“Your story came true,” Emilie said. “That’s not how it works. Something happens and you write about it. You don’t write about it and then it happens.”
“I don’t know,” Skya said as she turned another page. “Sometimes you want a story to be real so badly, you almost believe wanting it can make it come true.”
Skya put her hand lovingly on the cut stone walls. “You know why this place is called the Moonstone Palace even though it’s a castle? I didn’t know the difference between palaces and castles.”
“I just…I can’t believe it. Why? How?” Emilie flipped through the pages again, unbelieving and yet believing, because how could she not believe her sister’s story had come true? She was standing in it.
Skya reached out and cupped the St. Agatha medal Emilie wore. Jeremy had gotten it back for her.
“Maybe someone was watching over me,” Skya said. “A tenderhearted angel? Some patron saint? A friendly god of another world taking a stroll through our solar system?”
Skya released the medal. It fell softly against Emilie’s skin.
Aurora fluttered down to sit on Skya’s shoulder.
“Or maybe it was you all along,” Skya said to her bird. “I was running from that guy in the park, and he grabbed me by my backpack. I could’ve just let it go and kept running, but it had my story in it. I couldn’t let him have it. It was more me than me, you know?”
“What happened? Or do I not want to know?”
“He got me by the arm, started dragging me to the ground. But then…” She laughed and it sounded like church bells ringing on Christmas morning. “This huge red bird flew out of nowhere and started pecking at his face, his eyes. When he started to fall, the bird flew into the hollow of the tree, and I followed. I don’t remember what happened next, but when I woke up, I was here. And I wasn’t Shannon anymore. The Valkyries found me in the forest and said this…”
She pointed to a line in her story that read, Hail, Queen Skya! We are your Valkyries if you will have us.
“I just liked the word ‘Valkyrie.’ Wasn’t even sure what it meant.”
Emilie remembered something. The teeny tiny pencil sketch of the girl sitting at her desk…
“I saw your homework assignment about what you wanted to be doing in ten years. You didn’t want to be a queen of a magic kingdom. You wanted to be a fantasy writer. You did understand the assignment.”
Emilie turned another page.
The queen knew she could never leave her kingdom. It would not survive without her. If she wanted to find the lost princess, she would need to send a knight or a prince.
Or both.
Another page.
“Remember this warning, my queen,” said the Witch of Black Wolf Cave. “Only three times may the door into this world be used. After that, it will lock from the inside. You can get out, but no one else may get in. For you can always walk away from magic, but if you turn your back on it, it may never offer you another chance…”
“Three times,” Emilie said. “What does this mean? Three times the door opens before it closes forever? Do you mean the door we came through? The door in the tree?”
Skya sat down on the sofa and laid her head on the arm.
“Now I remember why I didn’t tell Rafe and Jeremy about the story.”
Emilie carried the Trapper Keeper to the armchair, reading the pages before and after, trying to find a loophole or a correction or something…
“But if it’s only three times, that means—”
Easy math. Skya came through. That was one time. Then Rafe and Jeremy fifteen years ago. Then they brought her through. That was three.
“Things always come in threes in fairy tales,” Skya said. “You have three days to guess the secret of the dancing princesses or you die. Three iron bands around the heart to keep it from breaking. Click your heels together three times…I didn’t know when I wrote that line that someday I would have to tell my prince that if he goes home again, he can never come back to me. And if he stays here, he’ll never see his mother again.”
Emilie’s throat tightened with panic. “Change it. Change the story. Can’t you erase it, write over it? Make it four times? Five?”
“Wish I could,” Skya said. “I tried a hundred times. I tried changing everything in the story. I tried erasing death and pain and suffering and sickness. It wouldn’t let me.”
“Why not? It’s your story.”
“Not anymore,” she said. “Now it’s Shanandoah’s story.” She leaned back with a heavy sigh. “And it turns out you can’t have a fairy tale without anything bad happening in it. Fairy tales need heroes. Heroes need dragons. Princes and knights need enemies. Life needs death. I wish it was easier, but it’s not. Not even here.”
Emilie wiped tears off her face and took a breath to settle herself. “But we can leave?”
“You can leave anytime,” Skya said. “If the price of magic is too high for you, you can leave. The door might only let you in three times, but it will always let you out. That’s how magic works. It will only give you so many chances to accept what it offers before it finds someone else who’s willing to pay the price.”
“So we can leave but we can never come back,” Emilie repeated. “Do they know? I mean, they will go back eventually. Rafe promised his mom.”
And Jeremy would go with him. She’d found a sister in Skya, but it felt like she’d also found two brothers in Rafe and Jeremy.
“I’ll tell them,” Skya said. “I didn’t know how to tell them then, and I don’t know how to tell them now, but—”
“I can tell them,” Emilie said. “You don’t have to do everything anymore.”
“It’s my story. I’ll do it.” Then she smiled. “You’re starting to act like a real princess, you know? I’m proud of you.”
“Great, I want to puke.”
Skya laughed. Emilie closed the story, sealing it shut with the Velcro flap. She carried it back to the golden box. Skya came over and locked it inside with the key.
