3. Rapunzel
Rapunzel
It’s usually quiet in the tower at night.
Not peaceful-quiet, like in the books I read with cozy libraries or sleepy cottages.
No, this quiet hums with something else—something unnatural.
During the day, the forest below hums with life—birds darting between trees, squirrels chittering, strange little creatures singing their nonsense songs.
Sometimes, the braver animals venture close to the tower’s base, noses twitching, eyes bright with curiosity.
But never too close. It’s as if an invisible boundary holds them back, like they know something about this place—something dark and old and not meant to be touched.
At night, even they disappear. The hush falls heavy, and the silence presses against my ears, too loud to ignore.
So I sing to fill the void. Melodies I make up as I go.
Songs I’ve never learned yet seem to recall from memories I know don’t belong to me.
Anything to remind myself that I still exist and there is a world beyond this tower.
Singing fills me with… contentment. And the roots tangled in my hair seem to like it too.
They stretch and sigh like a cat basking in a patch of sunshine.
They seem less like chains keeping me captive and more like friends in those moments.
When I hear a thump against the outside wall of the tower, I tell myself it’s the wind. Or my overactive imagination. But the thump is followed by a grunt. A very real, very deep grunt. My heart lurches.
I lean out the window and peer into the darkness, oil lamp in hand. The light doesn’t reach far, but it’s enough to illuminate a figure dangling by a leg halfway up the tower. It’s not Dame Gothel. Too tall. Too wide.
A pair of muscular legs sway in the moonlight, one boot caught in a thick snarl of roots climbing the tower’s side. A massive figure is being dragged skyward, unconscious and slack-limbed.
This is new and highly unusual.
A rush of panic hits me.
“A visitor!” I whisper-shriek, spinning away from the window. “A real, actual—oh, gods, I’m in my nightgown!”
I dash to the wall, fumbling out of the sheer, floaty thing and into one of the two dresses I own that don’t have weird mildew stains. My hair, unfortunately, remains its usual chaotic mess. I don’t have time to fight with it, not when the forest is actively yeeting a man up the side of my tower.
When did it start doing that?
I rush back to the window with the lamp, holding it higher to see my guest more clearly. As the light spills over him, I gasp.
He’s huge. And green.
His face, slack in sleep, is rugged and scarred, tusks curling from his mouth. He looks fierce. Dangerous.
“An orc?” I ask aloud.
His eyelids flutter. Then snap open. Wild, confused, and glowing faintly in the dark. He comes alive with a startled roar, flailing as he realizes he’s suspended in midair.
“What the fuck is happening?” he roars.
“I—um—hi?” I offer, clutching the lamp.
“Let. Me. Go.” He enunciates the words clearly despite the whole tusk situation.
“I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose. I-I don’t have control over it!” I gesture frantically at the roots coiled around his middle. “It’s never done this before.”
“Lady, let me go!” His bellow shakes the walls of the tower.
Before I can explain further, the roots slither up the stone like tentacles and hurl him through the window like a sack of potatoes.
I barely move out of the way before he crashes onto the floorboards with a teeth-rattling thud.
The roots slither away like they did not just assault a full-grown orc.
Well, this is new.
I wince, stepping toward him. “Are you okay?”
“What the fuck is going on?” he snarls, brandishing what looks like a handmade knife.
I take a nervous step back. “You were... delivered?”
“Delivered?”
“By the forest.” I motion to the still-swaying roots by the window. It’s the best explanation I have for his unceremonious arrival. “The, um, trees dragged you up here. I swear it wasn’t me.”
His brow furrows, tusks glinting. “The gods-damned forest kidnapped me?”
“Apparently.”
He grunts, glaring around the room as if expecting someone else to be responsible. “First, the vines tried to eat me, now they’re tossing me at strange women in towers. What the hell is this realm?”
“Fable Forest,” I offer helpfully. “It’s kind of... enchanted.”
He pushes to his feet—barely missing the ceiling—and towers over me like a mountain of bad decisions and worse intentions.
I gape as I get my first good look at him. Deep emerald skin. Eyes like green fire. Muscles that could crush coconuts under a threadbare shirt. Scars lacing his arms and neck. He looks like a warrior. Or a villain. Or both.
Despite the shouting, the tusks, and his sheer intimidating size, he’s kind of gorgeous. Or maybe that’s the loneliness talking. I briefly wonder if that’s why the forest delivered him up the side of the tower, but file the thought away to examine more fully later.
