The Enchantress Returns (28 page)

She glanced down at her observers and was disappointed by the lack of attendance. Although the entire kingdom had been invited to hear a message from the queen, only a crowd of roughly two dozen had gathered outside—including two sheep and a goat.

Red swallowed her pride and went on with her announcement.

“I’m assuming many people are too frightened to leave their homes, especially after the disappearance of our beloved wall, so please pass this message along,” Red said. “However challenging the current times may be, I have called you all here to encourage your strength and bravery—we have faced great threats in the past and have always overcome them together as a kingdom! And as I look around at your faces I can see that courage in your eyes! The Enchantress may have taken our wall, but she will never take away our spirit!”

Red posed for applause but there was none to accept.

“Furthermore,” she continued, “if there is one thing the people of the Red Riding Hood Kingdom know how to do—with the exception of the Boy Who Cried Wolf—it’s survive!”

Red caught her breath. She had forgotten the rest of her speech.

“What was the other point I was going to make, darling?”
The young queen spoke out of the side of her mouth. Luckily for Red, Froggy was standing inside the castle just on the other side of the balcony doors.

“We’re going to rebuild the wall!”
Froggy whispered to her.

“Oh yes, that’s right! Thank you,”
Red said and then refaced her people. “We are going to rebuild our wall!”

Red struck another pose of grandeur. This time she didn’t continue until she heard clapping from the people below.

“But before we do that, I’d like to invite all the carpenters in the kingdom to my castle this afternoon to work on something else—I know it’s short notice, but it would mean so much to
me,” she said. “Thank you for joining me today, Hoodians! I wish you all peace and poverty!”

“Prosperity, my dear! Prosperity!”
Froggy corrected her.

“I mean peace and prosperity!” Red declared and then quickly went back inside the castle. As soon as the doors shut behind her Red began taking off her jewelry and passing it to her handmaiden.

“Tough crowd,” Red said with a sigh. “At least I got all the ‘queen words’ in there.”

The twins had been listening to Red’s speech with Froggy.

“ ‘Queen words’?” Alex asked.

“Yes—
strength, bravery, courage, spirit
—the four words essential to making a good speech as queen,” Red said and then quickly changed the subject. “Have all the baskets and dresses been taken down to the courtyard yet?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the handmaiden said.

The twins had awoken that morning excited to see that the castle’s courtyard had been transformed into a workstation. Red’s servants piled thousands and thousands of baskets from her collection in one corner of the courtyard and hundreds of her summer dresses in another.

Jack had spent the entire night drawing up detailed plans for their flying ship. The blueprints were posted on an enormous board in the center of the courtyard for all to see.

“That should do it,” Jack said with a huge yawn. “How soon can we expect the builders?”

“A few have already arrived but the rest should be here by noon,” Froggy said.

Goldilocks scanned the courtyard. “I think we have a problem,” she said and gestured to the pile of dresses. “Who is supposed to make the ship’s balloon and sails?”

Alex and Conner looked at each other, each hoping the other would have an answer.

“Don’t look at me,” Conner said. “I barely passed Home Economics. I almost set the school on fire pouring cereal, remember?”

“I’m not very good with a needle,” Alex said. “Do you know of any good seamstresses in the kingdom?”

“I’ve already asked Granny,” Red said, happily charging into the courtyard.

No one said a word at first, but they were all thinking the same thing.

“Are you sure your grandmother is capable of stitching together a balloon and sails for a flying ship, dear?” Froggy bravely asked.

“Of course she is!” Red said without a sliver of doubt. “She and the Little Old Woman who manages the Shoe Inn will be here later to work on it. They were delighted by the request. Granny’s been making my clothes since I was a toddler. Trust me—if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s her.”

Within the hour, Red’s granny and the Little Old Woman arrived at the castle with their needles and thread ready. Unlike Mother Goose, these ladies were exactly how the twins had always pictured them. They both had gray hair wrapped into tight buns on the top of their heads and reading glasses placed on the tips of their noses. The Little Old Woman walked with a cane and Granny carried a large purse full of yarn and thread.

