Into the Wild

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “I just . . . thought you might like it,” he said.

  She stared at him for a second. Was this an apology? For Boots, food was probably the closest to an apology that she was going to get. “Really bothered you when the Wild took you over, didn’t it?”

  Dropping his head, he said nothing.

  “You don’t have to make it up to me,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. And the white cat nosed the paper bag toward Julie’s feet.

  She couldn’t refuse a peace offering from Boots—they were rare. Julie picked up the bag. What if it was candy from the gingerbread house? She shouldn’t eat anything from there. She could pretend to eat and then throw it out. Opening the bag, she took out a sandwich and lifted the bread: ham and cheese with mustard. She would have felt safer with PB&J, but it wasn’t so bad. At worst, it was one of the Three Little Pigs. She owed Boots an apology for being suspicious. “We can split it,” she offered.

  “There’s more,” the white cat said.

  “That’s okay,” Boots said simultaneously. “I don’t need any.”

  Looking for a second sandwich, Julie rooted through the bag: napkins, crackers . . . a Red Delicious apple. Oh, no.

  A red apple. In the Wild.

  She tried to toss the bag. Instead, her hand pulled out the apple, and the empty bag fell to her feet. “Boots . . .” she said. He flinched as if she’d hit him. Ears flattened, looking miserable, he huddled on the forest floor. Beside him, Precious watched her with an unreadable expression.

  Throw it, she told her arm. Drop it! Now! Her muscles wouldn’t obey, and her hand lifted the apple to her mouth.

  No, no, no! But her mouth opened, and her teeth sank into the apple’s red skin. The wet crunch seemed to echo, and she tasted the juice on her tongue.

  “Sorry, Julie,” Boots whispered. The white cat purred. And everything went black.

  Thud. A sudden jolt. Julie hacked—apple bits flew out of her throat.

  Air! She needed air! She gasped in and her lungs squeezed. Coughing, she bent up, and her forehead smacked into something solid. She flattened back down.

  She opened her eyes, wincing. Warped through glass, she saw blue sky, a smear of leaves, and seven faces pressed against the glass peering down at her. She screamed and recoiled—directly into more glass.

  She was enclosed: glass on all sides. She pounded on it. “Let me out!” she shouted. “Let me out of here!” She pushed upward with her hands and her feet.

  She heard a click, and the glass coffin opened. She sat up quickly, and the world swam. She squeezed her eyes shut. What happened? Where was she? Gingerly, she felt her head and opened her eyes.

  She was surrounded by dwarves.

  “Oh, no, not you,” she said. She scooted backward. How did she get with them? She remembered the apple . . .

  Oh, idiot.

  “My Snow White,” a boy’s voice said.

  Boots, what have you done? Why did you do it? She thought of the white cat. How convenient that Boots found the one thing he always wanted right when Julie was close to the motel. She’d worried that Precious was part of a story bit, but she hadn’t thought about any other kind of trap, a voluntary trap. Had Precious been a bribe or a reward? It was bad enough thinking that the Wild had used her own brother as an unwitting pawn, but to think that Boots had chosen to betray her . . .

  A boy—fourteen or fifteen with curly black hair—strode across the clearing. “Oh, fair beauty!” he cried. She looked over her shoulder to see if there was someone behind her, someone prettier. But there was only the forest, silent and shadowed.

  The dwarves hurried in front of the coffin, in between her and the prince. “Run!” they shouted. “Hurry!” Julie swung one leg over to climb out of the coffin, and the prince pushed through the dwarves as if they were no more than shrubbery in his way.

  “Julie!” the dwarves shouted. They do know my name, she thought. “The kiss ends the story! The kiss is an ending! You’re about to forget!” they said.

  And the prince was in front of her. She was trapped, half in and half out of the coffin. Trees hemmed her in on all sides—had they moved closer? She could no longer see the dwarves, just the prince. He was going to kiss her? A zillion scenes from movies flashed through her head. Inches from her, his nose loomed huge. She shouldn’t let him kiss her—it would end the story. But she felt frozen; her limbs wouldn’t move.

