- Rapunzel Goes Home (platinum edition)
- Chapter 010
~ Starting the Story
Rapunzel starts to tell her story to Mortimer.
The Seneschal, Mortimer Danberry and the Lock Maid, Margaret, entered the Testing Chamber and paused to take in the people in the room. Margaret the maid went to to the fireplace and roused the small fire and set the kettle to boil, ready to see to their comfort, but shared a small smile with her husband Mark who was by the door.
For Mortimer, the Lock Guard next to the door was expected, but the girl and her man; not so much. The man was indeed Flynn Rider; with a handsome nose the wanted posters never seemed able to capture.
The girl was a totally different matter. He was expecting a false princess with long golden hair, which is what his princess warning network had told him about yesterday. Most of the princess candidates were blonde, some few had other hair colors, mostly because criminals were hiding behind them. This was probably one of those. For some reason all the girls in the kingdom seemed to have a story that proved that they were the Lost Princess. "The story might just be entertaining, at least. I wonder how Flynn Rider fits into this one." Mortimer thought to himself.
This was not how the Seneschal ever expected to find Flynn Rider in the palace. He had never expected Flynn Rider to end up hiding behind a false princess."Oh, how the mighty have fallen," he almost laughed; except something about the way she looked was also familiar. She had a basket on her arm and a chameleon on her shoulder, who smiled at him.
The false princess was looking quite uncertainly at Margaret, who was moving around the chamber, and himself, as if she didn't know who was the important one here.
Mortimer noted that her dress was very odd. You could tell a lot about a person from their clothes. Most false princesses came in their best clothes, as if that could impress him. A few had come in very poor clothes, trying for sympathy, though none were barefoot like this one. This one's dress looked like it came from a prosperous, though not rich family, a mid-tier merchant perhaps. However, he could see an abundance of embroidery, which indicated more wealth then the dress itself did.
"Ah, welcome, my lady. Please, let us sit together so that we may determine if you truly are the Lost Princess."
Mortimer used lady as generic honorific, she had yet to prove her claim. He held a chair out for the false princess and trudged to the other side of the desk as Flynn Rider sat next to her. She put the basket down between the heavy chairs. The false princess and the criminal shared a look before turning to the Seneschal.
"So, when did you find out you were the Lost Princess?" He started. He didn't bother asking her name, everyone knew the princess' name.
"Oh, that was this morning." The girl's hands fluttered by her shoulder, she looked at her hands and placed them back in her lap.
"…And how did you find out?" the Seneschal prompted. No false princess had ever needed prompting before. They usually had no problem telling him all about how they learned they were the Lost Princess.
"I was looking at the sigil flag that Eugene here gave me when we were here for the lanterns. After Mother - er, not my real mother but, the person who kidnapped me - had taken all the flowers and braids out of my hair." The false princess' hands started groping near her shoulder again. She started looking around with her eyes really wide, like she was scared all of the sudden.
"Aw, those were pretty," commented Flynn.
"She told me again how terrible the world was and how it would destroy any light that it found, I couldn't help but accept that. Then she went to make the hazelnut soup she had surprised me with for my birthday yesterday. Then I flopped down on my bed and was looking at the sigil flag again and looking at the paintings on the ceiling of my room. Then I saw all the suns I had painted into all the scenes I had painted all over my room. And then I had a vision of a sun floating over me and two large people who I knew were my parents and that reminded me of the mosaic in the square showing the Lost Princess, King and Queen.
"The vision was so strong I fell over. Then I confronted M...Mother about it, telling her I am the Lost Princess and she was afraid. I know fear far too well to not know what fear looks like. She didn't deny it; she tried to make light of it. It confirmed to me that I was right. I was the Lost Princess. When I told her I would never let her use my hair again she knocked me out and chained me to the stairs. Before she could finish packing, Eugene came to rescue me. I tried to warn him, but she had gagged me and threw my hair out the window so he could climb up," the false princess said, glancing at Flynn.
"Wait!? She threw your hair out the window?" asked the Seneschal, confused. That sounded so bizarre. Her hair barely reached her shoulders, how could it be thrown out of a window? Why would anyone throw hair out of a window?
"Yes, that is how Mother would get in and out of the tower, there was no other way until she revealed the hidden staircase this morning," explained the false princess.
The Seneschal frowned as he tried to fit all that together.
"You should have seen it, it was a good seventy feet long and as golden as the sun on a summers day," chimed in Flynn, letting go of the girl's hand to make a large sweeping gesture. Mortimer sat back. He was having a hard time imagining seventy feet of hair.
"But now it's short and brown. Why is that?" This could be vitally important, thought Mortimer, addressing the girl, leaning forward again.
