The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (20 page)

Alex and Conner couldn’t stop staring at the portrait of Prince Charlie. There was a sad energy in this part of the hallway, and the twins were especially sensitive to it. The long-lost prince couldn’t have been much older than them when he’d gone missing.

Lampton clearly appreciated the twins’ interest. “Now, follow me, I have something very special I want to show you,” Lampton said.

Lampton led the twins down another hallway that led deeper into the palace. This part of the palace was completely vacant, and it made the twins more and more nervous as they walked. They had no idea where Lampton was taking them, and they were too timid to ask.

They rounded a corner, and at the end of another long
hall was a pair of black double doors. There were two guards on either side of the doors and a large stone arch above them with a sign that read Q
UEEN
C
INDERELLA’S
R
OYAL
R
OOM OF
D
ISPLAY
.

Alex and Conner looked to each other with light in their eyes. They had made it!

“Hello, Sir Lampton,” one of the guards said.

“Good evening,” Lampton said. He pushed opened the doors, and the twins followed him inside. They set their bags down and looked around the room.

The display room was a wide chamber with white pillars and a sky-blue tiled floor. The ceiling was domed and covered in golden stars. The room was illuminated by moonlight coming from a large window in the back and then reflected throughout by a series of hanging mirrors.

Several special objects were on display and placed on the top of short pillars and surrounded by thick glass cases. Brooms, buckets, and old raggedy dresses were all put on show. A family of mice lived in a glass case in a miniature replica of the palace.

In the very center of the room were Cinderella’s glass slippers. They were beautiful and petite, made from pure crystal glass and decorated with diamonds.

The twins could feel their hearts sink into the pits of their stomachs as soon as they saw them. They were so close!

“Those are beautiful,” Alex said. The slippers had put her in a trance.

“I’m quite partial to them myself,” said a soft voice that didn’t belong to Alex, Conner, or Lampton.

Sitting on the windowsill in the back of the room was Cinderella herself. They had been so astonished by the display room, they hadn’t noticed her.

“Your Majesty,” Lampton said. “Please forgive me; I didn’t see you there. I was just giving some guests a tour of the palace.”

“Quite all right, Sir Lampton,” Cinderella said, and walked across the chamber to greet them. “I like to come in here occasionally after long days to clear my head. Who might these two be?”

Alex and Conner couldn’t speak. They were completely starstruck.

“This is Alex and Conner,” Lampton told her.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Cinderella said, and held out her hand.

“We’re big fans!”
Conner said, and shook her hand a little too hard.

Alex couldn’t move. “You’re… like, my hero,” Alex said to her, and that’s all she could manage to say.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Cinderella said. “Welcome to my little room of memories.”

“It’s…
remarkable
!” Alex squeaked.

“Would you like me to show you around?” Cinderella asked.

Alex still couldn’t move her limbs but was able to nod.

Cinderella began a small tour and took them around the room to each of the items on display.

“These are the brooms and buckets I used to clean my stepmother’s house every day,” Cinderella said. “They were my first dancing partners. I remember, whenever I was home alone, I used to dance with them around the house and pretend I was at a big royal dance. Although, I must say they weren’t the best at conversation.”

Cinderella and Lampton laughed. Alex and Conner were still in shock that they were in her presence.
They were standing next to
Cinderella
! And she had a sense of humor!

“Over here are my raggedy old clothes that my Fairy Godmother turned into a beautiful ball gown,” Cinderella continued. “They’re not much to look at now, but whenever my Fairy Godmother visits us, they turn back into the beautiful ball gown she created for me.”

“That’s really cool,” Conner said.

“These are my mice,” Cinderella said, and showed the twins the miniature palace full of mice. She opened a latch and took a mouse out of the case. She gently petted it, and it peacefully nestled in her hand.

“Are they the mice that were transformed into horses and coachmen for your carriage?” Alex asked, finally finding her voice.

“The original mice passed away, but these are their children and their children’s children,” Cinderella said. “I look after them as a thank-you. They have a horrible
reputation, but mice are actually very gentle creatures. You just have to give them a chance.”

Cinderella put the mouse back with the others and walked to the center of the room.

“And these, I believe, need no explanation,” she said, and brought the twins to the glass slippers. She removed the glass case entirely and took one of the glass slippers in her hand.

“Those couldn’t have been comfortable,” Conner said.

“They were surprisingly easy to move about in,” Cinderella said.

“Did your feet ever get sweaty?” Conner went on. “That couldn’t have looked really—
uhh
!” Alex elbowed him in the ribs.

Cinderella snickered.

“Would you like to hold one?” Cinderella asked them.

Alex nodded harder than she had ever nodded before. Cinderella gently lifted one from the pillar and handed it to her. A magical feeling went through Alex. She was holding a piece of fairy-tale history. Perhaps the most famous object of all fantasy time was in her hands. She couldn’t help but get a bit emotional.

Conner, on the other hand, kept thinking of ways to steal the slipper. Alex looked up at her brother and knew what he was thinking by the intensity in his eyes. For a moment they shared the same thought. Was it possible to take off with it? Conner was actually thinking if it was possible to outrun Lampton and the two guards outside the door.

“What was it like?” Alex asked Cinderella. “What was it like to go from being a servant to being queen? What was it like to be saved from a horrible situation? Your life is literally… well… a Cinderella story.”

A sadness came to Cinderella’s face.

“I never thought my life would change so drastically, so I always made the most of what I had,” Cinderella said. “I always laugh at the term
Cinderella story
, because, if you ask me, it doesn’t matter what life you’re living, life never has a solution. No matter how hard the struggles are that you leave behind, new struggles always take their place.

