"Come on," Sawyer yelled, rushing to them. With his help, Rapunzel got Cinderella to her feet, and they hobbled to the mouse hole with Cinderella's arms draped about their shoulders.
"Where are the little guys?" Jack shouted.
"They will be all right," Rapunzel assured him. "They are far from helpless."
Turning to look for them, despite her proclamation, Rapunzel found Norco and Togo flying right at the giant with a massive cut of cheesecloth. Closing in from behind, they dropped the cheesecloth over the giant's head, and he roared and flapped his arms, tangling himself up further.
"All right," Norco called, catching up to them with Togo. "Let us get out of here."
The quaking and banging of furniture being overturned in the giant's haste to get free resounded as they reached the mouse hole, and Sawyer turned to Rapunzel.
"Let me get her out," he insisted, and Rapunzel reluctantly relinquished her hold on Cinderella to allow Sawyer to lug her through the limited space. Right behind them, she moved back beneath Cinderella's arm on the other side, and they made haste to the stalk.
"He is getting free," Togo flew up to warn them, and, just as they cleared the great iron entry, the door of the palace splintered, one whack from the gargantuan fist sending it into thousands of tiny scraps.
Rushing past them on the slope of lawn, Christophe and Jack waited at the top of the beanstalk, encouraging them to hurry.
"Give her to me," Sawyer said, swinging onto the stalk and leaning back to make room for Cinderella.
"Be careful," Rapunzel whispered, helping him situate Cinderella against the front of his body.
"Of course," Sawyer promised. "We will see you at the bottom." Then, he loosened his grip upon the stalk and let gravity pull them rapidly from view.
Watching Sawyer disappear with Cinderella through the clouds, Rapunzel jumped onto the stalk after them, taking a loose hold. Falling freely, she was quickly below the clouds, the leaves of the stalk striking her as she fell past them through the night.
She was almost at the bottom, Christophe and Jack not far above her, when a powerful quake disturbed the stalk. Arms nearly failing her, Rapunzel grasped onto a passing leaf, glancing in horror at Sawyer's cry from below as he lost his grip and fell from the stalk with Cinderella, rolling over the ground below.
Returning to her fall, Rapunzel jumped from the stalk, rushing to Cinderella's side as Cinderella's lips opened on a weak whisper. "Where... is... Rapunzel?"
"I am here. I am right here," Rapunzel sobbed, grasping Cinderella's seeking hand as another massive tremor shook the stalk and the world. Glancing to the clouds, she watched a giant boot make an unwelcome appearance.
"Great gods," Sawyer muttered, and sliding their arms beneath Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sawyer carried her to the edge of the forest, tucking her away from view behind a tree.
"Make haste!" Sawyer called anxiously, rushing back to help Christophe and Jack.
Sliding to her knees behind Cinderella, Rapunzel folded her arms carefully around her trembling form, Cinderella's body much cold, her hair too matted with blood.
Mindful of the injury, Rapunzel pressed her lips to Cinderella's temple, tears streaming down her face, feeling, with silent dread, it would be the last time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A New Destiny
Everything was hazy. Like a dream. Rapunzel's arms around her, hand clutching the luxurious fabric of Rapunzel's borrowed gown, awareness came and went as Cinderella watched Jack call for his axe. Flying to fetch it from a nearby stump, Norco and Togo carried it to Jack's outstretched hand, as he jumped the remainder of the distance to the grass below.
In full view beneath the clouds, the giant swayed precariously on the beanstalk as Jack gave it the first mighty blow. Then a second. It was on the third strike that the giant grew alarmed, tying to scramble back up as Jack delivered the final strike and the beanstalk came crashing down.
Releasing a ground-shaking yawp as he careened toward the earth, the giant tried to jump clear of the stalk, his arms and legs flailing about him before he finally landed with a crushing weight on the tiny cottage, which squashed like a grape beneath his chest.
"Mum!" Jack cried, rushing toward the shattered quarters, and Christophe grabbed him to hold him back, digging his feet in when Jack proved much stronger than him.
