TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE:
“Unfair Hair”
CHAPTER ONE:
“Snow White, Blood Red”
CHAPTER TWO:
“The Princess and the … Pea?”
CHAPTER THREE:
“Little Dead Riding Hood”
CHAPTER FOUR:
“Cinders and Ashes”
CHAPTER FIVE:
“Goldilocks and the Three Scares”
CHAPTER SIX:
“Jack the Beanstalker”
CHAPTER SEVEN:
“Bad Apple”
CHAPTER EIGHT:
“The Boy Who Cried Zombies”
CHAPTER NINE:
“Vampires and Zombies and Stepmothers, Oh My!”
PRINCESS AND THE PAGE TEASER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
The horse has asked to let the record show: She didn’t mean to kill the prince.
But the prince didn’t understand the difference between reign and rein. A king reigns, meaning he is in charge of his kingdom. A horse has reins, straps that are used to direct it. But the prince assumed that because he would reign, he also had free rein with the reins. Fortunately, the prince at least understood the difference between rein, reign, and rain, otherwise he might have thought he could command the weather, too.
The horse neighed in an annoyed tone, nudging the dead prince with her long nose. She had only aimed for that low-hanging branch to try to knock some sense into him. Instead, she had knocked him clean off and clean out.
But look! His chest moved up and down. He was still breathing. Shaking her mane in relief, and refusing to stick around while we talked about the difference between mane, main, and Maine, the horse trotted away.
The prince lay in the middle of a vast forest. On one side was a castle with a very tall tower. There was a lot of activity at that castle—soldiers running here and there, calling out a name, searching for someone. A soldier shouted that a horse was missing from the stables, too.
Hmmm.
On the other side of the forest was a castle where no one moved at all during the day. It was as though the entire castle wanted to avoid the harsh light of the sun and only came out after sunset, like creatures of the night.
Hmmmmm.
In between the two castles were a few small villages. There was the occasional cottage in the woods just awaiting a granddaughter, or a clever tailor, or a boy made out of baked goods.
There were also wolves and bears going about, minding their own business, unaware that very soon they would be descended upon by monsters. Or little girls. In this book, they might be the same thing.
With a groan, the prince sat up. He rubbed his head. If he knew the difference, he’d know that he now had neither rein nor reign. He was alone, in the middle of a forest. And piercing the sky, just a few yards from where he sat, was a lone tower.
The prince hated towers.
They were ugly. They made your legs burn and your breath catch in your chest if you had to huff all the way to the top of them. They were very difficult to keep clean, what with all the stones and dusty stairs and little animals taking up residence in them. And, until very recently, he had been held prisoner in one.
That last reason is probably a better reason than the others to hate towers.
His first impulse was to burn the tower down. (There are much more reasonable ways of dealing with towers! First, find out what the zoning ordinances are for the kingdom. Are towers allowed? What are the height restrictions? What is the tower being used for? Is it a commercial tower in a residential district? Or a residential tower in an area zoned for retail? Are all of its licenses current and valid? After doing the research, write a letter to the local kingdom council insisting they open up an inquiry to look into whether or not the tower is legal. After waiting several months with no reply, write another letter. This time, say you will be consulting a lawyer. Then you’ll need to find a lawyer who specializes in tower law, and … You know what, on second thought, the prince is probably onto something with his burning idea.)
But before he could even gather up enough tinder for a campfire, much less a towerfire, he heard the most beautiful voice. The prince hurried to the edge of the trees.
The ground around the tower was cleared in a circle. The tower loomed high in the sky, three or four stories tall, unlike this book, which is ten stories tall. Rough gray stones ascended to the sky. There was no door, not even a window until the top of the tower. That window was open, and from it the voice rang out like a doorbell. Some people have voices like church bells, but this one was less regal and more “come on answer the door come on come on.”
The prince understood her urgency. He himself had called out countless times from his tower, and no one ever answered anymore. Well, today, he would be her answer. He was about to shout up to her when another figure came out of the forest only a few steps away from him. The woman didn’t notice him. She wore a long black dress, and her dark hair was pinned into a no-nonsense bun. Her skin was paler than chalk, and she carried a burlap sack filled with something … wriggling.
“A witch!” the prince hissed.
“Rapunzel!” the witch cried. “Rapunzel!” She waited a few moments, then shouted in a much witchier tone, “RAPUNZEL!”
“What?” came the sweet reply. The prince squinted, longing to catch a glimpse of Rapunzel, but she remained hidden.
“Rapunzel,” the witch shouted, “let down your fair hair!”
From the window slid a length of hair, golden and shining in the sun. The prince was too far away to see clearly, but it was thicker than his arm, as thick as his thigh, even. What glorious hair! The hair reached all the way from the window to the ground.
The witch, still holding the squirming bag, walked forward through the clearing. The prince shifted, and a traitorous twig snapped! Once he was king, he would have that twig found and burned at the stake.
