Elsa of Corona: Chapter 36, Part 3
Jun. 3rd, 2015 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflydreamingNothing unusual happened when Elsa passed through the vines and the short tunnel that passed through the rock wall. She entered the valley and looked behind her. The tunnel was still there. She could the the silhouette of Maximus through the vines.
She turned back to the view of the valley in front of her. Perhaps it was as serene as it appeared.
She blew a short note on the whistle so that Maximus would know all was well. It was not far to the tall tower that stood in the center of the valley, and she started toward it, remaining vigilant against the unexpected.
Which would be... what? she wondered. Semantics aside, meeting Rapunzel was Elsa's first contact with magic other than her own. Rapunzel had been making a point of wanting to learn from Elsa, but Elsa knew that her cousin held knowledge about magic that Elsa didn't have. What kind of witch was Mother Gothel? How did her magic manifest? She seemed like an ordinary -- though physically strong -- human woman when Elsa fought and bound her.
Elsa knew that she could get caught up in her wonderings if she allowed herself. Now was not the time for thinking in that direction. Still, the valley around her was grand and natural, without a mark of magic's sickness. Even the tower's strange architecture had a quixotic beauty. Beyond the tower, the shining path of a waterfall cut through the surrounding stone cliffs. The waterfall disappeared into low trees and emerged as the stream passing through the valley. At the base of the tower, the stream collected in a pond.
She easily spotted the ground-level door. It was surrounded by broken mortar and stone. When she reached it, Elsa picked up a handful of the mortar. It crumbled in her fingers like dry, unfired clay. She examined the mortar of the stones that made the walls of the tower and found it to be firm, normal mortar. Up close, the tower seemed to almost be an ordinary building.
She took out the whistle, raised her face to the clear sky, and blew again. She was going to go into the tower. She would signal again when she reached the window above.
The door opened easily. Wobbily on its hinges, it closed with more difficulty. When closed, the interior of the tower filled with a gloom. She left the door open a few inches to provide more light, but not so much that she could be followed without a flood of light alerting her to the opened door. The dust on the stairs showed the recent passage of bare feet scuffled with shoe prints in two sizes. Elsa added her own shoe prints as she made her way up the stairs.
Neglect and disuse decorated floor after floor as she moved up the levels of the tower. That seemed peculiar until Elsa got to the final, highest floor, and saw that it was the only one that showed evidence of anyone living in the tower. Clearly, only the highest floor had been used in years. Unlike the lower floors, the inhabited floor connected to the penultimate level with a ladder, not stairs. Elsa climbed back down and found where a flight of stairs had been removed, and the passway boarded over.
She returned to the top level and went to where the missing stairway would have ended. The space was disguised by the flooring. A heavy closet cabinet stood directly over it.
Elsa opened closets and cabinets. As she made her way around the small space, her curiosity and apprehension changed to a dismay. In fifteen minutes, she walked through all the world that Rapunzel had known for eighteen years. Only one room had a door that could be shut and locked. The locks on the furniture were simple; a skeleton key was enough to get them open. The wardrobe and chests in the room held a wealth of clothing, shoes, hats, jewelry, and personal mementos. It was the only room whose walls were plain. Everywhere else in the tower, murals covered every bit of wall and ceiling.
The plain room must have been Mother Gothel's bedroom. Elsa found a bed in another room that only had a curtain across the doorway. She shuddered when she realized the impossibility of privacy. Many families lived without privacy, all in one room together with perhaps no more than a sleeping loft. Wealthier homes might have interior doors and multiple rooms. Rarely had Elsa seen the imbalance of Rapunzel's tower, and certainly not with a household of two women.
Rapunzel's room was little more than a large bed inside close walls, though the walls themselves were a marvel. For a long while, Elsa leaned against a bedpost and looked at the painted images. The lower parts of the walls showed having been painted over many times. Elsa imagined that Rapunzel had started painting them as a child, and as she grew in height and skill, she painted over her earlier art.
Gothel's bedroom could have belonged in a completely different home from the rest of the tower. It was clean, but slightly untidy inside the lockable furnishings. Gothel's vanity drawers held beads and bangles in careless disarray. In the central room, the orderly contents of any drawer Elsa opened implied that Rapunzel had tidied every square of space that she could tidy. She found Rapunzel's box of paints and her box of sewing. She paged through the three old books she found on a shelf. In the kitchen, she found that the oven still protected live coals. Thinking about what Rapunzel's life must have been, Elsa easily extinguished the coals with a crawling frost.
The largest window in the tower was as large as a door. Elsa stepped onto the low windowsill and looked out at the view. The window more-or-less faced the direction of Corona Castle, though nothing of the castle or harbor was visible. A pulley with no rope hung over the window. Elsa blew on her whistle. To her surprise, it did not echo as it should have done.
The valley was almost certainly ensorcelled so that it would not be easily found. Maybe it had also been charmed to prevent sounds from carrying, sounds such as a crying child, singing, or shouts. Experimentally, Elsa took in a deep breath and then yelled out her loudest, "Hello!" Not the least sound of echo answered back.
She returned to Mother Gothel's room and became convinced that the tower was not Gothel's only abode. She had the same feeling as when she had been called in to settle a domestic dispute between a townsman and his wife, and discovered through investigation that the townsman had been keeping a second household and family who knew nothing of the first family. The same sense of incompleteness resonated from Gothel's room as it had from the man's second home. Somewhere, Gothel must also have a house or cottage where she kept the truest part of her nature, possibly with the garden that supplied food for the tower. A small farm was unlikely, because a farm could not be run alone, though Elsa would not eliminate it from possibilities.
Since it seemed that Maximus would not have been able to hear her whistles, Elsa determined that she should return to him quickly. The tower seemed safe enough to send men later to bring back anything that Rapunzel might want from it. Elsa gathered up the books and the box of paints to take immediately. They seemed like possessions that would be dearest to Rapunzel.
She took a final look at Rapunzel's small world. In spite of all the bright paintings on the walls, the place gave Elsa a lonely filling that squeezed her heart. Only one door in the space had a lock, but the tower itself was like an encompassing lock, with the window like keyhole through which Rapunzel had peered out at the world denied to her.
Elsa shut the trap door and hurried down the levels of the tower. She shut the bottom door behind her to prevent wild animals from entering. They could have the tower after Rapunzel had taken away anything she wanted.
Jogging back to Maximus, Elsa wondered if Rapunzel would miss the tiny world that had been her home.
ooo
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Date: 2015-06-04 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-05 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-05 09:18 pm (UTC)I definitely wouldn't expect you to read 90,000 words of Frozen and Tangled crossover fanfic, LOL. At least the canon is more familiar -- Disney princess movies being from fairytales -- than the anime fanfic I write!
Thanks for reading. ^_^