“You weren’t invited,” Violetta said. “This celebration is for fairies only.”
“You’re breaking the laws of the Happily Ever After Assembly by being in our palace,” Xanthous threatened. “Witches are not allowed to set foot in this kingdom, and you know it.”
“Enforce those laws while you still have them, because soon there will be no assembly to threaten us with,” the one-eyed witch warned.
The fairies whispered to one another. What did the witch mean by this? Xanthous grew impatient and didn’t care to find out. “Leave at once, or we’ll have you thrown in Pinocchio Prison,” he threatened.
The witches cackled even harder at his attempt to frighten them. “But if we leave, you’ll never receive our gift,” the witch with cat eyes hissed. “We didn’t come all this way empty-handed.”
“We don’t want your gift,” Tangerina said. The bees flying around her neck and wrists flew at a quicker pace. “Go back to wherever it is you came from.”
“Trust us—you want what we have to offer,” the witch with waxy skin wheezed. “It’s less a gift and more a prophecy. It’s something the witches have kept to themselves for a great while, but since it’s such a ceremonious night, we thought we’d share it with you.”
“We don’t want to hear your ridiculous prophecy, either,” Rosette said.
“I do!” Coral peeped, speaking on behalf of all the curious fairies in the room. “It couldn’t hurt just to listen to whatever information they want to give us.”
The members of the Fairy Council looked at one another, but no one objected. “Very well,” Emerelda said. “If the witches promise to leave us in peace when they’ve finished, they may share their message with us.”
The witches scowled at the audience of fairies. They held hands and formed a circle. The witches cocked their heads up to the sky, and their mouths and eyes began to glow. A strong breeze swiftly blew through the palace as the witches chanted a rhyme in unison.
“Fairies, listen well,
For there is truth in the sights we foretell.
‘Happily ever after’ will not last,
When it’s greeted by a threat from the past.
One by one, the kingdoms will fall apart,
From battles they’ll lose and wars they’ll start.
Fairy blood will be spilt by the gallons,
When you face the army of thousands.”
The witches howled with laughter at the conclusion of their prophecy. All the fairies had to cover their ears from the screeching sounds.
“Get out of this palace before I turn you into ashes,” Xanthous said, and his whole body burst into flames.
“Yeah, and then I’ll kick your ashes into next week!” Mother Goose added.
The witches left the palace, cackling as loudly as they could the entire way. The fairies looked at one another anxiously. Did they have any reason to believe a word of what the witches had just said? Was an army of thousands really on its way? And from where?
“Do not worry,” Emerelda told them. “This was nothing more than a foolish attempt to ruin our evening, and I refuse to let them succeed. I say we continue our festivities in the gardens where we can celebrate under the stars.”
The fairies cheered, and Emerelda led all the guests through the hall and outside the palace.
“Aren’t you coming, Mother Goose?” Coral asked as she left with the others.
Mother Goose was the only one who had stayed behind. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“All right,” Coral said, and flew off with the others.
Mother Goose’s eyes darted left and right, and small beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. She was the only person to whom the witches’ prophecy meant something. Everything the witches had foretold was connected to a dark secret Mother Goose had kept for a very long time, a secret she had never told anyone, not even the Fairy Godmother.
But years ago Mother Goose had done everything in her power to make sure the army wouldn’t cross over. Was the threat still alive?
There was only one way to find out, and there was only one person who could help her—and he was worlds away.
Mother Goose took a giant swig from her flask and hopped onto Lester’s back. She steered him to the window of Alex’s room. Mother Goose climbed in through the window and had a look around. She found the magic mirror placed in the corner and touched its glass. There was no response and Mother Goose looked desperately around the room. On Alex’s nightstand she found the piece of mirror that had been chipped off, and to her relief it was shimmering—he was trying to contact Alex at that exact moment.
Mother Goose picked up the piece of mirror and the round, freckled face of the person she was trying to contact appeared.
“Oh, C-Dog, thank God it’s you,” Mother Goose said to Conner. “Listen, we need to talk. I need your help.…”
CHAPTER NINE
ABANDON TRIP
Conner spent his last two days in Germany locked in his hotel room pretending to be sick. While his principal and schoolmates went to museums and historical landmarks, he worked around the clock trying to contact his sister. He lived off sandwiches and sodas from a vending machine down the hall and twenty-minute naps when he needed them.
He had never been so angry with his sister before in his life. He knew Alex was busy preparing for the Fairy Inaugural Ball but it couldn’t have been going on for all of the past three days. When he finally got ahold of her—if he ever got ahold of her—she’d better have a good reason for why she had been ignoring him.
Unfortunately, the day of their departure finally came and Conner had no choice but to travel home with the others. He regretted leaving—somehow being close to the grave sites of the Brothers Grimm made him feel closer to the issue.
Their group loaded into the van and said good-bye to Berlin as they drove to the airport. Once they arrived at the airport Conner wouldn’t let the woman behind the counter check Betsy. His piece of magic mirror was inside and he didn’t want to be away from it in case Alex tried contacting him. His unexpected clinginess to the suitcase didn’t go unnoticed. Everyone in his group raised an eyebrow, but no one’s eyebrow rose higher than Bree’s. She was carefully watching every move he made.
