“It happened a few months ago when I used to work night shifts at Belvedere Castle,” he said. “I was in the middle of cleaning the joint when this strange vibration suddenly came out of nowhere. I figured it was just an earthquake and went back to work, but when I got home, none of the morning news stations were reporting an earthquake. I was convinced I had just imagined it, but then a few weeks later, the vibration happened again. The second time was much stronger and lasted longer than the first. I called the police to report an active fault line, but they assured me it was just a subway running underneath the castle. However, when I got home and looked at a map, I saw there aren’t any subway lines that run below that part of Central Park. The rumbling didn’t happen again until a few weeks later. The third time rattled the castle so hard, it shattered windows and left cracks all over the floor. I was nearly knocked off the balcony I was cleaning. I remember it didn’t feel anything like an earthquake or a train, but like something enormous was hatching from an invisible egg. I looked up and that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Conner asked.
“The best way I can describe it is a window into another world,” Rusty said. “For a brief second I saw a huge forest of evergreen trees and a bright starry sky. It looked like something out of a storybook—couldn’t have been more different from the hustle of New York City. Then the window disappeared as fast as it had appeared.”
Conner and Bree exchanged a grave look. Without any solid proof, they knew exactly what Rusty had witnessed—the bridge between worlds was starting to form.
“I went to the police station and filed a report about what I saw, but none of the officers believed me. A copy of the report was sent to the castle’s property manager and they fired me. They thought I had caused all the damages myself and was making up a ridiculous story to cover it up. Word about my police report spread all over town, and no one wanted to hire me after that.”
“That’s terrible!” Bree said. “Did the window ever appear again?”
“I didn’t see it again, but others have seen it appear all over the city,” Rusty said.
“But who? And where?” Conner asked.
“You can ask them yourself,” Rusty said. “Follow me.”
They continued down the Calvin Coolidge Express line. Flickering lights came into view ahead, and soon they discovered a vast underground campsite that was home to dozens and dozens of homeless people. The tunnel was full of tents, sleeping bags, and furniture made from cardboard and newspapers. The homeless people were spread out through the camp in groups; some kept warm standing over blazing trash cans, some played musical instruments, and some watched a man teaching a family of rats to fetch.
Rusty escorted Conner and his friends to a group who sat in the corner of the camp. The group included an older man in a blue suit, a woman in a fur coat, another woman in a Yankees baseball hat, and a third woman wearing a T-shirt that said READ BANNED BOOKS and tinfoil wrapped around her head. They were gathered around a radio listening to a patchy broadcast.
“There you are, Bagasarian!” the man said. “We heard there was an evacuation in Midtown. We were worried you got swept away.”
“Conner and company, allow me to introduce you to my underground family,” Rusty said. “This is Jerry Oswald, Annette Crabtree, Judy Harlow, and Roxie Goldberg.”
“I hope you aren’t from the papers!” Judy said, and hid her face behind the collar of her fur coat. “If I get included in another one of those savage Where Are They Now editorials, I’ll just die!”
“For the hundredth time, Judy, you aren’t famous!” Annette said.
“How dare you!” Judy said. “I was on Broadway!”
“It was Off-Broadway, and it was in the eighties,” Roxie reminded her. “No one’s looking for you now.”
“They’re not reporters, they’re just trying to get inside the public library,” Rusty explained. “But since we’re passing through, they want to hear your stories about seeing you know what.”
Rusty’s friends were as mortified as if he had just disclosed a nasty secret. They looked around the tunnel to make sure no one else had heard him.
“Why do you always have to bring that up?” Jerry asked.
“They’ll only mock us like the rest of the world,” Judy said.
“Haven’t we been through enough already?” Annette asked.
Rusty’s friends got to their feet and tried to walk away, but Conner and Bree blocked them from going too far.
“We’re not here to insult you,” Conner said. “We just want to know what you saw and where you saw it. Please, it might help us answer a lot of questions.”
“And it’s not like you have anything to lose,” Red added.
Despite the rude comment from his friend, the homeless people sensed the sincerity in Conner’s voice. They looked at one another and shrugged.
“I used to be a maid at the Plaza Hotel,” Annette said. “Late one night, I went into the Presidential Suite for the turndown service. As I was making up the bed, the room began shaking. All the furniture was knocked to the floor and the guests’ belongings rolled everywhere. The next thing I knew, a forest appeared out of thin air. It hovered in the sitting room for a few minutes and then vanished. The guests returned shortly after; they saw all their belongings scattered around the floor and accused me of stealing their things. They reported me to the hotel manager and I was fired. Nobody wanted to hire a maid with a history of theft, so now I live down here.”
“I was on the verge of a comeback when I saw the forest,” Judy said. “I had just been cast as Nurse Number Seven on the soap opera The Cute and the Complacent. Anyway, I was sitting in my dressing room at Rockefeller Center—that’s where they film the show—when it was hit with a terrible tremor. The forest appeared over my vanity and I screamed for help. By the time a producer came to check on me, it was gone. They thought I was crazy and had my character written out of the script. I’ve become the laughingstock of the Screen Actors Guild and haven’t been hired since.”
