Chapter 33

The Brownie

Serving good food to a hungry bunch boosts a brownie’s contentedness beyond count. I baked eggs ’n such, which is called a crust-less quiche here, found lovely pickles in the freezalator, and dried fruits in the larder. Thank goodness there were more of those po-tae-toe chips to fill up the chinks in yon growing Cyclops. He seemed a happy lad and adjusting well to the Blink.

I was taking the dirty dishes to the sink and, in a flash, there I was, back in the larder at the castle again. On the flagstones, of my former most beloved spot in the keep, a trap had closed on a giant rat. Rats! In MY larder! Well, I never. “Blink for a thrice and look what happens,” I muttered to myself. I could not leave such a mess and sped to tidy. It was imperative I check on Princess Rapunzel.

She was nae in the tower, but the most trusted maid of Princess Phrysia sat on the window ledge, crying in her apron.

“I thought she was Princess Phrysia!” she wailed and blew her nose on the last clean bit of cloth.

“Hush your mewling! Where are the princesses?”

“I don’t know!” she wailed.

I heard a fey sound, like dice clattering. The maid, though larger than I, cowered behind me. The clattering became louder, and then skeletal fingers appeared at the sill. The bones gripped hard as a grinning skull with drying flesh on it appeared. A figure shrouded in a gray cloak arose behind the nightmarish skeleton. A barefoot stepped on the head, and the skull’s teeth clipped shut. The towering, gray clad figure lowered his cowl.

“Necromancy, blasphemy,” the maid whispered and made the sign of the evil eye.

The voice of the necromancer bellowed, “Where is my Rapunzel?”

The maid fainted at the sound of his voice and my ears--they bled.

This was bad, very bad. While Rapunzel and Phrysia were away studying their arts, unbeknownst to any, I visited them. Every half moon, I popped over to chitty chat and drink a wee cuppa before bed time.

I worried so about Princess Rapunzel. So many nights the poor lass barely spoke, so overcome with exhaustion. She would even doze off and dribble my special tea on her gown. I asked her to ken the what’s what of it, but she lauded the necromancer and swore he did his best to mold her into the most powerful sorceress of all ages. When her mind seriously twisted, and I understood naught, I visited in secret. I still have sleepmares of it, I do, so horrible was the necromancer’s methods.

I could nae break the bewitching spell he wove over the princess. Stiffening my spine, one eve I visited Himself. Himself I name him because his own self is all that matters to him.

His spells slid off me as had always Rapunzel’s, and it vexed him to no end, but he tried to act as if it not. Curious about me, he was. He had nae experience with the brownies. He wanted to study me, to see how I resisted him and the ways of my transportation magic. Neither he nor the Princess Rapunzel can travel instantly from one place to another and he hated this lack.

He viewed me simple and this I allowed, but then the clever brownie tricked and trapped Himself as I trap trespassing nuisances in my larder. I did not tell Rapunzel of this. Merely that her training was finished, and she needed to come home. I knew she was confused but had not realized how much the madness gripped her.

Himself’s accusing tone rattled me wee bones, “You stole her from me and entrapped the two of us, but she escaped and came to me. Thinking me dead, she did not realize I was bespelled. How thoughtful of you, arranging me in my ancestral catacombs. The spell was broken when she plucked a single petal from the rose you gave me. Though no longer tranced, it took time for me to find my inner power to wake, so she left, believing me dead.”

When the necromancer stepped down into the tower, a skeleton dragged itself over the sill, then another and another until the tower near filled with bones.

“Princess Rapunzel escaped?”

He stroked his cadaver-white chin. “So, you did not know. How intriguing. I have a need of you, but not the dithering wench.” He snapped his fingers and the skeletons sped to grab me. I nae saw what they did to the maid, but she screamed a very, very long time. The dead begrudge the living and the vile things relish torture.