The bolt slid on the bedroom door, and she heard the queen’s voice singsong: “Oh, love-ly prin-cess?” Girl knelt down on the floor in front of Boots and begged, “Quickly, please. Tell me! Tell me who I am!”
“If I do, I’ll lose her!” Boots said.
“Who?” she whispered back.
“The love of my life!” he said. “It was the bargain . . .”
The queen came around the mattresses. “Ah, there you are! How did you sleep?”
Girl straightened. “I wasn’t able to sleep, Your Majesty,” she found herself saying. “There was an awful lump in the bed.” Why had she said that? She hadn’t meant to say that. It wasn’t even true.
The queen clapped. “Marvelous! You are a true princess! You must come now. We will celebrate with a feast.”
She was so close to breaking through! She searched for an excuse to stay: “But I’m not dressed.” It was true: she was barefoot and in the nightgown.
“Pshaw, you would be radiant in a scullery maid’s dress.” Putting her arm around her, the queen guided her toward the door. Girl looked back over her shoulder. To her relief, the cat trotted behind her.
The queen hurried her through the ornate halls into a vast dining room. Girl had a quick glimpse: six chandeliers lit the cathedral-shaped hall. Tapestries and mosaics filled the marble walls. At one end, Girl saw a two-story grandfather clock.
“Sit, sit,” the queen said. Obeying, Girl climbed onto a throne at one end of a banquet table. Her toes barely touched the floor. She wondered how it could be dinnertime. Shouldn’t it be morning? Had she slept through the day? Or had she only slept an hour or two and it was still night? Neither choice felt right. It had felt like morning when she woke. She tried to see around the pyramid of melon slices in front of her. The prince sat at the other end behind sculptures made of bread and pastry. “Here is the true princess!” he shouted. “She has passed the test! She is worthy to be my wife!”
Girl stared. “Wife?”
Smoke billowed from the center of the table. Spilling fruit platters, a boy solidified in the midst of the smoke. He swished midnight blue robes as he strode across the table toward Girl. “No, I forbid it!”
“Where did he come from?” Girl hissed to the cat. “Who is he? Do I know him?” But the cat was no longer in sight. “Boots? Where are you, Boots?” The magician grabbed Girl’s wrist and hauled her to her feet. “Ow, hey!” she said.
“She is my beloved,” the magician said. “I will have her!”
The prince climbed onto the table. “I challenge you to a contest for her love! For I am an enchanter, and I have magic at my disposal!”
Girl tried to twist out of the magician’s grip. “Let go.”
“Very well, prince,” the magician said, releasing her. Girl fell back into the throne. “What are your terms?” he said.
Rubbing her sore wrist, Girl stood up. “Wait a minute here. Don’t I have a say?” She was not marrying anybody. She barely knew the prince. She barely knew herself. And who was the kid in the wizard hat? The hat had a tag dangling in the boy’s face.
The prince puffed out his chest. “We shall have a magical duel. Whoever creates the thing that pleases the princess most shall have her for his bride.”
Magical duel? With her as the prize? She didn’t want to be a prize. She didn’t want this pimple-faced magician as her husband. She wasn’t even sure she wanted the cute prince. What she wanted was her name. She headed for the door. “Boots? Boots!”
The prince pushed his royal sleeves to his royal elbows and said, “I shall begin, since I was first to claim her hand.” He waved his arms in the air. “I summon the birds of the sky!”
As Girl reached the door, it slammed open in front of her. Birds flooded into the hall. Covering her head, she ran back to the banquet table as dozens of parrots dive-bombed her shoulders. She stooped under the table.
The birds dove around the hall chirping: “Beautiful, beautiful princess. Beautiful, beautiful princess,” until the echoes shook the chandeliers.
Cautiously, she peeked out. Green and red parrots swooped in figure eights.
“Ha!” the magician said. “You call that magic? Come, singers of the slime, dwellers of the mud! I summon you!” He waved his arms, and frogs poured through the windows. Hundreds of frogs piled onto the floor and hopped across the banquet hall. She jumped out from under the table and climbed on top of her chair.
