gingerbread house. Mouse had joined the quest after Cinders turned him into a horse and he found he quite liked it. Sparks had joined the quest because Cinders was his best friend and, even if she was quite loud, occasionally annoying and never packed enough sausages, he loved her more than anything.
‘Besides,’ Hansel said, ‘surely you’d know if your mum was a fairy princess. Wouldn’t you have extra-extra-special powers or something?’
‘You mean something like magical, sparkly fingers that make wishes come true?’ Cinders suggested. ‘And let’s not forget that time I flew.’
‘I’m not sure floating thirty centimetres off the ground counts as flying,’ Sparks said with a gruffly yawn. ‘I’ve got an idea – why don’t you wish up some lunch? I’m getting hungry.’
That was hardly a surprise. Sparks was almost always starving.
‘I don’t think I’ll have to,’ Cinders said. She gave the air a big sniff. ‘Can you smell that?’
‘Freshly baked bread!’ Hansel gasped. His mouth began to water. ‘Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a nice slice of toast.’
‘Come on, Mouse, let’s go and find something to eat.’ Cinders flicked the reins and Mouse picked up speed, galloping through the forest, following the delicious aromas that wafted towards them.
For the first time in ages, the twisted tree trunks of the Dark Forest parted and Cinders could see the blue sky overhead. And not just the sky, but beyond the line of the forest she saw a towering mountain in the distance, fields full of pink grass and colourful houses dotted along a blue-bricked road. At the end of the road was a market.
‘I don’t want to exaggerate,’ Sparks said, sitting up in Cinders’s lap, ‘but this might be the most excited I have ever been. Markets almost always mean sausages.’
‘Agreed,’ said Cinders as they clip-clopped on to the blue bricks. ‘Let’s go and find some snacks!’
In no time at all, they arrived at the market. Even though it looked like any other market from a distance, close up Cinders could tell it was somehow different. The stalls were brightly coloured, gleaming cascades of silk covered the tables and stands, and the air was filled with the sweetest smells. The market stalls in the kingdom all used rough canvas or white cotton to cover their stands and, no matter what day of the week it was, all Cinders could ever smell was fish and Cinders hated the smell of fish.
Neither Sparks nor Hansel were able to do magic themselves, but, if they could have granted a wish or two, they would have magicked something very much like the food they found at the very first market stall. Big, plump, juicy sausages for Sparks, freshly baked cakes for Cinders and, well, Hansel wasn’t fussy. He would happily eat anything.
‘Everything looks delicious,’ Cinders said, her mouth watering.
‘It does,’ Hansel agreed, looking round the marketplace. ‘But are we sure it’s safe to eat? I don’t think these people are quite like us.’
Cinders looked up from a particularly appealing sweet stall that sold seventeen different flavours of fudge.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Look,’ Hansel whispered, nodding at a man walking by. ‘They’re weird.’
The person in question was much shorter than Cinders or Hansel and his skin was a very pale purple colour. His spiky hair was bright green and his big, smiling eyes were such a bold yellow that Cinders was certain she’d be able to see them in the dark.
‘They just look different to us, that’s all,’ Cinders said, her own eyes again fixed firmly on the fudge. ‘Not everyone’s the same.’
‘I suppose so,’ Hansel replied. She had a point. Up until a couple of days ago, he’d never met a dog that could talk, but Sparks wasn’t weird. A bit rude sometimes, but that was just Sparks.
‘Excuse me,’ Cinders said to the blue-haired lady behind the fudge counter.
She turned and gasped, looking Cinders up and down in surprise.
Hmm, Cinders thought, Hansel isn’t the only one who thinks certain people here look odd. They’re as confused by us as we are by them!
‘How much is your vanilla-strawberry-chocolate-chip fudge?’
‘All the fudge is one gold piece per bag,’ the lady replied, eyeing the group curiously. It wasn’t often they saw people from the kingdom beyond the Dark Forest. In fact, she had only ever met one person from there before in her entire life and she hoped never to run into him again. She shivered, thinking of his big black hood and big black boots.
‘Thank you very much,’ Cinders said with a huge smile before turning back to her friends. ‘Okay, the fudge is one gold piece per bag. Hansel, how much money have you got with you?’
‘Absolutely none,’ he replied.
‘And I’ve got –’ Cinders dug her hands deep into her pockets – ‘a button. Flipping fiddlesticks! How are we going to buy something to eat if we don’t have the money to pay for it?’
‘Um, Cinders,’ Sparks said, pointing to a poster with his front paw. ‘I think we might have a bigger problem right now.’
Cinders gasped.
Nailed to the tree behind her was a wanted poster.
A wanted poster with her picture on it!
Even the bravest prince in the entire world might have been a little bit nervous riding through the Dark Forest on his own, and Prince Joderick Jorenson Picklebottom was the first to admit he was hardly the bravest prince in the entire world. Joderick was the kind of prince who would much rather spend his days baking a perfect chocolate soufflé or playing video games. But here he was, riding his horse, Muffin, through the darkest part of the Deep Dark Very Incredibly Scary Forest, looking for his friend Cinders.
‘So … which way do you think we should go?’ Joderick asked Muffin as they came to a fork in the trail.
Muffin snorted in response. She wasn’t magic like Sparks, so she couldn’t tell him what she thought. And, if she could, she didn’t think he would appreciate her response very much anyway.
Joderick looked down at the map he had secretly borrowed-without-asking from his father’s private desk, and frowned at the big tear that ran right down the edge. Joderick must have ripped it when he pulled it out of the desk, and now he had reached the end of the trail marked out on the parchment. He had no idea where to go next.
‘Why
