The 10th Kingdom

by Kathryn Wesley

  The Tooth Fairy yanked with all his strength and pulled out Tony’s front teeth. Tony’s mouth felt like fire. He screamed as blood dripped onto his tongue.

  The Tooth Fairy proudly held up two front teeth that Tony had never before seen in their entirety. They had been good front teeth. Tony missed them already.

  “Loose teeth,” the Tooth Fairy said. “I thought so. Don’t worry, I’ve got a whole bag of magic teeth here.”

  The Tooth Fairy grabbed a filthy bag and opened it. Inside were hundreds of teeth.

  Tony’s tongue played with the empty spot in the front of his mouth. He knew enough about medicine to know that someone clse’s teeth—someone else’s dirty teeth—would make him sick forever. He had to turn the Tooth Fairy’s attention to something else, and quickly.

  He went back to his real reason for coming here.

  “Look, please help me,” Tony said. “I have to get a key made from this.”

  He reached into his pocket and removed the bar of soap. The Tooth Fairy’s eyes narrowed. He looked over both shoulders to make certain no one else was watching.

  “What’s it worth?” the Tooth Fairy asked.

  Tony took off his watch and waved it. He was certain these creatures had never seen anything like it before.

  “This is a hand-worn clock,” Tony said. “See, it’s got miniature hands, and it tells the time perfectly.”

  The Tooth Fairy walked across the room and swung open a cupboard door. Inside were fifty gold and silver pocket watches.

  “I know,” the Tooth Fairy said. “We call them watches.”

  Tony closed his eyes. His mouth ached and was still bleeding. The soap bar made his fingers itch. And now, all of this had been for nothing.

  The hope he’d felt after Wendell’s good idea was fading fast.

  Wolf could just barely smell Virginia ahead of him in the forest. The stench of beanstalk knocked out all but the keenest scents. If he wasn’t so attuned to her, he probably wouldn’t have been able to follow her.

  She was making her way to a giant thousand-year-old beanstalk, surrounded by barbed wire and spikes. At its base was a sign that read, No Climbers!

  It was accompanied by the image of a giant, and another warning: Trespassers Will Be Breakfast!

  Not that anyone would want to trespass. Above, Wolf could hear the sound of booming drunken voices and what might have been breaking glass.

  For a moment, he lost her scent. His eyes narrowed.

  “Virginia?” he called.

  He was more than a little panicked. If he lost her now, he lost her for good. ‘ ‘I know you think you’re safe in those shoes, but nothing could be further from the truth. Anything you get from a Troll is bound to be bad and dangerous.”

  He sniffed, but he couldn’t catch her lovely scent.

  .“Oh, Virginia, where are you?”

  He thought he caught her scent, but he wasn’t sure. And she wasn’t saying anything. Then the air near the base of the stalk rippled, and slowly Virginia appeared.

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  He gave her his most rakish grin. He really was pleased to see her. “Hello, again,” he said.

  Virginia jumped. Apparently she hadn’t realized he was right beside her.

  Wolf leaned against the nearest tree, relaxing now that he had found her. He said, “They’re not fully recharged, you see. They don’t stay invisible very long without a proper break. That’s a design fault in the shoes, one of many, in fact.”

  Virginia tried to run from him but he leapt out and grabbed her arm. She punched him with her free hand before he pinned her with the other arm.

  “You’re not having them,” Virginia said.

  She was talking nonsense. “Having what?” he asked.

  “The shoes,” Virginia said. “They’re mine.”

  He wrestled her for a moment, then yanked the shoes off her pretty little feet. She put out a hand to catch her balance. Her eyes were glassy, as if she were drunk.

  “If you don’t get rid of them now,” Wolf said, “you won’t be able to later.”

  She shook her head, and her eyes cleared. Maybe the spell had broken. “You’re right. I don’t want them. They made me feel very strange.”

  He held on to the shoes so tightly that the strange materiai bit into his hands. Virginia stared at them. They were sparkling.

  “It felt so powerful being invisible.” Virginia gave a weak little laugh as if she knew how ridiculous she sounded. “How did you know where I was?’ ’

  “I could smell you,” Wolf said. “Follow me.”

