One day turned into three; three turned into a week; and a week became two. The days were quiet and peaceful, and I didn't even mind waking up at the ass crack of dawn anymore, not when I knew that the most dangerous thing I'd be doing was collecting eggs from, admittedly ornery, chickens.
The food Mother Holle fed us was plain but filling; and we slept on piles of hay in the small barn that were itchy but warm and soft, since there wasn't room for all three of us in the tiny house. Erik had gone back with a little of our money from Charming to pay Hans to care for our horses until we came back, leaving him thoroughly surprised and rather unsettled to learn about the magical nature of his well.
Rather to my surprise, without the fate of princesses to worry over, there was hardly any arguing between the three of us. Erik and Jack had both grown up on farms and were very familiar with the chores that needed to be done, and once a daily routine for everyone was settled into, Mother Holle's tiny household ran like Swiss clockwork. Between the three of us, there wasn't even that much to do, and we were able to spend a good chunk of our time there staring at the map Charming had provided us with and making plans for how we would tackle the next stages of our journey; specifically how we were going to go about crossing the Dark Forest, a mountainous range separating the kingdoms of Lorcastle and Weissland to the west; and then the Enchanted Forest, which connected in the north to the Grimm Woods.
By the end of the second week, I sat down and counted out the days since I'd arrived in this fairy tale world; and found to my surprise that it had been just about a full month. It was almost mid-September now; and though the weather was still plenty warm and sunny during the day, it was beginning to get a bit nippy at night. I'd woken up more than once in the barn shivering, having to pile another armful of hay over me to keep warm.
While our time with Mother Holle was peaceful and pleasant, I was beginning to get anxious to be on our way. On one level, it was a relief to not be on the road, putting ourselves in danger for the sake of royal strangers. I wanted to soak up and enjoy every moment we had at Holle's pleasant little cottage. But the entire time we were there, the knowledge in the back of my mind that we were only putting off the inevitable, and that with every day we remained there the sorceress regained more and more of her old strength; loomed in the back of my mind like a monster, waiting to come out and give me panic attacks in the dark nights while I tried and failed to fall asleep next to the softly snoring boys.
I was thinking about this while making Mother Holle's bed at the end of the second week. She was very particular about the way her mattress was shaken out; it had to be done at the end of every day, and I had to shake it so vigorously that the feather stuffing came out and went flying everywhere, falling like flurry of snow in the air. I always ended up with down in my hair and mouth, and usually in my clothes too, which itched worse than the hay.
In the middle of this process, Holle came in to the cottage with a basket of red, shiny apples, and she carried them to the pitted and worn table.
"Are you finished with the mattress, my dear?" she asked me in her cracked old voice.
"Just about," I replied.
"When you are, come over here and help me with these apples. We're going to make a pie."
I'd been helping Holle with the cooking most nights, eager to learn how to make edible meals without all the fancy tools and ingredients I was accustomed to. I'd done my best to get Erik to learn too, but he still seemed rather bamboozled by the concepts of "spices" and "flavor". For him, eating was just something you did to keep from starving. It being an enjoyable experience was an interesting, but unnecessary, perk.
I finished with the mattress and replaced it on her little bed, and then joined her at the table. She handed me a paring knife and I set to work peeling, slicing, and coring the apples, which all went into a bowl.
"Mother Holle," I said tentatively after several minutes of silence.
"Yes?" she replied, without looking up from her work—her fingers much more deft with her knife than mine, despite her arthritis.
"I think we're going to have to leave soon. We really should get a move on on the next part of our quest."
Holle sighed. "I know. You can't stay here forever. Though having you three here has been such a help. My household has never been run so fine."
"It's been really nice staying here," I told her hastily, not wanting to sound ungrateful. "It's been like a vacation compared to the craziness we've been through before. Heck, I'd stay forever if I thought I could. And the boys like it too, I know. Country life is in their blood, no matter how hard they both try to pretend to be intrepid adventurers. But—"
"But you have been called on a quest, and you must answer," she finished for me. "I know, I know. It is only my own selfishness that would keep your away from completing your journey. Yes, you shall leave here very soon. But if you stay at least one more day, that would make this old woman very happy. We have this pie to finish, after all."
