The Thirteenth Fairy

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “They don’t have a lot of imagination,” says Filomena, grinning even as she looks back, sweating under her layers.

  She, Jack, and Alistair are outnumbered. There are too many of the Rotten Rigatonis. They’re an arm’s length away. In a second, a pasta pile-on will commence, with Filomena at the bottom of it.

  She nearly screams out of sheer fear of what’s to come, when suddenly she smacks headfirst into Jack, who’s stopped running and has turned around with his hands outstretched before him, a ferocious look on his face.

  “Move to the side!” he bellows.

  Filomena is confused for a split second. Then she realizes what he’s about to do: The vines from his arms are already slipping out, ready to lasso and attack his enemies.

  “Woo! Let it rip!” cheers Alistair.

  “Jack, no!” she cries. “You can’t hurt the Alfredos!”

  “What! Why not?!” he yells back, still holding his arms out, his vines tingling with tension, ready to spring.

  “You just can’t!” she begs.

  As much as she wants him to, as much as she would love to give them a taste of their own medicine and relish revenge, she knows he can’t. Jack Stalker is magic, and he can’t waste it on these lousy noodles. It would be like a bear stomping on an ant.

  At last Jack relents and, instead of attacking, practically flies from the pavement, leaping for the tree closest to the schoolyard, with Filomena and Alistair close behind.

  “Up here!” Jack says, scrambling through the branches like a squirrel. It’s almost as if the tree were letting him climb it, leaning down and lifting him up.

  Filomena and Alistair follow, and the branches practically zoom them all the way to the top of the tree, tossing them higher and higher.

  “Whoa!” Filomena says, almost slipping off a limb. But a vine wraps around her wrist and tugs her, and she sees Jack ahead, the vines wrapped around his wrist, too, as he helps her up.

  He grins at her.

  (Okay, he really is way too cute.)

  When the action stops and the three of them are safely nestled in the highest point of the tree, which no one could comfortably climb without some sort of assistance (like, ahem, magic), they sit still. Filomena checks her body over to see if she feels any broken bones, or even scrapes, but there’s no pain. No sign of any kind of wound. She looks down.

  The Alfredos are left on the ground. They’re stomping their feet and screaming profanities, waving their hands in the air, fists balled up in a threatening manner. Filomena can’t make out everything they’re saying; she’s laughing too hard.

  “Whoa!” she says. “That was so cool! It was just like in the seventh book when the oak tree gently guides Jack and his friends up to safety at the treetop!”

  “I speak the language of the trees. I just asked for a little assistance,” Jack says with a modest shrug. “Yesterday I tried to tell you it’s not just a book. Do you believe me now?”

  Does she have a choice? Yesterday she was almost killed by a cackling thunderbolt. Today she stopped time and escaped from her enemies with the benevolence of a sentient tree. Now she’s sitting on said tree with two of her favorite fictional characters who look very, very real. She can see the sweat beads on Alistair’s forehead and the vines beginning to retract around Jack’s arms.

  She looks at them thoughtfully.

  They look back at her patiently.

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” Filomena tells them.

  “Good, because we need your help,” says Jack, relieved.

  “We sure do,” adds Alistair.

  “Okay,” says Filomena. “But first, tell me how you got here in the first place.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HUNT

  Jack shifts to situate himself on the branches more comfortably. He’s breathing a little heavily; running away from an adversary was the last thing he wanted to do. He was ready to unleash the vines on those … those … what did she call them? Alfredos? Did they all have the same name?

  Alistair steps gingerly onto the branches to maneuver closer to Jack. “How much should we tell her?” he whispers loudly.

  “Why?” asks Jack.

  “What if she faints or falls out of the tree?”

  “Ahem,” says Filomena. “Guys? I’m right here. I can hear everything you’re saying.”

  Alistair gives her a thumbs-up. “No worries, dear. I read something in the guidebook about mortal hearts and how faint they are, so I’m just being careful.”

