by James Riley
“Wha …?” May said.
Suddenly, the fairy in May’s hair sat up and waved her hands. Merriweather glanced at her.
“Little sister,” the fairy queen said in greeting, and the fairy in May’s hair began gesturing around, first at Jack, then at May, and back again. Somehow, Jack thought he heard her saying words, something about a “charmed one,” but it must have been his imagination.
Then they all jumped as one of the Ifrit’s expanding arms knocked a tree over on the other side of the clearing. “Can we talk about this later, whatever it is?” May said quickly. “’Cause, you know, I’d rather not get crushed by Mr. Smokey Pants here.”
Merriweather shook her head at May. “You do not act like a princess should,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Clearly, your manners have suffered from our missed appointment. Still, there are more important matters to attend to now. If left unchecked, the Ifrit will surely destroy us all, if not this entire world.”
“Merriweather,” Phillip said softly. He gently took her shoulder and turned her back toward the genie, where eyes the size of small lakes stared down at them, each delving into a shade of black that Jack wouldn’t have believed actually existed if he weren’t staring at it. It was like he could feel the genie’s eyes pulling at him, pulling at his very soul.
The face around the eyes resembled some kind of horned mask, more than anything else, a mask that covered the front of the smoke head, while the rest of the head seemed to swirl around on its own. It reminded Jack uncomfortably of the witch with the broken eggshell for a face.
“I shouldn’t have put the crown in, should I,” May said. It wasn’t a question.
“Merriweather,” Phillip repeated, taking a few steps back, “I know that this creature is powerful, but are you able to … to fight it?” The perfect prince sounded nervous, and Jack wished they weren’t all about to die so he could have enjoyed it more.
Merriweather looked at Phillip, then sighed. “I am sorry, Phillip. You promised to release me from my service if I healed this … creature,” she said, pointing at the slumbering wolf. “And my debt to your father is paid. Still,” the fairy queen said, glancing at May, “I do owe this one. If she wishes it, I could try to defeat the Ifrit. But that would then fulfill any responsibility I have to you as well, Princess.”
Phillip glanced at May, looking for some kind of answer, despite it being clear that the prince had no idea what was going on. May didn’t seem to be following any better, and jumped as if she were surprised to be called on. “Oh! Right!” she said quickly. “Yeah, go ahead and save us, that’s great! You don’t need to help me any more—saving our lives from the genie is enough. So … thank you?”
Merriweather smiled. “You obviously have no knowledge of what was meant for you, child. Someday, perhaps I shall tell you. However, if this is your wish, I shall grant it. Now, you three must flee while you can. I will make sure you have the chance.”
Phillip nodded, then pulled the other two back toward the wolf. All three grabbed the animal’s legs, and together they managed to pull him back a few feet into the dubious safety of the woods, as Merriweather boldly strode forward to stand on the fallen roof.
“Ifrit!” her voice rang out, startling Jack with its force. “One of my kind imprisoned you long ago, and now I am here to send you back where you came from! Face me, coward!”
And with that, she grew.
Her form grew slightly transparent as if she were also made of smoke, and she spread out more and more until she was the same size as the Ifrit. Then she solidified back into her normal, opaque body.
For its part, the Ifrit didn’t seem to care about Merriweather’s taunt. “Little fairy,” it said to her in a completely monotone yet booming voice, “you do not know what you are attempting to do.”
“Oh, I do,” Merriweather said. “I realize that you may destroy me, and if that is my fate, I welcome it. Come now, let us see if the vaunted reputation of the djinn is well deserved!”
“Oh, what have I done!” Phillip said, fear filling his eyes as he looked at Jack and May. “She … I did not … I thought she could …”
Jack grabbed his shoulder and shook him, trying to either comfort the prince or shake some coherence back into him. “She’s probably bluffing!” Jack said. “She wouldn’t just throw her life away, no matter what she thought she owed May. What would be the point?”
Phillip shrugged off Jack’s hand and took a step toward the cottage. “I do not care! I will not allow her to die for us! No one will die if I can help it!”
