Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

Previously...

I tried to interject, but the boys weren't paying attention to me anymore. I thought that Jack was going to explode, his fists were clenched so tightly as his sides that his knuckles were white, and his expression was furious. But when he spoke, it was quietly, though you could still hear his anger beneath his words.

“Fine. If that's how it is, then fine. It's always been the two of you, since we started this idiotic quest. The two of you on your little adventure while I tagged along behind, ignored until you found some use for me. Send me off on a search party, or to distract the crowd, or to any other damage control while you two go save the day without me.” He was talking to me now too, even though his eyes were still fixed on Ezu. “You didn't even feel bothered to tell me the truth about this quest despite feeling the need to drag me along on it. I came because I trusted you, because I thought you wanted me to and because we were friends. Well, thank you for finally letting me know what I really meant to you during this whole disaster of a journey.” He finally turned away from Ezu, grabbed his pack and one of the three bags of coins the Prince had given us from the horse we'd loaded with our supplies, and swung himself up onto his horse.

“Jack, none of that is true, you are my friend and I do need your help, because you're clever and talented and I couldn't do this without your help! I know I should have told you about the Book, but it just never seemed like the right time, and your story has such a good ending that I can't risk ruining it for you! It's not because I don't trust you, it's-” I pleaded, but Jack wasn't moved.

“Good luck on the rest of your quest. I've been gone from the farm too long anyways.” He squeezed the horse's sides with his knees and started her trotting off, back in the direction we had come from, towards the forest.

“Jack, please! How are you even going to get all the way back on your own?” I called after him, desperately, but he only ignored me, and urged his horse into a gallop. I stared after him helplessly, completely at a loss as how it could have turned out this way. I turned around, looking to Ezu for help, but I saw him throwing his own stuff over his horse's back.

“Ezu?” I asked, my voice cracking ever so slightly. He wouldn't look at me, his face was a grim mask. “Ezu, what are you doing?” I made to walk over to him, reaching my hand out to grab his arm, but he flinched and shied away from me which made me freeze in place.

Still without looking at me, he said, “I told you, I'm not going to love anyone. Ever.” He pulled himself onto the horse, never, not once, even glancing at my face. “You make friends easily, you'll be able to find two new knights. Finish the quest, and go home to your family, and your world.”

“You can't just leave!” I cried, but that didn't stop him from doing just that. He didn't follow the path Jack had taken, but he too headed towards the dark forest, in the opposite direction my quest for the remaining Princesses would take me. I watched him go, and he never looked back.

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“Stupid... idiotic...” I muttered furiously, shoving tree branches and thorned bushes roughly out of my way as I tripped and picked my way through the dense forest thicket, dragging my saintly tolerant horse after me. My face and arms were covered in tiny scratches and I kept having to stop to detach my cloak and shirt from where they had gotten caught by thorns, and more than once a branch I had shoved out of my way came swinging back to smack me painfully in the face.

After having been abandoned by the two people I had mistakenly believed would always have my back, the Book had directed me back into the depths of the woods, in the opposite direction Ezu and Jack had gone. Rapunzel was next on my list of damsels-in-distress, though for once I was wishing that someone would just come and rescue me already. I was so tired, especially after having spent a half an hour sitting on my butt in front of the deserted castle where I had been left all alone, crying more loudly and pathetically than I had since I was a kid. But as satisfying as it is feeling sorry for yourself, it isn't terribly productive, and I knew I'd be a lot worse off if I just sat around and let some crazy witch-queen awaken from an enchanted slumber and shroud the world in darkness, or whatever it was that she was supposed to do if I didn't put all the stories right. So I'd picked myself up out of the dirt, pulled out the Book, and got to back to work, friends or no friends.

The new, ruined version of Rapunzel's story didn't get twisted or destroyed; it just hadn't happened. According to the Book, the Prince, who had been hunting in the forest, never crossed paths with a certain tiny, crooked man who could spin straw into gold after becoming lost, and had never been directed towards Rapunzel's tower after asking for directions back to the road. He just continued to wander, hopelessly lost, in the dark and dangerous depths of the seemingly endless enchanted wood, while Rapunzel pined her days away as isolated and lonely as ever.

