Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (24 page)

After a few minutes, I found a rhythm: I reached up for a leaf above me, stepped on the next stem, and stood up straight before I reached up again.

It was manageable, as long as I only let my mind focus on certain things—like where the next leaf was, for example, or how helpful all the tiny spikes on the stems were. They made getting a good grip much easier despite my sweaty palms.

Then, just over halfway up, my foot slipped. Both hands grabbed the next leaf, and I caught myself easily. So, that part wasn’t so bad.

But then I automatically looked down to reposition my foot and saw how far we had come.

The Tree of Hope was just a small green circle, barely bigger than my thumbnail. The square EAS building looked a lot like a grass-colored napkin with a gray border. Speckles of color moved across the lawn.
People
, I realized with a start.

I had seen this view before. I had dreamed this.
Three
times. I really
would
slip. My stomach turned over inside me, weightless suddenly, as if I were already falling.

I didn’t
exactly
freeze.

I leaped at the beanstalk’s stem and wrapped both arms and both legs around it.

Fear is inevitable
. I hadn’t known Rapunzel meant my thing with heights.

It wasn’t like that time in the weapons closet. I couldn’t make myself move, but instead of going blank, my mind buzzed.

I tried to tell myself that there were plenty of things that scared me more than falling. Looking like an idiot in front of everybody in EAS, for instance. Or giving Chase the opportunity to make fun of me later. Or letting Lena down, because I was too afraid to climb a measly Beanstalk.

Unfortunately, none of this made me start climbing again.

I shouldn’t have listened to Rapunzel. I should have sent George up the beanstalk in my place.

For a while, the only thing I heard was the blood pounding in my ears. I refused to fall. I wasn’t going to die here, not on Lena’s first Tale, not before we had even gotten to the giant’s house.

I clutched the stem so tightly that my fingernails dug through the surface, and I tried not to remember what it felt like, falling in my dream, with the wind ripping my breath away and my scream trapped in my throat and my hands groping at empty—

“You’re not going to fall, Rory.”

It was Chase. His voice was only a few feet away. I breathed again. I hadn’t noticed until right that second that I had been holding my breath.

“Look at me,” Chase said. Slowly, I raised my head. He squatted on the leaf a little above and beside me, his limbs sprawled out carelessly. He leaned closer, just one hand holding the stem above him. “You’re not going to fall, but we have to keep moving. Lena’s got someplace to be.”

I nodded stubbornly. I knew
that.

“Come on, then.” Chase started to climb again, and in two seconds, he was out of sight.

I tried to follow. I stared at my arm, telling it to move. It didn’t want to let go. The most it did was twitch a little.

“Rory.” Chase was back. He stepped on the same leaf I was sitting on. It dipped wildly. I clawed at the stem, scraping some of the bristles away. A little whimper escaped, and I hated myself for it. I waited for Chase to tease me.

“Rory, you’re not going to fall. I promise. You know how I know? ’Cause I’m going to climb right under you. If you slip again, I’ll catch you.”

I wasn’t so sure that would help. Chase wasn’t much bigger than I was. I would probably just drag him down with me.

“But you know what? It wouldn’t matter if we both fell. I overheard the Director and Ellie talking. They sent the magic carpet out. It’s scouting around the stalk, just out of sight. The Director wouldn’t let us be in any
real
danger.”

Chase leaned forward so that his face was right beside mine. The leaf wobbled under us again, but I forced myself to turn, to look at him.

“Do you believe me?”

I did. He sounded so confident. He always did. Most of the time, it annoyed me, but at that moment, when I was twenty times higher off the ground than I had ever been in my life, his cockiness reassured me.

“Yeah.” My voice came out like a croak.

“Good. Now we’re going to start climbing.” My breath came in noisy gasps, but Chase ignored it. “I know you can do it. I’m going to do it with you. Ready? See the leaf a foot above your left hand?
On the count of three, you’re going to reach up and grab the stem. One . . . two . . . three!”

I was still numb with terror, but my hand moved. It held the stem so tightly that I watched my knuckles turn white.

“Perfect.” Chase patted my shoulder. “Now you’re going to stand up. That’s it.”

My legs had straightened of their own accord. Standing, I could feel how much I was shaking. The leaf shivered under my feet.

“Right hand now. To the stem at two o’clock. See it? Good . . .”

That was how we got up the beanstalk. Chase never stopped talking. We climbed slowly, but we went up.

When we were almost to the clouds, so high that dew collected on the leaves, making the stems wet, I slipped one more time.

The weightless feeling entered my stomach again, but Chase’s hands were on my back, shoving me upward.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry. I got you.” He grunted a little. Realizing how heavy I must be, I yanked myself upright before he could drop us both. “All right. We’re almost there. Three more minutes. You can handle three more minutes. Look, you can already see Lena. She’s waiting at the top.”

I
could
see Lena. Her dark face peered down at us through a hole in the clouds. Her lips were pressed flat, like they only do when she’s really worried.

I hated making her worry. I grabbed the next stem, stepped, and stood slowly, trying not to meet her eyes.

It felt like a lot longer than three minutes, but we made it. As soon as I was close enough, Lena grabbed both my arms and hauled me up.

We tumbled together on a lawn even greener than the courtyard we had just left. I collapsed, so relieved, I could cry.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were afraid of heights?” she asked.

