Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

Exhausted from the day’s crazy events, I fell asleep right there on the unmade bed.

I woke up around six or seven in the morning, curled in a ball and freezing my butt off. It had gotten bitterly cold in the night, and without glass in the window and all the blankets still knotted together in a pile on the floor, I’d been forced to bear the brunt of the cold, but was so tired that it hadn’t woken me until just then. I blinked groggily and shivered. There were birds making a racket outside, loudly enough to chase away any lingering hopes of falling back asleep that I had. I groaned and tried to covered my ears with my hands and to ignore the shaft of morning sunlight that was hitting me directly in the eyes, and I suddenly realized that it wasn’t only birdsong that I was hearing.

I sat bolt upright, straining my ears.

Yes, there it was again! That was definitely a person’s voice, calling something up to me from the foot of the tower. Could Little Red already be back with help? That didn’t seem likely, but maybe she ran into someone on her way. Or maybe, I thought with a nervous pang, it was the fairy sorceress, and she had survived the fall and was back for round two.

I quickly got up out of bed and hurried over to the window, brushing my wild curls back as best I could as I went. In desperate need of a shampooing, they stayed in place as if I’d hairsprayed them there. I stuck my head out and looked down, and saw to my great surprise neither Little Red nor the fairy, but a young man I’d never seen before and his horse.

He was dressed in what must have at one time been princely garb, all velvet and silk with embroidered cuffs and gold braided shoulders and buttons; but now it was stained with dirt and wear, missing more than one button, and frayed at the hem and sleeves. His horse was a huge noble stallion, pure white as the driven snow, or whatever that expression is, its saddle equally as sumptuous as the man’s clothing, but had similarly seen better days. The man blinked in surprise at my appearance. I don’t know what he was expecting, but it obviously wasn’t me.

“Who are you?” I called down to him.

“I—I’m Prince Justin, eldest son of his majesty King William of the kingdom of Cywith. I was out hunting several days ago, when I came across a snow white stag. I gave it chase, and it led me deep into the forest. When I eventually lost sight of it, I realized I had been separated from my entourage, and was quite lost. I’ve been wandering these woods for days, surviving on only dried meat I had with me and what berries I have been able to forage, until I came upon this tower just now. I called out, wondering who could live in such a strange place, and well, you answered.

I groaned.

“Oh, so you’re the prince.”

“Erm, yes? I’m a prince, at least, if that’s what you mean?”

“You’re a day late. One freaking day. If you’d just been a liiiitle faster getting here, I wouldn’t be stuck up in this tower right now!” I snapped at him. Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but this was just ridiculous.

“You’re trapped?” the prince said, with a sudden burst of interest that I didn’t much like the sound of. “I must aid you in your escape! Who has entrapped you in this tower, my lady? A witch? A sorceress?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now if you don’t mind,” I replied darkly. “Fresh wounds and all that. But I’m not going to lie, I’d really appreciate it if you could help get me out of here.”

“I would never abandon a lady in distress!” Prince Justin cried, and he jumped from his horse in a manly sort of way that made me roll my eyes. He began walking around the base of the tower, poking in the thorn bushes that surrounded it vaguely. Once he’d done a complete lap, he stopped in about the same place he’d started and looked back up at me with an expression of uncertainty. “I don’t know if you know this, but there are no doors in this tower,” he said. My right eye twitched a little.

“I am aware,” I replied dryly.

“If you don’t mind me asking, then how did you get up there?”

“I climbed up some girl’s hair.”

“Huh.” Prince Justin seemed to think about this for a moment, then shrugged. “That is unusual. I take it the maiden with the hair is no longer in the tower with you?”

“That would be correct. And since I don’t feel like waiting around long enough for my own hair to get as long as hers was, I think we’ll need to come up with something else.”

The Prince thought had for a moment. It looked a little painful.

“Are there any bedsheets—”

“Already tried that.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” He looked over at his horse, as if it might have some suggestions. It just looked blankly back at him, and then reached its head around and chewed away an itch on its rump. “How far down did the bedsheets reach?” he asked, looking back up at me. I thought about it, looking over my shoulder at the pile of blankets in the middle of the room.

“Um, about twenty feet down or so? Which still leaves a forty foot drop. And since I don’t want to end today as a me-shaped stain of the ground, that’s not a jump I’d be willing to risk.”