Following the flight of Norco and Togo as they circled the giant's head, Cinderella drifted once again into darkness, coming back into the night more slowly than before, colder than before. Fist grasping nothing, she reached for Rapunzel, finding empty air at her back.
"Rap," she said weakly, but there was little question in the call and even less answer.
The rapid pounding of her heart shooting new pain into her head, she pushed back from the tree, world tilting as she took in her surroundings. Beyond the edge of the forest, there was Jack crying, Christophe standing at his back, Sawyer staring solemnly toward the crushed house, and Norco and Togo finally alighting on the giant to poke him with tentative fingers. Behind her, where Rapunzel had been, there was no one.
"Rap," Cinderella called, the effort to her knees laborious and nauseating. Crawling around the tree, into the clearing, it was even more of a struggle to her feet, and Sawyer rushed to her side, trying to serve as a crutch.
"Rapunzel!" Cinderella screamed, pushing him forcefully away. "Rapunzel!" She took an uneasy step back toward the trees, feeling the wrong arms around her.
"Cinderella," Sawyer whispered.
"No!" she shouted, pulling from his grasp, tears impeding her vision as she lurched back into the trees. "Rapunzel!" she sobbed.
Circling the tree where Rapunzel had been, Cinderella came face to face with a mirage, passing through it and tumbling to her knees. Palms finding the ground flat and even beneath her, it did little to chase away the vertigo, and Cinderella closed her eyes as she spun around, appealing to the universe that when she opened them everything would look different. Cracking them at last, she stared directly into the face of Grimm.
Grimm casually stroked his beard, the tips of his ink-stained fingers smoothing the whiskers down, and Cinderella snapped her eyes closed again.
Taking a breath, she opened them once more.
Grimm smiled.
Sensing mortality closing in only moments before, Cinderella felt an incredible return to life. Lunging up at him, a growl tore from of her chest, making her sound as if she had been raised by a pack of wolves, but arms caught hold of her before she reached him, dragging her back to the ground.
"Let me go!" she roared to Sawyer, Christophe and Jack.
"You know you cannot hurt him," Sawyer whispered. "You are only going to do further damage to yourself."
"I do not care," Cinderella exclaimed, wrenching them all forward. "I will rip apart the air if I have to."
"Listen to her! She will rip apart the air! Please, let her go. I would love to see that."
Rage turning to weakness at the pleased tone of Grimm's voice, Cinderella crumpled against Christophe, watching the humored expression on Grimm's face blur into the forest around him.
"You do not care?" he prodded. "Why, I dare say you care too much. Do you know what it takes to write a good story, Cinderella?"
"I doubt you could tell me," she found the energy to snarl.
"Oh-ho, stubborn even now." Grimm laughed, placing his hand where his heart would be if he had one. "You do go for my weakness."
"Well, you have always gone for mine," Cinderella returned, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes, for it had never cost her as much.
"Motivation," Grimm went on, as if he had never been interrupted. "Not mine. Yours. You see, you must understand your characters' motivations. You must know what drives them, what pushes them onward when backward is a far easier path."
Clomping back and forth over crackling grass, Grimm had a particular arrogance about him, as if he was a professor lecturing to an especially ignorant group of pupils.
&
nbsp; "When one does as you did, taking a well-designed existence and escaping from it, your motivation, it appears to be freedom. When one leaves her tower, runs off, goes to another kingdom, it seems her motivation too is freedom. But, that is just it. That is why I could not write your story. I did not understand your true motivations."
Grimm leaned down as if to appeal to Cinderella's interest, and, could she have lifted her foot, Cinderella would have interested him in pain.
"You see, Rapunzel," he went on. "Her motivation was never freedom. She could have been happy in that tower forever once you were there."
Cinderella would have given anything to stop the whimper that escaped her lips, but in her fragile condition, apparently too weak to act at her will, it was hopeless bargaining.
