“Hello, Jack, this is Riley. I was”—worried about you? Missing you? Freaking out because I don’t know what to do outside the story all by myself?—“wondering what you’re doing. Yesterday was such a crazy day. Everything about it.” I pause, but only briefly. The stork shouldn’t think I’m done. “Anyway, I hope we’re still friends. And if we are, I would love to…er…find my romance with you. No, no!” Hysterically, I wave my hands at the SMS as if that will make Jack understand my message any better. “Not together with you. Just… Well, it would be nice if you came on this adventure with me.” I sigh and instantly wonder if the sound will be delivered in the message, too. “Alone is boring. So, if you don’t have any other plans for today, maybe you want to come to Camelot. I guess I’ll be hanging out there and stalking the king for a while.”
Okay. That was a good message. Well done, Riley. So what are the right words to close this SMS because “I love you, too,” like I used with my granny is certainly the wrong way to go. Thoughtfully, I narrow my eyes at the stork, but my expression lights up when I remember the many letters I wrote to the Magical Press, complaining about the missing deliveries of The Character Magazine. With a strong voice I finish, “Sincerely yours, R dot Redcoat.”
The stork rolls his eyes. Totally back to feeling insecure with this whole message delivery thing, I ask him, “Not good?”
“Perfect,” he replies with dry sarcasm and beats his wings to fly off.
Craning my neck, I watch him disappear into the clouds. He’s long gone when I finally turn back to the path in front of me and make my way through the Plush Toy Forest and across Kansas toward Camelot. Every now and then, my glance travels up to the sky, hoping that Jack might send a reply with a stork. Apart from Nils Holgersson traveling south with his wild geese, there’s nothing to report.
Well, lighten up, Riley. You can do this alone, as well.
Only, I didn’t lie earlier. Alone isn’t half as much fun as together. I wish Jack had come. My shoulders are hanging depressively, as are the corners of my mouth, by the time I slip into the bushes close to King Arthur’s castle.
I wait a few minutes, ducking in the shrubs as if on a turkey hunt. This is a good hiding place. There are no guards anywhere near. Breaking into the castle and confronting Arthur with the arrow pointing at him surely isn’t the best way to go about things. Better wait until he comes out into his fine garden. He can’t hide inside forever, right? Even though after an hour and a half, it certainly looks like it.
Man, doesn’t he need fresh air?
Just when I’m starting to believe that my adventure will be delayed again, the mighty wooden door of the castle opens. A young man in a white shirt and leather pants with a beard and a crown sitting askew on his head appears in the warm afternoon light.
My heart starts to pound dramatically in my chest. This is it. The moment when I’ll change my fate. Boy, am I nervous all of a sudden. My clammy fingers can hardly draw the bow with Cupid’s arrow as I stand up and watch King Arthur from behind a cherry tree. He bends down and plucks a few tulips from the majestic flowerbed near his feet. Good. He can give them to me in a minute when my arrow nails him in the heart, and he falls head over heels in love with me.
The sinew of the bow sounds out with tension as I draw the string even tighter. An excited smile pulls hard at my mouth.
“Well, hello there, Miss Redcoat… Found your target, I see.”
Nearly jumping out of my skin, I whirl around to the voice behind me and point the arrow’s tip straight at Jack’s chest.
Chapter 6
Jack
Once again, I find myself in the line of fire. This time, instead of pushing the arrow away, I only lift my hands in surrender and smile at Riley.
“Jack!” She eases off the string and lowers the bow. “You came!” The joy in her voice and eyes is sincere. I didn’t expect anything less. From her whimsical message earlier, I figured she wanted me here.
Still, it didn’t make me come any faster. I drop my hands and tuck them into my pockets. Frankly, finding a stork at my window after Phillip left was quite the surprise. Her message made me laugh, though. And it made me sad at the same time. For a solid hour, I paced my apartment, trying to make a decision. Erase Riley from my life completely, or start something entirely different with her?
A friendship outside of our tale.
I think that’s what she was asking me for in her SMS anyway—if we could have this tiny thing between us, even though we stopped playing our story every day.
Last night was tough. I’ve never had to fight against the call of the forest before. This must be what it feels like to break an addiction. There was a point sometime after midnight when I cursed Riley for doing this to me. But a life totally without her after being bound to her from the onset of fairy tales? It was hard to imagine.
Well, I’m here now, so I guess my decision is clear.
A sigh wants out of my throat, but I force it down. “I can’t let my girl shoot somebody without me, can I?”
She laughs. “Your girl?”
“You’ve been that for centuries, yes,” I answer sentimentally. But then I let a smirk take up residence on my face to ease the annoying lump in my throat. “And I believe it entitles me to co-determine the right happily ever after for you.”
Riley takes a step back and leans against the tree, bow and arrow crossed in front of her thighs. The red cloak accentuates the mischievous spark in her honey-colored eyes. “Oh, you want voting rights in my choice?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Cocking my head, I tilt my eyebrows once. “And that guy”—I nod toward Arthur in his garden a couple of hundred feet away from us, totally unaware what kind of fate awaits him—“isn’t the right one for you.”
“Thanks. Your concern is duly noted.” She sticks out her tongue at me, which makes me want to teach her another lesson. But she turns away from me, laughing, and draws the bow again, pointed in the same position as before. “Too bad there’re only two of us. And if it’s a tie, it’s my choice that counts since it’s my H.E.A. we’re voting on.”
“H.E.A?”
“Happily ever after,” she explains gossip girl talk to me. Then she utters a curse under her breath.
“What is it?” I whisper, coming to her side to have a closer look at the palace garden. King Arthur isn’t alone anymore. Some of his knights, among them Sir Lancelot, gather around him. That’s a problem for her, indeed.
“Tough luck. Looks like they’re starting a new play.” I don’t know why I’m grinning now. Okay, that’s a lie. I do know why. “This can go on for days, you know. And you can’t shoot Arthur out of his tale.”
“That’s what you think?” Her question sounds very much like a dare. Bow drawn right beside her jaw, one eye closed, the other narrowed for aim, she pulls at the string so hard that the wood bends. The sound gives me chills of the uncomfortable kind.
Riley is an excellent archer. She can shoot a cherry off a tree from three hundred feet away. Six feet of king flesh a short distance from us isn’t a challenge. If I let her fire this arrow now, though, I’ll lose her. I’ll lose our tale and my job. Damnit, she’ll turn my whole life upside down with one shot.
Panic rises inside me, hot like the coals in her granny’s stove. I can’t let her do this. Not so fast. Not today!
Short of a better idea, I lean in to her ear just when she’s ready to let go and drawl, “They say Guinevere ran off because he stinks like a polecat.”
Her eyes jerk open, and she stiffens in shock, but the arrow is gone. Holding my breath in terror, I whip around and track its path. It’s a short miss on Arthur, the arrow zooming past his face, embedding in the tree behind him. The thud echoes loudly, the sound carrying over to us.
Riley and I stand rigidly in the bushes, staring at Arthur like ghosts shut out from a haunted castle. Tracing the direction where the arrow came from, he swings around. I don’t know who’s more shocked, him or us. But he sure gets out of his stupor quicker than we do. Arm stretched out, a finger pointing at our hideout, he yells at those who swore him fealty, “Invaaadors!”