The Everafter War Read online

  Everyone leaped into action, except Sabrina, who was frozen in shock.

  “Sabrina! Go!” Granny shouted.

  Sabrina snapped out of it, racing after Puck into the laundry room. She opened the dryer door and pulled out a fresh, clean sheet. Puck tore it apart with zeal.

  “I didn’t see that coming at all!” Puck said, excitedly.

  “You sound like you’re proud of the sheriff or something,” Sabrina grumbled.

  “Only professionally. As a villain, I can appreciate that he has stepped up his game,” the fairy boy replied. “Still, that getup he wears is ridiculous. A leather cape is way over the top.”

  “There’s no time for jokes, Puck,” she groaned as they raced back to Uncle Jake’s side. Goldilocks had returned with the hot water and Daphne with the iodine. Everyone else seemed to be in a heated argument, and—once again—her father was at the center.

  “This is exactly why we’re going back to New York City,” he snapped, as he pressed his hand firmly against his brother’s wound. Nottingham’s arrow was still protruding from Jake’s shoulder.

  “Henry, not now,” Veronica begged.

  “If the rest of you were smart, you’d come with us,” Henry said, ignoring his wife.

  “And let those maniacs out of the town?” Uncle Jake challenged through gritted teeth. “If we leave, the barrier falls, and they all go free. But I don’t want to argue right now. I just want this arrow out.”

  Goldilocks herded the children together. “All right, kids, I need your help in the kitchen.”

  Puck stubbornly stomped his foot. “No way! I want to see this. I’ve shot a few arrows at people in my day, but I’ve never seen any of them come out. This is the opportunity of a lifetime!”

  “Suit yourself,” Goldilocks said, and she hurried Sabrina, Daphne, Red, and Baby Bear into the kitchen. Once there, she nervously searched the cabinets and refrigerator.

  “What are you looking for?” Sabrina asked.

  “Cocoa,” the woman said. “Everything is better with some hot cocoa. Oh, these cabinets. How do you find anything in here?”

  Daphne pointed Goldilocks in the right direction. Sabrina pulled the milk from the fridge, and Goldilocks put it on the stove to heat.

  “Why are those mean people attacking us?” Red asked.

  “They don’t like us very much,” Sabrina replied.

  Baby Bear growled.

  “Junior wants to know why someone doesn’t just tell them where Charming and Mr. Canis have gone,” Goldilocks said.

  “Well, first of all, we don’t know,” Daphne explained. “And, second of all, even if we did, we wouldn’t betray them. They’re our friends.”

  Uncle Jake’s horrible cry came from the living room. Daphne’s face went white.

  “I guess they got the arrow out,” Sabrina said with a grimace.

  “He’ll be fine, kids,” Goldilocks assured them as she rearranged the silverware in the drawers.

  Puck rushed into the kitchen looking exhilarated, as if he had just gotten off a roller coaster. “That was awesome!” he crowed. “I think the arrow going in is more fun to watch, but that was still pretty cool.”

  “You’re a troubling little boy,” Goldilocks said to him.

  He smiled so wide it was a wonder his face didn’t permanently stretch. “Thanks. That’s very nice of you to say.”

  Henry and Granny Relda hurried into the kitchen.

  “We need to get Jake to a hospital,” Henry said. “That’s an open wound. He’s going to need stitches and antibiotics. It could get infected if it’s not cared for properly.”

  Granny Relda shook her head. “The hospital is deserted. All the doctors were human, and Mayor Heart ran them out of town.”

  “There has to be someone here with some medical training. Can Doctor Dolittle help?” Henry said, taking a glass from the cupboard.

  “I think he’s part of the Scarlet Hand,” Granny said.

  Henry turned the faucet on, but only a couple of brown drops trickled out. “They’ve turned off the pipes.”

  Suddenly, the lights went out.

  “And the lights,” Sabrina added.

  “So we can’t watch the television? This is war!” Puck cried. “I’m going upstairs to get my sword. You don’t mess with the television!”

  “I don’t think fighting our way out is the answer, Puck,” Granny said.

