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ariel-seagull-wings · 3 years ago

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TOP 12 PORTRAYALS OF RAPUNZEL

@princesssarisa @sunlit-music @superkingofpriderock @mademoiselle-princesse @amalthea9 @theancientvaleofsoulmaking @astrangechoiceoffavourites @notyouraveragejulie @tilthenextbluemoon @giuliettaluce

Rapunzel, Rapunzel: lay down your hair so i can climb the golden stair!

These are the words to call the lady named after a vegetable, so one can climb her hair and visit the tower where she is kept prisoner. At the same time that she is known for her exotic name and very long hair, personality wise Rapunzel tends to get very underestimated. Some adaptations gaved her a pretty passive role, and pop culture parodies would usually paint her as “just a girl who cries for the Prince to save her”, downplaying the inteligence and resilience to adapt into harsh situations that she showed in the original Brothers Grimm’s tale. So today, i will share my twelve favorite portrayals of the long haired heroine, that showed respect to her, gaved her carisma and made justice to her strenghts.

12º The version from ‘The Story of Rapunzel’ (1951)

At the start of his career as a stop motion animator, Ray Harryhausen made, with the collaboration of his relatives, a series of shorts based on fairy tales. Those shorts were ‘The Mother Goose Stories’, ‘The Tortoise and The Hare’, ‘The Story of Rapunzel’, ‘The Story of Hansel and Gretel’, ‘The Story of Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘The Story of King Midas’ (when this tale started to be taken out of greek mythology and be perceived as a medieval fairy tale in the public conscience), where the characters were silent and the voice was given to a narrator. This encarnation of Rapunzel is more on the naive and passive spectrum, but i like her design and the fact she is animated in stop motion, plus the short is historically significant for being one of the early atempts to adapt her tale , and that’s why she has a place on this ranking.

11º The version from Simsala Grimm (1999)

In this german-french, two plushies, Yoyo and Doc Croc, receive life from a magic book to have adventures inside the Brother’s Grimm tales. They go to the tale of Rapunzel and help her and Prince Egmond get together. This encarnation of Rapunzel is kept as both prisoner and apprentice of Frau Gothel, who wants to turn the young woman into a mean spirited sorceress like her. But Rapunzel can only make spells that create pretty and merry things, like squirrels and birds. It’s a nice touch of humour, and that grants her the Eleventh Place at this ranking.

10º Mackenzie Mauzy in Disney’s Into the Woods (2014)

This movie as a whole is a weak adaptation of the now classic Broadway stage musical. But it had some enjoyable elements, one of them being Mackenzie Mauzy’s performance as Rapunzel. Mauzy has a short time on screen, but in that short time she brings beauty, grace, melancholy and anger to the role, and this makes it stand out enough to be the Tenth Place in this ranking.

09º Linda Purl in Timeless Tales from Hallmark (1990-91)

Timeless Tales from Hallmark was a direct to video series that had a live action hosted by Olivia Newton John and animated segments showing the fairy tale of the day, animated by the Hannah-Barbera studio. Purl’s Rapunzel is the romantic dreamer archetype, who sings her wish to be free. She has two encounters with the Prince before getting caught by the Witch Scarlotta, having her hair cutted and exiled to the distant woods. She reunites with the Prince, who has been turned into a blue bird (i see what you did there, screenwriters), and breaks the spell over him with her tears. She should smell more onions to cry and bottle those tears, that can be very usefull.

08º Tisha Campbell in Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1995)

In the bayous of Louisiana, Rapunzel is taken from her parents by Zenobia the Hoodoo Diva (played by Whoopi Goldberg, by the way), who seeks to make her a protege and shows her such neat tricks as voodoo dolls and shrinking her head down. Rapunzel is reluctant to do this when she sees Zenobia is hurting innocent creatures. Rapunzel soon attracts a handsome Creole prince, who must rescue Rapunzel and reunite her with her parents, but Zenobia seeks to thwart the interloper. One of the first african-american portrayals, this kind yet rebellious encarnation is a refreshing take on the character, and that is why she takes the Eight Place here.

07º Mandy Moore in Disney’s Tangled (2010)

After her mother dranked a tea made of a magical flower, Rapunzel was born with a magical hair that is able to heal any desease and rejuvenate anyone who touches it. Because of that, she was kidnapped and emprisoned in a Tower by Gothel, who raises Rapunzel to be insecure and afrayed of the outside world. But her curiosity is more powerfull, and with the guidance of a thief named Flinn Rider, the young lady escapes the Tower and goes on a journey to discover both what is scary and what is beautifull on the outside world with her own eyes, along the way captivating people with her merry and spontaneous personality, wich gives her the Seventh Place on this list.