Flynn Rider held up his hand and said, "That was my fault. Once I had climbed the tower to try and rescue her, her 'mother' stabbed me." Showing the hole and the blood on his shirt and vest. Mortimer was very surprised, it looked as though Flynn Rider had been stabbed and had bled very profusely, yet there were no bandages and he looked quite hale.
"She was going to fight her for every minute of the rest of her life, but she promised she would go peacefully with her 'mother' if she could heal me first. I couldn't let her do that, she would be worse then a slave. I knew I was dying, but I couldn't let her keep that promise. My strength was leaving me. I had only one chance to do something. So I pretended to want a kiss, grabbed her hair and cut it with a shard of mirror that was on the floor near me. Then things went rather fuzzy." Flynn finished quietly.
"That's because you died," the false princess reminded him, looking into Flynn's eyes shyly.
"He died!?" asked Mortimer, completely distracted from the question he had asked. Even the chameleon nodded.
The girl looked back to Mortimer. "Yes, he died. He was dying, I started the healing song, but with my hair cut there was nothing that I could do about it. It had lost its power. After he died, I finished singing it, because I couldn't think of anything else to do, but I was crying so hard I could barely finish."
She reached out and touched Flynn's cheek with a tender look on her face. "Then light started swirling out from his wound, forming a flower and then it faded and he woke up." The princess candidate finished.
"So you're telling me that your tears have healing powers?" The Seneschal was somewhat incredulous. Sure, there was magic in the world, but this was the weirdest manifestation of magic he'd ever heard of. And he had thought the incident with the magic beans in the kingdom to the South was weird.
"No, my hair had healing powers, but after it was cut there seemed there was only one last drop of magic left and it healed him. I tried healing Maximus by crying, but it didn't work," the false princess said sadly.
"Maximus? I know that name, isn't that the Palace Guard Captains' horse? How did he get involved with you, I was told that he captured a couple of men last night and involved in the prison break this morning?" This story was so out of control, Mortimer wasn't sure where it would go next.
"Well, Yes… he broke me out of the prison this morning, so I could save her." Flynn added casually.
Mortimer was getting tired of his insolent manner, law or no law.
"Please, let us explain," the princess candidate said desperately, reaching out to him with both hands.
Mortimer looked at her hands, then caught her fingers and the girl winced. "Oh, you have a lot of explaining to do, like why are your wrists so bruised?" He shot a dark look at Flynn Rider. The princess candidate's wrists had a thick band of red and black around them.
The princess candidate looked to be in pain, so he released her and she rubbed her wrists. "Those were from the shackles Mother bound me with. She chained me to the pillar by her room after she knocked me out. Then Eugene climbed up my hair, but I couldn't set myself or even hold my hair like I normally do. I was being stretched between the chain and my hair as Eugene climbed it. It hurt so much, I could barely breathe and I could see dark splotches covering what I could see."
Flynn was pale. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I was trying to save you." He pulled his chair closer, put his arm around her and she settled into him.
Mortimer frowned for a moment. This story was not making much sense, at all. All the other candidates had had neat, if not-so-little stories that made perfect sense. This pair seemed to be jumping back and forth between several things that had happened, and it seemed to make hardly any sense whatsoever.
"Let's all start from the beginning, the very beginning. The queen was pregnant and became sick. The kingdom turned out to find a magic golden flower that was rumored to exist, which was found and used to heal the queen. The princess was born healthy with long golden hair. An old woman - whom we never found - stole the baby soon after. Then what happened?" Asked the Seneschal slightly aggressively, trying to get things back on track.
The princess candidate began her story, "You wouldn't have been able to find her because you were looking for the wrong thing. Mother would use my hair to make herself young. If you were looking for an old woman with a baby, you wouldn't notice a young woman with a baby."
"You mentioned that before. Your hair had the power to make people young?" asked the Seneschal, his eyes narrowing.
"And heal," she added.
"She used it to heal my hand after I cut it on a rock trying to get out of the cave when the dam broke," chimed in Flynn holding up his left hand.
"… Ah, hold that thought, make sure to come back to that when we get to that part of the story. So we were looking for the wrong person, where did she hide you?" asked the Seneschal, holding up his hand to hush Flynn Rider, he was not going to get sidetracked this time. "Why was getting the story out of them so hard? Usually, I just have to sit back and listen." He thought.
"There is a hidden tower, I have no idea how it got there, or why it was built where it was, but it is in a small canyon with a waterfall," said the princess candidate.
"It's only about half a day's walk from here," added Flynn.
"Only half a day's walk from here?" cried Mortimer. It came out in a despairing sounding way, the thought of the Lost Princess being that close was terrible. He had people halfway around the planet searching for her.