I felt more responsible for their fates than any of the other Royal Pains-in-the-Asses I'd met so far, since Rumpelstiltskin's premature death had been my direct fault. I was trying not to think about what was going to happen to the Prince if I didn't find him. Even if there were no nasty animals lurking in the shadows waiting to huff and puff, there was a good chance he might starve to death sooner or later. That was a weight I really didn't want on my conscience.

I was trying to channel my frustration, my fear, and my anger into my cross-forest trek, but it was just making me rushed and clumsy and I tramped through the woods with even less grace than I usually managed, which was saying a lot. I also had been muttering darkly to myself the entire way, thinking up all sorts of new and terrible names for my traitorous “friends”, and trying to figure out exactly what kinds of curses I would pay to have put upon their heads if I happened to cross paths with a willing witch or sorceress. The wood had been getting denser however, the trees growing closer together and the underbrush thicker and thicker as I pushed my way deeper into its depths, and soon I was too busy concentrating on trying to trample paths flat enough for my horse to prance over to be able to work myself into a tizzy over Jack and Ezu. All I could do was assume the increasing difficulty of my journey meant that I was going in the right direction. If I were a witch intent on keeping a girl hidden from the world, I'd certainly hide her in the deepest, most treacherously ill terrained part of the forest that I could.

But then it just kept getting worse. More than once I had to double back, because the thicket became so overgrown it was completely impassable. For a while I had been able to use the position of the sun above me to orient myself northwards, where the oldest part of the forest appeared to be, but after a few hours even the sky was completely obscured by dark green foliage, and it became impossible to even be sure how much time had passed, or whether evening was encroaching. I wasn't sure what I was going to do once night fell. After weeks on the road, I was able to start a decent fire out of twigs and dry leaves if I absolutely had to, but it had rained a few days before and in this part of the woods, where so little light shone, the earth beneath my feet was still wet and I doubted I'd be able to get any fire lit. Without a fire, I'd be at the mercy of any wild animals that came a' calling while I slept—if I could sleep—and I was sure that wouldn't end well for me. I could probably climb a tree and sleep, albeit very lightly, in the crook of a branch if I found a suitable spot, but that would mean leaving my horse alone on the ground at the mercy of aforementioned wild animals himself, and that didn't seem fair. I just had to hope I either found Rapunzel's tower, or some sort of shelter, before night fell.

I probably wouldn't have, if it hadn't been for the singing. The hours I had spent wandering the forest had long since run together into an indistinguishable length of time, I might as well have been walking aimlessly for days as far as I could tell. I could well understand how the Prince had gotten irrevocably lost without the directions given to him by Rumpelstiltskin. I was exhausted, aching, and nearly to the point of tears again in frustration, and my horse was beginning to stop for periods, simply refusing to go on without a good amount of coaxing on my part; when I heard a soft, lilting song drifting like the faintest fragrance of a perfume on the air from behind me. The voice was as sweet and clear as a bell, and though it sounded to be a ways off, the relief that flooded through me gave me renewed energy. Even my horse seemed a little revived by the sound, and allowed me to drag it back the way we had come without too much difficulty.

The source of the singing wasn't as far off as I had thought, it was the close growing trees that had muffled the sound; but those same trees were an obstacle that took me the better part of another half an hour to fight my way through before I finally reached the edge of a clearing.
I'm not an idiot, at least I'm not anymore, and I didn't immediately break through into the open space even though I dying for a breath of fresh air that wasn't thick and damp and smelling of dirt. Rather, with a shushing motion to my horse who gave an annoyed—but muffled—snort in reply, I peered through the tree trunks to get a good look at what exactly lay ahead.

It was a tower, obviously. Over sixty feet high, it loomed as tall as any of the towering pines that flanked it like soldiers, ringed by thorned bushes, with no sign of any door or stairway, and only a single small window set at the very top, an iron window hook set in the stone beside it. Sitting in the window, framed like a Pre-Raphaelite maiden, was a golden haired beauty that would have been stiff competition for Snow White when it came to determining the fairest in the land. She sung a wordless song, all silly trills and “la la la”s and “doo doo doo”s, and an uncomfortable amount of humming; but it seemed to be a song she either knew by heart or was making up on the sport, for her attention was focused up towards the deepening blue sky of early evening that was exposed by the clearing. I thought I saw, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, dark clouds looming over the horizon.

I knew the story of Rapunzel well enough, and I certainly wasn't going to be caught by the sorceress by rushing out there without assessing the situation good and proper first, so I settled down on a patch of particularly springy moss, offered my horse an apple from my pack on the condition that it didn't chew too loudly, and waited.

