“Let’s start by getting your spring water sample,” he says, planting a kiss on her forehead, “and leaving the creepy caves. Then we’ll figure it out from there.”
She laughs at that and makes herself keep going up the coiling pathway. “Fine. So…Hughes. You said the leader wasn’t there this time. What if it’s him?”
“Could be,” Eugene says uncertainly. “They wore a mask with a voice changer and big bulky robes. But they didn’t talk like him, if that makes sense.”
“Moonface could be trying to throw us off.” Rapunzel hums more of the lullaby. Even more of the tunnel lights up this time, the roots like frozen lightning striking all around them.
“Moon Eye,” Eugene corrects. “The mask is shaped like a moon eye moth. Big crescent marks on the wings.” He winces as an enormous root by his head swells with light almost too bright to see. “Freckles—how do you feel about that nickname, by the way?”
Rapunzel considers. “Better than Punzie?”
“Oof. We can do better. Anyway, howbigdo you think these plants are?” He ducks under another huge root, this one nearly as wide as his torso.
“Maybe the starlight’s making them grow bigger than they should,” Rapunzel speculates.
Then the next turn of the passage gapes into an opening, and she finds she’s half right.
They climb over another set of roots and into another cave, not as immense as the underground harbor but still yawning broad and high, nearly four stories by Rapunzel’s estimate. A path has been cut into the wall ringing the hollow, with stairs descending to an expanse of bare wet stone at the bottom. A glittering gradient marks the history of a retreating waterline, the highest levels just a faint dusting, the lowest stripe of residue sparkling like diamonds along the floor. More roots of every size, some even bigger than Maximus, shape a drunken lattice over every surface.
And at the heart of that lattice, on the far side of the cavern, shines a single massive tree.
Clearly it was never meant to be here, in what should be a lively subterranean spring. It’s growing around what looks like the remains of one of the giant water screws Rapunzel saw on her sunmill tour, the enclosing barrel reduced to rusting peels of iron, the screw shaft’s spiraling ribs strangled by a gnarled, bulbous pewter trunk. There’s something squat and stunted about the proportions of its branches, even though they’re jammed tight up against the cave’s stalactites as if trying topush the lid off a pot. The dark leaves, all vibrant indigos, violets, even inky blacks, grow in billowing clusters of small round blots. Like its roots, the tree marbles with pearly light, and when Rapunzel whispers“Starlight, gleam and glow,”luminous ripples race over every twig.
Then, just as she spots a series of divots in the ground, the ripples converge on a single point. Crystalline light bursts from a tiny dangling shape on the lowest branch, blindingly bright.
“Gah!” Rapunzel throws a hand up to block the blaze. By the time she can see again, Eugene’s moved past her, headed for the stairs. “Eugene, wait!”
“I’m just going to check out what that thing was,” he calls back to her.
Rapunzel rushes after him and catches his elbow just as he reaches the bottom step. “Stop! Look—” She points to the ground.
It’s not stone, but slick mud.
And there’s already one trail of shallow footprints leading to the tree and back.
Someone’s already been down here.
“Hooo, good catch.” Eugene steps backward up the stairs. “But that means someone alreadyknowsabout the tree. And if they aren’t bothering to cover their tracks, they don’t expect to get caught.”
“I think…this is what’s left of the spring.” Rapunzel’s stomach flops. “This tree is absorbing almost all the water and starlight before it reaches the rest of the island. And…” Shepeers across the mud, to the tiny ball still shining in the tree. “I think that’s anapple.”
“Either Enver’s been lying about testing the spring,” Eugene says grimly, “or he’s been lying about the poison.”
“It—it could be a way to filter out the poison. Plants can absorb toxins.” Rapunzel doesn’t know why she keeps looking for a way out for the king. Maybe it’s because she’s tried so hard not to see Gothel in him, to leave the tower behind. Maybe it’s because she wants to find a wound she can still heal, even without the magic of the sundrop.
Maybe that’s why he showed her a wound as big as a kingdom.
“Maybe.” Eugene, to his credit, keeps nearly all the skepticism from his voice. “So we’ve got secret creepy caves, secret creepy giant apple tree, and—well, I guess the boats aren’t creepy, just secret. If we poke around much more without looping in Cressien, he’s going to strangle us with his crochet yarn.”
Eugene is rarely cautious on principle, so Rapunzel takes that as a good indicator they’ve pushed their luck enough for the night. “Okay. We have to rest up for the reception ball tomorrow anyway.”
Eugene catches her hand with a grin and starts leading her back up the stairs. “Please. I’m a professional liar—you’ll have to try harder than that. I don’t believe you’re going to sleep a wink.”
Rapunzel, in fact, does not.
She stays up nearly to sunrise filling her sketchbook with the images crowding her head like overgrown roots: the ships, the tree, the caves. The sunmills with their crystal sails. The verette charms at the hospital. Her feet are dirty, her hands are smudged with color and graphite, and Pascal is napping on the bedspread; she feels almost like her old self again, just without the weight of her hair.
But after she makes herself finally put the sketchbook down and wash up for bed (a few hours’ sleep is better than none), one more root of a thought keeps digging persistently around her skull.
