Chapter 6

Apparently, I had done all I needed to do with Rapunzel, 'cause seemed that I was like that time-tripped dude in that TV show: I would move on when everything was done and right.

You remember the show, right? (The first star got killed on set, and the replacement is now on some Star Trek spin-off. As if that doesn't describe a lot of actors.)

Anyway, this time I woke up in a gutter, just as a Mercedes pulled up and splashed me.

"Huh?" I asked, quite succinctly while trying to wipe the water from my eyes. My eyes were level with an exquisite pair of ankles, which suddenly pulled away from me.

"How did this... creature... get here? Please remove the rabble!" a uniformed man said, waving his arms maniacally. It was almost as if I had X-ray eyes, 'cause I could almost see the stick shoved up his ass.

I looked up at a beautiful woman with short blonde hair. She regarded my filthy figure with caring and understanding. I glanced at the Mercedes, complete with a driver holding the back door open for his passengers.

This wasn't some forested glade. The last I knew I had been in a tower with Rapunzel, giving her more than her dreams. Now I was a gutter-snipe at the well-heeled toes of an elegant lady who was...

Familiar.

"Don't get in that car," I said, standing. God, I was wet. I really had been lying in a gutter. I knew I smelled foul. But I didn't know how long I had here, so I looked her in the eye.

"Is there something I might help you with?" she asked with a regal British accent. Maybe she had once been a mere kindergarten teacher, but I had just stepped into a modern-day fairy tale whose unhappy ending I could change. Not a fairy-tale princess, a real one, a tragic one unless I could save her.

"Don't get into that car. Your driver has been drinking."

"Go get yourself a cuppa or whatever else you might need," her escort said, trying to give me money. I pushed his hand away. I only appeared at turning points. This had to be the night.

"Please don't get into that Mercedes."

"Do you require help?" she asked.

Just then two men in uniform charged me. I tried to duck their blows, but then I was hit. My head hit the curb and everything went... black.

Chapter 7

I awoke lying flat on my face and breathing dirt, which I quickly determined, due to my acute senses and keen mind, was because I was lying on a dirt road. There were corn fields to my right and left, stretching into the distance in the wan moonlight. I pulled myself to my feet and looked down the road. Nothing.

Thank god. I was worried that I was about to be surrounded by maniacal children intent on killing all adults in a bloody harvest ritual. I stood, grateful that again, apparently, I had awakened clean. I'd hate to smell like that sewer, and failure. I had to take my mind off it. My failure. And my nose liked being away from the gutter.

The moon was full, but shadows fell beneath the tall trees over the road in that direction. The leaves rattled maliciously in the darkness, whispering secrets to the ghosts and demons that surely lived nearby.

I decided that really wasn't a good direction to go in.

I turned around to see if the other option was any more inviting, and was nearly bowled over by a really big, dumb-looking guy.

What the fuck was this? Where were the damsels in distress? I needed some damselling to get that black Mercedes out of my mind!

I looked around his formidable form and there was nothing. Just more of the same dirt road. Not even a good, old-fashioned haunted forest. "Yo, dude, watch where you're going," I said, looking up at this farmer's son. "Would you happen to know where I can find the damsel, or damsels, I'm supposed to help?"

All I could figure right now was that the damsels must be in the woods. So when he didn't immediately reply, I turned toward the thick trees and started walking, with behemoth, the walking lunkhead, following behind me.

Once among the foreboding groves, which I had thought were a mere hundred or so feet long, I realized it was a full-fledged spooky, miles-deep forest.

"I do not understand what you speak about," the doofus said, again coming up behind me. "But I can tell you that when I was young, my mother used to tell my brother and me the story of Brier Rose, a beautiful, modest, sweet damsel. That is the only damsel of which I know."

"Okay, so tell." He began walking again, and I had to all but run to keep up with him.

"Tell what?"

"Brier Rose. What's the sitch?"

He stopped and looked at me. "You speak queerly. I do not quite understand most of which you say."

"Tell me about Brier Rose."

"I only know that which my mother told me."

"And what was that?" I was being patient, trying to pull his story out, word by word. And if he hadn't been built like a stone wall, I'd have already jumped him and beaten the crap out of him, just to make him talk to me.

"Turn right at the next town, and you'll find it."

"What's it?"

"A huge brier hedge, full of thorns and prickles. One large enough to cover a castle." He turned to me, earnest. "It is all but a legend. But the damsel within all that is the only one of which I've ever heard, before I met you."

His mother told him a fairy tale, and he believed it.

"I have always been tempted to try to help that maiden myself, but I was afraid of the briers and dragons and other things between myself and her."

I contemplated following him. After all, maybe he needed my help as well. But when I considered the seriously hot damsel who needed me even more, he left my thoughts entirely.

After all, what was a poor, simple butch to do?