Rapunzel sat on a purple iron chair beside the striped funnel cake cart and tried not to move. Her brown hair, longer than she was tall, spilled off the chair and across the cobblestones in a tangled brown river dotted with purple bows. Somewhere in that river, the creature was hiding. She had decided, three days ago, that she would tame it. She had not decided how to do it without losing the rest of her grandmother's ribbons. The creature was a small white chameleon, no bigger than her hand. It had climbed her hair the moment she stepped into this place, and it had not stopped climbing since. Every time she stood, her hair dragged behind her and snagged on table legs, cart wheels, flower beds, anything with an edge. Every snag yanked the chameleon. Every yank made it panic. It would thrash, claws hooking deeper, and bolt up another arm of her hair, tangling it worse. This morning she had walked from her tower to the square and left a trail anyone could follow. Brown hair lay snarled across the stones behind her, knotted around a chair leg, looped through a flower bed, threaded with bows pulled loose and crushed flat. One bow was missing entirely. She had counted. That made seven. She set a small plate of cake on the cobblestones and waited. The chameleon's head poked from a coil near her knee. It watched the cake. It watched her. She did not reach for it. The last time she reached, it bolted, and her hair caught the cart wheel, and the cart rolled, and a bow tore free and lifted on the wind. She had watched it go. Somewhere out past the square, one of her grandmother's ribbons was drifting through empty air, curling on itself, carried farther than she could ever walk. She spoke to the chameleon the way she would speak to a frightened cat. She told it she was going to cut her hair. She said it out loud so she would have to do it. Then she took the small scissors from the table and, very slowly, gathered the trailing length into her lap. The chameleon did not run. It crept onto her wrist and watched the blades. She cut above the longest tangle. The weight fell away in one heavy coil, bows and knots and dragged grit all together, and landed on the stones with a soft thump. Her hair now ended at her ankles. The chameleon sat on her wrist, still. She lifted it carefully to her shoulder, and it stayed. Nothing snagged. Nothing thrashed. On the ground beside her chair lay a long brown rope of her own hair, six bows knotted into it, and somewhere far above the square, a seventh bow she would never get back.

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.