Joel Fishbane
rapunzel unbound
Once, there was a girl who was locked in a Tower. This didn't bother her, at least not anymore. It was habit by now, part of that inevitable routine of existence. The room had become a comfort, a womb of granite and checked stone. She had a comfortable bed and three meals served on a silver tray. There was a lonely square window, beyond which the bramble crawled up the Tower’s side. There was heat in the summer and frost in the winter. None of this mattered. The Tower itself didn’t bother her; it was all she had ever known.
No. What truly bothered her was the woman with one face and many names: witch, warden, doctor, cook, confidant. None of them fit, as if her true identity was something much larger. Gothel was a hag, as old as the world and just as round. She walked with a cane, its head tipped with what she claimed was the tusk of an old rhino. Her nose stretched past her chin. She had remorseless eyes and a craggy upper lip. Of course, she also had warts - a witch without warts is corn without cob. Her very presence could provoke rabies in dogs; she was immoral as the weather and disturbing as leprosy.
Gothel had tremendous power. She could summon locusts at will and cause the ground to shake. One night many years ago, she had even caused the Tower itself to spring from the ground. As a young girl, Rapunzel had thought Gothel’s powers were stories told to frighten a small child into submission. Gothel would have had good reason to resort to such things; Rapunzel had been willful and obstinate, the sort of scamp who lied for pleasure, hid under the bed, and feigned convulsions just to see Gothel cry. Once she had tried to escape when she thought the witch’s back was turned. The door swung shut on its own. The wind, Rapunzel had said at the time. But it wasn’t. Most children start off believing the impossible and learn to disbelieve; Rapunzel went the other way.
The moment of belief started when she woke to find blood on the mattress. Oh, the scream! Had there been milk in the room, it would have turned to ice. The birds nesting in the Tower's eaves took wing and never returned. Rapunzel was twelve but had no knowledge of her body or its functions. She stuffed her pillow between her legs. It did no good. Her screams became whimpers as the linen became spotted with red.
When Gothel appeared, the old hag came forward, clinking her rhino-tipped cane against the floor’s cobbles. She placed a wintry hand on the girl’s stomach and whispered words in that strange tongue of hers. At once, the pain vanished. Gothel crept back towards the exit. When the door shut and the bolt had turned, Rapunzel saw that her linens were white, and the cramps were gone. The door had locked on its own.
Later, Gothel explained what had happened. “And if you behave yourself,” she added, “then I shall come each month stop the blood and cramps.”
Rapunzel wasn't grateful. The old woman really was a witch. The horror crawled over her like lice.
Every month, when the blood started, Rapunzel pretended that the cramps could not twist her as she slept. It was no use. Gothel always knew and Rapunzel always cried out - not from the pain but to stop the witch from taking it away. Gothel had told her this was something every woman endured. Rapunzel did not want the one thing she had in common with the rest of womankind to be taken away. In this one way, she wanted to be like everyone else.
“Don’t,” Rapunzel pleaded. “Don’t use your magic on me.”
“It's so much more than magic," said Gothel.
*
There were no clocks in the Tower. For Rapunzel, time centered around two things: whether the sun was in the sky and whether Gothel was in the room. Sometimes, they played cards. Gothel knew the rules to over a thousand different games even though she thought card-playing was a ridiculous hobby for a witch. “All the best games require two people,” she explained. “And witches are perpetually alone.”
“Is that why you keep me locked up?” asked Rapunzel.
Gothel only smiled, a sight which was never pleasant.
She told stories as they played. Gothel had been across the world and lived in almost every country twice. She spoke a dozen languages. She could paint and sculpt, though Rapunzel had never seen her do either. She had beaten a king at chess and won half his kingdom (“I gave it back,” she laughed). An Arabian taught her to gamble; a Frenchman taught her to hunt. Always men, Rapunzel noted. Gothel replied that she had not always been ugly.
“Youth,” she said, “was kinder to me than time.”
Men, Gothel had said, are the witch’s downfall. “They hunt us and hang us.” The witch said this with a bitterness that could only exist alongside a personal vendetta. With the insolence of youth, Rapunzel asked Gothel if she had ever loved. Gothel barked with laughter. “Aye, girl, I've had my heart broken. I've seen men I love string me up and burn me alive.”
Gothel was a haggard swill of a woman but her voice was like silk. Rapunzel's first memories were of the Tower and Gothel scurrying about, singing melody after strange melody. The song she sang most often was the one that always put Rapunzel to sleep. Gothel never came to the top of the Tower to tuck Rapunzel in; instead, she used her evenings to stroll through the trees and sing as she collected herbs for potions. The sound calmed Rapunzel’s blood and sent her to sleep. Then the song would score her dreams so that, no matter what she dreamed of, Gothel was always there.
