Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

The Grim Woods were so far north that the mountain range that bordered its northern edge had the words “THAT BE DRAGYNS???” scrawled across them.

The three question marks at the end of the warning was what really concerned me. It seemed to imply that the map maker had no actual idea what lay beyond those mountains, but that whatever it was, it couldn’t be anything good.

It was also a giant red flag that the people who dwelt in this particular forest, which had a reputation for being a nasty place in its own right, thought of the Grim Woods as their scary neighbors. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy was your friend, but most of the time, the enemy of your enemy was just another, bigger enemy of yours.

But it wasn’t like I was swimming in a sea of options at this point, so off I went, heading due north at an easy pace, letting Storm Cloud pick out the easiest path to take as long as we kept in the right general direction.

Several hours after leaving the castle, I decided it would be a good time to pause and eat something, especially since we were still hugging the river which meant I didn’t have to worry about not being able to refill my water skein.

I let Storm Cloud graze nearby while I sat on a rock and looked through the food supplies I had. There were hard biscuits that looked as though they would keep forever; a variety of soft cheeses wrapped in cloth; a sack of dried peas; what looked like a sack of barely; some wrapped salted pork; some jerky that looked like beef or maybe venison, and some that definitely smelled like fish; and a bag of potatoes, onions and carrots. The amount of each would definitely keep me going for long enough to get to the Enchantress and back as long as I rationed it carefully, even assuming I got lost or ran into a few setbacks along the way. If I made a habit of only eating two meals a day, I’d have even more to spare. That wouldn’t be too hard, I’d long grown used to scare rations and the pangs of an empty stomach.

Pleased with my outlook for the final leg of my journey, I settled back with some cheese, a biscuit, and a little of the salted pork. It wasn’t a meal fit for a king, but after trying a kingly meal back at Briar Rose’s castle, I was okay with that.

I ate slowly, trying to enjoy the peace of the forest while I could. I might not get another chance.

I had nearly finished when suddenly, Storm Cloud’s head whipped up, and he stared in the direction that we had come from, his ears swiveling forward in alert wariness. I immediately dropped everything and stood up, drawing my sword from its sheath and standing stock still, listening hard. At first I heard nothing, and started to wonder if maybe it was just a bird or the natural cracking of a branch that had caught the horse’s attention. But then, faintly in the distance, I heard the definite sound of movement. Something, something large, was moving through the forest. I kept silent, and still didn’t move. A few more long seconds passed, and I was sure that whatever it was, it was moving fast, and it was headed right for me. I quickly backed away from the fallen food to stand beside the horse, grabbing his reigns tightly in my free hand; if it was an animal of some kind, it would probably be content with taking the food and leaving Storm Cloud and I alone, we wouldn’t be worth the struggle when an easy meal was available. If it wasn’t an animal…

Well, I tightened my grip on the hilt of my sword, and wondered whether I should mount Storm Cloud and ride away now, while I still had the chance. But I hadn’t just left the food over by the rock, the saddle bags were there too, and I needed those. The map was still in there, along with everything else that could mean the difference between life and death. Besides, depending on how fast whatever it was, it could still catch up to me even if I was on the horse, and my sword was too short to be able to defend myself effectively while mounted. If I wanted to be able to fight back, I had to stay on my own feet.

To fight, or to flee? It was a choice I’d never really been given before, not like this. There had never been any time to think about it before, I had always either just been running, or forced to draw my sword, never really given the choice. I looked up at Storm Cloud and he pawed the ground nervously, tossing his head with a disquieted motion, but he didn’t seem like he wanted to bolt.

Alright then. I took a deep breath. Stay it is.

Whatever it was was making a hell of a lot of noise, and was coming towards me fast. It was crashing through the undergrowth like a freaking bear, and I had to wonder what the hell it was. It sounded big. I swallowed hard, and kept my eyes on the place between the trees where I guessed the thing was going to appear.

It burst from the shadows like a white flash of lighting, charging straight at me with terrifying speed. For a horrible moment I thought it was going to plow right into me, run me down and trample me or maul me or god knows what, and my brain hardly had the chance to make sense of what I was seeing before it skidded to a halt reared up in a sudden panic. There was a scream—a human scream, and a then a thud and a gasp, and a kicking hoof nearly brained me.

The creature—a horse, I suddenly realized as my shocked mind flew into overdrive, a great white horse—shied away from me with an alarmed snort and whinny, nearly stamping its fallen rider underfoot as it tried to back away from Storm Cloud and me. Obviously the horse and its rider had been as surprised to run into us as we had them.

“Whoah, whoah there!” I called to the horse, trying to grab it by the reigns to keep it from crushing the person still laying on the ground. It was already calming down, and it practically shoved me out of the way to go up to Storm Cloud, where the white horse proceeded to poke and prod at the black one inquisitively. Storm Cloud gave it a brief nuzzle, and then tossed his head in annoyance. Well, whatever, I guess that took care of the horse.

I hurried over to the fallen rider and crouched down beside the figure, who was moaning in a heap. I pulled back the heavy cloak that had been thrown over the person’s face, and gasped.

“Ezu!” I virtually shrieked.

“Rikki,” he gasped back, barely audible because he’d had the wind knocked out of him. He started to struggle into a sitting position, but I grabbed him by the upper arms and yanked him into a bone crushing hug before he could manage it on his own.

“Oh my god, I thought I was never going to see you again,” I said, trying to hold back the tears but failing miserably as the emotional dam finally broke.

“I came back, I came back,” he was saying over and over again, his own arms wrapping around me tightly, like a drowning man clinging to a life raft.

Then I wrestled myself out of his grasp, holding him at arm’s length, and slapped him right across the stupid face, as hard as I could.