  “Maybe not the answer but certainly an answer,” Puck grumbled.

  “Let’s go ask the man with all the answers,” Granny said. She led everyone back through the living room. Jake’s shoulder was wrapped in bandages, and he was unconscious.

  “He fainted from the pain,” Veronica explained.

  Henry heaved his brother onto Poppa Bear’s back, and the group marched up the stairs to Mirror’s room.

  “WHO DARES . . . oh, it’s you,” Mirror said, and the flames vanished. “This place is starting to get as busy as Grand Central Station, Relda.”

  “This isn’t even half of the guests,” Granny Relda said. “The Scarlet Hand has surrounded the house.”

  “And Jake!” Mirror cried, noticing his state. “He’s been injured!”

  “Quite seriously, I’m afraid. We need to get him to a doctor, right away,” Henry said. “We need the slippers.”

  “Which slippers are you referring to, Hank?”

  “Dorothy’s slippers,” Henry said, impatiently. “We’ll use them to teleport out of the house.”

  “Sorry, Hankster,” Mirror said. “I lent them to your daughters awhile back, and one of them was lost.”

  “You lost Dorothy’s slippers?” Henry cried, glaring at the girls.

  “A giant was chasing us,” Sabrina said defensively.

  “A really big giant,” Daphne added.

  “Fine. We’ll take the Gnome King’s belt, instead,” Henry said, turning his attention back to Mirror. “It does the same thing.”

  Mirror shook his head. “The girls ran down the batteries. If you have forty-six size Ds, then we’re back in business.”

  Henry sighed. “For once, I’m turning to magic to solve a problem, and there’s nothing available?! What have we got that will zap us out of this house?”

  “We’re a little short on zapping,” Granny Relda explained. “But, there is still a way out of the house.”

  “There is?” Sabrina and Daphne asked.

  Granny produced her set of keys. “Yes. There’s a back door in the Room of Reflections.”

  “The what?” Red asked.

  “You’ll see,” the old woman said.

  Granny stepped through the mirror and vanished. Henry and Veronica followed, then Red, Daphne, Sabrina, and Puck. Elvis bounded through next. The three bears growled nervously, but Goldilocks huffed something back that seemed to calm them down. A moment later, they followed, Poppa Bear carrying Uncle Jake through to the other side.

  The vastness of the Hall of Wonders never ceased to amaze Sabrina. Marble columns taller and thicker than redwood trees held the ceiling aloft. The hallway itself seemed to go on forever. Both sides held hundreds of doors made from a limitless variety of materials: wood, steel, stone, crystal. There was one door made from something Granny called protoplasm. All of the doors were labeled with brass plaques that explained the contents of their rooms.

  “How come we’ve never heard of this Room of Reflections?” Daphne asked her grandmother.

  “We don’t use it very often, and it’s not exactly within walking distance,” the old woman replied. “It’s all the way at the other end of the hall.”

  This piqued Sabrina’s curiosity. She often wondered what was at the end of the Hall of Wonders.

  Granny handed Mirror her set of keys. “We’re going to need the trolley.”

  “Costume change!” Mirror cried, then stepped through a set of double doors to his immediate right. A moment later, Sabrina heard a bell ring, and then an old-fashioned trolley car plowed through the doors and stopped in front of th
e group. Mirror sat in the driver’s seat, wearing a short green jacket, a black cap, and a money changer attached to his belt. He rang a polished brass bell and shouted, “All aboard!”

  The girls climbed up while Henry helped Uncle Jake and the others get settled. Once everyone was aboard, Mirror rang the bell one final time and shouted, “Next stop, the Room of Reflections!” He shifted a lever, and the trolley lurched forward, rapidly gaining speed.

  “I’ve always wanted to know what was at the end of the hall,” Daphne said.

  “Me too,” Henry admitted.

  “You’ve never seen it?” Sabrina asked, surprised.

  “Jake and I tried to walk it once, back before we got the trolley. We brought a tent and everything, but we forgot to pack food. After a day of walking we had to turn around and go back.”

