She lifted her face. “Ow,” she said.
In a flutter of wings, the swans landed around her. She pushed herself to her knees. Beside her, Boots lay shuddering on the ground. She crawled to him. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Birds,” he said. “Giant birds.”
“But are you okay?”
He raised his head and looked at her. Fur wet, his face looked like a mop. “I’m wet,” he said. “I’m cold. I’m hungry.”
She hugged him. “Yeah, me too,” she said. He didn’t squirm out of her arms. Instead, he curled against her as she looked around them. They were on a shore, a narrow beach of rocks lined by the encroaching forest. The swans were waddling in between the trees toward a picturesque cottage. “Excuse me, uh, sir?” she called. “Where are we?”
“Safe,” said the closest swan, the captain. “You’ll stay here for the night.” On the word night, the sky suddenly tinted orange. Julie and Boots looked up. Across the water, the afternoon sun had dipped instantly into sunset.
Okay, that was disturbing. Her urge to leave the Wild suddenly doubled. “Sir? We were heading for an ogre’s castle. It’s supposed to be on the other side of the ocean.”
“Step lively, men,” the captain barked. The swans waddled toward the cottage. As they approached it, they seemed to stretch and darken. Their wings shrank and thinned. Their legs extended. One by one, their feathers faded into army green fatigues, and their beaks flattened into human faces.
“They’re human only in the evenings until the spell is broken,” Boots whispered. Julie nodded, remembering the story: someone had to sew eleven shirts of flowers to turn them human again. She and Boots watched the soldiers march into the cottage. “Hope you like sewing,” Boots said.
“You don’t think . . .” She couldn’t be caught in another story so quickly! She looked at the captain. “Um, sir, I don’t have time to break your spell. I have to get to—”
“We already have someone sewing,” the captain said.
Wow, that was lucky. “You do?”
“Of course,” he said. “Come meet her. She’s in the tree.” Boots leapt out of her arms as Julie followed the captain around the cottage. In the space of time it took them to walk no more than thirty steps, the sun set and the moon rose. All the trees were dark masses of shadows.
Julie shivered and walked closer to the captain. She’d thought the woods were terrifying in daylight. She hadn’t imagined them in the dark. In the dark, the twisted trunks looked even more like faces. Knots stretched into silent screams. Switching on his flashlight, the captain focused the beam on a tree with a shape in it.
Even though she was expecting it, Julie took a step backward: there was a girl in the tree. She was making a strange clicking sound.
The captain strode toward her and Julie followed. Light spilled up the tree, illuminating feet, knees, and then hands moving in concert with the clicking—knitting, Julie guessed. As the light hit the knitter’s face, the girl lifted her head and flipped her hair to the side. Mouth open, Julie stared at her. Oh, wow.
The girl in the tree was Kristen March.
Kristen’s mouth curled, and Julie’s shoulders tensed. Kristen recognized her. Like the soldiers, she was in a tale, but unlike New Little Red, she hadn’t reached an ending yet. She still had her memories. Lucky me, Julie thought. Kristen was going to say something awful. She knew it.
But Kristen said nothing. Her hands kept moving, the needles kept clicking, and she didn’t speak. Why didn’t she say something snide? Julie had never known Kristen to resist an insult. But Kristen just kept pulling in blue and red daisies and knitting them together. Of course, Julie thought, the spell! She couldn’t talk or laugh while she knit flower shirts for the swan-men. The Wild was forcing her silent, just like it had forced the griffin to buck Julie and Boots. Julie started to laugh. How perfect! Kristen couldn’t talk!
The captain looked at Julie curiously. “Do you know her?”
“Yes, I know her.” Smiling, she added, “Unfortunately.”
Kristen’s eyes bulged.
“You should be glad she can’t talk,” Julie said. The pressure of holding in so many snide comments was probably intense. “There are kids at school who would give anything to see her like this.”
Kristen’s mouth formed an o in an almost-hiccup. Her hands moved faster, needles clacking louder.
“She thinks she’s so high and mighty,” Julie said. “Not so clever with the insults now, are you? Not so great stuck in a tree by yourself without all your friends around you. Oh, look, I think you missed a row.”