Twisted Tales

An hour and a half later, I found myself still wandering the forest. I was on the verge of panic now; the fact that I was lost in a deadly forest at night alone, and the knowledge that I had just killed Rumpelstiltskin before he could save the miller's daughters life were driving me to the brink. I was a murderer, a murderer! And somebody else was going to suffer, maybe even die, as a result.

I stumbled around blindly, trying not to hyperventilate, tripping over tree roots and bushes in the dark. Every rustle in the trees, every crack of a twig made me jump almost out of my skin and set my heart pounding. I was sure the shadows were monsters waiting for me to turn my back so they could eat me, I was sure the terrible wolves that nearly killed me that first day were stalking me at that very moment.

I silently cursed that god damned Book. I was only in this mess because of it. Everything would have been fine if it hadn't sucked me into this stupid fairy-tale world... I let myself continue to spiral into a bottomless pit of despair, allowing myself to feel utterly miserable without shame for the first time.

Just then, I heard a branch break somewhere behind me. I froze in place, listening hard for any other sounds. I wanted to pass it off as nothing important, a small animal maybe, surely nothing threatening, but something in the back of my mind wouldn't let me do that.

I stood stock still, fear constricting my throat in case I got any wise ideas about screaming for help. Thanks a lot, body.

For a moment or two, there was silence, but then another crack and a rustle made me whirl around in a circle, trying to pinpoint the direction of the noise. Somewhere to my right, something was making its slow but steady way toward me, pushing through the forest with no regard to the amount of noise it made. I swallowed with some difficulty, my throat very dry. If what ever it was was big enough, strong enough, or reckless enough to crash through the dangerous woods like that, I was sure I didn't want to come face-to-face with it.

Unfortunately for me, the thing in question seemed to have other plans. It was heading straight for me, and it seemed to be coming faster now. I looked wildly around, trying to decide where to run. I didn't want to make too much noise and draw any further attention to myself, but if I didn't move now, the thing would be in my face at any second...

Too late. With one final crash, a large, dark shape came stumbling from the darkness, nearly colliding with me. I barely managed to leap out of the way in time, and I watched in terrified silence as the thing collapsed to the forest floor, shaking slightly. I could hear its labored breathing, and see it try to push itself up to a sitting position. It failed, and fell back down. Against my better judgment, a twinge of pity stirred in my chest, and I edged cautiously towards the dark figure.

"Um... are you... okay?" I asked. Well, squeaked, more like. My voice was about five octaves higher than it usually was, and was strained with fear. The thing shifted suddenly at the sound of my voice, and I scurried backwards swiftly.

"Rrrr…Rebecca? R... Risa? Rikki? Rikki--that was it! Rikki?" it croaked, its voice hoarse and cracked. I froze on the spot, blinking confusedly. How did it know my name? "Rikki, is that you?" it said again.

It managed to push itself up, though I still couldn't see it in the shadows. What looked like an arm reached out for me, grasping at my leg. I shuffled away, out of its reach, confusion beginning to dominate the fear I felt.

"Well, don't just stand there, help me, you stupid girl!" it croaked, sounding distinctly annoyed. I paused, thinking hard. Then it clicked into place. "Erik? Erik, is that you?" I said.

"Yes! Yes, of course it's me! Who else would it be? Now get over here and help me up!" he snapped.

I let out a cry of relief and launched myself at him, throwing my arms around his neck. "Oh Erik! I was sure the giant had killed you! I was all alone, you were dead, and I couldn't find my way back! I thought I was going to be eaten by wolves or freeze to death or something! And then I ran into Rumpelstiltskin, and he made me play a game, and I won but then he ripped himself if half, and now we have to go rescue the miller's daughter before she gets beheaded by the king, since Rumpelstiltskin is too dead to do it himself, and I need your help because I don’t think I can do it by myself! Oh Erik, thank God you found me!" I was slightly blue in the face after finishing all of this. I said it all in one breath, my relief at finding Erik again overwhelming.

Unfortunately, Erik didn't seem to share my enthusiasm. He gave a whimper of pain when I launched myself at him, and pushed me off with a growl. "Ow! Get off me! What in the world are you talking about?" he demanded, his face screwed up in pain.

