Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Jigsaw ❯ The Beanstalk ( Chapter 3 )

CHAPTER THREE

"People tend to underestimate the effectiveness of a small piece of metal in the hands of an extremely pissed off person."

-Trotho Noma, How to Turn a Spoon into a Weapon of Mass Destruction

Jirae walked into the room and set the broom up against the wall. She stretched, creating a series of tiny cricks and cracks. "Damn import brooms."

"Grandma Jirae!" Tione cried. "You're Thorn Tivra?"

"Only for the weekend. The real Thorn Tivra is off looking after her sick brother. I told her she'd end up getting attacked by a spear-wielding mob or something, but she wouldn't listen. Fool." Then she took Tione by the ear and tugged on it. "But that doesn't explain what you're doing all the way out here, young lady!"

"Ah! Ow! I'm going to Sela!" Tione said, trying to get Jirae to release the painful grip on her ear. "Elin told me to! Now let go of me!"

"Elin?!" Jirae let go of Tione's ear. The fact that it was probably a bad idea to have revealed this came down like a ton of bricks. "To Sela?!" She gripped Tione's wrist instead, like a hawk's talons. "You're not going to Sela! You're going back home! Young lady, you may not believe that I can use magic, but I know a number of spells that I would not hesitate to use to keep you in Sheste where you won't cause any trouble!" Jirae's face was lit with anger and fear. She was enraged, but what could be intimidating her?

Tione pulled at her wrist. "Why don't you want me to go there? What's in Sela that you don't want me to see?" she demanded.

"Tione, are you in there?" a voice called from an adjacent room.

Tione and Jirae turned to the door as Aleric stepped cheerfully into the room, holding a piece of white cheese. She also noticed his bag seemed to be a bit fuller. "There you are, Tione! What took you so long? I couldn't find the jellybeanstalk, but I found this tasty… oh, hey! Who's that?"

"Well…" Tione said. "That's a bit of a story…"

Jirae's eyes narrowed, her severe scowl melting to a sober frown. "And who might you be?"

"I'm Aleric." Proudly placing his thumb on his chest as if there were any confusion, he then glared at Tione expectantly. “That's your cue to tell me what the hells is going on here.”

Jirae just crossed her arms. "And what is your relationship with my granddaughter here?"

"Granddaughter?" Aleric, looking very perplexed, ran his palm up his forehead. "Ugh! Just when I think I have everything figured out… your gramma's Thorn Tivra?”

Jirae turned up her nose in order to look down it at the boy. "Did you hear me, young man? Heed me, or I'll turn you into a skunk!"

"Gramma, hold on a second!" Tione said, holding up her palm. She whirled around to face Aleric and said as fast as she could, "That's my gramma Jirae that I told you about, and by some stupid coincidence it turns out that she's not the real witch but she's filling in for the real Thorn Tivra, who's a friend of hers! Got it?"

Aleric sighed to himself in contemplation, then shrugged. "Not really," he replied. "I find it's just best to not try to understand complex things like this and just do what my instinct tells me to. Yeah…” He nodded sagely.

"But… it's not complex at all…!" Tione wailed, forming her hands into fists. She really wished he would be serious. No wonder the whole dragon master thing hadn't worked out.

Jirae put her hands on her hips. "And this moron is really the best boyfriend you could find, Tione? Every male should be stupid enough for a female to keep under her thumb, but this man's dangerous!"

"Boyfriend?" Tione and Aleric cried.

An awkward smile from Aleric reflected Tione's own feelings about her grandmother's assumption. "Ha! Oh, gods. Listen, you've got it wrong…" he said. "I'm just traveling with her… or is she traveling with me…?"

"I couldn't care less about him! See? See?!" Tione began striking Aleric in random places. Her grandmother had jinxed them! Just by saying that they were interested in each other! Everyone knew that it was destiny that a young woman and a young man who set off on an adventure end up falling in love—without exception! No spell, enchantment or legal document could prevent it!

