Saving Fable Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Scott Reintgen

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Maike Plenzke

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Reintgen, Scott, author.

  Title: Talespinners: Saving Fable / Scott Reintgen.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Crown Books for Young Readers, [2019] | Summary: Indira Story grew up in Origin, yearning to be the hero of her own story, but after finally being chosen to attend Protagonist Preparatory, she learns that side characters can be heroes, too.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018057026 | ISBN 978-0-525-64668-6 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-525-64669-3 (glb) | ISBN 978-0-525-64670-9 (epub)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Books and reading—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Heroes—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R4554 Tal 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525646709

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  To all the heroes who started out thinking they were side characters

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: The Last Chance

  Chapter 2: The Author Borealis

  Chapter 3: The Lying Beacon

  Chapter 4: The Chosen Characters

  Chapter 5: Deus

  Chapter 6: Fable

  Chapter 7: Protagonist Preparatory

  Chapter 8: The Brainstorms

  Chapter 9: Antagonist

  Chapter 10: The Audition—Round One

  Chapter 11: The Audition—Round Two

  Chapter 12: The Audition—Round Three

  Chapter 13: Brainstorm Ketty

  Chapter 14: The Adoption Agency

  Chapter 15: Family

  Chapter 16: New Discoveries

  Chapter 17: A Talespin

  Chapter 18: Where-the-Treasure-Is

  Chapter 19: Every Cage

  Chapter 20: Three Unfortunate Grudges

  Chapter 21: Escaping Alice

  Chapter 22: Professor Darcy

  Chapter 23: Dr. Montague

  Chapter 24: Keeping Ghosts Company

  Chapter 25: Misunderstanding

  Chapter 26: Practice Makes Perfect

  Chapter 27: A Bad Day

  Chapter 28: A Really Bad Day

  Chapter 29: A Really, Really Bad Day

  Chapter 30: But Seriously…It Gets Worse

  Chapter 31: Cashing in a Favor

  Chapter 32: A Necessary Reminder

  Chapter 33: A Clue in the Case

  Chapter 34: The Bookseller Retirement Community

  Chapter 35: A Is for Apologizing

  Chapter 36: Family

  Chapter 37: Collision Course

  Chapter 38: More Pieces of the Puzzle

  Chapter 39: The Girl Who Cried Wolf

  Chapter 40: Hammer Time

  Chapter 41: Checkshire

  Chapter 42: Breaking and Entering

  Chapter 43: Rendezvous

  Chapter 44: The Unreliable Detective

  Chapter 45: Breaking and Entering…Again

  Chapter 46: The Raven King’s Recipe

  Chapter 47: Moves and Countermoves

  Chapter 48: Unfinished

  Chapter 49: The Ninth Hearth

  Chapter 50: Just the Beginning

  Chapter 51: Neat Little Bows

  Epilogue: The Real World

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  When in Fable, do as the Fablefolk do.

  —St. Imaginate

  Once a week, Indira Story woke up early.

  Like before-the-sunrise early. Stars-still-in-the-sky early. I’m sure you know the feeling, my dear reader. The bed is warm. The floor is cold. Even the moon watches you, one eyebrow raised, a little unsure why anyone would get up at that hour. If you know the feeling, then you know exactly how Indira felt as she got ready that morning.

  She lit a single candle in the corner of her shack and started getting dressed. It was one of the few times that having just one outfit to her name came in handy. Even in the semidark, she never ended up putting on mismatched clothes, because these were her only clothes. She slid instinctually into a pink homespun shirt. The tunic was cinched at the waist by a well-worn leather belt, from which a silver hammer hung.

  She packed her bag with the two biscuits she’d saved from the day before. Her stomach growled a little because of the skipped meal, but she knew from experience that it was worth it. All packed up, she snuffed her candle and slipped quietly outside. The stars twinkled overhead.

  Indira walked beneath their gentle glow, moving past a row of identical shacks. All the other characters-in-waiting were asleep at this hour. She might catch an early riser or two practicing monologues, but most of them were dreaming of other worlds.

  She made her way down to the village proper. There were always a few people huddled by the docks. At this point, the morning crew recognized her. She received a few tired hat tips or mumbled greetings as a boat drifted toward them. Indira nodded in return before waiting her turn to climb aboard.

  It was a short trip. The boat ferried travelers from Origin—her hometown—to the neighboring town of Quiver. If you were out at sea, looking at the two towns side by side, it would be hard to tell which was which. Both cities had hunched buildings, their roofs decorated with green stones that looked almost like fish scales. Even the docks looked identical.

