by James Riley
The animal picked up his head to stare at them. “Leaving you two … here to do what, watch over me?” He started to chuckle, but the laughter turned into a coughing fit.
“Calm down!” May said, pushing the wolf’s head back down onto the bed. “We’re here to take care of you. And we will. We’ll make sure nothing happens to you until the doctor gets here.”
“Doctor?” Jack said. “You keep saying that. What’s a—”
“You really gotta do that every time?” May interrupted without looking at him.
“I must know now,” the wolf said, his eyes dark with pain, but also filled with determination. “Tell me what occurred here. Where is the Red Hood?! What happened to the Mirror?!”
“The Red Hood escaped,” Jack said. “The Huntsman—this guy who’s been chasing us down—he threw you in here and then helped her get away.”
“What!” The wolf shouted, then struggled to push himself up, but quickly fell back to the bed and into another coughing fit.
“That’s not all, either,” May said in a voice tinged with anger. “They broke the Mirror.” She pointed to the wall. “More than it already was, I mean.”
The wolf sat up enough to see what she was pointing at, then dropped back to the bed with a sigh. “Clearly, you do not take after your grandmother, Princess. She never would have let this happen.”
May’s mouth dropped open, the wolf’s comment leaving her at a loss for words. Jack found himself filling in for her, though, far more passionately then he would have thought. “May did everything she could!” Jack shouted. “We all did! Maybe if we hadn’t been surprised by the Huntsman, we’d have the Red Hood and the Mirror right now!”
The wolf’s paw flew up and grabbed Jack’s head, then yanked it down to within an inch of the animal’s teeth. “And what, pray tell, are you implying?” the wolf growled softly.
“I’m implying,” Jack said, ignoring the animal’s heavy breathing, “that you were supposed to be watching our backs!”
The wolf glared at him for a moment, then released him. “You speak the truth,” he said, lying back down on the bed, looking paler than ever. “I … I failed. I was not aware of the Huntsman’s approach. I sought to hide my presence from the Red Hood, cloaked as a man. But in man form, I cannot use as many of my senses as I can as a wolf. I was taken unawares, and reverted to my regular form when I lost conscious control over my aspect.” The wolf winced, though in pain or just at the memory of his failure, Jack couldn’t tell.
“Well, it’s not really your fault either,” Jack said, much more eager to forgive now that the wolf had apologized. “None of us knew he was there, and we’re all dealing with it now. So just get some rest, and try not to move until the healer gets here.”
May nodded in agreement, and the wolf settled back into the soft bed, closing his eyes. They let him rest for a minute, then moved back to the wall.
As Jack slid down the wall to the floor a little laugh escaped the wolf’s lips. “One more thing,” he growled. “I hardly care what you do, but try not to wake me with your courting rituals again.”
Jack’s face turned bright red as he slipped and fell the rest of the way to the floor.
Chapter 26
Jack didn’t plan on falling asleep; too much was happening, and happening much too fast when it did. Still, he hadn’t slept in a while, what with finding the Black Forest, riding on the wolf’s back, and breaking the Mirror. After all that, the quiet comfort of the cottage was just too hard to resist.
Jack propped himself up against the wall with some bed pillows, then leaned back to settle in. On his right, May was doing the same, only she’d already closed her eyes. Jack smiled slightly as he marveled for the hundredth time that her hair could really be blue like that. How had she done that? Was there magic involved?
And then Jack opened his eyes, not exactly sure when he’d closed them. When he fell asleep, his mind always seemed to wander to the oddest places. Places where magic didn’t work, and there wasn’t any royalty … places where everyone was equal, no one was better than anyone else just because of who their parents were. That’d be nice, a place like that. That’d be some kind of dream world….
