A Grimm Warning

by Chris Colfer

  “Thank you, Sir Lampton!” Cinderella called back.

  Sir Lampton was battling his own group of Grande Armée soldiers with Jack and the kings. The Charming brothers were competitively seeing which of them could knock the most soldiers to the ground and they counted each man they disarmed.

  “That’s sixteen for Chandler, fourteen for Chance, and twenty for me,” Chase declared.

  Jack hit the ground and kicked a soldier’s legs out from under him. “Nice try, boys,” Jack teased. “But that was my fiftieth!”

  Mother Goose flew through the air on Lester’s back. She couldn’t stay cooped up at the palace any longer and had decided to join the fight.

  “All right, Lester! Just like that time we narrowly escaped those kamikaze pilots during World War II!” she instructed the gander.

  The giant goose stretched out his wings and spun in the air like a fighter jet. Mother Goose held a basketful of empty bottles of bubbly she had been saving and threw them at the Grande Armée soldiers as they flew over them. Cannons were aimed at her but Mother Goose snapped her fingers and the cannonballs were transformed into big soapy bubbles.

  One of the cannons fired at Mother Goose went astray and blasted a hole in the side of the carriage Rook was locked in. Had he been just a few inches to the left, he would have lost his life. Instead, Rook climbed through the hole in the carriage and rolled onto the ground. He ran into the woods away from the battle zone. He had tried to warn Alex but she wouldn’t listen—the fairies were no match for what was coming their way.

  Alex and Conner were a few yards from the front steps of the Fairy Palace when they saw Little Bo run past them. She was followed closely by Froggy and Red and didn’t show any sign of stopping.

  “Your Highness—” Froggy called after her.

  “Your Elected Highness,” Red corrected him.

  “Little Bo, please stop running!” Froggy pleaded.

  Alex and Conner chased after their friends. Little Bo sprinted just as determinedly as ever.

  “What’s going on?” Alex asked them.

  “Isn’t it obvious? Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them!” Red yelled back at them.

  “That’s not funny, Red!” Froggy reprimanded.

  “And by sheep I mean her mind! She won’t stop running!” Red said.

  Little Bo frantically raced through the gardens on the search for someone or something. She scanned row after row of Grande Armée soldiers; once she realized whoever she was looking for wasn’t among them she would dart across the gardens toward another row.

  “Where are you?” Little Bo said to herself as she ran.

  Froggy and Red were starting to lose energy and they slowed down. Little Bo’s pace never slowed and she broke free of the group trailing her and ran farther into the gardens.

  “It’s no use,” Froggy said, and stopped running. “She won’t listen to reason.”

  Red and the twins caught up to him. Conner glanced back at the palace behind him and saw a cluster of Grande Armée soldiers had snuck through the gardens and were now battling the troblins on the front steps. Trollbella sat on the steps just behind Gator and cheered him on as he fought off a soldier.

  “Go, Gator, go! Go, Gator, go!” she chanted and happily clapped like she was at a sporting event. “Get him with your sword! Get him with your sword!”

  “Oh no,” Conner said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this!”

  Conner bolted to the Troblin Army’s aid but didn’t get there fast enough. Gator was too small to fight the soldier off alone and lost his balance. The soldier stabbed him in the stomach and Gator fell to the ground.

  “GATOR!” Trollbella screamed.

  “Nooo!” Conner yelled. He lunged toward the soldier with his sword. The soldier was much stronger than Conner and he nearly suffered the same fate. Alex pointed her wand at the soldier dueling her brother and a bright red blast erupted from the tip and hit him in the chest. The soldier flew into the air and the other Grande Armée soldiers retreated in fear.

  Trollbella placed Gator’s head in her lap while he took his last breaths.

  “Don’t leave me, Gator,” Trollbella said with tears spilling from her big eyes.

  “Trollbella?” Gator said, looking up at her. “Before I go, I just needed to tell you—”

  “You want to marry me, I know!” Trollbella cried hysterically. “Yes, Gator! I want to get married, too!”