  “My heart is not faint, thank you very much. Didn’t you see how much running I just did? I don’t even do cardio regularly, and I was fine,” Filomena points out.

  “Cardio?” Alistair asks.

  “It’s like, um, exercise. Running. Spinning. That sort of thing, to get your heart rate up.”

  “Spinning? Like a wheel?” Alistair asks, curious.

  “No, like on a bicycle. Do you have those in Never After?”

  Based on their confused looks, it appears they don’t. She shrugs.

  “So I take it you don’t run regularly, then?” says Alistair.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Why not?” Jack wants to know.

  But Alistair is on her side. “Why would anyone run unless they had something to run from?” he says reasonably.

  “Well, people here do it to stay in shape,” she explains.

  “Like a circle? Or a square?” asks Alistair.

  “No, in shape, like … well, like him,” says Filomena, jerking her thumb at Jack, the fittest of the three.

  Alistair shakes his head in confusion. “Mortals,” he says under his breath.

  “Mortals? Aren’t you mortals?” Filomena says. “I mean, you both look human. Aren’t we the same?”

  Alistair looks insulted. “We’re Never Afters. You’re not.”

  “He doesn’t mean to offend,” says Jack. “And we’re human, but—”

  “But you’re from fairy tales, so you’re not real,” says Filomena, beginning to catch on.

  “That word again,” says Jack with a grimace.

  “I mean … I guess you’re not like us. In the book it says fairy tales are timeless … which I guess makes you immortal?” she asks.

  “Quite,” says Alistair. “We never grow old, but we can perish. There are rules about it, though. Complicated ones. Thankfully, our demise hasn’t been something we’ve come close to experiencing. Yet.”

  “We haven’t answered your question,” says Jack thoughtfully. “You asked how we got here in the first place. Well, you know about the Heart Tree portal. That’s how.”

  “Right. But also, how’d you get here? To school I mean. How’d you know where I’d be?”

  “We’ve been following you,” Jack admits. “I know you told me not to, but, well…”

  “And we couldn’t find any cheeseburgers to hunt,” Alistair adds.

  Filomena tries not to laugh. Hunting cheeseburgers?

  “Anyway, we’re not supposed to be here at all. We just ended up here when we were trying to get away, and this is where the portal took us,” Jack says.

  “Get away from what? Or whom?”

  “Queen Olga, of course,” says Alistair. “Duh.”

  “Right,” says Filomena, who never likes to say the ogre queen’s name out loud for fear of bad luck.

  “In the books, does it mention that she’s looking for something to secure her power and keep all the kingdoms of Never After under her spell?” Jack asks.

  “Yeah, but we never find out exactly what it is. She thinks it’s the Ring of Infinity or a Seeing Eye or the Magic Mirror, but it’s none of those things,” Filomena tells them.

  “No,” says Alistair sadly.

  “In the stories, you are always able to grab the object or destroy it before she gets it, anyway,” says Filomena.

  “Well, yes,” says Jack, attempting modesty. “So far.”

  “So what is it? What is she looking for now?”

  “Aladdin
’s Lamp. The genie of the lamp has powerful magic that Queen Olga wants for herself.”

  “But I thought the lamp has been kept in a secret place since Aladdin’s wedding,” says Filomena.

  “It’s supposed to be,” says Jack, exchanging a glance with Alistair. “But that was a long while ago, and in the meantime she’s been searching everywhere in Never After for it for centuries. If she finds it, then we’re … what did you call it? Ogre toast.”

  Filomena pales considerably.

  “Don’t worry,” says Alistair. “Jack will make sure that doesn’t happen—”

  “Because you’re Jack Stalker, and you never shy from adventure!” says Filomena, quoting from the enthusiastic words on the back of the books.

  “Righto!” cheers Alistair.

  Jack shrugs and looks a little shy. “Well … I guess.” He regards Filomena keenly. “You know, you should come with us to Never After. You seem to know a lot about our stories. You could be helpful.”

  “Except my parents won’t let me go more than several hundred feet away from my yard, let alone travel to another world.” Filomena shrugs.

