The Inside Story Read online

  “Every kid on this island is going to turn into a donkey,” Daphne explained, pointing to the beasts that had pulled them in the coach. “The driver will sell them all to farms, where they will be worked to death.”

  “She’s right,” said a boy who, unlike the others from the wagon, had stayed behind when the rest rushed into the town. “Pinocchio gets sent to a circus to be trained as a dancing donkey. I end up on a farm where I die.”

  “How do you know?” the Cheshire Cat purred.

  “I’m Lampwick, his best friend.” The boy started to run off to join the other children.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” Sabrina said. “If you know you’re going to die, why not turn around and go home?”

  The boy shook his head. “The Editor would not approve.”

  “Then join our army,” Arthur said. “We’re traveling through the stories. Soon we’ll find a door to the real world and we’ll escape for good. You could be free.”

  Lampwick smiled and shook his head. “And then what? I have a role here. I’m important to Pinocchio’s development. When he witnesses my death as a broken-down farm animal, it has a profound effect on him. Without me, his efforts to become a good boy might never occur. Even though I have a small part in his life, I’m essential to its direction.”

  “You’re a fool!” the dodo said.

  “I’m part of his growth as a character,” the boy said. “It is my tragic end that makes him a better person. In any good story the hero must experience tragedy to grow and ultimately defeat what is destroying him. I know the story isn’t called ‘Lampwick,’ but I’m arguably the most important character in it.”

  And with that, the boy disappeared into the throng of kids.

  “I’ve heard enough of his nonsense,” the White Rabbit said. “Come on, now. Let’s find your Pinocchio and get out of here.”

  The three groups walked in different directions, and with each step Sabrina felt more and more overcome with grief and panic. The claustrophobia came back to her tenfold and she fell to her knees, sobbing.

  “Sabrina!” Daphne said, trying to help her up.

  “What did I do, Daphne? I gave him back to Mirror!”

  “I told you to! We had no choice,” Daphne said.

  Sabrina ignored her. “How could I do that?”

  “He was going to let people die,” Daphne said.

  “What if we don’t get him back?”

  There was silence for a long time.

  “We will get him back,” Puck said. “I will make sure of it.”

  Sabrina looked up into his face, fully prepared to insult the boy, but instead she saw a determination in Puck that seemed genuine. Every hint of sarcasm was gone. Even the playful gleam in his eyes had been snuffed out. “You sacrificed him for us all, including me. I will repay that debt. No harm will come to your brother. The Trickster King makes this vow.”

  “You’re not alone here, Sabrina,” Daphne added. “We’re here. We’re a team. And we all would have done the same thing. You heard the Editor. Mirror’s story is off-limits. He can’t get into it, so whatever he has planned for Carmine can’t be done anyway.”

  “Carmine?” Puck said.

  Daphne rolled her eyes. “Fine, Baby X is his name! Are you two happy?”

  Sabrina couldn’t help but laugh. “Baby X is worse than Carmine.”

  Daphne laughed, as did Puck. It was nice to see smiles again, and Sabrina started to think things might be all right.

  “All right, enough of the boo-boo faces,” Puck said. “Let’s get back to work. There will be plenty of time for personal disappointments when we get married.”

  “It sounds charming,” Sabrina said. “But that’s also why I would never marry you no matter what!”

  “Sorry,” Puck chuckled. “Fate has us forever intertwined.”

  Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Daphne, you said you’ve read this story. Fill us in on what we’re missing.”

  “I know that eventually Pinocchio turns into a donkey. Then he gets sold to the circus. Then his owner tries to drown him in the ocean—”

  “That’s nice!” Sabrina interjected. “What kind of children’s story is this?”

  “Then a fisherman catches him, I think. He might live with the Blue Fairy for a while, then he gets eaten by a shark. There are lots of twists and turns.”

  Daphne was still trying to figure out the order of the events when the puppy dog leaped out in front of them. “We found him! C’mon!”