“Um, please, take a seat,” I offer politely as if I’m offering him tea and finger sandwiches.
He looks at the chair. It's small. Wooden. Not built for orcs.
I smile sheepishly. “Perhaps you’ll be safer on the floor.”
He grunts, which I’m sure in Orc (Orcish? Orcalish?) means “yes.”
His thigh muscles ripple beneath his leather pants as he stretches out legs the size of tree trunks.
I smooth my dress nervously. “I’m Rapunzel. And this is… well, this is my tower.”
He eyes me warily. “Brannock. I was trying to get out of this gods-damned forest when I was yanked up here.” He mutters the last bit, still annoyed.
I nod sympathetically. “I’m sorry. Like I said, this place has a mind of its own. I’ve been up here for… well, I’m not sure. Time’s strange in Fable Forest. It’s like the trees breathe, and your sense of reality shifts.”
His gaze flicks to the writhing pile of roots that is my hair. “Is that… normal?”
“Nope.” I tug at a strand, and it squirms. “My hair is alive. It moves. Grows. Every day is a bad hair day.”
His eyes narrow as he follows the trail of my hair around the tower, noting how it coils over shelves, winds around table legs, and disappears into shadowy corners. “You’re tethered here? By your hair?”
I nod. “Like a goat.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “This is a nightmare.”
“Agreed.”
We lapse into silence. I should be afraid of him, but I’m not. Somehow, his presence eases my loneliness. Eases something inside me.
Brannock shifts, glancing toward the window. “So… no stairs?”
I shake my head. “No stairs. No door. Just the window. Dame Gothel brings supplies every week—clothes and food—but she never stays. And she never gives me enough of anything to make a rope out of.”
“Dame Gothel?” he echoes, eyebrows lifting.
“She’s the witch who raised me. She said I’m here for protection. From what, I have no idea.”
His expression softens slightly. “You’ve been alone all your life?”
I nod. “Except for the forest animals and the occasional hallucination.”
Something flickers in his eyes—understanding, maybe. Or sympathy. The fierce lines on his face ease, and for a moment, he doesn’t look quite so terrifying.
I pause, wanting to apologize again, but I’m not sorry. This man is special. I know it in my soul.
“Can I touch you?” I blurt.
His frown deepens. “What?”
“I-I need to make sure I’m not hallucinating. Again.”
He hesitates, then offers me his massive hand.
I place my fingers gently against his palm. It’s warm, solid, and callused. Not another dream or illusion spun by the tower, but real and vital.
“You’re real,” I whisper.
His fingers curl around mine, and everything falls away—the roots, the tower, the silence—as I gaze into his eyes. There’s only my heartbeat. And his. My stomach quivers.
“I don’t know why the forest brought you here,” I say, staring at our joined hands.
They’re so different—he’s big, green, and unyielding, and I’m soft, pale, and trembling—yet we feel so alike.
“But I think… I think maybe it was supposed to.” I move closer, touching his jaw with my free hand. “Perhaps you need somewhere safe too?”
His eyes flutter shut as if the contact is too much. As if he hasn’t been touched with tenderness in years. “You think I need safety?”
I nod, my fingertips brushing the edge of his jaw and tracing the faint line of a scar. “I think you’ve been running for a long time,” I murmur, knowing my words are true somehow. “And not just from danger.”
His lips twitch, like he might smile. As if the idea of safety is so foreign, it borders on a joke. When he opens his eyes again, they’re softer. Guarded but curious.
“I don’t run,” he says eventually. “I fight. I burn bridges. I break things and walk away. I’m not a good person.”
I shrug. “That’s okay. I’m not sure I am either.”
That earns me a deep chuckle that does wondrous things to my nether regions. My breath catches. I don’t dare move. Don’t dare blink.
Because if this is another dream, if he’s a dream, I never want to wake up.
“Nothing in this forest happens by accident,” I murmur. “And you… You don’t feel like an accident.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, his thumb brushes over my knuckles. Tentative. Testing.
A hush falls over the room. The kind of hush that only comes right before something important.
And then it hits me.
Not just a thought—a vision, blinding and sharp.
Brannock, standing over me, bloody and snarling. Protecting me. Fighting something—someone—I can’t see.
In the vision, he’s mine. And I’m his.
My breath hitches. My fingers twitch in his.
He stares at me, confused. “Are you okay?”
For the first time in forever, the tower feels… different. Not safe. Not free. But shared.
And I know beyond a doubt that this orc has changed everything because...
I beam at him. “You’re here to rescue me.”