Chapter 2 Escape Plan

"Right." Regina said, eyebrows raised. "I suppose it's time to get this show on the road." Emma nodded her agreement, and took over from Regina. She clapped her hands. "So, here's the plan. Well, at least the Grinch's plan." She corrected herself. "We still have to figure out a plan to counter-attack." Regina looked over at her, clearly unhappy to admit she had so little control over the situation. "The Grinch is planning to take the last bit of magic from the world." Sherlock scoffed. "And how's he gonna do that?" James yelled. Regina sighed, opening her mouth to say something, but Emma cut her off. "Good question." She asked, looking at Regina pointedly. Regina rolled her eyes. "He's going to steal Christmas." At that, the supposed wizards huffed out a laugh, clearly not impressed. Emma sighed.

"And how exactly is he gonna do that, sweetheart?" Sirius asked arrogantly, an eyebrow raised. Regina glared at him. Emma put a comforting hand on her hip. "We don't know. That's the problem." "Is there anything you do know?" Sherlock called out. "You haven't exactly thought through this stupid prank, have you?" Regina looked more exasperated by the minute. "For the last time, Mr Holmes, this is not a joke. Now, as long as you continue to think so, please keep your mouth shut. Don't speak until you have something useful to say. We summoned you here because we need your help, but if you're not planning to, you might as well leave." Regina said impatiently. Sherlock looked about to give a sarcastic reply, but I tugged on his sleeve. "Sherlock, it's not worth it." I told him in a low voice. "We'll wait until they take us somewhere where we can find the way out, and then we'll leave. Until then, you had better just follow her advice." Sherlock looked annoyed, but did as I said. I breathed out a sigh of relief. We would just slip away at an unguarded moment; it would be best if Sherlock didn't draw too much attention to us until then. Who knew what these crazy people were capable of.

"To answer your previous question," Emma continued calmly, ignoring the conversation that had just taken place, "We do actually know a couple of things. First of all, the Grinch has set up his home base on the North Pole." At that, snickers could be heard. I looked over at the pretend 'demigods'. They'd been awfully quiet up until now. The blonde, Annabeth, seemed to be seriously considering what we were being told, but her boyfriend was taking it much less seriously. At the last statement, he downright laughed, looking at his girlfriend with an expression that clearly said "Can you believe these guys?" I suspected that would have been his exact words, had he opened his mouth to say them.

Henry wore a strange look of disappointment, as if he had thought everyone would have accepted the nonsense story. The kid didn't seem that young anymore, so I found it strange that he seemed to so wholeheartedly believe the story these two women were spinning. But I supposed if they were his mums, they could've easily brainwashed the poor kid. Emma continued, as if oblivious to the reaction her statement had had. "Second of all, the prophecy-" She stopped abruptly, as if having said too much. I rolled my eyes. Prophecy? About a cartoon character trying to steal Christmas? How could they possibly have come up with this idea? Regina looked at Emma angrily, while Henry observed Aïcha. I turned around to look at her too.

She wore a strange, content expression, and her eyes sparkled with something akin to mirth. Somehow, I got the impression that she was enjoying this immensely. I wondered why she seemed to be completely buying into this story, and why she didn't seem at all worried about getting out of here. "Anyway, the prophecy states that we need people from all the different realms to stop the Grinch from enacting his evil plan." Emma said, deciding to just carry on. "Why us?" Percy asked. Emma looked over at Henry. "Well, you've got him to thank for that." She said, pointing to her son. Henry grinned bashfully. "I figured if I picked out the best people from all the different stories, then we'd have one kick-ass team!" "Language, young man." His brunette mum scolded, but my mind had gone elsewhere.

Stories? What did the kid mean by that? There weren't any stories about us, as far as I knew. Everyone else looked similarly confused. Then, I noticed Aïcha's expression. She was grinning knowingly, as if she found our confusion funny. I saw Henry glance at her curiously. "Enough for today." Regina said abruptly. She looked at the rapidly darkening sky. "Thanks to your pointless discussions, it's too late to go anywhere now. You've wasted all our time with blabbering." At that, she looked over to Sherlock pointedly, who seemed to be ignoring her. "We might as well make camp for the night." Emma said. Regina nodded, and in a puff of purple smoke, five tents appeared. I had to admit, this trick was impressive. I was sure the big tents hadn't been there before, but they couldn't have just appeared from thin air.

Everyone walked over to a tent, as if simultaneously deciding to just give in to the madness for one night. There didn't seem to be much we could do about our situation anyway. I walked over to a tent at the edge of the clearing, together with Sherlock. "Miss Everdeen, you can share a tent with Aïcha." I heard Regina say. "No thanks." The hostile girl yelled from the edge of the forest. "I'll just sleep on the forest ground." "As you wish." Regina replied, clearly not having any patience for the girl.

