Once

Twenty Five

"How about Cinderella?" David suggested. "That one doesn't seem to have any violent bits in it. Then again, it does say here that in the original the stepsisters slice off bits of their feet to fit them into the slipper, and then afterwards get their eyes pecked out by birds."

He grimaced at his phone, then flicked to another page.

"Rumpelstiltskin? That's on the list, right? I remember that one used to really freak me out when I was little. That creepy little guy who turns up to spin straw into gold, and then for some reason wants to steal the queen's baby?" He shuddered, then looked back at his phone screen. "Says here it was originally called Rumpelstilzchen, and at the end he gets so mad when the queen guesses his name he stamps his foot through the floor, then pulls so hard to yank it out he rips himself in two."

"I remember that," Elle said. Her voice was blank, her mind far away.

"You must have had much darker fairy tales books than I had," David said, giving her a sideward glance. "In mine I think he just ran away at the end. Mind you, Mr Luzlic told us in his talk the other day that these were originally much darker than they are nowadays. No pretty princesses in pastel pink dresses, eh?"

"Mmm," Elle murmured in response.

They were wandering back from the Collection toward Elle's house. Before they left Mr Luzlic had given them a list of all the stories in the book, in case any of them helped Elle work out what was going to happen next. Unfortunately it turned out there were ten stories in the book, and according to the prophecy only seven of them would come true. It seemed impossible to Elle that they would be able to work out which ones they were looking for and which they weren't.

David, however, was doing his part as they wandered home by searching on his phone for any info he could find on the stories, to see if it might give them any inspiration.

"Snow White," David said. "Again, just as horrible as the other ones. The witch actually tries three times to kill her stepdaughter - first with a poisoned comb and then by choking her with a ribbon, before she settles on the poisoned-apple-approach. And then when they catch her at the end, they make her dance herself to death in red-hot iron shoes."

"I get it, David," Elle said crisply. His constant chatting was pulling her out of the thoughts she was trying to focus on. "They're all going to be awful. No need to look at any more."

"You know, now I think of it, I don't know why it surprises me that they're all so dark. Most of the ones I do remember from when I was a kid had horrible endings. Like, doesn't the witch get burnt alive at the end of Hansel and Gretel? And in Little Red Riding Hood - I mean, the wolf gets chopped in half by the woodcutter, right? If you told me either of those things happened in a film, I'd assume it was some slasher movie that would traumatise any kid you showed it to -"

"I said I get it, David," Elle snapped.

David turned a little pink. He closed his phone and put it slowly away in his pocket.

"Why were you pushing him so much?" Elle asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?" he replied. He had this innocent tone to his voice that immediately put Elle on edge.

"I mean Mr Luzlic," Elle said. "He was trying to help me, and every time he said something you were, like, picking at him. Asking him all those questions with this suspicious look on your face."

David shrugged.

"Maybe I'm suspicious. He seems to have an awful lot of answers. I was just trying to make sure he was being legit with us."