I backed off, trying to get a better look at him in the darkness. "Wait... are you hurt? What happened? Did the giant get you after all?”

"No, I'm perfectly fine,” he snarled in reply, “I just had to battle and escape from a thirty foot tall giant hell bent on revenge by myself with only a bow and arrow to help me which are pretty much as effective against a giant as a bee sting would be against you, thanks for asking, how 'bout you?"

I felt myself go red. Of course he must have been hurt, the fact that he was lying in a heap on the forest floor was proof enough of that.

But then Erik sighed, and grit his teeth. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you," he muttered, as if the apology physically pained him. "I'm just in a little pain right now."

Well, that just made me feel worse. Where as before I just felt dumb for asking a stupid question, now I felt guilty for making Erik feel guilty for making me feel dumb.

Or whatever was going on. But there was no point in dragging the awkwardness out any more than we already had, so I focused myself on what I knew I could help with.

"So, where does it hurt?" I asked, my voice steadier and stronger now. I noticed that Erik was cradling his left arm, and I reached for it. He scooted backwards a bit, but I grabbed him anyway. He flinched when I touched it, though I could tell he was trying to hide the level his discomfort.

"So your arm? Here?" I asked, putting pressure on his wrist, "Or here?" I said, moving to his forearm.

"No, actually, it doesn't hurt that bad. I'll be fine, really,” he insisted, trying to pull away.

I didn't let go, instead shooting him an incredulous look. "I thought you just said you were in terrible pain after battle a thirty foot giant? Which is it, are you hurt or not?"

"I'm fine. I was just making a fuss. No big deal, really," he replied, increasing his efforts to squirm out of my grasp. He moved wrong, and gave a yelp of pain that he tried but failed to turn into a fake cough.

"That’s what you get for not holding still,” I admonished. “I’m first aid certified, so just sit still and shut up—unless I ask you a question. Or if something hurts. Actually, it’s fine to talk in general, just quit lying and being so sarcastic. I’m just trying to help.” I ran my hands up and down the length of his forearm, judging his reactions and trying to feel the bones as best I could. “There is some serious bruising here, and it seems to be hurting you pretty badly. I think you might have a fracture. There isn’t any displacement or deformity that I can see or feel, so hopefully it isn’t anything too bad. Anything else in pain? And don't try to put on a tough guy and tell me you're fine!" I said, glaring at him as he began shaking his head to deny any other injuries.

He gave me a morose glare, and motioned to his leg. "I think I twisted my ankle," he muttered. I touched it lightly, and he winced. I sighed, gently pulled off his boot and rolled up his pant leg, trying to move his foot as little as possible.

His ankle was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe, and an ugly purple color that I could make out even in this darkness. “Shit…” I hissed under my breath. “It might be worse than a sprain,” I told him, “but there isn’t any real way of knowing for sure without an x-ray.”

“A what?”

“Can you walk on it? I mean, I assume you can since you got all the way out here. How much does it hurt?”

Erik shrugged. “It’s not crippling. At least, it wasn’t two hours ago when it happened.”

“But you’ve been walking on it since,” I said, and Erik nodded.

“Now that I’ve stopped, I’m not sure if I can keep going on it.”

I pulled off the cloak I was wearing. The red one. The one I stole. On accident. I stared at it for a moment, feeling guilty about what I was going to do. I had wanted to return it in perfect condition, but at this moment Erik needed it more then Little Red did. With some effort, I tore off a long thin strip from the bottom, then took a hold of Erik's arm, trying to locate the break. As I did my best to fashion a crude sling for him, thanking providence my brief summer job as a life guard required me to get my first aid certification, I took advantage of Erik's trapped state to question him.

"So, how did you get away?"

