Rapunzel Cuts Loose, page 5
part #4 of Grimmtastic Girls Series
Ha! Although Ms. Queenharts taught Comportment — which was basically the same as manners — she certainly wasn’t polite herself!
As Rapunzel worked, the teacher went to another trunk and pulled out a crystal tray — a special kind used to display tarts. Oh, no!
“You know those cupcakes you made in class during silverware placement studies?” Rapunzel said quickly. Ms. Queenharts ignored her and just kept working.
Rapunzel rushed on. “Well, I don’t know if you heard, but everyone simply loved those cupcakes of yours, including me. And since my friends and I are in charge of the festival, including the food booths, I was just wondering if I could ask you to make them as desserts this weekend?”
Ms. Queenharts whipped around to stare at her. “Did Mistress Hagscorch put you up to this?” she demanded.
“Huh? Who? No!” Rapunzel tried to sound innocent, but she felt her cheeks warm. She’d told the truth, though, because asking Ms. Queenharts to make something else had been her idea, not Hagscorch’s.
“It’s just that your cupcakes were so tasty,” she rushed on. “And Mistress Hagscorch is also planning tarts, so I thought …”
“Aha!” Ms. Queenharts exclaimed, pointing a silver spoon at her. “I was right! Don’t try to wiggle out of this one. The two of you must be in cahoots, and …”
She rambled on, but Rapunzel was too distracted to listen. Because the minute the word wiggle hung in the air between them, she’d felt a slight jiggle at her back. Her hair. Not now! Not again!
Panicking, she quickly plopped down on the bench at the nearest table, sitting atop her single braid. It wriggled around some. But then, seeming to realize she had it pinned, it gave up on making trouble. For now, at least. How long was she going to have to worry about it going wackadoodle every time someone spoke the word wiggle? she wondered. Mary Mary’s accidental spell would wear off eventually, wouldn’t it? Reluctantly, she tuned back in to what Ms. Queenharts was saying.
“Do you know why I’m making tarts for the festival? Because I” — Ms. Queenharts paused dramatically and pointed the spoon at herself — “am the Queen of Tarts! You must have heard my nursery rhyme. The one where I made some tarts all on a summer’s day? And what else happened that day? Mistress Hagscorch, that’s what. She sent a knave to steal those tarts and take them clean away!”
So! This old misunderstanding was at the heart of the trouble between Ms. Queenharts and Hagscorch, thought Rapunzel. “Are you sure it was her — that she sent the knave?” she asked. “Maybe it was his own idea. Maybe he was hungry. I mean, why would she want your tarts when she can make her own?”
“For the recipe, you dolt! It’s a secret that has been handed down for generations in my family. However,” — Ms. Queenharts paused briefly to lift more napkins from her trunk. Then she went on — “if you can get her to admit she stole the recipe and hired a knave to steal my tarts, I won’t make them for the festival after all. Deal?”
“Uh, I guess so,” said Rapunzel. She sighed inwardly, setting both elbows on the tabletop and resting her chin on her hands. She’d have to become the queen of fancy bargaining to make Hagscorch do any such thing. There was no way.
“Off with your elbows!” yelled Ms. Queenharts. “I mean — elbows off the table!” Startled, Rapunzel drew back, setting her hands in her lap. The teacher smoothed imaginary rumples from the tablecloth, saying, “We must avoid wrinkles and tears in our linens, as well as our gowns and tunics!”
“Will you at least think about the cupcakes?” Rapunzel asked, standing and stepping away from the table. She was getting a headache from the teacher’s yelling. Didn’t she know how to speak in normal tones?
Ms. Queenharts aimed her narrowed eyes in the direction of Rapunzel’s hair. “It’s a good thing tomorrow’s lesson in class is on good grooming.”
Huh? Oh, fragwaggle! thought Rapunzel. The minute she’d stood, her hair had begun wiggling again at her back, trying to unbraid itself. She grabbed the now-straggly braid and wrapped it around her waist, holding it tight with both hands. She didn’t dare remind Ms. Queenharts that she took Comportment in the afternoon, and afternoon classes had been canceled due to festival preparations. The very last thing she wanted to do was to fan the teacher’s temper, which was almost as bad as Principal Rumpelstiltskin’s!
