by Holly Hook
"Come on!" I yelled at him. We were wasting time. The girl sobbed as Eric helped her up and the three of us ran out into the night.
We didn’t stop until we had reached the far side of the deck. The girl cradled her arm and heaved with sobs. I couldn’t believe I had wanted to let Eric leave her. Maybe Alric was right that I was just as dark as he was.
“What is that stuff?” Eric asked. “It smelled worse than the locker room at school.”
“I don’t know,” I lied, hating that I was doing it. “But I think it’s reached the kitchen.”
I stood on my tiptoes and peered into the house. The poison had reached the linoleum. Plastic cups melted into red goo. The lights flickered in the kitchen and shattered, casting the room in darkness. The poison was affecting everything. I coughed again, trying to get it out of my lungs.
“We’ve got to go,” Eric said. He rubbed his hand down the girl’s back and she calmed down, but kept her arm close to her body. I wondered if it was broken. “This darkness won’t stop spreading for a while.”
More screams and shouts sounded as people ran through the yard. Someone dove into the pool, surfaced, and coughed, probably in an effort to get any poison off their body. Even the shrubs around Eric’s house seemed to be moving. The one at the corner writhed and reached for a guy running past it, but missed. Were those huge spikes on the plant?
“I agree,” I said. I nodded to the crying girl, who blinked tears away. “Can anyone open the gate?”
“I have to,” Eric said. “Let’s run around front and I can get back in through the front door. I hope the poison hasn’t gone into that room yet.”
We ran around the house just as the guy in the pool climbed out and followed us. Everyone else had vacated the back yard, but screams of panic along with rattling fence got louder as we ran. And the shrubs were alive. They'd turned into huge clumps of the scariest brambles I'd ever seen, with blood red flowers.
One of the branches moved towards us. Reached for the girl. She screamed and ran around Eric and the bramble slapped against the ground as if angry it had lost its prey. Thorns three inches long scratched at the dirt. I'd seen these brambles before.
We broke into the open front yard.
Everyone was at the front gate, screaming and pounding at the bars.
Eric stopped and swore. "I have to go back in and open it."
"You're not going back in there," I said. "The poison--"
"This has to be something Alric did," Eric said. "Mara. I'm a prince. I came from another world. Alric--he's an evil magician who wants to make everything like this. A story must have fallen." He leaned closer and squinted at me. "It might have even been mine, whatever it's supposed to be."
I sucked in a breath.
He remembered Fable. And he was so, so right.
I had helped Alric do this.
The brambles were snaking around the side of the house now. Eric ran to the front door and yanked it open. I ran after him, leaving the crying girl to run for the gate. The brambles would rip him apart and feast on his flesh.
And it was all because of me.
Eric vanished into the house. I followed. The burning tires smell was worse now but the screams got fainter. The wooden floor of the entryway was warped and cracking, but the poison hadn't reached this yet. Eric was beating on a digital touchpad with his fist and text jumped around on it. "There!" he shouted. A cheer rose up from outside. The gate was opening.
"Come on!" I yelled, grabbing his arm. "We have to go."
Eric tore past me and ran out the front door.
And stopped.
I was behind him, but close enough to spot the bright green bramble wrapping around his leg. Eric cried out in pain and grabbed at it, but the bramble squeezed harder and blood spotted the ankle of his jeans. He screamed, full of agony.
Something inside of me broke.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Not for Eric.
Not for the guy I loved.
I advanced on the bramble, lifted my boot, and brought it down on the thorns. One of them poked through my entire boot, right between my big toe and my second toe. The bramble thrashed like an angry snake and struggled against my weight, trying to get free. It released Eric and he stumbled down off the steps.
"Leave him alone!" I shouted. My body felt cold. This was what my magic felt like. If I was dark, I should be able to control these brambles. I let the feeling wash over me and the air turned sharp, almost like it was when Alric was around. "Go back to wherever you came from and leave Eric alone."
And then I lifted my boot and stared after the brambles.
And slowly, they retracted, vanishing around the side of the house.
The cold feeling fell out of me and I faced Eric. He was kneeling, cradling his bloody ankle, and breathing heavily. Behind him, the yard was empty and the gate wide open on the dark street. Cars started and took off. A tree across the street was shifting. Turning thicker. Darker. The evil was spreading past Eric's yard. It might spread through the entire town or beyond and it would be full of things like the toxic carpet and the deadly brambles.
No one would stand a chance.
"You controlled those thorns," Eric said. "You told them what to do."
I nodded. "I did." There was no denying it. "Are you okay?"
Eric stood there and shook his head. "Mara--who are you?" He slapped one hand to his forehead. "I've known you for a long time but the memory's blurry. I think...I think I knew you in Fable." He walked in a circle. "I'm not dealing with this. This isn't what I think this is."
I gulped.
The story had fallen. I had done this. The world was filling with things that might kill Eric. Tears filled my eyes. I'd never meant for this to happen.
And now people might die. Again.
I had to come clean, even if that meant Eric would hate me.
It was better than him being dead.
"Eric," I said. "Is there any way to reverse this darkness?"
