On the total opposite side of the spectrum, Blue was undeniably loving this chase. Her Pegasus’s holographic, glistening wings shifted between different shades of royal blue as they flew, which set off the color of her cape as it flapped around her.
My friend was smiling like mad and continuously egging her steed to go faster, causing its wings to change color even more rapidly and her wavy blonde hair to wildly blow in the wind behind her.
Overall, while she may have been far away from me in proximity, I could still see that the thrill of the experience was making her eyes shine with a brightness that rivaled that of the stars around us.
My attention shifted to a different part of the sky then, and as a consequence I found myself observing the final member of our group—Daniel. His steed had produced silvery wings that looked sharp against the darkness of the sky, making him easy to spot.
From my vantage point Daniel didn’t seem very happy, but he didn’t seem afraid either. He had his eyes glued to the back of my carriage with a really determined expression on his face. Like everything else about him though, it was a look I could not decipher.
As I continued to study him from my safe distance, I began to feel a tremble of cold remembrance slithering up my spine. I closed my eyes and shook my head in silent protest—trying yet again to ward off the gnawing feelings of insecurity.
But it was no use. The tighter I shut my eyes the more I saw my book, my mother’s glass slipper, the sky blurring around me as I plummeted to the ground, and Daniel’s stare burrowing into me as I fell. Watching me, judging me, reminding me of all the things about myself I’d rather pretend weren’t there but he—more than anyone else—wouldn’t let me forget.
It wasn’t like Daniel was the first person to ever look at me in a way that I didn’t want to be seen. I was totally used to people perceiving me in certain, unfavorable lights. Frankly, my whole existence thus far had been pretty thoroughly characterized by the phenomenon.
Accordingly, I’d grown accustomed to being very blunt and direct when addressing such assumptions about me. Which in turn made for an effective way of getting people to back off.
This head-on, head-held-high method had worked for me over the years—serving as a consistent way to get my opposers to leave me be.
Seriously. In the past whenever Lady Agnue, or Mauvrey, or anyone else made comments about my lack of princess-ness, or hero-ness, or any other kind of assertions about who they believed I was, it had never gotten under my skin that much. The simple reason being that I’d never entertained any delusions about how others saw me. I’d just always assumed they were wrong and simply didn’t know me well enough to realize it.
My whole life this had been my strategy, my norm, and my comfort zone for handling the confrontations and accusations that threatened to tear down my faith in myself. Only now . . . it appeared to no longer be working. At the very least, the strategy seemed to be losing its oomph.
Since about the time Daniel had shown up, I’d noticed that the judgments people made about me were having more of an impact—my normal tactics failing to keep them at bay. Maybe it was the appearance of Blue’s prophecy, maybe it was my own, or maybe it was just the mounting pressure and expectations that seemed to be growing around me now that I was getting older. Quite possibly it was a combination of all three. But most certainly it was all amplified by the boy currently flying behind my carriage.
Like I said, with Daniel barely knowing me at all, his unprecedented over-familiarity with the person I was afraid I was made me feel as though such accusations were a lot more legitimate than I’d once believed. As a result, I felt an increasing sense of doubt forming in the corners of my mind that was causing me to second guess myself, and a lot of other things too.
To tell the truth it was all beginning to feel a great deal like emotional vomit. I kept sucking the plethora of rattling insecurities back in as best I could, but I just couldn’t stop them from rising to the surface. And as time went on, it was only natural that I started to wonder more and more if maybe the reason I could never fully swallow down the thoughts and escape their torment was because . . . I couldn’t prove they were invalid.
Stop it, Crisa. Don’t be stupid, I heard my subconscious echo in the back of my mind. They’re wrong about who you are. You know they are.
But then again, I thought to myself in turn, if that’s true then why do I still feel this way?
My subconscious did not appear to have a response. So my head and heart were left on their own—hurting as they struggled to find some logical or instinctual bit of insight that would answer this question.
Alas, any such clarity seemed determined to elude me for the time being. Which meant that I was stuck with the task of resisting those awful, unacceptable thoughts, and the realization that I did not know how to justify their existence with the way I’d always seen myself.
As I continued to ponder the dilemma I kept staring back at Daniel—the source of my ill-timed insecurities, whom I’d been watching for some time now. All the while I hadn’t thought he’d seen me looking at him. However, just then he abruptly pointed in my direction and shouted something that I couldn’t quite make out.
My face flushed with a touch of self-consciousness until I discovered that Daniel wasn’t gesturing at me, but up ahead. I turned and saw that we’d broken through a bank of illuminated clouds and were rapidly approaching a massive, pink structure.
It was shaped like the most traditional fairytale castle you could think of and was sitting atop a plump cloud like a dollhouse on a heavily stuffed pillow. The full moon was literally right behind it—giant, glowing, and slightly golden.
The whole image took my breath away. It seemed to have the same effect on the carriage because the mushroom slowed down the closer we drew to its majesty.
I kept my eyes on the building as we headed toward it—studying its every feature.
