Witchy Tales: A Wicked Witches of the Midwest Fairy Tale Read Free Page A

at the end of my bed. There’s nothing. Had someone moved furniture in the middle of the night and not told me?
    I carefully shuffled across the bedroom floor, slowly extending my feet like antennae in hope I wouldn’t run into another piece of errant furniture that wasn’t supposed to be there. When my outstretched hand hit the wall, I started feeling around for the light switch. After a few seconds of searching, I gave up. Did someone move that, too?
    I pushed open the bedroom door and stepped into the living room, pulling up short and letting my eyes adjust to the brightness. Once they did, I wanted to turn around and go back into the bedroom. I’d walked out into a living room – but not my living room.
    “I … .” I didn’t even know what to say. What do you say when you go to sleep in your own bedroom, your smoking hot boyfriend at your side, and wake up a few hours later alone in a strange house?
    My gaze bounced across the room, confusion and dread braiding to pool heavily in my stomach. I was in a cabin. Well it looked like a cabin. Without seeing the outside of the building there was no sure way to tell.
    Other than the bedroom, which I’d just exited, the cabin consisted of one room. The fireplace on the far side was roaring, an iron pot of … something … steaming above the flames. The sofa appeared to be made out of sawed and split logs, but there were no pillows or cushions to offer comfortable seating. On the other side of the room stood a wooden counter, three bowls placed neatly atop it. That was it. There was nothing else in the room.
    “This has to be a dream.”
    No one answered me. There was no one there to answer. I strode back to the bedroom door and threw it open, narrowing my eyes so I could stare inside. Without a better light source it was hard to make out, but it looked as though there were three beds in the room, including the one I woke up in.
    I ran my hands down my clothes, breathing a sigh of relief when I recognized them. They were my jeans, T-shirt and tennis shoes. I wasn’t wearing someone else’s clothes. What’s going on here?
    For lack of something better to do, I pinched my forearm. The pain shot through me quickly, and it was enough to tell me this wasn’t a dream. Well, mostly. You can’t feel pain in dreams, right?
    I opened my mouth to call out, Landon’s name on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed the urge when the door of the cabin swung open and three … Oh, holy crap, this has to be a dream. There’s no way I saw what I thought I saw.
    “Oh, I see our guest has finally awakened. How did you sleep, my dear?”
    I’d always been taught that it’s polite to answer a question when it’s asked of you. Of course, I’ve never had the opportunity to talk to a bear. That’s right, a bear. There, standing in the doorway of the tiny cabin, was not one but three of them. They stood on their hind legs, their faces curious, and they stared at me as though I was the anomaly.
    “I … um … I think I’m dreaming.”
    “You’re not dreaming,” the first bear said. “I think I would know if you were dreaming.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The second bear, the one with the darker coat and bigger snout, pushed past the first bear and ambled in my direction. Instinct took over and I jumped back. “Don’t bite me.”
    “We don’t usually bite people,” the bear said in a gravelly, male-sounding voice. “That’s considered bad manners.”
    “Oh, well, that’s good,” I said, fearfully scanning the cabin. “I … how did I get here?”
    “You let yourself in,” the first bear said. If the second bear’s voice sounded male, this one definitely sounded female. “You were tired, and you needed a place to sleep.”
    “First you tried my bed,” the male bear said. “You said it was too hard.”
    “Then you tried my bed,” the female bear said. “You said it was too soft.”
    The third and smallest bear finally decided to speak. “And then you tried my bed and