Ever After High: A Wonderlandiful World Part 5

"Kind of a strange day, huh?" Cedar said.

"Strange days may be here to stay, and not to-" Lizzie stopped suddenly and stared intensely at Cedar. "What rhymes with ago away'?"

Cedar shrugged and walked away. She rarely understood what Lizzie was talking about, but clearly she didn't want or need friends, let alone a chat with the puppet girl.

Raven was in urgent conversation with Apple, so Cedar sat on a couch beside Humphrey Dumpty and Poppy O'Hair.

"Hey," they said.

"Hey," said Cedar.

Cedar crossed her arms, trying to hide the banders.n.a.t.c.h teeth marks. She'd sand those off as soon as she got a chance.

"I love that color," said Poppy, indicating the sky-blue paint staining Cedar's fingertips, left over from a recent art project. "Art is one of my favorite subjects."

"Mine, too!" said Cedar. "I love painting."

"I'm into the verbal arts myself," said Humphrey. "I'll treat you to a little freestyle rap. Um... just give me a minute...."

"I'm interested in sculpture," said Poppy. "Maybe because my hands have so much practice styling hair. Do you like my new do?"

Poppy's hair grew royally fast, and she was always experimenting with new styles. Today it was a turquoise faux-hawk.

"Oh... well, it's kind of alarming," said Cedar.

Poppy blinked.

"Sorry!" said Cedar. "I didn't want to say that! I totally respect your individual style, even if I think you look like a bird built a nest on your head."

Poppy blinked twice. "Sorry!" said Cedar again.

"Got it!" Humphrey said. He began to rap, his extremely white hands gesturing in rapid motions.

Yo, Cedar and Poppy, the talk's sounding choppy.

Don't wanna hop, T'

likes both of you guys, so trade the lows for the highs, say we stow the unwise.

Call a truce before war.

Let that snoozin' dog snore, and opt for the choosin'

to not talk about hair, fair?

Humphrey smiled, as if certain he had just solved everything. Poppy looked confused, as if she wasn't sure whether to be upset.

"Sorry," Cedar whispered.

Apple stood at the head of the room and the talking quieted.

"Welcome, friends," said Apple. "Ever since Legacy Day, I have so enjoyed meeting together for our Storybooker Share Slams to discuss our Rebel situation-"

"And Royal," said Raven.

"... And Royal," said Apple, nodding. "But today we have even more serious matters to discuss."

"Yeah, what in Ever After was that play?" Sparrow said.

"That vas art!" said Helga Crumb, shaking her fist in the air.

"Ja, you are right, my cousin Helga," said Gus Crumb. "Headmaster Grimm is a genius!"

Apple cleared her throat. "I meant the appearance of the banders.n.a.t.c.hes."

"Wait, did that play have anything to do with the banders.n.a.t.c.hes?" asked Blondie, recording everything with her MirrorPad.

"Monsters appearing outside of their stories is the sort of catastrophe that happens when people don't follow their destiny," said Faybelle Thorn, glaring at Raven.

"I don't like it," said Nathan Nutcracker, sitting on the mantel. His jaw chattered, making a clicking sound. "I don't like it at all."

"A queen!" Lizzie shouted. "A queen is only as big as her fishbowl, so be careful not to behead too much of your water!"

Apple tilted her head, her lips pursed, as if trying very hard to take the statement seriously. "What do you mean, Lizzie?"

Lizzie slipped a card back into her pocket. "Ah... never mind. In context it doesn't really seem to apply."

"Why does everything have to go back to being a Royal or a Rebel?" Cerise said.

"Because these crazy, off-script things didn't use to happen before..." Apple glanced kindly at Raven.

"I don't see how my not signing the Storybook of Legends made banders.n.a.t.c.hes appear on a mountaintop," said Raven.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," said Faybelle. "It sure didn't help."

"Wait a splinter!" said Cedar, standing up. "Don't go blaming Raven. She was right to not sign."

Faybelle stood up, too, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder. "I don't get you, little Miss Pinocchio. Why are you a Rebel anyway? If I were you, I'd follow my script so I could get to the Happily Ever After and finally be real."

Nate Nutcracker gasped. Raven clenched her fists. Cedar met Faybelle's gaze.

"You're right, if I don't follow my destiny, I might be trapped in this wooden body forever-but even worse would be to be trapped in a choiceless life. If I can't lie, if I'm cursed to blurt out whatever I think even if I don't want to, then I can't really choose." She glanced at Poppy and then quickly away, afraid she might let slip another horrid opinion about her hair. "I think being a Rebel means you get to cut the strings and choose your story. And nothing is more important to me than choice."

"Hear! Hear!" said Maddie. "Though-and this isn't a criticism-I'd have enjoyed what you said more with a cup of tea." Maddie looked down at her hand, which was holding a cup of tea. "Oh! Well this is perfect now. Call off the hounds! Call off the king's men! I found my tea!"

"Rebel, Royal, bleh," said Kitty, examining her nails. "If you don't care where you want to end up, it doesn't matter which road you take."

"I don't know everything, but I know that choices are complicated," said Cedar. "Every choice we make affects other people. So if you're not sure where you want to end up, should you just hold still, choosing nothing?"

"Or should you leap ahead anyway," said Briar, "making bold choices and accepting where they take you?"

"And if they take you over a cliff?" asked Apple.

"If your destiny happens at the bottom of a cliff, then yes," said Briar.

"One should always know beforehand exactly what should happen, how it should happen, and then make it happen," said Lizzie.

"Look!" Cerise shouted, pointing.

