The Color of Fear (14 page)

“What is this?” she asked.

“A scepter.”

“What’s it for?”

“Behead everyone in the kingdom, and there’ll be no subjects to rule, no kingdom to rule over. Instead, use the scepter to
control
their minds and, in turn, the world.”

This Enchanter was dangerous and too clever. The queen couldn’t wait to be rid of his foul presence.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“There is a realm
beyond
this realm. A mysterious and primordial place known as
the Red Spectrum
.”

“Sounds forbidding—why tell me of it?”

“It is the source and font of all fear.”

“Where is this ghastly place?”

“That knowledge was revealed to me on the promise that I take it to the grave, Your Royal Highness.”

“Then I shall impale your head on a spike, and you may keep your promise.”

The Enchanter grabbed hold of her hand. He pressed it against his jugular vein. “If it be your wish.”

She hissed. Then she snapped her hand away from his scrawny throat. “I admire your conviction.”

I’ll take his head some other time
, she told herself
.

The queen took her seat on the throne. “Kneel.”

The Enchanter knelt.

“Tell me,” she said, “why should I concern myself with fear?”

“Fear is a potent weapon with which to rule.”

Her pinky finger tinkered with her earring as she swallowed his words. “Tell me more.”

“We do not choose fear. It comes to us freely.”

The queen grinned. “Like hunger?”

The Enchanter smiled, revealing crooked and rotting teeth. “Magnify fear and your rebellious subjects will fight to survive! They’ll turn on one another instead of turning on the throne.”

A glint appeared in the queen’s eye.

“You’re devilishly shrewd, Enchanter,” she said.

“Only in service to the throne, Your Grace.”

She wagged her finger in front of her shaded eyes. “As I said … shrewd. Now tell me how to accomplish this.”

“You control the multitude by manipulating the Red Spectrum and afflicting the kingdoms with unrelenting fear.”

“But how?”

He laid his cold, gaunt hand atop hers again suddenly.

He squeezed.

In turn, her hand squeezed.

Cold, hard electrum alloy pressed against her palm.

A buzzing tickled her fingers.

The scepter!

Back in the toylike
miniature village, the walls of the tiny barn shook with the thud of another tremendous impact inside. The doors swung open. Out stepped a dusty and very flushed Jack, wide-eyed and cautious—and still clad in his Arthurian Knight armor.

He was covered in mud and hay.

He stepped into the sunny town square and glanced around at the squalid village, grimacing at its dilapidated condition.

“Caitlin! Hello? Caitlin? Anybody?”

“I’d certainly call myself more than ‘anybody,’” came a man’s deep voice from below. “And by not being anybody, I’d say I was most certainly ‘somebody.’”

“Who said that?” asked Jack, looking around warily.

“It is I, Alfonzo Thadius Bertram the Second. Prince of Farmlandia, at your service.”

Jack looked down. In the tall weeds at his feet was a frog. He had a feathered cap in his hand and was bowing with a flourish. On his arm, he wore a fabric band embellished with a family crest. His skin was pale and his eyes darkly shaded.

Jack rubbed his eyes and looked again. “You’re a damn toad? How weird is this?”

“I’ve been called many things, amigo, but
toad
is not one of them. I am a frog. And if you do not wish for my help, so be it.”

Alfonzo began to hop away.

“No, please, Your Highness. I didn’t mean to be rude; I was just surprised, and I—”

Alfonzo hopped onto Jack’s shoulder with one mighty leap. “It would be an honor to be of assistance, as I am starved for noble action.”

“I need help rescuing a damsel.”

Alfonzo eyed Jack’s knightly attire. “You’re certainty dressed for that mission.”

“Can you assist?”

“Absolutely, amigo. My specialties lie in the art of love.”

“No love arts for now. I just need to find my friend. Any chance you’ve seen a girl named Caitlin around here, with a little sister tagging along?”

“Indeed I have, amigo. She left a while ago with some others. A curious bunch. I will tell you all about it on the way. It should be very easy for me to follow their tracks.” Alfonzo gestured in one direction with his arm. “Let the quest commence.” And with that, he hopped out of sight.

“Wait!” called Jack.

Alfonzo was back in a flash.

“I’ll never be able to keep up with you. You’re too fast.”

The frog sat for a moment, as if in thought. Then its amphibian eye winked. “Come,” the frog instructed as he skittered off.

Jack followed him past a run-down miniature schoolhouse and up some broken boards that served as steps into the town sheriff’s office. Floorboards creaked under his feet.

“Now, where is it?” said Alfonzo, hopping around.

A huge spider descended from the ceiling on a long, silky thread. It settled on a drawer handle on the sheriff’s desk. Alfonzo zapped the spider with his tongue. As he retracted it, the drawer also stuck to it and slid open. Inside sat a small blue bottle labeled “drink me.”

“Mmm, that’s it,” said Alfonzo, munching down the spider. “Have a sip.”

Jack took off his chain-mail cowl. He held the bottle up to a beam of light that was streaming through the cracks in the boarded-up window. He grinned from ear to ear, like a Cheshire Cat.

“Sweet! I know what this is.”

Sleeping Beauty’s enigmatic dream
had left everyone wordless. They felt even more pressure to find the caterpillar—fast.

Caitlin surveyed the northwestern horizon as the group marched onward. A flat expanse of brown, parched grass stretched for miles under the blisteringly hot and hazy sky.

The flavorful hot-sauce aroma from the spill on Natalie’s costume had intensified with the warming sun. Licking her lips and twitching her nose, Cinderella sidled up to her.