  Mirror turned in his seat. “Folks, I’m going to put the pedal to the metal, as they say. So keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and please, hold on tight.”

  Everything around Sabrina turned into a blur of color and light as the trolley sped to an impossible pace. The engine screamed, as did a few of the passengers. It was terrifying. Puck, however, seemed to be having the time of his life.

  “Faster!” he begged. “It’s not fun until someone wets their pants!”

  Just a minute later, the trolley slowed, and the world came back into focus. Sabrina stepped off feeling light-headed and a little sick. She held on to the side of the trolley for balance. It seemed that everyone else in the group felt just as woozy, except for Puck, who begged Mirror for another ride. Once Sabrina felt better, she peered around the unfamiliar length of the Hall of Wonders.

  The doors at this end were even more bizarre than the ones she already knew. One was made of a whirling blue gas with ancient skeletons suspended in it. Another was like the mouth of a huge monster, with sharp teeth and a horrible forked tongue. Another door was constructed from the gigantic bones of some prehistoric animal. There was also a more ordinary wooden door, with two stones recessed in the wood. Each of the stones had a handprint engraved in it, but the brass plaque for this door was not labeled.

  “That’s weird,” Sabrina muttered to herself.

  To the left was a massive wall, much like the one at their end of the hall. This one, however, didn’t have a magical portal, only a single door made from rough stone. Intricate symbols that looked like hieroglyphics were chiseled into its surface. Sabrina had no idea what any of it meant, but the biggest of the symbols gave her a creepy feeling. It was a large sculpted eye. It moved like a real eye and studied each person in turn.

  “Creepy!” Daphne squirmed as she watched its gaze move up and down the length of her body.

  The most interesting difference between this door and all of the others was that it didn’t have a lock. All of the doors in the Hall of Wonders were locked tight except for this one, which opened easily when Mirror pushed it. Inside, the group found a circular room draped in black curtains. Lining the walls were twenty-five full-length mirrors, each an equal distance apart. Sabrina suddenly understood why Granny called it the Room of Reflections.

  “Are these magic mirrors?” Veronica asked, running her hand along one’s surface. The tips of her fingers disappeared into the glass, and the image rippled like the surface of a pond.

  “Not exactly,” Mirror explained. “They’re actually the back doors to every magic mirror the Wicked Queen created.”

  “Are you saying that we can step through these and come out into another Hall of Wonders?” Goldilocks asked.

  Mirror looked slightly offended. “My dear, there is only one Hall of Wonders and only one me. Each of the mirrors my mother created is unique, and each mirror comes equipped with its own unique guardian.”

  “Like Harry from the Hotel of Wonders,” Daphne said.

  “Harry?” her father asked.

  “Mr. Charming has a magic mirror,” Daphne explained. “It has a hotel inside it, run by Harry. He’s really nice.”

  “There will be plenty of time to talk about the mirrors once Jake is in good hands,” Granny Relda said. “For now, we’re going to step through one of them and use it to go to the real world, hopefully, far away from the mob outside.”

  “An excellent idea,” Mirror said, and then puffed up his chest with pride. “My mother designed me to be the hub, a gateway to the other mirrors, making me all the more unique.”

  “Gravy!” Daphne cried as she rushed to the closest mirror. “Let’s use this one!”

  Before she could jump into the reflection, Granny Relda snatched her arm and yanked her back. “Liebling, no!” She pointed to a sign hanging at the bottom of the mirror that read OUT OF SERVICE. “You can’t just jump into these things. Some of them don’t work correctly.”

  “She’s right,” Mirror said, pointing to a few others with the same sign. “Thirteen of the mirrors have, unfortunately, been broken beyond repair. Two more are buried beneath the earth, and who knows what’s crawled into them. Another is filled with a poisonous gas, and yet another is, from what I can tell, at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Two others have been shattered and their guardians destroyed. If you were to step into one of them, you would be cut to ribbons. In my free time I’ve been removing the shards from the frames.”

  He gestured to a pile of broken glass on the floor.

  Sabrina did the math in her head. “That leaves six magic mirrors that are still working.”

