When I opened my eyes again, we were in the middle of the most amazing meadow I’d ever seen. It felt like we’d been dropped right in the middle of Candyland. Lush grass surrounded us like a green carpet, basketball-sized flowers swayed in the breeze, and dozens of sparkling butterflies flitted through the air. Maybe I’d been wrong when I told Melissa and Trish that my adventures were nothing like Disney movies.
I heard my friends groaning beside me. They were both sprawled on the ground, looking almost as green as the grass.
“Welcome to the joys of inter-world travel,” I said, helping them to their feet.
“Ugh, that felt like getting sucked through a straw or something,” said Melissa, pulling off her hockey mask and rubbing her temples.
“Is it normal to feel like you don’t have knees?” said Trish, adjusting her backpack.
“It’ll wear off in a second.” I motioned for them to look around. “I hope it was worth it.”
My friends gasped in unison as they finally noticed our surroundings. Then Trish started spinning in happy circles like a character in a cheesy movie.
“It’s goooorgeous!” Melissa belted out in her amazing singing voice.
“Welcome to the Land of Tales,” said Anthony, sounding like a nasally tour guide. “On your left is a field. On your right is a rock. Through there”—he pointed toward a forest—“is the village and, beyond it, the palace where Princess Nartha is waiting for us.”
“Why did you pop us in all the way out here, then?” I asked.
“It’ll give me some time to fill you in,” said Anthony, setting off toward the woods. “Plus, Dr. Bradley insists that the more I walk, the more calories I’ll burn.” He shook his head like that was the most ridiculous idea he’d ever heard. “The main thing you need to know about the Land of Tales is that it’s the origin of all fairy tales.”
“What do you mean?” I hurried to catch up while Trish and Melissa trailed behind us, their eyes huge and their mouths hanging open.
“You know all those princess-needs-to-be-rescued stories?” said Anthony. “They all originated here. Every time a story has a babbling brook in it, this is where it came from.”
“That makes sense,” Trish chimed in. “No one knows the origin of fairy tales, but there are similar stories all over our world. It figures they’d all come from one place.” She really did sound like an encyclopedia with legs.
“So why did Princess Nartha ask us for help?” I said as we came to an overgrown trail that cut through the woods.
“In a nutshell,” said Anthony, “the land is under a curse that’s draining all the magic. For years now, the magic has been getting weaker and weaker. Eventually, the whole land will be affected, including the field where we first popped in.”
“What happens when there’s no magic at all?” said Trish.
Anthony pointed to a stream flowing past us. “Remember how I mentioned a babbling brook? That’s what it looks like now that the magic is almost gone.” Instead of babbling, the brook was moaning and sighing like it was in pain. “Once the last of the magic disappears, the brook will just be an ordinary stream. It won’t be able to say a word.”
“Poor thing!” cried Melissa. She rushed over to the brook and ran her fingers over the top of the water, like she was trying to pet it. “It sounds so sad. Can’t we do anything?”
“How long has this been going on?” I asked Anthony after I’d managed to get Melissa back on the path with us.
“From what Princess Nartha told us, the magic first started growing weaker seven years ago,” said Anthony.
“Wait, seven years?” I felt a jolt in my stomach. “That’s how long my parents have been gone. Do you think the two things could be related somehow?”
Anthony shook his head. “We were told a witch named Ilda is behind the curse. She’s the only one in the land with her magic still intact, so she must be responsible. Somehow, she’s found a way to slowly suck up the land’s magic.” He glanced at me with actual concern on his round face. “Watch out for Ilda, Jenny-girl. She’s crazy with a capital Q.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. Since when did Dr. Bradley and Anthony worry about me so much? Normally, they seemed perfectly happy to send me off to face creatures that either wanted to eat me or to turn me into a pet. “Do you have any idea how I’m supposed to get the land’s magic back?”
“According to Ilda, someone needs to complete her Three Impossible Tasks by the end of the seven years to restore the magic. Otherwise, it will be gone for good.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The seven years are almost up?”
“Correct-o! You have three days left before the curse can’t be reversed,” said Anthony.
“Three days?” Did people think we adventurers liked having ticking clocks hanging over our heads? “Why didn’t they ask the Committee for help right away?”
“Not everyone is a fan of the Committee and what it stands for.” Anthony looked like he wanted to say more, but then he just shook his head and kept walking. He was rarely so quiet, but I figured that might just be a low-blood-sugar thing. I decided not to push him in case he was about to crack.
Instead, I listened to Trish and Melissa gushing about our surroundings. The Land of Tales might have been in trouble, but with its bright blue sky and chirping lollipop-colored birds, it was still straight out of a storybook. I almost expected rainbow bubbles to start floating down from the sky.
“I can’t believe you get to visit places like this all the time!” said Melissa. She whistled along with the birds as they flitted past, trilling away.
“Trust me, they’re not all like this.” I started to tell my friends about how crazy Merland had been, even showing them a handful of smelly sand that was still in my pocket, but I could tell they didn’t really believe me.
When we came to a dirt road, I heard something rumbling toward us. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. I just managed to yank my friends backward as two girls sprinted past us at full speed. Each girl was holding on to the handlebars of a bicycle as she ran.
As the girls disappeared around the bend, Melissa turned to me. Her eyebrows were raised so high that they were practically in her hair. “Were those girls just running with their bikes?”
“Looked like it,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t they just ride them?”
“The witch’s curse strikes again,” said Anthony. “Folks here are so used to doing everything magically that they don’t know how nonmagical things work. It’s kind of sad.”
“I always thought bicycles were pretty self-explanatory,” I said.
“Oh, that’s nothing. You should see how people try to milk cows here.” Anthony smiled mischievously. “It turns out all the tickling in the world won’t make a cow give even one drop of milk.”
I hoped the gnome was joking, but before I could ask him, he hurried off down the path. I had no choice but to follow him.