Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories #6)(12)



“When you were a teenager, you made the mistake of courting a witch named Morina. You discovered she practiced dark magic, so you called off the engagement. It enraged her so that she cursed you and made you look like a frog. It made you ashamed of your appearance, and you lived in seclusion for years. You built a home underground, where you read thousands of books and drank lily pad tea. Then one day, you found twelve-year-old twins in the forest and they changed your life forever!”

The memory of meeting Alex and Conner in the Dwarf Forests made him laugh. Had he known then about all the trouble they’d get him into, he probably would have run screaming in the opposite direction. But now, he was thankful for every second of life he had to claim.

“The twins are the ones who nicknamed you Froggy. Thanks to them, you’re friends with Jack and Goldilocks, you’re engaged to Red Riding Hood, and you were recently elected King of the Center Kingdom! You managed to create a wonderful life despite Morina’s spell! She couldn’t stand how happy you became, so she cursed you into this blasted mirror! But you can’t let her magic get the best of you—you can’t let yourself fade away!”

This wasn’t Froggy’s first exposure to mirror entrapment, so he knew what to expect. A few years earlier, he’d witnessed the Evil Queen using the legendary Wishing Spell to free the man trapped in her magic mirror. Tragically, by the time the man was rescued, all his memories, his personality traits, and his physical features had melted away. Without a doubt, Froggy knew the same effects had begun creeping over him.

“You can’t let the darkness consume you,” Froggy told himself. “There is too much you’ll miss out on if you give in to it! You have to find a way out of this prison so you can have a future with the people you love! You must hold on to your identity so you don’t suffer the same fate as the man from the Evil Queen’s magic mirror! You must fight off this horrible curse so Morina doesn’t win!”

Froggy had no idea how to free himself from the mirror, but he knew he’d never find an answer by lingering around Morina’s basement for eternity. So, putting one webbed foot in front of the other, Froggy journeyed into the great shadowy world surrounding him until Morina’s basement disappeared from sight.

He wandered aimlessly through the darkness for what felt like hours, but he never found anything. It was so dark, he couldn’t see his hands or feet, let alone something he might collide with. With every step, he worried he had made a grave mistake by leaving the basement and feared the oblivion would drive him insane.

“Please, let me find something that proves I’m not alone,” he prayed aloud. “I just need something—anything—that can guide me to help!”

Suddenly, a speck of light appeared in the distance ahead. It was only the size of a pinhole but seemed as bright as the sun against the darkness. The discovery filled Froggy’s stomach with butterflies—maybe he wasn’t alone after all! He ran toward the light as fast as he could, and it grew into the shape of a tall rectangle—perhaps it was a door! As Froggy neared the anomaly, he realized it was another plate of glass, and his spirits sank. Had he walked through the darkness in a giant circle? Was the view of Morina’s basement the only thing that existed in the dark world?

Froggy’s heart skipped a beat when he noticed that the glass plate was much taller and wider than the plate he was used to. Perhaps he had found something new! He peered into the glass and found, not the missing children as expected, but a massive great hall with pale brick walls, green curtains, and silver chandeliers.

“My word—it’s a palace!” Froggy exclaimed happily. “Wait a moment, I recognize this place! I’ve been here many times before—it’s the entrance hall of the Northern Palace! This must be the view from another mirror! The darkness must somehow connect the two mirrors.”

Suddenly, hundreds of other square and rectangular plates of glass appeared all around him like floating windows. The bizarre phenomenon startled Froggy so much, he croaked—it’d been a while since he’d been excited by anything. He looked through the glass plates and saw into sitting rooms, drawing rooms, bedchambers, and hallways—all locations he recognized as well.

“I can see through all the mirrors in the Northern Palace!” Froggy said. “This must be how the man in the Evil Queen’s magic mirror was such a capable spy! He was using the darkness as a path between mirrors!”

The discovery made Froggy’s heart flutter. Perhaps the more he learned about the strange dark world, the closer he was to finding a way out of it. He desperately searched all the mirrors for someone to communicate with, but oddly, he couldn’t find a single soul in the palace.

“That’s peculiar,” he said. “I’ve visited Chandler and Snow White a number of times and their home has never been this empty.”

Finally, Froggy peered through a small circular mirror and found a cook in the palace’s kitchen. She looked exhausted and was placing a bottle of wine and three glasses on a serving tray. The cook must have felt Froggy’s eyes, because she stopped what she was doing and looked up before he could say anything.

“Hello!” he said happily.

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” the cook screamed.

She dropped the tray and glass shattered across the kitchen floor. Her reaction was so dramatic it scared Froggy, and he impulsively ducked out of sight. He wasn’t really surprised by the cook’s response, though—his appearance usually gave people a fright. He couldn’t imagine how alarming it’d be to see an enormous frog in a mirror when they weren’t expecting it.

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