The Enchantress Returns by Chris Colfer Page B

said. “I’ve had several aliases over the years… Guinevere, Mona Lisa, Lady Godiva, the Goose Flu… those were all me. But now I just simply go by Mother Goose. It fits me the best.”
    Bob was just as bewildered as the twins were. There he sat, a man of education and science, slowly losing faith in everything he thought he knew.
    “So you and the fairies have been spreading the same fairy tales all this time?” Bob asked.
    “We spread them as they happen,” Mother Goose said. “Our more recent history has had the biggest impact on this world—the stories of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella, blah blah blah—that’s why we call it the Golden Age. Unfortunately, the more this world began to develop, the faster it seemed to go by in comparison to our world. We were afraid the stories would get lost over time, so we recruited a few people in this world to help us.”
    “Like the Brothers Grimm?” Bob asked, starting to understand.
    “The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Walt Disney…” Mother Goose listed. “But we stopped recruiting protégés and mostly do it ourselves these days. There isn’t a time difference to be worried about anymore. And things became so calm in our world after the Happily Ever After Assembly was formed, we needed something to do.”
    “The Happily Ever After Assembly?” Bob asked.
    “It’s sort of like their United Nations,” Alex said. “All the kings and queens signed a treaty to regulate peace.”
    “All the kings and queens, the Fairy Godmother, the Fairy Council, and I make up the assembly. We’ve watched over the treaty since it was created,” Mother Goose said. “It’s been working out really well. Our world has stayed pretty peaceful… well, until now , that is.”
    Mother Goose eyed the twins—she had been told she wasn’t supposed to bring up the current situation.
    Bob nodded slightly. “I think I’m starting to understand it all,” he said. “Except one thing: You said there was a time difference between the worlds? What happened?”
    Mother Goose gestured to the twins. “These two showed up,” she said with a smile. “They were the first children born of both worlds and somehow linked them together. Magic works in mysterious ways, always has.”
    Bob looked over at the twins with an impressed grin on his face.
    “We’re kind of a big deal,” Conner said.
    Bob smiled at him. “Well, you think you know someone, right, guys?” he said with a wink.
    Bob left for work within the hour and the twins began another day of moping around the house with only their worries to entertain themselves with. They had grown very tired of the same concerns rotating in their heads.
    The next couple days weren’t as tense as the last week had been. Mother Goose wasn’t as strict as Xanthous, and it was a huge relief for the twins. The soldiers had to wake her in the middle of her naps to remind her of the “gnoming shifts.”
    Alex’s spirits were raised by seeing how much Conner bonded with Mother Goose. The two became practically inseparable. During the day they would sit at the window looking at the front of the house and play pranks on the mailman (Mother Goose would wiggle an ear and magically move the mailbox whenever he would turn his back). After dinner, ifthey weren’t watching professional wrestling, Mother Goose and Conner would play cards with the soldiers. She even taught him how to hide an ace in his sleeve.
    Alex didn’t fill him in on the plan that had been forming in her head for days. She already felt guilty enough breaking her grandma’s wishes alone; she didn’t want to drag her brother into it.
    One night Conner went to bed early and Alex stayed up, keeping an eye on Mother Goose. She was sitting at the kitchen table, thermos in hand, reminiscing about the fairy-tale world with the soldiers. Alex could tell she was having a little too much fun, because her eyes were glazed over and she was slurring and rhyming her