"Good, Pumpkin Seed," Jirae said with a very croaking, witch-like voice. "Then you can help me divide him into components that I can use in my potions and concoctions! Yes, I believe Tivra wanted some wartgrow cream by the time she came back…"

"Like hell!" Aleric cried. “I've got too promising a career to be in jars next to frog's eyes and powdered dragon's scales!”

Rolling her eyes, Jirae gestured to a far shelf which did, indeed, contain jars and vials and tubes mounted on wiry iron holders. “Please. No one powders dragon's scales anymore. Let it get in your nose, you'll be sneezing fire for hours.”

Although she was startled by the proposition, Tione kept her head and thought a moment. "If I do, will you let me go to Sela?" she asked. The main thing was to get away from Jirae in any way possible. She'd never let Tione and Aleric go; she already knew that no amount of negotiation would change that. There was fierceness in her old grandmother's determination that Tione was admittedly frightened by.

Aleric whirled around, looking like he'd been betrayed by an old friend. "You're joking, right? You wouldn't honestly… … oh gods…" He looked around the room for a suitable escape route, fidgeting with the strap of his satchel.

"Of course I would," Tione said. "Listen, if you look at it from my point of view, it's the only reasonable solution to my problem here." She winked. "After all, you did offer to help me get to Sela, didn't you?" She turned to Jirae. "What do you say?"

"Hmmm…" Jirae held her chin in her twisted, wrinkled old hand. Her aged blue-grey eyes wandered underneath her furrowed brow. She wrinkled her nose, causing the wart upon its end to turn red. "Hmmm…" Jirae ran a hand through her wispy gray hair and diddled with an earlobe. "Hmmmm… no… I think I'd rather bring you back to Sheste and deal with this boy myself!"

"You really are determined to keep me away from Sela, aren't you?" Tione asked. How could she possibly ward off a magic-using grandmother? The only thing she had was… Tione pulled out her spoon and held it in front of her, half expecting laughter and half expecting something worse. The dark metal of the spoon glimmered orange and yellow in the candlelight.

Jirae recoiled in surprise. "How would you have that? You're telling me that Elin and Trotho have allied themselves again?" Jirae didn't make any threatening moves, but she stood her ground. "And are Ga and Mok part of this, too? And…” she gulped. “And Zenos?"

What in the hells was Jirae talking about? Tione recalled the list of names from Elin's book. It had to have something to do with them, whoever they were! Why would the king be a part of Tione trying to get to Sela? Either way, the fact that Jirae was spilling so much showed she was intimidated. "That's right, Gramma! They are all working to make sure I get to Sela!"

Jirae had been acting apprehensive about something, but now she looked at Tione formidably. In this witch's forest lair, where flickering torchlight played off of shadows and sinister paraphernalia, it was the first time in years Tione was afraid of her. "Tione! What did Elin tell you?"

Damn. Tione had been managing to sound believable just by rattling off vague phrases that she didn't need any particular knowledge to say. What could she tell her now? "She told me everything. About…" Tione thought. "…the past. And about Sela, and about our family." That was taking a risk, implying that anything at all was relevant to this conflict. But perhaps if she still sounded convincing and Jirae believed everything she was being told, Jirae would spill some information.

"So you know everything. Somehow, the old fool told you. And I suppose your next destination will be the Silver Ruins. Or are you going to form an alliance with Queen Émigré?"

So Jirae wanted to know her next move. Well, she had none, except for getting to Sela—how could she have any other objective when she knew nothing about this complicated web of people, places and events from the past that she had inadvertently woven in her mind? No… getting to Sela wasn't her only objective. It was now also to find out everything that Jirae thought she knew about. Until then, she decided to lie. Reasoning that Queen Émigré would be King Zenos's wife, and knowing that seeing her would mean going to Sela (which was her destination), she formed her lie: If Tione said she was going to Sela to ally with Émigré and Zenos, wouldn't Jirae then believe that Tione had told her the opposite from the truth and go to the Silver Ruins, whatever they were? That sounded like a good move. "I'll be going to see Queen Émigré first," Tione stated, and deciding to add a taunt to seal the bluff, added, “And you won't be able to stop me.”

Jirae smiled. "Well, thank you for that information, Tione. It no longer matters whether you get to Sela or not, now that we know your plans."

