Chapter 2

After escaping from the back of the castle, I ran and ran for what felt like forever. Only when the pursuers behind me gradually disappeared did I finally stop.

I had arrived in an unfamiliar forest wrapped in mist.

The bad part was, the sun had already set, and the sky was steadily growing darker.

The struggle and the escape had drained a terrifying amount of strength from me. Hunger and cold crept in. If I couldn’t find a place to rest, I might not survive the night.

To keep from getting lost, I carved a triangular mark into every tree I passed.

But when I circled back near one tree, I noticed a different mark on its trunk-a five-pointed star.

In this forest, there was someone besides me.

Enemy or friend? The shock of finding a clue was quickly overtaken by fear of the unknown.

Crunch, crunch.

I heard footsteps on dead leaves nearby.

Was that person coming?

I stopped where I was and didn’t dare move, afraid to make even the slightest sound. Mist swirled all around; I could only rely on the noise to judge the stranger’s position.

They were already very close.

Then the footsteps stopped.

My heart pounded like it was going to burst.

In the next second, something cold and sharp pressed against my neck-soundless, like a specter.

“Who are you?”

A young woman’s voice questioned me from behind.

“I’m a princess.” I didn’t know who she was, so I could only answer vaguely.

“From…?”

Hearing her tone, I more or less understood who she was.

“No. I’m from a different story. I’m Sleeping Beauty.”

I was wearing a pink dress and had blonde hair, but in the night it was hard to see clearly. So I pulled out the rules I’d hidden in my skirt and handed them to her. The girl read them for a long time before finally lowering her weapon.

I turned around and, with difficulty, made out her clothes and face.

Little Red Riding Hood.

“Just like you, I was dragged into this world,” Little Red Riding Hood said, showing me the rules printed on her hood.

She was covered in blood, and a deep wound ran across her face.

“What did you just go through… Where’s the Big Bad Wolf?”

Little Red Riding Hood gave a bitter smile. “My grandma killed him. She made him into wolf ribs and forced me to eat them. I refused, and she raised her axe and said I didn’t appreciate her kindness-said she was going to kill me.”

I stared at her, stunned. Little Red Riding Hood closed her eyes, looking exhausted. “You think I could’ve killed her instead? I’m not capable of that. Just escaping from under her axe nearly cost me half my life.”

So it wasn’t only Sleeping Beauty’s story that had fallen apart-other fairy tales had, too.

Little Red Riding Hood and I kept searching through the forest, but no matter how we walked, we ended up wandering in circles, still stuck in the same place.

There was something wrong with this forest.

Ribbit… ribbit…

Just when we were about to give up, a small pond appeared by our feet, along with a frog and a toad.

Golden words shimmered above the pond, with arrows pointing left and right.

[Another pair of lucky ones. Congratulations on meeting the forest’s guides.]

[Two paths lie ahead. One leads to Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house, and one leads to a warm, cozy cabin.]

[You may ask the frog and the toad one question each.]

[Only one person may ask questions.]

Little Red Riding Hood and I exchanged a look.

A life-or-death choice-this was a question designed to get you killed.

I took out my rules.

[The animals alternate between truth and lies. Judge carefully.]

“The frog and the toad-one tells the truth and one lies.” I remembered a classic logic puzzle I’d once done. “We just need to ask the frog one question: If we asked which path leads to the cabin, what would the toad say?”

If the frog was telling the truth and the toad lied, the frog would give the deadly path.

If the frog lied and the toad was telling the truth, the frog would still give the deadly path.

So we’d simply take the other path.

“No, it’s not that simple. You misunderstood the rule.” Little Red Riding Hood interrupted my reasoning.

“I’ve met the Big Bad Wolf. When he was dying, he pretended to beg for mercy. He’d say, ‘Spare me, I won’t eat people,’ and then immediately, ‘Let me go and I’ll definitely kill you,’ and he kept repeating those two lines, alternating back and forth.

“This rule is about a single animal: it alternates between telling the truth and lying. It’s not saying one animal always tells the truth while the other always lies.”

In that case, the frog and the toad didn’t just have two possibilities-true/false and false/true. We also had to add true/true and false/false, for a total of four.

No wonder the rules gave us two questions. My earlier idea only used one.

Little Red Riding Hood and I sank into thought.

After a long while, something suddenly came back to me.

“Little Red Riding Hood, was the five-pointed star on the tree something you drew?”

She shook her head, confused, confirming my suspicion.

“The first line on the pond says ‘another pair.’ That means someone came before us and asked them questions.”

I used a stick to draft in the dirt. “So the frog and the toad must each know whether the other one’s next sentence will be truth or lie.”

After listing every possible case, I asked the frog,

“If I asked both of you right now which side the cabin is on, would your answers be the same?”

The frog shook its head-different.

Then I asked the toad, “Which way leads to the warm cabin?”

The toad pointed to the left.

I grabbed Little Red Riding Hood’s hand and decisively chose the path on the right, explaining my logic as we hurried along.

Between the frog and the toad, there were four truth/lie combinations.

Frog truth, toad truth: the frog would answer ‘same.’

Frog truth, toad lie: the frog would answer ‘different.’

Frog lie, toad truth: the frog would answer ‘same.’

Frog lie, toad lie: the frog would answer ‘different.’

So if the frog answered ‘different,’ the toad had to be lying next. And if the frog answered ‘same,’ the toad’s next statement would be true.

Little Red Riding Hood counted on her fingers and worked through it for a long time before understanding finally hit.

We kept walking through the forest in a single direction, and before long, a cabin that looked warm and inviting appeared in front of us.