The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell Read online

  “Do you hear that?” Conner asked Alex. “It sounds like singing.”

  They both turned to face the manor as a set of window shutters were pushed open. The twins wouldn’t have believed it if they hadn’t been so close, but standing behind the open window was a golden woman.

  She happily sang a soprano ballad as loudly as she could. A set of strings played along with her, but the twins couldn’t see where the music was coming from.

  “Oh, the day is here, and so am I,

  To wistfully dream of birds that fly.

  If I had legs, I’d see the world and travel away,

  But I’m only a harp, and this window is where I shall stay.”

  She turned to face the twins as she sang the final note, and they noticed a set of strings connected to her back. The strings played magically along to her voice. She was a magic harp.

  “Hello, children! I didn’t see you there!” the harp said.

  Alex jumped up and down. “Are you the magical harp?” she asked. “The one that Jack saved from the giant?”

  “The one and only!” the harp said, and struck a dramatic pose. “And thank God he did, because giants have terrible taste in music! You wouldn’t believe the numbers he used to force me to perform for him! All the lyrics were about eating sheep and stepping on villagers! Would you like me to sing for you?”

  “No, thanks,” Conner said.

  The harp took offense to this.

  “I remember that day like it was yesterday!” the harp said. “There I was, minding my own business, being a slave for the giant, when suddenly this skinny peasant boy walks by, and I was like, ‘Hey there! Why don’t you rescue me? I could use some rescuing!’ The next thing I know, we’re zooming down a beanstalk, being chased by the giant! Jack chopped down the beanstalk and the giant fell to his death! Splat! Right on the Bo Peep farms! It was quite a day!”

  “How terrifying!” Alex said.

  “It was the most excitement I had had in a hundred years! Everything worked out just wonderfully, though. Jack and his mother became rich, I wasn’t a slave anymore, and the Bo Peep family said the giant was the best fertilizer their farms had ever used!”

  “That’s so wrong,” Conner said to himself.

  “What are you two doing here?” the harp asked them with a big smile.

  Alex and Conner looked at each other, both afraid to answer.

  “We’re just visiting,” Alex said. “We’ve never been to the Red Riding Hood Kingdom before.”

  “We were in town and saw the beanstalk and wanted to see it up close,” Conner said.

  “Then, welcome!” the harp said. “Don’t you just love it here? I know I do! I’ve been around the world, and I’ve never felt more comfortable! It’s so safe here! The people are all friendly farmers, and the best part is, no wolves are allowed! Are you two thinking of moving? Wouldn’t that be nice? I think you should move here and visit me every day!”

  The harp was very chatty, and the twins could tell she was desperate for attention. Spending every day cooped in a house couldn’t be easy.

  “We’re actually on our way home,” Conner said. “We just have to make a stop at Red Riding Hood’s castle, and then we’ll be on our way. We’ve never been before—”

  “You should have Jack take you!” the harp said. “He’s headed there this afternoon to meet with Queen Red Riding Hood.”

  “He is?” Alex asked.

  “Oh, yes,” the harp said. “He visits her at the end of every week and brings her a handmade basket every time.”

  The harp looked side to side to make sure no one else was listening, but there was no one in sight.

  “Now, you didn’t hear this from me,” the harp said excitedly, with gossip in her eyes. “Queen Red Riding Hood calls him to the castle every week and proposes to him! Poor thing has been in love with him since they were kids!”

  “Really?” Alex said. “Does that mean they’re getting married?”

  “Oh, heavens no,” the harp said. “Jack can’t stand her! He turns her down every time.”

  “Why would he do that? Doesn’t he want to be king?” Conner asked.

  “His heart belongs to someone else,” the harp said sadly, and the strings on her back played a sad chord.

  “Who does he love?” Alex asked.

  “Let me guess,” Conner said. “Little Miss Muffet?”

  “Of course not,” the harp said. “Miss Muffet married Georgie Porgie but, as everyone knows, he has had countless affairs, but that’s another story—”

  “Back to Jack,” Alex said.

