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The tavern is full of bustling sounds and smells, but to my surprise it seems to be almost entirely empty besides me and this woman who is setting about wiping a table down. I sit at a nearby table that looks to have already been wiped. Sitting feels good. I wonder a little at the odd ambiance of the place. It feels like somewhere very good things have happened, but are not happening anymore. It also has that somewhat melancholy air about it, the same one you get when you see a picture of a much loved but long lost pet, bittersweetness, sadness, and joy all wrapped up together.
The bartender hefts a good pint of brew down in front of me, the foaming head spilling over the tip of the tankard in a very cliched and alluring way.
I take a sip, then, finding it to be beer, I drain a good half of the tankard in one fucking go, using both hands to hoist the vessel aloft and pour the beverage down my gullet. It is cool and refreshing, but not intoxicating at all, I discover to my slight disappointment.
“You must have been parched,” she says when I emerge from behind the tankard. “Where have you come from?”
“Where am I, more to the point?” I ask wonderingly.
“Oh, this is the Tavern at The End,” she says quite happily.
“I thought it was the Far Far Away?”
“It is, but it’s The End part of the Far Far Away,” she explains as if that might make some sense to me. It makes no sense at all, of course, and it feels like it might be somewhat rude to question it.
“I don’t feel like I belong at The End,” I say, puzzled. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Well you don’t get much choice,” she says. “Sometimes The End comes sooner than you think, or rather you come to it sooner.”
“It just feels rushed, you know? Unsatisfying. Once upon a time, there was a king who abducted a princess and their marriage failed and destroyed a kingdom until a wise old man banished her, The End.”
“Hmm,” she agrees. “Lacks a certain something, doesn’t it. Not really a romance, is it?”
“It’s not,” I agree. “And people will be very angry if it is not a romance.”
“Quite rightly, too,” she says with a stoic sort of certainty. “They’ve come for a love story, they have, not a buggering about the place being banished story.”
“Well, you see, it’s because I’m not really a princess, and so the king was wrong to take me. And that’s why the wedding failed, because I’m wrong for him.” I don’t know this woman but she has a bartender’s face, the kind of face you want to tell things to.
“And who says you’re not a princess?”
“Well, Balthazar.”
The woman squints her eyes and tosses her cleaning rag into the soapy bucket. “You don’t seem soft headed,” she says, “but you must be.”
“Why?”
“Who in their right mind would listen to a fellow called Balthazar telling them who they are and are not? Balthazar! Might as well have villain tattooed on his forehead.”
“I didn’t think about that.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you. Because princesses are always too trusting. Some of them lay about pretending to be asleep just hoping someone else comes along and kisses them.”
“I’m not a princess, though,” I say. “I’m just an ordinary girl.”
“That’s nonsense and I know it, and you know it. Ordinary girls don’t end up here, not in the Far Far Away, and not in the Ever After, and never at The End. You’re a princess, or at the very least, an intrepid heroine. It’s about time you started acting like it.”
I did not expect a pep talk from a stranger, but I find myself very much appreciating it.
“Do you get much in the way of customers here?”
“Sure,” she says. “But they never stay. You see, once The End comes, that’s it. There’s no more. It’s all over. You’ll want to be out of here before the covers close, I can tell you that much.”
“What’s your name?”
“They call me Hex Possession, but you can call me Hex. Now get going. I can hear the spine cracking, the pages growing closer together…” She makes a shooing motion with her hands. “It’s not your time! Or at least, it doesn’t have to be! Run! Run away!”
I do as I am told, bolting out the door and into the nearby forest. The strangest thing I have ever seen is happening, and that is saying a lot, given a dragon gatecrashed my wedding. The tavern is starting to look very book-like. I never noticed it initially, but there’s a sort of spine down the middle where the door is and it’s kind of fanned open like an open book might be. The shape of the entire building is a sort of jagged series of open pages and now some unseen hand is closing them. The left hand side of the tavern with its stone walls and glass windows is just sort of getting closer and closer together, rising up from the ground until it reaches the middle point and then it just flips over completely, closed, a very large book, flat at The End.
