Couple weeks ago, my computer caught a virus, and I was without for three days…. $215. Then the phone company I was using decided to buckle, which meant I had to find a new provider, and hey, just for kicks, let’s change over from dialup to DSL. Since I wouldn’t be paying for the phoneline any more, just the DSL, it seemed like a good deal, shaving $15 off my former phone and dialup bill.

I knew there would problems. I knew it. So I was six days without internet access. Yesterday I called up and gave them an earful and they “kindly” gave me a week of service free. Oh, gee. I’m so impressed. Today it was fixed within ten minutes of the technician showing up. He’d tried to fix the issue on Monday, but apparently Verizon doesn’t feel it necessary to actually staff their offices, and they have people who cover two or more offices a day, driving hither and yon to set up connections. Apparently the man who runs the office nearest me has been sick for three weeks, and there was a huge backlog of people who should have been set up that weren’t. I should have had connection by Saturday but I had to wait till about 30 minutes ago to get back online. But it was actually another issue aside from not being connected that left me high and dry, and the woman who had dealt with the original connection on Monday had switched something that kept me offline for another two days. Just goes to show that the larger a company the less they care, and the harder it is for them to actually get anything done right. Well, it’s good thing for them I’m locked into a year long contract, eh?

As little as I like to endorse nationalism, every person I got on the help line was either Hispanic or Indian. Either way they were very difficult to understand. Yet every person I spoke to in billing and the guy that initially signed me up over the phone was American. Coincidence? I think not. I’m still not happy, not really. I finally have connection and all, but they installed so much crap on my computer and a week of free service hardly seems like customer service, since they’re only covering the time I wasn’t even able to get online. They should have given me a free month at this point simply for my frustration level.

I got a lot of writing done. Though I was kind of hindered by my frustration, and I’m sure there are typos that I just didn’t notice since I couldn’t focus. Thank goodness I had updates for Tattoo cached and ready to go without me, though I still have to manually update the index and the sidebar here on Xanga.

The one bright spot was that my car went in for inspection. And there was nothing wrong, though it cost me $100 for the inspection and oil change/fluids.

Chapter 11, page 147:

“Do you like this length?” Amelia asked, running a hand over Fiona’s hair.

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Fiona replied with a shrug. “I usually trim it myself if I notice I’ve got a lot of split ends. Otherwise I let it go. I guess it likes this length. It never gets much longer.”

“Oh, I can make it much longer, and I will to cut it. But I can leave it any length you like, longer or shorter than it is now,” the little woman explained as she passed the comb through her hair. Fiona was surprised it didn’t snag on any knots with all the scarves she’d had wrapped around her head. She usually did little more than brush her hair or put a barrette in it to keep it out of her eyes.

Fiona blushed. She’d never really cared about how she looked, but she’d always secretly wondered what it would be liked to have long, luxuriant hair like Amelia’s. “I… like your hair very much,” she said hesitantly. “I can’t imagine what I would do with it all though.”

Amelia laughed lightly as she continued to comb Fiona’s hair. Looking down, Fiona was surprised to see it dangling around her elbows and still growing. She heard the snip of the sheers and saw a long strand of hair float down to the tarp.

“How does it work?” Fiona asked curiously.

“The sheers and comb are enchanted. They’ve been in our family for generations. My mother told me the tale as a nursery story when I was a baby. Have you heard the legend of Rapunzel?”

“Yes?”

“Rapunzel was sea-Folk,” the spriggan girl replied. “They already have such lovely long hair and longer lives. Her foster mother was an enchantress, some mix of Folk that’s been forgotten or gone the way of the unicorns. A silly dwarf who thought he might win her heart made the comb and sheers for her before she lost interest in him. I doubt he’d have done it if he ever knew what purpose she’d put them to, but who knows? Men do stupid things for love. The enchantress was said to be very beautiful and very vain.

