Rapunzel smiled. In the stories, it was always very satisfying when she cried out for Witch. The princes then showed how cowardly they were, and this one was no different.
“It’s not funny!” Jack snapped.
“Did I say it was?” She gave him one last, long, disdainful look. “You’re the worst prince who ever lived, and I’ll never go anywhere with you. Good-bye.”
She rang the bell. Jack made a noise like he had run out of air. A strong wind raced around the room. The ceiling garden whispered in a fit, showering petals as it rustled.
“Rapunzel!” a voice called outside her tower.
Rapunzel grinned.
“Rapunzel! Let down your hair to me!”
It was Witch.
Pleased with her performance, Rapunzel pranced to the window wheel and began to turn the crank. For her first time thwarting a prince, she had done beautifully.
“I can’t believe you!” Jack hissed. “She’s going to kill me — is that what you want?” He dropped to the floor to crawl toward the balcony. “Just don’t tell her I was here,” he whispered.
Satisfied, Rapunzel turned the crank faster and faster. Jack was frightened, and she was winning. “I tell Witch everything,” she said.
“I know,” Jack hissed. “That’s why she almost caught me last time.” He pried the door open with his fingers, and his voice grew muffled as he snaked out. “She caught the prince, did you know that? She probably even killed him, and all because he cut your stupid hair.”
Rapunzel tensed. “Because he what?” She put both hands to her sleek, golden head. “My hair? What do you mean, he cut it? What prince?”
But Jack didn’t answer. Rapunzel grabbed the wheel handle and gave it two final, furious cranks. When she saw her braid go taut and knew that Witch must be climbing, she raced out onto the balcony after Jack. He crouched at the railing, digging shaking fingers into the pockets of his shabby vest.
“Who dared to touch my hair? Tell me right now, you disgusting little peasant.”
“Go to Geguul,” Jack spat, yanking a small round object from one of his pockets.
Rapunzel didn’t know where Geguul was, but it sounded like another insult. “You’re not getting away, you know,” she told him. “Witch is climbing my braid. She’ll be halfway up by now. She’s very fast.”
“So am I,” said Jack as he slammed the object against the balcony stones. There was a mighty crack. Rapunzel shrieked and jumped back.
“Rapunzel!” It was Witch’s voice, quite close to the top of the tower. “Rapunzel, what was that? Are you hurt?”
But Rapunzel couldn’t muster her voice. She stared, rapt, at the snake-like thing that was erupting from Jack’s fist. It was the color of her hair and just as long, but slimmer and denser. Jack tossed one end over the balcony rail, and it tumbled to the dirt below. The end still in Jack’s hand shimmered. To Rapunzel’s amazement, it burst into a tripod of metal claws.
“Rapunzel!” Witch would be climbing through the window at any second. “Rapunzel, answer me!”
Jack hooked the claws onto the balcony railing, gripped the snake-like thing in both hands, vaulted over the rail, and vanished.
Rapunzel flung herself toward him. She was bewildered to see that he was already halfway down the side of the tower, dropping ten times faster than Witch ever had. He looked as though he had done this sort of thing before.
“Rapunzel!”
She heard Witch’s quick footsteps crossing the tower behind her, but her eyes were still fixed on Jack.
“Rapunzel — my darling —”
Witch pulled her away from the railing just as Jack touched the ground.
“What’s wrong?” Witch begged. “What happened? Can you speak? Are you hurt?”
Rapunzel gazed out across the moonlit clearing as Jack streaked like a shot toward the dark, forbidding forest.
Behind her, Witch jerked. Her arms closed around Rapunzel. “Who is that? Rapunzel, who is that?”
Rapunzel reached out to touch the metal claw that still hung from the balcony rail. He was dirty and short, a thief and a liar; he had spoken of dying fairies and hair-cutting princes, of peasants, and Geguul. He had insulted her hair, and climbed her tower, and he could make fantastic things grow from his fist.
“Jack,” she said.
AND then he called me stupid.”
“What a fool.”
“And he said my hair is useless.”
