Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Not Your Average Fairy Tale
The fluorescent lights of Westbrook High hummed their usual migraine-inducing frequency, casting everything in that particular shade of institutional sickly white that made even the healthiest teenager look like they belonged in a hospital bed. Danny Smith sat in the third row from the back, slouched so far down in his chair that his spine had formed a permanent question mark against the hard plastic. His green eyes were half-lidded, tracking the second hand on the clock mounted above the whiteboard as it completed its slow, inevitable march toward freedom.
Three minutes left. Maybe two and a half.
Mr. Harrison—a man in his late fifties with a salt-and-pepper beard and the kind of tweed jacket that seemed to announce “I take literature very seriously”—was winding down his lecture with the theatrical flourish of a man who knew he'd just dropped a bomb on twenty-five unsuspecting seniors.
"—and so, when you hear someone say 'happily ever after,' I want you to remember that the original storytellers weren't selling Disney merchandise. They were warning you. They were telling you that the woods are dark, that wolves wear grandmother's skin, and that sometimes, the prince is the monster."
A few students shifted uncomfortably. Jessica Moreno, who sat two rows ahead, had stopped taking notes and was staring at Mr. Harrison with wide brown eyes. She'd probably grown up on the sanitized versions, Danny thought. Most of them had. They'd been fed the G-rated pap since they could walk, and now someone was pulling back the curtain to reveal the bloodstains underneath.
Danny, for his part, felt a grim sort of satisfaction settle in his chest. Finally! Someone in this godforsaken school was telling the truth.
"That's dark, Mr. H," called out Marcus Webb from the back corner, his voice carrying that performative edge of someone who wanted to sound unbothered but was clearly a little freaked out. "You're telling me Cinderella's stepsisters cut off their own feet? That's messed up."
"They did," Mr. Harrison confirmed, adjusting his glasses. "And in some versions, birds pecked out their eyes at the wedding. The story wasn't about a beautiful girl finding her prince. It was about justice—bloody, biblical justice. The kind that makes sure you never forget that cruelty has consequences."
The bell rang.
A collective exhale swept through the room as students began packing up with practiced efficiency. Mr. Harrison raised his voice over the rustle of backpacks and the scrape of chairs.
"Your assignment—and yes, it's due Friday—is to pick three fairy tales from the list I've posted on the class portal. For each one, I want you to find the earliest recorded version, compare it to a modern adaptation, and write a short analysis on what the changes reveal about shifting cultural values. I want sources. I want citations. And I want you to actually think about what you're reading, not just regurgitate the first Wikipedia entry you find."
Danny was already standing, his backpack slung over one shoulder—a worn green Jansport that had seen better days, held together by duct tape and stubbornness. He was tall, a little lanky but with the kind of wiry build that came from summer construction work and the occasional pickup basketball game. His black hair was perpetually messy, falling into his face in a way that he'd long since stopped bothering to fix, and his eyes—the only feature anyone ever really commented on—stood out against his perpetually tired expression.
"You okay, Danny?"
He turned. Jessica had lingered by his desk, her notebook clutched to her chest. She had that look—the one that said she was trying to be nice, but also maybe a little worried. Danny got that look a lot.
"Fine," he said, the word coming out flatter than he'd intended. "Just ready to get out of here."
"The assignment's kind of intense, huh?"
"It's an assignment," he shrugged. "Doesn't matter how I feel about it."
Jessica opened her mouth to say something else, but Danny was already moving, slipping past her and out the door before she could finish whatever thought she'd been building toward. He didn't hate Jessica—she was fine, as far as classmates went—but he didn't have the energy for small talk. Not today. Not most days.
The hallway was a river of noise and motion. Students clogged the corridors, laughing, shouting, shoving each other with that particular brand of chaotic energy that only high school could produce. Danny moved through it like a fish swimming upstream, his head down, his shoulders slightly hunched. He'd learned long ago that the best way to avoid attention was to look like you were already late for something important.
He almost made it to the exit.
"Hey! Smith!"
Danny's jaw tightened. He knew that voice. He turned slowly, already feeling the familiar knot of irritation coil in his stomach.
Tyler Brennan was leaning against the row of lockers, flanked by his usual entourage—Brad Kessler and Derek Tran, two guys who seemed to have built their entire personalities around being Tyler's backup. Tyler was your standard-issue high school tyrant: broad-shouldered, quarterback-built, with the kind of confident sneer that came from never having faced a real consequence in his life.
