Letting the foot brigade go by, Cinderella listened to their steps fade before she backed from the cover of the trees, guilty as the horse gave a snort of discomfort, and started at a trot until she felt safe to return to a gallop.
When she reached the tower, Rapunzel's hair was pulled in, and, both guards and specters too close, Cinderella knew it was unwise to shout. Throwing the reins around a stump, she pulled herself quickly through the branches. "Rapunzel," she called when she reached the level of the window, her fright greater than any she had ever felt as Rapunzel appeared moments later with a tear-stained face. "Are you all right?"
"No," Rapunzel cried.
"Did he hurt you?"
"No," Rapunzel sobbed. "I was the one who did the hurting."
"And you regret that?" Cinderella questioned, shaken as much by the response as the narrow escape.
"Of course, I regret that," Rapunzel returned. "I do not want to harm anyone, and do you not see what I have done? He will go to town. My mother, she will find out. If she knows he has been here, if she knows I have had a visitor, she will hide me away and I will never see you again."
"Is that what you worry about?"
"What else?" Rapunzel replied, and Cinderella felt a strange, perhaps inappropriate, sense of relief. "You should go, Cin. If she finds you here..."
"I am not leaving without you," Cinderella countered at once.
"I cannot leave," Rapunzel argued.
"Yes, you can," Cinderella assured her. "You can. Is this what you truly want, Rapunzel? If you could have anything or everything else in the world, would you still want most for us to be together?"
"Why would you even ask me such a thing?"
"Because it is essential that I know."
Leaned forward, Rapunzel breached the arch of the window and the tears that ran down her cheeks glowed silver in the falling night. "Days ago, I knew nothing of you," she stated. "Tonight, everything without you would be nothing."
Tears obscuring her vision, Cinderella smiled amidst her panic, knowing she would ask Rapunzel to say those words again once they found safety. She would not forget them, but it was the kind of thing one could stand to be told more than once.
"Do you trust me?" Cinderella questioned.
"That is one thing of which I am utterly certain," Rapunzel replied.
"I do not want you to fear me," Cinderella admitted in a nervous whisper.
"I could never." Rapunzel sounded so full of faith that Cinderella found all the faith she needed.
"Still, I do warn you," she hedged, "this could seem a bit out of the ordinary."
When Rapunzel seemed little concerned with the warning, Cinderella turned her attention to the trees. With the same whistle she used to call the birds to her own aid, she called them to Rapunzel's rescue, and they came to her at once, as if they were awaiting her command.
"Duck," she said to Rapunzel, watching the birds gather into formation.
"What?" Rapunzel returned, her eyes going wide as the birds shot toward her window like an arrow.
With a scream, Rapunzel dropped from view as they entered the tower, and returned to her feet slowly, her back to Cinderella as she watched the birds inside her tower room. When they returned to Cinderella's sight seconds later, the birds clutched the sheet from Rapunzel's bed in their beaks, but as they laid it on the floor before Rapunzel, Rapunzel only stood staring.
"Climb on," Cinderella instructed, and when she glanced back, the utter trust Rapunzel proclaimed wavered slightly in her eyes. "Trust them," Cinderella pleaded. "Trust me."
Hesitance dissipating in an instant, Rapunzel swept her hair into her hands and stepped back onto the sheet, and Cinderella watched her vanish as the birds pulled the fabric around her. Hearing Rapunzel's cry as she was lifted off the solid floor of the tower, Cinderella clambered down through the trees with due haste, rushing to meet Rapunzel on the ground as the birds put her gently down and the sheet fell around her.
"Are you all right?" Cinderella held out a hand, and Rapunzel grasped it firmly, pulling herself up and into Cinderella's arms.
Feeling Rapunzel against her, Cinderella could tell she was unharmed, though her breaths came in uneven gasps as she looked at the forest from a new perspective. Hand falling down Cinderella's side, it met the cut at her waist, and Cinderella sucked air through her teeth as Rapunzel's gaze fell to the wound.