"You, Cinderella, you were her motivation. As scared as she was, she had all the courage she needed to do what she had to do to be with you. And you..." Grimm crouched before her, eyes seeing more deeply than invited. "You did seek freedom, but that was only part of what you sought, wasn't it?" Though Cinderella gave no answer, Grimm nodded, a proud smile curving his mouth. "Along with that, above that, what you sought was someone who looked at you and saw beyond the gown and the facade, someone who saw the real inside the illusion, as you had at the palace. The way Rapunzel saw you."
Sob sneaking past her lips, Cinderella felt the tears falling unchecked down her face, breaths broken as she struggled to sit up on her own without success.
"Ah." Grimm spoke in soft melody. "You have given me a power I never dreamed of possessing, so raw, it nearly bleeds. And you, you do bleed, don't you? On the outside and on the inside." He watched the teardrops searing imprints down Cinderella's face with ardent fascination. "The one thing I was missing, the one thing I could not create, you gave me by accident. I can cause suffering. A small child losing her mother. A father who cares more about his new wife than his own daughter. Physical pain, right Christophe? A trunk lid to the neck cannot feel good, I imagine. But, as you felt, it was all contrived. All..." Grimm stood, arm sweeping the vastness of the forest. "Artificial. This, though..." His gaze sharpened on Cinderella. "This torment... this deep agony... it is so real, Cinderella. Is that not what you wanted? Real? And, for her part, Rapunzel is faring no better than you."
"Where is she?"
"I knew you would ask." Grimm smiled. "Until Rapunzel fulfills her destiny, she cannot be..." Grimm snapped and Cinderella flinched, expecting the world to disappear around her. "No more. But now that I understand your motivations, you are back under my control."
"You do not control us," Cinderella said, though she knew it untrue, for Rapunzel was gone and she was dying, and neither of those things was within her control.
"You think not?" Grimm uttered. "Now that I know Rapunzel is motivated by her desire to stay with you, I could throw an obstacle into that path. It builds suspense, you see. How will she overcome that obstacle? How will you?"
"Where... is... she?"
"She is in Naxos." Grimm shrugged as if it was obvious. "Back on the course of her destiny where she belongs. About now, she is wandering around a desert that she will surely try to escape, but that is the beauty, you see. There is no escape. The desert is of the sorceress' creation and it is boundless. If you can get in, you cannot get out. An alluring prince, whom you had the pleasure of meeting, is already in that arid landscape. He will stumble upon her and, though their beautiful, heart-wrenching love story has been turned into something undeniably unseemly thanks to your interference, they will still be forever united."
"She will never love him," Cinderella whispered.
"Perhaps not," Grimm admitted, though it seemed to matter little to him. "But I can make her think she does. Unless, of course, you get there first."
Looking sharply up at him, Cinderella felt the motion throughout her head, and let it fall back to a firm shoulder behind her, breaths coming in weak bursts that felt like her last.
"Of course..." Grimm pulled his quill from his pocket, and flicked it toward her. "You will not be able to go like that."
For the first time since she tumbled from the giant's tabletop, Cinderella's vision cleared, but as Grimm's sick smile came into glaring focus, she almost wished it hadn't. Sitting up with little struggle, she reached to the wound, the blood that matted her hair the only thing that remained of her most recent brush with death.
"You want me gone," Cinderella stated. "I lay here dying. Why do this?"
"Because, Cinderella," he returned. "If you do not have a chance, it does not make a good story. When you go after the thing you want most, and you fall to your enemies, when you fail, Cinderella, that will be a poetic tragedy."
"I will not fail," Cinderella declared, but felt it little.
With a laugh, Grimm produced a parchment out of thin air. Tossed on the ground before her, the writing on Caratasa's map glowed.
She had studied it so often, Cinderella knew the map almost by heart. Well enough to know where she was upon it. Well enough to know where Naxos was upon it. Though she did not need to look to know why Grimm was so satisfied with himself, she still followed the path between the two - directly through the Gulf of Broken Dreams.
"You have been most brave," Grimm admitted. "But I assure you, your natural bravado will not serve you well in this endeavor. Of course, you can always choose another route, return to Aulis, perhaps, with your new friends and move on with your life, but I do not expect that of you. So, tell me, Cinderella, how am I doing controlling you now?"