“Is there anything else you can tie to the sheets? Like clothing?” he suggested. I paused. I hadn’t actually thought of that.

“Let me check,” I replied, and I hurried over to the wardrobe. There were three dresses hanging in it, and two nightgowns. I pulled one of the dresses down and inspected the seams and fabric. They were sturdily made, and came with corsets, which had thick laces with which to be tightened. I quickly gathered the dresses and nightgowns together and brought them over to the bedsheets, and set about adding them to my makeshift rope ladder.

Each dress was about five feet long, but I lost a foot or more of each in tying them together, so in the end I only extended my chain by less than twenty feet. That was a big improvement, but it still left me with a twenty foot fall, more than enough to prove fatal depending on how I landed. I went back to the window and leaned out.

“It’s a bit longer now, but it still won’t reach the bottom,” I called down to Prince Justin. “Any other ideas?”

“Well, I can catch you when you get to the end,” he suggested.

“And if you don’t?” I replied sourly.

“I will,” he insisted, looking rather offended at the implication that he might not be able to manage it.

“Forgive me if I’m not super eager to take the chance. I’ve done more than enough gambling with my life lately, thank you very much.”

“Well, what other choice do you have?” he pointed out, still a bit moodily.

I gnashed my teeth, but he was right. There really wasn’t much else to be done. It was either try my bedsheet-and-dress rope and trust him to catch me from twenty feet in the air, or hanging around this tower until Little Red came back with help four days from now.

If Little Red came back.

And I would be left with almost no time to find and rescue Sleeping Beauty, let alone the super witch who was waiting for me at the end of this quest.

Besides, the Prince had to be about six feet tall himself, which meant I would only have to drop about fourteen or fifteen feet to his arms. And I was a little under five and a half feet tall, which meant that if I was dangling at the end of a forty foot rope, my feet would be about fifteen feet above the ground. Add in the prince’s six feet, and that meant that there was just a measly ten feet from where my feet would reach to his arms. Ten feet was nothing, I told myself. Ten feet was easy peasy.

It was a bold faced lie I knew, and I was playing fast and loose with what the reality would be, which was that I’d be falling twenty feet and hoping that some strange man wouldn’t drop me, if my hastily constructed bed sheet rope didn’t come apart on me before I even made it all the way down it.

Like he had said, what other choice did I have?

I went back into the room, and started pushing the bed towards the window. It was a huge heavy thing—how in the world did the fairy get it up here in the first place?—and had four thick posts on the corners that would be perfect for tying the end of my rope to. It took me a while, but I managed to get it all the way over to the window, and I tied the end of the sturdiest looking blankets to one of the posts. For extra security, I used the lace tie from one of the corsets to really secure the blanket to the bed post as best as I could. I tossed the rest of the rope out the window, and anxiously watched it unravel down the side of the tower, much less elegantly than Rapunzel’s hair had. To my dismay, I had overestimated its length slightly, and it wasn’t quite forty feet long, leaving me with a bit more than twenty feet to fall at the end of it.

This was going to be… well, let’s just say that I was thinking longingly about my initial trip up the tower at this point.

“You’re absolutely positive that you’re going to be able to catch me when I drop?” I called down to Prince Justin.

“Absolutely,” he replied, and I couldn’t tell if he really meant it, or just a really good liar.

Well, it wasn’t like I was going to get down any sooner by just standing there. Doing my best to not look down at the dizzying drop below me, I very very carefully climbed onto the windowsill, grabbed the first bed sheet tightly, and slid my legs out over the ledge.

To my extreme relief, and mild surprise, the sheet held. With deliberate care, I tried to get some purchase on the wall of the tower with my feet, and shimmed a little lower so the rest of me was out the window. With my full weight now only being supported by my arms as I clung to a sheet sixty feet in the air, I realized how much my arms ached from my climb up the tower the day before. My muscles were already shaking with the effort of just hanging there, and my knuckles ached as if I’d just finished handwriting the complete collected works of Shakespeare. I suddenly doubted my ability to do this, and I wanted to go back up, over the ledge and into the tower room. It was fine, I was sure Little Red would be on her way back to rescue me at any time now. Four days wasn’t really that long to wait, after all. It would be nice to take a little break from rushing around and rescuing princesses. Way better than risking my luck with this stupid plan and falling to my death.