  “Do you think one of these will lead us to a doctor?” Henry asked impatiently.

  “If we pick the right one,” Granny said as she turned to Sabrina and Daphne. “That’s where you two come in.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. I think it would be unwise to just step into any one of these mirrors, especially since we don’t know what kind of guardian might be inside or where they might lead. You two, however, have been inside one and know the guardian quite well. You say his name is Harry? Do you think you can find him?”

  “Sure,” Daphne said.

  The girls went from one portal to the next, skipping the broken ones. One reflected nothing back at them, but all of the others showed something entirely unique. One revealed a medieval torture chamber. Another mirror looked into an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor, and yet another revealed a huge warehouse filled with thousands of crates and boxes. In one, Sabrina saw a tacky nightclub with a disco ball and strobe lights.

  “Here it is,” Daphne cried from across the room.

  Sabrina rushed over and peered into the mirror to find a breathtaking sunset. Swaying palm trees and a sandy beach invited them to enter.

  “Not so fast, girls,” Henry said, stepping toward the mirror. “I’ll go first.”

  “Dad, it’s perfectly safe,” Daphne said.

  He ignored her. It was the second time he had totally dismissed her opinion, and Sabrina noticed her sister's frustration building. Sabrina had learned the hard way to take Daphne seriously. It looked like her father had some lessons of his own to learn.

  Henry took a tentative step into the mirror, dipping his head inside to take a look around. A moment later he reappeared. “Coast is clear, folks. Let’s hurry.” He waved them through.

  Sabrina found herself once again standing at the front desk of an incredibly swanky hotel. The floor was polished marble with beautiful Persian rugs scattered about. The walls were adorned with tasteful contemporary masterpieces. Everything sparkled under the grand crystal chandelier, and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a tropical paradise pretty enough for a postcard.

  Harry appeared from behind the front desk. He was a short Asian man wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a stack of leis in his arms. He placed one around everybody’s neck as he welcomed them enthusiastically. When he got to the bears, he discovered he wasn’t tall enough to reach over their heads, so he simply placed a lei into each of their paws. Poppa Bear promptly ate his.

  “Aloha!” Harry cried. “Sabrina! Daphne! Welcome back to the Hotel of
Wonders. Are you here on business or pleasure?”

  “Neither,” Sabrina replied. “In fact, we’re just passing through. We’ve got an emergency on our hands.”

  “From what I understand, you and your family find yourselves in emergencies quite frequently,” Harry said with a knowing grin. “How can I help?”

  “We want to use your portal to get to the real world,” Henry said impatiently.

  “Oh, so you slipped in the back way. This way to the portal,” Harry announced, escorting everyone through the hotel lobby. “The boss has been here a lot lately. He’s pretty busy with his camp. I’m not sure why he doesn’t open some rooms to the refugees. We have plenty of space.”

  “Knowing him, he probably doesn’t want the riffraff ruining the sheets,” Sabrina commented.

  “What does riffraff mean?” Daphne asked.

  Sabrina automatically opened her mouth to explain but then remembered the girl’s reaction the last time she’d tried to define a word. She decided to let someone else play dictionary for a change.

  “Riffraff is a mean word rich people use to describe poor people,” Veronica said.

  “Harry, did you say Charming is working with refugees?” Goldilocks asked.

  “Yes, there were quite a number of citizens in Ferryport Landing who refused to join the Scarlet Hand. Heart and the others ran them from their homes, so the boss has offered them sanctuary in his camp. I hear there’s a fairly large population.”

  “Wait a minute!” Henry cried. “Your portal leads us to his camp? Mom, that won’t work. We need to go back and pick a different mirror.”

  “Heavens, why?” the old woman asked.

  “Have you forgotten? He threatened to destroy our family! He said he was going to bulldoze our house!”

  “Billy has changed since you knew him,” Granny said as she wiped Uncle Jake’s brow with a damp cloth. “Now he’s the closest thing we have to an ally in the Everafter community. If Mr. Canis has learned to trust him, so can you.”