  He led her through the forest, passing another giant beanstalk. He couldn’t help himself: he had to look up. Virginia did too. The stalk seemed to disappear into the clouds.

  Then a loud, booming voice echoed down from above. The sound of it shook the ground.

  “There’s someone up there,” Virginia said.

  “He’s started fee-fi-fo-ing.” Wolf shuddered. He’d been through this before and it was not one of his most pleasant memories. “Let’s get a move on in case he’s sick.”

  They ran through the beanstalk forest. They stopped for breath beneath another stalk. This one had the number 19 painted on it in red. Words were written into its trunk: Condemned. Mould. Do not Climb.

  Virginia peered at it as if she couldn’t believe what she was reading.

  “There are about seventy beanstalks left, but not many are occupied these days,” Wolf explained. “Giants drink so much they rarely have time to reproduce.”

  ‘ ‘Can I ask you a question?’ ’ Virginia asked.

  “Of course,” Wolf said.

  “Do you think I’m sexy?”

  He turned to face her, astonished. She was leaning against one of the stalks, her body jutted out provocatively at him. She was beautiful, from the tips of her little toes to her perfect mouth to her—he sighed. Her glassy eyes.

  “You’re the kind of man I suppose I should be scared of,” she said softly in a way that made him know she was going to make an exception for him.

  An exception he very much wanted.

  “Oh, Virginia,” Wolf said, “much as I would love to believe what you’re saying to me, I’m afraid it is the shoes talking. You will say anything to put them back on again.” She blinked, then shook her head. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Yes, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over me. You’re quite right to take them off me.”

  “They bring out very strange things, the shoes,” Wolf said. “Whatever you’re suppressing.”

  “I’m not suppressing anything,” Virginia said.

  She could believe that if she wanted, but he didn’t. And he found the whole incident quite curious, and quite hopeful. Then a stench wafted across the air. He sniffed, and the hair on the back of his neck rose.

  “Trolls,” Wolf said. “They have found us. Oh, cripes. Are we in big, big trouble now.”

  Through the trees, he could see distant lanterns swinging, and far away, the sound of barking dogs.

  “They have dogs,” Wolf said. “They’ll sniff us out. Run! Run!”

  Virginia lit out like she’d been made to run. Wolf had to hurry to keep up with her. He only hoped it would be fast enough. If the Trolls caught them now, things would go bad for them.

  Very bad indeed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prince Wendell was tied to the table. Three meals sat in front of him, and with his new doggy nose, he could smell the poison in them. His stomach rumbled, but his self-control never wavered. How dumb did the prison governor think he was anyway? Even a dog—a real dog—would have discovered this trick.

  A familiar smell caught his nose. Wendell turned. Tony was outside the Governor’s office. Wendell made his way to the door, stood on his hind legs, and peered through the keyhole. Tony was staggering down the hallway. His shirt was spotted with blood and he appeared to have new front teeth.

  How could that be possible?

  Wendell sat down in front
of the door and waited, hoping Tony was coming to him.

  A moment later, he heard Tony whisper, “I’ve got it, Prince.”

  “Brilliant,” Wendell said. “The Governor’s in the kitchen making me another poisoned dinner. Use the key now. Open the door. There’s spare uniforms in here. You can put one on and just march me out of the prison.”

  Wendell could hear Tony fumbling with the lock. He shoved the key in the keyhole and attempted to turn it. It didn’t turn. Wendell started panting, then made himself stop. Panting was so undignified.

  “Hurry up,” he whispered. Then he peered under the door.

  Two warders grabbed Tony from behind. The Governor stood beside him, with a steaming plate of meat.

  Wendell’s stomach growled again.

  “You must really love pain,” the Governor said.

  “No, oh no, please,” Tony begged. “I was just walking along the corridor and I slipped over and hit your door and ended up kneeling in front of it.”

  The Governor removed the key from the lock and examined it. He didn’t look happy.

