The Grim Adventure

1

Remember Me?

The hardest part of going for a run is putting on your shoes.

The hardest part of running away from the Seelie Keeper, however, is probably his magical powers and enormous wings. In the human realm, keeper often refers to someone who prevents a ball from entering the net in sports. In the fae realm, the Keeper is a ruler, a judge, and a rather grumpy know-it-all with very strong opin-ions about the world and everyone in it. The fae Keeper also just happens to be my father.

You can call me Fern, and though I’m the one speaking, this is not my story.

If it were, I might tell you that I was born with red hair and beautiful, sparkling wings. I might tell you that I was happy for years and years, eating sweet pies and drinking grape juice and taking naps in the moss, until I discovered that I have three spectacular talents.

My first gift is the ability to travel. If I close my eyes and think of a destination, I open them, and I’m there! How marvelous, right? It was quite useful when my parents would hide the cookies on the topmost shelves. My mother and father had no idea why the jars of sweets would go missing no matter where they hid them.

My second power is the rather useful ability to find things. I can uncover a single sock if I’ve misplaced its partner, I can locate freshwater streams in the middle of the desert, and I can find demifae children--boys and girls and kids of all sorts with one parent who is human and one who is fae--caught in the cracks between worlds.

My third power is the ability to drink a gallon of milk in thirty seconds. That one might not be as useful.

One gift I don’t have is the chance to see whether I will perish or squish or vanish off the face of the earth, or if I will live to see another day. That particular gift is owned by the very bright, and deeply in trouble, Rosemary Thorpe. She hasn’t done anything wrong, you see, but she’s certainly ended up somewhere she does not belong.

And that brings us to a burbling fountain, a mossy floor, an indoor patch of wild-flowers, a twisted vine that takes orders from its master, a talking statue, a jew-eled throne, and my very angry father as he towers over Rosemary, demanding to know how she found her way through the Lost Woods.

You see, my father--a greedy fairy with unpleasant ideas--wants to be able to go to any realm he wishes. It isn’t enough to be the ruler of the Seelie court, not for him. He believes the worlds should belong to whoever has the most power, and he is quite powerful indeed. As such, the man has quite a few strong opinions about who should rule the human realm, and he would quite like to know how to get there. It’s part of why my father and I can no longer be friends. I have the gift of travel, after all, and it’s the one thing he cannot do. Not without help, anyway.

If Rosemary tells him how to get from one realm to the next, her fretful time in the court will come to an end. He will certainly release her from the horrible vine that’s currently lashed her legs to the stool in the middle of his throne room. He will probably offer her sweets and have the fauns and pixies braid flowers into her hair.

The fate of the realms, however, depends on her ability to keep this secret.

The hardest part of going for a run is putting on your shoes. And lucky for us all, Rosemary Thorpe was already wearing her favorite sneakers when the time came to run.

2

One Way Out

“Fern.” Rosemary choked on the name. Her heart thumped as she looked from one nightmare to the next. She was sandwiched between impossibly magical things, between a talking statue and children with hooves for legs, and every single one of them terrified her.

Rosemary hadn’t seen Fern since the day she’d been ushered into a car by Jeffrey the doctor and Susan the nurse. The odd, freckled fairy had offered her a chance to escape to a school for students like her, and she’d taken it.

Now she thought perhaps she’d made the worst mistake of her life.

Sweat prickled across her forehead as two fairies--father and daughter--boxed her into the throne room. On one side, a man with long blond hair and bright blue eyes scowled at her from his jewel-encrusted throne, demanding her secrets. He blocked the exit she truly needed: the knotted tree with a portal to the Lost Woods that twisted behind him.

On the other side, Fern Forgettable stood in the double-door opening with her arms crossed, glaring at the man she’d called Father. Rosemary struggled to move, but the thick, rope-like vine squeezed her more tightly every time she at-tempted to wiggle.

