"Creepy!" Daphne cried.
"They looked fine, Granny. Like they had been sleeping the whole time. We tried to rescue them but the little girl had this magic ring and before I knew it they had vanished into thin air. Then the Jabberwocky set everything on fire with its breath. The place looked like they had been living in it for a long time. There were red handprints all over the walls, too. Granny, I think this little girl is the leader of the Scarlet Hand. There might be some clues there but we have to go now before it burns to the ground!"
"Sabrina, you've been in the hospital for three days," Granny Relda said in her light German accent. "The place where you saw your parents is nothing but ash now."
Three days!
Sabrina felt a sob rising in her throat.
"I'm so sorry, liebling.
If you're feeling up to it, the doctor says we can take you home," the old woman continued.
Sabrina nodded, fighting back tears.
Just then a nurse entered the room carrying a bouquet of exotic flowers. "Oh, look, our patient is awake," she said, "in time to receive some flowers. These just arrived."
She set the flowers on a table. Sabrina pulled a little card off the side of the pot and read the inscription. GET WELL SOON,
LOVE, UNCLE JAKE.
Granny's face seemed to tighten for a moment but then she smiled. "Must have been sent to the wrong room. Let's go, girls.
We have a ride waiting for us downstairs."
*
Snow White was beautiful, charming, sweet, funny, and intelligent. The only thing she wasn't was subtle. She couldn't stop staring at Sabrina's mustache and goatee in the rear-view mirror of her car, and, after catching the woman's gaze for the hundredth time, Sabrina finally blurted out that Puck had done it to her. The pretty teacher laughed so hard she snorted. Then she apologized.
"Boys will be boys," she said as she steered her car down the old country roads of Ferryport Landing. "They can be pretty immature when they're young, but they get a little better as they get older."
"Puck is over four thousand years old, Ms. White," Sabrina grumbled. "I think the odds of him getting more mature are pretty slim."
"You're probably right." The woman sighed, sharing a knowing smile with Granny Relda who sat in the front seat beside her. "Billy is nearly five hundred and most of the time he doesn't act a day over seven."
"So, are you two boyfriend and girlfriend?" Daphne cooed. She hung on the back of the front seat to hear all the gossip.
"Daphne!" Ms. White said as her cheeks flushed. "We're just talking."
"Something you two haven't done for a few hundred years," Granny Relda said. "I've heard the good mayor has been sending you flowers every day."
"Relda, you gossip! Who told you that?" Snow White cried.
"Oh, a little bird told me," Granny replied.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. In a town like Ferryport Landing, filled with fairy-tale characters and magical creatures, saying a little bird told her wasn't just an expression. It had probably happened.
"When you two get married, can I be your flower girl?" Daphne begged.
"I'll make you a deal, Daphne. If the mayor and I ever get married, you can be the flower girl, but you might be a very old woman by the time it happens. We're only up to having coffee together. I want to take our relationship slowly, and he's busy with the election," Ms. White said.
"Election?" Sabrina asked.
"The mayoral election," Ms. White explained. "We have one every four years, though it seems like a bit of a waste of money these days. No one ever runs against Billy."
Soon, Snow White steered her car into the Grimm family's driveway and parked. Everyone got out and said their goodbyes.
"Snow, thank you so much for the ride," Granny Relda said.
"My pleasure, Relda. If you need anything, just give me a ring. Until the school is rebuilt, all I've got to keep me busy is the self-defense class. Which reminds me, will I be seeing my star pupil again this Friday?" Ms. White turned to Daphne.
The little girl bowed to her, the way people do in martial arts films.
"Yes, sensei,"
she said with a big grin.
"Have you been practicing your warrior face?"
The little girl clenched her hands into claws, squinted her eyes, and contorted her mouth so that she looked like she was very angry, though her overalls with a kitten sewn on the front made it all a little comical.
"Very good," Snow White said. "I was very intimidated." Then she wished Sabrina a speedy recovery before getting back in her car and driving away.
"What was all that sensei stuff?" Sabrina asked her little sister.
"Granny thought it was a good idea to keep me busy while you were in the hospital. She signed me up for Ms. White's Bad Apples self-defense class at the community center. I've only gone once but she says I'm a fierce warrior."
"A fierce warrior, huh?" Sabrina laughed. "Was that what all the warrior-face stuff was about?"
"Yes, it's to let an attacker know that you mean business," Daphne explained.