“Thank you so much for coming, Granny!” Red said and hugged her grandmother.

“No problem at all, sweetheart,” Granny said. Her voice was soft, slow, and soothing. “It’s rather nice to take a break from retirement. We can only play cards and watch the grass grow for so many hours in a day before it gets tiresome.”

“What?!”
the Little Old Woman asked loudly. Obviously, she was a little hard of hearing. And if the way she was squinting was any indication, she was also hard of seeing.

Granny spoke directly in her ear. “I was telling Red that we’re happy to be out of the Shoe Inn.”

“Who’s dead?!”
the Little Old Woman asked.

“Not dead—
Red
, my granddaughter,” Granny said.

“Your granddaughter’s dead?!”
the Little Old Woman said, aghast.

Granny turned back to Red. “Don’t mind her, sweetheart. She has more than two hundred grandchildren—her ears aren’t what they used to be.”

Froggy, Goldilocks, Jack, and the twins were growing more pessimistic by the second. Could these elderly hands be given such a daunting task?

“
This
is what we’re trying to build,” Red said and showed the old women the blueprints on the board. “Do you think you’ll be able to make it?”

“Let’s see,” Granny said and pushed up her glasses for a better look. “Looks like you got a balloon and sails of some kind, huh? Are you kids going on an adventure?”

“It just so happens we are!” Red said with her head raised high. “We’re going to save the world!”

“That’s very nice, sweetheart,” Granny said and patted her on the back. She didn’t seem too invested in what Red had to say, as if a little girl had told her she was going to the moon. “Do you have fabric or should I run to the shop?”

“We should have everything we need here,” Red said and gestured to the mountain of her dresses piled in the corner.

“Well, look at you, being thrifty,” Granny said. She took one last glance at the board and at the pile of dresses and nodded. “Yes, I think we’ll manage just fine.”

Red jumped and clapped. The others looked more skeptical than ever.

“Are you positive you can manage?” Jack asked. Before he could get an answer the old women had sat themselves on stools near the pile of dresses and begun ripping their seams apart.

“Oh, this is nothing,” Granny said. “Remember that summer
you
ballooned, Red? Poor dear, you gained so much weight I had to make you new clothes every week.”

The twins had to bite their fists to keep from laughing. Goldilocks didn’t even try to shield her chuckle.

“You don’t say?” Goldilocks said with a sly smile.

Red blushed a deep shade of her name. “Granny, I don’t think this is an appropriate time to—”

“That’s why I made her the red cloak she’s so famous for,” Granny said, oblivious to her granddaughter’s embarrassment. “It was the only thing that fit her longer than a week! She used to show up to my house with empty baskets every time I fell ill. I never understood why her mother was sending them to me; then I figured out Red was eating all the baked goods inside them on her way to my house.”

No one in the courtyard could hide their laughter after hearing this. Even Froggy let a snicker escape.

“I was an emotional eater!” Red declared in her own defense. “I had a lot of things on my mind at the time.” She unintentionally glanced toward Jack. “Thankfully, like all my clothes, I grew out of that phase.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Granny said. “We all were thankful for that—except for the fabric store.”

Granny and the Little Old Woman both ripped impressively long seams at the same time. The sound made Red cringe even more. Although it had been her idea, Red couldn’t bear to watch her dresses be torn apart—or to stick around for her granny to share any more embarrassing memories.

“If you all will please excuse me,” Red said and headed out of the courtyard. “I think I’m going to lie down for a minute. My life has suddenly become a Shakeyfruit play.”

Word must have spread through the kingdom, because by noon the courtyard was filled with dozens of builders and carpenters alike, eager to help their young queen. The third Little Pig was the last to arrive, pulling a toolbox half his size behind him.

“I huffed and I puffed and I dragged this all the way from home,” he told the others. “Serves me right for being in the red with Queen Red.”

Jack stood on one of the larger baskets to address the room. “Welcome, and thank you all so much for coming! I’m afraid the task is large and our time is short, so forgive me for speaking hastily. The queen has put together a small mission in
hopes of salvaging what’s left after the Enchantress’s return. The mission involves a special ship, designed to sail across the clouds rather than the sea, and it must be built in record time.”