As she grew older, Rapunzel began blocking her ears with cotton so she could stay awake. The night became her sanctuary, her only time of privacy when she could read and think. It was here that she began to plot her escape.
Her first effort to run had happened on that terrible day when she was twelve and realized how powerful Gothel was. That night, Rapunzel had climbed out of bed and went to the window. Gothel always claimed the Tower was the tallest in the world, but Rapunzel didn’t think the ground looked too far away. She thought her saving grace would be the bramble that climbed along the Tower’s sides. Lowering herself out the window, she began to inch her way down grabbing the places in-between the thorns. The coarse bramble tore her skin just the same. Soon she was bleeding and knew that she could not continue. The window was still close, the ground too far away. There was nothing to do but climb back inside. The next morning, she swathed her hands in cloth and told Gothel she had fallen while sleepwalking.
Rapunzel saw that escape would take guile and cunning. One evening, she studied the lock on the door. It seemed simple enough and she believed she could unlock it using hairpins. It was hopeless for a time and then one night, after many months of work, the door clicked open with ease. Rapunzel stared at the stairs in wonder - they were the first she had ever seen. They terrified her and she feared they’d give way beneath her weight or worse, be nothing but one of Gothel’s illusions. Then she stepped forward and they held. They were real and nothing could stop her. She raced to the bottom, heart galloping in her chest, only to find a circular hallway that ran the base of the entire Tower. There was only one door and beyond it she could hear the witch's snores. Rapunzel searched the walls for signs of a hidden entrance, but it was pitch black and her fingers found nothing of use. Her only hope was to slip through Gothel’s room; this seemed too great a terror to try.
Dejected, she trudged back to the top of the Tower, where she curled into a ball and wept. She clawed at the walls and thought of flinging herself from the window or bludgeoning herself with a stone. Her despair seemed epic. She would be here forever. Eating when the witch wanted, sleeping when the witch sang, never leaving unless Gothel willed it so. She almost lost hope. It was then that the idea came to her, the one that was so simple she almost laughed in delight. Finding the mirror, she met her own gaze and swore on oath: she would never cut her hair.
*
Gothel had her own batch of ingenious punishments. I can make worms infest your skin and crawl about for days underneath; I can raise the temperature of your blood so it’s just below boiling. These, though, may have been idle threats because the one time Rapunzel could recall being punished, it wasn’t with worms or blood.
It happened the day Gothel had tried teaching her magic. “It’s a glorious heritage,” she told her.
Rapunzel snorted. She wanted nothing to do with Gothel’s powers.
“One day," said Gothel, "you will teach magic to your own daughter.”
Rapunzel snorted once more. This was when she was a teenager and was just starting to toy with being haughty. “Where would I give birth? Here?”
“You might. I was born in the Tower. There’s no shame in it.”
“I am not forcing my daughter to learn magic.”
“You will not have to. She will want to learn.”
Rapunzel laughed. “Like me?"
“You're stubborn. But you will learn.”
“Why? So I can become a witch. Then what will I do? Steal children from their parents?”
“You are an insipid girl. You know nothing of the world.”
“I know enough to know that you’re not wanted in it. Isn’t that the real reason you’re here, hidden away? Because the world doesn’t want you? Just because the world doesn’t want you, I don’t see why you should believe it won’t want me either.”
“The world won’t want you. You’re a witch.”
“I am not a witch and I never will be.”
Gothel grabbed her so tightly that Rapunzel’s arm began to bleed. “Who knows better than me what you are?" The witch clutched her by the hair, turning the girl’s face so that the two of them could see eye to eye. “If you’re not a witch, then what are you? If you can answer me right now, I will release you into the world. Go to the village, or across the sea, do whatever you like. Freedom is yours if you can answer me. What are you? Well? What are you?” When Rapunzel didn’t - couldn’t - answer; Gothel released her. “That’s right. You’re nothing. You’re just a girl in a Tower.”
It is doubtful any girl has ever sobbed as terribly as Rapunzel did that day. Most girls cry from despair or lost opportunity or a broken heart; Rapunzel wept because these things would never be hers. Girls in Towers have no despair or opportunities and their hearts can never break because they have been smashed at birth.
Gothel led the weeping girl back to the bed. “Shall I tell you a secret, girl? I do not intend to keep you here forever.”
Rapunzel looked at the old woman’s ugly face, studying it for a trace of honesty behind the warts. “You're going to let me go?"
“No. But if you ever hope to leave, it will take magic. That is why I keep trying to teach you.”
