The 10th Kingdom

by Kathryn Wesley

  He walked across the room to the door and opened it an inch. She walked up to the shoes. She’d never seen a more beautiful pair.

  “I’m not going to touch them,” Virginia said. “I just wondered how they worked.”

  “They’re working on you even now,” Wolf said. He sounded annoyed. “Leave them well alone.”

  She snatched the shoes and was about to put them on, when Wolf murmured, “Corridor, I think.”

  His words brought her to herself. She glanced at him. He got a panicked look on his face. “No! Quick! Balcony!” he said. “There’s someone coming.”

  And that would be the Troll King. She didn’t have time to put the shoes on. She ran to the balcony. Wolf waited for her, holding what she had thought was a rope but which was actually a bit of ivy. She hoped the vine was strong enough to hold both of them.

  She shinnied down it, amazed at what fear could make her do, and the moment she hit the ground, she ran. She could hear Wolf behind her, breathing hard. The first chance she got, she’d put on those shoes and give him the slip.

  Two guards were running toward them, but she dodged them as she crossed the unkempt lawn. She ran as far as she could down the rutted road, but she wasn’t up to a marathon. Her head still hurt. She slowed down to a fast walk.

  Still, Wolf had to struggle to keep up with her. She glanced over her shoulder. What had she done to this guy? He seemed determined to be near her. And she didn’t want to end up like Grandma, no matter how he thought he had reformed. No matter how cute he was.

  It was still daylight out here, but the sky was growing dark. And it wasn’t the darkness of night, but the darkness of an impending storm. She’d been unconscious for most of the trip to the Troll palace. She hadn’t seen the countryside, and she really wasn’t sure where she Was. One glance at that map in the prison had been helpful, but she hadn’t memorized it.

  “Excuse me, miss?” Wolf said. “Where do you think you’re going, exactly?”

  “Back to the prison,” Virginia said.

  “Back to the prison?” Wolf asked. “That would not be my first—”

  “I’ve got to find my father,” Virginia said. “And then I want to go straight back home.”

  ‘ ‘All right, all right,” Wolf said, ‘ ‘but not this way. Virginia, listen, please, you won’t survive five minutes unless you follow me. We must avoid the road and go this way.”

  He was behind her. She turned and looked in the direction he was pointing. They were facing a forest, but it wasn’t like any forest she’d ever seen before. Among the normal trees were huge beanstalks. Giant beanstalks. She couldn’t count all of them. They rose up to the sky, dwarfing the regular trees. And they looked hideous. She hadn’t realized that beanstalks were so ugly up close.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “I’m not going in there.”

  But she had a hunch she’d have no choice.

  Tony was on his hands and knees in the corridor. He was scrubbing the flagstone floor. His hands stung—the soap wasn’t Ivory and it had a peculiar smell—and the water was ice-cold.

  His skin was already red and raw. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like after hours of this stuff.

  If he had a wish left, he’d wish for his old life back. Sure, he’d hated the janitorial job and Mr. Murray, but it hadn’t been anything like this.

  “Pssst, Anthony?” The voice belonged to Prince Wendell. Tony looked around and realized he was outside the governor’s office. Wendell still had to be inside.

  “How did you know it was me?” Tony whispered.

  “You have a distinctive, unwashed smell,” Prince Wendell said. Tony flushed. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning the floor,” Tony said. “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Have you got a soap bar?”

  “Why, do you want me to wash you?”

  “Stay there!” Prince Wendell said. “Don’t go away.”

  As if there were somewhere he could go. Still, Tony crawled over to the door and peered through the keyhole. He could see the Governor in an adjoining room talking to a couple of the warders. Prince Wendell had jumped on a table and was walking toward a key ring. He took a key off the ring, jumped off the table, and came toward the door.

  Tony backed away as Prince Wendell shoved the key under the gap between the door and the stone floor.

  “This is the Governor’s master key,” Prince Wendell said. “Make an impression in the soap. Hurry, he’ll be back any moment.”

