said Callis, bony hands scraping a few roaches into the cauldron.
“The people in a fairy tale, I mean.”
“It should say so, dear.” Her mother nodded at an open storybook peeking from under Agatha’s bed.
Agatha looked down at its last page, a blond prince and raven-haired princess kissing at their wedding, framed by an enchanted castle …
THE END.
“But what if two people can’t see their storybook?” She gazed at the princess in her prince’s arms. “How do they know if they’re happy?”
“If they have to ask, they probably aren’t,” said her mother, jabbing a roach that wouldn’t drown.
Agatha’s eyes stayed on the prince a moment longer. She snapped the storybook shut and tossed it in the fire under the cauldron. “About time we got rid of these like everyone else.”
She resumed chopping in the corner, faster than before.
“Are you all right, dear?” Callis said, hearing sniffles.
Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “Onions.”
The rain had gone, but a harsh autumn wind raked across the cemetery, lit by two torches over the gates that clung to skipping flames. As she approached the grave, her calves locked and her heart banged in her ears, begging her to stay away. Sweat seeped down her back as she kneeled in the weeds and mud, her eyes closed. She had never looked. Never.
With a deep breath, Sophie opened her eyes. She could barely make out an eroded butterfly in the headstone above the words.
Two smaller gravestones, both unmarked, flanked her mother’s like wings. Fingers covered by white mittens, she picked moss out of the cracks in one, overgrown from the years of neglect. As she tore away the mold, her soiled mittens found deeper grooves in the rock, smooth and deliberate. There was something carved in the slab. She peered closer—
“Sophie?”
She turned to see Agatha approach in a tattered black coat, balancing a drippy candle on a saucer.
“My mother saw you from the window.”
Agatha crouched next to her and laid the flame in front of the graves. Sophie didn’t say anything for a long while.
“He thought it was her fault,” she said at last, gazing at the two unmarked headstones. “Two boys, both born dead. How else could he explain it?” She watched a blue butterfly flutter out of the darkness and nestle into the carving on her mother’s decayed gravestone.
“All the doctors said she couldn’t have more children. Even your mother.” Sophie paused and smiled faintly at the blue butterfly. “One day it happened. She was so sick no one thought it could last, but her belly still grew. The Miracle Child, the Elders called it. Father said he’d name him Filip.”
Sophie turned to Agatha. “Only you can’t call a girl Filip.”
Sophie paused, cheekbones hardening. “She loved me, no matter how weak I had left her. No matter how many times she watched him walk to her friend’s house and disappear inside.” Sophie fought the tears as long as she could. “Her friend, Agatha. Her best friend. How could he?” She cried bitterly into her dirty mittens.
Agatha looked down and didn’t say a word.
“I watched her die, Aggie. Broken and betrayed.” Sophie turned from the grave, red faced. “Now he’ll have everything he wanted.”
“You can’t stop him,” Agatha said, touching her.
Sophie recoiled. “And let him get away with it?”
“What choice do you have?”
“You think that wedding will happen?” Sophie spat. “Watch.”
“Sophie …”
“He should be the one dead!” Sophie flushed with blood. “Him and his little princes! Then I’d be happy in this prison!”
Her face was so horrible that Agatha froze. For the first time since they returned, she glimpsed the deadly witch inside her friend, yearning to unleash.
Sophie saw the fear in Agatha’s eyes. “I’m s-s-s-sorry—” she stammered, turning away. “I—I don’t know what happened—” Her face melted to shame. The witch was gone.
“I miss her, Aggie,” Sophie whispered, trembling. “I know we have our happy ending. But I still miss my mother.”
Agatha hesitated, then touched her friend’s shoulder. Sophie gave in to her, and Agatha held her as she sobbed. “I wish I could see her again,” Sophie wept. “I’d do anything. Anything.”
The crooked tower clock tolled ten times down the hill, but loud, doleful creaks thickened between each one. In each other’s arms, the two girls watched the hunched silhouette of old Mr. Deauville as he wheeled a cart past the clock with the last of his closed-down shop. Every few paces he stopped, laboring under the weight of his forgotten storybooks, until his shadow disappeared around the corner and the creaks faded away.
“I just don’t want to end like her, alone and … forgotten,” Sophie breathed.
She turned to Agatha, trying to smile. “But my mother didn’t have a friend like you, did she? You gave up a prince, just for us to be together. To think I could make someone happy like that …” Her eyes misted. “I don’t deserve you, Agatha. I really don’t. After all I’ve done.”
Agatha was still quiet.
“Someone Good would let this marriage happen, wouldn’t they?” Sophie pressed her softly. “Someone as Good as you.”
“It’s late,” Agatha said, standing up. She held out her hand.
Sophie took it limply. “And I still have to find a dress for the wedding.”
Agatha managed a smile. “See? Good after all.”
“Least I can do is look better than the bride,” Sophie said, swishing ahead.
Agatha snorted and grabbed the torch off the gate. “Wait. I’ll walk you home.”
“How lovely,” Sophie said, not stopping. “I can smell more of that onion soup you had for dinner.”
“Lizard and onion soup, actually.”
“I really don’t know how we’re friends.”
Through the groaning gate, the two slipped side by side, torches lighting up their long shadows across overgrown weeds. As they waded down the emerald hill and out of sight, a gust flew back through the cemetery, igniting a flame on a candle dripping onto its mud-stained saucer. The flame grew over a blue butterfly settled curiously on a grave, then stoked brighter, long enough to illuminate the carvings
