by Chris Colfer
“What’s the matter?” the polar bear asked her. “Am I too close for comfort?”
“Actually,” Goldilocks said, “you’re exactly where I want you!”
Goldilocks retrieved her sword and hit the frozen lake as hard as she could. A large crack bolted across the lake straight to the polar bear. The ice under his feet caved, and the polar bear fell straight through into the freezing water below.
“That’s my girl!” Jack hollered proudly. “Woo-hoo!”
Goldilocks got to her feet and caught her breath. It was very rare for her heart to race this fast. She carefully looked down at the hole in the ice, waiting for the polar bear to resurface, but the water refroze before he had the chance.
Goldilocks ran over to Jack. She reached into her boot, pulled out a few matches, and struck them against her belt. She held the small flames against the ice trapping him.
“We have to hurry!” Goldilocks said. “The twins are in trouble!”
Alex and Conner ran through the cavern with the Snow Queen hot on their trail. They were barely avoiding the icy blasts she sent toward them.
“Come back here!” she demanded.
The cavern was full of enormous icicles protruding from both the ceiling and the floor—as if the twins had discovered the mountain’s teeth. There was very little light but the ice was extremely reflective. The twins could see themselves everywhere they looked.
As if the situation couldn’t get worse, the twins ran smack into the second polar bear. He was standing at a long ice table sorting through a collection of props: pots and pans, bells and whistles, pieces of metal, and blocks of wood—everything the bears needed to keep the Snow Queen’s ears believing their charade.
The polar bear sneered down at the twins, and they bolted in the opposite direction.
“How dare you intrude upon my palace!” the Snow Queen screamed, blasting icicles into pieces near the twins.
“You’re not in a palace! The bears have been lying to you!” Alex shouted back at her.
“You live in the mountains! You haven’t conquered anything!” Conner added.
“They’re liars, My Queen,” the polar bear proclaimed. “We would never do something like that to you—to your left, My Queen!”
The Snow Queen pointed her scepter to her left, and an icy beam hit the icicle directly to the twins’ left. Thankfully, the polar bear had mistaken their reflection for the real twins.
“To your right, My Queen!” the polar bear shouted, acting as her eyes.
The Snow Queen blasted away the icicle directly to the twins’ right, missing them by inches.
“Conner, I hate to say this, but I think it might be smart to—”
“Split up?” Conner said, finishing his sister’s sentence.
They separated and ran in different directions. It looked like there were dozens of Alexes and Conners running through the cavern now.
“Ahead of you, My Queen!” the polar bear shouted.
The Snow Queen followed his instructions and fired icy blasts in every direction he told her.
“To your right! Behind you! To your left! To your front! Behind you again! To your side!” the polar bear instructed. Alex and Conner were running circles around them. The Snow Queen was going to blast the entire cavern away if she wasn’t careful.
“Now to your side! Turn around! One is right behind you! He’s getting away! Quickly, to your left!” the polar bear yelled.
The Snow Queen shot a strong blast to her left and the cavern went silent.
“Well?” the Snow Queen grunted. “Where are they?!”
Alex and Conner looked back—the polar bear was frozen in a block of ice. In her attempts to shoot them, the Snow Queen had hit him.
The Snow Queen grew frustrated and yelled so loudly the entire cavern started to shake. The cavern rumbled and the twins looked up to see a massive avalanche rolling straight toward them.
Conner dived behind an icicle. Alex hid under the ice table. The avalanche swept through the cavern and engulfed the Snow Queen. She screamed as it crashed into her. The wave of snow settled and the cavern was dead silent.
Alex peeked her head up from the table. The Snow Queen was lying on the ground, covered in a mound of snow. Her crown had been knocked off and her scepter was lying nearby.
Alex cautiously walked over to her. Was she dead? Could she hear her approaching?
Alex leaned down and picked up the scepter. Just as her hand wrapped around it, the Snow Queen grabbed on to Alex’s forearm and pulled her in close. The cloth slid off of her lids and Alex was staring into two bright lights instead of eyes.
