“Paul Bunyan joined the Scarlet Hand,” Daphne said.
“I see him,” Sabrina replied with a shiver. Giants, even small ones like Bunyan, gave her the willies.
“Look who’s leading the pack,” Daphne said, pointing to a woman in a gaudy dress decorated with hearts. Mayor Heart had her electronic megaphone in hand and was barking orders to the mob.
“Do you think Briar is still alive?” Daphne asked, peering at the trinkets she’d pulled out of her uncle’s jacket.
“Absolutely! Look!”
A green bolt of electricity shot out of an open window on the second floor. It hit a goblin on the ground, and his fierce metal armor was transformed into a silk gown that reminded Sabrina of the kinds of dresses women wore in movies like
Gone With the Wind
. The goblin tripped over his giant hoop skirt and tumbled onto his back, unable to right himself.
Another blast came out of the window and nailed a troll, who found himself sporting a feathery headdress and high heels, like a Las Vegas showgirl. He cried indignantly and shook a mace at the house.
“At least we know her fairy godmothers are here,” Daphne said. “Let’s go give them some help.”
Sabrina thought they should spend some time trying out the magical weapons first, but Daphne urged the carpet forward and soon they were barreling into the midst of the Scarlet Hand’s army. Everyone turned their attention from their attack on Briar’s home to the magic carpet. Swords slashed at them and wands launched deadly spells, each narrowly avoided as the nimble carpet banked and weaved through the crowd.
“Uh, you want to use one of those magic doohickeys?” Sabrina asked.
“I’m working on it,” Daphne said as she slipped on a huge ring with a stone scorpion set inside an emerald. “Abracadabra!”
The ring popped and sparked like a fork inside a microwave but did little else. Daphne shrugged and replaced it with a second ring, this one with a small tooth embedded in amber. “Gimme some magic!”
This time there was nothing. Sabrina was starting to worry, especially when the carpet hovered too close to an angry knight in full armor whose sword nearly cut her in two. Without even thinking she kicked the knight in the helmet and slammed his visor down on his nose. He staggered, finally falling into a rosebush and crying out when the thorns held him fast. The carpet veered away from the mob to a quieter patch of air. Once there, Sabrina turned to her sister, who was working her way through the magic wands. “Any luck? That knight almost gave me a haircut.”
“Hold your horses,” Daphne said. The wand she held was made of little red jewels fused together like a long stick of rock candy. Daphne waved it in the air and it started to glow. “Now we’re talking.”
“What’s it do?” Sabrina cried as Paul Bunyan’s gigantic ax came crashing down only inches from the carpet.
Daphne shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. OK, wand, shrink everyone.”
There was nothing.
Daphne frowned. “Set something on fire!”
Nothing.
“Freeze the bad guys!”
Zilch.
“Shoot everyone with electricity!”
Nada.
Daphne snarled and shook it as if perhaps its batteries were dead. “This thing is for the birds.”
Suddenly, an eerie hum came from the wand and a flash of light blinded Sabrina.
“No way!” Daphne exclaimed, her eyes big with surprise.
“What?”
“OK, don’t be mad. I didn’t know it would do that,” Daphne said.
“WHAT?”
“Take a look at your back,” Daphne mumbled.
Sabrina craned her neck over her shoulder and choked out a scream. On her back was a set of huge white wings. The feathers bristled and fluttered in the wind and when she tensed up they flapped.
“Oh no! Change me back. I can’t go through life with wings!”
“It’s not the wings that’s the problem,” Daphne said. “It’s the beak.”
Sabrina crossed her eyes and saw that her nose and mouth had been replaced with a hard, golden beak with a hooked tip. She screamed, but what came out sounded an awful lot like a squawk. “Fix it!”
At that moment Mayor Heart’s voice ripped through the air, courtesy of her electronic megaphone. “They’re only children. Attack the house until backup gets here!”
“I wonder who the backup is,” Daphne said, steering the rug out of the way of a flying spear.
“Who cares? I look like Big Bird,” Sabrina complained. She could feel feathers sprouting along her arms and legs.
“OK! OK!” Daphne cried. She flicked the wand at Sabrina and said “change her back” but nothing happened. “OK, let’s not panic.”
“Not panic? Listen, I’m starting to get a craving for worms. I think it’s definitely time to panic.”
