“I’ve used it a couple of times. It kind of does what you want it to,” Sabrina explained.
“Except for the time you destroyed the bank,” Puck reminded her.
“OK, about fifty percent of the time it works like a charm.”
“I’m still a bit confused,” Little John said. “Are you planning to blow this crazy child into the next county? What good will that do us?”
“It does more than blow houses down. Right, Daphne?” Sabrina said. The little girl nodded. “It cures the mentally insane.”
“Uh, maybe you should turn it on yourself, ’cause you sound crazy,” Puck replied.
Sabrina was about to roll her eyes but she caught herself. She looked to Daphne for permission to continue explaining. The little girl nodded again. “Let me start from the very beginning. We know from the story of Red Riding Hood that her mother sent her into the forest with a basket of food to deliver to her grandmother. That part of the story has always been a little odd. Who sends a child into the woods where wild animals live? That is not good parenting.”
“Good point,” Uncle Jake said.
“We think Mr. Hatchett told us the reason, though I doubt he meant to. The truth is Red’s family was at their wit’s end with her. They were desperate. They sent her to the grandmother’s because they were hoping she could do something to help her.”
“My mommy and daddy love me,” Red said.
“They wanted you to get better,” Sabrina said to the girl. Red nodded and hugged a stuffed doll with a missing head.
“Hatchett says Red’s granny was a witch, and when he showed up she was blowing a little flute that could manipulate the wind. Well, he got it wrong. It wasn’t a flute. It was a kazoo.”
Daphne held it up for everyone to see. Sabrina continued, “Red’s grandmother either found the kazoo or created it herself. From Hatchett’s version, it could control the wind. But we think it does more than that. The kazoo creates a wind that literally blows the insanity out of a person. When Hatchett and Canis stumbled upon the grandmother’s house, they watched the witch blow the madness out of a rabid wolf. She bottled it up but she wasn’t doing this to heal a sick animal. She was testing the kazoo to make sure it worked before she tried it on her granddaughter.”
“She was trying to fix Red,” Granny marveled.
Sabrina nodded. “At least we think she was. Mr. Canis, or Tobias Clay, or whatever his name was, just got in the way. He was trying to be a hero and save Red. He is the real hero woodcutter from the story, not Howard Hatchett.”
“And you want to try this on Red? Hatchett told us it was dangerous. The madness from the rabid wolf merged with Mr. Canis to become the Big Bad Wolf,” Uncle Jake said. “What happens if Red’s madness slips into one of us? The Wolf part of Canis is completely insane. Canis has never been able to fully control it.”
“We have to be careful,” Sabrina said. There was a knock at the door and when the locks were all undone it swung open. Nurse Sprat held a glass jar in her nervous hands.
“Here!” she cried, then shoved it into Sabrina’s hands and slammed the door tight.
“This jar will do the trick, I hope,” Sabrina said. “If the three pigs had had a jar when they beat the Wolf and took the kazoo from him, we might have been rid of the monster for good, but they had no idea what the kazoo was capable of. They just thought it was how the Wolf huffed and puffed his way around town. But when they turned it on him, the Wolf was gone and Canis was left behind. The rabid wolf’s insanity left Canis, allowing him to take control of his body, even when the insanity swirled back into him. But as we’ve been seeing, he wasn’t that much in control, and he’s slowly changing back.”
“So if we can trap Red’s insanity in a jar, then she can tell what she remembers from that day?” Robin asked.
Sabrina nodded. “The only chance of saving Canis is if an Everafter stands up for him. If we fix Red, she can do that for us.”
“It doesn’t hurt that she’s in the Scarlet Hand,” Uncle Jake added.
“Should I do it now?” Daphne asked.
“Yes. When I turned it on the Black Knight, I concentrated on having the power affect him only. I think the wind will do what you ask it to,” Sabrina encouraged her sister.
Daphne raised the kazoo to her lips and blew. The wind blasted out of it, upending the dolls, tea set, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. The people, however, seemed unfazed, except for their hair flying around.
Red Riding Hood glanced around her and started to laugh. “Bad weather!” she shrieked. “Very bad weather.”
The wind swirled around her like a snake. It crept around every limb, embraced her tightly, and then pulled back. Red cried out in pain as the group watched something horrible and black seep out of her. To call it a person would be wrong. It was more like an animal, with fangs and with eyes like bottomless pits. To Sabrina, it looked like some horribly mutated worm seeking revenge on a fisherman. It whipped around in midair, desperate to reach Red Riding Hood, but the wind kept it at bay. It shrieked angrily.
“Now, Sabrina!” Granny cried.
Sabrina opened the glass jar and reached out to the creature. It thrashed about as Daphne forced it into the jar. Once it was inside, Sabrina quickly tightened the lid and the wind vanished. She watched her sister look at the little kazoo and slip it back into her pocket. Then she turned to Red Riding Hood. The strange girl had collapsed to the ground and lay still.
“She’s hurt,” Robin Hood said, as he rushed to her side, but his concerns proved to be unwarranted. Red opened her eyes slowly and looked up into the face of Granny Relda.
“Grandmother?” she asked.
Sabrina’s heart sank. She had been wrong. She believed they could really heal the girl, and that she in turn could save Mr. Canis, but Red was just as crazy as before. The weapon had not done what she had hoped it would.
The door to the room flew open and slammed against the wall. Sabrina looked up and saw Bluebeard and Nottingham barging into the room, along with half a dozen card soldiers armed with swords.
“Sorry, Grimms!” Nottingham said. “We have to take our witness to the trial.”
One of the card soldiers dragged Red to her feet and pulled her from the room.
“I do hope you had enough time to question her,” Bluebeard said. “Though I suspect you didn’t get too many straight answers out of her.”
Nottingham and Bluebeard roared with laughter as they left the room.
“See you in court,” Bluebeard cried back over his shoulder. “The trial starts in fifteen minutes.”
The family rushed to the courthouse and pushed their way through the crowd at the entrance. There were no seats left and they were forced to stand in the back of the room.
Mayor Heart made her way over to the family. She had a wicked grin on her face. Her crooked yellow teeth made Sabrina’s stomach turn more than her mean-spirited comments. “Looks like today’s the day we wrap this all up, Grimms. I suspect your Wolf will meet the nooseman by this time tomorrow.”
Granny frowned as the woman walked away. “Isn’t she a delight?”
Judge Hatter entered the courtroom and made his way to the front where his desk once stood. Since he had smashed it with a sledgehammer the day before, it had been replaced with a stack of milk crates. He didn’t seem to notice. The Four of Spades called for order and announced the judge as he sat down.
“Let’s get started,” Judge Hatter said. “We can’t exactly get ended can we? No, I suppose we can’t. Can we? Or is it, may we? We may. No, we may not. Mr. Bluebeard, do you have a new witness?”
Bluebeard stood up from his desk and surveyed the crowd. He had a smug look on his face and he beamed at everyone, including Sabrina and her family. “Indeed I do. In fact, she’s our last witness. I call Little Red Riding Hood to the stand.”