With a Kiss (Twisted Tales) (19 page)

“What kind of trouble?” I asked. “How come they keep saying ‘beware’?”

“Watch it, Hobs!” an aster cried, shaking the snow off its head. “You’re headed the wrong way!”

“How do you know where we want to go?” Hobs asked.

“Beware!”

“They’re saying it again,” I said.

Before Hobs could reassure me, he flopped dramatically to the soft snow. Babs toppled over him with a startled cry. The Skittles scattered into the white powder. “Now that,” he said with his voice smothered against the ground, “was completely uncalled for.”

It wasn’t long before I figured out what he was talking about. A flower reached up with veined leaves and twisted over my clunky boots, tripping me to the snow next to him. My head collided with Hobs with a sickening crunch. I groaned and met the eyes of an angry daisy.

“Where are you headed?” it demanded.

“We don’t have time for this.” Hobs struggled to get up, but the flowers held him tightly. Apparently, they were sticklers for manners.

 “Just tell them where we’re going!” I couldn’t fight free and I gave him an accusing look. “Or do we even
know
where we’re going?”

“Why don’t you tell me,” Hobs said. “In case you don’t know what I’m talking about—try following your heart. Guess what? You have one now. The faery queen jump-started it before you came.”

I stared at him. Before I could decipher his meaning, I heard a howl in the distance. Babs gasped. I found her hand through the flowers and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay, baby girl.” She nodded, but her eyes were closed as if not seeing the wolves would make them go away. I twisted to Hobs. “What are you talking about? I’m not supposed to be the leader.”

“Is that what you think I’m trying to tell you?” He looked amused in a harsh way, but there was nothing funny about this. The wolves were gaining ground and we had nothing to defend ourselves with, except a bunch of Skittles and whiny flowers—a rainbow of color in the dust of snow that gave our position away.

To make things worse, the flowers were blabbing loudly about our sins amongst themselves. It wouldn’t be long now before we lost all the ground we had gained. If Hobs wanted me to do something, he’d better give up the riddles and give it to me straight.

Babs thrust her swirly toy at me through the complaining flowers. “What ish it?” she asked me. I grappled with the toy, but she wouldn’t let it go. The mirror was no longer cloudy. I saw her mother in a flurry of frost and skirts. Her long blonde hair whipped over her face—just three shades lighter than Babs’. Now that we were in faeryland, we saw what
we
wanted to see in the toy, and the kid must be missing her mother. With a sinking feeling, I knew that the faery queen wasn’t coming for us anytime soon. She pounded her fists against a thick prison of ice. It spread over the walls of her castle, sealing everything shut until she was trapped in its frozen cage.

“Hobs!” I pointed to Babs’ toy in her tightly clenched hand.

His jaw tightened when he saw it. “The hag’s getting too strong. We have to defeat her if we want to free our friends.” The howls in the distance were getting closer. Soon we would be trapped too. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will take them days to digest you. We’ll think of a way out by then.”

“How can you possibly think that makes me feel any better, Hobs?”

“I don’t.”

The wolves loped over the snowcapped meadow. They let out howls of rage. I ducked further into the flowerbed. “Who are you hiding from?” an aster asked with a much-too-innocent expression. Hobs tried to get to the flower, but he couldn’t reach it in time. “Hey!” the aster called out gleefully to the wolves. “You looking for somebody? Over here!”

Hobs elbowed it in the face and I wasn’t a bit sorry. I turned to the daisy and matched its glare. Somehow it read my look and its grip slackened on me. Babs broke free. Before I could stop her, she was on her feet. The wolves caught sight of the diminutive seven-year-old. They bared their teeth. “Well, looky what we got here, boys—it’s a Hostess snacky. We’re in business!”

Hobs tugged me out of the flowerbed. “We can outrun them!” That seemed impossible, but at this point I was willing to try anything. Hobs dragged Babs with us.

“It’s Oberon’s
baby, isn’t it?” the wolves shouted at our backs. “She’s the name we got wrong!”

