“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.
But then it opened its mouth. Two rows of polished fangs glistened clearly. A frothy glob of saliva dribbled from its mouth, pooling on top of the dirt.
“Snow, have you gone mad?” Rapunzel was livid. “This Blood-Eyed would like nothing more than to tear you up, limb from limb. I cannot allow you to do this. I forbid it.”
Snow White’s chest heaved. “This creature is in pain!”
Beauty pointed her finger. “Snow, if you open that trap, he’ll kill us all!”
Natalie shot a wide-eyed, meaningful glance at Caitlin. Caitlin shrugged nervously. She wanted to get out of there, fast. Except there was another part of her …
The wolf writhed as the metal clamps dug into its bone with a crunch.
“We can’t just leave him here to suffer,” Caitlin said, regretting the words as they left her mouth.
Cinderella clucked her tongue. “If we don’t kill it, it will kill us. At best, he’ll take a chunk out of one of our legs. One of us will wind up a Blood-Eyed, just like the rest of them.”
Snow looked up at Rapunzel. “I’m not leaving until you help me open this trap.”
A small pack of vultures appeared in the sky above the forest canopy.
Rapunzel squinted at the sky. “
They smell blood.”
“Don’t vultures eat dead things?” Caitlin wondered aloud.
Natalie nodded. “Gyps bengalensis. White-rumped vultures. They eat carcasses.”
“And aren’t you all technically dead … ?” Caitlin said.
“We must leave. Now,” Rapunzel ordered. “Snow, pronto.”
Snow huffed stubbornly. “Not until you help me free this wolf.”
“Tenacious as a Taurus,” Cindy said, shaking her head.
“I’m afraid I’m on Snow’s side,” Caitlin said.
Cindy popped a squat next to the trap. “Okay, I’m in.” She eyed the group. “But as soon as we open the trap, this canine ghoul will be on us like ivy on oak. Bread on butter. Flame on a wick. Fleas on a—”
“Okay, we get it,” Rapunzel said.
Cindy pointed to Rapunzel’s head.
“I’ll need one of your luxurious long locks, pretty princess.”
Rapunzel loosened a braid and handed it to her.
Cindy tied it around the top jaw of the clamp.
“We’ll pull it open from a distance. That way, we’ll have a solid head start when we run for our ever-lovin’ lives.”
Rapunzel pointed to a tree at the edge of the woods.
“Caitlin, Natalie, I need you two over there, please. Now. These wolves run fast. That leg wound might not be enough to slow him down.”
After tying a final knot, Cindy let out the line of braid and trotted with the girls to the edge of the woods. She handed the tail end of the rope to Snow. “You do the honors.”
Snow wound it twice around her hand. She tightened her grip.
“Get ready to run,” Cindy said.
Caitlin knelt, racing-block style. Natalie too. Rapunzel, Cindy and Beauty crouched forward, one leg in front, arms swung back like jet wings.
Snow pulled the rope of hair. Though her face reddened with the effort, the clamp only opened a quarter of the way. “Someone help.”
Cindy scooted over, taking hold of Snow’s hands. Caitlin felt adrenalin rushing through her veins. She twiddled her fingers. Tilted her head right, left. She was itching to run.
Together, Cindy and Snow pulled … and pulled … and pulled …
The clamp snapped open.
The wolf let out a hair-raising yowl!
It slowly stood on its hind legs. Like a human! Then it shook off all the dirt.
“It’s him!” Cindy screamed. “The Big Bad Wolf.”
He leered at them with narrowed red eyes.
Caitlin had never seen such a horrific-looking werewolf in all her life!
They took off, running for their lives, and leaving behind a whirlwind of leaves and a billowy cloud of dirt.
In the undersize dilapidated village, Jack held the small, blue bottle in his hand. Alfonzo the Frog Prince watched impatiently.
“Save the toast for the wedding, amigo. We must hurry if we are to catch up with your friends.”
Jack took a big swig. His face contorted as the liquid struck his taste buds. Bile was less bitter. He swigged again. And again. Then he chugged the whole wretched bottle dry.
“That should do it,” he said. “Hmmm. I’m not thirsty anymore either.”
Jack’s left hand suddenly cramped in morbid pain.
“Whoa—that was fast.”
A moment later his arm began contracting into his shoulder. It shrank perversely quickly. It felt to him as though the limb was being crushed in a vise.
“Bloody painful!”
His other arm cramped in racking pain, and he almost wailed like a babe as it shrunk before his eyes. Next went his right leg. The stabbing pain robbed him of breath. This was followed by the contraction of his left leg; it felt like his thighbone was being sawed off.
He tipped over onto his side from the weight of his suddenly oversize torso, feeling like a mutant. Finally, the muscles in his stomach twisted into a knot so tight he almost heaved up the previous night’s dinner. Then his torso popped into proportion, causing him to break out in convulsions and a cold sweat. A moment later the convulsions seized. His body temperature warmed.
“I was worried there for a second.” He stood up slowly and examined his new, ten-inch-high form, still feeling a bit wobbly. “Think I might’ve swallowed too much.”
“Not at all, amigo,” Alfonzo replied.