I reached up and tried to haul myself back up to the window ledge, but found that I simply didn’t have the strength. I just couldn’t manage it, no matter how hard I strained. My heart pounding hard in my chest, I hung there, only a few tantalizing feet away from relative safety above me, yet as far out of reach as if it had been a hundred feet. Breaking my own rule, I glanced down, and saw a very, very long way to the ground below. I tried to swallow, but my tongue seemed to have turned into a bock of wood in my mouth.

“Are you alright up there?” the prince called.

“Right as rain,” I shouted back, though the words got mangled in my throat on the way out and ended up a shaky squawk.

I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath. The longer I stayed there, frozen in exhaustion and fear, the worse it would get and the more likely I would be to slip and fall. It was time to get moving, and since up was obviously not an option, down it was.

It was easier moving down along my chain of sheets and blankets, but not by a whole lot. Every time I moved my grip down another half a foot, a waited several seconds to make sure I was grasping it good and tight before shifting my weight. And every time I reached the end of one of the sheets, I gave the next one several firm tugs to make absolutely positive that my knots would hold before I trusted my weight to it. Once or twice, the knots tightened and shifted alarmingly once my full weight was pulling down on it, and my entire life flashed before my eyes each time. It was short and grimy and far from glamorous, but I was rather fond of it and in no rush for it to be over.

Somehow, and later I honestly couldn’t have said how because the next fifteen minutes were just a hazy blur of aching muscles and muttered prayers, I made it to the final dress in my rope. I hung by a frilly lace hem, trying to keep my sweaty hands from slipping on the silk. For the second time I looked down over my shoulder, and saw with immense relief that I was, indeed, only a little more than twenty feet in the air. It still looked like more than high enough to break my neck—or failing that my spine, legs, or any other number of bones in my body—but it was a less pants-stainingly terrifying height than it had previously been.

“Okay,” I called to the prince. “Are you ready?”

“I’ve been standing here ready for ages now,” he said, sounding a little annoyed. He had indeed been standing at the base of the tower, after having cleared away some of the worst of the thorny bramble with a stick, with his arms outstretched for my entire climb. Given the aching, shuddering state of my own arms at the moment, I wasn’t inclined to have much sympathy right then.

“Okay, okay. I’m ready,” I said to myself, trying to muster up every ounce of bravery I had in my entire body. “Okay, just let go. Just let go, right… now!”

I didn’t move. My hands were clenched as tightly as they’d ever been.

“It’s not that hard,” I said angrily. “I just climbed down this entire thing and it took everything I had not to fall, so falling on purpose should be easy! Just don’t think about it, just don’t look down, and let go. Let go!”

Nothin’. My brain was sending the message to my fingers, but everything below my neck had apparently declared my brain unfit for command and proclaimed independence.

“Are you going to jump?” the prince called.

“I’m getting to it,” I snarled back without looking at him. Maybe if I just convinced myself that it wasn’t really all that far, that it would only be like stepping off a curb or the last step on a staircase-

And then one of the seams of sleeve of the dress I was clinging to ripped, I abruptly and sharply dropped four inches, and the hem of the dress slipped right through my fingers before the shriek even had time to leave my throat.

Falling happens fast. Like, really fast. Unless you’re falling out of an airplane of something, you usually only have just enough time to think to yourself, “oh hey, I’m falling”, before you hit the ground. If you have the time to think anything more than that, then the odds are you won’t be getting up again after you land.

There was a split second where my brain started firing off all kinds of alarm signals, some organ or other unleashed a tidal wave of adrenaline into my system, and my heart and lungs began working double time, and then WHOMP, I landed right in Prince Justin’s outstretched arms with enough force to send him staggering back.

To his credit he didn’t actually drop me, but he did fall heavily onto his ass. That was probably a good thing, what with slowing velocity and absorption of impact and other physics-y stuff that I didn’t really understand, but it wasn’t the most heroic moment of either of our lives.

I sat there in his lap, cradled in his arms, shaking and hyperventilating for a long while, my heart pounding so hard and so fast it was making my teeth rattle in my skull.

“Are you alright?” Justin asked.

