Fairy Tale

The group clambers onto the platform, which ascends the spire. Charlie hears ghostly voices whispering ominous threats, and black shadows begin to swirl around them as they rise higher and higher. Finally, the platform stops at a small landing near the top of the spire. The group proceeds along a narrow catwalk and through another door. Behind the door is a narrow set of stairs that descends into the ground. On the right is a wall of curved, green glass, behind which the “hungry” black shadows are moving.

The group descends the staircase. It is equipped with electrical lights, installed by Mr. Bowditch on one of his visits. Charlie asks Leah to first stop at Kellin’s chambers, which are several staircases down. At the door, Eye excitedly asks to finish off Kellin himself. Charlie agrees, a choice he regrets in hindsight. When Eye pushes open the door, a man named Jeff is behind it. Jeff cuts Eye’s chin before Leah kills him with a stab to the eye.

Inside the chambers, Kellin is asleep on the bed. As Eye approaches him, the Snab reappears, leading a huge swarm of rats, and the rats swarm Kellin. Charlie turns to Eye and notices that his friend is foaming at the mouth. Eye chokes out the word “poison”–he was poisoned by Jeff’s dagger. Charlie lays him down on Kellin’s couch, where he dies.

Charlie requests one more stop before facing Flight Killer: Kellin’s torture chamber in Deep Maleen. In a corner of the chamber, he finds Pursey the cook. Charlie helps Pursey to his feet and orders Jaya to take him to Claudia’s house. Before they part ways, Pursey warns the group that Flight Killer is in the palace with four others and that the moons Bella and Arabella will soon kiss.

Leah continues to lead the way down. The green light coming from the walls intensifies, as do the unsettling voices. The voices remind Charlie of the bad things he did with Bertie Bird. As they go deeper still, the voices are replaced by a deep humming. Charlie thinks of Elden as a child, cruelly bullied and reading books about the secret parts of the castle. Radar sniffs at a scrap of green fabric on the ground, which Charlie recognizes as part of a dress belonging to Flight Killer’s henchwoman, Petra.

The passage splits out, and Leah leads the way into a room made of green glass. There are even more black shadows trapped behind the glass, forming twisted faces. The whole room is surrounded by passages. Leah pauses, uncertain–this is as far as she ever went with Elden when they were children. She used to wait in this green room while Elden went further, but one day he didn’t come back, and she told herself that he died. Charlie knows that she has to believe this to avoid her guilt over not following and trying to rescue him.

With no leads, Charlie has Radar smell the piece of Petra’s dress. Radar indicates toward one of the passages, and Leah tears off in pursuit. Following her, Charlie emerges into a massive room whose ceiling is a copy of the night sky. It shows that the two moons, Bella and Arabella, are slowly closing in on one another. Down another spiraling staircase, he can see the Deep Well’s hatch and Flight Killer standing nearby.

Leah runs toward her brother. The light from the night sky ceiling brightens, and Charlie looks up in time to see Bella and Arabella collide in the sky, shattering on impact. The Deep Well begins to open. Flight Killer’s robe falls to the side to reveal tentacles where his legs once were, and Charlie realizes that “Elden [is] this world’s Cthulhu” (594).

Desperate, Leah uses her dagger to cut open her mouth and shouts at Flight Killer, begging him to stop. As she walks toward him, one of his tentacles wraps around her neck and begins strangling her, seemingly beyond his control. Charlie intervenes and pushes Flight Killer back toward the well.

At that moment, Gogmagog’s massive, thorned wing emerges from the well and impales Flight Killer. His body merges with Gogmagog, forming a “humped, twisted thing,” (597) that continues to rise from the well. As it looms toward Leah and Charlie, Charlie remembers the tale of Rumpelstiltskin and how the queen defeated him by saying his name. He shouts “Gogmagog” at the monster, over and over. Each time he speaks the name, Gogmagog screams and retreats, forced backward. Once Gogmagog is back inside the well, Charlie closes the hatch. As he turns to leave the room, Petra attacks and bites him before Leah kills her with a gunshot.

With the light from the destroyed moons fading, Leah and Charlie hurry back up the staircase. The Snab appears again, this time with a cloud of fireflies to light their way. They emerge back into the palace gardens, where a crowd of grayfolk is gathered. As Charlie addresses them, he feels himself beginning to change from the Prince back into his old self. He commands them to hail Queen Leah of the Gallien.

Charlie recovers from the bite, although it leaves a deep scar. During his recovery, he is visited by his friends, including Pursey, who informs him that the city of Lilimar is healing. Charlie notes that the grayfolk’s color seems to be returning to normal, although permanent scars remain. One day, Leah visits him. He asks her if she has ever been on the sundial, and she denies it, saying that this magic “changes the mind and the heart” (615). For the first time, Charlie thinks of Mr. Bowditch without “the softening filter of memory” (615) and realizes that he was indeed a coward for the way he abandoned Empis after taking its magic freely.

Leah confesses that deep down, she always knew Flight Killer was Elden. She weeps with shame that she stood by while her people died of the gray curse. Charlie tells her about the time that he and Bertie Bird took away a disabled man’s crutches and threw them into a lake. They bond over their shared regret, and Charlie confesses his love to Leah.

The following night, Eris visits Charlie and asks him to “lie with her” (620). He agrees and loses his virginity to her.

In the morning, Woody and Claudia come to see Charlie off. Initially, he lashes out in anger at them for not mobilizing Leah earlier, but he realizes that he wants to leave Empis on a happy note and makes up with them. All of Charlie’s friends from Empis come to see him off as he exits Lilimar’s gates. Leah gives him a parting kiss, and he departs to spend his last night at Dora’s.

The following morning, Charlie and Radar once again cross the border between the two worlds and emerge back into Mr. Bowditch’s shed. Charlie is relieved to find the shed just as he left it. As he walks toward his house, he sees missing posters with his face on them plastered everywhere. The date is February 2014; he has been gone for four months.

Charlie arrives at his house, terrified that he will find his father once again passed out from drinking. Instead, he is sober and overjoyed at Charlie’s return. They embrace, and Charlie quips, “here’s your happy ending” (632).

It is nine years after Charlie’s visit to Empis. In the intervening time, he graduated from NYU and became a professor in Chicago, teaching a seminar on Myth and Fairy Tales. Radar is still alive, although she’s growing old once again in the absence of sundial magic.

While Charlie was away in Empis, Christopher Polley was stabbed to death in Skokie, unable to defend himself due to his broken wrists. Charlie still feels “sorry and ashamed” (637) over his death.

One week after he came home, Charlie took his father to the well of the worlds. They went as far as the field of poppies, but Charlie declined to introduce his father to Dora or any of the other residents. He resolves to do “what Mr. Bowditch should have years ago” (638) but failed to do because of the “bad strain” (638). Charlie and his father return to their world and wall off the well. Though Charlie thinks longingly of Leah, he knows that closing the portal is the only right thing to do to protect both Empis and Earth. He hopes to one day return to 1 Sycamore and tell his children “the old stories, the ones that start with once upon a time” (640).