The Lost Story

by Meg Shaffer

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. —C. S. Lewis

Fifteen Years Before Our Story Begins Once upon a time in West Virginia, two boys went missing. They’d been missing since May, vanished during an end-of-school field trip to Red Crow State Forest.

You looked for missing children. You mourned lost ones.

When Maggie and Tom noticed the posters while looking for the trail map, they remembered that they’d forgotten all about the lost boys. Because that’s how it worked. First you were missing. Then you were lost. Then you were forgotten.

she really looked at the two boys for the first time. One was a blond who seemed incapable of smiling, the other a redhead wearing a shit-eating grin.

Ralph Stanley Howell, d.o.b. 6/15/92, 5′4, 118 lbs. Caucasian. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Jeremy Andrew Cox, d.o.b. 5/28/92, 5′6, 129 lbs. Caucasian. Red hair. Hazel eyes. “They never found those boys?” Tom asked. “Nope. Probably never will.” Maggie was a nurse, and because she’d seen the worst, she knew to assume the worst. If the boys went missing in the Crow, odds were they’d died the first or second night. If they weren’t missing but kidnapped as some had theorized…they probably wished they were dead. She didn’t say that part out loud to Tom. It was only their fourth date, and she didn’t want to spoil the mood.

Below and before them lay the still autumn-lovely woods. Trees upon trees upon trees rising and falling in endless waves, an ocean of forest, and two boys drowned in it.

They didn’t have fairy tales in West Virginia. They were lucky to have a Target.

“It’s called ‘searching behavior,’ ” he said. “People who lose someone will find themselves walking for miles or driving for hours…Lots of theories on why. I think it’s guilt. Misplaced usually. We think we should have been able to stop it, but we can’t. Even after they’re gone, your body keeps trying to do something to help even though you can’t.”

He pulled the photo she’d shoved into his hands yesterday out of his jacket pocket and held it up to her. “This is your sister? Your sister who was kidnapped and supposedly murdered twenty years ago?” “Yeah, why? Wait, what do you mean ‘supposedly’?” Emilie waited for the punch line to the joke, and when it came, it just felt like a punch. “Because she wasn’t murdered in the woods.” “How do you know?” “Because…when we were lost in the woods, we saw her.”

Regarding heroes, a famous professor named Joseph Campbell, who studied the world’s fairy tales and folktales, once wrote, The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know.

In other words, a hero on a quest for the Holy Grail isn’t looking for the Holy Grail. The hero is trying to find himself, and the only way he can find his true self is by going on a journey, being tried and tested until he knows if he is a hero in name only or a hero in truth. And that’s why the world has Holy Grails—not because the world needs Holy Grails but because the world needs heroes.

“Mom, I’m scared.” “I know, Emmielou. But scared is a feeling, not an excuse.”

“What news, my spy?” the queen asked. The crow sang the queen her secrets. “Oh, not him. Anyone but him. I was afraid of that.” She sighed heavily, wearily. “But who else would want to steal it but him?” The crow sang another song full of secrets, for in this world, crows didn’t simply caw. They saw. They saw, and they sang of what they saw. And the song the crow sang was one that said the world was about to change. Lost ones were coming home, but before they could feast in celebration, they must fight.

“You really think this girl who’s been missing twenty years is alive out there?” “Yes.” “And we knew her?” Jeremy didn’t answer. He simply pointed in the general direction of Rafe’s sculpture garden. “Okay, we knew her,” Rafe said. He couldn’t pretend otherwise. “How do you know she’s still alive?” “Gut feeling.”

“Gotta be an easier way to boop death than this. Jeremy?” He seemed to be elsewhere. He was looking up at the sky. Here in the country, miles from any town, the stars were out in full force. The stars and the old beat-up moon. The air was crisp and smelled lightly of distant smoke from a fireplace. He breathed in and smiled.

If Rafe doesn’t remember anything from when you two were lost, and that was when you two were together, then he doesn’t remember…” Jeremy drew back the string. “I don’t know what’s worse, that he doesn’t remember I’m in love with him or that he doesn’t remember he was in love with me.”