06º Pamela Winslow Kashani in American Playhouse: Into the Woods (1991)

The lady who originated the role in the Broadway stage musical. Like Mackenzie Mauzy, Pamela Winslow Kashani brings the beauty, the grance, the melancholy and the anger to the role, but with an extra touch of energetic humour, taking advantage of the fact that she is in a stage show and getting intense as possible. That humour in the First Act is what makes her PTSD and tragic death in the Second Act all the more heartbreaking. Plus, she probably has the most beautifull singing voice ever gaved to a Rapunzel encarnation, and sometimes that is enough to earn a place in my rankings.

05º Mitsuko Horie/Lara Cody in Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (1988-89)

This encarnation has a tragic backstory, having been forgotten by her parents after they received a memory spell from the Witch and they had three more kids after her. She is raised in the Tower as the Witch’s granddaughter, and develops a great talent to play the harp. Is the sound of that harp that attracts the atention of the Prince, who comes to the tower and conquers Rapunzel’s love. Sadly, when they are making plans on how to take her away from the Tower, the Witch sees the Prince climbing down, so she cuts Rapunzel’s hair and beats her till unconsciousness before exiling the poor young woman in the desert, where she learns to survive while raising the son that she conceived with the Prince, who searches for Rapunzel despite being blinded by thorns.

04º Luisa Wietzorek in Sechs Auf Einen Streich (2009)

This adaptation gives some interesting touches to Rapunzel’s story and character: until age 12, she lived a nomadic life, travelling in Gothel’s donkey pulled cart. But one day Gothel spots Rapunzel talking with a young boy, and decides to lock her in the Tower, where there is a magic golden haircomb that makes Rapunzel’s hair grow to be used as a ladder by her adoptive mother. Years pass, and the destiny brings the Prince, who was the young boy of the pass, to the Tower where the now grown up Rapunzel lives, and she has to face a dilema: continuing to live in the Tower, that brings the feel of comfort and safety, or taking risks and running away to freedom with the Prince she fell in love with.

03º Kelly Sheridan in Barbie as Rapunzel (2002)

This was my first animated adaptation of the fairy tale, and still is my favorite. In this movie, while giving some painting lessons to her little sister, Barbie tells a version of the Rapunzel story to encourage her creativity: kidnapped as a baby by the Witch Gothel, Rapunzel was raised as a house maid, receiving constant verbal mistreatments. But, thanks to her friendship with a rabbit named Hobie and a dragon cub (who still needs to learn how to fly) called Penelope, and her love of painting, the young long haired lady never lets her spirit be broken, always dreaming of someday go to live free in a castle by the sea. One night, she is surprised to find a haircomb that turns into a magic paint brush, wich can make a portal where she can escape and explore the ouside world, and in her first journey, she meets and falls in love with the dashing Prince Stefan, while asking him to not his name to her, because she is afrayed of being forced to tell it to Gothel. And she doesn’t stay long, because she fears that Gothel will get revenge on Hugo, Penelope’s father, for her escape. Talk about having a great sense of altruism, who wouldn’t want to have this lady as their best friend?!

02º Sylvia Wolff in Rapunzel oder Der Zauber der Tränen (1988)

This german TV Movie combines the tale of Rapunzel with another, more obscure tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, called Maid Maleen. In this version, Rapunzel growed up very acustomed to the comfort and rich life provided by the Old Witch, using a magic reel to roll her hair in and make it grow to be used as a latter. Even tough she is in love with Prince Mathias, she is afrayed of going to the outside world. Later, not being enough that the Old Witch discovers her secret, cuts of her hair and blinds Prince Mathias, the King, after learning the existence of a maiden in the tower who becamed the love of his son, orders his troops to search the tower and seal its window, because he wants Mathias to marry another neighbour princess he arranged for him! Fortunally one of the soldiers takes enough pity to let a loose brick so Rapunzel can breath. She tries to use the point reel to scratch the clay that glues the bricks, and after cutting herself in the reel and crying over it, the reel regains magic, floating, opening the bricks, helping her to escape to the outside world and search for her beloved Mathias...

