It had taken a while to convince Erik that I had no idea why all the other stories in the Book had disappeared, or why the only one remaining had called me out specifically, by name. He seemed to have the impression that there was something I wasn’t telling him—which was completely true, though I didn’t know any more than he did what had happened to the Book.

Erik seemed less willing than ever to help me with the miller’s daughter fiasco now, expressing a desire to stay as far away as possible from whatever crazy magic I had gotten myself embroiled in. At the moment, he was silent, deep in his own thoughts. Which, unfortunately, left me to mine.

For my part, I was worrying about what I would do if he ducked out entirely, deciding to wash his hands clean of the whole mess. I didn’t have any money, no friends, no knowledge of the economic or political climate, I didn’t know who the king was or what the laws of the land were… There were ten thousand different ways I could end up dead or indisposed before ever even reaching the castle where the miller’s daughter was being kept.

And that wasn’t to mention how the hell I was supposed to turn an entire room full of straw into gold when I got there.

I nearly started hyperventilating as Erik and I trudged at an agonizingly slow pace through the dense woods.

It would be fine, I tried to reassure myself. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. Let’s just take this one step at a time for now, and right now, the first step is getting out of these damn woods.

But I couldn’t keep my mind from jumping from one worry to another. It slid from my immediate problem of princess-rescuing, to the more distant one of what was happening back in my world, in the real world.

I didn’t have to worry about my family panicking when they noticed I was gone. I never thought I’d be grateful for the car accident that took both my parents two years before, but at least this way they wouldn’t have to deal with the torment of their only daughter suddenly going missing off the face of the earth.

My friends would be worried, but we’d all gone our separate ways and were so busy with life that we often went weeks, even months without hearing from one another. Who knew how long it would be until they even realized I was gone?

My job would notice right away, of course. They would be the ones who alerted the police. I tried to imagine what it would be like. The investigation dead ending because there was no suspicious boyfriend to pin the blame on, no stalkers or enemies to speak of. How long would the police search for me? Would I be declared dead? Did time even move the same here and back home? Was this place like Narnia, where years can pass in the span of a few second in the real world? Or, perhaps, it worked in the opposite direction. Maybe I would find my way home in a few days, only to discover that a hundred years had been lost to time while I was gone, and everyone I knew were long since dead and gone.

I began to feel slightly sick. This hardly seemed real, any of it.

Only that wasn’t true at all. Every bit of what I had been through so far had felt real, terrifyingly, impossibly real. But people don’t just get sucked into fairytale worlds, that just doesn’t happen. Yet here I was.

It was dark in the woods, but I studied the side of Erik’s face out of the corner of my eye as well as I could. The expressions of pain he made as he struggled along on his bad ankle, the pores on his skin, each individual eyelash, his dead weight as he hung from my shoulder, the thereness of his arm draped around my neck. There was no way I could dream all that up. Erik had to be real, and if he was real, so was everything else.

Including a very real girl in danger of losing her life if I didn’t do something about it.

Hours passed in tense silence, until neither of us could go on anymore—Erik in too much pain, me too exhausted. We finally had to stop, separating as soon as I helped Erik take a seat on a mossy stone. It had to be past midnight now, and the thought that the light of dawn was still six hours away made me feel more drained and miserable than ever.

I slept fitfully, exposed and shivering, though the summer’s night never dropped to a temperature that put us in danger of hypothermia. Every time I was roused from uneasy sleep, I would half sit up and roll over, only to see Erik still awake, his back against a tree, his bow across his lap, and a single arrow held loosely in his hand, as if ready to notch it at a moment’s notice.

Despite Erik’s watchful vigil, my dreams were plagued by wolves and giants, gnarled old gnomes and ill omens. Eventually I gave up on sleep entirely only a handful of hours later.

It was still dark when I finally sat up, picking sticks and leaves out of my thick, curly hair—but the sky had turned from black to indigo. That gave me a little hope. I knew that dawn wouldn’t actually bring anything with it to make this journey any easier, but I felt as though just the presence of daylight would give me a little more strength.

“Finally up?” Erik grunted, as if he were waking me up at a leisurely eleven in the morning, rather than four.

