Out of the Wild

  He blinked. “Huh?”

  “Um, it’s possible that, ahh, um . . . Sleeping Beauty is in your RV,” she said. She felt her face turn scarlet.

  Henry stared at her. “Uh, I told you before, it’s just my dad and me. I think I would have noticed if we’d picked up a thorny sleeping woman.”

  He so thought she was crazy. Great. Still blushing furiously, she said, “Listen, I know this is a weird request, but can I just look around your RV? Really quick. Please?” Oh, God, this was sooo embarrassing.

  His green eyes widened. “Is that a bath mat? Is it floating? Wow, that is so cool!” He shot her a look of total admiration, which made her blush even more. As he stepped outside to stare at the bath mat, she caught a glimpse of a table inside the RV. On the table was a canister of weed killer. She felt the blood drain out of her cheeks. Weed killer.

  No wonder there weren’t more thorns around the RV.

  “You do have her!” Julie charged inside, and Henry flattened against the side of the camper as the floating bath mat trailed behind her.

  She sped through the RV. Closet-like bathroom, no. Cabinets, no. Under the table, no. Bed, no. Where could you hide a grown woman in a camper? She dove for the cushions on the couch and tossed them over her shoulder.

  “Hey!” Henry said. “What are you doing? You’re making a mess. Dad is going to flip his lid. I don’t think I should have let you inside. Who are you? And where did you get that bath mat? It’s awesome!”

  She paused. He thought it was awesome? He was looking at her. Wow, he had movie-star eyes. Julie forced herself to look back down at the couch. Cushions aside, she saw a handle. Yes! She was right! “Look!” she said, pointing. A hidden compartment! Did he doubt her now?

  “All RVs have extra storage there,” he said. “We don’t keep anything in it. Well, we were going to pack camping gear—hey!” he said as Julie yanked up the lid . . .

  ... and saw blankets.

  The RV door banged open. “Henry, are you okay?” called his father. Was he Rumpelstiltskin? Maybe he wasn’t. What if she was wrong? But there was the weed killer and . . . Okay, there was no real other evidence, but it couldn’t be just a coincidence. She refused to believe it was just a coincidence.

  Dad charged into the RV. “Halt!” he cried as Henry’s dad tried to grab her arm. Julie yanked back the blankets.

  Everyone froze.

  “Whoa,” Henry said.

  Sleeping Beauty lay in the storage compartment with arms crossed as if she were in a coffin. Butter yellow hair framed her pink-cheeked face. She was alive, breathing softly and delicately.

  Dad leveled his sword at Rumpelstiltskin’s throat. “Your evil plan has been thwarted.” The tip touched skin. Julie remembered red on gray fur and shouted, “Dad, no!” He’d do it, she thought wildly. He was a hero; heroes slayed villains. She rushed to his side.

  “Evil plan thwarted? Who talks like that?” Henry said, his voice shrill and fast. “Dad, what’s going on? Who are these people? Is that a real sword? Why’s that dude dressed like Elvis?”

  Julie clung to Dad’s arm. “Dad, please.”

  The prince didn’t lower the sword. “Explain to your son what evil you have wrought.”

  “Who’s that woman?” Henry asked, voice still shrill. “Is she . . . She couldn’t be. She’s not Sleeping Beauty. That’s impossible.”

  Defying the prince, Rumpelstiltskin lifted his chin, exposing more of his throat to the sword point. “Please, please, don’t,” Julie begged Dad. He’d already killed once for her. “I’m safe. Sleeping Beauty’s safe.”

  He didn’t look at her. The sword didn’t waver.

  “Do what you will to me,” Rumpelstiltskin said, “but leave my son. He’s innocent.” His eyes flickered to Henry. “I had no choice,” he said quietly. “They threatened you. I would ransom the world to protect you.”

  Yes, of course, Julie realized. He was Rumpelstiltskin. He had bargained with a miller’s daughter for her baby, and then he had torn himself in two with anger and grief when he hadn’t been able to win the child. Of all the fairy-tale characters, he was the one who had wanted a child the most. He was the one who had been willing to go the farthest to have one. Now that he had a son, he would of course do anything for him. Bobbi must have known that.

  Dad knew it too. He lowered his sword.

  “All I had to do in return for my son’s safety was transport Sleeping Beauty. I was allowed to choose the route, so I disguised the journey as a vacation.”

