Once Upon a Time: The Villains Read Online Free PDF Page A

my heart. She would be mine again. I could feel it. All I needed to do was wait. Be patient a little while longer.
    “He will always love me,” she repeated stubbornly, a trait I was beginning to hate. “Arthur loves me enough to die for me.”
    An image of my mother, crouched against the stones hurtling toward her, flashed against my thoughts. How dare she bring the memory to mind! How dare Arthur be compared to my mother.
    I slammed my palm against the door, making it shake with my anger. “Then let him die.”
    “Even then I would love him,” I heard her say. “I will always love him.”
    “Love dies when people die.” I spoke rashly, but I was sick at heart. I could not stay and listen to her pathetic hold on hope. How did she do it? How could she know for sure he still cared, would always care? I went outside and tended my garden, furiously digging to vent my anger and the pain of a death long forgotten. From afar, I heard Rapunzel sing, a lonely, sad song that assaulted my heart.
    So far my plan to starve her into submission had not worked. But I had faith. Her lack of food and her weakened state caused me only slight worry. She was my daughter after all. She was stubborn. But she would come around. Eventually.
    That evening an oppressive heat settled over the forest. I threw open my bedroom windows and called in a light breeze, too tired to do much more than that. As I lay in bed, pondering what I should do to recapture my daughter’s love, I heard the oddest thing. A deep voice calling my daughter’s name. I rushed to the window. The night poured over the forest in shades of black and deep gray while the moon darted from one cloud cluster to another. I listened intently, but what I heard had grown familiar to my ears. My daughter crying.
    I returned to my bed. I had just imagined the voice on the wind. But as I laid my head upon the pillow, a strange thud shook the side of the manor. I returned to the window.
    Again I listened. I told the night creatures to quiet, demanded the brook behind the manor to slow its gurgling and for the wind to stop rustling the leaves. All grew still, and within the vacuum of quiet, I heard the step, pull and grunt of climbing. Someone was out there, outside.
    This time, I called on the moon to come out of hiding. As it peeked from behind a cloud bank, I lifted my gaze to the right and then the left. What I saw shocked even me. There, dangling more than fifty feet from the ground was the boy, Arthur. His face shone wet with the healing tears of my daughter’s love for him. He could see.
    Step, pull, step, pull. He climbed the side of the manor, heading straight for the tower with the help of a thick rope. But how?
    I peered up toward the tower window and spied my daughter’s tear-streaked, yet happy face straining along with Arthur, her love. She eagerly pulled on the rope like a fisherman hauling in a precious catch.
    “No!” I screamed. He would take her, and I would be left alone. Again. I couldn’t be left alone.
    I called on the wind. I called on the rain. Lash! Whip! Drive him away! Arthur slammed against the tower; his feet desperately fought for balance against the slick stones. My efforts led to no avail. The boy who had declared his love had reached the tower room.
    An inhuman scream wrenched from my gut and poured from my lips. I nearly doubled over with the pain of Rapunzel’s betrayal. How could she? How could my daughter, the only one I had ever lavished my love on, betray me like this? She was supposed to be weak from lack of food. She was supposed to be weak in mind. She was supposed to be weak in spirit, mourning the knowledge that her love was gone for good. I had been tricked most thoroughly, for she was strong, taking her lover into her arms and holding him tight.
    I pounded my fists against the window sill. “Who fed her?” I cried to the forest. “Who gave her water?” I demanded.
    The forest creatures were strangely quiet. Guilt had stolen their