  But Indira had learned to recognize the differences. Origin was a hopeful place. It was full of characters who could still be chosen, who were still waiting to be invited to Fable to be trained at Protagonist Preparatory. Quiver, on the other hand, was populated by characters who hadn’t been chosen. Characters like her brother.

  Indira disembarked with the other travelers. Quiver’s streets felt particularly abandoned and sad this morning. Indira always shivered a little as she navigated through the alleys, following the familiar turns to reach her brother’s apartment. The door looked more like the entrance to a cupboard than an apartment, but Indira kept that thought to herself.

  She knocked twice. “Pizza delivery service!”

  Inside, there was rustling. It took another second of fiddling for her brother to work the stubborn lock open. The door gave a ghostly groan. David looked out at her sleepily. The two of them were clearly related. Both boasted the same amber-brown skin, dark hair that never behaved, and wide cheeks that—unfortunately—old ladi
es always wanted to pinch.

  “Pizza?” David asked skeptically. “You don’t really have pizza, do you?”

  Indira grinned before sliding past him and into the cramped apartment.

  “We can pretend it’s pizza,” Indira said. “Just like we can pretend your door isn’t haunted by a ghost that was obviously murdered here and now seeks vengeance.”

  David closed the door, and it offered another ghoulish groan.

  “I thought we agreed the ghost was cursed by a witch,” he said.

  Indira removed the biscuits she’d saved from the day before and set them on the table. A quick glance showed that David had not taken her advice from their last visit. The whole place was a mess. She gestured for him to take a seat. “Eat up before the ghost takes your biscuit.”

  As he took a seat, she set to work on the apartment. She picked up clothes that looked relatively clean and folded them in a stack in one corner. She ushered stray wrappers into an overflowing trash can. She even found an abandoned plate wedged under the mattress. Behind her, David let out a satisfied noise as he took his first bite of the delivered biscuit.

  “I miss the food over there,” he said with a full mouth.

  She finished tidying up and took the seat across from him. His eyes closed as he took a second bite. She noticed the way his shoulders hunched. He also had a few bruises running down one arm. David was only a few years older than her, but he looked so very tired.

  “How’s everything going, D?”

  He finished chewing. “Long hours, but it’s fine. I got promoted this week.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Promoted? That’s great.”

  He nodded. “Going deeper into the mine now. I have my own team and everything. We get assigned to some of the trickier story nuggets buried in there. You know the routine. We excavate the nugget. Another team refines the story idea. And then it’s straight to the Authors!” He smiled a little. “Without us, there’d barely be any stories at all!”

  Indira nodded along. She had heard David talk about all of this before. It was a good thing, she realized, that he had such a positive attitude. David liked to think of their world as one big system. Indira knew that his bosses preached about it all the time. Stories were a team effort. Everyone had an important part to play in creating them. But she also remembered how badly David had wanted to be an actual character in a story. Her brother was living proof that not everyone was chosen.

  “Anyways,” he was saying, “what about you? Training hard?”

  Instead of answering, Indira dug through her backpack. There was a little slip of paper buried at the bottom. She unfolded it and passed it across the table to David.

  His eyes went wide. “Oh, Indira! I’m so sorry.”

  It was the same eviction notice that David had been given a few years before. If a character-in-waiting lived in Origin for too long without being chosen, room had to be made for other characters. Indira hadn’t realized just how long she’d spent in Origin until she’d opened her little mailbox one morning and found the slip waiting with her breakfast biscuit.

  “I’m only going to get one more chance now, D. If I’m not chosen this time around…”

  She couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. If she wasn’t chosen this time, she’d end up in Quiver like him. Working a hard job. A part of the system, sure, but not training to be a character in an actual story. She’d spent so long dreaming of that future that she wasn’t sure how she’d bring herself to accept anything else. David walked around the table. He went down on one knee so that she couldn’t avoid looking at him. There was a fierceness in the look he gave her.

  “You’ve got this. I’m not sure why it’s taken so long, Indira. But you will be chosen. Look, I’m cut out for this kind of work. I like it just fine. But you? You’re supposed to be a hero. I can feel it in my bones, baby sister. You’re meant for more than this.”