The redheaded fairy broke her angry stare and turned to Rosemary with a breezy smile. “Hi, peanut.” She waved. “Sorry we had to meet like this.” Then to her fa-ther, Fern said, “How did someone with such terrible manners create a daughter as lovely and friendly as I am? You could learn a thing or two.”

“Of all my daughters, why are you the one who keeps turning up? You’re my greatest disappointment, Fern, and you are not welcome in my court,” the Keeper said with a snarl.

Rosemary was trapped. She was surrounded by the foods she’d been warned not to eat and the goblets she’d been warned not to drink from. Mushrooms of all types--not just the jolly red-and-white-dotted toadstools, but every kind imaginable--pressed in on her from the mossy floor. Rosemary’s mouth was so parched that she was ready to run directly into the gurgling fountain and gulp the well dry, though she wondered if she’d been cursed to feel thirsty simply so that she’d drink the enchanted water. She’d been betrayed. She was going to be a prisoner in the Seelie court forever and ever and ever. Unless . . .

While Fern spoke to her father, Rosemary caught the sight of something small, something sharp, and something very, very important. Just beside the too-beautiful piles of fruit was a tiny knife meant for cutting the food.

As sneakily as she could, Rosemary snatched the little weapon and prepared to cut.

Rosemary’s heart dropped into her stomach. She heard the gasps and murmurs of others in the court as she watched the exchange between Fern and her father. It was at this moment that Rosemary realized this might be her only distraction. She took her paring knife and plunged it into the vine. Though it tightened and recoiled as if it were a living thing, it made no noise, for it was a plant. With all eyes on Fern and the Keeper, no one was watching Rosemary frantically hack at the plant.

Fern spoke again. “You have no business keeping a student here. Let her go.”

He sneered. “That’s not your call to make.”

“That’s right,” Fern agreed, taking a step forward. Rosemary caught her gaze and saw the way the skin tightened around the fairy’s eyes. She’d seen what Rosemary was up to. She lifted her voice, drawing the court’s attention. “It’s not my call to make, nor is it any of yours. The students get to decide on their own where they wish to go. It is not for us to influence their choice. But from where I’m standing, it looks like Rosemary does not want to be one of your spies. Let her go.”

“But why would they choose the humans?” the Keeper demanded. The thick per-fume of flowers rolled off him as if swelling to cover his fury. Rosemary heard his argument, but it was background noise to her task. She successfully cut through one of the wooden cords and did her best to contain her glee as it snapped to the ground. She had begun hacking at the thicker string of wood when the Keeper said, “Especially once we’ve shown them what humans are capable of.”

She stopped what she was doing. She looked at the pair with glacial slowness. She barely had time to see Fern’s careful shake of the head--a warning not to speak--before the words had already escaped her mouth.

“What do you mean you’ve shown us?” Rosemary said, voice scarcely loud enough to hear across the court.

The Keeper’s back straightened. He dusted his emerald attire, though there was nothing to remove. Fern folded her arms across her chest behind him and said, “Yes, Father, what do you mean?”

A high-pitched ringing pierced Rosemary’s ears as she asked, “Did you do this? To Essie?”

The man scoffed. “A human captured him. You saw it yourself. Humans did this.”

Rosemary’s pulse tripled. “And how do you know what I’m talking about?”

He took a few purposeful steps toward Rosemary, but his daughter caught him by the arm. He jerked his attention toward her once more, which gave Rosemary the chance to return to hacking and stabbing and cutting at the vine while all eyes re-mained on the fight.

“You aren’t allowed to interfere,” Fern snapped. “It’s in the bylaws. The students must come to the decision on their own.”

“And they will!” he growled. “But some may need help coming to the right deci-sion. We need their help. The students are the key to the coming war.”

He was about to turn back to Rosemary when Fern yanked his arm hard enough to garner a snarl. One more vine. She could do it as long as Fern held his attention. The fairy’s fire-red hair tilted back as she laughed an angry laugh and said, “There should be no war.”

“And there won’t be. It’ll be over before it begins,” he retorted.

