Chapter 2

Rapunzel is too comfortable to move even though she's curled awkwardly, the chair back stiff against her spine, its arm biting into her legs. She also has a bit of a head ache. And she's cold.

Actually, she shouldn't feel comfortable at all, but there's this warmth in her stomach that keeps her limbs loose and relaxed and contented. She doesn't want to move, but then she remembers that something is missing and her eyes slip open.

"Flynn?"

There's no answer besides a tickle of wind through the open window. Unfolding herself and hopping to her unsteady feet, she looks about the room for some sign that he is still there. But the tower looks about the same as always, except that the chair now stands in the middle of the room with her hair wrapped around it instead of the corner, and one of the steps in the stairs has been removed and the slab tossed carelessly on the floor.

She checks the kitchen, because maybe he was hungry. Then she races up the stairs, skipping the missing step and its empty hiding spot, to check her room because maybe he was tired and wanted to sleep in a bed rather than a chair. Then she checks her mother's room, because maybe he didn't know which room was hers and Mother's is much nicer. Then she checks the closet again because… well, she doesn't really have a reason for that.

"Flynn?" A level of uncertainty creeps into her voice as her words turn stale and die in the air. They make the tower feel small, feel stifling.

He's gone. There's no trace that he'd ever even been there – no satchel or jewels or fliers or dirt from his boots. All that's left is some misplaced furniture and a flutter in her belly. Had he even been real? Had she completely imagined him? Was she going crazy?

One time, Rapunzel made a dress completely out of woven strips of paper. It was blue and it was beautiful and it fit her so much better than her other dresses. It made a delightful crinkling noise when she walked, and she worked hard to work the paper so it wasn't too stiff or unwieldy.

Her mother took one look at it and said, "Oh, dear, Rapunzel. I think you're going crazy."

She hadn't known what that meant (except that Mother didn't like her dress) and after a great deal of pleading, her mother vaguely conveyed that it meant that something was wrong with her mind. She said that crazy people talked to themselves, and did unexplainable things, and then turned violent against the people they loved.

They saw things that weren't there.

"Oh no."

Rapunzel sinks to the floor in front of the closet, pulling her knees to her chest and breathing heavily as her eyes dart manically back and forth across the tile without actually seeing the design. She hugs herself tight and rocks back and forth in an attempt to find some sort of comfort.

She has gone crazy and something is wrong with her. She's been fighting the war against talking to herself for years, and she lost nearly every battle until she took up talking to the furniture and then took up talking to Pascal.

Now she's seeing people, and not just the way she imagined she saw people when she played as a child, but now she sees people and can't distinguish fantasy them from reality. That is truly frightening, and she holds herself tighter to fight back the paranoia, wondering what other parts of her surroundings aren't really there.

Now it is only a matter of time before she starts screaming nonsense at the air and attacking her mother with the potato peeler.

Of course Flynn wasn't real! How could she delude herself like that? She just imagined that a handsome man without fangs stumbled into her tower, and she had been able to overpower him. None of that could have happened. Thinking that it could is ridiculous.

She only imagined that he made her feel those amazing things – those amazing, wonderful things that did not exist. How could they exist? How could he exist?

"Stupid, stupid, stupid."

She sniffs back tears and runs her hands through her hair, taking a deep, shuttering breath to mourn the loss of the most fantastic thing that has ever happened to her.

And she smells him.

It's distinctly foreign, like nothing she's ever experienced before this morning, something that instantly brings his face to mind in sharp relief. It's on her hands and in her hair. She presses her gold locks against her face and takes another deep breath, bringing the evidence of him back into her lungs. It's like something is lit within her soul and that burn in her belly starts to growl again.

He was here! He was! He left and took his meager possessions with him. Somewhere he's out there: Flynn, the perfect man without fangs, who said she was gorgeous and made her feel beautiful.

She has to find him.

She admits that a smell in her hair is flimsy evidence, but Mother never said that crazy people imagined smells. And if she's grasping at straws and Flynn doesn't exist, if she is going crazy, then it will be best for her to leave now, before she hurts her mother or causes her mother to go crazy too.

