Page 54
Story: Shadow Charms
“I think we’re inside the book.”
“Inside the book? What?”
Dewey scratched his cartoon-like chin. “It makes sense, right?”
“How does any of this make sense?” Paige choked out, her lips still tugged into a frown.
Dewey fluttered around over the clumps of grass drawn in large patches. “The book asked what we wanted. I said it three times. That must have been the charm. Three times. And it sucked us inside.”
“Why would it do that?” Paige wailed.
Dewey lifted his eyes to the flat blue sky. “Because the Witchlock tree is housed inside this story.”
“What?”
Dewey nodded his illustrated head. “Yes. The Witchlock tree is in this book somewhere. We need to find it, and once we do, I bet we’ll find an exit point, or the book will spit us back out.”
“Are you kidding me? We are stuck inside a storybook?”
“Doesn’t sound like a good one either,” Dewey said, wrinkling his nose as he glanced around again.
“Seriously?” Paige asked.
“The book is called Torn Tales. You read the blurb on the back.”
Paige pressed a pointy, featureless finger against her lips. “An upside-down take on traditional fairy tales.”
“You got it,” Dewey said, poking a blob of a finger in her direction.
“Well, that’s just great. We’re stuck inside a book. And we’re cartoons.”
“Illustrations.”
Paige’s features pinched, and she let her head fall to the side. “Same thing.”
“Not really. Cartoons have a distinctive style that–“
“Shut it, Dewey. I don’t care about the difference between cartoons and illustrations. We’ve got bigger problems. How do we get out of here?”
“I already told you. My best guess is we search for the Witchlock tree in one of these stories and then a way out.”
“A way out? What way? We’re two-dimensional images on a page!”
“Wait, maybe we just need to ask to leave three times like we asked to come in.”
Paige nodded and sucked in a breath. “I’m going to try it.”
“No!” Dewey argued, waving his monochromatic paws at her. “We haven’t found what we came for.”
“We can come back in if we need to. I’m not willing to run all over this book in search of something that may not be here or become stuck inside the pages.”
“Fine, fine,” Dewey said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Go ahead.”
“Out,” Paige shouted into the sky.
Dewey pressed his lips together into an unimpressed expression.
“Out, out, out.”
Table of Contents
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- Page 54 (Reading here)
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