Twisted Tales

“What do we do, what do we do?” I hissed frantically to Samantha. There were no doors in the hall, nothing to hide behind. We’d be spotted immediately if anyone passed by.

“Go that way,” she whispers back after a moment of desperate thought, pointing towards the adjacent hall the two guards had just passed through.

“But the guards are still there, if they hear us and turn around—”

“Don’t go all the way into the hall, wait for my signal!”

“What signal?” Jack asked, wide eyed.

“This!” Samantha said, exasperated, and she waved her arms dramatically in a go, go go! gesture.

“Sounds good to me, let’s go!” Erik snapped. The three of us hobbled over as quickly and as quietly as we could to the other end of the hallway, back the way we had come. I stuck my head the tiniest amount possible around the corner, and saw the retreating backs of the two guards. They were still maybe a hundred feet from the end of the hall, it would take them several long seconds before they rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

Samantha lingered at the other end of the hall, her back pressed against the wall, listening hard as the footsteps of whoever was approaching drew nearer and nearer until the last possible second.

We waited with bated breath, watching the soldiers get further from us one step at a time.

Suddenly Samantha started waving her arms at us and ran on her toes down the hall, quiet as a mouse.

“Go!” she mouthed.

We scampered out into the hall, just as the two bickering guards turned around the corner and vanished from sight. Samantha came up from behind us and gave us a shove, so we weren’t standing right in the middle of the mouth of the hall.

She, however, was left standing in plain view when whoever-it-was that was coming down the opposite side reached the adjoining hall.

“Oh,” came a surprised female voice. “Oh, you startled me there! I’m… sorry, I don’t recognize you?” she said doubtfully.

Samantha gave the person, still hidden from our line of sight, a weak smile, and put her hands behind her back. Then she started flapping her hand at us, in an obvious keep going motion.

“Ah, I’m one of the huntsman the king has invited to stay at the castle for a few days,” she said, her voice dropping low into her affected-masculine pitch once more.

Erik, Jack, and I started creeping down the hall, trying to step as lightly as we can.

“Oh, yes!” says the girl. “I remember. You brought us some pheasants you’d shot earlier today! I was in the kitchens at the time, though I’m only a scullery maid. I hardly saw you, so I didn’t recognize you just now. Or was it one of the other huntsman? My, but you do all look so alike!”

“Haha, yeah, funny, isn’t it?” Samantha said, glancing down towards us to see how far we’d managed to get. “Well, I really ought to be going now—”

“Where to? I have the rest of the day off, I can show you around the castle if you’d like—”

“No!” Samantha cried quickly.

“Oh—well, okay then,” replied the scullery maid, clearly offended from her tone. “I’m sure the company of a mere kitchen maid isn’t good enough for men who hunt with kings.”

“No, it’s not that,” Samantha said, wincing.

Erik, Jack and I had finally reached the end of the hall, and now it was out turn to wave frantically at her, urging her to hurry up and join us before someone else showed up.

“I just, uh… I just… You, actually, yeah, that’s exactly it. Sorry,” she said hastily, and she turned and ran down the hall after us.

The four of us scuttled around the corner and hurried on. Samantha’s face was flaming red.

“I feel like such a cad,” she muttered. “Poor girl.”

“She’ll recover,” Erik said, a tad sarcastically. “She only even saw you once before, you haven’t broken her heart.”

“Ignore him, he gets grumpy when he’s been locked in dungeons and threatened with execution,” I told her. “But he’s right, in his entirely unsympathetic way. She’ll get over the snub.”

“I just know what it feels like to be rejected,” Samantha said, her head dropping slightly so her face was partially hidden.

Now it was my turn to wince. Of course, that was a particularly sensitive subject for the abandoned fiancee.

Somehow we made it through the halls and to the castle kitchens without any more near-disasters. The last six huntsmen on lookout we passed, Samantha motioned for them to join us, so when we finally stood just outside the kitchen doors, there were ten of us all crowded close together, like a football huddle.

“It’s just after dawn,” Samantha was saying, “so the castle gates will be open. We’ll be able to walk right out of here—except there are two guards posted at the gate at all times, and several more who walk rounds between the parapets on the castle wall. If any of them were among those who arrested you two last night, then they’ll be sure to raise the alarm the moment they see you. Now, there are six of us—seven if you include Jack, who the guards never saw—that won’t arouse any suspicion. We can surround you, Erik, and you, Rikki and keep you somewhat concealed from view. That won’t be enough though, if they stop us for any reason, even just to ask if we’re headed out on a hunting trip, they’ll undoubtedly notice you two and recognize you.”

