“…Hey! That’s against the rules!” barked a sudden, unknown voice.

Dreadlilocks turned around, her eyes still red and puffy. “…What?” she asked.

Standing behind her was a strange-looking little girl in a blue dress. She had shiny, olive-green skin and two large eye stalks on her forehead, with a little black bow in between them.

On her back was a gigantic, battered snail shell, with gigantic needles and pins sticking out of it every which way. It had a sort of dangerous air about it, as if it held a dark secret about the child it was attached to.

The snail girl pulled out a little red book. “There are no crying children listed in the register,” she said. “So you’d better get back to your script right away. This isn’t LaConte, you know; we pay attention to things here!”

“I…don’t know what you mean,” said Dreadli. “What’s my script??”

“You don’t remember?? That’s against the rules, too! But I guess I can help you get back on track…” She flipped through the book. “What’s your name? Lucy Locket? Kitty Fisher? Jenny Wren? No, I think Jenny is a bird…”

“My name is Dreadlilocks…”

“Dreadli…no, there’s no ‘Dreadlilocks’ in the register.” The snail girl snapped her book shut and glared. “…So that means you’re a visitor.”

“Is that…against the rules?”

“YES! There are NO visitors allowed on the moon at this time!! I can’t believe the Odsplut let you pass…what have you done with it…?!”

“I didn’t do anything! That Odsplut almost killed me!”

“‘Almost’?? That can’t be right…well, I guess I’ll have to fix the problem myself.”

She removed two needles from her shell and brandished them like swords. And from the holes they left behind, phantasms spurted out and leaked onto the ground, forming a small posse at her side.

She blew sharply on the golden whistle that hung around her neck. “CHARGE!” she cried, pointing a needle at Dreadlilocks.

So Dreadlilocks decided to run.

She jumped into the crater and slid down the side, just a little frighteningly faster than she had expected to go. But trying to slow her descent was not an option: she could hear the snail girl and the phantasms racing after her, getting closer every second.

Suddenly, the ground collapsed beneath her feet— literally this time, not merely as the result of the phantasms’ disorienting powers. Dreadli tumbled into an underground cavern, amid falling rocks and the echoes of her terrified screams.

An unseen body of water broke her fall, although she plunged into it with enough speed to dash her face against the muddy riverbed.

She quickly came up for air, paddling with one arm and wiping the dirt from her eyes with the other. She dragged herself onto the shore, coughing and spluttering and even more panicked than before.

But when she finally stopped to listen for her pursuers, she heard only silence. She looked up at the light, then out into the darkness, dripping and waiting.

“…It’s only a matter of time until she finds another way down here,” whispered an unknown voice. “I can hide you, but we need to leave now.”

Dreadli whipped around, and found a new stranger standing behind her.

It looked like a life-size version of one of the gingerbread cookies she used to bake with Baby Bear in the winter: sweet-smelling, golden brown, and decorated with delicate swirls of cream frosting, hard candies, and chocolate drops. Upon its head were two ‘pigtails’ made of shortbread, adorned with ribbons of licorice.

The gingerbread girl held out her hand. “Come on. Follow me,” she said.