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Sleeping Beauty

Once upon a ti a time after all the happily-ever-afters, and perhaps even after the ever-afters after that, all the evil villains of the world were banished frodom of Auradon and imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost There, underneath a protective dome that kept all manner of enchantment out of their clutches, the terrible, the treacherous, the truly awful, and the severely sinister were cursed to live without the power of ic

King Beast declared the villains exiled forever

Forever, as it turns out, is quite a long tier, even, than an ier than a week of being turned into a frog, and certainly et around to placing that glass slipper on your foot already

Yes, forever is a long, long, long time

Ten years, to be specific Ten years that these legendary villains have been trapped on a floating prison of rock and rubble

Okay, so you ; but for these conjurers and witches, viziers and sorcerers, evil queens and dark fairies, to live without ic was a sentence worse than death

(And soht back from death, only to be placed on this island—so, um, they should know)

Without their awesome powers to dominate and hypnotize, terrorize and threaten, create thunderclouds and lightning storuise their features or lie andexactly what they wanted, they were reduced to hardscrabble lives, eking a living selling and eating slop, scaring no one but their ownfroine they once had been great and powerful, these poisoners of forest apples and thieves of undersea voices, these usurpers of royal powers and owners of petulant mirrors

Now their lives were anything but powerful Now they were ordinary Everyday

Dare it be said? Dull

So it ith great exciteathered for a one-of-a-kind event: a six-year-old princess’s wickedly wonderful birthday party Wicked being so of a relative term under a dome that houses a bunch of powerless former villains

In any event, a party it was

It was the nificent celebration the isolated island and its banished citizens had ever seen, and tales of its gothic grandeur and obnoxious opulence would be told for years to come The party to end all parties, this lavish occasion transfor storefronts in the round, full of ghostly lanterns and flickering candles

Weeks before, a flock of vultures had circled the land, dropping invitations on every shabby doorstep and hovel so that every grubby little urchin from every corner of the island would be able to partake in this enchanting and extraordinary event

Every little urchin on the island, that is, except for one malicious little fairy

Whether her invitation was lost to the winds and torn to tatters or devoured by the hungry buzzards the royal scrawl, as was suspected, ill never know

But the result was the same