The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (34 page)

Conner began seeing dark figures running between the trees in the distance like he had seen in the cave.

“Get ready,” Conner said. “They’re here.”

Alex mentally prepared herself for whatever was about to happen. “That was faster than I expected,” she said.

A small howl came from the trees. Egghorn and Bobblewart pulled on their donkey’s reins and ordered it to stop. The cart came to a halt.

“Did you hear that?” Egghorn asked.

“Yeah, I did,” Bobblewart said.

They both pulled out their clubs and hopped off the cart, circling it for a moment.

“Over there!” Bobblewart said. “I see something!”

The troll and the goblin took off into the trees.

“Help me get to my bag!” Alex said to her brother. They began inching toward the front of the cart. Alex got ahold of her school bag with her teeth and dragged it into the back with them. It landed right by her tied hands, and she managed to open it and pull out Cinderella’s glass slipper, almost spraining her wrist in the process.

“What are you doing?” Conner asked her.

“Something that is going to hurt my soul and make me hate myself for the rest of my life,” Alex said. She forcefully hit the slipper against the floor of the cart and broke it into three pieces. She used one of the shards to cut her and her brother loose.

“Whoa,” Conner said. “Never in a million years did I think you would do that! That was pretty gangster.”

“We can glue it back together, right?” Alex said, trying to frantically put the glass slipper back together like a puzzle.

“It’ll still work for the Wishing Spell, won’t it?” Conner asked.

“The spell never said it had to be in one piece,” Alex said.

They put the pieces of the slipper into Alex’s bag and
jumped out of the cart. They ran into the forest in the opposite direction than the troll and the goblin had gone. A few moments later, they heard spine-chilling screams and howls as the troll and the goblin were attacked by the Big Bad Wolf Pack.

The horrible sounds made the twins run faster. They knew it would be only a matter of seconds before the wolves picked up on their scents and would be right behind them. They didn’t even know where they were going; they just knew they had to get somewhere safe as fast as possible.

Alex was eyeing the forest around them. There was a deep roar coming from close by. Could they be near the ocean?

“We’re farther south than I thought!” Alex said. “I think we may be back in the Fairy Kingdom!”

“Then let’s find a fairy who can turn these wolves into Chihuahuas!” Conner said. He turned back, and in the distance behind them he could see several wolves running toward them at full speed. A moment later, the twins saw the wolves running slightly ahead of them to both their right and their left, gaining ground and preparing for the attack.

The twins ran through a set of thick trees and then came to a sudden and jarring stop. They were standing on the edge of a very high cliff overlooking the ocean.

“How’d we get to the ocean so fast?” Conner yelled.

“Look,” Alex said. “It’s Mermaid Bay! We’re somewhere between the Fairy Kingdom and the Sleeping Kingdom.”

Conner looked behind them. The wolves were only a few feet away from pouncing on them.

“No, it looks like we’re somewhere between death and dying!” Conner said. “Alex, I’m really sorry about this!”

“Sorry about wha—
ahhhhhh!”
Alex screamed.

Conner pushed his sister and himself off of the cliff seconds before they would have been tackled by the wolves. They were falling so fast that they couldn’t breathe or hear each other’s screams. All they could hear was the air rushing past them.

The twins plummeted into the ocean. The wolves stayed on top of the cliff for a few minutes, waiting for them to surface in the water, but they saw nothing. The twins were gone.

I
t was just before sundown, and soldiers from the Corner Kingdom were hot on Goldilocks’s trail. She had been spotted on the outskirts of Baker’s Village in the early afternoon, and had been on the run ever since. A group of twenty men were right behind her on their horses, determined to take her into custody by any means necessary. Lucky for her, Goldilocks had the fastest horse in all the kingdoms.

“Come on, Porridge,” Goldilocks said to her horse. “You can make it, girl. We’re almost to the border.”

They passed Rapunzel’s tower and crossed into the Dwarf Forests, but the soldiers kept chasing her. In doing so, they were breaking laws that the Happily Ever After Assembly had enacted, but then again, Goldilocks had broken so many laws she had lost count, so she doubted the soldiers would experience any repercussions for it.

Porridge had an advantage over the other horses, since she knew the Dwarf Forests by heart. She and Goldilocks gained a lot of ground from knowing what was behind every tree and which paths led where.

“Split up and find her!” Goldilocks heard one of the soldiers order from behind her.

Goldilocks could feel her horse getting tired. They had been running for hours, and she knew Porridge needed a break soon if they were going to stay on the run any longer.

They came across an abandoned barn that was partially hidden by trees. Goldilocks had often used this place to hide from anyone hot on her trail.

“Porridge, I’m going to hide in here and wait it out,” Goldilocks told her loyal horse. “Find someplace safe and rest. Meet me back here tomorrow at sunrise.”

Porridge nodded and galloped away. Goldilocks withdrew her sword and approached the barn. The door was off its hinges; it looked like someone or something had forced its way in recently.

The inside of the barn was a disaster. Stacks of hay were knocked over, stables were broken down into nothing but bits of broken wood, and there were bloodstains on the floor and walls. But thankfully, whatever had caused this damage wasn’t here anymore.

Goldilocks put away her sword. She wasn’t intimidated by the barn in the slightest; she had seen much worse, had been through much worse, and had caused much worse in her days on the run.

