Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel Read online

  “We can’t stop!” Jack yanked at her braid, pulling her off balance. “Come on!”

  Rapunzel braced her hands against the dirt. “Can’t I rest for a little while?”

  “And let that witch catch up and tear my head off?” said Jack. “No!”

  “Her name is Witch,” Rapunzel said. “And she wouldn’t tear off your head. She would just be angry with you for worrying me. Can’t you understand that? Don’t you have anyone who loves you?”

  “I have parents,” said Jack. “Like normal people do.”

  “Well, whatever parents are, they must not care much about you,” said Rapunzel. “Or you wouldn’t be so awful.”

  Jack’s face fell. For a moment, he looked young and lost, and then he turned away. He unwound a coil of her hair from across his body and dropped it to the ground, and then he unwound another and another. Rapunzel looked on in distress.

  “You can’t do that!” she said. “I can’t carry it all. Wind it back up.”

  Jack struggled out of the last few coils and shoved the braid down to the ground. He stepped out of the pile of hair and brushed himself off. He adjusted his boots. He cracked his neck. And then he strode into the moonlit clearing and away from Rapunzel, who sat, anchored by her braid, unsure of what to do.

  “You can’t leave me here,” she said.

  Jack stopped at the edge of the clearing. He stood very still, except for his hands, which he balled into fists. “No,” he said, his voice low, “I can’t.” He turned to her. “But I wouldn’t spend another second with you if I didn’t have to.”

  Rapunzel was prevented from telling him she felt the same way by a humming noise that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. “What is that?” she said. “Jack, what is that?”

  The humming grew louder. Closer. Rapunzel whipped her head from left to right but could not see what was making the sound.

  “Is that a deer?” she called out, terrified. “You don’t sound like a deer —”

  “Silence, prisoner child.”

  The voice was thin and cool. Rapunzel spun toward it, but saw no one. She stared at the not-quite-empty space in front of her. A sliver of light no bigger than her thumb hovered in the air at eye level.

  “Are you going to hurt me?” she whispered. “Or help me?”

  “You deserve no help.” The voice was cold and unpitying. “I am here to take you where you must go. Now follow.” Without waiting for her, the sliver of light darted out of sight and into the trees, leaving a shimmering red trail in its wake.

  Rapunzel felt as though her knees had turned to water.

  “A fairy,” she breathed.

  “That’s Rune,” said Jack. “Come on, hurry.” Without looking at her, he bent and pulled a good amount of her braid into his arms. Rapunzel did the same, and between them, they carried her hair across the clearing and into the woods.

  Rapunzel could hardly believe that she was following a fairy. She hoped he still had the cure with him. Maybe she could get it from him here, now, and never have to see the other fairies at all.

  Once among the trees, she had the strange sensation that she was moving very fast, though she knew it was impossible: She was barely managing a trudge. Even so, when they had walked for a few more minutes, she couldn’t help thinking that the woods looked and felt different. The air was cool. The trees stood far apart, tall and silver in the moonlight. Mist moved through them at great speed, obscuring the ground, but there was no wind. The trail of red light was gone.

  “Stop,” said Jack, his voice low.

  Rapunzel stopped. The mist in the trees before them was so thick that it could have hidden anything. She heard only a faint and beautiful chiming sound that wasn’t a sound at all. It seemed to come not through her ears, but through her skin.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “A fairywood,” said Jack reverently. “Shh.”

  The mist began to swirl as though churned by a wind. It twisted into dozens of tall white funnels among the trees, and then the funnels burst, along with the trees themselves, making the strange, silver forest disappear in one silent puff of smoke, revealing a vast and empty darkness.

  Not empty, Rapunzel realized as the smoke thinned and vanished. Not empty at all. Her heart nearly burst with joy at the most familiar sight the ground had yet afforded, and the most beautiful.

  Roses. They were everywhere, and they belonged to Witch. Rapunzel knew it at once. No one but Witch could make roses like these. They twisted thickly around the few remaining trees at the outskirts of the clearing, dark and ripe, so alive that they pulsed. They blanketed the ground, filling the air with perfume. In the center of the clearing, a hundred feet away, they rose up in a colossal dome, a dune of blooming roses coiling and twisting in the moonlight, not as high as the tower but so wide that Rapunzel couldn’t see how far it stretched.

