Spoiler
Mirzi and Punzi (Rapunzel) have been trapped in a tower outside the village of Redbrook by Mirzi's mother, a witch. Prince Henry, who began visiting them a year ago and is in love with Punzi, was caught by the witch a month ago and hasn't been seen since. The witch cut off Punzi's hair and they're stuck. Both are majorly upset about Henry and the fact that they're soon going to starve to death.
I realise that I'm prone to infodumps, especially in this story so please point out anything too dumpy- but also try and tell me how to get rid of it. Also, the history at the start isn't necessary right now, but I want to give the history in bitesize chunks and I'm not sure how to do it. And then the personal background that follows just before the flashback of Henry's arrival- too much, or necessary? So all comments appreciated, but especially on the infodumping!
I realise that I'm prone to infodumps, especially in this story so please point out anything too dumpy- but also try and tell me how to get rid of it. Also, the history at the start isn't necessary right now, but I want to give the history in bitesize chunks and I'm not sure how to do it. And then the personal background that follows just before the flashback of Henry's arrival- too much, or necessary? So all comments appreciated, but especially on the infodumping!
CHAPTER TWO- RUSS
The tower must have been more than three hundred years old, built, as Redbrook village was, before the Deadwoods were replanted. They had been burnt down during a war with Polleda to the south- the only war Aldira had ever had with that country. Ten years later, the country starved of wood, King Helan used the money in his own pocket to buy seeds and saplings from neighbouring kingdoms-even Polleda itself- and had the royal gardeners come and install the widest variation of trees that would grow here. Magic, the natural magic that Aldira has such rich deposits of, helped and the Deadwoods were filled with life.
The woods engulfed many villages, places that now lay abandoned, but not Redbrook. A flow of pilgrims came through the village on account of the temple. It was called Mirzia’s Temple and was the place where my namesake, the Beloved Traitor, supposedly once took her rest, a place now blessed with her own magic and luck. But none of the pilgrims ever noticed the old watchtower, or learnt the secret of the girl locked inside it.
I had been coming to the tower for as long as my memory reaches back. I couldn’t remember ever meeting Punzi, ever telling her my name or finding hers. We had just known each other, been a fact in the other’s life, for seventeen years. I did remember countless visits to “the girl in the tower,” with my mother as I grew up. Sometimes she would leave the two of us there all day. As I got a little older and saw how the Redbrook mothers treated their children, it made me wonder how Punzi and I never hurt ourselves as she locked us in and went about her business. Perhaps she put a spell on us.
Whatever way it came about, Punzi and I had been best friends our entire lives, she in the tower and I in the cottage with my mother in Redbrook. Or at least I did, until when all of a sudden, at the age of fourteen, I found myself up here with her, and there were two of us.
I could have escaped. Punzi’s long rope of hair would have served me just as well as my mother. I suppose, in the end, my mother knew I didn’t have the heart to. Just as I didn’t have the heart to do a lot of things. So I stayed. My mother appeared once a week or thereabouts to give us food and other necessities. On one of her visits Punzi mentioned a toothache and the very next day she returned with a poultice. But there was never any news of the outside world, no hint of what she had left us for. I was too afraid to ask. So we simply continued, I cooked, Punzi cleaned and every so often we undertook the mammoth task of washing her hair.
It was all normal, regular, standard, when Prince Henry arrived, on a white horse and everything, and turned our lives upside down.
Later, I would be driven made by the call used by suitors (though at the same time it was the only thing keeping me sane). But right then, his voice was like a spring wind, fresh and young.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”
It was possibly the biggest shock since I was that tear-soaked fourteen year old watching her mother brick up a doorway. Punzi dropped her embroidery, her eyes widening.
“What will we do?”
Of course, if I had any sense at all I would have told her to pretend we weren’t here, to stay silent until they left. Who knew what they would do to us? If you’ll forgive me, it was the first new voice I had heard in a long time. I stood up and ran to the window before Punzi did.
There were two boys at the bottom of the tower, two horses beside them, both heads adorned with the soft brown curls that so many Aldirans had. I wondered if they were brothers. “Please, lady,” said one- the larger of the two. “Please. We won’t hurt you.”
I nodded to Punzi and we began throwing loops of hair to him and he climbed up. My heart fluttered. My mouth hung open.
“Hello,” he said, hoisting himself through the window and taking Punzi’s hand. “I’m Henry.”
From my spot in the shadows I took a moment to observe him. Broad, tall, with a wide, open flat face and deep blue eyes.
He did not look like danger.
He jerked his head down towards the bottom of the tower. “Russ will keep watch,” he said.
“Your brother?” I voiced my question.
He turned, stunned at the sound. “There are two ladies up here.”
Punzi was staring at him, taking in every stitch of clothing, every inch of skin, and her mouth moved without her recognition of it. “I’m not a lady,” she said.
“Then please, who might you be?”
She seemed too stunned by his existence and her last statement to speak, so I did instead. “I’m Mirzi Crackledawn. This is Punzi.”
“My pleasure. And to answer your question, Russ isn’t my brother. He’s, uh, my servant, as a matter of fact, though I count him amongst my friends.”
My eyes widened. In Redbrook nobody had servants, the closest I knew to one was, well, myself.
“We just happened to be here with the hunt,” he explained, “when I saw the woman, and your hair, and forgive me, I couldn’t help but be intrigued.”
“Where are the hunt now?” I checked. I had seen them stampeding through the Freesons’ fields, yapping and yelling. I didn’t want them all here. Solitude was not ideal, but all those dogs and horses, watching us, waiting as if we were their new prey was even worse.
“I sent them back,” he said simply, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He looked back at Punzi. “You don’t talk much, Lady Punzi who is not a lady.” He smiled wryly.
“I-” and I’ve always wondered what she meant to say here, perhaps, “I’m not a lady” again or “I’ve never seen a man before” but instead she bowed her head and said, “I don’t have anything to say.”
Henry put two fingers under her chin and lifted it up. “Then we’ll soon change that.”
Change that and everything else besides. Henry didn’t keep his secret long, his next visit confessing that he was the Prince of Aldira. Slowly, I watched Punzi open up to him. He brought her presents, was patient and sweet to her. I have to admit I wasn’t sure- when was I ever?- but he made her happy and so I allowed him. I liked Henry and when he wasn’t being romantic with Punzi I found myself joking and laughing with him. We were friends. So when I caught him laying that first tentative kiss on Punzi’s lips, it didn’t frighten me as much as maybe it should have.
Now though, we were as abandoned by him as we were by my mother, plagued by suitors who were worse than the hunt. I had no idea who had told them we were here, no idea why none of them offered us any real escape. Henry would have given us an actual way of getting out of the tower, had offered before, though something had made us decline or put it off every time.
The fact he wasn’t doing anything worried me. Because it suggested that something terrible had happened to him. I was haunted the thoughts of him dead, of Russ and his other friends and family grieving, the country in mourning, and the two girls who had caused it clueless, starving and alone. Probably as they deserved.
[This is all flashbacky. But because the chapter was so long I broke it here. And it's still really long. Sorry! But if I put the next part up, it literally just goes back into the story. Or do you think the flashback isn't working at all. Tell me!]
ooo)