I couldn’t answer. I was still breathing too hard. The blades of grass around me were as tall as I was and as wide as my hand.

“Oh, Rory—you’re
shaking
,” Lena said, still worried, which made me feel even worse. It hadn’t taken long for my plan to be the best Companion ever to completely fall apart. Maybe it was a good thing that I wouldn’t be around long enough to have my own Tale.

Chase jumped through the hole in the clouds. His hair was a little windblown, but otherwise, he looked just like he always did. Cocky. But he had been so cool on the beanstalk.

“I’m okay.” I stood up, my legs feeling rubbery after the strain. My clothes were sticky with sweat, which was so far from being ladylike that it was gross.

Chase brushed a few of the stalk’s bristles off his jeans. “Let’s go. We’ve lost a lot of time.”

“Maybe we should take a break,” Lena said doubtfully, glancing at me.

“We’re on a time crunch, Lena,” Chase said impatiently. “We can’t afford to let
her
slow us down anymore.”

I scowled, hot with shame. I still couldn’t really feel my legs, but I walked forward anyway, pushing stalks out of my way, determined not to hold the other two back any more than I already had. I was also determined not to let them see how close I was to crying. Or that my hands were still trembling.

I knew what Chase was like, or at least, I thought I did. But on the beanstalk, he had been like a different person, the kind of person I might want to be friends with. Seeing him revert to his old self—well, I was the teeniest,
tiniest
bit hurt. And there was no way I would ever admit that to him.

“Rory buried the ashes,” Lena reminded him icily. “Without her, we might not even
have
a beanstalk.”

That
did
make me feel a little better. After all, climbing the beanstalk was only
part
of the Tale. I could help out plenty of other ways.

“Just don’t freeze up again on the way down,” Chase replied. “I won’t wait around for the giant to catch us both.”

He was right. We had to go down. My dream could still come true after all.

I pushed the thought away. That was days from now. We had to concentrate on the other stuff first.

“You know, I
was
thinking about thanking you, Chase.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and tramped off farther ahead. My voice was still a little shaky, so I cleared my throat. “But you just ruined it.”

“Well, if you’re already mad at me . . .” Chase snatched my sword from its sheath at my waist.

“Hey!” I tried to grab it back, but he scampered just out of reach. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure it’s battle-ready.” He turned the sword over, hilt over blade, three times, and murmured a few words I couldn’t quite catch.

“What?” Lena said.

“Nothing.” Chase handed the sword back to me.

For the first time since Yellowstone, I didn’t struggle to raise the sword. “What did you do? Why is it so much lighter?”

Chase shrugged, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I just took the training wheels off.”

“Oh, my gumdrops. It’s one of
those
swords?” Lena said.

Chase just wove his way through the grass stalks ahead of us.

“What swords?” I asked, sheathing mine.

“Some of the oldest Fey blades have spells built into them,” Lena explained. “Even most humans can activate them as easily as flipping a switch on a flashlight. One of the more popular spells triples the weight of the blade. It’s supposed to build up the wielder’s strength.”

“Couldn’t you have taken the spell off
before
the climb?” I asked Chase. “It was hard enough.”

“Not without the Director finding out what he’d done,” Lena pointed out.

“You should be thanking me,” Chase said. “I bet your right arm’s a lot stronger than it was a few weeks ago.”

I glared at him, jaw clenched, but honestly, I was secretly grateful to have something to be mad about. I didn’t really owe him anything. Apparently, I’d needed a reminder why Chase and I could never be friends.

“Found something.” Chase held back a blade of grass so that Lena and I could pass.

Beyond him, the lawn ended, and the ground ahead was paved with slabs of slate the size of Ping-Pong tables. And beyond that, water glittered in the afternoon light.

“A lake?” I said.

“Doubtful,” Chase said. “See the tiles on the opposite side?”

Lena nodded. “And it smells like chlorine.”

Once she pointed it out, the chemicals in the air smelled so strong that I started to feel a little woozy. “A swimming pool? Just how big are these guys anyway?”

“It varies from Tale to Tale.” Lena shrugged, but she sounded a little nervous.

“I’m guessing they’re about four stories tall. There’s their house,” Chase said.

It looked surprisingly normal—brick with light blue shutters in every window. There was only one weird thing about it, actually.

“I’ve seen smaller mountains,” I muttered. I also spotted a green house-shaped blur very far away, and a smaller yellow blob beyond that, sitting like lone peaks in the distance. “Are you sure this is the right place?” I really hoped that the answer was yes. It would take us
hours
to walk to the next house.

“It’s always the building closest to the beanstalk.” Lena squared her shoulders and strode forward, so determined to be the fearless leader that I had to hide a smile. “We’re going to need to find a place to stash our packs.”

“Those geraniums should work.” I pointed to the bushes on either side of the front door, hoping I could be helpful.

“Yeah.” Chase rolled his eyes like this was completely obvious. “They’re big enough to hide my dad’s truck.”

We hid the backpacks and started for the door. There was only one step, but it was taller than me.

Chase leaped up and offered a hand to Lena.

Lena let him pull her up. “We need to get inside, keep the giant’s wife from getting suspicious, and find a way in and out of the house.”

“Got it.” Chase extended a hand to me.

I ignored it coldly and scrambled up by myself. I scraped my knee on the brick, but at least I didn’t accept any more help from Chase.

“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.