The young man's skin and hair were exceptionally fair, the latter strewn about his head as if it had not been properly trimmed in years, and his profile was soft, his expression temperate. Long arms folded neatly against his body, he appeared lost inside the sweater he wore, making him look almost a boy, though Rapunzel thought Red Riding Hood was likely correct and he was around their age, perhaps a little older. He was not unattractive and, sitting as he was, it was clear his demeanor was as far from that of the royal majority as it could possibly be.
"Excuse me," Cinderella called softly to him.
Intent as he was in his study of the branches above, he had not noticed their approach, or at least had shown no indication he noticed. When Cinderella spoke, though, the quiet young man lowered his gaze in their direction, not expecting strangers, but not frightened at their presence either.
"Hello," Cinderella greeted, her voice losing volume across the clearing until it was no more than a whisper by the time it reached him. "I am Cinderella, and this is Rapunzel and Norco and Togo."
"Hello," the young man replied simply, faintly, though he looked on the two maidens and two creatures with obvious intrigue.
"Red told us we would find you here," Cinderella explained.
"Red?" the young man returned.
"Stace," Rapunzel said.
"Ah," he said. "You mean the girl with the funny hat. Yes, we have met a time or two in the wood."
Rolling weakly onto his feet, the young man exceeded the stature of Rapunzel by a good six inches, and, as he came closer, his age was more certain. He had looked so very young sitting before the tree.
"I am Christophe," he said with a polite nod. "Welcome to my home."
Glancing about the vacant clearing, as Norco and Togo landed at her feet, Rapunzel wondered if he meant the tree.
"Your home is invisible," Norco deduced.
"No," Christophe shook his head, looking to an empty spot in the clearing with the weight of sadness. "It was my home. I returned from a walk a time ago to find only the Juniper tree still stood."
"Your house disappeared?" Cinderella asked.
"Along with my father and sister," Christophe whispered, looking off above their heads and fighting back tears. "Just gone."
"I am so sorry," Rapunzel murmured, clutching the air for Cinderella's hand, breathing in relief when her fingers closed around it.
With a sigh, Christophe allowed a few tears to fall as he turned back to the Juniper tree. "I should have been here," he whispered. "I was supposed to be here. But I got distracted on my walk. There was a frog, and it was singing, and I stopped to watch it, only for a moment, but it must have been long. And when I came back..." He shook his head as if he could not explain it. "I came to the tree to see if the gods would send them back to me, as they once sent me back."
"You disappeared too?" Togo asked.
"No, I did not disappear," Christophe responded. "I died once."
"What do you mean, you died?" Cinderella hesitantly questioned.
"Ten years ago," Christophe replied. "I returned from school one day and my stepmother offered me an apple from the heavy trunk in our kitchen. When I leaned in for it, she dropped the lid and I lost my head. Quite literally."
Stomach going queasy in an instant, Rapunzel also felt oddly fascinated, and she took a step closer to prevent any loss of the story to the wind.
"My sister, Marlinchen, who was actually the daughter of my stepmother and father, she saw it with her own eyes, and she laid my bones beneath this tree to bring life back to me."
"How helpful!" Togo declared, smiling, and Norco bobbed his head in agreement.
"Ah, she was lovely, my sister." Christophe sounded wistful. "Nothing at all like her mother."
"What happened to your stepmother?" Cinderella asked.
"Well, before I could be laid bones-bare beneath the tree, I had to be stripped of meat, of course. My stepmother, to hide her transgression, stewed me up and told my father I had gone off to live with my uncle across the kingdom. That night, my father ate me for dinner, calling for more until I was completely gone. Evidently, my original human form made for quite the delightful meal."
"It was the scraps from beneath the table that Marlinchen recovered," Christophe went on. "When the tree brought me to life, it did so as a songbird. So, I flew to the mill and sang for a millstone, which I brought back with me. Then, when my stepmother came outside... Blam!" he shouted, and they all jumped as one. "I dropped the stone upon her head, and, as she lay there dying, I turned back into a boy, reuniting with Marlinchen and my father, and we had lived happily ever since." Good humor at the memory fading, he looked back to the Juniper tree. "Until they were gone, that is."
