Crisanta Knight: Protagonist Bound

PROLOGUE What most people think of when they hear the phrase “Happily Ever After” is the romance, excitement, and adventure that led up to it. Very few people think too much about the “after.” That’s me by the way . . . I’m the “after.” My name is Crisanta Knight, but I go by Crisa. You probably haven’t heard of me, but I’d bet anything you’ve heard of my mother. She goes by Cinderella. Okay, don’t freak out. The back-story is that I live in a world called “Book.” Book is an enchanted realm, and certain stories about the lives of the people here filter into our neighboring realms, like Earth, in the form of “fairytales.” One year in my home world is equal to, like, twenty years on Earth, though. So, while you may know Prince Charming and Cinderella as characters in a four-hundred-year-old story, we know them as the current king and queen of Midveil, a.k.a. my mom and dad. The thing is, not everyone in Book is what you might call the “main character” of his or her own fairytale. My parents and teachers tell me this just makes sense. Not every person is meant to be an epic-worthy protagonist, they claim, because the world needs supporting characters, and love interests, and antagonists too. Personally, I think it’s a pretty messed-up system. I mean, the idea that we can only live up to whatever archetype is assigned to us—never able to aspire to be something more or even something else—just feels wrong. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Anyways, as the daughter of Queen Cinderella and King Jeremiah Knight (Midveil’s former Prince Charming turned King Charisma), I am a princess. So, unlike many other people in Book, I’m actually guaranteed to be the main character of my own story one day. As a result, I attend a special, extra-snooty private school for girls who are destined to be the next generation of female protagonists. My school, Lady Agnue’s, and the school equivalent to it for future male protagonists, Lord Channing’s, are geared toward grooming and preparing students for their impending fairytale fates. Just so we’re clear though, the children who are chosen to attend these academies are not all royals like me. Nevertheless, they all do know for certain that they are going to have their own stories. How, you may ask? Good question. A portal is said to appear in an area of the Forbidden Forest near the kingdom of Harzana. It is guarded by a group of Book’s most powerful Fairy Godmothers known as the Scribes. Every so often this one-way portal regurgitates an actual “book.” And each of these volumes, though initially blank on the inside, always has the title of the story—the name of a citizen of Book—engraved on its cover (e.g., Snow White, Sleeping Beauty—you get the gist). Ergo, that is how each school knows which children of the realm to take in. Talk about living life paying attention to the fine print, am I right? If you’re having trouble processing all of this, by the way, don’t worry. We ourselves do not even really understand the higher power that decides who we are. All we know is that somewhere in the off-limits part of Book, the Indexlands, a sort of prophet who has never been seen is responsible. We call her the Author, because it is said that she spends her life writing and nothing else. The words her enchanted quill pen into parchment become the realities that Book’s people live by. And bing, bam, boom, our fates are assigned and our identities are cast. We’re put into these perfectly neat little boxes of character development that the Author has picked out for us and the world goes on ticking to its succinct rhythm of calm and tidy conformity—tradition (tick), order (tock), convention (tick), sedation (tock). The Author works on the original copies of our books wherever she is, and then a twin of each one appears in the Forbidden Forest for the Scribes to share with the schools. However, since these books begin blank, chosen protagonists, such as myself, must train and prepare for indefinite fates at the academies. We are cursed to wake up each morning not knowing when the Author intends to set our stories in motion, and, more importantly, not knowing what those stories will be. Given that they have no control over what the Author writes or when it will be written, the people of Book have completely embraced the idea that who they are is not something they can decide for themselves. Those roles, it would seem, have already been cast . . . On that note, I believe that’s just about everything you need to know about my home world before you endeavor into it. Wait; hold on a second. There’s something else I should mention, something important that I’ve left out about my realm’s rules, my princess-ness, my school, and so on. I can break it down for you in five words. I absolutely can’t stand it.