I tried not to slow at that. Was it true? Was Babs not who everyone said she was? Who told me she was a princess anyway? Was it Hobs? Even so, her mother called Babs her baby, and wasn’t she a queen?

I listened to the snapping and snarling of the wolves rushing after us. It cleared everything else from my mind. “What are you doing?” Glasses’ cultured voice drifted behind us through the yowling. He was lecturing the other wolves. “You’re not eating, are you?”

“No!” another wolf growled defensively. It sounded like Gray.

“Yes, you are. What do you have there? Give me that!”

Hobs clucked his tongue at the sight. “Never feed the animals.” By now the wolves had descended on the Skittles, fighting for a taste of the sugary concoction. I could barely believe that stopped them. “Told you we’d outrun them.” Hobs sped down the frozen slope, and we followed. Snow shot out behind our feet.

“Don’t even pretend you planned that,” I yelled after him. Hobs tugged the rest of the Skittles out of the backpack and dumped them, leaving a telltale trail behind us. He was playing Hansel and Gretel with the wolves. It left us with nothing to eat, not that it was substantial to begin with, but it was the closest thing that we had—correction—
I
had to food. My tiara buzzed the rule through my head:
The Otherworldly can’t eat faery food. It’s forbidden.
My heart raced at the danger. “I can’t eat your food. It’s forbidden!”

“Well, I guess that gives us a reason to work a little faster.”

“Or I die?”

“Just stay away from the apples. You remember what happened to that other black haired chick, right?”

“You said it was a rule. This isn’t like Hades where I eat your food and have to stay here forever, is it? I like my life at home!”

I slipped and he grabbed my elbow, keeping me upright. It gave me a close up of his mischievous dark eyes. “That’s because you’ve never really lived yet,” he said.

My mouth dropped. How long could I go without food! Two days? That was my time limit before I had to return Babs to her mother. I couldn’t last that long. We headed over the hill. The castle lay in the valley below us, covered in frost. I wasn’t sure if it was made of white stone or ice or poisoned gingerbread like a proper witch’s house. Hopefully I wouldn’t find out the hard way because I was starving.

I still had Babs’ toy in my hand and I lifted it. The queen appeared as soon as I thought of her. She stared out a window caked with ice, her hands clasped in front of her. Maybe I had a chance of survival if she was a prisoner here? If we found her right away, I wouldn’t starve. I studied the stone walls of her castle—they were marbled and gray. Then I compared it to the ones we were heading for. The ivory spires were polished and tipped with gold; they weren’t the same. “Babs’ mother isn’t here, Hobs. Why are we going this way?”

“It’s safer taking a shortcut through the hag’s
lawn. That’s why. No way am I going through nymph territory to get to the faery queen. I’m sorry.”

What? Now he hated nymphs? I thought nymphs were supposed to be cute, diminutive creatures who loved the wilderness—a cut above an evil hag. “What’s so bad about nymphs?”

“Nymphs are bad. They party all day long. They’re always eating and drinking and getting merry and dancing.”

“Yeah, but compared to a witch . . .”

“Oh, did I forget the worst part? They have love potions.”

“So instead of turning you into a frog, they can make you fall in love with someone? Sounds life-threatening.”

“You might fall in love with someone horrible . . .”

I stared at Hobs, only now realizing that actually
could
be pretty bad. A little sprinkle from above, and— “They could make me fall in love with you?” I finished the thought aloud, I was so appalled.

Hobs broke into a smile. “Well, I was actually thinking of worse things.”

“Really? Like torture, maybe? Still, there’s got to be some other way besides trespassing through the hag’s backyard. I . . .” Before I could finish what I was going to say, I started to hum. Weird. I had a song stuck in my head, but why was I humming it when I was trying to talk? Hobs gave me a strange look and I felt a shock run through me. Wait. The song wasn’t in my head—it was in the air. It was pretty catchy. I felt myself nodding to it. Babs skipped to the rhythm.

“Oh, no you don’t! Cover your ears!” Hobs had me by the arm, almost carrying the both of us in his panic. “It’s the nymphs. Humans can’t resist their music. Neither can faeries, for that matter. Babs, cover your ears. Do it!”