Before the sun had set, the fairy sorceress appeared.

Vaguely middle aged and dressed in a long black cloak with the hood drawn up over her head, she seemed to glide towards the tower out of the wood on the opposite side of the clearing like a specter. Hardly daring to breathe, I watched her pull back her hood and call up to the girl in the tower,

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me!”

The girl started, broken from whatever daydream she had been engulfed in, and the lovely song came to an abrupt end. The wood seemed unusually quiet without it.

Rapunzel dutifully sent down a tumbling waterfall of hair like spun gold, wound around the window hook, twenty yards down to the ground. The sorceress began to climb, and even from this distance I could see Rapunzel wincing and grimacing as her adopted mother's weight tugged on her scalp. After an age and a half, the sorceress managed to haul herself up to the window and clambered ungracefully in, and she and Rapunzel disappeared from sight. I settled back down to wait, getting as comfortable as I could against a mossy stone. My horse apparently felt as though it was in safe hands, because it found a relatively flat patch of ground and laid down to rest for a few minutes, its ears flicking back and forth at all the errant sounds of the forest.

The sun set, and darkness fell over the forest. The temperature dropped drastically and the moonlight was too weak to be able to see anything clearly, but I didn't dare light a fire. The tower window was a postage stamp sized square of light glowing orange through the trees, the room inside illuminated by soft lamplight, or maybe firelight from a hearth. The moon continued to rise across the sky, and I struggled to keep away. Eventually I gave up all together and just settled in for a few hours fitful sleep.

The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, but the sun still lurked just below the horizon when movement from the tower woke me fully. I shifted uncomfortably in the dirt, the seat of my pants damp from earth, and peered with bleary eyes through the shrubs I hid behind. My horse, realizing I was awake, snorted in my ear, undoubtedly cold and hungry and bored. I shushed it sternly, and it gave me an annoyed look.

Back at the tower, Rapunzel had made a reappearance in the window. She leaned out of it and tossed an armful of silken hair down, down to the ground, letting it unravel in golden tumbling waves down the side of the tower. She draped some of it around the window hook, then backed away. The old fairy sorceress took her place, and awkwardly clambered out the window, gripping Rapunzel’s hair tightly as she climbed back down. I found myself hoping that her grip would fail and she would fall sixty feet to a grisly end, just because it would save me a whole lot of time and effort and the task of probably having to kill her myself. I paused for a moment and reflected how strange it was that I could so calmly contemplate what more or less equated to murder, but then shrugged it off. There would be time to look back and realize I had in turn become the same evil that I was working so hard to defeat in a tragically poignant, shallowly moralistic way later. Right now, I had a princess to rescue.

Suffice it to say, the sorceress didn’t fall off the tower to her untimely death. She made it down safely, and with a theatrical wave of her cloak, she vanished into the woods on the opposite side of the clearing. I gave it until the sun had properly risen, maybe half an hour later, before I dared to slink out of my hiding place and creep up to the tower. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the witch wasn’t hiding in a bush and waiting for me to poke my head out so she could blast me with some spell and turn me into a frog or something, but I made it to the base of the tower intact and let myself relax a little. My horse followed me gratefully, glad to be able to stand in the light of the early morning sun and crop grass in a pleasant clearing rather than the oppressive confines of the forest.

I looked up at the tower, and up. And up. And thought to myself that sixty feet really is an awfully long way.

Unsure of exactly how I should proceed, I reached out and knocked against the stone wall. All I got for my troubles was a set of bruised knuckles. No way she could have heard that from all the way up there. I cleared my throat. Should I try to disguise my voice? If I should, should I try to sound like the fairy sorceress, or the Prince? Did it really matter? I thought back to what I remembered from the original story. Did the prince disguise his voice when he first called upon Rapunzel or not?

I figured it probably didn’t matter, and just called out in my regular voice. Who knew saving the world could make a person so apathetic?

“Rapunzel Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

Nothing. My voice had come out a little hoarse, and not nearly as loud as I had intended. I tried again, mustering all my feeble lung power, and practically screamed the words upwards in the direction of the tower window.

”Rapunzel Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

For a moment, nothing happened. I had just begun to take another breath to call again, when suddenly a spiral of golden hair was tossed out the window, and hit me in the head.

