Braided, page 16
“We don’t know that—”
“You do know it.” Her voice was firm, and out of long habit, it silenced me. “She had a chance to see the life she was taken from, and she chose to go back to the Realms.”
“That’s not—” I shook my head. I couldn’t even look at Nanny Cresta. I could tell she fully believed what she was saying, and that made it even worse.
The hurt inside me was a jagged ache. I pushed it away and focused on Rapunzel. Gone again, just like I had feared.
But this time, I wasn’t going to wait for someone else to bring her back.
“Cinna,” Nanny Cresta said as I started toward the door. “Don’t. There’s nothing you can do.”
Of course. She knew me so well that she could tell exactly what I was thinking.
I would have liked to storm out of the room without looking at her. But halfway to the door, I realized that my feet were bare. I turned and marched back to my bed, intending to shove on my boots and turn again. But my boots were under my bed. I had to get down on my hands and knees and pull them out.
When I finally stood, Nanny Cresta was still twisting her hands together, looking small and hurt—which, infuriatingly, made me feel guilty. I tried to think of something, anything to say to her.
“You should leave,” I said. “Before I come back. I won’t keep this secret from my mother.”
Nanny Cresta nodded. She met my eyes, and I had to force myself not to be the one who looked away.
“Come back from where?” she said.
“From the Realms.” I clenched my jaw. “Fireball has been delivering my letters. So he knows how to fly to her tower.”
“Cinna. I told you. This bargain can’t be canceled.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said. “It’s not really your concern.”
“You’ll always be my concern,” she said.
I had nothing to say to that. I turned and—finally—stormed out of the room, my boots thudding hard against the floor.
* * *
By the time I reached the dragon roost, I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t been particularly stealthy as I raced through the castle, which I realized was a mistake only when I heard shouting and clinking swords. I looked over my shoulder. Sir Joshan and several guards were racing after me.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I should have stopped to plan. But I was filled with a red haze of painful emotion, and I couldn’t think.
I wanted my sister.
My hair wasn’t covered, but I didn’t have time for precautions. My bandage unraveled completely, and I tore it off and dropped it on the side of the path. My breath rasped painfully in my throat, and my side was a stitch of agony. I drove myself onward, drawing on panic to take the place of energy as the guards closed the distance between us. I leaped from the rock to the plateau, ducking under Sir Joshan’s hand as he tried to grab me, and landed with a bone-shaking thud.
Fireball turned and roared. Dragonfire washed over me, a wave of furious heat, and behind me, someone screamed.
Too bad Rapunzel never gave me that dragon-riding lesson.
But she had trained Fireball. Because as I raced toward him, he rumbled deep in his chest and lowered the front of his body, giving me easy access to his back.
Well, easy was the wrong word. But at least it was possible.
I had seen Rapunzel ride him, so I knew where she sat: on the base of his neck, right where it met his body. I dug my fingers into Fireball’s scales and pulled myself up. My foot got tangled in my skirt for a moment, but I pulled it free and over his neck, and slammed down onto his back.
I didn’t even get a second to process the fact that I was sitting on a dragon’s back before Fireball reared up on his hind legs. There was a huge roaring sound all around me, and I couldn’t tell if he was making it with his mouth or his wings, but either way, it drowned out the screams from the people below. I kept my focus on Fireball’s shimmering scales as I grabbed them and held on tight. My scalp tingled fiercely. I suspected that if I had been able to see my hair, it would have been glowing.
Fireball rumbled and burst upward, and terror came rushing in. But it was too late for fear to change anything. Suddenly we were in the air, and that sound was actually the wind, whipping my short hair back and howling in my ears as Fireball’s huge wings flapped up and down.
I didn’t glance back. I was too terrified to move. Fireball twisted in the air, ripping a scream from my throat, and then he caught an updraft and spread his wings wide, soaring above the mountain as he carried me past the craggy gray ridges that divided our land from the Realms.
21
After that terrifying ascent, Fireball leveled out and flew steadily. The wind rushed past my ears, a constant background noise that made thought nearly impossible.
Which was probably a good thing.
Dragons, it turned out, flew shockingly fast. By the time I dared look down, there was nothing beneath me but the gray fog of the Realms. It swirled and moved, but never enough to give me a glimpse of what lay within it.
A wasteland full of strange and vicious and deadly creatures, Rapunzel had described it once. Quoting me, in one of my letters. And I hadn’t even noticed. I had been so eager just to talk to her. I had thought that once she understood us—once she knew me—she would stay forever.
I pulled myself higher on the slope of Fireball’s neck. Two of his lower neck bones jutted out a bit, and I wedged myself between them, which made me feel secure enough to look around. Behind us, my home was already a distant silhouette of pointy towers. In every other direction, the fog stretched all the way to the horizon.
“Fireball!” I yelled, hoping he could hear me over the sound of the wind. “Go to Rapunzel.”
Fireball’s ears swiveled back. He kept flying in a straight line.
“Pretend you’re bringing her a letter. Come on, Firey. Where did you go when you were carrying papers in your claws?”