“Every hair must be kept in place,” shouted Ms. Queenharts. “Either get yourself under control or … off with your hair! Off with your hair!” With an imperious gesture, she grabbed a rose from one of the table centerpieces with her left hand and nabbed a silver butter knife with her right. Whack! She sliced off the flower’s head, leaving only its long stem.
Rapunzel’s eyes widened in shock. Fortunately, her hair seemed shocked, too. It stopped its wiggling and hung calmly at her back again.
“Hey!” called a voice. Cinda had come over to rescue her. Thank grimmness! She smiled at Ms. Queenharts as she grabbed Rapunzel’s hand and started tugging her away. “C’mon. You need to see what Basil and Awesome and their friends have done.”
“Okay,” said Rapunzel. She sent Ms. Queenharts one last beseeching glance. “Think about making those cupcakes of yours, okay?” Not waiting to hear the teacher’s reply, she allowed Cinda to pull her from the gazebo.
Together the two Grimm girls crossed the smooth green lawn, where siege engines were being set up for a planned demonstration. They kept moving toward the opposite end of the island from the food gazebos. When they rounded a grove of tall trees, Rapunzel looked up ahead … and stopped dead. Stunned by what she saw in the distance, she just stood there staring, her hand sliding from Cinda’s grasp.
There was a new addition to the festival entertainment. And in her opinion, it was a very unwelcome one!
Rapunzel stared in horror at the tall stone tower standing among the trees.
“What’s wrong?” Cinda asked, backtracking to her side.
“Nothing,” Rapunzel lied quickly. But her heart was thumping louder than the bongs the grandfather clock in the Great Hall could make. She could hardly believe she hadn’t noticed this tower earlier. She’d been so busy concentrating on Ms. Queenharts and the tarts that she hadn’t glanced in this direction.
“C’mon,” she said, and the two girls raced the rest of the way to the tower. She wanted to inspect it up close. Could it really be the witch’s — her witch’s — tower as she suspected?
Lots of students were milling around, most discussing the tower in admiring tones. It soared forty feet tall and was topped with a pointy roof that resembled a witch’s hat. There were five coils of long, sturdy rope lying on the ground alongside it.
How? When? Who? So many questions clogged Rapunzel’s throat.
“It appeared on this spot just this morning,” someone said, gazing up at the tower.
“Where’s its door?” someone else asked. “Looks like the only way in or out is that little window way up top.”
Rapunzel could’ve told them that there was a single hidden door that would appear and open if you spoke special magic words. And that once inside the tower, you’d be trapped! Because that door wouldn’t reopen to let you out again no matter what magic words you tried or how you begged.
While Cinda talked to some other kids, Rapunzel circled the base of the tower. On the far side, she found Basil and four princes at work: Perfect, Foulsmell, Awesome, and Prince.
Still kind of embarrassed over that whole hair-heart thing in Bespellings class, she avoided Perfect’s eyes. Instead she went over to Foulsmell, who was seated on a tree stump. There was a bottle of ink beside him and a big sheet of vellum in his lap. With careful strokes from a quill pen, he appeared to be making a sign for an easel that Basil was setting up in front of the tower. Hand-lettered in calligraphy, the sign read: Tower of Doom.
That’s for sure! thought Rapunzel. Little did they know that this tower represented her own doomed future. Now that she was this close to it, she was absolutely certain it was the witch’s tower. Where she’d lived as a little girl, raised by that very same witch.
“How did it get here?” she asked Basil, gesturing toward the stone tower.
“Strange story,” he said as he and the other boys began uncoiling the ropes at the foot of the tower and tying a stone to the end of each. “The guys and I met this really old lady in Neverwood Forest when we were looking for wood to build some kind of exhibit for this weekend. When we told her about the festival and how it was a fund-raiser for Grimm Academy, she got really interested. She told us we could use this tower till Sunday night. True to her word, she magicked it over here this very morning.”
“That lady — was she a witch?”
“Probably,” he said, grinning.
“Calling it the Tower of Doom was our idea,” Prince Prince told her. “Cool, huh?”
