Maybe if I ignored the snake, it would go away. After all, it was just a scalier version of the cricket nag, a manifestation of my inner thoughts of niggling conscious. It should be quiet. I'd done a good job with this last chunk of life. I sent the frog back with a body and Hydra should be saved.

Hang on. I sorta kinda saved someone. Maybe while Morte was out, I should get a closer look at the compendium without his critical, creepy eyes.

His sickle and the book had been left out on his desk, like he'd rushed somewhere in a hurry. Taking a deep breath, I put the tip of the sickle to the page and scribbled my name: Rexi Hood. The ink skimmed the surface of the page...then dribbled off in a puddle.

"Argh! Son of a harpy."

The snake chuckled. "You were a loussssy henchman. But an even worse sssavior."

Pixed, I grabbed the snake just below the head and looked into its slitted, pewter eyes. Even in that position, she stared at me like she owned me.

"Griz," I said, twisting my mouth in disgust like the word was something her flying puppies p.o.o.ped out.

"In the ssssoul."

I snorted and flicked her glittering silver scales. "Even your soul has tacky taste."

She rattled her tail, which would have been far more menacing if it had actually rattled. "My ssssissster will bring me back. You'll sssseee."

On the desk, the compendium rustled and creaked, like some unseen force was touching it. Pages flipped back and forth in a flurry until it seemed to settle on what it wanted. One by one, several of the names scrawled on the page became unreadable, obscured by a swipe of white, gossamer ink.

James T. Hook Grigori Rasputin Pollyanna Crow I would bet Mordred's name had been whited out on some other page.

"Yesss," Griz said, tapping her tail next to a name on the page. Grizelda De Ville.

We both waited for her soul to return topside, but the red letters spelling out her name stubbornly leeched through the white streak.

"Must be hard to reanimate a puddle," I quipped.

She shrieked, but without her stormbolts or acid-peeing puppies, she wasn't nearly as scary.

"Here," I said to Griz, tying her soul body into a knot around what was left of the creepy armrest. "Tell Morte I'm sorry I missed him. Let's not do lunch."

I couldn't record my name and I couldn't go back to Story for an eighth time, so waiting in the office for Morte to finish his Spell Checks or whatever was pretty much the worst thing I could do. But that meant going out...there.

Griz hissed and snapped as I stepped out the office door, but anything she said was lost to the howls of the Forgotten. Paper rained down from the sunless sky, some of it crumpled, some torn. Some with great slashes and symbols in bold red ink. Pages of stories that went unfinished and untold. I'd heard about it while serving in the Emerald Palace from sermons about the Storymakers that controlled our fate. The clerics of Libraria admonished all to pray for the Makers to show you the way. Then they warned that those who didn't behave or follow their path would end up cut out of the story and left on the underworld floor.

Seeing the blizzard of words among the cries of the Forgotten, I was almost starting to believe that there was a power that wrote every line of Story.

With no sun or moon in the sky, the only light source in Nome Ore seemed to come from bright flares in the distance. Maybe they were portals to other places, to other lands. Maybe I could sneak through.

Carefully, I navigated my way around the piles of souls and crumbling structures of unwanted and discarded settings. Slinking my way around, I stayed out of sight of Morte's copy riders-an army of identical, featureless clones, their entire bodies wrapped in scrolls. Though I don't know how they saw without eyes, they rode around on little creatures with shovels for faces. Like little paper pushers, they shuttled the falling pages toward the light sources.

This was by far the longest I had stayed in the underworld. After my first death, my soul looked much like a pale watermark. Each time, the transformation had progressed. This seventh time, my hands were still faded gray, but diseased black spots had taken hold of my toes and dark-gray tendrils were curling up my legs.

"Gross." I tried to wipe off my calves, but they were slick, like they were covered in smeared ink. The black glistened in the glow of the light. Which turned out to be a great blaze of ivory flames coming from a hole in the ground. So much for a way out.

The copy riders scrambled into view from behind the mounds of Forgotten. They scurried like insects, pushing unfinished ma.n.u.script pages into pits to fuel the flames. Like a forge-only instead of melting steel, they were melting souls.

I covered my mouth to keep from screaming as I watched more featureless clones tossing characters into the trough to be dissolved into ink.

I'd backed up next to a pile of decaying Forgotten characters without realizing it. A hand shot out and grasped my arm.

