Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

Maybe fifteen minutes after the sun had set completely, plunging the forest into oppressive darkness, I heard someone calling in a loud, clear voice from outside the tower.

”Rapunzel Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

From the crack in the wardrobe doors, I saw Rapunzel hasten over to the window and toss her hair out, letting it fall to the ground below. I wondered vaguely how she maintained sixty feet of hair so well. My own hair ended up a tangled rat’s nest if I turned my head too quickly.

Then I figured the answer was probably “magic” or some silly cop out like that, and refocused on the more pressing situation at hand.

Rapunzel began to grunt and wince, and I assumed that the fairy sorceress had begun the ascent. She was much quicker at it than I had been, and within five minutes, I saw the robed figure clambering over the sill and into the room.

She stood impressively tall beside Rapunzel, and I guessed the woman must have been near six feet. She made an intimidating silhouette, cloaked in black velvet and positively looming over the young, blond girl. A pair of pale, long fingered hands reached up, and pulled back the hood of the robe.

Despite having spent months living in a fairy tale world, I’d never seen an actual fairy before.

They weren’t like Tinkerbell, not the little winged creatures we think about in our modern day world. This was a fairy of the old school, drawn in the same lines as Tolkien’s elves.

She was tall and thin, not in the same proportions as a human, but rather like a giant had grabbed her head in one hand and her feet in the other and stretched her out like a piece of taffy. Her hair was a shiny black curtain that fell pin straight down her back, framing a colorless face. Her cheekbones were high and sharp enough to cut marble with, her chin a dagger’s point at the end of a powerful jaw. Her eyes were as black as her hair, and there was something cat-like about their shape and placement on her face. Somehow, she frightened me a lot more than the Evil Queen had.

“Mother!” Rapunzel gasped, and she rushed to embrace the fairy. The woman didn’t hug her back, but she smiled down at Rapunzel before gently detaching the girl. I couldn’t help but notice that the smile didn’t quite reach the fairy’s eyes.

“Contain yourself, Rapunzel. You saw me only last night, there is no need for such a display.” The fairy swept away from Rapunzel, pulling off the cloak and draping it over the back of the chair I had been sitting in only a few hours before. If I leaned over as far as I dared, I could still just barely keep her in my line of sight.

“Mother,” Rapunzel asked, the hesitation marked in her voice. The fairy seemed to notice her change of tone, and turned back to Rapunzel with narrowed eyes.

“What is it?”

I swear Rapunzel almost lost her nerve, hesitating so long that I lost hope that she would come out and say anything. But then she seemed to gather herself, and said in a rush, “Mother, I want to leave this tower. I want to see the outside world, I’m tired of spending every day in here while there is a whole world out there, passing me by.”

The fairy was silent for a long moment, and I could see by her body language Rapunzel getting more and more uncomfortable as the seconds stretched on and on. Then abruptly the fairy threw back her head and laughed. It was a harsh, ugly sound.

“Rapunzel, don’t be ridiculous now,” she said once the laughter died away. She patted the girl on the head, as if she were a very small child who’d just asked if they could go visit the nice farm out in the country that Rover was sent to when he got really sick. “I’ve told you before, the world out there is no place for a girl like you. It’s far too ugly and dangerous a place. There is nothing out there world seeing that you can’t already see from your warm, safe tower.” She turned away from the girl and walked across the room, out of my line of vision. Rapunzel followed her, and I cursed silently to myself. I could still hear them fine, since the tower room was so small, but not being able to see them made me anxious.

“But you leave the tower every day,” Rapunzel pointed out.

“And I’m a powerful sorceress,” the fairy replied ina tone that bordered on exasperated. “It’s not nearly as dangerous for me as it is for you. I have to leave to bring back food for us to eat, books for you to read.”

“If you’re powerful, then couldn’t you keep me safe as well, as long as I was with you?” Rapunzel pointed out pleadingly. “I’d stay with you, I just want to go with you when you leave the tower during the day. I want to travel with you, you could show me all the wonderful things there are to see in the world.”

“There are no wonderful things, Rapunzel, and I’m not permitting you to leave this tower,” the fairy snapped, suddenly harsh. Rapunzel didn’t say anything in reply, but she must have shied away or had some physical reaction or sadness or fear, because the fairy sighed and spoke again in a much gentler tone. “Rapunzel, my darling child. You are a very lovely girl. Too lovely, and too innocent. There are those who would covet you, and take advantage of your innocence. I’ll not have you lost, my child. I don’t wish for some man to set his sights upon you and take you away from me. I’ve worked very hard to keep you safe all these years.”

