Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

The monster was staring at me, its head titled slightly to one side, looking at me as if it couldn't quite believe I had seriously had the audacity to hurl a rock at its head. For a moment, it didn't seem to know how to handle the situation. It turned to face me, releasing Ezu from his trapped position. He gasped for air and rolled over, clutching at his chest. The monster took a threatening step towards me and then roared, hair bristling, claws outstretched and spittle flying. The trees shook, raining dead leaves down on my head. I was grateful for a second that my bladder was already empty, because I would have peed my pants all over again in the moment. It was a threat display, a show of aggression. He was testing the waters against this new foe, and I had a feeling that I was about to begin drowning in them any second now. But it was too late now, I was already in over my head. So I threw the other rock, hitting the monster on the shoulder.

“Go on, get out of here!” I shouted, stopping quickly to grab another stone before waving my arms over my head. “Shoo! Go on, get!” I threw the next rock, hitting it square in the chest, and jumped around and shouted a little more. “Grr, I'm big and scary, you don't want to fight me! Grr, go away, go away!”

It was a pathetic show. It might have worked against a bear, but this was no bear. This creature was a hunter, a predator. It was used to its prey fighting back, and nothing it had ever fought offered much difficulty. My direct challenge had shocked it, but it easily had three feet and four hundred pounds on me. It didn't stay shocked for long, and it certainly wasn't intimidated.

The beast bounded towards me, clearing the space between us in two leaps. Before I could even stumbled backwards it had knocked me to my feet and was crouched over me, its stinking breath overpowering my other senses, and droplets of drool beading my cheeks and forehead. Its wet, doglike nose half an inch from my own, the thing bellowed again, so loudly I could actually feel my ear drums vibrating inside my head. Deafened and cross eyed, I tried to think, tried to do anything to fight the beast off. My groping hand closed around a stick and I tried to poke it in its eye, but I was still too disorientated and it broke feebly across the creatures scarred muzzle.

“Stay back!” I gasped, making a desperate attempt. “Stay back, you... you monster!”

The creature paused, for some reason not slicing my stomach open like a perverse pinata. It narrowed its coal black eyes and roared again, furious.

“Not a monster!” I cried, quickly. “No, no, you're not a monster! You're... you're.. oh god, you're...” I knew it, I did, it was right there. I knew it when it had attacked us, of course I did, I had almost been expecting it, but not here, not this early. What was it? Who was it? It was the story, Snow White, the Witch, the evil Queen, it was her monster, it had to be. Because she had a monster in the story, in the messed up story,the wrong story. The beast growled; his breath smelled like blood. It placed one long claw against the soft spot under my chin. I couldn't concentrate like this, I couldn't remember and I felt so stupid since I knew this, I knew who he was, I just couldn't remember because my whole world was that horrible sharp claw and the blood welling in the small of my throat and those bare, grinning teeth, and was this how Snow White felt when the Hunts-

“The Huntsman!” I shrieked, suddenly remembering. I had known it, from the moment the thing came barreling at us. Of course it was, who else could it have been? “You're not a monster, you're the Huntsman! You've been cursed!”

The monster froze. It stared down at me with coal black eyes, angry and confused.

“Yes, yes, remember,” I panted, wondering if my voice was loud enough to be heard over the thunderous pounding of my heart. “You've been transformed, you're not a monster! You're a man, you're the Huntsman! The Queen tried to make you kill Snow White and cut out her heart and liver, but you didn't! You didn't because you're a good man, Huntsman! Remember who you are, you're a man, a good man! Remember!”

The beast howled and stumbled backwards, away from me. Ezu, who had managed to pick himself up off the ground and was creeping up behind the monster, sword raised, was forced to throw himself to the side to avoid being trampled.

I scuttled away like a crab, dragging myself through the dirt, watching with terrified eyes as the Huntsman broke down.

The monster was still howling, and clasped the sides of its head between its clawed paws. It thrashed, shaking its head from side to side, its eyes screwed shut.

“Huntsman!” I cried, but either the sound of my voice or the use of his old name only made the creature scream louder. It dropped to its knees, pounding the forest floor with giant fists, gouging the earth with its claws.

“Rikki, get back! Get out of range!” I heard Ezu shout. I could just see him past the spasming beast, apparently readying himself to charge at the creature again and take advantage of its distracted state.

“No, Ezu, don't!” I screamed back. “Don't, not yet! It's the Huntsman, I think he's remembering!” I prayed that Ezu would wait, just for a few minutes. If the Huntsman could remember, if we could change him back...

The howling died away. The Huntsman was curled in a ball now, still a giant, furred beast, his head tucked between his knees and his ape-like arms shielding the back of his neck.

I struggled to my feet, leaning against a tree for balance, since my knees were still fairly jello-like. I could see Ezu clearly now, standing opposite me, the Huntsman's curled form between us. We made brief eye contact for a second, and I could tell he wasn't happy with my plea to stand down, but he didn't make a move. I looked around for Jack then, and to my dismay spotted him lying in a motionless, crumpled heap at the base of a thick trunked tree. If we weren't eaten in the next few seconds, we'd have to check on him. Hopefully he was okay.

“Huntsman?” I said quietly, after waiting almost a full minute to spot any signs of movement from the monster, and seeing none. The monster groaned.

“Rikki...” Ezu said warningly. I hushed him.

“Huntsman, is that... you know, you in there?”

