Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

Sleeping in my uncomfortable little shelter was not a terribly pleasant experience.

We had stayed up for as long as we reasonably could, in part because we were too nervous to go to sleep with the possibility of a dragon nearby, and in part because the prospect of sharing such close quarters appealed to neither of us. Me for obvious reasons, and Prince Justin appeared to find it embarrassing and improper to do such a thing. I think the fact that I wasn’t princess, or any kind of aristocratic, high born lady and the way the bone chilling cold settled over us so quickly once the sun went all the way down made it easier for him to forgo his sense of decency in return for relative comfort, but it was clear he wasn’t entirely happy about the situation.

So we sat around his little flickering fire until it had almost completely died out, and we were too tired to try to go looking for more kindling to keep it going. He army crawled into the shelter first, pressing himself as close to the tree trunk as possible, and I followed in after, doing my best to keep myself from knocking the entire thing down on top of us. We were uncomfortably cramped in there, and got waaaay too familiar with one another. It took maybe half an hour of awkward rolling around to find positions that weren’t even more awkward than they had to be. Justin was too broad for us both to lay on our backs, shoulder to shoulder, and lying back to back just ended up with our butts touching, which was too weird for either of us to tolerate. We ended up laying head to foot, in opposite direction, with me on my back and Justin on his side, facing the tree trunk. My leafy ground cover made things a little softer, but we still kept having to shift and wiggle as stray sticks and little rocks dug into our backs. The one blessing was that, between the two of us, it did get almost warm in the shelter, and I didn’t wake up once from the cold. Just from Justin’s foot kicking me in the nose, or a bug crawling over my face, stuff like that.

I didn’t kick the sticks down in my sleep, but I must have been moving around at least some, because about an hour or two before dawn, Justin suddenly gave up and, with a distinct note of bitterness in his voice, told me he was going to go start the fire back up and keep watch. We hadn’t had any trouble, or even any real worries during the night about danger, not with his well trained, alter, and intelligent horse nearby who would, he assured me, knowing about any oncoming danger long before we became aware of it; so he hadn’t suddenly decided to go on watch because of that. I suspected it had something to do with the black eye he was sporting, but me and my throbbing nose didn’t feel too sorry for him.

By myself in the shelter it wasn’t nearly as warm, and I’ll admit I did miss the heat of another body so close, but I finally had just enough room to get a decent stretch, and I slept like a baby for the rest of the early morning hours, until Justin finally woke me up with the suggestion that we’d better get moving.

We ate a few handfuls of berries and some hard cheese for breakfast, he checked his stallion to make sure it was in good condition to continue today, and we climbed on, ready to keep heading north-ish until we hit something that looked interesting. Not once did Justin mention anything about the prospect of marriage, and I hopefully considered the possibility that my natural pain-in-the-ass personality might be enough to turn him off of the entire all on its own.

Then the sudden, horrible thought struck me that maybe that was what had turned Ezu off from considering me a possibility, and I spent the next few hours in a miserable spiral of self-pity. Justin, either sensing my change in mood or too grumpy from his own sleep deprived night to have much desire for conversation, stayed quite too.

The silence did allow us to appreciate the beauty of the forest without distraction however, and even I found it hard to maintain a good silent cry when I kept having to stop and wipe my eyes to get clearer views of ancient, twisting oak trees, or scattered patches of brilliantly color wildflowers that grew in every available clearing, or the bright little brooks and streams that meandered through the woods and sparkled in the early morning light shining down through the trees. It really was a lovely forest, and for the first time I really noticed how different it had been from the Black Forest that Ezu and Jack and I had spent so much time in before now. These woods just weren’t as ominous or as grim, despite being filled with just as many unpleasant creatures. This place really did feel enchanted, more like the kind of forest where you meet an enchantress in the trees than the kind where you meet a big bad wolf. Less… less folk tale, more fairy tale, I decided. That was the only way I could really describe the difference to myself, at least.

I was sure this place could be filled with horrible, man eating things, but I also half expected to see beautiful and magical things watching us through the shadows just as much.

We’d been traveling for several hours when we finally spotted something in the distance, through the trees. I jerked Prince Justin’s by the sleeve, and pointed.

“Do you see that, up ahead?” I whispered. He pulled the horse up short and nodded. “Do you think it could be the castle?”

“It looks too small, I think. And the wrong color for stone.” He squinted into the shadows of the looming trees, but it was too difficult to really make much out from where we were. “It could be one of the buildings from the town that surrounded the castle though, I suppose.”

“Let’s go check it out,” I said, sliding off the back of the horse. I crept forward, keeping crouched low, darting behind trees like some sort of not-very-good woodland spy. Justin followed behind me, taking take to walk as quietly as possible, but not bothering to make himself look like a fool with all the sneaking around.

