“New York is such a strange place,” Red said. “One minute I’m completely repulsed, then the next I feel right at home. Did the Old York inspire such mood swings?”
Before Conner could answer her, he was distracted by something moving underneath the Bethesda Terrace. A thin woman wearing a headband, a bright pink tank top, and matching sneakers was peeking out from behind one of the pillars in the walkway. The woman nervously eyed the park around them and frantically gestured for Conner and his friends to join her.
“Pssst,” she whispered. “Come over here—quick!”
From the way she was dressed, Conner assumed the woman was a native of the Otherworld. Still, he and his friends approached the walkway with the utmost caution. The woman in pink led them into the walkway, and they discovered she wasn’t alone. A man in a headband, a green tank top, and matching tennis shoes was hiding behind another pillar. Another man wearing a blue helmet and black biker shorts was ducking behind a trash can. A third man, in a janitor’s uniform, was crouched in the corner and staring into space with his hands over his head.
“It isn’t safe to be wandering around the park in the open like that,” the woman in pink told them. “If they find you, they’ll capture you and take you back to their base.”
“You must be talking about the witches,” Conner said. “Do you know which part of the park their base is in?”
“They’re gathered somewhere between the lake and the reservoir. On the Great Lawn, I suspect,” the man in green said. “But they search the park every couple of hours to look for escapees.”
“What are you guys doing in the park so late?” Bree asked.
“My husband and I were out for a late jog,” the woman in pink explained. “We used the Seventy-Ninth Street Transverse as a shortcut to get home, and that’s when the shield went up. We tried to get through it, but it zapped us.”
She and her husband showed Conner and his friends the burn marks covering their arms.
“We searched the park for help and saw the witches wandering through it,” the man in green said. “So we hid in Belvedere Castle, and that’s where we met him.”
He nodded to the janitor in the corner.
“I was working a night shift at the castle,” the janitor said. “We tried calling the police but couldn’t get a signal or a dial tone on any of the phones. When the coast was clear, the three of us made a quick dash to Tavern on the Green.”
“And that’s where they met me,” the biker said. “My friends and I were cycling around the perimeter of the park and also took a shortcut to get home. After the shield went up, we hid from the witches in Tavern on the Green with other people who got trapped in the park. We thought we were safe there, but eventually they found us. We’re the only four who escaped!”
“The rest were captured and taken to the witches’ base,” the woman in pink said. “We’ve been hiding under the terrace ever since.”
The janitor began to laugh, but not because he was amused. He started rocking back and forth as if he was on the verge of losing his sanity.
“You know, the guy I replaced was fired for making wild claims about magical things in the park,” he said. “We all thought old Rusty was just insane, and now here I am, cowering like a toddler from a bunch of witches. Funny how the tables have turned.”
The people under the terrace looked exhausted, and they trembled as they spoke. Obviously they had been through quite an ordeal, but something about their story wasn’t adding up.
“You guys make it seem like you’ve been here for days,” Conner said. “The witches have only been in the park for an hour at most. How have you covered so much ground?”
The joggers, the biker, and the janitor all exchanged bewildered looks.
“Sweetie, we have been here for days,” the woman in pink said.
“What?” Conner said. “How is that possible?”
“Ever since the shield went up, time in Central Park started moving much slower than in the rest of the city,” the man in green said. “All the clocks on Fifth Avenue have barely moved, and it’s been two days since any of us saw the sun!”
“An hour inside the park is like a second outside it,” his wife said. “Whenever we see people on the other side of the shield, they’re barely moving—like they’re stuck in slow motion!”
Conner felt like his heart had stopped beating. Now he understood why it had taken his friends so long to crawl out of the tunnel—Alex wasn’t only shielding the park, she was altering its time, too! Whatever the witches were up to, they had bought themselves plenty of time to get it done.
“Wait, why are you so surprised to hear this?” the biker asked. “Haven’t you been in the park for just as long?”