Tione felt dizzy. Had Jirae been fooled? Who was "we?" Tione didn't dare ask; she figured it was one of the things Jirae presumed she knew.

Jirae pointed to Tione and Aleric. "You two may have been destined to travel together and you may have found each other, but finding the other six of your companions will be an impossibility!" Jirae threw back her head and cackled evilly, her laugh filling and resounding throughout the tree house. "I'll say goodbye to you now, because I doubt you'll make it far enough to see me again!" Jirae cackled again, and thrust her hand into a deep pocket at the side of her dark black robe. The cackle faded as Jirae bent over to reach to the bottom of the pocket, wearing an annoyed and wrinkled frown. “Feh… Curse it…” she muttered, finally pulling out her fist. Standing up straight, she glared at Tione and Aleric before a few seconds. Promptly resuming her cackle, she threw a fistful of dust into the air and disappeared in a puff of smoke that smelled vaguely of rose petals.

“Tione,” Aleric said, waving away the rose-scented smoke, “your family… really weird.”

"I guess this thing came in handy… thanks, Great Gramma," Tione said, looking at the spoon and breathing a sigh of relief. "It looks like we're free to continue our journey… for now…"

"Whoa! Hold on! You're into what obviously looks like a quest to prevent some worldwide catastrophe, and you're just all smiles and `yay, let's keep going?'”

“Worldwide catastrophe?”

“Kingdomwide, at least. Listen, all the signs are there. Boy and girl meet, have seemingly useless trinkets, boy is charming and handsome, yet girl is tragically unreceptive…” He waved his hand as if trying to conjure Tione's agreement out of thin air.

“Hey!”

“Tione…” Aleric looked at Tione severely. “Have you ever had one of those dreams that tells what's going to happen?”

Tione groaned. “Gods, I don't know! We just started on this thing!”

With a ponderous sigh, Aleric scratched his head. "Well, hey. What about that thing you two were talking about for so long?" Aleric looked very nervous about something, his lips pursed into a tight frown. "Why the hell would King Zenos want to make sure you got to Sela, and why would you want to get together with Demon Queen Émigré?"

"Demon Queen Émigré? I figured Émigré was Zenos's wife or something since Jirae called her a queen…" Demons? Now there were demons involved?

Aleric crossed his arms. "Of course not! Émigré is the queen of the demons who live in Jigsaw. She has a whole army of demons and evil monsters at her disposal. They may not be bent on world domination, but they can't survive without causing suffering. The thought of you allied with her is enough to make me wish you HAD wanted to cut me up."

Tione had never met a demon before. But lore said that they were the counterpart to angels, and that the existence of each kept the world in its necessary balance between absolute good and absolute evil. She'd always figured that was a nice theory until you came face to face with one. "What about the Silver Ruins? What are they?" Tione asked.

"No idea. Even I haven't heard of that," Aleric mused. "Wait a minute… do you mean to tell me you know absolutely nothing about the stuff that Jirae thinks you do? `Cause you're not saying, but that's the impression I'm getting."

"That's right…" Tione admitted grimly. "I only recognized the names of a few of the places and people she named—remember the book? I have no idea about any of the events she referred to, and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing next."

"So… you mean you're on a quest… but you don't even know your goal?"

"That's about right…" Tione said. Then she remembered something. "Now, I had been pretending to know all of the things Jirae thought I knew for a few reasons, and one of them was to hopefully obtain some of the information I'm supposed to know… one of the things she said is that the two of us are somehow destined to be traveling together, and that there are six other people that are also destined to be traveling with us." Eight people? Wasn't that a bit much for a questing party? She had always figured four was the standard— six tops. "As much as I hate to say it, it looks like the two of us are going to have to stick together, find these six other people, and get to Sela and figure out what all of this is about… and I think the names in Elin's book are our key to who they are!" Tione took out her copy of How to Turn a Spoon into a Weapon of Mass Destruction and turned to the list. “Besides Gramma, there's Mok Duno, Trotho Noma, Ga Jallen, Bryce Kyndrel, Bright Blue and Zenos Shynne, the king.”