"Heard you're into fairy tales now," Tyler said, his voice carrying just enough to draw attention. A few nearby students slowed down, sensing the possibility of entertainment. "That true? You gonna write a report on how much you love princesses and shit?"
"It's called an assignment," Danny said, keeping his voice level. "You should try one sometime. They give you grades for them."
Tyler's sneer flickered, just for a moment. "Cute. Real cute." He pushed off the locker, stepping closer. He had a few inches on Danny, and he used them. "I'm just saying, Smith. If you're gonna waste your time on some baby story, at least pick a good one. Like the one where the princess has huge—"
"We get it, Tyler." Danny cut him off, his tone flat. "You've reached the intellectual ceiling of a twelve-year-old. Congratulations."
Brad and Derek exchanged looks. Tyler's face reddened.
"Watch your mouth, Smith."
"Or what? You're gonna tell the principal I hurt your feelings?" Danny tilted his head, his green eyes cold. "Look, I've got things to do. If you want to threaten me, can we schedule it for a time when I don't have better options? Say, never?"
He didn't wait for a response. He just turned and walked away, pushing through the exit doors and into the cool afternoon air. His heart was beating a little faster than he'd like to admit, but his face betrayed nothing. He'd gotten good at that over the years.
The walk home was usually twenty minutes, but Danny took the long way. He wasn't in a hurry to get back to the house—not because he didn't like his family, but because he knew what awaited him there. The Disney music. The princess dolls. The relentless, suffocating cheerfulness that his parents and sister seemed to swim in like fish in water.
He didn't get it. He'd never gotten it.
The world was on fire. Wars in three continents. Immigration crises that politicians used as weapons. A political landscape so divided that “compromise” had become a dirty word. Climate change creeping closer every year. And people were still singing about wishing upon stars.
It was laughable. It was tragic. It was both.
Danny kicked a loose stone down the sidewalk, watching it bounce and skitter into the gutter. His phone buzzed—probably his mom asking what he wanted for dinner—but he ignored it.
That's when he saw the shop.
It was tucked between a Laundromat and a Thai restaurant, and Danny was almost certain it hadn't been there before. He walked past this street every day. He knew the storefronts. And yet, here it was: a narrow little bookstore with a faded sign above the door that read The Last Page in curling gold letters.
The window display was cluttered with old books, their spines cracked and faded, their pages yellowed with age. And right in the center, propped up on a wooden stand, was a single volume bound in dark leather.
Danny stopped.
He couldn't have said why. There was nothing particularly special about the book from a distance—just another old thing in a shop full of old things. But something about it pulled at him, a strange and insistent tug in his chest that he couldn't quite explain.
He checked his phone. 3:47 PM. He had time.
The bell above the door jingled as he pushed it open, and the smell hit him immediately—old paper, dust, and something else, something faint and warm that reminded him of the way his grandmother's house used to smell before she passed away. The interior was dim, lit by a few scattered lamps that cast long shadows across the shelves. Books lined every wall, stacked in uneven towers on the floor, crammed into every available inch of space.
And behind the counter, an old man sat in a worn armchair, reading a book that looked older than the building itself.
He looked up as Danny entered, and the first thing Danny noticed was his eyes—a pale, milky blue that seemed to see far more than they should. The second thing he noticed was the old man's smile, which was warm but knowing, like he'd been expecting this exact moment for a long time.
"Welcome," the old man said, his voice scratchy but kind. "Feel free to browse. Let me know if you need help finding anything."
Danny nodded, not quite trusting his voice. He moved through the narrow aisles, his fingers brushing against spines and covers, reading titles that ranged from the familiar—The Odyssey, Canterbury Tales—to the obscure—The Book of Lost Things, The Secret Commonwealth. But his feet kept carrying him toward the front window, toward the book he'd seen from the street.
Up close, it was even more striking. The leather cover was dark, almost black, but when the light hit it just right, Danny could see faint gold embossing in the shape of twisted vines and thorns. The title was in a language he didn't recognize, but somehow, when he looked at it, he knew exactly what it was.
Grimm's Fairy Tales and Other Stories
Not the Disney version. Not even the standard Brothers Grimm collection he'd seen in libraries. This was older. This was the real thing. And it apparently held other stories too, likely originals as well.
His hand moved on its own, reaching out to touch the cover.
"I see you've found it."
Danny nearly jumped out of his skin. The old man was standing right behind him, silent as a cat, and Danny hadn't heard a single footstep.
