My Sort of Fairy Tale Ending (5 page)

As I waited for the elevator, two of the queen's fairy bodyguards beside me, I couldn't get the image of my sleeping parents out of my head. They were really here somewhere. Maybe in this very palace. I could be standing right above their heads. The thought made me want to scream and jump up and down at the same time.

The elevator finally arrived. I expected the leprechaun guards to be inside waiting to take me back to my room, but when the doors slid open, I found myself face-to-face with Ilda the witch. She was still dressed in the hideous sparkly, purple sweater she'd been wearing the last time I saw her, but her gray curls were matted and her orange lipstick was gone, leaving her lips pale and dry.

“Jenny,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I knew you'd follow me here.”

“Silence,” one of the leprechaun guards said, pushing her out into the hallway. I realized Ilda's hands were bound in front of her. All that stuff Mahlia had said about Ilda being an honored guest had been a lie. The witch was a prisoner, just like me.

“Where are you taking her?” I said.

Karfum turned to the other guards. “I will stay here with the adventurer. Gold ahead and bring the prisoner to the queen.”

The other leprechauns bowed their heads and pulled Ilda away while the fairy guards followed behind. I felt like I should say something to her, but what? Then the group disappeared around the corner, and she was gone.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked Karfum. Ilda wasn't my favorite person in the universe—her mind games drove me insane—but if it weren't for the information she'd given me, I would have never figured out where my parents had gone.

Karfum sighed and twirled the shamrock between his lips. “The queen has lost patience with the witch. I suspect things will not gold well for her this time.”

“What do you mean?”

A loud
Pop!
echoed from down the corridor. It was followed by loud, rodentlike squeaking. Uh-oh. I was afraid I knew what had just happened.

Needing to see the truth for myself, I turned and darted down the hall away from Karfum.

“Come back!” he yelled, but I didn't stop, not even when I heard the Queen's Guard running after me.

When I rounded the corner and emerged in the queen's throne room, I saw exactly what I'd been afraid of. In the Queen Fairy's hand was a small, gray-eared mouse in a tiny, purple sweater.

“What did you do to her?” I demanded just as Karfum caught up to me and grabbed my arm. The fairy guards quickly surrounded us.

“Quiet,” Karfum whispered in my ear. “You'll only make things worse.”

The queen didn't even look my way, like I was invisible. Instead, she conjured a golden cage and shoved Ilda inside. The gray-eared mouse tried to make a run for it, but its struggle was pointless. The cage slammed shut and disappeared.

I stood there staring at the empty spot where the cage had been. Then, feeling numb from head to toe, I let Karfum and another guard lead me away.

Ilda had been turned into a singing rodent, and it was my fault. If I hadn't convinced her to tell me about my parents' whereabouts, the queen would have never brought her here and punished her for revealing the truth to me.

Part of me knew it was crazy to feel sorry for Ilda when she'd helped the Queen Fairy steal all the magic from the Land of Tales. And yet, I couldn't help feeling guilty.

I was an adventurer. I was supposed to protect magical creatures, not stand by and watch them be transformed into rodents.

Then again, wasn't that what I was considering doing if I turned the Committee over to the Queen Fairy? If she had the Committee members under her thumb, she could turn every last magical creature into part of her musical act.

And it would be my fault.

I couldn't let that happen. But if I didn't do what the Queen Fairy said, then my only chance to get my parents back could be gone.

After the guards led me back to my room, I sat on the bed staring out the window at the haze. My parents were somewhere in this city. I could almost
feel
them nearby.

Frustrated, I grabbed a mini-golf ball and chucked it against the wall. It bounced off the bathroom door and sailed into the toilet.
Plop!

Oops.

As I sunk back on the bed, it occurred to me that if I could find where the fairies were hiding my mom and dad, maybe I could rescue them before the queen's deadline and be long gone by the time the three days were up.

In order to find my parents, I first had to get out of my room. I was tempted to try sneaking out through the panels in the closets, but my cuff would go off again. And this time, since the leprechauns wouldn't have to hurry to get me ready for an audience with the queen, I doubted they'd be so forgiving. Plus, I didn't exactly want to get zapped again.