  “Oh, right. Well, I’m not sure who he’s in love with. I’ve never seen her,” the harp said. “All I know is, he’s never been the same since she moved away.”

  Alex and Conner looked at each other with the same questioning expression. Who could it be? Was that the reason he had seemed so gloomy?

  The door of the shack opened, and Jack emerged with a basket made from the pieces of wood he had just chopped.

  “Hey, Jack, I have a wonderful idea!” the harp called out. “Why don’t you take these two with you to the castle? They’ve never been inside it before!”

  Jack seemed hesitant.

  “Please, Mr. Jack!” Alex pleaded. “We won’t be any trouble!”

  “Come on, Jack! Make their day!” the harp pleaded.

  “All right,” Jack said.

  Jack turned and began traveling toward the town. The twins ran after him.

  “Thanks so much,” Alex called back to the harp.

  “You’re welcome!” the harp said. “Come back and visit me… please!”

  Jack was a very fast walker. His legs were much longer than the twins’, so they found it difficult to keep up with him.

  “It’s very kind of you to let us tag along,” Alex said to Jack, but he never looked up from the ground.

  “You’re not much of a talker, are you?” Conner said.

  “I don’t have much to say,” Jack said.

  Conner nodded at him; he understood completely. As they neared the town, Alex pulled Conner aside.

  “How lucky is this?” she said. “If we get inside the castle and get ahold of the basket, we’ll be out of this kingdom in no time!”

  They traveled into the town and reached the castle. There was a set of large, wooden doors at the castle’s entrance. Jack knocked on the door. A moment later, a small window in the middle of the door opened and a set of eyes appeared.

  “Who goes there?” said a voice on the other side of the doors.

  “It’s Jack,” Jack said. “Again.”

  “Who is that behind you?” the voice demanded, and the eyes looked over Jack’s shoulder to Alex and Conner. They awkwardly waved.

  “Oh… what are your names again?” Jack asked the twins.

  “Alex and Conner,” Alex told him, and gave him a thumbs-up.

  “These are my friends, Alex and Conner. They’re accompanying me to the castle today,” Jack said.

  The doors opened, and the twins followed Jack into the castle.

  It felt like a condensed version of Cinderella’s palace. The halls weren’t quite as long, and the furniture wasn’t quite as nice. There were many portraits hung on the walls, but they all were of Queen Red Riding Hood at various ages in different poses, each one more grand than the last.

  The twins waited with Jack in a hall outside another set of doors. Jack knocked on the doors and immediately took a seat on a bench outside them.

  “This always takes a moment,” Jack said.

  A series of footsteps and sounds of rushing about came from the other side of the doors.

  “Wait, don’t open the door. I’m not ready yet!” someone whispered. “Hand me that cape! No, not that one, the other one, with the hood! Hurry!”

  Jack began to whistle as he waited.

  “How do I look? What about my dress, does it seem all right to you?” the whispers continued. “All right, I’m ready. Let him in! Quickly!”
<
br />   Jack stood up just as the doors were opened by a pink-faced and out-of-breath handmaiden. She escorted Jack inside, and the twins followed.

  They entered a long room with tall windows on both sides. The walls were covered in more portraits of the queen. Looking up from the floor was a giant wolf head with red eyes and a set of sharp teeth. It looked just like one of the wolves the twins had seen in the Dwarf Forests, and it alarmed them at first, before they discovered it was just a wolf-skin rug spread out on the floor. The twins knew without asking that the rug must have been the Big Bad Wolf himself at one point.

  At the very end of the room, perched elegantly—almost too elegantly—on a large throne was Queen Red Riding Hood.

  “Hello, Jack!” Red Riding Hood said.

  Red Riding Hood was a very pretty young woman around the same age as Jack. She had bright blue eyes and blonde hair that was done up glamorously behind her crown. She wore a long, red gown with a matching hooded cape and a pink corset. She wore a necklace with a massive diamond, her shoulders were completely bare, and she wore a pair of long gloves with a dozen sparkly rings on her fingers.

