Chapter 9
Rapunzel spent the rest of the day making Flynn play all her favorite games because, "You see? This is fun. If you were dead, you won't get to play checkers. You'd be missing out."
It got annoying. She acted as though she could talk him out of it or change his mind. If she just said the right thing, a switch would flick in his mind and he would realize what a fool he'd been. He too would think that board games were God's gift to imprisoned girls and newly imprisoned thieves.
"It's so great to play with another person. Pascal's good at checkers, but sometimes he gets forgetful and doesn't follow the rules. I wish I could play this game every day with you," she said pointedly, glancing up from her stroking of Pascal's spine to shoot him a look. The chameleon seemed to be having one of its forgetful moments as it stared into space with its mouth hanging open.
Flynn groaned, shifting a checker forward. "Can we stop talking about it, please?"
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to."
"Why not?"
"Explaining why not would be talking about it."
She frowned and jumped two of his pieces.
After checkers was bird watching, and after bird watching was "who can wash their dishes the fastest," and after that she broke out her favorite films of all time, all filmed by Pascal on various expeditions outside, some dating back nearly ten years.
She excitedly pointed out all her favorite moments and expounded upon the greatness of bumblebees up close, and elaborate hats with netting, and one particular archway over the entrance to town hall in one of the little villages. She bothered him until he took out his map and showed her where the town was located and told her everything he knew about it.
She was less impressed with the fact that they had the most gullible constable in the empire than she was with the knowledge that there was another arch on the back entrance to the building.
A few times he caught her staring at the battery, taking a breath to ask a question, but then she would stop herself and turn away, pretending she hadn't noticed it. He thought about moving it, getting it out of the way, shoving it into his bag. But then that would acknowledge that it existed and she would start talking about it again. So they let it sit, as she tried to push the wonders of her little life on him and he tried not to get too irritable with it.
They were well into a game of "hold this yarn for me while I knit," (which was not the best way to prove life was worth living, if you asked him) when the sound of the proximity alarm cut through the air. Her chipper conversation about the many unique features of the sweater she was making halted abruptly along with her knitting. For a moment she stared towards the kitchen and the whistling alarm as if confused by its sound.
"She didn't take very long," Flynn said, shrugging the mass of looped yarn off his hands. His voice pulled her back into the moment, snapping her into action.
"She must have forgot something." She raced out of the room to turn off the alarm and grab the basket she'd prepared for him once more, while he flopped onto the bed and sighed. At least he'd get to take a nap.
"I'm sure she'll leave again whenever she gets whatever she forgot. It shouldn't be that long," she said, bustling back into the room to drop the basket on the bed and start cranking it towards the ceiling.
"Yay," he grumbled.
She stopped cranking and looked up at him with more concern this time than irritation. "Please don't come out, Flynn. Please... just stay there? Just for a little while."
He considered her for a moment, struck by the honest fear on her face. Fear for him.
That in addition to the thought that if her mother did manage to murder him, Rapunzel would have to watch and then her mom might turn her rage on her daughter.
He nodded stupidly, and Rapunzel nodded back at him, reassuring herself, holding him to his word, before raising the bed again.
He was above her head when something kicked him into action. "Hey." He leaned out over the edge before she could make him disappear completely, holding himself secure with one hand grasping the edge of the mattress as the other reached for her face, pulling her into a kiss.
Her warmth crept into him, seeping its way into his stomach to fan out through every nerve. Soft lips pressed tight against his as she held her breath, as her eyes slipped closed. And she pushed up onto her toes to get closer, to pull every ounce of reassurance from him until she had to sink back, this time with the renewed warmth of his company.
She stood there a moment, breathing slowly and heavily, her eyes closed as if reliving the moment again and again, her lips still parted slightly as if unsure if it was over.
She was so pretty. Even with her hair mussed from her goggles.
"Thank you," he murmured.
He wasn't sure why he said it. Until the words were loose, he didn't even realize he felt any gratitude for what she was trying to do. He shouldn't really. Locking him away so he could forever be her encyclopedia was several levels of strange and unhealthy.
But it was true, and he held her gaze when her lidded eyes eased open again.
She swallowed, still stunned and not sure if she should believe him, then nodded and continued cranking the bed towards the ceiling.
He pushed himself away from her and pulled the curtains down to be slightly helpful and give himself something to do. She disappeared behind a veil of purple fabric, and rushed from the room with the hurried sound of slapping feet.
And there he sat, in the claustrophobic dark, trying not to think and listening intently in an attempt to decode all the little sounds from the other room. The floor boards creaked. Her dress shuffled as she moved.
There was no sound of her mother's shouted greeting. But then again, maybe his perspective on the passage of time was a bit skewed with nothing to hold his attention but the wait.
Then she gasped, and a second later she hurried into the room again, hissing, "Flynn! Flynn!"
"What?" His feet hit the floor before he'd even realized he'd moved.
"Shh!"
She grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards the window, pressing her back to the wall as if that would help her to not be seen from the ground. She swatted at him with her free hand until he followed suit, feeling completely ridiculous.
"What is it?"
"Shhhhh!"
As she approached the window, she bent double to hide from view, then dropped to the floor, pressing her back to the window sill, dragging Flynn with her.
There she gave him a look filled with fear, and he gave her a look that said she was weird. Then she pointed out the window, tapping her finger silently against the wall, before craning her neck and slowly pushing herself up to look over the edge and down to the ground below. He followed her, took one look at the glen below, and dove back down, out of view, swearing and pulling Rapunzel down with him.
