Twisted Tales

The King himself stood in the doorway, flanked on either side by half a dozen armed guards, and wearing a dressing gown and tartan slippers. He was obviously the king, because he had taken the time to throw on his crown, which sat at a crooked angle atop his bedhead.

The king looked from Anne, to Erik and me, to the piles of distinctly not-golden straw filling the room, and lastly, to the beanstalk, clearly visible out the small window.

“What,” he seethed, “is going on here?”

Both Erik and Anne looked down at me, kneeling on the ground, blood dripping from the fingers that were held over my throbbing mouth.

I rose to my feet, a little woozily. The miller’s daughter had clocked me good, and my lower lip had been cut badly on my teeth. I could already feel it swelling, and I knew that in another minute or two, it would be a huge, purple, swollen, bloody mess.

Exactly what I wanted.

I pulled one bloody hand away from my mouth to gesture at the miller’s daughter. “We’re her… her…” I floundered for a moment. I’d only had about fifteen seconds to think of this plan, and I didn’t quite have all the details figured out. “Her… cousins.”

“Her cousins?” the king repeated, his eyebrows raising incredulously. “And what, pray tell, are you doing here, in my castle, in the dead of night, without my knowledge?” He looked around the room again, and frowned at the piles of straw. “And why is none of this gold?” he rounded on Anne. “I warned you what would happen if you had not spun the straw in this room into gold by dawn, did I not?”

“That’s why we’re here,” I interjected loudly, my words slurred and thick through my rapidly swelling lips. “You see, she’s still learning the technique.”

“Still learning?” said the king doubtfully. “Her father made it very clear—”

“That old windbag?” I scoffed. “He talks a big game, and it’s true that Anne here has some talent, but her technique is lacking. She can spin straw into gold all right, but she could never manage this much on her own.” The words were just tumbling out of my mouth now, I didn’t even have time to think about what I was saying, or what I would say next. I just had to trust my big mouth to get me through this one.

The expression Erik was staring at me with didn’t make me feel all that confident, but I just made an effort to ignore him, and plunged recklessly on.

“So you see, since we’re very close to our dear cousin, when we heard about her predicament, we wanted to help. So we came here at once in order to help teach her the secret techniques to spinning so much in a single night.”

“And you got into this tower using… that?” the king asked, pointing out the window at the beanstalk.

“Well, you didn’t exactly make the stairs accessible,” Erik added. I cast him a grateful glance.

“I still don’t—” the king began, but at that moment, I let my other hand fall, revealing the pendulous, purple mess that was my lower lip. “By God,” the king gasped, actually recoiling from the sight of me. “What caused you such a deformity?”

I smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth. “Why, spinning,” I said. “My lip has become like this after so many years of licking the straw to thread it. And look at him,” I added, jerking a thumb to Erik.

He gave me a blank look, and I shot a meaningful one of my own at his sprained ankle. “Go on, show his majesty your foot.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Erik bent down and gingerly pulled off his boot, and then his sock, wincing the entire time. His ankle was swollen to the size of a softball, and his whole foot was a reddish, purple color.

“That’s from peddling the spindle all day long, year after year,” I said. “And you should see our mother. Her thumb is the size of your head, from twisting the thread day and night. No amount of golden thread can undo that.”

The king looked appalled, his gaze darting from my fat lip to Erik’s sprained ankle. Then he looked toward Anne, so pretty and dainty and not at all mangled, and he seemed to make up his mind.

“Ah. Yes. I see. Well, I’ll certainly not have my wife developing such… deformities as yours just for the sake of obtaining golden thread. My riches are great enough as they are.

Classy guy, I though cynically to myself. “Then… you will let our poor cousin go home?” I asked aloud instead, hopefully.

“Oh no,” the king said, turning back to face me. “I shall marry her, gold thread or no. She is a lovely creature, and it is time I took a wife. She is not of noble blood, but your family’s unique talent for spinning is a worthy thing, though I shall not ask that she uses her ability.”

I glanced quickly over at Anne, struck by alarm. This guy was clearly unstable—not only for believing my wild story, which couldn’t really be held against him since everyone in this place seemed to adhere to a bizarre code of narrative-based, fairytale logic; but mostly for kidnapping and threatening to execute random women when they couldn’t complete impossible tasks. Sure, she married him in the original story, but now that I’d met her as a real, tangible person, the thought of her being married to this weirdo was concerning.

But apparently, I was the only one concerned.

At the King’s words, Anne’s face split into a wide smile, and she clapped her hands together. “Oh, really, your Majesty? You will have me?”

“I will,” replied the king, nobley. “And you shall live a life of luxury as my queen, and shall never have to spin again.”

The miller’s daughter seemed pleased as punch by this arrangement, so I figured maybe I shouldn’t worry myself too much about her future. I got the story back on track, whatever happened from here on out was her problem.

