Our crowd-sourced saga has concluded! The Twitterverse (with the assistance of New York Times Bestselling Author Neil Gaiman) has created a rollicking, epic fairytale, set in a fantasy world, with an endearing coming-of-age story at its heart.
Here's a brief summary of the eight-day-long story event. Stay tuned to this space for more updates and developments as we take our story through the editing and production stages of making an audiobook!
First line:
Sam was brushing her hair when the girl in the mirror put down the hairbrush, smiled & said, “We don't love you anymore.” (Posted by Neil Gaiman, @neilhimself)
Scene 1
The girl in the mirror speaks ominously to Sam of a promise once made to “them.” Sam tries desperately to remember and a memory flickers of a devil’s bargain she once made—the same day her brother disappeared. Then everything fades as Sam slips through the mirror into another world.
Scene 2
Sam wakes up in darkness on the other side of the glass. She’s only able to look on in horror while her mirror twin slips into her place in the world. Even her own mother doesn’t seem to recognize that she has been replaced by a substitute. As she begins to succumb to fear and panic, a voice in the darkness stops her. There’s a mysterious puppet speaking to her. The puppet suggests that the way out is not through the mirror and that it’s Sam’s own fault that this is happening. The puppet also tells Sam she is nothing more than a puppet herself in some ways, even making her dance as if she were on strings. It warns Sam that time is passing and the more she lingers, the more danger there is of her mirror twin causing unspeakable harm in Sam’s world. But it offers help—of an enigmatic sort. Unable to do much else, Sam follows the puppet further into this dark world.
Scene 3
Sam is trying to piece together where she is and what is happening. She has a faint memory of the day she made the promise to save her brother’s life. But it is elusive and fades before she can truly remember much. Suddenly the darkness gives way to light, as Sam finds she’s in the middle of a glittering city. It is a curious place, seemingly made of wood and wax, with many towers. She looks around and realize she is alone. Scared and confused, Sam searches for a way out, only to hear an eerie voice taunting her with an insidious rhyme. She runs to escape the voice to the nearest tower, but before she can gain entry, a loud cracking noise echoes from behind her.
Scene 4
A mysterious little man pulls up in a horse and carriage with a wagon full of shiny trinkets. He demands that Sam provide a trinket for admittance to a party thrown by Her Most Excellent Collector of Things. Unexpectedly, Sam finds a strange green egg in her pocket that glows and pulsates. She tries to offer it as payment but the man, a delivery man named Finnegan, tells her to put it away and keep it a secret. He drives her into the castle walls and past the guards to a golden staircase. Then Finnegan says she must go on alone. He also tells her that if she gets in trouble she should rub the egg three times and gives her a mysterious key that he says may come in handy in unlocking something important. He drives off and Sam faces the staircase.
Scene 5
Sam ascends the stairs to find a lavish party with a feast and music and dancing. In the midst of the ball, is a striking woman with green eyes and raven tresses and a blue velvet gown. The woman knows Sam’s name—and she knows her brother! She’s the one who collected him. They retire to the Queen’s parlor and she goads Sam into remembering the day she made the promise, the day her brother disappeared. Sam and her brother had an accident in the garden and the Queen had appeared as a mirror reflection. Sam had promised to go to the Queen’s world if she would save her brother but then she broke the promise and the Queen snatched the boy. Now Sam discovers her brother is still alive. She and the Queen have a standoff: the Queen wants Sam’s magic egg before she’ll give up her brother. But Sam doesn’t trust the queen and she rubs the egg. Darkness takes hold once more…
Scene 6
When Sam came to, she was in a room full of puppets. Suddenly she heard her brother’s voice calling her. She searches the room but doesn’t see a boy. Then one of the puppets speaks, demanding the egg! He uses her brother’s voice, but can it really be Bobby? Sam can’t believe it, but the puppet tricks her and steals the egg, which he says is a heart, and runs off with it. Sam chases him and the heart begins to pulsate and smoke. Suddenly a giant stuffed toy badger appears and chastises the puppet, knocking him down. The egg falls and Sam grabs it. Sam asks the badger if he knows what the egg is: Could it truly be a heart? The badger grins and tells her it’s not just any heart, it’s the Queen’s heart.
