“Ah, shut up.”
Rapunzel clutched her hair to her chest and whirled around, staring into the darkness in every direction until she found the source of the familiar voice. Jack knelt several paces away, grimacing as he dug his bare hands into a thorny plant and worked her braid out of its prison.
“Jack!” Rapunzel’s voice was ragged from shouting. “I caught you! I thought I’d fallen too far behind, I thought —”
“You,” Jack said, freeing her braid and throwing it into the dirt, “are the loudest person I’ve ever met.” He gathered up the rest of her hair in an unkempt pile, dragged it over to her, and dumped it at her feet.
Rapunzel looked down at the pile in horror. Her braid, which had always been clean and golden, was as battered and filthy as Jack’s fingernails. But she would have to deal with that later. The only thing that mattered right now was the glass vial that Jack was carrying.
“Give me the cure,” Rapunzel demanded. She seized Jack by the front of his vest so she could search his pockets. Jack grabbed her wrists and fought her.
“Let go!”
“Not — until — you give — me — the cure!”
Jack stepped nimbly back. “I don’t have it anymore, all right? I already gave it to a fairy. He was waiting for me.”
Rapunzel whipped her head around in fear, but she saw nothing but the darkness and the trees. “Where is he?” she asked.
“He flew ahead to give it to his mate.”
“His what?”
“The fairy who’s dying. He went to save her life.”
Rapunzel gasped. The fairies had their cure. “But those fairies want to kill Witch,” she moaned. “They’ll hurt her.”
“Maybe they have their reasons,” said Jack with cool unconcern. “Maybe they’re just defending themselves against her. Ever think of that?”
“Don’t you dare blame Witch,” she shouted. “She did nothing to those fairies!”
“Then why did one of them almost die just from being in your tower?”
“That was the fairy’s own fault! She shouldn’t have pushed her way in!”
Jack shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “Have it your way. Just follow me close, all right? We have to get to the Red Glade, fast. It’s dangerous out here. Especially for me,” he added, and suddenly he looked afraid. “Come on,” he said, and he turned and set off into the darkness.
Rapunzel did not move. “The Red Glade?” she repeated.
Jack glanced back over his shoulder. “It’s where the Red fairies live,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I’ll never go where the fairies live!”
“Well, that’s where the cure is,” said Jack, smirking. “So if you want to save your witch, I guess you’d better hurry.”
Rapunzel hesitated. To follow a peasant through the woods, away from her tower and into the lands far, far away — it violated everything that Witch had ever taught her. She knew what Witch would tell her to do. But if Witch came now, she would want to protect Rapunzel, and that would mean going back to the tower while Witch traveled alone to the Red Glade to retrieve the cure. And if Witch went to the Red Glade, where her magic didn’t mix with the fairies’, she might be killed.
Rapunzel could not allow it. She would go to the Red Glade herself, for Witch’s sake. She swallowed hard.
“What will I do with my hair?” she said in a small voice.
Jack raised his dark eyebrows at the dirty, tangled heap of braid that sat at Rapunzel’s feet. “Cut it off,” he said. “We’ll move faster without it, and I can’t afford to lose time. I’ve wasted enough already.” He strode back to her, pulled a rather large knife from a short sheath at his belt, and grabbed her braid at shoulder length.
Rapunzel shoved Jack so hard that he landed on his backside in the dirt, his knife still clenched in his fist.
“What’s wrong with you?” he yelled.
“Cut it off?” she said. “What do you mean, what’s wrong with me, you lying, thieving, hair-cutting —”
“Peasant?” Jack hefted a good portion of Rapunzel’s braid into his arms before she could stop him. “What’re you dragging, fifty pounds of hair?” He dropped it with a thud. “It’s useless. Get rid of it.” He raised his knife.
Rapunzel kicked out as hard as she could and caught Jack in the front of his trousers with the sole of her slipper — just barely, but it seemed to be enough. He stumbled back with a howl, and his knife flew off into the trees. “If I see that knife anywhere near my hair again,” Rapunzel began, “I’ll —”
“That was my dagger!” Jack hobbled into the trees. “I don’t have another one!”
“Well, I don’t have another braid.” Rapunzel swept her braid back over her shoulder. “So stop trying to chop it off.”
Jack made no reply. He emerged from the trees, teeth clenched. “Great,” he said. “It’s lost, and I don’t have time to go digging it out, so you better hope we don’t run across bandits. Or a Stalker.”
“What’s a Stalker?” Rapunzel asked.
“Tell you what,” said Jack. “If we come across one, I’ll feed you to it.”
Rapunzel looked into the dense and towering woods, which were forbidding enough in the darkness, even without bandits. But at least they were empty of sizable creatures — or seemed to be.
“We’ll have to carry your stupid braid.” He sighed heavily. “Give me half,” he said. “You’ll take forever if you try to haul it yourself. And hurry up.”
Rapunzel wound her braid around Jack’s shoulders. She crisscrossed it over his back, sashed it around his front, and twined it around his waist like hairy, golden armor. Jack’s head stuck out of the hive of hair, looking red and angry.
“I said half,” he barked.
Rapunzel made a few big loops around herself with the remainder of her braid. Looking furious, Jack set off at a waddling run. Rapunzel skipped to keep up with him, but her skip turned to a hobble when her skin began to burn again where the rope had torn into it.
And then it occurred to her.
“You remember the day that I forgot,” she said, coming to a halt and forcing Jack to stop with her. “Don’t you? You remember coming to my tower, and a prince cutting my hair, and the fairy being sick and everything?”
From within the hair hive, Jack sliced a contemptuous look at her. “Maybe,” he said.
“Tell me the story!” Rapunzel said eagerly. It had bothered her beyond belief not to remember Jack’s first visit. The opportunity to have the blanks filled in was too tempting to resist, even if it meant listening to a liar who worked for the fairies.
“You want to know what happened?” Jack asked. “The truth?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“Then come see for yourself,” said Jack, veering left off the path and plunging into a dark, dense thicket. He pulled Rapunzel with him, and she hunched her shoulders as the trees closed in around her.
“Where are we going?” she whimpered. “I don’t want to go this way.”
“Neither did he,” said Jack, and he came to a halt. “Look.”
Rapunzel stopped beside him. She looked. And then she screamed so loudly that birds flew from the trees.
The man before them was made of stone.
Text and maps copyright © 2016 by Megan Morrison
Map by Kristin Brown
The world of Tyme is co-created by Megan Morrison and Ruth Virkus.
All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Morrison, Megan, 1976– author.
Title: Disenchanted : the trials of Cinderella / Megan Morrison.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2016. | ©2016 | Series: Tyme ; 2 | Summary: For generations the Charming men have been cursed, but now that the witch Envearia is dead the curse should be broken—however things are complicated at Charming Palace: King Clement is still nasty, Queen Maud has fled with the help of her son, Prince Dash, and Ella Coach (called Cinderella) would rather be at home sewing than living in the palace at Charming Prep school.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016008854 | ISBN 9780545642712 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cinderella (Legendary character)—Juvenile fiction. | Blessing and cursing—Juvenile fiction. | Magic—Juvenile fiction. | Princes—Juvenile fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Fairy tales. | Characters in literature—Fiction. | Blessing and cursing—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Princes—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ8.M8313 Di 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016008854
Cover art © 2016 by Iacopo Bruno
Cover design by Carol Ly
First edition, October 2016
e-ISBN 978-0-545-64273-6
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Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella Page 40