Rapunzel nodded, her mind racing. “Yeah, uh-huh, cool.” The witch couldn’t have moved the tower here by herself. Her magic wasn’t strong enough. So who had helped her? It must’ve been someone very powerful. Someone as evil as she, probably. Rapunzel crossed her arms, shivering.
“Are you cold? Want my cloak?” Basil asked.
She shook her head. “Did she ask for something in exchange? Make some sort of deal with you?”
He sent her his patented Are you crazy? look. “No way. I know better than to make a bargain with a witch.”
Lucky for you, thought Rapunzel. She’d been only six years old when, like her parents, she’d made a terrible bargain with the witch. A promise she would soon have to honor but did not want to keep. Yet she must, unless she could wiggle out of it somehow. She hunched her shoulders, hoping her hair hadn’t heard her think the word wiggle. But it stayed in place. Phew!
Thunk! Thunk! She watched Basil and his friends take turns tossing the stone ends of their ropes upward, trying to land them inside the high window. The idea seemed to be that the stones would act as anchors once over the windowsill, catching on the ledge when the boys pulled down on the free ends of the ropes. Then anyone could climb up a rope to enter through the tower window. The boys’ tosses had gotten nowhere near the window so far, though. Their ropes always fell to the ground again.
“Once we secure these ropes in that window up there, we’re going to let people scale the tower and try to make it inside,” Basil told her.
“Yeah, tickets for a chance to climb it are selling like hotcakes. Or maybe more like Hagscorch’s knick-knack paddy-whack pancakes!” Foulsmell enthused.
“Great idea, don’t you think?” added Awesome.
“No!” said Rapunzel.
Everyone nearby stared at her.
“Why?” asked Red. She and Wolfgang had come over from the amphitheater to check out the tower everyone was talking about.
“Yeah, it sounds like a winner to me,” Wolfgang agreed.
“I just meant that, even though she let us borrow it for the festival, it doesn’t mean she’ll want people tramping all over inside it. You know how cranky witches can be when you cross them,” Rapunzel said. She had to convince everyone to stay away from this tower!
“Phooey,” Foulsmell told her. He’d finished the sign and now set it on its easel. “Even witches know that towers are for climbing.”
“And I’m betting I’ll be the first to make it up this one!” Basil challenged the others.
“You’re on!” said Wolfgang.
“I don’t think so,” sniffed Perfect. “Because I have had climbing lessons.” Rapunzel saw Awesome roll his eyes, but she was sure Perfect hadn’t meant to sound boastful.
Thunk! Thunk! The boys continued pitching their ropes. Each time, they flew higher.
Rapunzel groaned. She stared at Foulsmell’s sign, focusing on the word doom, Doom, DOOM! Sometimes boys could be so clueless.
The witch had a reason for everything she did. Rapunzel was sure that her reason for letting them borrow the tower was not because she wanted to help with the festival. Not a chance. So why had she sent it here to Heart Island? Did she want students to go inside it? What if they all got trapped for six years like she had? Worry for her Grimm girl friends and the whole Academy filled her. Including Basil, too. After all, she’d saved him from that bully years ago and still felt kind of responsible for him.
Hearing hammering, she glanced over to see Mr. Hump-Dumpty, the giant egg who taught Grimm History, posting a sign under the tower that read:
DANGER!
BE CAREFUL ON THE TOWER
For if you fall to the ground while climbing it,
all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
won’t be able to put you together again!
He was so right. This tower was dangerous! Slowly, Rapunzel began backing away from the group around it. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that witch or her rampion patch, but she had to find out what the crabby old crone was plotting. When it seemed no one was looking her way, Rapunzel turned and headed for the swan boats.
After hopping into a small two-seater, she paddled across the river. Away from Heart Island. Away from the Academy. Toward the deep, dark Neverwood Forest. At the edge of that very scary forest, she docked her boat. Fueled with determination, she clambered out of it and started into the woods.
Rapunzel slowed as she eventually drew near her goal, a clearing up ahead. The rampion there still grew thick on the ground where it had always been, its green stalks dotted with pale purple bellflowers. In the center of the rampion patch, there was only a round flattened area to show where the tower usually stood. It was over on the island for the festival now, of course.