"What happened to you?" she questioned, eyes jumping worriedly to Cinderella's when she came away with blood on her fingers.
"That can wait," Cinderella declared. "Running away comes first."
Tugging Rapunzel to the horse, Cinderella boosted her into the saddle, pushing off a low branch to mount in front of her, and Rapunzel gathered her hair quickly between them.
"Do you know how to control one of these?" she asked.
"I do," Cinderella returned with a smile. "Just hold on tightly to me. We must make haste."
Though their haste was aimless, haste they made, Cinderella too aware they needed to get as far from the tower as they could before the prince returned, in what little light remained of the day.
The forest growing denser around them, ghouls were everywhere, and, as the streaks of sun falling through the trees became fewer and fewer, their path was rendered darker and darker.
It was also a difficulty for Rapunzel to hold onto both Cinderella and her extensive hair. Though it did not impede them, Cinderella could tell when a piece got free to catch on a passing branch by Rapunzel's pained sounds, and, far enough from the tower to risk stopping, she dismounted and raised her hand to Rapunzel, helping her down.
"We need to get rid of your hair," she said.
"My hair?" Rapunzel's eyes turned from the graying surroundings to Cinderella.
"Not all of it," Cinderella assured her. "There just needs to be less of it."
"All right," Rapunzel agreed at once, and Cinderella was struck by the fact that Rapunzel did trust her, instantaneously, without question, and, not knowing where they might go or how they might survive, she did not know if she deserved such blind faith.
Helping Rapunzel down against the curved trunk of a fallen tree, Cinderella spread the ample fall of hair across its surface and made sure her hand stayed true as she pulled the sharp blade across the locks, feeling them fall away as a specter moaned at her ear.
Looking toward the nothingness, Cinderella tugged Rapunzel quickly back up, feeling Rapunzel's lips upon her cheek as she huddled closer in the growing darkness, her trembling the only indication of the fear she had worn so bravely since she came down from the tower.
"You are still bleeding," Rapunzel stated worriedly, her fingers moving over the wound at Cinderella's side.
"It is nothing," Cinderella returned.
"It is not nothing," Rapunzel said, hand pressing more firmly, and Cinderella felt the blood on her dress warm against her skin.
"I am sure it will be..." she began, before going suddenly faint. Falling away, she caught the point of the dagger in the tree's side as Rapunzel's arms firmed around her.
"We have to find something to mend it," Rapunzel said.
"We cannot," Cinderella said weakly. "We have to stop moving. Neither of us knows these woods. We will die trying to navigate them in darkness."
"You will die if we do not," Rapunzel argued.
"I may not," Cinderella breathed.
"That is not a chance I am willing to take. We have to..." Rapunzel's worried voice cut off suddenly, and, though she could not see it in the dense forest, moonlight scarcely leaking through, Cinderella could feel the whirling of her head. "Do you hear that?''
"I hear nothing," Cinderella shivered, feeling cold slipping over her skin, despite the warmth of the Naxos night.
"Water," Rapunzel said. "It is loud. You truly do not hear that?"
"No," Cinderella shook her head, leaning heavily on the dagger's hilt as the spirits of the forest turned friendly toward her and Rapunzel's voice grew more distant.
; "Come with me." Rapunzel pulled at her hand.
"Rapunzel... you could fall," Cinderella returned, but Rapunzel only tugged her harder, and, gathering what little strength she had, Cinderella yanked the dagger's blade from the stump to follow.
She hadn't a journey in her, but there was little journey required. Stumbling over the uneven terrain, they came quickly upon moonlight enough that it poured over the ground with nearly the strength of the sun, and Cinderella allowed Rapunzel to lead her, caring little for where they were, so long as Rapunzel's hand still clung to her own.
"Oh my," Rapunzel breathed, and Cinderella feebly looked, finding vast cliffs thrusting high before them, sparkling with deposits of minerals, surrounding a deep blue lake, so still, it was like an artist's rendering.