Conducting them, the magician led their croaking as he bellowed out aria style: “Admirable princess, do you think it kind or wise, in this sudden way to kill a poor magician with your eyes?” The frog bellows reverberated like an orchestra of bass drums.
“Honestly, I don’t . . .” Girl started to say.
But it wasn’t over. Wading through the frogs, the prince-enchanter stabbed the wall with a butter knife. It sprang a leak. Soon, cracks spread across the wall, and water poured through onto the floor. Frogs hopped right and left and the birds flew toward the ceiling as the waterfalls engulfed the walls.
Okay, this was not fun. Even the queen lifted her skirts as the water level rose in the hall. Girl climbed onto the table beside the cheese.
At the prince’s command, barges came through the wall on either side of the grandfather clock. One by one, the boats squeezed narrow to fit through the cracks, then popped out into their full size. The barges drifted beside the banquet table.
Lying on one of the barges, a woman with seashells in her hair leaned over toward Girl. In place of legs, the woman had a long fish tail with shimmering scales. She handed Girl a pearl and said, “You are even more beautiful than I.”
“That’s nice,” Girl said, “but I don’t want this.” She tried to hand the pearl back, but the mermaid floated out of the hall.
Scowling fiercely, the magician blew on a pipe. In response, the river around them bubbled and swirled, turning brown with mud.
Hundreds of thousands of great oysters waddled slowly and laboriously onto the table toward Girl. She scooted to the center of the table as the shells flopped across the plates. “Seriously, you can stop now,” she said. “I’m not playing.” Row by row, the oysters opened up their shells and each spat a pearl at her feet.
“Princess!” the prince shouted. “Look at this!” He gestured toward the ceiling, and all the birds swooped down, dancing in spirals and twirls like magnificent acrobats.
“No, Princess, look at me!” the magician said. As the candles on the chandeliers detached and danced with the birds, the magician pointed at the muddy river. The water erupted. It shot toward the ceiling and burst through the plaster. Sunlight streamed through as the ceiling shattered and the palace dissolved around them.
Chapter Twenty-four
Midnight
Only the grandfather clock remained standing. All the castle walls were rubble. Screaming at each other, the prince threw feathers at the magician and the magician hurled frogs at the prince. The hands on the clock clicked: 2:55.
Rain fell on her face as she looked up at the clock. The time made no sense—it was night for the ball, morning when she woke, evening for the feast, and now afternoon? When was midnight? Shouldn’t she get a midnight? She had to be home by midnight, the fairy godmother had said. She wanted to go home. She didn’t want any more princes or magicians or mattresses or tests. If the clock struck midnight, would she learn where home was?
Climbing off the table, she waded through the water toward the clock. Boots shouted, “Don’t do it! Please!” Girl turned to see the cat race across the table and stop short of leaping into the water after her. “If you stop the Wild,” Boots said, “I’ll lose the love of my life.” Behind him, a white cat daintily ate from the feast.
Girl frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He hurried over to the other cat. “Isn’t she beautiful? Stylish and intelligent. She’s perfect for me, and the Wild said I could have her if you stay in your happily ever after.” Girl frowned at him. He wasn’t making sense. She t
urned back to the clock. Desperation in his voice, he said, “You of all people should know how hard it is to be one of a kind, how lonely it is to not belong. I have had this loneliness for hundreds of years, and the Wild offered me a chance to end it. Please, can’t you just be happy with this? Can’t this be your story?”
The words not belong lodged in her head. “I don’t belong here?” The words tasted true. She tried them again: “I don’t belong here.”
The queen slogged through the water toward her. “Nonsense,” she said flatly. “You are the princess, on the verge of your happily ever after. Isn’t that what you have always wanted? Isn’t this the right role for you?”
“I don’t know what I’ve always wanted,” she said sharply. “I don’t know who I am.” She turned to the cat. “But you do. Did I want to be a princess?”
“Yes,” Boots said, sinking back against the other cat. “Maybe.”
