In The Thorns Of A Castle: (Rapunzel Retelling: HALFWAY COMPLETED.)

Chapter 12. Benjamin and the Enchantress meet on a technicality.

He set out to walk to the Enchantresses cottage just as the sun was beginning to set in magnificent reds and beautiful pale yellows. He watched the sky turn yellowish-red and then a little patch of blackness against the awkward and wide silver mountains. He held his knife in a light brown leather pouch and stopped long enough to get a drink of water near the babbling creek. He splashed water on his face and neck and filled his water container so he had enough water for the journey ahead. 

He hooked the water container on his pants and looked at the sun to tell the time. It was almost eight at night. The stars would be out soon, and he would be at the witch's cottage within an hour or two at the most. Kathleen needed to eat something, or else Benjamin wouldn't hear peace in the next century. She would talk his ear off his face. But Benjamin would do anything for Kathleen Watson. Even if it meant trespassing to get what he needed to.

In the distance, he heard church bells ringing. 

Someone was already at the church and making sure the bells worked. 

He liked the sound of church bells and saw a little patch of Queen Anne's Lace growing near the babbling brook he stopped at. Fireflies were making him feel so peaceful, and he watched as they used their tiny bodies to light the area around him with a green glow and shimmered in beauty. One of the fireflies landed on his nose, and he watched as the firefly shone brightly on his face and eventually flew away and landed on a tree branch.

He continued on his journey and finally made it to a fork in the road. He didn't know which path to take. He also didn't know he was being watched by an intruder of the brown and white-bleached trees covered in stringy moss. 

Deep in the forest, there was an old woman wearing a dark green cloak and tall, laced black and silver-colored boots tied. She watched the man as he took the path to the left and then took out his knife. He began slicing the strawberries, and she instantly pounced on the strange man who was taking her strawberries so freely and without knowing the rules of the forbidden forest around them. 

The man dropped his knife in a flash of worry and was taken aback by the Witch's sudden anger towards him for what he was doing for his wife. He watched as her large hooded blue and green eyes glowed a bright crimson in the middle of the irises. She started cackling, and he backed away from her as quickly as possible. 

He thought the woman was mentally insane and was afraid of the Witch's laughter and voice. 

He dropped to his knees and held his face in his hands.

"Begging for forgiveness isn't going to work," she sneered coldly.

"I need the food for my wife," he explained.

"You can't steal another person's property. These belong to me. I've been growing my own strawberries since I lived in the forest all my life," she replied.

She watched as the man looked around for something to offer the Witch. But there was nothing to offer an immortal being from the forbidden forest.

"Who is your wife?" she wondered.

Benjamin said: "Her name is Kathleen, and she's about to have a baby."

This caught the Witch's attention.

"A baby?"

"Yes. She only has weeks left, and she's craving strawberries. I couldn't tell her no."

"Of course not," the Witch understood his immediate troubles and smoothed his hair back gently with her hands.

"What would you do for me if I let you have the strawberries?" she asked.

"I have nothing to offer you for my freedom from you. I don't have anything worth getting all worked up over. I'm sorry," he answered.

"That's not true. You have something of extraordinary value to give me in return for getting the strawberries."

It took the man minutes to understand what she was saying to him. Then, he understood perfectly when she didn't say anything else to elaborate on the subject.

"What would you want with a baby? The baby is no use to you or anyone to kidnap even for a trade with strawberries. You can't take my baby away," he declared.

The Enchantress, who disguised herself as an older woman, then grinned menacingly with shadows dancing across her glass-covered eyes.

She didn't say anything else except the whisper of her breath on his face in the dark and cold forest around the two of them as reality for him sunk in slowly.

"You know you don't have a choice. You stole from me. Now I'm stealing from you, Benjamin."

"I never told you my name." 

He said plainly to the Enchantresses face. She laughed coldly as she walked away from the man who was still sputtering about his misfortune about his life situation at the moment.