None of her BFFs knew she’d once lived here in that exact tower. They probably thought the tower mentioned in her tale was in some faraway corner of Grimmlandia. If only! She had purposely avoided this part of the forest ever since she’d left it to enroll at Grimm Academy.
The minute Rapunzel stepped among the rampion stalks, a cackly voice rang out. “Who’s that trespassing on my property?”
Suddenly, not four feet away, the witch appeared in a puff of smoke! She looked just as Rapunzel remembered her. Long white hair, black robes, and a black brimmed hat with a tall corkscrew point.
“Rapunzel!” the witch exclaimed with delight. She smiled, showing a row of pointy, pea-green teeth. “I was hoping you’d come. And I’m so pleased to see that your hair still grows long.” The witch knew very well why that was. She’d put a spell on it years ago while Rapunzel dwelled in the tower, causing her hair to grow to great lengths so the witch could use it as a ladder to climb up and down from the tower’s small window. The tower door was only for emergencies, for the witch feared that someone might see her use it and try to rescue her captive.
Rapunzel crossed her arms. Though the witch was acting friendly enough, Rapunzel knew from the evil glint in her eye that she was up to something. But what?
“Why did you lend your tower to the boys at the Academy for the festival?” Rapunzel demanded. “What did you trick them into promising you in return?”
“Nothing,” the witch said. She spread her arms wide, trying to look well-meaning and innocent. Things she definitely wasn’t! “I only sent the tower because I knew you’d come visit me to ask that very question. We haven’t talked since you were six. I wanted to be sure you still remember our bargain.”
Rapunzel just stared at her. Fortunately, her hair wasn’t wiggling at the moment. How the witch would laugh at her if it did. She was unkind that way.
The black-hatted crone stepped closer. “You do remember our bargain, don’t you?” she asked, her tone turning crafty. “You’ll be thirteen at the end of the school year. You promised to return when that happened. Here to the tower, to learn the ways of fairy-tale witches. I’ll teach you.”
“I can’t return,” scoffed Rapunzel. “The tower’s on Heart Island now.”
“I’ll move it back when the festival ends,” said the witch, taking another step closer.
Rapunzel took a step backward. “How did you move it to the island in the first place? I know your magic isn’t strong enough for that.”
The witch shrugged. Ducking her head, she kneeled to rip a rampion plant from the patch. She stood again and took a bite of its radishlike root, chomping it raw. “My magic grows stronger every year. And it’s already plenty strong enough to cause trouble here for your little friends at the Academy if you don’t keep our bargain.”
“What kind of trouble?” Rapunzel asked coolly. Recalling what her Handbook had said about the effects of consuming rampion, Rapunzel wondered what the witch’s heart’s desire was. To see their bargain realized?
“Aha! So you were thinking of breaking our bargain.” The witch whirled around in a flurry of black robes, then halted and shook a bony finger at her. “Let’s make a deal, shall we?”
Typical! thought Rapunzel. The witch couldn’t have a single conversation without wheeling and dealing about something. “What deal?”
The witch took another step closer, but then paused, her beady eyes shifting to something beyond Rapunzel. “You keep your promise to return here at the end of the year, and I’ll give you your magical charm.”
Rapunzel’s brows went up. “Huh? You have my magical charm? I don’t believe you.”
The witch smiled a secretive smile.
“Show it to me if you really have it,” insisted Rapunzel.
“It’s in here,” the witch told her, pulling a small black bag from inside her cloak. It crackled with magic. From her charm?
Rapunzel’s eyes shone as she gazed at the bag. Was her charm really in there? How could the witch have it? She took a step forward. She wanted to open the bag and see. She reached out …
But the witch quickly tucked it back inside her cloak. “Return to me as you promised at the year’s end, and this charm will be yours. It’s worth far more than the treasure those two are hunting.” She shifted her gaze over Rapunzel’s head.
Rapunzel turned to see two figures in the distance behind her. She craned to see them better as they moved through the trees. Snow and Ms. Wicked! It looked like Ms. Wicked was holding the fake mapestry.