Cover my ears? That was the last thing I wanted to do. No, I wanted to sing along. Hobs shouted out a clashing song, letting go of us long enough to pull out cotton from our backpack. “Put this in your ears.” I wasn’t sure what good that would do. The song was already in my head and I couldn’t get it out. I loved it!

The tiara rang a warning through my ears:
If you hear the music of the faeries, run.

“Told you nymphs were horrible,” Hobs said between his frantic clash-singing. They were having a party by the borders—I could hear the laughter all the way from here. Despite the warnings screaming through my head, I wanted to join them. I grabbed Babs’ hands and swung her through the air. She giggled and we twirled faster and faster, our feet making wild patterns in the snow. The wolves howled in the distance and I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I felt Hobs’ strong arms behind me. He tugged me back and forced the cotton into my ears. Poor Babs was next to suffer the same treatment. I collapsed next to her in the snow, breathing hard.

The keep of drifted snow was our only sanctuary. The music was muffled, but I could still hear it and I reached for it, wanted it. Babs tried to wriggle free and Hobs grabbed for her wrist. As soon as he went for her, I dashed past him, pumping my arms and stomping through the snow as if my life depended on reaching the music. It was all I ever wanted.

Hobs pushed Babs in a snow-bank and caught me by the waist, swinging me around. His lip curled with the effort to keep me back. “Listen to me!” he cried through the music. “Stop it! Listen to me!”

If you hear the music of the faeries, run. If you hear the music of the faeries, run.
It ran through my head, but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted the music. It was addicting. He watched me with pleading eyes, his face just inches from mine. “It will kill you! You’ve got to stop now! You’ll dance to death.”

It would kill me! I tried to care, or at least force myself to survive. I took a deep breath and hummed something else to block out the sound. It was exhausting. Hobs had me in a bruising grip, but released one of my arms to scoop Babs out of the snow. He herded us toward the hag’s forbidding castle. It was surrounded by an aura of brilliant lights—
northern lights in the west?
Everything was wrong here.

The nymphs picked up the partying with renewed vigor. It was exciting and captivating all at once. Hobs shoved us forward, his hand at our backs. “Run! Run as if your life depends on it because it does!” We broke into a sprint just to escape the sound of music. Tears streamed down my cheeks at the sheer torture of not dancing.

The closer we came to the ice castle, the stiller the air. As soon as we stepped into the hallowed courtyards, the sound cut off. Even the birds fell silent. The castle was like a beautiful, intimidating woman. Nothing dared touch it but age.

Hobs plucked the cotton from his ears and signaled me to do the same. “
She
doesn’t allow music here.” He panted for breath. “. . . never thought I’d be glad of that.”

It was an ice cave in here. I leaned down to catch my breath, watching Hobs wandered the frozen entryway with Babs. I grew still when I looked up and saw myself stare back at me about a hundred times. “I’m guessing she allows mirrors,” I said. They lined the endless corridors like a Stonehenge fun house. What would an ugly hag want with so many? Babs pulled forward in her faery costume, looking into one of them. Hobs jerked her back.

I glanced over, and he shrugged. “You can’t tell me that after all this, you trust a mirror?” he asked. He was right, I didn’t, but he was also talking too fast, which made me suspicious. We followed him through the length of the courtyard where it opened up again, letting in the bright Sidhe sky. He pointed to the valley below. “The biggest mirror is out there,” he said.

The sight below the icy crags was enough to erase everything else from my mind. The cliff edge separated us from an army that looked like a swarm of snow bees, more numerous than the snowflakes that floated over our heads. If these soldiers caught us, we’d be dead.

“We call that the Mirror of Reason.” Hobs edged out, showing me the frozen lake that had broken into thousands of ice forms; they looked almost human. “There are rumors of what’s under that ice—nasty things that we don’t have to worry about unless the place melts—and standing on all
those
nasty things are a whole lot of other nasty things;
her
army. See them?”