"Ummmm…" Aleric rubbed his chin, poring over the list in the candlelight. "Elin's your great-grandmother. Mok Duno is my grandpa…" he realized. "So does that mean that the people we're looking for are descendants of those people? But counting me, there are only six names. Shouldn't there be seven?"

Tione shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe Jirae got the wrong number, or maybe two of the people are related. We really can't jump to any conclusions about the people we're supposed to be looking for, or else we might make some big mistakes."

Aleric hesitated a moment, thinking this over. "That might be. So… what do we do now?"

Tione looked around the room, which still smelled faintly of roses. "We find that jellybeanstalk and climb it," she said, sounding certain of herself. "I've been getting a premonition about that thing ever since I saw it."

Aleric scratched the back of his head again. "I guess it sounds pretty unlikely, but I suppose we might as well give it a try, if we can find the thing. Neither of us has been able to find it. You know, it could have been an illusion or something, Tione, and there actually is no jellybeanstalk."

"Listen, I know there's a jellybeanstalk around here somewhere, and I'm going to find it. And then, I'm going to climb it!" Tione marched out of the room and into the next room, where a huge flowerpot took up most of the floor space. The pot was about four feet tall and covered with large multicolored dots. Almost the entire space of the pot was taken up by the beanstalk, thick as a tree and covered in waxy green skin and thick leaves that a child could use as blankets. Their stems would be more than thick enough to climb on. Tione turned to Aleric. "Please don't tell me you searched the entire house and didn't see this thing."

“I didn't, but you just said it.”

“Ugh. I can't wait to see what our other `friends' will be like.” She put her hands on the rim of the pot and lifted herself into it. The second she sunk past her ankles in the moist soil, she was extremely happy that she had decided to take Elin's boots after all. Now that she was standing in it, she could calculate that the pot was perhaps almost ten feet in diameter. Tione's hands made contact with the leafy growth. The leaves were smooth and inviting, and a sugary scent wafted from the plant. The urge to climb it was overpowering now. Was it a spell placed on the stalk by a giant living at the top to lure foolish people to their doom? Even if it was and she knew it, she felt she wouldn't have been able to resist it.

"Good. Let's hurry up and climb this thing," Aleric said. He put out his arms and grasped a vine-like coil and began pulling himself up the stalk.

"Right," Tione said, doing the same. How high would it be? Most likely she would get tired before they could reach the top. What if she lost so much strength that she lost the strength to hold on to the stalk and fell to her death? Even if this was so, she was now uncontrollably climbing the stalk, like a lemming might march toward an ocean cliff, sensing that she would not be able to stop herself until she reached the top. Rather than convey this to Aleric, who would then probably try to pry her off the stalk, she decided to converse with him about other things. "Aleric? You said King Zenos had a son, right?"

"Yeah. Two, actually," Aleric said from the other side of the stalk. "What, are you thinking that we should be looking for the Prince of Sela?"

"Maybe…" Tione said, hoisting herself through the hole in the ceiling and out of the house. She wanted to bring up some of the other names, but Trotho Noma was the only one of the other names she recognized from anything, and the short biography of him in the back of her book stated that he had died at the age of forty without ever being married or having any children. Still, it seemed as if he had been important in the past and that he would be relevant to what would happen in the future.

"Hey, Tione?"

"What?" Tione might have stopped climbing to talk if she had been able to. She really could do nothing but watch the forest shrink below her and feel her muscles get closer and closer to the inevitable point where they'd give out. She'd have to force herself to rest eventually.

"You're acting pretty calm about all this. I mean, your grandmother has just turned out to be a lot more than a mean old lady, right?"

"Yeah, when I realized that, I was a little freaked out. But for one thing, I never liked her all that much anyway. And for another, I had to at least pretend not to be shocked or I might have blown my cover. Thirdly, I always figured there was something suspicious about her," Tione explained. Even all those explanations didn't quite rationalize everything that had happened to her in the past half hour.

"And we're obviously caught up in something important enough to involve the King of Jigsaw and the Queen of the Demons. Just knowing that I'm destined to be a part of it makes me a bit nervous. What about you, Tione?"

