The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (10 page)

She looked up to see if there was an opening she had fallen through, hoping to see some sort of window into her bedroom, but all she saw were tree branches and the sky above her.

“Where am I?” she asked herself.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” As if he had fallen right out of thin air, Conner landed hard on the ground
beside his sister. He was pale and screaming, and his limbs were stretched out in all directions. “Am I alive? Am I dying? Am I dead?” he asked from the ground with his eyes tightly closed.

“You’re alive!” Alex told him. She had never been so happy to see him.

“Alex, is that you?” Conner asked. He slowly opened his eyes one at a time and looked around. “Where are we?” he asked as she helped him to his feet.

“It looks like some kind of… forest,” she said.

It was unlike any forest they had ever seen—in real life, at least. The colors were so vivid and the air was so crisp. It was as if they had fallen into a painting, a painting Alex was positive she had seen before.

“Look,” Conner said, pointing at the ground. “All of our pencils!”

The path was littered with the pencils Alex had been dropping into the book all week. She also found her school bag and a few of her dirty socks in the middle of the mess. But where were all the books she had dropped into
The Land of Stories
?

“So this is where they all went!” Alex said.

“But where is
here
?” Conner asked. “How far away from home are we?”

Alex couldn’t answer him. She was starting to become just as worried as he was. They were worse than lost.

“This is all your fault, Alex!” he said.

“My fault?” Alex yelled. “We wouldn’t be here if you
had just knocked on my door instead of barging in like the house was on fire!”

“I knew you were planning this,” Conner said. “I had to stop you!”

“I wasn’t planning on going into the book. I was just testing it out!” Alex explained. “You didn’t have to follow me here.”

“Oh, sure! Was I just supposed to leave you in the book by yourself ?” he exclaimed. “What was I supposed tell Mom when she got home? ‘Hi, Mom, hope you had a good day at work. Alex fell through a book. By the way, what’s for dinner?’ Give me a break!”

Conner began jumping upward as high as he could.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked.

“We fell. From. Somewhere. Up here. There’s. Got. To be. A way. Back,” he said, but all his jumping was pointless. Conner eventually tired himself out, and he took a seat on the ground against a tree trunk.

“What if we were transported to another country or something?” Conner asked; his forehead became more wrinkled the further he thought about it. “What if it took us to Canada or Mongolia or somewhere? How long is it gonna take for Mom or someone to find us?”

Suddenly, the ground started shaking. A powerful rumbling had consumed the forest. The branches of the trees shook, and the small rocks on the ground began jumping as something massive moved closer toward them.

“What’s happening now?” Conner yelled.

“Let’s take cover!” Alex said.

She grabbed her bag, and the twins ran off the path and into the forest a little way and took refuge behind a particularly wide tree.

They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. A huge cavalcade of soldiers on white horses rode past them. Their armor was clean and shiny. They carried green-and-silver shields with large red apples painted on them and waved flags with the same design.

“Alex, did we go back in time?” Conner anxiously asked his sister. “That looks like something straight out of medieval times!”

The pencils were all obliterated under the horses’ hooves. The soldiers were moving at such a fast and forceful pace that none of them noticed the awestruck twins peeking out from behind the tree.

Alex was fixated on their shields. A red apple was such an odd thing to be displayed on a shield, but there was something so familiar about it. She couldn’t put her finger on it.

The rumbling slowly faded away as the soldiers disappeared down the dirt path. The twins both stayed behind the tree for a few moments, making sure the coast was clear.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had about as much excitement as I can handle for one day,” Conner told Alex.

A poster pinned to a nearby tree caught Alex’s eye. She walked over to it and pulled it off the tree for further inspection. It was old, with faded writing, and a picture of a
disgruntled-looking little girl with curly blonde hair was centered on it. The poster read:

Alex’s face went white, and she stopped breathing for a moment; she had realized where they were. No wonder the trees had been so recognizable. She had seen pictures of them so many times growing up. The book had taken them to the exact place she had hoped.

“Is it possible?” she asked herself. The wheels in her head had never spun as fast as they were now.

“Is what possible?” Conner asked. “Do you know where we are?”

“I think so,” Alex told him.

“Where?” Conner asked, fearing the answer.

“Conner, we went
into
the book,” she explained, but he wasn’t following her. “I think we’re actually
in
the Land of Stories.”

She handed him the Wanted poster, and he read it. His eyes grew as wide as a lemur’s.

“No no no! This cannot be happening! This is crazy!” he said, shaking his head. He handed the poster back to his sister as if it were infected with rabies. He couldn’t believe what she was saying; he didn’t want to believe what she was saying. “Are you telling me we’re in the fairy-tale world?”

“I’d recognize this forest anywhere! It’s straight out of Grandma’s book,” Alex said with an unplanned smile. “But it makes perfect sense! Where else would it have taken us?”

“We just fell through a book!
Nothing
makes sense!” Conner said. “So, are we stuck here or what? How do we get home?”

“I don’t have all of your answers, Conner,” Alex said. “Don’t forget, all of this just happened to me, too!”

Conner began pacing around the trees with his hands on his hips. “I can’t believe I ditched detention and wound up in another dimension,” he said.

Alex was rather grateful her brother had come after her. They had lived together all their lives and had been in the same classrooms since kindergarten. She didn’t know if she could handle being in a different dimension by herself.

“I hope you’re happy, Alex,” Conner said. “I told you we should have thrown the book into the creek!”

“Enough with the blaming,” Alex said. “It doesn’t matter how we got here, the point is we’re here now. What matters is finding someone who can help us get home!”