Fireball twisted his neck around to look at me quizzically. The motion made my weight shift sideways, and I shrieked and gripped his scales more firmly. He snorted, letting out an annoyed ring of smoke, then faced forward.
“Rapunzel,” I said. “Go to Rapunzel, Fireball. Please?”
A flash of lightning zigzagged across the gray-white sky.
Fireball swerved. I gasped and pressed closer to his body. My voice rose. “What was that?”
Another flash crisscrossed the sky, followed by another, and then by a whole line of them. They were much closer than I was used to seeing lightning, but there was no other sign of a storm.
The flashes of lightning dashed across the sky toward us in a series of jagged flickers. One darted right past my ear. I screamed and jerked sideways, as much as I dared while clinging to Fireball’s neck. Something sizzled, and I smelled burnt hair.
This was no storm. Those lightning flashes were alive.
A half dozen of them dashed toward us, and Fireball roared. Fire burst from his mouth, engulfing the lightning creatures. When the fire died, the air was empty—but then Fireball screamed and lashed his tail, shaking another of the creatures off his rear. He twisted sharply, wings pumping, and let out a gust of flame. This time he missed, and the lightning creatures arced over the fire and down at his back. He whizzed downward to avoid them, almost dislodging me.
I screamed again. There was no way I was going to manage to stay on his back if he was battling these things in midair.
“RAPUNZEL!” I screamed.
Fireball looped, and I slid sideways across his back. He blasted fire at the group of lightning creatures, and I scrabbled into a more secure position, gripping his neck with every muscle I had. A line of burning pain ran across my skull, and Fireball roared, this time in agony rather than fury. I looked up to see one of the lightning creatures zigzagging from one of his ears to another.
I reached for a braid to swat it away with—which worked on pixies—and remembered, too late, that I didn’t have braids. All I had was my useless short hair that I had cut for no good reason. For a sister who didn’t care about my hair or about anything, a sister I was probably about to die for but who would never even know about it.
“Rapunzel,” I gasped, not even sure why I was saying it. But this time Fireball snorted, banked, and plunged abruptly into the fog.
It was so sudden I didn’t even have time to scream. My body slid forward over his neck, and my hair whipped back. The fog closed in around us, and then whatever sounds I made were swallowed by the grayness.
Down, down, down. I couldn’t see where the ground was or when we were going to hit it, and Fireball plummeted faster and faster. Despite my death grip on his scales, I could feel myself being pulled forward over his neck—
Abruptly Fireball leveled out and whipped sideways. My body jerked down and to the side, and my head slammed into something hard. My scream turned into a pitiful, strangled gasp.
Fireball pulled in his wings and curved his body against something solid. The fog swirled away from his movements, and for the first time I could actually see something: the stone wall I had hit my head against, which Fireball was now looped around.
“Cinna?” a familiar voice said.
I would have thought there was nothing in the world that could have made me move just then. But I turned before I could think better of it.
There was a window in the wall, and Rapunzel was leaning out of it. Her loose hair spilled down the side of the tower in a golden tumble.
“Cinna,” she repeated, stunned. Then a smile spread over her face, as brilliant as her hair. “You came?”
I couldn’t form words, but I managed a slight nod.
Her eyebrows lifted. She looked me up and down, then held out a hand. “Well, then. Come on in.”
I choked out a laugh. There was no way I was standing up and balancing on Fireball’s back. There was no way I was letting go of his scales. I would just sit there wedged against his neck forever. It seemed like the best of all my options.
“Come on,” Rapunzel said. “Before he decides to fly away.”
I scrambled to my hands and knees. Both were shaking so hard I could barely support myself. I shifted my weight to reach for Rapunzel, and my knee slipped sideways. I threw myself flat on my stomach, clinging to Fireball’s slippery scales, my breath escaping in pathetic whimpers.
A hand wrapped around mine. I looked up. Rapunzel had swung herself out of the window and was crouching next to me on the dragon’s back.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t let you fall.”
I didn’t believe her. Not because she had already betrayed and abandoned me. I just wouldn’t have believed anyone, right then, who told me that I wasn’t going to fall.
Rapunzel pursed her lips. “I guess I’m lucky I’m not afraid of heights. Fireball, slide backward.”
The world moved. I clung tighter, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Stop,” Rapunzel said. “There. Perfect.”
I forced my eyes open. Now I was right under the window. It was a very large window with a curved top, its shutters wide open and flattened against the tower’s stone wall. Rapunzel hopped back through it easily, her hair draping over the windowsill and Fireball’s back.
“See?” she said. “It’s easy.”
Through the window behind her, I could see the outlines of a bed and furniture. Which meant a floor. A nice, solid, stable floor.
Fireball rumbled impatiently, and I got to my hands and knees again. Rapunzel leaned over and grabbed me under my arms.
“No!” I yelped. “Don’t pull me. I can do it.”
She let go. I gathered my legs and my courage and flung myself off the dragon’s back and at the window.
