Out of the Wild Read online

  At least the Beast didn’t have to lie about his name or his past. He didn’t have to lie to people who loved him, like Rumpelstiltskin felt he had to do. Rumpelstiltskin had kept who he was a secret from his own son. Was that so much better than the Beast physically hiding himself up in the clouds? All the hiding, all the secrecy, all the fear . . . it wasn’t fair to any of them.

  She thought about Henry, finding out for the first time that his father was a fairy-tale character one moment and then being carried away by a dragon the next. He was, she thought, having a much worse day than she was. Poor Henry. Maybe her parents would help save him after Julie rescued them. Maybe they could all escape somewhere together . . .

  But how exactly was she going to rescue her parents? She had no allies, no magic, no plan, and the Wild was growing larger and stronger every minute. Even if she did rescue them, how were they going to escape the Wild, especially if the last safe place was gone? Was this a doomed quest?

  Just take it one step at a time, she told herself. Or one leaf at a time. Her arms were starting to ache, and her palms were developing blisters. The skin of the beanstalk was as rough as sandpaper. She began to wonder, had Dad planned to return to the Grand Canyon for her after he saved Mom? Or was leaving her just a choice he made out of necessity, like when she had left him behind in the Wild? She’d had a choice: stay with Dad inside the Wild or walk through a motel room door in his castle to the wishing well. It hadn’t been an easy decision. Had it been as hard for Dad?

  Julie heard a faint rumble, but this time it was coming from below. She looked down, but all she could see was the dense green of beanstalk leaves. Climbing lower, she heard the sound of glass shattering. People were yelling, their voices blurring together into one angry scream. What was happening on the ground? She’d expected, well, Disneyland below her. Happiest place on earth. This sounded anything but happy.

  The beanstalk trembled, and Julie clung to the stalk. That didn’t feel like wind. Her heart thudded faster. How far was she from the bottom? “Don’t fall,” she whispered to the stalk. The beanstalk lurched and swayed. Julie squeezed her eyes shut and hugged it. When the beanstalk steadied, she began clambering down as fast as she could, chanting to herself, “Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.”

  She heard a shout from below: “Someone’s climbing down the beanstalk!”

  Oh, no. She froze. What should she do?

  “Cut it down! Find an ax! Find a chainsaw!”

  No, no, no! Julie looked up. She’d never make it back to the clouds before they (whoever “they” were) found a way to chop the stalk down. And besides, she couldn’t go back there. The Wild was there. “Don’t!” she shouted. “Don’t chop it down!”

  “Someone is there!” she heard.

  She had to convince them she wasn’t an enemy. She had an idea. “Help!” she cried. “Please, help! I’m in the beanstalk! Please, help me down!”

  “Someone’s trapped up there!” she heard. “It sounds like a kid!”

  Yes! “Please, help!” she called. In another burst of inspiration, Julie added, “I want my mommy!” That wasn’t even a lie. The beanstalk stopped shaking, and she scrambled down the remaining leaves.

  Hands reached up to pull her off the stalk. She began making sobbing noises. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! It was horrible!” Once she started to fake-cry, she nearly started to cry for real. Comforting hands patted her. She wished she could tell them the truth. It was horrible. She doubted these strangers even knew how horrible. Spreading her hands, she peeked up at the people around her. She was enclosed in a ring of very agitated men and women.

  “Where are your parents?” someone asked her.

  A real tear escaped down her cheek. Where were they? She knew the answer to that. Could she say the real answer? “I think . . . the castle.” She wished these people were really her rescuers.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” a woman said.

  Her heart thudded faster. Poor dear? Why? “What’s wrong with the castle?”

  The woman wrapped her arm around Julie’s shoulders. “Better if you don’t look,” she said. “It will be destroyed soon enough. We’re wiping this place clean of all fairy tales.” She beckoned to a police officer, standing next to a streetlamp. “This little girl shouldn’t be here. Can you take her somewhere safe?”