He managed to retreat behind a tree just before the witch turned and caught sight of him. But it was too late for the witch. That poor maiden, trapped in a tower with no door! The prince had figured it all out. The witch must climb the hair-rope up and down. Though what dark purpose the squirming bag held, the prince could only imagine. (He chose not to imagine it. Witches are very scary! I don’t blame the prince for deciding not to think too much about it. Though if he were truly princely, he would have charged out of the forest and demanded she release her prey. Let’s not be too hard on him, though. He’s just been knocked unconscious by a grouchy horse, and apparently has been locked up in a tower for a very long time. Maybe he’ll get princelier as the book goes on.)
The prince retreated farther into the woods to wait. After a few minutes, he heard the witch stomping by. She was muttering to herself.
“… late for my own wedding now, thanks to the creepy little monster. That tower isn’t high enough for something so vile.”
The prince gasped. He knew that vile was like evil spelled another way. He couldn’t believe the witch would talk that way about the maiden in the tower! It wasn’t fair! Though doubtless the maiden was fair! But the pretty kind of fair, not the equality kind of fair, nor the pale kind of fair (like the witch), nor the cotton-candy-and-bad-rides kind of fair!
Goodness, I’m the narrator and even I’m getting confused. Let’s move on.
The prince, heeding my suggestion, tiptoed out of the cover of the trees. There was no sign of the witch. There was also no way up the tower now that the maiden’s fair hair was gone. The prince considered his options. He could call out to her, but what if
a stranger’s voice frightened her? She had no doubt been trapped in that tower a long time. He decided on a much sneakier plan.
He cleared his throat. “Rapunzel!” he croaked in his best witch voice. “Rapunzel?”
“What?” came the annoyed reply.
“Let down your fair hair!”
“But we just did that!”
The prince cleared his throat again. “Let down your fair hair!”
“Oh, fine!”
The prince looked nervously over his shoulder. If the witch came back now, he was toast. Figuratively. Or maybe even literally, if she was the turn-unfortunate-princes-into-toast kind of witch. He had never heard of that kind, but you never knew with witches.
The hair slid to a halt in front of him and he grabbed hold of it, still looking back toward the woods.
“Yuck,” he said, frowning. Whatever product Rapunzel used in her hair, it was … not working. The hair was slippery, almost slimy. So smooth he had a hard time holding tight. And the section beneath his hands had a huge, misshapen lump.
Well! He couldn’t judge her. After all, she’d been imprisoned in a tower. She probably just needed a good shampoo or two. Or fifty. He began climbing up the hair, one slippery, icky, slicky handhold at a time. The hair shifted and wriggled under his fingers. He climbed faster, looking straight up at the window.
Finally, gasping for breath, he heaved himself over the sill and tumbled into the room. It was dark after the brilliant sunshine outside. He couldn’t see much as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. He wiped his hands on his trousers, hoping the hair-feeling would go away soon. Touching his lucky matches for courage, he threw back his shoulders and stood with his feet apart and his fists on his hips.
“I’m here to—”
“Augh!” Rapunzel screamed.
The prince held up his hands, smiling his most princely smile. But he had been locked away for a long time, so it looked less princely and more a-strange-man-just-climbed-in-your-window-and-you-should-probably-find-a-weapon-ly. “Never fear! I’m here to save you! Quick, before the witch comes back.”
“What witch?”
“You know. Black dress. Fair complexion. Mean.”
“That’s my stepmother, you jerk. She’s not a witch!”
The prince frowned. “Oh. Well. But she has you trapped in this tower!”
“I’m not trapped.”
Maybe she was under a spell. So, not a toast-turning witch. A spell-casting witch. Even worse. Unless you really hate crumbs on your fingers, in which case the first kind would be worse. “Yes, you are trapped! The only way up or down is by climbing your hair, and you can’t very well climb your own hair, now, can you?”
Rapunzel spoke very slowly, like the prince was a small child. “There is a door.”
The prince laughed. She was definitely under a spell! Oh, what stories they would tell their friends after he finished rescuing her and they ran away together! “There’s no door! There’s only that window.”
Rapunzel pointed to the other side of the round room. The prince’s eyes were finally adjusting to the dim light inside. He saw that a set of stairs led down.
“But what good are stairs if there is no door?” he asked.
Rapunzel threw her hands up in the air, huffing in exasperation. (Exasperation is what you feel when you go to get your favorite cereal out of the pantry and someone put the box back inside already empty. Well, maybe you feel rage then. I certainly do.) “Did you bother walking around to the other side of the tower?”
“Of course I—” The prince stopped, frowning. He hadn’t, had he? (No, he didn’t. You would remember, because you just read that part.) “I assumed because of your hair, that—” He stopped again, frowning even frowninglier. Because now that his eyes had adjusted, he saw that Rapunzel did not quite match what he had imagined.
She was tall and round, much like the tower she lived in. Only she was not made of rocks. Few people are.
She was wearing lots of black eyeliner—which accented the killer glare she was giving the prince. Her clothes were black, her fingernails were black, her combat boots were black, and her Mohawk was black, too.
Her Mohawk. Which was definitely not a fair length of hair stretching all the way to the ground. “Where is your fair hair?” the prince whispered. A prickle of goose bumps rose on the back of his neck.