“You wish to teach me magic so I can leave you?”
“As long as you learn magic, you will be safe, and as long as you are safe, my duty is done.”
Rapunzel dried her eyes and stared at Gothel with all the force of her will. “I would rather stay here forever than learn magic. If I learn magic, then I will be a witch, but then I will also be like you. I can't think of anything worse."
For a moment, Gothel was no longer a witch; she was just an old woman with miserable eyes. Rapunzel was surprised. She had actually hurt the woman’s feelings. The witch rose and went to the door. When she reached it, she stopped and turned.
“Until now you have been willful but never truly wicked," said Gothel. "And wickedness deserves to be punished."
She waved a hand through the air and the night blotted out the sun. Rapunzel shrieked and clawed at the dark. Only when she heard Gothel walking calmly away did she understand the dark was just for her. Rapunzel clutched at the void. There was little to hear or smell. Better that Gothel had infested her with worms. Years of blindness! For the first and only time in all her years in the Tower, she stood at the window and thought about jumping. She stood for a long time, searching for find the courage to hurl herself into the bramble. She couldn’t. She supposed Gothel had known this. If she was the sort of girl to commit suicide, Gothel would not have left her alone in the dark.
She spent a bitter and terrible night, inching in and out of sleep. The next morning, Gothel came and returned her sight. The girl ate her breakfast in silence, grateful that she could see the coffee, the croissant, and the lovely yellow of the butter.
*
There were two books and what she knew of the world came from them. The first contained plays by the Shakespeare. “The Shakespeare,” Gothel once said, “has a great deal of respect for us. He fears our powers. The one time he didn’t...” Here, her voice faded and her tone became sad. “There was a great King who was obsessed with witchcraft. He sent out a proclamation declaring amnesty for all the witches in the land. Persecuted in other countries, they fled for his shores. My mother was among them and it was during this time that she met the Shakespeare. He was a great dramatist but he was also in the employ of the King and had to do his bidding. So when the King asked for a play about witches, the Shakespeare complied. Desperate to please his Majesty, the Shakespeare snuck into my mother's room and stole incantations that he placed in the play. When Mother learned what he had done, she flew into a rage. The spells had been her secrets and the Shakespeare had exposed them for the world to see - and for other witches to steal. Furious, she placed a curse on the play. ‘May it endure forever,’ she declared. ‘But its very name will bring bad luck to whoever speaks it.’”
Gothel laughed at this part, as if very proud.
Rapunzel knew nothing of drama, but she enjoyed the plays because they were the only fiction she had. She understood most of the language and invented meanings for the words she couldn’t deduce. Because of the Shakespeare, she once assumed that they lived in England. In fact, they were in the mountains and valleys that sat between Germany and France. Exactly where Germany and France were was not something she could discern. Gothel was stingy with geographical details. It had taken Rapunzel nine years just to learn about Germany and another three before she heard of France. A few years after that, Gothel gave her one more accidental detail when she accidentally used the word “mythical” to describe the land in which they lived.
“And just what does that mean?” Rapunzel asked.
Gothel chewed her fat lip. “It means we have no interest in progress. Everywhere else in this world, people have only one question: what’s next? They have great societies in Germany and France because they are not content. It drives them to wars and revolutions.”
The only other book Rapunzel owned contained her family tree. It had been scrawled out on an assortment of blank pages, dating back hundreds of years to the time when Rossiter Paupy and his wife, Llesnia, had first set foot in a barren patch of land next to the Munich River. Rapunzel made up stories about these ancestors. She decided Rossiter Paupy had faulted on a debt and been murdered in his sleep; his grand nephew Hadrian had gone mad and fallen off the edge of the world; and her parents - her horrible, treacherous parents who had died and left her to Gothel’s whims - they had been consumed by fire. Then their corpses had been ravaged by wolves, the wolves ravaged by vultures, and the vultures drowned in the sea. Nothing whatsoever was left of them in the world.
*
On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Rapunzel woke late to see Gothel hovering above her, her hand wrapped around a dagger. A haze had fallen over her and she had to fight her way through the fog. She bolted from the bed but was disorientated and collapsed at once. Her head swam. Her vision blurred. She tried to say something and gurgled instead. Gothel led her back to the bed.
“Should have used more hemlock,” she heard the witch say.
“Hemlock?” Suddenly, it made sense. There had been something in her tea the night before. “What are you doing?”
“This will only take a second. Hold still!”
“Stay away from me!” The girl tried to thrash about, but her drugged body failed her.
“Calm yourself. Your hair is too long. You might trip over it. And the vermin!” Gothel tried to steady Rapunzel’s frantic head.