I laughed. It started off a relieved sort of chuckle, but it quickly grew into something much louder and much more hysterical. Prince Justin blinked at me with an expression that made it very clear he was suddenly beginning to doubt that he’d done the right thing by helping this apparently utterly mad girl escape from her tower prison, but it wasn’t long until my hysteria passed.

I was still trembling like a newborn kitten, but once I’d composed myself and choked down the last of the wild giggles, I pushed him away and stood shakily to my feet.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. That was just…” I made a strange hiccuping sound. “A bit of a drop. Thanks for catching me.”

“I told you I would,” replied the prince with a touch of indigence.

“So you did. Well, I’m really grateful. Who knows how long I’d have been stuck up there if you hadn’t come along when you did. Can I offer you anything for your help? I mean, I know you’re a prince so you probably don’t need like money or anything, and even if you did, I don’t have much.” I had received a hefty bag of gold coins after rescuing Snow White, but most of the reward money had been in my horse’s saddle bags. The horse that Little Red and Rapunzel had taken. Hm. I wish I had remembered that before they left. I still had some cash in my pack, but it wasn’t anything impressive. I didn’t know what else I could offer the Prince for his help, but I was grateful that he hadn’t let me fall to my death.

Prince Justin looked a little confused. “Erm, you mean a token of your gratitude?”

I shrugged. “I guess?”

“A… handkerchief is often customary in these situations,” he suggested. I raised an eyebrow.

“Uh, I don’t think I have anything like that, but let me check.” I slid my pack off one shoulder and opened it up to check inside. There was the Book, the little bag of coins, a small dagger—I’d forgotten I had that—and a loaf of bread and some hard cheese wrapped up in a frayed cloth. Most of my food had been in the saddle bags too. With a sigh I untied the knot of the cloth with one hand and pulled it out, slinging my pack back over my shoulder and holding the cheese scented cloth out to Prince Justin. He took it reluctantly with his forefinger and thumb.

“Um, thank you,” he said.

A moment of awkward silence passed between us while he stowed it away in a pocket.

“Well,” I finally said, clapping my hands together briskly. “Thanks again for catching me, that was a big help. But I really got to be on my way now, I’ve got a lot to be taking care of. So good luck on your travels and all that. If you head that way,” I pointed into the forest in the direction I had come from the evil queen’s castle, “you’ll be out of the forest before nightfall. Probably, anyways. I don’t have all that great a sense of direction. Well, bye.” I gave him an awkward wave, and turned to leave.

“Wait a minute,” he said quickly, reaching out and catching me by the arm. “Where are you going?”

I gave him a funny look. He didn’t ask it as if he were just curious, he sounded genuinely surprised. “Uh, I’ve got this quest thing I’m doing, so… off to finish it, I guess?”

“But… I rescued you,” he said as if I should understand what he meant by that, his brows knitting together.

“I mean, you only caught me when I jumped. Fell, jumped, whatever. I did most of the work. I mean, you were helpful, definitely, but I don’t think I’d go so far as to say you rescued me. And even if you did, I don’t really know what that has to do with anything. I still have to go, so, I’ll be going now.”

“I definitely rescued you,” he replied with an obvious tinge of offense. “Or at the very least, helped rescue you. It was my idea to look for clothing to add to the sheets, and if I hadn’t been here to catch you, I doubt you’d be on your feet right now.”

“Okay, you might have a little bit of a point there, but-”

“I don’t think you’re quite understanding what I’m trying to say here,” he interrupted me hastily. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Whatever it is, I don’t think I like it.”

“You were trapped up in a tower, presumably put there by a wicked step mother, or enchantress, maybe a troll or giant or some such person. And I rescued—helped rescue you. In the usual way of things, well…” he trailed off awkwardly, as if he really hoped I would put the pieces together so he didn’t have to come out and say it directly.

I was beginning to get an idea of the picture he was trying to paint, but I didn’t like what it was adding up to and I’d be damned if I helped him get there.

“And I’m very grateful for your minor contribution, and have expressed such. And now I shall be on my way.”

“I believe we ought to be married,” the prince said in a rush, turning a rather delicate shade of pink.

“Absolutely not,” I replied vehemently.