“Of the four travelers, one will not return…” the Snow Queen rasped. Then the lights faded into nothing but empty eye sockets. The Snow Queen’s hand around Alex went limp and she fell unconscious.
Alex didn’t understand what had just happened. Had the Snow Queen just given her a prophecy?
“You got it!” Conner said excitedly and ran up to his sister. He was covered in snow but was jumping for joy.
“Yeah, I did,” Alex said—still unsure of how to process what the Snow Queen had just told her.
Jack and Goldilocks charged into the cavern. They were so relieved to see the twins. They took one look at the frozen polar bear and at the trapped Snow Queen and laughed.
Jack playfully nudged Goldilocks. “And you were worried they were in danger,” he said.
“Jack, look out!” Conner yelled. Jack ducked just in time to miss being slashed with a claw. The other polar bear had managed to get out of the frozen lake and appeared behind them—he was soaked and furious. He leaped toward Jack and Goldilocks, ready to tear them apart.
Alex pointed the scepter at the polar bear and an icy beam hit him in the chest. He froze in midair and hit the ground, trapped in ice.
“Well, I’m ready for this snow day to be over,” Conner said.
“Let’s get out of here before the bears thaw out,” Goldilocks said.
The group found the opening in the glaciers they had entered through and followed the marks Goldilocks left back into the harsh winds. They traveled south until they found the Granny right where they had left it.
“You’re back! You’re back!” Froggy said and literally leaped for joy as they climbed aboard the ship. “Well, how’d it go? Did you get the scepter?”
Alex showed him the Snow Queen’s scepter. “Boy, do we have a story for you!” she said.
But before Alex could even start, Red emerged from the lower deck. “Oh good, you’re all back! You won’t believe what happened to me while you were gone!” she said.
“We won’t believe what happened to you?” Conner asked, wondering what could top defeating polar bears and a Snow Queen.
Red was cradling something in her arms like a baby. As she neared the others, they could see it was furry and had four paws.
“I got a puppy!” Red said and happily showed them the small dog sleeping in her arms.
“Where did you get a puppy?” Alex asked.
“I grew a little impatient waiting for you to return—oh, I see you got the scepter! Well done—anyway, I went for a walk to pass the time and I found this little guy wandering around the snow alone! He was helpless, starving, and adorable, so I decided to adopt him!” Red explained.
No one knew what to say. Anything they could have said about retrieving the scepter wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting to her as the pup in her arms.
“Did you name him?” Conner asked.
“I named him Claudius,” Red informed them. “I named him after one of the characters from my favorite Shakeyfruit play, Hamhead.”
Froggy hit his forehead with an open hand. “Hamlet, my dear,” he corrected her.
“Yes, that’s the one,” she said. “But I’m going to spell it with a w. Wouldn’t that be divine? Clawdius, with a w! Do you get it?”
Everyone nodded along with her like she was a three-year-old child—except for Goldilocks. She was staring daggers at Red.
“You probably don’t get it,” Red said and explained it to her further. “If I spell it with a w, the word claw will be in his name, like an animal claw. Get it now? Say it with me, Goldie—Clawdius.”
Goldilocks looked down at the small dog and then back up at Red with a smile. “He’s very cute, congratulations.”
The others did a double take. They had never seen Goldilocks collect herself so effortlessly before.
“Thank you,” Red said. She climbed the steps back down to the lower deck, rocking her new pet as she went. “Oh my, what cute little paws you have, Clawdius! Oh my, what precious little eyes you have. Oh my, what pointy little ears you have…”
Goldilocks began unloading all her weapons, chuckling as she did.
“That was big of you,” Conner said to her.
“What’s so amusing?” Jack asked.
“Red is in for a rude awakening,” Goldilocks said.
“Oh, dear,” Froggy said. “Why is that?”