  Gator was shocked the troll queen had interrupted his dying words. It wasn’t what he had intended to say, but the little troll died before he could say another word. Trollbella rocked him in her arms and tears rolled off her face and onto his.

  “Come back, Gator!” she cried. “Please, come back!”

  Alex, Froggy, and Red joined Conner and the troblins at the front steps of the palace and they all stared quietly at the sad troll queen.

  “No war is without its casualties, I’m afraid,” Froggy said.

  As the twins looked around the gardens they saw more and more Grande Armée soldiers retreating into the woods. Xanthous appeared beside them, followed by Tangerina and Skylene.

  “The Grande Armée has fled from the south gardens,” he told the twins.

  “They’ve left the east side as well,” Tangerina said.

  “And they’ve retreated from the north and west, also,” Skylene said.

  Xanthous looked sadly to the ground. “Many of our men were lost, but I think it’s safe to say this battle is over.”

  Rosette reappeared from the Elf Empire with good news to share as well. “It was a bit of a mess when we arrived, but the soldiers and the ogres accompanying the Grande Armée fled into the Dwarf Forests,” she told the others. “The empire’s tree is severely damaged and a lot of the elves lost their homes, but Empress Elvina is safe. Violetta and Coral stayed behind to help them clean it up.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Alex said. “We’re in about the same shape here.”

  Soon the armies gathered alongside their kings and queens as they made their way from the gardens and regrouped with others at the front of the palace. Mother Goose and Lester landed next to the twins and Jack and Goldilocks joined them, too. Every man, woman, troll, goblin, and fairy looked exhausted—but an underlying pride was felt among them: They had fought off the Grande Armée together.

  Conner walked through the crowd and headed to the center of the gardens.

  “Conner, where are you going?” Alex asked.

  “To end this,” he said.

  He walked until he was halfway between the Happily Ever After Assembly armies at the front of the palace and the general and his men at the edge of the gardens. Only a couple dozen Grande Armée soldiers remained with the general and each looked more exhausted than the last. They leaned against the carriages and poles and one another. They were completely out of bullets and cannonballs and most of them had lost their swords.

  General Marquis was the only one who seemed to have any life left in him. He stood as tall and as spiteful as ever—as if he still thought there was a chance the Grande Armée could win.

  “The war is over!” Conner shouted at the general and his men. “It’s time to surrender, General, before one more life is lost.”

  A menacing smile grew on General Marquis’s face. “The Grande Armée never surrenders!” he said.

  Conner threw his sword on the ground to further prove his point. “The Grande Armée is gone,” he said. “You and your men were trapped in that portal for two hundred years! There is no French Empire for you to go home to! Napoleon is dead! You and your men aren’t fighting for anything anymore.”

  The Grande Armée soldiers whispered to one another—was it true? Had they really lost all sense of time in the portal? The general held his stoic face and laughed at Conner.

  “You stupid, pathetic, ignorant little boy,” Marquis said. “Do you insult my intelligence trying to fool me with these lies? I did not travel all this way to be defeated!
This war has only begun!”

  A thunderous pulsing vibrated through the ground like a massive heartbeat. Conner looked at the ground and saw his sword quivering as if something gigantic was heading their way. The tremor grew with every beat and the Fairy Palace began shaking as if the kingdom was being rattled by earthquakes.

  Smoke filled the sky above the treetops in the distance. A horrible screeching noise erupted through the air. Everyone standing at the palace covered their ears from the dreadful sound.

  “Oh no,” Alex said, and her face went pale.

  “It can’t be,” Mother Goose faintly whispered to herself.

  The Happily Ever After Assembly watched in horror as the silhouette of a gargantuan creature appeared above the trees. The rumors of the egg were true; a dragon had risen in the Land of Stories.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE DRAGON AWAKES

  The dragon emerged from the trees and landed at the edge of the fairy gardens. He was almost as tall as the Fairy Palace. Red scales covered his body and a forked tongue slipped in and out of his sharp teeth. He had two horns and sharp spikes covered his head and traveled down his spine. Two large wings grew out of the dragon’s back and a long tail whipped around behind him. Smoke continuously floated out of his enormous nostrils as if they were the exhaust pipes of a steam engine.