"You are the devil," she uttered, and Grimm gave a hearty laugh, the sound of his mirth filling the clearing where Jack's cottage once sat in peace and where so much death still hung in the air.
"Earlier tonight, you thought me a god," Grimm countered passively. "Do make haste. I assure you, the prince, he too is motivated."
Then, with the point of his quill, Grimm was gone once more.
Rolling the map up at once, Cinderella bounded to her feet. "I do not need it," she said, thrusting the parchment toward Christophe.
"What are you going to do?" he asked without taking it, and Cinderella offered the map to Sawyer.
When Sawyer also refused it, Cinderella grabbed his hand and shoved the map roughly into it.
"We are coming with you," Sawyer declared.
"No, you are not," Cinderella returned.
"You cannot go alone," Jack argued.
"If you are not with me, he will let you live," Cinderella said. "And I need you to wake Snow White. That prince, he may be her destiny. If he wakes her, Grimm may make Snow White disappear. Only you can stop that."
"Christophe and Jack can take care of that," Sawyer reasoned. "That is one more than enough. I shall come with you."
"I do not want you to come with me," Cinderella whispered, putting her hand on Sawyer's arm when he took the declaration as an insult. "I will live or die on my own. For what I want. You must decide what you want for yourself. And," Cinderella blinked back tears, "you need to tell others what is going on. Those who are left. Please, I beg you, wait for daybreak. Go to Aulis. Free Snow White, or at least protect her from the prince. Please. You will like Snow White and the dwarves. Perhaps, you will all make a life together."
"Why do you speak as if you will not return?" Christophe asked.
"Did it sound to you as if I will?" Cinderella returned gently.
"Then why go at all?" Jack queried.
"I have to," Cinderella whispered, squeezing Jack's arm. "I am sorry for your mother, Jack."
When Jack nodded, a fresh tear running down his cheek, Cinderella pulled him down to kiss his stubbled cheek, moving onto Christophe and Sawyer, before turning away with haste before she could cry in full.
"Make sure they get there safely." She touched the furry heads of Norco and Togo as she passed.
"You never did tell us who you would choose for Snow White," Sawyer called, and Cinderella glanced back.
Standing side by side, they looked a sturdy troop, three
good men, the type Snow White deserved over a prince who would simply declare his intentions to have her and think gold a fair trade for a person.
"That is not a choice for me to make," Cinderella said. "Besides, I could not choose. With the three of you, however it comes out, she could not be more lucky."
Producing as much of a smile as she could manage, Cinderella turned from them, clearing the giant's head and turning down the cart path toward fate.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Gulf of Broken Dreams
Perhaps Grimm was right. He knew her motivation, so perhaps he could control her, move her at his will.
When Caratasa first showed them the map, when she explained what lay within the Gulf of Broken Dreams, according to legend, Cinderella determined the place uncrossable. Even with what little information Caratasa could provide, she looked upon the black void at the middle of the map as a raging river. It would be better to walk a hundred leagues out of the way looking for a bridge, she thought, than attempt to cross it.
Deciding the Gulf an impenetrable boundary was easy when she and Rapunzel stood on the same side of it. As with any raging river, when the thing she wanted most stood in danger on the opposite shore, not crossing felt a greater risk than being swept downstream. If she did drown in the Gulf, if she was pulled under by whatever flood Grimm had in store for her, even if she died on his terms, she would at least die by her own desire.
Back within the forest, the darkness was deep, but not as deep as the darkness within Cinderella. Swinging between despair one moment, barely-contained rage the next, even the ghouls knew better than to come near her as she made her way through their domain on instinct.
Feet feeling over the path, each step was cautious but resolute. For she had much to accomplish. First, she had to find Rapunzel, ensure she was safe and knew she was not forgotten. Second, she had to deal with Prince Salimen, who would understand by the time she was done with him that he had made his last ever claim to Rapunzel. Third, she had to get to Grimm in such a way they could meet by touch, for her life up until she left Troyale had earned Grimm her extreme dislike. Taking Rapunzel, that had earned him a sentence of death.
Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (Black Forest Trilogy) Page 28