Real Rapunzel, Tale of the Tower

An  improved and expanded version of this story now exists, but will not be appearing here just yet. Details to follow shortly!








Once upon a time there was a woman, who had lost her love in
a pointless war in a place she hadn’t even heard of, and she was left destitute but for a small house, alone
and pregnant. Now in those days it was an unusual thing for a woman to raise a
child by herself, and most people assumed she would take up with someone else, who
could help her deal with the tribulations of raising a child and help her stave
off her loneliness. But the woman had truly lost her love, and didn’t feel she
was ready to love again.



Time passed and the woman gave birth to a daughter who she
named Rapunzel.  She was beautiful from
the day she was born, a fair and quiet baby, but an emptiness clung to the
mother’s heart, she began to feel that her babe was too lovely to be shown to
the world; she couldn’t shake the insistent feeling that someone may try to
take the child from her. 



Now as it happened, the mother had worked on and off for
various people during her pregnancy, cleaning mostly, but cooking and so on for
those that couldn’t too. One of the people she worked for was a rich old man,
far too elderly to cook and wash and do the laundry, and he had often paid the
woman for the time she would spend with him once the chores were done. He had a
great love of the sound of his own voice, but was a frightful bore, so this was
the best way for him to ensure somebody would listen to him.  The mother could barely remember one tenth of
what he used to bang on about, but she did happen to remember the tower he
spoke of. He had discovered it as a boy,  used it as a bachelor, even lived there for a few years before
he got married. She remembered the tower distinctly , because she had been
aghast when he told her that it didn’t even have a door, only a large window,
and that he would set his ladder to the wall and climb through, pulling the
ladder up behind him.



“A ladder?!” she had exclaimed “then how high was the
window, dare I ask?”



“Oh at least three stories, my gal, at least three.” He had
wheezed.



“Three stories you say?” she’d said, playing along with the
story, a distraction from the awful task of cutting his terrible toenails. “I’d
have not wanted to be the one bringing the shopping in.”



“You’d just take what you could on yer back my gal. No job
at really, was young then, of course.” Then a look she would never forget stole
into his eyes, a joy so real it brought tears to her eyes, “it was worth it
though, Do you know in all my years, I’ve never felt so safe, as I did there.
So peaceful.” And he’d proceeded to tell her about the hidden glade in the
woods, how isolated it seemed, how no-one ever came close. Then he’d laughed
his wheezy laugh and gone on to tell her how easy it was to get to the tower,
even though it couldn’t be seen from the road.



“Weren’t you worried though, being outside the town walls?”
she’d asked.



“There’s more to fear in town than out my gal” he’d said
“and anyway, it’s a stone tower with no door. Who’s going to think anyone is in
there?”



She hadn’t understood what he’d meant then, when he said
there was anything to fear in town. But the more she thought about it now, with
her baby in her arms, the more she understood. Nobody could take her Rapunzel
away if there was nobody around, could they? The idea buzzed around and around
her head, but she had no family or friends to talk to and let it out. Then ,
one sunny morning  she  got up, washed, dressed and fed baby
Rapunzel,  and then started  to pack up some things, not much, just a few
things her and her baby would need for 2 or three days. Then she tied her baby
to her back in a papoose and went to dig out her ladder. It was only a story
high, if that, but she just had to hope the old man had been exaggerating. She
tied her bags to either end of her ladder and set out, baby on her back.



The marketplace seemed louder than ever and the mother felt
frightened as she walked past red faced men, shouting their wares. She gathered
her courage together and walked through the market for Rapunzel’s sake. She had
to get her precious baby away from this awful rabble of shouty men. She had to
get her away from the envious stares of other mothers, who wished Rapunzel was
their own. She had to keep her safe and away from all harm.