The small frog now appeared like quite a large one to Jack, since they were almost the same size. Alfonzo’s eyes were as big as Jack’s fists; they bulged from his head and their glazed surface reminded him of the eyes of some exotic, reptilian alien.
Alfonzo smiled. “If you were any smaller, perhaps you’d be tempting to eat.” He waggled his long tongue at Jack. “Ha, ha, ha. But I’d never do such a thing. For I am a frog of honor.”
“Now what, mate?” Jack asked.
Alfonzo crouched. “On my back. And please make sure that sword of yours doesn’t puncture my hind legs.”
Jack climbed up onto Alfonzo’s slimy back and held tightly to a meaty fold of neck flesh. The Frog Prince’s skin was secreting mucus, so Jack tried to dry it up with his sleeve.
“Stop, amigo! You’ll suffocate me. Frogs breathe through the moisture on their skin.”
Jack winced. “My apologies.” He spit into his palms, rubbed them together, and smeared the lube over Alfonzo’s neck and back.
“Ahh, much better,” the frog announced as he inhaled fresh air.
Together, the two of them hurdled over the crumbling wall and bounded out of town at breakneck speed.
“Good news, amigo,” the Frog Prince announced. “I smell sweet sap in the air. Delectable plants and flowers await us just up ahead!”
Caitlin, Natalie, and the zombie princesses stood at a narrow entrance to what seemed to be an endless forest. Streaks of white sunlight penetrated its tall canopy of tangled branches, which filtered falling sunlight and turned it blue as it spilled into the forest.
The expanse of trees stretched far and wide in both directions—there was no apparent way to skirt the woods. The woodlands were so thick, in fact, that when Caitlin tried to look between the tree trunks, all she saw was a mass of bark bathed in blue.
Some trees had retained a bit of their green, though most were pale and covered in decrepit, bone-dry leaves.
A couple of hand-painted signs hung from a wooden post right where the path they had followed from the “doody” footbridge stopped at the tree line. The sign on top of the wooden post read “Zeno’s Forest.” Below that were smaller signs shaped like arrows. Each arrow pointed to a different destination:
The Enchanted Forest
The Emerald City
Camelot
Neverland
Wonderland
Practically every kingdom from every fairy tale ever told was represented by its own arrow.
But there were no paths leading through the forest.
No paths? Huh?
“How are we supposed to know how to get to where we want to go if there’s no path to lead us there?” asked Caitlin as her palms moistened and her chest tightened. Just the thought of getting lost in some unknown, isolated forest was enough to arouse overwhelming dread.
Rapunzel pointed to the arrows. “All these kingdoms are interconnected by this forest. We can journey through it to any place quickly, no matter how far away it is.”
Caitlin held the air in her lungs for a prolonged moment. Then she breathed out slowly. She was glad the journey would be quick, but she scratched her head. “How’s that possible?”
Snow cracked a smile. “In Zeno’s Forest, the farther away your destination, the quicker you arrive.”
How odd is that!
Natalie perked up visibly. “Zeno, huh? Is this forest related to Zeno’s paradox? And the tale of the tortoise and the hare?”
Showoff.
“Who—or what—is a Zeno?” Caitlin asked in a tart tone.
“Greek philosopher,” Girl Wonder responded. “He tried to demonstrate that all m
otion is an illusion.”
Whatever!
Cinderella cast a hard glance at Rapunzel and motioned with her head toward Caitlin. “Better warn her,” she said.
Caitlin stiffened. “Warn me about what?”
An uneasy look passed between the four princesses.
Snow put her arm around Caitlin’s shoulder.
“There’s something you need to know before you step foot inside this forest.”
Caitlin blinked rapidly and nodded.
“You must have your destination firmly planted in your mind—before you enter.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, you run the risk of not being able to move once you’re among the trees.”
Rapunzel leaned in between Snow and Caitlin, her eyes expressing caution. “You could get stuck in Zeno’s Forest. For hundreds of years!”
Caitlin’s heart fluttered in her chest. She recalled the time she had gotten trapped in a crowded walkway when exiting a baseball stadium. She was eight, so she couldn’t see over the heads of the adults towering over her. The ramp out of the stadium had become congested, people jamming up at the exit. The crowd literally stopped moving. Caitlin was trapped. Stuck. It lasted a good ten minutes, but felt like eternity. That was one of the first times she felt claustrophobic and panicky.
Rapunzel signaled to Snow White, who strolled over to the signpost. Beneath it was a plaque with writing carved into the wood: How to Navigate Zeno’s Forest!
Caitlin leaned in close to read it.
The farther your destination, the faster you arrive. Which means the closer your destination, the longer it takes to reach. Which means if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never arrive at your next stop.
Caitlin grasped the gist of it. Her next step would be so close it might take eons to get there, based on the laws of logic that governed Zeno’s Forest. But one question kept nagging at the back of her mind, so she decided to ask.
“How does the forest know where I’m going?”
Rapunzel winked sweetly at her girlfriends, then turned to Caitlin. “What’s your world made of?”
“Ooh, I know!” said Natalie, jerking her arm in the air as if she was raising her hand in the back row of a crowded classroom. “Particles called atoms.”
The Color of Fear Page 10
