“Where do I go?” Julie asked.
“You need to make a wish,” Zel said. “You need to go to the Wishing Well Motel and make a wish. But it has to be the wish that’s dearest to your heart or the Wild will find a way to make it come out wrong.”
“I’ll do it, Mom,” Julie promised.
“You have to beat the Wild at its own game. It’s the only way to defeat it,” Zel said. Battles, tricks, persuasion, none of it had worked. “The Wild has to play by its own rules. Remember that.”
“I will,” Julie said. “I love you, Mom!”
Zel’s throat clogged. There were a thousand things she wanted to say . . . First was: Don’t go. Sending her daughter off . . . She’d already lost her husband; she couldn’t lose Julie too. “Julie . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be careful.”
“Have an uneventful day,” her mother said.
Julie waved and plunged back into the forest.
“I love you!” Rapunzel called after her.
The forest swallowed Julie and the cat without a sound.
Chapter Nineteen
Goldilocks and the Beanstalk
Out of the sun and away from her mother, Julie didn’t feel so brave. She was in Worcester now—a solid fifteen-minute drive from the Wishing Well Motel, when the highways weren’t covered in moss and griffins. At a walk, it would take hours. Lots of opportunities for ogres and witches and wolves to make life difficult. For the first time ever, Julie found herself wishing for Cindy and her Subaru.
“You cannot do this,” Boots said flatly.
“Hey, how about a little optimism here?” Reaching down, she scratched under his chin. He didn’t purr or tilt his head into her hand. “Boots, what’s wrong?”
“You cannot rescue her,” he said. “You cannot make this wish.”
Jeez, with friends like these . . . “You’re on my side, remember? Boots?” He didn’t respond. Staring straight ahead, he sat stiff like a stuffed doll. “Boots? You okay?”
Mechanically he raised his head to look at her like he was a puppet controlled by strings. She shivered. Something wasn’t right. “Boots?” She had the sudden irrational thought that this wasn’t Boots. “Are you . . . Who are you?” she asked.
“I am the heart of the fairy tale,” the Wild said, through the mouth of her brother.
Oh, no. No, it couldn’t be. Julie rocked backward. The Wild wasn’t alive. It didn’t have a mind. Grandma, Goldie . . . everyone had said it was a force. Like gravity. Mom had never said it was alive. She’d never said it could do this.
“This story must not be. You must find another,” the Wild said. “You will ruin everything.”
The Wild was alive. It was alive, and it was speaking through Boots. She turned and ran. “Mom, Mom!” She wove between trunks. Behind each tree was another and another and another . . . Panting, she slowed. The tower was gone. She turned in a circle—thick trees in all directions . . .
The cat sat on the path.
Julie yelped. “Go away. Leave me alone.”
“I am offering a gift: the world as it should be.”
She shook her head. That made no sense. None of this made sense. She was talking to the forest? She was talking to the fairy tale? “This is crazy,” she said. “You’re destroying people.”
“On the contrary,” it said. “I am giving them meaning.”
She didn’t understand.
“I give them a beginning, a middle, and an end; a once upon a time and a happily ever after. I give rewards to the good and punishment to the bad. I give order and sense to an otherwise arbitrary existence.”
Oh, God, she thought, it’s crazy. The forest was insane.
With her brother’s paw, the Wild gestured at the shadowy trees. “In here, life is fair. Everyone has a place. Everyone belongs.” With her brother’s eyes, it looked at Julie. Its eyes were matte black. “I am offering you what you’ve always wanted, Julie Marchen. You can belong here.”
Anger flashed through Julie so fast that it made her shake. “You don’t know anything about me or what I want. You put my mom in a tower. You made me grow up without a dad . . .” She swallowed hard as her voice cracked.
“This is how it must be,” it said. “This is how it is.”
“Yeah, well, not anymore,” she said. “Count me out. Not playing. Game over.” She marched past the cat and down the path. She knew it was bravado. How was she going to cross fifteen miles with the Wild actively against her? How was she going to defeat something that wasn’t just powerful but was also intelligent? How had Mom done it? What had happened after the Great Battle? Julie wished she had asked. Yes, Mom had said to hurry, but Julie should have asked. She’d been stupid.