Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (26 page)

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.

Maybe Matilda was way sneakier than she pretended to be. The thought of Jimmy finding us and swallowing us whole had been bad enough. The idea of Matilda systematically smashing up our bones and kneading us into bread was so horrible that I had to push it out of my head before I panicked, bolted out of there, and got us all caught. “Do you think she’ll ever let us out?” I asked Lena.

“Yeah. One way or another.” Her voice shook. “All these skeletons are dry, and there are easier ways to get the meat off our bones than letting us rot.”

The thought brought me an image of Matilda and a deboning knife.

I gagged again, so hard I tasted bile, and Chase made a strangled sound. Shoving my hand away from his mouth, he stomped to the corner, as far away from the skeletons as he could possibly get, and he sat down with his head between his knees and his sword dangling from his hand.

Then Lena squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s only an experiment. Only an experiment. Only an experiment.” The mantra must have worked. When she opened her eyes, she had the curious distant gaze of a scientist rather than a freaked-out eleven-year-old.

“I’m guessing she’s just putting us in here to hide our smell.” Lena shined her flashlight on the rib cage at her feet. There were two spikes on the shoulder blades. “Not all of these are human. I’ve never seen a nonhuman skeleton before.”

“Your academic interest astounds me,” I said, but watching her act so detached did calm me down a little.

Chase moaned. “Can we
not
talk about them, please?”

“Shh!” Lena and I said together. I glanced outside the bread box. He had spoken way too loud to be safe, and through the crack, I could see Matilda’s husband and mother-in-law enter the room.

Luckily, they hadn’t heard him.

“Jimmy! Genevieve!” Matilda raised her arms to hug them. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

The giant looked like his picture: green-skinned with warts on his nose and coarse black hair thinning at the forehead. But when Jimmy smiled, his teeth shone, and I could see how Matilda could like him. “Mother’s train got in early.”

His mother had the same green skin and even the same warts, but her short hair was gray and stuck up in bristles over her head.
When she looked up to glare at Matilda, I saw she wore an eyepatch. “You may call me Mrs. Searcaster.”

Matilda’s face fell. I felt a little sorry for her.

“Genevieve Searcaster,” Lena said thoughtfully. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“She was rumored to be the Snow Queen’s general,” said Chase without lifting his head.

Lena’s eyes bugged out. Hansel
had
mentioned a giantess named Searcaster, but he had been trying to scare us.

“No . . . ,” I said slowly, watching Matilda bustle around her mother-in-law, settling her in a seat. It looked so normal, except for the size. Evil generals just didn’t sit around and harass their son’s wives at the dinner table.

“Sounds like her. Green skin, missing eye, and carries a cane with the cast-iron corpse of a basilisk?” Chase said.

Genevieve Searcaster leaned her cane against her chair, and I got a good look at it. “There
is
some sort of snake thing on it.”

“Let me see,” Lena said. I moved out of the way, and she took my place at the crack. I kept my back to the skeletons. It was easier not to panic if I didn’t have to look at them. “It
is
her. I thought she was captured and tried for war crimes.”

“She
was
,” said Chase. “She got off, because she said that the Snow Queen had her son.”

I snorted. “Jimmy? Isn’t he a little big for kidnapping?”

“They did it a lot during the war,” Lena said gently. “The Snow Queen would imprison loved ones of her allies. If they turned, the prisoners would be tortured to death.”

I gulped, glad that the war was long over. I would probably give in too, if the Snow Queen had Mom, Dad, or Amy. “That’s horrible.”

“That’s war,” said Chase, like we should expect such horrible things. “Or war with the Snow Queen, at least.”

Lena didn’t sound so indifferent. “It made it really hard for the Canon to tell afterward who was actually guilty and who wasn’t.”

“Well, Searcaster’s supposed to be under house arrest until the end of the next millennium,” Chase said. “I don’t know why she’s going on a ski vacation.”

“I think she’s guilty,” I said.

“My dad always thought so too,” Chase said, which actually made me feel a little less certain.

Through the bread box’s thin sides, we could still hear the murmur of the giants’ voices. Genevieve Searcaster’s cut through everyone else’s like the screech of a chainsaw. “When I said I liked white meat, I meant
human
, not
poultry
.”

Apparently, Matilda had just served the main course.

“I didn’t know we were considered white meat,” Lena whispered dryly, and I smothered a giggle behind my hand, wondering if I was hysterical.

“I just hope you don’t pass this embarrassing allergy to my
grandchildren
,” said Searcaster. “I’ve already had to accept that they might not come out a proper
green
.”

“What’s going on now?” I asked Lena.

