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“Approach lost animals gently, so you don't scare them away. With the right touch, they'll follow you home forever.”

—
Bo Peep's Guide to Enchanted Animal Care

A few hours' walk from the Bumpkins, my feet were killing me. I was used to wearing heels all the time—I lived in them—but this was the farthest I'd ever traveled, period. This was also the longest I'd ever gone without food. My stomach cramped around the nothingness. “I'm starving,” I complained to no one in particular.

“Okay, well, I nominate you to find some food for us,” Rexi said, still making sure to stay a few steps ahead.

I made a face at her green tunic. “Sure, I'll put that on my to-do list. Right under
find
parents, fix magic,
and
try
not
to
end
the
world
in
a
big
ball
of
fire
.”

“Well, if you're hungry, you can always try one of the figs. They haven't killed your pet yet. Unfortunately.” Rexi pointed to Kato, who was scarfing down more of the rotting fruit.

I wasn't that hungry.

Watching him whack the tree trunks with his spiky tail, I could see that my earlier observations had been spot on. He was getting bigger fast and wasn't a baby fuzz ball anymore. He was more like a gawky tween fuzz ball with paws the size of milk saucers. When he was done growing, he would be a big boy.

Rexi hollered from a little ways in front. “Hey, Dorkea.”

I moved a little faster to hear better, and so I could smack her if the opportunity arose. “Excuse me…what did you say?”

Rexi coughed into her hand. “I said, ‘Hey, Dorthea.'”

Yeah right.

“So I've always wanted to ask. What's the deal with that whole curse business anyway? Are you like a ticking time bomb now or something?” She matched my pace, then looked me up and down as if assessing my threat level.

She was the first servant to ever ask; everyone else had always kept their distance. Better safe than crispy, I suppose.

“It's possible.” I gave her a sly smile. “So you probably better be careful and stop pixing me off.”

Rexi snorted and rolled her eyes, her favorite mode of expression. “Bring it on. You look pretty harmless.”

A blumerang bird flew directly between us, then stopped to stretch its gossamer wings on top of a giant purple-spotted toadstool a few yards away. Before it had a chance to take off again, the toadstool opened its cap and swallowed the bird whole. The only evidence that the bird had ever existed were two feathers floating to the base of the fungi.

Rexi laughed uncomfortably. I wondered if she was rethinking that whole “harmless” idea. I know I was.

I turned around, but something stood in my path. It was small, about the size Kato had started out as but definitely not the same type of creature. This one looked nearly identical to the golden retriever pups the game master raised in the kennels. It had its eyes down, its tail tucked under, and light yellow fur that looked so soft it begged to be touched.

Who could resist?

“Aww, aren't you just the cutest widdle thing?” I said, petting the pup. “Are you lost too, sweet pea?”

Kato made a gagging sound behind me.

I steadfastly ignored him. “Don't wisten to mean old Kato. He's just jealous 'cause he's a stupid beast and you're so much cuter.”

Rexi made a gagging sound nearly identical to Kato's. “What is it with you and attracting useless furry things? Let's move. We're getting nowhere slow.”

Whatever. I was a princess, supposedly a natural with small woodland creatures and the like—though I'd never figured out how to get any of the castle canaries to clean my room.

A distant rumbling snapped me to my feet. I looked to the sky. It was clear. Thunder heralded a storm. And a storm reminded me of…

Kato circled around me, growling as if he too sensed the danger approaching. We'd just lost whatever lead the cyclone had given us, and now it was time to go. Rexi and I made eye contact.

“We need a place to hide.” She looked over her shoulder. “There!”

There
was a dense grove of golden fig trees. The leaves were fuller than the other trees so far, creating a shiny canopy. They could keep us out of view if the witch came from overhead.

Kato's growl pitched lower, turning more intense.

I turned back to grab the puppy and make a run for the trees, but Kato hadn't been growling at the sky.

He stood between me and the puppy, back arched in a protective stance. The puppy was still small and fluffy—except for its ginormous batlike wings. That, plus its glowing demon-red eyes kind of ruined the whole cuddly effect.

“What the hex?” Rexi shuffled back, colliding with me.

Extending its leathery, black wings, the pup howled up at the suns. A chorus of howls replied.

“Great. I think it just called for backup,” I said, looking around for the rest of the pack.

Thunder rumbled through the sky again, closer this time. The pup continued to howl, giving away our position.

Turning to make a run for the forest, a tree exploded into flames directly to my right. Smoke tendrils curled from the puppy's nostrils as it hovered a few inches off the ground.

I sighed. “Of course it's
a
fire-breathing
, flying demon puppy.”

