by James Riley
“I would be happy to hear of one,” Phillip grunted, his sword deflecting a goblin’s axe into the wall. “I fortunately did not spend enough time here to become familiar with any shortcuts, the last chance I had to visit.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Penelope said, then grabbed Phillip’s hand and pulled him right out the closest window.
In his life, Phillip had seen quite a few sights that would make grown men weep, all with a bravery that Jack might have called foolish. But bravery was not about feeling no fear, as Phillip had quickly discovered. Instead, bravery meant conquering your fears, and that, anyone could do, foolishly or no.
Still, the thousand feet of nothingness outside the window presented quite a large fear for him to overcome.
Penelope, meanwhile, had begun to climb up the side of the dragon castle, moving more quickly than Phillip had seen her move on solid ground. “We’re going up to the top,” she shouted down. “Less goblins there, I’d think.”
Phillip swallowed deeply, then followed her up a bit more slowly, carefully picking his hand- and footholds. Truthfully, he had been this high on the beanstalk last time he had been here, but then he had something solid beneath him. This time, his fingers dug into less than an inch of stone here, his toes flexing on top of the same below him.
“Where did you learn to climb so well?” he asked, knowing that fears had much less of a hold on you when you could turn your focus elsewhere.
“You get used to it when everyone around you can fly,” Penelope told him, smiling her half smile back down at him. “Maybe you should spend a few years in the fairy homelands. It’s a pretty nice vacation spot.”
“I will keep that in mind for later,” Phillip said, purposely not adding that he did not believe there would be a later for him.
Beneath him, he heard the first goblins exit the window, pushing each other to climb up after them. Their large feet and hands would make things more difficult but not impossible. He would have to hurry.
Fortunately, the higher they went, the more the wall angled inward, flattening out into the dragon’s back. Indeed, Penelope had reached a spot flat enough to be jogging up the side instead of climbing. “I’m going to try something, okay?” she said, quickly running out of sight.
“Perhaps you should wait for me before—” Phillip gave up, knowing she could not hear him. Instead, he put his efforts into climbing faster, hoping that whatever she did, he would not be too late to protect her.
And then he heard it. Singing. Beautiful singing, a song he could neither get out of his mind nor remember for the life of him.
Fairy queen music. Fairy queen magic.
Spurred on by the idea that Penelope was in danger, the prince quickly reached a portion of the wall flat enough to scamper up, then turned that scamper into an all-out sprint. There was Penelope, standing right in the middle of the dragon castle’s back, singing quietly. As low as her voice might be, though, Phillip could hear every note clearly, as he imagined anyone in the castle could. Such was the power of the fairy queens, and yet here was a human girl who somehow had been able to match it.
Who was this girl?!
Phillip quickly reached her and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her gently to stop her. She opened her eyes halfway and smiled a bit. “Let’s see if that helps anything.”
“What did you do?! What spell did you cast?”
Penelope shrugged. “It wasn’t magic, not really. It was more . . . an invitation.”
The ground beneath them began to rumble, first only a little bit, then more and more until it became difficult to stand.
And then an entire section of the roof exploded upward, rock flying all around them. Phillip grabbed Penelope and shielded her, yet most of the rock flew out and over, landing on the beach and in the ocean, and all Phillip felt was a heavy wind, followed by nothing, then the wind again, over and over.
Almost like wings beating.
The prince turned back toward the hole, then looked up into the green eyes of a furious black dragon.
“YOU!” Malevolent shrieked.
“An invitation?” Phillip asked quietly.
“Maybe more of an insult?” Penelope said, shrugging again. “I didn’t know what most of the words meant, but I figured they’d get her attention. I might have said some mean things about her mother, actually.”
“It seems to have worked,” Phillip said, right as the dragon spewed fire at the both of them.
CHAPTER 11
And you are . . . ?” May said to the man wearing the armor of an Eye, wishing she had some sort of weapon. And then, just as she wished it, there they were in her hands, two ray-guns that looked like they were straight out of some cheesy science-fiction movie.
Perfect.
The man opened his cloak to point at the white eye on his armor. “I’m assuming you’ve seen this before?”
“Oh, I sure have,” May said, then shot both guns right at the white eye, and the man exploded into a million pieces.
And then the million pieces unexploded, reforming into the Eye right behind her. She whirled around and shot again, but this time the shots zigzagged around him, and he shook his head.
“This isn’t only your dream anymore, child. You asked for help, and I offered. But to get you where you need to go, you needed to leave the comfort of your own head behind.”
“Deep and vague,” May said, lowering her guns. “You must be the Charmed One. Jack’s mentioned you a few times too.”
“All good things?”
“Mostly about how you were trying to train him to become evil. Unfortunately, you won. He ran off to become an Eye. Nice job.” She quickly raised the guns and shot, hoping to surprise him. The rays hit him again, and again he exploded, but for a second time, he just reappeared behind her.
Well. That was irritating.
“The lord of this world is on his way,” the Charmed One told her. “You have time to debate my actions, or you have time to ask for my help in finding what you seek, but not both. Which shall it be?”