  No! She couldn’t—

  The crowd cheered as the beanstalk creaked and swayed. “Bring it down!” people shouted. “Destroy the fairy tales!” Both the policeman and the woman looked up, momentarily distracted from Julie. Seizing the opportunity, she shook off the woman’s arm. She ran under shimmering lights and past a row of pink and purple boats and then splashed down into ankle-deep water. Wading through an archway, Julie climbed out of the water and hid behind the arch. Had anyone seen her? Was anyone chasing her? Heart pounding, she peered out.

  People were pointing upward and shouting. Julie heard a loud snap and then a whoosh of wind. A few seconds later . . . crash! She clutched the walls as everything shook.

  Outside, the crowd cheered. Julie shrank back. They’d done it, she realized. They’d knocked down the beanstalk. She began to shake. She was nearly on that beanstalk when it fell. If she’d climbed any slower . . . If they hadn’t believed she was an ordinary girl . . . Huddling in the archway, she wished she could stay here and hide—though she wondered where exactly “here” was. For the first time, Julie glanced around her. Dolls had been yanked from their pedestals and tossed around the room. Plastic arms and legs littered the AstroTurf floor. Perky suns and clouds had been torn from the walls. From another part of the ride, she heard distorted tinny music: “ . . . a world of laughter, a world of joy . . .” She stared at the wreckage.

  The crowd had trashed It’s a Small World.

  It didn’t make sense. Small World? Why wreck Small World? She thought of what the woman had said: they were here to wipe the place clean of fairy tales. They’re scared, she answered herself. The Wild has eaten half the country, and they’re scared. So they came to a place full of fairy tales and set about destroying it, as if that would help.

  And Mom and Dad were out there in the heart of it.

  Taking a deep breath, Julie hopped again into the ankle-deep water and waded past the pink and purple boats. Climbing onto the shore, she looked out between bushes shaped like elephants and dancing hippos. She saw people. Lots and lots of very angry, very loud people. Dense crowds clogged the sidewalks, lawns, and rides. She couldn’t see beyond them. I’ll never be able to sneak by, she thought.

  Wait—she didn’t have to sneak! She wasn’t a fairy-tale character. She looked perfectly ordinary. What if she pretended she was one of them? That shouldn’t be too hard, she thought. She’d been pretending she was one of them her whole life.

  Spotting a pack of teenagers, Julie hopped out of the water and ran toward them. “This way!” she shouted. She pointed toward the center of the park. The kids roared and changed direction. She trailed behind as they shoved through the crowd. Before they could notice she wasn’t one of them, Julie ducked into a ride and hopped inside a giant pale purple teacup.

  Wow, she hadn’t thought that would actually work.

  Grinning, Julie peeked up over the rim of the teacup. Her grin faded. Beyond the teacups, it was bad. Lit by the lights of the rides, Crayola-bright debris covered the street. Wreckage blocked the opening to Peter Pan’s Flight. The caterpillar from the Alice in Wonderland ride had been smashed, and the oversized flowers had been crushed and trampled. Horses from a carousel lay on their sides like wounded animals. Flags and signs hung limp and torn from lampposts. Cars from Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride had been tossed across the serpentine to lie upside down in a heap.

  Above it all loomed Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  The castle was encased in thorns.

  Roses chased up the turrets. Thick knots of branches with thorns as long as Julie’s arm squeezed around it. She could barely see the tips of the flags at the top of the castl
e. And, high above them, she saw the silhouette of a figure on a broomstick, circling the top of the tower, illuminated by the dozens of floodlights aimed at the castle.

  Dad!

  No, it wasn’t Dad. As the figure circled closer, Julie saw white frizzed hair and a billowing cloak. On the back of the broomstick, she saw the silhouette of a cat.

  “Grandma,” she breathed. “Boots!”

  Grandma and Boots were here! They’d evaded the Wild! But how? Why were they here, nearly three thousand miles from home? Had they come to rescue Mom? Had they seen Dad? Julie wanted to shout out to them. But they’d never hear her over the roar of the crowd, and the people who would hear her . . . Julie did not want to draw their attention. She needed to pretend she was one of them. She was stuck on her own. For now.

  Just knowing that Grandma and Boots were out there, though, made her feel like she’d eaten five chocolate bars and was full of sugar energy. She took quick stock: Sleeping Beauty was clearly here, which meant that the dragon was too, probably with Henry, Rumpelstiltskin, and maybe Mom! Dad couldn’t be far behind.