And maybe it’d look something like the place Jack saw when he opened his eyes. Somehow, surrounding him on all sides was a wide field with tall, golden grasses blowing gently in multiple directions from the slightly chilly wind. The meadow seemed empty, at least from where he was sitting. As he turned to take it all in, though, he noticed an oak tree behind him. In fact, he was leaning against it. How odd … Had that been there a minute ago? Hadn’t he just been in sunlight, whereas now he sat in the tree’s shade? Jack thought so, but didn’t really put too much effort into worrying about it. The tree was here now—that was the important thing.
He snuggled against the tree’s trunk, sighing with contentment as his back fit into the wood just right. The gentle breeze still managed to find him under the tree’s canopy, and the air blew his hair almost playfully. Jack smiled. This was actually really nice!
“It is quite nice,” said a man at his side, a man who Jack could have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago, a man whose voice was familiar.
A man who was also dressed entirely in black armor, covered by a blue cloak.
Somewhere deep in Jack’s head, a small voice cried out that this was the Wicked Queen’s Eye, that Jack was in danger, but the voice was too small to listen to, so Jack just ignored it and smiled. “I agree, it is nice,” he said. For some reason, his voice sounded dazed, even to him, but Jack didn’t let that bother him.
The knight returned Jack’s smile. “Sometimes I sit here for days, you know,” the man said, leaning his head back against the tree. “It’s very peaceful. Also, I must admit, it’s quite pleasant to think, to hear your breath moving in and out without the distractions of the outside world.”
Jack nodded in agreement. “I haven’t had much chance to sit still in a few days,” he said. “It’s been pretty strange.”
The knight leaned over. “It’s going to get stranger,” he whispered. At that, the knight waved his hand, and an image appeared in midair. It was of a girl with both blond and blue hair, checking to make sure the boy next to her was asleep before standing up and removing a chain from around her neck.
“You’re in for quite an adventure, actually,” the knight said to him as Jack dreamily watched the scene unfold in midair. “You really have no idea how deep you’ll be going.”
“Well,” Jack said thoughtfully, “we are going to rescue Snow White. That much I know.”
The knight’s eyes twinkled. “Are you now, Jack? That would be a grand adventure, and certainly a worthy one.”
In the image, the girl snuck quietly over to a nearby wall upon which hung a mirror.
A thought occurred to Jack, one that seemed to penetrate the fog currently filling his mind. “But you … the Eyes serve the Wicked Queen….”
The knight sighed and leaned back against the tree. “I think that you will find that much of what you previously believed, young Jack, may not be as true as you thought.”
That answer didn’t seem to help at all. “But you do serve the Wicked Queen, right?”
The knight paused as if trying to word his answer carefully. “I served the Queen in the past, yes,” he said finally. “However, unlike many in my order, I pledged my allegiance to another. My allegiance … and more.”
“More?” Jack said, looking closely at the knight next to him. He realized with a start, though a gentle one, that the knight wasn’t wearing his hood, as he had been in the giant’s mouth. The hood had been hiding a rather pleasant face, wrinkled with worry lines, but also quite a few lines from wide smiles. The knight’s hair was almost a bronzed brown, a color that accented his green eyes. For some reason, the man’s face looked familiar, as if Jack had seen him in paintings or something.
And then the realization of the knight’s identity suddenly hit him, almost as if the knowledge had
come from somewhere else, somewhere outside Jack’s head. “Wait a second,” Jack said slowly. “You’re the one who—”
“I was,” the knight corrected, his eyes twinkling again, though there was also a hint of sadness. “But now all I am is a shadow of my former self, a hint of what was. Or for some,” the knight said, a small grin sneaking onto his lips, “a hint of what might come?”
At that moment the girl in the image slowly held the end of her chain up to a small space at the top of the mirror, then pushed it into place.
An ear-splitting scream filled the air, and the floating image began pulling at Jack, yanking him bodily into it and away from the field, the sunshine, and the knight, straight back into his waking body and the cottage.
