The crowd roared approval and shook their fists in the air.
Charming turned to his team. Mr. Seven, Robin Hood, Snow White, and Mr. Canis nodded at him and he nodded back. Then he took off his purple suit jacket and tossed it aside. He scooped up the shovel off the ground and began to dig, but Uncle Jake stopped him and took the shovel from the prince. Charming nodded respectfully and stepped aside.
Sabrina and Daphne watched Uncle Jake dig. When the hole was big enough he pounded the casket lid closed. He and Charming lowered it into the hole as rain clouds circled and eventually soaked the camp. Uncle Jake filled the hole while Charming looked on. When it was finished, Mallobarb and Buzzflower planted a single seed on top of the plot and a moment later, fed by the rainwater, a rosebush sprouted and grew.
There was little time to mourn. The next morning Camp Charming became Fort Charming, and Sabrina was surrounded by a flurry of fight training, forging, and the construction of several lookout towers. Mr. Boarman and Mr. Swineheart directed the building, and with the help of some witches and wizards the fort grew in size dramatically. Teams of volunteers fortified the lookout towers with cannons, while others built a catapult big enough to hurl a pickup truck over the walls. Everyone else was drafted into Snow White’s army and trained in hand-to-hand combat. Under her command Everafters of all shapes and sizes ran drills, rappelled down the tall fort walls, and of course, Snow’s favorite, dropped at a moment’s notice for muscle-straining pushups. It was very strange to see the ancient Frau Pfefferkuchenhaus crawling beneath barbed wire on her belly.
It quickly became clear that the Grimms were in the way. The girls were left to their own devices, and as they searched for some way to be useful they came across Pinocchio sitting under an oak tree. He was resting on a stack of logs, one of which he had used to carve a dozen small marionette legs with a sharp knife. His work was detailed and marvelous, and his mastery of the blade was incredible. The legs were proportioned and elegant. There were several other arms, a few torsos, and a number of heads resting at his feet.
“You’re making puppets,” Daphne said, picking up one of the heads and examining it.
“They are called marionettes,” Pinocchio said.
“What’s a marionette?” Daphne asked.
“It’s a wooden figure with limbs attached to strings, and the strings are manipulated by someone,” Sabrina explained.
“And that’s not a puppet?” Daphne asked.
Pinocchio seemed to bristle at the little girl’s confusion. “No, a puppet has someone’s hand up its bum. Marionettes can walk, dance, and perform in any way its master desires.”
“And now you’re making them, just like your father,” Sabrina said, continuing to admire his work.
Pinocchio nodded. “It’s a skill I’ve been working on for some time. The secret is to use the right wood. If it’s too hard it’s impossible to carve but if it’s too soft then the whole piece can fall apart in your hands. It took me forever to find the right wood, but now that I have some I carry it with me.”
“Must get heavy,” Sabrina said, noticing the huge bag the boy had brought with him to the camp.
“A tad,” the boy said as if slightly annoyed. “My condolences for your loss.”
Sabrina thanked him and struggled not to cry. Her eyes and cheeks still hurt from the funeral. “She was the best.”
“I did not know her other than what I had heard from others,” Pinocchio said. “She seems to have been quite an exceptional woman and an asset to the Everafter community.”
Sabrina nodded, though she was unnerved by Pinocchio’s manner of speaking. He was such a little boy, yet he spoke as if he were a college professor.
Before she could respond, Goldilocks appeared. “Girls, your grandmother would like to see you in Charming’s cabin. She’s having some kind of meeting.”
The girls said good-bye to Pinocchio and crossed the fort to Charming’s cabin. When they entered they found their father and grandmother in the midst of a heated argument.
“If he does it again I’ll knock him out,” Henry said. “None of you have a right to sneak my children out in the middle of the night to fight dragons.”
“Good heavens,” Granny Relda said. “Your brother didn’t sneak them out to fight dragons. I’m sure he had no idea they would run into trouble.”
Henry looked as if he might scream. “We’re lucky any of them came back alive.”
“Henry!” Veronica cried. “Lower your voice. He might hear you.”
“I’m sorry but this is not cool. If he needed to go after Briar he shouldn’t turn to two children for help.”