The Inside Story

by Michael Buckley

  A figure dropped out of the sky and landed between the girls and the tiger. “Keep your paws off my fiancée, you flea-ridden stray,” Puck shouted.

  “By the lock that freed me,” the panther cried as he craned his neck to eye the boy fairy. “Who are you?”

  Puck put his hands on his hips and puffed up his chest. “I am the Trickster King. Leader of the Lazy, Master of Mayhem, Savior of the—surely you’ve heard of me.”

  The wolves looked at one another and then shook their heads. “Are you one of the monkey people?”

  Puck frowned and turned back toward Shere Khan. “No, I am not one of the monkey people. I am the sworn protector of the Grimms and you will not touch them, or I will turn the hose on you.”

  Shere Khan roared so powerfully that Puck’s hair was blown into an even bigger mess than usual.

  “We’re in The Jungle Book,” Daphne said to Puck. “They think Sabrina is Mowgli and I’m one of the wolves.”

  “Whoever you are, you are messing with the story!” Shere Khan bellowed. A strand of saliva leaked out of the creature’s mouth and dribbled to the ground. “The Editor will not tolerate it, and I have no intention of being revised.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Puck taunted. “Go ahead, raise your paw to me. I need a new rug.”

  The tiger leaped forward with every talon extended. He slashed at the boy fairy, who barely had time to pull his wooden sword from his pants and block the mighty blow. Puck swung back but his tiny weapon was deflected by a vicious swat. The sword flew out of his hand and landed in some tall grass. Shere Khan’s razor-sharp claws caught the side of Puck’s hoodie and slashed it to ribbons. Puck yelped as his wings extended and he flew into the air.

  “Puck!” Sabrina cried.

  As he hovered above the tiger, Puck looked slightly rattled, but he gestured for the girls to stay where they were. “It’s OK. I shouldn’t have underestimated him. He may not be real, but his claws are.”

  “Come down here, mosquito, so I can finish the job,” Shere Khan said.

  Puck swooped down and snatched his sword from the grass. Then he flew directly over the tiger and swung his weapon into Shere Khan’s spine. The huge cat groaned in agony and fell to the ground.

  “If I were you I’d slink back to your owner,” Puck said. “Perhaps you’ll get a bowl of milk.”

  Shere Khan lumbered to his feet. His bright orange hide glowed in the firelight and his eyes smoldered like hot coals. He glared at Puck, and then in one sudden movement he leaped toward a tree and used it to launch himself at his enemy. Puck kicked him in the face, but not before the creature slashed at his chest. The deadly claws had only missed his skin by a fraction of an inch. Puck’s hoodie would never be the same.

  Sabrina was shaken. Like Puck, she too had assumed they couldn’t be hurt in the stories. They weren’t actually the people they were pretending to be. They were more like actors playing the parts in the stories. She would never have suspected that they would ever really be attacked. She had once been in a school production of Stone Soup in the second grade and none of the pilgrims had attacked her. The risk of injury or death added another worry to her rapidly growing list of concerns.

  Puck lunged at the beast again, but it smacked him backward with a well-timed punch. He fell from the sky and rolled into Sabrina, knocking the torch out of her grasp. It fell onto the flat, smooth rock and rolled into an outcrop of tall grass nearby. A moment later, the wild flora burst into hungry flames that threatened to spread to everything around it.

  “What have you done?” the black panther cried.

  “What have I done?” Sabrina repeated. “The tiger is the one causing the problems!”

  An old wolf stepped forward to address the other wolves. “Flee, brothers. The red flower is blossoming.” The wolves howled and darted into the burning jungle. The black panther leaped down from his tree and followed them in a panic.

  “What red flower?” Sabrina said.

  “They’re talking about the fire,” Daphne said. “It’s part of the book, but this forest fire is not. The story wouldn’t have been very good if Mowgli torched the forest and killed everything for miles.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Puck said, still fighting with the tiger. “That story would rule.”

  “What should we do?” Sabrina asked.

  “We need to get out of here!” Daphne shouted.