Maybe there was another way. Whatever Luken had done to be able to sneak around the palace undetected, I needed to do it too. I crawled into the closet and tried tapping on the back of it a few times to see if he would answer, but there was no sound in the room next door. I'd just have to wait for him to come back.

As it got darker and darker outside, there was still no sign of Luken.

Chances were, he'd prowl through my room while I was sleeping, on his way to the tunnels. If I set a trap for him, maybe I could get him to help me.

I arranged things around the room until I was sure my trap was ready. Then, with nothing left to do, I got ready for bed.

After what felt like an hour of staring at the ceiling and wondering where my parents were, and what had happened to Dr. Bradley, and if Anthony was okay, I finally managed to fall asleep.

I wasn't usually a big dreamer, and when I did have dreams, they were full of things like half-troll, half-Pegasus hybrids and other wacky magical creatures that didn't exist. This time, though, my dream felt like someone was showing me a movie of one of my adventures.

I was in the Land of Speak, the last mission I'd gone on before I found out that my parents had been adventurers (instead of dentists like I'd always thought). I was in the palace, talking to Prince Lamb—a mouthless magical sheep, turned cute human boy—about how to best defeat Klarr, the evil clown sorcerer. There was a sudden
Pop!
and my best friends, Trish and Melissa, appeared in the middle of the throne room, insisting that Klarr was about to come and attack us. I tried to tell them that they shouldn't be here, that they were supposed to be in the Land of Tales helping the villagers learn to live without magic, but they wouldn't listen to me.

As Klarr's clown car approached the palace, we rushed around gathering everyone we could find to help us fight. All of a sudden, I had the eerie feeling that someone was watching me. When I glanced over my shoulder, there was no one there.

The longer the dream went on, the more it felt like whoever was watching me was actually inside my brain, somehow looking into my thoughts. I had a prickling sensation at the back of my skull that just kept getting worse and worse.

Finally, it got so bad that I couldn't stand it anymore. “I want to wake up now,” my dream-self said.

And I did. Just like that. As if I'd pulled myself out of the dream by snapping my fingers. That had definitely never happened to me before.

I sat up on the uncomfortably stiff fairy bed, in my uncomfortably starchy fairy pajamas, and a huge wave of homesickness washed over me. I'd been away from home dozens of times on my adventures, and it had never bothered me before. Anthony had always made sure my aunt didn't notice I was gone so she wouldn't worry.

This time, all I wanted was to be in my own room in my own bed. I wanted to be able to pick up the phone and call Trish and Melissa and hear their voices. Or to chat with Aunt Evie over a nice cup of Earl Grey tea while one of her animal patients snoozed on the table. Heck, I would have settled for talking to Anthony about his latest candy obsession, but even that was out of the question since I was trapped in my room. The only sign of life outside my prison was the faint sound of mice singing somewhere below, which didn't make me feel any better.

The truth was, I wanted my parents back in my life so badly that it hurt. I had to figure out how to make that happen. I just had to.

Just as the sun was starting to come up, a huge
Crash!
echoed through my room.

The trap I'd set had caught a Luken-sized intruder.

“Ow!” he cried as he tried to untangle himself from the web of bath towels and mini-golf clubs I'd crisscrossed in front of the closet.

“Sneaking around again?” I said, turning on the lights.

Luken struggled to get free, causing a shower of mini-golf balls to fall on his head. “Some help, please?”

“Fine,” I said, “but you have to tell me how you manage to sneak around this place. How do you keep that cuff from going off?”

“Sorry. I cannot reveal that information.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Then you can get out of that mess on your own.”

One last ball bounced off Luken's forehead. He sighed. “Very well, but you must tell no one my secret.”

“I won't.” As I helped free him from the trap I'd made, he told me how he'd deactivated his tracking cuff by opening it up and switching off some kind of sensor. Yet another bit of technology that made no sense in a fairy-tale land.