His head jerked back hard enough to give him whiplash and he nearly fell back down again, but he managed to steady himself just enough. Then he took me by the back of the head, his fingers entangling themselves into my hair, and pulled me in for a kiss before I could react.

It was a long, hard kiss; and our lips didn’t move as they pressed together hard enough to hurt a little, but it said everything that words wouldn’t have been able to, that words had never been able to say.

Finally, eventually, somehow, I was able to pull myself away from him.

“What,” I panted, feeling more than a little dizzy, I wasn’t sure if I’d been breathing, “was that?”

“Rikki, I’m so sorry I left, I didn’t know what I was thinking, I was so completely and utterly stupid—I guess I just thought that-”

“I don’t need some big apology speech,” I interrupted, waving his words away. If he had started with the apology speech, I’m sure I would have reveled in it, maybe even made him grovel a little bit. But now, my emotions were pointing me in an altogether different direction. “Yes, you were completely and utterly stupid, and a moron, and a fool, and a total, mega jerkwad. But you came back. You came back. I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again,” I repeated, and my eyes welled up with tears again, unbidden.

“Oh, Rikki,” Ezu said, his voice the sound of a heart breaking, and he pulled me in again to meet my lips with another kiss, this one entirely different—steady and sure, and so reassuringly firm, as if he was trying to convince me that he was really there in the flesh, not just some apparition, through a kiss.

At some point we surfaced for air, and many awkward coughs and furtive glances were had.

“How in blazes did you find me?” I asked, trying to pretend to be busy with the sticks and leaves that had somehow ended up tangled in my braid.

“I had an idea of where to find you. I mean, I might not have at all if I hadn’t… I got a map, and made some educated guesses, and got lucky, I suppose. Eventually I found and followed the river, which took me straight to Sleeping Beauty’s castle. When I got there, they told me that you had been there, and left that morning. I missed you by a couple of hours at the most, you can’t imagine how furious I was with myself. If I’d only been a little faster, or if I hadn’t stopped to rest as much-”

He was getting worked up, and I laid a hand on his chest. “But you found me, you’re here now, so it’s okay, it worked out,” I reminded him. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and then he took my hand off his chest, and held it with both of his in his lap.

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right. And they—the king and queen, and the princess and some guy, Prince whatever-”

“Prince Justin,” I said automatically. Ezu made a face.

“That’s what I said, Prince whatever—they told me that you had just left, and what direction you were heading. I wanted to go after you immediately, but they told me they could provide me with a fast horse and some supplies. I told them I would just take the horse, more supplies to carry would only weigh me down, even if I did have the time to wait for them to be prepared. I told them that if I wasn’t able to find you, then it wouldn’t matter anyways.” His face flushed dark red, but he kept talking, avoiding making eye contact. “They gave me the fastest horse they had in their stables, and pointed me in the right direction, and I was off. I’ve been riding as hard as possible for nearly two hours now, and the horse was hardly able to handle this terrain. It was a mess, and I had no idea how to find you. I was beginning to lose hope, to realize that this forest was huge, and that neither you nor I had any idea where we were going and there were no paths to follow, and it was too late to try to follow you by your tracks. I hadn’t even thought of that, I’d been in so much of a rush to catch up before you got too far away, and by the time I realized that that was what I should have done, it was too late and there weren’t any tracks to follow. So I just kept heading north, praying that eventually I’d come across you, or somewhere you’d been, or someone who had seen you.”

“And you did, somehow you did,” I said, squeezing his hand tightly. “I can’t believe it—but I never should have doubted you. If you decided to come back, then I know you would have been able to find me eventually. But… what made you change your mind? You said you wouldn’t… that you couldn’t…”

“I told you, I'm not going to love anyone. Ever.” I flinched at the memory, the words still cutting into my heart like a knife. Ezu shied away too, as if I’d raised my hand to strike him, and he passed a hand in front of his face.

“I was stupid. I was so stupid,” he said, his voice slightly muffled behind his hand. “I’ve loved you for such a long time now, but I didn’t think that I could let myself, that if I admitted it, something terrible would happen. It was easier to leave than to accept the… the consequences.”

“Ezu…” I half whispered, reaching out for him, but pulling back before I touched him.

He told me about the halfway house, where he had met the innkeeper and her husband, where they had told him the story of their love, and he had told them the story of his loss. And he told me that story too, about the horrible way his family had died, the way everyone he had known turned against him, the way he had gotten his revenge, and how it hadn’t made anything better. How when he looked at me, and when he felt the feelings that he did, all he had been able to think about way his dead mother and father and sister, and the face of the man he had killed. How he hadn’t been able to protect anyone, how he had only made it so much worse, and how someone like him didn’t deserve someone like me, who was always so determined to do the right thing. He told me how they had talked sense into him, and that if I thought I could ever have feelings for someone who was so fundamentally broken, then here he was—but no matter what, he’d always be at my side now, he was never going to abandon me again.

While he talked—rambled, really, I looked at him, soaking up every inch of him as if he might disappear again at any minute and I had to get my fill now. He looked awful, just awful. He was so thin, thinner than I remembered. Had I forgotten what he looked like, or had he lost that much weight in the days since we’d last seen each other? His eyes were red and ringed with purple shadows, as if he hadn’t slept at all. His hands were shaking slightly too, I couldn’t help but notice. He looked as if a stiff wind might knock him over, if he didn’t pass out first.

He finally petered out, his voice sort of fading away while he stared down as his hands, which now sat limply in his lap. I’d never seen him look like that before, so… sad, and vulnerable, and humiliated.

“Ezu,” I said, waiting until he looked right at me. “I love you, too.” And I kissed him again, and this time it was tentative and shy, and I held his hands tightly to keep them from trembling.