Read Online Rapunzel, the One With All the Hair by Wendy Mass - Free Book Online Page B

did I,” I tell him, smiling. “You are very sneaky, Master Steven.”
    â€œStop,” he says, “you are making me blush.”
    I cannot help wondering what color blushing cheeks would be on someone who is the color of a lima bean, but I do not want to be rude and peer too closely. “So what do we do? Just stay the witch’s prisoners forever?”
    â€œBut I am not her prisoner,” he reminds me. “Although I can see how it would appear that way. I shall continue to bring you things to make your life here more bearable. Andeven while you sleep, I am protecting you, although you are unaware.”
    â€œBut I was aware,” I tell him, suddenly realizing what I should have figured out before. “The breathing that lulls me to sleep — that comes from you.”
    â€œYou can hear my breathing?”
    I nod. “I thought it must be a ghost.”
    He smiles. “My dear wife, Katherine, always tells me I am a heavy breather. Worse than the fluttering of a noble lady’s fan, she used to say.” His smile slowly fades and he looks sad.
    I hope he isn’t going to cry again! To cheer him up, I suggest we play a game. I am quite good at chess but, of course, we do not have a set.
    â€œI must decline your kind offer,” Steven says, springing up from the rug, looping his arm around the rope, and grasping it with both hands.
    Truly, the man (I cannot call him a creature now that we are friends) moves like the acrobat I saw perform once in Market Square.
    Steven twists his legs around the end of the rope and says, “It is almost morn, and one never knows when the witch will darken my door.”
    â€œWhen shall I see you again?” I call after him as he slithers up the rope at a speed I would have previously thought quite impossible. By the time I finish my question, he is already closing the trapdoor.
    â€œI am always here when you need me,” he calls down as he pulls the door shut. Those hinges certainly are greased with magic oil, because they do not make even a whisper. The tower seems smaller, somehow, now that I am alone again. With a sigh, I blow out the wick and climb onto the “bed.” I strain my ears until I can hear Steven’s rhythmic, steady breathing. I feel myself drifting off to that place where everything is fuzzy but you know you are not yet asleep. Something is nagging at me. It is as though the answer to a riddle is right around the corner of my brain, yet I cannot reach it. I am not even sure what the riddle is, but I know it is vital that I figure it out.

Father has called Elkin and me down to the sitting room to go over the rules for the hunt. It is cool for a summer eve, and the three of us are seated in high-back leather chairs in front of the fireplace. Mum and Annabelle are here, too. Mum is busy embroidering gems onto a new dress. (Although she has a large staff to assemble her considerable wardrobe, she says sewing relaxes her. I think Mum and I have more in common in terms of our artistic creativity then she will admit). Annabelle is pretending to play with her collection of tiny wooden dolls, but whenever Mum isn’t looking, she throws one of them into the fire. I worry about that child.
    Father begins the lecture by talking about the virtues of the longbow versus the crossbow, how one can fire off many more arrows per minute with the longbow, thereby increasing one’s chances of successfully reaching one’s target. When he moves on to how to keep an animal in your line of sight, I stop listening. I will not be shooting any arrows. Well, unless my tomato assault fails. Even then, I do not think one can vanquish a troll with a bow and arrow. Certainly I cannot.While Father speaks, I go over Andrew’s map in my head. I figure the better I know the path ahead of time, the swifter I will reach the cave without being missed by the hunting party.
    â€œBenjamin,” Father rumbles, “are you