“No, we just got here,” Conner said.
“You mean there’s a way out of the park?” the janitor said, and jumped to his feet. “You’ve got to take us there! I’m going to lose my mind if I have to stay here another—”
“Quiet!” Goldilocks whispered. “Someone’s approaching!”
Conner, his friends, and the escapees quickly hid behind the pillars in the walkway. They heard footsteps, and soon four figures appeared in the distance. Rat Mary and Serpentina were escorting a Boy Scout and a Girl Scout to the Bethesda Fountain. The witches pushed, kicked, and called the Scouts foul names as they went. The children looked terrified and even more exhausted than the escapees under the terrace. They each carried two large wooden buckets and placed them in the fountain’s pool.
“Now fill them up, you filthy hobgoblins!” Rat Mary ordered. “And hurry! The Mistresses are waiting for their refreshments!”
The Scouts followed her commands and filled their buckets with water from the fountain. Serpentina scanned the water with a peculiar expression.
“Thisss doesn’t look any better than the water in lakesss or pondsss,” she hissed. “The Mistressesss requested clean water.”
“What the Mistresses don’t know won’t hurt them,” Rat Mary said. “Besides, the Snow Queen and the Sea Witch promised us that life in the Otherworld would be different. So far, it doesn’t seem to be any different from back home. We’re still doing all the work while they sit on their thrones and do nothing.”
“You know, Morina may have intentionally led usss all to our deathsss, but I’m starting to ressspect her,” Serpentina said. “Ssshe’s probably back in the kingdomsss enjoying being the only—”
Even though no one made a sound under the terrace, both witches suddenly snapped their heads toward it. Conner, his friends, and the escapees all held their breath and tucked themselves as far as possible behind the pillars.
“I thought I heard something,” Serpentina said.
“Probably more humans—yuck,” Rat Mary said. “I look forward to exterminating them all. They’re the true vermin of this world.”
“Ssshould we round them up and take them back to the bassse?” Serpentina asked.
“No, we’ve done our task,” Rat Mary said. “We’ll send another witch to come back for them.”
The Scouts finished filling their buckets, which became so heavy that the children could barely carry them. The witches shoved the Scouts back in the direction they’d come from and disappeared into the park. The escapees under the terrace waited a couple of minutes before moving, just to make sure the witches were gone.
“That was a close one,” the woman in pink said. “Let’s get out of here before other witches come back to capture us.”
The group of escapees hurried through the walkway and away from the terrace. They climbed a flight of stairs leading to a path on higher ground and heard a loud POP from above them. They looked up in terror to see Rat Mary glaring at them from the top of the stairs. The witch roared with laughter and exposed her tiny, sharp teeth.
“You didn’t actually think we’d leave you here, did you?” she said.
The escapees turned around and ran back toward the terrace, but after another loud POP, Serpentina appeared and block
ed their way.
“You aren’t going anywhere!” she roared. “Sssay, I recognize sssome of you from our home world! You’re the friends and brother of the Bailey girl! Oh my, the Mistressesss will be ssso pleasssed we captured you!”
“We aren’t coming quietly!” Jack shouted.
He raised his axe and Goldilocks raised her sword, but Rat Mary and Serpentina snapped their fingers and the weapons flew into the witches’ hands. The BabyBjörn, with Hero inside, also unfastened itself from around Goldilocks, flew to Rat Mary, and wrapped around her torso. The witch looked down at the strange holster and was pleasantly surprised to find an infant attached to it.
“It’s my lucky day,” Rat Mary said. “There are so many potions I’ve always wanted to make that require an infant as the main ingredient.”
“NOOOO!” Goldilocks yelled.
She charged up the stairs to rescue her son, but Serpentina’s long tongue wrapped around Goldilocks’s leg and dragged her back down the steps.
“If you even think about hurting him, I’ll teach you a new definition of pain!” Goldilocks warned the witches.
Rat Mary and Serpentina shared a menacing laugh.
