Free Fairest of All (Whatever After #1) by Sarah Mlynowski Page A

pj’s instead of a dress. It’s not as good as the queen’s disguises, but it should do.
    We are ready. Snow even packed us another picnic of stew sandwiches. Blah. For lunch and dinner. Jonah is carrying them in the borrowed satchel again. They’re kind of stinky.
    We pull up to the guard standing by the bridge. Luckily the bridge is still down, since the queen just left.
    “That’s Arnaldo,” Snow whispers, pointing at the guard.
    Arnaldo is very large. Very, very large. And he’s using a sharp-looking weapon to scratch his extremely bushy black eyebrows.
    “You,” he barks at us. “Why are you here?”
    My knees shake. “We’re the new decorators?” I say, except it comes out as a question.
    Okay, so I lied. Not nice, I know. Lying is bad. But we need to get into the castle, and this seems like the best way. Snow said decorators were always going in and out of the palace, so we decided that if we told them that’s what we are, no one would look twice.
    Arnaldo glares at us. Then he glares more at Snow. He is definitely looking twice. Five times at least. “Hmm,” he mutters.
    My stomach free-falls. He recognizes her.
    “Hmm,” he mutters again. We are so busted.
    “Go ahead,” the bushy-eyebrowed Arnaldo finally says. “But leave your horse here.”
    Phew! I guess my pajamas-and-pointy-hat disguise worked. We’re in!
    We tie Yopopa to a tree by the bridge. Then we cross the drawbridge and approach the palace.
    There’s a massive round gold knocker on the door.
    “I’m nervous,” Snow whispers. “I can’t believe I’m back here. And I can’t believe Arnaldo didn’t recognize me.”
    A pretty, dark-haired maid in a gray uniform answers the door.
    “It’s Madeline,” Snow whispers. “She’s the maid. She knows me, too.”
    “You’re in disguise,” I remind her. “Arnaldo didn’t recognize you and neither will she.” I hope. I really, really hope.
    “Can I help you?” Madeline asks.
    “We’re the decorators?” I say. Again, it sounds like a question.
    “Oh,” Madeline says with a frown. “We’re not expecting you for another hour.” She gives Snow a weird look. “Do I know you?”
    “No,” Snow says, hiding behind her floppy hat. “We’ve never met. Never, ever. I am not a princess. I’m a decorator.”
    I pinch her side. Way too obvious!
    But Madeline seems to buy it, because she ushers us into the foyer.
    The entire room is decorated in stripes. The marble floor is in black stripes. The ceiling has purple stripes. My slippers would fit right in. No wonder Evil Evelyn wants to redecorate. I’ve been here four seconds and I already have a headache.
    “This is the room she wants to fix up?” I ask.
    “No, she just did this room last month,” Madeline says.
    Seriously? “Then where? Her bedroom?” Please be her bedroom, please be her bedroom. That would make our lives so much easier.
    “The kitchen,” Madeline says.
    Boo.
    The kitchen is decorated all in red. Red sink, red table, red pots. I feel like I’m trapped in a giant bowl of cherry Jell-O.
    “I’ll leave you to it,” Madeline says. “I have a lot of sewing to do. The queen’s disguises don’t make themselves, you know.”
    We wait for her to leave before we sneak out of the kitchen. We follow Snow up two winding staircases.
    “This is it,” she says at the end of a long, dark hallway. “Her room.” She pushes open the door and we creep inside.
    Hanging on the wall is the mirror.

t he mirror is my size and framed in gold. If I didn’t already know it could talk, I’d think it was an ordinary mirror. But then I notice a fairy carved into the bottom-right corner of the frame. Hmm. Maybe it’s not so ordinary.
    I hope it knows how to send us home.
    Jonah runs up to it and knocks on the glass.
    At first, there’s no response, but then a loud voice from deep inside yells, “Are you trying to give me a concussion?”
    The voice is definitely annoyed, but I can’t tell if it’s female or male.