“So, we need a disguise?” I suggested.

“A distraction,” Samantha clarified. “And I have an idea for one.”

There were, according to Samantha, pig pens by the stables beyond the kitchen. And pigs have, I was informed, excellent senses of smell. I remembered something about pigs being used to sniff out truffle mushrooms in the woods, so I guess that made sense. And to go along with their great sense of smell, they have a voracious appetite. While we loitered around the back the of kitchens, Erik and I trying to subtly conceal our faces every time a cook or a maid came out the door, one of the other huntsmen headed into the bustling kitchen and was gone for almost fifteen minutes.

She finally returned panting slightly and looking a bit harried, but she nodded to Samantha.

“I swiped a few apples and a whole loaf of bread,” she said. “I left crumbs leading all the way up to the gate, and then hid the rest of the loaf and the apples in a bush a little way down the road.”

“Did the guards seem suspicious at all?”

The huntsman shook her head. “No, I told them I lost a button while returning from our hunt last night and was looking for it in the bushes.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a shiny button, which she had clearly pulled off of her jacket.

“Good job,” Samantha said smiling, and clapped the girl on the back. “All right, it’s now or never. Are you three ready?”

I glanced at Erik and Jack, who both looked a little pale. I knew my own expression bordered between “hesitant” and “queasy”.

Erik met my eyes, and he nodded. “We’re ready,” he said. I took a deep breath. I certainly hoped he meant it and wasn’t just saying that, because his twisted ankle was going to be the biggest hurdle to overcome in this plan.

“We’re ready,” I agreed.

“Okay. Remember to keep in tight formation, girls,” Samantha said to her huntsmen. “Let’s go.”

The six huntsmen, Samantha, and Jack closed ranks around me and Erik. I was left as the only one supporting his weight, but he powered through the pain I was sure he felt, half-hopping, half jogging along with the rest of us.

We passed through the kitchen in the weird little huddle, smiling and nodding at cooks and maids as we passed. Once outside the kitchen and back in the fresh air of the castle grounds, we hooked a sharp right and headed towards the stables.

There indeed were several pig styes, and the pigs inside were mind-bogglingly huge. I’m a city girl born and bred, and I’d never really seen a proper farm pig before, at least not anywhere other than on TV. These creatures were no Wilburs or Babes. The huge black sow nearest us with a dozen squirming piglets suckling on her was the size of a freaking hippopotamus, I swear. I understood quite suddenly how effective this plan really was going to be.

The huntsman from before hurried forward to one of the pens, and opened the gate. She pulled out a chunk of bread from her pocket and waved it towards a hulking monster of a pig, making cooing noises at it.

“Come here piggy, come get some good breakfast,” she called quietly. I looked through the gaps between the heads of the other huntsmen that surrounded us, sincerely hoping that no stable hands would show up and demand to know what we were doing.

The pig turned its head, its wet snout sniffing the air. It fixed its black eyes on the huntsmen, and then on the bread in her hands.

It surged forwards with terrifying speed, a locomotive made of fat and muscle. The huntsman immediately tossed the bread to the ground and scurried out of the way before she could be trampled. A second later, the two other pigs in the pen realized what was going on, and they pushed themselves to their feet as well, abandoning the cool mud wallow they had created.

Soon all three pigs were standing there in the courtyard, snuffling around in the dirt to find the bread crumb trail the huntsman had left.

It only took then a few moments to manage it. The next thing I knew, all three pigs were taking off at a trot, shoving each other out of the way in their frantic race to get each piece of bread first. Keeping as close together as we could, the ten of us took off after the pigs, having to run at nearly a full sprint to keep up with them.

I can only imagine what it looked like from the guard’s perspective. The two of them turned as one when they heard the warning shouts of the huntsmen, and their eyes widened when they spotted the three seven hundred pound swines come charging at them.

“Catch those pigs! They’ve escaped!” the huntsmen were all calling, but to no one’s surprise, the guards only threw themselves to the side to get out of the pigs’ way as they barreled through the open castle gates.

The animals continued running another few hundred feet, until one of them abruptly swung to the left and shoved her snout into a clump of bushes on the side of the cobblestone street. The other two were close behind, and soon all three were happily munching on whole apples. One of the huntsmen broke away from the group to pull down a switch from a nearby tree, with which to guide the pigs back to their pens again. The remained of the bread in her pocket would certainly help as well, I thought.

“Go, no, while you have the chance,” Samantha whispered to us, looking over her shoulder at the two guards who were still picking themselves up out of the dirt, their expressions both irritated and embarrassed.

