Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (32 page)

"Cin, please sit down and eat," Rapunzel pleaded.

"I am not hungry." Cinderella returned, pivoting to make her short journey to the east, only to be grabbed around the middle and plummet into Rapunzel's
lap.

"Here, eat this," Rapunzel ordered, shoving the remainder of a loaf of bread into her hand, and, sighing, Cinderella did as she was told, stuffing the
sustenance into her mouth and chewing without tasting.

Upon the realization they would not be able to make proper purchases, they took what they needed, provisions and weapons and extra sacks. Then they moved
on into the forest, anticipating the disappearance of Hemptown Square from the world. Or the universe. Or the realm. Or whatever name could be given to the
fake place through which Cinderella found herself treading, somehow destroying people she never knew existed.

Tears springing to her eyes, the bread turned dry in her mouth and she forced it down her throat. "What have I done?" she whispered.

"You have done nothing," Rapunzel returned.

"Clearly, I have done something," Cinderella argued. "I do not even know these people. How did I do this to them?"

As she glanced over her shoulder for answer, Rapunzel's eyes felt the same upon her face, gentle and forgiving, the hands upon her hips still solid and
familiar and right. Realizing they were temporary sensations that might be ripped from her at any time, Cinderella turned away again, feeling the tears
press harder.

"I do not know," Rapunzel replied. "Perhaps, we should go back. We could awaken Snow White. Perhaps, she and the dwarves can help us figure out what is
happening."

"We know what is happening, do we not?" Cinderella returned. "We are in a story, where people simply disappear. And, apparently, that is due to me. As far
as we know, Snow White and the dwarves are mere memory. So, what reason is there to go back? Or to go on? Perhaps, we should just stay here and spare
ourselves tired feet."

When Rapunzel said nothing in response, Cinderella wondered if she was in agreement, if that was what they would do. Sit and wait for destiny to catch up
with them.

"Nothing has changed," Rapunzel finally whispered, voice strained.

"Nothing has changed?" Cinderella pushed up from Rapunzel's lap, laughing in disbelief as she whirled to face her. "I made an entire town disappear!"

"You did nothing!" Rapunzel jumped to her feet as well. "You were not even there!"

"Then who did?" Cinderella asked. "I told you, I have angered fate..."

"Not fate," Rapunzel returned at once, but the rest of the realization came more slowly. "The storyteller."

"What?" Cinderella shook her head.

"When you left your kingdom," she said, looking up in wonder. "You must have left your story."

"You do not make sense," Cinderella replied.

"I do make sense," Rapunzel asserted, taking a step toward Cinderella that silenced further debate. "If you escaped your story, Cinderella, if you came
into mine, you changed our stories. Then, we changed Snow White's and the dwarves'. Now, all the stories, they bleed into one. They have changed."

"And this writer now punishes those I do not even know?" Cinderella questioned, mind drifting back to the disappearance of the house of treats and the
butterflies before that and the pouch of gold that fell at her feet and brought anxious captors upon her. "As it has tried to punish me," she whispered.
"As it will punish you, if you are with me."

"If I am with you?" Rapunzel questioned, stopping to release a short burst of breath and look away. "Is that what you want?" Blue eyes shined with pain as
they turned back to Cinderella. "For us not to be together?"

"Of course, that is not what I want!" Cinderella asserted.

"Because that is how you make it sound," Rapunzel declared. "As if you have given up. As if you will let whatever happens happen. As if you do not want to
fight for us."

Listening to Rapunzel's thoughts unspool, Cinderella felt the last the most atrocious accusation she had ever had directed against her, and so unbelievably
untrue she could scarcely think to respond.

"I would walk through fire to keep you!" she vowed.

"Then walk through the forest!" Rapunzel cried.

The sudden plea a most fair response, Cinderella listened to Rapunzel breathe heavily before her, watched her wait for something, anything, and wanted only
to take that look from her, the one that was unsure and afraid of what might come next.

Feet shuffling through the leaves, Cinderella took Rapunzel's face into her hands, the tears she caused trailing down Rapunzel's cheeks to sink warm and
salty into her palms. "All right," she whispered. "I will walk through the forest. I will go wherever you want me to go."

