Okay, okay, okay.  Here's the Rapunzel story I told people I'd post.  Sorry it's been so long.  I forgot all about it!




Rapunzel

        Gardening is my life.  I love to feel the soil in my hands and to smell the multitude of odors that emanate from it.  I have spent most of my life tending my garden so that it would be the most beautiful of all.  It is my life’s work.
        So it is no wonder that it was admired so greatly by my neighbors.  They were a poor couple and likely to stay that way.  The wife was a sickly woman, not strong enough to work.  Her husband, while physically able to work, was not inclined to do so.  He was a sloth of a man and much preferred to beg, cheat or steal what he needed.
        It was because of these conditions that one lovely afternoon I spotted my dear neighbor picking some rampion leaves from my beloved garden.  Being the smart woman that I am I automatically put two and two together.  I knew that his wife had been quite sick recently and that rampion has many healing abilities.  Feeling that it would be best not to make an issue of such a small thing I decided to let this matter go.
        A month later while I was planting some new seeds I once again spotted my neighbor in my garden.  This time he was digging up the rampion, roots and all!  Well, this just had to stop.  He was destroying all of my hard work.  I walked angrily up to him.
“What are you doing?” I demanded to know. 
He looked away guiltily and his face flushed scarlet.  He mumbled something about his wife being sick again and needing the rampion root to cure her. 
“You could have just asked me for it and I would have given it to you freely.  But instead you chose to steal from me and ruin my garden.  Why should I let you take it now?”
At these words he fell to his knees and cried, “Please!  My wife is dying!  She needs the roots to cure her.  It’s the only thing that will work!”
I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.  I’m a kind hearted individual after all and the damage was already done to my garden.  I told him to take the roots to his wife and that I would come and visit them soon to make sure that she was better.
He rose and eagerly snatched up the roots.  He ran all the way back to his house without looking back or even offering a word of thanks.  I just shook my head sadly and returned to my planting.  Why waste a perfectly good day worrying about such awful matters?
        As I had promised I fully intended to visit my neighbors.  However, it was several months before I had the time to do it.  That morning I walked across my garden and their yard to call on them.  I carried a basket filled with an assortment of vegetables that I was going to give to them. 
As I knocked on the door I heard a most peculiar sound like the bleating of a lamb.  The husband opened the door and let me in.  Immediately I was shocked by my surroundings.
The house was a complete mess.  Most of the furniture was broken or rotting.  Patched and soiled clothes were draped everywhere.  Remnants of meals were left sitting on plates that looked like they hadn’t been washed in months.  It was disgusting!
And in the midst of all this revulsion lay the wife in a bed of dirty sheets holding a small newborn child in her arms.  The infant had been wrapped in a stained and moth eaten blanket and it was crying as hard and as loud as it’s newly formed lungs would let it.  It was obviously the source of the bleating sounds I had heard outside.
Despite how the child was crying the new mother did nothing to calm it.  Instead she laid the baby in a large chipped bowl and then proceeded to go to sleep.  I looked in shock to the husband in hopes that he would do something.  The baby’s father just stood there beside me and ignored the sorrowful wails on his own flesh and blood.
“It’s a girl,” he said without expression, not even looking at his daughter.
I was in a state of complete disbelief!  How could anyone treat an innocent child in this uncaring and inhuman way?  As I thought more and more about it I became angry and appalled.  This was not a fit environment to raise a child and the parents even less so.
I decided then and there that I would take the child with me.  The parents couldn’t possibly afford to keep her.  They could barely feed themselves.  Plus it was obvious that neither one cared for the girl.  My mind was made up.
I hastened to the makeshift cradle and pick the little girl up.  I wrapped her in my cloak and started for the door.  The husband, startled by my sudden movement, asked what I was doing. 
“I’m taking your child to live with me.  She’ll get better care and attention from me than you.”