Fern responded with a humorless smirk. “You don’t know what the students are capable of. You think wish granting is a marvelous power? You’re right. Another can walk through walls. Another calls to water. A little friend of hers can drop you where you stand with a single scream. Another can call an army of shadows. They aren’t weak. You won’t win.”

Rosemary could only see the back of the Keeper’s head, but she couldn’t miss the way he tensed as if ready to fight. “I will.”

“And what if one of them could tell the future, Father? What if one of the students you hope to win to your cause could tell you exactly whether you will succeed, or if your fate ends in disaster?”

Rosemary nearly dropped her knife as Fern’s gaze flitted to hers, and her blood turned to ice. Was Fern talking about her?

“Impossible,” the Keeper said. “Once the students show us how to navigate the Lost Woods, we’ll have the access to the mortals we need to set all things right with the world. Never again will a fae suffer at the hands of a human.”

Snap.

Rosemary cut herself free, and she looked up at Fern with wide, startled eyes at the loud sound that echoed off the stones.

The Keeper turned as if to sprint toward Rosemary, but Fern dug her nails into his arm. Her command bounced off the walls as she called to Rosemary. “Go!”

Rosemary scrambled over the moss, kicking up stones as she slipped onto the sil-very walkway and struggled to catch her footing. She nearly knocked the throne to the ground as she dashed for the tree. She stretched her arm out for the knob with one final burst of energy.

And just as she touched the knob in the tree, just as the world began to twist and swirl as she teleported away, she felt the cold marble hands of a statue wrap around her ankle.

3

Come Out, Come Out

Rosemary hit a stone-covered wall with a painful thud, and pieces of rock flew through the air. She winced as something hard and horrible hit her face. She wiped at her cheek only to pull back a hand smeared with blood.

An instant later, the horrid, shattering sound of cracking marble filled the small, rocky space as the statue crashed into the wall beside her. A broken marble arm bounced off the wall and landed on the far side of the hall.

“Ack! Look what you’ve done!” the statue screamed. Rosemary stumbled backward as it ran for its arm, giving Rosemary just enough time to spring down the corridor as she searched for a way out. She didn’t know where the jump had taken her, but this certainly wasn’t the Lost Woods. Was she still in the Seelie castle?

She barely had time to gather a sense of her surroundings when the unmistakable noise of the statue thundered from somewhere behind her. Her sneakers thumped against the cobblestones as she ran and ran past doors and flickering lanterns and dripping ceilings. Rosemary took a tight corner and grabbed the last door handle on the right. She yanked the knob and leaped into the room, slamming the door behind her before the statue rounded the corner.

Rosemary turned the lock and doubled over, gripping her knees as she gasped and panted for air. She pressed her ear against the door to listen for the statue and was horrified at the smashing, splintering sounds of the marble woman breaking through each door in the hall. It would reach Rosemary any minute. She couldn’t stay here.

Maybe there was another way out.

She turned to examine her hiding place, to find that she was in a bedroom. An enormous black bed stood at the center of the room, with four tall white posts hoisting a black velvet canopy overhead.

On closer inspection, she realized they were not pillars, but bright white bones.

Rosemary shuddered as she backed away. Beside the bed was a wardrobe full of black pants and black hooded sweatshirts--some with buttons, some with zippers, some cloaks, others that seemed plain and unremarkable. She hurried to the sec-ond door, but it only led to a bathroom. There were no windows for her to crawl out of, no vents for her to hide in, no means of escape.

The cracking sounds of smashed wood grew louder and louder as the statue broke down door after door.

Think, Rose, think! She searched the room. A giant antique mirror was big enough for her to hide behind, but she would be trapped in a corner if the statue found her. A large fireplace filled with ashes and burned logs was big enough for her to scurry into, but she’d never been much for climbing and had foreseen one too many deaths to ever play in a chimney. Large paintings decorated the room--landscapes of misty mountains, portraits of a man on a ghostly river, and a dark painting of a giant winged moth with glowing red eyes. Curtains hung on either side of the paintings, but the curtains did not go all the way to the floor, and if she hid behind them, her feet would remain exposed.