The king gave one of the guards orders to take Anne to the queenly chambers, and to arrange for an entourage of ladies maids and ladies-in-waiting to be put together for her by dawn. The guard led Anne out of the tower room, and as she passed through the doorway of her ex-prison, she turned to smile as Erik and me, and mouthed a silent thank you. And then she was gone.

I cleared my throat. “Well, if that’s settled, then Cousin It here and I will just be going—” I spun on my heel to make a beeline for the tower window, but the sound of five swords being drawn from their sheaths made me freeze. I turned back around.

“I don’t think so,” said the king. “While I sympathize with the sentiment of wanting to aid your dear cousin, you have still committed high treason by using treacherous means of sneaking onto royal grounds, planting that… thing out there, and breaking into this tower where I was holding a… well, not exactly a prisoner, but essentially the same thing. I certainly can’t just let the two of you go, now can I?”

“Can’t you?” I asked hopefully.

“I can’t,” he said. “The two of you are under arrest, and you will be brought to the dungeons. Later, the captain of my guard will come to question you about how exactly you got past the wall and up to this tower.”

“And after that?” Erik asked, in a tone so dark that it was clear he already thought he knew what the king was going to say.

The king shrugged. “Oh, I’ll probably have you executed. I can’t allow people to break into my castle and then just let them go on their merry way. There have to be consequences for this sort of thing.”

“But—but—but—” I spluttered, my heart pounding so hard that it was distracting me from thinking of any argument as to why he couldn’t, in fact, do any of that. “But Anne, the miller’s daughter, she’ll… we’re her cousins, you can’t execute your fiancee’s family!”

“Oh, I doubt she’ll ever find out about it,” replied the king unconcernedly, glancing down at his fingernails. He gave them a polish on the fur lapel of his dressing gown.

“Won’t she be suspicious when we don’t show up for the wedding?” said Erik.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Guards, take them away.” The king gave a wave of the royal hand, and the five remaining guards surged forwards to take Erik and I prisoner.

There was no point in struggling. It was five to two, and one of those two had a sprained ankle and a messed up arm. And the other one was me, and I’m pretty much useless when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.

Besides, even if we made it to the window and onto the beanstalk, then what? I was certain it would be surrounded by guards by now, so going down wasn’t an option. And up? Even assuming the king didn’t order the thing to be chopped down while we were still climbing it, the only thing that would greet us at the top would probably be an angry giant.

And then the king would certainly have the beanstalk chopped down, and we’d be trapped in the clouds forever.

With an angry giant.

Two of the guards seized me by either arm, and three took Erik, though he was in less condition than I was to fight back. I looked over at him with frightened eyes as my two guards started trying to drag me towards the tower door.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a wince as one of his guards pinned his arms behind his back. “Everything will be fine. We’ll think of something.”

Then I was yanked through the door, and led down the tower steps with the point of a sword digging into my back.



The dungeons were everything you’d expect dungeons to be. Cold, damp, dark, dank, other things that start with D. I’d been unceremoniously tossed into a cell by the castle guards, the iron bars swinging closed before I even had the chance to pick myself up off the filthy stone floor.

I t had been an hour since then, and I’d spent most of that time sitting huddled in a corner in a pile of stinking, moldy straw, crying.

It was a proper cry, one of those cries where you really put all your emotions and all your energy into it. “Sobbing” might be more accurate a description. I’d been embarrassed at first, when the tears first started and I couldn’t stop them. Erik had been thrown into the cell next to mine, and though we couldn’t see each other, I knew he could hear me. But after a minute or two, it just felt so good to finally cry with all my heart, like I used to when I was a little kid. So I just let it come, and I let myself be miserable and afraid and hopeless, until I had no tears left, and I was only gasping quietly to myself with dry eyes.

Finally, I wiped them, feeling how puffy they were, and knowing that between them, my runny nose, and my swollen lip, I must look a real treat. Soon I was only sniffling a little, and a strange sense of calm came over me.

There was nothing we could do now. The cell bars were too close together to slip through. I didn’t have a spoon and a spare decade to tunnel my way out. There were no fairy godmothers coming, no Rumpelstiltskin to trade my firstborn for our escape. This was how our story ends; a cold dungeon, and a short drop.

“Rikki?” came Erik’s voice, quiet and hesitant.

“Yeah,” I replied, without emotion.

“I’m… sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know. That things ended like this. I should have had a contingency plan. An escape route. Something. I should have made you leave while you still had the chance. I was never going to be able to get away, but you could have.”

“It was already too late. They would have caught me on the stairs,” I said. “And besides, I should be the one apologizing. You wouldn’t even be here right now if it weren’t for me. I convinced you into helping me, I dragged you into this mess.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s true.”

