Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel

by Megan Morrison

  She hadn’t gone far before she saw a lump of their belongings on the ground off in the distance. Cloaks, it looked like, or blankets and cushions, maybe. It was strange that Jack hadn’t left those things near the campsite with the wagon.

  She hurried toward the heap. When she reached the pile, she grabbed the top cloak and pulled, but it wouldn’t come. Frowning, she tried to dig into the pile of supplies beneath. Her hand struck something solid. She threw back the cloak.

  There lay Jack, cold and still, his face as white as snow.

  Except that the snow around him was red.

  Rapunzel quickly knelt beside him. She touched the red snow and withdrew her fingers to find them slick with blood. Her shivering grew worse, though she no longer felt the cold.

  “Jack!” She took his shoulders and shook him. He did not stir. Frightened of the worst, Rapunzel lowered her ear to his mouth, listening for breath. When she heard a slight, shallow exhale, she seized his cold, motionless face in both hands.

  “You’re not dead,” she gasped. “You’re not dead, are you? Wake up, Jack, wake up!”

  But he didn’t wake. And when she lowered her ear to his mouth again, it seemed a long time before she heard a breath — this one slighter and shallower than the last.

  He wasn’t dead. But he was dying. Rapunzel realized, too late, that he had been right about the lifebreath.

  “Help!” Rapunzel cried, getting to her feet and looking around the wide, white, empty world. “Help us, please! Someone!”

  No one came, and Rapunzel had no idea what to do. She knew nothing about how to stop dying. Even Rune would have been a welcome sight.

  “Rune?” Rapunzel called. “Rune, can you hear me? Woodmother, where are you? Come back! Please, I need your help!”

  Nothing answered. Rapunzel knew that she was running out of time. She bent and covered Jack with his cloak.

  “I’ll get help,” she swore. “I’ll be back. You are not allowed to die. Do you hear me?”

  She knew he didn’t.

  She took off running across the fresh snow, careening into the wind, not sure whom or what she hoped to find, but knowing that she had to find someone.

  “Help!” she shouted as she ran. “Help me, please!”

  The snow began to fall more quickly, making it difficult to see. Rapunzel stopped and looked back toward where Jack lay. He was already out of sight. Would she be able to find him again? The snow was blotting out the tracks left by her boots.

  She stood where she was, afraid to go on, and afraid not to.

  “PLEASE!” she cried. “SOMEONE!”

  And then it struck her. She had seen the Woodmother — she had performed the task that Glyph had asked. So she was free of the fairies’ threat, and she could finally do as all her storybooks had taught her.

  Rapunzel cried out from her heart. “WITCH! WITCH, HELP ME! WITCH, I NEED YOU!”

  She turned in a circle, staring hard in every direction, searching for a sign that she had been heard. In her storybooks, Witch simply appeared, but that didn’t seem to have happened. Rapunzel strained her eyes against the snow. Her breath grew ragged as the seconds passed.

  “Witch,” she whispered. “Please.”

  The snow fell so heavily now that at first Rapunzel thought her eyes might be tricking her. But a dark and distant shape appeared on the horizon. As it moved closer, Rapunzel could see that the shape was cloaked and hooded, impossible to recognize. But it could only be one person.

  “Witch,” Rapunzel cried, sure that it was true, and she raced toward the hooded figure. She pushed the hood back with both hands.

  Under the hood stooped a woman — an old woman. Her hair was white, her face lined. But her eyes were clear and hazel, and Rapunzel knew them well, even if the rest of the wasted face was foreign to her.

  “Witch,” she gasped. “You came. You always said that you would come.”

  Frail, thin arms enveloped Rapunzel. She could feel, as well as see, how much Witch had aged without innocence to fuel her. But that didn’t matter now.

  Rapunzel took Witch by her hands, which were bony. The skin was loose. There were tears in Witch’s eyes.

  “Rapunzel,” she whispered. “You know me?”

  “Of course,” said Rapunzel, tears springing into her own eyes in spite of everything she knew. “Witch, help me, please. Jack is dying — there isn’t time.”

