Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel

by Megan Morrison

  At least most of her was.

  Rapunzel got to her feet and picked up her braid. She pulled it toward her, out of Jack’s reach.

  “No!” he shouted. He knelt up and reached for the tail end of the braid, but Rapunzel tugged the last few inches into the Woodmother with her, leaving Jack alone. He made a desolate sound and slumped there on his knees in the snow.

  Rapunzel looked up at the great black tree that loomed over Jack’s kneeling shape, and she watched its wide, dark branches against the night sky. She didn’t understand how she could be in the tree and still see it standing there.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked, still voiceless. The tree said nothing.

  It was Jack who spoke.

  “I have to go home,” he said, as if the tree were Rapunzel. He gathered her iron chain from the snow where it had fallen, and clenched it in his fingers. His face was white and bruised with exhaustion. “I don’t know how long it’ll take you to get out of there, or even if you’ll get out.” His voice was choked. “Rune said he’ll come back for me after he checks on Glyph — he’s taking me to the Red Glade to get what I need for the giantess. If you’re not out of there by the time he’s back, then I have to go with him. I have to make sure Tess doesn’t end up in Geguul. But I don’t want to leave you like this.”

  Rapunzel wished she could tell him that she understood. Of course he had to help Tess. She only wondered how she would ever see him again. Perhaps she could travel to the Violet Peaks and find his home in Dearth.

  She had no sooner considered this than the scene before her blurred, and the starry, snowy night began to shift and swirl as though made of fog. After a few seconds, the fog blew away, leaving Rapunzel in a world that was rocky and gray. The sky was gray. The dirt was gray. The ramshackle cottage before her was gray. Only the sky had any color in it; it was the vivid violet of early twilight, and it cast a purplish hue over everything.

  Jack was still there, but he wasn’t kneeling. He stood in the doorway of the cottage, trembling all over. He wore his knapsack, as usual, and his vest. In his fist was something golden — something about the size and shape of an egg. He shoved it into his knapsack and knocked the cottage door shut with his elbow. His breathing was rapid and uneven as he hurried down the two rough stones that served as doorsteps and raced across the rocky dirt, away from the cottage.

  “Where are you going?”

  The voice was harsh, and Rapunzel turned to the cottage door to see who had spoken. A woman stepped out and caught up to Jack in a flash. She was not old, but her face and body were bony, and her skin was stretched tight across her features. Her hair was black, and long strands of it hung straight as pins where they had come loose from a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her dark, lidless eyes were exactly like Jack’s.

  “Can’t explain,” said Jack. “No time. I have to go — I’m sorry, Mother. I’ll be back before seven fortnights —”

  “Seven fortnights?” cried Jack’s mother. “But we need you here. How’ll I manage this place without you for three full months?”

  He lowered his voice. “You’ll have money,” he said. “There’s a goose in the cottage, on my bed — it lays golden eggs. Keep it hidden; don’t let thieves get ahold of it.”

  “Golden eggs?” His mother grabbed him by the vest. “What have you done? I saw that awful plant in the yard this morning; I saw where it went. Tell me you had the sense not to climb it, Jack, please.”

  “I climbed it,” said Jack flatly. “It went to Geguul.”

  His mother shuddered. “No,” she moaned. “How many times have I told you, no matter how bad it gets for us, even if we’re half-dead of hunger, never trade yourself to the White —”

  “I didn’t,” said Jack. “I never saw the White Fairy, and I’m not a witch. A giant tricked me into a bargain instead, and now I have to go to the Redlands, or —”

  “The Redlands?” shrieked his mother. “I’ll never see you again if you go that far!”

  “Yes you will,” said Jack. “But I have to go now. Trust me — it’s for all our sakes.”

  “That’s exactly what your father said before he left us to find that treasure. And I begged him not to go, I warned him those caves were full of enchantments and confusion, but he was so sure he could help us —”

  “This is different,” said Jack. “If I don’t do this, then …”

  The cottage door banged open again and a small girl came running barefoot across the dirt. She was dusty and patchily dressed, and she flung herself at Jack, who crouched and caught her. Rapunzel knew that she was Tess. Like Jack and his mother, her hair was glossy black, but her eyes were wide, long-lashed, and bright blue. Rapunzel wondered if they looked as much like her father’s as Jack’s eyes looked like his mother’s.

