Towering

not two, but three locks on it, and they looked pretty solid. Still, she pulled at the handle. I did too. But without tools, there was no way to open it, and I had no tools.
    “Can’t you climb back up?” I asked. “You climbed down.” I didn’t want her to leave, but it was cold, so cold that I worried I might freeze to death if I stayed there much longer.
    She shook her head. “I am amazed I came down. You needed to be rescued, so I did. Suddenly, I felt a rush of strength, as if I had drunk a magic potion.”
    “Adrenaline. I read about that. Like, once, I read about this woman who lifted a car off her father, when he was being crushed.” It was weird. She was such a delicate flower, yet strong enough to slide down a rope and rescue me. It was sort of hot, both that she’d saved me and, also, that she needed my help. I could use someone needing me right now.
    “I just knew I had to do it.”
    I thought about climbing ropes in gym class. Or about a hundred rock-climbing birthday parties. This wasn’t much higher, if at all. I had no doubt that I could do it myself, but could I lift her? Maybe if I simply bouldered up, I could use the rope to help her, sort of a hip belay? Not that we had any equipment. But if you didn’t fall, you didn’t need a harness, right?
    If I brought her up, could I come see her again?
    “I just need more time. More time to understand what it is I’m meant to do.” Her yellow hair fluttered around her face.
    I decided. “I can pull you up. Is the rope strong?”
    “I think so.” Her face seemed calmer now. At least, she smiled. “And there is a fire in the fireplace. You could get warm and allow your clothes to dry.”
    “If I help you, can I come back to see you again?” One of the trees by the tower, its branches weighed down with snow, was shaped like a dragon, its green head crooked toward me, staring. A dragon to be slain.
    “I would count on it,” she said. “But you have not told me your name.”
    “Wyatt.”
    She gazed at me. The sun was fully out now, and her eyes were the color of the sky. “Prince Wyatt,” she said.

Rachel
    Wyatt first attempted to show me how to climb up. He told me that everyone learned to climb a rope in something called gym class at school. I knew about school because of schools in books— David Copperfield , Jane Eyre , Little Women . . . even Ebenezer Scrooge went away to school. Yet, none of the books I read made the slightest mention of rope climbing as a skill learned there. Clearly, this was another instance, one of many, in which my education had been deficient.
    After several failed attempts, I said, “Wyatt, I wish, more than you can imagine, that I had gone to your school and learned how to climb a rope. However, it seems that this is not the skill of a day, particularly a frigidly cold day such as this one. Is there perhaps another way you could get me up there?” I was growing worried, not to mention cold. I needed to be in my tower, after all, to keep me free from the dangers of the world. I had managed to persuade myself that Wyatt was safe. After all, he probably hadn’t even been alive when my mother was murdered. And he had kind eyes. But what if someone else came? What if someone had followed him? What if Mama came earlier than usual and saw me on the ground?
    “Yeah, I was thinking it wasn’t going to work,” he admitted. “You’re not really dressed for it.”
    I smiled at his attempt to make me feel better. “Yes, I am certain it is merely my apparel that is preventing me from scaling the height!”
    “Well, that could be part of it. Anyway, girls as pretty as you don’t usually have massive biceps, and I’d like to get to that fire.” He shivered.
    I smiled a bit more at his comment on my beauty, for it was similar to my thoughts about his. But when he mentioned the cold, I realized he was right. He was wet and cold, and it certainly wouldn’t do for him to freeze to death, right when I had just rescued him. Rescuing him was the first definitive thing I had done in years.
    Besides, I liked him.
    “Perhaps you could climb the tower yourself, then hoist me up?”
    “Do you think you could hang on that long?”
    I nodded. I felt a bit inadequate about not being able to climb, but just holding on seemed safer. “I hope so.”
    “I mean, you wouldn’t have to hang. There are a lot of footholds on the way up, those shingles. Watch me as I go up. Plus, I have leather gloves on. I could throw