  He’d enter from the front, she thought. That was how a fairy-tale prince would do it: storm the castle from the front gate. She crawled out of the teacup and plunged back out into the crowd.

  Zigzagging through the mob, Julie crossed over a bridge and then ducked down behind battered shrubbery, sculpted into the shape of Pinocchio and a donkey (both now headless).

  For a minute, Julie simply crouched there, panting. And then she gathered her courage and looked out. From here, she could see a stage in front of the castle. It had been abandoned mid-performance. Costumes and props and equipment were strewn all over. A single microphone stood on a podium, spotlight still fixed on it, as if waiting for someone to step forward and yell, “Stop!” But no one did.

  Beneath the floodlights, the plaza in front of the stage was nearly as bright as day. A TV crew was filming the wreckage of Main Street, and Julie saw people dart in and out of shops. A constant hum of sometimes distant and sometimes scarily close shouting filled the air. Was it like this everywhere, she wondered, or just Disneyland? Looking up, Julie saw that Grandma and Boots still circled the castle, silhouetted against the night sky. There was no sign of Dad. Maybe he was already here. Maybe he was inside . . .

  Suddenly, like a sunrise staining the sky, all the brambles around the castle blossomed into red roses and green leaves. Staring, Julie forgot to breathe. Oh, wow, what could this mean? Seconds later, the roses and leaves withered and dropped, and the thorns curled back in on themselves, receding down the stone walls of the castle.

  Dad had done it!

  Julie didn’t know whether to cheer or cry. He’d completed his quest and sprung the final trap. He’d awakened Sleeping Beauty.

  Shouts echoed throughout the park, and people poured toward the castle. From Tomorrowland, a pack of policemen charged onto the plaza. From Adventureland, a TV crew raced over a bridge. Now that the thorns were gone, Julie could see that all the stained glass windows of the castle had been reduced to broken shards. Someone had scrawled Once Upon a Never and Happily Never After amid various curse words in bright red over the castle facade. Inside the archway to Fantasyland, the mosaic of Sleeping Beauty was shattered. Tiles lay scattered on the ground.

  Then the castle door flung open. Two figures tumbled out, one with bright yellow hair and the other—Dad! Beside him, Sleeping Beauty (a very awake Sleeping Beauty) pointed and shouted at the growing, growling crowd.

  Police swarmed forward.

  Oh, no, she had to do something! Julie hadn’t come this far for Dad to be arrested now! Julie leapt up.

  Sparkles twinkled in the castle archway, and the fairy godmother Bobbi suddenly appeared inside the shimmering glitter. She looked like the quintessential fairy godmother: iridescent butterfly wings, a pink gown, a sparkling wand. The police fell back, and there was an instant of silence as the entire crowd gasped in unison.

  Bobbi laughed, and the sound echoed across the park. “Oh, you can’t have him yet. We aren’t finished with him. He has one more story to complete.” She waved her wand at Dad, and the prince vanished in a swirl of sparkles.

  “No!” Julie yelled.

  With a flick of her wrist, Bobbi vanished. Reappearing on the opposite side of the archway, she knelt and held out her hands to catch a fat green frog mid-leap. A frog! She’d turned Dad into a frog!

  Fluttering her wings, the fairy godmother rose into the air as the nearest policeman lunged for her. Where was Grandma? Why didn’t she do something? Julie looked up at the empty sky as a second policeman raised his gun and aimed at Bobbi.

  Bobbi and the frog/Dad vanished.

  Crack.

  “Dad!” Julie cried. Her scream was drowned out by the screams of the crowd.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Disneyland

  Julie crouched behind the battered bushes as the mob panicked. Some ran away from the castle, trampling across the bridges and sidewalks. Some rushed toward it. Fights broke out. Julie hugged her arms, instinctively making herself as small as possible.

  What should she do? What could she do? Dad was captured (and a frog). Mom was captured. Henry and Rumpelstiltskin, captured. Sleeping Beauty . . . Julie peeked out again. Sleeping Beauty was being arrested, and two men were bashing at the castle door with a pole from a carousel horse. Grandma and Boots were nowhere to be seen.

