Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel
Page 15
They passed the outer limits of Cornucopia. Lush farmlands rolled onward before them, empty and quiet. A light rain fell, pattering against the dirt road and refreshing Rapunzel’s skin. Serge ushered them toward a copse of trees at the bottom of the road, which he said was the shortcut.
The three of them walked into it, and Rapunzel realized at once that she was in another fairywood. Like the one in the Redlands, it was silent and full of slender, silvery trees and the strange, not-quite-sound of faint chiming. When they walked out of it again, the landscape ahead was foreign. Gone were the gently rolling farmlands. Ahead were high hills of shining green, planted thickly with trees. The sky was cold, clear blue, and the temperature had plummeted, but Rapunzel decided she liked the chill air. It tasted of pine and made her feel alive all over, just like the green hills ahead.
“Have we left Yellow Country?” she asked. “Is this Commonwealth Green?”
“It is,” said Serge. “I’d say I just put you several days ahead of schedule — no, don’t thank me, it’s the least I can do. Now, you must have questions.”
Rapunzel drew a deep breath as they started to climb the first hill.
“What do you know about my mother and father?”
“Not much,” Serge replied. “They had a house on the border of Yellow. Envearia had the house behind it, just inside the border of Green. Their gardens were separated by a fence.”
“Witch lived in Commonwealth Green?” asked Rapunzel. “Is her house still there?”
“It’s empty now,” said Serge. “Or so I hear.”
“Did my parents know her?”
Serge shook his head. “They moved into their house right before you were born,” he said. “The way I heard it, behind your parents’ house, Envearia had a fantastic garden full of vegetables and salad greens. And since your mother was pregnant with you, she started to crave those greens.”
Rapunzel knew only what Jack had told her about pregnancy, which wasn’t much. “She was very big?” she asked, extending her arms away from her stomach in a circle. “And she was hungrier than usual, because she was so big?”
“Right,” said Serge. “So she sent your father over the fence to get some of the greens from Envearia’s garden —”
“To steal them?”
“Well … yes,” Serge admitted. “And Envearia caught him. She told him he could have the greens, but that she wanted you in exchange. Your dad was so frightened of Envearia that he agreed. And so, when you were born, Envearia took you from your parents, whisked you away to the Redlands, and put you in the tower. People around here called it the Bargaining.”
Rapunzel frowned. “Why was everyone so afraid, then?” she asked. “The Bargaining was only a trade.”
Serge and Jack looked incredulously at her.
“But you got traded!” said Jack. “She took you from your parents!”
“Why should I have wanted to stay with them, if they were willing to give me away for a salad?” asked Rapunzel. “At least Witch wanted me. I’d rather be with someone who wants me.”
Neither Jack nor Serge had any reply to this.
“Now I understand why Witch didn’t tell me,” said Rapunzel. “She didn’t want me to feel hurt because my parents didn’t want me. She never wants me to be hurt.”
“Oh, really?” Jack snapped. “Is that why she messes with your brain?”
Rapunzel shot a glare at him. “How many times do I have to tell you — it was the fairies.”
“You can tell me all you want, but you’ll still be wrong. You saw Prince Dash holding that piece of your hair. You know the witch went after him for cutting it.”
Serge stopped walking with a jerk. “What about Prince Dash?” he demanded. “Did Envearia hurt him?”
“She turned him to stone,” said Jack. “He’s a statue in the Redwoods, between the tower and the Red Glade.”
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”
“He’ll have to be found,” Serge said. “I’ve got to go.”
“But you can’t go!” cried Rapunzel. “I still have questions!”
“The king and queen might not even know he’s missing,” Serge said. “I need to get back to Quintessential.”
“But where are my mother and father?”
Serge’s wings tensed.
“What is it?” asked Rapunzel. “Please, tell me.”
The fairy drew a deep breath, laid a blue hand on her shoulder, and spoke with gentle directness. “Your parents died,” he said. “A long time ago. I’m so sorry.”
The words passed through Rapunzel like water. She felt vaguely disappointed.
“They’re killed, then?” she asked.
“Well …” Serge frowned. “Yes.”
Rapunzel toed the grass with her boot. “So where are they?” she asked. She wondered what they looked like.
Serge’s frown deepened. “I’m sorry you don’t understand,” he said, “but I don’t have any more time. Jack, you take over from here.” He squeezed Rapunzel’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Just stay on the ground — and don’t agree to any more mind wipes.”
He let go of Rapunzel, snapped his fingers, and vanished. Nothing but a faint cloud of blue smoke remained where Serge had stood.
JACK looked gravely at Rapunzel.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Rapunzel was taken aback. He sounded unlike himself.
“What for?” she asked him.
“Because your parents died,” he said, as though that were obvious.
She shrugged a little. “I didn’t know them,” she said.
“Aren’t you sad at all?”
“No.” Rapunzel didn’t like his expression. “Stop looking at me like that,” she said. “How am I supposed to feel?”
“Awful,” Jack said. “Your parents died.”