Daphne steered the carpet back toward the crowd, flying low and buzzing the tops of their heads. With one hand she removed her sneaker and did her best to wallop a few as they zipped by. “I realize this is inconvenient but you need to focus. We’re here to rescue Briar Rose.”
Sabrina scowled as her feet ripped through her shoes, revealing tough, spiky talons. She stood up and realized her entire lower body was now that of a fat, pear-shaped goose. She looked down at her hands only to find they were no longer there—they had vanished inside the feathers of her wings. It was official. She was a bird.
“Excuse me if I’m a little distracted—
honk!
” Sabrina was horrified by the sound she had just made and hoped it had been her imagination. Daphne looked just as startled.
“Did I—”
“Yeah … you honked,” Daphne said as she smacked a few more trolls with her shoe. “Try to think of the bright side. At least Puck isn’t here to see this. He’d never let you forget it.”
Uncle Jake began to groan. He opened his eyes slowly and peered around. Sabrina saw his face twisted in confusion. She tried to ask him how he felt but in her excitement she let out a series of honks. Startled, Jake shoved Sabrina off the rug in midair with a “Shooo!”
“NO!” Sabrina cried as she plummeted toward the ground. In desperation she flapped her wings as hard as she could. The action seemed to slow her, and she found she could control her direction. Without thinking she sailed face first through an open window and crashed to the floor, tumbling and sliding to a stop.
When she was on her feet she turned to call for Briar only to find the two fairy godmothers standing over her, wands drawn. Buzzflower and Mallobarb were stout women with serious faces. Their threatening eyes told her everything she needed to know. Sabrina had better not move a muscle—or a feather, in this case.
“Take your filthy, traitorous bottom out of here, goose, and tell the rest of the Scarlet Hand they’re going to have to send more than a bird if they want take us down,” Buzzflower said, her voice fierce.
“I’m not a goose!” Sabrina cried.
“Well, you aren’t a Bengal tiger,” said Mallobarb.
“I’m Sabrina Grimm!” she honked. “I’m here to rescue you.”
The fairy godmothers looked at one another in disbelief, then back at Sabrina.
“Really?”
“Listen, my uncle is here and my sister, too.”
“Jake is here?” Buzzflower said.
“He is?” a voice said from down the hall. A moment later Briar Rose raced into the room. Even distressed, Briar was a vision. She had green eyes and skin like cocoa. She was enchanting … except for the baseball bat she held threateningly. “Where is he?”
Sabrina pointed out the window with her wing just as the flying carpet zipped past.
“So, what’s the plan?” Buzzflower said.
“Yeah … a plan. We hadn’t really gotten that far,” Sabrina said.
“Great,” Mallobarb said sarcastically. “What we need is a distraction. If we can get those lunatics outside to focus on something other than the house, we can fly Briar out of here ourselves.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sabrina said. “What do you have in mind?”
“I think a giant goose might confuse them for a bit,” Buzzflower said.
“You want me to fly out the window and let them shoot at me?”
The fairy godmothers nodded.
“I could be killed!”
The fairy godmothers nodded again.
“No,” Briar said. “She’s right. This is too dangerous. Those people out there intend to kill someone. If something were to happen to Sabrina I could never live with myself.”
Sabrina peered out the window. Her sister was still buzzing the crowd but seemed to have had no more success with Jake’s magical possessions than before.
“OK, I’ll do it, but I haven’t mastered flying yet since I’ve only been a bird for five minutes. If I manage to stay in the air you have to act fast. Get out as soon as you can.”
Briar looked nervous but agreed. “But where are we going to go even if we do escape? The town is overrun by the Scarlet Hand.”
“Prince Charming and Mr. Canis have built a camp. We’ll take you there,” Sabrina said, returning her attention to the window.
“Good luck,” Buzzflower said.
“Here goes nothing!” Sabrina said as she leaped out the window and flapped her wings as hard as she could. She would have described the experience as awkward and unnatural but she had no time to contemplate her situation. Her appearance drew the full ferocity of the crowd and before she could react, dozens of arrows, magical blasts, and even an electronic megaphone were flying right at her. She dodged the best she could, feeling a spear clip her tail feathers. It startled her and she landed awkwardly on the head of a hobgoblin. Enraged, the creature tried to clobber her with his lumpy club but she leaped off and landed on the head of another hobgoblin. The first brute brought his club down on his colleague’s head just after Sabrina leaped onto another. Not wanting to wait for another assault, she leaped off the startled head of the third hobgoblin onto a fourth, then a fifth, then she landed in the beehive hairdo of the Queen of Hearts, who screamed and slapped at Sabrina. Instinctively, Sabrina pecked at the mayor’s hands and leaped into the air. She flapped wildly, and much to her surprise, rose into the air and away from the mob.