  Rapunzel moved toward the rose dune, but Jack gripped her elbow hard. She batted his hand away. “Stop grabbing me.”

  “Not that way,” Jack hissed. “The fairies can’t penetrate the flowers. We have to go underground to get in.”

  Rapunzel had a sudden, unsettling suspicion. Jack seemed awfully familiar with the place. “Have you been here before?” she asked him.

  “Yeah.”

  She clenched her teeth. “So you have seen roses,” she said. “Plenty of them.”

  “Course I have,” said Jack. “Everyone has. I couldn’t believe you believed me — you’ve got to be the most gullible person alive.” He snickered, and Rapunzel went hot with anger. But then Jack dropped to his knees and pulled her down with him.

  “Ow!” she said as her knees banged the dirt. “What was that for?”

  The answer rose from the ground before them, a slim pillar of clay with a red marble top no bigger than a plate. In the middle of the plate was a little red fairy. Now that he stood still, Rapunzel could see that he had large moon-white wings and a shock of white hair. He wore a bit of silver leaf for his trousers and a sash of white silk around his chest, pinned at his hip with a silver ring. From this ring hung a small but heavy-looking leather pouch. The fairy bowed his head and touched his tiny fingertips to the center of his breast in salute.

  “Beanstalker,” he said. “You are welcome here. It is a rare mortal that we would bring through the fairywood, but you have earned your passage.”

  Jack bowed very low. “I brought her like you asked, Rune,” he said. “I gave her all the help that was in my power.”

  Rapunzel reeled. She knew she’d been tricked, but this was worse than she had realized. The fairies had told Jack to bring her, and so he had left the rope on the railing on purpose, to give her a way to get down — and then he had taunted her and made her come.

  “Did you even need a cure?” she demanded. “Or was that just another lie?”

  Rune laughed, and the sound was chilling. “The cure for magic ills must include a drop of the magic that caused them,” he said. “The dew was necessary — and effective. Eldest Glyph is conscious.”

  Rapunzel’s heart plummeted. If the powerful fairy was awake, then she had failed Witch in every possible way. “No,” she said loudly, as though by the force of her voice she could make it untrue. “She can’t be cured, she can’t be conscious — that fairy has to die!”

  Jack gasped.

  “Just as I expected,” said Rune. “You are beyond unwelcome here, girl.”

  “If this is where you fairies live, then I don’t want to be welcome here,” said Rapunzel, who found that she was breathing fast. “I just wanted to get what Jack stole from me. But since you already used it and woke up your mate, now you’ll try to kill Witch. Well, I hope you fail. I hope your mate dies, and I hope you never come back to my tower again, ever.”

  Jack shot her a warning look, but Rapunzel ignored him.

  “Do you imagine that Eldest Glyph desired to visit your tower?” asked Rune.

  “She came there, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”
r />   “To hurt Witch? To kill her?” Rapunzel’s voice was rising.

  “Yes.”

  She clenched her fists. “And to steal my memory too,” she said. “Don’t deny it.”

  “If we could take your memory,” said Rune, “now would be an excellent time to do it. You are here in anger. You want to hurt us. If we could make you forget your tower, and your witch, then why wouldn’t we?”

  Rapunzel hesitated. There was no denying the fairy’s logic, and yet it made no sense. She looked to Jack for help, but his smirk told her that he was on the fairy’s side.

  “Because you’re powerless!” Rapunzel exclaimed, finding an answer. “You can’t do any magic. Your mate is the only one who has power — Witch told me so.”

  Rune beat his wings and rose up to meet Rapunzel at eye level. He dug one hand into the leather pouch at his hip and withdrew a palmful of red clay, which he began to ply with his fingers, rolling it long and thin before he crushed it between his hands.

  “What are you …,” Rapunzel began, but the words dried up in her mouth. Her lungs grew tight, and her body felt as though it was deflating. The few remaining trees shot up to an alarming height, and then her vision turned soft and black. Air rushed past her face as though she were careening again down the side of the tower. She tried to scream, but there was only a bizarre zinging sensation throughout her body, followed by a pop in her ears.