  Gently, he placed his lips on hers. Her eyes were wide open—his eyes were so close they blurred into one oblong iris. His lips felt soft and warm. His mouth opened, and she felt his tongue move between her lips. It felt like fried egg in her mouth. She yanked away.

  He looked at her and she stared back at him. He’d kissed her. She’d never been kissed before. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She wasn’t sure she didn’t like it. She thought she might want to try it again. But he didn’t move toward her. He didn’t even smile. Had she done it wrong? He opened his mouth to speak, and she didn’t breathe. “And they lived happily ever after,” he said in a flat voice—as flat as the Wild when it spoke through Boots.

  And the woods vanished.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  In the Tower

  Alarmed, Zel watched her hair grow. New hair spilled out of her scalp at a rate of one inch per second. Already she had twelve feet of hair. Coiled on the floor, it looked like a golden boa constrictor. Fresh mounds slid over each other as it grew.

  She knew what would happen next: first a witch would come, then a prince. Later, she would be banished to the desert, and the prince would be thrown on briars and blinded. Later still, she would find him and cry on his eyes. And the second her tears touched his eyes, the story would end and she would forget.

  She had to make reminders. Quickly. Zel cast about for something, anything, to shape into clues for herself. Bare stone walls. Dirty floor. The Wild knew so many of her tricks. She’d have to be clever if she wanted any chance of leaving a reminder it wouldn’t transform.

  She’d forgotten so much already, just from living. She could only vaguely remember what Julie’s father looked like. He’d had green-blue eyes, like the ocean in New England. His eyes used to crinkle when he smiled. The rest of him was a blur, but she remembered his eyes, and she remembered his hands. His hands could cover hers easily.

  She looked at her own smooth, pale hands that hadn’t scarred or tanned or aged in five hundred years. Five hundred years. Zel could bear to lose all of those years except the last twelve. She didn’t want to forget Julie.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me!”

  At the command, Zel yanked at her hair. The coils slid and flopped. She didn’t want to forget the day that Julie was born, when she first looked at Julie’s pink, scrunched face and felt as if the sun itself had flared up inside her chest.

  “Oh, Rapunzel?”

  She didn’t want to forget Julie’s first steps: how she went straight from walk to run to fall. She didn’t want to forget the way Julie used to leap into Zel’s bed or the way she cleaned her room by throwing everything in the closet or the way she argued with Boots over TV channels.

  Compelled by the Wild, Zel leaned out the window. Down below, Gothel waited, broom in hand and black dress billowing in the breeze. “Are you waiting for Christmas?” Gothel called. “Come on, Zel, lower the hair!”

  Zel blinked. That was strange. Gothel sounded like herself. She’d never varied from the witch’s lines before. “Mom?” she called down. “Are you all right?”

  “Just peachy!” Gothel called back.

  She was herself! What did it mean? Were things going to be different this time around? With the Wild growing so fast and subsuming so many new people, all the story bits were jumbled up. But did that mean there was truly a chance for change for the Wild’s original residents? Did Zel dare hope? “Hair’s coming!” Zel shoveled the mounds of hair onto the windowsill. It teetered there, a massive heap. She pushed it over. It tumbled down the tower wall. She braced h
erself on the window frame as the weight of it pulled her forward.

  Gothel grasped it, and Zel’s scalp was yanked forward. “Yow!” Another thing she’d forgotten: how much this hurt.

  “Ow-ow-OW!” It felt as if her head was going to pop off like a Barbie doll’s. Gritting her teeth, Zel hung on to the window frame as Gothel climbed the outside wall of the tower.

  Zel gasped as Gothel, scrambling over the windowsill, released her hair. Blinking back tears that had popped into her eyes, Zel reeled her hair inside. Sitting down on the puddle of hair, she massaged her scalp.

  “I’ve never understood why I don’t just fly up here,” Gothel said lightly.

  Zel grunted. It was going to be even worse when the new prince came. Any prince the Wild picked was bound to be heavier than Gothel. It didn’t matter if Zel’s scalp was strong enough; it still hurt. She really hated this.