“Excuse me, may I help you?” said a proper voice behind the twins. They jolted at the sound of another voice besides their own. They turned around to see who it had come from, and once they saw, they both wished they hadn’t.

Standing behind Alex and Conner was what could best be described as a frog man. He was tall, with a wide face, big, glossy eyes, and shiny green skin. He wore a dapper three-piece suit and carried a large glass jar of lily pads.

“Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I’m rather good with directions if you need some,” he said with a very wide smile.

Alex and Conner were so petrified that they were paralyzed. If they needed any more evidence that they were in the fairy-tale world, this was their proof.

“You look awfully young to be in the forest by yourselves,” the frog man said. “Are you lost?”

Conner let out a high-pitched squeal that lasted much longer than it should have. “Please don’t eat us!” he said, and dropped to the ground in a fetal position.

The frog man looked down at him with a frown. “Young man, I have no intention of eating you,” he said. “Is he always like this?” the frog man asked Alex.

Alex responded with a squeal almost identical to the one her brother had made.

“I know, I know. Don’t worry; I’m used to people screaming at me,” the frog man told them. “Get it out of your systems. The shock will only last a minute.”

“We’re sorry!” Alex finally managed to say. “It’s just that, where we’re from there aren’t many… um… frog people? Sorry if that isn’t the politically correct term for what you are!”

Conner let out another high-pitched noise. It wasn’t a scream this time, but it was embarrassing nonetheless.

The frog man studied their faces and paid special attention to their clothes. “Where exactly are you from?”

“Pretty far from here,” Alex said.

A piercing set of wolf howls echoed through the forest. All three of them jumped at the sound. The frog man looked around the trees with fear in his big, glossy eyes.

“It’s getting dark,” the frog man said. “We’d better get inside. Please, follow me home. It’s just a few minutes’ walk from here.”

“Nice try!” Conner said.

The wolf howls echoed again. This time they were much louder than the first. Wherever the wolves were, they were getting closer.

“I know I look scary now,” said the frog man to the twins, “but I’m nothing compared to some of the creatures that lurk around these woods at night. I promise I will not harm you.”

There was such concern in his eyes, it was hard not to trust him. The frog man took off at a brisk walk deeper into the forest.

Alex nudged Conner. “We’d better follow him.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not going home with the giant frog!” Conner whispered to her.

“What do we have to lose?” Alex asked.

“Besides our lives?” Conner said, but, despite his protests, he was dragged up by his sister and pulled in the direction the frog man was leading them.

The twins hurried behind the frog man for a good while. They zigzagged between trees and jumped over boulders and tree roots that stuck up from the ground. The deeper they went into the forest, the thicker the trees became. It got dark very quickly and was almost pitch-black by the time they reached the frog man’s home.

Alex and Conner stayed close together. With every step they second-guessed if they had made a smart choice going with this strange creature.

“This way,” he said.

The frog man brushed aside some dead vines growing over a large wooden door that was camouflaged into the side of a small hill. He pulled the door open and led the hesitant twins underground. He looked back into the forest, making sure they hadn’t been followed, before shutting the door behind him.

It was very dark underground. Alex and Conner were so close together, they could have been mistaken for Siamese twins.

“Forgive the mess. I wasn’t expecting company,” the frog man apologized, and lit a lamp with a match.

Alex and Conner didn’t know what to expect of the frog man’s home, but what they were seeing definitely wasn’t it.

They were in a large room with dirt walls and a low, dirt ceiling. Roots from a tree growing above them grew down like a chandelier. A cluster of big, cushy chairs and sofas—many of the cushions had the stuffing sticking out of them—sat in the center of the room and were angled to face a small fireplace. Nearby, teacups and pots hung from hooks over a tiny kitchenette.

To Alex’s delight, there were books everywhere. Shelves of books lined the dirt walls; piles of books were stacked on every available surface and on the ground; it was as if the room were infested with literature.

“Conner,” Alex whispered close to him. “Look around at this place! It’s like we’re having our own Lucy and Mr. Tumnus moment!”

Conner looked around and saw what she meant. “If he offers us Turkish delight, I don’t care what you say: We’re getting out of here!” he whispered back.

“It’s a little dirty, but it’s cozy,” the frog man said. “It’s hard to find a landlord who will house a frog, so I did the best I could with what I had.”

He placed his jar of lily pads on the mantel and immediately started a fire in the fireplace. He filled a teakettle with water from a pitcher, placed it over the fire, and took a seat in a big, white chair closest to it. He crossed his legs and folded his hands neatly in his lap. He was one proper frog.

“Please have a seat,” the frog man said, gesturing to the
sofa in front of him. The twins reluctantly did as he asked. The sofa was rather lumpy, so they had to shift around in their seats to get comfortable.

“What are you?” Conner asked the frog.

“Conner, don’t be rude!” said his sister, elbowing him in the side.

“It’s quite all right,” the frog man said with a complicated smile. “I understand my appearance takes some time to get used to. Even I haven’t fully adapted to it yet.”

“You mean, you weren’t always a… um… frog person?” Alex asked as politely as she could.

“Heavens, no,” the frog man said. “I was cursed years ago by a very aggressive witch.”

“Why?” Alex asked. She was fascinated by how casually he had said it.

“To teach me a lesson, I suppose,” the frog man told her. “I used to be a very vain young man. The witch transformed my appearance so I would lose all of the things I took for granted.”

His wide smile softly faded. It had obviously been a very long and painful experience for him, and he still had a sad sense of loss and longing about him. The twins had never seen a frog look so sad.