The Unfairest of Them All Page 5

  Cerise was bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet. She leaned close to Raven and whispered, “My mom might be afraid to talk about… the situation. Such a marriage is forbidden in our village. Both sides would freak out if they knew.”

  “Both sides?”

  “The Wolfs and the Hoods. You’ll see.”

  Cerise pulled out her phone and selected Red Riding Hood from the Yester Day app. She leaped easily over the edge of the well and directly in, holding her hood on with one hand and winking at Raven as she dropped into the water.

  Raven followed right after, the dry rush through water pushing her hair out of her face. She rose up and out of another well, landing on her feet.

  Around her the Dark Forest was thick and sticky with evergreens. Sunlight sliced through the canopy in slim, cathedral-lighting shafts, lending just enough light for ferns and a few wildflowers to creep out of the dark soil. Ahead was a cottage, and beyond that, a village in a clearing.

  “My parents built their house here so they’d be close to the wishing well,” Cerise said as they walked to the cottage. “Dad can come for visits anytime, sneak in the back door, and no one sees.”

  “So who does everyone think your dad really is?” Raven asked.

  “Oh, Hoods don’t ask questions,” Cerise said. “We’re a very private people. I think most people assume the Huntsman was my dad. That would make more sense to them than the truth.”

  “But that would make you Hunter’s sister!” said Raven. “Besides, you’re not Cerise Huntsman—you’re Cerise Hood. Hey, are you related to Robin and Sparrow Hood?”

  “Distantly,” said Cerise. “And let me emphasize—distantly.”

  The cottage was built of warm-colored wood, with green-painted windowsills and a thatch roof. Cerise opened the back door smoothly and silently, without a squeak in the hinges. They were kept well-oiled, Raven realized, for Cerise’s dad’s visits. Even the door hinges helped keep the Hood family secret.

  Inside was a cozy family room, wooden furniture fit with comfy cushions. It would have been lovely, if Raven could have seen very well. But the windows were dark, with all the curtains closed, just low flames from a few fairy lamps to light the room. She peered at the framed photos on the walls. Every one was of Cerise: Baby Cerise, gnawing on a chew toy that looked remarkably like a bone; Toddler Cerise, chasing a chicken; Little Girl Cerise, climbing a high tree; Teenage Cerise, posing with her mother in front of Ever After High on the first day of school.

  Nowhere in sight was a family photo of Cerise with both of her parents.

  “Mom?” Cerise called out.

  Red Riding Hood emerged from the kitchen wearing a floured apron. She was tall and lean, not as broad-shouldered as her daughter. She and Cerise shared the same straight dark brown hair, but Cerise’s had a shock of white at the forehead, and Red didn’t cover hers with a hood.

  “Cerise!” Red ran forward and swept her daughter up in a hug. “You’re here! I’ve missed you so much. And what perfect timing, because I just finished a batch of mini pecan pies.”

  “Mom has a business selling pastries,” Cerise said to Raven.

  “Oh, it’s just a hobby, really,” said Red.

  “A hobby? She shipped twenty thousand fairyberry scones last year alone!”

  Red laughed. “You’re my biggest fan. Are you here for Yester Day? When I got the hext from Headmaster Grimm, I didn’t imagine I’d be treated to a visit from my own daughter.”

  “Mom, this is my friend Raven. She wanted to meet with you especially. You see… she knows.”

  Red’s eyes widened. “She knows?”

  “She knows,” said Cerise.

  Red ran to lock the back door, checked the lock on the front door, and then went from window to window, pulling the drapes shut even tighter.

  “I knew this day would come, but I’m not ready.”

  “It’s okay, really, Raven’s great at keeping secrets.”

  “If they knew,” Red was saying as she collapsed onto the couch, “if any of them knew, the Hoods or the Wolfs, Cerise would not be welcome home. The ignorant, stubborn fools.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Raven. “Cerise didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Red. “Her father and I went off script. The story says that we’re enemies. The Hood and Wolf clans remember that every hour of every day. How Baddy and I forgot long enough to fall in love…”

  “Will you tell me the story?” Raven asked, sitting beside her. “I need to know if there’s any hope when someone rebels against their destiny.”