“Jimmy and Genevieve are sitting at the table, and Matilda is pouring everyone some wine.” Lena bit her lip. “Hopefully, this won’t be a long dinner. We have a lot to do.”

To reassure her, I told her about the mousehole that Chase found—how it led from the kitchen straight to the backyard. I expected Chase to interrupt me and start bragging at any time, but when I turned back to look, Chase’s head was still between his knees, bent almost to the floor.

“Chase, what’s your problem?” I said.

He didn’t answer. He just slid his hands through his hair.

I moved a little closer, despite myself. It annoyed me to be so concerned about someone I didn’t like. “Hey? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said hoarsely, but he had sweated so much that his curls looked wet. Each breath made his entire chest shudder.

No matter what Rapunzel had said, being nice to Chase didn’t exactly sound appealing, but if I was honest with myself, only one part of me wanted to hate him forever—the same stubborn side that Mom always said reminded her of my dad. That’s never a compliment.

I sighed deeply and sat down next to him, moving my sword so it didn’t poke either of us.

“I’m
fine
.” Chase lifted his head to glare at me. “I just don’t like skeletons.”

“Uh-oh. I forgot about that,” Lena said. “He’s afraid of bones.”

Then Chase scowled at
her
. “Bones and confined spaces. I got locked in a tomb for three days. You’d be scarred too.”

“Oh,” I said thoughtfully.

Rapunzel had known. I’d thought she had been talking just to me when she mentioned fear, but maybe not. Maybe she’d been talking to all of us.

Lena rubbed her face, murmuring, “Way to go, Lena. All of EAS to choose from, and you pick the sixth graders with phobias.”

Guilt churned in my stomach. She was right. I should’ve told her to pick a better Companion before we climbed the beanstalk.

“It hasn’t stopped us, has it? We’ve helped,” Chase said fiercely. “I found an easy entrance, and if it hadn’t been for Rory, we would never have gotten inside.”

Wide-eyed and stiff, Lena jerked back to the crack as if he’d
struck her, and I knew she didn’t mean it the way it sounded. That didn’t stop it from hurting.

“Is it specific types of bones?” I asked. Chase shot a glare in my direction, but he didn’t say anything. “Like skulls? Or femurs?”

Chase flinched. He didn’t even like their names.

It would’ve been so easy to tease him. All I had to do was ask if funnybones counted. But somehow, seeing him struggle like this made me lose my appetite for payback. It reminded me too much of when I got stuck on the beanstalk. No matter what else he’d done before this trip, he hadn’t teased me then.

“Look at it this way,” I told Chase. “The worst that could happen is that they could find us. Then you would get to fight them.”

Lena stared at me like I’d eaten some enchanted cabbage and grown donkey ears.

“Right,” Chase said sarcastically. “Then there would be two Jacks on one Tale—a Beanstalk one and a Giant-Killer.”

“Chase the Giant-Killer.” I tried to smile encouragingly. “Actually, it does have a nice ring to it.”

Chase eyed me carefully. He couldn’t tell if I was joking or not. “Are you trying to cheer me up?”

“To distract you,” I replied, a little defensively. “Fair’s fair.”

He knew what I was talking about. He shrugged. “It’s not my first time up a beanstalk. Whenever my dad would rescue a group of people, somebody would get stuck. I was more patient than my dad when we had to help them down.”

“I’m glad you were.” It was as close to thanking him as I could make myself go.

Chase smirked a bit—not meanly, but more like he knew exactly what I was thinking. I grinned back.

“You guys.” The light from the crack illuminated Lena’s face.
She looked frightened, and for a second, I thought maybe Jimmy was heading toward us. “I think we need to listen to this.”

Genevieve Searcaster’s voice was much louder now, and her words ran together a little. “The Arctic Circle. Pah. In my day, we went skiing in the Himalayas, like
normal
folk. I still remember racing my older brother down Mount Everest—”

Her day had to have been a
long
while back. Two giants skiing on Everest would’ve made headlines even in 1850.

“Matilda’s been pouring a lot of wine,” Lena whispered. “I think she’s trying to make sure her mother-in-law goes to bed early.”

“Sorry, Mother. The Himalayas have a lot of humans running around.” Jimmy was even louder than his mom.

“If you’re seen—” Matilda began.

“Humans,” Searcaster scoffed. “We never worried about what the humans saw before Her Majesty was imprisoned.”

Chase stiffened, and Lena sent us a look that clearly said,
How the hiccups will we get out of this?

“The giants have a queen?” I asked hopefully. They shook their heads darkly, and I knew Searcaster meant the Snow Queen. A chill ran down my spine, but I couldn’t understand it—hadn’t the war ended a long,
long
time ago?