Chapter Text
Conner couldn’t stop crying. It was like a faucet had been turned on inside him and all the tears he had ever held back were rushing out. Alex had left him. He was never going to see his sister in person again. He didn’t know how he was going to survive it.
The twins used to sneak into each other’s rooms if they knew the other had a bad day. After their dad died Conner spent a lot of evenings in Alex’s room, watching movies. Sometimes Alex would come into his room if she was upset, but Conner never entered hers seeking comfort.
He wanted to watch movies with Alex. He wanted to process all they had been through in the last month. He wanted the familiar understanding that siblings have; the quiet We are the same, I understand .
He hoped that Alex was upset as he was. What if she was perfectly fine? What had never actually needed him in the first place?
He tried to take a deep breath. He was never going to stop crying if kept thinking like that.
He wanted to scream his lungs out at her. How could she just leave him and mom like that?
“You’re going to regret this,” Conner had said. “One day you’re going to look back and wish you hadn’t left me and Mom—”
“No, I won’t,” Alex said . “Because I couldn’t live without this world now that I know how much it offers me.”
They both knew it was undoubtedly true. Conner just wished it wasn’t.
After an hour of crying, Conner had finally run out of tears. His eyes felt like they were made of sandpaper. He curled up in his bed, hugging a tear-stained pillow.
He missed Alex so much it hurt; that familiar, empty ache in his chest that made it feel like his soul had been hole-punched. It was the ache of someone you loved being ripped away from you unexpectedly.
Maybe he should have stayed with Alex. But he couldn’t just leave his whole life in the Otherworld behind. Who did that? Well, his sister did. He laughed at that—even though it wasn’t funny—one of those sleep-deprived, grief-driven laughs that sounded insane.
His mind started to wander, fragmented thoughts flitting around his head. He felt his eyelids start to droop. He didn’t have enough energy to keep them open.
***
Alex sat curled up in the bed of her new room, staring out the wide, glassless window. She had always loved stargazing. She, Conner, and her dad would lay on the lawn of her grandmother’s cottage, and Alex would point out constellations she recognized and would rattle off astronomy facts. Conner and her dad would find shapes in the stars and make stories about them.
But the stars in the Fairy Kingdom were something else. There were no clouds or pollution to block them out. Some fairy glowed and slept in midair, creating ever-changing constellations. She didn’t think she'd ever tire of the sight. She hoped she wouldn't. She never wanted to tire of the Land of Stories so that she’d never regret her decision.
Every time she closed her eyes she saw the look of betrayal on Conner’s face when she had told him that she would be staying. She had expected it to be difficult, but she hadn't imagined just how hard it would be.
"I've never been anywhere without you in my entire life," Conner said. He was crying. "We can’t live worlds apart,"
But they had to because Alex belonged here, and Conner belonged in the Otherworld. Alex felt that she was supposed to be here in her bones. She had thought about it every day since their first trip. She needed to be here.
But, she also belonged with Conner. Everything they had faced—from school bullies to different dimensions to Evil Queens and Enchantress’—they had faced together.
Maybe she should have just sucked it up and stayed in the Otherworld with Conner and their mom. It would have been easier. But since she had first found out about this world, the fact that she didn’t live there felt like a stab in the chest.
She knew she would miss her family horribly, but there was nothing to be done now.
***
Alex didn’t remember going to sleep; she only remembered her dream. She opened her eyes to see tree roots and wild grass. Sitting up, strangely not feeling the aches and stings from the past week, she looked around. She found herself laying in a grassy clearing on a blanket, a bag stuffed under her head like a pillow. Familiar. As she looked at the old oaks she realized that she was in the woods near her grandma’s cottage, in a clearing the Bailey’s would sometimes have picnics in.
She felt something move next to her. She snapped her head towards it to see Conner slowly waking, even though she was sure he hadn’t been there a moment before.
As he slowly stirred, she noticed that his eyes were red-rimmed. Immediately, guilt rushed through Alex. She knew that it was her fault he had been crying.
As soon as he was upright, she launched herself at him, hugging him hard. Even if it was just a dream, she was going to take any chance she could to hug her brother.
As Alex felt the fabric of Conner’s shirt she realized why this dream felt so odd. When they were little the twins used to appear in each other's dreams. When they would wake up they could recite everything they had talked about and everything they had done. No one had believed them. Eventually, when they were five or six, the dreams stopped. But those shared dreams always had a weird feeling. They lacked the nonsensical, out-of-focus feeling regular dreams had.
“This is a twin-dream, isn't it?” Conner said as he pulled away.
“I think so,” Alex said. “I was sort of starting to think we had imagined these,”
“It’s not that weird compared to everything else,” Conner said as they both stood.
