The Ballad of Never After

In these chapters, Garber focuses on Evangeline dismissing the idea that Jacks is the archer because she doesn’t want to believe it. The foreshadowing of her fox costume at the ball and Jacks’s archer nickname has hinted throughout that Jacks and Evangeline are playing the parts of the archer and fox from the ballad. Garber employs metafictional aspects when she suggests that Evangeline’s belief in happy endings may be slipping, which creates suspense for the reader regarding what the ending of this book will be. Having never been able to hear the ending of the ballad, Evangeline believes that the archer and fox find a way to be together. However, faced with the idea that she and Jacks are the fox and archer, she shies away from this ending. Evangeline hence becomes a proxy for the reader, invested in narrative endings.

Garber both resolves and reintroduces elements of mystery in these chapters in order to drive the plot. On one hand, a handsome stranger repeatedly appears in Evangeline’s dreams, who is later revealed to be Chaos. On the other hand, the mysterious air of these dreams also generates moments of resolution: LaLa finally explains her full backstory and motivation for cursing and manipulating Evangeline, which enriches Garber’s exploration of the theme of Manipulation. Despite the physical danger and emotional turmoil that LaLa’s actions have caused Evangeline, Evangeline forgives her, feeling that LaLa’s actions are justified because she did them in the name of finding her true love. Evangeline’s characterization hence underpins the theme of The Power of Love. She puts the wants of others above her own well-being and is quick to forgive, even though LaLa’s actions have almost gotten her killed several times.

The tiny dragon foreshadows the mirth stone being the gem on the clock pendulum. It also symbolizes the magic of the Hollow, which is shown in the following chapter when Jacks’s wound heals on its own. While Jacks’s characterization has been largely static in the series so far, Chapter 37 provides a major turning point in which Jacks is tender and loving in contrast to his usual aloof, sarcastic manner. This scene provides a bridge to the romantic climax later when Jacks uses the four stones to reverse time and bring her back because he refuses to live in a world that doesn’t include her. However, Garber resists resolution by framing the narrative under the guise of pretense. Rather than confess and move forward with a new dynamic between them, Jacks says that they can go back to pretending that they don’t care later. Jacks’s character development is hence nonlinear since this scene presents a tender singularity in the romantic subplot.

The magical setting of the Hollow provides a period of relative calm and inactivity in order to build suspense before chapters of major action. This is emphasized when, in Chapter 40, Evangeline is torn about taking the mirth stone. She wants to stay at the Hollow because the time there has been blissful, but she also realizes that she has responsibilities to people outside the Hollow. This setting hence also provides a space in which Garber explores Evangeline’s internal conflicts. Holding Jacks and committing him to memory provides the final content moment before Garber returns the text to its external conflicts. Taking the mirth stone from the clock will change everything, and Evangeline is fortifying herself against what she expects to come, as well as admitting, if only to herself, that she genuinely cares for Jacks.