"Sorry," Danny said, pulling his hand back. "I didn't mean to—I was just looking."
"Don't apologize." The old man's smile widened. "That book has been waiting for you for a long time."
Danny blinked. "What?"
"Every book waits for its reader," the old man said, as if that explained everything. "Some books are patient. They sit on shelves for decades, century even, waiting for the right hands to open them. Others..." He reached past Danny and gently lifted the book from its stand, handling it with the reverence of a priest holding a holy relic. "Others choose their readers more directly."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to." The old man held out the book. "Take it. It's yours."
Danny stared at the book, then at the old man, then back at the book. "I... I can't just take it. How much does it cost?"
"It costs nothing. It was never for sale."
"But—"
"The only payment required is that you read it." The old man pressed the book into Danny's hands, and Danny felt a strange warmth spread through his fingers, up his arms, settling somewhere deep in his chest. "And that you take it seriously. These stories aren't games, young man. They never were."
Danny opened his mouth to argue, to pull out his wallet, to insist on paying like a normal person. But something in the old man's expression stopped him. There was a weight there, a seriousness that cut through Danny's usual cynicism and left him feeling strangely exposed.
"Okay," he said finally, the word feeling inadequate. "Thank you."
"Thank me when you come back." The old man smiled again, but this time it had a hint of something else—sadness, maybe. Or hope. "If you come back."
And before Danny could ask what that meant, the old man had turned and disappeared into the maze of shelves, leaving Danny alone with the book in his hands.
He stood there for a long moment, the bell above the door chiming softly as he exited, the old book warm against his palms. Then he shook his head, tucked the book under his arm, and walked out into the fading afternoon light.
The Smith household was, as always, a shrine to the Mouse.
Danny heard the music before he even opened the front door—a jaunty, familiar tune that he recognized as "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. It was coming from the living room, where his dad's phone was hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker, filling the house with the sounds of Magic Carpets and Jasmine's soaring vocals.
"Danny! You're home!"
His mom appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her face brightening in that way it always did when she saw him. She was a small woman, with the same green eyes Danny had inherited, and an energy that never seemed to flag no matter how long her shifts at the hospital went.
"Hey, Mom." He let her hug him, because he knew she needed it, even if he didn't.
"How was school? Are you hungry? I'm making your favorite—spaghetti with meatballs. And I got garlic bread."
"It was fine. And yeah, that sounds good."
From the living room, his dad's voice called out: "Danny! Come here, come look at this!"
Danny sighed, but he obeyed, stepping into the living room to find his father—a lanky man with graying temples and an infectious laugh—sitting cross-legged on the floor with his seven-year-old sister, Lisa, the one who’d called him. The coffee table was covered in Disney princess dolls, and Lisa was holding up two of them, clearly in the middle of some elaborate story.
"Daddy said Cinderella and Belle could be friends!" Lisa announced, her pigtails bouncing as she waved the dolls. "But I said Belle's too smart to hang out with Cinderella 'cause Cinderella's always talking about boys."
"That's not true," their dad protested, grinning. "Cinderella has depth. She's a survivor."
"She's a princess," Lisa corrected, as if that settled everything.
Danny watched them, feeling the familiar mix of affection and alienation that always rose up when he saw his family like this. They were happy. Genuinely, sincerely happy. And he couldn't for the life of him understand how.
"Hey, champ." His dad looked up, still smiling. "Good day?"
"It was a day."
"That bad, huh?" His dad stood up, brushing off his knees. "Well, maybe dinner will help. And hey—I've been meaning to ask you. We're planning a family trip to Disneyland next month, for Lisa's birthday. You're coming, right?"
Danny felt his jaw tighten. "I've got school."
"You can take a weekend off. Come on, it'll be fun. Remember when we went when you were ten? You loved Space Mountain."
"Dad, I'm seventeen. I don't—" He stopped himself, because he could see the hope in his dad's eyes, and he didn't have the heart to crush it. "I'll think about it."
His dad's smile brightened. "That's all I'm asking. Just think about it."
Danny nodded and headed for the stairs, the old book still tucked under his arm. He could hear Lisa launching into a new story behind him, her voice rising and falling with the dramatic cadence of a born storyteller, and he felt something twist in his chest.
He didn't hate them. He couldn't. But sometimes, being around them felt like drowning in syrup—sweet and suffocating and impossible to escape.