  When her lungs and vision were restored, Rapunzel looked down to make sure her body was whole. She gasped when she saw that she was kneeling on a giant green leaf, even bigger than her bed in the tower.

  Rune descended before her, and Rapunzel swayed in terror at the size of him. He was as big as she was, and his wings were half the size of the massive leaf. Either Rune had grown enormous, or he had made Rapunzel the same size as a fairy.

  He landed in front of her, and his features came into sharp focus for the first time. Rapunzel saw that he looked human, except that his skin was red and marked all over with strange patterns that looked like they were drawn on with black ink.

  “Did you shrink me?” she whispered.

  “How could I?” said Rune, smiling as he rolled the ball of red clay in his fingers. “I am powerless. Or perhaps your witch is a liar. Will you believe her words, or your own senses?”

  Rapunzel barely heard him. Witch thought there was only one powerful fairy to worry about, but Rapunzel saw the truth now. There were two.

  She had to get home. She had to warn Witch.

  “Rapunzel!”

  She turned toward Jack’s voice and saw that he too was now fairy-size, some distance away. The sight of him filled Rapunzel with relief. At least he was familiar.

  “It feels strange the first time,” Jack said, shoving his hair out of his eyes as he jogged toward her. “But you get used to it.” He gave Rapunzel’s shoulder a pat, as though he had never tricked her, and he laughed. “You look like you swallowed a bug,” he said. “Don’t worry, you won’t stay this size forever.”

  Incredulous, Rapunzel turned her eyes back to Rune.

  “It is time for you to enter the Red Glade,” he said, watching her closely. “To face the damage you have done.”

  Rapunzel pushed herself to her feet. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said. She meant to say it furiously, but the words came out small and afraid. She didn’t want to go and meet a thousand fairies. She couldn’t steal back the cure; the powerful fairy was already awake. She had failed Witch, and she could not fix her mistake. Not by herself.

  The only thing to do was go home.

  As Rapunzel opened her mouth to call for Witch, a shock of pain erupted in her lungs and traveled up into her brain, sharp and hot, making her ears ring. She fell to her knees on the giant green leaf, clutching her throat with one hand and her forehead with the other.

  “If you call the witch,” Rune said quietly, “I will kill you and feel no remorse. I would have killed you already, but I was sworn to bring you here alive — unless you summon her.” One of his hands was clenched, and as he squeezed his fingers tighter, clay oozed from between them. Rapunzel’s head throbbed. She opened her mouth again to cry for Witch, but her voice was gone. It appeared that Rune now held it in his fist.

  Jack apparently heard none of this. “Come on,” he called, waving to her from the bottom of the clay pillar on which Rune had risen from the ground.

  “Go,” said Rune.

  Rapunzel had no choice. She made her way over the massive leaves, crawling across sticks and rocks that were half her height. When she reached Jack, the fairy platform descended to ground level, and they both stepped onto it. Rapunzel looked over her shoulder to find Rune standing on the platform behind her. She glared at him, since it was all she could do.

  “Prepare yourself, prisoner child,” Rune said.

  Then the platform descended, and the clay swallowed them.

  NO sooner had the clay closed overhead than it opened before them into a long, narrow passageway, lit by small cages of twined copper threads that glowed with strange light. Rune unclenched his fist and rolled the clay into a ball, allowing Rapunzel her voice back.

  “You won’t be able to summon the witch in here,” he said. “We are not conquered — yet.”

  He flew forward, and Rapunzel and Jack followed behind, each taking as much hair as they could carry. Rapunzel glanced around the passageway, hugging her braid for comfort. Here were walls and ceilings again, but these were made of clay. Her head began to throb. Her stomach hurt.

  “I feel sick,” she whispered. She had only been sick a few times in her life, but she remembered the occasions clearly. They were the few unpleasant memories she had.

  “It must be the magic,” said Jack. “Because fairy and witch stuff don’t mix.”

  “But I’m not magic.”