  Witch went with Rapunzel through the snow. Rapunzel knelt beside Jack and brushed the fallen snow from his cloak and face. His eyelids and lips were blue.

  “His head is bleeding,” she said. “And he’s barely breathing, and he’s so cold….”

  Witch braced herself on Rapunzel’s shoulder as she lowered herself into the snow. She slid her hands beneath Jack’s body. A sizzling noise cut through the muffled, snowy silence, and Witch jerked her hands away, hissing in pain. Smoke rose from her fingertips, which looked charred, as though she’d put them in a fire.

  “What happened?” cried Rapunzel.

  “Iron,” Witch managed, grimacing as she plunged her burned fingertips into the snow. “Where is it?”

  Around Jack’s neck, Purl’s iron chain glinted. Rapunzel shoved her hands under him and rolled him onto his side to find the clasp of the chain. When the back of his head was revealed, she sucked in a sharp breath, and Witch made a low sound.

  Behind Jack’s left ear, at the base of his skull, his head had been bludgeoned. The wound was a gash, wide and deep. His hair was matted in a glaze of ice and blood.

  Rapunzel unfastened the chain. The iron clasp was red and slick. “Get rid of it,” said Witch. “Throw it far from here, or I won’t be able to help him.”

  Rapunzel threw the iron chain as far as she could, away into the snow. “Hurry,” she begged. “Please, please, hurry …”

  Witch brushed the hair from Jack’s injury and shook her head. “If I can mend him,” she said, “you will come home to me?”

  “Of course,” said Rapunzel. “Just don’t let him die….”

  Witch was silent as she worked her magic. Her fingers moved over and near Jack’s wound, but never touched it. She looked sometimes as though she were playing a harp, and at other times as though she were sewing. Rapunzel watched as Jack’s icy blood thawed and his wound began to close, first where it was deep and dark, and then at the surface. His torn skin drew together in a pinched line. He exhaled unevenly.

  “Jack!” Rapunzel scrambled to his other side, where she could watch his face. She took his freezing hand in both of hers. “I’m here, it’s all right. You’ll be all right.”

  As Witch continued her silent manipulations, Jack became more lifelike. His breathing grew regular. Color was restored to his skin, and the hand Rapunzel was holding grew warmer. He swallowed, and the knot in his throat bobbed up and down.

  “My … head …,” he moaned, and Rapunzel smoothed his hair away from his forehead.

  “You were hurt,” she said. “But you’re all right now. Can you open your eyes?”

  Jack’s eyelashes fluttered. One eye opened a crack.

  “Rapunzel,” he said in a thick voice. “The tree … are you …”

  “Shh, don’t,” she said. “Let Witch finish.”

  “Let …” Jack’s eye fell shut again. And then both his eyes opened wide, and he jerked, trying to sit up. “Who’s that?” he asked, slapping at Witch’s hands. He was too weak to move quickly, but his eyes were panicked. “What’s happening? Rapunzel —”

  “Jack, don’t!” Rapunzel realized her mistake, but it was too late — he would not lie still and let Witch minister to him. He kicked and scratched and tried to roll, and finally he managed to get onto his hands and knees in the snow. He looked up, panting.

  Witch sat back on her heels and wiped sweat from her face. She looked drained. “I believe he’ll survive,” she said. Her voice had changed too, Rapunzel realized. It was older. Thinner. “It’s time to go, Rapunzel.”

  “Go where?” Jack barked.
“You’re not taking her anywhere.”

  Witch pushed herself to her feet and held out her frail hand to Rapunzel, who looked at it and realized that she had no choice.

  She had made a bargain with a witch.

  “Good-bye, Jack,” she said as she stood.

  “Rapunzel, don’t.”

  “I have to,” said Rapunzel. “Witch mended you.”

  “You bargained with her.” Jack’s expression was anguished. “No … no …”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Rapunzel. “Go with Rune, save Tess from Geguul, and soon I’ll come and visit you. Take care of Prince Frog for me until I get there, all right?”

  Before Jack could answer, Rapunzel put her hand into Witch’s.

  The journey was instantaneous.