  The children chased after the giant dog as he weaved through the senseless maze of Toyland’s streets. They faced one obstacle after another. On one street they had to duck back and find another path as they almost ran into a group of children playing a game to see who could shatter the biggest window in a large church. The stained-glass shards came down like razor-sharp rainbows and there was no way to pass safely.

  Another street had a group of children in the midst of a makeshift jousting tournament. Two children rode donkeys at each other and took turns trying to knock their opponent off with pillows. They also saw a little boy who had uncovered a can of green paint and was stalking around like a giggling idiot drenching anyone who came within five feet of him.

  After many failed efforts, Sabrina and her family managed to find a clear path to a filthy tent. Once inside, Sabrina spotted the driver of the coach standing next to a trembling donkey.

  “He’s selling the animals,” the Cheshire Cat said when they joined him and the others in the tent.

  “Disgusting practice,” the White Rabbit complained.

  “Pinocchio has already turned into a donkey?” Sabrina asked.

  “He couldn’t have. I remember the story said he was here for weeks before the change started,” Daphne said.

  The Cheshire Cat motioned to a dark section of the tent. “He’s over there. I can see well in the dark. He’s hiding in the shadows.”

  “Why?” Lancelot asked.

  “Pinocchio winds up in a circus, so he has to be sold. Maybe he’s trying to hurry everything along,” Daphne said. “He’s watching for the Ringmaster and he’ll stow himself away when he leaves.”

  “How much will you give me for this fine, strong donkey?” the fat man said. His voice was high and piercing.

  “I’ll take him for twenty-five nickels,” a man said. “I can use his skin for a drum I have at home.”

  The donkey brayed and whimpered until the fat man snapped his whip at him.

  “Do I hear more than twenty-five nickels?”

  “Does he dance?” another man shouted from the crowd.

  “Pardon?”

  A man dressed in a long black coat, white pants, and black boots stood up. “Does he dance? I have a circus in need of an act,” the man replied. “If he can dance, I’ll pay fifty nickels.”

  “You’re a ringmaster, I see. You could teach him to dance in your circus,” the fat man said.

  “NO! He must dance. I won’t pay for a donkey that doesn’t dance.”

  Suddenly Pinocchio stepped into the light. “He dances,” he said. “Like a prima ballerina. I’ve seen him myself.”

  The fat man and the Ringmaster were confused. “You must follow the actual events.”

  “This is my story,” Pinocchio said. “Take the donkey to your circus. I will accompany you.”

  “Does the Editor know about this?” another man in the crowd asked.

  Pinocchio removed the magic wand from his pants pocket. He flicked it with his wrist and a blue flame ignited the air. “The Editor knows what I’ve told him,” he said. The men were taken aback by the magic. “Now, if you have sufficiently eaten up the oxygen in this tent with your stupid questions, can we get on with it?”

  The fat man nodded. “Take him with you, Ringmaster.”

  The crowd stood all at once and in the excitement Sabrina lost sight of the little troublemaker. One moment he was standing in the center of everything and the next he was gone.

  “Find him!” Sabrina
shouted to the characters, and they all raced out of the tent. Without the magic yarn ball they had to ask everyone they came across for help. They went from building to building asking children if they had seen Pinocchio, but all the children were caught up in their games or were intentionally rude. Most of them stuck their tongues out at Sabrina or tried to pelt her with crab apples.

  “Little kids are jerks,” Sabrina said.

  “Um, hello?” Daphne said with mock offense.

  “Except you,” Sabrina said. “He’s gone. What do we do?”

  “In the story, he is sold to the circus. The Blue Fairy shows up at one of the shows,” Daphne said. “It’s his chance to get her to fix the spell that turned him into a real boy.”

  “How are we going to find a traveling circus?” Guinevere complained.

  “I don’t know exactly, but the first step is getting out of this town,” Daphne said. “If we stick around, we’re all going to be eating hay and swatting at flies with our tails.”

  “She’s right,” Sabrina said. “He’s not here anymore anyway. It’s better to leave while we can.”