Eventually I reached the edge of a small clearing, and was able to get a good look at the building without a bunch of tree trunks and leaves in my way.

The first thing I realized, with a pang of disappointment, was that this couldn’t possibly be the right place, because this certainly wasn’t a castle, and there weren’t any other buildings in sight. It was a lone little cottage, all brown and pink and quaint. Only something about it looked a little… off. I was no architect, but there was something wrong with the building.

Then my brain finally listened to what my eyes were telling me, instead of trying to cling stubbornly to what it thought it knew about what houses should be made of.

“Oh lord,” I said, backing away hastily and bumping right into Justin. “We really should get out of here, quick-”

“Is that cottage made of… bread?” he asked, stepping around me and moving closer to the house. I reached out to grab his sleeve, but he shook me off.

“Yes, it is, and it’s really important that we don’t-”

But he was already gone, hurrying past into the clearing and up to the house.

“What a blessing!” he cried. “The whole house is edible! Yes, the walls are made of bread, and the roof is…” he reached up and broke a piece off the roof, giving it a gentle squeeze and sniffing it. He laughed. “The roof is cake! Spice cake! Is that icing on the gables?”

I grit my teeth, and glanced over my shoulder at Justin’s horse. It looked back at me and nickered uneasily, evidently aware that something was not entirely right about the situation.

“If I mounted you right now, would you abandon your idiot master and get us both out of here, to safety?” I asked it.

Despite its clear unease, it gave an emphatically negative toss of its head. I sighed. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. God damn it.” I glanced around the clearing nervously, checking to be sure we were really alone, and I rushed forwards, up to Justin. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and tried to pull him away.

“It’s a trick!” I whisper-shouted at him, doing my damnedest to drag him back under the cover of trees, but he was considerably larger than me and I was making no progress.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, annoyed, pushing me off him, “but I haven’t had a proper meal in days. We can’t survive on berries and old cheese! It’s a house made of bread and cake! Just waiting here in the woods to be eaten!”

“And don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?” I insisted. “How many conveniently edible houses in deserted locations do you run across on a daily basis?”

“This is the Enchanted Forest,” he replied, waving my frantic concern away. “Strange instances of good fortune are not unheard of for weary travelers.”

“What about strange instances of very very bad fortune?” I snapped, stomping my foot impatiently. He took a huge bite of the cake he had pulled off the corner of the roof, then leaned forward to peer at the window, which was paned with foggy glass.

“I think this window is made of sugar,” he said through a mouthful of cake.

“This is a witch’s house, you idiot! And if we don’t get out of here, she’ll-”

But before I could elaborate on the horrifying future of being fattened up and cooked alive that awaited us if we didn’t get moving, Justin gave a sudden cry of alarm and leapt back from the window.

“What, what? What is it?” I asked frantically, drawing my sword and expecting a witch to come flying out at us any second.

“There’s smoke pouring from the stove in there! The whole place will catch fire and burn down! Quick, come on!” And with that he rushed away from the window and with one well planted heel, he kicked down the door. Black smoke billowed out, and Justin covered his nose and mouth with a poofy sleeve and hurried inside.

“You’re going to get us killed, you moron!” I screamed after him, and after only a moment’s hesitation, I hurried to catch up with him, in case I needed to drag him bodily out of the potentially burning building.

Fortunately nothing was on fire, at least not yet. Something was burning horribly inside the stove at the very back of the small room, filling the cramped space with a disgusting smell and thick smoke. I looked around, and saw a tub of water filled with half washed dishes on a counter by the window, and hurried over to it, pulling all the dishes out. Justin pulled open the door of the oven and I rushed over, careful not to spill the soapy water, and after waiting a second for the acrid smoke that poured out to clear, I threw the water inside the stove to douse the fire within.

Fortunately the fire had nearly already died out on its own, and the meager dishwater was enough to quench the last few tendrils of flame into glowing embers. We really hadn’t needed to rush to the rescue at all, but I guess that’s probably just an automatic reflex princes have, like blinking when you get something in your eye.

I coughed, trying not to inhale the fresh wave of smoke and steam that rose to engulf us after I doused the fire.

“What-” Justin asked, between a small coughing fit of his own, “what is that?” He pointed into the depths of the oven. I could make a pretty safe bet as to what it was without needing to look, but morbid curiosity got the better of me. I bent down just a little to peer inside the oven.

Something large and completely blackened lay within, like a whole hog that had been barbecued to little more than a lump of charcoal. But it wasn’t a hog. I could just barely make out clawed hands frozen in place, reaching towards me, towards the door of the oven, skin and fat and bone burned to blackened flakes. Suddenly, the smell that filled the room seemed a thousand times worse, and I staggered back out into the clearing, where I threw up what little I had in my stomach.

