Twisted Tales

Dungeons, but Fortunately No Dragons

         The King himself stood in the doorway, flanked on either side by half a dozen armed guards, wearing a dressing gown and tartan slippers. He was obviously the king, because he had taken the time to throw on his crown, which sat at a crooked angle atop his bedhead.

         The king looked from Anne, to Erik and me, to the piles of distinctly not-golden straw filling the room, and lastly, to the beanstalk, clearly visible out the small window.

         "What," he seethed, "is going on here?"

         Both Erik and Anne looked down at me, kneeling on the ground, blood dripping from the fingers that were held over my throbbing mouth.

         I rose to my feet, a little woozily. The miller's daughter had clocked me good, and my lower lip had been cut badly on my teeth. I could already feel it swelling, and I knew that in another minute or two, it would be a huge, purple, swollen, bloody mess.

         Exactly what I wanted.

         I pulled one bloody hand away from my mouth to gesture at the miller's daughter. "We're her... her..." I floundered for a moment. I'd only had about fifteen seconds to think of this plan, and I didn't quite have all the details figured out. "Her... cousins."

         "Her cousins?" the king repeated, his eyebrows raising incredulously. "And what, pray tell, are you doing here, in my castle, in the dead of night, without my knowledge?" He looked around the room again, and frowned at the piles of straw. "And why is none of this gold?" he rounded on Anne. "I warned you what would happen if you had not spun the straw in this room into gold by dawn, did I not?"

         "That's why we're here," I interjected loudly, my words slurred and thick through my rapidly swelling lips. "You see, she's still learning the technique."

         "Still learning?" said the king doubtfully. "Her father made it very clear—"

         "That old windbag?" I scoffed. "He talks a big game, and it's true that Anne here has some talent, but her technique is lacking. She can spin straw into gold all right, but she could never manage this much on her own." The words were just tumbling out of my mouth now, I didn't even have time to think about what I was saying, or what I would say next. I just had to trust my big mouth to get me through this one.

         The expression Erik was staring at me with didn't make me feel all that confident, but I just made an effort to ignore him, and plunged recklessly on.

         "So you see, since we're very close to our dear cousin, when we heard about her predicament, we wanted to help. So we came here at once in order to help teach her the secret techniques to spinning so much in a single night."

         "And you got into this tower using... that?" the king asked, pointing out the window at the beanstalk.

         "Well, you didn't exactly make the stairs accessible," Erik added. I cast him a grateful glance.

         "I still don't—" the king began, but at that moment, I let my other hand fall, revealing the pendulous, purple mess that was my lower lip. "By God," the king gasped, actually recoiling from the sight of me. "What caused you such a deformity?"

         I smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth. "Why, spinning," I said. "My lip has become like this after so many years of licking the straw to thread it. And look at him," I added, jerking a thumb to Erik.

         He gave me a blank look, and I shot a meaningful one of my own at his sprained ankle. "Go on, show his majesty your foot."

         After a moment's hesitation, Erik bent down and gingerly pulled off his boot, and then his sock, wincing the entire time. His ankle was swollen to the size of a softball, and his whole foot was a reddish, purple color.