“I wouldn’t let anyone take me away,” Rapunzel said, almost petulantly.

“You don’t understand the ways of the world, the ways of men,” replied the fairy. “That is the end of this discussion.”

“So I just have to spend the rest of my life trapped here, then?” Rapunzel continued anyways, a touch of anger creeping into her tone. “That isn’t fair, mother. It’s my life too, I should be allowed to make decisions for myself.”

“It’s not your life, it’s mine,” the fairy snarled, in a voice so cold and hard that it made my heart pound a little harder in my chest. I heard a stumbling step or two, and the back of Rapunzel’s golden head came into view. I guessed that she must have taken an involuntary step away from her adopted mother; but to her credit, she didn’t back down.

“Are you… are you my real mother?” she asked out of the blue, the words spilling from her lips in a rush as if she were trying to get them all out before she lost her nerve. An icy silence fell over the room.

“What are you saying?” the fairy hissed. Rapunzel took another step back, and I could see that she was trembling, but her hands clenched into fists at her side, and she continued.

“Are you really my mother? Are you really my… my only family?”

“What gave you the idea otherwise?” the fairy asked, her tone still a threatening whisper. “What brought this on?”

“Are you my real mother?” Rapunzel repeated, her voice rising to a slightly hysterical pitch.

“Who else would I be?”

“Are you, or aren’t you? Why won’t you answer me?”

The fairy took a step towards Rapunzel, closing the gap between them and coming back into my view. Her eyes were dangerous slits, her mouth a tight, hard line.

“I raised you from a baby. I fed you and changed you, clothed you and cared for you. I kept you safe up here, away from the evils of the world. Does that not make me your mother?”

Rapunzel swallowed hard. “But… why? Why hide me away then? I’m old enough now, I don’t need to be kept safe up here in this tower. I want to leave.”

“You’re mine,” the fairy growled, and she took another sudden step closer to Rapunzel so that she loomed over the slight girl. “They gave you to me, they stole my rapunzel so I took you instead, and I won’t lose you too. I’ve spent years cultivating you, you’re mine and mine alone and you will stay in this tower until you wither and die. I grew you, this is your pot, and these are your roots.” She grabbed Rapunzel by the hair, yanking the girl’s head backwards so roughly that she cried out in pain.

My hands, though shaking, tightened on the hilt f my sword. This was not going well, exactly as I had feared. Was it too much to have hoped that after raising a child from infancy, the fairy might have come to have feelings of genuine affection for the girl? Apparently so. Why did evil villains have to be so… evil?

I didn’t leap out to the rescue quite yet. The fairy would have seen me the moment I left the wardrobe, and because I wasn’t exactly supremely confident in my combat abilities—especially against a supernatural sorceress—I wanted to see if I could until she had her back to me, so I’d at least have the element of surprise on my side.

Turn around, turn around, I urged silently, my face practically pressed against the wardrobe doors so I could see as much as possible through the crack between them.

“You’re hurting me!” Rapunzel shrieked, struggling in the fairy’s grasp.

“You’re never leaving this tower,” she snarled, leaning down until her face was an inch from Rapunzel’s. “You will never speak of it again, or you will be punished.” Then she released the girl, who stumbled backwards and nearly fell to the ground. The fairy turned away then, and I was about to throw open the wardrobe and jump out, but before I could, Rapunzel spoke again, and I hesitated.

“No,” she said to her adopted mother’s back. Her voice shook, but it was loud and firm. I could see her trembling as she stood there, her shoulders hunched as if she wanted to fold in on herself and disappear, but she was standing her ground.

The fairy turned back to her, her lips pulling back from her slightly pointed teeth in a sneer.

“No?” she repeated, her voice little more than a whisper. “Did you say no to me?”

Rapunzel’s chin quavered, but she kept it lifted high. “It’s not your life, it’s mine,” she said. “And I’m going to leave this tower, no matter what you say. You can’t keep me here forever. I thought you cared about me, but all you care about is owning me. You’re not my mother, you’re a… you’re a… a witch!”

It was obviously the worst insult that Rapunzel could think of, but while I was tempted to roll my eyes at its weakness, it seemed as though it struck home for the fairy.

