“Ladies and gentlemen, please lend us your eyes and ears as we go over our safety demonstration,” said a voice from the speakers.
The flight attendants stood in the aisles and gave instructions on how to buckle the seat belts and wear the safety vests, and pointed to the emergency exits. A cartoon showed the passengers how to properly put on the oxygen masks and evacuate the plane in the event of an emergency. By the time the safety demonstration was done, the plane had departed the gate and was cruising toward the runway.
Red reached over Jack’s and Goldilocks’s seats and tapped Bree and Conner on the shoulders.
“Sorry, those yellow vests were so ugly, I zoned out,” she said. “Could you repeat those bits about cabin pressure and water landings?”
“If the cabin loses oxygen, masks will drop down from the ceiling so we can breathe.” Bree filled her in. “And in the event of a water landing, the bottom of the plane will turn into a flotation device.”
“But that’s absurd,” Red said. “Why would we end up in water? Can’t the driver just steer around it?”
Suddenly, the plane rocketed down the runway. The force slammed Red into her seat and she screamed.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” she shouted.
“Relax, we’re just taking off,” Bree said.
“TAKING OFF WHAT?”
“Into the air.”
Bree thought it was obvious, but judging from the horrified look on Red’s face, it wasn’t.
“THIS THING GOES INTO THE AIR?” she asked in a panic.
“Yeah, that’s why it’s called a flight.”
“I WISH SOMEONE HAD SHARED THAT MINOR DETAIL BEFORE WE BOARDED! IS IT TOO LATE TO GET OFF?”
“Yes!” the whole cabin said in unison.
As the jet launched into the air, Conner closed his eyes. The subtle movements of the plane quickly rocked him to sleep. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a peaceful rest.
Conner saw flashes of his sister in his dreams…. He couldn’t understand her completely, but she was desperately trying to communicate with him…. She was trying to warn him that something terrible was going to happen…. He needed to stop it before all was lost…. He asked her to repeat herself, but it became harder and harder to hear her…. As if a dying strobe light were illuminating them, Conner could see less and less of her…. A dark, smoky cloud suddenly wrapped around Alex…. It pulled her away from him like a giant hand…. She was screaming, but there was nothing he could do to help….
“Alex!” Conner cried, and awoke with a jolt.
“Are you okay?” Bree asked him.
“Sorry, bad dream. How long was I out?”
“For about an hour. You’ve been twitching since takeoff but I didn’t have the heart to wake you up. I can’t imagine how exhausted you are.”
“I suppose shaky sleep is better than no sleep at all,” he said. “You’ve been up as long as I have. Did you manage to nap at all?”
“I tried but no bueno,” she said. “There’s just too much on my mind.”
Conner nodded. “I hear you,” he said. “Gosh, I would give anything to think about something besides my sister. I’m even starting to worry about her in my dreams. I just had a nightmare where she tried to warn me about something, but I couldn’t understand her. I’m sure it’s just the stress talking.”
He turned to Bree, hoping to find some reassurance in her eyes, but she had none to spare.
“Conner, there’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “I was trying to be considerate and didn’t want to overwhelm you, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore.”
Although he had no idea what she was talking about, Conner’s whole body went tense. Bree was always so calm and cool about everything; she wouldn’t be so worked up if it weren’t serious.
“You can tell me,” he said. “I doubt there’s much that’ll trouble me more than I already am troubled.”
“All right,” Bree said, and took a deep breath. “I wasn’t completely honest about my trip to Connecticut. I was visiting family, that part is true, but I lied about the reason I went.”
Conner gulped. “Was it another guy?”
This was the last question Bree expected to come out of his mouth.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” she said, and went straight to her point. “When Emmerich and I came back from the fairy-tale world, after the Grande Armée was defeated, I kept thinking about the portal in Neuschwanstein Castle. The more I thought about its history, the less sense it made.”
“It was a pretty complicated story,” Conner said, remembering. “In the early 1800s, the Grande Armée forced the Brothers Grimm to lead them to the fairy-tale world. The brothers took them to Neuschwanstein Castle and activated the portal with the magic panpipe, and the Grande Armée went inside it. What the Armée didn’t know was that Mother Goose had bewitched the portal so anyone without magic blood would be trapped inside it for two hundred years.”
“Exactly,” Bree said. “So what I couldn’t stop asking myself was how Emmerich and I got through the portal without being trapped.”
Conner’s life had been so complicated since the Grande Armée invaded the fairy-tale world, he’d never had a chance to think about the portal at Neuschwanstein Castle—but Bree was absolutely right! She and Emmerich should have been trapped for two centuries just like the Grande Armée. There was only one reason why they weren’t.
“You have magic in your blood!” Conner exclaimed. “Emmerich’s my cousin, so that’s where his magic came from, but what about yours?”
His heart skipped a beat as he thought of one possibility.
“Oh no—we aren’t related, too, are we?” he asked.
“Um… no,” Bree said. “You’re forgetting the grossest part about the story. In order for the Brothers Grimm to activate the portal at Neuschwanstein Castle, they also needed magic in their blood. Mother Goose transferred some of her blood into theirs so they could use the panpipe to trap the Armée. And that magic was passed down from generation to generation of the Grimm family.”
“Holy DNA test,” Conner said. “You’re a descendant of the Brothers Grimm!”
Bree nodded. “As you can imagine, I was really eager to prove it. That’s why I ran away to my cousin Cornelia’s house in Connecticut. I needed to confirm my family’s heritage.”
“So that’s why Cornelia was so calm about everything she saw at the hospital! Your family has known about magic and the fairy-tale world for longer than my sister and I have!”
“They know about a lot more than that,” Bree confessed. “Cornelia, Frenda, and Wanda are part of a secret group called the Sisters Grimm. My fifth-great-grandmother, Maria Grimm, founded the group in 1852. Knowing that the fairy-tale world existed, the women in my family began investigating some magical incidents happening around the world.”