Press ahead and find a way through the wall.

There are gray clouds above you and a wall of huge, rough stone blocks not far away. Part of the giant's castle? Where are you? And where is Doe?

You take a breath and take stock. At least you won't have to climb UP half a mile of beanstalk today. You hope. But you will have to find out how the happy ending was stolen and how to restore it. Or make a new one.

You pat your limbs and examine your clothes. A traveler, you suppose, from the cloak and boots. There's something sewn into the hem, heavy flat round things...coins. Practical, you suppose. Or you could bludgeon someone with it, needs must. Looped through your belt is a cloth wrapped round a bit of bread and cheese and a little knife. The belt purse holds a few coins, their copper and silver faces rubbed near smooth.

Perhaps Doe has been worked into the story somehow. If so, she's most likely in the castle. You advance toward the wall.

Big and rough as it is, you could probably climb it. But you don't like the idea of being so exposed. You walk along the wall, hoping for a better chance, and finally you find it. A slanting drain opens in the wall. Outside it is a line of pebbles and loose soil. A feathery head of seeds on an arm-thick dandelion stalk nods at you eye to eye. Even the weeds are giants.

You brush past the dandelion, freeing a few seeds to climb up on the warm, light breeze, and climb up through the drain hole.

On the other side is a garden. A little weedy and overgrown, but tended. Rows and beds of lush dark green plants fill planting beds raised up shoulder-height from the paths of irregular cobbles between. Cobbles? Giants' gravel, must be. The plants are huge. Cabbages like tumbleweeds. Carrots waving their feathery green tops above your heads. Beets whose tops are great bushes and whose roots must be barrel-sized. They look happy. Well-fertilized...oh. A bone snaps under your boot.

You survey the garden, looking for places to hide or escape if one of the giants should enter. And somewhere there must be a door into the castle.

There's a flutter of wings. You dive beneath a spinach leaf and look up to see a butterfly as big as a chicken flying through the garden.

"Doe!" you hiss, hoping it might be your Guardian in story form.