Fairy Godmother HQ was constructed of glittering, pinkish chrome bricks accentuated by towers of lilac-colored steel. Lanterns blazing like small, golden suns hung from every balcony. Dozens of windows mirrored the stars surrounding the castle. And a large, silver door framed in gems marked the impressive main entrance.
My vehicle soon came to a stop in front of that door and floated next to it casually. Before I could assess my next move, the carriage flipped on its side and dumped me out. I screamed for a second until I realized that I hadn’t fallen through the clouds, as they were solid as a pile of goose-feather comforters.
I stood up and waved at the others to come closer. The Pegasi were hesitant at first—blowing more colorful puffs of blue and orange smoke out of their nostrils in protest—but eventually they descended and landed on the poofy cloud beside me. When they did, their eyes stopped glowing and their wings vanished from view, returning them to their normal horse-like forms.
Blue and Daniel dismounted first. He stretched nearby while she went to help SJ down. I ignored him and headed for the silver door without delay. It had the words “Fairy Godmother Headquarters” spelled out across it in jewels of various colors. I paused in front of it, which gave the others time to join me. We all stared at the door for a beat before Blue stepped up and knocked forcefully.
“Blue!” SJ squeaked.
“What, you have a better idea of how to get inside?” she huffed.
We really didn’t, so we waited there on the front steps hoping for something to happen. Sure enough, a few moments later a buzzing sound went off inside and the door opened on its own. Good fortune aside, it seemed a bit too easy so the others and I entered through the archway with caution.
The five of us stepped into a silvery, circular room with a series of floral landscape paintings hanging on the walls alongside a lone building directory. This directory informed us that the first and second floors of the compound consisted of offices and the “Grand File Room.” Floors three and four were training areas, five through nine were the apartments that the Godmothers lived in, and the
tenth floor was simply marked “Private Affairs.”
On the other side of the room sat a translucent desk. Behind it was a mousy, middle-aged woman with a long nose who didn’t look up as we came toward her. The woman’s nametag read “Coco La Rue” and she was devotedly filing her nails beneath the counter.
This seemed insane to me. Not because I deplored cuticle care, but because each of her fingernails appeared to be covered in tiny diamonds. Hence I imagined it was a really expensive manicure to shave away at so aggressively.
Since she hadn’t acknowledged our arrival, I decided to speak up. “Um, hi,” I said outright, approaching the edge of the desk.
“Name?” Coco responded sounding relatively annoyed.
“Um, Crisa.”
SJ elbowed me.
“Crisanta Knight,” I corrected myself.
“No,” Coco responded icily, putting down her nail file and glaring at me. “I mean the name of the dolt Godmother you clearly tricked into getting you here.”
“Who says we tricked anyone?” Blue replied. “We were just passing through when our mushroom carriage ran out of gas, and—”
A small jolt of electricity suddenly shot out of Coco’s intentionally aimed pointer finger, zapping Blue in the chest.
“Ow!” she yelped as she staggered backwards, absorbing the shock.
“Hey!” Jason protested.
Coco flexed her wrists, causing tiny crackles of electricity to sparkle at the tips of her other nine digits. “I’ll ask one more time before I have you escorted from the premises and back to wherever it is you came from,” Coco responded coolly. “Name?”
“Um, Tami Robinswood,” I lied quickly, not intending to sell out Debbie.
Coco pressed a few glowing, holographic buttons on the screens that levitated above her desk. Then she picked up a normal quill and wrote something on a notepad beside her.
“Look . . .” I said as she scribbled, attempting to appeal to her compassion in some way. “Coco, is it? I know we’re not supposed to be here. But we came to see one of your Fairy Godmothers. Emma Carrington. She was my mother’s Godmother and we just didn’t know how else to contact her.”
“Well, your plan has holes, honey,” Coco responded as she kept writing. “Emma doesn’t work here anymore.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise and firmly placed both my hands on Coco’s desk, squaring her off. “What? No, that’s got to be some kind of mistake. She has to be here,” I said.
“No mistake. Emma hasn’t worked here for nearly ten years,” Coco asserted, meeting my stare with a malicious one of her own. “Now then, if that is all, feel free to help yourself to some candy while you wait for security to escort you out.”
The passive-aggressive woman coldly pushed a glass bowl filled with gumdrops across the desk with her expensive-looking manicured hand. Then, without even giving us so much as smile, she turned her attention back to her nails as if we were already long gone.
Now I know I did not just travel two hundred miles in a flying mushroom to get turned away by a snooty, self-involved receptionist named Coco LaRue. I need a good, crazy idea and fast.
I rapidly surveyed the room and saw that apart from the entrance we’d come through, the only other door was about a dozen feet to my right.
Actually, you know what, forget good. A straight up crazy idea will get the job done too.
Before SJ, Ms. LaRue, or my common sense could stop me, I bolted for the other exit.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Coco screeched like a terrified canary.
But it was too late. I had already thrown open the door and was running down the hallway. My friends and Daniel—evidently deciding that they didn’t want to hang around with Coco either—took off after me.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I heard Jason yell as they tried to catch up with me.
“Nope!” I shouted back.
