Suddenly, their father, Henry, raced out of the woods, snatched the children by the arms, and dragged them back within the trees. Sabrina had never seen someone’s head explode, but she thought she might see her father’s. He looked like an erupting volcano, and she felt like a panicked villager frozen in fear at the sight of the angry lava god.
“Get back to the mirror right now!” he demanded.
“Granny had us do these things all the time, Dad,” Sabrina explained. “She trained us to be brave and take action.”
“And look where that got her!” he roared, then spent the next ten minutes in a breathless rant about respect, trust, and sneakiness. When he finally came up for air, he said, “You’re grounded.”
“You can’t ground us. We’re homeless,” Daphne said.
Henry was momentarily befuddled. “Fine! But once we get a home you are going to be locked inside it until you are very old and very gray! Come on, I’m taking you back myself.”
“What about the old lady?” Puck asked.
Henry shook his head. “We didn’t come out here to save her. I wanted to make sure she was OK and see if there are any obvious weaknesses in Mirror’s power over her.”
“And what did you learn?” Sabrina asked.
“That an all-powerful monster has control over my mother and if we confront him, especially now, when he’s angry, he’ll incinerate us with his magic.”
“So we’re just going to give up?” Puck said.
“You don’t just go running headfirst into a fight. No, we’re going to get some help. We need to find the Wicked Queen,” Henry said. “She made Mirror. She has to know how to stop him.”
Suddenly, Elvis raced to join the group. He was even more frantic than before, whining and growling as he raced about in circles.
“Something’s wrong,” Daphne said, doing her best to ease the dog’s panic.
“It must be the storm,” Henry said.
But a crunching noise drowned him out. It came from within the woods and was followed by the sound of a tree falling over—a very big tree. When Sabrina turned to face the sound, she saw something so grotesque and terrifying she nearly fainted. Its body was mammoth and covered in thick, matted hair. Its arms were long and spindly, but its legs were thick with muscles and tendons. A ridge of raised spikes poked through the stretched skin covering its spine and trailed upward to its head, which was both shocking in size and shape. The head was nearly as big as half of the rest of its body, but it was also lumpy like a pumpkin that had fallen off a truck. Its eyes and nose were not where they should have been—almost as if it were a toddler’s Play-Doh creation. But its most eye-gouging feature was its fang-filled mouth that came unhinged at the jaw when it roared. It opened so wide Sabrina could have stepped inside with no trouble.
“Grendel!” Henry cried, snatching the girls once more and racing in the opposite direction.
“What is a Grendel?” Sabrina begged, doing her best to keep up.
“He killed hundreds of Vikings—and ate most of them. There’s a poem about him.”
“That thing’s in a poem? Ewwww!” Daphne cried.
Puck flew leisurely overhead. “Yawn! I’ve never been afraid of anything that appeared in a poem. Next time you guys will be trembling over the Cat in the Hat.”
“He’s no joke, Puck,” Henry said as he continued to run. “A warrior named Beowulf chopped off his head once. It still didn’t stop him.”
“Big deal! Who here hasn’t had their head chopped off?”
“This is exactly why I wanted you girls to wait in the mirror. We don’t just have your grandmother to deal with—the town is overrun with members of the Scarlet Hand, and unless you have forgotten, they let all the monsters out of the Hall of Wonders, too.”
“What are we going to do?” Daphne said. “He’s gaining on us.”
“Just keep running until I can come up with a plan of attack,” Henry said.
“Plan of attack?” Sabrina said. “The plan should be to keep running.”
“We can’t outrun that thing,” Henry said. “All right, Puck, you still have those stink balloons?”
“I never leave home without something disgusting!” Puck reached into the folds of his hoodie. What came out were four more of the disgusting sludge-balloon bombs he had tested on Sabrina.
“Good! You hit him high and I’ll take him low.”
Sabrina could feel panic squeezing her neck. “Wait! You’re going to attack him with some water balloons and your bare hands?”
“And my feet, too,” Henry said.
“Are you feeling all right, Dad?” Daphne asked.
“Don’t underestimate the weapon that is your own body. If you know what you’re doing, you can be very dangerous,” Henry said.
“What should we do?” Sabrina said.
“Nothing! You haven’t been trained in a fight,” Henry said.
“Then train us!” Sabrina said.
“Fine! Lesson one! Watch from the safety of these trees,” he demanded as he shoved the girls behind the thick trunk of an ancient maple.
“Dad!” they groaned.