Rexi looked back and forth between Kato and the puppy. “No fair. Why did we get stuck with the defective sidekick whose only special power is eating things?”

The howls were getting closer, but we couldn't go anywhere until this puppy was neutralized.

The dog's belly expanded, most likely gathering enough air to barbecue us. This was it. I'd avoided fire my whole life, and this was how the curse would come true. I was about to become the Girl of Emerald, bathed in flames.

Faster than my eyes could track, Kato whipped around, using his barbed tail to smack the puppy into the air like a ball. The fur ball flew…right into the purple-spotted toadstool. The puppy didn't even have a chance to look surprised before the giant mushroom gobbled it up and burped out a spare piece of fluff.

“I stand corrected,” Rexi admitted.

Astonished, I looked at our super-awesome sidekick. “Let me guess, you meant to do that.”

Kato shrugged his feathered wings modestly.

The approaching howls broke off any further praise I might have given him. Looking to the sky, I could just make out the horde of flying puppies and their leader, riding on a thundercloud—the Gray Witch.

“We've gotta move,” I said and sprinted past the flaming tree. The gold dripped off the leaves like wax from a candle.

The thunder boomed directly overhead. Once we reached the grove of figs, I figured we'd be safe and unseen.

One problem: you don't necessarily need to see something to destroy it.

Stormballs crashed through the golden canopy, creating large holes that allowed light to filter in. So far, they were way off target, but all it took was one lucky shot, right?

In between the booms of thunder, Griz cackled and taunted, “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I have a present for you.”

Yeah, like that was going to happen. Did she think I would yell out, “Ooohh goodie, a present! Gimme, gimme”? I might be shallow, but I'm not dumb. The gift thing may have worked once, but if I fell for it a second time, I deserved to be zapped into oblivion.

Rexi motioned for me and Kato to stop. “Maybe if we stay put, Griz will keep flying ahead,” she whispered.

Stormball after stormball crashed through the grove, then nothing. After a solid minute with no new strikes, I whispered, “Maybe she's moved on.”

There was a slight rustle in the trees just behind us. I looked up and found tiny pinprick holes appearing in the canopy.

What in Grimm's name was going on now?

Stupidly, I went over to investigate. Face tilted to the sky, I felt a drop on my cheek. I hissed quietly in pain because it burned. Like acid. Somehow the witch was making it rain acid, and it was coming down through the trees. A yip right above me. So not Griz, but the puppies.

I really didn't want to think about where the acid was coming from. I prayed it was drool. The alternative was too gross to think about.

The puppies spread out in a scatter pattern, making their acid melt through the trees. Rexi's eyes bugged out and she made weird hand signals.

I mouthed,
What?

She exhaled heavily and shook her head.
We
have
to
move
, she mouthed back.

Right then, some splatter landed on Kato's wing. With a mighty roar, Kato let the world know his pain.

And our location.

I didn't think; I just moved, shoving Kato out of the way. Milliseconds later, a stormball crashed in the exact spot where he had been standing.

“I see you,” Griz singsonged directly above us on her cloud.

“Go!” Rexi grabbed my hand and took off.

The world became a blur of gold as leaves whipped past my face. The trees behind us burst into flames, driving us forward. The grove was getting lighter, a sure sign that it was coming to an end.

I pointed to the tree line in front of us. “Split up as soon as we're out!”

Rexi nodded. We broke through the trees, and I aimed to veer right. My foot hit air.

We had run off a cliff.

“Rule #14: For protection, a princess should never carry something as unladylike as a sword. Kitchen utensils are handy in a pinch.”

—
Definitive Fairy-Tale Survival Guide, Volume 1

My dress plumed out around me, but it did nothing to slow my descent. Rexi and I fell like shrieking stones, still holding hands. Kato spread his wings and caught the wind.

I grabbed his paw and prayed to the Storymakers for a miracle. In answer to my prayer, we hovered for a moment. Then we sank again. Kato's wings weren't strong enough to support all of our weight.

I let go of him.

Spinning wildly, turning end over end, the force ripped Rexi and I apart.

In my somersaults, I caught glimpses of the earth below. It was blue. My last thoughts before I hit were,
Hooray, water is better than jagged rocks,
and then,
I
don't know how to swim
.

The air whooshed out of my lungs as I performed a spectacular belly flop. Momentarily stunned, my head became submerged. When my body decided to obey my brain's commands again, it was too late. The weight of my dress pulled me down as effectively as any anchor.

The water was cold, and my fingers started to freeze up. I struggled with the pearl buttons at my back. If I could only get this Grimm-forsaken dress off.

My chest burned. The desire to take a breath was nearly overwhelming. As my vision closed in, something hit the water with a big splash. Probably a stormball. Maybe it would get me before I drowned.

