It was as close to heaven as any earthly experience could ever be. The last several meals I’d had were peas porridge, cold and nine days old, so the sight that greeted me as we entered the kitchen was almost enough to send me into throes of ecstasy.

Strings of sausages hung from the ceiling beside cloves of garlic; steaming rolls of freshly baked bread were sitting beneath warm towels; peeled potatoes sat in a wooden barrel, just waiting to be turned into french fries or mashed potatoes…

“Hi, Hans,” Jack said as we entered, and a man I briefly mistook for a living, breathing mountain looked up from the stool he sat on, a bowl of half shucked peas in his enormous lap.

He grunted in greeting, and then his eyes slid over to me and his bushy eyebrows raised. “You’re the lass who arrived this mornin’ with that Erikson lad?” He said in a rumbling voice with a dark frown, and I swallowed audibly.

“Erikson?” I asked, a little uncertainly.

“Erik,” Jack said. “Erik Erikson, your friend upstairs?”

His name is Erik Erikson? I wanted to say, but the way both Jack and the huge cook were looking at me made the snarky quip die in my throat. I suddenly got the distinct sense that being associated with Erik wasn’t exactly a good thing.

“Um… yeah,” I admitted, looking from one to the other. There was no point in denying it, it seemed to be common knowledge by now that we had arrived together. “But he’s not my… friend, exactly. I only just met him a couple of days ago, and he helped me out of some trouble with wolves.”

The cook grunted again, this time approvingly. “Good. You’ll keep away from that boy if you know what’s good for you,” he said, pointing the tip of his kitchen knife at me warningly.

“Uh… why?” I asked. Dear god, had I really spent the last few days in the company of an ax murderer after all? Erik certainly had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but he didn’t strike me as a dangerous guy. He hadn’t tried to take advantage of me in any definition of the term while I’d been lost and alone and helpless, essentially trapped in his house and entirely at his mercy, so whatever the cook was talking about couldn’t be that bad, right?

Right?

“Uh,” Jack interrupts with an obviously fake cough before the cook can answer. “Rikki here hasn’t had a proper meal today, Hans. Do you think you could put something together for her?”

Hans grunts for the third time, affirmatively this time, and rises to his feet, towering over us in the cramped confines of the kitchen. He places the bowl of peas onto the stool he had been sitting on and starts to clatter around the kitchen, pulling down strings of sausages and slicing rolls of bread.

“Wait, why should I stay away from Erik?” I asked, looking at Jack.

He shifted awkwardly and didn’t quite meet my gaze. “It’s nothing, Hans is just… some people in town just don’t really think he’s entirely, completely… trustworthy, that’s all.”

“Like how?” I pressed him.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said, trying to sound dismissive.

“I have somewhere I need to be in the next couple of days, and I was going to have him guide me there, so it actually matters quite a lot to me,” I protested.

“The girl has a right to know,” Hans growled, turning back to us and shoving a plate full of mouth-wateringly delicious looking food into my hands.

Jack looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t seem to think of anything that would hold water.

“Why don’t people trust Erik?” I ask Hans directly.

“All sorts of reasons,” Hans said darkly. “There are all kinds of strange stories that surround him. That he’s been making deals with the dark creatures, with witches and giants and wolves, and that’s how he’s been making his living in chasing them off. There didn’t use to be so many nasty things in the forest before he came to these parts. I’ve even heard talk that he’s a werewolf.”

“Those are all just rumors, though,” Jack interjects. “There’s no proof that any of that’s true, and you can’t ruin a man based on village gossip.”

“Aye, but it’s fact that his family’s all dead, is it?” demanded Hans. “Wolf attacks, and the house burned down, and him found at the scene, the only survivor? That’s damned suspicious if you ask me. And even you have to admit, master Jack, that the forest has grown far more dangerous since he arrived.”

“Erik’s been living outside the village for years,” Jack pointed out with obvious irritation, “and things have only gotten bad in the forest during the last year or so.”

But Hans just shook his head as if he knew so much more than Jack did. “You didn’t hear all the stories when it happened,” Hans said. “Erik came from a town not even twenty miles away, and word spread quickly enough after it happened. He’d left home to find his fortune, see,” he continued, addressing me directly, and I listened with a sense of horrified fascination. “He got himself a nice little set up just outside this village and set to work making himself useful around these parts. But then, not even a month after he settled down here, there was an attack back in his village.”