  “Really?” says Alistair. “My parents let me go anywhere.”

  Jack slaps his head. “You don’t have parents. You’re an orphan!”

  “Oh, right,” says Alistair, looking glum.

  “Sorry, man,” says Jack, abashed.

  “It’s fine. I never even knew them. They died when I was a baby,” explains Alistair.

  “I never knew my birth parents, either,” Filomena tells them.

  “Those aren’t your parents?”

  “They are. But they’re not my biological parents. I was adopted,” she explains.

  Alistair nods. “I wish someone had adopted me.”

  “Someone did,” says Jack. “Me.”

  Alistair laughs.

  Meanwhile, Jack wishes Filomena were more enthusiastic about going back to Never After with them. You’d think she’d be curious about it, he reflects. But at least now she doesn’t seem to keep questioning their very existence. Jack is patient, but if he were being honest, he’d say it was getting old, trying to prove he was really there, alive, in front of her all the time.

  “Okay, so now you know our story. Are we done?” asks Alistair. “Can you help us hunt for cheeseburgers now? Yesterday we couldn’t find any.”

  “You haven’t eaten since yesterday?” she asks.

  “No,” says Alistair, whose stomach growls loudly as if to agree. “Pardon.”

  “We found a few things people left in these big bins,” Jack says. “Some kind of cheesy bread?”

  “You ate trash pizza,” says Filomena, trying not to gag.

  “Trash pizza—is that some sort of delicacy?” Alistair wonders.

  “Where did you sleep?”

  “There’s a meadow not far from here,” says Jack with a shrug. “It was quite adequate.”

  “Um, no. We really need to get you guys something to eat,” says Filomena, who looks like she’s starting to regret running away from him yesterday.

  Jack and Alistair had seen the big house she calls home. It sure looked comfy. They argued all night over ringing the doorbell, especially when it had started to rain.

  “Yes! Eat!” says Alistair.

  “No time. We need to get back to the tree as soon as possible,” argues Jack. “And we were hoping you could point us in its direction.”

  “Oh right, because I have the tree on my backpack,” says Filomena. “Unfortunately, I have no idea where the tree might be.”

  “None?” Alistair gasps.

  “Nada. I told you I thought the books were fiction. Fantasy.”

  “Yes, yes, fiction, fantasy, all the F words,” says Alistair. “I learned a few more … They have four letters.”

  “But if you went through the tree to get here, don’t you remember where it is?” she asks.

  “It was dark!” Alistair says defensively. “And we were running for our lives! Excuse us if we didn’t take notes.”

  “I thought I knew where it was, but we kept getting farther and farther away,” says Jack, feeling embarrassed to admit it. Filomena seems to think he’s some kind of hero, and he’d hate to disappoint her.

  “Do you remember anything about it at all?” she asks.

  “I remember there were letters against the hill. Tall ones,” he replies.

  “Olly … something,” says Alistair.

  “Olly?” Filomena repeats. “Hmm…”

  “And we were on a hillside, high above a village,” says Jack.

  Filomena looks like she’s deep in thought when a spark of recognition lights up her eyes. “Olly … Holly … Hollywood? The Hollywood sign! Were you near the Hollywood sign?”

  “Is that how you say it?” Alistair says.

  “How would you say it?” Filomena spells it out. “H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.”

  “Hollywood. Right,” says Alistair.

  “I know where it is,” she tells them. “Let’s go. Oh, wait! First, we should hunt down those cheeseburgers. There’s a place not far from here.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  PIE ’N BURGER, PIED AND PIPE

  Filomena takes them to the Pie ’n Burger, one of the oldest restaurants in the adjacent and much larger town of Pasadena. (Yes, there is a Pasadena, a North Pasadena, and a South Pasadena, but she thinks one of them might be fictional.) At the diner she chases down three delicious cheeseburgers, as well as generous helpings of pie. Jack declared the meal as good as a giant’s feast.

  Afterward, Filomena used her saved-up allowance money to hire a cab to take them to the Hollywood Hills, where the sign is located.