  Gothel was silent for a moment as Zel conquered the pain. When Zel looked up, her mother was staring out the window. “All the years outside and here we are again,” Gothel said. “I had hoped that after five hundred years, my role would have changed.”

  Zel didn’t know what to say. Gothel was right: five hundred years out of the Wild, yet Zel was still the girl in the tower and Gothel was still her jailer. “Mother . . .”

  Continuing to stare out the window, Gothel said, “I have some news you’re not going to like.”

  Zel felt the bottom drop out of her stomach, and her hair was forgotten. Something had happened to Julie. She knew it. Her baby was hurt, and Zel was unable to go to her. She clenched her fists, wishing she could pummel the walls until they fell. She’d been unable to keep her daughter safe from the Wild. She would never forgive herself. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Julie’s in the woods,” Gothel said. “I saw her. She’s looking for you.”

  Zel almost melted into the floor with relief. That was the news? She knew that. “I know. She found me.” She must have found Gothel too. She must have been the one who reminded Gothel who she was.

  “Good for her,” Gothel said, smiling. She looked around the tower room. “Where is she?”

  Shaking out her hair, Zel got to her feet and looked out the window. Dark green, the Wild stretched like a smothering blanket to the horizon. “She’s on her way to the well,” she said.

  Gothel’s eyebrows shot up into the crinkles of her forehead. “You let her go back out there?”

  Zel flared up. “I didn’t have a choice! She wasn’t safe here.” Gothel’s silence spoke volumes. “At least out there she has a chance of making it,” Zel said. Again, Gothel said nothing. Zel wilted. Be honest, she told herself. It had taken her years of tries to get there. She’d had to reenact her story countless times before she’d succeeded. Julie was only twelve years old. How could she make it? “She doesn’t have a chance,” she whispered. Oh, what had she done? Sent her only daughter out for the Wild to toy with, that’s what she’d done.

  Awkwardly, Gothel patted her shoulder. She didn’t need to say anything. There wasn’t anything she could say.

  It’s not right, Zel thought. Julie should have the whole wide, wonderful world, not just this sad set of stories. She deserved more than “ever after.” She should have every day, new and unique.

  For a long while, Rapunzel and the witch stood side by side silently at the window looking out over the green expanse of Wild.

  Zel smiled briefly, remembering. “You should have seen her—facing down the Wild. Determination in her eyes. I was so proud of her.” The smile faded. “I wish I’d told her that.”

  “You told her what to wish for if she gets there?” Gothel asked.

  Zel nodded. “Her heart’s desire.”

  “She might make it,” Gothel said. Zel heard the doubt in her voice.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Mysterious Princess from Unknown Lands

  Once upon a time, there was a girl in a forest. . . .

  She had a knife at her throat. The blade felt cool, smooth, and flat. A hand held her arm, and she felt breath on the back of her head, warm on her scalp. She looked out at trees. Sunlight came down between the trees in shafts. The forest was green and gold. Except for the heavy breath behind her, it was silent. Not even a leaf moved.

  The girl tried to turn her head slightly, and the knife pressed against her windpipe. She wondered if that was a bad thing. Behind her, her captor began to sob. “Forgive me, princess,” he said—a deep voice, one she didn’t recognize. “The queen’s mirror says that you, with your skin as white as snow, are the fairest in the land, and so the queen has commanded me to kill you.”

  Princess? Queen? Kill? She clutched at his knife arm as fear coursed through her so suddenly that she felt dizzy. “Please, don’t!”

  He released her, and she scrambled away from him. She backed against a tree. She wanted to run, but the same fear held her feet frozen. She rubbed her throat as the man buried his face in his sleeve. “I could never hurt such innocence,” he said. “I will kill a deer for the queen and tell her it is your heart she eats instead.”

  Someone wanted to eat her heart? “Please,” she said, “let me run away.”

  “Run away, then, you poor child,” he said. “The wild beasts will soon catch you.”

  Her legs started moving, almost on their own. Leaves snagged her hair, and she stumbled as her shoes snagged on roots and rocks. Branches curled like claws over her head. Knots and holes leered like faces. She heard beasts roaring, and she kept running and running . . .