  “Right behind you,” Puck said.

  The girls started to follow the fleeing pack but were stopped in their tracks by Shere Khan. His eyes locked onto the children and his jaws filled with angry foam. Sabrina couldn’t tell whether the rising temperature she felt came from the fire or the rage wafting off the jungle cat.

  “You have doomed us all. The Editor and his revisers will be here any moment,” Shere Khan said. “Perhaps he will spare me if I kill those responsible for the damage.”

  Puck zipped down and snatched each of the girls by the back of their shirts. A moment later, they were rising skyward. “If Garfield the cat here won’t let us pass, I suppose we’ll have to take another route.”

  Shere Khan leaped at them, swatting with his massive paws, but the children were already out of his reach and sailing over the fiery jungle.

  “Thanks for the save,” Sabrina said.

  “No problem, honey bunny,” Puck said. “I can’t exactly let my bride-to-be become cat food.”

  “The second we’re on the ground, I’m going to put my fist into your mouth, you stinky, scummy sack of stupid,” Sabrina said.

  Just then, a stone sailed into the air and slammed into Puck’s head. “Owww!” he cried, flapping awkwardly in the air and nearly dropping the girls. Sabrina looked down and saw hundreds of monkeys swinging from treetops and shaking angry fists at them.

  “I think those are the monkey people we heard about,” Daphne said.

  Puck did his best to avoid the flying rocks, zigging and zagging around each projectile, but there were too many of them. Their only defense was to fly higher.

  “How does this story end?” Sabrina asked. “We can’t stay up here much longer.”

  “That depends,” Daphne said. “The Jungle Book is a collection of short stories. Technically, this part is over, and so the door might be down there.”

  “You want me to fly down into that inferno?” Puck said.

  “Yes?” Sabrina squeaked. She hoped her uncertainty was covered by the wind.

  “You’re completely insane—a good quality in a wife. Hold on,” Puck said. His wings stopped flapping and the three dropped toward the ground. Sabrina was sure they were about to be splattered on the jungle floor when Puck’s wings expanded and caught an updraft of hot air. They glided to safety and touched down on the ground, surrounded by burning trees.

  “Do you see a door?” Daphne asked as she scanned their surroundings.

  “It could be anywhere,” Puck said.

  Sabrina began to panic. Puck was right. She hadn’t read The Jungle Book from cover to cover, but she remembered lots of settings—the Council Rock, the human village, the giant snake’s lair—the door to the next story could be anywhere. Maybe they should have stayed in the sky. Maybe they would have been able to see it from up there.

  She wondered how things could possibly get any worse when she got her answer. From out of the trees stampeded a herd of long-horned cattle. They tore through the jungle, their hooves grinding everything into pulp and their horns goring trees and bushes. Their panicked bellows rose above the noise of the roaring and crackling fire. The children leaped behind some ancient trees for protection, but unfortunately, another wave of cattle was approaching from that direction as well. Nowhere was safe.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Puck said to Sabrina. He spun around on his heels and she watched him hulk up in a disturbing transformation. One of Puck’s many abilities as a fairy was to change into a variety of different animals, which didn’t make it any less weird each time he did it. His arms grew in length an
d his shoulders hunched with dense muscles. As his whole body sprouted thick, black fur, Sabrina could tell he was transforming into a gorilla. He snatched the girls in his huge arms, climbed a tree, and plopped them all onto a high branch. A moment later he morphed back to his true form.

  “We’ll be safe here,” Puck said as they eyed the sea of cattle below.

  “Are you sure?” Daphne said. “Look!”

  From within the stampede, Sabrina spotted a herd of creatures altogether unlike the cows. These were small, pink, and fast, with little legs and arms to scurry along the ground.

  “Revisers!” Sabrina cried.

  Everything that got in the way of the revisers was quickly devoured and vanished. In fact, the very jungle was disappearing—every inch was being replaced with an empty, white void.

  “I vote that we get out of here!” Daphne shouted.

  “I second that,” Sabrina said.