“You can say that again,” Alex said. They walked away from the clearing, along the familiar trail to their grandma's house. They left their bag and blankets behind. Alex wasn't sure why.
“I wonder why we stopped having those dreams?” Alex pondered.
“I mean, we were always told that we were lying about it,” Conner said. He was trying to hide the fact that he was upset. That act had never fooled Alex.
“Yeah,” Alex said. She bumped Conner with her shoulder. “Can you imagine what terrors we would have been if dad had told us about the land of stories when we were little,”
It began to rain as they walked, fat drops hitting the leaves and the tops of their heads.
Conner wouldn't look at her.
Alex took a deep breath. “Look, Conner, I had to stay,”
He looked sharply up at her, “ Why ? No one forced you,” Tears were forming in the corners of his eyes.
“You know why I had to,”
“It doesn't mean I have to like it,”
“I’m not saying you have to,”
“It's just—why didn't you tell me? How could you even consider something that drastic with asking me?”
“Because it seemed silly to bring up when we didn't know if we’d ever go back, and then with Enchantress and everything I didn't really get a chance.” Alex tried to defend herself. “I didn't ever think that the decision would mean that we wouldn’t ever see each other again,”
“You still decided to stay yesterday. It's not like the portal closing was a surprise,”
“You know why I stayed,” Alex said. “I couldn’t take another day of being stuck where I don't belong,”
“I know,” Conner said quietly. He wiped away his tears.
They were silent as they walked the last twist in the path before the cottage. But instead of seeing the comforting house, they saw a different set of woods. It was the trees that populated the nature park by their old house. They spent many afternoons there, exploring, pretending to be explorers or pirates or knights.
They came across the spot in the path where an old tree had fallen years ago. Alex couldn’t count the number of times she and Conner had fallen off of it while trying to jump over it or see could balance the longest. Alex hesitantly offered her hand to Conner for balance when he put a foot on the log. To her surprise, he took it. She gave his hand a squeeze as he hopped down. When Alex jumped up and over herself, Conner squeezed back.
As they walked, topics turned to other things. To their mom, to school, to nothing really at all.
“I wish we could have stayed together,” Alex said.
Conner wrapped an arm around her, “Me too,”
They walked a bit longer in silence. They came to a fork in the path. They both remembered that one way would take them deeper into the woods and the other would take them straight off a rocky, ten-foot drop. The problem was, they couldn’t remember which was which.
Conner made L’s with his hands to make sure which way was right and left. “The drop is to the left,” he said with certainty.
“No, it’s definitely to the right,” Alex said.
“And how many times have you gotten us lost in the woods?” Conner said. Alex didn’t respond. “Exactly. And anyway it’s not like we can actually get hurt while we’re dreaming,”
“Fair enough, “ Alex said. “And I only got us lost like twice,”
“It was definitely more than twice,”
“Whatever,” Alex rolled her eyes. She was only pretending to be annoyed. She was too glad that she and Conner were teasing each other to get frustrated.
“How’s mom handling this?” Alex asked.
Conner sighed. “All things considered, pretty ok,” he said. “She stressed-cleaned all the mess left behind by the soldiers and Mother Goose, but I expected that. She seems more stressed than anything. I think she knew that this was going to happen eventually. But she’s not sure how she’s going to explain you leaving to the school.”
Alex grimaced.
“Don’t worry about her Alex. Mom’s smart, she’ll figure it out.”
“I know,” Alex said. “I’m just- I feel bad.” Alex glanced up as the rain began to beat harder. “And she’s going to have a lot to worry about anyway, what with moving to Bob’s house and dealing with the fact that she disappeared off the face of the earth because she got kidnapped. And even if I hadn’t left she would have had to explain where we went and why we look like we went to war and back,”
Alex had stopped walking. She hadn’t realized that her breathing had quickened as much as it had. God, she had messed everything up. She had ruined her life by leaving, not to mention her mom and brother’s lives.
Conner grabbed her hands. “Alex, take a deep breath.” Alex did. In, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4 . Conner looked into her eyes. “Mom is strong. I’m strong. You’re strong. Hell, you just defeated the freaking Enchantress. ”
“Yeah.” Alex took another deep breath. “Yeah, yeah.”
They began walking again. The path turned again and they saw a cliff. It wasn’t the ten-foot drop that the twins were expecting, but the cliff in the Eastern Kingdom that dropped into mermaid bay.
“Whoops,” Conner said sheepishly.
“‘ It’s definitely to the right,’” Alex mocked.
Conner rolled his eyes. “It's been a while since I’ve walked down here, okay?”
