Inherent Fate

by Geanna Culbertson

  “It’s the Pied Piper,” I said, digging my nails into Daniel’s leather jacket. “It has to be. You and I both know he’s more than a legend. He’s been locked away in Alderon for years. But Germany has those wormholes opening to Alderon. I bet he’s been using his magic music to draw people through.”

  “I thought Earth rejected Book magic.”

  “It must be coming from the other side of the hole—probably the same one we’re headed toward. That’s why Earth isn’t stopping it. It’s a loophole. Since the source of magic is somewhere else, there’s nothing the realm can do about it. The Piper can lure people through the hole without interference.”

  The music’s call temporarily dulled my resolve and I was jerked forward a few feet. Understanding the urgency of the problem, Daniel yanked me by the arm and pulled me closer to him.

  “If that’s true, then why are only some people hearing it?” he asked, eyeing a third purple-eyed sleepwalker on our left. This one was an adolescent boy with shaggy brown hair and gray sweats.

  “Yunru said that the stronger a person’s heart, the more likely they are to hear and be compelled by the music. That’s you and me apparently. But only people with pure hearts are completely hypnotized, like those two kids and Yunru—whoa!” I lurched forward. Daniel reeled me in.

  “I guess we’re lucky that you’re probably the first princess in history without a pure heart then,” Daniel commented.

  I was struck by the statement. Alas, I didn’t have time to fully process it. The music was hard to tune out and I needed to focus on a way to stop it. Then it hit me.

  “When you met me in the hall, you could barely hear the music, right?”

  “Yeah. It was loud when it woke me up,” Daniel replied, “but then the phone rang and kind of blocked it out for a minute.” His eyes were bright with understanding.

  “That’s it then!” I exclaimed. “The same thing happened to me. The high-pitched sound must’ve suppressed the music’s power temporarily, which means—”

  “—we just need to find a continuous sound that’s loud and annoying enough to cause more interference,” Daniel finished. He paused and glanced back at the hotel. “I have an idea.”

  My feet begged to take a step. Daniel gripped me by the shoulders and maneuvered me to an empty fruit stand. “The music’s not affecting me as much as it’s affecting you. I’m going to risk getting something from my hotel room before that changes. Just hang on for two minutes.”

  I grabbed hold of the stand. “It’ll take you way longer than that to get back here.”

  He started jogging back to the hotel. “I’ll take a shortcut,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  I watched him dash down the street then back into the hotel. The music grew louder in my head and I found myself resisting the compulsion to plug my ears. I knew that if I let go I would be done. I was already struggling to hold on.

  Whoa! Scratch that. Not holding on! Not holding on!

  My hands had slipped as if they were greased with bacon fat. I staggered forward but was able to grab onto the edge of the counter. I dragged the stand a few inches along, its weight crunching in the dirt.

  Come on, Daniel! Where are you?

  Thankfully I saw him come out of the hotel then—but not through the door. Daniel hopped out of his hotel room window five stories up. Then he leapt onto the slanted roof of the building next to it, skidding down and repeating the process when he reached the roof of an adjacent structure. This building had several balconies. Daniel bounded from one to the next until he was ten feet above the ground. At that point he jumped. With more style and ease than I’d ever seen, he touched down, rolled, and came to his feet.

  Well, he did say he would take a shortcut.

  I expected him to head toward me, but much to my surprise he took off behind the hotel. I was too flabbergasted to yell at him. I dragged the stand forward another few inches.

  My fingers were slipping again. The music poured through my ears like a tidal wave. And then an entirely different sound filled my skull. It was the funky song we’d been listening to in Greg’s car! The techno dance beat blasted through the streets as the Glove Mobile came speeding around the corner, headlights bursting into the night. The moment it resounded in my ears it overpowered the hold of the Pied Piper’s enchantment, restoring my control over my body.

  Daniel jerked the car to a stop in front of me. The music continued to pump powerfully from the car’s audio system, offsetting the flute’s melody.

  “You’re brilliant!” I said as I threw open the side door and leapt into the front seat.

  “You sound surprised.”