I made it through. I made it through with such force that I slammed into Rapunzel, and the two of us landed in a tangled heap on the floor. Which was, indeed, solid and stable. It was also made of stone and not covered by any rugs.
“Ouch,” Rapunzel said mildly.
My breath came out in an oof. Pain ran up my knee, my right foot, and my shoulder, all of which had hit the floor hard. All the same, I could have cried with relief.
Rapunzel stood and pulled me to my feet. Then she pulled me closer, into a tight, intense hug that I would have appreciated more if I’d had a chance to breathe first.
“I can’t believe you came after me,” she said, and the wonder in her voice made me forget, for a moment, about minor things like breathing. “I thought you said you never rode a dragon before!”
I pulled back a bit and gasped in a breath. “I never have. Until now.”
Her eyebrows went up. She gave my shoulders a final squeeze, then stepped back. “I’m so glad you did. I didn’t want to leave you, but I thought I had no choice. I started missing you the second I left. And now you’re here!”
“Right.” I touched the edge of my hair, singed off by the lightning creatures’ attack. “I, um, I had some trouble getting here. I’m not sure—”
“Don’t worry about it.” She beamed at me. “You won’t have any trouble anymore. I’ll make sure of it.” She gestured with her arm. “Welcome to my tower, Cinna. You’re going to love it here.”
22
We were in a small, round room. It was somehow filled with light, even though there were no candles and the single window was covered with thick gray fog. The light illuminated a narrow wooden bed covered by a colorful patchwork quilt, a wooden clothes chest painted with geometric designs, a round table with a single chair, and a gray couch.
The fog outside the window shifted, and Fireball stuck his snout through.
I jumped. Rapunzel laughed and went to the table. She pulled a basket from underneath and drew out something small and dark, which she tossed to Fireball.
Fireball craned his neck farther into the room and snapped it out of the air. He swallowed, made a purring sound, and drew his head back into the fog.
“What was that?” I asked.
Which was obviously the least important of the many questions I had at that moment. But it also seemed like the most manageable.
“Chocolate,” Rapunzel said. “Dragons love chocolate. I keep a stash on hand so they’ll keep coming.” She took another piece from the basket. “Want one? I got this batch from a witch who lives in a gingerbread house. She makes the best desserts.”
I shook my head. Rapunzel shrugged and popped the chocolate into her mouth. She closed her eyes. “Mmm. Butterscotch flavored.”
I found myself wishing I had said yes to the chocolate.
On second thought, I found myself wanting to get off the subject of chocolate. “This is your tower? Where you’ve lived since you were taken?”
Rapunzel opened her eyes. “Yes.”
The entire tower room was about the size of my bedroom. The stone walls were covered with drawings of dragons and horses and mermaids, along with some spirals, lots of geometric patterns, and a surprising number of flowers. “It’s very…well-decorated.”
“I was bored a lot.”
“I can imagine,” I said, and then immediately felt my skin and hair flush. Because of course I couldn’t imagine. Not really.
Rapunzel tilted her head back and looked around the walls, then glanced at me almost shyly. “Not bad, right? Much better than my drawings when I was four years old. I had lots of time with nothing else to do, so I made up with practice what I lack in natural ability.”
I tried to think of a question that wouldn’t make me sound like a fool. “Where did you get the paint?”
Ugh. Well, maybe next time.
“The fae brought it to me,” Rapunzel said. “They gave me whatever I asked for, and plenty I hadn’t asked for, too. Magical dancing slippers, mischievous chameleons, talking teapots…you can’t even imagine. When I was done with things, I just threw them out into the fog and asked for new toys.” She grinned. “I was quite spoiled, actually.”
“Weren’t you lonely?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Weren’t you?”
I looked down.
“Once I learned how to ride dragons, I could go anywhere in the Realms. And even before that, I got all sorts of visitors. There was even a harpy who lived here for a while and taught me how to knit.” She ran a hand through her hair, working out a knot with her fingers. “Our hair is like a drug for the fae. They can’t resist it. Anytime I was lonely, I would just let it down over the windowsill, and something would notice and be drawn to my tower.”
“How did you know it wouldn’t be something dangerous?”
“I didn’t.” She smirked. “That was part of the fun.”
I said nothing, but my reaction must have been clear on my face, because her smile faded. “None of the fae are allowed to harm me,” she admitted. “It might not have been as much fun otherwise. Until the fight with the hydra, I didn’t know that rule only applied inside the Realms. That was an unsettling realization.”
“Is that why you decided to come back here?” I demanded. “Because you couldn’t deal with the possibility of actually getting hurt?”
“No, Cinna. I told you. My presence there was putting you in danger. How could I stay, once I knew that? The whole reason I came, the reason I let Sir Joshan find me and bring me to the castle, was for you. Because I—”
I cut her off. “Because you read my letters.”
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her cheeks and the edges of her hair went faintly pink. “I’m sorry. I meant to. I just…I didn’t know if you would be happy about it. You wrote those letters to someone who existed in your imagination, and I got the sense I wasn’t exactly that person. I figured once you got to know me, it wouldn’t bother you that I’d read them.”