I got a mouth full of the stuff and fell backwards onto my kiester, swatting it out of my face. I scrambled to my feet and wasted no time in grabbing two handfuls of the hair, and then…

Realized that I didn’t really know how to climb. Anything. Let alone human hair, up the sheer side of a stone tower. I faltered, looking back up and thinking to myself that that really was a long way up. I imagined looking down from that height. The thought did curious things to the pit of my stomach.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said aloud to myself. “You’ve climbed a tower before! When you rescued the miller’s daughter!”

“But that was different,” I replied to me. “That was a rope, not hair. And it wasn’t as high, and Jack was on the other end of the rope helping haul you up. It was much safer.”

“You’re stupid. This is stupid. Why am I even here? Why is this my problem anyway? I don’t care what happens to these stupid princesses!” I snarled.

“Yes you do,” I admonished myself. “This is your world now. These problems were caused by you, and it’s your job to fix them, and you like that. You like helping these people, you like having people to help. You like knowing this word better than anyone else, and feeling for the first time in your life that you really belong somewhere, that you know to do and how to do it, even if it’s hard. This is more your home than your own world. Could you really just stand by and let it all get destroyed by some super-witch?”

I fell silent. I begrudgingly admitted that I made a good point. I guess I’d just have to learn on the job.

I tightened my grip in Rapunzel’s hair, and planted one foot against the side of the tower.

At first, it was terrifying. Every time I let go with one hand to haul myself a little higher, I’d swing to the side and almost lose my footing on the stone wall. And by the time I got into the rhythm of release-reach-grab-pull-step-repeat, my arms had begun to ache. I was climbing using mostly only arm and upper body strength, of which I didn’t have much to begin with. There were no footholds to take some of my weight, I could only use my feet to keep me from swinging wildly. Hand over hand I climbed, and I panted and grit my teeth, and my arms began to shake with the strain. My hands started to seize up, and it was becoming harder and harder to unclench my fists to reach up for the next handful of hair. And then I began to wish that I had thought to wear gloves or wrap my hands in cloth, because the hair kept getting twisted around my wrists and fingers and tangling me in place. When my palms became sweaty, my grip began to slip alarmingly, sending me sliding downwards once or twice so suddenly that my heart and stomach seemed to stay in place while the rest of me dropped down a foot. Once, and only once, I glanced beneath me to see how far I had come. I didn’t make that mistake again.

It had taken the fairy sorceress five minutes to scurry up Rapunzel’s hair; it took me three or four times as long. For a while there I really didn’t think I was going to make it, and I started swearing that if I managed to reach the top without becoming a greasy stain at the base of the tower after a long fall, I’d start doing a lot more upper body exercises in the future. Somehow, though, I made it.

Sweating and gasping for breath, I finally grabbed the cool stone of the window ledge and clung to it like a drowning man to a raft. It was only then that Rapunzel actually got a look at me and realized I wasn’t her step mother. She gasped in shock and stumbled backwards, but her hair was still wrapped around the window hook and it pulled abruptly taut, jerking her head sharply as the rest of her kept moving in the opposite direction.

You know that scene in The Ring, when the girl is climbing out of the television set? I have the uncomfortable suspicion I looked an awful lot like that, my hair wet from sweat and clinging to my forehead, trying to claw the rest of the way through the window with my arms while my legs windmilled wildly behind me with nothing to get purchase on. Eventually I was able to get enough of my upper body through the window that gravity did the rest of the work for me and I tipped forward like an unbalanced teeter totter, sliding face first into the small tower room.

“You… you’re not my mother,” Rapunzel managed to gasp, wide eyed and fearful, her hands entangled uselessly in her hair which was still keeping her trapped in place. I struggled to my feet, almost losing my balance along the way, my legs were shaking so badly from exertion. With unsteady steps I waddled over to the window and, careful not to actually lean out of it, I reached for the window hook and unwound Rapunzel’s hair from it. Quick as lighting she took the opportunity to draw up her hair, piling it in front of her in a golden mound without taking her eyes off of me.