And my Number One favorite portrayal of Rapunzel is:

01º Shelley Duvall in Faerie Tale Theatre (1983)

There were some small changes made in some detailles of the story (radishes replacing rampion to be more familiar with international, non german audiences, insinuation that the Peasants Wife’s craving of the vegetal was a spell purposefully cast by the Witch, Rapunzel being traped in the Tower at adulthood instead of age twelve and a talking parrot/macaw that tells the Witch of the Prince’s visits), but as a whole, this is probably the most faithfull adaptation of the Brothers Grimm tale, and is all the more benefited for it, specially Rapunzel’s character, portrayed by the shows herself, Shelley Duvall. Duvall presented a very sincere passion for the source material, and in her performance, she showed a deep understanding of Rapunzel’s character and why she resonates with so many people: her rebeliousness, her curiosity, her romanticism, her inteligence, her quiet strenght, her resilience and her sense of hope, all of those qualities that the Grimm’s described in their heroine, are all there! When i watch this episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, i don’t see an actress playing a role, i see an icon of my childhood coming to life!

And that is why Shelley Duvall in Faerie Tale Theatre is whom i consider my definitive Rapunzel.

#rapunzel #literature #brothers grimm #fantasy #moodboards #rankings #musings #fandom musings #wallpapers #tumblr mutuals #pop culture

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storybrookeofold · 4 years ago

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junie-bugg · 4 years ago

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The Heartrender - Chapter Three: Flickers

Hello all!

Here’s chapter three of my Everlark fic ‘The Heartrender’, in which I inadvertently utilized the “only one bed trope” 😏💕

You can read here on Tumblr or here on AO3 (I suggest reading on AO3 because I add a poem at the beginning of each chapter that I feel fits nicely with the story.)

Rating: Explicit

Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Sexual Content

Relationship: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark

Tags: Enemies to Lovers, witch!Katniss, witch-hunter!Peeta, AU - Shipwrecked, AU - Fantasy, Sexual Tension, Explicit Sexual Content, Furs and Fires, Angst and Fluff and Smut, sexually experienced Katniss, virgin Peeta, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Loss of Virginity, Laughter During Sex, Blood and Injury, Imprisonment, Peeta has some prejudices to work out, Peeta also has an accent, Inspired by Six of Crows

Summary:

He hated her. He hated her for what she was: an abomination, a demon sent to tear at the fabric of the natural world. He hated her for making him want to laugh. He hated her for being so brazen and sensuous and everything the women of his country were never allowed to be. But mostly he hated her because he realized he didn’t hate her. Not even a little bit.

After a shipwreck has left an abducted witch and a member of the ominous Order bent on wiping out her kind stranded on the icy shores of an uninhabited land, the two must work together to survive or face tearing each other apart in the process.

Chapters: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04

Chapter Three: Flickers

Night had fallen, and with it, the temperature. Peeta allowed the witch to hold his arm so she could keep his blood warm. When she retracted her hand every once in a while to readjust the pelt around her shoulders, his jaw clenched.

He shouldn’t miss her touch.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” she asked.

“Near the northern border of the Permafrost. Though I don’t know how far from the capital we were before the ship sank.”

“We’re walking to Fjordhingă then?”

“Yes,” he replied. Fjordhingă was the trading capital of the north. It was to be the last stopping point of The Bloody Rose’s voyage before they headed west to Sjorkden. If he and the witch could make it there by foot, perhaps Peeta could talk their way onto a ship. But how would he get the witch on board? What if she ran away? The thought had been nagging him like a fly on his brow.

Even with the witch there to keep his blood pumping, he felt his limbs freezing up as the temperature continued dropping. He desperately scanned the darkening horizon, hoping to find an outcropping of rocks they could huddle under, or maybe another whaling camp. Instead, he spotted a gabled roof.

“Oh, thank god,” he breathed and started tugging the witch along.

“Lieutenant…” she said apprehensively.

It wasn’t just some stray shack. It was a fishing village, with squat houses and a trading outpost, all perched on the cliffside and overlooking the ocean. One circular dirt road cleared of rock and vegetation lay at its center and clusters of small stone buildings had been constructed around it. The houses had wavy glass panes in the windows and soot-blackened chimneys, though no light shone onto the street and no smoke rose into the sky.

An abandoned village then.

Even better.

Peeta hastened his pace.

“Lieutenant, stop!” the witch yelled, tugging him back behind the village’s low border wall. “Look at the flagpole!”

Peeta’s heart sank when he saw an ominous black flag waving high above the rooftops.

Black was for plague. No wonder the place seemed abandoned.

Everyone had died.

He thought they were going to move on, but the witch set her shoulders back. Her face took on a quiet focus.

“We need to be careful. We can’t just barge in. There may be corpses.” She dropped his arm and moved around him. He watched her walk to the door of the closest house and lay a palm to its wind-weathered surface before he could stop her.

