Rapunzel Cuts Loose, page 12
part #4 of Grimmtastic Girls Series
“Leader? Are you there?” Ms. Wicked whispered.
“What’s wrong, Ludwig?” the witch demanded when nothing happened. “Do you need your ring?” She took off his gold ring and tossed it at the mirror. It disappeared through the center of the mirror, taking with it the last bit of mist that remained. Then the mirror turned completely flat and reflective again. There was no sign of Ludwig at all. Not even the tip of his prominent nose showed through. “Why didn’t it work?” wailed the witch.
“Because my friends and I have tricked you,” Rapunzel announced. The members’ attention swiveled toward her as she pointed to the xylophone that lay atop the heap of artifacts in the trunk. “That xylophone is actually a toy, not a library artifact. I grew it on a tongue twister plant in Bespellings class last week. And an hour ago, I picked it from that very plant, which is now on the festival grounds with even more xylophones growing on it.”
“You dare to trick me?” The witch snarled in stunned disbelief. “Deal’s off. We’ll take that comb and the artifacts and you may stay here alone forever to contemplate your treachery!”
But as she was ranting, Rapunzel was whispering to her comb. If it truly was her charm, it would do what she needed it to. And it did! Instantly, it grew wider and taller, its teeth stretching, bending, and crisscrossing as it formed a cage around the trunk of artifacts to protect them from the Society’s clutches.
“Our plan is ruined!” one of the members groaned. Then he suddenly leaped from the floor and into the mirror, disappearing from the room. The others began to follow, leaving the tower by way of the magical mirror, one by one. So that was how they’d all gotten into the tower! Ms. Wicked was the last to go, taking the mirror with her as she leaped through it. Now only Rapunzel and the witch were left in the high tower room.
“You think you’ve won?” the witch sneered. “Not so! Each of the artifacts we stole has already done harm to the wall around Grimmlandia. Your actions may have prevented Ludwig from traveling here for now, but we’ve succeeded in making certain … loopholes … in the fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and other literature as well. Story holes through which he and other Society members will be able to travel on occasion to rewrite the tales. Even without the artifacts, we now have more power than ever before. And we’ll get what we want in the end. Remember, evil is the new good.” She let out a long, horrifying cackle, displaying her pointy, pea-green teeth.
Rapunzel began backing away from her, moving toward the safety of the wardrobe. Before she made it there, however, the witch whispered, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”
Then, just as had happened when Rapunzel was a little girl, her glossy black hair pulled her to the window, where it whipped outside, growing longer and longer until its ends touched the ground below. Since Ms. Wicked had taken the mirror with her, the witch needed some other getaway and was resorting to her tried and true method of departure.
After leaping from the window, the witch began to climb down Rapunzel’s long hair. Fortunately, Rapunzel and her friends had anticipated that something like this might happen. But would their plan to capture the witch work?
Peering down, she could see the other three Grimm girls standing at the ready below. Red had opened her basket and was setting the book of Grimm Fairy Tales they’d brought from the G section of the library to lie open on the ground at the tower’s base. Quickly, Rapunzel pulled a new object from her black bag — a pair of silver scissors. Without giving herself time to change her mind, she began to cut her hair to shoulder length. Snip! Snip! Snip! The cut hair tumbled from the window, catching the witch off guard.
“Nooo!” she heard the witch wail. Still battling her fear of heights, Rapunzel held onto the window ledge tightly and watched the would-be Wonderful Witch Twitch tumble down, down, down.
She landed smack-dab in the middle of a page in the Grimm Fairy Tales book Red had set upon the ground as part of their plan. It lay open to an illustration of the tower in Rapunzel’s fairy tale!
When the witch hit the open book, there was a whooshing sound as she turned into a plume of pea-green smoke. The smoke whirled like a small tornado that became smaller and smaller as it was magically sucked into the page. As the smoke began to clear, the witch appeared beside the tower in the illustration.
“Now!” yelled Cinda as the smoke faded away completely.