“But I rescued you, and-”

“Oh, I don’t have time for this!” I threw my hands up into the air in exasperation, turned on my heel, and just started across the clearing, planning to wait until I had lost sight of the prince before pulling out the Book and figuring out where I had to go next.

To my dismay, the prince hurried to catch up to me.

“Look, I’ve been a prince for my whole life now, and I’ve known a lot of other princes in my life,” he said, trying to get in front of me so I’d have to listen to him.

“Good for you,” I said tersely, just turning around in the opposite direction and walking that way until he cut me off again.

“My point is,” he continued doggedly, “that many of my peers have been in similar situations, and I’ve grown up learning all about this sort of thing. When one finds a maiden in a tower, or sitting alone by a forest pool, or unconscious in an unlikely location, it is a prince’s noble duty to help rescue them from whatever plight they may be suffering. And when that sort of situation arises, it is almost always a sign that the two were meant for each other and should be wed! That is just how these things work!”

“Maybe that’s how it works for princesses, of the daughters of millers and woodcutters, or clever tailors or whatever, but unfortunately for you, I am none of those things,” I informed his highness, prodding him sharply in the chest with my finger. “There was a princess in that tower, but I’m afraid you missed her. I am not your consolation prize. I have no intention of marrying you, and I can assure you that you would not be happy with me in the slightest. Now I seriously have to be on my way, I have a princess of my own to be rescuing and I’m not eager to waste what little time I have left to do it in by standing here and arguing with you all day. Now good day.” I gave him a firm shove out of my way, and stomped off into the forest. Behind me, he hurried over to his horse, swung himself up onto it, and urged it to canter up alongside me. The forest was as dense as ever and it wasn’t possible for the prince’s impressively large steed to walk right next to me, he kept having to direct it around large trees and thick undergrowth, but he was able to keep up and stay close enough to carry on badgering me.

“What would I tell people if I just went back to my kingdom now?” he protested. “That I found a hidden tower in the woods and rescued-”

“Helped rescue.”

“-Helped rescue a maiden in distress from it, and then just went home without her to make my bride?”

“Yes, that is exactly what you tell them,” I replied tersely. “Or, if your fragile ego can’t handle that, then just don’t mention the tower and the supposed rescuing at all.”

“No princes go missing from hunts after following white stags in enchanted forests without coming across maiden to rescue, no one would believe me if I went back and claimed nothing had happened,” he argued, as if that should have been obvious.

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said. “You don’t even know me! Do you really want to commit to spending the rest of your life married to the first girl you found in a tower? I could be just awful.”

“You don’t even know me either,” he pointed out, as if this could be a positive thing. “You shouldn’t just reject me out of hand without getting to know me first. Perhaps we were meant to find each other!”

I snorted. “I highly doubt that. And besides, your idea of me ‘getting to know you’ involves a wedding. I think it would be a little bit too late to change our minds if it turned out we weren’t compatible after that.”

“We wouldn’t have to marry right away,” he said, starting to sound a little desperate now. “We could have a long engagement. I don’t understand why you are so opposed to this! I am a PRINCE! The heir to a throne, to a kingdom of no little wealth and power! I am an excellent hunter, renown for my sword play, well versed in matters of politics, handsome and charming and-”

“And full of yourself,” I muttered under my breath.

“Why are you being so stubborn about this?” He was actually pouting now, completely at a loss as to why I wasn’t swooning at his feet.

“From where I’m standing,” I replied coldly, “you’re the one being unreasonably stubborn. I didn’t even really need rescuing from that tower. Someone was already on their way to go get help to get me down. I just accepted your help because I didn’t want to wait. If I’d have known how annoying you’d end up being about it, I would have told you to get lost!”

“I was already lost,” he said, the expression going right over his head.

“And if you want to get less lost any time soon, I suggest you stop following me.” I stopped in my tracks suddenly, and Prince Justin had to turn his horse around with some difficulty and backtrack to where I stood. Figuring that I probably wasn’t going to be able to shake him for at least a while longer, I had decided just to stop and check the Book for any tips on where to head next, since wandering aimlessly around the forest while trying to lose the prince was only going to make things more difficult for me in the long run. I was sure he’d get bored of following me around and trying to convince me to marry him sooner or later, and I might as well be heading in the right direction while I waited for it to happen.

“What is that?” he asked, looking down curiously from his high perch as I pulled out the hefty tome.