“She tricked Rapunzel’s mother into giving away her daughter for a taste of cabbage.” Amelia snorted as if it were the most ludicrous thing she’d ever heard, and the scissors continued to snip away at Fiona’s tresses. “Back then, the Sea Witch, the queen of all Sea Folk, wasn’t the sort to let any promise made by or to her kin go unfulfilled, so the poor mermaid had to give up her first born child, even though the hunger for cabbage had been put on her by the enchantress in the first place. Somehow the evil woman had known the mermaid would give birth to a daughter, as I don’t think she would have wanted a boy. She changed the girl’s tail to legs and took her away to a tower by the sea, knowing even if the girl didn’t, that she’d pine away and die without at least the sea air to breathe.“

“I’ve heard Folk say that her tower was the first lighthouse, built according to some promise the enchantress made to the local monarchy or as an intentional coup against the Sea Witch. The girl tended the light that kept the ships from breaking on the rocks and once a month the witch brought food and supplies, and harvest her hair. Like us, she used the hair for spells, though she used the girl’s hair to enhance her own beauty and vitality, keeping herself young and beautiful. The Sea Witch was furious.” The tarp was covered with hair, but Amelia kept cutting and Fay could see that her hair was still incredibly long.

“Everyone knows that what the Sea Witch has, she holds. She was more powerful then, and felt every ship that sailed over her waters owed her tribute. If she took one in five, she considered it her just due. The lighthouse was an affront to her, stealing her bounty. She didn’t care a bit about the girl and would have killed her outright, sending a storm to tear the lighthouse from the shore or wearing the rocky cliff away until it fell into the sea, but she felt she had to teach the Enchantress a lesson. She knew the enchantress had grown fond of the girl despite her vanity.”

“So one day, she presented herself to a passing ship and told the Prince on board about the lovely girl in the tower and how she was being kept prisoner by the evil enchantress. The Prince’s family had a long history with the Sea Witch. They had won safe passage from her as a wedding present when some long dead ancestor married one of her daughters, also long gone. This was when his people were nothing more than fishermen in a ramshackle little harbor town, and her promise to them was something that had weighed heavily since then. His family had prospered enough to declare themselves kings and cover vast distances with fleets of ships that failed to drop even a coin to her in passing, even arguing successfully that allies through marriage were entitled to the same protections as themselves.”

“The Sea Witch did not tell him that the girl in the tower would become sick and die if she was taken from the sea. She told him to woo the girl and when he had won her, to destroy the tower as a token of his gratitude for enabling their union. The enchantress is always described as evil, but in fact, she had come to love her foster daughter in her own way, and she had found other ways to prolong her life, if not her beauty. She scryed their location and came to warn them that the girl could not live away from the sea, but neither believed them, despite the girl’s failing health. She had come to hate the sea as a symbol of her imprisonment, and the couple had retreated to the mountains after their marriage. The Prince had the Enchantress thrown into a briar patch and told her if she ever returned, he would have her killed. He had the comb and sheers thrown down a mountain gully where my ancestors found them.”

“What about the Prince and the mermaid?” Fiona asked anxiously.

“Just as the Enchantress had foretold, his wife continued to sickened, and though all the wise men and healing women in the kingdom came, none of them could make her well. Eventually the Prince had no choice but to take her back to the sea and call upon the Sea Witch for her help. The Sea Witch promised she could make the girl well again, but that the Prince would have to give up his family’s protection. Their kingdom would be as other kingdoms in her eyes. After much hesitation, he finally agreed, and the Sea Witch told him the girl’s true nature, changing her legs back to a tail right before his eyes. She also told him of the burden of all Folk, that she would require the flesh of men every full moon, which is to say once a month.”

“Some say that he asked the Sea Witch to take him into the sea so that he could stay with his love forever, and that his parents, made childless, spent their remaining years building lighthouses to protect ships from the Sea Witch, thereby gaining some small measure of revenge upon her. Others say that the Prince was disgusted by his bride and left her there with the Sea Witch, which earned mankind the eternal hatred of the mermaid and all her descendants. Years later, when he was old and regretted his decision, he went back to the sea and built lighthouses to remind his love of how they had met. But whether or not she ever forgave him, no one knows, and there’s no one left to ask. No one’s seen any merfolk since mankind invented the engine.”

Fiona sat silently as the spriggan maid continued to clip her hair. Eventually she set the comb and scissors aside on a nearby table. Amelia braided her hair and set the fat plait over her shoulder. Fiona lifted it with some astonishment. Despite Amelia’s story, she hadn’t expected her hair to end up quite so long and full.

“Thank you, Amelia!” Fiona said with a smile.