“Gotcha!” Snow slammed the book shut before the witch could escape.
“Yes!” Red exclaimed. “According to that spell book we looked at in the library, Spells to Foil Fairy-Tale Crooks, if she stays in there for at least a day, she’s well and truly trapped.” The three Grimm girls did a happy dance. Watching from above, Rapunzel grinned at them.
“How did you get up there? You hate heights,” an alarmed boy’s voice called up to her. It was Basil! He’d just arrived with Awesome, probably hoping to try again to scale the tower. “We have to get you down.”
With a sharp gasp, Rapunzel drew back from the edge of the window, trembling as she recalled how high she was. “And the artifacts, too,” she called back. “All the missing ones are in here with me.”
Although she was too far from the window now to see those standing below it, she heard much murmuring and discussion. A few more voices joined the others, including Prince Perfect’s.
Oh, perfect, she thought. Not. She and her friends hadn’t thought through this part of their plan very well and she really didn’t want him to see her in this potentially grimmbarrassing predicament. Her hair would soon grow longer, of course. But she couldn’t very well climb down her own hair. She had no way out of the tower unless the witch let her out. And the witch was gone.
Just then, they all heard someone shout, “The gazebos are on fire!”
Over by the snack area, flames flashed high. Had those three cooks finally started an all-out war? Rapunzel worried. Then she remembered she had the power to help. Quickly, she shrank the comb charm to regular size and tossed it onto the bed so she could grab Jack and Jill’s pail from the artifact trunk. When in the twins’ hands, the pail could magically resize itself to hold great quantities of water.
“Look out below!” she yelled, tossing the pail out the window. Basil caught it and took off with it along with some of his friends, all running toward the food gazebos. Then she backed away from the window again. A few minutes later, in the distance she saw them pass the pail to Jack and Jill, who filled it with water from the Once Upon River and quickly put out the flames.
“Rapunzel,” Red called up. “I just checked the X on the You Know What, and guess what? It’s showing that we are in the exact right spot. I think what we’ve been looking for is in the tower somewhere!”
“Okay, I’m on it!” Rapunzel called down. Excited now and glad to have something else to think about besides being trapped so high, she moved away from the window and began searching the room. What kind of treasure would she find? Gold and jewels as Snow had often hoped? She peeked under the bed in the old trunk, and in the wardrobe. Nothing. As she hunted for treasure, the three girls below called out “warm” or “cool,” depending on how the golden thread indicator on the mapestry reacted to the places Rapunzel moved.
“Very warm!” Snow called at last.
Rapunzel was back at the wall now, only two feet from the window. She picked up the closest object — a candlestick on a side table. When her BFFs didn’t call out, she kept moving in a small circle, picking up other things.
“Red hot!” called Red a few seconds later.
Rapunzel was standing right in front of the window now. She looked up. She looked down. She glanced around. But she saw no treasure. She got on her hands and knees. Maybe there was a loose stone and the treasure was under it? She brushed away the pieces of straw Mordred had left and dug at the edges of the stones with her fingers, but she couldn’t pry the stones loose. She sat back. A piece of the straw had gotten caught in the hem of her skirt, so she pulled it out. Instantly, an ancient, disembodied voice spoke:
This straw of old
Can spin into gold.
“The X just disappeared from the You Know What!” called Snow. “Do you have … It?” The treasure, she meant.
Rapunzel stared at the straw she held between thumb and forefinger. It certainly didn’t look like treasure to her. But what about that spooky voice?
Hearing another odd sound, she jumped to her feet and looked out the window to see Principal R marching a group of knights in armor across the island in her direction. Clink, clank, clink. Prince, Perfect, Awesome, Wolfgang, and Basil were walking right alongside them.