Her expression shifted, contorting into something more animal than human. At first I thought she was trembling, but then I realize it was the air around her which had gone hazy as if steam were coming off her, and I recognized the crackle in the air of the almost electric feeling of raw magic. Guess that was my cue.

I flung the wardrobe doors open and rushed out into the middle of the room, charging at the fairy just as she was reaching a hand for Rapunzel. The fairy was extremely surprised by my sudden appearance seemingly out of no where, and I came within an inch of cutting her hand off as I wildly flailed by sword. I was inexperienced though, and taken by surprise or not, she was still a powerful fairy sorceress, and she yanked her hand back just in time to avoid my slashing blade. She took two, three hasty steps away, backing into the kitchen table, and staring at me with an expression caught somewhere between confusion and rage.

“Who is this? Who are you? Where did you come from?” she hissed, her pupils contracting into catlike slits.

“I’m…” I tried to think of something impressive or clever to say, something that would have done Bilbo Baggins’ “I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer, and I am Barrel Rider” speech proud, but I’m not a terribly impressive or clever person, especially not while I’m very probably staring my death in the face. It’s a shortcoming of mine. “I’m… well, think of me like Rapunzel’s fairy godmother, only a much better one than you. I’m here to protect her best interests, and if that’s leaving this tower, than so be it, and I won’t let you stand in her way.” I stood there, between Rapunzel and the fairy sorceress, my feet spread and my knees bent, with my short sword held aloft and threatening.

The fairy’s face was a frozen mask for a few seconds, and then she burst unexpectedly into laughter.

“You? You are her fairy godmother? You honestly think you can stand in my way?” She threw her head back, laughing so long and so hard that it was honestly one of the most insulting experiences of my life.

“Yes, I am, and yes I do!” I replied heatedly. Then, without taking my eyes off the fairy, I said to Rapunzel behind me, “Go, now.”

“How?”

My insides turned to ice.

This. This was why I couldn’t do this stupid, horrible quest alone. I just didn’t think things through. How in blazes was I supposed to get Rapunzel out of here? I hadn’t even thought of that! How did she get out of the tower in the original story? I couldn’t even remember. God, god damn it! How could I have been so stupid? This was going to end horribly, probably painfully, and it was entirely my idiotic fault.

Shit.

“Okay then,” I said slowly, as the fairy’s laughter finally began to die out. “Okay then. I’m sure we can reach some kind of agreement here. I’m sure nobody wants anyone else getting hurt.”

“Actually, I want to hurt you quite a lot,” said the fairy with a foul sneer. Her eyes flashed to Rapunzel. “And I will punish you next, for conspiring against me like this, you wicked girl.”

And then she came at me, her clawed hands outstretched, grasping for my throat.

I didn’t bother trying to strike her with my sword, she was too fast and I wasn’t nearly agile enough. I just put all of my energy in trying to get out of her way as quickly as I could, dropping to the ground and just rolling to the side in a clumsy somersault. She whipped around and snatched at my hair, but I thrust my sword backwards at her and she was forced to let go avoid being stabbed. I whipped around and didn’t let myself think, didn’t take the time to plan what I was doing because that would give me time to doubt, time to hesitate. I just threw myself at her, slashing at her torso with wide but energetic strokes. One of them caught her, just a little, but enough to draw blood. The fairy seemed shocked by the wound, both of our eyes drawn down to the splash of crimson blood. Rapunzel must have seen it too, because she shrieked again, this time in panic, and covered her eyes with her hands.

I cursed silently to myself as I skipped backwards, away from the swipe of the fairy’s hand as she tried to claw my eyes out with fingernails that looked more like talons by now.

I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I obviously couldn’t just kill the fairy—even assuming I was capable of shoving a sword through someone, which I wasn’t entirely sure I could; I’d just been swinging the thing blindly on instinct this entire time, without thinking about what it would be like if I actually made contact—but more than my own personal qualms about murder, even in self-defense, I’d also forgotten that for all intents and purposes, Rapunzel still thought of this woman as her mother. If I killed the fairy in front of her… that wouldn’t make me a very good fairy godmother.