“I sincerely doubt you’ll get the chance,” Rat Mary said. “Not where you’re going, at least.”
With no way to escape and no one to save them, Conner, his friends, and the Central Park escapees were taken prisoner. The captives followed the Boy and Girl Scout through the park while the witches watched them from the rear. The witches forced them to walk in a straight line, and whenever someone stepped out of line, they were either whipped by Serpentina’s tongue or scratched by Rat Mary’s long nails.
They journeyed deeper and deeper into the park, traveling more than half a mile. Soon the smell of gingerbread became so strong and the air became so smoky that it was difficult to breathe. Conner and the other captives stepped onto the Great Lawn in the heart of Central Park and instantly knew they had arrived at the witches’ base.
What was usually fifty-five acres of open grassy fields and baseball diamonds was now the location of one nightmarish scene after another.
Hundreds of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were scattered across the Great Lawn and were being forced to bake some sort of gingerbread creation. There were rows of huge cauldrons where Scouts mixed ingredients and stirred dough. The dough was scooped out of the cauldrons by other Scouts and spread out on metal sheets as big as king-size mattresses. Once the dough was flat, Scouts cut it with enormous cookie cutters, making human-size gingerbread men. Then the Scouts transferred the metal sheets to one of a dozen enormous brick ovens along the west side of the lawn.
Charcoaline kept the ovens blazing with her fiery breath. Arboris, Tarantulene, and all the other witches walked among the Scouts like prison guards. They smacked and scolded every child who wasn’t working to their level of satisfaction—which was all of them. Just like the Boy and Girl Scout collecting water at the Bethesda Fountain, all the children on the Great Lawn were terrified and exhausted and moved about like zombies. Conner saw Oliver, his companion from the plane, stationed at one of the cauldrons. Oliver was too afraid to look up and kept his eyes on the dough he was mixing.
“Why are they baking such enormous gingerbread men?” Red asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Goldilocks said. “They’re making gingerbread soldiers—the witches are cooking up an army!”
“If we get out of this alive, I never want to hear the word army again,” Conner said.
At the north end of the Great Lawn, the witches had constructed a tall hill made of jagged bedrock. It loomed over the lawn like a rocky watchtower. The bottom of the hill was guarded by the lion statues from the library, the polar bears from the Snow Queen’s sleigh, and a thin moat where the Sea Witch’s sharks swam. At the top of the bedrock, the Snow Queen sat on a throne made of ice, and the Sea Witch was perched on a throne made of coral.
Alex stood between the Snow Queen and the Sea Witch at the peak of the hill. Her eyes were still glowing like lightning, her hair was still floating above her head like a slow-motion fire, and she faced the roof of her massive force field. She seemed less like a person and more like a generator stuck in a mindless state, producing magic that protected and benefited her commanders. His sister’s lifelessness brought tears to Conner’s eyes, and he wondered if she could even be saved, or if, like Morina had said, she was cursed past the point of no return.
Rat Mary and Serpentina directed their prisoners toward the northeast corner of the Great Lawn to a row of cages made from candy canes. The cages were filled with Scout leaders, Central Park staff, tourists, and other New Yorkers the witches had rounded up. The witches pushed the joggers, the biker, the janitor, Jack, Goldilocks, Red, and Bree inside a small cage—but right before they could grab hold of Conner, he dashed toward the hill to get to his sister.
Just the way he’d felt at the barricade on Fifth Avenue, Conner was consumed by a powerful desire to save his sister and lost all common sense. Rat Mary and Serpentina chased after him, but Conner was much faster than the witches. He ran in an erratic pattern between the cauldrons and barely missed being lassoed by Serpentina’s tongue. Conner leaped over the moat at the base of the hill and hiked up the bedrock as fast as he could.
