Rapunzel's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The brick boar ground its shoulder against the tower. Rapunzel's vines wrapped its legs and tore like wet paper. She grew fresh thorns, thick as her wrist, and drove them into the beast's flank. They snapped against the brick. Her magic bit into wood and stone and living flesh. It could not bite into this. She stood at the balcony and watched her wall come apart, and she understood she needed help she did not have. She knew one person who unmade things. A witch had rebuilt a candy house beyond the ravine, closer now than the old stories placed her. Rumor said her stove had swallowed a boy's breadcrumb trail whole and left no ash. Rapunzel did not trust her. But the boar had already cracked the crystal arch, and blue light spilled toward the sealed thing below. She sent her hair racing through the soil, west, fast as roots could run. Her hair found the sweet-walled hut and knocked at its door with a knot of vine. The door opened. Cordelia stood there in her star-marked robes, staff in hand, its crystal glowing green. She looked at the writhing vine on her step without surprise. "You're the tower," Cordelia said. "The hair that grows through graves." "A thing of brick is breaking my wall," Rapunzel spoke through the vine's shaped mouth. "Steel won't cut it. My thorns won't cut it. Your fire unmade a boy's trail to nothing. Unmake this." Cordelia stepped onto the path her vines had laid. "Payment first." "Later. It's at my arch now." Cordelia studied her a moment. "Then take me there. Roots are faster than my feet." Rapunzel wove a seat of braided hair and swept the witch across the forest floor. They reached the tower as the boar drove a tusk into the widened crack. Cordelia planted her staff and raised the crystal. Green light poured out. It touched the boar's hindquarters, and the brick did not burn. It came apart. Mortar turned to dust. Bricks fell as loose clay. The beast squealed and swung its head, and Cordelia walked the light up its spine until the whole boar collapsed into a heap of rubble and dead thorn. Rapunzel pulled her vines back and sealed the crack with fresh stone-hard root. The tower held. For the first time in weeks, nothing dug at her base. Cordelia leaned on her staff and looked at the rubble. "Someone built that on purpose. Aimed it at you." She wiped clay from her sleeve. "You owe me now. I'll name the price when I've decided it." Then she looked at the arch, at the blue light and the sealed thing beneath. Her eyes stayed there too long. Rapunzel saw the witch had learned exactly where her secret lay. She had saved her tower. She had also shown one more powerful stranger the spot she most wanted hidden.