But the fairy sorceress didn’t seem like she was going to give me a choice in the matter. She grabbed one of the hard backed wooden chairs from the kitchen table and hurled it across the room at me. I ducked, but one of the legs clipped me on the temple and I was sent spinning to the ground. The world went black for an instant, and the next thing I knew I was laying on my stomach with my face pressed against the ground. The first thing my fuzzy vision focused on was a splash of red at the edge of my vision, and a sudden rush of pain in my face made me realize that I had hit my nose on the stone floor and it was bleeding badly. With effort, I rolled over onto my back just in time to see the fairy looming over me, dropping down and pinning me to the ground. She raised her arm, her fingers spread out like claws, and I had no idea what she was about to try to do to me, but it couldn’t be good. I dropped my sword and grabbed her by the forearm, using her own unyielding strength to pull myself up and bite her, as hard as I could, just below her wrist.

She screamed in pain and I felt her skin break beneath my teeth, hot, coppery blood splattering on my tongue. The fairy jerked away and with some struggling I managed to get one leg out from under her and kicked her square in the chest, knocking her off me.

I rolled over onto my knees, grabbed by sword, scrambled to my feet and ran to the other side of the room where I jumped behind the armchair, dragging it out a little so it was between me and the fairy. She surged to her own feet and whirled about, her face purple and livid, blood from my bite dripping from her fingers onto the grey stones. We both stood motionless in place for a long moment, me panting out of fear and sudden exertion, she panting with poorly concealed fury. She sidestepped to the left to start to move around the armchair, and I stepped left as well, keeping it between us. She stepped right, and I mirrored her. She took two quick, darting jumps left again and I scrambled in the same direction, so we were just circling around the chair like a couple of children vying for the last seat in a game of musical chairs.

She gave a rasping cry of frustration and just leaped forwards, onto the seat of the chair and jumping clear over the back at me. I cried out and tried to run, but the room was so damn small that I simply couldn’t get enough distance between me and her before she grabbed me by the arm. With terrifying strength she threw me to the ground, and then grabbed me by one of my kicking ankles and began to drag me bodily across the room, towards the tower window.

“I’ll throw this… this thief,” she spat the word, “out, and then I’ll deal with you, girl.”

“No you won’t!” Rapunzel cried, and suddenly she had jumped onto the fairy’s back, her arms wrapping around the fairy’s neck in a choke hold that would have earned her a title spot in professional wrestling. I scrambled to my feet, but wasn’t sure what I could do. The girl and sorceress were too intertwined for me to dare risk trying to use my sword for fear of hitting Rapunzel instead, but Rapunzel was bound to get hurt sooner or later, she simply couldn’t maintain her ill thought out attack. The fairy was tremendously strong, and she had grabbed handfuls of the girl’s hair, trying to rip Rapunzel off her back. The fairy wheeled about in circles, thrashing and struggling, gasping out choked snarls of fury. Rapunzel held on for dear life, but it was like she was trying to ride a mechanical bull. I rushed forward with the intention of grabbing Rapunzel and yanking her off so I could finish off the sorceress myself, but even as my free hand reached out for Rapunzel’s back, the fairy took one wild step too far, the back of her legs hit the window sill, and, off balance with Rapunzel’s weight clinging to her, she tipped over the edge, out the window.

My first horrible, time-wasting reaction was to scream. The strangled cry had barely escaped my throat however before my body decided that my brain couldn’t handle a crisis like this in a timely manner and took executive action, launching itself forward and grabbing wildly for something, anything.

What I grabbed was Rapunzel’s hair, and I spun in a circle so it wrapped around my waist and I dropped to the ground, bracing myself with all my might against the wall just below the window. I closed my eyes and waited for half a heart stopping second for the hair to pull tight, while I prayed to every god that I could think of that I wasn’t about to scalp Rapunzel.

Her hair suddenly pulled taut, and I was almost pulled up the wall and out the window myself, but a second later, as I was lifted bodily from the floor, the weight on the other end suddenly became drastically lighter and I stopped moving upwards.

I opened my eyes.

I was curled in a ball, my knees pulled tight to my chest, about a foot off the ground, suspended partially in the air by the hair wrapped around my waist. Tentatively, I put one foot down, then the other, so I was crouching on the floor. I tried to stand up, but the weight on the other end of the hair shifted and the hair I had wrapped around me began to slip alarmingly from my grasp. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. There was obviously still the weight of another person on the other end of the hair hanging out the window, so I probably hadn’t either scalped or decapitated Rapunzel.

That didn’t rule out breaking her neck though, so at that moment, the absolute last thing that I wanted to do was actually look and see what had happened.