"Nah, I'm not that nervous." What in Jigsaw had she gotten herself into when she left her house that morning? Still, it all seemed so outrageous that at the moment nothing had sunk in all too deeply. All she could really concern herself with was how they would walk on clouds once they reached the top.

When Tione and Aleric reached the top of the jellybeanstalk, Tione realized that she could scarcely remember most of the journey up. At the top was, of course, a land of clouds that was, of course, dominated by an enormous, foreboding castle, which stretched its towers hundreds of feet upwards, towards the thinnest and wispiest of the clouds in the sky. It was horribly cold, too, and the air was still.

"Don't you think this is a little too typical?" Tione asked, feeling the cloud for a place to stand. Finding one, she dismounted the beanstalk, feeling relieved to be able to stand on the ground again… or at least a reasonable facsimile.

Aleric followed Tione. "Nothing is typical in Jigsaw," he pointed out. Looking around, he shivered. "It's a lot colder up here."

"A little," Tione said, kicking idly at the thick fog that covered the ground.

Aleric shivered and turned to look at Tione with his arms crossed. "So, how about that premonition of yours? Is it telling you where we should go next?"

Tione looked around. The cloud landscape was very hilly, and the castle was the only structure that she could see; if there was anything else, it was covered by more clouds. She thought she could see the cottony hills and valleys shifting and changing, but she wasn't sure. Feeling around in her mind for a solution, she realized that the nagging, tugging feeling that had gotten them this far was no longer present. "I don't know… it's disappeared. I just felt the need to climb the beanstalk, but now that we're up here, I don't know what to do. But doesn't that castle seem like the obvious place?"

"I suppose…" Aleric said. "But you'd better hope that you can stop any giants that we see inside just by holding up that spoon of yours like you did with that witch, because I sure don't have any weapons."

"Listen," Tione said. "Any giant that lives in a castle that huge will probably be too big to be able to see us anyway. Right?" The idea had only just occurred to her, but it seemed to make sense. "And what if a giant did see us? Something that small wouldn't really be useful for anything, right? What would a giant that big do with such a tiny person if he found one?" Feeling clever at her logic, Tione smiled at Aleric.

"Squish it like a bug," Aleric muttered.

Tione's smile fell to the ground and shattered. "That's a possibility."

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"How's the spell holding up, Geddon?"

Geddon sighed, dropping his hands from casting position. "It just failed. I don't think it's working anymore, Shani… Did you stop concentrating?"

"I don't think so… can we set up the spell again?"

Geddon shook his head. "It's too difficult a spell for two magicians as inexperienced as us to use it successfully twice in a row."

Shani gulped. "So… that was our last hope of escape?"

Geddon nodded. "Yeah." He bowed his head. "Father… I'm sorry."

----------------------------------------------------------------- ---

"That is a huge-ass door," Aleric muttered.

Tione looked up. The huge metal doors of the castle stretched out on both sides and upwards into the sky to the point where she couldn't see the edges, but she figured they must have been at least a couple hundred feet tall. Opening them was out of the question. "Yeah… whoever lives here would have to be big. I can't even see the handles."

"Well, here's some good news: we don't need to use them." Aleric squatted down on the hewn gray stone the step was made of. The bumps and irregularities in it were large enough for someone his size to trip on. "I think this space under the door is big enough to crawl under… but we'd better make sure that no one's behind it, because if someone sees us, we won't be able to back out fast enough." He looked back at Tione. “'Kay?”

Tione nodded, seeing Aleric's point. She got down onto her knees to peer under the door, but didn't see the interior of a castle. Instead, she saw a pair of brown eyes staring back at her.

"Hey! Move it!" the owner of the eyes yelled, causing Tione to rear backward and land on her rear. A pair of arms and a head poked out from under the door. "Oi! `elp me out, wud ya?"

Aleric grabbed the flailing hands and pulled until a young boy who looked to be around fifteen emerged from under the door and immediately turned around and reached back under the door.

"Hey… who are you? …Uh… what are you doing?" Aleric asked.