Just when I thought I would give in to the urge to inhale, something pushed me to the surface. I started breathing a half beat before my mouth met air. Coughing the water back out of my lungs, I noticed that my hacking echoed. It looked like I had emerged under a shelf in a canyon's wall.

Starting to sink again, I flailed around in the water for something to grab. My hand hit horn behind me. I grabbed it and turned in the water to see what I hoped was my rescuer. It was Kato. He hadn't flown off and left me. I wondered if his cannonball dive was the result of a failed attempt at flight or if it had been intentional when my head hadn't resurfaced. Didn't matter. On my mental score sheet, I had to add a plus column.

Rule of favor or not, I owed him my life.

Lightning cracked through the sky, electrifying the very air. Thunder boomed as evidence of Griz's temper tantrum. Out of sight, she screamed in rage from above. “Do yourself a favor and drown, little princess. Because that will be a much kinder fate than what you'll get the next time I find you.”

A light spot in the dark water caught my eye. It was Rexi's blond head. She looked totally different with her hair plastered to her head instead of sticking straight up. “Let's not do that again, okay?” she said, panting and swimming toward us.

“Sounds like a plan.” I grabbed her green sleeve and helped pull her to us. Each of us hanging on to one of Kato's horns, we floated down the river and kept ourselves hidden under the cliff's rocky shelf. An hour of floating later, both Griz and our hiding place were gone. The high canyon walls ended abruptly, the depth turning shallow as we floated up to a beach.

I desperately wanted to get out of the water. My skin was beginning to resemble the withered figs. Clawing through the sand, I hauled myself onto the beach.
Blessed
land.
I closed my eyes and savored the feel of the fine grains beneath my hands. “Thank Grimm.”

When I opened them again, a pair of sightless, milky-white eyes held captive in a wrinkly and decapitated head stared back at me.

“Excuse me,” the head said. “Could you give me a hand? I seem to have lost mine.”

Shrieking, I scrambled back into the water—away from the grotesque head—treading over Rexi and dunking her underwater in the process.

“What is with you?” she sputtered.

I raised a shaky hand and pointed. “It talked. How can it be talking? It's a
dead
head.”

Rexi shoved me off her. “Obviously not too dead if it's talking.”

Minor details. I turned away and froggy-paddled down the shallow part a bit. “I think I'll float a little farther downstream and find another head-free beach.”

“Helloooo? A little help if you please?” the head cried plaintively.

Against my better judgment, I looked back. While I was freaking out, Kato had jumped out of the water and gone to play on the beach. He was batting the head back and forth between his two massive paws.

Rexi shrugged. “At least he's not trying to eat it.”

“I'm getting quite dizzy,” the head complained, the milky eyes rolling around, probably not on purpose.

With the poutiest lips, I gave Rexi a pleading look. No effect. I switched to what I hoped was a steely yet regal glare.

She shook her head. “Sorry, but I don't work for you anymore. Your High and Mightiness will just have to clean up after her own
pet
this time.”

“But I really,
really
don't want to.” While claiming ownership of him earlier, this was not what I had had in mind.

Though I'd gained fifty pounds in the form of my waterlogged dress, I reluctantly slogged up the beach again. Grimacing, I picked up the head by its scraggly, sand lice–infested gray hair.

“Um, is there someplace in particular you'd like me to put you, Ms. Head?” I wrinkled my nose and held it out as far as my arm would stretch.

“Call me Hydra. If you would be a dear, my cottage is just up the beach a bit.” Her milky eyes still rattled around the sockets a bit.

My whole outlook perked up at the thought of a place to rest. It helped me combat the
ick
factor by dreaming of hot tea and getting dry in Hydra's nice, warm cottage.

Turns out “cottage” was a bit of a euphemism.
Shack
probably would have been a wee bit closer to the truth. There was a small stovepipe coming out of the roof. Most roofs are similar in shape to a witch's hat—this one looked a bit more like a bowl because the point was sagging down in the middle. There were windows on either side of the building with shutters hanging mostly off—attached by a single piece of gum. The door looked like it had been carved directly out of the tree, and it was open.

A frumpy headless body in a housecoat ambled out, whacking into the door on its way.

“Holy hex!” Rexi splashed back into the water. “I'm just gonna stay way over here, if that's all right with you.” She looked at the body and shuddered. “And if it's not, I'm
still
gonna stay over here.”

“Coward!” I shouted, secretly desperate to do the exact same thing.

“Better than being zombie takeout.”

Kato used one of his wings and herded the body in our direction.

“There you are. Poor dear. Did those mean doggies hurt you?” Hydra consoled her hunchbacked body as it wandered blindly toward us.