Instantly his face reddened in resentment.  “How dare you come in here and insult me in such a manner!  You will put that child down and leave my home at once!”
“No.  I will do no such thing.  The child is coming with me and if you try to interfere I will curse you into oblivion!”  I swiftly exited the house and carried the still screaming infant to my own home.
I never saw my neighbors again.  They were too scared to confront me directly.  Instead they took to telling cruel and nasty stories about me.  They claimed that I had cursed them for stealing my rampion and that I had demanded their first born child in return for taking the herb. 
Fearful of reprisals I fled the area with my new charge.  It was hard to leave my beloved home and garden, but for the child’s sake as well as my own we had to.  We eventually found a small out of the way cottage to reside in.  Perfect for raising a family. 
I had decided to call the girl Rapunzel after the herb that her father had stolen from my garden.  It was a lovely name and seemed to fit her exactly.  For twelve years we lived in that house.
By Rapunzel’s twelfth birthday, she had developed into a beautiful young girl.  She had the loveliest golden hair.  It was so long that it trailed on the ground behind her when she didn’t put it up.  Besides her beauty, she was also very reckless and easily lead.  On more than one occasion her peers at the village school had tricked her.  I decide that there was only one thing to be done about this. 
I took Rapunzel to the middle of a great forest surrounded by mountains on all sides.  At its center was a stone tower.  It was an unusual tower, as it had no stairs or door.  The only opening was a window at the very top.
Using magic I placed Rapunzel in the tower and told her that I would come and visit her everyday.  I gave her everything that she could possibly want or need.  She was given books to read, pretty new gowns to wear, and instruments for playing music.  She had her own kitchen with plenty of food to eat and the pleasant prospect of my daily visits.  No child could ask for more.
“Now remember my dear, when I come to see you each day I will call to you thusly:
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair.’
When you hear this you’ll plait your long hair and let it out the window so that I may climb up to see you.”
        Rapunzel smiled at me.  “I understand ma’am,” she replied sweetly.
        I left her there feeling that there was no safer place in the world for her.  She was such a trusting and beautiful young girl that I wanted to do everything in my power to protect her.
        Things pretty much went on like this for a while.  Rapunzel lived in her tower and I came to visit her every afternoon.  We had a perfectly lovely life together.  That is until he came.
        He was a prince from a far off kingdom that had been traveling alone for some time.  He had been wandering in the forest when he heard Rapunzel singing to herself.  He followed the sound of her sweet voice until he came upon her tower.  At that moment, unbeknownst to me, he observed my calling up to Rapunzel to let down her hair. 
He waited there until I had left.  That’s when he made his move.  He went close to her tower and called up to her:
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel
Let down your hair.”
        Rapunzel, hearing the words that only I should have known, innocently let down her long golden locks.  The prince climbed up and through her window.  Once inside his gaze was drawn to her.  There she stood next to the window softly singing to herself.
        I don’t blame him for falling in love with her beauty.  What man could resist her fair face and demure manner?  What I can blame him for is taking advantage of her inexperience and innocence.
        This so called Prince Charming was a pilferer of the young.  His heart was easily swayed by a pretty face or kind word.  He took advantage of vulnerable young women and made them promises that he couldn’t keep.  It was rumored he already had three wives in three different castles, all unknown to the each other.  In short this was not a desirable suitor for my dear Rapunzel.
        However, being the naïve girl that she was Rapunzel was seduced by his charms.  She was an easy target and quickly fell victim to his whispered words of love and devotion.
        He continued to see her every night, waiting until after I had left from my daily visits.  He convinced her to run away with him.  Together they conspired to build a ladder from skeins of silk.  Every night he brought one roll of silk with him and Rapunzel braided them into a ladder.
        Of course, at the time I knew nothing of this.  Until one day I was visiting Rapunzel in her tower.  I was busy watering the small potted fern on the table, when Rapunzel, who had been daydreaming by the window, said reflectively, “Why is it, good dame, that you are so much heavier to pull up than my prince?”