“None of your business,” I snapped as I opened it up. There were the stories I had already completed: Rumpelstiltskin; Cinderella; Snow White; and Rapunzel, which ended with Rapunzel and Little red riding away together. All the pages after that were blank, except for one that had the title scrawled in an ornate script at the top of page reading “SLEEPING BEAUTY”.

In the center of the page were the words, in italics, Why don’t you let him come along?

“No freaking way,” I growled at the book.

“What was that?” the prince asked, frowning slightly.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I told him without looking up. I turned the page. Written on the next page was, He might prove helpful. You are all alone now, after all. Do you really think you can rescue Sleeping Beauty without any help at all?

“Yes, I do, no thanks to you, you useless heap of toilet paper,” I snarled.

“That was uncalled for,” the prince said, insulted.

“Not you!” I snapped again, and flipped the page.

That was uncalled for. Besides, you have never turned down help before. Remember the prince and Donkeyskin when you rescued the Miller’s Daughter? And the wolf Alfred, the Fairy Godmother, and Jonathan Cole when you rescued Cinderella? The dwarves and the knight Roland, the Huntsman and the Prince and his entire army from when you rescued Snow White? Remember Jack’s aunt and uncle, when Ezu was desperately ill after the incident with the giant? The Black Thief? The kindly farmer whose cart you rode into town? Ezu’s friend Hans who allowed you to stay as guests in his home overnight? The-

“Yes yes, I get the point!” I said heatedly.

“Are you quite well?” the prince asked with concern, but I just ignored him this time.

The Book, as obnoxious as it was, did indeed make an uncomfortable accurate point. I had gladly accepted help from whatever unlikely source it had come from in the past. From my experience so far, Princes were full of themselves, stubborn, pig headed, and just over all difficult to deal with.

But them again, so was I.

I sighed.

“Fine. Okay. If he wants to, I’ll let him tag along, I guess. But if he messes anything up, or gets in my way, I’m kicking him to the curb, you got that?”

Flip of a page.

I knew you would see it my way.

“Just give me the beginning of the story, before I start asking uncomfortable questions about why you seem to be able to hold a coherent conversation with me but can’t just cut to the chase and tell me exactly where the next princess is and exactly how to rescue them with the minimal amount of effort.”

Lady Rikki, who had been so knighted for her daring and estimable efforts at helping dispell the terrible curse placed upon Cinderella, known as she was across the land for her bravery and kind heart, who never shied away from helping someone in need-

“Just get on with it,” I growled.

There once lay a small but prosperous kingdom at the edge of the Enchanted Forest, which was ruled over by a goodly king and his lovely wife. They had no children; and this they lamented very much. But one day, as the queen was walking by the side of the river, a little fish lifted its head out of the water, and said, "Your wish shall be fulfilled, and you shall soon have a daughter.”

What the little fish had foretold soon came to pass; and the queen had a little girl who was so very beautiful that the king could not cease looking on her for joy, and determined to hold a great feast. So he invited not only his relations, friends, and neighbors, but also all the fairies, that they might be kind and good to his little daughter. Now there were thirteen fairies in his kingdom, and he had only twelve golden dishes for them to eat out of, so that he was obliged to leave one of the fairies without an invitation. The rest came, and after the feast was over they gave all their best gifts to the little princess; one gave her virtue, another beauty, another riches, and so on till she had all that was excellent in the world.

When eleven had done blessing her, the thirteenth, who had not been invited, and was very angry on that account, came in, and determined to take her revenge. So she cried out, "The king's daughter shall in her fifteenth year be wounded by a spindle, and fall down dead."

Then the twelfth, who had not yet given her gift, came forward and said that the bad wish must be fulfilled, but that she could soften it, and that the king's daughter should not die, but fall asleep for a hundred years. But the king hoped to save his dear child from the threatened evil, and ordered that all the spindles in the kingdom should be bought up and destroyed. All the fairies' gifts were in the meantime fulfilled; for the princess was so beautiful, and well-behaved and amiable, and wise, that every one who knew her loved her…

And on it went, following the trajectory of the story that I knew well enough, until it got around to the part about the huge briar bushes that surrounded the castle, full of impaled princes and knights yadda yadda yadda. Next there should have been a young prince who hears a tale about the forgotten castle and, as the hundred years have passed, he can pass easily through the thorned hedges which have turned into flowers, walk right into the castle as easy as you like, plant a wet one on Sleeping Beauty, and win his princess for all the effort it takes to go to the grocery store.