“No,” I said, once I’d gotten my breath back enough to speak. “No, I’m not your mother. And for that matter, neither is… well, that’s a bit of a rough ice breaker, given that you don’t even know my name. Man, am I about to lay some harsh truths on you. Maybe we should get to know each other a little first. Hi, I’m Rikki.” My instinct was to go over and stick out my hand for her to shake, but given that I was the first person apart from the fairy sorceress she’d ever seen since the day she was born, I figured that might be a little overwhelming for her. Of course, in my world she’d have been one pack of stray dogs away from being a feral child, but this was a fairy tale world and reality didn’t always apply in quite the same way. Still, there was no need to go testing her limits just yet.

“Where did you come from?” she asked me in a hushed voice. She practically cowered, as if I were some avenging angel here to smite her for some obscure wrong doing. She was kneeling on the ground, and there was definitely an awkward power dynamic thing going on with me standing above her the way I was, so I looked around for something to sit on.

I saw that I was standing in a single, circular room, sparsely but comfortably furnished. There was a large, fluffy looking bed pushed against one wall, covered with feather stuffed blankets and pillows. Beside it was a large and ornate wardrobe, the doors slightly open allowing me the slightest glimpse of a few simple but fine dresses within. There was a wooden kitchen table with two hard backed chairs a little way to my right, with the remnants of what must have been their dinner from last night. To my left there was a tall freestanding mirror, a comfortable armchair, and what looked like a few children’s toys scattered on a rug that sat at the foot of the armchair. The walls were full of framed needlepoints that had been hung up, showing a clear progression from clumsy, childish stitches to beautifully intricate needle work. There was a single very worn, dog eared book on the kitchen table. And that was all. It was pretty grim.

I grabbed one of the hard backed chairs—I didn’t have to move very far to reach it—and sat down in it, as far from the girl as I could reasonably manage, and I tried to look as nonthreatening as possible. “I came from the forest,” I answered her question in a gentle tone. “And beyond the forest, before that.”

She just gaped at me, as if she had never even considered the possibility that there was a “beyond the forest” before in her life.

“Are you...” she asked, her quavering voice dropping to a nearly inaudible pitch. “Are you a witch?”

I screwed up my face. “No! God, no. I mean, probably not in the way you mean, at least. No, I'm just a girl, like you.”

She blinked at me, nonplussed.

“Like... me?” she replied. “I didn't realize... I didn't know... you mean there are others?”

“Other what?”

“Other... people.” She blushed scarlet. “I mean, I know there are other people out there,” she waved a hand vaguely at the world outside the window, “but I just didn't really think... Oh, I don't know.”

I took a deep breath. This was going to be a long conversation.

“Yeah. Lots, in fact. There are way more people in the world than just you and your... the woman who takes care of you.”

“My mother,” Rapunzel supplied.

“Eh,” I shrugged noncommittally. “Anyways, there is a whole world out there, beyond this tower, filled with people and towns and cities and palaces and all kinds of things apart from...” I looked out the window, at the sea of green that seemed to stretch on forever into the horizon. “...Trees.”

“Cities? And Palaces?” Rapunzel's eyes lit up for the first time since I'd made my unexpected appearance. “What are they like? To see first hand, I mean?” She was obviously a naturally curious girl, she seemed to have momentarily forgotten her fear of me in the wake of the sudden flood of potential questions I had inspired in her.

“Cities are these big, sprawling areas where lots of people live and work, all together. It's always loud and bustling,” I tried to describe. It was a little tough not to automatically start describing the cities I was used to back in my modern day world. “They are full of buildings, like your tower, but shorter. Bigger, though, on the inside. More spread out. Homes and shops, places like that. And paved roads which are always full of people and carriages and things. There are shops, where people bake bread and build furniture, there are inns and taverns where travelers from different towns can stay or where you can get a drink or a hot meal. And there are the castles, big beautiful buildings, bigger even than this tower, where kings and queens, princes and princesses, live.”

“Princesses?” she repeated slowly, her brow furrowing. “There are princesses in my book.” She pointed over my shoulder at the dog eared book on the kitchen table. “I thought they were just make believe.”

“They’re real, trust me,” I replied, a little sourly. “I’ve met my fair share of them.”

“Are they really beautiful, and good and kindly?” she asked, in the same kind of hushed, reverent tone someone might have used after being told that unicorns and birthday wishes were actually real.

“As far as I can tell, yeah,” I said, not adding that they often seemed to be as three dimensional as a bag of rocks—but perhaps that was more due to the failings of cosmic authors somewhere than because of the girls themselves.

“And Princes? They’re real too?”