  Puck’s wings unfolded and he grabbed the girls. Soon the trio was zipping along the tree line, high above the hungry monsters, but Sabrina felt far from safe. The entire world was vanishing, not just the trees and animals—even the night sky was being devoured. Each of the little pink creatures was an eating machine, chomping on the cattle, the trees, the ground, everything. The Editor’s words echoed in her mind.

  Leave now or my revisers will devour you.

  Daphne’s eyes were wide with fear. “They’re very fast.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m faster!” Puck shouted. “Besides, would I let something happen to my fiancée and my future sister-in-law? While we’re on the subject, I was hoping we could discuss our wedding cake. I’d like to go traditional—you know, something stuffed with wild boar and drizzled with spider icing. What do you think, honey? Oh, and when do you want to go and look at engagement rings?”

  Sabrina wondered if it would be better to shake herself loose and die on the jungle floor rather than take more of the stinky boy’s teasing. “You keep flapping your mouth, fairy, and I’m going to engage my fist to your lip.”

  Just then, Puck’s body jerked to a sudden stop. All three of the children fell like stones. They landed hard on the ground and lay there for a moment, groaning in pain. Sharp agony raced along Sabrina’s hip and another pain ached in her right shoulder.

  “I didn’t see that branch,” Puck said.

  “Branch? It felt like a truck to me,” Daphne said as she crawled to her feet.

  Sabrina sat up, nursing her wounds. She was sure her whole left side would be black-and-blue in the morning. “We have to keep moving.”

  The three helped one another up and began to stagger forward. There was no path to follow and the exposed roots and heavy brush did not make walking easy. Before long, Sabrina could hear the hungry, chattering teeth of the Editor’s pets behind her. She turned and spotted one darting in the undergrowth several yards behind them.

  How could she have chased after Mirror into this crazy book? She had signed their death warrant because she had made another dumb mistake . . .

  “There’s the door!” Daphne shouted.

  Sabrina peered into the brush. Something white was standing in the bushes up ahead—something that didn’t belong there. Daphne was right! There was a door, but could they reach it before the revisers devoured them? She dug deep into herself and found the energy to run harder and faster. Her determination to save her family and herself made the pain in her hips and legs vanish.

  Before she knew it, she was turning the knob and opening the door. Daphne and Puck tumbled through and Sabrina started to follow. Before she could, a reviser clamped down on her loincloth. It growled and tore at the cloth. Sabrina could feel its incredible strength as it pulled her back with its teeth, and she fell to the ground. It dragged her away along the ground toward the hungry jaws of the rest of its pack. She kicked at the creature, pounding it with her feet, but nothing could stop it.

  She was sure she was about to die when the creature let go of her loincloth and was lifted off the ground. It squirmed and cried as if in the hold of a viselike grip, but there was no one there holding it up. Sabrina didn’t stop to figure it out. She scurried backward into the open doorway.

  Just before the jungle vanished from view, she saw the reviser slam into the ground. It looked as if it were dead. She remembered the Munchkin’s warnings about staying inside the margins. Was this invisible power what he was trying to tell her about?

  3

  hen the world materialized again, Sabrina found herself at the edge of another unfamiliar, dark forest. Unlike the setting of the fierce and fiery Jungle Book, this one smelled of cedar pines, and a layer of crisp dew covered everything. The change of scenery wasn’t the only thing that was different. She and Daphne were dressed in new outfits—puffy shirts and royal blue leggings. Sabrina sighed in relief. Anything was better than the loincloth she had been wearing. Puck was still in his usual filthy and shredded hoodie. She guessed that as an Everafter, he was allowed to stroll through the Book unaltered. Perhaps the Book, like the Editor, recognized Puck. Because the girls were human, they were unfamiliar. Maybe that’s why it kept forcing them into different roles.

  Her little sister seemed thrilled with her new attire. She had discovered a sharp sword sheathed at her side. She took it out and awkwardly swung it around. “Maybe we’re in The Three Musketeers! I hope I’m D’Artagnan. Hey, that’s a good name for the baby. D’Artagnan Grimm.”