  “Don’t go!” Tess clung to Jack. “Where are you going, Jackie? Don’t go, don’t.”

  “Tess.” Jack’s voice was full of guilt and fear. He looked her in the face. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’m leaving for seven fortnights. How long is that?”

  “Fourteen weeks,” said Tess.

  “Good,” said Jack. “And that’s ninety-eight days. So you can count those days, and by the time you’re finished counting, I’ll be home. I promise you.” He scrubbed a bit of dirt from under her eye with the pad of his thumb. “You do your reading and writing every day while I’m gone, all right? Promise me.”

  Tess shook her head. Her small hands gripped his collar. “Don’t leave us like Papa, don’t, don’t …”

  Jack’s skin was as gray as the cottage. He kissed Tess’s forehead. “I’ll come back in time,” he rasped as he pried his sister’s fingers from him. “I will. You’ll be safe, I swear.”

  “What do you mean, ‘in time’?” said his mother, her voice eerily thin. “What do you mean, she’ll be safe? Jack, what have you done?”

  Jack stood. He looked mutely at his mother and sister. And then he turned away from them and ran as fast as Rapunzel had ever seen him move, dodging rocks and jumping fences, careening down the mountainside.

  Rapunzel watched him go, dimly aware that she could not follow. She was not really in Dearth. These things had already happened. A memory, that was what this was; the Woodmother was showing her a memory of Jack. Rapunzel suddenly wondered if the Woodmother had every memory. Even the ones that Witch had taken from her.

  The sky began to move. It drew closer, and its color and texture changed until it looked like stone. She fell to her knees, afraid it would crush her, but it stopped well above her head.

  A ceiling. Jack’s ramshackle cottage and its gray surroundings had vanished. Now she was inside, standing in a corridor she had never before seen. She put her hand against the stone wall, disoriented.

  “Traitor!”

  The word was unfamiliar, but the voice … the voice was as familiar to her as her own.

  “Witch,” she mouthed, and her heart swelled. “Witch, where are you?”

  “Traitor, traitor …”

  Witch’s voice was thick and broken. Rapunzel turned toward the sound, anxious to help her. The corridor before her was long and lined with many doors. Between the doors, candles flickered on the walls. The marble floor reflected the dancing flames.

  “He said he loved me….”

  The cry came from somewhere up ahead. Rapunzel ran to the first door on the left and pushed it open.

  In a great, dark room lit only by a dying fire, Witch lay on a carpet, sobbing. Her back heaved again and again.

  “He was mine …,” she managed, her voice muffled in the carpet.

  Witch was surrounded by roses. Hundreds of them, all in baskets tied with ribbons. They spilled from the baskets and out onto the carpet, so she appeared to lie weeping in a firelit garden.

  “Sit up, girl. Compose yourself.”

  Now Rapunzel saw the other woman in the room. She looked and sounded like an older version of Witch, except that her face was rigid, like her voice. She
sat near the fireplace in a tall chair, her back straight, her eyes hard.

  Witch sat up as though pulled by strings. She turned toward the woman and lifted her damp face, and Rapunzel was struck by how beautiful she was — more beautiful and even younger than Rapunzel had ever seen her. There was a softness in her eyes that Rapunzel had never witnessed there. Perhaps it was because they shone with tears. Perhaps it was something else.

  “Mother,” said Witch, and her voice faltered. “Help me.”

  “I cannot help you if you behave like common trash. You will exhibit self-control at once.”

  Witch did not move. “My heart is broken,” she whispered.

  “Storybook nonsense. Get up from that carpet, Envearia, and do it now.”

  Witch rose, somewhat clumsily, as though she felt heavy and tired. But when she stood, her posture was graceful, and her back was as straight as her mother’s. She wore a long, heavy satin gown, and lavish jewelry hung from her ears and glimmered at her throat. There was even a string of jewels dressing the dark waves of her hair. Rapunzel had never seen her like this. Witch usually dressed quite simply.

