The Enchantress Returns (50 page)

The Enchantress snapped her fingers and the ground started to rumble with the power of a dozen earthquakes. All the fairies looked to one another, petrified of what was coming their way. Clusters of vines exploded out of the floor and seized the fairies in the room.

They desperately tried to free themselves—struggling against
the plants with all their might and all their magic, but it was no use. The plants were too strong to escape. Ezmia roared with laughter as she watched the vines coil around each Fairy Council member and drag them into the ground.

Emerelda sank her hands into the ground to prevent the vines from dragging her away.
“You won’t win, Ezmia,”
she said.

“Oh, but I will,” the Enchantress said, looking down at her with a smile in her eyes. “You see, I’m finally building my
own
pedestal. But this time, rather than admiration, I’m building it from rock, root, and
rage
.”

Things were gloomy as ever at the Charming Palace. All the other rulers had gone home after the Happily Ever After Assembly meeting except for Sleeping Beauty, who had no choice but to stay. She sat with Cinderella in her chambers, quietly comforting the distraught mother.

“It’s been almost two weeks since that horrible woman took my daughter away from me,” Cinderella said. “I never thought I could feel like this inside. I never thought I could be so miserable.”

Sleeping Beauty dabbed the tears spilling from her friend’s tired eyes.

“You have to stay strong, Cinderella,” Sleeping Beauty said. “We have to be brave for our people.”

Cinderella blew her nose into a handkerchief. “But who
is supposed to be brave for us at a time like this?” she asked. “When the rest of the world is looking to us for strength and guidance, who do we look up to for reassurance?”

Sleeping Beauty gently took Cinderella’s hand in her own. “We have to inspire each other,” she said.

Cinderella patted her friend’s hand and placed her head on Sleeping Beauty’s shoulder. There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Cinderella said.

Sir Lampton stepped into the queen’s chambers. His face was so long the queens knew he wasn’t bearing good news.

“What is it, Sir Lampton?” Cinderella asked, bracing herself for whatever it was.

“More bad news, I’m afraid, Your Majesty,” he said. “I just received a letter from Sir Grant in the Northern Kingdom. Apparently the Enchantress attacked the Northern Kingdom last night after attacking Troll and Goblin Territory. They woke up this morning to discover all their crops have been poisoned.”

“Dear God,” Sleeping Beauty said and placed a hand on her chest. “Does the Enchantress have no soul?”

“Queen Snow White has asked that we send what we can,” Lampton added.

“Yes, of course,” Cinderella said. “Gather as much food as the kingdom can spare—”

The ground under the palace began to shake. Cinderella’s chambers rattled as something moved through the palace toward her chambers.

“What on earth?” Lampton said, staring down at the floor
as it began to crack under his feet. He retrieved his sword, although it was useless against what was coming.

Vines burst through the floor and slithered up to Queen Cinderella and Queen Sleeping Beauty. They wrapped around them and dragged them back from where they had come from. Sir Lampton tried rescuing the queens but it had all happened too quickly to prevent.

He looked through the cracks in the floor; he could see the vines dragging the screaming queens several floors through the palace and into the ground where they disappeared out of sight.

The ground began to rumble again, this time not from something directly below the palace but from something much farther in the distance. Lampton ran over the cracks to a window to see what was causing all the commotion.

Miles away, in the northern part of the Charming Kingdom, a gargantuan pillar made of rock, roots, and dirt emerged from the ground and rocketed into the air. The land cracked and elevated unevenly for miles and miles around it. The pillar grew higher and higher, only stopping once it had reached the clouds.

A massive coliseum was on the top of the pillar, constructed of enormous jagged stones shaped like arrowheads. Vines and thornbushes grew up the sides of the pillar, taking with them all the rulers they had seized from around the world.

The Enchantress sat in the center of the coliseum on her old Fairy Council chair like it was a throne. The plants arrived with her guests and pinned them around to the walls at various
heights and angles around her. The abducted kings, queens, and fairies were now prisoners in Ezmia’s vengeful, earthy web.

True to her word, the Enchantress had built herself a pedestal made of the deepest parts of the earth, powered by the deepest anger of her soul.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE ENCHANTRESS’S MOST PRIZED POSSESSION

The ground began to tremble and quake under the campsite.

“What’s happening?!” Conner yelled.

“It’s the Enchantress!” Alex screamed. “She’s starting her final attack!”

As if tiny explosions were being set off around the camp, bouquets of devilish vines burst through the ground and slithered through the site. They knocked over tents and people as they moved—as if they were
searching
for something.

Jack and Goldilocks immediately drew their weapons and began slicing the demonic plants, but there were too many of them to fight off.

“Help!”
The twins heard a high-pitched scream behind them. They turned around and saw the vines tangle around Red and attempt to drag her back into the ground with them.
“Someone help me!”

