“Thank you,” Rapunzel said.
Jack glanced at her. He nodded, and she considered him with some admiration. He had climbed up her whole tower — and he’d done it three times. He must be very strong. And Witch, who had climbed her tower every day for years and years, must be the very strongest person in the world.
Jack wiped his forehead and flicked the moisture from his hand. “Would’ve been nice if Rune had helped me,” he muttered. “I know he heard me.”
“Yes, but he wants me to die.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I guess,” he said. “You sound so matter-of-fact about it.”
“Well, it’s a fact.”
Jack eyed her for another moment, and then he grinned a little. “You’re going to have some good stories to tell after this, you know that?” he said. “Of how you conquered a Stalker and climbed your own hair out of a ravine, in spite of the fairy who wants you dead.”
“That’s an awful story.”
“That’s what makes it good,” said Jack. “My father always said that about adventures. The parts that are worst in the doing are best in the telling.” He gazed out across the river, and his grin faded into a thoughtful expression.
With effort, Rapunzel pushed herself up to sit. Jack stood and fished the Ubiquitous Instant Bridge out of his pocket. He held it up.
“Ready?”
Rapunzel braced her hands on the ground and tried to get to her feet. Her head pounded where every hair had been pulled. When she stood, her knees wavered a little, and Jack grabbed her arms to steady her.
“You sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“I — I think so,” she said, glancing at her braid. It was frayed all over from scraping against the cliff’s edge, but just now, she had no energy to worry about it. “Wind up, please,” she said. The wheel spun and the hair coiled.
Jack cracked the acorn against a rock.
A narrow rope bridge appeared, spanning the river valley. Rapunzel tucked Prince Frog safely into her pocket and went across first. The bridge swayed each time she stepped on the wooden slats. She did not look down or back, and she did not breathe until her feet touched the ground on the other side. Jack crossed it twice as fast as she had done, but he needn’t have hurried. Though it looked rickety, the bridge stood firm long after they had crossed it.
“So here we are,” said Jack. “Welcome to Yellow Country.”
Rapunzel took a deep breath. She could have sworn that the air was different here than it had been on the other side of the bridge. It was spiced. Sweet. She breathed again, enjoying the way it tasted. On her shoulder, Prince Frog seemed to be doing exactly the same.
“Come on,” Jack said, and they continued toward the willow trees to make camp.
RAPUNZEL woke halfway through the night, roused by the throbbing of every muscle in her body. She ached. She was stiff from sleeping for the first time without pillows or a mattress. She was sore from all the walking and braid-carrying she had done the day before. She was bruised and battered from climbing up the rocks and smacking her arms and legs against them. Worst of all, her neck seemed to be frozen in place from having been jerked out of the river by her hair. She tossed on the ground and tried to find a comfortable position to lie in, but it was no use. She barely slept for the rest of the night, and when the sun rose, she was almost as tired as when she’d first lain down.
Still, once she and Jack had eaten a bit of bread for breakfast, Rapunzel walked all day. Her hair, still wet from the river, grew heavier with every step. Whenever she complained about it, Jack volunteered to cut it off, and so, eventually, she stopped complaining. She tried to be glad that at least it was no longer humid and hot, as it had been in the Redlands. Yellow Country was much more temperate and often cooled by winds.
Rapunzel’s second day in Yellow Country was more excruciating than the first, and she wanted to cry out for Witch every minute. What kept her marching was her fear of Rune, whose shimmering trail of red light she spied several times. She wondered if Witch was trying to follow her; she knew that Witch would look frantically for her. But as long as Rune was watching, Witch probably could not approach.
Jack checked his compass from time to time, explaining the world to Rapunzel as they walked. He pointed out horses, crops, and farmhouses and told her how people lived by working the land; he showed her where trails led off the main road toward smaller villages. But nothing he said, no matter how interesting, could tear Rapunzel’s mind from the pain in her feet for very long. When they made camp that night, she felt as though they were nothing but two big, pulpy bruises, throbbing at the ends of her legs. Jack told her that traveling would get easier as she got stronger, but it hadn’t happened yet.
The next day, they descended into a wide, shallow valley divided into farms; but though Rapunzel found the landscape fascinating, she could think of very little besides the pain in her back and feet.
“I can’t go any farther,” she whimpered when they reached the other side of the valley. She looked at the top of the hill, miserable with exhaustion. “And don’t tell me to cut my hair,” she said before Jack could make his usual reply. “You know I won’t.”
He sighed but said nothing, and sat next to her on the side of the road while she rested her feet.
“Tess used to hate walking up the mountain,” he said.
“Who’s Tess?”
“My sister. That’s her name. Anyway, our village is way, way up in the Peaks, so we have to walk two leagues down the mountainside to the nearest town for supplies, and the path home is straight back up again. Tess used to complain the whole way. She’d cry and beg me to carry her. Which was fine when she could still ride on my back, but then she got too heavy.”
“So what did she do?” asked Rapunzel, curious.
“She started playing this game.”
“What kind of game?”
“If you keep going, I’ll show you.”
