A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3)(60)

“Yes, I’d be happy to,” the concierge said. “I’ll have those bikes brought to the front of the hotel right away.”

“Thank you so much,” Bree said.

Conner had almost forgotten Bree wasn’t actually staying there. He tapped his foot to get her attention. “We need to know how to get there,” he whispered.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Bree said to the concierge. “Would you mind highlighting how to get to Neuschwanstein Castle on a map for me? Just in case I can convince my dad to take me there himself when he’s finished with work?”

The concierge nodded, and highlighted the route for her on a small map. She thanked him again and then waited with Conner in the front of the hotel for their bikes to be brought out.

“You’re really good at that,” Conner said. “Like, scary good.”

Bree’s head was lost in the map. “Okay, judging from this map, the castle is roughly eighty miles away… meaning we’re gonna be on these bikes all day,” she said.

“Oh no,” Conner said, looking down at the suitcase he had been lugging around the entire trip. “What am I supposed to do with Betsy?”

“Just check her at the front desk and tell them you’re with me,” Bree said and handed him her bag to store as well.

“I guess this is where we part, old girl,” he said sadly. He removed the piece of mirror from the suitcase and put it in his jacket pocket. He had just realized that now, with being in Munich, he had taken Betsy on as many adventures as Bob had before him. He took her back inside and checked her under room 723, not knowing if he would ever see her again.

A man from the hotel brought Conner and Bree each a bike and they began their long ride to Neuschwanstein Castle. Bree took the task of leading. She steered her bike with one hand while constantly looking down at the map in the other.

It took them an hour or so to pedal away from the Munich traffic and enter the German countryside. As soon as they did, the magnificent Alps came into view. They were unbelievably tall, as if they had been painted against the sky. Their sharp and jagged peaks were sprinkled with snow like the white in an old man’s beard. They stood imperially like giant soldiers guarding their homeland.

As they rode deeper into the scenery, the ground rose with the Alps’ altitude. Conner and Bree looked in wonder at the grassy hills around them. They were convinced Germany was the greenest place on earth.

Occasionally a village appeared beside the road. Each was more picturesque than the last, with their orange roofs set against the high backdrop of the azure sky behind the Alps. The scenery was so beautiful it didn’t seem real. Conner never knew the world could be so gorgeous and with every mile of their journey he saw something that reminded him of the Land of Stories and just how much he missed it.

Clouds began to roll in from beyond the mountain peaks and covered the countryside like a thick fluffy gray ceiling. It was hard to tell where the mountains ended and the clouds started.

After a few hours of biking, Conner and Bree pulled into a tiny town called Oberammergau to get a bite to eat. Every one of the cottage-like homes and shops were painted with murals of fairy-tale and religious art as if they were one and the same. Conner and Bree stopped to admire an adorable house painted with iconic scenes from the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

“I could never tell Red about this,” Conner said. “She’s already got a huge head; I can’t imagine how she’d act if she knew she was painted on the buildings of the Otherworld, too.”

They were delighted to see how well represented fairy tales were in the center of town. There were statues of trolls and Humpty Dumpty, shops were filled with toys and trinkets and puppets of all the classic storybook characters, and there was even a small inn called Hotel Wolf, where Conner and Bree chose to eat.

“I feel like we’re eating in the Red Riding Hood Kingdom,” Conner said over lunch.

“If these people only knew what we knew,” Bree said.

Conner looked down at his food. “Yeah…,” he mumbled sadly.

“What’s the matter with you?” Bree asked.

He was hesitant to tell her what was on his mind. “I would never want anything to happen to my sister or my grandmother or anyone in the Land of Stories,” he said. “But there’s a part of me that hopes the portal does open, so I can see them all again.”

Bree smiled gently. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” she said. “We’ll just try to think of the situation as a win-win. If the portal is closed, your friends are safe, and if it’s open, at least you’ll get to see them again.”

“Yeah, while they’re being attacked by thousands of French soldiers,” Conner said.

“Maybe the soldiers changed their minds while they were in the portal,” Bree said. “Two hundred years is a long time for self-reflection; they could have re-thought their whole universe-domination thing.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. They both knew it was a slim chance but Conner appreciated the optimism nonetheless. He wished he could live a life where there wasn’t always a cost or a choice—he wished for once that when someone said, “And they lived happily ever after,” they meant it.

They finished eating and continued their journey to the castle. It was impossible to keep track of time since the sun was hidden by the clouds. A few hours later, just as their bums and feet started aching from biking all day, they arrived in the village of Hohenschwangau.