Chapter Two! Thanks to the three lovely people who reviewed Chapter One! You made my day!
Oh, btw - it occurred to me that it's kind of unlikely that Puck and Sabrina would both think of exactly the same nickname, but then I thought, they're so alike (you can tell by the way they're always agreeing with each other ;) ) that they probably think almost exactly the same way.
***
"Stupid, stupid Wonderland!" Puck growled and turned back to Sabrina. "Well, now you've done it, Grimm. We're going to have to take the long way."
"The long way where?" she asked, her voice sounded dreamy and faraway, even to her own ears. What was wrong with her? She couldn't seem to get her eyes to focus on one thing for very long and her brain hopped around, rattling inside her skull as it tried to keep up with them.
"Home," Puck said, grabbing her hands and pulling her to her feet. He let go of them and found pink glitter covering one of his own. "Gross! Where did this come from?"
Sabrina looked at her hands, expecting to see the same sparkles, but one of her hands was completely clean. "I don't know," she said uncertainly. She probably could have spent the rest of the day - the rest of her life, even - just standing there, staring at her hands, waiting for the sparkles to reappear. Puck scowled at her, turning her hands over and pushing them down to her sides. If he hoped this would stop her from staring at them, he was disappointed. So he reached out a dirty finger and pushed her forehead back until she was staring straight ahead rather than down.
Sabrina blinked. She could not account for the last few moments at all. What on earth was happening to her? She didn't have much time to think about it. Puck tugged on her hand and all but dragged her to a short little door in the wall. It was dark reddish wood, rounded on the top, with a big golden knocker. There was no doorknob.
Sabrina rocked on her heels, drifting away from Puck, but she stopped when his hand clamped down tighter on hers. "Stand still, Grimm," he said, then muttered something under his breath and studied the door a moment. Then he reached out and banged on it.
"Hey!" the doorknocker said, morphing into a face, like Ebenezer Scrooge's had done. "I'm here for a reason, you know!"
Puck and Sabrina both jumped back. "Gah!" Puck cried.
"I mean, would you put a knocker on a door if you wanted people to pound on it with their grubby little fists? No!" the doorknocker continued. "And speaking of which, the door's not gonna be happy about all those grease marks. Don't you ever wash, kid?"
"No, he doesn't," Sabrina said, suddenly realizing how dirty Puck's hand was and in turn, how much she didn't want to be touching it.
"Washing is for sissies!" Puck sneered.
"And those of us who do not wish to contract communicable diseases. If you don't mind, could you let your friend there do the knocking?" the face asked. "I've just been polished, see."
Puck scowled. "Fine."
Sabrina reached out and gingerly picked up the face's heavy nose ring, letting it fall back against the back-plate. It made a loud chiming sound.
"Oh, why do I make such a wretched noise?" the knocker said.
"What?" Puck snapped in surprise.
"What kind of doorknocker sounds like that?" it wailed. "That's no knock. Anyone'd think I was a silly little bell instead of a proud gilded doorknocker."
"I think it sounds very pretty," Sabrina reassured him.
"Really?" it said, looking excited. Then it frowned. "Doorknockers aren't supposed to be pretty! We're supposed to - oh drat, I missed it! Would you mind knocking again?"
"Missed what?" Puck asked.
"I guess so," Sabrina said, doing as she was asked. The ring fell, again with a chime, and though the face cringed, it didn't lament the sound.
"Who's there?" it asked.
"The Trickster King and the Queen of Sneaks," Puck said grandly. Sabrina barely stifled a gasp. How did he know about her nickname? Nobody knew that nickname. She'd made it up on her own and given it to herself. She eyed him suspiciously, but if there was any secret in his words, he didn't seem to know about it. Maybe he'd come up with the same nickname on his own. She didn't like that idea at all.
"The Trickster King and the Queen of Sneaks who?" asked the doorknocker.
Sabrina and Puck looked at each other. "Huh?" they asked in unison.
"The Trickster King and the Queen of Sneaks who?" the knocker repeated. "It's a knock knock joke obviously. That's my job."
"Your job is to make knock knock jokes?" Sabrina asked.
"Yes, and that's not the right answer." The knocker sighed as if it was dealing with idiots. "You can't get in unless you say the right answer."