He faced me. "The only way to do that is to make whatever story I'm in end the way it should."
I let a tear fall. I was showing weakness and I hated it.
"Is that true?"
He nodded. "Things were bad in Fable when I left it, but I heard that making a story end the way it should is the only thing that will chase the darkness back. Alric owns this now." He waved around at his yard and at the grass, which was blackish even in the porch light. "I can't believe he found a way to spread into this world, which is supposed to be safe for us Legends who manage to escape."
I took a step back.
The only way to stop this would be to save Sara.
And get her and Eric back together.
I started to walk away.
"Mara. Come back. What's going on?" Eric asked. He followed me.
I whirled around on him. "You want to know?" I asked. "I'll tell you." I checked the yard to make sure the brambles weren't returning. "Alric messed with your memories. Sara is Snow White and you're the prince who was supposed to revive her after she got poisoned with the apple. I'm the horrible person here." I felt angrier as I said it and I feared I would choke Eric next. "I guess I'm the jealous one who wanted her out of the way because she stole you from me. I loved you first, but I guess she wins because she looks better than me or something. I didn't know who I was until a few minutes ago when Alric took Sara away. He made me think he was on my side. The guy even stole my magic mirror. And now the only way we're going to get rid of this darkness is to get Sara back. But I'm just as bad as he is. Good luck with that."
Eric balled his fists as the floodgates of his real memories opened. Redness rushed to his cheeks. He was furious at me and he had every right to be. I hoped he wouldn't try to attack. I could defend myself. Very well.
"You know," he said. "That sounds right. I have seen you before. And Sara. I suppose you're glad she's gone?" His voice rose with every word.
"I am and I'm not," I said. "You're not happy and you still hate
me, so what good is that? This all sucks. The only person who won here is Alric."
Eric's expression softened and he stared at me for a long time. "Mara," he said. "I never thought someone like you would tell the truth like that. You could have fooled me for a really long time, with my memory messed with and all."
"Well, I wasn't going to let those brambles hurt you. And more stuff will try to hurt you if this place stays dark." It killed me inside to say it. "We have to get to Fable and get Sara back."
"But how? Portals don't open often. Not until midnight. We need to find a place that reminds us of fairy tales and then wait for the clock to strike twelve." Eric waved me to the gate. "You know any places? I wasn't planning on going back there for quite a while."
I stood there in the yard. "This story ending the way it should means I have to die."
Eric put his hand on the side of the open gate. "No, you don't."
"You think Sara is a perfect princess?" I asked. "After you two get together she's supposed to dance me to death in some iron shoes. Sorry, but that doesn't sound like a great way to go."
Eric gulped. "Sara wouldn't do something like that."
"I have a volume of fairy tales in the house if you want to see."
"I don't think we should go back in there. It was the poison apple I saw on the floor, right? She bit into that. I don't think my kissing her is going to help like you think it will. People think kisses are the magic cure in Fable, but that's just a myth. It usually takes something more powerful than that. So unless you know anything that can remove curses, we might be stuck." He was shouting again.
I didn't back down. We just stared at each other for what felt like hours.
"Well? You made the apple!"
His words stabbed into me. I had made the apple. I'd even been holding it in my memory, right before Alric caught me and took it away. I must have been seeking out Sara in Fable.
In Fable, at least, I was an evil, evil person.
And I didn't want to go back there and meet my former self.
"Wait," I said. "I might have something. Remember Foods?"
Chapter Thirteen
Haven House was still boarded up, but getting in would be no problem. I was full of dark magic, after all.
"You're saying lettuce is going to help Sara?" Eric asked as we stood on the side of the road.
"It turned Nort and Joey back. It might be able to remove the poison."
I checked up and down the street. None of the darkness and evil had made it to this side of town yet. So far, it was all back in the rich neighborhood, where trees were growing thick and dark and brambles sprung up along houses.
But I had the feeling it would spread out here before daylight.
By morning, there would be a death toll.
"Where's it at, then?" Eric asked.
"In the garden. I didn't destroy it like I did the purple lettuce," I said. "What time is it?"
Eric checked his phone and glared at me again. "Eleven forty-five."
"Go grab the lettuce," I said. We weren't even pretending to be nice to each other. Even after Sara came back, that would never happen again.
I would never have Eric.
Maybe I'd never been meant to have him at all. I'd be lucky to survive this. In order to, I'd have to kill that jealous queen inside of me.
I wondered what would happen to me after that.
Who I would be.
Eric vanished into the garden and returned a minute later with a head of the bright green lettuce. "I can't believe this stuff," he said. "It's all warm and tingly. Almost like it's full of light magic."
He handed me the head of lettuce. He was right. I hadn't touched it before, but as I held it, it filled my arms with a warm tingling.
I'd created this, too.
Maybe I was capable of doing more than evil.
"Portal," Eric said. "We need a portal. Alric will have taken her to his castle first since that's where he has the magic mirror. I think he has some other place where he stores people and whole villages in glass coffins, but as far as I know, no one else has ever found it. If we don't catch up with him tonight, we'll never find Sara."