  Julie finally understood. That was why Sleeping Beauty was at Graceland and here at the Grand Canyon! Her path had been disguised as an ordinary road trip for Henry’s sake.

  “You weren’t supposed to ever know,” Rumpelstiltskin said to his son. “If I obeyed my orders, you’d be left alone. You wouldn’t be harmed.”

  Eyes wild, Henry looked from his dad to Julie to Prince. “This is crazy!”

  Julie tried to imagine what he was feeling. It had been tough enough to grow up knowing her family’s secret, but how much worse would it have been to discover that her mom had been hiding the truth all along? “What kind of threats did Bobbi make?” Julie asked. She pictured Henry as a pumpkin. Was that really enough of a threat to get involved in a kidnapping? Wasn’t Rumpelstiltskin risking his son by involving him at all?

  “Oh, Bobbi’s not the dangerous one,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “She’s bad, but the one she works for . . .” He shuddered. Wait—what did he mean? There was someone worse than a rogue fairy godmother? Bobbi had a boss?

  Henry shook his head as if trying to shake the words out of his ears. “You expect me to believe . . . Are you saying . . . You’re really Rumpelstiltskin?”

  Julie shivered. That sounded a lot like a fairy-tale moment: someone had guessed Rumpelstiltskin’s true identity. Had they just fueled the Wild again? “He’s still your dad before anything else,” Julie said. “Nothing changes that.”

  Henry forced a laugh. “It’s all a big joke, right?” He looked pleadingly at Julie and then he spun around, his eyes darting all over the RV. “Okay, where are the hidden cameras? Very funny. Hilarious.” His voice cracked on the final word. Bending over Sleeping Beauty, he poked her shoulder. “Joke’s over. You can get up now.”

  Julie wished she could say it was a joke. She wished she could tell him it would all be okay. This was such a terrible way for someone to find out the truth.

  “Sleeping Beauty will sleep until awakened by a kiss,” Dad said. He laid the broomstick and duffel bag on the counter behind him and pushed past Rumpelstiltskin.

  Julie scooted between her dad and Sleeping Beauty. “You know you can’t kiss her, right?”

  “I do not wish to be faithless to your mother or to what she believes is right,” he said, “but the spell must be broken. It would be cruel to leave Rose asleep for longer than is needed. Sleeping through life . . . it is the one of the cruelest fates within the Wild.” Gently, he pushed Julie aside.

  Behind him, Rumpelstiltskin said, “If you kiss her, you’ll fuel the Wild.”

  Julie nodded vigorously. See! Even the villains knew that was bad.

  He added: “You’ll be playing right into their hands.”

  Both Julie and Prince turned to stare at him. “What?” Julie said, stunned. Someone wanted Dad to wake Sleeping Beauty? Someone wanted the Wild to grow faster? She had to have misheard.

  “The kiss was supposed to take place in Sleeping Beauty’s castle in Disneyland for maximum fairy-tale impact of setting plus characters,” Rumpelstiltskin explained. An actual prince waking an actual princess inside a castle . . . Yes, that would have given the Wild an incredible burst of strength.

  “Are you saying this whole mess isn’t about Sleeping Beauty at all?” Julie asked. “This is about the Wild? About helping the Wild?” But that couldn’t be! No fairy-tale character would ever want to help the Wild . . . would they?

  It was totally and utterly inconceivable. But the pieces fit:1. Bobbi’s strang
e behavior. As Cinderella’s fairy godmother, Bobbi could poof herself from place to place, yet she had chosen to flee Worcester in a highly visible apple coach. She had transformed Mom and Grandma into pumpkins but not Dad. In fact, Bobbi had dared Dad to chase her. She knew if she kidnapped Sleeping Beauty right there in front of an actual prince, he wouldn’t be able to resist, and then she’d have a prince on a quest to save a princess.

  2. The glass slipper in Times Square. Could Bobbi have planted the glass slipper deliberately? Maybe she was the one who had egged on the crowd! Or what if it had been someone else, like this “boss” that Rumpelstiltskin had mentioned . . .

  3. The birds. The pigeons that attacked . . . they could have been under orders to re-create a fairy-tale event. Later, they could have pointed the way to the trail of thorns.

  4. Jack and Gina’s arrest. The police had mentioned an informant—could it have been Bobbi’s boss or some other fairy-tale character who wanted to keep Jack and Gina and the others from stopping Dad?