  Daniel yanked a lever and shoved his foot on the pedal beneath him that made us take off. Lights in various windows lit up in our wake, countless people in the village disturbed by the sound of the crazy upbeat song that filled the previously silent night.

  The song also woke up the sleepwalkers as we passed them. Just like it had for me, the music blaring from the car stereo caused enough interference to cancel out the effects of the Pied Piper’s music.

  As we skidded into a hard left turn, the shaggy-haired boy in the gray sweats jumped out of the way of the car. I saw his eyes in the side view mirror as we drove by. They had returned to normal and he looked confused, trying to figure out where he was and what was happening.

  I recognized the street we were on and pointed ahead. “Turn right!”

  Daniel jerked the steering wheel. The whole vehicle shook as the tires rolled over the narrow cobblestone street. As we careened down it, I worried that the side view mirrors would get knocked off. This was the shortest way to the riverfront, but the road was barely wide enough. The worn brick walls on either side were inches away. And while he wasn’t bad for only having one lesson, Daniel was hardly a professional driver.

  I clutched the seat with one hand and felt grateful we’d heeded Anna’s warning about seatbelt safety.

  After another second, the Glove Mobile shot onto the road beside the river. A teenage girl in a nightie rubbed her eyes as we passed, looking relieved to be free from the music but also understandably shocked by the out-of-control Toyota 4Runner blaring techno music.

  Daniel was hitting the forward pedal pretty hard. We sped so fast that the buildings whizzed by in a blur. About thirty seconds later we saw our target—a black hole. It swirled in front of a bridge farther down. Yunru was about to enter into its depths.

  “Punch it!” I said. “She’s going to fall through!”

  We drove past the little boy in the pajama set, waking him up.

  The cobblestones rattled beneath us. My heart pounded against my chest, contending with the bass of the song.

  Daniel was doing everything he could to keep from losing control of the car while maintaining speed, but nothing could’ve gotten us there fast enough. Yunru was through the hole before our music was close enough to break the spell.

  Daniel didn’t slow down. At fifty miles an hour the car sped through the wormhole that connected Hann. Münden to Book.

  Falling through a hole had been rough before, but it was nothing compared to what came next. The Toyota 4Runner tumbled through the churning colors and sparks of the dimensional connector in a violent spin. CD cases, empty soda cans, souvenir shop trinkets, and other miscellaneous items inside the car were tossed this way and that. The music made the turmoil all the more nauseating. The only thing that kept Daniel and me from breaking our necks was the restraint of the seatbelts.

  Eventually we crash-landed back in the desert. The Alderon sky was dark, still encased in the red-streaked nightfall we’d left behind. Sand stretched in every direction. The only notable difference was the river we landed next to. Unlike its German counterpart, the waters of Alderon’s Weser were lime green, like the blood of a mutant eel.

  The car’s headlights cast dual beacons on what lay ahead. Yunru was walking into a huge cave, its mouth at least a hundred feet wide. Daniel found his bear
ings and steered the car toward it, the wheels spitting sand. When we were thirty feet from her, Yunru ceased her zombie walk and shook herself, the music evidently having done its job. She squinted in our direction. “Daniel? Crisa?”

  Daniel pushed another pedal on the floor of the car and we came to a screeching halt at the threshold of the cave. The inner walls of the cave were gouged, making pockets that were surrounded by sharp stones, reminding me of the Magistrake’s tooth-rimmed orifice. There was a natural pathway that curved through the cave, passing clusters of pockets. Several larger ones featured iron bars like prison cells. Behind the bars stood nearly three dozen people.

  The missing Germans!

  I was relieved they all still seemed to be there, and I understood why. The Pied Piper drowned his victims on the third night of his abductions. The hotel newspaper said the disappearances had happened the last two nights. Today was number three. We were just in time to save them.

  Intent on busting them out, I was about to reach for the car door handle when a large figure lumbered out of the shadows of a ground-level cave pocket. Our headlights illuminated him for all his gruesome glory. The creature looked like a hunchbacked old man crossed with a fanged beast. His eyes were huge and black and shiny like opals. He wore a feathered cap and a red peasant top over his gravely skin, which had mushroom-shaped moles growing out of it. In his hands was a large wooden pipe.

