Kindred

Chapter Seven

…..

The real stumbling block for Rapunzel wasn't the awkwardness of meeting the parents she didn't know (they accepted her wholeheartedly) or adjusting to life as a princess (everyone from the highest ranking courtier to the poorest peasant treated her with kindness) but the sudden realization that she had no idea how to be around people.

Gothel, smothering as she had been, had often been gone for long stretches of time, and Eugene's own people skills were nothing to write home about, having been raised in an orphanage and pushed into a life of crime from early on. Those were the two people she had the closest relationship with; therefore, what was normal?

She could use a knife and fork, but didn't understand why there were so many different pieces of cutlery for just one meal. Court etiquette confused her no matter how many times the rules and taboos were explained to her. Her simple kirtle and gown had been tossed out and now her clothes had so many different pieces that it required three servants to help her dress every morning and undress every night.

She knew Eugene felt the same. Even though he had nominally been accepted as her husband-to-be, he always thought the courtiers looked down their noses at him (and he was right, many of them did privately sneer at him). But he had more freedom to come and go as he pleased, and although he always left with a promise to return, Rapunzel lived in fear that he would someday go and not come back.

The girls her age at court were so different. She had a retinue of six ladies-in-waiting, and although they could be very sweet they had been raised with a different set of standards than she had. The dynamic was so strange that the oldest and most socially aware girl, a countess' daughter named Magdalena, issued instructions and the others, including Rapunzel herself, followed her lead as best they could. On the surface, Magda was nice, but there was a hidden bite to her that made Rapunzel believe that the ladies were sniggering at her behind her back.

"Don't you look lovely today, highness," she would gush from behind her painted fan. "Purple is such an earthy colour, so fresh. It truly becomes you."

Rapunzel would thank her for the compliment but noted that the other girls exchanged smirks behind their own fans. It was some sort of insult, but Rapunzel wasn't intelligent enough to grasp it.

Some days she didn't want to leave her room at all. A little part of her yearned for her old tower, where everything was familiar and there was nobody around to see her fail at being part of the world.

…..

"Punz!" Anna gasped, clearly having run up the stairs at break-neck speed. She was holding her side and her face was a furious red.

"What's wrong?" Rapunzel asked, dropping her paintbrush.

"Nothing's wrong," Anna assured her, flopping into a nearby chair. "I just...needed to...tell you...about the thing!"

"Drink some water," Rapunzel ordered, pouring her a glass from the pitcher she kept in the gallery.

When Anna looked less like she was going to expire from exhaustion, Rapunzel asked what 'the thing' was.

"Okay, so you know how Pocahontas and Merida are always wandering around the woods, right?" she began. "And we've all been wondering what the hell they get up to in there..."

"I don't think we've all been wondering that..." Rapunzel said uneasily.

"Okay, maybe just me," Anna shrugged. "Point is, I think I figured it out. I think the woods are haunted."

Rapunzel blinked. Had she heard that right?

"What?" she asked.

Anna rolled her eyes and flopped further into her chair.

"Come on, don't give me that skeptical look! I got that from Elsa already today...look, the forest is really, really old, right?"

"Right..."

"So it stands to reason that something must have died in there at some point, right?"

"I suppose so..."

"And Pocahontas talks to spirits back home so she probably does it here too, and I know Merida's got some messed-up deal with ghosts screaming in the middle of the night or something, and both of them are always in there, so they must be looking for ghosts!"

It still didn't make much sense, but Anna had a way of making even ridiculous things sound plausible through sheer enthusiasm. Rapunzel had gravitated towards Anna for that very reason; Anna was clumsy and gauche but didn't care a jot for what anyone thought of her, and her whimsical nature made her so much fun to be around.

"So, are you up for an adventure?" Anna asked with a wicked smile.

"Of course," Rapunzel shrugged. "Why not?"

…..

Three hours later, Rapunzel found herself holding a large tree branch preparing to strike...something, while Anna painstakingly pulled the underbrush out of their way. Something suddenly dashed out in front of their feet, both girls screamed, Rapunzel brought her branch down but just managed to knock Anna off her feet.

"Oh," she said sheepishly, extending a hand to Anna. "It's just a rabbit."

If it were possible for a rabbit to look peeved, this one looked very peeved to have been disturbed. With an injured sniff in their general direction, it scurried behind a tree and out of sight.

"That makes four rabbits," Anna groaned. "Two deer and one mouse, and that bird thing..."

"A heron," Rapunzel said helpfully.

"Right, a heron. No ghosts."

They may not have found any ghosts, and neither had seen Merida or Pocahontas despite trying to follow their trail, but they were in high spirits nonetheless. It was a pleasant day to be rambling in the underbrush, and although they were covered in little scratches and bruises it was exciting to be out together.

"Do you have forests like this in Arendelle?" Rapunzel asked curiously.

Of the two of them, Anna seemed more used to the wilderness.

"No, it's all pine trees and snow," Anna muttered. "And the one time I actually got to go up the mountain I didn't get near the forest. Probably for the best though, it's full of wolves."

"Are there wolves in this forest?"

"I dunno...maybe?"

They stopped, stood still, listened for that telltale howl. When it didn't happen within the space of a minute, they concluded that this forest was wolf-free.

"What were the woods like by your tower?" Anna asked, jumping lightly over a small stream and helping Rapunzel do the same.

