Страница 22 из 40
"We will give him a trial," Mustardseed said quietly.
"You are overstepping your authority!" Titania raged at her son. "I am still Queen of Faerie."
"There is no Faerie, Mother. It has been gone for ten years," Mustardseed said. "We're living here, now. It's time to embrace our new home."
"You would throw away thousands of years of our history?" Titania argued.
"No, there is room for tradition," Mustardseed said. "But not traditions that oppress and create mistrust. Sentencing a man to die because that has always been the way of things is wrong. My father struggled for too long trying to rebuild that way of life. I will not allow you or anyone else to do the same. You will fail as he did."
"Mustardseed!"
"Mother, the humans have traditions of their own. Adopting a few of them might do us all a world of good. We will allow Cobweb to defend himself," Mustardseed said, and then turned to Gra
"Do we have hers?" Mr. Hamstead said, pointing at Titania.
Titania got up and stormed out of the room.
"I will make her understand," Mustardseed said.
Gra
Mustardseed returned the nod, then turned and exited the room.
"So, I guess we're back to the subway," Daphne said.
"It's a place to start," said Gra
"Or he may still be down there," said Momma. "It's a good place to hide from other fairies since they're technically forbidden to be in the tu
"Great," Sabrina said. "Anyone got a flashlight and two years? Do you know how many miles of subway track there are? Six hundred and fifty six!" She recalled the report she had done in the fourth grade after a trip to the Transit Museum.
"It's the realm of the six dwarfs," Momma said. "They control the underground. If he's down there they'll help you find him."
Gra
Everyone agreed to continue the search for Cobweb in the morning. The sun had set long ago and it had grown bitterly cold, plus they were exhausted.
The group returned to the hotel to find Mr. Hamstead's room had been destroyed. His bed had been torn apart and his drawers rifled through. There was a note on the bathroom door that read, "You can go back to Ferryport Landing dead or alive. Your choice." Hamstead snatched the note and crumbled it into a ball.
"At least he gave me a choice," he said with a forced smile. "Maybe I'm too much trouble for you," Bess said. Hamstead shook his head. "I've dealt with bigger threats than Tony Fats."
Bess gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. "You take care, doll face. I'll see you bright and early in the morning."
"I hope we get invited to the wedding," Daphne sang after the blonde beauty was gone.
Mr. Hamstead rolled his eyes but gri
Gra
When Sabrina woke the next morning, she crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom in hopes of finding a glass of water to get rid of her morning breath. She quietly shut the door so that her family and Moth could sleep. She gargled, washed her face, and checked herself in the mirror. Then she screamed.
Hovering several feet off the ground behind her was Puck's cocoon. She turned to find that the top of it had split open and something was gurgling inside. When she craned her neck to get a better look, a thick, green gas seeped out. It had the foulest smell Sabrina had ever experienced-like rotten cabbage, dirty laundry, and string cheese. Sabrina instinctively leaped back but the cocoon followed her, like a smelly puppy.
"Get this thing away from me!" Sabrina cried, but no one came. She tried to maneuver around it, but every step she took the cocoon mimicked. She faked to the left and then to the right, only to have the cocoon block the bathroom door, trapping her inside. Then the real nightmare started.
A sound like a steam whistle filled Sabrina's ears and green gas blasted out of the top of the cocoon, filling the bathroom with a funky fog. It seeped into Sabrina. It was in her hair, in her socks-she could even taste it. She pinched her nose tightly but it didn't help.
"Sabrina, are you okay in there?" her grandmother said as she tapped on the door. "No!" Sabrina cried.
"It sounds as if your di
There was another knock on the door. "Hey! Light a match in there," Daphne shouted.
Suddenly, the door burst open and Moth shrieked in rage.
"How dare you!" she cried.
"My goodness gracious," Gra
"This thing just blew up on me," Sabrina cried as the cocoon continued to spray her with fumes. "Make it stop!"
"What you've done is unforgivable!" Moth seethed. "You have stolen my right!"
"I didn't steal anything!" Sabrina cried. "It followed me in here."
"Moth, could you tell us what is happening?" Gra
Moth growled. "During the larval stage, when a fairy is most vulnerable, he chooses the one person in the world he trusts the most to look after him. Once the choice is made the cocoon marks the person with a special scent, one the cocoon can easily follow. This is an honor that should have gone to me.
"Well, then," Gra
The smell was all over Sabrina and no amount of washing could get it off. She took six showers, washed her hair, and scrubbed every inch of her body, but each time the smell returned with a vengeance. She could even smell it on her toothbrush. If she hadn't been so angry she might have cried.
Still, the smell was only half the nightmare. Sabrina discovered that wherever she went the cocoon hovered behind her, step for step. She shouted at it, hid from it, even threatened to drop-kick it out the hotel window, but nothing would stop it. As she couldn't reasonably walk the streets with a flying, eggplant-shaped gas bomb hovering at her shoulder, Gra
Left alone with an angry Moth, Sabrina ignored the fairy, watching talk shows she was certain were inappropriate for her. Moth stalked around the room with clenched fists, muttering bitter words under her breath.
"What's this?" Sabrina said when her grandmother and sister returned with a long piece of string.
Gra
Sabrina grumbled, knowing she looked like an unhappy child at the worst birthday party ever.
Mother Goose's directions were far better than any Bess or Oz had given the group. Momma knew exactly where to find the dwarfs. They lived in an abandoned subway station underneath the mayor's office downtown. The City Hall station had been closed decades ago, when the new, longer subway cars had made the platform impractical.
The walk to the station was chilly and the Grimms were glad to have scarves and mittens. Even Mr. Canis had found a big pair of gloves for his claws and a scarf to wrap around his whiskered head. Moth, Mr. Hamstead, and Bess didn't seem bothered by the cold, Moth because of her fairy blood and Mr. Hamstead and Bess because they were too busy giggling and holding hands to notice the temperature.