  Rapunzel breathed in and out, and she was standing in the tower, holding Witch’s hand, as though there were no space at all between the First Wood and the Redlands.

  “Amazing,” she murmured. “How did you do that? You don’t seem strong enough.”

  “When you are with me, I am strong enough for anything.”

  Rapunzel understood her meaning better than she wished to.

  She looked slowly around the tower room. It was exactly the same as when she left. The stones in the walls, the wheel at the window, the books on the shelves, the bathtub, and the bell. There were her toys, her gowns, her curtains. There was her canopy. There, the fireplace. Everything was the same.

  But the ceiling was so low compared with the sky, and the walls were so close compared with the world, that Rapunzel felt they were pressing in on her. And though nothing had changed, it looked different to her now. The window wheel — she had used to love to turn its crank and lower her braid for Witch, then wind it up proudly, just as she’d been taught. Now she realized how long she had spent tied to it, with just a few feet of slack hair on which to travel. The bookshelves too — she had gone to them again and again to read about how wonderful she was. Now she saw that the shelves were full of lies, designed to frighten her into choosing her cage over everything else.

  She had not even been there for a full minute, and she knew she could not stay. Not forever. Not like before.

  “What you must have suffered,” said Witch in the strange, thin voice she now had. “My poor Rapunzel — your braid …” She let go of Rapunzel’s hand and brushed wet hair back from her brow. “I missed you,” she said.

  Rapunzel knew it was true. What she didn’t know was whether Witch had missed her as a person or only as a source of power.

  “I missed you too,” she said. Whatever else might have changed, that was the truth. “I wanted you so much.”

  “You never called for me.”

  “The fairies said they’d kill me if I did, and then they’d kill you too.”

  “They lied. I warned you about the creatures of the ground. You see how quickly I was able to bring you home — I etched that magic into you when you were an infant, not a week old. At any time, I could have brought you here, if only you had believed in me.”

  So the fairies had tricked her, in the end.

  But they had been right too, about many things.

  Witch held Rapunzel close. “They even cut your poor hair,” she murmured, and stroked the crown of Rapunzel’s head. “Let me fix it. Let me make everything comfortable for you, now that you’ve come back.” Witch hugged her tighter. “Welcome home.”

  But then she broke from Rapunzel and stepped back, holding one hand to her stomach.

  “Fairy magic,” she murmured, and swept her eyes over Rapunzel. “What’s happened to you? What have they done?”

  Rapunzel looked down at herself. She had forgotten how many fairy garments and devices she had on.

  “The Red fairies made a wheel for my hair to help me carry it,” she explained, and she took it off. “Unwind,” she said, and her hair came away from the wheel. Rapunzel went to the balcony and put it outside. “Does that help?” she asked when she returned.

  Witch glanced at Rapunzel’s fairy boots and clothes, and then at the bronze ring that traveled around her finger. “Are you wearing anything else that’s fairy-made?” she asked.

  “No,” Rapunzel lied.

  Witch’s hazel eyes glinted. “Not your cloak?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

  “I bought it at a shop in Cornucopia.” This much was true. Rapunzel took off the cloak and laid it over a chair, and Witch touched the little orange-jeweled copper pin.

  “Very pretty,” she said. “Where …?”

  “Princess Daigh of Orange,” said Rapunzel. “She gave it to me to help me get home faster.”

  “Oh?” Witch looked at her. “You planned to come home?”

  “Of course. I always planned to come home.”

  Witch picked up Rapunzel’s braid and touched the place where the bandits had cut it.

  “Let me fix your hair,” she said again.

  Rapunzel realized something with a jolt. “How did you know before that my hair had been cut?” she asked.

  “Hmmm?” Witch’s thin voice was vague.

  “When my braid was on the wheel,” said Rapunzel. “You couldn’t see where the bandits had cut it. How did you know it was cut?”

  Witch smiled and patted Rapunzel’s braid. “I always know when your braid needs fixing,” she said. “Why don’t we give your hair a bath and mend it?”

  This answer would have satisfied the old Rapunzel. Now, she heard the lie in it.

  “No,” she said, watching Witch’s smile to see when it would falter. “You knew because you saw it when it was unwound. Which means that you followed me, didn’t you?”