“Right here.” Rapunzel pointed toward the window. She started hauling up coil after coil after coil. The coils moved on their own as she piled them gently on the floor, stopping a couple times to pat them. “You poor dear,” she cooed. “Did the mean man climb up you?”
“That’s not hair.” The prince backed slowly away.
“Yes, it is! This is my fair hair.”
“That is not hair!”
“It is!”
“It isn’t!”
“It is!”
Oh dear. This could go on for quite some time. Clearly someone is confused. I’m going to request a spell-check to make sure I have the right words.
“This. Is. My. Fair. Herr!” Rapunzel shouted, stomping one boot-shod foot.
Ah ha! I see my error now. I thought she was saying hair, as in the thing that grows out of your head and on your arms and sometimes on your face far too early, as we will learn about much later. But really she was saying herr, which is the German word for “lord”!
“This is my fair Herr!” she said, almost at the end of the length of whatever was coming up through the window. “I won him at the fair, and he’s as lordly as any creature there ever was!”
The prince felt behind himself with trembling hands, trying to find the top of the stairs but too scared to turn his back on Rapunzel and her pet. By now, the undulating, wriggling coils filled most of the floor. He really should have asked me to clarify which type of fair Rapunzel had been referring to! And asked for spelling. Spelling things wrong can be very dangerous. (That’s why you have so many spelling tests in school. It’s not to be exasperating; it’s to potentially save your life in a situation exactly like this.)
The prince swallowed nervously. “Why do you live in this tower?”
“Because my stepmother wasn’t going to let me keep him anywhere else!”
“Why not?”
Finally, she finished pulling. Over the sill came the largest, hissingest, angriest head of a snake the prince had ever had the misfortune to see.
“Well, because my fair Herr has a terrible appetite. And look! You upset him so much, you made him throw up his supper. Poor Herr!”
The prince remembered the wriggling sack. He remembered the witch—the stepmother—muttering about a vile creature. And he remembered the odd lump he’d climbed past on his way up. He didn’t want to imagine what was now in a partially digested pile at the bottom of the tower.
(Don’t worry! Because the small pig had been so recently ingested, he survived. He was, at this very moment, running home to his dirt burrow. He couldn’t wait to wash snake spit off the hairs of his chinny chin chin, then tell his two brothers they really needed to invest in better building materials for houses: straw. Sticks. Maybe even bricks! Anything to keep them out of the bellies of other animals.)
Rapunzel, unaware of the fate of the little pig’s chinny chin chin, glared at the prince. She stroked her fair Herr on his head. His yellow eyes stared unblinkingly at the prince as his long, forked tongue tickled the air.
Did you know snakes smell with their tongues? I wonder what he thinks the prince smells like!
“Ssssssssssupper,” the snake answered.
Oh. Oh! Well. That’s unfortunate.
“My stepmother won’t be back for a few days. And my fair Herr has to eat. He’s not picky. He’ll eat anything.” Rapunzel raised an eyebrow at the prince. The snake had no eyebrows, but if he did, they would have been raised as well.
The prince’s eyebrows would have been raised in terror, but they were oddly missing. Like they had been burned off or something. But his forehead was definitely terrified.<
br />
The fair Herr slithered closer.
So the prince, who knew a thing or two about towers and gravity, did the only thing he could think of. He threw himself down the stairs. Falling was faster than walking. Each stone step jarred and bruised him, and he hit
every
single
step,
from the
top all the
way down to
the bottom.
He landed in an unprincely lump on the tile floor. There, he found a cheery kitchen, a series of framed photos of Rapunzel and her fair Herr, and the door he hadn’t been bright enough to find.
Limping, he threw open the door and stumbled into the sunshine. As soon as he made it to the trees, a trio of soldiers on horses surrounded him. The one who always delivered his food, Willhelm, gently nudged him.
“It’s not fair!” the prince shouted, pointing toward the tower.
“Fair or not, you’re coming with us.”
“No!” the prince said. “The Herr! The Herr!”
“We’ll be careful with your hair,” Willhelm said, rolling his eyes at the others. One of the soldiers grabbed the prince and threw him onto his horse. (Feeling guilty for whacking him so thoroughly on the head, she had gone for help. Which was good, because we would have hated for her to be around when Rapunzel was looking for new food for her fair Herr.)
“Back to your own tower, Prince Charring,” Willhelm said.
The prince nodded, still dazed from his fall. Back to his own, safe, snakeless tower. “No Herr,” he whispered. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”
Rapunzel leaned out her window, sighing. She looked at her fair Herr. He was her responsibility. And her stepmother was always nagging about responsibility. They were forbidden to leave the tower, but her poor snakey-poo had to eat!
And eat.
And eat.
And eat …
Let’s use one word here that has a single meaning we can all agree on: RUN!
Once upon a time in the next kingdom, several years before the prince learned the difference between fair hair and fair Herr, there lived a queen. There also lived a king, otherwise it would have been a queendom. But he isn’t important yet.