"Well, what are we supposed to say?" Puck asked.
"The right answer," the knocker said. "I thought I'd mentioned that."
"Oh brother," Puck said.
"That's not the right answer," the knocker pointed out. "Unless you two are brothers, which you can't be, because one of you's a girl. Are you brothers?"
Puck opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again angrily. "Hmph!" was the only sound he made.
There was a moment of silence. Sabrina assumed that this meant Puck was through with the doorknocker and it was up to her to get the door open. "I don't get it," she told the face. "How do we know what the right answer is?"
"Well, if it answers the question, it's probably the right answer," the knocker said helpfully.
Sabrina's brain was spinning like it had just been on a roller coaster full of loop-the-loops. "Okay," she said, holding her free hand to her head. "Let's start over."
"All right," the knocker agreed. "Go ahead and knock,"
"Again?" she asked.
"I thought you wanted to start over. Every knock knock joke starts with a knock."
"Oh brother," Puck said again.
"Oookay," Sabrina said, and knocked.
"Who's there?" said the knocker.
"The Trickster King and the um, Queen of Sneaks," she said, feeling self-conscious saying it.
"The Trickster King and the um, Queen of Sneaks who?" the knocker asked. "Hmm, that's a little wordy. Still, it's something new," he added, almost to himself.
Sabrina looked at Puck for help, but he just shrugged. "Uh, Sabrina and Puck?" she said hopefully. She felt stupid, sure that this was the wrong thing to say.
"Oh very good!" the knocker exclaimed. Then he frowned. "Are you Sabrina and Puck?" he asked.
"Yes," they said together.
"And also the Trickster King and the um, Queen of Sneaks?"
"Yes," Sabrina said again, hesitantly this time.
"Oh very good!" the knocker exclaimed again. "You found the right answer! Come on in!"
At this, the little door swung open. Sabrina had to bend over to get through it. Puck followed, lifting and then dropping the doorknocker's ring as he did. "Thanks," he said, with his devilish grin.
"You're welcome. Hey! What did I say about your filth? Look at this! I'm going to need polishing all over again! You little brat!"
But Puck only snickered and pushed the door shut with his sneaker.
"That wasn't very nice," Sabrina scolded the fairy.
"Nah, but it was fun," Puck said.
"And what's this Queen of Sneaks business?" she demanded. She was trying to concentrate on something she knew for sure - like being annoyed with Puck. If she started looking around the room she was sure she'd start feeling dizzy again.
"Dunno," the fairy said disinterestedly. "Just something I thought up."
"Oh," Sabrina said, trying to sound as neutral as possible. If it sounded like she hated it, he'd say it every chance he got. If it sounded like she thought it was cool, it would be as if he'd given her a compliment, which would be awkward. And there was no way she was going to tell him that that's what she liked to call herself. That would be admitting they had something in common. She shuddered at the thought.
Now that Sabrina had nothing to say, she turned to the room. Its walls were a deep maroon colour, with a mesmerizing pattern of squares that had her tilting her head from one side to the other as she studied it.
"Grimm, what are you looking at?" Puck interrupted.
She didn't answer. Couldn't he see she was looking at the wall? He flew over and dragged her away from it. "I hate this place. Come on."
He pulled her over to the opposite wall and pulled back a green velvet curtain. Then she followed him down a twisting, circular hallway.
"What's wrong with this place?" she asked him. Why did her voice sound so funny? It sounded like she was half-asleep and thought everything was wonderful.
"Because it's stupid," he said. "And it makes people - especially girls like you - act stupider than normal."
"I'm not being stupid!" she snapped. There! Her voice sounded almost normal again.
Puck snorted and they continued down the hall. Sabrina let him pull her along. While they walked, she tried to decide if the walls were red with white stripes or white with red stripes.
Puck interrupted her thoughts again. "Grimm, am I going to have to drag you across this entire country?"
"What? What do you mean?"
"I mean, would you quit trying to go the opposite direction?"
"Opposite direction?" Sabrina frowned.
"Yeah, you know, left instead of right, or backwards instead of forward."