“I did?” On the other side of the table, the prince and the magician had drawn swords. Fiercely intent, they swung the swords in elaborate swooping arcs. The blades hissed through the air, missing each other by several feet—which ruined most of the effect of their fierce intent.
“Among other things,” Boots added, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him.
“Other things,” Girl repeated. “Tell me about the other things.”
The queen expanded her arms. “All you ever wanted is here,” she said. “Here you are admired and adored. Here you have servants to wait on your every whim. Balls to entertain you. Feasts to fill you. Room after room to call your own.”
“But not home,” she said. The trumpet player had spoken of home. She’d asked about her mother—had she found her? Girl didn’t know. Who was her mother? “What about my family? Where are they? I belong with them.” Marching to the clock, she felt along the sides for handholds. The wood was smooth, vertical two stories up to the clock face.
“You don’t remember them. You don’t even know them to miss them.” Continuing in a curiously flat tone, the queen said, “Why can’t you be content with what I can give you? Why should your lost past matter?”
The pendulum swayed in front of her. “It matters,” Girl said, not turning from the clock. “Family matters.” It had mattered to the trumpet player. “Who is my mother?” she asked. “Who’s my father? Do I have any brothers or sisters?”
Boots made a sound, half a meow and half a moan.
“Your mother is gone. Your father is gone. And you had no brothers or sisters,” the queen said.
“Except for me,” Boots said.
Both Girl and the queen turned. Even the white cat stopped eating to stare at him. He hung his head miserably. “You made me your brother,” he said. “Even when I abandoned you to enter the woods, you still called me brother.”
“A cat cannot be a brother. A cat is a companion,” the queen—the Wild—said. “I do not understand this.”
“You couldn’t,” Boots said to the Wild. To the white cat, he said, “I’m sorry, Precious, you’re everything I was searching for, but Julie’s right—I belong with my family. I wasn’t meant to be the villain; I want to be the brother.” He leapt off the table into the water. He meowed loudly as the water soaked his fur. For an instant, it looked as if he would leap out again, but then he flattened his ears and ran forward. Splashing across the floor, he bounded across the tops of toads and oysters toward the clock. Girl stepped aside. He shed his boots. Claws gouging the ornate wood, he scrambled up the clock. Perching on the rim of the face, Boots swatted at the hands.
Bong!
Water soaked her sandaled feet. She again wore jeans and a sweater. The key to the linen closet again was tucked in her front jeans pocket.
Bong!
Behind her, the queen shrieked. “No! I will not allow this!”
Bong!
“Stop her!” the queen shouted. Dishes rose up from the table and rolled past her. Spoons hopped beside them. They plunged off the table’s edge into the water.
Bong!
Three mice with canes ran into the hall and splashed into the shallows. A woman with a meat cleaver chased them. A hedgehog riding on a rooster raced behind them. “Find her a role!” the queen shouted.
Bong!
A shoe fell from the sky and landed in the prince’s hand. “I will marry the woman whose foot fits this slipper!” He held it over his head, and birds swooped low over it. The shoe overflowed with blood that ran down the prince’s arm as he advanced toward her. She retreated. What was happening? What was . . .
Bong!
A giant ogre echoed in the distance: “Fee, fie, foe, fum . . .”
Bong!
She remembered the ogre. She remembered the magician. She remembered the Wild. She remembered the trumpet player: her best friend, Gillian, who had sparked her memory at the ball. And she remembered herself. “Julie,” she said. “My name is Julie.”
Bong!
She could have been a princess with a palace and a prince and feasts and balls . . .
“Capture her!” the queen shouted. “Punish her! Stop her! Seize her!”
Julie saw torches and knives waved over cowled heads—a mob that surfaced out of the water. Splashing, she backed against the table as the mob spun into a circle. “Princess impersonator!” they shouted. “False princess! Villain!”
Bong!
“You shall dance in red-hot shoes!” the mob shouted. “You shall be put in a barrel with sharp nails and dragged up the street!”
Bong!
Circling, they brandished their torches. “You shall become a black poodle and have a gold collar around your neck and shall eat burning coals ’til the flames burst forth from your throat!”
Bong!
