THE ROOT OF DARKNESS

THIRTY FOUR

I am still lost in the formless world of dreams and drowsiness when a sudden series of shouts and yells barges into my ears.

Jolting, my eyes fly open as a familiar course of adrenaline runs through me. It is a familiar feeling. I have felt that a hundred times during the climb up the beanstalk, when I startle awake in the dead of the night thinking I was falling to my doom.

Each night on the giant beanstalk brought a different kind of fear. The fear of my ropes snapping. The fear of the strong winds blowing me off my perch. The fear of suffocating in the thin air. The fear of slipping on plant sap.

The fear of losing my blade, the last thing I have of my father.

It was a treacherous sensation.

And that fear is exactly what I feel right now, as I scramble on the pile of leaves I was lying on, squinting up at the sight before me.

"Don't move, you slimy intruder!"

A bark shoots in my direction, followed by the whiny ring of a steel sword pointed at me threateningly. My heart thunders as