  “Most people think of Los Angeles as Hollywood, and Hollywood as a place where movies and television shows are made. I don’t think you guys have those in Never After, do you? It’s like, make-believe things that people watch to pass the time,” she tells them when they’re comfortably seated in the back seat of a taxi.

  “Like puppet shows!” says Alistair.

  “Yeah, sort of,” says Filomena. “But anyway, Hollywood isn’t just where they make movies or, um, puppet shows. It’s a neighborhood, just like North Pasadena, where I live.”

  Jack looks out the window thoughtfully. “Like a different village.”

  “Exactly!” says Filomena, pleased.

  It takes about an hour to get to their destination, and when they arrive, it’s a long hike on foot to the top of the hill near the Hollywood sign. The three of them peer up at the sign.

  “Yup, that’s it. That’s where we landed,” says Alistair.

  “I knew you’d know the way to the portal,” says Jack with a smile.

  Filomena smiles back, even though she doesn’t feel like she’s accomplished anything great, but it’s nice to be appreciated for once.

  Jack leads the way, walking quickly through the brush while Alistair huffs behind him.

  Filomena checks the time and is relieved that it’s not as late as she thought. She can get back to school for pickup at the usual hour, and her parents won’t suspect anything. She turns off her phone during school hours—students aren’t allowed to use their phones at school—which is convenient. If her mom were watching the tracker on her phone, she would surely have freaked out to see that Filomena is miles away from school, where she should be, and Filomena doesn’t like worrying her parents.

  One time she wasn’t outside for the usual 3 P.M. pickup, and her parents almost had a meltdown. They’d forgotten she had band practice. What if she gets back late today? She can picture them now, running around the house, then the neighborhood. All the calls they’d make to all the parents they know who have children at her school.

  At least her list of friends isn’t long, so they won’t have an abundance of phone calls to make. In that way, her antisocial behavior and apparent inability to form genuine friendships is finally coming in handy. You’re welcome, Mum and Dad!

  Filomena’s thoughts are disrupted as she tri
ps over a rock. Jack catches her arm just as she’s about to fall, and their eyes meet for a moment. Shyly, they both look away.

  When they arrive in front of the sign, Alistair sits on the curve of one of the Os and wipes his forehead.

  “So where’s the tree?” asks Filomena.

  Jack waves toward a particularly large and shady oak, but neither of them seems to be in any hurry to head toward it.

  “So I guess this is goodbye, then,” says Filomena tentatively.

  “Uh, not quite,” says Jack.

  “We lost the key to the tree,” explains Alistair.

  “The Pied Pipe! That unlocks the portal! Of course!” says Filomena joyfully. Until Alistair’s words set in and joy turns to aggravation. “What do you mean, you lost it?”

  “It fell from my pocket when we got here,” says Jack, looking around at the dirt and grass. “We just have to find it, and then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Okay, well, good luck, then!” says Filomena.

  Alistair looks stricken. “You’re leaving us?!”

  “Um, yeah. Do you have any idea how grounded I’m going to be if I don’t get back to school in time for my mom or dad to pick me up?”

  She doesn’t even know if she has enough money to pay for another cab ride home. She might have to take the bus. Come to think of it, they probably should have taken the bus to get here.

  As curious as she is about Never After, she’s also a bit afraid of the whole thing. While she’s accepted that Jack and Alistair are real, part of her is still unconvinced that everything about Never After is real. Besides, her parents would want her safely back home, not traipsing around some fantasyland.

  But as she backs away, she notices Jack pulling what looks like a small glass marble out of his pocket. It begins to transform in his hands, stretching and changing and shifting shape, making all sorts of funny noises until it settles into its true shape and he sets it over his left eye.

  It looks like an ordinary brass telescope, the kind of thing her dad would buy on a hobby website. Except Jack is pointing it not to the sky but at the ground. When he swings it in her direction, she can see a large open eye staring at her from the glass. It’s not gray, like Jack’s eyes. It’s golden.