“I suppose before yesterday, Snow White had servants at the castle do everything for her so she didn’t have to know how to cook or sew or remember people’s names .

. .” It suddenly occurred to me that both Snow White and Cinderella had been actual people, and I wondered where they were while I was being them.

Edwin looked at me suspiciously from underneath his bushy eyebrows. “So you’re saying you’ve been bewitched?”

“Be- fairy- ed, technically. I mean, this was obviously a mistake.” And then because they all still stared at me 121/431

blankly, I added, “She’s only a fair godmother, not a good one.”

The dwarfs bent their heads together, talking with each other in murmured voices. The ones that had been sitting on my side of the table moved around to the other side to be included in the discussion. I sat there watching and wondering what conclusion they’d come to. They spoke in such hushed voices that I only caught snatches of their conversations.

Someone said, “She can’t be bewitched. Bewitched people never know they are; that’s part of the bewitchment.”

“She’s sick then.”

“What sort of sickness makes you think you’ve seen fairies?”

More murmuring. Then Reginald’s head popped up from the group and he looked over at me with a forced smile. “While you were lost in the forest you didn’t perchance eat any of those mushrooms we warned you about, did you?”

I folded my arms. “No, I didn’t eat any hallucinogenic mushrooms.”

More murmuring from the dwarfs. “Maybe she’s telling the truth. She just used a six-syllable word.” 122/431

“Of course I’m telling the truth,” I called over to them.

“You can tell because there are no snakes falling out of my mouth.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the best thing to say. The dwarfs lowered their voices and murmured faster. I heard the words “doctor” and “medicine” thrown around.

Finally they stopped discussing my condition and Reginald stepped over to me. He took my hand, pulled me from the table, and walked with me toward the stairs.

“We all think that a rest would do you good. Let’s go to your room and you can lie down.” I went with him—what else was there to do? The rest of the dwarfs followed us up the stairs, eyeing me carefully like I might make a break for it. I protested all the way up. “I don’t need to rest. I’m telling you the truth.

I’m from the future. Look, I’ll prove it to you. I’m taking geometry in school. Just ask me, I can find the perimeter of a triangle—or the area. Well, actually I’m not that good at the area and sometimes I mess up on the perimeter too—but I can do the angles for you. Could Snow White do that?”

He led me to my room like I was a little girl and this was all just some bedtime story I’d concocted. “And why do people in the future need to know how to find the area of a triangle? Is that a big problem in your day? Un-identified triangles?”

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“Well . . . um . . . I don’t know. It’s just something they teach at school.”

“Sounds like a lovely place. You go ahead and rest now.”

He shut the door and then I heard scraping noises on the outside of the wood. I tried the door handle and confirmed my suspicions. It didn’t budge. I pounded on the door to get their attention. “Hey! You can’t lock me in here!”

“It won’t be for long,” someone yelled. “Just until we can find some leeches.”

“Leeches!” I called back. Suddenly I remembered something from my history class. One little fact that had managed to stay lodged in my brain long after most of the teacher’s lectures had rolled away. And that was that medieval doctors’ favorite treatment was bleeding patients. It went without saying that this sort of medicine killed more people than it helped.

“Aye, Edgar—er, Doc—will have that bad blood out of you in no time and you’ll be back to your normal self.” I heard the sound of footsteps going down the hallway and then down the stairs.

My first thought was one of disbelief. I was being held prisoner by a bunch of dwarfs. Then my next thought was one of fear. Leeches. That so totally sucked.

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I heard the front door shut and ran to the window in the room. The shutters were already open and the window didn’t have glass. I leaned out and watched all seven dwarfs heading outside. They walked a few feet and then Edwin turned, looked back, and saw me. “We’ll be back in a bit,” he called to me. “Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone.”

This caused a rumble of laughter to move through the group, which I didn’t appreciate.

Reginald also turned around to address me. “Don’t try to leave the house. We’ve left Cuthbert there to stand guard.”

I tapped my fingers against the windowsill. First of all, I knew which one was Cuthbert, and I could see him traipsing along with the rest of them. Second, I knew they had all left. Did they not think I could count to seven?

As they walked away from me, Cedric split away from the rest of the group. I could just make out the words he said to the others. “It’s high time I went north and spoke with Prince Hubert.”

Reginald nodded. “The sooner the better.” A few minutes later they all disappeared down the forest trail.

I went to the door and tried the handle again. I knew it was bolted on the outside and so I jiggled it, hoping I 125/431

could somehow knock the bolt loose. Nothing happened.

I looked at the hinges, fingering them. The door’s con-struction had to be simple. After all, it had probably been made with only a handsaw and a mallet. Surely I could take it apart, find a weakness, something.

Or not.

You know, instead of teaching us completely pointless things like how to figure out the angles of a triangle, school ought to teach us something we could actually use in life, like how to escape from a room after you’ve been locked in by a bunch of dwarfs.

If I had a rope, I could secure one end to the doorknob and climb out the window. I searched the room for something I could use as a makeshift ladder, but all I had was that furry animal skin on my bed. I never asked what animal, because frankly I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t very well tie it to anything to use as a rope. This is why, apparently, Rapunzel had to throw down her hair. The Middle Ages were lacking in good ladder material.

I leaned out the window again and tried to judge the distance to the ground. The house wasn’t smooth like the ones from the twenty-first century. It had been made from stones and mortar, which jutted out at all sorts of angles. A little like a rock-climbing wall. I’d done those before. Of course, I’d always done them with a harness 126/431

and a rope tied around me, but this time I didn’t have a choice.

I heaved myself out the window and carefully gripped onto the rocks. I inched downward, at every moment expecting the rock to give way under my feet or for my hands to slip, but neither happened. Slowly, I made my way down the wall.

At last I was able to jump to the ground. Without looking back, I ran into the forest, making sure to head in a different direction than the dwarves had gone.

I’d only made it a little way when I saw Chrissy leaning up against a tree, her hands folded across her chest.

She shook her head solemnly at me.

“That was the most pathetic princess display I’ve ever seen.” She craned her neck to see past me into the village. “You attacked an old woman, then convinced a group of dwarfs you were insane. One more day and the whole fairy tale would have to be rewritten to include a chapter where the villagers go to the castle, beg the queen for a poisoned apple, and administer it themselves just so they can have some peace and quiet.” It was hard to speak, hard to get out everything I wanted to say. I ended up just pointing at her and then waving my hand wildly. “This wasn’t my fault. You made me stupid!”