“Switching the cuffs off is rather simple, really,” Luken said.

“Okay, so can you deactivate mine?” I said, unwinding the last towel from around his arm.

Luken shook his head. “It is too dangerous. If anyone finds out what I have done, I will be harshly punished. I cannot inflict that same fate on you.”

“You don't understand. I don't care how much they punish me! If I don't get out of my room and find my parents in the next two days, then I might never get them back. Please, you have to help me!” I was about a second away from grabbing him and shaking him until his pointy ears fell off.

“What do you mean?” Luken asked. “What has happened to your parents?”

“They've been missing since I was really young, and now I know the queen has them hidden somewhere. She said she'd make a deal with me, but I don't trust her. That's why I want to find my parents on my own, so I can get them out of here before the queen's deadline is up.”

He stared at me. “You have actually
met
the Queen Fairy? What was she like?”

“Creepy and blinding. I can still kind of see her outline on the back of my eyelids every time I blink.”

Luken's face lit up, and he pulled out his sketch pad again. This time, his drawing was of a ride made completely out of lights. No doubt it would blind everyone who went through it, probably permanently.

When he saw me looking at the sketch, Luken quickly closed his notebook and put it away.

“The queen has ruined many families,” he said, rubbing one of his long ears. “If helping you means that at least one family might be reunited, then I suppose it is worth the risk.”

“You mean you'll do it?” I practically squealed. “Thank you!”

Luken shrugged. “I only hope it will help.”

He looked so sad all of a sudden that my excitement faded. “Did she break up your family too?” I said.

He nodded slowly, not looking at me. “Before I was born, my father was one of the most influential theme-park designers in this land. His sketches inspired the Ferris wheel and many other rides, and he was working on his biggest project yet: a ship that could actually take you into space. Can you imagine something so incredible?”

Actually, I could. But Luken was so awed by the idea that I didn't say so. Instead, I asked: “So what happened?”

“The Carousel Catastrophe,” Luken whispered like it hurt to even say the words. “My father and several others perished in the accident. The queen had just come into power, and she used the tragedy as an excuse to close the park once and for all.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “And your mom?”

“After the accident, she came to believe that our theme-park lifestyle was responsible for my father's death and that something would happen to me too if I followed in his footsteps. She became one of the queen's biggest supporters, convinced that her vision for the future of this land was the only way to keep me safe.”

“You don't agree with her?'

Luken shook his head. “My father's designs were amazing. If we can get the park to reopen, then I will be able to carry on his legacy and make others happy just like he did.”

“That's why you're always drawing plans for amusement park rides?” I said.

He smiled shyly. “They are not nearly as good as my father's were, but most of his plans were destroyed. I hope to one day be able to replace them all.” His smile faded. “That is why the queen must be taken off her throne, so that we can reopen the park and return this land to the way it should be.”

“Okay, then we'll make that happen. If you help me find my parents, I'll help you take down that glowing fairy.” I stuck out my hand. “Deal?”

Luken stared at my hand for a minute and then lightly rubbed his palm against mine. I guess that was the closest to a fairy handshake I was going to get. “Deal,” he said.

I held out my cuff. “Now, please turn this thing off.”

Luken reached into his pocket and took out a small box filled with tools. He got to work, poking and prodding at the cuff. “If we are to search for your parents,” he said, “we should do it soon. There is a lot of unrest in the kingdom.”

“What do you mean?”

After glancing around, as if making sure no one was listening, Luken whispered: “Protests. The leprechauns are going on strike early tomorrow morning. They will refuse to go to their stations.”

“That's perfect!” I said. “It'll be a huge distraction. The fairies will be so worried about what's going on with the leprechauns that no one will notice if we're not in our rooms.”

Luken nodded, rubbing his ear again. I was starting to think he did that whenever he was pondering something. “That might work.”

There was a loud knock on the door.

Luken grabbed his tools and jumped to his feet. “At dawn,” he whispered, hurrying toward the closet he'd just come from. “When the leprechauns strike, we shall go into the tunnels.” Then he disappeared.