Page 59 of Disenchanted

The usual selection of Bridgey’s incredible pastries, sweet treats and freshly baked golden goods behind the glass were not on display. The polished marble countertop had gone. The gleaming coffee machine that regularly saved their mornings had vanished. Instead, a large brass pot dangled in the open fireplace, and on top of a roughly hewn wooden crate, there was a giant vat of magically overflowing porridge. So much for normality.

“Porridge?” She grimaced. “Of course.”

“Why is it always bloody porridge?” Casimir moaned.

It had never occurred to Sage before, but there really was a lot of porridge in fairy tales. They both stared daggers at the stuff as Bridgey slopped two enormous grey ladlefuls into bowls and handed them over the counter.

“I used to feed travellers at my cottage door; now they just call it a café.” Bridgey chuckled at them, looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

Sage looked uncertainly at her friend. The last thing she needed was small talk today. “Erm…Quite.”

Bridgey turned to Casimir. “Oats and stories both thicken if you let them sit awhile, that’s what my nanna always used to say.” She tossed her rag over her shoulder, folded her arms and nodded at him triumphantly.

Casimir leaned over the counter and lowered his voice, one eyebrow cocked. “Nannas, always so wise…Bridge, are you all right? You seem a bit off. How much do we owe you?”

Bridgey grinned, her ruddy complexion shining with a sheen of sweat, unsurprising given the roaring open fireplace behind her. “Coffee’s on the house if you promise to tell me what you’re wishing for today.”

Sage and Casimir shared a glance. This wasn’t right. Bridgey was different, even compared to the changes they’d already witnessed at the autumn festival. The huge grin on her face was strained. Her stance looked tense. Her usual friendly, laid-back nature had been replaced by something unfamiliar and rigid. Sage was about to ask Bridgey if she’d like a sit-down, perhaps a drink of water, but they were elbowed out of the way by the next customer in the queue, and Bridgey’s attention moved away.

“I used to feed travellers at my cottage door; now they just call it a café,” Bridgey said to the man who’d been waiting behind them. It was followed by a chuckle at the exact same pitch as the one she’d given before.

Sage shot Casimir another side look and found that he was giving her a matching bewildered reaction in return. Bridgey spoke again, cheeks taut. “Oats and stories both thicken if you let them sit awhile, that’s what my nanna always used to say.”

Sage felt a hideous, sickly dread trickle down her spine as she watched Bridgey toss her rag over her shoulder, cross her arms and nod at the man.

“How much’ll it be?” the customer asked her.

“Coffee’s on the house if you—”

“Promise to tell me what you’re wishing for today,” Sage and Casimir said in unison.

This was not the end to magic that Sage had assumed she would find that day. In fact, it was anything but. The spell raged on and, if anything, had only grown in potency.

“She’s stuck, isn’t she?” Sage said, swallowing hard. “A moment in time, a page in a story. She’s not herself anymore. She’s a character.”

“And not a very good one at that,” Casimir said, ushering a horrified Sage over to the same secluded table behind the coat rack where she had found herself last week, before all of this madness had unfolded. Sage would do anything to go back to that moment, to leave the damn book well alone and not let her cursed curiosity or her selfish ego get the better of her.

She slumped back into the chair that Casimir had guided her to and stared into the distance, half aware that she was watching Bridgey and each of the customers in the queue follow the same loop of behaviour and repeated lines of dialogue over and over. A quick, disturbing thought that, until now, she hadn’t dared consider entered her mind. What if this spell, this curse, was a problem that could never, ever be solved? What if everything had changed forever? What if there was no way to return to normality? Port Sylvan may be trapped. And that meant…She turned to Casimir, still in the same ridiculous clothing for yet another day. As the realization of what was unfolding began to truly dawn on her, the blend of worry, anger and dread turned into sheer fright.

“All right, we can get the worst part of this out of the way first. Go on. Say it. You told me so,” Casimir said as he took a seat opposite her. It was enough to snap Sage’s attention back.

“Well,” she sniffed. “I did.”

He gave her a conceding nod. “Maybe this is a somewhat more sinister series of events than I initially gave you credit for.”

At least reality was still managing to crack through the shell of Casimir’s solidifying character. Although she had noticed the change in his syntax already that morning. He was losing grip of himself. “And the decline makes perfectly logical sense too. Fairy tales start with some sort of beautiful dreamlike imagery and gradually spiral into the most horrifying, twisted nightmare for their unsuspecting characters.”

“Lilara knew exactly what she was doing, all right. Bitter old wi—” Casimir cleared his throat. “Woman.”

Sage’s defences shot up to defend Lilara. “It’s not bitterness, Cas; it’s genius. She’s so smart, she knew how to make me sit up and pay attention. It’s truly the perfect spell; it’s only my fault for not heeding her more quickly.” Although, even as she said it, Sage had to wonder how entirely she still believed that sentiment. A cloying, claustrophobic feeling left her tugging at the high neck of her sweater. She steeled her conviction. “The sinister parts of fairy tales are never just cruelty for cruelty’s sake, are they? There’s always an important message at the end of it to be taken as a lesson, and this is mine.”

“And what, precisely, is that lesson meant to be? Maybe it’s about all of us as a community or me and you as a…partnership. Friends, obviously. Our working theory has always been that you’re the protagonist in all of this, but what if…?”

Sage dropped her gaze and tugged at the ends of her black sleeves.

“I knew it!” Casimir shouted. “There’s more, isn’t there? Spit it out, Specs.”

She still couldn’t bring herself to anything like honesty. The thought of admitting to him that she was something like unlovable, something like wicked, and knowing how he’d insist that she was wrong despite all the evidence…