The scream had come from a tall, thin woman who now stood in the doorway wearing a vibrant blue dress, full, platinum-colored hair framing her long face. Phillip stood behind her, and both he and the woman looked completely shocked; the woman’s mouth was still hanging open from her scream. Across the room, the wolf was also awake and glancing around with the same confusion that Jack felt.
With a sinking feeling, Jack quickly looked over to the wall, over to the Mirror.
And there was May, having placed the crown of her necklace into the Mirror’s frame.
“Princess!” Phillip screamed.
“You must not do that!” the woman in blue shouted.
“May, don’t!” Jack said, but he was far too late.
May smiled guiltily. “I know I wasn’t supposed to, but you gotta understand, I need to know if it will work! I need to know.” With that, she stepped away from the Mirror, bracing herself for what might happen, as they all did …
Except nothing did happen, and after a few more seconds of nothing, Jack, Phillip, and May all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Phillip reached May first, as Jack was farther away, but Jack wasn’t far behind.
“What were you thinking, Princess?!” Phillip asked her.
“May,” Jack said, pushing Phillip aside, “you have no idea what might have happened with the Mirror broken like that. We don’t even know what it would have done if it was still in one piece!”
“I … I needed to know,” May said, sounding almost confused. “I had to see what would happen. It might have been able to give us one last piece of information, even if it was broken!” As she spoke, her eyes began to moisten. “Don’t you guys get it?” she said. “How are we supposed to find her without this? We needed the Mirror! It can’t be broken! I won’t accept that!”
Jack and Phillip both reached out to touch her, but she jerked away from them and strode back over to the Mirror. She stared at it in despair for a moment, then reached up to take the necklace back.
“The damage has been done,” the woman in blue said from behind them, her voice sad. As if in response to her words, a small glow appeared behind the crack in the center of the Mirror. Slowly, the glow grew in intensity, filling the Mirror, shining forth at odd angles from every fracture in the glass.
Then an even stranger thing began to happen. The glow, the actual light in the Mirror, began to trickle out of the hole in the middle of the Mirror, just like smoke rising out of a chimney.
Chapter 27
“Uh-oh,” May said, backing away from the Mirror.
“That pretty much covers it,” Jack agreed, yanking her back more quickly. Whatever was pouring out of the Mirror looked like some kind of bright, greenish-yellow smoke, though Jack hadn’t ever seen smoke that glowed.
“This way!” the prince yelled then gestured for Jack and May to get outside. Jack couldn’t really argue with that, so he pushed May toward the door, then ran to the bed; there was no way the wolf could move on his own. Jack put a shoulder under one of the animal’s injured legs and heaved … only, he didn’t move the animal an inch.
“Whoa!” Jack said. “He must weigh like a hundred stone!”
“You,” the woman in blue said, pointing at Jack, “out. I’ll take care of this … this creature.”
Jack started to object, then looked into the woman’s eyes, eyes that were completely white. The woman, whoever she was, had no irises or pupils whatsoever. “Right!” Jack said, knowing better than to argue with a woman with no eyes. He lowered the wolf’s leg back onto the bed, then ran for the door, leaping over a small cloud of whatever was coming from the Mirror.
It might have been his imagination, but the cloud almost looked like it grabbed for him as he jumped.
Phillip caught him on the other side and pulled him out the door, which slammed shut behind him. May was waiting a short distance away at entrance of the clearing, so the two joined her there.
“Who is that woman?” Jack asked the prince when they’d gotten a relatively comfortable distance away.
“We call her Merriweather,” Phillip said, watching the cottage, “though I do not know if that is her real name.”
“She’s not human, is she,” Jack said.
“No,” the prince said. “She is a queen of the fairy folk. My father saved her life when I was very young, and she has watched over me ever since. She called herself my godmother, actually, when I was young.” He frowned. “I wonder what the delay is.”
“I am here,” said the fairy queen from directly behind them. All three spun around to find her standing calmly with the Wolf King lying in the grass at her feet. The wolf was breathing hard, but it wasn’t as labored as it had been. And he wasn’t bleeding; in fact, his fur had grown back, and he seemed to be completely healed.