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

I crawled over to the front of my cell and sat huddled in the corner between the iron bars and the wall that connected our two cells. I still couldn’t see him, but I could hear him better. “How long do you think we’ll be kept in here, before…” I trailed off, because I couldn’t bear to say it.

I heard a shuffling sound, and when Erik spoke again, his voice was much nearer. He must have also come up to the front corner of his cell, just opposite me. We were only a foot apart now, separated by a single stone wall. “A few days, probably. They’ll question us, learn how we got into the castle grounds. Once they feel as though we’ve admitted everything, they won’t have any reason to keep us here anymore.”

I didn’t reply. Silence fell over us like a suffocating weight, broken only by the distant drip, drip, drip of water in some far corner.

At least Jack got away. At least, he wasn’t in the dungeons with us. I’d briefly held out hope that he might find a way to rescue us, but I couldn’t think of any way that he could manage it. I know if it had been me who escaped, I’d never think of a way to save Erik and Jack in time.

After what felt like a long time—though it was hard to tell in this dark, timeless place—Erik spoke again.

“Why did you want me to punch you back there?” he asked.

“What? Oh.” I touched my fat lip gingerly, wincing as a bolt of pain shot through my face. It was a… an idea from a story I know. Three old women, one with a hanging lip, one with a huge toe, and one with a giant thumb, spin a whole room full of flax for a girl who found herself in a very similar circumstance as Anne up there. When the king in her story saw the old women, they told him their unusual body parts come from years of spinning flax, and he declares that his bride will never have to spin again. It worked there, so I figured, why not give it go? I guess it sort of worked, at any rate.”

“It was a good idea,” Erik tried to reassure me, but his words were hollow. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “So. This is it. This is the end of the road for us. No point in keeping secrets now, huh?”

I was too tired to try to guess where he was going with this. “What are you talking about?”

“What were you really doing in the woods when we first met? Where are you really from? Not anywhere around here, I know that much. The least you can do is tell me the truth, since we’re doomed anyway. Consider it my last wish.”

I mulled over his words for a long moment. He might not believe me. He might think I was just screwing with him, and get pissed that I wouldn’t tell him “the truth”.

But then again, he might believe my story. It wasn’t that much stranger than his own. And I didn’t want to go out as the only person in the whole world—in two worlds—that knew what had really happened.

“Well,” I finally said slowly. “It’s kind of a weird story, and I don’t know if you’re going to believe me. But I swear it’s all true, as crazy as it sounds.”



“I’ve been on my own for a while now. My parents died in a car—in an accident a few years ago. I have a brother, and I think a great aunt or something somewhere, but no other real family to speak of. My brother’s been in the army for about six years, so I hardly ever see him.

I just moved to a new city. My old job was this dead-end nightmare, and I was hoping that a new city full of new people might… I don’t know, inspire me or something, and I’d discover my passion and make myself this new, great life.

I never got that far.

I’d been at my new place for maybe two days. I hadn’t even started unpacking yet. I decided I’d go for a walk around the neighborhood, check out some of the shops. It’s this really old neighborhood, one of the oldest in the city, apart from the original “old town” area. All the stores are crammed together in converted row-houses, it’s really weird. Anyway, I’m walking down the street, trying to see if there is anywhere interesting to check out. I come to this bookstore, a used bookstore with these big, dark windows. It looked like it must have been closed, but the sign said open, so I decided to take a look.

I went inside, and my god, this place was packed with books. There was shelf after shelf after shelf crammed into this tiny space that used to be someone’s living room, and there were books three rows deep on each shelf. And that wasn’t even enough space to hold them all. There were books piled up a couple feet high along the ends of every bookshelf, stacks on every counter and chair and flat surface available. I immediately knocked over like three the piles the moment I step into the shop. Some of them are old, some of them are new; some of them are really, really old. I picked up a first edition of the Principia Mathematica, just laying open on the floor. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but holy crap, I thought I was being punk’d or something.

So there’s like ten thousand books everywhere, but no people. I’m the only one in the shop, I couldn’t even find a clerk. I wander around the shelves a little, find a couple of things I’m interested in, and take them up to the counter. There was a little bell on top of a stack of books on the counter, so I give it a ring and wait.

“Can I help you?” someone says from behind me, and I swear I nearly jumped right out of my skin. I have no idea where she came from, but there was a woman there, who I assumed was a worker.

I told her I was interested in buying some books, so she went around the counter to ring me up.

One of the books I’d picked up was this old, beat up copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I loved those stories, I grew up on them. My mom used to read me one story a night when I was little out of these two huge hardcovers, and when she finished one, she’d start with the other; and when she got to the last story in that one, she’d just start over again with the first. I never got tired of them. At least, not until I was maybe fourteen? After that, I got really into paranormal romances, and those old fairy tales sort of fell by the wayside. I don’t even know what happened to those old books my mom used to read out of, I haven’t seen them in years. Maybe she gave them away.