In the privacy of our tent, Sherlock and I once more discussed our escape plan. We decided that as soon as we were somewhere populated, we would flee. We would find our way to the public transport, and from there, we would figure out how to get back to London. Luckily, Sherlock had his wallet on him, so we would be able to buy ourselves airplane tickets if necessary. The American accent of our "captors" made us suspect that we were not in Great Britain anymore.

Having decided so, Sherlock and I laid ourselves to rest. However, I was woken by a strange sound in the middle of the night. My companion also seemed awake. "Watson, look up and tell me what you see." He said. "I see a fantastic panorama of countless of stars." I replied, finding his question slightly odd. "And what does that tell you?" He asked. I thought long and hard about the answer required from me, and then replied:

"Astronomically, it suggests to me that if there are billions of other galaxies that have roughly similar stellar population densities as represented by my view, that, potentially, trillions of planets may be associated with such a galactic and, therefore, stellar population. Allowing for similar chemical distribution throughout the cosmos it may be reasonably implied that life-and possibly intelligent life-may well fill the universe. Meteorologically, the blackness of the sky and the crispness of the stellar images tells me that there is low humidity and stable air and therefore we are most likely to enjoy a beautiful day tomorrow. Why? - What does it tell you, Sherlock?" "Someone stole our tent.'

I stood up and looked around the clearing. It did indeed appear that someone had stolen our tent. The bottom was still there, but the top seemed to have been torn off forcefully. All of the other tents seemed intact. I heard Sherlock get up too. "What do you suppose we do?" I asked. "Wake up the others?" Sherlock scoffed. "Hardly. Unless you want to be told our tent was stolen by the Grinch." I laughed halfheartedly, too tired to think about the crazy events of the day before. I was still half waiting to wake up from a dream, to find I had dozed off on the couch. "We could go looking for the tent, if you want." Sherlock suggested. He didn't seem to be his usual decisive, controlling self, which was odd. "We don't have a flashlight." I reminded him. I sighed. I was too tired for this. "Let's just go back to sleep." I suggested, and he complied.

When I woke up the next morning, I was still tired. The hard forest floor hadn't exactly been comfortable, and my dreams had been plagued by strange wizards, and all the magical creatures from all the adventure movies I'd ever seen as a child. I was angry at myself for letting everything get to me like that. There were real things to worry about. How to get away from these crazy people, for starters. And I'd developed a new worry, too. Whatever way these crazy people had dragged me here, they had to have done something to Mary, too. She wouldn't have given up without a fight. I worried for her, and for our unborn child. I had to get home soon, I decided.

No one else seemed well rested, either. I suspected Emma and Regina had stayed up all night, discussing their crazy plans. I scolded myself for not having thought of that earlier. If only I'd heard what they'd said, I would have been able to figure out their plan. They had to take us to a city eventually, if they wanted to take us to the North Pole. James and Sirius seemed quite jolly. I'd overheard James say to Lupin that they'd better just tag along. The teenagers seemed up for an adventure. I sighed. How easy it would've been, to do this with the carefreeness of a teenager!

Aïcha seemed surprised to see everyone was still there when she woke up. She seemed downright happy; a grin never left her face. I saw her chatting to Henry. She didn't just seem to view this as an adventure; there was something that made it seem as if she actually believed everything being said. Katniss showed her face in the morning, still as distant as the day before. Like us, she must've thought that right now her best chance was to stick with the group, if she wanted to find her way out of the forest. Percy and Annabeth talked mainly amongst themselves, and I could see that after talking privately, they were both seriously considering what we'd been told. How did Emma and Regina find such easily manipulated teenagers? Perhaps they were taken from a mental health institution. That would explain a lot.

Regina made breakfast appear in a puff of purple smoke. This trick of hers was definitely growing old. And breakfast wasn't any good, either. Everyone got two slices of dried out bread. As we were eating breakfast on the ground, Katniss appeared again. "What have you done to Peeta?" She demanded, in an angry voice. It seemed this was the question she'd been dying to ask. "Like the bread, you mean?" Sirius asked, confused. That only seemed to make her angrier. "He's okay, I promise." Henry told Katniss. She seemed unsatisfied with this response, but taking it out on a child seemed to be too much even for her.

As we finished up our breakfast, a piece of the plan was finally revealed to us. "When we're all done eating, we're going to walk through the forest to the road, and then we'll cross the town line. Then, we're going to find our way to Boston." My ears perked up at that. Boston? That was quite a ways from London, to say the least. How had they managed to transport us across the Ocean, without us noticing? But I quickly gave up my contemplation in exchange for another conclusion. Boston was a large city, and we'd surely manage to get away from the group once we were there. From there, we'd go to the airport and take a plane back to London. With any luck, I could be home with Mary in a few days. I almost smiled at that. But first, we had to survive travelling to Boston with these crazy people.