  To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement. I’d always imagined the Pied Piper as a human boy. This thing was a monster.

  The Pied Piper roared angrily and started to charge the car. Daniel grabbed the lever between us and slammed down on a pedal. I assumed he was turning around to try and outrun the monster, but then he did something that made me like him even more than I ever thought possible—he drove forward.

  Tires screeching and music rattling the vehicle—we slammed straight into the beast as he leapt toward us. His gruesome face smacked against the front window, cracking it, but his clawed hands gripped the hood. Daniel maneuvered the vehicle straight into the nearest wall, and the monster was thrust into the rock with the full force of the Glove Mobile.

  Daniel pulled the lever again and backed up fifteen feet with a jerk. The Pied Piper fell off our hood and plopped to the ground like roadkill. After a second he groaned, starting to get back up. I smacked my hand on the area of the car beneath the front window. “Hit him again!” I yelled.

  Daniel didn’t hesitate. He shifted the car back into drive as the monstrous musician came to his knees. Again we plowed into him. This time he was definitely down for the count. Daniel turned off the car and we hopped out.

  As we approached the monster, its body started to morph. We watched as the janky, grotesque creature transformed into a normal older man. Daniel and I stood over him. After a moment the man began to stir and lazily blinked his eyes open. He growled, his face contorted in pain. “When I change back, I will tear out your throats and sew them to my slippers.”

  “Pleasant image,” I scoffed. “Why don’t you sleep on it?” I turned to Daniel. “You wanna do the honors?”

  “Nah, you do it.”

  I grinned down wickedly at the Pied Piper. The bottom of my boot heading toward his face was the last thing he saw before he was knocked unconscious.

  The antagonist out cold from my power stomp, Daniel picked up the creature’s instrument. It was long and smooth with a reddish tint, as if it was made from cherry wood. I stared at it—this beautiful, powerful instrument had been used to lure countless innocents to their demise. Without hesitating, Daniel snapped it over his knee, ensuring that no one, not even this beast once he woke up, would ever be able to use it again.

  “What happened?”

  Daniel and I spun around to find a slightly dazed Yunru.

  “Daniel, Crisa, what’s going on?”

  “No time,” I said, shaking my head. Daniel patted down the Pied Piped and found a key ring on his belt. I activated my Hole Tracker to verify my suspicions about how long we had left. The holographic map that popped up confirmed my fear. “That wormhole is going to close in two minutes and we need to get all these kids out of here.”

  Yunru looked like she wanted to ask a million questions, but we didn’t have time. Daniel and I ran up to the cave cells and unlocked them, freeing the trapped Germans. The prisoners ran out in a frantic dash. “Go,” Daniel told them. “Hop through the black hole outside and don’t look back. It’ll take you home.”

  The last of them dove through the hole as Daniel tossed Yunru the keys to Greg’s car. He winced when he saw a sizable dent in the hood and front bumper where the Pied Piper had been sandwiched. “Aw crud,” he said. “Yunru, we’re really sorry about the car.”

  Yunru didn’t respond. She was just staring at us. The black hole started to shrink. “Yunru,” I said, throwing open the driver’s side door. “It’s time to go. You have to get back. It’s now or never.” She glanced at the keys in her hand. “What if I choose never?” Her eyes pleaded with mine. “I have many questions.”

  “And you’ll have answers,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and quickly but gently maneuvering her toward the car. “Just not today. But we’ll see each other again. Everything you need is in your books.”

  Yunru bit her lip but nodded and climbed into the front seat. She put her seatbelt on and powered the ignition. “I—I’ll make up some story about the car for Greg,” she stuttered. Then she gave a final glance back. “Thank you.”

  With that she turned the car back on. Its ignition roared to life, as did the stereo. Yunru slammed down on the pedal and sped toward the black hole. She, the Toyota 4Runner, and the techno music vanished within its depths mere seconds before the hole closed.