  “He cannot leave me.” Witch’s voice was desperate. She swept her eyes over the baskets of roses at her feet. “He cannot leave me.”

  “He can and he has.”

  “No, it is a mistake. He will return to me. He will realize his folly.”

  “It is folly — but it is permanent.” Witch’s mother lifted her nose. “The wedding invitation has arrived.”

  Witch made an anguished sound and pressed a hand tightly to her mouth, as if to stop herself from vomiting.

  “Prince Phillip has made his choice,” her mother continued, “and he has sent you his regrets. And so we must begin again.”

  “You say that as though any prince would do,” cried Witch. “As though you would see me married off to anyone wearing a crown, no matter where my heart lies.”

  “You will marry royalty, Envearia. Do you think I have invested twenty years in you for nothing? I trained you for a queen.”

  Witch fell to her knees and began to sob. “I only want him. I only want him….”

  “A disgusting outburst,” said her mother. “Stop it this instant. I must think. I must plan. I cannot do it with you howling like an animal.”

  But Witch did not seem to hear her. “I only want him,” she said again, swiping at her wet face. “I don’t want anything else. I don’t care about any of it — not any of it, do you hear?”

  Witch tore the bright jewels from her throat and flung them into the fire. She pulled the glittering earrings from her ears and ripped the sparkling circlet from her head, yanking some of her dark hair out with it.

  “Stupid girl!” cried her mother, rushing forward to pry the jewelry from Witch’s clenched hands. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “I want nothing he gave me! I want no reminders! I want to remember nothing!” And she collapsed upon the carpet again, sobbing violently.

  “Great White skies,” her mother said. “Do you think you are the first to experience this pain? Count yourself fortunate that you are still young and beautiful and there are still avenues open to you. We will leave the Blue Kingdom and settle in Grey, where my sister has an estate, and where Prince Saras Vesper has not, as yet, courted anyone publicly. He is not Marked, it is his brother, so he will almost certainly inherit the throne. Grey will soon be at war with the Empire, I think, but that is the risk we must take. War will give you a great opportunity to demonstrate loyalty under duress and usefulness in a time of strife, and in this way, you will gain the Vesper family’s gratitude and love. We will leave in a fortnight.”

  Witch remained on her stomach, weeping.

  “But first,” said her mother, “you will come to your senses. We will attend the wedding of Prince Phillip to —”

  “Do not say her name!” Witch screamed into the carpet.

  “She will be Her Royal Highness Felicity. Accept it. I will not allow you to embarrass me at the wedding, where Prince Saras Vesper will very likely be. It is your first opportunity to impress him, and believe me, you will not be the only woman there who is trying, nor will you be the most cunning. But do as I tell you and all will go to plan.”

  “I will not go.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A curse on Phillip and his wife — a curse on their children, and on their children’s children! May they suffer heartbreak and humiliation — may their line have no peace!”

  “Envearia!”

  Witch sat up. Her eyes were different now. There was no softness in them; they were alight, as though a terrible fire had been kindled within her. She reached out to either side of her and clutched handfuls of the roses that littered the carpet, and she gripped them until the thorns broke her skin and lines of blood showed between her fingers. She held the roses up and shook them.

  “He thinks that he can send me flowers and ask forgiveness and that it will be over between us,” she said. “He thinks there will be no repercussions.”

  “Repercussions? Envearia, you may be foolish, but even you cannot believe it possible to take revenge on the crown prince of the Blue Kingdom. You have no power.”

  “Not yet.” Witch’s fingers went white around the rose stems.

  “What do you mean, not yet?” Her mother gave a brief, cruel laugh. “Do you think you can marry Prince Saras and then turn his army against Prince Phillip? Would you start a war over your own selfish heartbreak?”

  “Hang Prince Saras. I will have nothing more to do with princes.” Witch was quiet. “There is another way of getting power.”

  All color drained from her mother’s face.