“Well, I don’t understand why you want me to feel awful about their being dead, when they didn’t care a thing about me,” said Rapunzel. “But you don’t think I should worry about Witch, when she’s the one who loves me.”
For the second time that afternoon, Jack had no ready response. “Let’s go,” he said after a moment. He jerked his thumb toward the wagon. “Your turn.”
As Rapunzel reached out for the wagon handle, she noticed that Jack’s front pocket had gone still. “Oh — Prince Frog!” she said, putting her hand to her mouth. “I hope he’s all right — take him out, would you? See if he’ll stay put.”
Jack unbuttoned his pocket and pulled out a rather wilted Prince Frog, whom he placed on his shoulder. Prince Frog sat slumped there, his golden eyes fixed dully on the distance, and he made no attempt to hop anywhere as Rapunzel and Jack hiked into the north.
“Why did you ask Serge where your parents were,” asked Jack, “after he told you they were dead?”
“Well, they’re killed, aren’t they?”
“And why do you keep calling it that?”
“Because in my books, if people get killed, they’re dead.”
“But some people don’t get killed. Some people just die.”
This was a new idea, and Rapunzel rejected it. “You can’t just die,” she said scornfully. “You have to drown, or get your head chopped off, or something.”
“No,” said Jack, “if you’re lucky, you get nice and old, and you die in your sleep.”
“How old?”
“Like eighty or ninety. People who are fairy-born live longer than that, but regular people usually don’t. My mom’s parents died at sixty-three and seventy-one.”
“Why? Did something crush them?”
“No!” Jack laughed. “They just got old.”
“What does that matter?”
“Because when you get old, you wear out, I guess,” he said. “You get sick more easily. And one day you die.”
They crested another hill. The sun had begun to set, and the trees around them stood out sharply against the sky.
“One day I die?”
echoed Rapunzel. “How do you know?”
“Because everyone dies.”
“Not Witch. She’s ever so old, and she never dies.”
“She’s a witch,” said Jack.
“Well, if Witch doesn’t die, then I won’t either,” said Rapunzel. “Not unless I get killed.”
“What does that even mean to you?” Jack replied in exasperation.
“When a person is killed, it means they’re very hurt,” said Rapunzel. “Like when I almost drowned. It’s very, very bad.”
“Yeah, it’s bad,” said Jack with a snort. “It means your body stops working.”
“Like Prince Dash!” said Rapunzel. “Like a frozen statue.”
“It’s not the same.” Jack stooped to pick up a long stick from the ground. “I’m trying to remember how I explained this to Tess,” he said. “But I don’t think I ever had to. Nobody had to explain it to me either — I saw animals die on the farm, and I guess it just made sense after a while.”
“What did?”
“Death,” said Jack. “Look. When you die, it means … well, it means you’re gone for good. Your body gets buried under the ground, and the rest of you goes into the Beyond.”
“The rest of me?”
“The part that isn’t physical.”
“Oh.” Rapunzel thought about this for a little while. “You mean my feelings?”
“Sort of, yeah. Some people call it a soul. Some people call it the shard of the Black. Some people don’t believe there’s a Beyond at all — they think we just rot, and that’s it.”
“Are they right?”
“I don’t think so. But who knows?”
“Doesn’t anybody know?”
Jack shrugged. “Some people say they do,” he said. “My mom believes in the Beyond. She says she can feel it. My dad said it’s better left a mystery, and I agree with him.”
“What about Tess?”
Jack shot her a surprised, grateful look. “Tess thinks everyone in the Beyond is happy,” he said. “And at peace. And that they’re together with the people they love.”
This, Rapunzel liked. “If I die,” she said, still not convinced she ever would, “do you think I could meet my parents in the Beyond?”
“Maybe. If it works like that.” Jack looked sideways at her. “I thought you didn’t care about your parents.”
“I don’t, I just …”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to at least meet them.”
Jack looked somewhat relieved to hear this.
They headed up the next hill. It was very steep, but Rapunzel’s thoughts were so deep and strange and new that she barely felt the climb. She had a mother and father, but she couldn’t know them. Her parents’ bodies were buried in the ground, and the rest of them was in the Beyond, where she could not go. Maybe they were happy there.
She wondered how they had died. She wondered what had happened before that, when they were still alive. Governor Calabaza had said that her mother had gone to him for help after the Bargaining. But why? Her mother hadn’t wanted her, had she? Serge had made it clear that her parents had traded her to Witch, fair and square.
She found that she couldn’t help imagining what her life might have been like if there had been no Bargaining. She would have grown up in Yellow — what an odd thought. She would have had to find ways to get money for food and clothes. She might have learned to swim. She might have lived near Cornucopia and been in lots of jacks contests. She might have played with other children.
How different her tower was. Everything in it was beautiful and easy. Everything belonged only to her. There was no need to worry over money or clothing or hunger, no need to learn how to swim. Things had been perfect since before she could remember.
Though lately, her memory hadn’t been quite reliable.