A sly smile came to Goldilocks’s face. “I’d recognize one of those anywhere. That’s not a puppy—it’s a wolf cub.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE WICKED STEPMOTHER
Red was insufferably inseparable from her new pet. While the others rested in the lower deck after their encounter with the Snow Queen, the sounds of Red playing fetch with Clawdius kept them tossing and turning in their cots.
“Fetch, Clawdius!” Red encouraged in a loud and high-pitched voice. “Go on, boy! Go get the stick! Bring it back to Mommy!”
Since they had decided it was best for the Granny to fly covertly at night, everyone on board was struggling to adjust to the nocturnal traveling schedule, getting sleep whenever they could—and Red wasn’t helping matters.
A loud clank came from the upper deck that caused everyone to jolt.
“That’s it!” Goldilocks said, jumping out of her cot. She ran up the steps to the upper deck and was mortified by what she saw—Red was using the ice scepter to play fetch with Clawdius.
“Are you insane!?” Goldilocks said, yanking the scepter out of the pup’s mouth.
“What? He likes it,” Red said.
The twins could hear their conversation as clear as a bell below, and they worried these moments would be Red’s last.
“You’re really not helping my urge to throw you and that mutt off this ship!” Goldilocks said.
Red ignored her. She hummed a tune to herself and took a seat on the other side of the deck. Clawdius curled up in Red’s lap and went to sleep as she stroked his bushy gray fur.
“Hoods have always suited me so well, and motherhood is no exception,” Red said. “Isn’t it amazing how quickly we’ve bonded? What are the chances a poor dog would be stranded in the wilderness and rescued by a fabulous queen? I feel like we’re living in a story!”
Goldilocks had had enough. It was time to burst Red’s bubble.
“He treats you like you’re his mother because he actually thinks you’re his mother,” Goldilocks said. “He’s bonding with your coat, Red, not you! Clawdius is a wolf!”
“What?” Red said with a laugh, as if it was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard in her life. “That’s ridiculous! There’s no way Clawdius is a…” Her voice trailed off. She looked down and saw Clawdius sucking on one of the buttons of her coat—disappointed no milk was coming from it.
Red was suddenly aware of the familiarity of his teeth, his ears, his snout, and his fur—she had seen all these features before, just on a larger scale.
A piercing scream erupted from the back of Red’s throat. “WOLF!” She jumped to her feet and pushed Clawdius to the ground. “Get it away from me! Get it away from me!”
Jack, Froggy, and the twins climbed to the upper deck when they heard the screaming. They were afraid Goldilocks might have finally lost her patience and tried to murder Red, but Goldilocks was leaning on the banister watching Clawdius chase Red around the deck with a huge smile on her face.
“Don’t just stand there! Help me!” Red yelled at Jack and the twins. She was running in circles and Clawdius was playfully barking up at her, thinking they were playing another game.
“Darling, please calm down!” Froggy said. “He’s just a tiny little—”
“He’s a bloodthirsty killer!” Red screamed. “Just look at him! He’s probably been plotting to kill me in my sleep since he came aboard!”
“He’s not the only one,” Goldilocks said.
“Get away from me, you ferocious beast!” Red yelled over her shoulder at the baby wolf. The twins found her choice of words to be a bit extreme. The wolf cub didn’t seem threatening in the slightest, especially as Clawdius was now chasing his own tail.
“Perhaps you could raise him to be unferocious, my love?” Froggy suggested.
“Name one example of that method working!” Red yelled. Froggy drew a blank. “That’s because you can take the wolf out of the wilderness but you can’t take the wilderness out of the wolf!”
Red stood on the banister and Clawdius jumped up at her, trying to join her on the ship’s edge. He grew tired of jumping up for Red’s affection and sat on the floor just below her with his oversize paws spread in front of him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Red said. “I can’t be your mother if I’m constantly worried you’re going to maul me to death, now can I?”
A singular sad yelp came out of the pup and he looked at her sideways.
“I have a history with wolves, you know,” Red said. “One almost gobbled me and my grandmother up when I was a little girl! A wall was built around my kingdom to keep out the likes of you. Surely you can understand the inconvenience?”