Obviously, that isn’t quite the version I got.

According to the Book, the old man who was supposed to have told the prince about the story never did. A bizarre and unlikely chain of events, starting with the unexpected death of one Rumpelstiltskin, led to the old man getting thrown in a jail cell after becoming violent when a guard tried to fine him for jaywalking at a busy intersection during a market day. He was therefor not present to tell the tale to the prince, and the prince was probably off wasting his time hunting and looking handsome in public places and other princely things instead of going around kissing unconscious women like he damn well should be. There was a description though, of how the kingdom had lain between three others, and right on the edge of the forest, which had since swallowed it up in the ensuing century. While not a nice detailed map with a big red X marking the spot, that was something I could work with.

I made a mental note to stop at the town the old man was imprisoned in and bail his bail, since it was technically my fault that he was there.

So there Briar Rose was, asleep in her castle, the 100 year limit on the curse passed, just needing a quick peck to wake her up and save the day. That should be easy enough. I mean, I know there was a dragon in the Disney version, but not in the Grimm’s story. The bitter fairy never even appears again in the story, if she’s even still alive after a hundred years. I could see no possible way this quest could go wrong. This would be a piece of cake.

I slammed the book shut, and tried not to think about how the rustling of the pages almost sounded like faint, ominous laughter.

“Alright,” I said, turning to look up at Prince Justin. “I’m not going to go back to your kingdom with you and marry you. But if you’re still absolutely set on not going back either without me, then I suppose you can come along with me on my quest. It won’t be fun, and we’ll probably almost die once or twice along the way, and it’ll involve a lot of boring traveling,” I warned him. “You’ll hate it, I’ll hate it, and I’ll complain the whole way which will just make the trip seem even longer. But if you are absolutely positive you can’t just go home now and save yourself the trouble, I guess you can tag along.”

Prince Justin looked very much like he wanted to turn around head back to his nice, comfortable kingdom for a moment. But then he set his jaw and squared his shoulders.

“I understand. I will accompany you on this quest, and see you through it, offering you my service and protection. And if you happen to fall in love with me along the way-”

“I won’t.”

“-Then so be it.”

“Glad that’s settled.” I stuffed the Book back into my pack and pulled it back on. “Now scoot forward on that saddle, my feet are sore and covered in blisters, and if I don’t have to walk then I’m not going to.” The prince edged forwards as much as he was able to, and then reached a hand down to help me up. I almost didn’t take it out of principle, but it was a really tall horse, so I accepted the help. Once I was up, he pulled away and looked from his own hand, slightly calloused from wielding a sword but otherwise soft and pink—more like the hands of a guitarist than a laborer—to mine, which were tanned from weeks in the sun, cut and scarred and covered in thick, hard callouses that had been formed from acquiring blisters over blisters after months of difficult work.

“You have… a strong grip,” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied flatly. “So the kingdom that was taken over by the Evil Queen, what direction is that in?”

“Erm, well, it’s south from my kingdom,” said Justin.

“And is there a third kingdom anywhere nearby?”

“Yes, one that borders both my own and Queen Ravena’s.”

“She had a name? Huh. I guess I should have figured, but she didn’t really give me much of a chance to ask.”

“Wait, what?”

“Take us in the direction of where those three kingdoms meet. We’re looking for somewhere still within the edges of the forest, but right around where the three borders converge. How well do you know local history? Perhaps you’ve heard stories about the place we’re looking for.”

“What did you mean by ‘had’? Did something happen to her? Was she overthrown? Slain? And what do you mean you didn’t have a chance to ask her? Did you meet her? And survive?”

It was going to be a long trip. I wondered if it would have felt so long if I was making it in the company of my friends. I wondered how Jack was doing. I wondered where Ezu was. I wondered if he had thought at all about me since he’d left. I wondered if it would hurt more to know if he had, or if he hadn’t.

“Let me start from the top,” I said to shut Justin up. “So after a giant attacked my friend’s house, I ended up lost in the woods, and met this guy named Rumpelstiltskin…”