There was also the little matter that I wasn’t entirely sure if I could stand up and look out the window without losing my grip on the handfuls of hair as thick around as an anaconda. If the force of her hair stopping her fall hadn’t killed Rapunzel, then the rest of the fall to the clearing below certainly would.

Inch by inch, I started to rise to a standing position, adjusting and tightening my grip on the golden hair as I went. Finally, after what felt like an eternity in which my heart pounded so hard that I was worried I would drop dead of a heart attack at any minute, I was standing all the way up. I took a deep breath, and leaned ever so slightly out the window, and looked down.

Rapunzel was only about five feet down, kicking and swinging madly with her hands entwined in the hair at her scalp.

“Rapunzel!” I gasped, relief flooding through me so strongly it made me a little weak at the knees, which wasn’t great considering the position we were in.

“Help me!” she squeaked, her legs windmilling as she dangled like a yoyo at the end of a string.

“Oh god, hold on!” I called down to her. I took an extra second to look past her, at the base of the tower. I saw an empty pile of clothes caught in the briar that grew around the tower. I didn’t know what that meant, if the fairy had survived the fall or not. Perhaps she had magicked herself away, or perhaps she had disintegrated into fairy dust on impact.

I decided I didn’t want to know. I focused instead on trying to haul Rapunzel up, putting one foot against the window sill for leverage and hauling as hard as I could on her hair. She squealed and swung, but I just didn’t have the strength to pull her back up. It was all I could do to keep her from slipping further down. My hands were sweaty, and my arms were already shaking from the effort of holding her in place.

“I can’t pull you back up,” I called, ashamed to admit it but not sure what else I could do.

“Don’t let me fall!” Rapunzel sobbed. I thought hard. Her hair slipped through my fingers a little, dropping her and inch lower. She shrieked in terror.

“I’m not going to let you fall,” I promised her. “I have an idea. I can’t pull you back up, but I might be able to lower you down.”

“No!” Rapunzel cried.

“It’s okay,” I replied, fudging the truth just a little bit. “I’m positive I can get you down safely. You have more than enough hair. But you can’t keep dangling like this!” I wasn’t actually positive that I could lower her down safely, but I was positive that if I didn’t do something, her scalp would end up torn off sooner or later. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

I didn’t even wait for her to reply. It didn’t matter if she agreed or not, something had to be done. Very, very carefully, I slackened my grip, just the tiniest fraction. Rapunzel slid down another few inches, accompanied by another shriek of alarm. I tightened my fists, and her hair dragged through my palms. It hurt, not like rope burn, but equally unpleasant. That wouldn’t work, I couldn’t keep that up. Next I tried getting her hair wound tightly around my forearm up to the elbow. Then I oh so slowly let go my other hand, my right hand. With all of Rapunzel’s weight being supported by my left arm, it felt like my arm was about to be pulled out of my socket, but I had a good enough grip that Rapunzel wasn’t going anywhere. I grabbed a point a little further back on the rope of hair, wrapped it around my right forearm the same was it was around my left. Then I unwound my left, and had ended up about a foot further away from the window. I took the tiniest possible steps back to the window, and Rapunzel was lowered about a foot, slowly and relatively safely.

I heaved a sigh. Okay, now I only had to do that sixty more times.

If I had though climbing up Rapunzel’s hair to get into the tower had been hard, it was nothing compared to lowering the girl down inch by inch in this manner. Wrapping her hair around my arms cut off my circulation and my hands began to swell and turn purple, but at least when I started losing feeling in my fingers and wrists, it distracted me from the pain.

Somehow, lord only knows how, I did it. I ran out of enough hair to wrap around my arms while Rapunzel was still a few feet off the ground, but she was close enough that she could jump the rest of the way. She fell into the grass at the tower base, narrowly avoiding the thorny bushes, and lay crying in a heap. I collapsed as well, my arms hanging useless at my side, my hands throbbing and discolored. It took the both of us almost as long to recover from the descent as it did to get down in the first place.

Finally, I managed to stand up and lean out over the window sill again.

“Rapunzel? Are you okay?” I called down to her.

“My head hurts,” she moaned, barely loud enough for me to hear. I grimaced. I bet it did.

“It’s okay, don’t worry! I’ll find a way down, just hold on!” Fairly certain that she wasn’t going to be going anywhere, I turned back to the room and looked around, at a loss at what I could possibly use to escape the tower.

But cliches are cliches for a reason, and I figured it would be stupid of me not to at least give it a shot, so I went over to the bed and stripped it of all blankets and sheets. With clumsy knots I tied all the sheets together, returned to the window, and tossed my makeshift rope out.