  The group walked through the town gate and spotted a crude sign outside that read TOYS ARE GRATE! NO MORE SKOOLS! DOWN WITH RITT MATTICK!

  “Hey, where you going?” a girl missing a front tooth said as the group departed the town. “It’s dangerous to go into the parts of the story that aren’t written. The margins are full of ghosties.”

  “We’re running away to join the circus,” Sabrina said. She walked on, leaving behind the troubling little town and its doomed population. Soon it was just a speck of dust on the horizon.

  They walked along the road for what seemed the better part of a day. By the time they decided to make a camp for the night, Sabrina was sure she would collapse from exhaustion, pain, and hunger. She realized she hadn’t eaten all day.

  King Arthur took his men into the woods, promising to find some game for dinner. The White Rabbit insisted they not hunt any of his brothers or sisters, and the dodo demanded that whatever they brought back not be an endangered species. Meanwhile, the rest of the Wonderland refugees trotted off in search of water and fruit. Daphne and Puck collected some firewood and stones to build a campfire.

  Sabrina wanted to help, but she felt beaten and ill. Her hip was throbbing and her head felt like a demolition site. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the pain, and she must have fallen asleep, because when she opened them again she found a wild boar roasting above a crackling fire. The sun had vanished and the stars were like little pinpricks on a black canvas. Plus her hunger had turned ravenous. When the boar was ready, she ate like a starving coyote and drank more than her share of the sweet water the Cheshire Cat had brought back to the camp via the knights’ helmets. With her belly full and her thirst quenched, she was surprised to find that she didn’t feel that much better. In fact, she was still terribly exhausted. She hobbled over to a patch of softer ground and called her sister to her side.

  “I need to rest,” she said apologetically. “You’re in charge. Don’t let them talk you into moving on. Don’t let them bully you either. If you have to get Puck to turn into a dragon or something to threaten them—do it.”

  Sabrina wouldn’t remember if Daphne agreed or not. A moment later, she fell into a sleep that was deep, dark, and dreamless.

  Sometime in the night she awoke with a pain in her side; a terrible blow rocked her body. She scampered backward, only to find that she was the only one in her group who was awake. The others had settled in for the night and the campfire was now a fading orange glow of embers. She would have thought the blow had been a dream except for the sharp pain in her ribs. She pulled up her shirt and found a growing purple bruise. Something had struck her. She was not imagining it.

  She wondered if something had fallen from the tree above and hit her, but there was nothing. Perhaps some wild animal had come along and tried to take a bite, then darted off when she woke. Whatever the case, she knew that sleeping was now out of the question.

  She saw something move in the woods to her left, and then it appeared on the right. It was just a flash and could have easily been a trick of the light, but then there was something standing over her. It wasn’t so much a person as it was the faint notion of the form of a person—mostly invisible but swirling with dust and dirt like a tiny hurricane trapped in a human-shaped shell.

  “What are you?” Sabrina asked.

  “Free me,” it croaked. Then whatever it was vanished.

  The morning came and the ragtag group filled their bellies with some wild grapes and a few unidentifiable fish the cat caught in the stream. They cooked them over a fresh fire, and then they picked up their search for Pinocchio.

  “You’ve been quiet all morning,” Daphne told Sabrina.

  Sabrina didn’t want to frighten her sister with thoughts of ghosts. They had plenty of things to worry about as it was. “I just want to find Pinocchio as soon as we can.”

  After nearly another whole day of walking, they came across a little town. It would have been nothing more than a place to pass through if not for the huge sign tacked to a tree.

  Puck stopped an old man who was hobbling down the road, powered only by his cane and stubbornness. The old man told him the theater was at the other end of the town but not before he gave him a good swat with his cane. He apparently objected to Puck calling him “gramps.”