She took off her long coat and her sword, and began unlacing her tall boots, getting ready to settle in for the night. Something colorful caught her eye while she was doing so. A bright blue fabric was sticking out from the bottom of a stack of hay.

Goldilocks pulled it out from under the haystack and examined it. It was a beautiful bright blue gown with delicate stitching. It reminded Goldilocks of a dress she had owned when she was a girl. It had been so long since the last time she’d worn a dress.

She discovered a mirror hanging on the barn wall. It was slightly tilted and had cracks on the bottom half, but she could still see her reflection perfectly. She didn’t like what she saw. Goldilocks was young, but she had aged so much since the last time she had seen her reflection so clearly. She was a full-grown woman now.

Goldilocks undressed and put on the blue dress. She let her hair down and ruffled it up a bit. She wiped off all the dirt on her face with a handkerchief and looked in the
mirror again. She stared at herself, completely awestruck; she had forgotten how beautiful she could be. She only wished Jack could see her looking like this.

“Such beauty, such a waste,” said a voice.

In the blink of an eye, Goldilocks had retrieved her sword and extended it in front of her.

“Who’s there?” Goldilocks demanded, but she didn’t see anyone else in the barn.

“If only the world could see what I see now: Goldilocks, a woman feared throughout all the kingdoms, standing vulnerably in a dress,” said the voice.

“Don’t be a coward. Show yourself!” Goldilocks said. She turned back to the mirror, but didn’t see her reflection. Another woman, with a pale face and in a dark, hooded cloak, was staring back at her.

“Hello, Goldilocks,” said the woman in the mirror.

“You!” Goldilocks said. There was only one woman in the world who could possibly have the ability to communicate from mirror to mirror. “I know you. You’re the queen everyone is looking for.”

“Yes,” the Evil Queen said. “We’re both women on the run.”

“What do you want with me?” Goldilocks said.

“Why do you assume I need something from you?” the Evil Queen said. “I’ve appeared to you simply to pass along some information I’ve recently acquired.”

“Nice try, but I’m not some ditzy maiden you can con,”
said Goldilocks, getting closer to the mirror. “Try giving
me
a poisoned apple, and I’ll shove it down your throat.”

“No, of course not,” the Evil Queen said in a mocking tone. “You’re just poor little Goldilocks, a girl who was tricked into thinking she was going on a date with the boy she loved, and has been running from the law ever since.”

Goldilocks stepped away from the mirror. “How do you know that?” she asked with intensity in her eyes.

“I know more about you than anyone,” the Evil Queen said. “I know that when you were a young girl, you received a handwritten letter from a young boy you loved named Jack. He asked you to meet him at a house a little way out of town and gave instructions on how to get there. You went to the house and waited and waited for hours, but he never showed up.”

“How do you know all this?” Goldilocks asked.

“You became sleepy in that house, didn’t you?” the Evil Queen continued. “So you decided to go to sleep in one of the beds and hoped you’d wake to find him. But you didn’t wake to him, did you? You woke to find three bears staring down at you, and they almost killed you. You barely escaped the house alive, but the bears pressed charges against you anyway for breaking into their home and, being young and scared, you ran. You ran and have been running ever since.

“For years you wondered how Jack could have done that to you. How could he have framed you like that? And then
finally one night you snuck into the Red Riding Hood Kingdom and asked him. But Jack told you he’d grown up poor and illiterate; he hadn’t sent you the letter because he never learned to write. Someone
else
did. Someone
else
framed you.

“Jack had been looking for you for years. He was devastated when you disappeared. He even climbed a beanstalk looking for you. You two have been meeting covertly in the shadows for almost a decade now.”

“Who told you that?” Goldilocks asked.

“Every driven person comes from a mountain of pain they wish to keep hidden,” the Evil Queen said. “I did my research on you, Goldilocks, and you and I aren’t so different. Except, I know who wrote you that letter.”

Goldilocks shook her head in disbelief. How could she know something Goldilocks had been trying to discover her entire life?

“And who might that be?” she asked.

“Red Riding Hood, of course,” the Evil Queen said.

“What?” Goldilocks said. She almost stopped breathing.

“It’s true,” the Evil Queen said. “The young queen has a large mirror in her bedroom and talks in her sleep. You’d be appalled by the things she confesses in her nightmares.”

Goldilocks had to sit down. She didn’t even feel human anymore; she felt like an entity made of pure anger.

“Red Riding Hood has always loved Jack, and you were standing in the way,” the Evil Queen said. “She was young when she wrote the letter. She had no idea what the
consequences would be. She thought you would leave brokenhearted before the bears got home, and then Jack would be hers.”

“But she’s had years and years’ worth of opportunities to make things right,” Goldilocks said. Her eyes were staring down at the ground, but she was blind with rage. She stood up, threw off the blue gown, and redressed in her own clothes, sword and all.

“What will you do now that you know the truth?” the Evil Queen asked.

“I’m going to take Red on a trip,” Goldilocks said. “And she’s not coming back.”

“There’s only one place where she can disappear forever…” the Evil Queen said, and her reflection faded from the mirror.

Goldilocks burst out of the barn and ran into the night, whistling for her horse. She was about to do exactly what the Evil Queen wanted, but, more important, she was about to get her long-overdue revenge.