It wasn’t even close to long enough. It was still at least a forty foot drop from where the corner of the last blanket hung. Frustrated, I hauled the sheet back up and tossed them to the floor. By now Rapunzel was struggling to sit up, wiping her eyes and nose with the back of her hand, and looking thoroughly miserable. She caught sight of the empty pile of clothes in the bramble and burst back into tears, and I felt a pang shoot through my heart. The poor girl was going to have some serious issues after all this was over. I wondered which ending was more traumatizing, the original in which she ends up knocked up and banished to a desert, or the one I’d just help put her through.

“There doesn’t happen to be any rope or anything like that up here, does there?” I called down, without much hope. Crying too hard to speak, Rapunzel just shook her head. I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. That was it. I got this far, and now I was going to die up here. “You’re going to have to go for help,” I told Rapunzel. She hiccuped, stopped her crying in shock, and looked up at me.

“Wha-what? But… I can’t, I don’t… I don’t know where to go!”

“I’ll just have to do my best to direct you. You can take my horse, he’ll probably be helpful in back tracking. There is a valley not too far from here with a castle, and on the other side of the valley is a road through the forest. It should be mostly safe to travel now, and it will eventually lead you to a town or an inn or something. You can get help there.”

“I can’t do that!” Rapunzel squeaked. “How would I find my way back? I don’t know where I am, or where anything is! I’ve never left the tower before!”

I leaned heavily against the wall. She was right. Even if she did manage to get out of the forest and find someone to help get me out of here, she would never in a million years be able to find her way back. I certainly couldn’t have done it if our positions were reversed, I’d only even found the tower in the first place by sheer luck.

I was broken out of this unhappy train of thought by Rapunzel suddenly stiffening and looking over her shoulder. My horse, who was laying peacefully in the grass nearby, completely undisturbed by everything that had happened, suddenly surged to its feet and gave a nervous whinny. It took me a few moments to realize that something was moving through the trees in the darkness beyond the clearing.

“Oh geeze, what now?” I groaned. Should I throw my sword down to Rapunzel? Would it be of any use to her whatsoever? Would I just end up accidentally stabbing her if I did?

Before I could make a decision, someone burst through the trees into the clearing. For a brief moment I was filled with panic, sure it was the fairy, returned for vengeance. The person looked around, spotted Rapunzel sitting in the grass, my anxious horse, and then looked up and saw me leaning halfway out the tower window, trying to get a better look at what was going on below. The person pointed an accusatory finger up at me.

“You!” they cried. “Finally! I’ve been tracking you for weeks, and finally I’ve found you!”

My jaw dropped open as I realized I recognized the figure, but only barely. I’d only met her once, and briefly, after all.

“Little Red Riding Hood?”

“I was Little Red Riding Hood, until you stole my cape from me!” the girl shrieked.

I couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t seriously happening.

I had run into Little Red the very first day, practically the very first hour, that I had arrived in this messed up fairy tale world. Wolves had been chasing me, I had quite literally bumped into her in the forest, I’d tried to drag her along after me while I screamed and raved about the wolves that I knew weren’t far behind, but my aggravated state rightfully alarmed her and she refused to go with me. Freaked out and desperate to get out of my grasp, she tried to squirm away and her cloak fell off in my hands. She ran off in one direction, I ran in the other. Obviously she had gotten away fine, but it appeared that she hadn’t taken the loss of her cloak very well at all.

“I didn’t steal it!” I protested. “It was an accident! Inadvertent! Unintentional! What are you even doing here?”

“I want my cloak back!” she screamed up at me. “My grandmother made me that cloak! I’ve been one step behind you for weeks! You keep leaving a trail of crazy everywhere you go, but you’ve always remained one step ahead of me, always leaving just before I arrive! Did you know people are talking about you in the streets of three separate kingdoms like you’re some kind of a hero? I doubt they still would be if they knew you were a thief!”

“I am NOT a thief!” I shouted back.

“Give me my cloak back then!”

I grit my teeth. I didn’t actually have the cloak. I hadn’t had it for weeks. I could hardly even remember how I’d lost it, it was all so many traumatic incidents ago. Not that she’d be happy to see it even if I still had it, it had gotten to be in pretty bad condition by the time it and I parted ways.

“I lost it,” I replied, in a tone I thought too quiet for her to hear. Apparently I was mistaken.