“Debate!” May shouted, and shot, only to have the ray whiz off in the opposite direction from where she aimed it, missing by a mile. “YOU made Jack do this, didn’t you?”
The guns disappeared out of May’s hand, so she concentrated, and the ground shook out of nowhere, again and again, like enormous footsteps.
“Giant?” the Charmed One asked her, not turning around to look.
“Dinosaur,” May said as a humongous Tyrannosaurus Rex bent down to swallow the Charmed One whole.
At first, it seemed that she might have actually gotten to him, as he didn’t reappear anywhere. And then the dinosaur turned to look at May and spoke in the Charmed One’s voice. “You cannot hurt me here, May. You cannot hurt me anywhere. All I am is an idea, and ideas can’t be harmed. Only passed along or ignored.”
“Why did you take him?” May asked, gritting her teeth to keep from calling in the air force. “Why did you take him from me?!”
Abruptly, the scene shifted all around her, and May gasped.
Jack was staring right at her. And he was dressed exactly like an Eye.
“Jack?” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
He looked right at her, then bent down on one knee, his hands held out for hers.
May reached out for his hand, only to look down and see that she held an apple in hers. And her clothes were different . . . she was dressed in black robes with golden trim, far richer than anything she’d ever worn before. Her hair was no longer blond but black, and her hands had hints of wrinkles.
“I accept your poisoned apple,” Jack said to her, and took it from her hands. “And in return, I pledge my loyalty.”
“Stop talking like Phillip!” May yelled, but that’s not what came out. Instead, a voice that sounded like both May’s and . . . someone else’s said, “I accept your oath. You are now under my control.”
She was the Wicked Queen. And as the May inside her new royal clothes scream
ed, the Jack in front of her brought the apple to his lips and took a bite.
“NO!” she screamed, and suddenly she wasn’t the Wicked Queen, she was May, and she was pulling on Jack to yank him away from the Queen with all her might, but he wouldn’t move, he just sort of slumped to the ground, he wasn’t breathing, what was happening—
“May,” said a voice, and she felt a hand on her shoulder. “This is the glass man’s doing. Let me help.”
The Charmed One pulled a sword from off his back, a sword that looked exactly like Jack’s, and handed it to May, then nodded back at the apple now lying on the ground. May screamed in anger and stabbed at the apple, which exploded into the man of sand’s shape. Something tinkled like broken glass, and the sand man screamed as sand went flying.
“Catch what sand you can!” the Charmed One yelled, and May caught as much as she could as the Charmed One grabbed her hand and yanked her forward, just as the scene shifted, then shifted again, over and over.
Shift: An upside-down cliff, where to fall was to be safe.
Shift: A dark castle, the one from up the hill from May’s house, only the lights go on abruptly, blinding May, and someone’s in there with her, someone glowing. . . .
Shift: A future where nothing exists, only roaming elephants carrying cities on their back, cities the size of small dogs, inhabited by butterflies.
Shift: May pushes off from the ground in the middle of her old neighborhood, gently floating into the air. She’d always known she was adopted, since she was the only one to survive her planet exploding, but to have superpowers? Who knew!
Shift: War breaks out between the colors blue and red, though green seems jealous that it wasn’t involved. Yellow, meanwhile, hides in the corner.
Shift: The Wicked Queen gently reads May fairy tales as she tries to fall asleep, purposely skipping over the story of Snow White.
Shift: An oak tree in the middle of a quiet field of grass—
And there, the Charmed One stopped. “We have lost the glass man within your dreams,” he told her. “But he will continue to hunt you down, not resting until you are imprisoned here forever. For he is the guardian of this land, and what he does, he does for the sake of every dreamer. If a person could appear in the dreams of others without their knowledge, that person would gain untold power over them.”
“I’m not here to gain told or untold power,” May said, breathing hard from the run through crazy. “I’m only here to find . . . a weapon. The Fairest.”
“A weapon?” the Charmed One said. “That’s an interesting way of viewing it.”
“I really hate this whole vague thing, by the way,” May said.
The Charmed One shrugged. “That means we must travel to his castle and most likely defeat him to find what you seek.”
“So we just stab him until he breaks again?”
The Charmed One shook his head this time. “First, we cannot harm the guardian beyond repair, for that would leave these realms in danger. But fortunately for that, there is very, very little you can do to actually harm the glass man. His sand makes up this realm, and to kill him, you would have to destroy everything here.”
“Destroying dreams?” May said. “You know, if that’s all it takes—”
The Charmed One frowned. “It appears that you have other worries as well.” And with that, a window appeared between them, showing a black dragon diving toward Phillip and Penelope.
“WHAT?!” May shouted. “No, he can’t hurt her, I need her help! And also to get me out of here!”
“You worry about her instead of them?” the Charmed One asked.
She grimaced. “I’ve heard how this goes. Not to mention I’ve read the story. And seen the movie. What I haven’t read is something about some glass man made of sand . . .” She trailed off, realizing what she just said, then shook her head. “Ugh, I have. The Sandman. I hate this place. Not everything is literal, people! Sometimes things are just metaphors!”
“Are they?” the Charmed One asked her, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t you even dare start,” she said, pointing at him threateningly. “Where is the Sandman’s castle? I don’t have time for vague.”