“As real as you and me. And real nuisances, more often than not.”

Rapunzel’s mouth opened, and the words tumbled out before she seemed to realize she was even saying them. “Will a Prince come and find me, all the way up here in my tower?” And then her sense caught up with her tongue, and her lips pressed tight together, as if she was afraid more treacherous words might escape against her will, and she blushed bright pink. “That’s not to say… I love my mother very much, and my tower, I don’t mean that I… it just… it gets so lonely, and-”

I held up a hand to stop her. “Hey, I’m not in a place to judge. This conversation is just between you and me, I won’t tell anyone. Do you want a prince to come find you up here?”

“I… I don’t know.” She shook her lovely head uncertainly. “I thought, like in my book, maybe… I don’t know. I thought that maybe, someone might come and take me away from here. I’ve always wanted to see what the forest was like, from outside of my tower. My mother has told me stories. Mostly about how the outside world is a dark and dangerous place, but my forest is so beautiful and peaceful, I’ve always secretly thought that the rest of the world couldn’t be so very bad.” She fell quiet, then flushed again and averted her eyes. “Oh goodness, but you’re someone who has come to me, aren’t you? Someone from out there. Are you a Prince?”

I laughed. “No, not a prince. Not a princess either, or a king or queen or anything like that. Just an ordinary girl. You know, you can leave if you want to.”

Rapunzel blanched. “No, no I couldn’t! My mother has expressly forbade it!”

“Rapunzel,” I said, leaning forward so my elbows rested on my knees, my hands clasped in front of me, “I’ve got a story for you.”

And I told her the story of Rapunzel, of herself, the way I’d learned it years and years before. The couple who became pregnant, the wife who craved the greens from the witch’s garden next door—especially the rapunzel. The husband getting caught climbing back over the witch’s garden wall, their deal to exchange the child to be born for the greens. The way the witch spirited away the infant to a tall tower hidden away from the world, naming her after the offending plant that started the whole business.

It was a long retelling, and Rapunzel had many questions which she was not hesitant to interrupt me with.

By the time I’d finished, Rapunzel was sitting cross legged on the floor, her mouth slightly open, and her expression troubled.

“That story,” she finally said, after a long silence. “That’s… that’s supposed to be what happened to me, isn’t it? How can you know all that?”

“I’ve been sent on a quest, to help you, and other princes and princesses like you. A prince was supposed to find his way here and… well, not rescue you or anything, actually he was going to get you into a lot of trouble and you were going to end up wandering around a desert after getting knocked—you know what, it doesn’t matter. The point is, he got lost or something, and so I’m here instead to make sure you get your happily ever after. Actually, I think you’re going to be much better off than you would have originally been.”

But Rapunzel was shaking her head. “No, no I don’t believe you. I can’t believe you. My mother is my real mother, I know it in my heart. If there really is a whole world out beyond my tower, then it must be as terrible as she always warned me it was. It must be too dangerous, I would be foolish to even dare think about going out into it.” She shook her head fiercely, as if trying to physically shake the inkling thoughts of rebellion from her head.

“Well, I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s a perfect world out there,” I admitted. “It can be dangerous at times. But mostly only if you live like I do, traveling from town to town and sleeping in the woods and stuff like that. That’s not normal. Most people just live in one quiet little town for their whole lives, and stay quite safe and happy living comfortable lives. Royalty have it even better. The most dangerous thing a king or queen has to deal with on a daily basis is the risk of getting burned by an overly heated bed warmer.” I stopped, and thought about a handful of the less well known fairy tales recorded by the Brothers Grimm, and a few particularly notable, particularly French and Russian, historical instances. “Actually, that isn’t entirely true. But I’m sure you’d be fine.”

Rapunzel shifted, still obviously uncomfortable. “What do princesses do, exactly?”

“They…” I trailed off, thinking about it. “Well, they get married to Princes. Who usually become kings eventually, which turns the princess into a queen. And, um… well, where I come from, queens usually hold at least some political power even if there is a king on the throne, and they usually serve the primary role of uniting two kingdoms through the inter-marriage of two royal family lines. And sometimes Queens can be rulers on their own, though I’m not gonna lie, I’m not entirely sure if that’s true in this place.” Somehow I couldn’t really see Queen Elizabeth playing the role of a fairy tale queen. “To be perfectly honest, it seems like queens who rule a kingdom on their own around here tend to be of the evil variety. Hm. Come to think about it, this place could really use a feminist uprising.”