Scene 7
Sam hears the story of the woman who has become Queen of this mysterious land. The woman was once a puppet maker entreated with making a special puppet for a prince. She toiled hard but the puppet wasn’t grand enough. Then a magpie came along one day with a magic mirror. The mirror brought dead things to life and made living things die. This was the solution to the puppet maker’s problem! She would use the mirror to bring her toy to dazzling life. But the magpie insisted the Puppet Maker give her heart in exchange! The crafty woman felt this was too high a price, but she wanted the best puppet possible for the prince. So she tried to cheat, but the magic mirror pulled her through to the other side. Sam was enraptured by this familiar sounding tale but then an interruption: the Prince himself appeared! And he reveals that he is the twin brother of the Queen, separated from her at birth. He also tells Sam that the green stone egg, that she now knows to be the Queen’s heart, is the key to finding her brother, Bobby.
Scene 8
Elated to hear this, Sam asks what she must do to find her brother. The Prince takes her, the badger and Pinman on a wild chariot ride into the sky. Their map is a curious music box that plays a familiar tune from Sam’s childhood. The rhyme reveals that she must seek a rose of midnight blue and a door unseen. Suddenly the song stops and a bright light explodes in the sky and the chariot falls to the ground where a deep blue hue engulfs the land. Then everything stops and Badger spots attack bats in the sky sent by the Queen. The prince gives Sam the music box and tells her to run. She, Pinman and Badger flee into the darkness, but are unsure where to go next. She opens the music box but the tune doesn’t play. Badger spies a keyhole in the box, and Sam remembers the key in her pocket. She uses it and the lid slowly opens to reveal …a doll that looks exactly like Sam. Suddenly, the doll opens its mouth and screams one fateful word: “Impostor!”
Scene 9
In shock, Sam drops the box, the tiny voice echoing the refrain of her mirror twin from the day’s start: “We don’t love you anymore!” Suddenly, the Prince, wounded near-fatally, staggers forward and reveals that the doll is a part of Sam herself and that it holds the key to her understanding. He urgently reminds Sam to find the rose and remember the song, and then he dies tragically. Sam is saddened and furious, but forges on determined to find the blue rose. She happens on an invisible vine that pulls her, Pinman and Badger into a strange garden, filled with talking blue roses. She accidentally lands on one, breaking it and is confronted by an imperious paper swan wearing a crown embellished with a blue crystal rose. The swan demands she hand over her heart in exchange for the broken rose, but Sam cleverly thrusts the queen’s heart into Pinman’s hand and it starts smoldering. He lights the swan on fire, immolating her and Sam takes the crown, the rose emitting a blue-green glow that surrounds them…
Scene 10
Putting on the crown emboldens Sam with a sense of power, but brings her no closer to finding her brother. She inspects the blue rose and finds on its stem a thorn—a tiny shard of silver mirror. Sam thinks about pieces, pieces of herself and pieces of the puzzle—two brothers, two sisters, two promises broken. A key and a heart….but how do they unlock the mystery? She can’t quite put it together yet and time is a tickin’. Sam remembers the song mentioned a door and they search for a door unseen without luck. Then Sam puts on the crown once more and as Queen of the Roses, commands the flowers to show her the door. The blue crystal rose floats up and out of the crown breaking into a shimmering cloud of shards, in which a door forms. She uses the key and then the heart, finally wrenching the door open just in time for the three of them to tumble through before the Queen’s hunters swoop down to attack them. But the question remains…where are they now?
Scene 11
Sam, Pinman and Badger find themselves in a dark space, only to hear a voice and realize they are now inside the music box! The doppelganger doll tells Sam that she’s a piece of her and that she’ll need to reunite the fractured pieces of herself and love herself again to rescue herself and Bobby. There is an enchanted mirror in the music box that shows them the location of her brother Bobby—he’s a prisoner in the Queen’s castle, trapped in the body of a magpie..