As Christophe stood staring up at the branches, as if trying to will his father and sister back into existence, Cinderella's hand slid up Rapunzel's arm to tug at her elbow. "Just a moment," Cinderella excused them, hauling Rapunzel out of hearing range, and let out a puff of air as she glanced back toward the Juniper tree. "So, what do you think?"
The story of Christophe's life and death, and his gleeful murder of his stepmother, still vivid in her mind, Rapunzel tried to withhold her snap thoughts. "I think we may not be ones to judge considering our own pasts."
"Yes," Cinderella said, a small smirk coming to her lips. "But what do you think?"
"I think he is demented!" Rapunzel admitted, glancing to Christophe when her voice squeaked louder than intended. Settled back at the tree's base, though, he only continued to stare at the branches with Norco and Togo at his sides, trying to figure out what he saw up there.
"And it does not seem much better down the family line," Rapunzel declared. "His stepmother killing him? His father eating him? It seems the only one who was not stark mad was the girl. But then..." she sighed. "I do feel sorry for him."
"As do I," Cinderella admitted. "And he and Snow White do have something in common, seeing as both their stepmothers tried to kill them."
Reluctantly agreeing with the legitimacy of that, Rapunzel nodded.
"Plus..." Cinderella uttered, taking a deep breath as she met Rapunzel's eyes. "It is only a story."
The statement pushing a small laugh past Rapunzel's lips, she wondered when exactly Cinderella became a true believer. "Yes," she replied. "It is only a story."
"But he, he is real," Cinderella said.
"Our stories do affect us, though," Rapunzel returned. "I still lack the knowledge of the world that was withheld from me in my life, and, you..." She took Cinderella's hand, the one upon which she had first noticed the marks of Cinderella's pained past, intangible as they were. "You still wear the scars of yours."
Hand rising to Rapunzel's cheek, a gentle thumb stroked softly over her skin as Cinderella looked toward the cliff wall. "He is alone," Cinderella uttered at last, eyes returning to Rapunzel's. "Which I cannot help but think may be my fault. As you said, I have changed things."
"You did not do this," Rapunzel responded, feeling the ache in Cinderella's soft, disbelieving smile.
"Perhaps not," Cinderella said, glancing back to Christophe. "If he would like, though, perhaps he could come with us. He does seem pleasant enough when you have not tried to kill him."
"All right," Rapunzel agreed. "But we keep looking."
"Of course," Cinderella uttered. "We do have two days, after all, and I am told much can happen in two days time."
Smiling at the response, Rapunzel stepped into Cinderella, arms sliding around her waist. "We can change Snow White's fate," she whispered.
"I guess we shall see," Cinderella returned.
· · ·
Getting Christophe to join them on the remainder of their journey required little persuasion, for father and sister gone, and not even a house in which for him to live, he had nothing to hold him there.
"Are we truly in another kingdom?" he questioned, his sad, quiet tone filling with underlying excitement as they passed into warmer weather and he removed his sweater, reve
aling shorter sleeves and long thin arms beneath.
"Truly." Rapunzel smiled at him.
"We should take the road on the other side of this knoll," Cinderella interrupted. "There is a village. We can replenish our food supply, and find whomever else we might find." Exchanging a glance with Rapunzel, she rolled the map up and returned it to her sack, as they topped the knoll and the foretold road crossed their path.
Starting down it, they came upon the village so quickly, it took them all by surprise. For, along the way, there had been no signs of life, not even just beyond the perimeter of town. Many hours from nightfall, there was no reason for such desolation as they passed the wooden sign into 'Hemptown Square,' but the typical noises of community did not meet them. The soft falls of three sets of feet and the flutter of two sets of wings were the only sounds, and they seemed abnormally loud in the eerily silent setting.