  Alex and Conner could never have imagined a creature so big. There wasn’t a dinosaur or monster they had ever read about that could compare to the beast coming toward them.

  The dragon arched his back and roared at the Happily Ever After Assembly. It was so loud many of the windows shattered. All the fairies in the gardens ran or flew to the trees beyond the gardens to avoid being trampled by the creature. General Marquis laughed hysterically at the frightened fairies fleeing their homes.

  Conner grabbed his sword from the ground and joined his sister and the men and women at the front of the palace.

  “Mother Goose, what do we do?” he asked.

  Everyone turned to her.

  “Why is everyone looking at me? I’ve never killed a dragon before!” she said.

  “Weren’t you and Grandma some of the fairies who hunted them during the Dragon Age?” Alex asked, trying her best not to panic.

  “I just wrestled the smaller ones,” Mother Goose admitted. “Your grandmother was the one who knew how to slay them.”

  Conner rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Okay, everyone think! There’s got to be a way we can kill this thing!”

  General Marquis could feel their anxiety all the way across the gardens. He enjoyed seeing how helpless his new pet made them feel and forced them to wallow in it for a little longer before ordering it to attack them.

  The Masked Man appeared through the trees just below the dragon and had never looked so happy. He gazed up at the dragon as if he were looking at an embodiment of his life’s work. He had waited his whole life to possess an actual dragon, and it was bigger and better than he could ever have imagined.

  Unfortunately for General Marquis, the Masked Man had more control over the dragon than he realized.

  “That’s enough waiting,” the general shouted. “Send the dragon to attack the Fairy Palace! I want to watch it burn!”

  The Masked Man turned his head sharply to the general. “No,” he said.

  The general rotated his whole body to face him. No one had ever defied him so bluntly before.

  “What did you say?” General Marquis asked him.

  “I said no, Jacques,” the Masked Man said.

  He walked toward the general but the dragon stayed right where he was. There was something very different about the Masked Man; he didn’t seem as frail or as odd as he usually did. Having possession of the dragon made him stand taller and much more confidently—he didn’t have to please anyone anymore.

  “I’ve taken a lot of orders from you recently and I’ve had enough of it,” he barked at the general.

  “You work for me!” General Marquis shouted.

  The Masked Man burst into laughter. “Now comes the part when I tell you the truth, General,” he said. “From the minute I saw you and your men storm into the prison, you started working for me. I’ve waited a long time for someone like you to come my way—someone as power hungry as me but who was blinded by his determination and could be easily manipulated. This whole time you only thought I was working for you when actually you were giving me exactly what I wanted. Thank you for your services, General Marquis, but you are no longer valuable to my cause.”

  The Masked Man was the only person who had ever deceived him. For the first time, the general of the Grande Armée looked afraid.

  “Don’t just stand there! Seize this man!” the general demanded—but the soldiers stayed still. In this moment the man with the dragon was the one they didn’t want to cross.

  “Wise choice,” the Masked Man said to the soldiers. “Good-bye, General.”

  He opened his hands and the soldiers discovered he had kept the shells of the dragon egg. He clutched them very tightly. He raised his hands toward General Marquis and the dragon jerked his head in his direction. The dragon took two steps closer to him and the general tried running away.

  “Nooooo!” General Marquis screamed.

  The dragon took a deep breath and exhaled a long and powerful fiery geyser from his lungs. The geyser hit the general and he was consumed in its vicious flames. When the dragon stopped, the ground beneath the general had been scorched black and General Marquis was gone.

  “What just happened?” Conner shrieked.