Scene 12
Sam laments that the castle is too far to walk back to and that they’ll need transportation to get there. She knows just who she can call, and as she readies her trinket (the gold crown) she and her friends join forces with the doll and leave the music box, stepping through the mirror. No sooner are they through than their old friend Finnegan comes along with his carriage full of trinkets and sweeps them up to head to the Queen’s castle, but upon pulling up outside, they get a bit of a surprise. It seems the Queen’s very large army is waiting for them! (Dun, dun, dun!)
Scene 13
Sam and her friends are trying to come up with a way to slip past the Queen’s army when Pinman bravely (or foolhardedly?) decides to address the puppet army. His address seems to be failing to aid their situation, until Sam steps forward and, using the crown, commands them to dance. They are awed by her power over them, but Sam sets them all free, saying she will not exert control over them. The army is astounded by this and pledge to aid her. They part the way and allow her to go forward. As she approaches the long staircase up to the Queen’s castle, things look bleak, abandoned, desolate. She ascends the stairs and finds the Queen at the top, with a lifeless magpie in hand!
Scene 14
Sam is distraught over the seemingly dead bird. She entreats the Queen to fix it, and the Queen demands the heart. But suddenly the Prince appears! Sam is shocked, having seen him die, to find him here alive. He is cryptic but entreats her to give the heart to him instead. Confused, she demands the truth and threatens to smash the heart if they don’t confess it. They stall, but suddenly Sam gets an idea and she runs forward and snatches the magpie from the Queen. She presses the heart to its chest and a green glow spreads over them all. In the brightness, the bird floats up and its silhouette changes, lengthening and shedding its feathers. When the glare clears, a voice whispers “Sam?” It’s her brother, Bobby, and he’s human again.
Scene 15
Sam learns that Bobby may be human, but he’s not quite whole. When the Queen took him to save him from death, she healed him but hid pieces of him so he would not escape. His voice is with Pinman and his soul is with the Prince. With some help from Finnegan, she figures out the pieces of the puzzle and knows what to do. She takes the Queen’s crown which she got from the Paper Swan and breaks it into pieces. Then she, Pinman, the Prince, Bobby, the Queen and the music box Doll all grab hold of it. Reality swirls and they are transported. When Sam comes to, she realizes she’s looking at a familiar sight…herself.
Scene 16
Sam finds herself in the garden where it all began, the day her brother was hurt. She sees her younger self running after Bobby who holds the green stone heart. She pushes him and he falls, bleeding, to the ground. Nearby the mirror peeks out from beneath the leaves. Sam is distraught to see this all unfold once more and tries to warn herself. The evil Queen is reflected in the mirror and tries to make the fateful promise with younger Sam. Watching, Sam gets hold of the green stone heart and tosses it at the mirror shattering it and shattering the memory-mirage of the garden. Sam finds herself in her room again staring at a reflection of herself.
Scene 17
But something isn’t right…Sam can’t control her movements. She realizes that she is now the reflection trapped in the mirror. Her menacing mirror-twin sneers at her from the bedroom but Sam stands tall and confronts herself, insisting that she’s changed and learned from her mistakes. Slowly the mirror gets weaker and Sam gets stronger…strong enough to reach through the glass finally and grab her reflection and pass through to the other side. When she lands, she’s elated but worries that she’s alone. Where is her brother and her companions? Suddenly there’s a thumping in the hallway and someone enters her room. It’s Bobby! Alive and whole and wondering why Sam is so excited that he’s allright. He calls her to dinner and she realizes all has been restored in her world. But as he goes he hands her a mysterious item that came for her: the music box! She opens it to find the queen and prince as dancing dolls inside, while a new altered version of the song that’s long haunted her plays. She looks in the mirror and sees Pinman, the Badger and Finnegan waving to her and fading. When they disappear, only Sam remains, smiling at herself in the mirror. It’s good to be home.
THE END