Page 75 of Down from the Tower

“So we ran away for nothing,” she grumbles.

“No, it was time to move on.”

She bites her lip but doesn’t say more, and I use the time to try and connect. I could reach out for Ban or Lucius and see if they have any news, but Lucius is startling to see and Ban is difficult to deal with at the best of times.

The stone flashes, indicating that my message is being seen. A moment later Elsie appears on the smooth surface, one eyebrow raised. “I bet Ray it would take less than an hour for you to check in.”

She doesn’t look hurt, or even winded and I feel a small sense of relief flooding through me. “And?”

Elsie shrugs, “You should see this.”

She shifts around on her side of the stone, and Rapunzel scoots close enough she’s almost in my lap. I keep an ear out around us, letting my shadows rise up and lock us in a protective bubble while Elsie moves around.

When she shifts the stone, we’re looking at Raymundo and Dahlia. They are out front, a few tradesmen standing nearby, and Elsie must move around to be less obvious because the scene moves a little further away.

But the voices are clear.

“No one walks into my lands and wrecks the place,” Dahlia snarls, hands on her hips. “You’re scaring the little ones and all my guests! I should turn you into a centerpiece.”

There are three Flowerborne on the ground, one lacking a face but their leaves and stems move, and two more than remind me of the half-human versions from the gingerbread house.

“We is following the Queen’s needs,” the middle flower says, a bright peony with a face that reminds me of a girl, her cheeks a brighter pink and her eyebrows made out of the petals. “She is looking for the girl of golden thread.”

I blink, and Rapunzel nearly rips the stone from my hands. “They are looking for me!”

“Shh!”

“No girl like that here,” Raymundo says easily, and I watch as he twirls an arrow. They’ve either dispatched the rest already, or this is all that made it through the woods to the tavern. A few people might’ve panicked seeing them this deep in the woods, but a fresh Flowerborne with no skills is easy to kill. “Just us travelers and tavern keepers.”

“You be a Reaper,” the third flower says, this one a bright yellow. The voice sounds male, but the face is impossible to make out at this distance.

Ray chuckles. “That I be. We have no girl of gold. And you have no right trespassing here.”

“The Queen demands-”

“The Queen doesn’t govern this land!” Dahlia cries, and there’s a chorus of cheers that follow her words. “Sherwood forest has no true ruler. This is a land for the people. And we don’t need the Mad Queen’s influence here.”

“You will have it. Yes, yes,” the pink one says, bobbing its top-heavy head. “You will have it, you will see. The Golden Girl will have to die, indeed.”

I raise a brow. The rhyming is new. All that really tells me is this is probably a different patch of flowers from the last rogue plants we saw. They all seem to have different personalities.

“No Golden Girl,” Ray reminds, catching the arrow in his hand to prod at the plant. It hisses and stumbles backward to avoid the arrowhead. “What, little plant? Scared of Death?”

“Death has no power here!” the Flowerborne cries, its face twisting in disgust. “You have no power!”

Dahlia clicks her tongue, and it’s clear the two of them are in charge of this interrogation. “Tell your Queen to stop invading our lands. We don’t need mutant flowers and vengeful Queens.”

“Gives us the girl, and we leave,” the yellow plant argues, trying to rise up on its stems. It looks like someone slashed through them, and the plant is too weak to support itself. It stumbles forward and remains facedown, the pink one and the faceless plant ignoring it.

“They aren’t going to help it,” Rapunzel breathes in my ear.

“The Flowerborne don’t care for their companions like you and I,” I explain. “They grow from and out of the dirt, developing qualities no plant should have. Their emotional range is limited. These ones rhyme. The last ones you saw were blood thirsty and eating body parts. These aren’t creatures of passion. They are menaces at best.”

She doesn’t argue with me, and the middle flower holds up leafy arms. They haven’t tried to take on the qualities of a mimic, lunging forward to grab and attack either of my friends. Instead, they seem set on staying in their leafy forms. “Please! We look for the Golden Princess of Tressa. Queen says she’s here, over the wall so tall. She will be the vengeance we sought, great and small.”

“No princess here,” Dahlia snaps, waving her hands towards some of the traders standing nearby. “Here. Have these or drag them back into the woods to crawl somewhere else. We don’t need riddles.”

The tavern owner moves to walk back to the building, but the faceless Flowerborne reaches out and grips her arm. The bulbous head tilts back, opening up, like a flower in bloom.

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