  5. The wolf. After New York, Bobbi must have transferred Sleeping Beauty to Rumpelstiltskin, who then left on his “spontaneous” road trip with Henry, leading Julie and the prince to Graceland, where the wolf . . . Julie shivered. Oh, wow. She’d thought that at worst, this was about one reckless kidnapping. She never imagined there could be a conspiracy! “You’re working for the Wild?” Julie demanded.

  He held up his hands in defense. “I was only transportation!”

  “Only transportation?” She gawked at him. He was the one with Sleeping Beauty in his RV. He was the one who laid the trail that led them to the wolf! “How about ‘kidnapping’ and ‘attempted murder’?” Her voice cracked, and she realized she’d been shouting.

  “Murder?” Henry yelped.

  Rumpelstiltskin crumpled against the wall of the RV as Julie told him about the wolf. Henry backed away from both of them as she talked.

  “I didn’t know.” Rumpelstiltskin pleaded to Henry, “I swear I didn’t know.”

  Henry turned away from his dad and stared out the window at the canyon. Julie saw him wipe a cheek with the back of his fist. Later, she promised herself, she’d talk to him. She’d finally met another kid whose parent was a fairy-tale character! They had a lot to talk about—if he was ever willing to speak to her again.

  In a whisper, Rumpelstiltskin said, “Tell me how I can make it better.”

  He couldn’t, she thought. The wolf was dead. The Wild was growing. And Sleeping Beauty . . . “You can wake Sleeping Beauty!” Julie exclaimed. Yes, that was perfect! “It’s not a fairy-tale moment if the villain kisses her, right?” They could wreck the kidnappers’ plans right here!

  “I . . . suppose it’s not,” Rumpelstiltskin said.

  “He’s not a prince,” Dad objected. “It may not work. She might not wake.”

  Still facing the window, Henry gave a choked laugh. This all had to feel like a nightmare to him. His world was turning upside down. But Julie couldn’t think about him right now. Pay attention, she told herself. You can stop the kidnappers’ plan right here. “Just try it,” she said to Rumpelstiltskin. “Please.”

  Rumpelstiltskin knelt by Sleeping Beauty. Julie held her breath. Would it work? Dad was right; Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t a prince. What if it didn’t work?

  Henry interrupted, his voice even more strained, “Uh . . . ’Scuze me? Which one of you brought the dragon?”

  Julie turned, and her stomach lurched. Out the window, a dragon—its wings spread radiantly against the dying sun—rose out of the Grand Canyon.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Dragon

  “Get down!” Rumpelstiltskin leapt onto his son, knocking him to the floor. Julie fell to her knees as her dad shielded her. She saw a flash of iridescent scales and silver claws as the dragon dove for the window and then veered up.

  Metal crunched, and then rosy sunlight poured in as the roof of the RV was peeled back like the lid on a can of cat food. Julie screamed as wind from the dragon’s wings rushed into the camper, and then the dragon’s shadow fell over them.

  Dad drew his sword.

  “It’s the next trap!” Rumpelstiltskin shouted. “They want a prince to fight a dragon!”

  “Don’t fight it, Dad!” She grabbed his sword arm.

  The dragon plunged its claws deep into the camper. One set of talons closed around Rumpelstiltskin and Henry. The other scooped up Sleeping Beauty.

  Julie released Dad’s arm and shrieked. “Never mind! Fight it, Dad! Fight it!”

  Wind whooshed into the camper again as the dragon took flight. As its shadow lifted, the rose red sunset glinted off Dad’s sword. “Leave them and fight me!” Dad cried to the dragon. He jumped onto his broomstick and shot up out of the torn-open roof of the RV.

  Grabbing her bath mat, Julie flew up after him and then stopped, hovering above the RV. A few yards ahead, the earth dropped away in a mammoth cliff. She watched the dragon soar out over the Grand Canyon. Behind it, the sun was nearly down. The dragon spread its wings, and its translucent skin glowed like sheets of gold. The scales on its body flashed red, gold, and emerald. She saw its prisoners as dark shapes. Sleeping Beauty hung limp from her waist, and Henry and Rumpelstiltskin struggled in the dragon’s talons, a mile above the Grand Canyon.

  Sword raised high, Dad dove at the dragon.

  The dragon twisted away from him. Silhouetted against the dark blue sky, Julie watched in horror as the dragon opened its jaws, and a jet of fire blazed across the sky.

  Fire-breathing dragon! “Dad, watch out!” she screamed.

  Dad jerked to the left, and the fire blasted past him, missing him by inches.