Words so true, they frightened her, she only hoped Rapunzel could believe them after everything else she had said. When Rapunzel pushed forward against
her, Cinderella wrapped her up tightly and knew she did.

"This is absurd," she uttered, still holding on as she opened her eyes to look to the forest around them, to those who journeyed with them to ensure they
were still there.

Falling back, Rapunzel's eyes were clear, beseeching, her hands sliding from around Cinderella's waist to clutch at her arms. "Then we will live in the
absurdity," she stated. "Just do not let me go."

"I will not," Cinderella whispered. "I will never let you go."

Pressing into her again, Rapunzel's body was a comfort against her as she remembered Caratasa's words -
Do not let it go.
- and wondered how she was
supposed to hold on in a world under the control of another.

H
e once shared a workspace in Ravenna with an artist who painted himself into his own paintings.

Day after day, the dark man watched the painter perfect his facade, taking great pains with his own likeness, staring again and again into a piece of
polished steel to get himself just right, and believed it an arrogant undertaking, a dangerous mixing of reality and fantasy that ruined the world of his
art.

Watching the paintings come to fruition, one and then two and then three, the artist's face always hidden there amongst his subjects, the dark man finally
asked why the artist did it, why he painted himself into his work when his art would be his legacy, whether he appeared in the paintings or not.

"My subjects have minds of their own," the artist replied. "If I am not in there with them, who knows what they will do?"

The dark man thought the answer a jest, and then a mad notion from a man who later tried to remove his own stomach with a rusty spoon. At the time, he
could not fathom why a true creator would feel the compulsion to control his world from within when he had all the control he needed from without.

Sitting before his story, though, the dark man watched it continue to unfold, long after the last line had been written, his perfect ending interrupted by
one defiant, meddlesome girl.

He should have let Her drown in that swamp, or had Her thrown full-body into that fire. For now it seemed those punishments were not unjust, but simply
premature, and that the artist in Ravenna was not crazy, but intuitive.

Perhaps, a little control from within was not arrogance, but prudence, for now the dark man had finally learned for himself that subjects left unsupervised
did tend to roam.

F
rigid wind whipping the flurries around them, it was clear they had entered a new kingdom. As they shivered against the sudden cold, Cinderella and
Rapunzel pulled their capes from their packs, wrapping them around their shoulders, as Christophe tugged his sweater over his head, topping himself with
the cap he had taken in their raid of Hemptown Square.

"Will you be all right?" Cinderella asked Norco and Togo, who seemed mesmerized by the light snow, staring right into it and blinking rapidly as flakes
landed in their eyes.

"All right?" Norco asked. "My. I say this is much more agreeable. Do you agree, Togo?"

"It is highly agreeable," Togo said, tongue dangling out to catch the flakes as they fell.

"Well," Cinderella's teeth chattered. "I am glad it is agreeable to someone."

Peering as far as she could see in the direction they walked, she saw nothing but dark winter ahead, and, glancing back, nothing but night falling on the
desolation left behind them. For a moment, she felt hopeless, for neither way was a way she wanted to go. Then, Rapunzel's arm slid through hers, and,
meeting her eyes, Cinderella realized she had not over-spoken. She would walk through fire, through forest, through whatever was put into her path. For
there was no story worth telling without Rapunzel.

Thought leading her onward through the riled weather, they made it only a few steps more before a figure dashed from behind a tree before them.

"Wait! Please!" Cinderella called out, but the person did not heed her request.

"Norco and Togo on it!" the two called in unison, dropping the small sacks they had found at the feet of their human companions and flying off in pursuit
of the fleeing shadow.

"Let go of me this instant!" a deep voice reverberated through the trees a moment later.

"She needs to talk to you for only a moment, I am certain," Norco responded, struggle evident in his voice. "These humans are really very excitable, do you
not think, Togo?"

"Certainly, they are quite excitable," Togo replied, panting in exasperation.

"Who are you?" the deep voice demanded. "What are you?"

