The Cinderella Theorem Page 25

  Calo flopped down on his straw. “The only way this could be worse is if you just walked right up to Tallis and volunteered to be his prisoner.”

  I bit my lip. “Perhaps, I should explain the situation before we two endeavor to save our companions in misery.”

  “Before we two endeavor to save our companions in misery?!? You invoked the quest clause?”

  I smiled sheepishly. “Apparently.”

  Calo sighed. “But if you invoked the quest clause, someone had to have sent you on the quest. Who would be stupid enough to send the heir to the throne on such a foolish quest?”

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, let me explain. Doug told me only I could save everyone because I’m not living Happily Ever After yet. And then we came up with a plan to rescue everyone. See, first I’ll get you to Less Than Happy, then—”

  Calo waved his hand impatiently. “Then, I can go around and cheer everyone up. I know that part of the plan, Lily.” He sat down and sighed.

  “How do you already know Doug’s plan?”

  “Because it’s what I would do.” He sighed again. “Did Doug happen to mention a way to get you home?”

  “Not specifically,” I mumbled. “He said the best thing would be for me to become Happily Ever After and vanish back.”

  “Which will be so easy to accomplish here in a dungeon.” Calo started pacing.

  “What’s Matt’s Law?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

  “You’re not allowed to know. Of course, since you’re already here and the prohibition on telling you was to prevent you from doing something exactly like this, I’m not sure if it matters anymore.”

  Calo looked like he might be about to tell me, but shook his head instead. “I better not tell you. If we do make it out of here, there’s bound to be some sort of inquiry.”

  “Do you think Doug will get into trouble?” I was surprised by all this forbidden “Matt’s Law” business. After all, I had created this situation. Logically and mathematically, I had to be the one to fix it.

  “Doug should be fine.” Calo paused, then added, “So long as I get you back in one piece.”

  I nodded. I must have looked a little frightened about the prospect of staying in Uppish Senna forever, because Calo took me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes and said, “I promise you, Lily, I will not leave these dungeons unless I know you have found a way home as well.”

  I shook his hands off in time to rub myself invisible as the guard approached. Calo flung himself onto his pile of straw. After the guard had passed, I hissed at Calo “I don’t have to go back. I’m not doing any good at HEA, but you have to go back. You are a brilliant Happiologist and HEA needs you.”

  Calo snorted. “If I’m such a brilliant Happiologist, then you should trust me to make the decision about you getting back. Make yourself visible and we’ll compromise.” He waited for me to rub my marble, then he stuck out his hand.

  I took it and we shook.

  “Neither of us will leave without the other,” he said.

  I nodded.

  Calo ran a hand through his hair. “Right. Well, next we should come up with some sort of plan, and for safety’s sake, you’d better stay invisible. I’ll just shut up when the guard walks by.”

  “Fine.” I rubbed myself invisible and then took off my shoe. An update from Doug had just arrived. “Hey, you’re already up to Not So Happy. Just six more levels to go.”

  “How did you know that?” Calo spoke to the wall, so that if the guard passed it would look like he was muttering at the images on the screens.

  “Doug is updating me through my shoe on any changes in levels.”

  “Clever.” Calo smiled. “But we’d better not aim for Happy. Let’s just shoot for Less Than Less Than Happy. I can make people Happy on that and then, when it’s just us, we’ll work out something else. I’ll know when I’m getting close, by the way, so you won’t need the updates for me.”

  “You’ll know when you’re getting close to what?”

  “To Less Than Less Than Happy. I’ve trained myself to recognize the subtle differences in my levels.”

  “That’s possible?”

  “Lily,” Calo’s tone was patient. “You just turned yourself invisible by rubbing a marble. Anything’s possible.”

  “Could I learn to do it?”

  “Probably. It’s still sort of controversial. Not all Happiologists like it.”

  “Why not?”

