CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

KIDNAPPED

They don’t call him Jack the Giant Stalker because he’s afraid of trolls. Next thing you know, he’ll be running from dwarves! The pint-sized monsters might seem frightening to his friends, but Jack finds them merely irritating. “Get to the bridge!” he bellows. Then adds, “The other way!” since they’re running away from it.

Filomena stops first and looks back at him, hesitant.

The last time they were chased by this crew, she kept him from unleashing his magic on them. But there’s no reason to stop him now; they’re not just a bunch of seventh graders. They’re the ogres’ minions.

“HURRY!” he yells again.

Filomena understands. “To the bridge!” she orders, pulling on Gretel’s sleeve and turning her around. “Leave the bag!” she screams to Alistair.

“Nooooo!” Gretel protests. “My makeup!”

“You don’t need it! You’re beautiful without it!” Filomena argues.

“You really are!” Alistair agrees, even as he tries to run with the large suitcase.

They run past Jack, who is standing at the edge of the cliff, his vines slipping out and reaching toward the trolls.

Alistair trips on a few rocks and falls down hard.

“Okay, fine! Leave it!” Gretel finally agrees. They run toward the bridge and begin to cross to the other side. But Alistair, ever the gentleman, won’t leave Gretel’s bag and drags it behind him.

“JACK THE GIANT STALKER,” the troll formerly known as Posy Williamson sneers. “MORE LIKE JACK THE GIANT LOSER!”

The trolls fan out, wicked smiles on their faces. “We knew you’d try to cross here once we cut down that stupid Heart Tree! You’ll never get back to Never After now! You’ll grow old and die here, just like your stupid mortal friend!”

“Is that you, Rumpelstiltskin?” Jack says. “Haven’t seen you since Queen Rosanna figured out your name! I thought that stench smelled familiar!”

Posy looks annoyed. “I’m wearing deodorant!”

The vines from Jack’s arms uncoil ferociously and attack from above, and soon they’ve looped around each troll and rolled them up like … well, like spaghetti noodles.

But the trolls unleash their own weapons—garden shears!—and begin to hack at the vines.

Jack falls to his knees, his vines dripping blood.

“Jack!” Filomena cries, looking back and seeing him fall.

She and Gretel and Alistair have almost reached the end of the bridge, and even through the haze, Filomena can see the familiar landscape of Never After ahead.

“GO!” yells Jack, keeping up the fight as new vines sprout to battle the trolls.

“No, we’re not leaving without you!” cries Filomena. She removes her Dragon’s Tooth sword from its sheath. “Come on!” she tells the other two.

“Um, okay?” Gretel says, doing the same.

Alistair is already running toward the trolls, his dragon sword held high, Gretel’s bag bumping behind him on the rocks. “COME AND GET IT!” he screams.

Filomena lunges at the trolls, glad for the karate training her parents made her take when she was in elementary school.

A few of the trolls focus their attention on the new combatants, and one of them slashes at Gretel’s sweater.

“YOU ANIMALS! THIS IS DESIGNER!” Gretel yells as she stabs back and disappears into a troll pile.

Through the smoke and the blood and the yelling, Filomena loses track of her friends, but at last the trolls are choked unconscious by Jack’s vines, and they fall, one by one.

Jack runs up to her, his vines coiled back around his arms. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Where are Gretel and Alistair?”

“I thought they were with you!” says Jack.

“No!” says Filomena.

Then they see a group of trolls crossing the bridge, carrying two person-shaped bundles and one large suitcase above their heads.

Jack snaps his vines and sends them whizzing to catch the trolls, but they disappear into the haze at the end of the span.

He curses soundly, using a few of those four-letter words Alistair taught him. “Come on. We’ll find them over there.”

They rush to the other side, and as they pass through the portal, they find the bridge itself has changed and now they’re running along a rickety wooden one staffed by ogres, just as Jack feared.

Jack pulls Filomena down, and they jump off, tumbling into a ditch underneath while an ogre army marches above them.

It’s Jack’s turn to shush her.

Filomena nods, her heart pounding. At last, when the ogres have disappeared around the bend, she and Jack come out of their hiding place and survey the area.

But there’s no sign of the trolls—or of their friends.

They’re gone.