  “Take him downstairs,” the Governor said. “Tie him to the dining table and give him fifty beanstalk lashes in front of the entire prison. Right now.”

  Beanstalks were the toughest thing known to man. Wendell had seen backs after they’d been lashed. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Wendell buried his head in his paws. “Sorry about that, Anthony.”

  Then the door opened. The Governor came inside. Tony was nowhere in sight, but Wendell could hear him, screaming, down the hallway.

  The Governor set the plate of meat in front of Wendell, and the acrid scent of poison nearly made him gag. Next time, he wanted to say, get a poison a dog couldn’t smell.

  But the Governor didn’t seem too concerned with him. Instead, the Governor indicated that three other warders follow him into the main room.

  “I’ve got keys going missing,” the Governor said. “I’ve got Trolls and wolves and Queens missing. What in the fairying forest has happened to basic security in this prison?”

  Faintly, Wendell heard the snap of a lash and another scream. Poor Tony.

  “Sir,” one warder said, “while we were searching the prison we found that the door to the cellar was unlocked at the time of the Queen’s breakout. It is possible she escaped that way.”

  Another snap of the lash. Another scream. Wendell winced.

  “What’s down there?” the Governor asked.

  “Just a load of old junk,” the warder said. “It’s been there for hundreds of years, before this was a prison.”

  Snap. Scream. Wendell wished he could cover his ears.

  “Take tomorrow’s work detail off the laundry room,” the Governor said, “and have them clear out the whole thing, top to bottom.”

  The warders nodded; then they left. The Governor went with them, probably to supervise Tony’s torture. Wendell stretched his rope to the limit to peer at the Governor’s desk. On it was the work detail. Wendell could just barely reach it.

  He grabbed a pencil in his teeth and slowly scrawled Tony’s name on the bottom of the sheet.

  Downstairs, the lash snapped again, and Tony screamed.

  It had been a long time since Wolf climbed a beanstalk. His hands were scratched. This one wasn’t well cared for. He crouched on a vine twenty feet above the ground, Virginia beside him. He kept the magic shoes as far from her as possible, but she didn’t seem to want them anymore.

  For all he knew, that was a ploy to make him careless. He wouldn’t be careless, not with those things.

  She was peering down intently, breathing very softly. He was having trouble breathing that quietly. Her proximity was quite arousing, even if there were Trolls and dogs lurking nearby.

  As if in answer to his thought, the Troll King appeared below them, leading two giant Dobermans. The dogs were snarling and drooling and sniffing the ground. Wolf felt his hackles rise. He wanted to leap on their backs and tear their guts out. He wanted to bite their necks until they died. He wanted to—but he wouldn’t. He would hide up here like a good human until they went away.

  “Keep moving,” the Troll King said. “They are very near. The dogs can smell them. Don’t let them escape again.”

  “No, Dad,” the three children said in unison.

  After a moment, the Troll King and the dogs passed by.

  Wolf could see only the tops of the children’s heads and that didn’t help him distinguish between the males. Only Blabberwort’s orange hair made her stand out. Fortunately, he recognized the voices.

  “Got any magic mushrooms, Blabberwort?” Burly asked.

  “I’ve got some dwarf moss,” Blabberwort said. “It’ll blow your head off, though. I saw fairies for three days last time I took it.”

  “Roll us a giant,” Bluebell said. “This could be a long night.”

  The Trolls moved away, following their father deeper into the forest.

  Virginia was clinging to the vine so hard that her knuckles had turned white. Apparently she had thought they were going to find her.

  Wolf turned to Virginia and whispered, “Beanstalk has a very potent smell. It puts off the dogs.”

  Virginia rubbed her nose with the back of one hand. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “We’ll stay here until it’s safe,” Wolf said.

  The lanterns were small blobs in the distance.

  “How did you get involved in all this in the first place?” Virginia asked.

  Wolf, fortunately, was looking down. The last thing he wanted to do was tell her the truth. ‘ ‘Well, I happened to find myself at a loose end ...”

  “You were in that prison, weren’t you?” Virginia asked. “What were you in for?”