  The dragon shot another burst of flame at Dad, and its prisoners screamed. Dad spiraled away and dove toward the dragon’s back, causing it to twist in mid-air and shoot another stream of fire at Dad. Stripes of smoke filled the air, drifting into darkened clouds. He would never get close enough to strike!

  What should Julie do? What could she do? She didn’t have a sword. She didn’t even have a butter knife. She just had herself and a stupid flying bath mat . . . I could distract the dragon, she thought suddenly. I could get its attention, and Dad could strike!

  Taking a deep breath, Julie leaned forward on the bath mat and flew out over the canyon. Her stomach dropped as the earth fell away beneath her. Don’t look down, she thought. Just don’t look down.

  “Hey, dragon!” she shouted. “Over here!”

  “Julie, stay back!” Dad yelled.

  The dragon swung its head toward her. Behind it, the sun was now a sliver of orange-red as bright as the dragon’s fire. She swallowed hard. “That’s it! Watch me, you overgrown gecko!”

  She heard Henry cry, “What are you doing?”

  As the dragon opened its jaws, Julie dove down, faster, faster—the wind whipping through her hair. A mile below, she saw the Colorado River like a strip of black ribbon. She aimed straight for it.

  Wind rushed behind her, and she shot a look back. Oh, no, the dragon wasn’t supposed to follow her! She was only supposed to be a momentary distraction. It wasn’t supposed to start chasing her! Julie saw its jaws open. Instinctively, she yanked up on the bath mat. She heard the air crackle, and a jet of flame burned through the air right where she had just been. Faster, she ordered herself. Faster!

  Julie swooped through the canyons. Up, down, right, left. She circled around pillars of rock as thick and tall as skyscrapers. She skirted along jagged ridges.

  The dragon kept coming.

  She had to find someplace where the dragon couldn’t follow. But where? The sun was gone now. Only the deep orange afterglow remained. Shadows filled the impossibly wide canyons. Could she hide down there? Maybe if she flew fast enough, she could escape into the darkness. Pointing the bath mat down, she dove. She gritted her teeth as wind slapped her face. She shot a look over her shoulder and saw the dragon diving after her like a torpedo. Its wings were tucked into its sides, and its talons holding Henry, Rumpel
stiltskin, and Sleeping Beauty were pulled up against its chest. “Faster! Faster!” she shouted at the bath mat.

  She plunged deep into the canyon. As the canyon walls blurred on either side of her, she saw the river below. In the shadows, it looked like a road of black glass. On either side, Julie saw trees. She could hide there! Surely, the dragon was too huge to follow her between them. As she dove closer, she yanked up on the front fringe and glided over the top branches of a patch of trees. “Slower, slower,” she whispered to the mat. She skimmed over branches, slowing. As soon as she was slow enough, she’d—

  “Julie!” her dad yelled. Henry and Rumpelstiltskin yelled too.

  She turned her head. Red fire shot toward her, so bright and close that for an instant, it was all she could see. Without thinking, Julie rolled off the bath mat. She landed hard in a cradle of branches. Air squeezed out of her lungs. The bath mat zipped past her and then burst into flames. A small fireball, it hurtled toward the canyon wall and slammed into the rocks in a shower of sparks.

  Her body aching in a thousand places, Julie clutched at branches as the sparks faded and the canyon floor finally fell into shadows. The afterimages of the fireball danced in front of her eyes and, for a moment, Julie couldn’t see anything. She heard the whoosh-whoosh of wind from the dragon’s wings, and she held her breath. If she couldn’t see it, could it see her?

  “Julie!” her dad called. “Answer me, Julie! Are you all right?”

  “Julie!” Henry shouted at the same time.

  If she called back to them, would she reveal herself to the dragon? If she didn’t—She saw a streak of fire blaze across the sky high above her. Against its glow, she saw the silhouette of her father, directly in the fire’s path. “Dad, watch out!”

  “Julie!” Dad dove toward her.

  The dragon flew to intercept him.

  She screamed as the dragon’s head turned toward Dad. It was too close! Dad wouldn’t be able to—

  Suddenly, in a deep, echoing voice, the dragon spoke: “Prince!” What? The dragon talked! Its voice reverberated across the canyon. “We have your beloved!” Your beloved? Mom? The kidnappers had Mom? A jet of flame sizzled through the air right between Dad and Julie. In that blaze of light, Julie saw the dragon. It was directly over her head! If it looked down, it would see her!