Rapunzel tucked the single piece of straw into her black bag as the principal arrived and stationed the knights around the base of the tower. “Good work recapturing the artifacts,” he called up to her as she lowered them down from the tower window a few at a time on a makeshift sling of tied-together bedsheets. Briefly, she considered the possibility of escaping the tower in the bedsheet sling herself. But the idea of descending the heights that way was so terrifying that she got dizzy just thinking about it. No way. Climbing up the tower stairs had been hard enough!
After what she’d just witnessed in the tower room, it no longer seemed wise to keep E.V.I.L. a secret as she and her BFFs had done in the past. Everyone needed to know what that rotten society had planned, in order to be on guard against them.
“The E.V.I.L. Society was just here,” Rapunzel announced to one and all. “And they had a magic mirror. They were trying to use it to transport their leader from the Dark Nothingterror into Grimmlandia!” She left it to Red, Snow, and Cinda to answer the questions that were sure to follow her statements.
As she continued to methodically lower artifacts, she heard snatches of what her friends and the others down on the ground were saying. “It’s a tricky situation, all right,” she heard the principal say. “But the evil characters have a right to exist in the tales, too. Though I admit, it’s a balancing act to keep them from trying to up their evil hold on matters.”
What? Did that mean he’d known about E.V.I.L.’s plans all along? Rapunzel wondered. She and her friends had never been sure. But if he had known, why hadn’t he done more to try to stop E.V.I.L.? It seemed a little bit late, showing up now with his group of knights.
Once the artifacts were all safely below, the knights took charge of them and the fairy-tale book Rapunzel had borrowed, and marched off toward the Academy to return everything to the library. Despite his words in defense of E.V.I.L.’s existence, Principal R looked worried about what she’d told them. After again congratulating Rapunzel and the other Grimm girls on retrieving the artifacts, he urged her to come down from the tower.
“Um, not possible,” she called, standing back from the window. “The stairs only lead up, not down.”
“How about climbing down the bedsheets?” she heard Perfect suggest.
He has to be aware of my great fear of heights, so why would he even suggest that? she thought with sudden annoyance. Did he really know so little about her? If so, why had he even asked her to the ball?
“Are you dense?” Basil asked him. “She doesn’t do heights.” That made her smile. At least Basil got her.
“Perhaps Ms. Goose could fly over and give you a ride out of there?” Principal R suggested. Another less-than-helpful suggestion, given her fears.
It seemed everyone had a rescue idea. Many involved using magic. Like flying her down on a magical kite, or creating a rainbow to slide down, or making a super-tall beanstalk grow next to the tower. While they discussed various options, Rapunzel again considered the bedsheets she’d tied together. She could not climb down them without freaking out. It was a preposterous idea. Right?
Still, something made her reel in the sheets and begin to tie more knots along them at intervals to help her get a foothold. When she was finished, she tossed the sheet-rope back out of the tower. She tested the end that she’d tied to a bar beneath the window when she’d made her sling. Good. It was still secure. Her back to the window, she put her hands on the ledge behind her, preparing to heave herself up and over. Then her eyes fell on the comb lying on the bed next to her black bag. She’d almost forgotten her things!
She ran to the bed and picked up the comb. “Wish me luck,” she whispered to it. Giving it a quick kiss, she tucked it into her bag, which she slung over one shoulder. As she sat on the window ledge, there were a few gasps from outside, then a hush fell over the group below. Taking a deep breath, she lowered herself down the side of the tower.
Keeping her eyes firmly on the makeshift rope — not the ground — she slooowly and carefully moved lower. “Don’t look down, don’t look down,” she murmured to herself over and over along the way. When she reached the base of the tower, she stared at her three best friends, feeling stunned. They stared back at her in amazement.
“I can’t believe you did that!” Cinda squealed happily.
“Neither can I,” Rapunzel admitted.
“It was a towering triumph!” said Red.
“Yeah,” Snow agreed, nodding her head up and down so hard that her tiara tilted sideways.
“I know! And I was hardly scared at all,” Rapunzel told them gleefully. “I think my new comb … I mean my charm, must have the power to calm my fears … at least when it comes to heights.” When she pulled out the comb charm to show them, the piece of straw came out with it and fell to the ground.