They landed in London’s Heathrow Airport and found seats by the gate for their connecting flight home.
“Oy, governor! Oy, governor!” Cindy said in a horrible cockney accent to all the British people that passed them by. “That’s how you say hello here,” she whispered to the others like she was filling them in on a secret.
“No, it’s not,” Bree said, embarrassed for her.
The Book Huggers had been giving Conner dirty looks ever since they left Berlin but Conner was unaware of it. He had been staring off into space the entire time, clutching Betsy to his chest as if he were expecting someone to rip the suitcase out of his hands.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Bailey?” Mrs. Peters asked him as she read a newspaper.
“Better,” Conner said, without looking up.
“I’m so sorry you missed out on all the other activities; you would have enjoyed them,” his principal said.
“Next time” was all Conner could reply.
The gate’s intercom buzzed as an announcement was made. “Attention, all travelers leaving on international flight 527, we will be boarding the plane in ten minutes, starting with our first-class passengers.”
“Oh wonderful,” Mrs. Peters said, and folded up her newspaper. “We’ll be in the air on our way home in no time.”
Conner knew it would be difficult to use the piece of magic mirror once he was on the plane. He decided to try reaching Alex one more time before boarding.
“I’m going to use the restroom before we get on the plane,” Conner announced to the girls. He hurried across the waiting area to the nearest bathroom with Betsy in his arms.
The Book Huggers rolled their eyes at Conner just like every time he had said or done anything o
n the trip. Bree watched Conner as he went, curious about why he needed his suitcase to use the restroom.
Conner entered the men’s room and looked under all the stalls to make sure he was alone. He locked himself inside one, put the toilet lid down, and had a seat. He opened Betsy on the floor in front of him and retrieved the piece of mirror. He pressed the glass with his finger and watched it shimmer for a few moments but had no luck reaching Alex. He was so frustrated and disappointed.
However doubtful he was about getting a different result, Conner decided to tap the glass one more time before calling it quits. The glass shimmered for as long as it always did and right when Conner was about to put the piece of mirror away, his heart dropped. A face appeared in the mirror—but it wasn’t the person he was expecting.
“Oh, C-Dog, thank God it’s you,” Mother Goose said. “Listen, we need to talk. I need your help.…”
Conner was so excited to finally be in contact with someone he almost fell off the toilet. “Mother Goose! It’s so good to see your face!” He was in hysterics.
“If I had a gold coin for every time someone said that, I would be in debt,” she cracked. “Listen, I have to talk to you about something very important.”
She seemed just as flustered and worried as he was, but Conner figured her concern could wait, compared to the news he had to share.
“No! I have something I need to tell you that’s more important,” he said. “Something major has happened and I need to tell someone in the fairy-tale world about it!”
Mother Goose eyed him strangely. “Kid, are you in a bathroom?” she asked. “Because if so, I think you should maybe talk to a doctor about this and not me—”
“I’m in a bathroom because I’m trying to hide!” Conner said. “I’m in Europe on a class trip! This was the only place I could get privacy!”
“Europe?” Mother Goose asked. “Okay, kid, calm down and slowly tell me what’s going on before you have an accident.”
Conner took a deep breath and started from the beginning. “I was in Germany for this thing with my principal and a couple other kids. The University of Berlin found three brand-new fairy tales in a time capsule left by the Brothers Grimm. They included careful instructions not to publicize or publish the stories until two hundred years later. We and a bunch of other people went to the cemetery where the Brothers Grimm are buried, and there was a special reading of the stories. The first two weren’t important but I think the third one was a warning in disguise.”
“A warning?” Mother Goose asked. “A warning about what?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” he said. “The story was too similar to real life not to have a bigger purpose.”
“Tell me what the story was about,” she prompted.
“It was about a pair of brothers who told stories just like the Brothers Grimm. They got their stories from a fairy who lived in a secret castle, just like the Brothers Grimm got their stories from you, and from Grandma and the other fairies. One day a greedy king forced the brothers to provide him with a map to the secret castle so he could conquer it. A magical bird that also lived in the secret castle, who I’m assuming is supposed to be you, gave the brothers an enchanted map to give to the king, so that it would take him two hundred years to get to the castle, leaving the people and magical creatures lots of time to prepare a defense. The brothers in the story were afraid the magical bird would forget to warn the others in the secret castle about the approaching king so they wrote a story about it, hoping the story would reach the secret castle before the king’s army of thousands did.”
“Wait, can you say that last part again?” Mother Goose interrupted.
“I said, they hoped their story would reach the secret castle before the king’s army of thousands did, in case the magical bird had forgotten to warn the others,” Conner repeated.
All the blood drained from Mother Goose’s face and her eyes drifted off into a fearful trance. “But it’s impossible,” she said softly to herself.