"Help us."

I screamed. I couldn't help it. When I recognized the face as Fryer Tuck's, half his jolly face blackened and crumbling away, I screamed louder.

The Riders ambled toward me, surrounding me and grabbing at me. I slashed at them with the bent quill tip like it was a knife. For every slice I made in their scroll wrappings, sans serif scarabs crawled out. For once, I didn't care about the bugs and kept hacking away.

But there were too many of them. They swarmed me, covering every inch and drowning out my screams.

Once again, I felt the familiar sensation of my plotline wrapped around my throat. Then it tightened like I was being lifted. As the bugs fell from my face, the first thing I saw were the white pupils flaring in the black abyss Morte had for eyes as he said, "I had hoped you would prove useful for my ascension. What a disappointment. There is a deadline to meet. I don't have time to waste on a useless story such as yours." With a flick of his wrist, he la.s.soed the knotted wire around my neck, then flung and discarded my soul in the forge of faceless shadows.

There aren't words to describe the feeling of losing track of who you are. I couldn't stop the forge from claiming the knots in my plotline as, one by one, they blurred and melted away, the memories that shaped my story erasing to nothing along with me.

For what felt like an eternity, I lay there, sinking and disappearing. Screaming until my voice was just an echo of a memory.

"I hear you!"

Dorthea's voice rang clearly, cutting through the cacophony of souls. The white flames in the pit burst higher and turned green.

"No," Morte cried out. "I can't let you out intact." He reached into the fires with his bare hand and pulled out a blackened and dripping line. Hurriedly, he started cutting off pieces with his scythe. I felt each and every slice like he was hacking away at my insides.

"Rexi Hood, va.s.sal of Emerald, bound by blood, ink, and the curse in my veins. I name you as my creation and my other half. I order you to get your snarky self back here RIGHT NOW!"

Air filled my lungs so quickly, I broke into a round of coughing that made my ribs ache. I had been yanked out of the underworld.

"Welcome back," Dorthea said softly next to me.

Sitting up to breathe easier, my palm hit something dry and p.r.i.c.kly. It was gra.s.s, yellowed and dead, as if the very life had been sucked out of the ground.

Verte and Oz stood just outside the dead circle, which was about ten trolls across, where the rest of the gra.s.s in the clearing was still vibrant and plush. The Maker's workshop looked like it had been hit with a cyclone. The chicken house was just gone.

What happened?

The opal necklace pulsed softly on my chest. Aside from one tiny thread of emerald running through its center, the stone looked orange and red, like a regular fire opal.

I turned to the side to ask Dorthea what had happened, but she collapsed flat on the dead gra.s.s. Her pale skin and flaming hair weren't bright enough to compete with a lit match.

Her chest barely moved. Mentally, I tugged the end of the magical string that connected us. There wasn't anything at the other end.

"Dorthea!"

I reached out for her, but Oz yelled, "Don't touch her!"

He was too late.

The second I touched Dorthea, the opal and my vision exploded in green flames. I heard a voice, but it wasn't Morte's. It sounded like several people talking at once.

"So hungry. Feed us. Join us."

The flames burrowed into me, which was different from before, when she'd used me like a battery. Drain can be recharged. But I was being consumed.

"Stop. Please," I begged Dorthea, whose face was blank-but her eyes were wide-open and solid green.

The voices answered for her, braiding in and out of each other in a chorus. "More. We need to be more."

I could hear Verte and Oz arguing in the background, but the curse kept talking. And a voice that sounded like mine joined the thread. "We must take it and become stronger. Power fixes all."

No. I am a child of the trees...

"And we will burn."

I could feel more than see Oz and his bright flare of power come closer. "My sincerest apologies, ladies," he said and bashed our heads together.

Then, blessedly, there was nothing. Just the lightest pulse of red. Like a heartbeat. Getting dimmer.

"4 apples, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, pinch of baking powder, a teaspoon of cinnamon and nutmeg. And 1 clove-to hide the poison."

-Killer Kitchen Recipes.

13.

Food for Thoughts.

I woke up feeling like how I imagine those dancing princesses did after hours of twirling in those ugly knockoff slippers. "Ugh," I groaned, holding my head in a vain attempt to contain the throbbing. "Somebody kill me, please."