Guiding her around the lake's edge to the flow of water, a narrow veil that ran over the cliff to meet the lake below, Rapunzel turned to Cinderella, a vision of loveliness in the moonlight.
"You are so beautiful," Cinderella breathed, hand rising to one pale cheek, wanting those blue eyes to be the last thing she knew of the world.
"Lie down, Cinderella," Rapunzel returned, and Cinderella dropped to the warm patch of grass near the fall of water, gaze steady on Rapunzel as she tore a piece from the hem of her dress and let water pour over it, before ripping the slit in Cinderella's dress wide and running the wet cloth against the wound, talking in a nervous whisper of how she read the proper care of wounds in a book and hoped it was not fiction.
Tearing another piece from her dress, Rapunzel pressed the cloth firmly against the sliced skin, and Cinderella felt undeniably tired. Her hand covering Rapunzel's where it passed through the slit in her dress, she hoped Rapunzel also read how to survive the forest on her own as the darkness consumed her.
· · ·
The deliberate rhythm of hooves woke her to the dawning day, and Cinderella sat up with a start, finding, much to her surprise, she was still alive. Glancing to Rapunzel, who had awoken with her, she watched blue eyes darken with worry, before turning her gaze in the direction of the approaching brigade.
A guard Cinderella recognized as one of Prince Salimen's troop appeared in a fissure in the canyon, a dozen others at his back, and Cinderella jumped to her feet, pulling Rapunzel with her and reaching for the dagger. A whinny from the canyon's far side, and she glanced the other way, watching uniformed soldiers march in at their backs.
Surrounded as they were, the dagger in Cinderella's hand was useless. The two halves of the search party closing in from either side, they were outnumbered and out-armed, the only real choices death or surrender.
It was resisting for the sake of resisting.
Still, when Prince Salimen's guard moved closer, a sickening grin on his face, and Cinderella felt Rapunzel's hands on her waist, she moved backward, as if there was any escape. Feet slipping slightly on wet rock, the veil of water poured over them, and, at once, as Troyale had before it, Naxos wavered before Cinderella's eyes, growing dimmer and darker, until the soldiers and everything around them disappeared.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Huntsman
Blood did not keep forever. With each passing sunrise, it grew less potent, magic lost to time, and, with each passing sunrise, Queen Ino grew less patient.
For days, she had worn the face of concern, protecting her part in Snow White's disappearance, while the castle was overrun with servants and villagers, streaming in and out, taking orders and reporting back. The entire populace of Aulis, it seemed, had volunteered to help in the search for the girl, as anxious to prove their loyalty in her absence as they had been to celebrate her in life.
With a village's worth of people traipsing about the grounds, Queen Ino could not risk going for the blood. Even in the darkest hours, there was no rest in the efforts of those dedicated to the king. She had told Gurr to store it somewhere safe, somewhere it would not be found, and had to trust he knew how to hide it well, so it would not be uncovered, even as everyone in town looked high and low for any sign of Snow White.
Feeling time run longer each day, Queen Ino knew King Kardon would search forever without intervention, a consequence she had not fully considered. As she watched him again at the door, more distressed than she had ever seen him, the queen felt a sudden pang of remorse she shoved away with force.
"Darling," she uttered, approaching her husband and pulling him away from two metalworkers who had returned from the search with grim expressions and no good news. "I know you feel you must keep hope, but how likely is it that Snow White has survived all these nights alone in the forest?"
His expression slipping at once into despair, Queen Ino thought the king might protest, or even cry, but he did neither, instead letting forth a defeated breath as he nodded.
"Only two more days," he bargained, but was cut off by the unrelenting shake of the queen's head.
"It has been time enough to find her, if she is to be found, and there has been no sign." Trying to feign an appropriate level of grief, the queen was taken by surprise as genuine sadness enveloped her so unexpectedly it brought real tears to her eyes. Blinking them away, she tried to recall what she intended to say. "We cannot put the lives of everyone in the village on hold for our dear Snow White, who is most certainly dead."
First tear falling to her cheek, Queen Ino did not feel at all herself, but when the king's hand reached up to brush it away, she thought it must have done its part to convince him.