The body hefted the Hydra head onto its shoulders. Nothing magically knit the two back together, and I couldn't see a zipper or anything. There was only a slurpy sucking noise, and if you asked me, the head still looked wobbly at best.

“That's just wrong,” Rexi called from the water.

Yeah, I didn't need the observation, thank you—I had the full, creepy view up close. I threw Rexi a weary look. “If you're not going to help, you're not allowed to comment.”

Though part of me hoped she'd come up just so she could keep making snappy quips, Rexi held up her hands and mimed sealing her lips.

Hydra finished checking over her newly found extremities and wandered farther up the path.

I followed at a safe distance, in case the head lost its balance or something. Polite conversation tamped down my urge to run away, screaming. “I heard you say something about dogs. Did they do…um”—how to say this delicately?—“did they knock your head off?”

“Heavens no. What a silly idea.” Hydra rooted around in a weed-infested garden. She pulled some bloodroot from the ground and ambled back in my general direction, using a broken garden hoe like a walking stick. “It was a witch who played croquet with my head. The dogs just rolled me down to the beach.”

“Did you happen to see what direction they went?” I hoped the answer was,
Way
the
spell
away
from
here
.

“Well, obviously I didn't see anything.” Hydra pointed to her sightless eyes. “But if you'll come with me I can ask the others.”

“Others?”

She gestured me over. “Up at the house. Be a dear and guide me.” Her nails were long overdue for a manicure. They were yellow and gnarled, and they bit into my arm as I led her up the wilted garden path.

Kato gave the area a thorough search. Probably hungry
again
. When he approached the garden, he looked back at me like he was asking for permission—guess he'd learned his lesson with the Bumpkins. I shook my head, since I recognized a few of the plants from Verte's garden—the cursed and poisonous section.

He gave a last mopey look at the plants and trotted to keep pace with me. I ruffled the fur between Kato's horns to reward his obedience. For a moment, he seemed to enjoy it; then he smacked my hand away with his tail. I suppose he'd decided he was too noble for head scratches—good thing I hadn't tried to rub his tummy. My stinging hand served as an excellent reminder that underneath the soft, comforting fur still lurked the Kato that liked to knock me down a peg.

Taking off at a gallop, he beat me to the half-hanging cottage door and ambled in—then nearly knocked me over backing out.

“Big baby.”

Even though Kato might be a prince, he'd started off grubby enough that he didn't have much room to judge Hydra's housekeeping. And surely it couldn't be
that
messy in there. While he was being hypocritical, I was quite proud of myself for being so helpful and humble.

As I walked through the door, I gave myself a little pat on the back—and then froze.

I'd been prepared for a hovel. I might have even been okay with a house full of magically trained circus mice. I was not prepared for the
others
.

Heads lined the floor-to-ceiling shelving. Different sizes, different species—all of them looked lifeless. Some had clearly passed their expiration date. Several looked freshly harvested. One still had a faint flush to its cheeks.

And wouldn't you know, there was an empty spot on the shelf, just the right size for my royal head.

Following Kato's example, I backed up toward the door. “You know what? On second thought, it doesn't really matter which way Griz went. We have to go west anyway. I'll just see myself out.”

For a fragile blind lady, her grip was surprisingly strong. “You definitely don't want to be heading west. I can help, and there's so much I have to tell you. I'm afraid I must insist you and your friends stay here.”

Spell
no
.

I squirmed, trying to get free, and cursed myself for not staying on the beach in the first place. This freaky hag made Gretel's gingerbread witch look like a sweet, harmless baker. Probably the only thing Hydra wanted to help me with was removing my head. Well, that wasn't gonna happen. Groping blindly to the side, I grabbed the first thing I could get a handle on.

Ah, frying pans—the preferred weapon of princesses everywhere.

Hefting the pan from the sink, I whacked Hydra's head from her shoulders, sending it flying into a shelf, where it fell to the ground with all the
others
.

Hydra's gnarly hands instinctively flew to the spot where her head had just been, releasing her grasp on me but snagging the cardigan on my shoulders. I dropped down and out of the jacket. Then, planting my bejeweled heel on her crusty behind, I sent her body to join the heads on the floor. For good measure, I chucked the skillet at her and booked it out the door.

It wasn't until I was outside that I remembered the wishing star had been in my pocket. But nothing could have made me go back in there again. Besides, the stupid thing was busted anyway.

As if to confirm the wisdom in my decision, Hydra's body came ambling out the door again. I bolted.

My companions were waiting for me farther down the beach at the border of the woods.

“Zombie?” Rexi shouted as I ran past.

Close enough.