The boy either didn't hear Aleric's questions or decided to ignore it. Watching him, Tione noted that he wore a long green tunic, tight green slacks and brown boots. After a few seconds, the boy pulled two objects out from under the door and stood back up with a confident smile.

"I'm Jack," the boy said, "and I'm escapin'! See ya!" Jack darted off faster than Tione had seen anyone run before and took a flying leap off the front step, disappearing from sight.

"What the…?" Tione muttered.

"Must have been someone who got the same idea as us," Aleric said. "Looks like he made off with some of the giant's treasure. I didn't see what he was holding… maybe the traditional harp that eats golden eggs and goose that plays with itself."

"After I get done saying what I have to say here, remind me to hit you, okay?" Tione asked.

Aleric nodded. "Sure. What's on your mind?"

"Umm… if that kid was in such a hurry, doesn't that mean that… maybe… perchance… he was being chased?" Tione pointed out, edging away from the door. "And therefore it might not be a good idea to be standing here in front of the door?"

Aleric stood there pondering this, then nodded. "Yeah… I'd say that those are reasonable surmises…"

"So don't you think we should move?!" Tione said, grabbing Aleric's wrist to pull him off to the side where they wouldn't be seen, but barely dove to the ground in time to avoid getting struck by the huge doors, which flew open past them at a breakneck speed that generated a wind powerful enough to knock both of them onto their sides. Even greater than the sound this made was the sound made by both doors slamming backward into the castle walls. The sound of thunder assaulted their ears until their heads ached.

"DON'T SLAM THE DOOR!!" a deep female voice roared from inside the castle.

"That was close," Tione whispered to Aleric.

"WHAT?" Aleric screamed, holding his hand to his ear.

"I SAID `THAT WAS CLOSE!'" Tione yelled back.

"IT WAS, WASN'T IT?" Aleric yelled into Tione's ear.

Tione grabbed Aleric's head and moved it so his ear was inches from her mouth. "I'M LESS THAN A FOOT AWAY FROM YOU! YOU DON'T HAVE TO SCREAM AT ME!!"

Aleric pulled his head away with a startled scream, glared angrily at Tione and opened his mouth to say something, but his reply was drowned out but a loud THUD that came from all around them.

"What the hell?" Tione said. "What happened?" When she looked up, she realized that everything in her line of sight had been slightly blurred by something, save for a constrictive space she and Aleric were contained in, a small circle perhaps three feet across.

Aleric put out his hands, but they were stopped by an invisible barrier at the edge of the circle. "Well, I hope you're happy," Aleric said. "While you were busy screaming at us, somebody trapped us in a magical forcefield."

"Damn it, Aleric," Tione muttered. Could this be related to the whole Jirae-Sela-prophecy thingie? Perhaps the beanstalk had been a trap. Was this the end of their journey already? It would not be hard for their captors to dispose of them; tossing them off the edge of the clouds would do, she realized with a shudder. Tione was startled out of her thoughts by a loud, high-pitched giggling.

"Oh, so it's my fault-- where's that coming from?" Aleric asked, looking around for the source of the playful laughing.

Tione looked up—the only place they hadn't managed to look, and saw what was making the sound blocking out the sun. And screamed.

"Now, Tione, I know you're scared, but if you give me a minute, I'll figure out what's going on here and then I'll figure out a way to get us out of here." Aleric said calmly. “Don't you worry.”

"Look up, you moron!" Tione yelled.

Aleric looked up and saw what Tione was screaming about, and quickly proceeded to follow her example.

The voice rang out again with a fascinated gasp. "The other ones made that funny sound, too!"

The blurring effect of the forcefield made it make out the details of what was making the noise, but not so much that Tione and Aleric couldn't identify it. Squatting outside the castle doors and grinning down at them was the largest little boy that either of them had ever seen. And they weren't trapped in a forcefield, but a small glass jar.

The boy took something out of his pocket, which Tione quickly identified as a lid with holes poked into it. "You can be in my collection, too."

"We're in trouble," Aleric gulped in a moment of deductive brilliance.

Tione pounded on the side of the jar, creating only a dull thump and wished she'd trained with the spoon; she bet somewhere in the book would be a way to break glass. "Hey! Listen! Shorty! We don't wanna be in your stupid collection! Let us out!"