  “Hope?” Red shook her head. “Listen, the very day after I graduated from Ever After High, I made my way to Grandma’s house with my basket of treats, ready to face my destiny. Baddy—sorry, Badwolf—he approached me in the forest like he was supposed to, tried to get me to go off the path, you know, so he could get to Grandma’s house first. Just like the story goes. Only, I realized I wasn’t scared of him. He made me laugh!

  “He started making up all kinds of excuses to make me leave the path.” Red lowered her voice to imitate her husband. “ ‘There’s, uh, a scorpion on the path up there, so you should probably go another way. Or it could have been a piece of wood that looked like a scorpion. Also, uh, the dirt on this path is enchanted, and when it gets wet it develops a ravenous hunger for boots. And slippers. Any footwear, really. So if you take the path, it will eat your shoes. And did I mention the scorpion?’ ”

  “He’s never been very subtle,” Cerise said with a fond laugh.

  “Baddy was in his human form, and, I admit, I thought him very handsome.” Red blushed the color of her name. Raven raised her eyebrows in a question.

  “The Wolfs are wolves,” Cerise explained. “But many, like my dad, can transform between wolf and human form.”

  “Oh, okay. I wondered,” said Raven.

  “When I got to the cottage and Baddy was there in my grandmother’s hat and nightgown, pretending to be her…” Red snickered. “Can you imagine? And I was supposed to not notice it’s him, but I was dying, and I could tell he was dying, too, both of us trying so hard not to laugh, because this was our destiny! This was the story we were born to tell, and how could we not take it seriously? Poor Grandma sat forever in the closet waiting to be rescued, but Baddy and I didn’t want the moment to end, so we made up more and more things to say. ‘My, what big, uh, nostrils you have.’ ‘All the better to sneeze with.’ ‘My, what big fingernails you have.’ ‘All the better to paint a lovely shade of red.’ Eventually, he was supposed to attack me, and I could tell he didn’t want to. So I ran and screamed, and he snarled, but neither of us could take it seriously until…”

  Red paused, and her chin trembled.

  “The Huntsman came,” said Raven.

  Red nodded. “With his ax. And he was supposed to kill Baddy, just kill him right there. But I… well, I’d learned a few things at Ever After High, and I, er, dropped a smoke bomb. And yelled ‘Fire.’ ”

  “A smoke bomb?” Raven asked.

  “I always carry a couple in my basket,” Red said. “Just for protection. Baba Yaga taught us how to make them.”

  “Was she all young then?” Raven asked, trying to imagine.

  “Gracious, no,” Red said. “She was ancient.”

  Raven tried picturing Baba Yaga as a baby—already wrinkled, gray-haired, and crabby.

  “So, after that, the Huntsman left?” Raven asked.

  “Yes, once he saw that Grandma and I were safe and that the wolf was nowhere to be seen.”

  “What happened after?”

  “Well, we found ways to meet. Hoods aren’t supposed to go into the forest. That’s the Wolfs’ domain. And Wolfs aren’t supposed to get near the village. But Baddy and I would leave notes for each other in a hollow tree and meet far, far away from the village and the Wolf dens where no one could hear us, because as soon as we’d start talking, we’d start laughing, and Baddy has an outrageously loud laugh.
” Red blushed at the memory. “We got married in Wonderland, just the two of us, the Mad Hatter presiding. My bridesmaid was a rabbit in a bow tie, and Baddy’s best man was a dormouse. It was all perfectly mad and just as crazy as our love. As happy as we were, I didn’t feel really right away from home. Hood Hollow is my setting, after all. So for better or for worse, we returned home and have been living as a family in secret ever since.”

  Cerise sat beside her mother. Red took her daughter’s hand and smiled sadly.

  “Is it really so bad?” said Raven, attempting to cheer herself up as well as the Hoods. “After all, Beauty fell in love with the Beast.”

  “That was their destiny,” said Red. “But even scripted love between a Hood and a Wolf would not go down well in Hood Hollow. The hatred between the clans is old, deep, and illogical, but very, very real.”

  “Was it worth it?” Raven asked.

  “Of course,” said Red. “I mean, we have Cerise. And each other. But… but it’s hard, too. If our clans knew about Cerise, they’d consider her an abomination! I do sometimes wonder if we were selfish. Falling in love was our choice, but by going off script, we condemned our daughter to a life of secrecy.”