Assembled below, fanning out into the glen like ants, encircling the tower with military precision, was an entire platoon of royal guards.
"Shit!" he repeated, his voice scarcely above a whisper and raised to an unfortunate pitch.
"How did they find us?" she whispered, pushing herself up again for another look.
He dragged her back down, and ran a hand through his hair. "How should I know?"
"What should we do?"
"I don't know. Let me think a minute."
"You should hide again and I'll tell them you died when you crashed and then give them the battery back."
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because... Just- No! I'm not going to just hand it back to them."
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"This is not open for discussion. For right now it's mine and you," he pointed a finger into her face, "are not going to give it away."
"Then you should give it back."
"I'm not- Ugg. Just let me think a second. I'll come up with a plan."
"I still say I should tell them you're dead. Or that you left and took the battery with you! Flynn, that could work!"
"And they'll just buy that story, will they?"
She tilted her head to the side. "Why shouldn't they?"
"It's not going to work."
"Hmm. You're right. They'll see me and my hair that way."
"Why do you care so much about people not knowing where you live? No one cares!"
"Yes, they do."
"...What on earth makes you think that?"
"My mother."
He rolled his eyes.
She gasped, spurring him to clap a hand over her mouth despite how there was little to no way they could be heard from the ground. After a moment of silence, where she quieted and there was no sound of an army scrambling up the side of the tower to arrest them, he pulled back again.
"Flynn," she whispered, her voice rising in panic, "what if my mother comes home and finds them all camped out outside my tower?"
"Then I guess you mom will have to face off against the royal guard. Who do you think would win?"
"This is serious!"
"I realize that!"
"Then why aren't you acting serious?"
"Because I'm freaking out!"
"Well, I'm freaking out too!"
"Great!"
"Oh my God, this will kill her," she moaned, dragging her fingers through her hair.
"It will probably kill us first."
"Oh God."
"Rider!" someone shouted from below. "We know you're in there. We've got you surrounded. Give yourself up."
They both froze.
Then Rapunzel pushed herself onto her knees and before Flynn could stop her, she shouted back at them.
"Go away!"
"Blondie!"
He tackled her to the floor, pressing a hand to her mouth again. They lay like that for several frantic moments, unable to hear the muttering from below.
Behind them Pascal began to tick.
And then they heard the sound of a hundred tiny clicks, not quite in synchronicity, the sound of metal chipping into stone.
Dread churned in his stomach as the noise grew louder, more oppressive, as he carefully peered over the window sill to find a sight even more frightening than the royal guard spread out before them.
A hundred royal chameleons were climbing the wall, running in skips and leaps, with whirring, angry gears and tails held poised to strike. They hissed and glinted in the light, deadly and viscous and charging towards them.
Flynn threw the shutters closed, on his feet and shouting. "How do you lock it?"
"The knobs!"
"How do they work?"
"Here." She reached in front of him as the first of the chameleons threw itself against the shutters with surprising force and Flynn braced his shoulder against the wood to hold them back. Another THUD. And another.
Rapunzel's hands skirted over a long string of bolts down one side of the shutter, flicking each lock and setting a complicated set of swirling, interlocked bars into place, each one jerking across the shutter to clunk into a lock on the other side then latch with metal fingers that sprouted out and clung to the lock. The chameleons scrambled across the wood, just inches from Flynn's face on the other side of the door, their feet sounding like hail or a thousand raining arrows.
The final lock clunked into place and Rapunzel darted back, afraid to be too close to their attackers even through the barricade. "The other windows," she gasped, and raced across the room towards the second bedroom. He moved to follow her, but the sounds from outside were splitting in two directions as the chameleon swarm divided, swirling around and surrounding the tower in a storm of angry clicking. Changing directions, he charged up the stairs to outrun the swarm to the window on the landing.
Not bothering to slow, he threw his weight against the nearest panel on the shutter and reached for the other just a a chameleon skidded inside, spines bared, eyes narrowed, steam hissing in a scalding streams. He grabbed for the nearest object at hand, a hefty candle stick, and swung wildly at the machine, hitting it squarely in the face to send it flying back out the window into a long fall towards the ground below. Then a second chameleon was climbing in, and a third, and it was all he could do keep up with them, bashing them over the head.
The closed shutter creaked and started to slide open from the force of several chameleons pushing against it. They started circling around, to come down from above, from the side, throwing themselves into the room where he was lucky to hit them on a wild swing.
From below, Rapunzel screamed.
The stream of machines felt unending and with a desperate roar, he pushed forward, grabbed the shutter and threw it closed, catching one of the chameleons between shutter panels, which crunched and whined, and then blocked the window from closing completely.
Another chameleon flew over its fallen comrade and Flynn whacked it in the side before struggling to poke the broken pile of bolts and metal from the window sill.
The junk fell away and the window closed with a thunk, immediately bursting open a fraction under a new assault. He pressed it closed again, both hands spread wide against the shutters, fighting against the force on the other side.
He panted, and shifted to awkwardly turn the locks, having to hold back the machines a little less with every new click of the barricade.
"Rapunzel?"
But she was there, running up the stairs past him, looking disheveled and terrified, but unharmed. She grabbed for a level on the wall, and jerked it down, and a spiraling system of shutters telescoped across the glass dome above their heads, ticking and whining until finally slamming closed and locking, throwing them both into darkness with a definitive, echoing CLUNK.