Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (29 page)

I scowled. I did not appreciate him bringing that back up when
I was twenty feet off the ground. “I’m not anything like the Snow Queen.”

“Can you two
not
bicker?” Lena said. “There are giants sleeping down the hall.”

“He just called me evil.”

“I didn’t say
that
.” Reaching the tabletop, Chase pulled himself over the edge with his elbows.

“It can’t be
me
.” I rolled onto the table and stood up, brushing off my jeans. “What could I have possibly done like the Snow Queen? Freeze when I’m scared? Suck royally in Hansel’s class? Throw rocks at her dragon?” A soft clattering noise came from the floor below, and I stepped away from the table’s edge nervously. “Did you hear that?”

Chase grinned. “Are you trying to change the subject?”

“
No.
I really heard something. Clicking against the floor.” I glanced over the edge, but there wasn’t much point in looking without Lena’s flashlight. “I bet there’s something down there. Maybe the mice.”

“Right.” Chase rolled his eyes. “Or the giant’s guard dog.”

“It’s okay, Rory. We don’t have to worry about any prophecies now.” Lena shined the flashlight across the table. “It’s not like we don’t have enough to do— Oh, look! They left the safe unlocked.”

Neither of them believed me. I tried not to get annoyed. After all, I
had
wanted to change the subject.

Lena headed toward the safe, but Chase paused, scowling. “Why are you fighting this so much? Having a Destiny means you’ll go down in history. You’re not excited at all.”

I wasn’t.

I felt about the same as I had on my first day in Mrs. Coleman’s class. There was a math test before lunch, and Mrs. Coleman made
me take it even though I hadn’t even been there for the lesson, much less studied. Panic was the best word. I didn’t want to mess up before I even got a chance to start.

“I think I’m still trying to get used to the fact that giants are at the top of the food chain,” I said softly, walking beside him. “Having them talk about me is way too much to handle.”

“Yeah, but since when is it a bad thing to find out you’re special?” Chase said, and I knew we both wished that he were the one with the Destiny, not me.

The safe was a little smaller than my bedroom closet and made of a hard gray stone like granite, even the door. The combination lock looked like silver, and the dial was tarnished. On the top shelf, the hen slept, its head under its wing. I don’t have a lot of experience with chickens, but it looked pretty normal to me. The harp stood on the other side, head bent, her golden hair hanging down. It covered her face and waved a little while she snored harmoniously.

“The safe must keep them asleep,” Lena said quietly. “It’s pretty simple magic.”

“She made a lot of noise for something so little,” I whispered. The harp was only about a foot tall, a lot smaller than I thought.

Chase whistled very softly and pointed to the bottom shelf. It was covered in coins, several inches deep. “That’s a lot of gold.”

Lena knelt and pulled a sack out of her backpack. She loaded the coins inside slowly, careful to make sure none of them clinked.

I knelt beside Lena to help. The coins were heavier than they looked. “I know I’m new to this,” I said slowly, “but wouldn’t it be more efficient to take all three at once? I mean, they’re all here.”

Chase’s eyebrows disappeared under his bangs, and he looked at Lena eagerly. Maybe we
could
go home early. Then we could clear up the whole Snow Queen misunderstanding so much faster.

Lena glanced up at the sleeping hen and harp, clearly tempted. Then she sighed. “We can’t.”

“Well, the safe
is
open,” I pointed out. “And we—”

“No, we can’t deviate from the other Beanstalk Tales,” Lena said fiercely. “If we do, it’ll decrease our chances of survival by eighty-seven percent.”

Disappointed, I dropped two more handfuls of coins into her backpack and reached for the last of it, stuck far into the corner.

“Besides, I really don’t want to take any chances with Genevieve Searcaster here,” Lena said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll wake the hen and the harp if we grab them. They might raise the alarm.”

“Good call,” Chase said. When Lena finished zipping up her backpack, he slung it over his shoulder. I looked at him suspiciously. He wasn’t usually so helpful. “They’re leaving on vacation tomorrow, so getting the other two should be easy. Shall we?” He gestured to his rope ladder.

“One second.” Lena pulled another bag out of her pack and dumped it out, scattering gold coins across the bottom shelf, almost covering it.

“Is that what you picked from the storeroom?” I asked.

“Leprechaun’s gold,” said Chase with approval.

“The giants shouldn’t notice anything’s missing until after they get back.” Lena dusted off her hands and smiled, proud of herself.

On the climb down, I got stuck just once for about a second, but I got myself going again before Lena reached me. A big improvement, if I do say so myself.

As soon as we were hidden under the fridge, Chase started humming the same lullaby that the harp had sung earlier, but it wasn’t until we emerged in the cold night air that we realized Chase was eating.

“Lena
told
you not to touch the trail mix.” I tried to snatch it back.

“What?” Chase just raised the bag above his head. He was way too tall for me to reach it. “I’m hungry.”

“I
knew
you wouldn’t carry Lena’s backpack just to be nice.”

“Lena’s not complaining.” Chase looked over my shoulder.

Lena didn’t even look at him, but she stumbled over one of the twigs I had pulled out of the campsite earlier. “I don’t like it, but I need to save my energy for more important things. Like finding my sleeping bag.” She yawned hugely.

I glared at Chase. He looked slightly ashamed, but he still stuck his hand into the trail mix bag. “How ’bout we make a deal? You let me snack, and I’ll take the first watch.”