  The tear in space and time sealed itself up. Daniel and I were left alone, standing side by side in the mouth of the cave.

  The scarlet night sky was dotted with stars and the moon was half-concealed by clouds. By its partial glow I noticed that the sand beneath out feet seemed reddish. I knelt down and grasped a handful just to be sure. When I opened my fist, red grains fell through my fingers.

  Daniel and I locked eyes.

  Red sand and the Weser before us—we were in the right place. We were closing in on the Cave of Mysteries.

  t was a bit hard to calculate exactly how much time had passed since we’d left Goldilocks in Alderon. Inter-dimensional travel was a confusing thing, time-wise.

  My Hole Tracker automatically adjusted to the time of whatever realm I was in. Based on what it said now and the Book-to-Earth time difference (the latter moving twenty times faster), I figured it hadn’t even been an hour and a half since we’d left.

  It was late evening now and the storm that had been brewing earlier was much stronger. Flurries of sand whipped around my boots and the wind blew hair into my mouth as we followed the river upstream.

  Aside from the sand and the river, the third and final marker for the Cave of Mysteries was supposed to be a rock. It was one of the elements we’d discussed back on Adelaide during our short conversations about what lay ahead.

  “An enchanted rock?” I remembered SJ asking Blue when she’d explained this detail in Ashlyn’s living room.

  “No. Just a normal rock,” Blue responded in confusion. “Why does everything have to be enchanted?”

  I smiled at the memory. Daniel noticed.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “Our friends,” I responded. “I miss them.”

  I heard the not-so-distant crackle of lightning. The sound was sharp and loud, a hundred times more powerful than the lightning daffodils in the Forbidden Forest that had almost killed us a while back.

  Another crack echoed. Bright silver light cut jaggedly through the crimson and black sky like a dagger through an artery.

  Daniel and I began to walk faster but continued talking. I finally got the chance to tell him about my vision about Mark. I was over the moon about the revelation that my friend was aliv
e and couldn’t wait to tell Jason and the others. I didn’t know when, but we would be seeing Mark again and he would be fine.

  The other topic we discussed was the genie lamp. Daniel was worried that Arian still had it because it meant that if we ran into him again we would be in just as much trouble as we had been on Adelaide.

  I was not fond of the subject on two counts. For one, I didn’t want to talk about Arian right now. I wasn’t foolish; it’s not like I thought I would never see him again. He was a far too persistent enemy to stay in my dust for long. But since the guy tortured my sleep as much as he did my waking life, I could use a break.

  I also hated thinking about the genie lamp.

  I’d grown up looking at that lamp—along with many other famous relics—in the Treasure Archives of Lady Agnue’s. Those special cases at my school housed a collection of priceless fairytale artifacts, from my own mother’s glass slipper to the remnants of the apple that had poisoned SJ’s mom, Snow White.

  While the treasures had always filled me with disdain (they were reminders of every expectation I was supposed to live up to), it was only recently that they’d begun causing me mortal peril. Sometimes it felt like the universe was determined to keep me in the clutches of my fairytale ancestors forever.

  Before we left school and embarked on this journey, one of Arian’s accomplices had broken into the Treasure Archives and stolen four objects: the magic mirror from Beauty & the Beast, the poisoned corset the wicked witch tried to kill Snow White with before the apple (a detail that was missing from many retellings of the story), the pea from The Princess & the Pea, and Aladdin’s genie lamp.

  I didn’t know who this lackey of Arian’s was, but I’d seen glimpses of her in my dreams. She always wore a purple cloak and glittering black pumps with tall silver-sequined heels. I had no idea how she’d managed to get into our school. But I intended to find out. I was determined to, just like I was determined to learn what Arian wanted with those particular relics.

  Arian had said that he intended to use the lamp and the mirror on his “more important target.” But I wasn’t sure who he was referring to, or what he wanted with the corset and the pea. Truth was, I wasn’t even sure if he had the latter. While Arian had owned up to stealing the other three items, he claimed his accomplice hadn’t taken the pea. I didn’t know if I believed him or not, but I guess I could add that to the list of things I needed to figure out.