“Alex!” he shouted. “It’s me—it’s your brother! The witches have invaded the Otherworld! You’ve got to fight off the curse or else—”
Before Conner could get anywhere close to his sister, one of the library lions knocked him off the hill. He soared over the moat and landed painfully hard on the ground. The wind was knocked out of him, and he gasped for air.
“CONNER!” Alex screamed.
For just a brief moment, her concern for her brother overpowered the curse. Her eyes stopped glowing, her hair stopped floating, and the shield around Central Park disappeared. The Snow Queen and the Sea Witch looked at each other in panic—they hadn’t thought anything could break the curse.
“Keep the shield up, you stupid girl!” the Snow Queen screeched.
Alex immediately returned to her bewitched state, and the shield reappeared over Central Park. Rat Mary and Serpentina dragged Conner to the cage and threw him inside it with his friends.
“Conner, are you hurt?” Goldilocks asked him.
“I’ll be okay,” he groaned.
“That was so stupid of you!” Bree berated him. “What were you thinking? You could have gotten yourself killed!”
“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Conner said. “Now we know Morina was wrong—Alex hasn’t been cursed past the point of no return! She’s still in there—we can still save her!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CURSED AND THE COURTEOUS
A powerful rainstorm traveled down the western coast of the fairy-tale world and drenched the Dwarf Forests. Luckily, most of the residents and animals were already in hiding from the Literary Army, so the woods were virtually empty when the storm hit. But there was still one creature that got caught in the rain and scuttled through the forest in search of shelter.
The creature was shivering, soaked to the bone, and a complete stranger to the woods. After traveling in circles all night, it spotted a cottage by the side of a stream. The cottage appeared to be empty, as there was no light shining through the windows or smoke rising from the chimney. The creature hoped the cottage’s looks weren’t deceiving—not for the creature’s own sake, but for the sake of any poor soul who might be inside. The creature had a reputation for leaving an impression on whomever it crossed paths with.
The creature broke down the front door and stepped out of the storm. The cottage was unlike any place it had ever seen. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the furniture were all painted white. The front room was lined with shelves of tiny glass bottles filled with colorful liquids.
The creature was parched from its trek through the vicious storm. It took a bottle from a shelf, twisted off the small golden cap, and smelled the red liquid inside. The fluid smell
ed like a fruity juice, so the creature threw its head back and downed the bottle in one gulp. Not only did the liquid instantly quench the creature’s thirst, but it also reenergized the creature and made it feel warm inside. The creature inspected the bottle and saw that the word REJUVENATION was engraved on the glass. It checked the other bottles on the shelves and discovered similar engravings. The blue liquids were labeled YOUTH, the pink liquids were labeled BEAUTY, the purple bottles were labeled VIBRANCY, and the turquoise bottles were labeled STAMINA.
The strange engravings aroused the creature’s curiosity. It searched the cottage for more clues about what kind of establishment it had stumbled into.
In the back of the room the creature found a wall covered by a curtain. It pulled a tassel and the curtain separated, revealing a large mirror with a golden frame. As soon as the creature realized it was a mirror, it quickly shielded its eyes to avoid its reflection. Looking into the creature’s eyes instantly turned any observer into stone—and the creature itself was no exception.
If someone managed to get a glimpse of it before being turned into stone, they would see she was a woman with glowing red eyes, fangs, and a long, scaly body. Instead of hair, the woman had a head full of hissing snakes that constantly fought one another for dominance. The monster’s name was Medusa, and she was from a world far beyond the realm of fairy tales.
Strangely, as Medusa shielded herself from her reflection, she noticed that something was very different about her appearance. The powerful glow that was usually emitted by her eye sockets had disappeared. She peeked through her fingers at the mirror, and her gaze drifted up her body and landed on her face—but miraculously, Medusa wasn’t turned to stone. Instead of the bright red pupils that infamously turned people into statues, Medusa saw a pair of brown eyes she hadn’t seen in a very long time. She glanced down at the empty bottle in her hand and realized that the liquid inside wasn’t juice, but a potion.