“How little he knows.”
“He even told me that another prince cut my hair yesterday. He was terrible, Witch. Worse than all my books.”
Tight-lipped, Witch cradled Rapunzel. It had been an hour since Jack had bolted into the dark forests of the Redlands, and Rapunzel lay in her nice, clean nightdress in the downy comfort of her bed, recounting the whole horrible adventure to Witch. It was like being a small child again, to be burrowed against Witch, breathing in the fragrance of her skin. She always smelled like roses.
“You shouldn’t have let him stay here and upset you.” Witch kissed Rapunzel’s forehead. “I wish you’d rung your bell at once.”
“I didn’t go with him, though,” Rapunzel said.
“No, you didn’t. You’re much too wise. I’m very proud.”
Warmth swelled in Rapunzel’s chest. She shut her eyes and relaxed into the very pleasant sensation of having her hair stroked. It was wonderful to be beloved and safe after such a nasty shock. Witch made everything better.
“Did he ask you to go with him?” asked Witch after a moment.
“No, it was all wrong,” Rapunzel said. “He didn’t fall to his knees or ask me to marry him. He just told me to go to Geguul. What is Geguul?” she asked, but Witch seemed to be very far away.
Witch kissed her forehead again. “I’m listening,” she said. “Tell me more.”
“Well,” said Rapunzel, trying to think of more to tell. “Oh yes! He was going to take one of my roses, but he wasn’t tall enough to reach the ceiling.” She smirked at the memory of his shortness.
Witch’s eyes clouded. “Why did he want your roses?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Rapunzel. “He said he was finding a cure.”
“A cure? Did Jack say that he was ill?”
“No — it was for a fairy!” Rapunzel sat up, remembering that she had left several details out of her story. “A fairy is dying! Jack said I hurt it, but I’ve never touched a fairy.”
“I’d like to get my hands on this Jack,” said Witch.
“Why? You wouldn’t kill him, would you?”
Witch turned an awful, ashy color. “What?” she whispered.
“Jack said you’d kill him,” said Rapunzel in a small voice.
Witch stared at her as though she had never seen her before, and then she put her face in her hands and her hair fell forward, obscuring her.
“I tried to keep you safe.” Witch’s voice was muffled. “I did everything in my power to protect you — but I’ve failed.”
“But I’m safe!” cried Rapunzel. “Jack was lying. No one cut my hair. And I can prove it,” she said, realizing that she could.
Witch raised her head at once. “Prove it?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Rapunzel. She jumped out of bed and hurried to the window wheel, where she unwound the tail end of her braid. “If Jack was telling the truth, my hair would be cut.”
“Rapunzel —” Witch was on her feet.
Rapunzel untied the end of her braid and pulled apart the tail to expose its middle. There, amidst the tapering wisps of gold, was the proof she had expected not to see.
It had been cut. Someone had hacked off a good six inches of one thick lock.
She stared at the shorn chunk of hair.
“But …,” she managed, when she could speak. “But I don’t remember.” She looked up to find Witch likewise staring at her braid, white-faced. “I don’t understand. If it’s cut … was there a prince yesterday?”
Rapunzel searched her
mind for any hint that such a visitor had come. She tried to recall a face, a voice, a feeling of anger.
“I don’t remember,” she said, amazed. “I would remember if someone cut my hair. But someone did, and I don’t. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I know what happened?”
Witch’s eyes flicked from the ruined lock of hair to the window wheel, and then to the ceiling garden. “A fairy came here, you said?” she asked.
“Why? Could a fairy have —”
“Let me think.”
Witch had never spoken so sharply to Rapunzel, who drew back, startled. She tied up the end of her braid and replaced it at the window wheel. Witch’s eyes were still fixed on the roses that bloomed overhead.
“A fairy,” Witch muttered. “It would be a fairy.”
Rapunzel burned to know what Witch was thinking, but she didn’t dare ask another question. She turned instead to the window and gazed down at the dark world below. It was hard to see now; she could make out only the shapes of tall trees and distant mountains. But Rapunzel knew the view by heart and could fill in the picture with her mind.