"It wasn't easy," Erik admitted. "I had to avoid being crushed, first of all. That didn't go too well." He gestured to his broken arm with his good one. "I managed to lead him out of the clearing, a little into the forest where the trees there closer together. Their size makes it hard for them to maneuver in confined spaces like that, so that helped me for at least a little while. But then he got frustrated, and just began knocking down trees like they were saplings, trying to get at me. Half an acre of forest is completely demolished." He shook his head sadly. I finished with his arm, and tore off another strip of cloth for his ankle. He used his good hand to help me hold the cloth in place while he continued his account. "One of the trees nearly crushed me. As it was, my foot was trapped underneath it. Luckily it wasn’t too big of a tree, and my foot wasn’t completely crushed. I think it was pulling myself free that did more damage, honestly. The giant almost got me then, while I was stuck, but I still had my bow and arrow and was able to get a shot right into one of his eyes. While he was thrashing around and howling in pain, I managed to get my foot free and escape into the woods. I headed in the direction I saw you run off in, but between the pain was clouding my mind and the darkness, I wasn’t in much of a state to track you. I wandered around for a couple of hours until I heard something blundering around in the undergrowth, and I thought no animal could possibly be that loud and clumsy, so I figured it had to be you and I headed in that direction. Sure enough, I ran right into you,"

I gave the wrapping around his ankle one final tug to tighten it, perhaps a little harder than I absolutely had to. Erik gave a yelp of pain, and I patted his bound leg. “Okay, all done,” I said, admiring my handiwork.

“Thanks. Now if you find me a stick or something, I’m pretty sure I can keep going for a couple more hours. The river is right over there,” he jerked a thumb behind him, “and we can follow it right into town. Hopefully once we get there, a doctor can get me fixed up properly.”

“I’m not finding you a stick,” I told him firmly. “You shouldn’t put any weight at all on your ankle, and we’ll move a lot faster if you aren’t hopping through the forest on one foot. Come on, I’ll support you.” I reached out to pull him to his feet, but he pushed my hands away.

“No way,” he denied, “You’re not carrying me all the way back to town.”

“Either swallow your pride,” I told him, “or I’ll leave without you and you can crawl all the way to town for all I care. You just told me all I have to do is follow the river back there, I don’t need your help getting out of these woods anymore.”

Erik glared at me, and I glared right back.

He broke before I did, and his shoulders slumped with defeat. “Fine,” he snapped.

He insisted on struggling into a standing position on his own, using a tree for support and standing unsteadily on his good foot. Before he could protest anymore, I slipped under his arm and allowed him to lean heavily on me. He outweighed me by quite a bit, but he wasn’t much taller than I was, so I wasn’t totally overbalanced. It wouldn’t be an easy walk back to town, but I was sure I could do it.

We started to walk, hobbling along at a painfully awkward pace at first while we struggled to find a mutual rhythm to our steps. We didn’t get very far before Erik suddenly ground to a halt and turned his head to look at me with an utterly bemused expression.

“Wait, earlier, I wasn’t listening very clearly because you threw yourself on me and I was distracted by my bad arm—did you say something about killing someone, or did I imagine that?”

Blood rushed to my cheeks, from shame and embarrassment. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Uh… yeah, I might have said something along those lines.”

“What—how did you—who did you-”

I took a deep breath, and explained the whole bizarre encounter. Erik didn’t seem particularly phased that I met an old gnome in the woods who had offered me help in return for my first born child, but then again, he lived in a house gifted to him by a magical fairy he had met in the woods, so I supposed this kind of situation wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary in these parts.

He was, however, deeply shocked by the ending. I guessed your would-be rescuer spontaneously ripping themselves in half wasn’t as common an occurrence.

"You... you... made a guy so angry he tore himself in two? How the hell do you do that? Wh-what was his name? Rumpelstiltskin? You had to guess that? Are you psychic or something?! What kind of a name is that?”

“I’m a good guesser, okay?” I muttered. “That’s not the point, anyways.”

“And what exactly do you mean by, now you have to rescue some girl stuck in a tower?” he demanded.

“I told you, without Rumpelstiltskin to help her, the miller’s daughter is going to be stuck in the tower by the king, and she won’t have anyone to come spin the straw into gold for her. And if she doesn’t, the king will have her executed, because… I don’t know, he’s a huge asshole, I guess. But I can’t let that happen to her. It’s my fault Rumpelstiltskin is too dead to help her, and I can’t just knowingly let some poor girl get executed because of a mistake I made!”

Erik groaned, and covered his face with his good hand. “If I’d have known how much trouble you were going to be,” he said, his voice partially muffled through his fingers, “I’d have let those wolves eat you.”