  She was showing too much skin, wearing too much makeup, and was dressed too well for the middle of the day.

  “Hello, Red,” Jack said.

  “What a surprise! I wasn’t even expecting you!” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” Jack said.

  “And I see you brought… guests?” Red asked. She was not happy to see that she and Jack were not alone.

  “Yes, this is Alex and Conner,” Jack said.

  “Hello!” Alex said bashfully.

  “What’s up, Red?” Conner said, and was then elbowed by his sister.

  “Helloooo,” Red said behind a clenched and very fake smile. “Welcome to my castle. Please have a seat.”

  Red clapped her hands, and two servants placed a large, cushy chair right next to her throne for Jack to sit on. They brought Alex and Conner each a small stool to sit on some distance away from Red and Jack.

  Jack moved the chair back away from the throne a couple feet before sitting on it. He handed Red the basket he had made for her.

  “Is this for me?” Red asked him. “Oh, how thoughtful of you! You are just too sweet for words! I’ll cherish it!”

  “You always do,” Jack said.

  “So, tell me, what’s new with you?” Red asked Jack. She was leaning toward him as far as she possibly could without falling off of her throne.

  “Nothing much,” Jack said. “Same old, same old.” His body language made it obvious that he was ready to leave from the minute he’d sat down. “How’s the kingdom?”

  “Oh, I never bother myself with all that talk of economy and security and peasant needs and blah blah blah,” Red said. “My granny takes care of all that for me. She’s much better at it than I would be, anyway.”

  Red got tired of holding the basket. She snapped her fingers, and her handmaiden collected the basket from her.

  “Put it with the others,” Red instructed.

  The handmaiden collected it from her and headed out of the room. The twins figured this was their chance.

  “May we see the others?” Alex asked.

  “The others?” Red asked.

  “The other baskets,” Alex said. Red was looking at her peculiarly. “My brother loves baskets.”

  Conner nodded, going along with it.

  “I do! They’re my most favorite thing ever!” Conner said. “You know what they say, life is better with baskets!”

  Red was staring at them as if they were the strangest people she had ever met in her life.

  “If you wish,” she said, and shooed them off.

  Alex and Conner jumped up and followed the handmaiden out of the room and down a hall.

  “Where does Queen Red Riding Hood keep all of her baskets?” Alex asked the handmaiden, and then winked at Conner. She wasn’t very good at playing dumb.

  “She has a chamber dedicated entirely to baskets,” the handmaiden said.

  “So, she has a basket room?” Conner asked.

  “Yes, and if you received as many as she did a year, you would, too,” the handmaiden said.

  “How many are we talking about?” Conner asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  The handmaiden opened a door, and the three of them walked inside. The room was twice the size of the room they had just been in and was filled from floor to ceiling with thousands and thousands of baskets.

  Some were on shelves, some were stacked neatly, and others were just piled around the room. The handmaiden tossed the basket from Jack in a pile on one side of the room.

  “The queen gets them for birthdays, holidays, and any special occasion,” the handmaiden said. “Some are from villagers, some from friends, others are from the monarchs of neighboring kingdoms.”

  Alex and Conner stared around the room with their mouths open. How would they ever find the basket they were looking for in all of this?

  “Do you mind if we have a look around?” Alex managed to say through her shock.

  “I suppose,” the handmaiden said. She looked at the twins curiously and then left them inside the basket room.

  The twins could barely breathe. They both felt as if a dumbbell had suddenly been tied to their chests.

  “I have never felt so overwhelmed in my life!” Conner declared. “This is like trying to do the whole summer break packet of homework the day before school starts again, but a thousand times worse. How are we going to look through all of these?”

  “It’s not that bad….” Alex tried convincing him, but she didn’t even convince herself. “We just need to start. You take one side, and I’ll take the other. Let’s do this.”