  Tony took the key in his hands. He was shaking. What would they do to him if they found him with this key? He didn’t want to think about it.

  He grabbed the soap bar and shoved the key into it, pressing hard. At that moment, a warder walked by. Tony nearly swallowed his own tongue.

  “Very stubborn stain, sir,” Tony said.

  The warder didn’t seem to care. Tony waited until he was gone before taking the key from the soap. He looked both ways down the corridor before shoving the key under the door. Then he watched as Prince Wendell reattached the key to the ring.

  Tony went back to his soap bar and studied it for a moment. Funny how something as small as a mold for a key could give a guy hope.

  Relish the Troll King was throwing all his shoes from his closet, but he already knew that his favorites weren’t there. The girl had taken his magic shoes. His invisible magic shoes. And he hadn’t even seen her dance for him.

  He’d come in, found his iron shoes cooling, his children out cold, and a box in the middle of the floor. He’d slapped his children awake, but that hadn’t given him any satisfaction. And now that he knew the shoes were missing—well, he threw the remaining ones at Burly, Blabberwort, and Bluebell.

  “Idiots!” the Troll King shouted. “Fools! I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” Burly said. “She made this magic shoe box appear.”

  They were convinced that tiny girl was a witch. He glared at his son, then walked to the box that they had somehow failed to open. He flicked off the top. Inside was a pink child’s purse and a note.

  Relish grabbed the note and read it aloud. “ ‘Best wishes from Wolf.’ ”

  His children bowed their heads.

  “Imbeciles!” Relish shouted again. “We must go after them immediately. Get the dogs.”

  The dogs would find her and her friend Wolf. And his favorite shoes. And once he had them, they’d never escape again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The beanstalks had a strong green smell mixed with a hay-like odor and the dry stench of overcooked beans. The smell was powerful and unlike anything Virginia had ever sniffed before. She walked beneath the stalks, the vines and branches winding over her head. The tallness of them made her think of a trip she had taken to California as a young girl. The redwoods had seemed magnificent to her, but they were tiny in comparison to the beanstalks.

  She wasn’t trying to get away from Wolf now. There really wasn’t any point. He was the one who knew how to get from this beanstalk forest to the prison. She could only hope that he really would lead her there.

  The shoes, though, tempted her like an itch that she knew she shouldn’t scratch.

  Up ahead, she noticed a large stone statue of a young boy. As she got closer, she realized that the statue had been neglected. It was covered in vines, and part of its head had been hacked off. Troll graffiti marred the base, but she could still read the inscription:

  Brave Jack First Mayor of Beantown

  She frowned. Everything was so strange here, and yet oddly familiar. The tales she had learned as a child mingled with

  what she could see and made the world she had believed in turn into something that wasn’t quite real.

  She turned to Wolf. “Is that Jack of—”

  “Jack and the Beanstalk, yes,” Wolf said.

  She nodded. The shoes tingled against her. She reached for them, felt them beneath her fingers. They glittered.

  “This used t
o be a very prosperous area,” Wolf was saying. He wasn’t looking at her. “Before the beanstalks sprouted everywhere and polluted the land.”

  She slipped the shoes over her feet, and felt the tingle run through her body.

  “The Trolls were given the land here as their kingdom,” Wolf was saying.

  She held her hand up to her face and almost giggled when she saw nothing.

  “And that’s why they hate Prince Wendell so much, because he has a juicy, fertile kingdom, and—” Wolf stopped talking and turned around. Then around again. Virginia suppressed another giggle. He couldn’t see her.

  “Virginia?” Wolf called out.

  He continued to spin like a wind-up toy on low, and then he stopped, putting his hands on his hips.

  “Please tell me you didn’t take the Troll King’s magic shoes,” Wolf said, clearly disgusted.

  All right, she thought. I won’t tell you anything at all. She put a hand to her head. Slightly dizzy. Almost drunk. The urge to giggle rose within her again. She wondered how long she could suppress it. Long enough to escape pretty boy here?

  She didn’t know, but she was going to try to find out.

