An Inconvenient Princess Read online

  “To use as rope. It looks strong, and longer than it has any right to be. We’ll braid it tightly and tie it at both ends. Then we’ll tie it to that ring that juts out just above the window. I’ve measured as best I can by sight, and it should reach most of the way to the ground. We’ll have to drop the last bit.”

  Rapunzel chewed her lower lip and then her upper lip, somehow managing to look charming the whole time. I refrained from rolling my eyes. Princesses.

  “I…I don’t know,” she said at last.

  I tried to smile encouragingly. “Do you want to get out of this tower?”

  She nodded and glanced toward the window. The look of longing in her eyes brought a twist of sympathy to my stomach. She might be an odd girl and an inconvenience to my search for my sister, but she had also suffered greatly, locked alone in here her whole life. Every single thing we did from now on would be new and strange and most likely overwhelming for her.

  I tried to make my voice even more gentle. “This is the only way. At least, it’s the only way I can think of.”

  “What about your friend? The other fairy?”

  I had told her briefly about Mortimer the night before and how I had ended up in her tower. The thought of tigers loose in Astoria had nearly made her decide to stay in the tower.

  “Mortimer only makes things worse. Who knows what he might do to us? I wouldn’t call him unless I truly had no other choice.”

  She nodded. I’d told her the same thing the night before, but I was willing to tell her several more times if it would help her adjust to what had to be done.

  She took a deep breath. “All right. But how are we going to cut it? I don’t have scissors or even a sharp knife.”

  “I do.” I pulled my small knife from the top of my pack where I had placed it ready. “Should we braid it before or after we cut it, do you think? Which would be easier?” I figured she must be an expert at braiding hair at this point.

  Having something to focus on seemed to help her, and her face brightened again as she considered my question. “I think we should braid it first. I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday. About how it doesn’t get dirty. And I realized it’s far easier to care for than it should be when it’s so long. No one in my books ever talked about having such long hair, but I always supposed they cut it. Often.” She glanced at me curiously. “But now I’m wondering. Do you have to cut your hair all the time?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes.” I tried to remember when I had last cut my hair. “Maybe once a year or so.” I usually considered my hair to be on the long side, but not next to Rapunzel.

  “Once a year.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Then there is something magical about my hair. And I think whatever it is, it makes it easier to braid. So, we should do it first, in case the magic goes away when we cut it.”

  I agreed, glad she was able to think the issue through so objectively.

  She unwound her current loose braid while I watched in astonishment. The hair was thicker than I had realized, which sparked an idea.

  “Let’s do two separate braids. That way they won’t be so thick, and it will be easier to knot one of them to the ring. And if I knot them together, they’ll be longer, too. So, it might be able to reach all the way to the ground.”

  She nodded, and we soon had two tight braids. It had taken much less time than I had anticipated, but I couldn’t put my finger on how the enchantment worked. Nothing obviously magical had happened, it had just been surprisingly quick and easy. I shook my head. I would never understand the ways of fairies.

  “All right, I’m ready.” Rapunzel squeezed her eyes shut.

  I looked at her trembling face and then took another look out the window. Even calculating to reach the ground, we had more length than we needed now with two braids.

  I gripped the hair firmly, folding it over and sawing at the loop as fast as I could. I was almost afraid Rapunzel would cry out in pain, but she didn’t seem able to feel it. That was a relief, at least.

  I quickly cut through one braid and moved to the other. When I had finished, I stepped back, a little relieved that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “I’m finished.”

  Rapunzel opened one eye and then another. “I thought it would feel light and strange, but it doesn’t.”

  If she hadn’t endured a constant headache with all that heavy hair dragging her down, then it must be another element of the magic. I sometimes considered cutting all mine off, and my own brown locks only reached half way down my back.

  She watched as I tied the cut ends of the braids and then looked down into her lap with confusion. “But what’s…?”

  She touched the golden strands that draped across her legs, the ends unraveling now that the rest of the braid had been cut. She ran her hands along their length and up until she reached her head. She gasped.

  “There’s so much of it still. I thought you would have to cut it very short.”

  I shrugged, pretending not to notice the moisture in her eyes. “With the two braids we didn’t need as much.” I smiled, pleased with myself.

  I had suspected it would be a big adjustment for her, and that she would appreciate as much length as I could leave her. It looked like I’d been right. I’d tried to judge it so that when she stood up, the braid would stop just before the ground. I didn’t think I could quite bring myself to travel around the kingdom with a girl whose hair dragged on the ground—magic or not.

  I knotted the two braids together as tightly as I could, glad that my parents had insisted we all learn at least some practical skills, despite our family’s fairy-sourced wealth. When I hoisted myself up to sit on the windowsill, back toward the outside world, I had a moment of unease. But Rapunzel came forward to brace my legs and make sure I didn’t fall out the window, and I managed to work up my courage to let go and use both hands to attach one end of the hair to the iron ring sticking out of the wall.

  When I finished, I gripped the braid and lifted myself up off the windowsill, testing both the hair and my knot with my full weight. It held. I breathed a sigh of relief and lowered myself back inside.