Anyway, when I saw a copy of the book in the shop, I knew I had to have it. So the shopkeeper picks it up and takes a look at it.

“You like fairy stories?” she says to me. I told her I loved them, that I practically knew them by heart when I was little, but that it had been a long time since I’d last read them.

“You like the adventure, the magic?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I remember laughing, and saying something like, “I could use a little adventure and magic in my life right now.”

Then she smiled at me, and I’ll never forget that smile. Like she knew something I didn’t.

She told me to hold on, and that she had another, better copy of Grimm’s fairy tales somewhere in the back. She disappeared through a dark, narrow doorway for a few minutes. I was beginning to think that she wasn’t going to come back at all, and that maybe I should just leave, when she finally returned with this huge, leather-bound book in her arms.

She dropped it heavily onto the only free space available on the counter, and this huge cloud of dust rose up off its cover, making me cough.

“Take a look,” she said, smiling again and pushing the book towards me.

I did, and I could immediately tell that this probably wasn’t a book I could afford. The leather cover was embossed, the edges of the pages were gilded, and it weighed about a hundred pounds. I told her I didn’t have a lot of money, but she just told me that her prices were very reasonable.

“Look inside,” she said. “The calligraphy is all done by hand, and very beautiful.”

So I opened the book to the first page, the table of contents. I started scanning them, reading the familiar names of familiar stories, but it was getting harder and harder to focus. There was this strange ringing in my ears, distant at first, but growing louder and louder as I stood there. I felt a breeze at my back, and thought that maybe someone had opened the shop door, but when I turned to look, it was still closed, and we were still alone. But the ringing in my ears kept getting louder, and the wind got stronger. I turned back to the woman, and I had to shout to hear my own voice—”What’s happening?”

And she just stood there and smiled at me, like she knew something I didn’t.

This huge gust of wind blasted me from behind, pushing me into the counter. I put my hands against it to steady myself, but it didn’t let up. It was like a hurricane whipping at my back, blowing my hair into my face until I couldn’t see a thing, blowing over stacks of books on the counter. The pages in the book of fairy tales began to flip in the wind, faster and faster, and the whole time I feel like my head is about to burst from the ringing. The wind was forcing me down, pushing me towards the counter, towards the rippling pages of the book—and I suddenly realize that I’m not being pushed onto it, I’m being pulled into it. Something is sucking me down, me and the air all around me. I tried to fight it, but it was like trying to fight gravity. I clung to the counter top, but the next thing I knew, I was in the air, and then I was being dragged down, down down…

When I woke up, I was lying on the ground, confused to see a forest of trees above me. When I sat up, I found I was in the middle of woods I didn’t recognize. And laying open beside me was the book, the one from the shop. Not knowing what else to go, I picked it up. It was open to a page in the middle, and written at the top of the page were the words “Little Red-Cape”.

I barely managed to get to my feet when I heard the sound of something large crashing through the undergrowth, and the next thing I knew, a girl in a red riding cloak barreled into me, knocking the both of us down.

She jumped back to her feet to run off again, but I grabbed her by the hem of the cloak. I was frightened and confused, I had no idea where I was, and I wasn’t about to let her get away without getting some answers from her first.

But she just started shouting at me, demanding I let her go. She tried to kick me off, but I kept clinging to her cloak, sort of using it to pull myself up. She grabbed a handful of it as well and the next thing I know, we’re having this tug-of-wag match with the cloak, there in the middle of the forest. I was trying to tell her that I just needed help, asking her who she was and where I was, but she wasn’t listening at all. She just kept shouting something about wolves over and over again, but wouldn’t explain herself. Of course, now I understand that when someone is shouting hysterically about wolves, you don’t try to stop them and ask questions, you just run. But I’ve always lived in a city, in state where wolves were hunted to extinction like, a hundred and fifty years ago, so I didn’t quite put two and two together at the time.

Then the tie around the neck of the cloak came undone, and the girl fell right out of it, hitting the ground hard. I lost my balance as well, and fell on my ass in the dirt with the cloak in my hands. The girl just scrambled to her feet, gave me a dirty look, said “You deserve what’s coming to you!” and then ran off into the forest, leaving me alone holding her red riding cape.

I was scared, confused, and cold, so I… I put it on, and started wandering around the forest, calling out for help. I figured that if some girl was wandering around out there, I couldn’t be too far from civilization.

I had just started to guess what had actually happened to me, and where I really was, when I realized I wasn’t alone anymore. Something was in the woods with me, and I understood what the girl had been running from where I saw the eyes watching me. Then… I started running, and you know the rest.”