“Thank you so much, you’ve saved our lives,” I told her, grabbing her by the hand and shaking it vigorously. “And you already saved me once before too—I owe you my life twice over!”

“You don’t have time to thank me, just go! If fate is smiling upon our quests, we’ll meet again,” she smiled at me.

I gave her one last smile of my own, gestured to Jack to grab Erik’s other arm, and the three of us detached from the group of huntsmen and hurried down the road, letting ourselves be lost in the flow of people walking up and down the busy street.



The very first thing we did was duck into shop, under Erik’s instructions.

It was a shoe maker’s, and he had the owner search through the shoes he had available until we found a pair of boots that fit me. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was to peel off my muddy, damp converse, wrap my blistered and aching feet in clean linen, and pull on the heavy leather boots. They were a bit clumsy to walk in, not-quite like the boots I was used to back in my own world, but it wasn’t like I was going from ergonomic, memory foam running shoes specifically designed to my foot profile or anything. They were more comfortable than the converse, and while not a whole lot more supportive, it was enough that I breathed a loud sigh of relief upon standing back up.

Erik passed the shoe maker a handful of copper coins, and we headed back out into the street.

“There,” he said, “we’re even.”

“Even?” I replied with a scoff. “If I recall, you said you were going to put the cost of the shoes on my bill, right after your roof.”

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, avoiding looking at me—which wasn’t easy since I was still supporting him on his left side, “I’ve decided to make the shoes compensation for you, uh, helping me get around on this bad ankle these last couple of days. You’re still on the hook for the roof though, so don’t go thinking that you can just skip out on that now that that miller’s daughter of yours is rescued.”

I couldn’t help but smile. So the Tin Man has a heart after all, does he?

The next thing we did was stop at a street stall that was selling steaming meat pies, which was a little weird for breakfast, but they’re delicious and I was starving, so I just stuffed it into my mouth without complaining. Erik was really scraping the bottom of his coin pouch now, and I neither I nor Jack had any money of our own. Thank god this stupid quest was finally over, and we could all just go home before we starved to death in the streets.

Speaking of going home…

We were sitting on the edge of the street eating our pies without talking, watching the morning crowds bustle by, and just generally appreciating the feeling of no longer being on the executioner’s block. Jack still had my backpack slung over his shoulder, so I leaned around Erik and asked him for it.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, sliding it off and passing it over Erik, who rolled his eyes and leaned back. “Good lord, it’s heavy—what have you got in there?”

“Just a book, unfortunately,” I grumble, taking it from him. I put it in my lap and unzipped it, pulling out the Book.

“A book?” Jack asked, peering over at it curiously. Erik, on the other hand, glared at it as if it had done him a personal wrong.

“A very special book,” I said, opening it. One that would hopefully now tell me how I was supposed to get back to my own world. Because that’s how it worked, right? Dorothy completes her quest, and Glinda the Good Witch tells her how to return home. Maybe all I had to do was click my new leather boots together three times and think there’s no place like 21st century public bathrooms.

I flipped through the Book, but found that all of the pages were still inexplicably blank.

Except, of course for Rumpelstiltskin.

It scanned it, and found that it continued from where it had left off in the forest. It covered our journey to Kingsbury, picking up Jack along the way, my mishap with the spider in the woods and meeting the twelve huntsmen, our break-in to the castle and subsequent capture and rescue. It continued, in fact, all the way up until right then, detailing the three of us sitting on the side of the street, meat pies in hand. And there was more.

But Rikki Collins has forgotten that Dorothy didn’t get to return home until she had defeated the Wicked Witch. And there is yet still evil magic brewing in the land, set into motion by the death of Rumpelstiltskin like the falling of dominoes. In the kingdom of Lorcastle, the step-mother of a girl who sleeps in the ashes has found a magic ring, which gives her far too much power than a woman like her is meant to have. To the western country of Weissland, a wicked queen hides a glass coffin in the dark dungeons of her castle fortress. Deep in the Enchanted Forest, a Prince is waylaid, and a maiden in a tower remains forever isolated from the outside world. A princess lays sleeping in a forgotten castle, in a forgotten kingdom, waiting for a prince who will never come. And last of all, to the far north, there lies a grim wood where an ancient evil has remained confined for these last hundred years. But its guardian weakens, and terror and suffering shall be unleashed again upon the world if it is not stopped in time.

So go, Rikki Collins, to set right the next maiden’s fate you have led astray.

“WHAT?!” I shouted right there in the street, making both Erik and Jack jump in surprise. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”