Ever After High (Male Reader)

Maddness Is Life

Lizzie's heart hurt. It felt wounded in there, barely pumping, as wilted and colorless as the beautiful plants of her Grove.

And that made Lizzie Hearts, who was already quite mad, even madder.

She stormed through the heart-shaped door with you, Maddie, Kitty, and Cedar on her heels. You were not greeted with bottom-of-the-well decor, restless furnishings, or shouting greeting cards, but with a simple white room with one normalish door and one dark purple carpeted opening that was door-sized. The normalish door bore a sign scribbled in orange crayon: JABBERWOCK NOT THROUGH HERE.

Lizzie: That is not a trustworthy scrawl. Someone may be trying to trick us into not taking the correct door.

Kitty: Or someone may be trying to trick us into thinking they are tricking us, making us choose the trick door by saying it isn’t what it is.

Y/N: Stop saying ‘trick!’ I’m tired of that word!

The shouting hadn’t cured your knee-tremble and belly-twistiness as she’d hoped. Lizzie gripped the sword hilt harder. That Jabberwock would pay for what it did to her Grove.

You turned back to the “trick” door (sorry, Ozzie), only to discover it missing, replaced with an empty wall.

Y/N: Did one of you steal the door?

Lizzie: Nay.

Maddie: Not me.

Kitty: Me neither.

The three girls looked at Cedar expectantly.

Cedar: Um… no? I didn’t even know stealing doors was an option.

Y/N: It shouldn't be, but look at everything else happening.

And then the wall sort of blinked and the door you had come through was also gone.

Lizzie: Aha! Unless one of you is lying, Cedar, the school itself is stealing doors.

Maddie: The school must want us to go that way.

Lizzie: Forward! Into the purple fur hole! So there!

Because shouting did make her fluttery-tummy and noodley-knees feel a tiny bit stronger.

Tendrils of long purple carpet tickled Lizzie’s face and whispered against her arms as she scampered through the opening. But despite the grape-ish furriness, the tunnel felt welcoming, exhaling a cool, fresh breeze.

Y/N: It’s too easy.

Cedar looked around nervously.

Cedar: It’s also quiet, maybe too quiet. You think something is waiting to surprise us, or eat us, or something?

Lizzie: I hope so.

Lizzie started patting the sword. She tightened her lips and lifted her chin to look braver.

The purple-carpeted tunnel ended, spilling them onto the polished wooden planks of the Grimmnasium. At the far end of the huge room sprawled the lumpy, scaled shape of a beast. The school had brought them directly to the Jabberwock.

Maddie: Thanks, Ever After High.

Maddie whispered, petting the wall.

The Jabberwock was using its clawed, three-toed paws to attach something to its head, but the Narrator couldn’t bear to describe it.

Lizzie: It’s Maddie’s dad! The thing is tying the Mad Hatter to its head with vines and sealing wax! It’s making the Mad Hatter into a hat...a Wonder-powered hat at that.