Between the lines

OLIVER

“YOU MUST BE KIDDING,” RAPSCULLIO SAYS WHEN he sees me for the third time. “What do you need now?”

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere in this stupid fairy tale. I am back to square one, actually. Although I’d believed that maybe I had found a way out of this prison, Delilah is right. I can’t be the one who paints myself free, and I can’t trust anyone else to do it for me, which means I’m going nowhere fast.

I’d wanted to talk to Delilah, but she was fast asleep-my own fault since I was the one who asked her to close the book. After she left, I felt so completely defeated, as if nothing I could ever do would change my circumstances. Nothing I usually did in my off time-chess, a long walk, a bracing swim in the ocean-could take me away from my thoughts. And then I remembered Delilah.

When she wanted to escape her life, she read books. Like this one.

Queen Maureen had mentioned an entire library at Rapscullio’s cave-a room that I’d never actually reached, because I got so distracted by his magic canvas instead. But if Delilah could use stories for distraction, maybe they would work on me too.

“I’m looking for a good read,” I tell Rapscullio. “I hear you’ve got quite a large selection?”

Rapscullio brightens. “Oh, yes, indeed I do. I’m particularly fond of troubadour ballads and folktales, but my shelves seem to have a bit of everything: romances, horror, comedy. Even some plays by a fellow called Shakespeare. He’s not half bad.”

“Maybe I could browse?” I ask. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”

“Be my guest,” Rapscullio says, extending one emaciated arm toward a tunnel in the rear of the lair. “You go have a look around, and I’ll make us some tea. Chamomile. You seem a little… high-strung these days.”

“I don’t want you to go to any trouble-”

“No trouble at all.” He elbows me and grins with half his mouth; the scar immobilizes the other half of his face. “Maybe you’ll even tell me more about that girl of yours.”

“Girl?” I can’t tell him about Delilah. I feel like she’s my own personal secret. Like if I tried to explain her to anyone inside here, it would be giving a piece of her away.

“The one you had me paint the picture for-”

“Right.” The girl I made up, as an excuse. I wait for Rapscullio to unearth his teapot from under a moldering flutter of old maps on a broad table, and I turn and duck through the narrow passageway into another part of the lair.

The small room is musty and slightly damp, with floor-to-ceiling shelves carved out of gnarled walnut. Books are stacked and tucked and jumbled in piles. There are astronomy tomes and volumes about insect species and a whole shelf about Renaissance painters. I read some of the spines. An Herbologist’s History of the World. War and Peace. A Tale of Two Cities.

Rapscullio’s teakettle begins to whistle. Any minute now he’s going to come back here and expect me to rhapsodize about a make-believe maiden who lives somewhere in this kingdom. I pluck a book off the shelf. Maybe one of these stories will inspire me to come up with a good lie that he’ll believe.

When I pull the book free, though, another one tumbles to the dirt floor, having been jammed behind the first on the shelf. I pick it up and dust it off, about to replace it more carefully, when I realize I’ve seen this one before.

It’s purple leather, with gold lettering.

BETWEEN THE LINES, I read on the cover. I flip it open and see a picture of myself on the very first page, as if I am staring into a mirror. “Once upon a time,” I murmur aloud.

Maybe one of these stories will inspire me.

“Milk or sugar?” I hear Rapscullio’s footsteps in the narrow corridor, so I slip the book beneath my tunic and hastily reach for another one, which I pretend to be thumbing through when my host arrives with the tea.

My whole connection to Delilah started with words-a message etched onto the cliff wall. Why couldn’t it end the same way?

I may not be able to paint myself into another world, but perhaps I can edit myself out of this one.