  Daphne swung her sword into a nearby tree, where it stuck tight. As she struggled to pry it loose, Sabrina glanced around and saw they were traveling with a crowd of similarly dressed men. Each had long, shoulder-length hair and a full beard. Leading the group along a well-worn path through the trees was a woman in rich, embroidered robes. A golden crown adorned with delicate jewels rested on her head. Her face, however, was not as delicate. It was a collection of sharp features and rough lines—both gorgeous and unnerving. Sabrina feared her smile more than any weapon.

  “Which story is this?” Puck asked.

  Daphne shrugged. “Beats me.”

  Sabrina was disappointed. Daphne had read so many more fairy tales than she had, and even though Sabrina had accepted her role as a fairy-tale detective, there weren’t enough hours in the day to read and memorize every fable, tall tale, and folk story in the family’s private library. It was at moments like this that she wished she hadn’t been so stubbornly resistant when Granny Relda had explained her family history and responsibilities. If she had been more cooperative and listened more closely, she might know more about the stories and the actual historical events they described.

  “What is it with all the forests?” Daphne grumbled as she peered into the woods.

  “I know! Couldn’t they set one of these stories in an icecream parlor for once? I’m starving!” Puck exclaimed. His outburst stopped the rest of the group in their tracks. Every eye shot angry daggers at the children.

  “No one spoke during this part,” one of the guards whispered.

  They followed the group quietly until they came to an overgrown part of the path, so faint it would have been easy to overlook it. The queen held her hand up, and her men came to an abrupt stop. As everyone looked on, the queen reached into the folds of her robes and took out a ball of white yarn. Sabrina wondered if the woman was planning on knitting a scarf when she saw the queen do something unexpected. She raised the ball of yarn to her mouth and whispered something into it. Then she set it on the ground at her feet and stood back. The ball of yarn started to twitch and hop. It bounced around like a Mexican jumping bean and then rolled into the woods with a shot, leaving in its wake a strand of yarn for them to follow.

  The queen reached down and snatched the loose end of yarn and began to wrap it into a new ball as she followed the string into the woods.

  “Ahhh, now I know where we are,” Daphne said. “This is one that Jacob and Wilhelm wrote about. It’s called ‘The Six Swans.’ ”

  Sabrina had a vague memory of reading it, or rather, of stru
ggling to stay awake while she read it. Clearly, she had lost the battle.

  “That woman is a witch. Her husband is a king and he has seven children with his first wife. The queen wants to do bad things to his kids, so the king hides them in a cabin in the woods. She’s using a ball of magic yarn that will unroll until it takes her to where they are.”

  “So the yarn is like a GPS device or something?” Sabrina asked.

  A guard shot them an angry look. “Shhhhh!”

  “Yes,” Daphne whispered. “In the story I read, it leads her to their cabin.”

  The children trudged through the dense woods for the next hour. The men followed the queen obediently as she collected and wrapped her ball of yarn. Finally they came to a cottage built near a bubbling spring. Six smiling boys, the oldest not much older than Sabrina, raced out of the cabin toward the group. Their eyes were bright with joy until they saw the queen. When they turned to flee, the men pounced on them and dragged them to the wicked stepmother. From the folds of her dress she removed six silk shirts, and one by one she pulled them over the heads of the boys. In a flash of light, each boy made what appeared to be a painful, squawking transformation into a white swan. Legs and arms vanished. Lean bodies turned plump and sprouted feathers. Toes were replaced with webbed feet. Once each of the boys had changed, the queen’s men released the swans. The distraught gaggle took to the air and disappeared over the treetops.

  “She turned them into birds!” Sabrina said. It hadn’t been long ago that she had been turned into a goose, and sometimes she still felt the instinct to shove her head into the river and feast on tiny fish. “What happens to them next?”

  “I don’t remember everything, but I think their sister finds a way to break the spell,” Daphne said. “But to do it she has to keep quiet for six years.”

  “What did you say?” the queen asked.

  The girls turned to see the queen standing behind them, listening to every word.

  “Did you say the king has another child?” she continued.