Once

Fifty Three

She smiled at him: a beaming smile that seemed to come right up from somewhere deep inside her.

"You always know what to say. Do you know that, Russell?"

"It's true, Elle. I mean it. Anyway, you needn't sound so surprised. Of course you're the best girl in Farway. You're my best friend, aren't you? Everyone knows I have impeccable taste."

She laughed.

"I guess there's no better evidence I could ask for."

"None whatsoever. Now, maybe you can get out of your own head for a while and just enjoy yourself? Just a friendly bit of advice from your fairy godfather."

The words brought her screaming back to the present with a crash. She'd been away somewhere for a minute, enjoying herself too much. She'd forgotten she had a deadline. And it was one that was approaching fast.

"Er... that's the thing, Russell." Her voice was suddenly scratchy and hoarse, tinged with a faint sense of dread. "I don't know how much time I've got to enjoy myself."

He looked at her sharply, and said, "What do you mean?"

She sighed deeply, staring down at her fingers in the folds of her skirt.

"It's me, Russell. Today's story. It's me."

She watched him turn deathly pale right down to the collar of his pink T-shirt.

"You? But it can't be you, can it? You're, like, the one in the prophecy. The one who sees it all."

"I am the one who sees it all. And today I've seen that it's me."

With a quivering lip he said:

"Which story?"

"Cinderella."

He forced a weak smile to his face. "Someone thinks a lot of themselves."

She gave him a flat expression. She might have relied on Russell to make a joke at a time like this.

"So what's going to happen?" he asked. "Not too many monsters in this one, are there?"

Elle's mind raced back to the hideous black eyes of Kaye leering over her, those awful things she'd screamed right into her face. That was enough of a monster for her to deal with today.

"I don't know what's going to happen," she said. "I came here tonight to see you guys, like I said, but also because that's how to get to the end of this story. She goes to the ball."

Russell sat frowning to himself for a minute.

"That's not the end though, is it? She marries the prince at the end."

"I somehow don't think that's going to happen tonight, Russell."

He rolled his eyes at her.

"I know that. I'm just saying, this isn't the end, is it? It isn't over just because you came here tonight."

Elle said:

"No, Russell. I'm sorry to say that it very much is not over."

It was as if her words had cast some sort of magic spell, since at that exact moment Elle noticed that something was going on at the back of the hall. There were kids muttering things to each other, people slipping out of the room furtively, excitedly. A sense of something intriguing and somehow slightly shocking rippled outwards through the crowd.

Elle found herself crossing the room before she'd even realised she was out of her chair. Russell raced to catch her up.

"What's going on?" he said to a kid who was just running past them, keen to find his mates and pass on the news.