He sucked in a breath.

She was too close.

“Don’t!” he barked and pulled her away.

She whipped her head around, a scowl pulling her brows together. “You’d rather we die of plague then allow me to use my god-given powers?”

“Don’t drag god into this.”

“Oh don’t worry. I doubt we have the same one,” she retorted. “Now get out of my way.”

He didn’t want her touching that door, but he knew what she was doing. He’d read about the practice of purification in class, but he hadn’t imagined it would smell so good.

Pure white light emanated from within the building, flooding out in bright streams from the windows, the minuscule cracks in the stone walls, the deep hollow of the chimney. Long shadows crept along the ground, shifting in oblong patterns as the light in the house moved. The witch’s hair and clothing snapped in some enchanted breeze, pulling ebony locks and fur upwards in a cascading arc until the light faded and gravity pulled her hair back down in a glossy curtain.

The air tingled with the sharp scent of mint.

“I thought you could only manipulate bodies,” Peeta got out.

“I can do a great many things you wouldn’t understand, lieutenant.”

“Don’t call me that,” he muttered. Lieutenant was his title from the Order. It felt wrong to hear her speak it here.

“Would you rather I call you by your name?” she asked.

Peeta didn’t respond.

“Didn’t think so.” She turned the brass knob and the door swung in on itself. “Welcome home, lieutenant.”

By noon the next day, she had purified the entire village.

It was a spell, an easy one, that burned away rot and disease. Each time she pressed a hand to a doorway, the windows filled with that bright celestial light, her hair rose above her head as a flame rises above a candlewick, and she burned away any trace of plague inside. Scraps of cloth that had been coughed into, drops of dried blood on the floor, corpses that had been left behind. Each house was spotless when she was done.

They had slept in the house farthest from the others, on the far side of the village. It was small, with only a kitchen, sitting area, and one bedroom. There was a sizable stone hearth in the kitchen, plenty of split logs in a wicker basket by the back door, even some strips of salted caribou meat in the pantry. First, they had scarfed down the meat, and only after, with the salted flesh chewed and swallowed, did they think of their thirst. Peeta made a fire while the witch lugged a burnished pot outside to gather snow. They drank the warm melted water and then collapsed into bed with their clothes still on.

It was a real bed, with a canopied frame and pillows and soft, quilted blankets. Peeta was too tired to object when the witch curled in against his chest, and once more he spent the night with his nose buried deep in her hair.

As exhausted as he was, Peeta was a soldier. He woke early, as he always did, and found that he couldn’t fall back asleep. The pale morning light of dawn bled through the curtains. Anyone else would have rolled over and tried to catch a few more hours of shut-eye, but Peeta couldn’t. The witch’s heat against his chest was too much, like a beating, throbbing wound that refused to heal. He untangled his arm from around her and then hurried to the door, grabbing a spear in the pretense of hunting.

Winter burned his nostrils as he took in deep lungfuls of air. He was a boy raised in the fjords of southern Sjorkden, and a man of the northern academy. He’d thought he’d seen the bitterest winters the world had to offer when ice would form between the stones of his tower dormitory and he and Yasser would have to sleep on the floor by the black iron furnace for warmth. They would go to breakfast with blue nail beds and teeth that chattered so violently sometimes it was hard to chew. But he realized those nights were nothing compared to this, a winter’s chill so sharp that it cut out a spot for you into the very landscape, made you feel as if your skin was crafted of snow, your bones pressed from ice.

He secured the fur around his shoulders and tried to replace thoughts of piercing silver eyes with thoughts of breakfast.

But the winds of the north were unforgiving, and the frigid bite of the air only reminded Peeta of how warm he had been with the witch. By the time he had finished hunting, having speared only one measly hare, his limbs were frozen, joints locked as if welded, lips numb under his teeth as he tried to bite the life back into them.

He found himself anticipating coming back to the village, wanting what he so desperately fled only hours before; to tangle in bed with the witch once more, a merry fire crackling in the hearth, the warm press of her body cradled against his own, his nose buried in the hollow beneath her ear, soaking up the heady scents of jasmine and fresh rain and sunlight until he was drunk on her.

His thoughts were peaceful until he remembered the sin of what he had been considering.

Laying with the witch was practical. The use of her magic against the cold was necessary. There was nothing charming or romantic about having to rely on an enemy for survival. He should despise his needing her.

She wasn’t human. She was dangerous.

It was foolish to forget that.

Yasser collapsed into the seat across from Peeta, his dinner tray laden with a bowl of brown grits, boiled sausages, some mushy looking turnips, and a small cup of water.

