It’s an honor being a royal hot air balloon maker. But the conversation occurring around me makes me want to float away from my coworkers and hide.
I only have one thing in common with the other three people working in the sunshine outside Princess Amzho’s castle: a love and talent for our craft.
I’ve learned to live with pain.
A copper wilting wasp scuttles up my arm, its stinger poised to strike. I lift my eyes past my rotund master, over the carts of food I’ll never eat, and rest them on distant mountains. I focus on those peaks as the wasp delivers a paralyzing injection. Debilitating
“So, does the bureau know why they sent us here?”
Sal shrugged while cramming fries in his mouth.
Jane waited for him to swallow. “They said a passing centaur reported all the other wilderkind in the area have gone silent.” She slapped his hand before he grabbed another burger. “Aren’t you worried?”
Lily keeps her knife angled down as she runs, just like Papa had shown her.
“Your weapon is your ally, but misuse will make it your enemy.”
He’d said it so many times the words were ingrained in Lily’s memory. Yet now, as she runs through the shadowed forest, fleeing the attack on
Something was coming. Renard raised his hand, calling for a halt. His men stopped instantly, and he cocked his head, listening for the sound of their prey.
Breaking branches and pounding hoofs in full charge approached them through the woods. A large, tusked boar nigh on five hundred pounds burst into view.
If anything merits some Courage Cordial, it’s a job interview.
I stare at the glass bottle on my shelf, one of many elixirs I’ve created. A sip won’t hurt—it’ll just give me a little confidence boost. And I’ve made hundreds of successful potions before, which is why in thirty minutes I’ll be walking under the
Yellow police tape crisscrosses the entrance to Buckbean Asylum. The plastic shines under my headlamp: fresh, unlike the torn, discarded scraps half-buried by shriveled-up oak leaves. Though the asylum closed years ago, the structure remains.
So do the spirits of the patients.
That’s the rumor, at least. I’m here to see if it’s true.
“What if I told you that you could just go home?”
Toby almost believes the words… until he remembers it’s a villain speaking them, and he shakes himself. He forces a laugh, but pain stabs through the wound in his side, and he stops laughing with a gasp.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
For Zadie, the first ninety-nine steps under the oppressive canopy of nighttime Pennsylvania woods were hard enough. The air was still and stagnant, and only thin shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness. But at the hundredth step, Zadie hesitated and took a deep breath. She had reached the point where she would have
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What human being, given the Gift of flight, would wish he had another one?
You’re looking at him. Er, reading about him.
Does that even make sense? Zoiks. I’m as clumsy with words as I am with people. And I’m clumsier with flight.
I hate heights. I hate speed. I hate the breathlessness
What’s the difference between a hero and a wimp?
I fall firmly in the latter category. I don’t sing in public. I don’t raise my hand in class.
My wimpiness wasn’t really a problem until last week. That’s when Aidan Peacebringer —beautiful Aidan, with his curly hair and goofy grin and not being
By Ronnell Kay Gibson You give one pink fairy armadillo a belly rub, and now look what’s gone an’ happened—I’ve got an army of the little buggers. The first armadillo showed up a week ago. My dog, Brewser, plum scared the bajeezers outta me when he started barking at the butt-crack of dawn. The border
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