  “The Masked Man—he has the dragon’s eggshell!” Mother Goose exclaimed. “When a dragon is born and develops its sight, it assumes that whoever it first sees with its eggshell is its mother—meaning whoever holds the pieces of the eggshell becomes the dragon’s master! The Masked Man is in control of the dragon!”

  “Oh great,” Conner said. “More good news!”

  The Masked Man raised the eggshell pieces toward the Fairy Palace. “Kill them,” he instructed the dragon, and the creature took a step forward. Suddenly, Little Bo Peep emerged from the gardens and put herself in between the dragon and the palace.

  “Wait!” Little Bo screamed. “You don’t have to do this!”

  The Masked Man dropped his hands and the dragon stopped.

  After searching the Grande Armée soldiers for hours, Little Bo had finally found the Masked Man. She slowly walked toward him with tears running down her face.

  “I know your life has been difficult and unfair and you’ve been tossed aside by your own blood, but I also know there is a loving and caring man under that mask somewhere,” she said. “That’s the man I fell in love with! This is your chance to show the rest of the world that you’re not the conniving and revenge-seeking lunatic they think you are—for my sake, show them the man I love so there is still hope we can be together! Don’t ruin the world just because it has ruined you!”

  The others watched her with bated breath. They felt their hearts pounding out of their chests. Had her words meant something to him? Did the Masked Man love her enough to call off the monster? If the Masked Man’s face hadn’t been covered, they would have seen a very conflicted expression surface as he thought about what Little Bo had said.

  But he raised the eggshells toward the palace again. “Kill them ALL!” the Masked Man shouted.

  Little Bo’s pale skin went even whiter. Tears stopped rolling down her cheeks and she stopped breathing altogether. She stared at the Masked Man in a daze and clutched the left side of her chest. Despite her heartfelt appeal, the man she loved more than anything else in world didn’t care if she lived or died. With no one else to live for, Little Bo collapsed on the ground and became very still.

  Sir Lampton and Xanthous ran to her and carried her back to the others. They laid her down on the steps and Alex and Conner leaned beside her. Conner checked her pulse.

  “She’s dead,” he gasped. The women covered their mouths and the men removed the
ir hats at the news. Even Red was upset to hear it and buried her face in Froggy’s shoulder.

  Alex pulled Little Bo’s necklace out from the top of her dress. She inspected the tiny heart-shaped stone at the end of the chain and saw that a crack had formed across it. Little Bo Peep had died of a broken heart.

  The dragon slowly crept toward the Fairy Palace. He scorched the gardens beside him with his fiery breath as he went.

  Alex couldn’t stand waiting around like a sitting duck for another second. Her grandmother was the only living person who knew how to defeat a dragon—and as long as she was still alive there was a chance she could give them the answer. Alex ran up the front steps and into the Fairy Palace, praying her grandmother could give them a solution before all was lost.

  “Alex, where are you—” Conner said, but was distracted before he could finish.

  “Look!” Goldilocks yelled.

  A herd of unicorns emerged from the forest behind the dragon and circled the enormous creature, preventing the beast from reaching the palace. The herd was led by Rook, who rode Cornelius at the front of the charge. He had returned just in time.

  The dragon was agitated by the unexpected obstacle. “Destroy them and get to the palace!” the Masked Man ordered.

  The unicorns stabbed their horns into the dragon’s feet and he roared in pain. The dragon picked the unicorns up with his front claws and threw them into the forest in the distance. He kicked Cornelius and he was sent soaring into the gardens with Rook on his back. The dragon grew impatient and scorched the remaining unicorns with his breath. They had only slowed him down—but thankfully they had bought Alex some time.

  Inside the palace, Alex raced into the chambers of the Fairy Godmother and fell to her knees at her grandmother’s bedside. Even though the fairy-tale world was in the middle of the greatest crisis it had ever faced, the Fairy Godmother slept peacefully as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Grandma, I need you to wake up!” Alex begged. “There’s a dragon outside and I don’t know how to stop it!”

  The dragon’s roars shook the chamber and Alex buried her face into her grandmother’s mattress until the sound passed.