“An attack?” I asked. “What kind of attack?”

“Wolves, miss,” answered Hans, and his voice dropped to a theatrical whisper. “A pack of ‘em, as blood thirsty and wicked as the devil himself. They came down from the hills right into the Erikson farm and tore apart the mother and little girl, right in front of their house. Old Mr. Erikson was found inside the cottage, the entire building burnt near to ashes. And the strangest part, the part that didn’t sit right with the rest of their village, nor with ours, is that it was Erik himself what found the bodies. At least, he was found with them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the nearby farmers saw the smoke coming off the cottage and went to investigate. They found Erik, covered in blood, kneeling over his mother and sister’s bodies. He claimed he had found them there like that, already dead, and was too horrified to think about going for help. But funny, innit? Funny how the very day he returns home for the first time since setting out to make his fortune, he finds his entirely family freshly dead? What are the odds of that?”

“How is he supposed to have committed murder by wolf? Jack demanded, in exasperation.

“Well, there’s talk, isn’t there?” Hans continued. “Talk about that boy being in league with the wolves around these parts. He was always the one who took care of any wolf problems we had around here. He’s mighty good with animals. Almost like he has control over them. And with his family gone, he inherited the entire farm, all to himself.”

Jack scoffed. “You mean the farm he doesn’t live on, that he doesn’t work, that he gets nothing out of?”

“I mean the farm he sold after their deaths, sold for a tidy sum,” replied Hans grimly.

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Jack, Jack who obviously didn’t by the story that Erik had made some kind of supernatural pact with wolves to take out his own family. “Is that all true?”

“Well…” Jack hesitated. “Well… his family really did all die, but god knows how it all actually happened. This is all just according to a bunch of farmers from village twenty miles away, and they’ve probably exaggerated the story a hundred times over. I’ll admit I’m not Erik’s biggest fan—he’s a right twat most of the time—but this all sounds like village gossip to me. People love to spread it around because Erik’s a bit of jerk, and does the town’s dirty jobs.”

“You’re too young to be able to see the bad in people, boy,” Hans told Jack. “But believe you me, there’s a whole mess of bad in that Erikson lad.”

“Come on Rikki,” Jack said, taking me by the arm and pulling back out of the kitchen. “Let’s eat outside, it’s a warm morning.”

Jack led me out of the inn and around the edge of the building, where there were a couple of stools leaned up against the wall. He sat on one and I on another, where I continued to cram my breakfast into my mouth in a most unladylike fashion.

“So you’re leaving town, then?” Jack asked, watching me carefully, his expression still serious.

I nodded, my mouth too full to reply verbally.

“I…” Jack stopped, cleared his throat, then tried again. “I meant what I said, about not thinking that Erik is the kind of person who would do… all that stuff Hans was talking about. But… he is right that it might not be a great idea to hire him to be your guide.”

“I’ve spent the last few days with him, and he hasn’t caused me any harm so far,” I pointed out after a swallow that took some effort. “I mean, he’s not exactly the best conversationalist, or the most pleasant company, but-”

“I don’t think he’s intentionally hurt anyone,” Jack said quickly, “at least, not anyone that didn’t start something first. But… well, trouble just seems to follow him wherever he goes. You might be getting yourself into more than you bargained for by staying in his company any longer than you have to.”

I was about to protest, but then I was forcefully reminded of the freaking giant that had tried to kill us yesterday.

Then again, I have been the one to lead the pack of ravenous wolves to Erik’s door, which he so kindly killed, skinned, and gutted for me.

He had gone and gotten his ankle sprained, forcing me to carry him out of the forest; but I had been the one to accidentally lead to Rumpelstiltskin’s death, and wrangle Erik into helping me locate the castle where the miller’s daughter would be held.

Honestly, when it came to who was causing trouble for who, the score was coming out pretty even on both sides.

“Well,” I said slowly, thinking over my words with care. “That may be, but I don’t really know anyone else who could help me, and I’m kind of working on a strict deadline here, and I’ve come to learn that he’s not the kind of person who asks a lot of questions; so I don’t really think I have many other options besides let him be the one to take me to where I need to go. I can handle a little trouble now and again. Someone else’s problems make a nice distraction from my own.”

