Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
“Nothing charming about this at all,” the mayor says. “You need to leave this place. People come here for their resolution, but you are not ready to resolve anything. You are chaos, and you are…”
This is the second time an old dude I didn’t initiate a conversation with is calling me chaos, and I do not like it. I do not like it at all. There is an urge in my muscles to swing the sword, to bring it sweeping though the flesh and sinew of the nasty people before me.
Do it. I hear a soft whisper. It’s not coming from me, and it’s not Charming’s voice, though in many ways it sounds very similar to Charming. It could be a brother, perhaps.
“I’m not going to do it,” I say out loud. “That would be awful.”
I sheathe Dragonslayer and walk through the crowd of people before me, angry villagers no longer quite as bold as they were before. They will remember me, I think, the princess with the sword who spared them.
I am now aware that I am being followed, or perhaps something more than followed. Tracked.
11
Charming
I am at The End.
Balthazar threw me here at the very last moment rather than let me kill him. The coward made the coward’s choice, just as I had counted on him to do.
There are people here, meaningless subjects. I shouldn’t call them that, even mentally, but nothing holds any meaning besides Emmaline. I would slaughter each and every one of them a thousand times over to get her back.
“Have any of you seen a princess with dark, curling hair and a large sword upon her back?”
Many of these people have the absolute audacity to ignore me and continue playing out the final stages of their petty little stories. They do not know who I am, but they should. In the old days, Charming was a name that transcended realms and worlds alike. The notion that I could have been forgotten is galling and spurs me on along with my burning desire to find Emmaline.
“HAVE YOU SEEN MY PRINCESS?” I boom the question with as much regal authority as I can muster.
“Yes, we saw the noisy wench with the sword,” a man finally answers me. He is not afraid of me, because he is at The End, and those at The End fear very little. “She went back up the wrong way. Toward Resolution.”
So she is alive. She has not gone to The End. I had hoped her instincts for story would keep her clear of that particular fate, but there are other hazards she may not be aware of. I need to find her as soon as possible and return to the Ever After with her.
A small cheer goes up as the tavern opens. The day is beginning to wane, and with the gathering dusk the covers of the tavern spread, the pages opening to reveal the building.
“Come on in.” The tavern keeper welcomes everyone with a warm smile. “Come in! Come... not you,” she says when her gaze falls on me. “You stay well out of here.”
“I’m looking for my princess.”
“Of course you are,” she says. “The two of you are causing havoc, I hope you know. It’s very irresponsible to be introducing all this chaos at The End. Enough of it, and we’re going to need to send all these people to Epilogue, and who is going to pay for that?
“I apologize, my good lady. I will take my leave.”
“You do that,” she says. “I don’t want to see either of you ever again. You don’t belong here.”
“I know.”
“If you know, then it is very irresponsible for you to have come. The girl I understand. She’s not of this world, but you, I know you, Prince Charming. You should know much better than to let your bride wander around the lands of narrative this way.”
The woman has very clearly been planning this since she saw Emmaline, storing up a good haranguing which I now bear the brunt of, even though it doesn’t make sense. I’m supposed to not be here, and yet I am also supposed to rescue the princess. I know her true frustration lies with the fact that the landscape of narrative is becoming all twisted with our presence. She fears for her tavern and for the travelers who deserve a solid, satisfying end.
At first glance, this woman appears to be a ruddy-faced tavern keeper. That is who she is for her guests, and it is all most of them will ever see. I see something else. I see the bones beneath the round face, which is always an illusion. I see a dark robe instead of a cheerful dress and apron. And I see a scythe rather than a cloth for wiping tables. She is doing her best to usher those who come to her away with the least amount of fear and fuss, but she is still the same creature as stalks every end, one way or another.