  Jack shrugged. “You’ve been around witch magic for a long time,” he said. “You’re probably full of it.”

  Rapunzel hoped it was true. Maybe if she had enough of Witch’s magic with her, she could summon her. She watched Rune fly ahead until she thought he was out of earshot. “Witch,” she whispered. “Witch, please help me. Witch, please come for me.”

  She held her breath in hope. In her storybooks, whenever she called for Witch, the air whirled, the ground shook, and Witch appeared out of nowhere to sweep her away from danger and take her safely home.

  One minute passed. Then two. Rapunzel swallowed hard to keep the sick feeling down.

  “I don’t want to go any farther,” she said, hovering behind Jack as they came to the very end of the passage. “They’ll hurt me. Rune wants to kill me.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does. You didn’t hear him. He said he would kill me, and he took my voice, and he hurt me.” Rapunzel edged backward down the tunnel. “Help me go home,” she said, wincing against a wave of nausea. “Please, Jack, I don’t want to stay. I’m afraid.”

  Jack glanced at her. “I promised them I’d help,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  He sounded like he almost was.

  And then he was thrust aside by several pairs of grasping red hands that reached into the passageway from the outside. The hands seized Rapunzel by her braid and yanked her forward into their grasp. She sobbed and thrashed as they dragged her past Jack and into the dim light.

  “LET ME GO!” she screamed. “WITCH, WITCH, HELP ME —”

  “Silence!” shouted one fairy voice.

  “Kill her!” shouted another. “End it here!”

  “You know that we cannot.” Rune did not sound happy about it. He stood before Rapunzel, lifted one hand, and made a sharp, twisting gesture. Rapunzel’s braid whipped instantly around her in tight coils, gagging her and securing her arms to her sides. Her hair tasted of filth, and she choked, her eyes watering as she looked frantically around to understand where she was. Red grass as tall as trees surrounded her, and the sky was dark overhead. More copper-caged lights illuminated the glade, hovering among t
he giant grasses and casting weird shadows over the fairies who surrounded her. They were all red, like Rune, some with lighter and some with darker skin, some with pink wings and hair, others with orange or brown. If their faces had not been hideous with hatred, they might even have been beautiful.

  “Bring her to the Centercourt,” said Rune.

  Jack followed Rune with one look behind him at Rapunzel. He wasn’t smirking now. In fact, he looked anxious, which made her more afraid — and then he was gone, hidden by the tall grass ahead. The end of Rapunzel’s braid hung from her like a leash, and the other fairies dragged her forward to follow Rune. She tripped, then tried to rise, but it was impossible without her hands to help her; she fell into the dirt. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but the fairies yanked her to her feet and flew onward, bringing her stumbling behind them.

  In minutes, they had brought her to a wide-open space around which a thousand fairies stood muttering and watching her. Rapunzel nearly fainted at the sight of so many creatures together at once. Rune’s minions dragged her to a stake in the center of the circle, and they lashed her to it with the remainder of her hair. Then they backed away into the masses, and Rapunzel stood trapped, unable even to sob, her heart beating as rapidly as Rune’s wings, her tears coursing without pause. It was worse than anything that had ever happened in her books, and she had no hope of being saved by Witch.

  Rapunzel searched for Jack, and found him standing just behind Rune at the head of one of the huddled fairy groups. He looked frightened.

  “Destroy her!” cried one fairy voice. “While we have the chance!” said another. “We must save ourselves!” “She is the source of ruin!” The voices chimed together until it seemed the entire glade clamored for Rapunzel to be killed on the spot.

  “No!” said Jack, but no one listened.

  “No!” Rapunzel tried to shout, but the word stuck in her braid.

  “No,” said a weak voice that cut through the rest of the noise. A hush fell over the fairies. “Let me see her.”

  Rapunzel craned her neck to see who was speaking.

  The fairies parted in front of her, revealing a red marble dais on which a fairy wearing a pale blue sheath rested in what appeared to be a large cupped hand made of soft red clay. Her hair was the color of a cloudless sky, and so was one of her wings. The other wing hung, dull gray and broken, down to the ground beside the hand.