  Now came the hard part.

  It took over an hour to get Rapunzel out the window. Her story about hanging out of it had led me to believe she wasn’t afraid of heights. And I think, truth be told, it was the outside she was afraid of—even while she craved it.

  It didn’t help that she didn’t have the arm strength necessary to lower herself down. She assured me she did daily exercises in the tower, but they obviously hadn’t been enough.

  “Maybe you’ll have to go without me,” she said forlornly, gazing at her hair dangling in front of the window.

  “Absolutely not.” I shook my head firmly. “We are both getting out of here, and we’re doing it today.”

  “Perhaps we should wait for the prince to come. He could help us.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “When is he going to come?”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her, and she sighed. “Tell me what I have to do again.”

  I explained for the fourth time the way she needed to twist the rope between her feet to slow down her descent. “And do you have gloves? I don’t want either of us getting rope burn.” I laughed. “Well, hair burn, in this case.”

  Rapunzel gulped and looked out the window again. “Maybe it wouldn’t burn us—because of the magic.”

  “Maybe. But I’m not risking it, if I can avoid it.”

  She seemed to acknowledge the sense in this since she immediately scurried away and came back with two pairs of elegant gloves. All of her clothes were of high quality, signaling her station as clearly as her face. Which led me to another problem.

  “Do you have anything more sensible you can wear?”

  “Sensible?” Rapunzel looked down at herself. “What do you mean? This is my plainest gown.”

  I rubbed my temples, faint traces of the headache from the day be
fore still lingering. “You’re wearing full-skirted pink satin. With off-the-shoulder puffed sleeves.”

  She smiled at me. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? But not as nice as my other ones. I have a lot of time for embroidery up here.”

  I grimaced. I hadn’t brought enough clothes that I could afford to lend her any of mine. And she was quite a bit shorter than me, too. The pink dress would have to do.

  Eventually I managed to coax her out onto the windowsill—sitting facing outward this time. Clearly, it wasn’t safe for me to go first. If I left her alone up here, she might never make it out the window at all. I had thrown both of our bags down ahead of us, and she seemed to find this bracing. As if, having now committed, she had to see it through.

  She carefully looped the braid under one foot and over the other and gripped them together as I had instructed her.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Now hold onto the braid with both hands and slowly let it take your weight.”

  She gave a little whimper but did as instructed.

  “See! It’s holding your weight just fine. Now you need to slowly move your feet apart a little so that you slide down.”

  She did so and almost disappeared from sight, squealing as she slid past the window. I leaned out and was relieved to see she had clamped her feet together again and stopped not far below me.

  “Slowly being the key word.”

  She gulped. “Sorry, Penny.”

  With more care this time, she resumed moving downward. I watched her anxiously, occasionally glancing up at my knot. It appeared to be holding, and the hair seemed even stronger and more supple than actual rope, but I was concerned what would happen when her feet hit the knot half way down.

  I could see when she got there because she paused for a long time. But, somehow, she must have maneuvered past it, because she began to descend again.

  When her feet touched the ground, I shut my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. It had worked. I swung my own legs out of the window and balanced for a moment on the sill. Somehow it looked a lot further down from this angle. I turned my eyes away from the ground and grabbed at the hair with my gloved hands.

  Quickly I threaded the rope through my feet and stood up, taking the last of my weight off the windowsill. I paused for half a second to balance myself and then began slowly sliding down.

  It was more difficult than I had imagined because the gloves were too small and pinched awkwardly at my hands. My fear of losing my grip made me clench the braid too tightly, and I kept jerking as I moved down the length of the hair.

  I shook my head. Escaping a tower without doors by a braid of hair. I never could have imagined this scenario. This was what happened when Mortimer got involved with my family. Talking horses, bear husbands, frogs. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, really. My stomach contracted as I wondered what trouble he had dumped Anneliese in, and the rope nearly slipped from between my feet.

  I clenched them more tightly and regained stability. I needed to focus. I could go back to worrying about my twin later. Slowly, I descended further.

  I thought I must surely have already passed halfway when my feet hit the knot. Carefully, I let go with my legs, lowering myself by my arms only, until I could grab at the braid again with my feet. My arms burned, and my hands were starting to cramp in the too-tight gloves. I needed to reach the ground fast.

  I let myself slide more quickly, careening toward the grass slightly faster than was safe. Rapunzel called something up to me that I didn’t quite catch, and then she screamed.

  I jerked to a halt, swinging my head around as I tried to find the threat. Why hadn’t I put the knife into my boot instead of back into the bag? My hurried movement made the braid swing around, and my cramping hands spasmed, and then I was falling.

  Chapter 4

  “Ooof!” I landed much sooner than I expected in a tangle of limbs and a loud whinny.

  “Steady now, girl,” said a voice next to my head as the ground moved under me.

  I sucked in a deep lungful of air and realized I had been caught by an unfamiliar mounted man. I looked up into a handsome face—the most handsome I had ever seen—and flushed with embarrassment. He chuckled at me, his bright blue eyes inviting me to join in the merriment.