  Exhausted, she stumbled over a root and sprawled onto the pine-needle-covered ground. Above her, wind moved the trees, and branches seemed to reach for her. Unable to help herself, she started to cry.

  “Why are you crying, Girl?” a kind voice said. “Do you wish to go to the ball?” An oak tree made a popping sound. Bark swung open like a door, and light poured out of the trunk. Surprise stopped her tears.

  Briefly, she wondered what she was surprised at: the sudden voice or the fact that the tree had a door—but the thought felt unimportant and Girl let it drift away.

  Getting to her feet, she stepped cautiously toward the tree and peered inside. Through the opening, she saw a marble hall lined with pillars. She drew back, again feeling surprise. This time, she was sure she was surprised at the tree: it was larger inside than outside. But it was hard to hold on to the feeling of surprise. She supposed this must be how trees were.

  Coming around one of the pillars, a woman in a bathing suit and sunglasses waved at her. “Ah, there you are!” The woman bounced toward her, her toes barely touching the floor. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Girl frowned. After two surprises, she now had practice in pinpointing the emotion’s source: she was surprised at “expecting you.” “How could you be expecting me?” she asked. “I didn’t plan to come here. I just ran.”

  For an instant, the woman faltered, and her smile slipped from her face. Then the smile was back beaming so quickly that Girl thought she must have imagined it. “You can’t go to the ball looking like this.” The woman tsked. She took Girl’s hand and pulled her inside the tree. Butterfly wings fluttered on the woman’s back between the straps of the bathing suit. Girl twisted to feel her own back. She was wingless.

  The fairy godmother waved her free hand, and a wand popped into the air in front of her. She plucked the wand out of the air and pointed it at a marble pillar. A picture of a golden ball gown appeared on the marble. It sashayed across the face of the pillar. The fairy lifted her sunglasses. “Mmm, no,” she said. She pointed at the next pillar, and a silver dress shimmered and curtsied. On the third, a ball gown studded in rhinestone stars spun in a slow circle. On the fourth, a dress composed entirely of feathers descended from the top. Its skirt poofed until its hem touched the base of the pillar. “Yes,” the fairy said to the feather dress. “You will do.” She waved her wand at the pillar.

  Girl felt wind spiral up from her feet. It circled up her legs, up her torso. She l
ifted her arms in the air, and the wind cycloned over her head, pulling her hair up into a twist, and then it was gone. When she looked down, she was wearing the feather dress.

  The fairy clasped her hands. “Perfect as a princess!”

  Girl stared at herself. From her neck to her waist, the dress was an intricate pattern of tiny green and gold feathers, each as brilliant as a jewel. From her waist to the floor, she wore sweeping plumes of black, white, and navy. Peacock feathers draped down her arms. “How did you . . . How am I . . .” She touched the feathers, awed. Each one shimmered.

  “Don’t ask questions,” the fairy said. She tapped the marble floor with her wand. A mirror with a crown of leaves sprouted in front of Girl. “Oh, wondrous beauty that I see,” the mirror said. “The fairest of the land stands before me.”

  Girl gawked in the mirror. Amazing. She was . . . I’m beautiful, she thought. I look like a . . . like a . . . the phrase “fairy-tale princess” popped into her mind. Yes, that was it. In wonder, she touched her hair, which had been swept into a tumble of curls. The feathers flowed around her as she moved. “Wow,” she said out loud.

  Taking her arm, the fairy propelled her across the hall toward a blank marble wall. Girl resisted, wanting to look in the mirror longer. At the tap of the wand, a door opened in the marble. “Now, remember: it all changes back at midnight.”

  “What . . .” Girl began as the fairy godmother guided her through the door. “Down you go,” the fairy said, “and have a lovely time!”

  She shut the door, and Girl was alone in darkness. “Come back, please,” she said. She knocked on the door.

  What ball? Where was she supposed to go? The questions made her head spin and throb.

  Candles flickered to life around her. As the light grew, she saw that she was pounding on a solid wall. The door was gone. She was bewildered. Her head began to pound harder. None of this made sense!

  Did it matter that it didn’t make sense? she asked herself. She couldn’t answer that. With an inward shrug, she gave up on her questions.