"I'm not…" Sabrina trailed off. Had she been going the opposite way? She hadn't meant to. They started walking again and she tried hard to concentrate on going the same direction as Puck. But the walls were just so distracting. She couldn't help but stare at them.
Puck tugged her hand hard. "I have an idea, Grimm."
Sabrina didn't like it when Puck had ideas. "What kind of idea?" she asked suspiciously.
"Talk," he said.
That was not what she'd expected him to say. "About what?"
"Anything. You like talking, don't you? You're a girl. You must like talking."
"Hey!" Sabrina protested, but quickly relented. "What good will me talking do?"
"Well, I've noticed you're more like yourself when you're yelling at me about something, so I'm hoping it'll keep you from running off and staring at walls for the rest of your life."
Sabrina paused to consider this. She had to admit, it made sense. And with her head feeling fuzzy as it was, she thought that maybe right now was a good time to trust someone else's judgement. Even if that someone else was Puck, the oldest little boy in the universe. "Okay," she agreed, but couldn't think of anything else to say. Sometimes it was easier to talk when you didn't have to.
"You are not talking," Puck pointed out after a moment of silence.
"I was trying to think of something to say," she explained.
The fairy muttered something again. She wondered if it was 'oh brother.' "Look Grimm," he said, "it doesn't matter what you talk about, just that you talk. Ask me annoying questions, sing a song, I don't care." He paused. "On second thought, don't sing."
She stuck her tongue out at him. It was immature, but what did she care? "Fine. Where are we?"
Puck groaned. "Oh man, I take it back. Just ask questions. Not annoying questions."
"What's annoying about that?"
"Well duh, Grimm, where do you think we are?"
"Hello, you've been living fairy tales for four thousand years. I'm twelve and I just started reading them a few months ago. Forgive me for not being up to date on my faraway kingdoms."
"I thought you read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
She had. Or had she? It was all so confusing. She did seem to remember saying something to herself about an Alice on her way down the hole, but still… "have I really?" she asked.
"Yeah, just a little while ago."
"How do you know?"
Puck shrugged. "Well, see, it was just a little while ago. Like a week or two, maybe. I walked into the living room and you were sitting on the couch and I asked you what you were reading and you said 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'."
"And then you threw a glop grenade at me or something, right?"
"I did not!"
"I had a normal conversation with you and I don't remember it?"
"I told you, this place messes with your head." As an afterthought, he added, "and besides, only that part of the conversation was normal. It ended with you throwing the book at my head."
Sabrina brightened. "Did it hit you?"
"No," Puck said, a little too quickly.
Sabrina grinned. "It totally hit you, didn't it?"
"It did not!"
"Whatever," she said, still grinning. The fairy grumbled, but she continued before he could think of a response. "You said before that this place makes girls act stupid. Have you been here before?"
"Possibly," he said unhelpfully.
"With girls?" she asked. She made herself smirk. She didn't want to admit that this bothered her, even to herself. If she smirked, he'd think she was mocking him instead of being jealous. She had no business being jealous of him anyway. Or so she told herself - until her mind conjured up the image of her and Puck's married, future selves and she couldn't deny that her heart felt a little stab from the green-eyed monster.
"No way!"
"Then how do you know that girls act stupid when they're here?"
"Well duh, have you met Alice?"
"No, why?"
"She's like, the dumbest girl you could ever meet. She might even be dumber than you."
"Gee, thanks," Sabrina said.
"This place makes people a little crazy if they stay too long. And Alice definitely stayed too long," Puck continued in a low voice, his eyes glowing with excitement as if he was telling a ghost story. "There's something in the air… it makes you forget. Of course, it doesn't work on me, because I'm a sensible boy instead of a girl like you who's always asking questions and stuff. That was Alice's problem too. You know what they say, 'curiosity killed the cat.'"
"What do cats have to do with anything?"
"Nothing," Puck said exasperatedly. "It's just a saying. I mean Alice was too curious. So are you."
"Well, I am a detective." Sabrina tried not to sound too proud, but she didn't succeed.
Puck clucked dismissively and waved the comment aside with his free hand.
Sabrina thought a moment. "What do you mean, 'it makes you forget'? Forget what?"
"What happened last week, where you're from… some people even forget their own name." The fairy turned to look at her. "Those are the ones that never come back."