This was too tempting to resist. She stood again on her sore feet and walked up the hill beside Jack.
“So,” he said, “what you do is, whenever you feel like you want to complain, you have to make yourself say something good instead. Tess always says stuff she’s happy about, or stuff she’s looking forward to.”
“Seeing Witch,” Rapunzel said instantly.
“Right … but maybe try to branch out a little more,” said Jack. “Like, Tess will say she’s happy it’s sunny out, or she’s happy we’re having eggs for supper.”
“Oh.” Rapunzel thought about it. “I’m happy that Rune didn’t kill me,” she offered.
Jack snickered. “Good one,” he said. “I’m happy the bridge didn’t crash.”
“I’m happy you have Ubiquitous Instant Bread.”
“I’m happy the Stalker didn’t eat us.”
In this way, they climbed the hill, and Rapunzel realized that Tess’s game was a good one; it was easier to endure the walking when she was busy thinking of things to be glad about. Still, she could not trick her feet into believing they were painless forever. She was nearly in tears by the time Jack looked at the sky and said that they should make camp again.
Dusky blue evening fell over the fields and the world grew quickly darker; the moon and stars could not be seen. They chose a level expanse of grass in a little copse of trees, and Rapunzel had just begun to shrug off her wheel of hair for the night when water started to fall from nowhere and splash her with little cold drops. She shrieked and took cover beneath a tree.
“What is that?” she shouted, searching the sky. But it was empty except for branches — and Jack was laughing.
“You’ve never seen rain?” he asked.
Rapunzel remained close to the tree trunk. “I’ve seen it,” she said, “but it stays outside. Witch doesn’t want it to hurt me.”
“Rain won’t hurt you.” Jack stood in it and tilted up his chin. “And you’d better get used to it. It rains plenty in Yellow Country; that’s why they’ve got such great crops. Come on, fe
el it.”
Prince Frog boinged into the drops, but Rapunzel only watched with a sinking heart as rain pelted the grass where they were to sleep. She had already been dreading another night sleeping on the ground; now it would be more uncomfortable than ever. “I’ve been wet enough since I left my tower,” she said. “I want to stay dry.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” said Jack. “I don’t have an umbrella.”
“A what?”
“A little dome on a stick. You hold it over your head so the rain can’t get on you.”
“Oh.” Rapunzel pursed her lips in thought. “You don’t have a Ubiquitous one?”
“I used it on the way to the Redlands. How did you know Ubiquitous makes umbrellas?”
“If they make bridges, it can’t be hard to make domes,” said Rapunzel. “It can’t be hard….”
She glanced at the bendy branches of the willow tree overhead. They hung and swayed in the rain, which was falling faster. If she wanted a dry place to sleep, she would have to act quickly.
She grabbed the end of a branch in one hand and reached out to grasp another branch from a neighboring tree. The branches were slim, but not bendy enough to be tied in a knot.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“Do you still have my pink handkerchief?”
Jack did, and Rapunzel used it to lash the branches together. Rain fell on her hands and face, and she decided it was refreshing, but she still didn’t think she’d like to sleep in it. She strode a few paces away and grabbed another pair of branches.
“What are you doing?” Jack repeated.
“Making a brella.”
“Umbrella.”
Rapunzel ignored him. “What can we tie these with?”
Jack, who looked interested in the experiment, lashed the branches together with his belt. The two of them stood in the space between the tied branches, which was no wider than Rapunzel’s balcony.
“What now?”
“We hang a canopy over these,” said Rapunzel, “and we can sleep under it without getting wet.”
“Nice one!” said Jack, looking impressed. Rapunzel was proud of herself. Witch, she thought, would have been proud of her too, for figuring this out all on her own.
“What should we use for a canopy?” she asked.
Jack eyed her. “Your hair would work, if we took it out of the braid.”
Rapunzel hesitated — then nodded. Even after three days of walking, her braid remained damp from the river; a little rain wasn’t going to make it any worse. Having to braid it up again was better than having to sleep on wet grass.
“Unwind,” she said. Her heavy braid uncoiled from her throbbing back, and Rapunzel’s shoulders slumped in relief. Jack untied the ribbon that secured the end of her hair and stuck it into one of his pockets before beginning to undo her braid.
“Wow,” he said as her hair came apart in long, damp waves.
“What?”
Jack didn’t answer. He continued to loosen the braid, looping it over his elbow as he freed long sections of it that never seemed to end. “Think you’ve got enough of this stuff?” he muttered. “I didn’t know hair could even grow this long.”
“It’s magic.”
“Why would anyone use magic to make all this hair?”
“I asked Witch to do it,” said Rapunzel. “When I was little, it used to go down to my feet, and it was so pretty that I asked if I could have more. I asked if I could have so much hair that it went all the way down to the ground outside the tower. Witch said it was a wonderful idea.”
Rapunzel slipped off the wheel the fairies had given her. Though every muscle rebelled, she lowered herself to the ground and lay down in the grass. Jack gave her an odd look.
“I’m making sure I have enough slack to lie down and sleep,” she explained, tugging a bit of hair away from him.