  Tony stood at a table in the center of the dining room, on the far side so that he could see the guard pacing above. The room seemed smaller and narrower when filled with most of the prison population.

  So far as Tony could tell, they were all men, although some had wings. Others had scrunched up faces like those Trolls that he and Virginia had been running from. Others—like the guy across the table—had scars dividing their faces as if they were baseballs.

  The Governor stood in the front of the room with a few other warders. The map was behind them. And on the table in front of the convicts were bowls of something that smelled like four-day-old pea soup combined with overcooked baked beans and rotting hay. Tony had a hunch mealtime was not going to be his most favorite time here at the Snow White Memorial Prison.

  Everyone was standing with hands clasped in front, although no one would tell him why. At a short movement from the Governor’s whip, the convicts around Tony started to recite. In unison, they said:

  “We promise to serve Prince Wendell, kind and brave Monarch of the Fourth Kingdom, and pledge to mend our naughty ways so that we may all live happily ever after.” Then they sat down. Tony suppressed the urge to look at all of them as if they were crazy. Crazy they might be, but they were also dangerous.

  “I have some very bad news,” the Governor said. “A new era of punishment is upon you. From now on, all privileges will be withdrawn.”

  The prisoners at all of the tables started banging metal cups and fists against the wood. The entire room seemed alive.

  “Unfortunately, a new inmate, who must remain anonymous for his own safety, has refused to tell me how he helped the Queen escape.”

  Oh, great. Tony tried to duck his head but it didn’t help. The Governor walked toward him, making sure everyone knew who he was talking about.

  “If you should find out who this man is, please treat him with compassion, as you would any other new inmate.” The Governor stopped right behind Tony. “Don’t think ‘well, I can’t have any visitors or get any exercise because of this scum’ and use it as an excuse to kick him unconscious. ”

  The pounding had stopped. Everyone was looking at Tony, even the guys with one eye or, worse yet, one eye in the middle of their foreheads. The Governor moved away, then signaled the warders, who stopped at their posts by the door.

  The convicts continued to stare at Tony. He gave them his best Mr. Murray-suck-up grin and said, ‘ ‘Boy can I understand why no one likes that guy.”

  And unsurprisingly, no one laughed. Tony licked his upper lip, then looked down at the green slop in his bowl. That was where the stench was coming from. The slop was still steaming slightly, which made it seem even more unappealing.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  His words were like a cue to the others to eat. Most of them turned their attention to the food, such as it was. Clay Face was slurping from his bowl as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.

  “It’s baked beanstalk,” Clay Face said between slurps.

  “Baked beans?” Tony said hopefully. He took a spoonful and swallowed.

  “Beanstalk,” Clay Face said.

  Tony spat out the food into his hand. “I can’t eat this. It tastes like an old mattress.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” an old convict said. “Old mattress has a sweaty, meaty taste.”

  Tony didn’t want to know how the old guy knew that. “How often is this on the menu?”

  “Three times a day,” Clay Face said.

  Tony lifted his glass. It was full of pale green juice. It looked like something Virginia would buy at the vegetarian juice bars that dotted the trendy parts of Manhattan. He took a deep breath and a sip.

  It tasted like cold pea soup mixed with baked beans and hay, with some rancid meat thrown in for flavor.

  He spat the juice out all over the table.

  “That’s beanstalk juice,” Acom said. “Takes a bit of getting used to.”

  Tony put the glass down. He was thirsty but not that thirsty.

  He could see, just beyond the doors, the stairs to the cellar. Down there was the mirror that would get him back to his world, where green juice tasted like lemon-lime Gatorade and where green slop would at least have some salt in it.

  “Supposing I wanted to, uh, speak to someone about getting a, for sake of argument, small piece of metal made,” Tony asked. “How would I go about that? Who’s the Mr. Big around here?”

  Baseball Face looked both ways to make sure no one was listening, then leaned forward and whispered, “You want anything bought, sold, borrowed, or made in here, you have to go see the Tooth Fairy.”