Walking past shops and stalls, devoid of life or commerce, Cinderella came to a stop in the center of the thoroughfare, her eyes roaming the vacant spaces.
"There is no one here," she said, voice carrying in the stillness, and reached out to catch Christophe when he tripped beside her.
"Thank you," he uttered, glancing at the ground behind him. "The ground is uneven," he said, and Cinderella and Rapunzel looked too.
Taking a few steps back, Rapunzel's head tilted to the side as she studied the carved terrain. "It is a letter," she declared. "An 'A'. There are more of them."
Gaze traveling along the thoroughfare, Cinderella could see them too, the letters, so tall they could not be easily made out from the ground. Pressing up and in at her, they felt most important, as if they might explain that for which there was no explanation, and she turned to the nearest shop, that of a shoemaker with a roof awning at just the right height. Grabbing onto the support, she heaved herself onto it.
Once atop it, Cinderella still found the letters too tall, and she pushed off the pane of a glass-enclosed window, catching the eave and pulling herself up to the roof, the clays slick beneath her feet as she turned back to the thoroughfare.
"Can you read it?" Rapunzel called up to her, hand resting over her heart in visible concern.
Her gaze turning to the letters, Cinderella could see them all, pressed tall and bold into the dirt.
"If you cannot read it," Rapunzel added gently. "You can tell me the letters, and I will help you."
But Cinderella did not respond, not because she could not read the letters, but because she could. For though there were words with which she should have struggled, she understood the message with perfect clarity.
And, due to Cinderella, it read, the citizens of Hemptown Square were no more.
· · ·
Trampling back and forth over crackling leaves, Cinderella glanced at Rapunzel on every pass, surprised each time she was still there. From the side of her eye, she could see Christophe follow her back-and-forth movement along with Norco and Togo, and imagined she looked the mad one now.
"Cin, please sit down and eat," Rapunzel pleaded.
"I am not hungry." Cinderella returned, pivoting to make her short journey to the east, only to be grabbed around the middle and plummet into Rapunzel's lap.
"Here, eat this," Rapunzel ordered, shoving the remainder of a loaf of bread into her hand, and, sighing, Cinderella did as she was told, stuffing the sustenance into her mouth and chewing without tasting.
Upon the realization they would not be able to make proper purchases, they took what they needed, provisions and weapons and extra sacks. Then they moved on into the forest, anticipating the disappearance of Hemptown Square from the world. Or the universe. Or the realm. Or whatever name could be given to the fake place through which Cinderella found herself treading, somehow destroying people she never knew existed.
Tears springing to her eyes, the bread turned dry in her mouth and she forced it down her throat. "What have I done?" she whispered.
"You have done nothing," Rapunzel returned.
"Clearly, I have done something," Cinderella argued. "I do not even know these people. How did I do this to them?"
As she glanced over her shoulder for answer, Rapunzel's eyes felt the same upon her face, gentle and forgiving, the hands upon her hips still solid and familiar and right. Realizing they were temporary sensations that might be ripped from her at any time, Cinderella turned away again, feeling the tears press harder.
"I do not know," Rapunzel replied. "Perhaps, we should go back. We could awaken Snow White. Perhaps, she and the dwarves can help us figure out what is happening."
"We know what is happening, do we not?" Cinderella returned. "We are in a story, where people simply disappear. And, apparently, that is due to me. As far as we know, Snow White and the dwarves are mere memory. So, what reason is there to go back? Or to go on? Perhaps, we should just stay here and spare ourselves tired feet."
When Rapunzel said nothing in response, Cinderella wondered if she was in agreement, if that was what they would do. Sit and wait for destiny to catch up with them.
"Nothing has changed," Rapunzel finally whispered, voice strained.
"Nothing has changed?" Cinderella pushed up from Rapunzel's lap, laughing in disbelief as she whirled to face her. "I made an entire town disappear!"
"You did nothing!" Rapunzel jumped to her feet as well. "You were not even there!"
