The Price of Longing Read online

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  Weeks passed, and Rapunzel began to fear that her mother was right. Prince Caleb never meant to come back. If he had, wouldn’t he have returned already? Still she continued to get out the signet ring when she was alone, to caress and admire it, and to allow herself to hope, just a little.

  It was one such day when she heard a call beneath her window. “Rapunzel, my love, let down your braid!”

  Her heart leapt. Was it a trick? Had she gone mad? But no, he was there, outside the window, below. She thrust her head out. There he was, with two horses hitched to a covered carriage.

  “You’ve done some gardening since I left. No?” He looked up, and jerked. “What happened to you?” he gasped, stricken.

  “I can’t let down my braid,” she replied, tears coming again. “She took it away, she—“ Rapunzel’s voice cracked. “She found out,” she finished in a whimper. “She killed the baby—“

  “Baby?” the prince said.

  “Yes. I was with child, and she gave me a potion to kill it. Then she burned the rope, and cut off my hair.” She let her tears fall. They landed on the prince’s face, like rain.

  “She killed our child?” he growled, unsheathing his sword. “I will slay her for that.”

  “No! Wait!” Rapunzel protested, flinging out a hand. “You cannot hope to stand against her, even with your sword. She has powers you cannot comprehend. She would crush you! Just go, before she finds you here!”

  “I won’t leave you here,” Caleb said, determined.

  “I can’t get down!”

  “Then I will climb up to you!”

  Rapunzel gaped. “Climb? How?”

  The prince sheathed his sword. “These vines look sturdy.”

  “They’re covered in thorns! Even if you made it up here, there’s no way you could get me down.”

  The prince readied himself to climb. “I’ll figure that out when I get up there,” he said, gritting his teeth. He grasped a vine and grunted as a thorn speared his palm. Ignoring the pain, he grabbed for another handhold. Slowly, painfully, he hauled himself up, thorns tearing at his clothes and flesh. Blood made his grip slippery. He continued up. Rapunzel twisted her fingers together and watched.

  He was halfway up when the vines began to writhe. Peeling off from the tower, they whipped at him, lashing his face and arms, leaving crimson streaks with their thorns. Rapunzel cried out. Caleb grunted and continued up.

  When he got to the top, his hands were cut to ribbons. He left bloody handprints on the windowsill as he climbed in, wincing at the pain. His eyelids were shut, blood weeping from them. “My lady?” he said. He opened his eyes. They were scratched; they turned sightlessly, searching for her. “Everything’s fuzzy and gray. I can’t see you.”

  “I’m here,” Rapunzel assured him, rushing forward. She took his face in her hands and examined his eyes.

  “Am I blind?” the prince asked, panic in his voice.

  “I can heal you. I just need the right herbs. Sit, and keep your eyes shut.” She helped him to a chair.

  Rapunzel brought him the washbasin to soak his hands in. He hissed at the stinging as the water hit his wounds. “I have ointment,” Rapunzel told him, and went to fetch it. She hadn’t been grinding herbs for nothing. She spread the ointment on his hands. The wounds stopped bleeding. She tore a spare pillowcase into strips and began to bind his hands. “You came back for me,” she said in a small voice.

  “Of course I came back,” Caleb said. “I am sorry I took so long. When I returned, there were diplomats my father wanted me to entertain, and he wouldn’t let me leave again until they were gone. He didn’t believe me about you. ‘A girl in a tower? Probably a wench in a tavern. She’ll have herself another man by the time you return to her,’ he said.” He let his hands rest in Rapunzel’s.

  Rapunzel let his hand go. “I have your ring hidden,” she said, and went to retrieve it. She turned back and cried out. Looming behind Caleb, framed in the window, was her mother, her eyes wild with rage. “Caleb, look out!” Rapunzel screamed.

  Caleb got to his feet and unsheathed his sword, grunting at the pain in his hands. The witch kicked it out of his hands; it went skidding along the floor and stopped at Rapunzel’s feet.

  “Ravisher!” the witch growled, her voice gravelly again. “I didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to return here, and more foolish to scale the wall of the tower.”

  “Stand aside! I will not let you hold this girl prisoner any longer!” he yelled, eyes still rolling in his head, trying to follow the witch’s voice.