“I was a teller at National Bank on Forty-Fourth Street,” Jerry said. “I was working late one night and went into the vault to store a deposit. Suddenly, the vault started to rattle. It was so powerful it knocked all the deposit boxes open and money spilled onto the floor. The commotion set off the alarm and police arrived within the hour. Had they showed up just a moment sooner, they would have seen the forest for themselves. My boss fired me for carelessness and I couldn’t find another job. I told my wife what had happened, but she didn’t believe me and threw me out of the house.”
Everyone turned to Roxie Goldberg, anxious to hear her story next.
“Why are you looking at me? I never saw a forest appear. I live down here because I hate paying taxes.”
Conner sensed there was a pattern to the homeless people’s encounters. He paced back and forth as he thought about the information they had provided.
“How long ago did each of you see the forest appear?” he asked.
“Four months ago,” Rusty said, then scrunched up his brow. “As a matter of fact, it was four months ago to this very day.”
“What a coincidence,” Annette said. “I saw it exactly two months ago.”
“Precisely one month ago for me,” Judy said.
“Two weeks,” Jerry said.
“And how long did the apparition last?” Conner asked.
“It only lasted a few seconds at the castle,” Rusty said.
“It was quick, but I’d say a minute or two,” Annette said.
“Fifteen minutes at least,” Judy said.
“About forty-five minutes, I suspect,” Jerry said.
“Interesting,” Conner said. “So the sightings are happening faster and faster, and each time the apparition appears, it stays twice as long. If it continues in this pattern, that would put the next sighting tonight and it could stick around for an hour or two. I just wish we could tell where it’s gonna be.”
An idea popped int
o Bree’s head and she gasped—startling Jack and Goldilocks beside her.
“Actually, I think the locations may be just as predictable,” she said.
Bree looked around the tunnel and snatched a map off a sleeping homeless person. She spread it against the wall of the tunnel and had Jack and Goldilocks hold it in place.
“Mr. Oswald, what street was National Bank on again?” she asked.
“Forty-Fourth and Fifth Avenue,” Jerry said.
“And Ms. Harlow, where is Rockefeller Center located?”
“Between Forty-Eighth and Fifty-First,” Judy said.
“And the Plaza Hotel?”
“It’s at Fifty-Ninth and Fifth,” Annette said.
“And Rusty, I know there are no streets in Central Park, but if Belvedere Castle were on a street, what would it be?” Bree asked.
“That’s easy,” Rusty said. “It’s just north of the Seventy-Ninth Street Transverse.”
Bree pulled a marker out of her pocket and made a note of all the locations. Once she was done, she took a step back and studied the map.
“Just what I thought,” she said. “The bridge first appeared on Seventy-Ninth Street at Belvedere Castle. Next, it appeared at the Plaza Hotel—exactly twenty blocks south of the castle. After that, the forest appeared at Rockefeller Center—exactly ten blocks south of the hotel. And finally, it appeared at National Bank on Forty-Fourth Street—exactly five blocks south of the center. The bridge is traveling in a semistraight line through New York City, and each time it appears, it covers half the ground it did before.”
“So everything is a pattern!” Conner said. “That means we can trace when and where the bridge will appear next! According to the formulas, that would place the next appearance tonight at two and a half blocks south of National Bank on Forty-Fourth Street.”
Goldilocks gulped. “So what’s located between Forty-First and Forty-Second Street?”
Conner and Bree traced the map, and their fingers arrived at the same spot at the same time. They exchanged a long, fearful glance before turning to the others.
“The New York Public Library,” they said in unison.
“This practically confirms everything we’ve suspected,” Bree said. “Whoever took Alex to the library definitely knows about the bridge between worlds. But this time, I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Just like the Sisters Grimm predicted, this might be the bridge’s final stop. Tonight may be the night when worlds collide!”
Conner’s eyes filled with panic. “Rusty, you’ve got to take us to the library,” he said. “Now.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE SCARIEST VILLAIN OF ALL
Conner and his friends charged down the Calvin Coolidge Express tunnel as Rusty led them deeper through the abandoned subway. The homeless man ran so fast he could barely keep his flashlight steady, but even in the dark, Rusty knew the tunnel like the back of his hand. Eventually they arrived at the construction site of a small subway platform that had never been finished. Ladders, tools, and paint buckets had remained untouched since the project was halted in the 1920s.
“See that hatch above the platform?” Rusty asked, and aimed his flashlight at a circular door in the ceiling. “Climb through it and it’ll take you into the lower level of the library.”
“Thanks for bringing us here, Rusty,” Conner said. “If we’re able to save my sister, it’ll be all because of you. I wish I had something to repay you with.”
“It’s been a long time since I felt useful,” the homeless man said with a smile. “That’s all the thanks I need. Good luck finding your sister, kid.”
Conner and his friends shook Rusty’s hand and climbed onto the unfinished platform. Jack retrieved a ladder and positioned it directly below the hatch. He climbed up the ladder and attempted to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge.
“It’s stuck,” he called down.
“It’s been nearly a century since it was opened,” Rusty said. “It may need a good push.”
