Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

I slept for nearly twenty four hours straight.

I had fallen asleep sometime around ten in the morning the previous day, and I woke up a little after dawn the next, greeted by a particularly annoying ray of morning sunlight slanting through one of the windows directly onto my face. I looked around the room blearily and found that someone, probably a servant, had come into the room while I had been sleeping. The bathtub had been removed, but a pitcher of cool water and a bowl filled with dried flower petals had been left on the vanity. On the small table beside the bed was some kind of small seed cake, a pitcher of what looked like milk, and an empty cup.

The seed cake was dry but delicious, and the stuff in the pitcher did indeed turn out to be milk, so fresh it was practically still warm from the cow, and sweetened with honey and some kind of spice that made me think of Christmas. Then I crossed the room and filled the bowl of flowers with water, taking my time in washing my face. I could hear songbirds outside, since the windows had no glass, only cloth curtains to cover them. The room had gotten bracingly cold during the night, but even the goosebumps on my arms and legs were something that I relished just then. It woke me up, made me feel alert and eager to get moving.

There were new clothes laid out for me at the foot of the bed as well, good clothes. A pair of thick trousers, much better suited to the coolness of the coming fall weather; a long sleeved tunic with a leather belt to cinch the waist; a new leather scabbard, smooth and thick, to replace the dusty and beaten one that currently held my short sword. And best of all, a nice pair of leather boots, which looked as if they had thick soles and sturdy sides, which might help protect me from rolling my ankle the next time I inevitably took a tumble while hiking through treacherous territory.

I dressed quickly, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like an adventurer. Like a hero.

I ran my hands through my hair, all dark, wild curls, and felt that it was even more out of control than usual after having slept on it while it was still wet. I rummaged through the vanity drawers until I found a comb and brush, which were both pretty useless when pitted against my unruly mane, but somehow I got the worst of the tangles out. That of course left my hair a giant ball of frizz, so I sat down, concentrated hard, and pleated my hair into a tight french braid—something I was pretty terrible at without help, but it didn’t matter what the end result looked like. I still had an old, abused ribbon in my pack that I had used ages ago to tie up my hair, and I pulled that out now.

Hair braided, face washed, stomach filled (at least a little), and the comforting weight of my sword at my hip, and I was ready. I was feeling good.

I met the king, the queen, Prince Justin, and good ol’ Briar Rose in the banquet hall. A servant had led me there when he spotted me wandering around aimlessly, trying to get my bearings again in the maze of castle corridors. The royal family were all gathered at one end of the table, eating breakfast together and talking intently. They saw me enter the hall from the far end and fell quiet, and it was an awkward forty five second walk across the vast room to where they all sat, while they watched me in silence. Justin stood when I drew near, however, and came around the table to pull me up a chair.

“Good to see you in the world of the living again,” he said with a smile. “We were beginning to worry that you’d fallen under an enchanted sleep of your own.”

“Ugh, don’t even joke about that,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m starved though, I almost wish someone had woken me up to eat.”

“Well there’s plenty here, take however much you need. You’ve got a long journey ahead of you, and you ought to start on a full stomach.”

“You really do mean to go, then?” the king asked me, his expression troubled.

I grabbed a plate and began to fill it high with food I hardly recognized, but most of which seemed to be red meat and other dishes that didn’t exactly scream “breakfast” to me. “I do,” I said. “I have to. It needs to be done, and I’m the only one that can do it.” I think. Otherwise, why would I have been given the task when there were surely so many other people already in this world who were so much more qualified to do the job?

“And there is nothing anyone can say to talk you out of this? It surely is a fool’s errand. Even if the attempt weren’t likely to cost you your life, how could you ever hope to find where the Enchantress has been trapped for all these years?” the king pressed.

“I’ll find a way. I always do,” I replied through a mouthful of dead animal and, strangely enough, more of the Christmas-y spice. I’d never had gingerbread flavored pigeon before, and I didn’t know how I felt about it. I was almost missing bread, cheese, and apples.

