Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The)

by Bach, Shelby

“Now we just need to knock,” I said, dusting off my hands.

  Chase took a long length of climbing rope off his shoulder. A three-pronged hook swung off one end.

  “What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Dad calls it Jack Attack,” Chase said.

  “Your dad named a grappling hook after himself?” This was perilously close to making fun of Jack, but even Chase had to realize how ridiculous that was.

  Chase didn’t answer, which made me suspect he knew. He swung the rope in slow circles, like it was a lasso.

  “What are you doing?” Now even Lena seemed a little suspicious.

  “Earning my keep.” Chase released the rope, and the metal clunked against the wood about halfway up. He whirled the rope and released it again.

  “Well, that’s one way to knock,” Lena said, impressed in spite of herself.

  “That’s how Dad always does it.” Chase coiled the rope carefully. “You know, seeing as I’m the only one here who has any experience in this Tale, maybe I should do all the talking.”

  I gave him a dirty look. I knew he would pull something like this. He was trying to steal Lena’s Tale. Good thing Lena was way too smart to fall for—

  “Fine,” Lena said.

  “What?” I said sharply.

  “And you two might want to step back a little.” Chase slung the coiled rope over his shoulder. “We wouldn’t want the giant’s wife to think that we were trying to ambush her.”

  “We’re less than a tenth of her size. It would be like three mice coming at us,” I said, but Lena just dragged me to the side, a little behind a pot as big as my classroom, with Amy-size pansies. “Lena, it’s your Tale.”

  “Shhhhh!” Lena hissed. “Someone’s coming.”

  Someone was coming. Huge steps thumped closer and louder from inside. Then the door swung open with a squeal like a car with bad brakes.

  “Yes?” boomed a voice. Lena’s fingernails dug into my forearm, and my heart banged around behind my ribs.

  With the huge clay pot in the way, the only part of the giant’s wife I could see was the bottom of her white apron and the leather sandals on her feet. Her toenails were painted red.

  “Mistress Giant, I have heard that you are kind to travelers, but I had not heard of your radiant beauty,” Chase said loudly.

  I rolled my eyes. He was certainly laying it on a little thick.

  He gave the giant’s wife a sad smile, barely big enough to show his dimples. “My Companions and I are on a quest. We no longer have our packs, and I’m afraid that we’ll run out of food. We would gladly trade a crust of bread for a day’s work around the house.”

  “No,” the giant’s wife said, a little uncertainly. “No, I don’t think so. Thank you anyway.”

  “Just a few crumbs?” Chase looked astounded that his flattery hadn’t worked.

  “Try up the road. The yellow house,” said the giant’s wife. The door began to close. Lena looked about as panicked as she had when she realized the Fey cookbook caught on fire.

  We couldn’t Fail now, not before we even got inside.

  I ran out. Lena flailed a little, trying to catch me before I got far.

  “Wait!!” I waved my arms to get the giantess’s attention.

  “Oh, little girls!” said the giant’s wife in an entirely different tone, spotting me and Lena. She knelt so quickly that the calico fabric of her dress blurred. Her face was as big as a set of French doors, but except for the fact that her teeth were too big and pointed, her smile seemed kind. “I’ve never had little girls come to the door before. Just little boys, and I’ve had such trouble with them.”

  I smiled back. Maybe I wasn’t such a terrible Companion after all. At least when climbing wasn’t involved.

  “Nice to meet you, Mistress Giant,” I said and held out my hand.

  The giant’s wife laughed a little and gave me her index finger to shake. It was covered in flour, which rose in a cloud around my head. I coughed a little.

  “My name is Lily. This is my friend, Rachel. And that’s Chip,” Lena added in an apologetic tone, pointing at Chase. “He likes to talk a lot. I’m sorry if he insulted you.”

  Chase gave an angry little snort, but other than that, he kept his mouth shut.