The boy smiled. "You sure do make funny noises." With that, he tipped the jar on its side, slammed the lid on the top and turned the jar right side up.

Meanwhile, Tione and Aleric were jostled around inside the jar, several times coming close to hurting themselves on the sides of the jar. By the time it was over and the jar was right side up, they were sprawled out on top of each other at the bottom of the jar, with Aleric laying across Tione's stomach.

"This is so humiliating…" Aleric muttered.

"You're humiliated!" Tione screamed, trying to shove Aleric off her chest. "Get off me! You landed there on purpose!"

Aleric was thrown off Tione and against the glass when the giant boy lifted the jar into the air. Tione's stomach lurched, and she flailed out to grab onto anything she could get a hold of, which turned out to be Aleric's arm.

Aleric used the arm Tione wasn't holding to rub the back of his head where it had struck the side of the jar. "You just had to climb the beanstalk, didn't you?" he groaned. "Now we get to spend the gods know how long as some kid's pets. Congratulations."

"Ugh, shut up!" Tione hissed as they felt themselves being carried through the doors back into the castle. She began to feel as if the up-and-down motions of the giant's walking were threatening to rearrange her insides. "I don't feel so good…"

"You need to stop yelling for once and take deep breaths," Aleric suggested as they passed over the threshold out of the sunlight.

"I'M NOT YELLING!" Tione snapped, and felt her stomach lurch again. "Ugh…"

Aleric tried to pull his arm away from Tione's grip. "Gah! Let go of me! If you're gonna throw up, then throw up over there!"

Tione rubbed her shaky stomach and tried to look out the side of the jar at the room they were now in. It was clear that it was a kitchen, but the details were hard to make out through the concave glass. When they stopped moving and were set down onto a countertop, Tione could concentrate on identifying the typical sounds of a kitchen. It was easily the nicest room she's ever been in; the floors were polished stone, not dirt, and torches with fire large enough to engulf a house lit the room from elaborate brass holders on the walls. All the wood was smooth and polished, and through the holes in the top of the jar Tione could smell something sweet and spicy, like cinnamon. Standing at the countertop preparing food of some sort was another giant.

"We are in deep trouble," Aleric muttered.

"No freakin' kidding," Tione hissed.

The giant they had just spotted, a large woman wearing a neatly-pressed pastel-green dress and a frilly white apron, turned around to face the boy giant and blew a strand of graying ginger hair out of her forehead. "Ragul! Now what have you been up to? Outside getting yourself all dirty again?"

The boy, Ragul, jumped up and down on the tiled floor, causing slight tremors on the countertop Tione and Aleric's jar was resting on. "I found two more humans for my collection!" he said happily, grabbing the jar recklessly and holding it up, causing Tione and Aleric to fall on each other again with a sound that emerged from the jar as nothing but squeaks.

The woman crossed her arms over her expansive chest and sighed. "You know what I said about picking those things up… they probably carry diseases."

"Diseases?!" Tione yelled indignantly, shoving Aleric off of her again. "We don't have any—"

"Hush," Aleric said. "I don't think they can understand us anyway. We could yell as loud as we could and it would just sound like squeaking to them."

"So…" Tione said. "To them, we're just like dumb little bugs?" The thought of being unable to communicate to someone—particularly someone who had her life in their hands was foreign and frightening.

Aleric shrugged. "No idea…”

"Okay, then, Ragud…" Mother was saying. "Just keep the filthy things out of your father's sight. If he finds out, you'll most likely never see them again."

Ragud grinned. "Okay!"

Aleric gulped. "Yeah… I thought something was missing from this picture…"

"You mean the man-eating giant?" Tione asked.

Aleric nodded, beginning to look a little ill. "That's just great… I wonder how many other people this kid has already `collected…'"

"Now take those things up to your room before your father gets home."

"Okay!" Ragud held the jar up to his face and peered through the glass at Tione and Aleric with inescapably gigantic eyes. "Now you can come up to my room and meet your new friends!"

"Oh, goodie…" Aleric muttered.