The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (25 page)

“Don’t be so negative, Conner,” Alex said.

“Alex, I’m just being realistic,” Conner said. “We still have so many places to go, and so much more ground to cover. And after seeing that weird jungle woman in Red Riding Hood’s castle take a chunk of the basket, we may not be the only ones going after this Wishing Spell thing. What if we don’t succeed? Have you thought about what we’ll do if we get stuck here?”

She hadn’t thought about it and didn’t want to. She was afraid that thinking about it made it much more possible.

Alex inspected the map further, tracing it with her index finger.

“All right, I think I figured out what we did wrong,” Alex said.

“
We?
You’ve been hogging the map since we got it,” Conner said.

“All right, I think I figured out what
I
did wrong,” Alex said, her cheeks reddening. “The path we should have taken is just on the other side of the forest next to us. We’ll walk through the forest, get on the correct path, and then be on our way into the Fairy Kingdom.”

“Great,” Conner said.

They walked off the path and into the forest beside them. After walking for a while, they noticed that the forest was very still and eerily quiet—too quiet, especially for Conner. He’d had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach since they’d entered the forest.

The trees grew taller here, but whenever the twins looked up, there were no birds or bugs or anything to be seen gliding from tree to tree. The whole forest, excluding the trees, seemed lifeless.

“Hey, Alex?” Conner asked.

“Yes, Conner?” Alex said.

“Have you noticed we haven’t seen any animals or birds for a while?” he said.

“No, I haven’t; I’ve been a little preoccupied,” Alex said, still looking down at the map.

“I’m just saying, don’t you think it’s kind of strange we’re the only—
aaaaah!
”

Without warning, the twins were jerked suddenly upward and suspended in the air. They were dangling above the ground in some sort of roped net. They had walked right into a trap.

“What’s going on?” Alex yelled. “What is this?”

“It’s some kind of trap!” Conner said.

“Help!”
Alex screamed. “Somebody help us!”

Unfortunately for them, their cries were heard by the wrong people. Two figures ran through the forest straight toward them. One was tall and lean, the other was short and round.

“Egghorn, we caught something!” said the low, growly voice of the smaller.

“It’s about time!” said the high-pitched, raspy voice of the taller.

They came close, and the twins could make out the frightening faces of a goblin and a troll standing before them. The goblin was gangly and thin with big, yellow eyes and pea-green skin. The troll was fat and frumpy with a huge nose and horns. Both had big, pointy ears that stuck out on the sides of their heads.

“Let us go!” Conner demanded.

“You can’t do this!” Alex yelled.

The goblin and troll paid no attention to what Alex and
Conner were saying. They stared at the twins like insects in a jar.

“Ooooh, look how young they are, Bobblewart!” the goblin said.

“Plenty of time to serve!” the troll said.

“What do you mean
serve
?” Conner said. “You’d better not hurt us!”

“Let us out of this net right now, or I’ll report you to the local authorities,” Alex said, not knowing whom she could be referring to.

“And they’ll grow bigger and stronger every day!” the troll said.

“Bobblewart, get the cart!” the goblin instructed. “They’re going to make the perfect slaves.”

The twins struggled twice as hard against the net when they heard the word
slaves
. They remembered what Froggy had told them over tea. The trolls and goblins had been banished for kidnapping and enslaving innocent people… and now Alex and Conner were living proof that it was still happening. How were they going to escape this?

Bobblewart, the troll, ran off and returned a moment later driving a small cart pulled by a frail donkey. Egghorn, the goblin, cut a rope above the net, and the twins fell hard into the cart. They continued to fight against the restraints of the net, but it was no use.

Egghorn climbed aboard the cart and sat next to Bobblewart. They both took the reins and whipped the donkey belligerently until the cart reached full speed.

They traveled for the rest of the day. All the twins could see through the net were treetops and sky zipping past them.

“Alex, what are we going to do?” Conner asked, still fighting against the ropes of the net.

“I don’t know,” Alex said. She was trembling like a small dog.