  Sharp girl. He glanced at her. “Oh, nothing much. Just a bit of sheep worrying, you know. And putting a wolf in a prison cell with nowhere to bound, only able to stare at the sky through the bars, it’s inhuman.”

  Virginia nodded. “So you think I should put them on again?”

  “What?” He frowned at her.

  “I’m sure the shoes are fully charged up again now.”

  Virginia tried to grab the shoes from him, but Wolf held them away from her.

  “No!” Wolf said.

  “They’re mine,” she said. “They—what’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s just my tail,” Wolf said. He was embarrassed that it got out. He stuffed it into a little hole in the back of his trousers. The wolf parts of him always seemed to appear at the most inopportune moments.

  “Your tail?” Her eyes were wide.

  “It’s not very big at this time of the month,” he said. “Just a little brush.”

  “You’ve got a tail?” Virginia said.

  “So?” Wolf snapped. “You’ve got succulent breasts, but I don’t go on about them all the time, do I?”

  Virginia was peering at his back end which, if truth be told, wasn’t such a bad thing. Finally, he smiled.

  “Go on,” Wolf said softly. “Touch it. It’s perfectly normal.”

  She reached out, then closed her hand into a fist. “If it’s normal, why do you keep it hidden all the time?”

  “Because, incase you haven’t noticed,” Wolf said, “people don’t like wolves.”

  Her gaze met his. He nodded encouragingly. “Give it a stroke,” Wolf said. “Go on, it’s not going to bite.”

  Virginia stretched out her hand and touched it. Her fingers were very gentle.

  He moaned and then shifted slightly.

  “What?” Virginia asked, pulling her hand back.

  “With the fur,” Wolf said. “Not against it.”

  She touched it again. Her fingers felt better the second time. “It’s very soft,” Virginia said.

  “Thank you,” Wolf said.

  The Queen lifted the cellar door. Billows of dust flowed around her but she barely noticed. The two servants behind her coughed. She grabbed a lamp and held it out as she waiked down the cellar steps.

&
nbsp; Cobwebs and dust and darkness. The place smelled of damp and rot. It had been a long time since anyone had been down here. She shivered slightly. It was cold as well.

  She could feel the servants’ fear behind her. But she knew better than to fear. She knew what she was looking for.

  When she reached the dirt floor, she slowly drew a large circle with her feet. Then, carefully, she marked five Xs in it. When she was done, she stood aside.

  The servants glanced at her as if they didn’t believe what she wanted. But she had briefed them before they came. They lifted their shovels and dug on the first X, carefully, just as she had explained.

  It only took a few moments to unearth the mirror from its shallow grave. One of the men went to pull it out, but she held out a hand, stopping him. It was better to remove them all at once.

  The servants dug the second hole, then the third, fourth, and fifth, unearthing the remaining mirrors. Then she nodded and let them bring the mirrors forth.

  Each mirror was ancient, and each was different, a product of its time. Some had metal frames, some wooden. One was smaller than the others and yet she could feel its magic.

  She stared at them all, still covered with dirt, and longed to have them in the privacy of her own room. She smiled at her own reflection presented in ail five mirrors, and said, “It’s so good to have the power back.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tony’s feet were chained together and he was manacled m to fourteen other prisoners. They shuffled, shuffled, shuffled their way to the prison cellar. He looked at it in anguish. He had wanted to return here since he’d arrived—well, not quite since he’d arrived, but since he’d found out what a horrible place this was—and now he couldn’t escape.

  Heaven knew he wanted to more than anything. The whipping last night was a new low in his life. He could still feel the sting of the beanstalk lash on his back and shoulders. If only he had one wish left, he’d wish for good health for the rest of his life—or maybe he’d make it a combined wish. Good health and freedom. Certainly no one would deny him that.

  No one except the Prison Governor.

  The line of convicts extended from the pile of junk to a back wall that was made of wood. As Tony watched, the wall went up to reveal a dock and a boat moored alongside it. He was at the very edge of the opening. The fresh air smelled better than he expected, better than it did in Central Park even, and the sky was so blue and beautiful, it made him want to cry.