"Oh, don't feel bad for yourself, it is very well hidden, the only reason I found it was because I was trying to get away from Maximus and I quite literally stumbled upon it," commented the second most wanted person in the kingdom.
Mortimer gave Flynn a look. He kept getting the desire to ask him a lot of questions, but determining the claim of this Lost Princess candidate was more important, turning back to her. "And what did you do all this time?"
"I stayed in the tower. Mother told me that the power of my hair was a special gift and needed to be protected, so I could never leave the tower. So I kept busy by doing chores, reading, painting, and doing things with Pascal here to keep each other entertained," she said, patting Pascal affectionately.
"The big thing in my life were the lanterns that I kept seeing every year on my birthday. I knew they weren't stars since they didn't move like the stars do, I mapped them out on the wall of my tower and the floating lights didn't fit anything else up there. And this year I was determined to find out exactly what they were. I worked up my courage and asked Mother if she would take me to see them, but she said they were only the stars. After she left for the morning, Eugene showed up," she glanced at Flynn.
"Who is Eugene? Aren't you Flynn Rider?" asked Mortimer, confused.
"My real name is Eugene Fitzherbert," said Flynn Rider, self-deprecatingly.
"O-kay," the Seneschal said slowly, no wonder he picked a different name. Flynn blushed after a long moment of quiet gazing. Turning back to the Lost Princess candidate prompted, "please continue."
She explained that after capturing him ("with a frying pan" interjected Flynn), and noticing that he didn't have pointy teeth, (Mortimer traded a glance with Flynn, who shrugged) decided that she would show him off to Mother to prove that she could handle herself outside.
But that didn't work, so she asked for some new paint, made from shells she knew were from far enough away that she could see the floating lights and get back before Mother did, she hated herself for lying to Mother like that but it was the only way to see the lights. By hiding his satchel she was able to make a deal with Eugene to take her to see the floating lights and bring her safely back, which he agreed to.
They went through the forest and when they got hungry they stopped at the Snuggly Duckling. They almost got captured by the ruffians and thugs there, and then the palace guards. They fought at the dam, which broke, and then made camp, where she healed Eugene and got the satchel from Mother.
Then next day they had made it to the island and had a great time doing new things.
"The library was wonderful, I haven't seen so many books in one place ever and so much more to learn. Then there was the chalk drawing, there were all these children making drawings on the stones in another square and I joined in and made a big sun flower with a purple background," said the Lost Princess candidate.
"It was very impressive," added Flynn.
"You made that?" The Lost Princess candidate nodded. "Everyone thought it was amazing, we even heard about it here at the palace. The court painter went down to copy it, so it could be saved," remembered the Seneschal.
"And in the square with the portrait of the royal family, where the people leave flowers for the Lost Princess, there were musicians and I started dancing. It was so amazing to have music and be able to dance at the same time. Mother played for me sometimes as a treat, but I could only dance alone. There were people to dance with there and a lot of people joined in, but they kept Eugene and I apart until the end," the Lost Princess candidate blushed and looked at Flynn Rider.
"Then it was time to go to the boats and see the lights. That was really scary, because even if was everything I imagined it was, it was still going to be over soon and I was going to go back to the tower. But I didn't really want to, I wanted to stay with Eugene. But Mother needed me. So when he gave us lanterns, I gave him the satchel. I was sure he liked me then since he didn't seem to care about it very much. But then he paddled us to shore and left with the satchel." The Lost Princess candidate looked at the criminal with a look that asked him to explain himself.
"Um, it was because I saw the Stabbington brothers on the shore behind you when we were going to kiss. I went to give them the satchel, because I didn't care about it any more, but they did. At least I thought so, they didn't care about the satchel anymore either, as they knew about your hair. They wanted you instead," said Flynn Rider to the girl.
"Well, I care! What was in the satchel!?" interrupted Mortimer, annoyed that something that seemed to be so important wasn't being explained. Princess Candidates always explained everything.
Flynn was suddenly busy looking anywhere, but at the two of them.
The Lost Princess candidate looked at Flynn Rider and started, "Well, I don't know exactly what it was..."
"It was the Crown of the Lost Princess." Flynn Rider blurted out.
- End of Chapter 010
Author's Note: Rapunzel and Eugene are have a hard time telling the story. Rapunzel just realized she doesn't have another name for Gothel but Mother. Flynn is sweating. She might be the Lost Princess but he has no idea what the Test entails and isn't even sure that the test can identify her correctly. He has to let her do most of the talking so she does not freak out. His life is in her hands again. For what? The fifth time in 3 days?
Interestingly, Gothel didn't lie and say Rapunzel wasn't the Lost Princess, she deflected the question.