The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (33 page)

“Ignoring what situation?” he said, not looking her in the eye. “We saw the Curvy Tree. It was just another story Dad heard and told us when we were younger. Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is.”

“That’s not what this is, and you know it!” Alex said, raising her voice.

“Alex, stop,” Conner said.

“Stop denying it!” she said.

“Alex, don’t!” he said.

“You’ve known since the minute we got here! You felt it, too!” Alex said. “I know you did! You may be able to lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me!”

“I’m not lying! You’re making things up in your head that you want to be true!” Conner said, trying to hide the tears forming in his eyes.

“All my life I felt like I was missing out on something! Like somewhere in the world there was something going on that I was supposed to be a part of! And now we’ve found it; it’s this place! Part of us belongs here!” she said with tears streaming down her face.

“YOU CAN’T PROVE IT!” Conner said.

“CONNER, FACE IT!” Alex yelled. “DAD IS FROM HERE! HE’S FROM THE LAND OF STORIES!”

“THEN WHY DIDN’T HE TELL US?” Conner shouted, and it echoed through the mines. “WHY DID HE KEEP IT FROM US?” He sat on the ground and quietly sobbed into his hands.

Alex sat on the ground next to her brother and cried with him. It was so much to take on, so much to digest.

“Maybe he felt like he couldn’t,” Alex said. “He always said he would take us to the places where he grew up when we were older. We’re still pretty young. Maybe he thought he would tell us when he thought we were old enough to understand.”

“I think ‘Hi, kids, did I ever tell you I’m from another dimension?’ is pretty shocking no matter what age you are,” Conner said.

“It’s such a heavy thing to confess,” Alex said. “He must have been waiting for the right moment. Unfortunately, the right moment didn’t come until it was too late.”

“So does that mean Grandma is from here, too?” Conner asked.

“I’m guessing so,” Alex said.

“Then how did they get to our world? There must be more than one way besides the Wishing Spell,” Conner said.

“There must be,” Alex said. “But the Wishing Spell is all we’ve got so far, so we need to keep looking for the glass coffin if we ever want to see Mom again.”

The twins dried their tears and continued their search into the mines.

“You don’t think Mom is from here, too, do you?” Conner asked.

“I doubt it,” Alex said. “She has photo albums of her childhood. Dad only had stories.”

“Do you think she knows?” Conner asked.

“She has to,” Alex said. “How could she not? They were married for more than a decade.”

“Then maybe she knows where we are,” Conner suggested. “Maybe she isn’t as worried about us as we thought.”

The twins spent another hour just walking through the mines. Conner had seen so many tunnels that he felt like his mind was starting to play tricks on him. He could have sworn he kept seeing things running around in the shadows.

“Did you see that?” he asked, paranoid.

“You’re just seeing shadows,” Alex said.

“Oh,” Conner said. “I could have sworn it was… Never mind.”

The twins found a long, miniature table with a few dozen miniature chairs around it. It looked like an area where the dwarfs took breaks from working. A large portrait of Snow White hung on the dirt wall behind it, and a glass coffin with rubies and diamonds sat against the wall underneath it.

“Bingo,” Conner said. He used a pick that had been left on the table to pry a few of the jewels loose from the coffin and placed them in Alex’s bag. He could see where a few had already been taken by others before them.

“That was easy,” Conner said.

As soon as he turned around to face his sister, he wished he hadn’t just said that.

“Conner?” Alex said, looking at her brother, who was completely petrified.

Through the dim flames of their lanterns, the twins saw a dozen humongous black wolves circling them. They were surrounded by the Big Bad Wolf Pack. The wolves growled at the twins and gritted their teeth.

“Stay back!” Conner said, and swung the pick at them.

This didn’t affect them at all. A few of them snickered.

“Are these them?” one wolf said.

“Yes,” another wolf said. “We’ve been tracking their scent for days!”

“Hello, children,” said Malumclaw, creeping toward them. “I would say, ‘Nice to meet you,’ but I can tell from your smell that we have crossed paths before.”

“Please don’t hurt us!” Alex said. She was shaking with fear and clutching on to Conner.

“Can we eat their limbs at least?” another wolf said. “
She
doesn’t need their limbs? Does she?”

“She?” Alex asked. “Who is
she
?”

“We agreed we would bring them to her unharmed,” Malumclaw said regretfully, looking toward the twins. “You’re coming with us!”

“Conner,” Alex whispered to her brother. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Conner said. He placed his lantern
on the ground and took a step closer to Malumclaw.
“Bad dog! Very bad dog! Sit!”

The wolves and Alex all had the same exact expression on their faces. What was he doing?

“I said sit! That’s a very bad dog! Go to your basket!”
continued Conner, shaking his index finger at Malumclaw. Whatever he thought he was doing was failing miserably, and it was just insulting the wolves.

“I changed my mind,” Malumclaw told his pack. “You can eat their limbs.”

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” Conner said, looking back at his sister.

“I’m not!” Alex said.

In one quick move, Alex kicked the lantern Conner had placed on the ground, and it soared across the tunnel and crashed into one of the wolves, setting him partially ablaze. The wolves rushed to help extinguish their friend. Alex grabbed Conner’s hand, and they ran farther down the tunnel, going deeper into the mines.

“After them!” Malumclaw commanded, and the remaining members of the pack chased after them.