“People forget that I wasn’t liked very much by the people of the Charming Kingdom when I first came to live at the palace,” Cinderella said. “Not too many people were thrilled with the idea of a servant girl becoming their queen. Many people called me
the Pumpkin Princess
or
the Mouse Monarch
when they first discovered the details of how I had come to the ball that night. I had to earn the kingdom’s respect, and it wasn’t easy.”

“Being a queen has to have some perks, though, right?” Conner asked. “No more scrubbing floors or dancing with cleaning supplies or talking to mice.”

“Meeting the man of my dreams and starting a family is the best thing that will ever happen to me,” Cinderella said with a smile, and rubbed her belly. “And that is what makes me the happiest and luckiest woman in the world. However, living a public life is a difficult thing to do, and even now I still find it a bit overwhelming. No matter what you
do, you can never please everyone. And that was the hardest lesson to learn. In fact, I’m still learning it.”

This was all such a revelation to Alex. Suddenly, the fairy-tale world seemed even more real than it had before. She never thought she could respect Cinderella more than she already did, but she had never thought about the story from
her
point of view.

Alex set the glass slipper back beside the other one. At first Conner shot her a look:
What are you doing? We have to steal that!
But they both knew they couldn’t take it; at least not tonight, not after the kindness they had been shown.

“After all the magical things that have happened in my life, this is my most prized possession,” Cinderella said, her hands still on her pregnant stomach. “And she’s going to be here any day now.”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” Alex asked.

“Mother’s intuition,” Cinderella said. “She never sits still when she hears music. So she must have my taste and her father’s energy.”

One of the guards from the hallway burst into the display room.

“Your Majesty, Sir Lampton, your presence has been requested in the ballroom,” the guard said very seriously. Something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” Sir Lampton asked.

“Soldiers from the Northern Kingdom. They’ve come with a message for the king and queen,” he said.

Lampton handed the twins their bags, and before they knew it the twins were following him, Cinderella, and the other guards out of the display room and down the hallway toward the ballroom.

“Now how are we going to get ahold of one of the glass slippers?” Conner whispered to Alex.

“We’ll have to collect all the other items first and then come back for it,” Alex said. “It should be easier to explain why we need it if we have the other items. We’ve already established a trusting relationship with them.”

“I knew I should have grabbed one when I had the chance,” Conner said.

They reentered the ballroom. All the guests were still and the orchestra was dead silent. Cinderella reunited with her husband at the thrones. Dozens of the same soldiers dressed in silver armor whom Alex and Conner had seen on their first day in the Land of Stories were now spread throughout the ballroom.

“Forgive our intrusion, Your Majesty. My name is Sir Grant. I am the head of Queen Snow White’s Royal Guard. We have news regarding the Evil Queen,” the leader of the soldiers said.

“What is it?” King Charming said.

Everyone in the room could tell it was not good news by his tone. You could have cut the tension and worry in the air with a knife.

“Last night, a magic mirror that belonged to the Evil Queen was stolen from her former chambers,” Sir Grant
said. “The Evil Queen is still very much at large, and that she has her former mirrors makes her a much greater threat to all of us. We are asking—
pleading—
if anyone in the Charming Kingdom knows anything about where the Evil Queen is hiding, that they please let us know immediately.”

Snow White’s soldiers filed out of the ballroom. King Charming and Cinderella embraced each other, worried both for themselves and for what the news meant for their kingdom.

“It was lovely to meet you children, but I must go now,” Lampton said to them. He patted their shoulders and then headed out after the soldiers.

Many of the guests began leaving as well. Alex and Conner followed them out, down the entrance steps, and away from the palace.

“This whole Evil Queen situation is starting to concern me,” Alex said.

“I know, but it’s not really our problem,” Conner said. “We’ll be long gone before anything else happens.”

“I suppose so,” Alex said.

“Where are we off to now?” Conner asked.

“The Little Red Riding Hood Kingdom is north of here,” Alex said. “I say that’s the best direction to head. I hope we have better luck getting hold of Red Riding Hood’s basket.”

“We’d better not chicken out this time,” Conner said. “Gosh, we were
so close
!” He clenched a tight fist.

“We just couldn’t have taken it, not without permission,” Alex said. “It wouldn’t have felt right.”

“I’m so tired of being a good person,” Conner said.

Despite having failed to collect a glass slipper and the abrupt end to their evening, the twins had had a pretty fantastic night. It wasn’t every day that they got to have such an intimate conversation with one of the most famous women in history.

Luckily, the twins found a night driver transporting a cart full of pears to a village in the northern part of the Charming Kingdom. They convinced him to let them ride in the back of his carriage in exchange for a few gold coins. It would only be a few miles’ walk to the Red Riding Hood Kingdom from there.

Conner fell asleep as soon as they climbed aboard. Alex couldn’t sleep, so she decided to read through the journal again. She reached into her bag and was astounded to discover what was inside it.

“Conner!” Alex gasped.

Conner jumped back to consciousness. “What is it?” he asked.

He looked over and saw something very shiny in his sister’s hand. His eyes were still a little blurry from sleeping, and he had to let them adjust before realizing what it was.

“A glass slipper!” Conner exclaimed, and Alex gestured for him to keep quiet so the driver wouldn’t hear them. “How in the world did we get one? Did you steal it?”

“I thought it was you!” Alex’s mouth was so wide, it could have fit a dozen of the pears inside it.

“No, it wasn’t me, I swear! Do you think Lampton or Cinderella put it in your bag?” Conner asked. “Do you think one of them knew we needed it?”

“I have no idea,” Alex said. She couldn’t believe she was actually holding on to one of Cinderella’s glass slippers. They both were completely dumbfounded.

“Looks like our trip to the Charming Kingdom wasn’t such a waste after all,” Conner said.