Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (12 page)

Hansel showed me how to block in four positions: high, low, left, and right. Then he left me to practice and walked around, correcting people’s stances and giving tips. Every once and a while, Hansel would announce that every single one of us would be dead if the war was still underway, but he didn’t bother to come back and check on me.

So, I didn’t have anything to distract me from the pain.

First, my arms started to burn. Then I started to feel it in my stomach. Soon after my legs began to tremble, the witch dummy started to get past my guard. She poked so many holes in my shirt that it started to look like lace.

It didn’t help to find out that I was the only one having trouble with the drill. Adelaide performed hers like a ballerina, rapping her dummy—an evil fairy—on the neck, chest, and leg in time with Hansel’s count. The triplets were solid fighters, able to fight with either sword or staff, and even Lena could punch holes in her troll dummy with a spear. And the
other
new girl in the class, Miriam, hit her practice dummy with so much force that every stroke rang out like a bell across the room.

“How did you
do
that?” I asked her finally.

“Tennis. I’m on the team at home.” She pushed her hair out of her face and raised her sword above her head, mimicking an overhand serve. “Some of the movements are the same.”

So, I didn’t even have being new as an excuse.

I was
terrible
. I couldn’t believe it. Usually, I picked up new sports so easily.

“Pathetic attempts—the lot of you. None of you would stand a chance if war came upon us again,” Hansel bellowed. “Villains aren’t going to be nice enough to let you pick your sword up after they’ve knocked it from your hands. Do you expect mercy from the likes of General Searcaster?”

I rolled my eyes. It didn’t work if you
tried
to scare people.

“They say she plucked out her
own
eye—sacrificed it for her mistress’s magic.” Hansel corrected the stance of a tenth-grade boy and moved on. “Do you think a fierce giantess like that would hesitate to slay you if you made it easy?”

Gulping, I blocked another strike from the witch dummy. Maybe
it did work a little. The eye comment, especially.

“And you’ve heard of Iron Hans, I’m sure,” Hansel lowered his voice to a rasping whisper. “He’s a Character, maybe even the oldest still alive—ten centuries or so. A huge wild man, covered in hair, with skin the blackish-gray of iron. No blade can pierce it. They say he escaped from a Fey prison, just a few months ago. If you ever meet this villain, you should turn around and run the other way. None of you are good enough to face him.”

If possible, my palms got even sweatier.

“He always carries the same weapon, an enormous double-headed ax, almost as old as he is,” said Hansel. “With one blow, he can behead a man in full armor. With two, he can fell a castle wall. In the final battle alone, defending the rooms where his queen hid, he cut down sixty-seven Characters, one by one.”

“Uh, Lena,” I whispered around my witch dummy. “Are villains what I think they are?”

“Of course,” said an unwelcome voice. “Bad guys.”

I was instantly annoyed. I didn’t know if this would happen
every
time I saw Chase, or only on days when I was already mad at him.

He stood with his arms crossed, holding his chin in one hand, on the back of a small dragon dummy that Hansel hadn’t assigned to anyone. It was at least seven feet off the ground, and I wondered exactly how high he could jump.

I turned back to the witch dummy—to show him exactly how much attention he deserved.

“Wow, you really suck,” he said. “You
should
be scared.”

I gave him a dirty look. He didn’t
have
to rub it in.

I raised my sword again. When the witch dummy repeated the drill, I blocked all four hits, pretending like it was easy. The muscles in my arm were
not
happy.

Chase leaned over the dragon dummy’s head and told me in a low voice, “You know, it was my dad who finally took Iron Hans down. So, if you ever want any pointers—”

That was really too much. I couldn’t let him get away with that. “You two, switch,” I told the dragon and the witch dummies, hoping that they were spelled to follow everyone’s orders, not just Hansel’s. “I’ll practice with the dragon now.”

The dragon dummy moved so quickly that Chase didn’t have a chance to brace himself. He tumbled to the floor, just like I hoped he would.

I smiled. He scrambled to his feet, glaring at me, and then he glanced around the room to see if anyone had noticed.

“I won’t always suck,” I told Chase cheerfully. “And I can defend myself with a few other skills until then.”

Chase opened his mouth to say something, but a heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

I jumped the height of a troll.

Hansel stood over me, scowling. “I didn’t tell you that you could switch dummies. You’ll stay after class today and straighten up the weapons closet.”

“But—” I protested, as Hansel steered me back toward the witch dummy.

“I hope you’re not planning to tell me that you weren’t actually going to practice with the dragon dummy, that you were simply trying to make a point,” Hansel said, glowering at me. “Because that’s not what the dummies are for.”

I bit my tongue to stop myself from getting into more trouble.

Chase grinned at me and headed off.

Twenty minutes later, just as I started to feel like I couldn’t lift my arm even one more time, Ellie arrived and announced that it
was time for everyone in Eastern Standard Time zone to go home.

Sighing, I watched a dozen students file in and out of the weapons closet.

“Don’t feel bad. Hansel really
does
always pick on the new Characters,” Lena said, standing next to me. “I’ll help you straighten up. It’ll go fast.”

“No, you won’t,” Hansel called from across the room, nodding pointedly at the doorway.