Jack didn’t seem to know quite what to make of my reply. “Where exactly is it you’re heading?” he asked.

“To…” I faltered. I didn’t actually know the name of the place we were heading, or even what it was. A town? A city? A big ol’ castle all by itself in the middle of a swamp? I was afraid to guess; I didn’t want to immediately out myself as not only a foreigner to this country, but a foreigner to this universe. Dimension? World?

Whatever.

“To… uh… the royal… tooooown… ciiiiiiiiity… plaaaaace?” I tried, trailing off vaguely at the end of each word in the hopes that Jack would fill in the gap for me with the correct option.

He just looked at me like I was a little soft in the head. “To Kingsbury?” he suggested.

“Yes, exactly,” I said quickly. Well, probably. I mean, that sounded like what someone would name the capital of a kingdom, right?

“If you leave before noon today, you could be there by tomorrow evening.”

“Tomorrow?” I gasp. I hadn’t realized it would be so far. That meant that I had an entire day less than I had originally assumed. We wouldn’t arrive in Kingsbury until the day before the King gave the Miller’s Daughter his final ultimatum.

“What is it you need to do in Kingsbury that’s so important?” Jack asked, leaning forward on the stool so that his elbows rested on his knees, and looking hard at me.

“It’s… nothing,” I lied pathetically. I could never come up with good lies on the spot, and even if I could, I have the guiltiest damn face when lying that you’ll ever see.

“Are you on a quest?” he pressed, and something like excitement flashed in his eyes.

I paused, and took a moment to look back at him as intently as he was looking at me. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the intense interest in his expression.

I was on a quest, I guess. An unofficial one, maybe, but a quest nonetheless. And quests weren’t exactly unheard of in this world, were they? They were practically a dime a dozen, falling into the laps of worthy tailor’s sons and ill-treated stepchildren.

And Jack… who was Jack?

Jack, like Hans, was an incredibly common name, used and reused in fairy tales. There was one particularly famous Jack I could think of off the top of my head.

“Do you live here at the inn with your aunt and uncle?” I asked Jack abruptly, changing the subject.

He looked surprised by my question, but answered it. “Oh… uh, no, I don’t. I live with my mother on a farm just outside of town.”

“Just your mom?”

Jack looked a little uncomfortable, and finally breaks his unwavering eye contact. “Yes. Just my mother. My father died some years ago.”

“And you’re… forgive me for asking, you’re very poor?”

Jack flushed, turning pink from the tip of his nose to his ears. “My aunt and uncle do all right with the tavern, even though this village doesn’t see many visitors-”

“But you and your mom?”

“Yes, we’re poor,” he said, and it came out bitterly. “My mother’s too old to work the farm, and I can’t maintain it by myself. My aunt and uncle have to spend all of their time keeping up the inn, and they have no children of their own to help them. It’s just my mother and I, and we’re losing everything. The crops won’t grow, and we’ve had to sell every single one of our cows.”

He was obviously angry, but I got the sense that it wasn’t directed towards me, even though I’d forced the information out of him. His hand went towards his pant pocket, almost unconsciously.

“I just sold our last cow today,” he said, and his tone was suddenly flat. “She was too old to give milk. I didn’t think I could get even a single copper for her.”

“But you did get something, didn’t you?” I asked, and this time it was my turn to lean in and fix Jack with an expectant stare. “You met someone, and he bought the cow off of you?”

Jack’s flush deepened, and he looked away from me, off into the distance, beyond the town proper, presumably in the direction his mother’s farm lay. “I was supposed to head home right after going to market. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t face my mother. I stopped here instead, because I don’t want to admit… I don’t know why I did it, it was so stupid. But he was talking to me, and it all seemed to make sense at the time…”

“What did you sell the cow for, Jack?” I pressed.

His hand clenched into a fist on his thigh. “Beans,” he spat. “Magic beans. Which are probably just ordinary beans, just three, not even enough to feed my poor old mother. I’m so stupid-”

“You’re not,” I said, leaning back, my mind racing. “You’re not stupid at all. Magic beans wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen today.” God, I itched to open the book and peruse its pages right then… but then I remembered that they had all gone mysteriously blank.