53 pages • 1 hour read
Chris ColferThe Wishing Spell
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Fairy Kingdom”
Alex and Conner cross into the Fairy Kingdom, where the grass is a verdant green and the water sparkles. They pass a herd of unicorns, which stops grazing to bow to them, leaving the twins confused. The journal says collecting fairy tears is difficult, since fairies rarely become emotional enough to cry, and Alex finds a bottle in the book’s spine to hold the tears. The twins hear a sniffling sound and come across a fairy sitting by the path, crying. They can’t believe they actually found a crying fairy without even trying because “Nothing has been this easy” (265).
The fairy’s name is Trix, and she’s crying because she goes on trial before the Fairy Council soon and is scared she’ll be banished from the kingdom. Another fairy was teasing her for being so small, and she used magic on him, something fairies aren’t supposed to do. Alex dries Trix’s tears without collecting one, so Conner says some scary things to make the fairy cry again and catches a tear in the bottle. Alex offers to go to the trial with Trix. Trix thanks them and leads the way to the fairy palace.
The palace is an open-air structure made of golden arches and pillars. The Fairy Council waits inside, minus the fairy godmother and Mother Goose, who are rarely there because they’re busy traveling around the kingdoms to help people. The seven fairies in attendance sentence Trix to banishment, but Conner intervenes, saying that the fairies have no business punishing a fairy for a mistake when there are so many other problems, like the trolls and goblins enslaving people. The Fairy Council pardons Trix, and a few of them go to investigate the goblins and trolls. One fairy calls her pet, a fish with legs like the one from the story Conner and Alex’s dad told. The twins ask her about it, and her story about the fish matches their dad’s.
Chapter 13 Summary: “A Wolf Pact”
At the edge of the Northern Kingdom, the Evil Queen approaches the Big Bad Wolf Pack with a proposition. In exchange for bringing her Alex and Conner unharmed, The Evil Queen will deliver Red Riding Hood to the pack. The wolves agree, adding that if the queen doesn’t hold her end of the bargain, they’ll snap her neck. The Evil Queen is not cowed and returns that if the wolves don’t bring her the twins, she’ll have them all turned into rugs, “just as Red Riding Hood did to your father” (280). The Evil Queen leaves, and the stunned wolf pack goes to hunt the twins.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Sleeping Kingdom”
Alex and Conner stay the night in the Fairy Kingdom, but neither sleeps much, thinking about the walking fish. They wonder if their dad or grandmother ever came to the Land of Stories but ultimately decide they hadn’t because both love fairy tales so much that they probably would have stayed. In the morning, the twins hitch a ride to the Sleeping Kingdom to find the spindle, passing Mermaid Bay. On the way, they hear a rumor that both Cinderella’s slippers have been stolen. They figure the huntress took one and are left to ponder if someone slipped the other in their bag to frame them.
In the Sleeping Kingdom, the twins find the people sleeping and the land barren as if for winter. They mosey past the half-asleep guards to the palace throne room, where Sleeping Beauty discusses the state of her sleeping subjects with her husband and advisor. They don’t know how to keep the people awake or get the kingdom back to how it was before the curse. Conner suggests the people wear elastics around their wrists and snap them when they start nodding off. Alex looks through her bag for an elastic, and Cinderella’s slipper falls out. The king calls for the guards, who wake up to chase the twins.
They run up a long set of stairs to the room where Sleeping Beauty slept for 100 years and find the spinning wheel and a bed, but the spindle is gone. Sleeping Beauty arrives, having called off the guards. The twins tell her they need the spindle for the Wishing Spell, and she remembers the man who took it before. Sleeping Beauty dreamed about the other world during her curse and knows the twins are telling the truth. She pulls the spindle out from under the pillow on the bed and gives it to them. Alex and Conner are overjoyed because they won’t be “trapped in the Land of Stories forever” (295).
Chapters 12-14 Analysis
The plotlines and mysteries of the novel begin to converge in these chapters. The walking fish is the first piece of evidence the twins find that their dad was from the fairy-tale world. The unicorns bow to the twins because they are part fairy, and as citizens of the Fairy Kingdom, the unicorns honor them. The Big Bad Wolf Pack was the only real threat to the fairy-tale world before the Evil Queen escaped. The Evil Queen offers them Little Red Riding Hood, whom the pack wants to avenge the Big Bad Wolf’s death. The Evil Queen uses Red Riding Hood as a bargaining piece to attain the help of the pack, making the pack yet another threat to Alex and Conner collecting the Wishing Spell items.
The Sleeping and Fairy Kingdoms show how magic affects the land. The Fairy Kingdom is a place of goodness, shown by how the land sparkles. The council’s decision to banish Trix isn’t an evil one, rather one of fear. Following Sleeping Beauty’s curse and other negative events caused by fairies, the council has cracked down on any use of magic against another being to show that the fairies take their protection of the fairy-tale world seriously. The Sleeping Kingdom still suffers from the aftermath of its 100-year sleep. The people struggle to stay awake, except for Sleeping Beauty, who steadfastly stays awake to rebuild the land. Conner’s rubber band suggestion shows him applying real-world solutions to fairy-tale problems.
The significance of Sleeping Beauty’s dreams of the real world is never explained. It’s possible she heard tell of it from the Fairy Godmother, but no such conversation is ever referred to. It may also be that much like people in the real world dream of a land of fairy tales, people in the land of fairy tales dream of worlds other than their own. Dreams may be a link between the worlds that isn’t investigated in this book.
