Bindings by Carla Jablonski

one piece, everything else will take care of itself. At least , he thought, that’s how it works in fairy tales.
    Tim went back to trying to find a hiding place, or at least a way to keep himself one step ahead of his predatory host. He noticed that the flute playing had stopped. Tim wasn’t certain if that was because he was now out of hearing range orbecause the man had started hunting for him.
    Fairy tales. Bloody fairy tales . Tim hoisted himself up into a little recess in the wall. As he had expected, it led to another tunnel. This one was very dusty, as if it hadn’t been traveled in some time. That struck Tim as a good sign.
    Somehow the monsters never seem as real as the princes and princesses do , Tim thought. The ogres and the giants never seem to have a chance, really. Even the brave little tailors and clever orphan girls make mincemeat out of them. And live happily ever after. That’s how they end, the stories. Now that he was in a real-life fairy tale, complete with its own monster, he realized how unlikely those stories really were.
    Probably because they’re told by grown-ups. More lies.
    Tim spotted daylight at the end of the tunnel he was in. Could it actually be an exit? Since there weren’t footprints in the narrow passageway, and there were plenty of cobwebs, this could be a way out that the man had forgotten about. Tim picked up speed, banging his knees and bumping his head as he made his way to the end of the tunnel.
    â€œWhoa!” he exclaimed. The tunnel opened out onto a narrow platform. If Tim had been moving any faster, he would have pitched right over the edge. It was a sheer drop of about thirty feet.
    Tim peered down below him and into a courtyard of rubble and bones. On the top of a pile of skeletons lay a young girl—obviously a recent victim. She was still dressed in a beautiful flowing gown and had a tiara on her head. She looked like she might have been a princess—or had been playing dress up. Her body was twisted and broken. Tim couldn’t tell if she had been killed by the horrible man or if she had plunged to her death from the very spot he was now in.
    Tim was filled with horror and deep sadness for the little girl. He began to choke up. Maybe she was clever and brave. Maybe she would have done all right, if she’d been in somebody’s bedtime story. But she wasn’t. And neither am I. So I need to hold myself together.
    This is going from bad to worse to even worse than that . Tim gritted his teeth. He was determined not to let this beastly man get the better of him. “I won’t give up!” he declared. His voice echoed around the courtyard. “I just won’t! I’ll beat you for me, and for that little girl, and for this Land—whether it’s Faerie or not!”
    Tim tried to calm himself, backed up, and began searching for another place to hide. Why would these tunnels be built so low? Tim wondered. Can Creepy Bloke even fit in here? I wonder if that guy does a lot of crawling around on his hands andknees. I guess he’s crazy enough for that. His mind was rambling to distract him from the horrible sight of the girl.
    Or maybe… Tim stopped crawling. He froze with one hand off the floor, one knee raised. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t always go around standing up. Maybe he doesn’t always have two legs. He could be some sort of animal, when he’s at home.
    Tim placed his knee and his hand on the floor. Every muscle ached from his awkward journey through the twists and turns of this bizarre mansion. He was still being pursued and he still had no place to hide.
    A new thought occurred to Tim. Perhaps hiding wasn’t really the way to go. The other ones—the previous victims, he reasoned, it looks as if they all tried to hide and look where it got them.
    But he had to do something. He couldn’t just wait around to be turned into snack food. But what?
    Tim crawled out of an