“Fable—”
“No! You want me to be like you,” Fable yelled, “but I’m never going to be like you! You’re awful and everybody hates you!” Fable had never spoken to her mother this way before. She felt dizzy, like she was yelling while running through a twisting tunnel. Her face felt hot—but she couldn’t stop, not now that the dam had broken. “I don’t want to be queen like you, I don’t want to do magic like you, and I don’t want to be mean and lonely for my whole life like you!” All around her, the foliage bent and leaned away. The trunks of the pine trees groaned and crackled. “I am never going to be the stupid queen of your stupid forest! You can keep it!”
The forest was unnaturally silent as both of them breathed for several seconds, and then Fable turned away from her mother without asking permission and stalked off through the woods. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears.
“Wait . . .” her mother called.
“And they are my friends!” Fable did not look back.
Fable did not speak to her mother again for the rest of the day. She did her best to avoid crossing paths, but for all the acres the Wild Wood covered, she could not seem to escape her. She caught sight of a familiar bearskin cloak watching over her as she picked berries that evening, and spotted familiar hazel eyes in the leaves as she tossed pebbles into the Oddmire.
The following day, she glanced up from getting a drink in a stream to find the queen watching from the opposite bank, her face inscrutable as always. Fable was wearing the dress that Annie had given her, if only because she knew her mother would not approve. It had already grown dingy from wear, and it caught in the branches when she was climbing, but it was still fancier by far than her usual dust-brown canvas frock.
“Fable,” her mother said. “We need to talk.”
Fable folded her arms and stomped away in the opposite direction without giving her mother the satisfaction of a response.
On the third day, Fable was sitting on the banks of the Oddmire with Squidge. To distract herself, she had invented a little game in which she poked two sticks into the thick gunk of the mire—one for herself and one for the hedgehog—and then tried to guess which one would sink or topple first. So far, both had remained upright for several minutes. The mire was especially thick today.
Fable considered using compel to speed things along, but if one of the sticks accidentally turned into a chipmunk or something, she didn’t want to have to get her dress all mucky pulling it out.
A boom like a thunderclap shook the air, and the trees around her shuddered. Fable’s attention snapped toward Endsborough. Over the trees, a cloud of smoke billowed into the sky.
Fable was on her feet in a flash. “Stay here, Squidge.”
The hedgehog watched as Fable pelted away. Behind her, both sticks sank slowly into the mire.
As Fable neared the town, she could hear muffled shouting. Something was happening in the city. She wanted desperately to know what was going on, but she knew she shouldn’t cross the border. Her mother had expressly forbidden her from seeing anyone from town, and she had already crossed so many lines.
Somebody screamed.
Fable’s jaw clenched. She glanced left and right into the trees around her. There was no sign anywhere of a furry brown cloak or a pair of steely, disapproving eyes.
Fable crept to the forest’s edge and the little stream that divided the forest from the town. She could hear more voices now. A pair of men in coveralls hurried down a dusty street toward the source of the excitement. There was something else, too. She sniffed the air. It was sharp and bitter, like the smell in the air after Old Jim Warner had fired that gun. A column of smoke continued to pour upward into the sky.
In the distance, a voice shouted: “Help!”
Fable glanced behind her one last time, took a deep breath, and then hopped over the burbling water into Endsborough.
NINETEEN
Tinn and Cole could feel the heat of the blaze from twenty feet away. Smoke stung their eyes. Annie Burton held the boys’ shoulders as all three of them stared, openmouthed, at the inferno. The explosion had blown out the windows in the ground floor of Fenerty’s Stationery and Paper Goods, and the flames had been quick to make their way upstairs. Bits of burning paper rained down like hellish ticker tape confetti as the fire punched through a second-story window to wave at the horrified onlookers.
Several dozen townsfolk were already passing buckets of water from the creek that ran behind the Lucky Pig up to the burning building and back again to be refilled.
“I’m going to help,” Annie said. “You two—stay back. I am not kidding this time.” The twins nodded solemnly as their mother fell into line with the bucket brigade.
They could hear the fire station bell clanging away. Cole and Tinn had seen them roll out the steam pumper before. It was an impressive thing, but it took several minutes to get its boiler going and get the horses hitched up to the front. Cole peered up the dusty road, waiting to see them when they came around the corner.
Endsborough was alive with activity. Townsfolk bustled from door to door, eager to inform their neighbors of the chaos. Albert Townshend nearly tripped over his own feet carrying a sloshing mop bucket up the road. Old Mrs. Stewart had come out to watch the excitement from the comfort of her rocking chair.
A motion just up the street caught Cole’s attention and he blinked in surprise. The air was hot and dry, and it made his eyes water—but he could have sworn he had seen