  “And I’m tired of the secret,” said Cerise. “Maybe it’s time to take off the hood.”

  “No,” said Red quickly. “No, Cerise, you don’t know how serious the consequences would be.”

  Cerise slumped back against the sofa, her whole face a frown.

  “Your destiny wasn’t fair,” said Raven. “So you rebelled. I know that couldn’t have been easy.”

  “I would do it again,” said Red. “But you should know, being a rebel takes a lot more work than going along with the status quo. If you’re thinking of trying to change your destiny, Raven, know that it will be much, much harder than you expect.”

  “Too late,” Raven whispered.

  “Mom, I don’t know if Dad told you already, but Raven didn’t sign the Storybook of Legends on Legacy Day,” said Cerise.

  “What? That was you?”

  “She’s… well, she’s just the bravest person I’ve ever known. Besides you and Dad. If she can change her destiny, why can’t—?”

  A noise outside interrupted them.

  “What now?” Red said.

  She cracked open the door. The Hoods were gathering in the village center with torches and pitchforks.

  Cerise rolled her eyes. “Every. Single. Time. Someone misplaces a shoe, and they go straight for the torches and pitchforks.”

  She moved past her mother to see what was going on, and Raven followed. A mob of Hoods had gathered by the stream that separated the village from the encroaching forest on the other side. A man in front was holding up a young wolf dressed as a sheep, gripping him by the back of his fluffy costume.

  “Wolfs!” the man shouted toward the shadowy trees. “How dare you? We will not stand for this breach of rules!”

  “It was just a dare!” the young Wolf howled.

  Raven saw the shadows between the trees shift, and then a dozen wolves appeared, black and gray and brown, with yellow eyes and teeth exposed in snarls. The one in front stood on his hind legs and became a man with pointy ears, heavy beard, and some serious sideburns. He was also, magically, fully dressed.

  “Let him go,” the wolf-were said. “He’s a child.”

  “Planting your spies in our herd, are you?” shouted a Hood.

  “If we did, it’d be all the better to see you with,” replied the Wolf with a snicker.

  “Next you’ll invade our homes, all the better to smell us.”

  “Don’t worry, we can smell your stench miles away,” another Wolf growled.

  The two sides kept shouting at each other, and in the middle of it all, the young wolf shivered.

  “Don’t say anything about their teeth—that’s when they attack.”

  “Stay away, grandma-eaters.”

  “You can’t prove anything!”

  If they’d been in the Castleteria, pickled peppers and peas porridge hot would have gone flying. Do something, Apple had pleaded with Raven then.

  But I don’t want to be a leader, Raven thought. I don’t know how to lead.

  The young wolf whimpered, sounding as afraid and alone as young Raven at nursery-rhyme school, the only future villain in the class, ignorant of the KICK ME, I’M EVIL sign taped to her back.

  “Hey, stop it!” Raven yelled. She lifted her hands intending just to do a loud pop spell and get their attention, but it backfired. A burst of black air exploded, knocking both the Hoods and the Wolfs onto their rumps and singeing a few eyebrows. The wolf in sheep’s clothing fell to the ground and scurried over the bridge to his clan. The Hoods barely noticed. They were all staring at Raven.

  “It’s… it’s her.…”

  “The Evil Queen’s daughter…”

  “Get her.”

  “Get her!”

  “Get her!”

  The Hoods jumped to their feet and grabbed Raven, dozens of hands on her arms and legs. Raven couldn’t even manage to squirm.

  “No! Stop!” Cerise yelled.

  “We don’t allow witches in Hood Hollow,” said a Hood man. “Let one witch in and next thing you know a whole crowd of gingerbread-housed, child-eating, cackling cauldron stirrers move in, taking up space and changing everyone into frogs.”

  “Or worse, into wolves!” a grandfather shouted.

  “But that’s not just any ordinary witch!”

  “That’s her daughter!”

  “Get rid of her before she goes off script and destroys Hood Hollow like her mother destroyed Wonderland!”

  “The only thing to do is dunk her.”

  “Yes, toss her in the river. She’ll float downstream and become someone else’s problem.”