“Did you hear what happened to Larone?” he asked, his urgent tone cutting under the loud din of the dining compartment.

“No,” Peeta replied, unsure if he wanted news of how Wilhelm was handling his first witcher voyage. The antics of newbies were fun to hear about at the start, but when tales of seasickness and fatigue reached the ears of experienced witchers, especially witchers on the cusp of earning their freedom, the stories were more annoying than entertaining.

Yasser greedily stuffed a spoonful of grits into his mouth and swallowed before continuing. “Well, I’m telling you anyway. If I have to know, you have to know.”

“Can I finish eating first?”

“No. Now eat your sausages, growing boy!” Yasser mimicked the garbled, high-pitched accent of one of the servants from the academy, Mrs. Jengon, who had doled out food in the great hall. Each and every student was a “growing boy” in her eyes. Even the ones who had finished their battle with puberty.

Peeta frowned and took a tentative bite of sausage.

“Alright, I’m going to try and say this with as much grace as possible,” Yasser said solemnly but then burst into peals of laughter, slamming a fist against the table so forcefully the plates rattled. “Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t think I can. Larone gave the Heartrender a little too much to chew if you know what I’m saying.”

Peeta stilled. “He didn’t.”

Yasser cocked a thick eyebrow, his mouth crinkling around the corners. With his flaming red hair and bright green eyes gleaming under the oil lamps he looked like some kind of buff leprechaun. “He did. And now half his pisser is being packed in ice.”

Peeta’s stomach rolled, his body instinctually clenching in phantom pain as he imagined it. He set down his fork with the sausage impaled on the end and pushed the plate away.

“God…”

“But don’t tell anyone I told you,” Yasser added. “The commander wants to keep it under wraps. Doesn’t shine very well on him, does it? If his recruits are dumb enough to stick their cocks between witch jaws?”

Peeta didn’t tell a soul but the news still spread through the ranks like a wildfire during drought season. Yasser updated him at breakfast. Larone was in the infirmary being tended to by Dutch, the crew’s one doctor, and wouldn’t be out of recovery until the ship reached Sjorkden. Peeta felt bad for the boy, but it was his own foolishness that had gotten him into trouble, and now he’d never bed a wife or sire heirs. Larone’s power crawl was over before it had even really started.

Peeta relieved Hans Gerholt from guarding duty that night, disgusted when he saw no one had bothered to clean the Heartrender up. Larone’s blood had splattered her face, dried, and then cracked. She looked absolutely monstrous with a red dipped chin.

“You here for a good time too?” she said, picking up on Peeta’s discomfort. He didn’t respond, just sat down stiffly in the guard’s chair and listened to the creaking of the boat, the squeaking of rats in the walls, the soft clinking of the witch’s chains when she shifted across the cell floor. “Your little friend showed me his even littler friend. I barely bit him and it was half off.”

“Stop talking,” Peeta growled, angry at himself that he had risen to her bait. He knew she just wanted to get a rise out of him. The weeping girl was gone, replaced with one who had accepted she had nothing to lose.

“Now your commander…” she drawled, eyes flashing in the partial darkness. “His would have taken more gnawing.”

Peeta didn’t much care for the commander. He was old and cruel, but it was the principal of honor and his loyalties to the Order that made him rise so sharply from his chair that it tipped over. He lunged at her through the bars, pulling her up against the cold metal by her collar. “Hold your tongue, witch, or I’ll cut it out.”

She tsked quietly, hanging limply in his grip. “Did your commander ever tell you where he found me?” She saw the confusion in his eyes and clung to it. “Of course he didn’t. No pious soldier of Sjorkden would ever reveal he had been cavorting in a pleasure house.”

“You’re a whore,” Peeta whispered, almost disbelievingly, the pieces clicking into place. He released her and she fell to the ground in a weakened heap.

On the surface, she looked the same. Wrinkled red dress, oily black hair, sunken cheeks. But now there was something alight inside of her. Heat smoldered like molten silver in her eyes.

“You and your kind have called me many things, lieutenant. Witch. Slum scum. Unholy daughter of Krell. But I’m afraid ‘whore’ is where I draw the line. I did not choose that life, it was thrust upon me, and here I am now. Free of it.”

Peeta looked down at her. He thought the commander had put her in those iron hand caps to keep her from unleashing her powers. She could not kill if she could not curl her fingers. But now he suspected they had come from her time in Ellsworth. How long had she been wearing them? From the rust on the padlocks, he suspected a long time. “How ironic that you speak of freedom while you lounge in chains.”

