“True.” Snow-White scratches her chin. “Jazz always wore the pants, long before she even met Al.”
“You might be onto something here,” Bellina supports me now, pointing a finger my way as she narrows her eyes. Then the Beauty gets up from her chair and paces back and forth in front of us. Her heels clack on the stone floor underneath the hoop of her marvelous purple dress. She can never sit still for long, especially not when she’s pondering. “The list of royal love stories in this country is long. Even the red-haired fish girl—” She whirls around to us. “What’s her name again?”
“Avalyn,” we all groan and cut her tired glances. For some stupid reason, she constantly forgets the mermaid’s name.
“Ah, yes. So she gets Prince Sebastian, right? Ann-Marie marries the Frog Prince. And Rapunzel is a kidnapped princess herself.”
“See?” I raise my eyebrows and gesture wildly with my arms. “Love only happens among royals. Nobody has ever read about a girl from the woods falling for a verminous pooch.”
Rory lifts her nose, disgustedly pushing away her cake and wiping some crumbs off her pink dress. “Ugh, you think Jack has fleas?”
I shrug it off. “Sometimes, I see him scratching his ear with his hind leg when he’s in wolf form, but that might be out of habit.” He actually does it a lot when he’s nervous. And he always gets like that before the ending of our story. I probably would, too, if the Huntsman was going to cut my belly open with a knife to free my latest lunch.
Ignoring our speculation about Jack’s hygiene, Princess Cinderella leans across the coffee table and pats my hand. “So, not all fairy tales end with love. That’s just life.”
“Yeah, but if they don’t, at least those characters get to do some cool stuff in their stories.” I grab my ankles, my feet still flat on the couch. “Take Hansel and Gretel, for instance. No romance, but an entire house full of candy to crunch. What do I get? A small piece of cake and wine, and I’m not even allowed to eat it because the basket is for Granny.”
Cindy tips her head to the side and presses her lips together. I don’t know how to interpret her look. Five seconds later, she grabs a platter from the table, holds it out to me, and lifts one eyebrow in hope. “Macaron?”
I drop my forehead to my knees and groan.
*
“Don’t hang your head, sweetie.” Cindy hugs me tightly in the great hall after our tea. The other girls left an hour ago, so I had some time alone with my bestie to swoon over the hotties in the latest issue of The Character Magazine and read about the most recent escapades in Fairyland. Delivery weasels tend to get distracted in the woods and misplace parcels. I’m missing two months’ worth of issues, so I have to rely on Cindy these days to provide my weekly celebrity fix. Her charming husband picks up the magazine for her from the Magical Press each Tuesday, right after it releases.
Another advantage of having a prince at hand. Just saying.
While I tie my boots, Cindy squats down in front of me and places her hand under my chin to make me look into her starlit eyes. “You know you didn’t get the worst deal with your story.”
That’s easy for her to say. As soon as this heavy door closes behind me, she’ll skip into the study, drag Prince Jason into the living room, and cuddle up to him in front of the home cinema.
The only thing I can cuddle up with is the old blanket on my couch. Or Jack Wolf, who recently ate my grandmother. I prefer the blanket.
But I give a quick nod anyway and smile courageously at my friend. As we both rise again, she holds out my bow and quiver.
“You’re right.” It’s not the worst story in the forest, just one without romance. “I guess I could be a green witch and get squashed by a house at the end of my tale, right?” That would really screw up my day.
She laughs, but I see the shivers spreading over her bare arms at the mention of the Wicked Witch of the West. That woman is a grumpy old hag, and not only in her story.
“Come to the market with me tomorrow?” Cindy changes the subject as I turn and open the door.
“Sure,” I call over my shoulder and wave goodbye as I leave Castle Grove, the home of most of my princess friends. “Meet me by the fountain!”
She didn’t actually have to ask me to come. Strolling through the market of Grimwich with my best friend on Mondays is as much a non-changeable tradition as the stories we each play out. Even though she’s generally the only one who buys anything. But that’s because I don’t have a chamber filled with treasure to spend on excessive luxury. I don’t own a castle, remember?
But it’s okay. The forest provides whatever I need to survive: food, wood, and animal skin. The rough life in the wilderness has turned me into a formidable archer, and I’m excellent at fending for myself. Besides, Granny is a great tailor. Sometimes, she designs me new clothes. Simple garments made of linen or the leathers I bring her after skinning my prey.
This pretty, hooded cloak is one of the first things she ever made for me. Apparently, a fairy gave her the red satin many, many years ago, and it’s supposed to always protect me from harm. I broke my wrist last summer…so much for the protection. Still, I don’t ever take it off. Well, I do. To sleep. But that’s it.
It’s why they call me Red Riding Hood.
Unfortunately, shoes are something I do have to spend money on. I look down at my feet as I tramp through the Wood of 1000 Dawns. These boots are barely two years old, practically brand new. Certainly good enough to walk another decade in. To raise the money for this pair, I had to paint all the white roses in the Queen of Hearts’ wondrous garden red. No shit. Not a very grateful job.
Behind a line of hazel bushes up ahead, I see the straw roof of my cozy little hut. A thin trail of smoke from the fire I made this morning still puffs from the chimney. A warm feeling floods me at the sight. There’s hardly any interesting booty for thieves to steal in my house, so the square windows stay open all summer long. As I approach, a robin, usually nested under the roof, greets me from the window ledge with a happy chirp. I pluck a raspberry from the shrub winding up the pole of the porch as I walk up the steps and place it in front of my tiny friend with a smile. “Enjoy, sweetie.”
No matter how much I sometimes wish for a different ever after for myself, I always take in a deep, happy breath when I cross the threshold of my cabin. Sure, there might not be a marble staircase leading to floors above—heck, there isn’t even a second floor—but this is home to me.
I leave my boots by the door and flop onto my comfy couch. A few years ago, Tinker Bell had talked me into adopting her discarded flat screen when she moved into an apartment in Grimwich with Thumbelina, Humpty Dumpty, and Godfather Death. I guess she felt a little sorry for me when she saw my puny place.
With no satellite reception this deep in the woods, a TV just sounded like a bad joke. Of course, I didn’t tell her that. You should never hurt a pixie’s feelings. Very bad idea, trust me. It was a nice gesture, though, so now the device just collects dust in the cellar until she notifies me of a visit—which isn’t all too often, thank the fairies. That thing is darn heavy and quite cumbersome to carry up the stairs.
Lacking the common luxuries of the people in town, I pick up my alternative entertainment from the coffee table: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The book is property of the Grimwich Library and, yikes, that boy has a tough story to act out in his universe.