The tower stood in the center of a large clearing of hard red dirt. The woods that fringed it were dense and green, full of trees even taller than her tower. Each morning, the sun rose over the tops of the eastern trees, and each evening, it melted its way down the sky until it was hidden behind the western woods. Then the moon rose, soft and white, and pale violet stars shone in the blackness. Tyme was a land of such beauty that Rapunzel had sometimes pined to leave her tower and touch it.
But she knew better. Every beast and peasant below would try to kill her if she went to the ground, and she understood that being killed was something very bad.
“Come sit with me?”
Rapunzel turned from the window to see Witch seated on the edge of the bed, one hand outstretched. Rapunzel went at once to sit beside her. She held Witch’s hand tight. “Do you feel well, Witch? You look upset.”
“I’m well.” Witch covered Rapunzel’s hand with her own. “It’s you I’m worried about. Rapunzel, there is magic — fairy magic — that can steal human memories.”
Rapunzel’s hand flew to her mouth. “Steal memories?” she breathed. “But I thought fairies were useless! All my books say —”
“Your books are mostly right,” said Witch. “But certain liberties have been taken.”
“Liberties?”
“Little changes here and there. I don’t like to give you stories that are too frightening, so I alter them a bit.”
“Oh!” said Rapunzel, who rather thought her stories were scary enough. “Good.”
“And since fairies fly near your balcony from time to time, I didn’t want to make you afraid,” said Witch. “But one fairy is capable of magic. And she is powerful.”
Rapunzel’s skin crawled at the idea that a fairy might have done magic on her. “Why haven’t you told me this before?” she demanded.
“I thought there was no need,” said Witch. “Ever since you were an infant —”
“When you rescued me from the swamps?” Rapunzel said. Her rescue from the ground was a story she knew and loved. It was her favorite bedtime tale.
“Yes.” Witch smiled. “Since that day, I’ve put spells around this tower to stop fairies getting in. And though that fairy got through my spells, she is ill now, or so Jack said. She is even dying, perhaps. And if that is true …” Her eyes shone. “She can never trouble you again. Nor will anyone else. Not ever.”
“Oh, Witch.” Rapunzel hugged her. “I love you.”
Witch’s arms closed around her. Warm wind blew in through the window, and the moon beamed through the stone arch, making the tower room glow.
“Will you stay a little longer?” Rapunzel asked, her voice muffled against Witch’s shoulder.
“Yes. And I’ll be back early tomorrow to celebrate your birthday.”
“What will you bring me?”
“Something more wonderful than you can guess.”
Rapunzel lifted her head, intrigued. “Is it a toy?”
Witch shook her dark head.
“Is it a snack?”
Witch laughed. “Ever so much better than a snack,” she said.
Rapunzel bounced in place on the bed. “I must be nearly as old as you now.”
“Innocent girl,” said Witch, laughing. “You’re still a child. I’m ever so old.”
“You don’t look old,” Rapunzel insisted. Witch had clear hazel eyes, dark lashes, and a lovely face framed by waves of deep brown hair. She was wonderful to look at.
“That’s very kind.”
Rapunzel frowned. They had had this conversation before. She had first noticed it on her twelfth birthday — she grew older, and Witch didn’t. She wondered how old Jack was, and then realized what she was wondering. “Bother and drat,” she said, annoyed.
“What’s wrong?” asked Witch, who had gone to the window wheel. She untied the end of Rapunzel’s braid and took it apart in her hands.
“Jack.” Restless, she went to her toy chest and grabbed her velvet bag. She turned it over into her palm, spilling out a handful of silver jacks and a small bouncing ball, and she sat on the floor to play. She loved the cool heaviness of the jacks in her hand, loved the smoothness of their knobby little X shapes and the rounded points sticking out of their middles. Witch had given them to her on her seventh birthday and taught her how the game went.
