That hadn’t turned out so well. I’d run away to try and prove myself and hadn’t seen him since. But that was six years ago.
As for Dorthea, she’d become Oz’s apprentice, so she could control the Emerald curse and get her parents back from the mysterious realm of Kansas. From our blasted bond, I knew that she felt she owed a great deal to her mother. I don’t remember having a mother. I’m assuming I had one, since I hadn’t hatched like a swan princess. When I tried to think of a mother, the closest thing I could come up with was Verte.
She clearly didn’t want my help.
So as the first sun, Ethos, rose in the sky, all my thinking had led me to one conclusion: I was pixed. The only thing I had were my clothes, a headache from overthinking, and a rumbly tummy that sounded like it belonged to a bear.
Getting up, I stretched out my muscles, opened the drinking horn Verte had given me, and took a deep whiff. Then promptly gagged.
I’d rather starve.
I looked around the clearing. It was all brown and drained of life. Empty.
“If only Hydra were here, she could put her oracle head on. Then I might know what to do.” I sighed. In the middle of the wish-pocalypse, after I summoned Griz to the Mimicman’s ivory tower, her flying puppies had carted me off until I wiggled free, landing at Hydra’s beach shack. At the time, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with myself—aside from stay alive.
Hydra asked me where I was headed. And when I didn’t have an answer, she took me in and gave me this advice: “If ya ’ant to know where yous goin’, you gots to know where yous been.” Well, as I looked back at the roads I’d been down, there were wrong turns, giant sinkholes, and crevices where the path was just plain missing.
How could I possibly know what to do with myself when I didn’t even remember all of my own history?
“History…” I said slowly. “Nottingham’s Museum of Magical History.” That’s where all of Fairy Tales’s magical artifacts were stowed away. Surely there had to be something there to give me a hand in getting a happy ending. Or at least a not entirely sucky one.
“Okay. What do you think?” I asked the air. Thus far, magic and I had not been a good mixture. “Yo, Storyfaker, you around? If this is a bad idea, send me a sign.”
Nothing.
“All right, if this goes wonderlandy, I blame you.” My stomach growled again. “Now, first step on the road to a fresh start should always be…food. And I know a hexcellent little bakery on the way, just outside the forest.”
Head held high, I aimed to walk proud and start my new life of freedom. I made it all of five steps. Heels were not made for hiking. They sunk into the ground, knocking off my center of gravity, pitching me forward to face-plant in the dirt.
“That’s not a sign. That doesn’t mean anything.” Determined, I got up and, slowly, strolled out of the clearing, heading toward Nottingham. “This is way harder than Dorky made it look.” And madder than a hatter with a mouse in a teapot, I made small talk with myself the whole way. Because hearing my own voice was far less creepy than the uncanny absence of sound that stretched over the forest.
Nothing tweeted or peeped. In fact, not a single animal seemed to remain in the dying forest. The ironwood trees no longer moved either. Perhaps their last bits of wild magic had left with Dorthea. But instead of returning them to the proud giants they once were, they seemed more like empty corpses. Like the petrified Forgotten.
“Ugh. Not my problem anymore.” I needed to stop thinking. I’d already established it was a dangerous habit that didn’t lead anywhere good. “I know.” I cleared my throat and started to sing. “Let it go. Let it goooo.”
“Yes, for the love of Grimm and all our ears, let it go.”
I looked down to where the voice and accompanying snickers came from, but I still didn’t have a shadow. The boots seemed to be doing their job, keeping Morte away. Except perhaps Dorthea had added a little something extra to enhance them. I hadn’t been walking long enough to have made it out of the forest, yet I had covered far more distance than seemed possible. Especially considering my balance on the hexed heels was about as good as a deer on a frozen pond.
A line of guarding gnomes formed a barrier between me and Nottingham Pawn.
“Hey, pal,” one with a blue, pointy cap said, hopping over to me. “Move it along. There’s nothing to see here.”
Oh, but there was. Something had happened to the shop. The thatched roof of the front porch lay on the ground like a doormat. The support beam was busted and splintered. Hex, the front wall had a person-size hole in it. Bigger than me…and I sorta had a vague feeling I had a significant hand in it being there. Though I didn’t remember it happening.
Not to mention every tree, crossroad post, and building had a collection of wanted posters on them—Dorthea’s, Verte’s, Kato’s, and mine, to be exact. Dorthea’s and Verte’s were dead ringers. Kato’s had a drawing of a beast that looked like a lizard lion. And mine…well, I needed to send an apology card to my cousin, Red, when I had a chance.
Before the gnomes could ask any questions, I pulled my hood down and wobbled past them into the rest of the village. I didn’t need a good memory to know where I was going, just a good nose. One sniff and I wondered if all the birds from the forest had ended up in the baker’s four and twenty blackbird pies. My stomach rumbled, as if saying, Who cares?
The pies were waiting on the windowsill of the baker’s mill. The baker himself was outside fiddling with his water wheel. Every few seconds, he’d peer over to his window, his lips moving in a silent count. With a satisfied nod, he’d go back to his tinkering.
I still had the pewter button I’d nicked in my pocket. There was a metal bell just to the baker’s left. If I could hit it…
I took aim and flicked it with all my might. The button soared spectacularly—in the wrong direction. It hit the blue, pointy gnome hat with a loud shatter that made me wince.
“Bogies, bogies. I’m hit. Gnome down. I repeat, we have a gnome down,” the little guy hollered and hopped around before the cracks reached his mouth.
The other gnomes started angrily yelling, calling for vengeance, torches, and pitchforks. The villagers of Nottingham stepped out of their homes and their shops, staring openly and whispering to one another. They all gathered closer to the pawn shop. Including the baker.
Not what I intended. But it would work. A little bit of glue and the gnome would be fine. Ish.
With everyone’s attention elsewhere, I hurriedly stuffed a full pie in my mouth and grabbed an extra for dinner later. Then I walked away, leaving town and heading the back way toward the museum.
A crack of lightning broke through the sky. The sound reverberated through my chest, down into my shaking legs.
“No…she’s dead. Griz is dead.”