  I failed, Julie thought. We lost. We lost thoroughly and completely. The kidnappers won. Soon, the Wild would cover the entire continent and begin to spread to the rest of the world. Julie felt her eyes fill up with tears. She’d failed, failed, failed. Everyone was going to be trapped inside fairy tales. She was never going to see her family again. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  The only way to stop the Wild was with a wish in the wishing well, but the well was thousands of miles from here. Last time, she had found a magic door in a castle that had led to the Wishing Well Motel. She couldn’t count on that happening again.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Wait. Just wait. What if she could make it happen? What if she turned her experience into a fairy tale? By its own rules, the Wild reenacted fairy tales. If her story was a real fairy tale, then the Wild would have to include a motel room door inside its castles, just like it had to put an oven in its gingerbread houses.

  Could she do it? She remembered how the Beast had told her about the giant writing stories to try to change his fate. The Beast had said the giant would fail because he hadn’t told his stories to anyone. But here at Disneyland, there were thousands of people to tell. If she told her story to everyone, maybe it would become a real fairy tale!

  It was a crazy thought. It meant revealing her family secret in the most public way possible. But did she have any better ideas?

  Julie peered out through the bushes at the castle. As she’d noticed before, the stage in front of the castle looked as if it had been abandoned mid-performance—amid the wreckage of costumes and props, a microphone still stood on a podium. If she told her story here in front of all these people . . . She had to at least try!

  Gathering her courage, Julie crept out from behind the bushes and joined the mob. Immediately, the flood of men and women swept her forward. She was tossed back and forth as she zigzagged toward the stage, and as soon as a path cleared for an instant, she ran up the stairs to the stage and climbed onto the podium.

  This will never work, she thought. There’s no way that the microphone is still on. She tapped it. See, nothing. Examining it, she flipped a switch and tapped it again.

  Speakers thumped across the park.

  Whoa.

  Okay, this was it. She hoped this wasn’t a stupid idea. All her life, she’d been trained to hide who she was . . . She hoped Mom understood. “Um . . . Hello? Everyone, listen to me,” she said into the microphone. “Everything you’re doing here isn’t helping. You can’t stop the Wild this way.” Her words echoed back through the speakers, but they ha
d no effect on the crowd. People continued to shove and shout on the plaza in front of her. “Listen to me! I think I know how to stop it!”

  Sparkles fluttered around her.

  Julie felt her stomach sink. Oh, no.

  From the top of the podium stairs, the fairy godmother waved at her. She wasn’t, Julie noticed immediately, holding the frog. What had she done with Dad? Bobbi shook her finger in a tsking motion. “My dear, you’re not ruining this for me. I have the chance to be great again, and no little brat is going to take that from me,” she said merrily. The mike picked up her words and amplified them across the park. She raised her wand and pointed it at Julie.

  Julie shrank back. The lip of the podium was behind her. It was a twenty-foot drop to the pavement below. Trapped, trapped, trapped! “Don’t!” she cried, throwing her arms up over her face.

  Wind rushed against her, and Julie heard Bobbi say, “You!”

  Julie lowered her arms to see Grandma, mounted on her broomstick, between her and Bobbi. Perched in mid-air, Boots hissed at Bobbi.

  “Don’t you point that stick at my granddaughter,” Grandma snarled. She pointed her finger at Bobbi, and a shot of black dust flew from her fingertips. Bobbi vanished and reappeared a few feet to the left. She aimed her wand at Grandma.

  “Watch out!” Julie shouted.

  Boots leapt off the back of the broomstick onto the podium as Grandma dodged. A bolt of sparkles slammed into a lamppost, and it collapsed in a poof of smoke. In its place sat a pumpkin. Grandma zapped back. Bobbi ducked, and a shower of snakes fell from a castle flag and plummeted into the moat.

  “Get down,” Boots said in a voice low enough for only Julie to hear.

  She dropped to her knees beside her brother. Whipping her wand in a circle, the fairy godmother shot a cyclone of sparkles at Gothel. Julie flattened onto her stomach and covered her head. Missing Grandma by inches, the sparkles bored a hole into the wall of the castle.