“I feel worse than I did before,” I groaned regretfully, trying to stretch out the cramps in my body to no avail.

“You could have been sleeping in a real bed by now if you had just kept going.”

“You wanted to stop just as much as I did,” I pointed out, rising to my aching feet.

“For a brief rest, not a four hour nap.”

“We’re not all wolf-killing, giant-fighting, forest-treking terminators, okay? I’m doing the best with what I’ve got.” A stabbing headache was beginning to drill its way right down the middle of my forehead and I could feel every individual blister on my feet I’d gotten so far.

I grabbed Erik's wrists and yanked him up off the ground, quickly sliding under his arm to steady him. "Which way?"

Erik pointed to our left with his good arm. "That way.”

We traveled on, the journey feeling harder than ever, but I intently watched the sky through breaks in the canopy of leaves overhead. It grew lighter and lighter every passing minute, and I knew that daybreak wasn’t far off now.

I was so focused on looking up that when Erik suddenly stumbled, I nearly went down hard with the both of us.

“Hey, be careful!” I snapped reflexively, looking over at him.

His head suddenly snapped up and he blinked a few times in a row, his eyelids dragging as if he had to fight to keep them open.

“Wha-? Oh, sorry,” he mumbled. A few steps later, and his head started to droop again, his eyes fluttering closed, and his bad foot tried to take his weight. This time I was paying attention and was able to catch him before he could send both of us sprawling onto our faces.

“Hey, wake up! You can’t sleep yet, you said we were nearly there,” I said loudly, giving him a little shake to rouse him.

“Not asleep,” Erik grunted, despite the fact that his eyes were clearly closed and his chin was resting against his chest.

I groaned in exasperation, suddenly having to take almost all his weight. “You should have just slept when we took a break earlier,” I grunted. “We can’t afford to stop for another four or five hours, not while we’re so close to town!”

“Mm-hm,” Erik agreed, clearly with no actual idea what he was agreeing with. He slid down a little further, and then jolted half awake, “I’m awake,” he quickly insisted, fooling no one. He rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his good hand and then shook his head vigorously.

“What are you just standing there staring at me for?” he demanded, glaring at me through heavy lids that were already in danger of falling closed again. “We’re nearly to town, come on, hurry up.”

To his credit, he really did try. Erik kept passing out for the briefest of seconds, but each time he came alive again as if he’d been poked with a cattle prod, until the irresistible tug sleep came to claim him once again. I tried to get us as far as I could as quickly as possible in the meantime, but I knew it was a lost cause. Between his battle with the giant and going on nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, in the cold, with a broken ankle and a sprained wrist, there was just no way he could continue for much longer. Dawn finally broke somewhere on a horizon that I couldn’t see past all the trees, but my hopes had never been lower.

But then, just ahead, I thought I saw a shaft of bright morning sunlight piercing through the line of tree trunks, and I realize that there was a break in the trees ahead.

“Erik, look! I think that’s the end of the woods, I think we made it!” I cried. At that moment however, Erik lost his battle with consciousness, and both his legs went out from under him completely. I was able to hold him up for one second, two, three—and then I had to let him fall to the ground. He stirred, raised his head, but his eyes were still closed.

“We’re there? Good, time for a nap. Just a little one,” he mumbled, and he was out like a light. I gave him a firm shake a few times, but each time he never roused enough to take more than one or two halting steps. His body was demanding sleep, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I couldn’t even blame him, my own body was crying out for a proper rest, and I knew that if I hadn’t slept earlier, if I continued to push myself rather than take that uncomfortable nap on the forest floor hours before, I’d be curled right up next to him, only a hundred feet from town but too exhausted to continue a single step more.

I sighed and contemplated what to do, whether to leave Erik there and run to the village, then come back with some one who could carry him back; or try to carry him myself, which would slow me down considerably--but then I wouldn't be leaving my unconscious companion to the mercy of whatever animals lurked in the woods.

I opted for the second option, grasping Erik firmly by his waist and hauling him up. I have no idea where I got the strength or the energy, I assume it was out of pure desperation that I even managed to drag him into the sunshine.