“You’re smelling sweet and delectable, young chili pepper. We’d better find something to dine on quick. Not sure I can control myself much longer.” Cindy poked her nose close to Natalie’s neck.

Natalie lifted her hand. “Keep your distance, glutton.”

Sleeping Beauty shook her head and sighed. “I’m sorry to say that I’m starting to feel the same way.” She smiled awkwardly at Caitlin. “And I’m a vegetarian.”

Rapunzel and Snow White exchanged troubled looks, as if to say they all were experiencing an increasing hunger.

“We should hurry it along, dontcha think?” Caitlin said.

Snow knelt on the ground, closed her eyes, and scooped up a handful of earth. She allowed a few grains of sand to spill out between her delicate fingers. Her brow furrowed in concentration.

“The entrance to Zeno’s Forest is about two hundred paces that way.” She pointed east. “Just past that bridge.”

Caitlin and Natalie squinted and turned their gazes eastward too. A small footbridge about as long as a school bus arched over a rushing stream. Wooden slats that formed its deck curved up and over the babbling water, and its railings were intricately constructed from woven vines and branches.

When they approached, they could see that the slats were thickly coated in a splatter of bird droppings.

“Please don’t tell me we have to cross doody bridge,” Natalie lamented.

“
Doody
isn’t the only reason we should avoid that bridge,” Cinderella noted.

As she spoke, ten meaty, black crows landed on the bridge railings. Their beady eyes burned like red embers as they perched on the vines and glared at the group.

Caitlin gasped. “Why don’t they attack us?”

“You sound disappointed,” Cindy said.

Rapunzel took hold of Caitlin’s hand. “Black crows are the queen’s eyes. A pack of living-dead wolves are her teeth. The crows signal the location of her prey, and the wolves hunt them down and retrieve them for the queen.”

Zombie wolves?

“We need to cross by fording the stream,” Rapunzel suggested. “Better hurry. We’re now on their radar.”

Snow pointed across the stream. “I can see the entrance to Zeno’s Forest over there.”

The girls quickly made their way to the bank of the stream.

“Hold hands,” Rapunzel said. “The water is only knee-high, but the current will knock you flat unless our fingers are locked tight.”

Slowly and steadily, the girls eased themselves into the rushing stream. Natalie’s eyes bulged as she immersed herself waist-deep into the frigid waters. “I-I c-c-can’t b-b-brea—”

“Can’t breathe?” Caitlin said, finishing her sister’s sentence.

Natalie nodded briskly while flapping her hands.

“M-m-my sympathy f-for your anxiety h-h-has g-grown i-immensely.”

Hand in hand, the girls waded across the cold river.

When they were safely on the opposite bank, Snow White unhooked her canteen. “How delightful. Fresh water. We should fill up our water pouches.” The princess ghouls opened their bota bags and immersed them under the water until they were bulging.

Suddenly a sharp, clamping sound followed by a crackling noise ending in a thud rang out from over by the tree line. Snow’s head whipped left to right, scanning the area.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered.

“Loud and clear,” Cindy said.

“What was it?”

“It sure wasn’t the drip of the water from my skirt landing on my feet.”

Snow tilted her head. “Sounded like the rustling of leaves.”

“Or maybe the bloody babbling stream of death,” Cinderella said with a smirk.

“No, shhh. I’m not kidding,” Snow said. “Stop for a second. Listen.”

Snow cupped her hand to her ear. “It’s more than just wind and twigs. Can’t you hear it?”

Caitlin and Natalie looked at each other in bewilderment.

“Sounds like moaning,” Snow said. “Like someone’s in pain. This way.”

Snow tore off toward a cluster of decrepit white oaks on the edge of the forbidding forest.

“Wait!” Rapunzel called after her. “You can’t just detour from the mission!”

Too late. Snow had already scurried down to the edge of the woods.

“Well,” said Rapunzel, putting her hands on her hips and spreading out her wet skirt to let it dry, “we can’t just leave her here alone in the big, bad woods.”

The girls detoured to follow the direction Snow had run. They came to a tangle of trees on the edge of the forest whose trunks were contorted in ways that made them look nearly human. Their lower branches resembled old limbs, and their topmost branches fanned out like sprouts of three-foot-long hair. Fallen leaves, seedpods, and broken branches shrouded the ground. The place had a vinegary, woodsy scent.

Clearly, the trees were barely alive. Sap oozed from upper branches as if the trees were crying.

“What is this place?” asked Caitlin.

“More like what
was
this place,” Cindy said. “Whatever it
is
, it appears to be enchanted.”

“Snow, where are you?” Beauty called.

The girls looked behind trunks and under branches.

“Not the time for games, girl,” Rapunzel said. “What could possibly be so important as to—”

She froze in her tracks. There, on the ground, panting and wheezing among crushed leaves and busted twigs, lay a Blood-Eyed zombie wolf powdered in dirt!

Caitlin’s mouth fell ajar.

One of the wolf’s hind legs had been caught in a rusted iron bear trap.

Metal jaws were clamped tight around its ankle, piercing its flesh. The wolf had obviously struggled to flee, making the wound worse.

Snow stood a few feet back, just out of reach of its front paws. She stared at him concerned. “If we don’t help him, he’ll bleed to death.”

“That’s the idea,” Cindy remarked.

Snow glowered. The wolf whimpered and tears clouded its ruby eyes. Its head flopped down on the dirt so that its snout lay sideways on the ground. It was hard to make out the wolf’s features as the dirt dusted and covered its face and torso.