  “Dunk the witch! Dunk the witch!” the mob began to chant.

  “You can’t,” Cerise yelled. “Raven is good. She’s helped me see I can write my own destiny!”

  No one paid her any attention. Dozens of hands lifted Raven above the heads of the mob. They carried her onto the bridge.

  “No!” said Cerise. “Not Raven. I won’t allow it. I won’t.”

  The mob kept chanting, holding Raven up. She could see the stream swirling below her. It looked cold. And a lot deeper than she was expecting. And were those wicked sharp rocks in the depths? Raven writhed, trying to fight her way free. This wasn’t a joke. She was about to get seriously hurt. Or worse. She opened her mouth to mutter a spell, too scared now to worry about the spell backfiring. But someone shoved a sock in her mouth.

  This is what she got for interfering. She wasn’t a leader. She didn’t know how to reason with people. She just needed to give up, improve her skulking skills, and hide her way through the rest of her time at school. Any time she attempted to help, it backfired, just like her magic.

  “No!” Cerise yelled.

  And then she howled. The sound froze Raven’s blood and stopped the chant dead in the mob’s throats.

  Cerise’s eyes flashed yellow. “Put her down.”

  No one moved.

  “I said, put her down!” Cerise sprang from the stream bank onto the bridge, an impossibly high leap. The crowds on both sides of the stream gasped in shock. Cerise crouched on the lip of the bridge as if prepped to pounce.

  “Down,” she said again.

  The many hands let Raven slip, and she landed on the bridge’s wooden planks.

  “Cerise, how are you doing that?” someone asked.

  “Raven Queen was right,” said Cerise. “We can write our own destiny. And I’m not hiding anymore. I’m proud of both my parents—Red Riding Hood and Big Badwolf.”

  She stood to her full height and pushed back her hood, revealing her wolf ears.

  Almost drowned out by both clans’ shouts of fear and rage were Cerise’s mother’s soft cries.

  Narrator? Oh, Narrator, you sweetie crumb cake you?

  Maddie, you know I’m not supposed to talk to you.r />
  Yes, but I’m lonely. The school is empty, and everyone else is still off having adventures for Yester Day.

  So why did you come back early?

  Well, Neverland was nothing like Wonderland. For one thing, there wasn’t a single talking rabbit! And I was waylaid by pirates, which should be fun, but they didn’t break into any choreographed musical numbers. And… well… ah-ah-achoo! I couldn’t stop sneezing. Is it possible to be allergic to pirates? Never mind. Of course it’s possible. Everything is possible and nothing is not possible except possibly the impossible. Anywhy, no one there drinks tea, the mermaids splashed me and made fun of my hair, but, worst of all, my friends weren’t there.

  I’m sorry your Yester Day wasn’t satisfactory, Maddie, but I really do need to get back to telling the story.

  Ooh, please do, I love stories. Any more juicy secrets like Cerise being part wolf?

  Um… besides the Ashlynn and Hunter thing?

  Ah-ha, so they are sweet on each other! Tea-rrific!

  You didn’t know that already? Curses. Well, I’m not saying anything else.

  Okay, I’ll just start guessing things, and then you freak out if I’m right.

  I never freak out.

  Is Baba Yaga in love with Headmaster Grimm?

  That’s ridiculous.

  Is Madam Maid Marian a dragon in disguise?

  Maddie…

  Okay, jump ahead then. Tell me what happens in, like, a hundred pages or something.

  Never! Is that how you read books, jumping forward and reading the ending first?

  Of course!

  Well, there are some things you are better off not knowing beforehand.

  Oooh! So something bad is going to happen?

  I didn’t say that.

  To whom? Raven?

  No, I wasn’t talking about Raven. Just calm down.

  Apple?

  Never mind about Raven and Apple. And that’s all I’m saying, because I will not be tricked into telling you your future, Maddie.

  Me?! The big bad thing is going to happen to me?

  I didn’t say… I was only… you didn’t hear it from me, I mean… argh!

  APPLE WALKED AWAY FROM HER MOST recent castle while scrolling through the Yester Day app. All she wanted was a monarch who had to deal with super-spazzy subjects who yelled and threw food at one another and yet figured out how to make them stop and just be happy.