“I check for lice every day.”
“A witch cares nothing for vanity, Rapunzel.”
“I’m not a witch. And I never will be.”
Gothel grabbed her in a warty first. “Ungrateful wretch!”
“Cut it then," said the willful girl. "I’ll only grow it all again.”
Silence. A million year’s worth of stasis as the old witch hovered, the knife in one hand, the girl's head in the other. At last, she left the room and the door slammed on its own behind her. Rapunzel lay where she was for a long time, wrapping her braids around her. She had won her first battle; it had only taken eighteen years of war.
Gothel didn’t come to see her the rest of the day. Rapunzel spent the hours turning her two braids into a single long rope of copper strands. That night, when she was certain the old witch was asleep, she went to the window and, with the hope found in lovers and saints, lowered her hair down the side of the Tower wall. Then she wailed in frustration. After all this time, it was still too short.
*
Now she stood atop the Tower, nineteen and in bloom. The sun was up and the witch was downstairs. The silver tray with her lunch sat at the edge of the bed. She took her time with meals. Gothel never dined with her. She stayed away so long as Rapunzel was eating - and Rapunzel made certain she ate for a long time. She paced herself. A sip of tea. Stand by the window. A bite of bread. Repeat. Rapunzel chewed her bread and went back to the window. Her long hair trailed behind her in a single magnificent braid.
It was then she heard his voice.
Rapunzel had known a host of men in her time. When she was fourteen, she had stood at the window and pretended Romeo was in the bramble below; when she was fifteen, she had traded barbed retorts with Benedict; and when she was sixteen she had imagined both Lysander and Demetrius lusting after her. In her morbid moments, Hamlet found her face down in the river and Othello had killed her over a handkerchief. Yes, she knew men. She knew their hopes and fears and what made their hearts swell. But she did not know if these fictional men were anything like the real thing, having never met one.
And then, suddenly, there he was. His voice was like thunder. When had she ever heard a sound so powerful and thick? Terrified, enchanted, body trembling, Rapunzel moved towards the window. She peered over the edge. He stood below. The Man. Was he ever a sight! Tall and strong like a tree, he was food for the hungry and a stay for the condemned. His clothes were torn, his face ragged with growth. Had she any basis for comparison, she might have said he looked worn and haggard, as if he hadn’t slept. But how was she to know such things? To her, he was glorious.
He stood off center, trying to keep his balance amidst the thicket that surrounded the Tower's base. His hands were cupped around his mouth, blocking part of his face.
“Hello!” she called.
“Hello!” he called back.
Neither knew where things should go from there.
There came a deep rumbling from beneath the ground. It shook the fruit from the trees and made the birds take flight. The Man stumbled out of the briar and leaned against his horse for support. The entire Tower shook and Rapunzel thought it might crumble beneath her. She cried out and clutched the window frame for support as her legs buckled. Below, the Man watched in terror as the ground cracked open. Old Gothel rose from the hole, a withered Venus in her oyster shell. The world stopped its trembling. The forest fell still. The wind itself ceased to move. Even the Man's horse lost its snort.
“Are you the devil?” asked the Man.
“Something close.”
“I'd like to see the maiden,” said the Man.
Rapunzel blushed. The only man in the world and he had come for her!
“She is not to be seen,” said the witch.
“You would deny royalty?”
Gothel laughed. “You would claim royal authority with me?”
Rapunzel started. Royalty? Was he a prince?
“I wish to speak to her," said the Man. "I'd need her to sing for me again.”
The witch scowled. "Her? Sing for you?"
Why not? Rapunzel began to sing.
Gothel looked up. “Away from that window Rapunzel!”
Rapunzel didn’t move. She and the man locked eyes.
“Stop looking at her!” Gothel hissed.
The witch’s hand shot in the air. The Man stumbled back. So did Rapunzel. For a moment, her vision had clouded. Now it was clear. Had it been her imagination? She tried to steal another glance at the Man and saw that his form was blurred even while everything that surrounded him was clear.
“You will leave,” Gothel instructed.
“I will come back.” said the Man.
From under the witch’s breath came an incantation. She waved a hand through the air, forming a circle of fog. He tried to speak but she cowed him into silence with a growl. “You will return to wherever it is you woke up this morning. You shall fall in love with the first girl you see. The moment this happens, neither you nor Rapunzel shall ever think of each other again.”
“I will shut my eyes and look at no one else.”
“Spare me,” Gothel waved her hands. Against his will, the Man sheathed his sword and climbed back onto his horse. His body was not under his own control.
“I will return for you Rapunzel!” he cried, even as the horse turned and galloped away.