  “Wonderful to meet you, Lily, Rachel, and Chip,” said the giant’s wife warmly. “I suppose I have to let you help now. My mother-in-law is coming this evening, and I’m terribly behind on dinner.” She laid her hand, palm up, on the ground. Lena stepped on it in her fearless leader mode. I tried not to think about heights and followed, grabbing on to a finger to keep my balance. “Besides, I’ve always wanted little girls in the house. But Jimmy—that’s my husband—just keeps eating them. He says they taste like sugar. And sometimes cinnamon.”

  Lena and I exchanged a nervous look. Then the giant’s wife stood up about five times faster than elevators move. Making a break for it was no longer an option.

  “I’m told that I taste like brussels sprouts,” I said shakily, clinging to the giantess’s ring finger.

  “Earwax,” Lena said, pointing to herself.

  The giant’s wife laughed again. This close, it sounded a little like thunder. “Don’t worry. I don’t eat humans.” Lena and I let out tiny relieved sighs, but then the giantess added, “They give me terrible indigestion.”

  The giantess headed down a hall about as long as an airport runway. Car-size frames hung on the walls, and each photo showed the giantess smiling with a man with dark green skin.

  “Hey!” Chase said from the front step. “What about me?”

  “I guess you better come in too,” the giantess said without turning around. “Close the door behind you.”

  Chase stepped slowly over the threshold and looked up at the door in horror. It was at least fifteen times as big as he was. Served him right for trying to take over Lena’s Tale.

  • • •

  The giant’s wife told us to call her Matilda, and she put us to work.

  “You, boy,” she said when Chase came in after closing the front door. I had the feeling that she didn’t like Chase much and wanted him out of the way. I warmed to her a little. “Sweep out under the fridge.”

  Chase looked shocked. This was obviously the first time a giant had actually taken him up on working for a meal.

  “I’m sure there’s dust and crumbs and who knows what else under there,” Matilda told me and Lena conversationally, “and I’ve been meaning to do it for years.”

  I could see why she hadn’t gotten around to it. “The fridge is as big as a hotel,” I whispered to Lena. Even a giant would have a hard time moving it.

  Matilda gave Chase a small black-bristled brush.

  “Terrier,” Lena said, pointing at the brush, and when Chase took it, it seemed about that size.

  “Yes, ma’am.” With a sigh, Chase scurried toward the crack between the fridge and the floor.

  Chores seemed easy compared to getting up the beanstalk and inside the house. It almost felt like the hardest part of the Tale was over. Finding the gold, hen, and harp would be a cinch.

  Lena and I helped Matilda cook. Our first task was to stand in the sink and pull the silk off the oversize corncobs. We discovered pretty quickly that Matilda liked to talk.

  “It’s just so lucky that you girls showed up. I don’t normally need the help, but—” Matilda bit her lip.

  “Her front teeth are the size of cookie sheets,” Lena whispered to me. It wasn’t exactly a cheery observation.

  “Well, I don’t like to criticize,” Matilda said, “but my mother-in-law is so particular. I’ve been dreading this visit for months now. Last time she stayed with us, I fixed whale for dinner, and she complained because she had to pick the bones out of her teeth.”

  I yanked a bunch of silk strands off the corn. “Jump rope,” I said, holding them out to Lena, and she nodded. I tried to imagine it getting stuck in my teeth. Then I tried to imagine being big enough to get it stuck in my teeth. T
his was probably how Sarah Thumb felt all the time.

  “What will you serve tonight?” Lena asked Matilda.

  “Do we really want to know?” I whispered, alarmed.

  “It’s important to be friendly,” Lena whispered back.

  “Condors,” Matilda said, chopping a potato the size of my mom’s Jeep. “I had to get such a lot of them, but she said she prefers white meat. They’re already in the oven so I don’t need to worry about them.”

  “Where’s your husband now?” I asked, determined to steer the conversation away from dinner. “She’s his mother. He should be helping you.”

  “Help cook? Jimmy?” Matilda laughed thunderously again. “You humans have such silly ideas. No, he’s at work.”

  “What does he do?” I said, relieved. Work was a much safer subject than dinner.

