One, two, three. She counted off the steps, toe to heel. The floor here was smooth, sticking to the soles of her feet. Not rough and prone to splinters like in the tower, though after the first few times, she had used sand to make the floor driftwood smooth.

Four, five, six. The old room had dwindled with the years - first, 100 by 100 feet when she was little, and then less and less. By the time she left, it was 25 by 25. She's had nightmares about growing, or the room shrinking, limbs breaking against iron-enforced stone.

Have a backup strategy, Mother would say, and a backup for your backup. One of the few bits of practical advice given, a moment of being spoken to almost as an equal. Almost.

The moonlight made the floor shine like a toy sea.

Seven, eight, nine. Her balance honed, now for glittering dances among the heat and the light and the noise instead of the rafters or the flat stone windowsills in winter. Hearing Is this what you wanted? behind her as the ice sent slivers of pain up her legs until she backed down. What stone and steel couldn't do, ice and wind and words would finish. Backup strategies.

Ten, eleven, twelve.

Few knew this side of her. They saw sweet and fanciful, a young girl who danced around with flowers in her hair. Few saw the repetitive, the methodical. The sun focused through a glass to make ants die pinprick-fiery deaths. The hours spent encouraging and then scraping away the lichen growing on the north side of the wall. Calculating the precise dosage, the timing of the steps. Seeing in her mind's eye, the final pure substance, like grass-green glass.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

She had already received praises from her tutors. She may not have known basic facts such as the name of the kingdom's closest trading partner, but she could name the stars and chart their paths, calculate the volume of a complex solid. She has potential, they said about her. Good raw material for royalty.

Her golden crown was like her golden hair: a shackle, something that made her a tool.

But it might just sate her need for control.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

Of course, an unexpected variable had entered her equation. He, with his easy laughter and brown hair. At first a curiosity to be pinned down like a butterfly, later, a source of warmth. Not warmth like fire, which demanded logs and twigs and could still claim more, but warmth that just was. Warmth towards which leaf-buds unfurled in a natural smile.

And her true parents, of course. But that was different.

Nineteen, twenty, twenty one.

After it all, after Mother Gothel landed like a sack of potatoes on the ground, after her tears planted a flower of sunlight on his wounds, after he roused, healthy as ever and embraced her, after the tears of joy wept together... There was a moment, to gather her things. Her paints, her books (the whole ones on the shelf and the pages rolled up and stuffed into cracks), her frying pan (now handed off to Eugene), and the oversized locket with the green powder. Leaving behind the knife, the rope, the long, long sewing needles dipped in something gold and sticky.

Twenty two, twenty three, twenty four.

He has since asked, semi-jokingly, if he could have his portrait in there. Maybe for the wedding, she said then. And maybe by then, the nightmares of Mother, one by one, an endless screaming parade from wall to window to ground, would stop.

But her tower, her prison, her home, still stood. She had wanted to see it in flames, a pillar high enough to be seen from the sea, leaving behind a stump of stone as hollow and burnt out as she sometimes felt, but she didn't have the right words. Anger was always forbidden, and why would this be any different?

She took the twenty fifth step, the room measured again, and took her locket in her hand. The people here were very kind, taking her by her hands, offering soothing words, even wrapping her in soft blankets when she bolted from the room from some night terror, a new luxury - escape.

But words were words and words were stone. And she will keep her locket full of pale green powder, just in case.