  They split and rapidly began looking through the piles and piles of baskets for the one with the bark rim. They knew they didn’t have much time and grew more anxious after each second.

  They had no idea there could be so many shapes and sizes and designs for baskets. Like snowflakes, each one was different from the next.

  Alex was paranoid that she had missed it. Conner kept getting splinters and kept shouting “Ah!” every time it happened.

  They had been there for almost an hour and still hadn’t covered even a fourth of the room. They were making a huge mess. The room was twice as disorganized now as it had been when they’d entered it. Even Alex wasn’t hesitating, throwing around baskets that she had already examined.

  “This is impossible!” Conner yelled, kicking a pile of baskets.

  Just as he kicked the pile, the door swung open and the handmaiden returned. Alex and Conner froze. She was appalled by the chaos they had caused.

  “I don’t know what on earth you’re doing, but I think it’s time for you two to leave,” she said.

  The handmaiden escorted them back to the throne room. This time, she watched them like a hawk as they sat on their stools.

  Queen Red Riding Hood was literally hanging off her throne and grabbing hold of Jack’s chair as she talked to him. The twins had never seen Jack look so bored and lifeless. Neither of them had noticed the twins return.

  “You know, Jack,” Red said, circling his forearm with her finger. “The Red Riding Hood Kingdom isn’t much of a kingdom without a king.…”

  “Perhaps you should change the name to the Red Riding Hood Queendom,” Jack said.

  Red laughed much harder than she should have. “You’re so funny! But that’s not what I meant. What I’m trying to tell you, Jack, is that I’ve never been more ready to get married. If someone asked me for my hand in marriage today, I would say yes! Do you know anyone who might be interested in marrying me? In being king? Anyone?”

  A white dove suddenly flew by one of the windows outside and sat on the window ledge. As soon as Jack saw it, his entire face lit up. His eyes grew wide, and he smiled; for once, he looked happy.

  He turned to Red. Clearly she wasn’t used to seeing him like this, either. The twins could practically see her h
eart beating out of her chest as excitement filled her body. Was he going to propose? Was this the moment she had been waiting for for so long?

  “Red,” Jack said.

  “Yes, Jack?” Red said.

  “I have to go,” Jack said, jumping up and heading out of the throne room. Red almost fell off of her throne.

  “Go?” she said. “Go where?”

  “Home,” Jack called out, not even looking back at her. “I’ll see you next week.”

  Red crossed her arms and pouted. He was the only thing preventing her from having everything.

  The twins felt it was best to leave with Jack, so they followed him out of the castle.

  “It was wonderful meeting you, Alex, Conner,” Jack said, and shook their hands.

  “Likewise,” Alex said. “Thanks again for taking us to the castle.”

  “My pleasure! I hope to run into you someday soon,” Jack said, and then headed in the direction of his home with a new bounce in his step.

  It was very strange. Jack was now acting like the person Alex had always thought he would be.

  “What is that guy’s deal? How does someone go from a zombie to a camp counselor in a matter of seconds?” Conner said.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said, looking after him as he walked away. “He’s a very odd man.”

  “Looks like we’ll be sneaking into the castle after all,” Conner said, and slumped to a seated position on the ground.

  “At least we know what to expect tonight, and we already went through a good portion of the baskets,” Alex said. “We just have to wait until midnight.”

  “And in the meantime, I could really use a nap,” Conner said.

  The twins traveled up the street and booked a room at the Shoe Inn. Their room had a perfect view of Red Riding Hood’s castle. It was somewhere near the shoe’s tongue, because a set of laces crossed through one of their walls. The room also had a working bathtub, and they both took turns using it, since they hadn’t been able to bathe in so long.

  “That was the best bath I think I’ll ever have,” Conner said.

  They both decided to rest for a little bit, and as soon as their bodies touched the bed, they both fell into a deep sleep. They slept for a few hours and woke up shortly before midnight.