“Do you wanna test your theory that we can’t get hurt?”
“Hell no,” Conner laughed. “Even I’m not that crazy,”
“You literally shoved us off here once,”
“We were being chased by wolves!”
“There were other options,”
“Well I didn’t see you coming up with any bright ideas,”
They were both laughing. Alex never wanted to stop.
The twins turned back around only to find the path and tree’s different.
“God, that is so weird,” Conner said.
“We were dealing with a ghost barely five days ago, and the setting of a dream changing is weird to you?” Alex said.
“Just because we’ve seen some stuff doesn't make it not disorienting,”
“What do you think we'd be like if we didn’t know the fairytale world?” Alex said suddenly.
“Well, you’d probably be a lot lonelier,”
“Rude,”
“True. I think I would be too, honestly. I could have done without all the trauma though,”
“Me too,” Alex said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be normal again,”
“Were you ever?”
Alex punched Conner in the arm but giggled anyway. “You say that like you ever fit in,”
“I was better at it then you,”
Suddenly Alex laughed. “Do you remember that time—it was like right after you’d come out at school—when you bit that kid and gave him a gash. I swore that your canines got longer and your eyes started glowing,”
“I forgot about that,” Conner laughed.
“It’s a wonder we didn’t figure out the fact that we had inhuman heritage sooner,”
“I don’t know, I think ‘our dad is a fairy from the world of classic fairytales’ is a pretty big leap,”
They walked further. Trees seemed to change every time the path twisted, oscillating between every kingdom. It twisted into what was clearly the dwarf forests, the canopy of towering evergreens overhead making it dim. Both the twins felt the back of their necks prickle with the dark aura that was permanently over these woods.
They were on the protected path from the Corner Kingdom to the Northern Kingdom, where they had first ended up in the Land of Stories, falling through the sky screaming, with no idea what they were getting into. They were both half-expecting a cavalcade of Northern soldiers to come barreling in like they had the first time they were here.
“What do you think would have happened to us if we hadn’t met Froggy?”
“We’d probably be dead,” Conner said. “Scratch that, we’d definitely be dead. He’s saved our lives so many times,”
“We’ve saved his too,”
“Yeah but we also always dragged him into said deadly situations,”
“Not intentionally,”
Conner gave her a look .
“Ok, sometimes intentionally. But it’s not like we really had a choice,” Alex defended.
“Fair enough.” Conner shrugged. He noticed something out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, it’s the way to Froggy’s hole in the ground,”
“Let go visit it,”
“Why?”
“It’s not like we have anything better to do,”
They left the protected path and began making their way through the underbrush, wary even in their dreams of making too much noise. It was strangely easy for Conner to navigate the underbrush towards his friend's old house. Eventually, they found the hillock with the ivy-covered door. Conner tried to open it, but it barely budged.
“God, this thing is heavy. Help me with this,”
Alex obliged and the twins yanked as hard as they could. With a slight creak the door opened.
“Geez, why is that thing so heavy?”
Alex thought about it. “Probably to make it hard to break in. He’s a prince but he’s not dumb.”
“Debatable,” Conner joked.
“Look at all the locks,” Alex said gesturing to the inside of the door, where there were three strong, if rusted, locks. “We would have been dead if he had actually tried to eat us like you thought he was going to,”
“Hey, don’t act like that was a ‘me only’ thing. You thought that too.”
“Only for the first minute.”
“Let’s just go inside.”
They peered down the dark tunnel. It was inky black by the time it reached the turn into Froggy’s living room.
“We didn’t think this through,” Conner said.
Alex made a humming noise as she thought. Then the tunnel was lit up by blue light. Conner looked over at his sister and was shocked to find that her eyes were glowing and throwing light like searchlights.
“That’s new,” he said.
Alex shrugged.
They walked down the tunnel, careful to not trip on any roots. They rounded the corner into the living room and were overwhelmed with nostalgia. The books, the root hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier, and the lumpy, busted furniture were all the same. But the books shelves were sparser, and the fireplace had clearly been unlit for a long time. Plenty of spiders had made homes in the corners of the room, giving it an eerie look. Alex went over to the bookshelves and began flipping through them, eye-lights throwing blue light and harsh shadows.
Conner wandered over to the kitchenette. Really he just needed a minute to compose himself. It had just hit him that he would never see this again. Never see his friends again. Sure, he had friends in the Otherworld, but not like he did here. His Otherworld friends didn’t really listen to him, didn’t really care about him. But going through as many near-death experiences with someone as he and his friends had tended to make you pretty close. And he would never see them again. He took a deep breath. God, he so did not want to start crying again. He walked over to one of the couches and sat down.