“Oh,” said Jack. “Well, you stay there, then.” He ducked under one set of tied branches and passed the loops of her hair over it, then carried it all to the other set of branches and passed the loops over that one too. As he traveled back and forth, the golden hair began to form a thick canopy above Rapunzel in the damp grass. She listened to the soft thudding of the rain and imagined that she was in her own bed, and that stars might begin to twinkle in her hair.
When Jack ran out of hair, he secured the end to the branch and spent a few minutes spreading it out evenly on one side of the canopy and then the other. Finally he ducked beneath it and lay down beside Rapunzel. A moment later, the soft sound of rain became harder, and the branches all around them began to thrash. But their canopy remained secure, and they were, if not dry, then much drier than they would have been.
“See?” Rapunzel said when they had been quiet for a long time. “My hair isn’t useless.”
Jack shifted beside her. “Not completely,” he agreed. Rapunzel heard a crack, and then she smelled bread. Jack handed her half the loaf, and they propped themselves up to eat.
“It’s nice to get the wheel off my back,” she admitted, tearing off a chunk of bread with her teeth and wishing it was something different. She was getting sick of bread. It didn’t seem to have flavor anymore.
“I don’t know how you stand it,” said Jack. “Won’t you ever cut it off?”
“If I had cut it off, we couldn’t have tripped the Stalker,” Rapunzel pointed out to him for the twentieth time. “And we’d be sleeping in the rain.”
Jack shrugged. “We should get you something to carry it in, at least,” he said. “Cornucopia’s not far now — about a league and a half from here. We’ll probably get to town by noon tomorrow. A town’s a place where lots of people live.”
“I know. I’ve read about towns.” Rapunzel gazed up at her hair. “They’re full of diseased peasants who will want to sell me into slavery.”
Jack burst out laughing. “What kinds of books were you reading in that tower?” he asked.
Rapunzel chewed her tasteless bread. Jack mocked her as often as he explained things to her, and since she couldn’t get away from him, she tried to ignore him when he was insulting. She longed to get back to Witch, who would listen to her without laughing.
Thinking of Witch made Rapunzel depressed. It was nearly a week now since she and Witch had seen each other, longer by far than the longest separation they had known. Sometimes, Witch would go away for a couple or even three days, but that was the very most. Usually she visited Rapunzel every day.
“I miss her,” she mumbled, picking bits of crust off her bread.
“Hm?”
“Nothing.” Rapunzel knew better than to tell Jack that she missed Witch. She had done it last night, and he had replied so cuttingly that she had no desire to do it again.
“What’d you say?” Jack insisted.
Rapunzel shrugged. “So the First Wood is on the other side of Yellow Country?” she asked, though Jack had already told her this.
“I think I have a map in here somewhere,” said Jack, perking up at the question. “You should have a look at it.”
Rapunzel swallowed the last of her bread. “Map?”
He stuffed the rest of his bread in his mouth and fished a tiny lantern from his knapsack and a folded square of paper from his vest pocket. The paper was a picture, he told her, that represented where places were.
“We’re here,” he said, and put his fingertip on the map over the large, slanting words Yellow Country, and near the much smaller, cursive word Cornucopia. There were other cursive words written inside the Realm of Yellow’s border. Jack explained that they were all towns and villages.
“Where’s my tower?”
Jack dragged his finger toward the bottom of the map, over Redlands, to a place in the southeast of that country, near the border of a country called Grey. There were no towns near where Jack was pointing. Her tower must have been the only place for many leagues.
It was funny, she thought. The Redlands really was south of everything. She wondered why Witch
had said that they were in the middle.
“Where’s the Red Glade?” Rapunzel asked, studying the Redlands. “I don’t see it.”
Jack pointed to the words Fortress of Bole. “Bole’s the capital of the Redlands,” he said. “Most fairy glades are near the capital cities, I think, but they’re not on maps. They’re hidden and tricky to find — for people who aren’t fairies, at least.”
“Where else have we been?”
He traced his fingertip over the path they had taken, showing her where they had seen the stone prince, and the Golden River where they had met the Stalker, and the places they had camped so far in Yellow Country.
“And the First Wood, where the Woodmother is?”
Jack tapped the center of the map, and Rapunzel traced a path with her finger from where they now sat all the way up to the place marked Independence, which Jack said was the capital of Commonwealth Green. “Glyph told me the First Wood’s usually near that area,” he said.
Rapunzel measured the distance with her fingers. It was three times as far as they’d already traveled. “We have to walk for that long?” she asked, discouraged.
“Commonwealth Green’s a big country,” said Jack. “It used to be a province of the Pink Empire, but it’s independent now.”
“Pink Empire?”
“Here.” Jack touched the northernmost country, a sprawling mass labeled New Pink. “But they’re not conquerors anymore,” he said. “Not since the old rulers went to sleep.”
Rapunzel only half listened. She had found the words Violet Peaks, and she brushed them with her finger, tracing the mountains that bordered Tyme all along the east, from north to south. “You’re from the Violet Peaks,” she said to Jack. “You said so, didn’t you?”
Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel Page 10