"Of course," I assured her quickly. "We can put off leaving until tomorrow, or even the day after."
"Tomorrow will be fine. I shan't keep you longer than I must."
"Erik and Jack will be sad to go, though I don't know if you'll get them to admit that," I said to her with a grin.
"I'll be sad to see them go," Holle replied. "That lad Erik can carry two pails of water from the well at a time, and it takes Jack half as long to milk the cow as it takes me! It'll have to grow accustomed to doing things the slow way again."
We finished peeling the apples, and then she taught me how to make a simple crust and assemble the pie. It went into the little brick oven behind the cottage—the same one I had found the talkative bread in; it had mysteriously appeared in Holle's yard after our encounter with it—and then my chores were done for the day. I went to go track down the boys to let them know we'd be leaving tomorrow.
Jack was in the vegetable patch in the front garden getting it ready for a few late roots vegetable seeds to be sown.
"Good to know," he replied when I told him, leaning on the hoe he was using to break up the earth. "I figured we out to get going soon. Though I have to admit, I'll be sorry to see the back of this place. I don't mind roughing it with you, but there's something about farm work that soothes the soul." He gave me a crooked, almost apologetic smile. "I guess you can take the man out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the man."
"A soft place to sleep and a warm meal every night?" I raised an eyebrow at him. "Anybody would be crazy if they didn't prefer that to sleeping on the side of the road, hoping some witch doesn't kill you before dinner—which consists of moldy cheese and rock hard bread."
Jack laughed. "Quit talking while you're ahead, or you won't be able to convince me to leave tomorrow! Being hit by one witch's curse was enough for me."
"I'll take the next one," I promised.
Then I hunted down Erik, who was over by the little river that bordered the southern edge of the meadow. He was sitting by the bank with his back against a tree, his arms behind his head and his eyes closed. He looked like he might be asleep, so I slowed my pace and tried to walk more quietly as I approached him. His hair was getting long, I realized, hanging almost into his eyes. I wondered if he'd let me or Holle give it a trim before we left, so he looked a little less like some wildman we'd found living in the woods somewhere.
Which, actually, was kind of that case.
"Erik?" I said quietly, not wanting to startle him by sneaking up on him.
He wasn't asleep. "Hm?" he responded, without opening his eyes.
I came up beside him, and sat next to him. The late afternoon sun glittered on the little stream, and far off in the distance, hazy, purple mountains rose on the horizon.
"We're going to head out tomorrow, if that's okay with you."
"I'm fine with that. I'm surprised we stayed as long as we did."
"Well..." I looked away from the water and at his face. His eyes were still closed. "It's been nice."
"Yeah," he agreed. "It has."
I was quiet for a long moment, just watching him. "Erik?" I finally said.
"Yeah?"
I hesitated. "...Never mind."
Silence fell between us again. Then he finally opened his eyes, and looked over at me. I looked away, back at the water. "You ready to start another quest?" he asked me. "It won't be easy. These kinds of things; they tend to get more and more difficult as the story goes along, don't they?"
I nodded. "I'm ready. I have to be. We don't really have much of a choice, do we?"
He didn't respond right away. When he finally did, he asked a question I'd been dreading. "You ever planning on telling Jack about that book of yours, and where you really come from?"
My stomach twisted into a knot. "Uh... eventually," I hedged. "I've just been... waiting for the right moment."
"You've had plenty," Erik pointed out, his tone was unusually gentle. "During these last two weeks; this would have been the perfect time for it."
I sighed, and ran a hand through my hair. "I know, I know. It's just... the longer I put it off, the harder it is to do. I mean, how the hell do you drop that kind of bomb on someone?"
"I don't know what a bomb is," Erik replied, "but as I recall, you just up and told me everything while we were locked in a dungeon."
"Yeah, but I thought we were going to do, so I didn't have anything to lose," I reminded him. "It wasn't like you could call me crazy and ditch me, could you?"