The hallway we raced down was painted white, had white carpeting, and was lined with doors that were all white as well. The fact was, the only things in the area that weren’t white were the numbers on each door, which were bright pink.
At first I wasn’t sure how I would know when to stop running and pick one of these doors, but then a violent alarm started ringing through the corridor and I realized that the time to choose had come.
Up ahead was the first door I’d seen without a number. It was marked, “Grand File Room.” It seemed as good an option as any, so I threw it open and sped inside. The alarm hadn’t stopped, but when I entered the room, I did. Unfortunately, I stopped too abruptly and the others full on rammed into me—knocking me over.
I jumped back on my feet without pause and swiftly observed the room we found ourselves in. This place was twenty times as wide and tall as the grand ballroom at Adelaide Castle, and it was also completely white. What was most intimidating about the space though was not its size, but the fact that it was filled with hundreds of rows of platinum file cabinets. These rows were tightly packed together and each column consisted of dozens upon dozens of the cabinets stacked on top of one another like building blocks, stretching to the ridiculously high ceiling.
Out of instinct that this was not a good place to be, we tried to head back the way we’d come. Regrettably the door behind us had swung shut just after our entry and now appeared to be locked.
At the other end of the room I spotted several doors that looked like another way out.
“There!” I yelled above the sound of the alarm.
We raced through the middle of the stacks toward the door in the center. As we did, I caught closer glimpses of the different file cabinets. Most of them just had names or cities printed on their fronts, and they appeared to be in alphabetical order. But when we were about halfway across the room, one very specific cabinet caught the corner of my eye.
I couldn’t explain how I’d managed to see it, but I knew that I had. Consequently, I knew just as badly that I had to go back for it. And so, without warning or thinking, I suddenly halted to a stop, changed direction, and sped back down the aisle to the row where I’d seen it.
“Knight, what are you doing?” Daniel called after me.
I didn’t have time to explain. I just ran until I reached the row marked: “ROW N.” The moment I reached it, the alarm stopped.
I glanced back toward the others, who seemed equally confused. Then an automated female voice filled the room—coming out of what must’ve been a building-wide intercom.
“Attention staff. Intruders detected. Please evacuate all training areas and report to your designated safety stations. Proceeding to initiate campus-wide lock down. Grand File Room floor evaporation will commence in three . . . two . . . one.”
The announcement echoed around us before being cut off by static. It was immediately replaced by a higher-pitched alarm that pierced my eardrums in a way that the first one could’ve only aspired to. Pairing off this lovely new sound, the lights in the room began to dim and the floor started glowing a deep shade of magenta with pulsating streaks of red like veins in an artery.
A second later the entire floor vanished beneath our feet and we fell into the pinkish wormhole that had inexplicably consumed it.
I dropped through absolute nothingness for about three seconds before plunging into a body of water that was as dark and cold as it was unexpected.
My friends were lost to me; all I could make out were the filing cabinets that hung from above like stalactites in a cave. There was only one set of cabinets from each row down here though. As I swam for the newly formed ceiling they protruded from, I wondered where the rest of them had gone.
This ceiling, which was clear and glossy, showed me the answer. On the other side of it I could see the file room we’d just been in. And I saw that the remaining cabinets from each row were still piled up there.
I pressed my hands against the barrier separating me from the room above. It felt solid. Nevertheless, I began to ram my left shoulder against it. Hard as I tried though, I co
uldn’t even make a crack. It was unforgivingly concrete and icy like the top of a frozen lake.
I reached my hand into my satchel to try and use my wand as a means of breaking out. Although, before I had the chance, this new ceiling (the file room’s floor) began to glow again just like it had right before we’d fallen through.
The light illuminated the strange sea and I caught a glimpse of the others in the distance. When they saw me they started to head in my direction. But seconds later we were all taken aback by an additional set of cabinets that came down from the room above. They crashed into the water around us. Moments after they dropped in, the glow of the ceiling subsided.
The floor portal . . . it’s sucking the rows of cabinets down here one level of stacks at a time. That means our way in here is also our only way out.
I readied myself—grabbing onto the highest handle of the nearest set of cabinets. Seconds felt like an eternity as I held my breath and waited in the darkness. My lungs started to hurt as I began to run out of air.
Finally the ceiling lit up once more.
When it did, I looked toward my friends and Daniel and pointed upwards. They followed my lead and grabbed the handles of the cabinets they were closest to, using them to climb back into the file room.
We passed up through the barrier but kept ascending as fast as we could so as not to be taken back down along with next set of cabinets.
It worked. The five of us were barely able to clear the portal before it turned to solid floor once more, blocking the Grand File Room from the watery depths looming underneath it. Thankfully, “barely” was all we needed, as it was more than enough to keep us alive.
I released a deep breath of relief when I saw the others were okay—wet, but otherwise just fine.
“Now what?!” Blue shouted over to me.
I pushed a strand of soggy hair behind my ear and glanced around. The doors we had been headed for at the other end of the room were now some ten feet above the floor. As each set of cabinets sank, the walls of this place were rising higher and higher—taking our exit farther away from us as a result.
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