        I couldn’t believe my ears.
        “Your prince?” I asked in disbelief. 
The color drained from Rapunzel’s face.
“What do you mean, your prince?”  I demanded.
        Realizing she had made a grievous mistake she attempted to win my consent by confessing everything and telling me of the wonderful virtues of her secret betrothal.
        I admit at the time I was infuriated to learn that I had been deceived by the one person I loved the most.  As Rapunzel finished her story about her Prince Charming my anger turned to disappointment and dismay.  I was sorry that she felt that she had to keep all of this a secret from me and it worried me that this cradle robbing Casanova had so deeply sunk his claws into the child.
        I desperately tried to convince her of his duplicity.  In vain I begged and pleaded with her to rethink her decision.  I told her of his reputation and the other young women he had waiting for him.  She wouldn’t listen.  She only repeated that she loved him and that she wanted to be with him.
        In a last ditch effort to keep her safe from him I cut her hair and removed her from the tower.  I took her to a distant valley.  I left her there to wait while I went back to the tower. 
I took the golden locks of hair that I had cut from her head and braided them together.  Then I tied one end to the window and waited for the call from below.
Soon after sunset I heard it.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let your hair down.”
I pushed the braid over the windowsill and let it fall to the ground.  I stepped to the side of the window and watched for his entrance.  In just a moment the prince climbed through the opening expecting to see his lovely bride-to-be.  He walked into the center of the room.
“She is gone,” I cried stepping in front of the window.  “You will never see her again!”
Quickly he turned around to face me.  Realizing that he had been thwarted in his latest conquest he became visibly angry.  His eyes flashed with unrestrained malice.  He lunged for me, arms outstretched.
I ducked and moved away.  Carried forward by his momentum the prince couldn’t stop himself from falling through the open window.  He fell to the ground and landed in a thicket of briars headfirst.  The thorns scratched his eyes and blinded him.
I was amazed that he had managed to survive the fall at all.  Before I could climb down myself to see if he needed help, the prince rose and stumbled off into the forest alone.
Briefly I looked for him, but I needed to get back to Rapunzel.  I traveled back to the valley where I had instructed her to wait.  But when I got there she was nowhere to be found.  I searched everywhere for her.  Rapunzel was not in the valley.  She had obviously gone in search for her beloved Prince Charming.
I wept.  I had lost my child forever.  I had cared for her for all the years of her life and this was how she repaid me.  Leaving me to wonder endlessly about where she was and how she was doing.  My only hope was that she had found someone worthy of her to take her in and care for her.
As the years passed I often thought of her.  Every time I heard a story about a young girl with golden hair I thought it might be her.  In the end I was always disappointed.
One day while I was in the market buying seeds for my garden I overheard an elderly couple talking about a beautiful young woman who had recently married a prince.  I turned away.  It was never my Rapunzel in these stories.
“…And they say she healed his eyes with her tears.”  I heard the old woman tell her husband.  “Imagine that!  Then when the prince opened his eyes and saw that it was his lost love, he took her back to his castle and married her.  Isn’t that romantic?”
The question elicited no response from her husband, but she had caught my attention.  I turned back to the couple and grabbed the woman’s arm.
“Excuse me, but did that young woman you were just talking about have golden hair?”
“Yes, I think that’s what I was told,” she said with a questioning look at me.
“And what was her name?  I need her name.”  I was breathless.  I hoped that it was her and prayed that it wasn’t at the same time.
“Rapunzel.”  I closed my eyes.  So she was still alive.  I was relieved.  But underneath it I felt completely miserable.  She hadn’t deserved such a fate.
While I had been thinking the old woman had continued to talk.
“I remember that name perfectly.  My husband and I had a baby daughter once.  She was taken away from us as punishment for picking a tiny bit of rampion from our neighbor’s garden.”  The old woman leaned in close to me as if to impart a secret.  “She was a witch you know.”