Jack and Froggy both ran to her, throwing themselves on the ground and reaching a hand toward her. Red was almost all the way underground.… Only one of her hands was free. She looked to Jack and then to Froggy. If these were the last moments of her life, she had to decide right then and there who she wanted to spend them with.…

Red grabbed hold of Froggy’s hand. He was shocked to see her hand land in his.

“You chose
me…”
Froggy said, looking into her eyes. Both of them recognized the significance of this moment.

“Yes, I
choose
you,” Red said, and a small smile appeared on her face. She pulled him a little closer and kissed his slimy green lips, not repulsed by his appearance or texture whatsoever.

The vines climbed over Red and began wrapping around Froggy, too. Jack grabbed hold of one of his legs and Goldilocks grabbed the other. The vines were too strong for them to pull Froggy and Red free, but Jack and Goldilocks weren’t giving up. The vines moved past Froggy and began growing around the whole group, pulling all four of them toward the ground.

Alex and Conner were on their way to help when they heard another cry.

“Butterboy!”
Trollbella yelled from across the camp. The vines had wrapped around her and were dragging her into the ground, too.

Conner grunted and looked around. “Can someone else save Trollbella?” he called out, but all the other trolls and goblins were too afraid of the vines to go near her.

“Save me, Butterboy!”
Trollbella cried.

“Okay, fine! I’m coming!” Conner yelled. He and Alex changed their course and ran for the young Troll Queen instead.

Conner grabbed Trollbella’s hands and Alex grabbed Conner’s feet. They tried to pull her free but the vines were too strong.

“This would be so romantic if it weren’t for the possessed plants pulling us apart, Butterboy,” Trollbella whispered dreamily into Conner’s ear.

The vines began to creep past Trollbella and onto Conner, pulling him with her.

“Alex, you have to let go of me!” Conner yelled behind himself. “You can’t let the vines get you.”

“I’m not letting you go, Conner!” Alex yelled back.

“You have to save the fairy-tale world, Alex!” Conner said. “You have to save the Otherworld and Mom, too!”

Alex’s grip around her brother’s feet tightened. “I can’t save anything without you,” she said.

“Yes, you can,” he said. “It was always meant to be you!
You’re the one who got us here and you’re the one who is going to get us out! You heard the ghosts—you’re the heir of magic! You’ve got to defeat the Enchantress so this world can go on!”

The vines had wrapped almost completely around Conner. Alex was shaking her head profusely.

“I can’t do it alone!” she said, terrified to lose him.

“Yes, you can,” Conner said. “I’m really sorry about this!”

Conner kicked Alex off of him and the vines consumed him entirely. They dragged him and Trollbella down into the ground and disappeared.

“Conner!”
Alex yelled after him, but it was no use. He was gone.

Alex looked across the camp just in time to see the vines pull Red, Froggy, Jack, and Goldilocks into the ground with one final heave. As soon as Trollbella, Red, and the others clinging on to them had been taken, all the vines in the campsite disappeared into the ground.
They had come for the queens.

Alex got to her feet and looked around in shock. In a matter of minutes, all of her friends and her brother had been taken from her. She had no choice but to finish their quest alone—
it was all up to her now.

Bob ran up to Alex. “Where have they been taken?”

Alex was wondering the same thing. She looked down at the large cracks the vines had left in the ground. They weren’t just in the campsite, but stretched off into the distance, as if the vines had left marks on their way to and from their destination.

“I have to go,” Alex said. She ran to their tent and retrieved the Wand of Wonderment. She placed it in the troll’s satchel
and threw it over her shoulder. Alex ran off into the distance, following the cracks in the ground as if they were a trail.

“Where are you going?” Bob asked as he ran after her, but she didn’t respond.
“Alex?!”
He tried chasing after her, but she was a third his age and ran three times as fast as him.

Alex never stopped running. Her feet hit the ground in rhythm with her racing heartbeat. She was fueled by adrenaline but mostly by fear. She could have sworn she heard Red’s screams and Conner’s shouts as they were dragged under the ground below her.

She prayed she would get to the Enchantress before she could harm her brother or the others, and wished with all her might that once she got there she would have a plan to take Ezmia’s most prized possession away from her.

Alex had to think of a way to steal Ezmia’s pride, not only for a moment, but for the rest of her life. What could she say or do to her that the Enchantress would take to heart and not brush off? How could Alex emotionally scar Ezmia so deeply that her pride would never return completely?

Could an evil enchantress take to heart anything that was done or said by a thirteen-year-old girl? Ezmia had spent a century imprisoning the souls of kings, soldiers, and fairies in jars—was someone like Alex capable of leaving a mark on someone like that?

Then, like a flash of lightning, Alex realized something for the first time—what she thought of as a disadvantage was actually in her favor. It was
because
she was a thirteen-year-old that she had a greater chance of bruising the Enchantress’s ego. If
Alex
could muster up enough courage to say something to
the Enchantress that a king or fairy never had the bravery to before, perhaps it would have an even greater effect on her.