Rapunzel HairFall's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Rapunzel stood up from the iron chair with the chameleon on her shoulder and the cut rope of hair still coiled at her feet. She meant to walk back to the tea table and sit down properly. She did not get three steps before a shadow swept the cobblestones. One of Chester's escaped winged books dove out of the purple leaves above the square, wings beating hard, and aimed straight at the chameleon's white back. The chameleon shrieked and bolted off her shoulder. It hit the stones and ran. The book banked and came around again. Rapunzel turned in place, her hair dragging, and watched the chameleon dart under the striped funnel cake cart. It scrambled up inside. A pot tipped. A sack split. Powdered sugar burst out the side of the cart in a white cloud, coated the wheels, coated her shoes, coated the book as it pulled up and circled for another pass. The chameleon shot out the other side, white and powdered and frantic, and made for a stack of dark teacups someone had left balanced on the stones. It climbed. The book saw it. Books love knocking over stacks. The tome folded its wings and dropped. The top cup went first, then the middle, then the saucer, each one ringing off the cobbles in a bright crash. The chameleon leapt clear and ran for her feet. Rapunzel grabbed the cut coil of hair off the ground. It was heavy in her arms, still knotted with six purple bows. She shook it open as fast as she could and spread it wide between her hands like a fisherman's net. The book wheeled and came back low, wings angled at the chameleon. She stepped into its path and threw the hair up over it. The strands fell across the wings and tangled in the spine. The book thrashed, beat once, twice, then sank to the stones in a brown mesh. The bows shivered as it struggled. It could not lift. The chameleon climbed her ankle, then her skirt, then the long fall of her hair, and settled on her shoulder again. Its sides moved fast. She did not reach for it. She tied the ends of the net around the cart wheel and left the book pinned there, alive and furious and grounded. She walked to the tea table. Beside her own tall, carved chair sat a small fuzzy green one she had set out that morning, no bigger than a loaf of bread, with soft pink spikes down its back. The chameleon saw it. He climbed down her arm, crossed the table, and stepped into the little chair. He sat. His sides slowed. Rapunzel sat too, in her own chair, and did not move her hair at all. For the first time in three days, the chameleon stayed where she put him.