Chapter 1

I blame my parents entirely. There is no one else at fault here—not my cousin, not poor Ezzie, and certainly not me! I suppose you might blame my aunt and uncle for being silly enough to trade away their daughter for a handful of herbs (never mind naming the poor girl after the herbs in the first place!) but they certainly didn't tell my parents to do what they did.

All right, all right. I'll give you the full story.

You've probably heard of Rapunzel, and how she was rescued by a prince and blah, blah, blah. Not that I have anything against her—in fact, she's my nicest cousin. Yep—my mother's sister married a man, and they had Rapunzel.

Well, my parents are what we'd call a few berries short of a pie in these parts. Mother was pregnant with me when Rapunzel was rescued, and so she and my father decided to name me…

Cabbage.

All right, laugh. Go ahead and get it out of your system. I certainly didn't ask for a name like that, but unfortunately, I was about two hours old when my parents decided which plant to name me after. (On second thought, I'm just glad I didn't get Rutabaga!)

Anyways, when I was seven, my parents went and pestered the local witch, Esmeralda, to take me in and raise me—also that they wouldn't object to her putting me in a tower. At first the witch, who was a good deal more sensible than my parents, said no. Absolutely not. But they kept on bothering her well into winter, until she finally threw up her hands and took me in, saying that parents who wanted their seven-year-old daughter locked up in a tower by a witch were either insane or very ill, and not capable of good parenting in either case.

So I went to live with Ezzie (she told me to call her that) and we lived in the comfortable cottage until word got around that she'd taken me in. Then dozens upon dozens of parents who seemed about as intelligent as myna birds were thrusting their daughters upon poor Ezzie—most of them named things like Mint, Sage, and Strawberry; not Cabbage.

At any rate, Ezzie was not pleased by this. So we packed up our things and moved to a deserted tower on the outskirts of the Grilendal Swamp. It wasn't the best-smelling place, and there was always mildew, but it was nice enough.

But then, when I turned thirteen, the heroes started coming. And boy, did they ever come! On my thirteenth birthday, seven showed up! Seven! And we never even got to eat the cake that Ezzie had baked specially.

I was quite glad that my parents had given me to Ezzie instead of locking me in a tower themselves. Otherwise, they would have sent me off with the first who arrived. (That would be the prince of Karingar—well-bred, well-to-do, well-off, and well over forty.)

Now I'm fifteen. The number has slowed down a bit, but they're still coming like crazy. To make matters worse, Ezzie has decided that I'm old enough to live on my own—with one of her cats for protection, of course.

Great. A skinny, fifteen-year-old girl, an overweight cat, and an army of suitors.

What could go wrong?