  They dashed to the theater box office, but with no money they were forced to barter. Eventually, after much begging, Sabrina convinced King Arthur to part with his crown, insisting that when they got to the real world he would no longer be royalty anyway. The crown got them all front-row seats as well as a few nickels to spend at the local grocer. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough money in the world to shut the king up about the indignity suffered. He claimed he felt naked without it and kept worrying about having “crown head.”

  Eventually the doors to the theater opened and the crowd entered the venue. Everyone found their seats and waited for the show to begin. Meanwhile, Sabrina, Puck, and Daphne searched the crowd for signs of Pinocchio or the Blue Fairy.

  “You’re sure the Blue Fairy shows up in this part of the story?” Sabrina asked her sister.

  Daphne nodded. “If he’s going to make his move, it will be tonight.”

  “I have a few ideas I’d like to run past you about how we plan to stop him,” Puck said. “First, I was thinking I could clobber him with a chair. It happens all the time on television and seems fairly effective.”

  “Let’s just try to grab him without smashing furniture over his head,” Sabrina said.

  Several horns played a happy tune and the audience applauded. The Ringmaster came out dressed in a long black jacket, white pants, and knee-high black boots. He bowed deeply. In the blazing theater lights he looked bewildered, almost frightened. He reminded Sabrina of Mikey Beiterman, a budding actor in her second-grade class. During her school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, he had forgotten what he was supposed to say. A teacher had attempted to whisper the line to him, but he was so embarrassed he burst into tears and ran backstage, refusing to return for the rest of the play. Unfortunately, Mikey was playing the part of the man-eating plant and was crucial to the next two acts. The Ringmaster had the same lost expression on his face. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid the act advertised tonight featuring Pinocchio the dancing donkey has been canceled. Instead, I offer you the amazing Russian Stallion Brigade.”

  Several white stallions trotted onstage led by two beautiful identical twins. They marched the stallions to one end of the stage, then the other.

  The audience murmured until a little boy stood up and cried, “That’s not how the story goes. Bring out Pinocchio!”

  The audience cheered their approval.

  “I can’t,” the Ringmaster said. “Pinocchio is changing the story. He has not become a donkey. He threatened me.”

  “Where is he?” Sabrina said, jumping to her feet.
r />   “There!” the man said, pointing at a seat in the upper deck. Sabrina craned her neck to see a woman with bright blue hair being led out of her seat by a young boy. The boy had a magic wand in his hand that glowed like fire.

  The crowd cried out in surprise.

  “He’s got the Blue Fairy!” Sabrina shouted to her friends and they all rushed out of the tent and into the street. There they found Pinocchio glowering at the Blue Fairy.

  “Stay out of this,” Pinocchio said as the group approached.

  “We’re not going to let you do this, puppet boy,” Daphne said.

  “I wasn’t a puppet! I was a marionette!”

  “Pinocchio! What on earth has gotten into you? I’m like your mother in this story,” the Blue Fairy said.

  “My mother? I suffered greatly and you didn’t lift a finger to help. I was turned into a donkey. I spent a week in the belly of a shark! Two murderers tried to hang me from a tree outside your house. A man tried to drown me. What did you do, O mother dear? Nothing. You’re the most powerful Everafter of them all and you did nothing!”

  “I understand your anger,” the fairy said, “but it is misdirected. I am a storybook portrait of the Blue Fairy. The real Blue Fairy is somewhere in the real world. Whatever your intentions are with me they will not satisfy your need for revenge. I have no idea why my real-life counterpart chose to behave the way she did. But there must be a reason. Perhaps you should go to her for answers.”

  “No! She will feed me the same mumbo jumbo she always has and will continue to deny me. The Book of Everafter is my only hope. Its power is at my disposal, as are you!” Pinocchio said. “I want to be a man.”

  Puck stepped forward and Pinocchio turned his wand on him. “You stay back, you filthy street urchin. I have suffered long enough. I will have my wish.”

  Puck looked back at the group of people with him. “There’s a lot of us and only one of you.”

  “I’ll shoot you with this. I swear,” he said, his hand trembling with nerves. “I went easy on you before, fairy.”