One woman rose on the backs of salamanders. She leveled a scepter at Julie. “You will prick your finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel . . .”
Bong!
Midnight.
From the top of the clock, Puss-in-Boots yowled, “Julie, catch!” Pulling the ogre’s wand out of his boot with his teeth, he tossed it. It spun through the air. “Save our mother! Save Rapunzel! Run, Julie, run!” He was abruptly silent; the Wild must have seized his throat.
Splashing through the water, she ran for the wand. Torches dipped toward her as hands reached for her. She snatched the ogre’s wand out of the water. “From a girl to a fish!” She and the wand fell through the air. Belly-flopping into the water, she sank into the dark blue-green.
The wand! Where was the wand? She saw it, suspended in the murk. Wiggling her fin, she dove for it. Opening her fish lips, she aimed for the sinking stick. The wand hit her lips. She closed them firmly over it and kept wiggling. Zigzagging, she wove between human and animal legs.
On the other side of the lake, she flopped onto the shore. She spat out the wand and rolled on top of it. “From a fish to a girl!” Immediately, she morphed back into a girl.
She picked up the wand. She ran through the diamond forest, then the gold, then the silver. Behind her, she heard a thud—thud—thud. She looked over her shoulder as a giant lunged for her. She slapped his fingers with the wand. “Giant to rabbit!”
He shrank and fell behind.
Shrieking, a battalion of witches flew toward her. Touching the tips of their broomsticks, she turned them into birds. Trolls, ogres, and seven-headed dragons—the magic from her wand flew—became frogs, mice, and stone.
The woods closed around her. Branches reached for her as the trees thickened. Bark morphed into walls, trapping her. No! No more woods!
Spinning in a circle, she slapped the branches with the wand and shouted, “From trees to flowers!” The woods around her turned into a meadow. All was suddenly silent.
Julie saw a hunched figure ahead, sitting on a rock in the middle of the meadow. Cautiously, she walked forward. Hooded, the old woman poked at the grasses with the butt of her broomstick. She didn’t look up as Julie approached. “Grandma?” Julie said. She stopped a few feet in front of her.
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The witch raised her head. With her rheumy red eyes, she regarded Julie. “You have won,” the Wild said through her. “I will give you your wish—I will give you your heart’s desire.”
Home. She’d won. Julie closed her eyes and tried to feel happy. Instead, she felt drained and tired. She remembered everything now: Mom and Boots and Gillian and Kristen and the dwarves and the swan soldiers. She remembered the police and the media and the awfulness that awaited their emergence from the Wild.
Standing creakily, the witch touched the rocks in the meadow with the bristles of her broom. The rocks rose into the air as if lifted by invisible giants. Sailing over the dun-colored grass, the rocks collided. Sticking together, they bubbled into more rocks. The wall grew, budding, down into the earth. Spires spun out of the base. Roses spread across the stones, and flowering trees sprouted around it. An arch widened, and steps carved themselves out of the air. Red cloth rolled down the stairs and across the grass to stop at Julie’s feet. A door peeled open at the top, and the castle waited.
Climbing the stairs, Julie went inside.
Sunlight streamed through unfinished holes as the roof of the castle laced itself shut. Chandeliers flew to the ceiling. Ivory silks draped themselves over the walls. Candles burst into flame. Golden statues stepped into alcoves. Marble tiles laid themselves over the floor. Julie walked through the hall as the red carpet knit itself in front of her.
The carpet ran into a throne room and up to a dais enclosed by a curtain. Julie walked up wide marble steps. She touched the velvet curtain. Of its own accord, it swept open. Golden ropes tied it back on either side of the dais.
On the throne, a man sat as still as stone.
Velvet robes, silk blouse, golden circlet on his head, he looked like a prince. He had pale lines—half-faded scars—on his face, as if he had been scratched, as if he had fallen into a nest of thorns . . . as if he had fallen from a tower into a nest of thorns. I will give you your heart’s desire, she remembered the Wild had said—and she knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, who he was. He had a cloth wrapped around his eyes. Gently, Julie untied the cloth. It fell into her hands.