“What?!” she shrieked. “You LOST my cloak? You stole it, and then you lost it? Who the hell do you think you are?”

“It was just a stupid cloak! Oh my god, I don’t have time for this. I’ll get you a new cloak, dammit!” I screamed. I turned back to the room behind me, saw the fairy’s discarded cloak lying on the floor, grabbed it, and chucked it out the window at Little Red. “Here! Take this one! Take this cloak, and choke on it!”

I took a few deep, steadying breaths. I was losing control of my temper. It had been a very trying couple of days, and this certainly wasn’t putting me in any better of a mood. Little Red continued to glare up at me, but she stooped and picked up the cloak I had thrown. Eventually she tore her gaze from me and glanced down at it, rubbing it between her hands.

“Hm. Velvet. Not bad.” She swung it over her shoulders, trying it on. “It’s a little too long, but it’s got a hood. Maybe I won’t have to teach you a lesson after all.”

My god, was Little Red Riding Hood threatening to beat me up? Could my life get any weirder?

“Um, excuse me,” a quavering voice interrupted. “What’s going on?”

“Who is this?” Little Red asked suspiciously, turning to look at Rapunzel. “Your partner in crime?”

“She’s just a girl that I helped,” I replied quickly. “She was being held captive up in this tower, and I helped get her out.”

“She killed my mother,” Rapunzel said, tearing up again. “Or maybe I did. I don’t know anymore. But she wasn’t even really my mother, she was… she was bad, I think… oh…” and she collapsed into a fit of crying again.

“Have you been assaulting more innocents?” Little Red demanded accusingly.

“No,” I snapped. “I was trying to help her! She had been kidnapped by some crazy sorceress! And now she’s down there, and I’m stuck up here, and I can’t believe I’m saying this but thank god you came along because I need help! Go back to town, go fetch someone who can get me down from here! I need a ladder or rope or something! Oh damn it, Jack still had that stupid grappling hook! If I ever see him again, I’m going to kick his ass for leaving…”

Little Red was hardly listening to me anymore. She reached down and helped pull Rapunzel to her feet. “You’ve been trapped in that tower your whole life?” she asked. “Is that why your hair is so long?”

Rapunzel nodded. “My mother—the woman who I lived with, she used my hair to climb up and down the tower.”

Little Red shook her head sadly. “What is the world coming to these days? How about I take you to my Granny’s. It’s only about a three day’s ride from here on horseback. Sje can take good care of you until you figure out what it is you want to do.”

Rapunzel nodded, apparently still to distraught to speak.

“That means we need a horse,” Little Red called up to me pointedly, crossing her arms with so much attitude that I could see it all the way from up here.

“Okay, fine, take my horse too!” I snapped. “Are you happy now?”

“No,” Little Red replied coolly, “But it’s a start.”

“Just go find someone to help me!” I urged. “If you don’t come back and I starve to death up here, I swear I’ll… I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life!”

“Yeah yeah, whatever. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’ll be back.”

“You’d better!” I shouted, but she wasn’t paying me anymore attention. She went over to calm the horse and lead it to Rapunzel, who she helped mount it. Rapunzel, having never seen a horse before, nearly had another panic attack, but Little Red somehow managed to keep her calm and get her up there. Little Red clambered up as well, sitting behind Rapunzel.

“It’ll take me a day or two to get to town,” Little Red called to me, “And another day or two to get back with someone who can help. Can you make it for up to four days up there?”

“There is enough food for that long,” Rapunzel called tearfully. “Not much more than that, but enough.”

I sighed. “I guess I don’t have any other choice.”

“I guess you don’t,” Little Red replied, and with that she turned the horse and led it off into the trees in the direction she had come. I watched them disappear, wondering how the heck Little Red Riding hood Had followed me through the forests and kingdoms the way she had. It was probably some weird fairy tale thing again, one of those moments where the limits of chance were pushed to ridiculous degrees, all for the sole purpose of getting me to where I needed to go. I didn’t really like the way fate was playing fast and loose with reality for my sake. Nothing is an unnerving as having the universe take a personal interest in you.

I turned away from the window. Four days. I might have to wait in this tower, all alone, for the next four days. That would be pushing my time limit for stopping the final boss, or whoever it was, pretty close. I wandered over to the bed, now stripped of sheets, and threw myself down onto it. Hey, at least I’d have plenty of time to think.

Yay.