Rapunzel scattered the jacks on the floor before her. She bounced the ball and picked up one jack before the ball could touch the ground again. Onesies. She bounced the ball again and picked up two jacks. Twosies. She bounced the ball a third time and scooped up some jacks without looking. She had played so many hundreds of times that she could tell, by weight, exactly how many she held in her hand. Sure enough, when she opened her palm, she counted three jacks.
And then it occurred to her.
“Jacks,” she muttered.
But it had always been her favorite game, and so Rapunzel bounced the ball and snatched up four jacks with a practiced hand. Foursies. She continued until she cleared fourteensies, but no matter how she focused, Jack would not be gone. Disgusted, she stuffed the jacks and ball back into their bag and shoved it all into the pocket of her robe. “I wish he had never come,” she said.
“Do you?” Witch asked, holding up a lock of golden hair to study it in the moonlight.
Rapunzel was silent. Witch bound her hair with cord and ribbon and came to kneel on the floor beside her. “An early birthday present,” she said, and opened the curling tail of the braid to show Rapunzel its middle.
Rapunzel stared. There were no rough cuts, no jagged ends. Every hair curled softly over Witch’s fingers. It was perfect.
She took the curl into her own hands, and Witch brushed a wisp away from her forehead. With two cool fingertips, she pressed the soft circle of Rapunzel’s temple.
“Jack isn’t everywhere, the way it seems,” Witch said. “He’s just in here.”
“I know.”
“Everything he did and said exists now only in your mind. That’s all that makes him real.”
Rapunzel nodded and yawned. She was exhausted. It had been a long and trying evening.
“He hurt you,” said Witch. “I can’t bear to think of how much. He insulted you. He accused you of violence toward another creature. How dare he?” Witch’s hand slipped from Rapunzel’s temple to cup her cheek. “Do you wish you could forget him?”
Rapunzel sighed. “I’ll probably forget him by tomorrow,” she said. “I already forgot what happened yesterday.”
“Only because the fairy made you.”
“Yes, and I don’t like it.”
Witch withdrew her hand. “You’d rather remember such an awful day?”
“I don’t know. It’s just … so strange.” Rapunzel struggled to put into words what she felt. “It’s not that I want to remember. It’s that something happened to me, and I can’t find it in my head.” She straine
d her mind again in frustration. “Suppose I did kill a fairy. Shouldn’t I know that?”
“You killed nothing!”
“But Jack said she’s dying. If she got hurt in my tower, who else could have hurt her?”
Witch sat back. “Let me set your mind at rest,” she said. “If the fairy is ill, it isn’t because of you. It’s because of me. I used powerful magic to protect this tower. And my magic and the fairy’s do not mix.” Her smile tightened at the corners.
Rapunzel squinted at the blue firelight. “If your magic made the fairies ill,” she said, “that must be why Jack came back for the cure. But why would he want to help that fairy?” she asked. “And why would the fairies send him?”
Witch looked thoughtful. “I suppose the fairies sent him as their emissary.”
“Emissary?”
“He came on their behalf,” Witch explained, “because they cannot come themselves.”
“Because the magics don’t mix?”
“Exactly. You’re so clever, darling.”
Rapunzel warmed at the pride in Witch’s eyes.
“Now get in bed,” said Witch, “and I’ll tuck you in before I go.”
With a few graceful flicks of her fingers, Witch restored everything in the tower to its place. Rapunzel crawled into bed. As she snuggled under her covers, she caught sight of the glass balcony door, and she shivered, remembering how Jack’s shadow had looked against the translucent curtain, his hand reaching for the door handle. She wished her mind wouldn’t think of it, but even when she closed her eyes, the image wouldn’t leave her. She wondered what was worse: to forget something awful, or to remember it.
“Maybe forgetting is better,” she mumbled.
Witch sat down at Rapunzel’s side and smoothed her hair. “Is that what you want?” she said. “You know you can ask me for anything.”
Rapunzel glanced at her. The way Witch talked, it was as though she could make her forget, just as the fairy had. The thought of losing more memories made her stomach curdle.
Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel Page 2