Jack walked across the room to the blueprints.

“If you could all gather round and take a look,” Jack instructed. “Our supplies are scarce but I believe if we follow these plans precisely we could build this in a matter of days. I won’t lecture you with the reasons this project must remain an absolute secret, I’ll only repeat that your involvement may finally free the world from the Enchantress’s grip. So if you all could be so kind as to lend us your labor, your strength, and your devotion, we can get started immediately and put a stop to this madness once and for all.”

None of the carpenters objected—his words had encouraged them past the point of questioning. Half of them began stripping the baskets into usable pieces while the others aligned them and started crafting them together to form the ship’s bow.

Jack was beaming. For the first time in a long time, he was taking charge of something productive—and he was a great leader.

“He’s really good at this sort of thing,” Alex said to Goldilocks.

“Quite good,” Goldilocks said with a bittersweet smile. “He doesn’t get many opportunities to be a hero anymore.”

Her face was full of pride, but as she watched him command the carpenters, the pride was replaced with guilt. Jack had been such a respected and valued member of the Hoodian
society—he had thrown it all away in his decision to go on the run with her. Although Goldilocks knew it had been his own choice, she couldn’t help but feel a bit responsible.

“Ouch!” Conner shrieked. He had joined the carpenters and kept getting splinters as he stripped the baskets apart. “How are you doing this so easily?”

The third Little Pig stayed silent and simply showed him his hooves.

“Gotcha,” Conner said. “I’ve always thought thumbs were overrated.”

The day flew by as the carpenters worked tirelessly on the ship. Jack was growing anxious, knowing he still had to track down the Traveling Tradesman. He left Froggy and the third Little Pig in charge of overseeing the construction after carefully going over his blueprints inch by inch.

“This is going to be better than I imagined!” Froggy said with a happy hop. “What do you call this contraption?”

The third Little Pig rolled his eyes. “That’s a hammer,” he said.

“So
this
is a hammer! Interesting,” Froggy said and carefully examined it. Despite all that he had been through, he was still a prince at heart.

“On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t leave,” Jack said.

“They’ll be fine,” Goldilocks said and started to drag Jack away from the carpenters. “You’re a terrific instructor.”

Goldilocks and Jack were stopped before they could leave the courtyard.

“You two!” Red called down from an open window. She
was holding a freshly opened white envelope in her hand. “Take the twins with you! I just received word that fairies are coming to inspect our missing wall and I don’t want
those
two hanging around when they do!”

“Ah, man,” Conner said. “I was hoping to help with the ship!”

“Then you should definitely leave,” the third Little Pig said and yanked a piece of basket out of his hands.

“Very well,” Goldilocks said. “They can help us track down the Traveling Tradesman.”

Alex and Conner had to admit they were a bit excited to go on the hunt.

“What am I supposed to tell the fairies when they see all of this construction going on?” Red asked.

Alex was quick to answer. “Tell them you decided to combine all your baskets into one big basket,” she said.

Red scrunched her forehead. “Would anyone believe I’d do something like that?”

“Yes,” the entire courtyard said in unison. Even the carpenters and the old women were in agreement.

Red grunted. “Fine,” she said and promptly shut the window behind her.

“We’re going to need another horse if the twins are traveling with us,” Goldilocks said.

“Not to worry,” Froggy said. “We have plenty of horses in the stables. You can have your pick of the lot.”

The twins eagerly ran up to their rooms and collected the things they thought they’d need searching for the Traveling
Tradesman. They met Jack and Goldilocks in the castle stables, where they were busy packing supplies onto Goldilocks’s infamous cream-colored horse, Porridge.

Porridge glanced uneasily at all the other horses. Goldilocks hadn’t been exaggerating; her horse really didn’t care for other horses. And as the twins also glanced around at the perfectly groomed ponies, it wasn’t hard to understand why. While Porridge had been out in the world running from the law with her mistress, all these horses had spent their days in their comfortable stalls—no wonder they didn’t get along.