“Freedom is a fickle thing, lieutenant. I may be stuck here in this cage, but I suspect you carry one wherever you go.”

Peeta’s nostrils flared. That familiar rush of rage he experienced during combat surged through his limbs, but with nowhere to go, his head soon swam with it. “Do not pretend to know me. You’re repulsive. A perversion against nature.”

“I am nature. You are just too brainwashed to see it.”

“Nature does not defile the earth. Or slaughter the innocent by the thousands.”

“My people have committed no such crimes. We were healers before you forced our hands to bloodshed. I suggest you try looking upon yourselves before you go blindly doling out sentences.”

Peeta was at a loss for words. The nerve of this girl, injuring Larone and then preaching about who the real enemy was. Coaxing out his anger and frustration when he was normally so good at hiding it. Ever since he ran away from home, he had learned the hard way that emotion in the face of an enemy was weakness. He could not afford to let her under his skin, no matter how hard she clawed away at him. He was ashamed to admit it, but he had found himself thinking about her on nights when he wasn’t on guard duty.

That stopped now.

“Rot in hell,” he spat as he righted his chair.

“You will,” she growled.

The witch burned the red dress in the kitchen fireplace. The fabric steamed and curled into blackened strips, sending dark plumes of smoke up the chimney like released ghouls. Peeta didn’t have to ask her why she did it. He knew she burned the dress to try and burn away the memories of her capture, and perhaps the memories that came before. If he thought about it, the dress must have been from her time in Ellsworth. He could only imagine how a girl of her beauty would fare in the clutches of a pleasure house, the horrors unleashed upon her when the rights to her body were not her own. He wondered how she could even bear touching him.

A man.

A stranger.

If burning the dress had worked, he couldn’t tell. She came to bed in a fur-lined nightgown and quietly rested her cheek on his breastbone. His cheeks burned, shame lacing itself into his stomach lining when he didn’t push her away.

“I’ve never heard a heart song so gentle,” she murmured admiringly. She sounded surprised.

Peeta’s chest ached. He was suddenly self-conscious of how fast he was breathing and in his fight to slow down, hadn’t asked her what she meant.

They raided each house one by one. The people of the village were either dead or had moved on when the plague hit. They left behind dressers full of clothing, shoes, pots and pans, utensils, pottery, carving knives, firewood, axes, the occasional sword, hunting supplies, wax candles, furniture, toys, paintings, family heirlooms. All the trappings of domesticity.

The pair took a pan here and a pair of shoes there. Peeta had found two large packs with which to stuff items in. His pack would contain a small assortment of kitchenware, food, some firewood, and the water sacks. She would carry extra clothing and furs. They planned on spending a couple of nights in the village before restarting their journey north to Fjordhingă.

In the days they spent stocking up on provisions, the witch took over hunting duty. She didn’t hunt with spear or snare as Peeta had learned. She used her powers to crush windpipes and burst hearts. Wild dogs stopped dead in their tracks, keening over like sacks of potatoes. Birds plummeted from the sky, cold before they hit the ground. He enjoyed the bounty, feasting on a new roast every night and salting the leftovers, but with every meal, he grew warier. He had heard the stories of course, of the deathly potential that Heartrenders possessed, but seeing her in action was completely different from hearing some old tale around a campfire. Just how powerful was she? And when she determined he was no longer useful as a means of body heat or when their little truce no longer suited her, how easy would it be to kill him? A curl of her fingers or a flick of her wrist and he’d be dead.

Maybe he’d made a mistake by letting her live.

Every night when he watched her sleep, the voices of the masters pressed into his head, willing his fingers to close around her throat, to witness the light drain from her bulging, terror-filled eyes and have her know that he had bested her.

Him. The seed of a pathetic, weak-willed baker. Wielder of no arcane power and with no legacy to help carve the way. Just him and his own two hands against the world. As it had always been.

But no matter what his common sense was telling him, of how dangerous he knew her kind to be, he couldn’t do it. He would reach for her neck and then freeze, afraid to go any further. If she didn’t stir he’d stay his hand, running feather-light fingers across her pulse point, quietly admiring the way her angled features softened in sleep. But if her eyelids fluttered or her breathing changed he would retreat as if she had burned him.