She pushes herself up off the floor because she has to find him, she has to get out of the tower. She can't imagine living her life any longer with the knowledge that she's missing out on so much. She has to see it. She has to experience it again, the feel of his hands as they held her, the heat of his lips against her throat. The tower has never felt so confining.

When she was little, Rapunzel used to play pretend. She put on her mother's shoes, which were so large that she had to shuffle across the floor in order to walk. She wrapped herself in her mother's cloak, letting it drag behind her on the floor and slip down off one shoulder. She would dress up and pretend that she was outside, walking in the forest and seeing tree bark and worms and squirrels up close. She would traverse the forest of the main room of the tower, hiding under the table to avoid scoundrels and bandits, carefully headed towards the kitchen, where the food market was located. Rapunzel would be very, very brave and tell the evil merchant in the kitchen that she wasn't afraid of him and he better give her enough food to last the week. No skimping. And not too much, or she would get pudgy. After her epic show of bravery, the merchant would cower and give in, and Rapunzel would snatch up a loaf of bread and scurry back across the main room, giggling and victorious.

Mother never liked that game. Whenever she caught Rapunzel playing it she would take back her shoes and use them to slap the back of Rapunzel's calves. She was even more upset when she saw Rapunzel pretend that she was attacked by bandits, but had taken one of their swords and, with a wild war cry, murdered them all!

Mother had told her all about swords. They were long knives that bad men outside carried. Mother had spread her arms to show how long a sword could be, and Rapunzel's eyes had grown wide in fear and interest. "They'll use it to slice you open," Mother had said, slashing a long, sharp fingernail across the little girl's belly, making her flinch. "And you'll die. But before you die, you'll watch as all your warm, gooey insides spill out onto the ground."

A few times, Rapunzel pretended that the bandits had found her, captured her, and then killed her. She played out her own tragic, grizzly death on the floor of the tower. The scene was complete with groans of agony and gooey insides spilling out of her stomach.

Mother didn't seem to mind that game so much.

With this game in mind, Rapunzel decides that she ought to have shoes and a cloak. She should be prepared for sticker burrs that will attack her toes and for the bone chilling cold that will eat into her and sap her strength and leave her in a ditch to die. But she doesn't have shoes and her mother has the only cloak. She frowns and decides that she'll just have to be underdressed and she'll just have to shoulder the pain until she finds Flynn and he shows her where to find shoes.

She also decides that she needs a weapon. She doesn't have a sword, but then Flynn didn't have one either and he seemed to be doing alright. She thinks about taking the big kitchen knife, but then decides to leave it because Mother will need it when she comes back and finds her daughter gone and has to cook for herself. She won't need the cast iron skillet, though. She doesn't know how to use it really, and she definitely doesn't know how to clean it properly. And that had worked as an exceptionally good weapon against Flynn. He hadn't even seen her coming. Surely it will work just as well against ruffians if she's sneaky about it.

Tucking the frying pan under her arm, she looks around the tower once more. There are so many things that could possibly come in useful on this adventure, but she can't possibly carry them all, and the outside world must be so strange that preparing for it at all seems futile. As Pascal climbs up onto her shoulder, she decides that she has the essentials.

At last a fat drop of trepidation oozes down her spine. The tower is her home and she doesn't know when she'll return. Hopefully it would be soon. Once she makes certain that she's sane, once she's proven that she can handle herself. Maybe she can bring back the sword of one of the ruffians she'll overpower. Then Mother will have to let her outside again, where she can sit in the sun and run really fast and be with Flynn again. Maybe she can bring back that glittery circlet Flynn had in his bag. That will impress her mother, prove her sanity, and keep Flynn around for a time.

Yes. That sounds like a very good idea.

Mother will be furious. She'll fly into a rage and yell and pull at her hair. She'll be so worried that she'll be physically ill and there will be no one to care for her and make her soup and sing for her. Maybe when she comes back she can beg for forgiveness, but this is something that she simply has to do.

Filled with determination, she marches to the window, throws her hair over the hook, takes a deep breath, and - before she can change her mind or let her guilt eat away her conviction – she leaps.