  “Oh, transport,” Matilda said airily. “He owes a fairy fifty years of labor. Only thirty-one years to go—nearly thirty. Rachel—”

  Lena nudged me, and I remembered that Rachel was supposed to be me. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Would you mind getting the rosemary from the spice cabinet? I want to put some in the potatoes.”

  “Lena, do I need to look for the wine?” I whispered. When she gave me a strange look, I added, “For the slumberwort.”

  “I decided against the slumberwort,” Lena whispered back.

  “Oh.” I wondered if she had another plan. Or if we would end up tiptoeing past a snoring giant, only to see an enormous eye crack open. . . .

  Oh, well. It was Lena’s Tale.

  “Sure!” I told Matilda, and the giant’s wife put her hand in the sink and offered her palm to me. I clung to her thumb and pretended I was only two feet away from the ground until she deposited me gently in the open cabinet above her.

  “Thank you, dear. When I look, I always end up pulling half the spices out.”

  I walked among the bottles, skimming labels. With a shudder, I sidestepped a barbeque rub that claimed to be good for condor, turkey, human, and eggplant.

  “I’m just glad that I only have to fix two meals for her—dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow morning,” said Matilda. “The hotel will take care of the rest.”

  “Oh?” Lena said innocently. “You’re going out of town?”

  I spotted the rosemary on the back of the shelf. This Tale would be a piece of cake.

  “Just for a couple days. We’re taking my mother-in-law skiing in the Arctic Circle—for her 650th birthday.”

  The spice bottle was almost as tall as I was, and I had to shove my shoulder against the glass to shift it.

  Matilda noticed. “Oh, you found it! Wonderful!” She reached into the cabinet and grabbed me and the rosemary at the same time, pinning my back against the bottle. My feet dangled over empty space, and overcome with dizziness, I wondered if Matilda would still use the rosemary if I threw up on it.

  “Maybe I should go help Cha-Chip,” I said, correcting myself just in time. “It’s kind of a big job for one person. One person our size anyway.”

  Lena shot me a pained look that clearly said she resented being abandoned, but I couldn’t help it. If I was going to be any help, I needed to spend some quality time on solid ground.

  “Suit yourself.” Matilda set me down on the floor gently.

  I took a second to steady myself on wobbly knees. “I’ll let you know when we’ve finished.”

  The fridge sat just low enough that I had to duck my head as I went, so I almost ran into Chase before I saw him. He leaned on the brush, arms crossed. I was annoyed before he even said anything.

  “You haven’t done any work at all!” My hands were still sticky with the residue from the corn silk.

  Chase scowled. “Wow, you’re really determined not to like me.” I wanted to say that this wasn’t true, that he was the difficult one, but then he continued, “I already finished. I’ll prove it.”

  He hopped off the brush and walked to the back wall. “She didn’t give me a dustpan, so I just pushed it through this mousehole.”

  The mousehole was a small round opening in the paneling that edged the floor. I touched a black streak that covered one side of the arch. Soot came off on my hand. “Why are there scorch marks?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the giants tried to smoke out the mice.” Chase strode through the arch confidently, even though it was even darker past the hole than it was under the giants’ fridge. “Come on. It goes all the way outside.”

  Half a minute later, a slight breeze cooled my face. Chase stopped in another opening, a dim light behind him.

  He pointed out a dust bunny that came all the way up to my chest, just a few feet away from the mousehole. Beside it stood a mound of dust, some crumbs, and a few assorted items, which included a shark’s tooth.

  Beyond the mound, the sun was setting. It turned the pool orange.

  “You found it!” I cried, delighted.

  “Of course I did. I put it there, didn’t I?” Now that we were outside, I noticed the sweat at his temples. He had been working hard.

  “Not that. An easy way in and out of the house.” This Tale was looking easier and easier all the time.

  “Oh, right. I knew that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We better get back. If the sun’s setting, then I bet the giant will be back soon.”

  “And his mom,” Chase said as we turned around. “Trust me. It’s usually the moms you have to worry about. If she’s old enough to survive her first six centuries, she’s definitely a threat.”