The twins ran as fast as they could. They only had one lantern left, so they were practically in the dark. They could hear the wolves stampeding behind them. Their howls were unbearably loud as they echoed down the tunnel. The tunnel began to descend, making it nearly impossible for the twins to run.

“Jump in there!” Conner said, pointing to a mine cart on a track.

“No way!” Alex said, but Conner picked her up and plopped her inside. He jumped inside himself and pulled the brake lever, and the cart began traveling down the tunnel at a rapid speed.

A few of the wolves swiped at them with their claws. The twins ducked down as far as they could in the cart, but not before one of them reached Conner and left a bloody scratch on his forearm. Alex kicked another right in the snout, and it whimpered away. Another wolf barely missed the twins with his claws but knocked the brake lever right off the cart.

The cart gained speed, and soon they were outrunning the wolves.

“We’re doing it! We’re getting away!” said Conner, holding his hand over his wounded arm.

“I wouldn’t celebrate just yet if I were you!” Alex said. She pointed to a sign ahead that said:

“That’s not good!” Conner yelled, wishing for the lever to somehow grow back on their cart.

The cart began speeding faster down the tunnel as it
descended at a steeper angle. They were going so fast—
too fast!
They could barely open their eyes with the air rushing by their faces. The track turned and dipped deeper into the mountain. The twins were afraid they were going to fly out of the cart if it didn’t fly right off the track first. It was the scariest roller coaster they had ever been on.

“This would be awesome if it weren’t for the fear of death!” Conner shouted. He was even tempted to put his hands up, but he knew it wasn’t an appropriate time.

The cart zoomed through the mines, showing no sign of slowing down. In a matter of seconds, the twins’ greatest fear had gone from being eaten alive by wolves to crashing in a dwarf mine. The track led them through a giant cave with stalactites pointing toward stalagmites and a large pool of water at the very bottom.

To the twins’ horror, they passed another sign, which said:

DEAD END

It appeared an avalanche of rocks had fallen on the track many years before, and now the twins were speeding toward the solid wall of rock that had formed there. The twins ducked as low as they could in the mine cart, bracing themselves for the traumatic injuries they were about to receive.

The cart slammed against the rocks. It violently rattled as it broke through the wall. A few rocks fell into the cart and onto the twins. Alex screamed, and Conner covered
his head as much as possible with his arm. Just when they thought they were surely about to die, the cart slowly came to a stop.

The twins peeked around from inside the cart. They were outside, somewhere in the Dwarf Forests, on the other side of the mountain.

“I cannot believe we just survived that,” Conner said. They were pretty banged-up, but they climbed out of the cart not seriously injured for the most part.

They didn’t waste a minute questioning their luck. The twins ran from the cart into the trees.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Alex said. “It won’t be long before the wolves find us again!”

“Who were they talking about? Who were they going to bring us to?” Conner asked.

“I’m afraid to even say it—
Aaaaaahhhh!
” Alex screamed.

They hadn’t been in the forest for even a minute when they both felt brutal blows to the backs of their heads. They fell to the ground, slowly losing consciousness.

Right before they passed out completely, the twins saw the faces of Bobblewart the troll and Egghorn the goblin looking down at them, each holding a club in his hand.

The twins woke up with splitting headaches. They were bound together with rope in the back of a very familiar cart.

“Hey, Egghorn, look who’s waking up,” Bobblewart said.

“The little thieves have arisen,” Egghorn said.

The goblin and troll were driving the same exact cart, but it was being pulled by a different donkey; the previous one had most likely been used to death. They kept Alex’s bag between them as they traveled down the road. Alex and Conner fought against the ropes, but they were tied with triple knots around their hands and feet.

“Where are we?” Conner asked.

Alex strained her neck looking up out of the cart but managed to recognize some familiar trees.

“We’re back where they caught us the first time!” Alex said. “We must have been knocked out for an entire day!”

“Would you like us to make it two days?” asked Egghorn, raising his club.

“This can’t be happening again,” Conner said. “You can’t enslave us again! We told the fairies about you!”

“Oh, yes, we know,” Bobblewart said.

“They came and gave us all very long lectures about it,” Egghorn said.

“And they shut off all of our tunnels, thanks to you!” Bobblewart said angrily. “Now we have to take the long way into our territory!”

“Then let us go!” Conner said.

“Not this time,” Egghorn said. “You stole our kings’ crown while in our kingdom. According to the Happily Ever After Assembly’s rules, we have every right to bring you back into our kingdom and charge you for your crime.”

“It’s gonna be one heck of a trial!” Bobblewart said. “Every troll and goblin will be there!”

“And we’ve already scheduled you for beatings after the trial is over! Everyone in the territory will get a turn!” Egghorn said, and he and the troll howled with laughter.

Conner stayed calm about the matter. He raised his tied hands just over the side of the cart. The scratch on his arm was still healing, and he stretched so a few drops of his blood fell from his wound and onto the ground as they traveled.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked him.

“I’m leaving a trail,” Conner said.

She didn’t know what to think of this, but she trusted him. Whatever he was doing, he had a plan.

A few hours later, the twins had managed to shift themselves up into a seated position. The troll and the goblin continued entertaining themselves by predicting the horrible things the twins would go through once they got back to the Troll and Goblin Territory.