  Witch’s smile remained fixed, but her eyes changed, and the look in them was frightening. “You are tired,” she said. “Let me draw you a bath.”

  “No.” Rapunzel had no intention of removing her other fairy garments.

  “But you’re filthy,” said Witch, still smiling that awful smile. “Surely you want to change into something clean. And then I’ll make you supper, and we can sit and talk, and you can tell me everything that happened.”

  “And then,” said Rapunzel, her heart beating very fast, “you’ll ask me if I want to forget everything that happened.”

  The smile cracked. Witch bared her teeth for the briefest moment, then closed her mouth.

  “So this is what you think,” she whispered. “They’ve poisoned you against me.”

  “I’ve seen for myself,” Rapunzel said.

  “Seen?” Witch tilted her head. “In the Woodmother, I suppose, you’ve seen. But the Woodmother is a fairy. A very old fairy. After she swallowed you, you saw what she wanted you to see.”

  “So you were there,” said Rapunzel. “You did see me go into her.”

  “Of course I was there,” said Witch, and now she looked old and feeble, her face framed by white hair, her expression full of sorrow. “I had to find you. I was so frightened for you — oh, my Rapunzel —”

  A horrible idea dawned on Rapunzel. “If you were there, then you must have seen what happened to Jack,” she said. “Who hurt him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Witch in the same feeble, sorrowful voice. “After the Woodmother took you, I followed that Red fairy — Rune, you called him — as far away as I could before I lost my strength. I didn’t see what happened to Jack —”

  “No more lies,” said Rapunzel hoarsely. “Witch, tell me now. Who hurt him?”

  Witch gazed at her with her clear hazel eyes, the only feature that remained of the young and beautiful mother that Rapunzel had known and loved.

  “I did,” said Witch.

  Rapunzel stood stricken. She took an uncertain step back and found herself at her bedside. She sat on the bed. Her legs felt weak.

  “And so, here we are,” said Witch. Her white hair grew thinner on her head, as though she aged with every word she spoke. “You know everything — or think you do — so let’s not pretend. Shall I be very plain with you? Do you think you have th
e stomach for it?”

  Rapunzel barely had a voice.

  “Witch … how could you? Why would you hurt him so badly?”

  “To ensure that you would return to me,” said Witch. She did not look feeble now. She looked cunning, and her eyes were bright. “I saw how much he cared for you when he tried and failed to pull you from the Woodmother. I assumed your feelings were similar. Nothing so simple as to make you trade your freedom for my help.”

  Rapunzel was horror-struck.

  “And now you are home, as you promised,” Witch said, her voice nearly a rasp, “and home you will stay. It can be a comfortable stay, or it can be very unpleasant. That much is up to you.”

  “I promised….” Rapunzel thought back. What had their bargain been, exactly? “I said that if you mended Jack, I’d come home with you,” she said, her voice returning. She stood. “I never agreed to stay once I was here.”

  “And now that you’re here,” said Witch, “how will you leave?”

  “I’ll climb down my hair,” Rapunzel said. “I’ll cut it off.”

  “Cut it with what?”

  Rapunzel took the dagger from her belt and held it up.

  “Oho, I see.” Witch gave a croaking laugh. “You have changed indeed. Go ahead. Cut your hair. Roll it on the wheel and climb down. I won’t try to stop you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Clever girl.” Witch tilted her head and looked fondly at her, but the fondness was a mockery of what it had once been. “I did not raise an imbecile. My mistake.”

  “I said why not? Why won’t you stop me?”

  “Because I will not have to,” said Witch. “You will not choose to go.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No, I don’t.” Witch went to the window and looked out. “Because if you go, there is no reason in the world why I should not find your Jack and finish what I started.”

  Rapunzel trembled. The dagger dropped to the floor. “You mean kill him?”

  “Why not? I’ve killed before,” said Witch. “But then, you know that too — or don’t you?” She turned from the window and grinned, and the look was so out of place in her withered face that Rapunzel was revolted. “Shall we play a game? I’ll tell you terrible stories, and you tell me if you’ve already heard them.”