  Tony wasn’t sure he heard that right. “The who?”

  “The prison dentist,” Acorn said.

  “And how would I get to see him?”

  “Easy,” Baseball Face said. He brought his right hand back and punched Tony in the mouth. Tony recoiled backwards. Pain shot through his upper jaw. Then he stared at Baseball Face as if he were crazy, which he probably was.

  “Tell the Governor what happened, and you won’t see tomorrow,” Baseball Face said with a green-goo grin.

  “Teef..Tony said, hand over his bleeding mouth. “He’s knocked my teef out.”

  “Shh,” Acorn said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  Tony felt the blood ooze through his fingers. The other prisoners watched as if the show weren’t quite good enough. Acorn finished eating his green slime and then stood. He went to one of the warders and beckoned Tony to follow.

  Tony did.

  ‘ ‘This man hurt his front teeth on dinner,’ ’ Acorn was saying as Tony approached. “I think he needs to see the Tooth Fairy.” “Prisoners aren’t supposed to fraternize outside of the dining hall,” the warder said.

  “Then you tell Prince Wendell, the next time he comes here, that a man can’t get good and necessary dental treatment.”

  The warder frowned. Apparently Wendell—in human form—had some pull around here. “Make it fast,” he said.

  Acorn nodded. He crooked a finger, and Tony leaned down. The pain in the front of his mouth grew worse. Acorn gave him instructions on how to get to the Tooth Fairy’s cell and then pushed him in the right direction. Tony looked over his shoulder. The other prisoners were grinning. Maybe he would finish his meal, blood or no blood.

  “Go,” Acorn whispered.

  Tony sighed and hurried down the corridor. The bleeding had stopped, leaving an iron taste in his mouth. His tongue played with his front teeth. They wiggled and there were some strands of skin around them that hadn’t been there before.

  It didn’t take him long to reach the Tooth Fairy’s. A filthy sign above the door let him know it was the right place. The cell door, surprisingly, was open. Tony went inside.

  The Tooth Fairy turned and grinned. The Tooth Fairy was not the
pretty woman of childhood myth, but a dumpy guy with long blue wings. He had the worst teeth Tony had ever seen.

  “It’s no good,” the Tooth Fairy said. “They’ll all have to come out.”

  “You haffn’t looked in my mowf yet,” Tony said.

  “Do you want some candy?”

  “Candy?” Tony asked. “You’re a dentiff, you’re not supposed to be giving people candy.”

  “Why not?” the Tooth Fairy asked.

  “Because it rots people’s teef.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Of corf it does,” Tony said.

  “Well excuse me,” the Tooth Fairy said, “but who’s the tooth extractor here? You or me?”

  Tony sat down nervously. If he wasn’t in so much pain, he wouldn’t have done it. But something had to change. He was getting a headache that ran up the bridge of his nose and into his forehead.

  “I’ll just put the straps on you,” the Tooth Fairy said.

  “The what?” Tony asked.

  “The Straps of Comfort,” the Tooth Fairy said.

  “I’m not being strapped in,” Tony said.

  The Tooth Fairy strapped him into what looked to Tony like an electric chair. Since all of the lights were candles, though, he could only hope that the one torture these creatures hadn’t heard of was an electric chair. And he wasn’t about to tell them.

  “Tooth decay is caused by three things,” the Tooth Fairy said. “Number one, poor diet; number two, not brushing properly; and number three, Bad Fairies.”

  He pulled down a roller chart with pictures of the mouth and pointed to a diagram of malevolent-looking fairies.

  That was it. This wasn’t Oz and Toto, nor was it even as good as the worst dentist in New York. “I’m going,” Tony said.

  The Tooth Fairy leaned forward and reached into Tony’s mouth with stubby, dirty fingers. Tony tried to move his head away. The Tooth Fairy waggled Tony’s front teeth and the pain was enormous.

  “Does that hurt?” the Tooth Fairy asked.

  “Yes!”

  He waggled them some more. The pain grew.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “Yes!”

  “What about thisT’