Principal R’s eyes lit up when he saw the straw. As he plucked it from the ground, it began to glitter and gleam brightly in the sun. He did a happy little jig. “How grimmensely grimmnificent! You found the legendary treasure. The Straw of Gold! With the right magic, it will make more and more and more.” He ran off with it, kicking his heels and shouting. “The Academy is saved at last!”
Rapunzel and the other GA students stared after him.
“So the treasure we’ve searched for all this time is a piece of straw?” asked Cinda.
“A magical straw that can apparently be turned into gold,” Rapunzel corrected.
“I think there’s a story about that in the fairy tales somewhere,” said Red.
“No jewels, though?” Snow said in disappointment. But then she cheered up. “At least we found the treasure.”
The four BFFs high-fived, laughing in delight. Since the boys were staring at them in confusion, the girls showed them the mapestry and explained everything, or most of it anyway. As Rapunzel and her three friends began walking toward the snack gazebos, the guys followed, examining the mapestry in fascination.
As her friends were speculating on the cause of the earlier fire, Rapunzel snapped her fingers as she figured something out. “That treasure straw came from some bales of straw I found here on the island and spread on the ground for the pet show. Mordred must’ve gotten some of it caught in his fur during the judging. When he was captured in the tower by the witch, the magic straw must have fallen from his fur to the floor.”
“Just think!” said Cinda in wonderment. “If he hadn’t found that exact piece of straw, we’d never have located it ourselves. It would’ve been like looking for a needle in a towering haystack.”
“A needle we didn’t even know was the treasure,” added Red.
Snow nodded. “And that explains why you saw the X on the mapestry move to Neverwood Forest for a while yesterday,” she told Red. “Because the tower took Mordred there after the pet show and then returned here again with the straw he’d left inside.”
As the other girls continued chatting, Perfect called to Rapunzel. She dropped back to walk with him.
“So you cut your hair,” he remarked right away, sounding like he disapproved.
“Uh-huh.” Slowly, Rapunzel shook her head from side to side. She was used to long hair swishing all the way to her knees. Now it barely brushed her shoulders. This was a fun change, but she still preferred it long. “It’ll grow back,” she told Perfect. For some reason, she didn’t feel so tongue-tied around him anymore. Or so thrilled to be talking to him either. Even though she actually had taken his suggestion to climb down the bedsheet in the end, it still rankled that he’d seemed to know so little about her.
“But will it be long again by tonight?” Perfect asked impatiently as they continued walking behind the rest of the group.
“Well, no. By the end of the week, though. My hair grows really fast. It’s a curse spell the witch from the tower put on me long ago.” Didn’t he know that about her either? She knew lots of little details about him. For instance, he liked oatsqueal for breakfast, while Basil liked knick-knack paddy-whack pancakes. If you liked someone as a friend, you paid attention and learned things about them.
“Oh.” He shifted his shoulders and looked away. After a minute, he spoke again. “Um, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Rapunzel lifted an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Squirming a little, he stared down at the ground. “I … um … I forgot that I had already asked Princess Pea to the Festival Ball before I asked you to go. So …”
Rapunzel came to a dead halt and frowned at him. From the way he avoided looking her in the eye, she knew he was lying. Suddenly, she guessed why.
“You’re backing out on me because I cut my hair?” she asked in shock.
“Huh? No. That would be …”
“Shallow?” she supplied. “Superficial?”
He didn’t reply, which meant she’d guessed right. That hurt, but on the other hand, did she really want to go to the ball with a boy who didn’t have the courage to tell her he’d changed his mind about going with her? If simply cutting her hair had caused him to fall out of like with her, then he was more of a loser than she would’ve thought possible. And realizing that made him even less appealing.
“Well, thanks for telling me,” she said, more politely than he probably deserved. “Have fun.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said with relief. “I was afraid you’d get mad. No hard feelings, then?”