A shudder raced through me.
We had one chance.
"The mirror," I said. "There's a mirror inside that he used to come through into Haven House last night." I thought of the downstairs bathroom one.
It was the only chance we had.
The two of us rushed the front door at the same time. If the dwarves were still here, we were screwed. Eric and I jammed our shoulders into the plywood as I cradled the lettuce. It refused to break.
“You have magic,” Eric said. “You break this open.”
I faced the door and imagined it cracking in two, but it refused to budge. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “I don’t remember how I used magic before.”
“Well, something has to work. You used it to make that poison apple.”
I hoped I would never remember how I did that. It wasn’t a talent I wanted to use again. If this was the result, I’d never use my magic again. I bristled and faced Eric. Cold swept through me. My magic was coming back, riding on my anger. “Would you shut up?” I asked.
And then the plywood cracked right down the middle.
We froze and I faced it. The crack split the board and both pieces fell off the door as if Alric himself had done this. The cold inside vanished as I stared at the door.
“Hello?” Eric asked, leaning in. “My mother runs this place. She might be in there.”
Stephanie. She was Eric’s mother the whole time.
Her reading my dream journal revealed who I was. It was when Sara had remembered, too. My entries had made them both remember who I was.
That was it. When I was in Fable, I wasn’t coming back here. Ever.
“Mom?” Eric asked, but he was met with only silence.
“I hope Alric didn’t do anything to her,” I said.
“She never abandons Haven House,” Eric said.
“But Sara’s not here anymore. She has no reason to stay. Maybe she left.”
“She wouldn’t have done that without telling me.”
I waited to hear any dwarf footsteps, but none came. “You had better go in there first,” I said. “They won’t want to hurt you.”
Eric gave me a dirty look and ducked into Haven House. He scrambled around inside, turned on some lights, and came back out. “Clear,” he said. “The dwarves are gone. I have no idea where they could have gone. Maybe they went out looking for Sara.”
“You’re telling the truth?” I asked. Now that Eric knew what had happened, he didn’t need me anymore.
“Truth,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you, Mara, even though I should. I might need you to hold off Alric once we get to Fable. The mirror will take us right to his castle. It’s where all mirror portals go. And he’ll be there. I don’t have magic. You do. But if you screw this up, I might change my mind.”
I about withered inside. I struggled for words but they wouldn’t come. For once, I didn’t have a comeback.
“Look, Mara. If you honestly want to help reverse this mess you’ve caused, stand between me and Alric. Keep him away from me while I cure Sara. Maybe, just maybe, I won’t consider you a complete failure if you do that. I’ll take the lettuce. I don’t want your magic corrupting it.”
“My magic made that lettuce.”
Eric stepped into the kitchen and waved me in. I followed, waiting to be ambushed any second, but no dwarves came. We walked to the downstairs bathroom. The mirror still hung there, unbroken.
Eric checked his phone.
We had seven minutes.
“This doesn’t feel very magical,” he said. “We need this to feel magical for a portal to open. Do you have any candles?”
“Sara does,” I said. I rushed upstairs, waiting for the dwarves, but no one came. In fact, the steps had burn marks, probably left over from Alric’s fight with the dwarves. The dwarves wh
o were just trying to protect Sara. I ran into her room, grabbed the taper candles she displayed on her dresser, and ran back downstairs. I was still alive.
I didn’t deserve to be.
“Here,” I said, tossing Eric Sara’s lighter. I set a candle up on either side of the mirror and Eric lit them. I went out and turned off the kitchen light and the glow from the candles filled the bathroom, casting a circle on the ceiling. We were almost there.
In minutes, I might be facing Alric.
And I might not come out alive.
But I was going to get in his way. Big time.
The house creaked somewhere and the linoleum under our feet warped. Eric jumped and closed the bathroom door behind us. “I think the darkness just got here,” he whispered. “Those brambles might be outside the house.”
As if on cue, something scraped against the bathroom door. I checked to make sure nothing was coming under it. It was too dark to tell. The temperature in the bathroom was dropping and the air grew more electric. We were almost out of here. This was working.
Eric and I faced the mirror. Our reflections stood side by side. Eric’s eyes were steely. Mine, dark. They were the eyes of someone I didn’t like.
Someone who had hurt Eric just to have him to herself.
Silvery vapor filled the mirror, blocking us from view. Eric tapped me on the arm. “The portal,” he said. “We have to go through now. You first.”
I didn’t argue.
I had to go into danger. I climbed up onto the sink and reached out to touch the glass. It was vaporous, wisping around my hand, and very, very cold. As cold as ice particles.
I held my breath.
And ducked through to the other side.
Chapter Fourteen
I toppled onto a floor made of polished gray stone and lined with blood red carpets. I got my bearings and stood, whirling in a circle. I'd never seen this room before, but it was huge, with enormous torches hanging on the walls and casting firelight on everything. A large throne stood next to me, shining with gold and polished wood. A tall window looked out on a very dark forest in the distance. A long red curtain was drawn next to me, keeping half the room from view.