Alex managed to squirm her way to a seated position under the net to see where the troll and goblin were taking them. They were headed straight toward a line of boulders the size of mountains. Alex gasped; she recognized the rock formation from the map.

“What is it? What do you see?” Conner asked her.

“They’re taking us into the Troll and Goblin Territory,” Alex said, completely white-faced. “I can see the boulders that surround it!”

They remembered Froggy telling them the boulders had been placed around the territory to keep the trolls and goblins inside, but, clearly, as the cart squeezed through a crack between two of the boulders, the inhabitants had found ways around their imprisonment.

The cart went through the boulders and into the kingdom, but there was nothing to see. There were no trees or buildings or life of any kind. For miles around them, the land was only littered with piles of rubble and broken bits of stone.

“I don’t understand,” Conner said. “Where do they live?”

“This looks like a medieval junkyard,” Alex said.

The cart went through a gigantic hole in the ground and traveled down, deep into the earth. It was pitch-black, and the twins could barely see their hands in front of their faces. The smell of mildew and decay was horrible.

“The whole kingdom must be underground!” Alex said.

After descending in the dark for quite a distance, they saw tiny lights ahead of them. They came from lanterns scattered around a group of humans digging tunnels.

“What are people doing down here?” Conner asked, and then saw the trolls and goblins behind them.

“Faster!” the trolls and goblins demanded, whipping the humans.

Alex had to cover her eyes at the sight of it. “They must be slaves! Oh, Conner, this is horrible! This is so horrible!” she said.

Conner hugged his sister, and she cried into his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Alex. We’ll find a way out of this,” Conner said, but even he was scared.

There were hundreds of huts and small homes stacked on top of one another all around them. It was an enormous underground world.

“This place must be like one giant ant colony,” Conner said.

The cart moved through a stone arch with large statues, one of a goblin and one of a troll, on either side of it. They
were frightening, with harsh features, and they were anything but welcoming. A sign carved into the arch read:

BE TROLL, BE GOBLIN, OR BE AFRAID

“Most people just have welcome mats,” Conner said.

Past the arch was a long tunnel constructed of stones. The cart traveled through the arch and a light could be seen at the end of the tunnel. There was much noise coming from the end of the tunnel, a combination of high-pitched laughter, rumbling conversation, and loud clanking.

The twins were soon driven into a massive common room with hundreds of goblins and trolls spread everywhere on numerous levels. Some were even hanging from a chandelier.

Everything was made of stone; they ate and drank from stone plates and goblets and sat on stone chairs at stone tables. They were served by other enslaved men and women. Each troll and goblin behaved in a more vulgar way than the last.

In the center of the chaos, on a platform overlooking the room, were two thrones. The Troll King sat in one and the Goblin King sat in the other. A crown made of rock was on display directly between them, just above their heads, demonstrating that they equally shared power over the kingdom.

They watched over their citizens with crude smirks, enjoying the festivities around them.

As the cart went through the room, many of the trolls and goblins hooted and hollered at the twins; some threw bits of food at them. Alex and Conner held on to each other tighter than ever, both trembling with fear.

The goblins and trolls were all grotesque and dreadful. They had warts and sharp teeth and horrible hygiene. They were the type of monsters Alex and Conner used to have nightmares about when they were younger.

Sitting on the kings’ platform was a little troll girl about the twins’ age. She had a round face with a small snout, and her hair was worn in pigtails just below tiny horns. She was sitting with her head resting on her hands and seemed bored and lonely; she didn’t appear at all interested in the activities around her. She looked up as the twins passed her and gasped when she saw Conner.

This took him by surprise. “What is she looking at?” Conner asked. “Do you think she wants to eat me or something?”

The cart turned a corner and descended down another long tunnel. They were so deep underground that they wondered if they would ever make it back to the surface.

The cart entered a small and dim dungeon with a row of cells in it. Other slaves were imprisoned inside the cells: men, women, children, and elderly alike. They all looked exhausted and were ghostly pale. They were all silent and cowered at the sight of Egghorn and Bobblewart steering the cart into the room.