“What’s impossible?” Conner asked. “Does this story mean something to you? Because it sounds like something bad started two hundred years ago and the Brothers Grimm are warning everyone about it now.”
Mother Goose didn’t respond. All she could do was shake her head from side to side as she thought about what he told her.
“Mother Goose, if this story is real, then I’m afraid something horrible is about to happen in the Land of Stories and we need to stop it,” he said.
She finally looked up and made eye contact with him again. “I’m afraid their story is based on something that is very real,” she told him in a stricken tone.
Conner felt his heart descend deeper into his stomach. “What happened?” he asked.
Mother Goose sighed and then told Conner a secret she had managed to keep to herself for years—until this moment.
“Two hundred years ago in Otherworld time, there was a man named Jacques Marquis, a general in the French Empire’s Grande Armée,” she said. “General Marquis was a smart man; he knew the Brothers Grimm stories about mythical creatures and kingdoms were more than just fiction. He had them followed and discovered the truth about where their stories came from. He wanted to conquer the magnificent lands he read about, in the name of the French empire. So, he kidnapped the Brothers Grimm and demanded they provide his army with a portal into the fairy-tale world or he would kill their family.”
“And did they give him one?” Conner asked.
“That’s where I come into the story,” Mother Goose said. “I never gave them a map like the bird in the story, but I told the Brothers Grimm of a portal they could lead General Marquis and his army of five thousand men to. But I bewitched the portal before the army arrived so that it would take them two hundred Otherworld years to cross through it and into the fairy-tale world.”
“And that was two hundred years ago!” Conner exclaimed. “So why haven’t they crossed into the fairy-tale world yet?”
“Because, after the Enchantress was defeated, your grandmother closed the portal between worlds, and just in the nick of time,” Mother Goose said. “Thank God she did, because it meant I never had to tell her about the approaching army. I loved the Otherworld so much but I couldn’t object to closing the portal since I knew that it would prevent that awful man and his soldiers from entering our world.”
“Didn’t anyone wonder where a group of five thousand soldiers disappeared to?” Conner asked.
“No, because shortly after, in the winter of 1812, Napoleon and the Grande Armée also invaded Russia,” Mother Goose explained. “The French soldiers couldn’t stand the cold and the retreating Russian soldiers hadn’t left them any crops or livestock to survive on. The death toll was catastrophic and everyone assumed General Marquis and his men were among those that perished.”
Conner sighed a deep breath of relief. “That’s wonderful news,” he said. “That means the army is still stuck in the portal and will never reach the Land of Stories, right?”
He expected Mother Goose to confirm his relief but instead her eyes drifted off again into another concerned gaze.
“The portal is closed permanently, isn’t it?” Conner asked.
“It was,” Mother Goose said. “But there is a chance the portal between the worlds may be… re-opened.”
“How?” Conner asked.
Mother Goose knew the answer but decided it wasn’t her place to tell him yet. “I can’t tell you why or even that it will for certain, all I can tell you is that there is a chance,” she repeated. “And the only way we’ll know for sure is if we check whether or not the portal is working. If it can be opened from the Otherworld side, that means it can be opened on the Land of Stories side as well, and the Grande Armée may cross into the fairy-tale world after all this time.”
“Then tell me where it is! I’ll check it myself,” he pleaded.
“Absolutely not,” Mother Goose said firmly. “I still haven’t forgiven myself for
telling Alex about the Enchantress—I couldn’t live with myself if I sent you off on a dangerous chase as well.”
Conner was so frustrated he wanted to throw the piece of mirror across the bathroom. He was still being treated like a child after all this time. But Mother Goose raised a hand to silence him before he could argue.
“But I may know someone else who can tell you,” she said with a mischievously raised eyebrow.
“Who?” Conner said. “Someone in this world?”
“Yes,” she said. “Where exactly in Europe are you?”
“I’m at an airport in London,” he said.
This made Mother Goose extremely happy and she made an excited fist with her free hand. “Terrific, I have a friend in London—”
“It’s not the queen, I hope,” Conner said. “She’d be difficult to get to.”
“No, the queen and I haven’t spoken in years.” Mother Goose waved off the idea. “This friend is very old but has been a confidant of mine for a very long time.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s more of a what than a who,” Mother Goose explained. “Find the lion from the Red Lion Brewery. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“The lion from the Red Lion Brewery?” Conner repeated to make sure he had heard her correctly. “Is he a real lion?”
“He’s a statue,” Mother Goose said. “He was the mascot of the brewery I spent most of the 1800s at—I met a lot of my closest drinking buddies there. Now I really need to go before your sister catches me in her room. We shouldn’t tell anyone else about this unless we know for certain the portal has been re-opened. I don’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits around here if there’s nothing to worry about.”
“And what if it’s open?” Conner said.
Mother Goose gulped. “Then we’re in big trouble,” she said. “Good luck, kid—oh and one more thing, do you still have that poker chip I gave you?”
“Yes, I take it everywhere with me,” Conner said.
“Good—you’ll need it,” Mother Goose said, and then she faded from the piece of mirror in his hand.