  Calo cocked his head patronizingly. “If Happiologists can learn to do it, then why couldn’t regular citizens learn it too? We’d be out of a job.”

  “Do you really think the need for HEA could be eliminated?” I tried to visualize Smythe’s SFL minus HEA, but I couldn’t get the equation to formulate.

  “I doubt it,” Calo went on. “It takes a lot of time and discipline to master your own emotions and happiness. Most people are perfectly willing to let external sources affect their happiness.” After a moment, he added, “And unhappiness.”

  “But,” I began and stopped just as quickly when I heard the guard outside the door. His footsteps reminded me that we were supposed to be getting Calo’s levels up. The unasked question hung around me waiting to be asked like a math problem begging to be solved. “I’ve got one more question and then we’ll start trying to get you to Less Than Less Than Happy.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Lily. Talking with you has been helpful already.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, to be quite specific,” Calo spoke slowly, choosing his words as he went, “…instructing you improves my mood.”

  I scoffed. Of course. Calo liked showing off that he knew more than me. I just rolled my eyes and took out the latest shoe update. “Alright, Mr. Brilliant Happiologist, let’s see if you’re right about what your level is.”

  Calo tilted his head considering. “I feel like I’ve Been Happier.”

  I made a disgusted noise, balled up the note from Doug, and threw it at Calo. “You’re brilliant.”

  Calo smiled, “You said you had another question.”

  “Even if mastering your own happiness is difficult, why wouldn’t everyone want to do it? Isn’t it a good thing? It’s hard to learn your multiplication tables, but you’ve got to memorize them if you want to work with math on a higher level.”

  Calo smiled. “Yes, Lily. It’s a very good thing. But not everyone wants to take the time and effort to learn their multiplication facts. They could just get a calculator. And it’s the same for their happiness. Why bother mastering your emotions if you know a Happiologist will come along and make you happy?”

  “That’s awful and irresponsible and mathematically unsound. A calculator could break or a Happiologist might not make it in time.” Or worse. I thought of Ella. Her Happiologist had failed her. I had failed her. My stomach dropped faster than an infinite slope as I considered telling Calo what I had done.

  Calo was laughing. “Which are you more upset by? That people use calculators or that they use Happiologists?”

  “You’re okay with the citizens relying on us for their happiness?”

  He sighed. “I don’t have to be okay with it. I don’t have to think about it at all. I just have to do my job and do it the best I can.”

  “But if they can learn how to be responsible, shouldn’t they?”

  “Let it go, Lily. When we’re up against the possibility of Cinderella vanishing, I can’t take the time to teach her to be happy herself. If I don’t act, if I don’t find her a cleaning job, she could vanish. I know you don’t really follow fairy tales, but Cinderella is pretty well known. Here’s a syllogism for you: Cinderella is to fairy tales what Pythagoras is to math.” He rolled his eyes. “And please don’t critique my logic. I’m just trying to point out that we don’t have the time to make E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land a perfect world, we’ve got just enough time to make sure the citizens stay in it.” He paused. “Do you see what I’m saying? I’d rather have a co-dependent Cinderella than
no Cinderella at all.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “Calo, I have to tell you something.” Then I rubbed myself visible, just as the guard passed. “I’ve had sort of a side project, recently, and…um…I decided to prove that being normal equals being happy. And to test my theory, I tried to make an unhappy citizen normal in order to make her happy.”

  Calo’s eyes narrowed. “Her, who?”

  “Maybe we should check your levels, Calo. I don’t want to set you back.”

  “Angry is not unhappy, Lily. Her, who?”

  “Well, I...I used Ella as my test subject.”

  Calo was silent for twenty seconds, but it felt much longer. “What were the results?”

  “Um…she became happier, much happier, but I think it was superficial.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she vanished,” I whispered, meekly.

  “You’re the reason she vanished? Are you telling me that in your first month as our princess you managed to vanish the most well-known fairy tale of all time?”