I was able to pull Erik for about hundred feet, right to the edge of the forest, where I finally dropped him with aching arms. I couldn't drag him any further; I was too tired and he was far too heavy. I panted with my hands on my knees and looked out over the expanse of wide, rolling hills before me, a little valley that cradled a village so close that I could smell the first batch of bread being baked that morning on the air.

I could make it to the first building in only a few minutes if I ran. And if someone ran back, we could get Erik in as little as ten or fifteen. That was all, just ten or fifteen minutes he would be by himself, alone and unprotected, at the mercy of the creatures of the woods.

It would be fine. It would be fine, right? I had spent hours in those woods all alone, and nothing had attacked me. Except for those wolves. And Rumpelstiltskin.

And I had been conscious. Not quite as easy prey as the sleeping man at my feet would be.

But there was no other option. I couldn’t drag him anymore, I didn’t have the strength. I would just have to run, and hope.

I sprinted into the valley, ignoring the burning of my lungs as best I could and making a beeline for the closest house. It took me seven minutes to reach it, which I knew because I counted the seconds out, hoping I could make it in under five.

It was one of the larger buildings, two stories with a big oak door and a weathered sign emblazoned with a naked mermaid and a bottle of booze. Classy joint.

I pounded on door with my fists and called as loudly as I could manage between gasping breaths.

"Help! Please, someone, I need help! My friend is out there, someone!" I cried.

The door swung open inward and I fell forward, just barely managing to catch myself before I hit the floor.

A stout woman with very pink cheeks and flyaway hair thrown up in a messy bun stood before me, the emotion in her eyes a mixture of concern and nosy interest.

"What was that?" she asked, in a disconcertingly high soprano voice. "Someone needs help? Who? Where?"

“My friend. We got lost in the woods all night and he’s too tired to go on, and I can’t carry him all this way by myself. Please, someone has to go get him, he’s still on the edge of the forest,” I said, my energy spent, pointing to the far away dark mound which was Erik's crumpled body.

The woman's eyes grew wide and she huffed a little Oooh!, then turned back into the house. "Richard! Come quick! Some young ones got lost in the woods, and a boy needs some help!" she called, wringing her spotless apron. There was a thundering overhead as pounding footsteps made their way across the ceiling, then down a flight of dark stairs on the far end of the room.

A man as tall and thin as the woman was short and round came bounding into view, his slightly graying hair askew, his eyes bright and alert. "What? Where? Who needs help?" His gaze fell upon me, and his eyes widened. "You?" he asked, peering closer.

I grimaced. I must have been a sight; bloody, muddy, and sweaty. "No, not me. A boy, on the edge of the forest. He's too exhausted to go on, and I can’t carry him the rest of the way. Please help, I can’t just leave him there," I pleaded, pointing again.

I wished they would just go already, I wasn't comfortable leaving Erik laying there, unconscious and alone.

The man seemed to be thinking along the same lines I was, and he dashed off without another word, his long legs carrying him to my friend's forlorn form twice as fast as I had managed.

"Come in, come in. Oh you poor dear, you look like you need a drink and a nice bath. Just come on in deary, that's it," the woman crooned softly, ushering me into the blissfully dark room. The woman placed a reassuringly steady hand on my back and led me to a long bar, asking me questions as we went. "You poor thing. You must be in a state right now! And your poor friend. I’m sure he will be alright. What did you say his name was?" she asked, slipping behind the bar and pulling out a dusty bottle from underneath.

"His name is-" I began, interrupted by a huge yawn. Now that Ezu was taken care of, at least for the moment, the wear of the past two days was beginning to set in. My eyelids dropped, and my head felt like it was on fire. I sat down on a chair at the bar and rested my forehead on it, enjoying the feeling of the smooth, cool wood against my feverish face. "His name is Erik," I mumbled. At that moment, three things happened simultaneously. The woman gasped, and almost dropped the bottle she held in her hands. At the same moment I felt weariness take me over, and pull me down, down into the dark well of sleep. And finally, just before I closed my eyes and let slumber take me, the oak door burst open, and I saw a dark silhouette framed there, haloed by a blinding white light.

Then my eyelids slid shut, and I thought no more.