This is a story about a girl and a book.
It is a book of fairy tales, and a girl who is rather ordinary, until she finds herself quite literally sucked into the stories she had known all her life.
But the world of Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping...
We took the southern road out of town, which meant we had to cross right through the middle of the village.
It had been more than a little awkward, since I was painfully aware of how many stares we got from everyone we passed in the street—some curious, others openly hostile. I alternated between attempting falsely cheery waves, and just keeping my head down and avoiding eye contact; but Erik hardly seemed to notice the attention at all.
However, I couldn't help but notice that the moment we cleared the town proper and were back out into open farmland, the swift pace of his hobble abruptly decreased dramatically.
He was breathing a bit heavily, and I asked him if he wanted to sit down for a moment.
"No," he grunted, his expression hard. "It's almost all farmland from here to Kingsbury, but the forest cuts right through the land about halfway between. There's only one wayhouse along the road about an hour's walk into the forest, and if we don't get there by nightfall, we'll be spending another night sleeping outside, in the woods, at the mercy of whatever wild animals are in the nearby." He glanced over at me, and his expression wasn't exactly flattering. "I can take care of myself, but so far, while left unsupervised in the woods, you've managed to get chased by wolves, you killed a gnome, and doomed a peasant girl. I think it would be best for everyone if we got to the wayhouse before dark."
I briefly considered kicking his walking stick out from under him, but that seemed a little too mean.
Instead I focused on doing calculations in my head. It was mid-August, and the sun didn't set until a little after eight in the evening. It was maybe noon now, which meant that we had an...
Eight hour walk ahead of us. In order to get halfway to Kingsbury.
The sun was high in the sky, and the dark, green, cool forest had given way to flat yellow farmland that stretched all the way to the horizon on either side of the dusty road. A few scraggly trees grew along the path's edge, but they offered little shade from the heat of the August sun.
This was going to be a long walk.
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We stopped at about three in the afternoon—at least, that was my best guess of the time based on the position of the sun—to sit on the side of the road, rest our aching feet, and eat a little bit of the bread and cheese Erik had stuffed into his rucksack before we'd been forced to flee from the attacking giant.
The bread was stale and the cheese was pungent, and the new shoes Jack had provided me with were actually more painful than my crappy converses had been. They offered more arch support sure, but when I peeled them off to inspect the damage, I saw that I already had about five blisters between both feet. Blending in with the local wasn't worth the suffering, so I pulled out my old shoes and put those on instead, stuffing the clunky leather ones on top of the red riding cloak, that was in turn stuffed on top of The Book and the rest of my old clothes. I needed more than a little elbow grease to get the zipper to close again over the bulging contents.