"They were a lot more open," she answered, tossing her braid back over her shoulder. "From what I could see anyway. I didn't really get to explore, I was stuck in the tower for most of my life and then boom! Straight to the city."

It was remarkable, really, how much they had in common. Anna had never been officially locked away, and her parents' intentions had been good, but Anna was just as isolated and out of touch with normal girls her age as Rapunzel was.

At least, until they both went on retreat and discovered that there were a great many ways to be a girl their age.

"Ssh!" Anna said suddenly, crouching behind a tree. "I think I see something!"

Peering through the thicket, Anna could see something too. It was a pale yellow thing, too unnatural a colour to be an animal, and it was billowy and floating. A strange sound followed in its wake, a sort of high-pitched whine.

"Is it a..." Rapunzel began, but she couldn't bring herself to finish.

They weren't supposed to actually find a ghost. That was supposed to be an excuse to ditch the castle chores for the day to run around in the forest! What now?

"Oh God," Anna gasped. "It's coming this way."

"What do we do?" Rapunzel hissed.

"I don't know!" Anna hissed back.

When the thing was almost upon them, they sort of simultaneously lashed out in panic and also came to a silent agreement to strike together. They rose from the thicket, screaming at the top of their lungs, brandishing tree branches in an effort to protect themselves.

Snow White screamed straight back at them, tripped over a root and fell into a dead faint.

…..

"I don't understand," she had protested, before her first retreat. "I've only just come back to you...don't you want me to stay?"

"Of course we do, darling," the queen sighed. "But you must understand, you have royal blood and you are the only child we will ever have. The future of our nation depends on you."

"I won't fit in there," Rapunzel mumbled, clutching her too-heavy skirt with both hands. "I can barely manage with the ladies-in-waiting here. How am I supposed to fit in with real princesses?"

"You're a real princess," the king reminded her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Different countries have different customs, those other girls will be just as unsure as you are."

Unsure? Unsure wasn't a good word to describe any of them, when she finally arrived at the retreat. She was in awe of Ella and Aurora, they were so graceful and gracious it didn't seem human. Belle's intelligence was frightening and Tiana's firm manner was intimidating. Elsa and Pocahontas spoke so rarely it was hard to tell they were there at all, but they always sat just off to the side, watching over everything with amusement.

Jasmine laced every conversation with sultry charm, and polite and friendly as Mulan was her stories made her sound like she had saved her nation single-handedly. Ariel's curiosity was as fascinating as her tales from the deepest reaches of the ocean, and Snow was so sweet it was hard to believe anybody could have wanted her dead. Merida was so different from all of them, and so uncaring of how different she was, that she might have been from another planet entirely.

Different from Rapunzel and different from each other. Was it any wonder then that she and Anna gravitated towards each other, recognizing a kindred spirit? Anna was earnest, loved to laugh and was always up for mischief. She might as well have been Rapunzel's twin.

…..

"...so anyway, we're very sorry."

Anna finished her long apology, just about remembering to actually say sorry instead of just explaining how they had been the cause of Snow's twisted ankle.

"Yeah, we're really sorry, Snow," Rapunzel said, with as much earnestness as she could manage.

"That's okay," Snow said with her characteristic sweetness. "It could happen to anyone."

"Not anyone I know," Merida snorted, shifting Snow's weight across her shoulders.

Really, they had been lucky that Merida heard all the screaming and came down from...wherever she was to investigate. Before she arrived on the scene Rapunzel and Anna had been contemplating making some sort of stretcher out of vines and sticks to carry Snow back to the castle. They explained what happened, and after Merida had finished laughing at them (a bit cruelly, to be honest) she just slung Snow White over her back like a sack of flour and carried her away, with the two ghost-hunters following morosely behind.

"Why did you think these woods are haunted, anyway?" Merida asked.

Rapunzel didn't really have an answer, so she looked to Anna.

"Well, you and Pocahontas are always in here," she began. "And you're always telling those stories about the things that wander around in the woods. We got curious."

"And what were you going to do if you actually found one?"

They didn't have an answer, so they just looked down at the ground with their cheeks burning. A muffled snort told them Merida was laughing at them again.

"Oh, you found them."

They looked up towards the source of the smooth voice, and sure enough Pocahontas was sitting on the tip of an outcropping, weaving some sort of rope with long blades of grass.

"They were hard to miss," Merida drawled back, and Pocahontas laughed.

Tiana took one look at them as they emerged from the forest and went straight into the kitchen for the medicine chest, muttering under her breath. Cinderella was out a moment later, holding a cold wet rag.

"It's awfully swollen," she said as Snow was laid out on one of Jasmine's hooked rugs.

"It doesn't hurt that much," Snow said, though she was pale and trembling.

"I assume you had something to do with this?" Elsa sighed in her sister's direction, conjuring a handful of ice shards to wrap around Snow's ankle.

"Well, yeah," Anna mumbled.

"Actually, it was both of us," Rapunzel volunteered.

Elsa raised a dubious eyebrow, but Ella laughed.

"It never gets boring having the two of you around, does it?" she said.

Rapunzel knew boredom. It was a constant companion in the tower with its three books, four windows, one fireplace and one stove. It was an insidious creeping sensation whenever she had to attend court or listen to her ladies-in-waiting gossip about people she didn't know.

It occurred to her then that even though she had been on the retreat for nearly three months, she had never been bored.