  “Well, this is unexpectedly intimate. And I don’t even know your name. I’m Arthur, by the way. Happy to be of service.”

  “There you go, Penny,” said Rapunzel, almost bouncing with excitement on the ground beside us. “His name is Arthur.”

  “Whose name?” I asked, still confused at the unexpected series of events. “And why did you scream earlier?”

  “My name. I’m Arthur,” said the young man at the same moment as Rapunzel said, “The prince. The one I was telling you about. And I didn’t scream, I squealed. With excitement. When I saw him.”

  I groaned and covered my face with my hands. Arthur—or rather, Prince Arthur of Farthendale as I now realized he must be—chuckled again, seemingly unbothered by the fact that he still cradled me in his arms.

  After all my declarations about rescuing myself, I had needed a prince to save me after all. It was humiliating.

  “What fortunate timing,” said Rapunzel, still beaming up at us. “What a lucky thing Prince Arthur was here to catch you. And his horse. One of my books had a picture of a horse and rider on the cover, but it’s still somehow bigger than I imagined.”

  I refrained from pointing out that I wouldn’t have fallen if he hadn’t appeared and caused her to ‘squeal’. Instead I tried to decide how to tell the most attractive man I had ever met to put me down. No witty ideas came to mind.

  “Um, can you put me down?”

  “Oh! Sorry!”

  He slowly lowered me toward the ground, and I felt the grass under my feet with relief. He swung down after me, keeping a light grip on the bridle of his beautiful mare.

  I looked up into his blue eyes and then quickly away. “Thank you,” I muttered, still regretting the necessity.

  “I live to assist damsels-in-distress.” He gave us both a small bow. “Although it appears you did most of the assisting yourself, and I find I’m barely needed.”

  I noticed a coil of rope tied to the mare’s saddle and realized he must have come back to rescue Rapunzel.

  “So, I should be thanking you,” he continued, “for providing me with the opportunity to still be useful in some small way.” He grinned easily at us both.

  Oh no. I refrained from another groan with a heroic effort. Handsome. Charming. Ready at the perfect moment for a rescue. He was just as much a prince as Rapunzel was a princess. And I knew what came next.

  Knowing my luck, our tiny party had just grown. And now I would have to play chaperone, the unwanted third stuck in the middle of what I could only imagine would be a sickeningly sweet courtship. Finding Anneliese was a hard-enough task without these two in tow.

  I glanced toward Rapunzel, expecting to find her making eyes at Prince Arthur, but found instead that she had taken off her slippers and was staring at her feet. I stared at them, too, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Except perhaps that they were unusually dainty, each of her toes perfectly sized in comparison to the others. I thought of my own mismatched set and frowned.

  “It’s not like I imagined.” She looked up at us both. “It always looked so thick and soft from up there.” She pointed back toward the window of her tower. “But there are prickly things among the blades of grass. It hurts my feet.”

  I sighed. “Welcome to the world, princess. That’s why we have boots. Might I suggest you put your own shoes back on?”

  “It’s certainly a disappointment,” said Prince Arthur. “I have often thought so myself. You can gaze out upon an entirely alluring field, only to find yourself unable to discover the perfect picnic spot when finally you arrive. The grass is never so lush as it appears from afar.”

  “How strange.” Rapunzel smiled easily at him. “They never mentioned it in any of my books.”
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br />   “A lamentable oversight,” said the prince gravely.

  I wanted to laugh, but I wasn’t entirely sure he was joking, so I swallowed it.

  For the first time, I was able to get a good look at the outside of the tower. It looked ancient, the gray stone weathered by age and chipped in many places. It rose straight and tall, no further building attached as I had at first assumed. I paced around it, but it looked the same from every angle. A lone building in a sea of grass. The only difference on the other side was that I could see a distant creek.

  When I got back around to the others, I pointed in the direction of the water. “Can I suggest we set off that way? I would feel more comfortable if we did any further talking away from this place. I would like to be as far from here as possible when the fairy returns. Whenever that may be.”

  “Fairy?” Prince Arthur raised his eyebrows at me, and I shrugged.

  “Since Rapunzel has seen her do magic, I can only assume that’s what she is. And Rapunzel’s hair, at least, has obviously been enchanted.”

  He looked at her still-long braid, which she had redone into a single strand. “A curious situation grows only more curious. I would like the full story but am perfectly satisfied with hearing it at a suitable distance.”

  Rapunzel had slipped her shoes back on and now picked up her bag. “I sometimes thought I could hear running water in that direction. Do you think there might be a river?”

  “It looked more like a stream to me.”

  Her eyes lit up. “How delightful. I have always longed to see a stream.”

  “Then see it you shall.” The prince gallantly took her bag and slung it across his horse’s back. When he turned to me also, I considered refusing to hand over my pack but could think of no reason to do so. I knew the petty inclination was only my pride. I was still smarting from needing his rescue.

  So, I handed it over silently and strode forward to take the lead. He fell amenably into step beside Rapunzel, leading the horse that he had introduced as Aster, and the two of them followed me until we had reached the stream and the shelter of the trees around it.