Justin followed me a few moments later, looking a little green himself but managing to keep from tossing his own cookies. He’d probably seen worse between war times and public executions and whatnot, but he still seemed rather shaken.

“What happened here?” he asked, looking back at the house of candy coated horror behind us. He evidently didn’t expect me to actually answer, but I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and did anyways.

“I told you, this is—was, a witch’s house. It’s made of bread and cake to lure in lost travelers.”

Justin gave me a strange look. “How do you know that?”

Oh damn, I’ve gone and done it again. Knowing more than I should. You know what, this was a fairy tale world. Why shouldn’t I have access to unreasonably specific information?

I shrugged. “I’ve heard of it before. I’ve been traveling a lot. I guess some of her victims out smarted her this time.”

Justin shuddered. “This is an evil place,” he said grimly.

“You’re telling me,” I muttered. Justin looked at me now, concern etched across his face.

“Are you alright, by the way? I take it you haven’t seen death before. It can be a traumatic experience.”

I shook my head, thinking about Rumpelstiltskin, the evil queen, the fairy sorceress. All the men who had been killed at the battle with the Evil Queen, during Snow White’s quest. “No, I’ve seen death before. Just nothing quite like that.”

Justin gave me a confused look.

“Well, except for the guy who ripped himself in half,” I added thoughtfully. “That was pretty horrible.”

Justin opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it and closed it again.

Instead he looked back at the cottage of enriched bread; the gingerbread house, if you will.

“It seems a shame,” he said tentatively.

“What does?” I replied, although I was really only half listening. I was looking around the glade, sincerely hoping that I wasn’t going to have to waste a bunch of time helping Hansel and Gretel find their way home in some weird side quest.

“The house, all that food, just going to waste out here in the woods,” he continued, watching me out of the corner of his eye to gauge my reaction.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Oh no, no way,” I said. “Don’t even think it!”

“Only the interior will have any smoke damage,” he argued.

“That’s not the point!”

“We don’t have much left to eat. Certainly not enough to sustain the both of us for more than a few days, if we’re stingy with our rationing.”

“We’re you out in this forest to hunt in the first place? You have a bow and arrows! Make use of them!”

“Yes, and chasing game is how I got lost in this forest in the first place,” Justin pointed out. “And hunting takes hours. I suppose if you’re willing to halt your quest for a day or two—or three—and risk the possibility of ending up even further away from Rosenberg while I try to track some deer or hares or something…”

“But… but…” I stammered, trying to think of any argument I could reasonably make. “But… it’s icky!” I finished, lamely.

Justin raised an eyebrow. “Icky?”

“A woman died in there, Justin! A witch! That smokey flavor that I’m sure permeated through the light and moist layers of cake is essence of charred human flesh!”

“Did you just call me ‘Justin’? I am a prince, you know; honorifics are usually customary.”

I groaned. As repellent as I found the idea, he was right. We had little food left, and there was no guarantee that we’d be able to find any animals willing to give their lives for the cause along the way to Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

“If you’re going to make me eat murder flavored cake, then I’m not standing on formality when I address you,” I snapped, begrudgingly.

Justin made a contemplative face. “I rather like it,” he went on, imperturbably. “It smacks of familiarity between us.”

“You know what they say familiarity breeds,” I grumbled, but only under my breath.

And that was how we ended up setting off once again with our packs and saddlebags stuffed with bread and cake. I vetoed the sugar windows on the basis of cavities, which took a while to describe adequately to Justin because apparently the current scientific assessment of the cause of tooth aches is tooth worms

I also insisted that he go back inside the cottage to see if there was anything a little healthier that we could filch too while we were at it. Justin was confused at first, and then horrified when I explained that I was talking about vegetables.

“You mean like livestock fodder?” he had asked, incredulously. I asked him what exactly he survived on in the royal palace, and he rattled off a list of foods that mostly consisted of huge quantities of red meat, bread, wine, meat soaked in wine, bread soaked in wine, butter, bread smothered in butter, meat marinated in mixtures of butter and wine, wine flavored butter, and so on. I nearly got gout and diabetes just from listening to him. Then we had a long discussion of the value of vegetables in ones diet, in which he seemed a little too personally interested in the bits about how fiber rich veggies are good for regulating the bowels, and he agreed to give the “livestock fodder” a chance. He collected some root vegetables from the cottage that were salvageable, and then we once again set off in a north-ish direction, filled with willfully ignorant confidence that we were bound to run into the place sooner or later as long as we were headed in more or less the right direction.