The Huntsman shifted. He pushed himself up into a kneeling position, crouched on his haunches. He looked blearily at me, his gaze no longer full of bloodlust, but weary uncertainty. He groaned, a deep growling rumble in the back of his throat.

“Hunts...man...” he managed to gasp. The word was barely intelligible, his animal's muzzle was ill suited for forming words. But it was enough.

I gave a cry of relief and collapsed to me knees.

This had been easily ten times more terrifying than the battle with the Step-Mother back in the graveyard. In fact, it had brought up fearful flashbacks of the chase the wolves had given me when I had first arrived here. I raised a hand, trembling from the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins, to touch the warm, wet blood coating my throat. The cut was shallow, and probably looked worse than it felt. To be honest, I was more concerned with my soiled pants.

“Ezu, it's okay,” I called. “It's okay, he remembers.”

“Yeah, but for how long?” he replied, only clutching the hilt of his sword tighter. “He's still cursed, what's to stop him from losing it and mauling us to death in the next fifteen minutes?”

“That won't happen,” I said, twice as assuredly as I felt. I rose to my feet and took a hesitant step towards the Huntsman. “Huntsman?” I said, gently. “Are you okay?”

The beast shook his shaggy head, as if trying to clear away the cobwebs from his enchanted mind.

“Yeeesss...” he groaned, then bared his teeth in a silent growl, his eyes crossing with the effort. “Nooo...” he heaved his heavy shouldered in a pathetic shrug.

“Oh, don't worry,” I said as I approached him, overcome by pity.

“Rikki, what are you doing? Stay back!” Ezu hissed at me. I ignored him, and once I was close enough, tentatively patted the Huntsman on the giant, furry forearm.

“It'll be okay. The Queen did this to you, but we're going to try to break her spell. We might be able to free you.”

“Rikki!” Ezu hissed, practically frothing at the mouth. “He's with the Queen, shut up! We can't trust... it!”

I looked into the Huntsman's scared, confused, tired eyes, and knew we could. Whether or not the freedom on his mind from the Queen's spell was permanent or only temporary, right now he was no monster, just a frightened man, and we had to help him.

And besides, the help he might be able to offer us in turn might be even more valuable.

Nobody else agreed with me.

Phrases like “most certainly not!” and “are you insane?” were thrown at me by both Jack and Ezu, who thought bringing the Queen's pet along for the ride would surely end in disaster. Nothing I said could convince them otherwise, and since, unfortunately, this appeared to be a democracy, I was outvoted and the decision to leave the Huntsman to, well, whatever, was reached.

“This is horrible, we can't just abandon him here,” I muttered under my breath once we broke out of our discussion huddle.

“It's already been decided, Rikki,” Jack whispered back.

“And the only other option involves the possibility of him falling back under the Queen's spell and mauling us all to death, and I don't like any plan that has even a small percentage of those odds,” Ezu added.

“We're making a big mistake,” I warned nonetheless, not convinced. The boys ignored me.

((A/N: I'm not going to lie, I can't remember what I was supposed to have happen here. I will explain more in the official author's note, but long story short, I lost parts of this chapter, and there is some discussion between the above and what comes next in which the monster follows them for a brief period of time, he saves their lives from one of the Queen's wandering soldiers, and Jack agrees to reconsider letting him go with them. If I get around to re-writing this trainwreck, this scene will be the first I fix))

Ezu, Jack, and I took a brief moment to come together in a huddle and discuss how this changed things. Ezu was still insistent that the Huntsman couldn't be trusted, and I was just as obstinate that he was our only chance at success. Jack spent most of the time hushing our increasingly voluminous bickering, and trying to mediate the exchanges. The Huntsman himself stood a little ways off, blinking sadly at us, waiting for us to finish.

“Alright, so does that settle it?” Jack whispered.

“No,” Ezu said at the same time I said “Yes”.

“Sorry Ezu, I have veto power,” Jack said, “and I think Rikki is right about this being our best chance. I mean, what's our other choice? Just leave him here? If he's really still just a puppet for the Queen, he'll just end up following us and attacking us when we least expect it. At least this way we can keep an eye on him the entire time.”

“I still this this is a dangerous idea,” Ezu snarled.

“The idea was dangerous to begin with. It's not like we can get any deader if things go wrong,” I pointed out. “And besides, you still have yet to come up with a single idea of what to do with him if we don't take him along with us. Unless you have yet to mention you're actually a super human, it's not like we can tie him up or fight him off in any way.”

“Fine,” Ezu finally snapped. “But if this goes horribly wrong, just remember I told you so.”

“You'll have gloating privileges for all eternity if we survive this,” I promised.

We broke.

“Alright, Huntsman, we've come to an agreement,” Jack, our designated peace officer, said, turning to the giant beast. “We are on a quest to rescue the Princess Snow White, and overthrow the evil Queen's reign at the same time. Not only have you been personally affected by the Queen's wickedness, but you'd probably be a valuable asset in, well storming the palace, since, one, you're huge, and two, you have knowledge of the palace and the grounds. So we've decided you can come along with us, on the condition that nobody gets mauled. Do you agree?"

The Huntsman looked at us like a loyal dog eager to please its masters.

"Yeeeessss," it grunted, articulating as well as it could under the circumstances. "Heeeelp!"

"Gloating privileges for eternity, don't you forget," Ezu whispered in my ear.