“Show Emilie how you kill the spider,” Jeremy said. “What’s a spider?” Emilie asked. “I assume you don’t mean an actual spider. Because I object to the senseless killing of spiders. Unless it’s two a.m. and one’s on my bed.” Jeremy pointed at the target, squinting one eye. “That little cross in the middle of the gold is the spider.

You kill the spider in one, you win the world.” “Killing the spider at forty yards in one shot is practically impossible,” Rafe reminded him. “You can’t even see it from here without a sight.” “If it’s an impossible shot,” Jeremy said, “why did your father spend his entire life trying to make it?”

“You stood there, took one shot, and killed the spider.” “That never—” “It happened. It was a perfect shot. I knew you’d done it the second the arrow hit the target. Even your dad knew. Your dad knew, and you saw what I saw—his ego dying right before his own eyes, being outshot by his fourteen-year-old son, who liked to draw sketches of poodles. It killed him that you made that shot, so you said, ‘I think it’s off-center.’ Then you ran down the field to the target, and I was right behind you, Rafe. I was there. I saw you pull out the arrow. I saw you tear the paper to hide the evidence.

Rafe couldn’t stand Jeremy’s eyes on him like that. He couldn’t stand the weight of expectation. It was easier when nobody thought he could do anything special. Now he wanted to kill the spider. He wanted to be as good as Jeremy thought he was. But he wasn’t.

Emilie woke from strange dreams that left her head spinning. From the window of the tiny guest room, she saw the gold and silver fingers of dawn climbing over the tops of the mountains and stretching into the sky. If Ohio had mountains, she thought, she would’ve gotten up a lot earlier every morning. Awed, she watched the sunrise until she heard the soft scuttling sounds of a wide-awake fancy rat who wanted his breakfast. She unzipped the top of Fritz’s large mesh pop-up tent, and he happily scurried into her hands and up her arm. She kissed the top of his head and carried him to the kitchen to get his breakfast.

“This is where we went missing. There’s a desire trail to a place called Goblin Falls.” “What’s a desire trail?” “That’s when people make their own unofficial trails. But everyone knows about it. We knew about it. Jeremy told the police that’s where we went off-trail. A few hikers say they saw us on that trail too. And that was the last time we were seen. Twenty-four hours later, we’d vanished from the park. Which makes no sense.”

“River. Leads right to a main highway. And here? Trails. Trail here and here. You can get lost in a place like that, but you can’t stay lost. You either die from injuries or exposure or dehydration or…you find one of, God, fifty trails and walk out in a day or two.”

They should have found us. They were right on top of us in that park, and we were…what? Invisible? And where were the bones?” “Bones?” “I went from five-four to five-nine. I put on twenty-five pounds when we were missing. Jeremy put on thirty and was almost six feet tall by the time we left. That happens to teenagers, but not when you’re starving. If we were hunting out there, where were the bones? Dad never found a single deer carcass, a dead rabbit, not even a snare or a spear or the remnants of a cooking fire.”

“Tell me something I don’t know about the universe,” Jeremy said. “No one knows what ninety-five percent of the universe is made of. How’s that?” “That’s a lot of universe to have gone AWOL,” he said.

“But if the universe is infinite?” “Then yes. Yes to everything. Infinite universe equals infinite outcomes.” “Unicorns?” “Yes?” “Dragons?” “Yes, yes!” “Infinite monkeys typing infinite Hamlets?” “Yes, in an infinite universe, wormholes have to exist. All possible worlds exist. In fact, there are no possibilities in an infinite universe, just eventualities.” “What do you think it is? Finite or infinite?” “Oh, I don’t know what I think, but I know what I want. I want an infinite universe.” She

“Think about what it means if literally anything is possible. We could be anything you can think of.” “Anything?” “This entire universe we’re in right now could be tiny, fitting in the palm of some being’s hand so far beyond us, we’re like ants to a giant. And the giant keeps us in jars on her windowsill. We’re a computer simulation. We’re characters in a storybook left on a train by a girl late for dinner. We’re a dream an ancient god is dreaming, and any minute now…he will wake.

Ask any question in an infinite universe, and the answer i...

Jeremy wanted to believe there was a world where he and Rafe never left Shanandoah, a universe where they’re still there, riding out with Skya on their horses, Freddy and Sunny, killing Bright Boys, hunting snow deer and drinking sweet rainberry wine, climbing the great sprin...