She had been right about the old man’s exaggeration, the
window was set high enough that a man on a horse would not have been able to climb
into it, but it was nowhere near three stories high. She could reach it, just,
on her ladder. She jiggled at the sash window, just the way the old man
described, fearing all the while that the frame would have swollen, or rotted,
that she would fall to her death and Rapunzel’s (who was still strapped to her
mother’s back) but just as she was about to abandon hope for despair, the
window gave way, and slid slowly open. She peered into the gloom beyond, and
then leant her belly on the window frame, tilting inward so she could test her
weight on the floor, without leaving the touch toe security of the ladder. It
seemed ok to her. Time to take the plunge. She climbed in.



The first time she’d had to leave Rapunzel she was
distraught, but it had to be done, they had to be fed. She waited until
Rapunzel was sound asleep in her little drawer (she was still too small for a
bed, and the tower didn’t have a crib) and she let down the ladder, creeping
quietly down. She left it a goodly distance away, so no one would see it and
think to explore the tower, then went to go and get their things. The tower was
already quite adequately equipped, with twin beds, a small shower room and a
kitchenette. She collected up a few pots and pans, but hesitated when it came to
the knives. She shouldn’t have anything sharp in the tower, she would have to
leave to get food from time to time, and little Rapunzel might cut herself.
She’d be toddling soon enough, into everything. She couldn’t risk it. No knives
in the tower. She would keep this house, the house that had belonged to her
beloved, and prepare the food here, do all the chopping, slicing and grating,
then take it to the tower to be cooked. She couldn’t leave he baby for long.



She packed up all she could, and hurried back to the tower.



The next few years were exactly as dull and safe as the
mother had hoped they would be.  At first
she sat and rocked her baby, and knitted and sewed and scrubbed her way to
making the tower a  pretty little home.
She filed Rapunzel’s little nails and brushed her beautiful hair. She had to
leave from time to time, more and more as Rapunzel got older and needed more.
She had to take up a cleaning job again, and fretted every time she left  5 year old Rapunzel sleeping alone. Rapunzel
was already a keen reader and loved books more than anything else, so almost
every morning when mother would return from her night shift, she would bring her  a
new book.  Life was good, like they were
the only two in the world, just the way mother liked it.





 
                                                                       * * * * *






Rapunzel hummed to herself, brushing out her long, long
hair. It was ridiculous really, how long it had gotten, trailing on the floor,
but mother had never let her get it cut, said it was too dangerous. Mother,
however, often went off into town to get her hair cut. She was off in town so often;
Rapunzel might as well live in the tower alone. Except then she would be
allowed to leave. She knew, from all of the books she read, that children were
normally allowed to leave their homes, come and go as they pleased, meet other
people. She was eighteen years old, and had never felt what it was like to walk
on sand, or feel grass underneath her feet. The only voices she had ever heard were her mother's and the birds. 
She sighed and went to the window, throwing it open and leaning far out
so she could feel the breeze, watching the birds with envy.




“Are you ok, My lady??” a voice hailed her from below. It was a voice
like she had never heard before. She looked down, surprised at the man on the
horse. She had never seen either such thing before, only the deer. She recognised the animal only from her many books.



“I’m fine” she said eventually, because she didn’t know what
else to say. “Who are you?”



“I’m a knight. Well I will be. I’m off to find a quest to
do, you see.” His horse shifted, as if even he was embarrassed by the long
pause that followed. He hadn’t actually told her his name, so Rapunzel didn’t
feel she should offer hers. Eventually he spoke.



“How did you get up there?” he asked.



She rolled her eyes. “A wicked old witch locked me up here.”
She said, ladling heavy sarcasm into her voice.



His brow furrowed.. “I could rescue you if you like?” he
sounded almost apologetic, “I haven’t been out looking for a quest for long, so
I can easily pop home and get a ladder. That way everyone wins.”



She stared at him for a little while longer. He continued to
speak, babbling away into the silence.



“I mean,” he went on “ I get to have my quest  done nice and quick, you get to be rescued,
and we can get married at the same time as my brother, next week.”



“I’m sorry, married?”



“well, I’m saving your life, its only fair.”