“If you really are determined to go,” the queen said, “then we have done as you asked and made preparations for your journey. When you have eaten your fill, Prince Justin and Princess Briar Rose can show you what has been made ready.”

I ate until I thought I would burst, despite many of the delicacies being dishes like fried calf ears and lark’s tongues, and when I was done I thanked the king and queen for all of their help and followed Justin and Briar Rose out of the banquet hall.

They led me out to the stables, which were still in the middle of getting a good scrub down by several servants to loosen the century worth of dirt that had built up around them.

Inside one of the stalls was a beautiful, glossy black horse who watched us approach with big dark eyes, snorting in pleasure when it saw Briar Rose. She patted it on the nose, and reached into the folds of her dress for a piece of carrot which she gave to the animal.

“This is Storm Cloud,” she said, now moving her hand to scratch it behind the ears. “He is one of the best horses in our stables. Not the fastest, but he is the hardiest, and the most even tempered. Wolves, ogres, witches; he’s come across them all in dark forests and he’s never bucked his rider or galloped off course. He’ll be a good mount for you, if you really are determined to go into the Grim Woods.”

“He’s no Caesar,” Justin added, casting a fond look into the stall opposite which I now saw housed the chestnut horse who appeared to be napping, eyes closed and ears back, “but he seems like a fine creature.”

“Thank you,” I said, genuinely honored that they would offer me such a good horse. “I’ll make sure he gets back to your stables all of this is over.” The uncomfortable thought that I might now be around to make good on that promise rose in the back of my mind, but I quashed it quickly.

“And your saddle bags have already been filled,” Justin added, pointing to the bags which hung on a peg beside us, just outside of Storm Cloud’s stall. “It has enough provisions to last you the better part of a month. Twice that, if you’re frugal with them. Better stuff than we ate on our way getting here, I can tell you that much too.”

I grimaced at the memory of the smokey gingerbread from the witch’s cottage. Suddenly the lingering flavors of nutmeg and star anise in my mouth from breakfast seemed rather unpleasant.

“And you’ve some coins as well,” said Briar Rose, “in a leather pouch in the front pocket of the right saddle bag. Hopefully it will be enough to pay your way wherever you end up, though I do not think there will be many inns or way houses along your path.” She too suddenly looked darkly troubled, and I could tell that no one thought that I should be undertaking this quest.

Except, maybe, for Justin, who wasn’t looking at me with big sad eyes as if he were staring down a lamb heading for slaughter; but was instead looking at me appraisingly, with the hint of a smile on his lips.

“And most importantly, the king and queen spent some hours preparing this for you,” he said, pulling out a tightly rolled map and handing it to me. “It’s a hundred years old so the country borders aren’t accurate anymore, but they’ve marked out clearly the location of this castle, the river, a few major landmarks, and the Grim Woods for you, which are all you’ll really need to find your way.”

I unrolled the map and scanned it, pleased to see the dark ink circles and arrows and dotted lines that made it immediately clear at a glance where I would be headed. The Grim Woods didn’t look all that far, really; not when I searched the map and saw how far I had already come from the distant mountains we had passed through on our way to rescue Snow White. I could be in the Grim Woods in four, five days by foot; certainly sooner with a horse. I rolled the map back up and stowed it in one of the saddle bags.

“Thank you guys, I really mean it. This will all be an enormous help.”

“Plus I’ve made sure you’ve been supplied with some proper provision for a quest,” Justin added, looking rather pleased with himself. “Forgive me for saying so, but I just can’t believe you got this far without getting lost or dying, considering you have no real supplies. Now you have a compass; a bow and a quiver of arrows; two extra skeins for water; a blanket; a winter cloak; a water proofed canvas and some rope so you can make yourself a proper shelter in case of rain or cold nights,” he paused here to cast me a disapproving frown, which I pretended not to notice, “a flint box; a small dirk; and did I mention rope? Enough rope to, say, climb down from a very tall tower. Don’t forget to take it with you if you ever need to leave Storm Cloud somewhere.”