Rapunzel rubbed her head. She tried to think back to her birthday, a year ago, and was almost not surprised when her memory seemed too short. She had no sense of whether certain days were missing or whether anything unusual had passed, but she didn’t believe she remembered enough to fill a year.
It was impossible that Witch would have wiped her mind and lied about it. Wasn’t it? Witch might have kept secrets from her, but that didn’t change the fact that she loved her. The fairies must have wiped her mind themselves. But if that was true, then why hadn’t they done it again, in the Red Glade? Rune had asked her that — if he could have done it, why wouldn’t he? Maybe he had been trying to confuse her.
Perhaps he had been trying to trick her into this. Into doubting Witch.
Her thoughts circled in this way for an hour. When it was time to stop and camp, Rapunzel was sorry; although she was exhausted, she would rather have kept walking until she burned out her thoughts altogether.
“Look at that, would you?” said Jack.
Rapunzel stood still and watched the sun drop beyond the horizon. The sky darkened for a dramatic moment, then shone with pink light. It was as pretty as any sunset she had seen from the top of the tower, and she liked watching it from here, in the brisk, cool wind, listening to the rustling of the trees that grew in small thickets all over the hills.
“This is my favorite weather,” said Jack. “Clear and cold.”
Rapunzel thought it might be her favorite too, but saying so felt somehow traitorous. The weather at home never felt like this.
“So the Blue Kingdom is that way,” she said, nodding to the sunset. “And the sea?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “When I go there, I’ll work on one of the ships to get passage out to the Olive Isles.”
“Ships?” asked Rapunzel.
And so Jack explained ships and sails to Rapunzel as they cracked their Ubiquitous acorns and made their surroundings comfortable. First they cracked a little green tent and made it comfortable with pillows and woolly blankets. Jack pulled a tiny lantern from his knapsack and hung it from a hook inside the tent’s peak, and Rapunzel parked the wagon outside the tent door and unwound enough of her hair from the wheel to let her lie down and sleep. They took off their boots and vests, and settled down to eat sausages and cheese and drink mugs of hot chocolate that steamed in the cold night air. When they finally crawled into the tent, their teeth chattered, and they dove under the blankets. Jack told stories of things he’d seen and read and heard about — stories he said Tess had always liked to hear — and Rapunzel mostly let him talk. He seemed happiest when he was telling stories and explaining things, so he didn’t mind her silence, and she had much to consider and little to say.
She lay on her back, staring up at the lantern and petting Prince Frog, who camped on her stomach. She thought about Witch, and about everything that had happened since Jack came to the tower. And then she thought of Serge, telling her not to agree to any more mind wipes.
“I won’t,” Rapunzel mumbled to herself.
“Won’t what?” said Jack. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Yes,” said Rapunzel. “Go on about mermaids.”
She let go of her troubling thoughts as Jack told stories of women with fish tails, who could breathe underwater and wore jewels in their scales. Rapunzel listened to his voice until she fell asleep.
In the morning, they consulted their map. The last village they’d passed was Bayberry. If they headed slightly northwest today, then tomorrow they could follow the main road north along the Mimicry River. The air was frosty, and Rapunzel reached for her cloak, but Jack cautioned her away.
“You’ll get hot enough walking,” he said.
He was right. They walked all day, over green hills and past two small villages, until Rapunzel’s tunic was damp with sweat. At sunset, they descended into a valley that dropped more sharply than any they’d seen so far in Green. The rocky road wound back and forth in a long, snaking pattern, and when they reached the bottom, Rapunzel didn’t know which idea she disliked more — to climb up to the other side immediately or to wait and do it first thing in the morning.
Someone clamped a hand over her mouth.
Rapunzel came fully awake at once with every muscle tensed, her scream stuck in her throat. She opened her eyes. It was barely light out, certainly not time to be awake yet, but Jack was kneeling beside her, practically smothering her with his palm. She smacked at him, but he caught her smacking hand in his free one and gripped it.
“Shh.” He waited for Rapunzel to relax before he lifted his hand. “Listen.”
There was rustling outside the tent, and the sounds of two people whispering. Rapunzel saw the shadows and light of a lantern swinging and heard a tinny clang, as though something had dropped into the wagon, which was parked outside the tent with all their things in it.
Including her hair. Rapunzel sat up, ready to scream down the valley, but Jack covered her mouth again and shook his head.
“Bandits,” he whispered, his mouth very close to her ear so that he made almost no noise. He was shaking as he put his hand to the hilt of his sword. “I’ll sneak up on them and save our stuff. Don’t move again — if you do, your braid will move in the wagon, and they’ll see it.”
Rapunzel stayed where she was as Jack crept out of the tent and became a silhouette on the wall. She watched him crouch and look around the corner.
“NO!” he yelled. His shadow lunged toward the two whisperers, who were standing near the wagon. There were two shouts — a crash — and the light flickered out. Rapunzel could see no more. She crawled out of the tent and ran around the side in her stocking feet. Jack was pulling on his boots in a hurry, his sword thrown across the top of the wagon.