“Where were you sired?” Peeta asked one night as they ate a bird the witch had caught. The bones were small and Peeta had to be careful not to break them with his teeth. He gnawed on a piece of cartilage as he waited for her reply.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean-” Krellian was not Peeta’s first language. He had picked it up between his boyhood and his blood christening into the Order, but he had limited knowledge of words. He learned Krellian and Narubi and Hannako from old, leather-bound textbooks and even older professors. For years he had studied all the archaic tongues they hoped he would someday snuff out, but he did not know slang or turn of phrase, and his accent was rounded in his mouth compared to the crisp consonants of a native Krellian speaker.

She spoke as if she were tiptoeing through a flower field.

He spoke as if he were crashing through it.

“Where did you… grow?”

“Grow up?”

Grow up. Peeta slotted the term into his memory for future use. “Yes. Where in Krell did you grow up?”

The witch narrowed her eyes, those silvery irises glowing like moonlight from behind a cloud’s ragged border. “Why? Are you planning your next raid?”

“No, I-” He ducked his head, his cheeks burning furiously. “I’m just curious.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I won’t tell you, lieutenant,” she snarled. She threw down her uneaten bird’s wing, splattering congealed blood everywhere. “Besides, you don’t deserve to know.” Her anger was eager, ready to be unleashed upon him even in quiet, semi-companionable moments such as mealtime. She confused him. Why was she flirty and seductive when they lay in bed together but bitter and closed off when he tried having a casual conversation?

Although to be fair, he hadn’t been very open with her either. And not particularly kind.

“It was just a question.”

“A dangerous one. Go ahead and ask another. See if I’ll talk.” Her eyes glittered as if they were playing a game she knew she would win.

Just another thing he didn’t like about the witch. How ashamed he felt when talking to her. Minor slip-ups, cracks in his armor of indifference. She had a talent for coaxing them out of him as if she were pulling secrets from a drunk man.

But he was in too deep now. Might as well try to get something out of her.

He lowered his gaze to the fire and asked, “Then what’s your favorite color?”

The witch blinked. She hadn’t been expecting such a mundane inquiry. She was silent for a moment, probably contemplating if giving away this piece of information would in any way compromise her. She decided a favorite color was harmless.

“Green.”

He pictured it. The verdant green of a forest. Lush and deep and full of secrets.

Just like her.

“Mine is orange,” he offered. “Soft. Like a sunset.”

She cocked a dark brow. “Not red for the blood of your enemies?”

Peeta raised the drumstick back up to his mouth, suppressing a smile. “That comes in a close second.”

She had laughed then, a sound so joyful and clear that Peeta’s heart clenched and he stopped chewing just to hear her better.

She awoke screaming one night, flailing about under the sheets and shoving him away as if he were stabbing her. He had been awake when it started, unable to quiet a storm of racing thoughts. If he hadn’t been so alert, perhaps he wouldn’t have sprung to her aid so quickly.

“What is it?” he demanded, suspecting there was something biting her under the covers. He threw the blankets back, but there was nothing. “Huh?” he asked when he couldn’t make out her quaking mumbles.

“Just a dream, it was just a dream,” she whispered to herself, and then she dissolved into tears. Her face glistened wetly in the moonlight and she shrank away when he reached to pull the covers back over her.

The next night, he took some furs and slept by the fire in the kitchen, afraid she wouldn’t want him in bed with her. But when he was about to doze off, she padded through the doorway.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Sleeping.”

“On the floor?”

“But… you… last night… ” he stammered.

Her face hardened as she crossed her arms self-consciously. “I’m sorry you had to see that, but I’d feel better if you stayed in the room with me.”

“You kicked me,” he argued.

“Not on purpose,” she hissed.

The two glared at each other, and then the tension broke. The witch softened, her shoulders sagging like a loose bowstring. “Please.”

He should have told her no. Instead, he said: “Alright.”

She dreamed of clients. Harsh hands and sour breath. Shackles looped around a bed frame.

He wasn’t allowed to touch her after those dreams. Not for a long while at least, and when they would eventually come together again, he let her choose when to climb back into his arms.

“What makes me different?” he asked quietly one night as she clutched his shirt, her tears drying over his heart.

She raised her head to meet his eyes. “Can you feel your own heartbeat?”

He could if he focused. If he held his breath and silenced his thoughts. He nodded.

She sounded sad, as if she were quoting somebody when she said, “If you listen close enough, you can hear that all heartbeats are different.”

It sounded like Krellian nonsense. Heartbeats sounded like heartbeats, but it was out before he thought to stop himself. “What is mine like?”

She laid her head back down and inhaled slowly through her nose, listening. “It’s gentle and steady. Like the lapping of the ocean. Ever present and soothing. I’ve never heard one quite like it.” She inhaled again, steeling herself. “It makes me feel safe. Which is ironic because it belongs to you.”