*
Rapunzel refused to leave the window. Long after the Man was gone, she stared across the treetops pretending she could still see him. “I might call him a thing divine," said Rapunzel. "For nothing natural I ever saw so noble.”
“I said step away from there,” said Gothel. She was in the room now, advancing with her horned cane. “There’s nothing noble about men, Rapunzel. They are carnivorous creatures. They care nothing for us.” She gave the sigh of a woman who knew what it was like to be a girl who had just seen a man for the first time. “He has come to see you before, hasn’t he?”
“You know my actions better than I do.”
“What happens here when I go on my walks?”
“Nothing. I'm alone, always alone.”
“‘I was hoping I could persuade her to sing for me again.’ Again, Rapunzel? You
have sung for him before?”
“The only singer is you. He must have heard your voice.”
“You little fool. You know nothing of the outside world. If it came to murder you, you’d unlock the door. You're too trusting, Rapunzel. You must believe me when I tell you that men are bad for you.”
Rapunzel turned back to the window. “He said he was royalty. Surely, they’re different.”
“They’re the worst of all. He’ll destroy you if you let him.” She was exhausted from the day and turned to leave. “I am tired. I will sleep. You will be punished in the morning.”
“Punished!” Rapunzel remembered what had happened the last time she was punished. The horror of Gothel blotting out the sun. "I haven’t done anything!” she wailed.
“You will learn, girl. I have sworn to protect you and I will not break my oath.”
“I did not ask for your protection.”
“It's a parent's curse to force their child to do things for their own good.”
“You're not a parent. You're a witch who has locked a girl in a Tower."
“You and your fairy tales. I'm your mother, Rapunzel. I gave birth to you in this very room."
The horror of this struck Rapunzel like a slap. She flung herself onto the bed and wept. It could not be true. And yet what other truths could there be? She would not look at Gothel as the woman left, leaving only the warning that her punishment would come at dawn. Rapunzel sat on the edge of her bed and watched the light fade. No. She could not endure this anymore. With the melodrama common to youth, she was certain another day would bring only death. Nineteen years in this room and in all that time escape had been a game for tomorrow and never today. Not anymore.
When the sun had set and she was sure Gothel was asleep, Rapunzel slipped her pillowcase free and stuffed it full of clothes. She took the Shakespeare too and the book with her family tree. She wanted to leave nothing behind. Gothel had forgotten to clear the tray from her dinner. Rapunzel picked up the knife and wiped it clean. Her hair lay around her like a coiled snake and she sawed it off as short as she could. At some point the knife slipped and sliced her fingers. She stared at the wounds, filled with a strange excitement. Normally, if she cut herself, she could depend on Gothel to heal her. But if all went as hoped, she would have scabs for the first time in her life. Finally, the knife slid through the final strands and the braid, seven years long, lay by her feet.
Next, she tore the bedsheets off her bed and tied them to the end of her braid. The makeshift rope stared back at her as if even it thought her mad to use it. But Rapunzel knew she could no longer think. She had reached the point of no return. She would act. If she was going to get caught, it would not be while she stood in indecision.
Rapunzel tied the end of the rope to her least favorite dress and the end of this to the leg of her writing desk. She yanked the cord, until she was satisfied the knot would hold. Next, she pushed the desk as close to the window as she could and made certain it was too big to fit through the gap. It would be a suitable anchor, or so she hoped. Then she threw the rope out the window and peered into the dark as it snaked down the side of the Tower towards the bramble below. It was no use; she could not tell where it ended. It might be touching the bramble or it might have fallen short. There would be no way to know until she was there.
She gave her quarters a final look. One room, a broad circle, twenty feet in diameter, with only a single window to show her the outside world. One room which had seen so much, heard so many stories, been the sole witness to the only moments she had ever known. This room where she had dwelled as baby, child, girl, and now woman. Don’t be a fool, said the room. Gothel told you the world is evil. You do not belong out there. You are ill-equipped. What will you do for money? Where will you live? Gothel may be a witch but she is also your mother. She cares for you. Can you say the same about anyone out there? Does anyone out there care for you? You have no family. You have no one.
All true. She climbed out the window just the same.
*
Later that evening, the Man’s eyes met those of another and, as Rapunzel's mother had foretold, he fell instantly in love and forgot all about Rapunzel. And in the trees, in accordance with the magic, Rapunzel forgot all about him. In the years to come, she would never remember what had led to her escape. But she never cared. It would always be enough that she was free.
Joel Fishbane’s novel, The Thunder of Giants, is available from St. Martin's Press. His short fiction has been widely published, most recently in Crannog, Dark Horses, and Abandon. For more information, visit www.joelfishbane.net.