In an infinite universe, all stories were true stories.

Then his mother died of a stroke, died so fast he wasn’t able to make it home to tell her goodbye. In his grief, he sleepwalked through his mother’s wake, forgetting the names of her colleagues and students as soon as they introduced themselves. Later, he’d remember only one person he met that day. A woman in dark blue shook his hand and said, “Jeremy, dear, I know your mother was so proud of you. She told me all the time.”

“I also knew your father, Jeremy. I was at his funeral too. Shame.” He turned back and looked at her. “You were?” “So young. I’m so glad you’re doing so well. We were all a bit worried.” “Worried about what?” he asked. “Oh, it’s hereditary, they say. Schizophrenia. But you’re quite well, obviously. A hero even. It’s…Well, it’s good to see you.

Jeremy dug through the straw and packing material and found that the crate contained paintings. He lined them up along the walls. They were all of him. Age fourteen or fifteen, sitting at his mother’s piano at their old house on Park. He could almost hear the music coming out of it…“Primavera” by Ludovico Einaudi. And a red crow is perched on the open top.

Never forget, the price of magic may be high, but it’s worth paying. If you forget, see number eight. If you forget again, see numbers eight and nine.

The seven women on horses are known far and wide as the Valkyries. They’re the queen’s cavalry and her guard. Tempest is their leader, already described, but no matter how glorious you imagine her, she is even more so in person. The other six are as follows: Ember—redhead, temper to match Winter—she’s the pale one with white-blond hair Gale—dark brown skin, brown hair, griffin tattoos on both arms Torra—the tall, glowering one with the crossbow Rebel and River—the olive-skinned black-haired twins who rarely speak with anything other than their swords We now return to our crisis-in-progress.

Joy is quieter than people think it is. Especially the joy of getting back something you thought was lost forever.”

“I saw your homework assignment about what you wanted to be doing in ten years. You didn’t want to be a queen of a magic kingdom. You wanted to be a fantasy writer. You did understand the assignment.”

“Nobody ever tells you that when you go to another world, that even if it’s paradise, you’ll still miss your mum and your dog.” He

“Look,” Jeremy said and pointed. Outside the palace walls, a white stag and a red hart stepped lightly and gracefully through a pumpkin patch, sniffing out a perfect one for their dinner. “Wow,” Rafe breathed. The deer finished eating and dashed back into the woods. “I took all this away from you because I was homesick.” “I could’ve stayed,” Rafe reminded him. “I didn’t have to go home with you. It was my choice.”

“Being in this world, away from Dad, it must have felt like I could love you, that it wouldn’t be wasted here.” “It wasn’t wasted here. Not a drop of it. Love doesn’t go to waste on Queen Skya’s watch.”

“Your father’s soul is in the Ghost Town. It would have made a tear between our worlds when he passed through. You can use it to get back home. A day’s ride to the entrance. An hour or two through the Ghost Town.” “The Bright Boys will swarm us,” he said. “I can’t fight this fear.” “You can. It’s not courage that repels them most. It’s love. Love casts out fear.”

I wasn’t lost because I wasn’t here. I was lost because I’m lost without you. All this time, I’ve been lost without you, and you were the only one who could ever find me. And if you die, I will be lost forever.”

There was no bond that bound hearts that did not bind theirs. “You,” Rafe whispered in his ear, “are my kingdom. Where you are is where I belong. And I did remember that I loved you all this time. I just forgot I remembered. I’ll never forget it again.

Remember the fairy-tale recipe? One ingredient in fairy tales is the royal disguised as a nobody. And who’s a bigger nobody than a storyteller? My sister, bless her heart, who wasted her coronation gift on a pencil of all things, better like this story. I did, after all, write it for her.

But you don’t really need a magic pencil to write a magic book. All books are magic. An object that can take you to another world without even leaving your room? A story written by a stranger and yet it seems they wrote it just for you or to you? Loving and hating people made out of ink and paper, not flesh and blood? Yes, books are magic. Maybe even the strongest magic there is.

And since fairy tales have happy endings, this means one of two things. Either this isn’t a fairy tale… Or it’s only the beginning.