“Fine. With the caffeine in all that chocolate, I bet you’re the only one who can stay awake.” Lena fell heavily to the ground between the other two backpacks. “Which one has the sleeping bags?”

“Don’t eat all the M&M’s,” I told Chase fiercely and went to help Lena.

Digging through the packs, I found what Rapunzel had stuffed in my bag—a glass vial on a silver chain. It was the same light she’d used while she was carving the night of the Fairie Market.

The young will lie in the dark,
she had said.

Well, of
course
we would. It was time to sleep. Did she think we needed a night-light?

I shoved it in the front pocket and searched deeper in the backpack.

The sleeping bags were midnight blue with silver beads stitched on them. If you squinted, they looked a little like puddles reflecting the night sky, which was probably supposed to be some sort of
camouflage. Lena was asleep even before I finished rolling out the other two. I could hear her soft purring snores.

I wriggled into my own sleeping bag. I expected to feel every bump and groove on the hard ground beneath me, but it was as soft and yielding as my mattress at home. Either Ellie had given us magic sleeping bags, or the petals helped a lot.

I glanced at Chase.
Since when is it a bad thing to find out you’re special?
he’d said.

Chase dropped M&M’s into his mouth one by one. “Go to sleep. I’m waking you up for the next watch, Destined One or not.”

I gave him one last dirty look and then closed my eyes.

It took me a while to fall asleep. It wasn’t just the Great Destiny.

It was knowing that people were talking about me. I had dealt with my celebrity parents all my life. I had even hated it sometimes, but if I was really honest with myself, hadn’t I wanted to be famous too—not as my parents’ daughter, but just as Rory? Hadn’t I wanted to do the kind of great things that people talked about?

But it’s one thing to be famous for something you’ve already done rather than something you’re supposed to accomplish someday.

I didn’t want to be the one destined to destroy an amulet or whatever, only to let it accidentally slip through my fingers at the last moment.

I was still just me.

It might not be enough, I realized, drifting off, as Chase started to sing that lullaby again.

•  •  •

I dreamed of the beanstalk. This time, Chase was there, climbing down right beside me. The top of his T-shirt was red with blood, and he moved clumsily. He fumbled, and I reached a hand up anxiously, ready to catch him.

When we fell, he started to scream.

It didn’t surprise me to have Chase there. It shocked me that I was more worried about him than about the fall.

Way
too
concerned, actually. Someone shook me awake about a hundred feet above the ground, and I opened my eyes to see Chase scowling at me, his hand on my shoulder, which didn’t help me figure out what was dream and what wasn’t. “You okay?” I asked him sleepily and squinted at his shirt in the dark, looking for signs of blood.

“Yeah.” Chase gave me a weird look (one that I completely deserved, for once). “You need to wake up, though. It’s your turn to keep watch.”

“Oh.” I sat up and blinked hard, trying to force myself awake. As Chase crawled into his sleeping bag, still giving me funny looks, I ignored him. I stared out at the Searcasters’ pool and wondered what could happen in the next few days that would make me worry about Chase Turnleaf.

s Chase had put it over breakfast, “Even giants aren’t stupid enough to leave an open safe on their kitchen table when they go on vacation.” So, that morning, we went looking for the desk.

We found it easily. After coming through the mousehole under the fridge, we scurried down the hallway and slipped past the second doorway on the right. Chase used Jack Attack to turn on the lights. The desk looked antique, but fairly normal—wooden with flowering vines carved up the side.

I hadn’t woken Lena for her turn to keep watch. I’d wanted to give her an extra hour of sleep. She needed the rest. As her Companion, it was the least I could do.

It was also a mistake. By the time we found it, exhaustion made everything a little fuzzy.

So I just stood there staring at the desk while Lena and Chase talked about it. It was as big as my school.

“It’s a roll-top. My grandmother has one like it,” Lena said. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I
told
you,” Chase said, irritated. “The giants left
hours
ago. I watched them leave myself. They took a magic carpet the size of this room. Matilda worried that the wind would mess up her hair, and her mother-in-law told her to be quiet or she would accidentally
knock her off the carpet somewhere over Canada.”

Lena glared at him. “I believe they’re
gone
. I’m just not sure we should be doing this
now
. All the Tales say that retrieval of the items occurs in the
evening
. Late afternoon at the earliest.”

“You’re going to waste a perfect opportunity just because it’s still
morning
?” Chase said.

“It does seem way too convenient.” Being that tired made me even crankier than usual. “I thought that Tales were supposed to be harder than this.”

“And
you’re
complaining because it’s too
easy
?” Chase rolled his eyes. “Look, in my family, we don’t question getting lucky. We just work fast.” He started climbing up the carving on the side of the desk. “If anybody else wants to get it over with, this is the best way up—petal, leaf, vine, petal, petal, leaf, and so on.” He grabbed a new handhold with every word, demonstrating.

“I do want to get this over with,” Lena said, more to herself than me. She grabbed a handhold and pulled herself up a few feet. She didn’t climb as fast as Chase, but she was more careful, testing out each carving before she trusted her weight on it. Her carryall backpack swung across her shoulders, throwing her a little off balance. She had insisted on bringing it with us. She said it was so we could have the food nearby at all times, but I was pretty sure that the real reason had more to do with her gold coins. She wanted to make sure nothing happened to her new treasure, not when it was her ticket to making up for the Fey cookbook incident.