  His words cut through her fears. Indira allowed herself a smile, and David swept in for a quick kiss on the cheek. “I don’t know when the next selection round will be,” he said. “But fight for it. I—I don’t want you to come back here. No more visits. I’m doing fine. I want you focused. Train until your bones ache, yeah? Put your nose to the grindstone. Got me?”

  “David. I’m not just going to abandon you.”

  He smiled back at her. “You’re not welcome here! Get lost!”

  She couldn’t help grinning. David always seemed to know the right thing to say. She watched as he unwrapped the other biscuit and handed it to her. He lifted his own in the air to offer up a proper toast. “To our last biscuit together! And to Indira Story, a hero in the making.”

  The two of them bumped biscuits. Indira did her best to smile and laugh, but as David got ready to go to work, she felt a little thread of fear snaking back through her. She couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her brother behind, but beneath that fear was a deeper one. What if she wasn’t chosen? What if she had to join her brother in Quiver forever?

  She gave David a hug and found it hard to let go. He finally pulled away and winked at her like it wasn’t a big deal, like this might not be the last time they’d ever see each other. She watched him join the growing stream of workers heading out for the morning. He waved back at her once and flexed an arm. It was a reminder. Be strong. Fight. She almost started crying as she nodded back, and then he vanished around a corner, lost in the crowd.

  Indira walked back toward the docks. At first, she convinced herself that she was going to ignore David’s request not to return. Of course she’d come back and visit her brother. But as she looked out over the dawn-lit ocean, she realized David was right. She needed to focus.

  This was her last chance.

  “I’ll be back,” she whispered. “But only when I find a story big enough for both of us.”

  And with that, she made her way back home.

  Peeve Meadows was playing the guitar. Again.

  Indira curled beneath a blanket, one house over, trying her best to not allow the strangled music to steal her precious sleep. Life in Origin offered very little comfort. Each of the characters-in-waiting assigned to the coastal town enjoyed the following: a private room, a comfortable bed, and a view of the sea. And right now, Peeve Meadows was ruining Indira’s favorite of the three.

  Indira rolled out of bed with a groan. She did the same thing she did every morning that she wasn’t visiting David, the same thing that every character in Origin would do as soon as they woke up: she looked out the window.

  Her shack offered a porthole view of the sea. Great crashing waves, a rocky shoreline, and the town’s rustic harbor. But Indira looked out past those things. They were just background noise. Every character set their eyes on the distant sky, hoping beyond hope to see the arrival of the Author Borealis.

  “Just clouds,” Indira said, rubbing her window with a sleeve. “Almost always clouds.”

  She sighed before heading outside, eager for breakfast. Her door opened on rusting hinges. She let it swing hard into the side of her shack, hoping the noise would give Peeve an idea of just how loud she was being. Indira walked out to the mailbox that was assigned to her decrepit shack. She popped the back of it with a fist, and the broken front came snapping open. Inside, she found a wrapped biscuit smothered in honey.

  A glance showed Peeve Meadows striding over from her identical shack with a smile on her face. Indira thought it was a little early in the day for smiling.

  “Good morning!” Peeve said. “Trying out a new song. I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

  Indira took another bite. “They say practice makes perfect.”

  “Exactly,” Peeve said, smiling again. “I thought it would make me a more rounded character, you know? If I don’t know how to play an instrument, I’m automatically disqualified from any stories about music. The teachers are alwa
ys telling us to broaden our horizons!”

  That was the standard instruction. The same advice Indira had heard every day she’d lived in Origin. Local teachers taught the characters-in-waiting to broaden their horizons. Become more well-rounded individuals. Develop interests and quirks. Anything to catch the eye of a potential Author. All it takes is one detail! One little thing to set off your beacon and earn your way to Protagonist Preparatory!

  “Good idea,” Indira said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “Maybe I should take up the piccolo.”

  She took a final bite of her biscuit before stuffing the wrapping back inside her mailbox. A single road led past all the identical shacks, curving ever so slightly out of view. Indira stretched her tired limbs and started off at a jog.

  “Where are you going?” Peeve called.

  “For a run,” Indira answered. “Broadening my horizons.”

  The characters that called Origin home had thousands of strategies and rituals and myths for getting noticed by the Authors. But Indira had been in Origin for years, and none of them seemed to work. Peeve was her newest neighbor. Indira shook her head, remembering that the Author Borealis had chosen the person living in that particular house four times now. She hadn’t even really bothered getting to know Peeve. It seemed unfair, but before long, one of them would be gone. Really, Indira was leaving either way.