Jack’s eyes went wide. “That’s amazing,” he said breathlessly.
The right side of Merriweather’s mouth turned up the slightest bit. “Hardly,” she said. “And I’d rather see the animal dead. Still, I did as my young prince requested. The animal will be fine … when it wakes.” She bent down and picked up the wolf’s chin, then let it drop back to the ground. The wolf never moved. “After healing the creature,” she said, “I enchanted it to sleep, so that I’d have time to change your minds.” She gave them all a hard look. “No good will come from this one, children. Its life has been one of hardship and lost love, and I do not know if it is capable of returning from such a dark place.”
Jack didn’t have any idea what to say to that, but before he could think of anything, Phillip grabbed his arm, spun him around, and pointed at the clearing. On Jack’s other side, May gasped. As much as he knew he’d regret doing it, Jack reluctantly followed their gazes back to the cottage.
The greenish-yellow smoke was now visible through the windows, filling the entire cottage. Cracks appeared in the brick walls, and the wood in the roof began to crack, shrieking as if in pain.
The smoke continued to spread, the creaking growing louder and louder until finally the entire roof launched into the air, like a lid exploding off a pot of boiling water.
The roof spun as it shot into the air, rising in an arc that suddenly looked like it might land a bit too close to them for comfort. As the roof tumbled back down, heading straight for their group, Jack, May, and Phillip all jumped backward. Merriweather, however, didn’t move. The roof crashed down a few inches from her foot, and the fairy queen didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, she glanced down at it, then looked back up at the smoke and frowned. “Your Highness,” she said to Phillip. “You are not safe here.”
“She’s quick, huh?” May whispered to Jack.
“What is it?” Phillip asked the fairy queen. As they spoke, the smoke seemed to be coalescing into some sort of shape, almost like … almost like a body, a torso.
Merriweather never took her eyes off the smoke as the sheer magnitude of it began to block out the sunlight. “It is a devil, plain and true,” she said. “My people call them djinn, but I believe humans refer to them as genies.” She narrowed her eyes. “This one is known to me. It is an Ifrit, one of the elders.”
“You two have met?” May asked.
The fairy queen sighed. “I know the one who trapped it in the Mirror,” she said. “Her
folly invites ruin upon us all.”
“An Ifrit,” Jack said. “Is that more powerful than other genies?”
The fairy queen turned her white eyes on him, making him regret asking. “You might say that,” she said. “The younger genies are close to being all-powerful, but are forced by their elders to learn humility through service to lesser beings, usually humans.”
“How nice,” May sniffed. “It’s good to know where we stand in the grand scheme of things.”
“Indeed,” Merriweather said. “The elders, the Ifrits, are even more powerful than their young, and controlling them is next to impossible once they are let loose. Fortunately for our world, there have only been two who made their way here during my lifetime. This is the second.”
“And the first?” Jack asked, watching as the genie’s torso filled in completely, the smoke now building arms the size of storm clouds. At the very top, almost too high to see, it looked as if a head might be forming.
“The first?” Merriweather said with the barest hint of a smile. “It’s best that you not know, human. Your kind tends to react badly to their world almost being unmade. Fortunately, one of my fellow fairy queens tricked it into trapping itself within a kerosene lamp, then hid the lamp where no one will ever discover it.”
“Bet someone finds it,” May whispered to Jack.
Merriweather turned her gaze to the princess, her white eyes blazing in anger. Before May could say anything, though, Merriweather took a step back in surprise. “You!” the fairy queen shouted, her eyes wide.
May froze for a second, clearly just as surprised as the fairy queen. “Um, me?” she asked in a small voice. Jack inched between the two, not trusting this eyeless fairy queen at all.
“You!” Merriweather repeated, still in shock. “I know you! You were not where you were meant to be! I arrived at the appointed time, and you were not there!”