Before they could give answer, Norco and Togo reappeared through the trees, each grasping tightly to the arm of a young man. Their wings flapped with
utmost effort to haul the struggling chap, whose feet skated right over the winter-slick terrain.

"Please do not run away again," Cinderella said softly, putting an immediate end to the man's resistance.

Without the pull against them, Norco and Togo carried the man too far backward and his feet slipped out from under him, sending him to his backside in the
snow.

Rushing forward to help him up, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Christophe came to an abrupt stop when the man bounded to his feet and turned to face them, the
shiny blade in his hand small but deadly. Cap pulled low, scarf pulled high, he was hard to see inside his weather-appropriate clothing, but his eyes upon
them were more fearful than threatening.

"Who are you?" the young man asked, the knife moving from one of them to the other in such a way that Cinderella knew he did not know how to use it well.

"I am Cinderella," she responded. "This is Rapunzel and Christophe, and your attendants on your lovely return trip were Norco and Togo. Who are you?"

"I am Sawyer." The young man attempted to stand taller, but the blade shook in his hand. "Of the Saxens."

"You are a prince?" Cinderella warily questioned.

"It depends on who is asking," Sawyer returned.

"One who is not partial to princes," Cinderella returned, and, even with his mouth concealed, she could see the smile that flickered across his face.

Knife lowering in surrender, Sawyer tugged the scarf down below his chin, revealing his face, as handsome as expected with a scar that showed especially
white in the cold running down his cheek toward the corner of his mouth. "Well, in that case," he replied. "I am a prince, but only by association. My
sister, with whom I stay, is married to the king of Ceres."

"Ceres?" Rapunzel repeated. "Is that the kingdom we are in?"

"You know about the breach of the kingdoms?" Sawyer questioned, inspecting them carefully as they nodded. "And about the disappearance of some of the
inhabitants of my kingdom? Do you know of that?"

"Not your kingdom," Cinderella returned, as what felt like a boulder dropped into her stomach. "But we have seen it."

"I thought you might be to blame," Sawyer asked, and Rapunzel's fingers gave a light squeeze upon Cinderella's arm.

"We are not to blame," she replied. "We have done nothing to your people."

"Do you know what causes it?" Sawyer queried.

"We do not know." Cinderella shook her head, feeling it half-life. "We do hope to find out, but, before we do that, we have a friend who is in need."

"Here in Ceres?" Sawyer asked.

"No," Rapunzel returned. "She is a few kingdoms off in Aulis. We are making way there now."

Head turning slowly, Sawyer glanced around at the oncoming darkness, eyes returning to them with interest.

"You are going to journey through the forest at night?" he asked.

"We must," Cinderella returned. "For we do not have shelter for the night."

"And you have come out here for your friend?" he questioned.

"Yes," Cinderella replied. "She is under a spell, and we seek one who can help us break it."

"Might I be of assistance?" he offered.

"You very well might be," Cinderella answered, eyes moving down the fine buttons on Sawyer's coat to the embroiled gloved that twirled the blade. "For our
friend needs a worthy suitor, and if you, like Christophe, have no one to whom you are linked, you may prove yourself that. It does not seem the
haughtiness of castle living has rubbed off on you quite yet. At least, not too terribly."

Intended as test as to his suitability for Snow White, Cinderella realized she might have cost them potential shelter when Sawyer stared at her in shock,
but as hearty laughter burst forth from his chest, she relaxed instantly into its warm timbre.

"I promise to be on my most humble of behavior, My Lady," he said with a small bow, "if you and your friends would be so kind as to be my guests this
evening."

"We accept," Cinderella said at once. "Thank you."

Tugging his scarf back into place, Sawyer motioned for them to follow, and they trailed behind him through the graying snow, the whistle of the wind a
chilling melody through the trees.

"Perhaps, you could tell me more about this friend," Sawyer called back to them, and Rapunzel squeezed Cinderella's arm again in reaction, a pleased grin
playing at her wind-chapped lips. "You have come by on a fine night. This evening, my sister holds a grand festival, for these strange events have prompted
a desire for merriment, as no one knows what tomorrow might bring. The entire kingdom shall be in attendance."