"Then who did?" Cinderella asked. "I told you, I have angered fate..."
"Not fate," Rapunzel returned at once, but the rest of the realization came more slowly. "The storyteller."
"What?" Cinderella shook her head.
"When you left your kingdom," she said, looking up in wonder. "You must have left your story."
"You do not make sense," Cinderella replied.
"I do make sense," Rapunzel asserted, taking a step toward Cinderella that silenced further debate. "If you escaped your story, Cinderella, if you came into mine, you changed our stories. Then, we changed Snow White's and the dwarves'. Now, all the stories, they bleed into one. They have changed."
"And this writer now punishes those I do not even know?" Cinderella questioned, mind drifting back to the disappearance of the house of treats and the butterflies before that and the pouch of gold that fell at her feet and brought anxious captors upon her. "As it has tried to punish me," she whispered. "As it will punish you, if you are with me."
"If I am with you?" Rapunzel questioned, stopping to release a short burst of breath and look away. "Is that what you want?" Blue eyes shined with pain as they turned back to Cinderella. "For us not to be together?"
"Of course, that is not what I want!" Cinderella asserted.
"Because that is how you make it sound," Rapunzel declared. "As if you have given up. As if you will let whatever happens happen. As if you do not want to fight for us."
Listening to Rapunzel's thoughts unspool, Cinderella felt the last the most atrocious accusation she had ever had directed against her, and so unbelievably untrue she could scarcely think to respond.
"I would walk through fire to keep you!" she vowed.
"Then walk through the forest!" Rapunzel cried.
The sudden plea a most fair response, Cinderella listened to Rapunzel breathe heavily before her, watched her wait for something, anything, and wanted only to take that look from her, the one that was unsure and afraid of what might come next.
Feet shuffling through the leaves, Cinderella took Rapunzel's face into her hands, the tears she caused trailing down Rapunzel's cheeks to sink warm and salty into her palms. "All right," she whispered. "I will walk through the forest. I will go wherever you want me to go."
Words so true, they frightened her, she only hoped Rapunzel could believe them after everything else she had said. When Rapunzel pushed forward against her, Cinderella wrapped her up tightly and knew she did.
"This is absurd," she uttered, still holding on as she opened her eyes to look to the forest around them, to those who journeyed with them to ensure they were still there.
Falling back, Rapunzel's eyes were clear, beseeching, her hands sliding from around Cinderella's waist to clutch at her arms. "Then we will live in the absurdity," she stated. "Just do not let me go."
"I will not," Cinderella whispered. "I will never let you go."
Pressing into her again, Rapunzel's body was a comfort against her as she remembered Caratasa's words - Do not let it go. - and wondered how she was supposed to hold on in a world under the control of another.
Interlude 3
He once shared a workspace in Ravenna with an artist who painted himself into his own paintings.
Day after day, the dark man watched the painter perfect his facade, taking great pains with his own likeness, staring again and again into a piece of polished steel to get himself just right, and believed it an arrogant undertaking, a dangerous mixing of reality and fantasy that ruined the world of his art.
Watching the paintings come to fruition, one and then two and then three, the artist's face always hidden there amongst his subjects, the dark man finally asked why the artist did it, why he painted himself into his work when his art would be his legacy, whether he appeared in the paintings or not.
"My subjects have minds of their own," the artist replied. "If I am not in there with them, who knows what they will do?"
The dark man thought the answer a jest, and then a mad notion from a man who later tried to remove his own stomach with a rusty spoon. At the time, he could not fathom why a true creator would feel the compulsion to control his world from within when he had all the control he needed from without.
Sitting before his story, though, the dark man watched it continue to unfold, long after the last line had been written, his perfect ending interrupted by one defiant, meddlesome girl.
He should have let Her drown in that swamp, or had Her thrown full-body into that fire. For now it seemed those punishments were not unjust, but simply premature, and that the artist in Ravenna was not crazy, but intuitive.
Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (Black Forest Trilogy) Page 24