Between the Lines Read online

  I think of all the beautiful paintings hanging in museums around the world—muses captured on canvas: the Mona Lisa, the birth of Venus, the girl with a pearl earring. “Voilà,” Oliver declares, and he steps aside.

  Carved onto the rock wall is a disproportionate figure with bug eyes, snake hair, and a flat line of a mouth. Apparently, to Oliver, I look like a Muppet.

  “Not bad, eh?” he says. “Although, I don’t think I quite captured your nose….”

  No wonder; he’s drawn it as a triangle.

  I hesitate. “No offense, Oliver, but you might not be the ideal choice to paint a picture of my room.”

  He frowns at the portrait he’s drawn of me, and then smiles. “Perhaps not,” Oliver says, “but I know just the fellow who is.”

  page 31

  Prince Oliver dreamed that one of the mermaids was still kissing him. He was fighting to pull away from her, struggling to breathe—and then he opened his eyes. No mermaid was kissing him, just Frump, licking his face as Socks whinnied and stamped his foot a few feet away. Oliver sat up, damp and bedraggled, on the ocean shore. He had no recollection of the mermaids bringing him to the surface, and he might have considered it all a nightmare, except for the fact that in one hand he was clutching his compass, and in the other he was holding a sack that contained the flotsam and jetsam the mermaids had claimed to be treasures.

  One hour into their journey, Oliver and his faithful entourage reached the River of Regret, a mile-wide whitewater fury that had claimed the lives of many who’d tried to cross it. The only hope for passage was the Bridge of Trolls, which—it had to be said—was nearly as perilous.

  It is a well-known fact that trolls either always tell the truth or always lie. And that every day they build two bridges—one safe and one designed to collapse at the first hint of weight.

  Oliver dismounted, patted Frump on the head, and walked to the edge of the cliff. He could see three small, squat men shuffling about with hammers and nails on the far side. One of the bridges appeared rickety and weak; the other was strongly fashioned—but Oliver knew that looks could be deceiving.

  “Helloooo?” Oliver called, but the trolls continued working, unable to hear him over the roar of the water.

  Oliver turned and dug the megaphone from the mermaids’ treasure collection out of his rucksack. “Helloooo!” he yelled again, and this time the trolls all looked up. “My good men,” Oliver said. “Which bridge should I use to cross?”

  The first troll, Biggle, glanced up. When he spoke, Oliver had no trouble hearing him; trolls were known to talk in decibel levels that could shake the Earth. “Why, what have we got here? Some fancy man with his fancy horse, and what’s that? A big rat or somethin’?” Biggle stroked his long gray beard.

  “Sir, I do see you’re working quite hard,” Oliver said with a smile. “I would greatly appreciate your advice.”

  Snort and Trogg, the remaining trolls, started to laugh, grunting and holding their bellies. “Ye can only ask one of us to choose for you,” said Trogg, the chubby one. “Make yer pick.”

  Oliver thought about this. If trolls always lied or always told the truth, how to find out which troll was trustworthy? “Do you tell the truth?” he yelled through the megaphone.

  Biggle replied, but at that moment, the water between them roared, so that Oliver could not make out the answer.

  Snort cupped his hands near his mouth. “He said he always tells the truth!”

  “No, he didn’t,” called Trogg. “He said he was a liar.”

  Oliver glanced from each hideous face to the next. Biggle, he realized, must have said he was truthful. This would have been his response if he was indeed truthful, because of course he’d say so; but it also would have been his response if he was a liar.

  Which meant that Snort’s statement had to be the truth.

  In other words—he was the troll to trust.

  “You!” Oliver said, pointing to the short troll in the middle. “Which bridge?”

  “This one,” Snort proudly answered, pointing to the rickety bridge.

  Oliver mounted his stallion again and, without a moment’s hesitation, crossed the bridge Snort had indicated.

  “That’ll be a guinea,” Biggle grunted.

  Oliver patted down his pockets and saddlebags, but all his spare change had fallen into the ocean when he was with the mermaids.

  The mermaids.

  The trolls advanced, menacing, ready to pound him into the dirt.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “do you know what’s more precious than gold? True love.”

  “We’re trolls,” said Trogg. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “I happen to know three lovely ladies who could overlook that fact,” Oliver said.

  “Honestly?” asked Snort.

  Oliver grinned. “I always tell the truth,” he said.

  OLIVER

  “BEDSPREAD,” DELILAH SAYS.

  “Um… pink.”

  “Good. Number of stuffed animals on the bed?”

  “Three.”

  “Excellent. What are they?”

  I close my eyes, trying to remember. “A pig, a bear wearing a strange little shirt, and a duck with quite a sassy look on its face.”

  “And the book?”

  “Purple leather, with gold lettering that reads Between the Lines.”

  It’s odd to think of my story as a physical entity, because obviously I’ve never seen the outside of the tome in which we all live. But Delilah has described it in excruciating detail.

  In fact, she’s spent hours this Saturday evening giving me a thorough tour of her bedroom by carrying the open book from end to end. I have read fortune cookie messages tacked onto her mirror; I have met her pet fish—named Dudley; I have stared at a whiteboard she can write upon and erase, which is festooned with small favors from places she and her mother have visited: the Flume in New Hampshire, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, Boston, the Statue of Liberty. We realized that the only error in our plan was that Delilah could not watch the painting actually happen—since that would have to occur when the book was closed and I could meet privately with Rapscullio in his lair.

  To this end, Delilah insisted that I memorize every last detail of her room, so that it could be as accurate a representation as possible on that magic canvas. Like me, she doesn’t want to leave anything up to chance.

  “How many lamps are in here?” she quizzes.

  “Three. One on the desk, one clipped to the bed, and one on the dresser. And next to the lamp on the dresser is a music box you got from your mother for your fifth birthday; and there’s a sticker on your headboard of Curious George that you put there when you were three and could never quite peel off entirely; and right now there are three pairs of earrings that you haven’t put into your jewelry box yet, which are sitting next to your hairbrush.” I smirk at her. “Now do you believe I’m ready?”

  “Very,” she says.

  “Okay. I’m off, then.”

  “Wait!” I turn back to find her staring at me, biting her lower lip. “What if… it doesn’t work?”

  I reach up, as if I might be able to touch her, but of course I can’t. “What if it does?”

  She traces one finger along the edge of the page close to me. The world beside me ripples. “Goodbye,” Delilah says.

  * * *

  Rapscullio’s lair needs a thorough cleaning. There are cobwebs in the corner, and I am pretty certain a rat runs over my shoe as I enter. “Anybody home?” I ask cheerfully.

  “Over here,” Rapscullio calls out. I turn a corner to find him examining a butterfly that’s been trapped inside a glass jar. There are holes in the lid, but the insect’s wings are beating desperately as it tries to escape.

  I know how that feels.

  “Rapscullio,” I say, “I need your help.”

  “Kind of busy right now, Your Highness…”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  He sets the captured butterfly down on a