"I wouldn't have ditched you, even if I wasn't locked in a cell at the time."
"I just don't want to put that on Jack right now, you know? Not when he has his own story still waiting to happen. I don't want to risk messing it up too."
"You think he's going to go back home and plant that last bean?" Erik asked me with a raised eyebrow.
I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. I just don't want any more stories going wrong, you know? I've done enough damage already."
Erik seemed to consider this for several long moments. "The way I see it, you've done a lot more good than you've done damage. The only thing you actually [i]did[/i] was accept an old gnome's challenge. You had no way of knowing his death would impact so many other lives. And you've risked a lot to put everything right."
"So have you and Jack," I reminded him. "And you guys don't have to be doing this with me at all."
Erik shrugged. "Yeah, well. It was getting a bit boring back at my cottage anyway."
I snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure a nice little adventure fighting witches and saving the world is exactly what you needed to break the monotony."
He grinned back. "Exactly. Getting thrown into dungeons and having your face cut open really make you appreciate the tedium of every day life much more."
"Speaking of your face, let me take a look at your cheek. How's it doing?"
Erik turned his head so I could see the long cut running down his cheekbone to his jaw. Mother Holle had taken out the stitches for him the previous week, and he's been fortunate enough to avoid an infection. It was mostly healed, though it was clear he'd have the scar forever.
"Much better. I even forget it's there from time to time. How about your hand?" he asked in turn.
I held it out for him to see, palm up. "Almost as good as new! And thank God for that, because shaking out that mattress one-handed was not easy."
Erik laughed. "But it was great fun to watch you try!"
I gave him a shove, and he almost toppled over, but he didn't stop laughing.
"You laugh now," I warned him, "and watch how sympathetic I'll be when you're the one all messed up! I hurt my hand protecting your unconscious rear end from De Leon, don't you forget that!"
"How could I?" he replied, wiping a tear of mirth form his eye. "You didn't stop talking about it for three days."
I gave him another shove, but this time he took me down with him. I popped back up with half a mind to drag him into the river and give him a good dousing—half indignant, half enjoying myself. He lied in the grass, grinning up at me, while I knelt above him, trying to work out a strategy to get him to the water's edge despite him being bother bigger and stronger than me. I reached out to grab him by the shoulders, planning on rolling him and then kicking him right off the bank. He was faster than me though, and he reached up and caught me by the wrists before I could make good on my plan. Then he flipped me, and suddenly I was on my back and he was the one above, looking far too pleased with himself for my liking.
He snorted with laughter at the expression on my face, and I said some very unladylike things, which only made him laugh even harder. For the first time since I'd met him, he was laughing—really laughing, without holding back. It transformed his face, and it was so infectious that I couldn't help but grin back, despite struggling to maintain my sour expression.
He finally managed to stifle his laughter, and noticed me watching him with a silly smile on my face.
For a second, he smiled back, and my heart started to pound just a little harder as I basked in the warmth of his undivided attention.
But then, just as I opened my mouth to speak, the grin slid off his face, and that old familiar wall suddenly went back up behind his eyes. He pushed himself up and rolled away from me so quickly you'd have thought he was thrown off by an electric shock, and he was on his feet before I even had time to sit up.
"I have to go," he said abruptly.
"What?" I asked, feeling breathless and confused. "Go where?"
"To the... the... to..." he struggled to come up with an excuse, still staring at me with guarded, flat eyes. "Chores," he finally managed to spit out. Without any more explanation, he spun on his heel and headed back towards Holle's cottage as quickly as he could without actually running, his hands clenched into fists at his side.
I watched him go with a sinking feeling in my chest, not sure what had just happened between us. For some reason, it hurt.
New plan!
I'm going to update twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays (yes, I know it's Tuesday right now, but I got excited by the idea and didn't want to wait until Friday).
The chapters will be slightly shorter, but since they'll be coming twice a week instead of once, it will even out. It will also create better pacing I think. One full week just feels like such a looooong wait between chapters.