"Meh, been there, tried that. It's actually considerably more difficult than you might think." Verte thrust a gla.s.s of something lumpy and brown into my hand. "Here, drink this. It will help."

I turned my nose up at it and dumped it out on the floor. "Call someone to clean that up. I'm going back to bed. Wake me when the kitchen sends up a beverage that's not poisoned. And preferably burrberry flavored." I closed my eyes and rolled over, reaching for the blanket, but there wasn't one.

"Dear Grimm, please tell me I was never that obnoxiously spoiled," a girl said.

"Don't worry, Dot, you weren't. More like twice that bad. At least," Verte answered.

I growled and sat up. "Would you two..." The sentence trailed off when I saw the girl standing by my emerald sorceress. She looked an awful lot like the Princess of Emerald having a really bad hair day. Which was impossible, because I was the Emerald heir, and I was sitting right here. "Who are you?" My breathing picked up. "Guards." I couldn't catch my breath and my chest burned. "Mother..." I looked down and saw that I was wearing some hideous necklace. Like a fire opal in a super-tacky pewter mount. But fire opals weren't more than half green.

"Yup. I was afraid of this." Verte stood up and grabbed my arms. "I'll hold her down. You scoop the sap off the ground and shove it down her gullet if you gots to."

The imposter princess did as she was told but hesitated when Verte warned, "Careful. I think she's a biter."

"Pixing right I am," I said. "Don't lay a filthy finger on me, you common street rat. Do you know who I am?" Opening my mouth to speak was just the opportunity they were looking for. The lumpy, viscous liquid was sticky, sweet, and absolutely didn't want to go down my throat. But it was too gummy to spit back out.

The girl put a hand over my mouth and pinched my nose, so I didn't have a choice but to swallow. "Shh, I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, Rexi. Please be okay."

"Rexi?" I muttered behind her hand so it sounded more like "Mrphy."

Who the spell was that?

"Rule #14: Whether in the castle or in woodsy exile, a princess must always look her best. Local wildlife can easily be charmed to help with most tailor work. Before adding local flora to your designs, be sure to make sure it's not poison ivy."

-Definitive Fairy-Tale Survival Guide, Volume 3: Enchanted Forests.

14.

Out, Out Glammed Spot.

Until the sap gloop stuff made its way through me, I was Dorthea. At least in my mind. Losing myself one knot at a time had been a nightmare. But at least I didn't know what I'd forgotten. Remembering things I shouldn't know...

I'd gone to h.e.l.l in the underworld. And h.e.l.l had followed me home.

After Verte and Dorthea stepped outside Oz's workshop to give me s.p.a.ce, I found some ink and used a brittle twig like a quill. Very carefully, I striped my left arm.

"Didn't get enough of ink stains?"

I didn't acknowledge Morte and instead blew to dry the seven lines of ink. One for each time I'd died. With the memory lapses, it was obvious I couldn't trust my mind anymore, but hopefully I could still trust my body to tell the truth. For good measure, I added my name. In case I ever had the misfortune to forget who I was again.

Morte chuckled darkly. "Didn't I say you were born to be Forgotten? End this already and submit."

"Never," I whispered more to myself than Morte.

Even now, I still had lingering fragments of Dorthea's memories. Of Mom, erm, Queen Em. And trying to play hide-and-seek with Verte. I also had a wicked craving for chocolate wands. Worse than that though, her feelings...

I didn't know you could be so lonely in a palace full of people.

"Didn't you?"

"Get out. Get out. Get out." I scrubbed at the ink marks swirling up my calves, trying in vain to wipe them clean.

"I will not. It's my workshop," Oz said after poofing up from being in the form of that green book bug thing. Staring down at my legs, he said, "Unless you weren't talking to me." He combed his fingers through his mustache, his gla.s.ses wiggling into place on his nose. "You know, it's oft been said that hearing voices is either a sign of brilliance or madness. Now talking back to them-"

"Mind your own business," I said and glared at Oz. After I had come back to my senses, Verte and Dorthea had the intelligence and survival instincts to stay clear of me. The Storymaker lacked both.

He ignored me and grabbed my wrist. "What's all this now? Very interesting mark."

My shadow growled.

"I'm keeping score. Now b.u.g.g.e.r off. Literally."

"Pfft. Not those chicken scratches. The iridescent inked flower on the inside of your wrist."