When she turned her head to look over her shoulder, she spotted Buzzflower and Mallobarb lifting Briar Rose out of the window and into the air, a stream of magical dust floating behind them. The trio floated off to the shelter of the woods that bordered Briar’s property.
Sabrina found Daphne and Uncle Jake, who had slipped back into unconsciousness. She angled her wings so that she could fly alongside them and together they rose high enough to be out of danger.
“Briar and her fairy godmothers are out of the house,” Sabrina said. “Have you figured out that wand yet?”
“I think,” Daphne said.
Just then, the Mayor’s wretched voice filled the air. “Don’t follow the traitors. We’ll let the pack handle them.”
“The pack? What’s the pack?” Daphne asked.
Before anyone could hazard a guess, the temperature of the air rose dramatically. It was accompanied by a sticky, humid cloud that invaded all of Sabrina’s pores. There was a sound like a hurricane crashing through a strip mall and then something as big as a jumbo jet flew overhead. It flew by at such an incredible speed all Sabrina could see were red wings and a long tail and then it was gone.
“Uh, what was that?” Daphne asked.
Sabrina wasn’t sure, but she knew anything that big and that fast couldn’t be good. Worse still, it was not alone. A second creature appeared in the sky. This one was green and covered in black spikes. It had bulbous yellow eyes that scanned the sky.
“There’s another one!” Daphne cried, pointing to a third creature that had appeared in the west. This one was purple and slightly bigger, with birdlike talons and a white snout. Fire blasted out of its nostrils and lit up the sky.
“Are those dragons?” Sabrina gasped, flying out of the way of the green one’s leathery wings. Her answer came in the form of a crackling voice broadcast from a megaphone far below her.
“Dragons, your target and her cohorts have fled into the woods,” the mayor bellowed. “Retrieve them anyway you can. Bringing them back alive is not necessary.”
The creatures turned their massive bodies in the direction of the woods and flew over it with amazing speed. They blasted several areas with fire as if to clear the trees for a better glimpse of their prey.
“We need to find Briar and the fairy godmothers before they do,” Daphne said as the flying carpet dipped into the trees below. Sabrina tilted her wings and followed, surprised by how easily flight was coming to her. If she hadn’t been on the edge of terror she might have actually enjoyed the sensation.
Flying beneath the canopy of trees made navigating much harder. Several branches scraped her soft belly and a few lashed across her face. Daphne seemed to be having the same problem, and the trees got denser as they flew farther into the forest. Soon Sabrina spotted Briar and her fairy godmothers, hurrying along through the bramble. The girls flew alongside of them and stopped.
“They’ve sent dragons after you,” Sabrina said. “We need to get you out of here, now.”
“Dragons!” Briar cried. “Where did they get dragons?”
“We can worry about that later,” Daphne said as she lowered the rug. “Briar should climb on board with me. Buzzflower and Mallobarb will have a better chance of escaping by air.”
“She’s right,” Buzzflower said as she took out her wand. “And they might find we’re a little harder to kill, too.”
Briar climbed on the rug and knelt down next to Uncle Jake. “He looks so weak.”
“This camp you spoke of,” Mallobarb said. “Where is it?”
“At the farthest edge of the barrier,” Sabrina explained. “If we get separated and show up first I’ll let Charming know you’re on your way. But we don’t have a lot of time to talk.”
She had no idea how right she was. At that moment the purple dragon’s head dipped down from above. It studied the group. A blast of hot breath scorched everyone.
“What do we do?” Sabrina whispered, wiping the sweat from her face with one wing.
“Just get out of here!” Daphne shouted and at once, everyone scattered. They hadn’t moved a second too soon. The dragon opened its mouth and roasted the area with flames.
Sabrina sailed into the air, flying higher and higher. Getting above the scene seemed to make sense to her. It would allow her to survey the area and keep an eye on the monsters. When she felt she was high enough, she tilted her body a little and moved in a wide circle. She could see the entire forest. Daphne, Jake, and Briar Rose were racing in the direction of the town and the two fairy godmothers were firing magical attacks at the dragons. She had to give her sister credit: Daphne was leading them for the first time and everyone was still alive. She couldn’t have done better herself.