I cleared my throat loudly. “Well, that all sounds extremely helpful. Really, it does, and I’m incredibly grateful to you. I may possibly be able to think of an instance or two in the past where some of those supplies could have come in useful. All I can say is that I have learned some very valuable lessons from my mistakes.”

“You are certain you want to do this, then?” Justin asked me, but not in the same tone that everybody else had used when asking me that question, not as if he was talking to a crazy person who was convinced they could jump off a very tall building with only an umbrella to slow their descent.

“Want to?” I repeated. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not a question if want to. But I’m going to do it, yeah.”

“One your own?”

This time I faltered.

“Y-yeah. I mean, I’m not worried about doing it alone. I’ve had to do a lot of things alone.” I beat Rapunzel’s fairy step mother alone. I sort of beat Ravena, Snow White’s crazy step mother, alone. And in the end I’d had to confront Cinderella’s step mother alone too.

Justin was watching me hard, his eyes serious and intense. “If I happen to see your friends after you’ve gone, I’ll tell them where you went, yes?”

I swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, let them know.”

“I know you have to do this,” Justin said, his voice dropping just a little quieter. It wasn’t so quiet that Briar Rose couldn’t hear from where she was standing right next to us, but she caught the tone change and busied herself with stroking Storm Cloud and pretended not to listen. “I’ve seen the same look in your eyes in some of the other princes and knights I’ve known. One day they get that look, and then they are off with only the clothes on their back, disappearing into the wilds to slay dragons and rescue damsels. I know no one can talk you out of this, and I don’t think I would try even if I thought I could. If you’re right, everyone, the whole world, could be in serious trouble if you don’t go. I think someone, or something, is looking out for you. I think that’s why you found me in the forest that day, I think that’s what led us here. I’ll be expecting you to come and visit once you’ve put an end to the Enchantress, and tell me all about it.”

My eyes filled up with tears a little, and I tried to blink them away quickly. When that failed, I just threw myself at Justin and wrapped my arms around his shoulders in a hug.

“Thanks,” I said, more than a little choked up. “I will. I promise.” I tried not to think about whether those words felt like a lie on my lips or not. Justin patted me on the back, only a little awkwardly. Then I gathered myself together, pulled away, and cleared my throat again. “Alright. Well then, I guess I outta get going then. I’d like to get as far as I can while there’s still plenty of daylight.”

“Alright. Be safe,” Justin said, moving out of the way so I could take down the saddle bags and open Storm Cloud’s stall door.

“And we can never thank you enough for helping to rescue our household from the fairy’s curse,” Briar Rose added. “You’ve given us our lives back. We owe you more than we have repaid you here, more than we could ever repay you. If you are ever in need of anything again, please come to us.”

That was three castles now at which I had a standing invitation to visit. If I made it out of this alive, I could spend the rest of my life mooching off royalty, summering in one country and wintering in another… I bet summer would be gorgeous here, the heat of the summer months kept at bay by the dense forest, green and so alive and beautifully warm. And fall in Snow White’s kingdom must be glorious, all the foliage on those mountains on the horizon turning red and orange until it looked as if the sky was on fire. And I thought of winter in Cinderella’s kingdom, those cobbled streets lined with snow, the tall peaked roofs hung with icicles.

And then I though of spring, spring at a small cottage in the middle of the woods, with a huge iron fireplace to keep the house warm on the still chilly nights; a cottage only a little ways outside of town where there was a comfortable inn run by kind people who would take in a scared, lost girl and her sick friend. A cottage where I could spend the rest of my life.

But that cottage was far away, far far away now. And I had a date with an Enchantress to keep.

I helped Justin saddle and bridle Storm Cloud, and led the horse out of the stables into the castle court yard. We picked our way past cow skeletons, which would probably take a while to get rid of since there were so many of them, and walked to the castle gates. There I said one final goodbye to Justin and Briar Rose, promising again to come and visit once my quest was over. I mounted Storm Cloud and patted him on the sleek neck.

“Okay buddy,” I said, just to him. “Let’s go kick that bitch’s ass.”