Beauty scoots sideways.
“Thank goodness. You have been sleeping for seven hours!”
More curious now than afraid, Beauty gathers up one sack, another, and the voice becomes clearer.
“You are in a house of cutthroat cannibal thieves.”
Beauty lifts twelve sacks before reaching the final, lumpy bag. She takes hold of the bottom seam and shakes out a bevy of bones. The dry, pearly bones vibrate and clatter on the wooden floor as the voice sings:
“I was once a beauty like you. Then my best friend’s beloved made me an improper proposal. When I spurned him, derided him for his disloyalty, he told my friend I had invited him to my bed. She brought me here and gave me three glasses of wine. The first white, the second red, the third yellow, which together rendered me paralyzed. Her parting words as she let in the thieves were: A woman as beautiful as you has not right to flirt with men. You are a common whore who deserves to die. The thieves lit a fire under the big, black kettle, cut me to pieces, cooked and ate me. Go now, quickly! Only one hour until the sun sets and the cutthroats will return. Run, run for your life!”
Sprinting down the west road, Beauty’s lungs ache and her tongue feels huge. She wills herself to run as she did when escaping some torture of her sisters. To her surprise and dismay, she cannot. Her body seems spongy and leaden. A sharp pain sears her right side and she sits in the middle of the road to catch her breath.
Pondering, as fairy tale beauties are fond of doing, Beauty concedes that Snow White may not have exaggerated the dangers of Grimm Forest. What am I to do when darkness falls? She opens the satchel, drinks three sips of elderberry wine, and decides to consult the mirror. As she reaches into the bag, an eddy of black smoke forms at her feet. It whirls, stretches, grows into a human shape, and the smoke dissipates to reveal an old man. He wears a hooded purple cape over a yellow tunic printed with runic symbols. A garland of henbane and nightshade crowns his head. His silver-white beard and mustache hang straight to his belt.
"No need to consult your mirror, Princess." The old man unfolds his webbed fingers. A golden key gleams in his palm. "Twenty paces forward, at the base of the giant black oak, is a door. This key fits the lock, and inside the tree is a passage to Glass Mountain."
Beauty blinks. "How do you know I'm searching for Glass Mountain?"
"Take the key, Beauty, and fulfill your destiny."
Beauty is about to touch the key when she's struck from behind, as if a heavy wooden swing has caught the back of her knees, and she's swung fifty feet into the air. Watching the ground diminish below her, Beauty sees a woman jump from the forest, grab the old man's beard and kiss him passionately as her other hand slips a jeweled dagger from her belt.
Beauty turns away and meets the face of the giant who holds her in his mammoth hand. She gapes at his bald bumpy head and ridged forehead that slants to such an extreme degree it nearly obscures his red eyes fixed on the road. He pulls his lips back in a grimace, displaying two rows of giant yellow grinders. Beauty is spiritually preparing to meet her maker when a sharp whistle sounds from below. The giant plucks the woman from the road and deposits her next to Beauty in his cupped hand.
"Are you all right?" the woman asks. Beauty doesn't answer; her eyes remain riveted to the giant's gruesome visage.
"Don't be afraid. He's my friend, Uele. My name's Rapunzel, what's yours?"
Beauty's finally breaks her stare and instantly, her fear vanishes. Rapunzel is an angel in a gossamer white gown; her complexion radiates a pink aura of health, her body is a fluid, graceful connection of curves, and her green,
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