  The witch threw out a hand and Caleb froze. She stepped aside from the window, and swept her hand back. Caleb was thrown out the window by an invisible force. He hung there a moment, suspended, his sightless eyes locked with Rapunzel’s.

  Then he fell. He didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound, all the way down. Rapunzel heard a sickening thud when he hit.

  Her mother chuckled, then turned to face her. The chuckling stopped. “You,” she said to Rapunzel. “I should have left you with your mother, the trouble you’ve been.”

  Rapunzel fell back to sit on the bed. “What?” she whispered, the ground dropping from beneath her feet. “But you—“

  “You’re just like her, with your selfish longings, never willing to accept the price,” the witch snapped. Her youthful visage was fading slowly, as she aged before Rapunzel’s eyes. Her voice roughened. “Your father stole rampion from my garden, to feed your mother’s craving, and I caught him. In exchange for his life, I demanded you, so I could raise you as my own child.”

  Rapunzel shook her head, disbelieving. “It isn’t true,” she whispered, madly.

  “It is true. But I raised you, and loved you, as my own. And this is how you repay me.”

  Rapunzel squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw. “You,” she said, her voice suddenly stony and dangerous. “You killed my child. You killed my lover. You’re not even my real mother. You’re… you’re a monster.” She reached down and took up Caleb’s sword. She charged forward and thrust the blade through the witch’s chest. The witch cried out. Rapunzel let go of the hilt.

  The witch sank to her knees; her magic failed completely, revealing her true face. Rapunzel recoiled. All the hatred was gone from the crone’s eyes, replaced by fear and sadness. “My daughter,” she moaned, breathing hard against the pain. “I just wanted to keep you safe.”

  Rapunzel almost faltered then, almost dropped and took her mother’s face in her hands and begged for forgiveness, but she made herself hard. “Not your daughter,” she spat.

  She went to the window. Caleb lay in a crumpled heap at the base of the tower. “If he could do it,” she said to herself. She kilted up her skirt and swung a leg over the sill. The vines were strong, and if she placed her hands carefully, she could avoid many of the thorns. The witch being dead, they did not lash at her but stayed sedate as normal vines. The thorns still tore at her though, at her clothes and her skin, as she lowered herself slowly down.

  Caleb’s body lay at the base of the tower, his neck twisted at an awkward angle, broken. Rapunzel threw herself down atop him and wept into his chest. She wanted to scream out, but she didn’t have the energy for more than mewling little sobs. His ring was still around her finger, her hand clenched around it.

  After a time, Rapunzel rose and closed his eyelids over his ruined eyes. She gave his cold cheek a kiss. Standing, she looked back to the cottage.

  What would she do now?

  Her mother was gone. The only man she loved was dead. All she had was this little cottage. She walked toward it, through the garden full of sinister but now strangely meek looking plants.

  She continued on into the cottage. She packed food enough for a week, and her mother’s most powerful books, full of all the magic she never taught her. Rapunzel would have to teach herself now.

  Then she went back out and loaded these things into the carriage. The horses were nudging
the prince’s body gently with their noses. Rapunzel hauled him up and half carried, half dragged him to the coach and laid him out on one of the seats.

  She turned to the horses and reached out to them with her mind, gazing into their calm, dark eyes. They knew the way back to the castle. She stroked their faces and talked to them softly. They seemed to nod.

  Rapunzel climbed up into the driver’s seat and took up the reins. Clicking her tongue, she urged the horses into a trot. The least she could do was bring him back to his father. After that, she would figure something out.

  She halted the horses several yards away and turned back to the tower. She raised a hand toward it, and clenched a fist. The tower shook and began to crumble, falling in upon itself. Soon it was nothing but a pile of boulders, a fitting cairn for the witch who masqueraded as Rapunzel’s mother.

  Perhaps her real parents were still alive.

  Rapunzel turned away. Without looking back, she urged the horses on their way.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  About the Author

   

  Amber Marshall is the author (with Kristopher Lewis) of The Trident of Merrow. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and a flash drive full of fictional bad boys with big hearts.

  She can be found online at https://ambermarshall.wordpress.com.