Jack jerked him back toward the woods. “That brings up an interesting question, Phillip! Namely, how are you supposed to help?! You’re not going to do much good by standing there really still, are you?!”
Phillip struggled against Jack’s grip, but Jack locked his arm around the prince’s. “We have to do something!” Phillip cried.
Jack nodded. “That’s right,” he said, grunting at the effort it took to keep the prince from running off. Whatever else he might be, Phillip was strong. “We have to run, to get away,” Jack continued. “If not, Merriweather might be sacrificing herself for nothing! We have to get out of here, and now, Phillip. Tell him, May.”
When the princess didn’t answer, Jack abruptly released Phillip, who fell forward in surprise.
“May?” Jack asked in a small voice. He looked all around the forest path, but the princess was gone.
“There!” Phillip shouted from the ground, pointing out toward the clearing. Jack glanced up to see May running as hard as she could, heading straight for the remains of the Red Hood’s cottage.
A cottage that was going to be the center of the battle between a genie and Phillip’s fairy godmother.
Chapter 28
“May!” Jack screamed after her, but either she didn’t hear him or didn’t care, because she didn’t even slow down. As he watched, May barreled into the roofless cottage, plowing right into the thick of the genie’s smoke.
“What is she doing?!” Phillip yelled, but Jack didn’t wait for the prince. Instead, he took off after the princess, sprinting as fast as he could. He barely heard Phillip swear from somewhere behind him, then race to catch up to Jack.
Running through the genie’s body felt like pushing through heavy fog. It was much more solid than Jack would have expected. He threw a brief look above him as he passed through the smoke, just in time to see the Ifrit raise its hands, a tornado forming at the end of each.
Merriweather had her eyes closed, and seemed to be humming … only she was humming in harmony with herself, effortlessly voicing different parts of the same tune. As she hummed a long, silvery wand flickered into existence in her hand, and she pointed it at the genie.
And then both disappeared from view as Jack entered the cottage. As he skidded to a stop, a bit of the genie’s smoke broke off from its body and clung to Jack’s legs. Panicking for a moment, he frantically dusted it off him until he realized it wasn’t trying to kill him.
Outside, a brilliant light lit up the windows, brighter than the sunlight had been before it was blocked out by the genie. Another flash, and the remaining smoke inside the cottage began to swirl around as if it were caught in a tornado.
And right at the eye of that tornado was May, running toward the cottage’s door clutching the broken Mirror in her hands. She threw Jack a worried look as she blew past him, not even pausing on her way back out the cottage door. Jack threw up an arm to catch her, but she ducked under it, not stopping until she barreled right into Phillip, knocking both of them over.
“What are you doing!” Jack yelled to her over the wind, which was now strong enough to make him grab at the doorway to stay on his feet. May leapt up from the ground, but immediately almost lost her footing again in one of the stronger gusts. Jack caught her and steadied her, then reached out to help Phillip up, as well.
May screamed something at him, but he couldn’t make it out over the wind. “What was that?!” he yelled back.
“I said, I’m not going to let her die for me!” May screamed in his ear. The princess then grabbed the Mirror from the ground where it had landed, pushed past Phillip, and ran off into the middle of the clearing, Jack right behind her.
Above them, tornadoes raged throughout the clearing, but they weren’t just air: Somehow, the tornadoes seemed to be tugging at the edges of the sky, the land, everything, pulling it all in … at least, the tornadoes not aimed at Merriweather. Those seemed to be pulling the fairy queen apart from several sides, and everywhere they touched her, she turned transparent again as bits of her were pulled away from her body.
Merriweather snarled, her eyes glowing a blinding white, and her song grew louder. Now what had been one wand became ten, a hundred, maybe a thousand wands, all dancing faster than Jack could follow. The Ifrit burst into flame, and the sudden fire lit up the clearing. Merriweather’s wands continued their dance through the air, conjuring up her next spell … only, the genie didn’t give her the time. It reached out with its enormous hands and locked them around the fairy queen’s throat, its masklike face contorted with rage.