Taking his advice, Jack pressed his back against the hatch and pushed against it with all his might. The door opened with a loud crunch, and pieces of wood fell from the ceiling. Opening the hatch punched a large hole through the floorboards and carpet above it. Jack climbed through the hole and then helped the others through the floor of the library’s lower level.
The gang emerged inside a long room with colorful walls. It was filled with tiny bookshelves and miniature tables and chairs. Paintings and stuffed animals of classic literary characters smiled down at them from every corner.
“Oh my,” Red said. “I didn’t realize this was a library for dwarfs.”
“This is the children’s center,” Bree said. “There’s a lot more than this.”
“How big is the library?” Goldilocks asked.
“It’s 646,680 square feet, to be exact,” Bree said. “There are four levels with over forty rooms open to the public.”
Her friends were surprised she had the information so readily available.
“How do you know all that?” Red asked.
“The plane had Wi-Fi,” Bree said with a shrug.
Any knowledge about the structure was useful to them, but Conner’s stomach filled with knots once he heard how big the library was. Whoever had taken his sister had plenty of corners to lurk in.
“Should we split up and look for her?” Jack asked.
“No, let’s stay together,” Conner said. “I don’t want to give Alex’s kidnapper the chance to knock us off one by one—sorry, I’ve seen too many horror movies. We’ll search each level, one room at a time, until we find her.”
Conner’s friends nodded and followed him out of the children’s center. If they had any doubts about Alex’s whereabouts, they quickly subsided as they stepped into the hallway. All the walls and floors of the library were covered in thick vines and ivy. The plants were covered in vibrant flowers that bloomed as Conner and his friends passed them. Exotic butterflies fluttered through the air from blossom to blossom. In just a matter of hours, Alex had enchanted the national landmark so that it resembled an ancient temple in the middle of a jungle.
“Strange,” Jack observed. “It reminds me of when the Enchantress attacked the Eastern Kingdom and covered it in plants just like this.”
“Let’s pray that’s where the similarities end,” Goldilocks said.
They walked in a tight group as they explored the lower level of the library. Jack gripped his axe, Goldilocks drew her sword, and Red clung to her can of Febreze as they went. With all their eyes put together, there wasn’t an inch of the lower level they didn’t scan.
Once the lower level had been searched, they slowly moved up the stone staircase to the first floor. They searched behind every pillar and beneath each archway of the entrance hall. They looked through the aisles of merchandise in the gift shop and under all the desks in the state-of-the-art education center but found nothing out of the ordinary besides vines and ivy.
They journeyed to the next floor of the spacious structure and searched all the galleries, corridors, and research rooms. Once that level had been inspected, they climbed the stairs to the top level. They found portraits and murals, candelabras and statues, but not a trace of Alex anywhere. Soon there was only one room left to search. Conner and his friends gathered at the doors, and each took a deep breath before going inside—this was it.
The Rose Main Reading Room was the largest and most recognizable room in the New York Public Library. Although Conner and Bree had never seen it in person, they instantly remembered seeing it in movies and television. The room was filled with dozens of hanging chandeliers and two rows of wide tables. The high ceiling was made of beautiful wood carvings that framed painted murals of cloudy skies. The walls were lined with arched windows and two levels of bookshelves. However, all the shelves were empty because the books were floating magically through the air like a thousand balloons.
At the far end of the long room, between the rows of tables, they found Ale
x asleep on the floor. As soon as he laid eyes on her, Conner ran to his sister’s side and scooped her up in his arms. Her face was paler than he had ever seen it and her skin felt cold as ice.
“Alex, it’s me—it’s Conner!” he said. “We’ve found you and we’ve come to take you home!”
Conner brushed the hair out of her face, but Alex didn’t open her eyes.
“Alex, can you hear me?” he asked.
He gave her a gentle nudge, but his sister didn’t open her eyes or move a muscle. Conner listened to her chest to make sure she was breathing and then checked her pulse.
“She’s alive,” he said. “But barely.”
“Why isn’t she responding?” Bree asked.
“She must be under some sort of spell,” Conner said, and tapped the side of her face. “Alex, you have to fight this off so we can help you! Who’s doing this to you? Who’s making you enchant things and attack people?”
“She won’t wake up unless I tell her to wake up.”
Conner, Bree, Jack, Goldilocks, and Red turned to the other side of the room and discovered they weren’t alone. A woman in a long black cloak, with red lips and horns like a ram, appeared out of thin air.
“Morina!” Goldilocks said. “It’s you—you’re the one who’s behind all this!”
Just the sight of her filled Red with rage, and she charged toward the witch with her fists raised.
“You no-good, grass-eating, udder-sucking, hoof-stomping, wedding-crashing, friend-stealing piece of fertilizer!” she yelled. “How dare you take my fiancé AND my friend! I’m going to rip those hideous horns right off your—”
Morina waved her hand like she was swatting a fly, and Red went soaring across the room and landed on the second level of bookshelves. Red used the railing to get to her feet, but the metal bars magically wrapped around her body and held her in place. Morina waved her hands at the others, and they flew to the railing beside Red and were also restrained by its metal bars. Conner tried to hold on to his sister as he was forced through the air, but she slipped out of his arms and rolled back to the floor.