“Thanks anyway, Lena,” I whispered.

She reluctantly jogged outside under Hansel’s stern gaze. With one final scowl in my direction, Hansel stepped out too and closed the door after him.

I headed for the closet. Every step echoed in the big empty room.

Almost sure that I was the worst swordswoman that EAS had ever seen, I started on the messy piles of weapons.

I turned one spear over and over in my hands, wondering if maybe I was training with the wrong weapon, but my arms were so weak that I kept losing control and knocking over the row of staffs I had just put away. I gave up, settling the spear back where I found it.

Maybe I was just bad at everything.

Then the torches snuffed out abruptly.

I squinted, looking back at the open door, now the only source of light in the closet.

“Hello?” I called uncertainly.

No one and
nothing
answered, but metal clattered behind me. I winced, wondering what
else
I had knocked over.

Then I heard the clanking sound again, this time behind the door, and peered closer into the shadows. I wasn’t alone. A large
figure rose to his feet in the back of the room. “No way,” I murmured and nervously stepped back.

The figure lurched forward clumsily, hair standing in tufts on his hands and shoulders. The dim light reflected dully on his dark gray skin. It looked like metal.

Iron Hans? Here? My mind flew to the story that afternoon, but I couldn’t believe that even Hansel would be mean enough to send a villain after a kid.

One gray hand fell on a shelf of unused swords, clanking again like metal on metal, and in his other hand, he held the double-headed ax. It was as tall as I was. It could cut me in half with one chop.

I froze, terrified. I knew I needed to run. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t obey. My mind went blank.

Iron Hans stumbled forward another step, raising the ax above his head.

I squeezed my eyes shut, shoulders hunched forward, waiting for the blow to fall. From the back of my throat came a very small, very embarrassing squeak.

Then someone laughed in a very familiar way. Two someones.

I opened my eyes a crack. The torches burned again, and I saw Chase letting Adelaide down from his shoulders. They were both laughing so hard that he almost dropped her.

I stared at them, filled with a completely different kind of horror. I would never live this down, not in a million years. Chase wouldn’t
let
me.

Once Adelaide’s feet were on the ground, Chase straightened up with a clink. Both of them wore chain mail, their hands and faces covered with pewter paint. “I knew Yellowstone was a fluke,” Chase said, grinning. “You’re no braver than the rest of us.”

“I never said I was,” I murmured. Adelaide carried a small hatchet, and I couldn’t understand how I thought I’d seen a double-headed ax.

“A room full of weapons and she didn’t even reach for one,” Chase said gleefully, as if I hadn’t said anything, and my fists curled at my sides.

“She didn’t even
move
.” Adelaide slid the hatchet back into a row of axes.

“Not a Companion I would want on
my
Tale,” Chase said.

“Basically, a Failed Tale waiting to happen,” Adelaide said.

It was true. It was so true that I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even argue, and that upset me more than anything.

Without even looking at the rows of weapons I was supposed to be straightening, I turned on my heel and ran out of the closet.

In my head, a voice a lot like Hansel’s said,
Class, Rory has just demonstrated how
not
to handle an ambush. I’m sure most of you will realize what kinds of problems you’ll create if you don’t move when someone attacks.

What if I froze up this badly during a real Tale?

ory Landon, what are you hiding under your desk?” Mrs. Coleman asked.

I froze, caught, as the whole class turned in my direction. I’d been reading “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.” I was so far back in the classroom I thought the teacher would never notice. Oops.

“Nothing.” I shoved the library book deep within the desk.

“Give it to me.” Mrs. Coleman crossed the room briskly. My face burning, I surrendered the book. “
The Complete Works of Charles Perrault
?” The students laughed, but Mrs. Coleman seemed more puzzled than angry. “See me after class.”

For a second, I wished she had just sent me out of the room, where I could have sneaked to my locker to grab another collection of fairy tales.

I had been reading since I’d got home the night before. After Mom had turned off my light around ten, I’d read under the covers with a flashlight. When I woke up hours later with drool on the page, I read over breakfast.

Reading was better than thinking.

And I really wished I didn’t have to think. I’d just found out that the original Sleeping Beauty was called Aurora. I’d never hated my
name so much. I spent the rest of the period miserable, ashamed that I was such a useless coward. I was only fit for the kind of Tale where I pricked my finger and slept for a hundred years.

The bell rang, sounding about a million miles away. After my classmates filed out, Mrs. Coleman sat me down for “the Talk.” I had heard six different versions of it.

“Rory, your behavior is absolutely unacceptable. I don’t know what teachers at your previous schools overlooked because of your . . . circumstances.”

The word she wanted to use was “parents.”

“But,” she continued, “if
I
catch you reading in class again, you’ll face some very serious consequences.”

Most of my teachers treated me differently from the other kids. Half tried to make me a teacher’s pet so they could cozy up to Mom during the parent-teacher conference. The other half tried so hard
not
to play favorites that I ended up getting in trouble.

“Sorry, Mrs. Coleman,” I said dully, just hoping she would let me go soon. “It won’t happen again.”

I got off relatively easy. She had me alphabetize all the documentary videos in the supply closet. Next time, she promised, she would send a note home to Mom.