Witchy Tales: A Wicked Witches of the Midwest Fairy Tale by Amanda M. Lee

again. This time I was sure of it. While I was staring directly at him I realized what the change was. So did Thistle.
    “Your nose just grew,” Thistle said, pointing.
    “What?” Sam clapped his hand over his nose, horrified. “My nose is getting bigger?”
    “You’re Pinocchio,” I said. “If you lie, your nose gets bigger.”
    “I wasn’t lying. Crap. I felt it this time.” Sam was starting to panic.
    “You need to stop lying,” Thistle said. “Even little ones are going to affect you. If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut as much as possible.”
    Sam glared at her. “Thanks for that.”
    “I don’t know what else to tell you,” Thistle said. “I don’t think the curse knows the difference between truth and sarcasm, so you have to be careful.”
    “Maybe if we’re lucky his nose will grow long enough that it can support part of your dress and it won’t make noise,” Landon suggested.
    “Shut up!”
    “Everyone shut up,” I said, rubbing the crease between my eyebrows. “Stop arguing.”
    “No one is arguing,” Landon said, rubbing my back. “We’re just … expressing ourselves in loud voices.”
    “We’re frustrated,” Sam said.
    “We’re all frustrated,” I said. “We have a bigger worry, though.”
    “Which is?”
    “We still haven’t found Clove,” I said.
    Sam’s face drained of color. “She’s out there all alone. We have to find her.”
    “There’s one other thing,” I said.
    Everyone waited.
    “If Sam is here, I’m going to guess Marcus is here, too,” I said.
    Thistle balked. “Aunt Tillie likes Marcus, though.”
    “It’s fairy tales, Thistle,” I said, keeping my voice low. “That means there’s almost always a princess and a prince.”
    “Crap,” Thistle grumbled. “This is so unfair.”
    “We have to stick together,” I said. “Our first order of business is finding Clove.”
    “What about Marcus?”
    “Hopefully he’ll find us,” Landon said. “He can take care of himself. Don’t worry about that. Bay is right, though. We need to find Clove.”
    “She’s probably terrified,” Sam said.
    “Where do we start looking?” Thistle asked. “Were we heading in this direction just so we could meet up with Sam, or will we find Clove this way?”
    I didn’t know the answer to the question. Thankfully, I didn’t have to try to scrape something up. At that exact moment, an ear-splitting scream tore through the night, and we all snapped our attention in its direction.
    “Somebody help me!”
    “Clove,” Sam said, pushing past us and breaking into a run. “Clove!”
    “Great!” Landon said. “I was worried things were about to get boring.”

 
     
    If your hair is long enough for someone to climb it, then it’s long enough to cut off and climb down yourself. Suck it up and save yourself. Sitting around and waiting for a man is a complete and total waste of time.
    – Aunt Tillie’s Wonderful World of Stories to Make Little Girls Shut Up

Six
    We raced through the woods, branches reaching out to scratch our faces, but nothing could stop us. We’d located our missing cousin, and it sounded as though she was in trouble.
    We escaped the woods and found ourselves on an expansive and well-manicured lawn, the moon above casting an eerie pall over the area. In the center of the lawn was a high tower. The lone spire resembled a partially finished castle, and there was only one window in the stone edifice.
    “Where is she?” Thistle asked, bending over to catch her breath.
    “Help me!”
    I glanced around, and when my gaze finally landed on the tower window I had to swallow the worry bubbling up in my throat. “Crap.”
    “What am I looking at?” Landon asked, worried. “Is she in that tower?”
    I pointed to the window. It was high in the tower, at least fifty feet above the ground. A faint light flickered inside, and a small figure moved back and forth at the window. “She’s up there.”
    “Is something attacking her?”
    I