  “Yes.” My voice surprised me. I didn’t know it could be so quiet.

  After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Calo said, “At least some good has come from your incompetence. I’m nearly happy enough to go rescue everyone.”

  “Glad to be of service. I also memorized everyone’s sad items, so you’d know what we’re up against.”

  “Exactly how many people are we rescuing?”

  I did the math quickly and answered, “Ten. Tallis let the birds go free in exchange for my capture.”

  “You mean you really did just volunteer to be a prisoner and you ransomed yourself for some birds? I didn’t know you liked animals that much.” Calo smirked, obviously feeling better.

  “Very funny. The exact terms of the agreement were that he would empty a cell. I didn’t know which one he would choose. I just hoped it wasn’t you, because I really needed you for the plan.”

  “Tallis wouldn’t be foolish enough to let me leave. He desperately wants me on his side.”

  “He’s already asked you?”

  Calo nodded. He went thoughtful and pensive for a moment. I wondered how I knew the word pensive and would my quest clause vocabulary be available to me when this was all over.

  Calo came out of his reverie (!) and asked, “Who are we rescuing? I want to start formulating plans.”

  “Okay. Well, there’s Ella and Aven obviously. Ella’s stepsisters.”

  “Adelaide and Amaryllis,” Calo interrupted.

  “And her stepmother.”

  “Agatha.”

  “Then just your grandmother, grandfathers and your parents.” My eyes darted to Calo to see how he would take this news.

  “I don’t have grandparents. My story opens with my father dying.”

  “Your story opens with your adoptive father dying,” I corrected.

  Calo stared at me. “You mean my birth family? You know who they are?”

  “I’m 97% sure.”

  “Who?”

  Calo’s usual logic and reasoning seemed to have left him. If he’d been in a proper state of mind, he would have realized there was only one other tale in the dungeon. HEA and the Agency kept up with all that. But perhaps he thought I’d left a wave of vanishing behind me in Smythe’s SFL.

  “The Candlemaker’s Daughter is the tale you started in.” I went invisible as soon as I heard the guard coming.

  “But everyone vanished from that story, there was no one left. The file disappeared,” Calo hissed to my invisible self.

  “The file was stolen, by the same person who kidnapped you and gave you to the Miller family.” I rubbed the marble so I’d be visible and looked directly at him. “Levi stole the file. Levi kidnapped you.”

  “Kidnapped me? What is that story about?”

  It was my turn to be shocked. Calo didn’t know a fairy tale. “You don’t know the story?”

  He shook his head. “It was vanished long before I started working for HEA. We all just assumed the file was gone too. Our rescue plans were always more of the brute force “get in and grab everyone” variety since we had no way to make the citizens happy without invoking Matt’s Law.”

  “What is Matt’s Law?” I asked again.

  Calo looked at me a long time, considering. “I will tell you, if you promise to tell me the story of The Candlemaker’s Daughter.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. I had planned to tell him anyway, but he didn’t have to know that.

  Calo began, “When your mother and father first began dating, she was kidnapped by Tandem Tallis and his forces.”

  “She knew about the kingdom, then?”

  Calo tilted his head. “It’s sort of how she found out.”

  “What?”

  Calo ignored me and went on. “Your father wanted to rescue her. Everyone was against it. He was heir to the throne by that time and no one wanted to risk the heir on a fool’s errand. Your father and Grimm met secretly, defying the king and queen, and came up with a plan to get your father into Uppish Senna.”

  “Grimm was a part of a plan to defy the king and queen?”

  Calo nodded. “He said it was a matter of honor between partners. He managed to get your father smuggled into the dungeons. But your father was captured pretty quickly.” Calo paused while I went invisible. After the guard passed and I’d returned, he went on. “It’s important to note that no one who wasn’t sad had ever been held in these dungeons before. Your father tested the strength of the door as soon as he was left alone and to his surprise, the door opened. He found your mother and her cell was unlocked as well. They managed to escape and made their way back to Smythe’s SFL. Your father called the phenomenon of the unlocked doors ‘Matt’s Law’.”