“There are no locations here,” the Charmed One said, his voice fading out with the scene, as everything shifted to a castle made entirely of translucent bricks of glass, sand falling slowly within.
“Well,” May said, “that certainly speeds things up.” She glanced around and sighed. “Annnnnnnd he’s gone. Yet I’m still talking.” She closed her mouth deliberately, staring up at the castle, then realized she was holding a handful of sand. She pushed as much as she could into her pockets, then dusted her hands off. Where the sand fell, tiny little flashes of light exploded, then faded out. Odd.
Okay. She was here at the castle, yes. But she didn’t have a weapon. She couldn’t hurt the Sandman. And the Charmed One hadn’t said one word about how she was supposed to use the sand he’d told her to bring. So really, nothing really new for her.
She did know one thing, though. There was no way that she was ever, ever going to call this place a sandcastle. Nope. Not gonna happen.
With that, she set out into the sandcastle (ugh, there it was already) in her dreams to find the fairest one of all.
CHAPTER 12
The sandcast— the castle of sand was empty. May probably could have seen that from the outside, given that it was made of glass. But all the swirling sand gave her a headache. Where was the Sandman, anyway? Out writing nightmares?
She made her way through the glass castle, searching for a dungeon or a cloudy room or something where the Fairest might be held. Where would one hide something in a glass castle? One wouldn’t, probably, just like one hopefully wouldn’t throw stones (she laughed to herself at that, then rolled her eyes), but that answer didn’t get her anywhere, besides to maybe a more logical world to live in. But to be honest, that wasn’t happening any time soon.
The castle looked bigger on the outside than the inside . . . either that, or she was just a lot quicker than she thought, because she managed to walk through the entire thing within seconds. Seconds? Wait, it couldn’t be that small.
But this was a dream, and dreams went by much faster, didn’t they?
If only she could fast-forward to the point where she found the Fairest.
“She belongs to me,” said a glassy voice behind her, and she whirled around to find the Sandman, with what looked like a newly sculpted glass plug keeping his sand inside his glass body.
“Why do you always appear right behind me, anyway?” May said, pushing her hands into her sand-full pockets.
“Sleep always catches one unawares,” the Sandman said, tilting his head a bit.
“Oh, aren’t we proud of that little line,” May said. “You think you’re so smart? Maybe you should . . . take a FALL!” And with that, she tossed a pile of sand into his face.
Had her comment made sense? She’d better clarify. “As in, FALL ASLEEP!” There.
The Sandman brushed the sand from his face and looked at her curiously. “I’m not entirely sure what you hoped to accomplish. But I do not have time to play your games. Shall we take a look through your nightmares again?”
And the castle disappeared, only for May to smooth a long, blue gown over herself. “But I couldn’t possibly!” she said to Merriweather, who stared down at May with a loving smile. “This gown is far too nice for someone like me!”
“You need to look pretty if you wish to impress the prince,” Merriweather said. “And I’m here to help with that, to help you get away from this life!”
May felt the fabric between her fingers dreamily, then abruptly screamed, long and loud. “Are you KIDDING me?!” she shouted, throwing the dress at Merriweather. “THIS?! You’re not making me live this, NO ONE is making me live this! I’m NOT Cinderella, I don’t care about a stupid dress or some prince, and this is not who I am!”
“Isn’t it?” the man of sand said, and May stood at the top
of an elaborate set of marble steps leading down into the most beautiful ballroom she’d ever seen. She, like the dancers below her, wore a mask to hide her identity. These masquerade balls were such fun, and she’d wished for so long that she might attend one. To be here, to perhaps be near the prince . . . !
But would that ever happen? From her vantage point atop the stairs, she could see her prince, swirling around in a dance with a girl in a large pink dress, one that looked like it’d taken a bit of magic to make itself. She looked down at her own blue dress and marveled at its magnificence once more. Only a fairy queen could create something so beautiful.
NO. SERIOUSLY, DRESSES?! She growled and kicked both glass slippers off her feet, which hit the dance floor below, shattering into a thousand pieces. “I DARE YOU TO MAKE ME TRY THOSE ON LATER!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “I DARE YOU!”
The crowd parted all the way to the prince, who broke off his dance with the girl in pink. His mask, a large double-diamond-shaped covering, hid his entire face behind it as well as most of his hair. He held out his hand to her and, in a familiar voice, said, “You should embrace who you are. Your dreams show you the real you.”
May picked up one of the bigger shards of her slipper and threw it like a baseball at the prince. “I am who I SAY I am!” She picked up more of the rounder shards and threw each of them as she yelled. “I! AM! NOT! CINDERELLA!”
The prince caught each shard, then pushed them together in his hands. A moment later, he bent down on one knee, opening his hands to reveal a glass slipper. “If the shoe fits, May.”
And that’s when May recognized the voice.
It was Phillip’s.
No. NO! The dream was in her head, and she didn’t know who the prince was, so she was just giving him Phillip’s voice. It couldn’t be, he was from “Sleeping Beauty,” and she was from “Cinderella.” It didn’t make sense; he couldn’t be the prince, he was in the completely wrong story . . . wasn’t he?