On the ground, May skidded to a stop near the middle of the battle. Stray bolts of magical energy from the wands were flying around her on all sides, along with several small trees and huge clumps of earth that had been sent into flight by the tornado winds.
May planted her feet firmly, then quickly ducked under a bolt of energy that came within inches of splitting her head open. Just as Jack reached her, the princess pulled the crown out of the Mirror frame and held the Mirror aloft, its glass face pointed straight at the genie.
“Hey, Ifrit!” May screamed. “I pulled your plug. Time to say good night!” With a triumphant smile, she braced herself under the Mirror and waited for the genie to be sucked back in.
Of course, that didn’t happen.
May, clearly frustrated, brought the Mirror down and stared at it, even shaking it a bit. Finally, she turned to find Jack and Phillip both staring in horror at the incredible chaos swirling around her. She ducked under a flying tree and took a step toward them. “It didn’t work!” she yelled. “I took the crown back out, but the genie’s not going back into the Mirror!”
Another bolt of magical energy crashed into the spot where she’d just been standing. May looked up, and the realization of what was going on all around her finally seemed to sink in. She threw the Mirror up over her head as if to cover herself from rain, but almost dropped it as Jack grabbed her arm, practically yanking it off in his effort to pull her to cover.
“What were you thinking?!” he yelled at her as he pulled her toward the forest.
“Don’t act like you knew it wouldn’t work!” she shouted over the wind, following closely behind him. “It made sense that he’d be sucked back in there!”
“Princess,” Phillip shouted, struggling to be heard on her other side, “we have no idea what kind of spell imprisoned him within the Mirror. It was not necessarily logical that removing the crown—”
“You say that now!” May yelled. “But where were you when I was coming up with the plan?!”
Suddenly, the wind completely stopped; the remaining airborne trees and dirt crashed to the ground like deadly rain. As the energy bolts continued to strike all around them Jack glanced up to see what was happening, and found himself looking straight into the burning white eyes of Merriweather. The fairy queen looked dazed as her hands struggled to free herself from the genie’s grasp, yet she wasn’t putting as much energy into it as she had been. She was losing her strength, and it looked as if the tornadoes had ripped off giant pieces of her body.
If the fairy queen failed, they were all dead. So why was she turning her attention from the Ifrit to look down at him?
Unless it wasn’t him she was looking at.
As if she could hear his thoughts Merriweather smiled faintly, even showing some perfectly white teeth. Apparently she did know what he was thinking. Jack nodded up at her. If she could see him, she’d know he was ready.
Thinking the battle was almost over, the genie doubled his efforts. Magical energy from Merriweather’s wands crashed into him—a last-ditch effort on Merriweather’s part—but the Ifrit just shrugged it off. With a triumphant yet eerily monotone cry, it released Merriweather, letting her slump over. The genie then brought its hands up above its head and formed a circle with its fingers. An enormous ball of pure, burning light formed in the middle of that circle, which the genie held in his hands for a moment, savoring his victory.
Then it launched the light ball straight at the fairy queen….
Except, she wasn’t there. Jack blinked and looked again, but Merriweather was completely gone. The ball of light passed right through the spot where she’d been, incinerating a swath of forest at least a mile long in its wake.
Above him, the genie didn’t seem to know where Merriweather was any more than Jack did. It glanced around, searching for its missing opponent, but found no one. Finally, as if to eliminate all options, it looked straight up….
Just as blue cloth the size of the sky fell straight on top of the genie.
The blue cloth covered the Ifrit’s head first before settling over its body and its arms, the sides of the cloth coming together at the bottom of the genie’s smoky base. Within seconds, the Ifrit’s entire body was enclosed by the blue covering.
First one, then the other of the genie’s hands cut through the cloth, while its head pushed furiously against the top of the cloth, trying to break out. Before the genie’s head could break through, though, the cloth began to shrink—slowly at first, then faster and faster. Even as the genie endeavored to free itself, Merriweather steadily reduced both their sizes, shrinking as quickly as she’d grown.
