
I sink down on a marble bench. “Then you’ll lose your wager,” I say. “Although I do want to talk to you about something.”
“Ah, you see,” she replies, snipping a dead branch. “I knew it. Mother’s intuition.”
“About that…” I take a deep breath. “You’ve said you consider me to be a son. And I’ve always thought of you as my mother. I don’t think family has to be related by blood, do you? Don’t you think family is the people who love you the most?”
“Of course,” Maureen says.
“And…well…if your son was going to move away, you’d want to go with him, wouldn’t you?”
Maureen rolls her eyes. “I’ve told you before, you can’t live above the cobbler’s shop on page three. It’s not seemly for a prince, and it doesn’t make sense to haul a bed out there when you have a perfectly grand one in the castle.”
“I don’t want to move to page three. I want to live in the real world.” I pause. “With you.”
“Me? In the real world?” Queen Maureen chokes on a laugh. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to live there.”
“That’s why you’ll have me.”
Her eyes find mine. “Is this about your Delilah?”
“Not this time,” I confess. “It’s about a boy who’s going to lose his mother. And if we switch with them, well, I believe he won’t have to.”
“That’s tragic,” Maureen says. She sinks down beside me on the marble bench. “But why would you think that some ordinary woman and her son might be able to come inside here? You’ve seen how the other strangers were forced out.”
“This isn’t an ordinary woman,” I explain. “This is Jessamyn Jacobs. She wrote this story.”
Queen Maureen is silent for a moment. She plucks the petals from the rose in her hand, one by one, letting them float to the ground. She stops before she picks the final petal, and places the stem between us. “She gave me life,” Maureen says softly. “It’s the least I can do for her.”
So much has happened today that I’m not sure I will get a chance to speak to Delilah alone tonight. But then, shortly after the last star appears in the sky, there is a seam of light along the spine of the book and I feel myself being drawn toward our usual page.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Hello.” I can’t stop smiling at her. It’s as if all the awful truth I’ve learned today has only served to remind me of how lucky I am to have found her. “So, you’d best have a spectacular birthday gift for me.”
“You don’t know it’s going to work,” Delilah says.
“You don’t know it’s not,” I point out. “I’m thinking…we go out to supper first, and then you give me my present. And to be perfectly honest, I am expecting a cake. Preferably chocolate, but I won’t quibble.”
“I can’t let myself hope this is going to happen,” Delilah says, “because the stakes are so high if it doesn’t. Not just for us this time either. For Edgar.”
I look at her, sobering. “I know.”
“I came home from the hospital today and I hugged my mother so tight she probably thought I was insane. I couldn’t tell her about Jessamyn dying—because what if Queen Maureen winds up here, perfectly healthy?
So instead I just said I had a really bad day and I needed my mother.
But I can’t stop thinking, thank God it’s not my mom. And that’s awful, right?”
“It’s human nature, I suppose,” I reply.
“Is this our fault?” Delilah whispers. “When Jessamyn fainted the first time, shouldn’t we have tried to get Edgar back here immediately?”
“She swore to me that she wasn’t ill,” I say.
“She lied to you because she didn’t want to worry you, the way we didn’t want to worry Edgar.” Delilah shakes her head. “We lost weeks he could have had with her.”
Her eyes are full of storms. “We can’t turn back time,” I say. “The only thing we can do is try to ensure that Edgar and Jessamyn have more of it.”
Delilah bites her lower lip. “I know you look like Edgar…but do you really think Maureen can pass for Jessamyn?”
“Close enough. From what I saw of family photographs when I was in her house, Maureen looks much like Jessamyn did when she got married—although, oddly, her hair color seems to have changed from brown to red. For that matter, King Maurice is the spitting image of Edgar’s late father.
” I tilt my head, considering. “We should only hope we’re lucky enough to have to disguise Queen Maureen to make her look exactly like Jessamyn. ”
“What will happen to Edgar if…the book doesn’t let Jessamyn in? I mean, things out here aren’t like they are in there. Food doesn’t magically appear. You have to make money to buy it. You have to be able to pay your own mortgage. Edgar’s only seventeen. He shouldn’t have to grow up that fast.”
“He won’t have to. In fact, he’ll never grow up,” I say.
Delilah raises a brow, still dubious.
“If this has any chance of working,” I tell her, “I must believe one hundred percent—and to do that, I need you to believe too.”
She lowers her lashes so that they cast shadows on her cheeks. For a moment I think perhaps I’ve made her cry. When she looks at me again, I realize that desperation and hope are twins, merely altered versions of each other. “What kind of frosting?” she asks.
“Buttercream,” I say softly.