She sighed. He seemed ever so nice and all, but she most
certainly did not want to escape from belonging to one person, only to belong
to another.



“Go away,” she said “the witch will eat you if you don’t. Go
away and find some other damsel to rescue. I’m not ready  to get married!”



“I meant no offence, dear lady” he called to her. “Can I
offer no aid?”



She turned back, a sudden thought occurring.



“Could you toss me up a small blade, one that I may keep
hidden on my person?”



He obeyed unthinkingly, clearly a man used to following
orders, tossing up a small folding knife, even as he voiced his misgivings.



“That little blade will not strike a mortal blow, my lady”



“It is not intended to.” She smiled smugly “women’s ways are
cunning, not violent.” And she shut the window before he could ask her what she
meant, for she didn’t really know yet. All she knew was she didn’t need some
boy knight on a horse who was willing to marry someone they had just met to do
her rescuing for her. She could handle that herself.



She tried approaching the subject gently, talking about being
18 and ready to start earning her keep, going to work with her mother. Mother
was horrified.



“There is no way, Rapunzel, absolutely no way that you are
leaving this tower, not now, not ever. Do you hear me?” she screamed, advancing
on her daughter. “It is far, far too dangerous out there!”



“But you’ll be with me mum, you’ll look after me. Just an
hour or two?” she pleaded, “please, I just want to meet some new people.”



“There is no-one worth meeting, Rapunzel. No-one. You are
good and pure and precious, you can’t go among those filthy loud other people,
Rapunzel. You are not like them.”



“In what way am I different mother?” Rapunzel was shouting
now.



“Because you are mine!” her mother screamed back, “you are
my baby!”



They both stood staring at each other, mirror images of each
others trembling rage.



“you have enough food for this week” her mother said
eventually “I’m going to go to my house, cal down.”



“if we were normal that would be our house” Rapunzel
muttered as her mother scrambled down the ladder and took it away, “if you were
normal”



She searched through the thousands of books that lined the
walls, for mother had been good in that department and continued to get
Rapunzel a book a day for years, until she found a book on hand weaving and
began to read.



When it got too dark to read by the candlelight, Rapunzel
got to work on her hair. She plaited it into tiny braids. By morning her
fingers were numb for she had been plaiting all night. She finished the last,
sealing it with candlewax at the end like she had all the others as the dawn
chorus began. So it was, with the window thrown open, listening to the sound of
morning birds, that Rapunzel took the knife, and cut the plaits off as close to
her scalp as she could.



When her head was shaved and the meters of plaits lay on the
floor, she took a break for breakfast, and to pack up her mother’s backpack.
Then she began tying each braid to the bedstead and began to braid them into
the tightest rope that someone that had only ever read about weaving could
manage. The sun was nearly setting when she was finished weaving her rope.  She was somewhat worried about  leaving her home to enter unknown in the
dark, but a voice inside her was screaming “hurry hurry hurry”  in case her mother relented her tempestuous
mood and came back to the tower early. She left a heartfelt if hasty letter to
her mother.








Dearest mother,



I am sorry I cannot be
yours forever. I have to assess my own risks now, live my own life. I will come
back to you soon, mother, to visit, and to show you that the world is not so
dark a place but first I must find my own way.



I love you,



Rapunzel xx








She then put on almost all of the clothing she owned, slung
her back pack on her back, and looked at the sheer drop below. She really hoped
her rope held. What if it didn’t? She could lay there for days, hurt with no
help to hear her.



She looked around her room again, at the books that lined
the walls. She’d hate to treat her books this way, but could see no other
option. She started grabbing armful and flinging them out of the window, so
she’d have something to cushion her fall.



Then she took a breath, and lowered herself out of the
window with the hair rope. As it happened she didn’t need to throw her books
down, the rope held fine. She crouched down and touched the grass with her
fingertips. She touched the tower with her other hand, felt the familiar smooth cool stones.



“Goodbye” she whispered. She turned her face to the dying
sun, and walked off into her own sunset.