  If that was true, I didn’t want to leave Lena alone inside the giant’s house any longer. I hurried through the dark space and then under the fridge with my head bent.

  “We’re done!” I shouted up to Matilda.

  The giant’s wife wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “Wonderful! You can help Lily dice.”

  “You mean, I’m done.” Chase shoved the brush in front of him. “I’m still waiting for your apology, you know. You accused me of slacking off.”

  “You’ll get it right after you tell me you’re sorry for spelling my sword and making me look like an idiot,” I said as Matilda stooped and offered us her palm.

  “No way. That was really funny.”

  I stepped onto Matilda’s hand, too busy glaring at Chase to remember to brace myself against a thumb or a finger. Matilda stood without warning, and I started to topple.

  Chase lunged and caught my arm just in time. “You know, for someone afraid of falling, your balance really sucks.”

  Only Chase would insult me while he was saving my life. So, why the heck did Rapunzel want me to be his friend?

  “I always have the hardest time getting pieces small enough. I’ve never had enough patience.” Matilda deposited us on the counter. “But Lily is doing a superb job.”

  Lena’s cheeks were wet, which made Chase look a little freaked out.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Onions.” Lena pointed to the pile of white smelly bits in front of her with her sword, and Chase let out such a relieved sigh that I almost laughed. “They’re a lot more potent when they’re this big.”

  “I can’t believe the first time we get to use our swords is to do battle with a vegetable.” Chase looked pained at the thought.

  Lena wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “Would you rather fight Matilda?”

  Chase glanced over at Matilda, who opened her oven, checking on the roasted condors. “No,” he admitted. “She’s pretty big, even for a giant.”

  Lena gestured to the next onion sternly, and Chase raised his sword with a grimace.

  A key scraped the lock down the hallway, and a few seconds later, a man’s voice boomed, “We’re here! Do I smell Englishmen cooking?”

  I froze. He sounded a lot meaner than his wife, and I couldn’t imagine them both being allergic to humans. The barbeque rub came to mind, and I gulped, wondering if Matilda was planning a second course.

  “No, darling, it’s a surprise!”
Matilda shouted back, so loudly that the counter shook a little. To my relief, she whispered to us, “They’re early. You’ll have to hide. Quickly! Into the bread box.”

  It was at the far end of the counter—a painted wooden box, labeled in curling blue letters. We ran, our sneakers squeaking on the marble. Chase reached it first and waited outside.

  “Matilda?” The giant was halfway down the hall. I ran faster. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if we didn’t make it in time.

  When Lena reached Chase, he helped her over the rim, and then he helped me too before jumping in after us.

  “In the kitchen, dear!” Once she saw we were all inside, Matilda slid the door closed, telling us, “Try to be as quiet as possible.”

  It clicked shut, and we were left in the dark. Our heavy breathing sounded way too loud in the enclosed space, and every noise echoed off the walls. The only light came from a small crack between the door and its frame. An odd smell crept into my nose—a little bit like chalk, but less earthy and more animal-like.

  Even hidden, I still didn’t feel very safe. If Jimmy decided he wanted a roll or something with dinner, we wouldn’t have anywhere to run. “We need an escape route. Just in case.”

  “Did anyone think to bring a flashlight?” Chase whispered back.

  “I did.” I heard Lena fumble in her jacket pocket, and she flicked it on.

  Chase breathed in sharply, and I had barely enough time to clap a hand over his mouth to keep him from shouting.

  Then my eyes adjusted, and I could see what was worth screaming about.

  “Skeletons,” Lena said breathlessly.

  ozens of skeletons sat in the bread box behind us, stretching all the way to the end, tumbled carelessly on top of each other. It was hard not to imagine the faces that went with the skulls.

  “‘Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread,’” I whispered, realizing why the skeletons were there with a horrified shudder. Chase’s breath came in panicked bursts over the back of my hand.

  The thought of what kind of dust was entering our lungs made me gag, so I tugged up my shirt and breathed through the fabric.

  Lena nodded and pressed a hand over her mouth like she was fighting the urge to throw up too.