Egghorn and Bobblewart cut the net around Alex and
Conner, yanked the bags out of their hands, and aggressively forced them inside a cell.

“Get in there!” Egghorn said, and slammed the cell door shut behind them.

“What do we have in here?” Bobblewart said. He took the twins’ bags to a table on the side of the room and dumped all their belongings out onto it.

“Stay out of there!” Alex said as she watched helplessly. There for the entire room to see was the glass slipper, the lock of hair, the chunk of basket, the map, the journal, the dagger, their sack of gold coins, and everything else the twins had been carrying.

Thankfully, the troll and goblin only seemed interested in the dagger and the sack of gold coins. They took those with them and dumped everything else in a pile of waste on the side of the table.

“Rest up! You’ll have a long day tomorrow!” Bobblewart said, and then shared a laugh with Egghorn and left the room with their cart.

All the other slaves stared at Alex and Conner through their cell bars. They had sympathy in their eyes, so sorry that the twins were about to experience everything they had endured for however long they had been there.

“Does anyone know how to get out of here?” Alex asked, but none of them responded, as if they had been trained not to speak. Even the children were silent.

“How is this happening?” Conner grunted. He violently shook the bars of the cell, but they didn’t budge.

“That’s no use,” said a voice behind the twins. “Those bars are made out of pure stone.”

Alex and Conner turned to face the prisoner occupying the cell next to theirs. Crouched over in the darkest corner of his cell was an old man. He was thin and had a long, gray beard and tattered clothing.

“There’s got to be some way out of here,” Conner said.

“I’ve heard every man and woman say that when they were first brought here,” the old man said. “But sadly, there isn’t.”

“How long have you been here?” Alex asked him.

“Years,” the man said. He leaned forward, and the light fell on his face. His face was as tired and ragged as his clothes. He had a wandering eye, so the twins couldn’t tell which one of them he was speaking to.

“Say, don’t I know you two from somewhere?” he asked.

The twins knew this wasn’t possible, but the man seemed convinced and, for whatever reason, the man seemed oddly familiar to them, too.

“I don’t believe so,” Alex said. “We’re rather new to the area.”

“I could swear it,” the old man said. “Are you sure I never traded you a magic flute for a chicken? Or perhaps a singing flower for a lamb?”

“No, I’m sorry, we’ve never traded anything with you before—” Alex said, and then she realized who he was: the wandering eye, the long beard, the raggedy clothing…
could it be?
She pulled Conner aside. “Conner, he’s the Traveling Tradesman, the one from the journal!”

Conner couldn’t believe it. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Sir,” said Alex, kneeling down to him. “Are you by chance known as the Traveling Tradesman?”

The man had to think about it. Obviously the years of enslavement had taken their toll on his mind.

“Yes, I believe that is what they called me,” he said. He was happy to be reminded of a time when he wasn’t a slave.

The twins were so pleased to hear this. “Ask him if he knows what happened to the man who wrote the journal!” Conner whispered into Alex’s ear, and she nodded.

“Mr. Tradesman,” Alex said. “Do you remember a man coming to you and asking about the Wishing Spell?”

“The Wishing Spell?” the Tradesman asked. At first, it seemed he had no idea what she was talking about, but then recognition dawned on his face. “Why, yes, I do! He was one of the last customers I did business with before I was brought here. Silly lad, he talked about wanting to travel to another world. And I thought
I
was mad.”

“Did he ever make it?” Alex asked. “Did he find all the items of the Wishing Spell?”

“I don’t know,” the Tradesman said, and the twins slumped. “I never saw him again, so it’s possible.” He looked up at them curiously. “Why do you ask?”

The twins looked to each other. They didn’t know what to tell him.

“Don’t tell me you two are chasing after the Wishing Spell, too?” he asked.

They looked at each other guiltily. Conner leaned down next to Alex and began asking questions of his own.

“We’re trying, but we don’t know everything we’re looking for,” Conner said.

The Tradesman laughed. “No one does; that’s the beauty of it. Some people know the descriptions of the items it requires, but no one knows what they are for sure.”