Free The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer Page B

soldiers were moving at such a fast and forceful pace that none of them noticed the awestruck twins peeking out from behind the tree.
    Alex was fixated on their shields. A red apple was such an odd thing to be displayed on a shield, but there was something so familiar about it. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
    The rumbling slowly faded away as the soldiers disappeared down the dirt path. The twins both stayed behind the tree for a few moments, making sure the coast was clear.
    “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had about as much excitement as I can handle for one day,” Conner told Alex.
    A poster pinned to a nearby tree caught Alex’s eye. She walked over to it and pulled it off the tree for further inspection. It was old, with faded writing, and a picture of adisgruntled-looking little girl with curly blonde hair was centered on it. The poster read:

    Alex’s face went white, and she stopped breathing for a moment; she had realized where they were. No wonder the trees had been so recognizable. She had seen pictures of them so many times growing up. The book had taken them to the exact place she had hoped.
    “Is it possible?” she asked herself. The wheels in her head had never spun as fast as they were now.
    “Is what possible?” Conner asked. “Do you know where we are?”
    “I think so,” Alex told him.
    “Where?” Conner asked, fearing the answer.
    “Conner, we went
into
the book,” she explained, but he wasn’t following her. “I think we’re actually
in
the Land of Stories.”
    She handed him the Wanted poster, and he read it. His eyes grew as wide as a lemur’s.
    “No no no! This cannot be happening! This is crazy!” he said, shaking his head. He handed the poster back to his sister as if it were infected with rabies. He couldn’t believe what she was saying; he didn’t want to believe what she was saying. “Are you telling me we’re in the fairy-tale world?”
    “I’d recognize this forest anywhere! It’s straight out of Grandma’s book,” Alex said with an unplanned smile. “But it makes perfect sense! Where else would it have taken us?”
    “We just fell through a book!
Nothing
makes sense!” Conner said. “So, are we stuck here or what? How do we get home?”
    “I don’t have all of your answers, Conner,” Alex said. “Don’t forget, all of this just happened to me, too!”
    Conner began pacing around the trees with his hands on his hips. “I can’t believe I ditched detention and wound up in another dimension,” he said.
    Alex was rather grateful her brother had come after her. They had lived together all their lives and had been in the same classrooms since kindergarten. She didn’t know if she could handle being in a different dimension by herself.
    “I hope you’re happy, Alex,” Conner said. “I told you we should have thrown the book into the creek!”
    “Enough with the blaming,” Alex said. “It doesn’t matter how we got here, the point is we’re here now. What matters is finding someone who can help us get home!”
    “Excuse me, may I help you?” said a proper voice behind the twins. They jolted at the sound of another voice besides their own. They turned around to see who it had come from, and once they saw, they both wished they hadn’t.
    Standing behind Alex and Conner was what could best be described as a frog man. He was tall, with a wide face, big, glossy eyes, and shiny green skin. He wore a dapper three-piece suit and carried a large glass jar of lily pads.
    “Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I’m rather good with directions if you need some,” he said with a very wide smile.
    Alex and Conner were so petrified that they were paralyzed. If they needed any more evidence that they were in the fairy-tale world, this was their proof.
    “You look awfully young to be in the forest by yourselves,” the frog man said. “Are you lost?”
    Conner let out a high-pitched squeal that lasted much longer than it should have. “Please don’t