And Jack was ready. He grabbed the Mirror from May’s hand, then ran back to the spot where the princess had stood just a minute ago, a spot right beneath the steadily shrinking Ifrit and fairy queen. There, he lifted the Mirror above his head, just as May had. “Merriweather!” he shouted as loudly as he could.
What might have been an ethereal laugh from the fairy queen floated into his ear. The genie seemed to realize what was going on now, and frantically tried to escape, but it was too late. With a rush like the tornadoes of a moment ago, the Ifrit and Merriweather began swirling around and around, the point of their combined cyclone aimed directly at the Mirror.
When the tip of the genie-and-fairy-queen tornado hit the hole in the Mirror’s glass, Jack almost fell over. The Mirror suddenly weighed dozens of times its usual weight! Jack’s legs buckled under him and his arms strained like they never had before as the Mirror pushed down on him harder and harder.
Above him, the fairy queen couldn’t do anything to help, as she was struggling to keep the genie in place while she pulled them both into the Mirror. And Jack knew he couldn’t afford to drop it. One misstep would give the genie the distraction it needed. But there was no way he could hold the Mirror up for much longer.
And then May was at his side, grabbing one side of the Mirror. Phillip took the other side with a curt nod, and suddenly, the weight was bearable. All three braced themselves as Merriweather slowly pulled the shrieking genie back into its prison, the Magic Mirror.
To Jack, the process felt like it took hours, the two majestic creatures swirling around in an endless cyclone of rage and supernatural energy, the genie fighting for its freedom, the fairy queen struggling to save the lives of three teenagers. But in reality, it wasn’t more than a few seconds before the genie let out one final shriek, and Merriweather sucked them both back into the Mirror.
And just like that, the Mirror was its normal weight again. Without the heft to balance against, all three of them lost their footing: Phillip tumbled to the ground while May and Jack both fell to their knees. Jack managed to hold on to the Mirror as he fell, narrowly saving it from further damage by hitting the cracked and broken ground.
After taking a deep breath, Jack rose shakily to his feet, then brought the Mirror up to
his chest and held it so that they could all see what was happening. All the cracks had disappeared as if they’d never existed, while the hole from the crossbow’s arrow had been filled in with what looked like a small piece of blue stained glass.
“Oh, Merriweather,” Phillip said softly, dropping to his knees and bowing his head.
May, though, stared deep within the Mirror, her brow furrowed. She squinted her eyes a bit, then reached down and tapped the prince on his shoulder. “Look,” she told him, pointing into the Mirror. “There’s … there’s something in there.” And then, as if she didn’t even realize she was doing it, May reached into her pocket, took out the crown necklace, and pushed it back into the top of the Mirror.
The now familiar green smoke filled the glass, but before it could cover the entire Mirror, blue bands of light shot out from behind it and wrapped themselves completely around the green smoke in several rings.
“She got him,” May said softly. She looked up at Jack, and he saw that her eyes were wet.
Jack nodded. “She really did,” he said, finding that he suddenly had no energy. “But it’s not like she’s gone, right? Maybe we can still get her out.”
“That’s right,” Phillip said, gently touching the glass. He stared into it for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. “Merriweather?” he said, then cleared his throat and repeated her name in a voice that was loud enough to have been heard across the clearing.
The Mirror swirled, blue ribbons fighting with green smoke as both tried to push toward the front. Then, for the briefest of instances, Merriweather’s face appeared. The fairy queen looked awful: Her beautiful face bubbled in and out of focus, and the look in her eyes made it clear that she was in pain as she continued her fight within the Mirror. The fairy queen locked eyes with Phillip for a brief moment and mouthed one word, but Jack couldn’t recognize it. And then she was gone, the swirling green surrounding her and pulling her back into the Mirror’s depth.
Phillip winced, then slowly pulled May’s crown necklace off the Mirror. He handed her the necklace, then turned to face them, the Mirror hanging limply from his hand. The fairy in May’s hair silently cried, her little body racked by noiseless tears.