Clawdius whimpered, somehow understanding the young queen. He moped over to Froggy, feeling like he had been abandoned for a second time.
“There, there, old chap,” Froggy said and picked up the tiny wolf. “We’ll find you a nice home, don’t you worry.”
Red stayed on the banister for the majority of the day, too afraid to move.
That night, as soon as the sun set, Jack fired up the ship and Froggy steered it south. It sailed through the clouds of the Northern Kingdom to their next destination—Cinderella’s wicked stepmother’s estate.
Jack and Froggy took shifts through the night navigating the Granny. The twins tried to sleep, but it was difficult with the Granny rocking along the midnight sky and because Red was talking in her sleep.
“Oh my, what soft fur you have, little Clawdius,” Red said, and stroked an imaginary dog in her bed. “Oh my, what small nonthreatening teeth you have.… Oh my, what strong non-growing bones you have.… Oh my, what a delicate little diet of fruits and vegetables you have.…”
Goldilocks had successfully blocked out the noises with a pillow wrapped around her head. Alex wasn’t so lucky. Not only did she have Red talking in her sleep to drown out but also the fear of what the Snow Queen had told her in the cavern.
Out of the four travelers, one would not return. What did it mean? Was she referring to the twins, Jack, and Goldilocks? Was she telling Alex that one of them was going to die? Had she actually made a true prophecy or was she just trying to get into Alex’s head?
Alex wondered if anyone had literally worried themselves to death, because if not, she was probably going to be the first. Her thoughts were overwhelming and Alex finally gave up on the idea of sleep. She got up from her cot and discovered her brother had done the same. She climbed up to the upper deck and found him leaning on the banister facing the East. He held a quill, and a stack of parchment was spread in front of him.
It was quiet out here. Only the sounds of the Granny’s sails flapping in the wind and the flickering of the central flame could be heard.
“You couldn’t sleep, either?” Alex asked.
“I don’t think someone comatose could sleep through all of that,” he said.
“What are you doing?” Alex asked, gesturing to his quill and parchment. “Not homework, I hope. I think you�
�ll be allowed to turn in a couple late assignments given the circumstances.”
“No, I’m just writing,” Conner said. “I’m making notes of all the things we’ve seen and the places we’ve been so far. I don’t want to forget anything. I may want to make a couple short stories out of it. The Snow Queen’s polar bear servants, Red having a pet wolf, pheasant pudding… It’s all good stuff.”
“That’s great,” Alex said. “I hope you get to use them—”
Alex said it without thinking. Conner stopped writing and took a deep breath.
“Alex, we’re gonna save Mom,” he said firmly.
Alex didn’t know what to say. “I hope so—”
“No, I need to hear you say it. We won’t be able to do it unless we both believe it.”
Alex found the confidence in her brother’s eyes contagious. “We’re going to save Mom,” Alex said, this time fully believing it.
Conner smiled. “Good,” he said. “Thanks for that.”
“What keeps you so positive? Usually I’m the one giving the pep talks, but you’ve been boosting my morale since we got here.”
“What are our options? If I have the choice of being doubtful or being hopeful, I’m going to choose hopeful. It takes less work to be positive.”
Alex smiled at him. “That’s a nice way to see things.”
“And,” Conner added, “you know once we save Mom’s life there’s no way she’ll ever be able to say no to us again!”
Alex laughed and covered her mouth, forgetting the rest of the ship was asleep. “Okay, now you’re getting your hopes up way too much!”
The twins savored the thought. Conner was right; it was much easier than letting their minds fill with doubt.
A cool breeze suddenly blew past the ship and shivers went down their spines.
“Do you feel that?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
Alex looked over her shoulder and gasped. “Conner, look!” She turned her brother in the direction she was facing.
Slowly gliding toward them was the ghost Conner had seen in Red’s castle. There was something so majestic, so regal, and yet so frightening about her all at the same time.