  “So the principle that only your unhappiness keeps you locked here is Matt’s Law?”

  “Exactly.” Calo looked nervous. “Tell me my story, Lily.”

  “Okay.” I briefly told the tale. I was worried how Calo would take the news. It wasn’t a happy story. He listened quietly and said nothing until the end.

  “So Levi took me off the hillside?”

  I nodded. “It’s the most logical analysis of the facts. Besides, he practically told me so.”

  Calo sat in silence for a moment and then stood up suddenly. “Let’s go rescue my family, Lily.”

  23

  And They All Lived Happily Ever After

  We didn’t actually leave as soon as Calo’s tone had implied. First, we finalized our plan; Calo did most of the talking. His new-found family was the last piece of the equation to make him Less Than Less Than Happy. He was like the old Calo: direct, bossy, arrogant. It was good to see him back to his usual self.

  His plan was fairly simple. He thought just the explanation of the truth to The Candlemaker’s Daughter citizens would be enough to send them back, with the possible exception of his grandmother, who had tried to kill him. My job was to stay invisible and when the guard came by, grab Calo and pull him into the “circle of invisibility” as Calo called it. Also, while he talked to the citizens I would be busy making a dummy in the straw to be covered with the prisoner’s blanket after they had vanished back. We needed to trick the guard for as long as possible.

  “But will seeing your family make you too happy?” I asked.[59]

  “I’m planning to focus on all the years I was deprived of them by my evil, sadistic grandmother.”

  “And Levi,” I added.

  “Yes, and Levi.”

  ~~~

  The first prisoner we came to happened to be Calo’s (evil, sadistic) grandmother. We knew it was her because the cell was cluttered with photos of Celdan, Colin, and Calo together and happy throughout all of Calo’s life.

  “Where did the pictures come from?” I asked as we peered through the window.

  “Magicked up from Tallis’s twisted imagination, no doubt,” Calo muttered absently as he studied the cell. “Alright Lily, how should I approach this situation?”

&nbs
p; I turned sharply to stare at him. “Are you testing me in the middle of a rescue? We don’t have time for this!”

  “Just consider it. This is an interesting case. Pretend I need your help.”

  I shook my head and turned to study the cell again. We were both invisible and the addition of Calo made it even hotter than before. The sooner I solved this, the sooner I could cool off.

  After a moment of study, I said, “Okay. The queen is kept prisoner by the idea that Celdan and Colin have somehow escaped the dungeons, found you, and are living Happily Ever After. You should tell her the truth, that you’ve never met your parents and that you’re all still languishing in the dungeons.”

  “Very good. And nice use of languishing.” Calo nodded. “Let’s go.”

  We slipped into the cell, splitting up to do our jobs. Calo surprised the queen, as he became visible.

  “My lady,” he bowed and began his explanation. I started making a straw-dummy. I only had to interrupt Calo once to turn him invisible.

  After the guard passed and Calo was visible again, the queen asked, “Then, these pictures are false?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And my son and common daughter-in-law are wasting away in this prison?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The queen began to laugh. “It’s all too wonderful. They are unhappy. They have been robbed of their Happily Ever After.”

  And then she was gone. Calo rushed over to be included in my invisibility.

  “Pleasant woman,” he said under his breath.

  ~~~

  Ella’s stepsisters were next: Adelaide, followed by Amaryllis. They were similarly easy to return to Happy. Calo just told them Ella was in the dungeon and that Aven was free to be snatched up.

  “Should we be lying to them?” I asked as we stood, invisible in Amaryllis’s empty cell.

  Calo didn’t look at me as he answered. He was listening for the guard. “Don’t think of it as lying. Think of it as rescuing. People who are so unhappy will believe anything to have happiness–even if they know deep down it’s probably not true.”