He smiled but she couldn’t see it. Then he asked, “And what does yours sound like?”

There was a long pause and then she said, “You can listen if you want.” She sat up in bed, pulling him along with her, and with gentle hands twined through his hair, tipped his ear to her breast.

It was hard to concentrate. The heels of her hand on his cheeks and her fingers laced across his scalp made him feel as if she were touching him everywhere. But then he forced himself to lean into her chest, the shell of his ear pressing against her sternum, searching for the sounds of her very being.

At first, he heard nothing, just felt the rise and fall of her breaths, but then, as if cotton had been removed from his ears, he heard the heavy beat of life. The first thud was loud like a cannon shot, but the second was quiet, like the dull closing of a door. Her heart sounded like it was limping on stilts. Hobbling along unevenly. Long step, short step. Over and over. Cautious. Afraid. So unlike the girl he’d come to know. But it was all there, hidden away deep inside of her.

“See?” she whispered. “We’re different.”

But they weren’t. Not really.

When she fell asleep and Peeta remained awake, he tried reaching within himself to feel his own heart again. It was like the constant beating of waves as she said, but he didn’t find it soothing. Every beat felt achingly blunt, as if his heart was slowly ripping itself apart to make more room.

It terrified him that he didn’t know what that meant.

On the morning of their departure, he rose, dressed in a black tunic and pants, clasped a heavy fur cloak around his shoulders, and then sheathed a sword at his hip. He stepped outside to swing it around, getting the feel for its weight.

The sword was heavy, made of polished steel that glinted in the cloudy morning light. Compared to the swords he had grown up with, the blade was plain. There were no holy etchings in its metal face, no onyx embedded into the hilt, and no divine blessings had been uttered over it, but he felt a fierce rush of strength all the same. Peeta was used to heavy swords and the leather-wrapped pommel felt right in his hands, as if he’d been missing a part of himself without a weapon.

“Is that really necessary?” the witch asked, her voice carrying from inside the house and over the frostbitten yard. When he laid eyes on her, a hot jolt flooded his body as if he’d just caught himself from falling off a roof.

She leaned against the doorframe, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, but he could tell from the way she warily focused on the blade that she was on high alert. A caribou hide nightdress brushed the tops of her dusky knees and her hair was loose and mussed on one side. The side she had pressed against his body in the night, Peeta realized.

“What else would you have me use?” Peeta asked darkly, unsure why the witch got to use her powers whenever she wanted, but when it came to Peeta’s talents they were disapproved of.

“You have a Heartrender with you,” she said arrogantly, pointing at herself. “You’re just going to be lugging around a sword for show and no offense but I’d rather you carry extra food.”

“It’s not for show. This sword is to protect myself against you,” he said angrily, pointing the blade in her direction.

She took a hurried step back as if she expected him to advance. There was a heavy, quiet moment as Peeta watched her from behind the sword’s edge.

And then she sharply twisted her wrist.

Peeta’s heart rate skyrocketed.

Her voice was low, dangerous as she said: “I don’t know what your superiors told you, but a sword is no match for a Heartrender.” She began squeezing her fingers together and Peeta’s heart stuttered, his chest clenching painfully as if he were having a heart attack. Stabbing heat pulsing through every vein in his body as if his blood had turned to molten lava. He fell to his knees, dropping the sword into the hard-packed dirt with a hollow clang.

“Stop,” he begged, clutching at his chest. His breaths came in ragged pants. He was falling apart under the pressure. “Please.”

She tensed her hand, unsure whether or not to let up. Her eyes were frightened, but there was resolve there too, as if she had imagined this situation before and had already decided the outcome. This was her chance. She had a pack full of food and supplies. She had her enemy in her clutches. She was going to do it. He was going to die, right here, in an abandoned village where no one would think to come looking for him. Where no one would know his name. All who wandered would stay away from the black flag, and he’d be the feast for wild animals and the decay of time.

He should have killed her when he had the chance but he had been weak and now his chances were spent.

She squeezed tighter, her fingertips almost touching her palm. And then all of a sudden, her face crumpled. With a strangled gasp of breath, she released him. He fell to the ground in a quivering heap as his heart rate plummeted and then righted itself.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, trying to stem the flow of tears with her hands. She disappeared back inside the house and Peeta was left to stare shamefully at his own tears pooling in the dirt.

#The Heartrender #everlark #everlark fanfiction #everlark fanfic #witch!Katniss #witch-hunter!Peeta #enemies to lovers #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark

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