“Is there anything, anything at all, that you can do to help me help her?” I pleaded, giving Erik my best puppy dog eyes.

He just glared back at me, unmoved.

"This poor girl, her father told the king she could weave hay into gold, and now the king will lock her away, and if she doesn't transform the whole room by sunrise, she’ll have her pretty little head cut off! It wasn’t even her own fault she got stuck in this situation, it wasn’t like she was making up lies to show off or anything. Her selfish dad got her into this mess, and now the only person that could possibly help her apart from is dead! I can’t just leave her to that miserable fate," I begged, .

Erik's fierce expression faltered, and he bit his lip. I let a single tear, real but perfectly timed, run down my cheek. He broke.

"Fine!" he spat. "Fine, I'll help you. But only a little! I don’t have the time or interest to go on some crazy quest to rescue random damsels in distress. I’ll do what I can to get you to what ever castle she’s being held in, but them I’m done," he warned.

I would have jumped for joy if I wasn’t supporting half of Erik’s weight. "Thank you so much!" I said. "I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try to do something!"

Erik just grumbled. "Okay, okay. Whatever. I’ll never get rid of you at this rate." Then he stopped and peered at me intensely, as if he was trying to read my mind. "Wait... how do you know all that?" he demanded.

Oh, crap. Now was definitely not a good time to tell him about The Book, but I couldn't think of a good way to talk myself out of this predicament. So I decided to do what came natural to me in times of stress: play dumb.

"All of what?" I asked, my eyes wide and innocent.

In contrast, Ezu's eyes narrowed. "About the miller's daughter or whoever it is?" he said.

“I…eeeeeeee…” I drew out the word to an uncomfortable length, my mind whirling frantically to come up with a believable excuse. “…Eeeeee… am a… really good… guesser?” I failed.

Erik just looked at me as if I had something seriously wrong with my head. Maybe I did. Who was I to say that this all wasn’t some incredibly realistic hallucination?

“How do you know?” Erik demanded again.

“I have… I have…” I floundered, and then heaved a sigh. It was funny, whenever I was reading books where a relatively simple lie could easily get the main character out of a dangerous situation, I always got passionately frustrated that they couldn’t manage it. Yet in that moment, my mind was a complete blank, and I could think of absolutely nothing to help me avoid answering his question other than truthfully.

“I have a magic book,” I muttered.

“You have a what now?”

“A magic book. It’s like a book of stories, except the things it in really happened. Or are going to happen? Will happen at some point in the near future? I’m not going to lie, I don’t entirely understand how it works.”

“And you found out all this stuff about the miller’s daughter from this magic book?” Erik repeated, not sounding quite as skeptical as I had expected him to. It was going to take me a while to get used to the fact that magic wasn’t exactly a novelty around these parts.

“Yeah,” I agreed, not mentioning that I had actually known all that stuff would happen via a different copy of the same book, the one my mother had read to me from my childhood, one that had never sucked me into its pages to force me to live the stories I had once held so dear—which I didn’t realize at the time was something I should have been grateful for.

I wasn’t about to tell him all that, about having lived a completely ordinary life in Oregon until approximately three days ago when I wandered into a tiny bookstore that I thought, at worst, would be unbearably hipster, but actually ended up being unbearably supernatural.

It was hard to say which was worse.

“Where did you get a book like that?” he asked. “And why haven’t you mentioned it before?”

I recalled, with a slight shiver, the woman with the wolfish smile behind the counter of the book store. “It was… a gift. Probably from a witch or a fairy or something, like your story about your house. I don’t know why she gave it to me, but she did, so now I’m stuck with it. And I didn’t mention it because… why would I? I didn’t really think it was going to affect me this much until I ran into Rumpelstiltskin and realized that the entire trajectory of an innocent woman’s future has been thrown off course.”

“So this book tells you the way things should have happened? How it all would have ended up if you hadn’t interfered?”

“Uh… yes.”

At first Erik just stared at me, and then he made a funny coughing sound in the back of his throat. It bubbled up, until a roaring laugh escaped his lips. His body shook with laughter, even as he clutched his arm to his chest in pain.