“Finding anything interesting?” He asked Alex.
“Just books about magic theory and curses and how to break them,” Alex said, not looking up. “I wonder why he just left them here to rot. They seem super interesting.”
“He probably didn’t want to remember his time here.”
“I guess,” Alex said. “I still wouldn’t just leave them,”
She quickly finished looking through the books and the twins climbed back out of the tunnel. As they stepped into the dim light Alex’s eyes returned to normal.
The twins continued to wander silently, both of their heads too full for conversation. Eventually, they came to a fork in the road that neither recognized. One path was lined with oak trees and the other with tall evergreens. But about ten feet down each of the paths there was a wall of white light.
“I’m going to guess that that’s how we wake up,” Alex said.
Conner fiddled with the blue thread bracelet on his wrist. “I don’t want to,”
“Me neither,” Alex said. She was fiddling with her matching yellow bracelet. “I’ll call you on the mirrors first thing tomorrow.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Conner said. “You better not ghost me,”
“I’d never,” Alex said. Conner chuckled and wrapped his sister in a hug. They didn’t know how long they stayed like that. For some reason, Alex started crying and Conner joined her quickly after. Eventually, they pulled apart.
“Well, I guess we should go,” Alex said wetly.
Conner nodded. “Remember to call.”
“I won’t forget. I’m not you ,”
“ Hey! ” Conner said, mock offended. He began to walk down the path lined with evergreens.
“Wait,” Alex said. Conner stopped. “I love you,”
“I love you too Al,”
And Alex walked down the oak-lined path. The twins both dissolved into light.
***
When Alex awoke, it took her a moment to realize where she was. She was used to falling asleep and waking up in odd places recently, so when she saw that she was in her room at home it was a relief.
Until she remembered that she was supposed to be in the Fairy Palace. And that her grandmother had closed the border between worlds. Weird. Then that fully registered in her tired brain. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Ever.
She bolted upright. She hoped this was another twin-dream. But as she ran her hands over her blankets and looked around her room, she knew that it wasn’t. She ran out of her room and into Conner’s. She went numb. His bed was empty. This wasn’t a twin dream.
“ No, no no, ” Alex ran her thumb over her thread bracelet as she sank to her knees in her brother’s doorway.
The door to her mother’s room opened and her mom peeked out. Her eyes widened when she saw her daughter. “Alex?” she asked. “How are you here?”
“I-I don’t know,”
“Where’s your brother,”
“Probably in the fairy palace,” Alex said. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“I know,” Charlotte said, looking out of her depth. She took a deep breath. “Ok, let’s start by getting off the floor.”
Alex took her mom’s hand and hauled herself off the ground. She fell into her mother’s arms and began to cry. When she was more under control she released her mom and wiped her eyes.
“We’re going to talk to your grandma and figure this all out, okay?”
“But she can’t reopen the portal,” Alex argued.
“Well, clearly people can pass through it because you're here and your brother isn’t.”
Alex nodded and wiped her eyes again.
Charlotte’s bedroom door opened again and Bob walked out. His jaw dropped when he saw Alex. “What? How?”
***
“Oh, shit,”
Conner was standing in a hallway somewhere in the fairy palace. He had just woken up in what he thought was his room in his crappy rental house. Until he looked closer. Then he noticed that there was no alarm clock on the nightstand or the fact that the window was on a different wall and that instead of a ceiling light there were softly glowing orbs floating in the corners. That was what had really caught him off guard.
As he stumbled out of his room—the floor was clean which definitely wasn’t right—and opened the door it dawned on him where he was. The glimmering gold walls and the fact that down the hall a section of the wall was missing, replaced by willow branches, made it unmistakable. He was in the fairy palace. Hence ‘oh shit’.
“Oh this is so so bad,” he said to himself. He tried to get his mind into problem-solving mode. The first order of business was to find his grandma. The problem was, he had no idea where in the fairy palace he was.
He looked around and noticed gold plates on the doors. He turned to look at his own door and saw Conner B. etched into the gold plate. He looked to the door to the left and saw Alex’s name. So he went down the hall looking for his grandmother's name. Five doors down he found it, The Fairy Godmother, and etched smaller underneath it Brystal B. He knocked and a voice that he recognized as Emerelda’s called out “Come in,”
Conner entered and was surprised to see the fairy council lounging on the couches in his grandma's study, sipping from mugs and with plates of breakfast foods on their laps.
“Oh what the hell,” he heard Emerelda say under her breath.
“Hey, I don't want to be here either,” Conner said. He looked to his grandmother behind her desk. “Do you have any idea what's happening ‘cause I am so lost.”