  “What do you mean, girl?”

  Witch’s mother was afraid. It was not only in her voice, but in her eyes.

  “I’m not as stupid as you think, Mother.”

  “No, you are far stupider. Never speak of this again.”

  But Witch was no longer listening. Rapunzel saw that her eyes were distant, and she was thinking. This expression, Rapunzel knew.

  “He will regret his choice,” Witch said, and she smiled a smile that made the hairs on Rapunzel’s arms stand up.

  “Stop.” Her mother’s voice was sharper than a dagger. “Envearia, I forbid it.”

  Witch laughed — a light, carefree little laugh — and got to her feet again, throwing the roses to the ground. This time, there was no clumsy heaviness. She moved with the grace and precision Rapunzel was familiar with. Her eyes were dry, and they gleamed. She flashed a wide smile at her mother. The smile was beautiful.

  The change was terrible.

  “Good-bye, Mother,” she said.

  “Envearia, no. Do not do this.”

  Witch walked past Rapunzel and out of the room without looking back. Rapunzel followed her through the door and back into the corridor, but the corridor was gone. In its place stood a dim spiral stairway. Witch was already ahead and out of sight; Rapunzel heard her footfalls on the steps above moving swiftly.

  Still clutching her hair in her arms, Rapunzel began to take the stairs two at a time in her eagerness, but she could not catch Witch. She tried to run, but her hair slowed her down, and the climb became steeper with each step.

  At the top of the winding stair, she reached a narrow wooden door that stood ajar. From beyond it, she could hear crying — thin, high-pitched crying, unlike any weeping she had heard before. The door was just open enough for her to slide through, and so she did, and when she saw where she was, she gasped.

  A tower. With a stone floor and an arching window. Was this her own tower? The light was familiar, but the walls were unadorned and everything seemed too small. Rapunzel took a few steps into the room, and the strange, thin crying grew louder. She looked down to find a basket at her feet, full of blankets that moved and wailed in the blue firelight. A tiny fist poked through the folds of fabric and flailed, and Rapunzel drew a breath of surprise. She had never beheld a baby, but she knew what they
were, and she knew that Witch had brought her to the tower as a baby.

  So was this … her?

  Rapunzel knelt before the basket and reached out a hand to move the blankets aside. She wanted to see the tiny creature, and perhaps soothe its pitiful wailing, but her hand passed through the blankets just as it had passed through Jack. She could only watch while the tiny fist waved back and forth, tight and red. She willed the baby to move its arm enough to get the covers out of the way and show its face, but the baby had no such strength.

  Rapunzel looked around the tower, wondering why Witch was not there. Maybe she had climbed out through the window. Or maybe the Woodmother had brought Rapunzel into another memory completely. It definitely wasn’t her tower, she decided — though the flames were blue, the fireplace was a different shape. There was a rocking chair where the bathtub should have been. There were books on the shelves, but the titles were new to Rapunzel — they were all about witchlife and other kinds of magic. There was no canopied bed either. Just a wooden cradle, standing in the middle of the room.

  But there were roses. Roses everywhere. Blooming from the ceiling and the walls, fragrant and beautiful. Whatever this tower was, Witch had been here.

  The sounds of horses’ hooves pounding the ground and many people shouting made Rapunzel turn her head toward the window. Two grappling hooks gripped the stony windowsill.

  “Hurry, Phillip!” she heard a woman’s voice cry. “Are they there? Are they alive? Tell me, quickly!”

  A large, veined hand gripped the windowsill, and a man of intense masculine beauty hoisted himself up onto the window ledge. Rapunzel thought that she had seen him somewhere before, though she could not place how. He glistened with sweat, and the moisture curled his light hair at his temples and over his forehead. His eyes were green, his nose slightly crooked in a way that somehow only made him more attractive, and his mouth was exquisitely carved; Rapunzel found herself gazing straight at it. In spite of everything she’d been taught about how to treat princes who came to her tower, her heart fluttered and her blood raced. Here was a prince, she thought, whom she might have followed to his lands far, far away.