With no way to escape and no one to save them, Conner, his friends, and the Central Park escapees were taken prisoner. The captives followed the Boy and Girl Scout through the park while the witches watched them from the rear. The witches forced them to walk in a straight line, and whenever someone stepped out of line, they were either whipped by Serpentina’s tongue or scratched by Rat Mary’s long nails.
They journeyed deeper and deeper into the park, traveling more than half a mile. Soon the smell of gingerbread became so strong and the air became so smoky that it was difficult to breathe. Conner and the other captives stepped onto the Great Lawn in the heart of Central Park and instantly knew they had arrived at the witches’ base.
What was usually fifty-five acres of open grassy fields and baseball diamonds was now the location of one nightmarish scene after another.
Hundreds of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were scattered across the Great Lawn and were being forced to bake some sort of gingerbread creation. There were rows of huge cauldrons where Scouts mixed ingredients and stirred dough. The dough was scooped out of the cauldrons by other Scouts and spread out on metal sheets as big as king-size mattresses. Once the dough was flat, Scouts cut it with enormous cookie cutters, making human-size gingerbread men. Then the Scouts transferred the metal sheets to one of a dozen enormous brick ovens along the west side of the lawn.
Charcoaline kept the ovens blazing with her fiery breath. Arboris, Tarantulene, and all the other witches walked among the Scouts like prison guards. They smacked and scolded every child who wasn’t working to their level of satisfaction—which was all of them. Just like the Boy and Girl Scout collecting water at the Bethesda Fountain, all the children on the Great Lawn were terrified and exhausted and moved about like zombies. Conner saw Oliver, his companion from the plane, stationed at one of the cauldrons. Oliver was too afraid to look up and kept his eyes on the dough he was mixing.
“Why are they baking such enormous gingerbread men?” Red asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Goldilocks said. “They’re making gingerbread soldiers—the witches are cooking up an army!”
“If we get out of this alive, I never want to hear the word army again,” Conner said.
At the north end of the Great Lawn, the witches had constructed a tall hill made of jagged bedrock. It loomed over the lawn like a rocky watchtower. The bottom of the hill was guarded by the lion statues from the library, the polar bears from the Snow Queen’s sleigh, and a thin moat where the Sea Witch’s sharks swam. At the top of the bedrock, the Snow Queen sat on a throne made of ice, and the Sea Witch was perched on a throne made of coral.
Alex stood between the Snow Queen and the Sea Witch at the peak of the hill. Her eyes were still glowing like lightning, her hair was still floating above her head like a slow-motion fire, and she faced the roof of her massive force field. She seemed less like a person and more like a generator stuck in a mindless state, producing magic that protected and benefited her commanders. His sister’s lifelessness brought tears to Conner’s eyes, and he wondered if she could even be saved, or if, like Morina had said, she was cursed past the point of no return.
Rat Mary and Serpentina directed their prisoners toward the northeast corner of the Great Lawn to a row of cages made from candy canes. The cages were filled with Scout leaders, Central Park staff, tourists, and other New Yorkers the witches had rounded up. The witches pushed the joggers, the biker, the janitor, Jack, Goldilocks, Red, and Bree inside a small cage—but right before they could grab hold of Conner, he dashed toward the hill to get to his sister.
Just the way he’d felt at the barricade on Fifth Avenue, Conner was consumed by a powerful desire to save his sister and lost all common sense. Rat Mary and Serpentina chased after him, but Conner was much faster than the witches. He ran in an erratic pattern between the cauldrons and barely missed being lassoed by Serpentina’s tongue. Conner leaped over the moat at the base of the hill and hiked up the bedrock as fast as he could.
“Alex!” he shouted. “It’s me—it’s your brother! The witches have invaded the Otherworld! You’ve got to fight off the curse or else—”
Before Conner could get anywhere close to his sister, one of the library lions knocked him off the hill. He soared over the moat and landed painfully hard on the ground. The wind was knocked out of him, and he gasped for air.
“CONNER!” Alex screamed.
For just a brief moment, her concern for her brother overpowered the curse. Her eyes stopped glowing, her hair stopped floating, and the shield around Central Park disappeared. The Snow Queen and the Sea Witch looked at each other in panic—they hadn’t thought anything could break the curse.
“Keep the shield up, you stupid girl!” the Snow Queen screeched.
Alex immediately returned to her bewitched state, and the shield reappeared over Central Park. Rat Mary and Serpentina dragged Conner to the cage and threw him inside it with his friends.
“Conner, are you hurt?” Goldilocks asked him.
“I’ll be okay,” he groaned.
“That was so stupid of you!” Bree berated him. “What were you thinking? You could have gotten yourself killed!”
“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Conner said. “Now we know Morina was wrong—Alex hasn’t been cursed past the point of no return! She’s still in there—we can still save her!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CURSED AND THE COURTEOUS
A powerful rainstorm traveled down the western coast of the fairy-tale world and drenched the Dwarf Forests. Luckily, most of the residents and animals were already in hiding from the Literary Army, so the woods were virtually empty when the storm hit. But there was still one creature that got caught in the rain and scuttled through the forest in search of shelter.
The creature was shivering, soaked to the bone, and a complete stranger to the woods. After traveling in circles all night, it spotted a cottage by the side of a stream. The cottage appeared to be empty, as there was no light shining through the windows or smoke rising from the chimney. The creature hoped the cottage’s looks weren’t deceiving—not for the creature’s own sake, but for the sake of any poor soul who might be inside. The creature had a reputation for leaving an impression on whomever it crossed paths with.