The Girl in the Tower

A woman great with child sat by the window and watched the neighbor’s garden. It was walled in stone, and no gate showed. Inside grew rampion, called rapunzel, in tidy green rows. She wanted it more than she wanted bread or sleep.

“If I don’t eat some of that green, I shall fade away,” she told her husband.

He loved her and feared for her. So one evening, when the moon was thin and the shadows long, he climbed the wall and filled his pockets. His hands shook as he dropped back down. The next night, hunger drove him again. This time, a tall figure waited among the plants.

“Thief,” the witch said. Her voice was quiet and cold. “You take what is mine.”

He fell to his knees. “My wife is sick with longing. Please, spare us.”

The witch looked past him toward the house. “Keep your life,” she said. “But when the child is born, give her to me. I will raise her as my own.”

He had no courage to refuse. He went home and told his wife nothing of the bargain. She ate the greens and grew strong. In time, a daughter was born. The witch came to the door before the baby had cried twice. She wrapped the child in a gray cloak and carried her away. The woman wept, but the witch did not look back.

***

The witch named the girl Rapunzel, after the plant her mother had craved. The child grew in a small stone house at the edge of the woods. She learned to sweep, to bake, to keep her voice low. The witch was not cruel, but she was watchful. Every night she bolted the door and counted the spoons.

On Rapunzel’s twelfth birthday, the witch measured her against the doorframe. “You are growing too tall for this house,” she said. “Too tall, and too curious.”

“I only looked at the road,” Rapunzel said. “I wondered where it goes.”

“It goes nowhere you will follow,” the witch said.

The next morning, she led Rapunzel through the forest to a tower. It had no door. Only one window, high up, looked out over the treetops. The witch called up, and Rapunzel climbed a rope ladder. Then the witch pulled the ladder down and left her there.

Rapunzel had a bed, a chair, a table, and a small stove. She had a window. She had her voice. She sang to the birds and the passing clouds. When the witch visited, she stood below and called, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” Rapunzel unwound her long braid and let it fall. The witch climbed up hand over hand, bringing bread and turnips and news that was never news at all. Then she climbed back down, and the tower was quiet again. Days turned into months, and months into years, and Rapunzel grew used to the height.

A prince rode through that forest in the summer, hunting with a small party of friends. He fell behind them near evening, and the trees grew close. Then he heard someone singing above him, high and clear, and he stopped his horse to listen.

He followed the sound until he saw the tower. It had no door and one window, and the singing came from the window. He sat under an oak and waited, because he did not know what else to do.

At dusk the witch arrived. She stood below the window and called, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” A long braid fell from the window, and the witch climbed up hand over hand and vanished inside.

The prince watched from the oak and said nothing. When the witch left, he rode home and thought about the tower all night.

The next evening he came back alone. He stood where the witch had stood, and he called the words he had learned. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

The braid came down. He climbed, and it held him, and he swung in through the window. Rapunzel stepped back against the wall.

“Who are you?” she said. “You are not her.”

“I heard you singing,” he said. “I wanted to know who was up here.”

“Now you know,” she said. “Nobody comes here. Nobody but her.”

He came again the next night, and the night after that. He brought apples and a small knife and news of the road. They talked in the dark, low, in case the trees had ears.

“What is it like, the road?” she asked.

“Long,” he said. “Dusty. Sometimes beautiful.”

“I have never walked on it,” she said. “I only watched it from far away.”

By the end of the week they had a plan. He would bring a length of silk, a little each visit. She would braid it into the hair. Then, on a night with no moon, she would let it down and climb to the ground, and they would walk away together.

***

She kept the silk under her mattress and worked on the braid at night. It took many visits. The prince came and went, and the witch suspected nothing, because the tower was quiet and the window was high.

One evening Rapunzel sat at the window and watched a bird pull at a thread in the wall.

“Why do you pull at that?” she said to the bird, laughing. “You are worse than the prince.”

The witch was already climbing. She had heard every word. She came in through the window and stood very still.

“The prince,” she said.

Rapunzel’s hands went cold. “I meant the bird,” she said. “Only the bird.”

“You have never been a good liar,” the witch said. “You were better at singing.”

She took the long braid in both hands. Rapunzel did not move. The witch cut it with the small knife from the table, and the silk fell out of it in a soft heap.

“Go,” the witch said. “The road you wanted to walk on is that way.”

She took Rapunzel down by the cut rope and left her at the edge of the trees. Then she went back up and waited in the dark.

At moonrise the prince came and called, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

The braid fell from the window. He climbed it, and at the top he found the witch.

“She is gone,” the witch said. “The bird you loved is gone. You will not sing to her again.”

He let go of the braid. He fell through the branches and landed in the thorns below, and the world went dark.

For a long time he lay in the thorns. The sky was black. When he sat up, the black stayed. He put his hands to his face and felt the wet and the cuts, and he understood that his eyes were hurt past mending. “Rapunzel?” he called. No one answered. Only the wind moved in the branches.

He stood up slowly. He found the tower wall with his hands. He felt along it for a door, and there was none. So he turned away and walked until the ground went soft under his feet. He walked all night, and the next night, and the next. By day he slept in ditches or under hedges. He ate what he could find with his fingers: berries, and once a dropped loaf. “Which way is home?” he asked a woman at a well. “North,” she said. He walked south. He asked a boy on a road. “East,” the boy said. He walked west.

Years went by. His hair grew long. His beard grew long. He learned to hear a stream before he reached it. He learned to count his steps between one tree and the next. He learned to tell morning from evening by the warmth on his cheek. “I am still going,” he told himself. “I am still going.” That was the one thing he would not put down.

***

One evening in a far country he sat by a hedge to rest. The air was warm. Somewhere beyond the hedge, a woman was singing. The song was low and slow, and it climbed and fell like a bird, and he knew it. He had heard it through a tower window. He got up and followed it through the gap in the hedge.

“Who is there?” the singing stopped, and her voice came from the doorway of a small house.

“It is only me,” he said. “I heard you sing.”

“I sing for the birds,” she said. “And for the little ones asleep inside.”

He stood still. “Is your name Rapunzel?”

There was a silence. Then her hands were on his face, on the cuts, on the beard. “Your voice,” she said. “I know your voice.” She began to cry, and her tears fell on his eyes. They were warm, and they washed the dust away. He blinked. The dark thinned. He blinked again, and there she was, older, thinner, with short hair, and the last of the light behind her.

“I can see you,” he said.

“Then come inside,” she said. “The children will want to meet you.”

So he went in. In the morning they packed what they had, and they walked back the way he had come, and the way was not so long with two of them on it.