His room was a sanctuary of clutter and comfort. Posters on the walls—bands his parents didn't understand, movies they'd never seen. A laptop on his desk, its screen dark. Clothes draped over the back of his chair, evidence of a teenager's complete lack of organizational skills.
Danny dropped his backpack, kicked off his shoes, and flopped onto his bed, the old book landing on his chest. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, listening to the faint strains of Disney music drifting up from downstairs.
Then he sat up, opened his laptop, and started scrolling through the news.
The headlines told the same story they always did.
*CEASEFIRE COLLAPSES IN EASTERN EUROPE AS BOTH SIDES ACCUSE EACH OTHER OF VIOLATIONS.*
*MIGRANT CARAVAN STALLS AT SOUTHERN BORDER AS POLITICAL DEADLOCK DEEPENS.*
*POLL SHOWS RECORD POLARIZATION, MAJORITY OF AMERICANS BELIEVE CIVIL WAR POSSIBLE WITHIN DECADE.*
*GLOBAL TEMPERATURES RISE, EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS BECOME NEW NORMAL.*
Danny scrolled, his jaw tight, his chest heavy. This was the real world. This was the truth that the Disney songs and the princess dolls and the cheerful family dinners were all trying to paper over. The world wasn't a fairy tale. It was a mess. A beautiful, terrifying, heartbreaking mess, with no guarantee of a happy ending.
And people kept pretending otherwise.
He slammed the laptop shut, suddenly angry, though he couldn't have said at what. At the news? At his family? At himself, for caring so much about things he couldn't change?
He picked up the old book, flipping through its pages without really seeing them. The paper was thick and rough, nothing like the smooth, glossy pages of modern books. The text was old-fashioned, printed in a font that looked like it belonged in a medieval manuscript.
He stopped at Little Red Riding Hood.
He read it. The original version. The one where the wolf eats the grandmother, then the girl, and a hunter has to cut them both out of its belly. No woodsman coming to save her at the last minute. No happy reunion. Just blood and teeth and the cold reality of the forest.
He read Hansel and Gretel. The mother—not a stepmother—convincing the father to abandon the children. The witch, fattening them up for the oven. Gretel, tricking the witch and shoving her into the fire, then running home with pockets full of jewels.
He read Cinderella. The stepsisters cutting off their heels and toes. The birds pecking out their eyes at the wedding, just like Mr. Harrison had said.
He flipped and speed-read through Pinocchio, and found the puppet in this one a lot less lovable and naive than the Disney puppet, not to mention the story being WAY darker. The talking cricket was barely alive in the story before being squashed by Pinocchio himself. He bit off the cat's hand and the puppet was hung. And the guy in charge of Pleasure Island was as bad as the Coachman, if not worse.
And then he reached Snow White.
The story was familiar at first—the jealous queen, the huntsman, the seven dwarfs. But as he read on, the details grew sharper, crueler. The queen asking for Snow White's lungs and liver, intending to eat them. The dwarfs warning Snow White about the queen's tricks. The three attempts on her life—the lace, the comb, the apple.
And then the ending. The queen forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she fell down dead.
Danny felt a shiver run down his spine as he read that last line. Not from fear—not exactly. It was something else. A recognition. A strange and unsettling sense that this was right, somehow. That the stories had always been this way, and the modern versions were the lie.
The book began to warm in his hands.
Danny frowned, looking down at the pages. The warmth was growing, spreading from the leather cover into his fingers, his palms, his wrists. The words on the page began to shimmer, the letters shifting and rearranging themselves into patterns that hurt his eyes to look at.
"What the—"
He tried to drop the book, but his hands wouldn't open. The warmth had become heat, and the heat had become fire, but it didn't burn.
The room around him began to blur. The walls wavered like reflections in disturbed water. The posters on his walls peeled away into ribbons of color, spiraling toward the book in his hands.
Danny tried to scream, but the sound was swallowed by a rushing noise, like wind, like water, like the turning of a thousand pages all at once.
The book opened wider, its pages fluttering, and Danny saw something inside them—not words, but images. A castle. A forest. A school perched on a hill, its spires stretching toward a sky that was pink and gold and wrong.
And then the book pulled.
Danny felt his body stretch, his bones elongating, his flesh dissolving into light. He was falling and flying and being torn apart and stitched back together, all at the same time. The world narrowed to a point, then expanded infinitely, and he was caught in the space between, suspended in a moment that lasted forever and no time at all.
He heard a voice, familiar and strange, warm and distant:
"Every story chooses its reader. And every reader chooses their story."
And then everything went black.