I was seriously considering pushing him to the ground and running away. He caught my death glare, and tried to stifle his laughter. Erik struggled internally with himself for a few moments, then coughed lightly and wiped the grin off of his face, though his eyes were still dancing.

“I’m sorry, that’s just a little bit funny.”

“I really don’t think it is,” I replied coldly.

“That witch or fairy or whoever who gave you that book has a real twisted sense of humor.”

“I’m so glad you appreciate it, I should try to get you guys together sometime so you can bond over my suffering. Maybe you’ll start a club, the ‘Let’s Laugh at Rikki Because She’s Going to be an Accessory to Murder’ club.”

Sensing my feelings on the topic, Erik tried to put on a much more somber expression. “I can see how it’s all rather disturbing to you, of course. I’m not thrilled about it either, since it’s led to me having to get you started on your inevitably fruitless attempt to undo the damage you’ve inadvertently caused.”

“I feel so much worse now than I did before. I think I’m just going to leave you here after all.”

“Can I see this book of yours?”

I hesitated. “Why?”

“I’m curious now. Does it just foresee the future of this miller’s daughter? What other tales does it contain? I’m interested in seeing a book that supposedly records events before they’ve happened.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t think of an excuse as to why I couldn’t show The Book to him. Besides, what damage could it really do anyways?

I begrudgingly agreed and we stopped for a brief rest, and to take a look at The Book. After helping Erik lower himself onto a mossy stone as much as I could, I pulled off my backpack and unzipped it, taking out the weighty book.

It was dark, too dark to be able to read it, but Erik rummaged around in his pockets and withdrew a flintbox, with which he lit a small fire that he had built in the space of only five or ten minutes.

It was just a small, crude camp fire, and the flickering flames were almost too weak to read by, but I managed by leaning down until my nose was pressed almost to the pages and squinting a lot.

I opened the book to the table of contents and ran my finger down the list of stories until I found Rumpelstiltskin. I started to flip to that page, but froze abruptly.

“What?” Erik asked, noticing that something was up.

“The pages—they’re all blank,” I said slowly, not sure if I could trust my eyes. I quickly flipped through the entire book, only to find that every single page had inexplicably gone blank.

All the pages, except…

“The story of Rumpelstiltskin is still here,” I said, stopped at the beginning of that story. The page opposite was completely empty, and all the pages after the final line were as well, but somehow this one remained intact.

It was a short story, only a page and a half long, and I read it aloud.

[c][c]
Once upon a time there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he got into a conversation with the king, and to make an impression on him he said, "I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold."

The king said to the miller, "That is an art that I really like. If your daughter is as skillful as you say, then bring her to my castle tomorrow, and I will put her to the test."

When the girl was brought to him he led her into a room that was entirely filled with straw. Giving her a spinning wheel and a reel, he said, "Get to work now. Spin all night, and if by morning you have not spun this straw into gold, then you will have to die." Then he himself locked the room, and she was there all alone.

The poor miller's daughter sat there, and for her life she did not know what to do. She had no idea how to spin straw into gold. She became more and more afraid, and finally began to cry.
No one came to her aid, however, and she spent the long night locked away all alone in the tower, knowing that death surely awaited her.

The next morning the king unlocked the room and entered, only to find the miller’s daughter still surrounded by the piles of ordinary straw.

“Why, you haven’t spun a single piece of straw into gold! I warned you that if you did not spin all the straw in this room into gold, you would have to die!”

“Please spare me,” cried the miller’s daughter, throwing herself upon his mercy. “Give me one more day, and come back tomorrow! I will try my best to spin this straw into gold by then!”

The king, though displeased and beginning to think that the miller had lied about his daughter’s talent, felt pity for the girl and agreed to give her one more day to complete the task.

“If you have not succeeded by tomorrow,” he told her, “then you will have to die.”

And whether she dies or not, depends on you, Rikki Collins. For Rumpelstiltskin is dead, and no one else in the wide world knows of the predicament of the miller’s daughter. On this day, her father met the king and spun a thread of lies about her talent at the spindle. Tomorrow, her father brings her to the king’s castle, and at dawn the next morning the king comes to find that she has failed. She has one more day, until the following dawn, to spin the roomful of straw into gold, or her life is forfeit through no fault of her own.