"You are right, of course," he replied, but his desire to continue the search was palpable, and she blamed the huntsman for the hope that remained in King Kardon's eyes.
He had done a fine job tearing himself to pieces, coming in with such a haggard condition the queen would have believed his story herself if she had not provided him with it. When he told the king about the pack of wolves that attacked them and carried Snow White away, though, and King Kardon tearfully asked if there was any hope of Snow White's survival, Gurr had been unable to deny the king reassurance, replying there was always hope, when he should have known better than anyone there was none.
"Yes, of course I am." Queen Ino found her voice unnaturally weak. "Now, tell these kind people to return to their lives and leave us about ours. We must grieve."
With a solemn nod, the king relented, as the queen knew he would. She could not change his heart. They had never had such power over each other. She had always been quite adept, though, at changing the king's mind. He would believe and hope for Snow White's safe return until his dying day, but he would do so with the quiet stoicism of a born leader.
Putting on his bravest face, the king went to meet his advisors. Instructing them to abandon the search, he ordered everyone from the castle, waiting for the last villager to be collected from the grounds and sending each common man off with an official thank you, before at last climbing the staircase to his chambers and closing the heavy door upon the world.
As the thud resonated through them, the corridors of the castle went eerily silent, the truest knell of death. Grief spreading from room to room like a plague, the queen found herself succumbing to a sickness she had no cause to catch. Her intention when she sent Gurr off had been to kill Snow White. She could not be sorry she was dead.
· · ·
Leaned against the shed where the carcasses hung to dry, Gurr found even the sharpening of a saw blade too difficult a task. Movements jerky, he succeeded only in making the edge more jagged, and, finally tossing the work aside, wondered when he would heal, if he would ever heal after what he had done.
He should have been put to death for Snow White's disappearance, for failing to protect the girl as was his duty. When he took her to the woods, his only job of value was to see her safely home. Instead, he had sent her off, most likely to her death, feigning the story of an attack any true huntsman should have seen coming.
The king had thought to punish him. Gurr could see it in the man's eyes when he had stood before him to confess his failure. Until that moment, King
Kardon had always been a merciful ruler, but his daughter's life the price for Gurr's mistake, he wanted Gurr to pay, and, standing there, unable to look the king in the eye, Gurr wanted what he deserved.
It was the queen who demanded mercy, who advised the king to spare Gurr the harshest punishment, and, though Gurr was certain it was due only to his knowledge of her sin and the whereabouts of the yield she had requested, he was nonetheless grateful to be alive to care for his little Angelina.
Despite her testimony on his behalf, when Gurr looked up to see the queen coming for him, intention in each footstep, he was struck by a suitable feeling of dread. Every sin the queen had committed, he had committed and then some, for he had sinned against her. As a castle servant, when ordered to a task, silence and obedience were the expected responses. Gurr had succeeded only in silence.
"Gurr." The queen practically purred his name, and the men at the hunting shed came to attention. They all knew better than to speak their observations, but there was not one amongst them who did not notice the queen when she passed. "I need protection to walk the grounds," she said. "Prove to me I did wise in sparing your life."
Tone so honey-sweet, he knew the other huntsmen would never hear past the seduction, Gurr could hear only the threat in it. "Aye," was all he could manage as he grabbed a hatchet from the shed wall and shoved it into a loop on his belt. Trailing the queen off, he felt the eyes of the others upon them, too blind not to envy his position.
Beyond the view of the castle servants, Gurr took the lead without being told, directing Queen Ino into the densest trees within the castle grounds, snow crunching beneath his boots as they walked. At the unmarked spot where he left it, he sank to his knees, and could feel her over him, watching impatiently as he dug into the solid cover of snow, whisking it away to reveal the disturbed ground beneath. Careful with the hatchet's blade, he chipped frozen earth away a chunk at a time until he could pull the leather pouch from the ground, and handed it to the queen, his only offering to appease her.
Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (Black Forest Trilogy) Page 10