WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE: RAPUNZEL For horse thieving, kidnapping, jail breaking, and using her hair in a manner other than nature intended! REWARD

Make haste” Jane added, just because she always wanted to say that.

Ani told them all...telling more than needed telling, the stories clarifying and unifying themselves in her mind as she let them spill out of her mouth.

Geric," she called. He turned back around. "What kind of flowers were they?" "I don't rightly know," he said. He made faltering gestures with his hands, forming their size and shape from the air. "They were yellow, and smallish, and had lots of petals." "Thank you," she said. "They were beautiful.

Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.

... until Miri could not help it any longer and she laughed out loud. The sound broke the game. Peder looked at her. He reached out, and she thought he meant to grab her straw or perhaps yank her hair as he used to when they were little. But her put his hand behind her head and, leaning forward, pulled her face to his. He kissed her. One long, slow kiss.

They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.