Rapunzel chewed on her lip for a long moment, staring out the small window at the treetops that stretched into the distance. “I don’t think I want to be a princess, or a queen,” she finally said. I couldn’t say I blamed her. Some of the other women in fairy tales were headstrong and independent, intelligent and earned their happily ever afters by being clever and compassionate, honest and brave. But it seemed to me that all the princess I’d been set to rescue were ones who just sort of got swept up in other people’s lives, other people’s plots and plans and schemes. The miller’s daughter got entangled in the attentions of royalty by her father’s lies, and wasn’t able to do anything to save herself—not that that was her own fault, she had been in a literally impossible situation. Cinderella just wanted to go to a party, and got caught up in her step mother’s jealousy and cruelty. Nothing in her life would have changed if the prince hadn’t noticed her at the ball. If he’d found another girl, she’d have danced for three nights, then gone back to her horrible life with her step mother and step sisters. Snow White was another victim of jealousy, and wildly outmatched against the wicked sorceress who plagued her. Snow White couldn’t have defended herself against a witch that powerful. I hadn’t been able to myself, I’d just gotten lucky. Rapunzel had been bartered away before she was even born, and kept imprisoned without even really realizing she was in cage. All these girls were victims of circumstance, and entirely powerless to do anything about it, pitted against foes that were overwhelmingly more powerful and experienced than they. And then the fates finally turned in their favor, what happened?

A man showed up, to take them away to a life of peace and luxury. Which was a pretty nice reward in return for their suffering, sure. But I realized something in that moment. None of the girl’s I’d helped so far had been asked what they wanted. Maybe they did want to be swept off their feet by a handsome prince, to become a princess and live happily ever after as royalty. But nobody had even bothered to ask them. Not even me. I’d just assumed that getting them back on track to their original happy endings was what I was supposed to do, but as I looked into Rapunzel’s wide eyes, I wondered if maybe I was wrong.

“What do you want, Rapunzel?” I asked her, quietly.

“I don’t know.” She looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Then her eyes darted back to the window, back to the outside world. “I want… I want to know what else is out there.”

I could help her escape. We could go together, to the next stage of the quest. She could come with me to rescue Sleeping Beauty, she might prove to be a valuable asset. I had been trying to avoid the thought of having to finish this quest all by myself. Maybe now I wouldn’t have to. I could take her under my wing, show her the world, take her on the rest of this adventure with me. I could rescue her. She could be my partner in crime. My sidekick. My princess.

I sighed.

“I think you need to talk to your mother, then. Maybe she won’t understand, I don’t know. If she’s been so bent on keeping you here all this time, maybe she won’t want you to leave. But I think you should talk to her about it. If she really cares about you, she’ll listen to what you have to say. You’re a young woman, and you’re old enough to be able to make decisions of your own. It isn’t fair to keep you trapped up here, not if you don’t want to be.”

I hid in the wardrobe when dusk drew near. Rapunzel told me that her mother only came at nightfall, and I figured it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to be caught hanging out in the tower, given the sorceress’s reaction in the original story when she discovered Rapunzel had been having little visits from the prince. I didn’t much fancy being thrown out of the tower and having my eyes pierced out by the thorny bushes at the tower’s base. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect the conversation to go all that well in general. Given the unreasonably violent reaction of the sorceress in the aforementioned original story of Rapunzel, I imagined that she wasn’t going to be all that understanding when Rapunzel asked if it was okay to just saunter out of her tower prison that the fairy had gone through extraordinary lengths to keep her in. But I’d be just as bad as all the people I was trying to fight against if I didn’t at least give them the opportunity to sort all this out like grown adults, so into the wardrobe I went.

That didn’t mean I was stupid, though. Once Rapunzel closed the doors on me, leaving them open just the slightest crack so I could peer out with one eye, I drew my short sword and laid it ready on my lap. I was prepared to leap out and start swinging if it seemed like the sorceress meant any harm to Rapunzel, since I wasn’t about to let the poor girl suffer for something I put her up to. I wasn’t sure how well attacking a fairy sorceress with nothing but a short sword would go for me if it came to that, but this wouldn’t be the first situation I’d leapt blindly into, and I’d always turned out fine so far. I tried not to think that sooner or later, my luck was bound to run out.