A bunny was hopping up the face of Apple's grandfather clock. The clock chimed one, and the bunny ran down again. Cedar felt her mouth hang open. Such behavior wasn't uncommon for Ever After mice, but a bunny?

"Whoa," Dexter said, adjusting his gla.s.ses as if he couldn't believe what he'd just seen.

"Hickory d.i.c.kory dock," Cerise whispered.

"Raven, did you do that?" Apple asked.

Raven shook her head. "I wouldn't even know what spell to use."

Cedar couldn't help saying aloud, "When the bunny reached the top, I swear it paused to check the time."

"What-ever-after," said Faybelle with an eye roll.

"Ha-ha!" said Lizzie, brandis.h.i.+ng her scepter. "When is a mouse like a bunny?"

"Well," said Ashlynn kindly, "both are fluffy and cute and small and cute-"

"No," said Lizzie. She cleared her throat and looked at everyone significantly. "When is a mouse like a bunny? And when is a bear like a banders.n.a.t.c.h? Off-put? This is precisely my point!"

Cedar sighed. Lizzie's not making sense was the most normal thing about this day.

Apple wrangled the conversation back to banders.n.a.t.c.hes and the headmaster's instructions to stay at the school, but Cedar kept her gaze on her hands, chipping off the blue paint. Perhaps if she managed not to notice anything, she might not blurt out something awkward and hurtful and lose any more friends.

WHEN APPLE DISMISSED THEM, LIZZIE WAS so full of thoughts she forgot to shout "Off with your head!" before leaving the room. Lizzie knew bunnies. She wouldn't exactly say she liked them-they were much too fluffy and softish and un-hedgehog-y-but she was royally aware of them. At no point had she sensed a bunny in Apple and Raven's room, despite the big-eared bouncer she'd seen with her eyes.

Lizzie's stately walk down the corridor nearly tripped into a skip. A giddy kind of excitement wiggled inside her, as if her stomach were a bag of popcorn in midpop. Banders.n.a.t.c.hes! Jubjub birds! Bunnies that are obsessed with clocks! Were some of her subjects wriggling their way out of Wonderland and flocking to their princess? She took a deep breath and heard an extra inhale besides her own.

"It is unseemly to hide from your future queen," Lizzie said.

"Fine," said Kitty, slinking out of thin air. "Though I might have said aunseenly.' "

"What happened to that bunny rabbit?" Lizzie shouted.

"You mean the clock-climbing mouse that had somehow been transformed into a bunny?" said Kitty.

"Yes! Don't you care that you don't know how it happened? I would like to know, and am troubled by the fact that I do not!"

"Calm down, Princess Freak-Out." Kitty's smile weakened. "Now that you mention it, I'm troubled, too."

Unbeknownst to the Wonderlandians (except for Kitty, who can hear this narration right now but pretends not to), both Lizzie and Kitty had just used the word troubled for the first time in their lives.

"Grrrr," Kitty growled.

Maddie was on her way to find a place that needed to be hopped on. But upon overhearing the Narrator mention things of a troubling nature, she hurried back down the hall to her fellow Wonderlandians.

"I'm concerned," said Maddie, and then immediately covered her mouth. "Oh no! It's happening to me, too!"

"What is?" Lizzie asked.

"I said I'm concerned," Maddie said. "Not akilter-tipped' or ataut-hearted' or even awormy-worried'! aConcerned' is even worse than atroubled'! It's Ever Afterlis.h.!.+ It's boring," she whispered now, hand to the side of her mouth. "It's bland, heart-sapping plain-talk!"

Kitty shrugged. "It's not unlikely that enough time spent in a different place would introduce drift in your natural speech patterns." Kitty's eyes went wide, and then she, too, covered her mouth.

"See!" Maddie said, pointing at Kitty. "You said aintroduce drift-' "

Kitty interrupted. "Don't repeat it!"

"It," said Maddie.

"Not it," said Lizzie and Kitty in unison, and with that simple bit of madness, they realized all was not lost.

"That's a relief," Maddie said. "The Narrator just said we realized all was not lost. Now we need to find what actually is lost, and then everything will be fine again."

Lizzie wondered if something wasn't lost so much as found. Perhaps Wonderland had found her at last.

"Ooh, Lizzie, you think Wonderland is coming to Ever After?" Maddie asked.

"How did you know what I..." Lizzie started.

"The Narrator sometimes mentions what you're thinking."

"Nattering nosy nabob," Lizzie muttered. "Since you have no respect for royal privacy, tell us exactly what is going on, Nut-Bundled Know-It-All Narrator! Tell us why there are banders.n.a.t.c.hes and jubjub birds and mice disguised in bunny-ness, and why Maddie is aconcerned' and Kitty is aintroducing drift'!"

No one said anything for a moment, except the Narrator, who didn't say anything, since this sentence was not audible to all parties.

"Did the Narrator tell you anything?" Lizzie asked.

"Nothing helpish or revealy," Maddie said. "It's a Narrator rule. They're not supposed to interact with the people in their story. Though you can trick them sometimes."

About that last part Maddie was completely wrong. At least with regards to this upstanding, rule-abiding Narrator.

"We need help," Lizzie said, stumbling over the words. She remembered one of her mother's cards: Worms NEED things. But a princess such as you ORDERS things. Today, put your things in order by ordering things to be what they are.

And then, for fun, order them to be what they are not.

Lizzie sighed. "We're having far too many reasonable thoughts to be able to figure out anything on our own."

"I'm sure Apple and Raven-" Maddie started to say, but Lizzie banged her scepter on the wall.