E2K: a journal for the new literary paradigm

Fiction

Princess of the Golden Locks: Rapunzel Revisited

by Carol Papenhausen

Once upon a time, a lovely princess lived in the castle with her father, the king. Her beauty attracted every male in the kingdom, and she smiled innocently at them all while her father seethed and growled, Besotted idiots. No brainless hunk of testosterone will spoil my daughter's chance of a brilliant royal marriage.

Thus the king arranged to have a tower built in the middle of a meadow where Rapunzel, for that was her name, would languish until her father found the perfect prince. The tower had but one window, at the very top, and was so constructed that no one could scale the wall and take Rapunzel away from her father's kingdom.

Each day a bevy of young men on spirited horses rode under the wall while Rapunzel smiled from her window. The young men entreated her to come down, but she told them that descent was impossible since the tower contained no staircase. She was a prisoner in her tower until the king released her.

Gradually the young men left, all except one, who came faithfully each day to watch her brush her long golden hair in front of the window. Sometimes he would recite poetry to her as her hair cascaded down the wall and shone in the sun.

One day, as Rapunzel smiled, his face suddenly lit up. "Aha," he said, "my dearest princess! You have only to let down your hair so I can climb up and hold you in my arms."

Rapunzel, innocent that she was, smiled even more brightly and let her hair down as far as it would go. The young knight climbed hand over hand on her golden tresses as she cried, "Ouch!" and "That hurts!" Finally he reached the top, slid over the windowsill and held out his arms. "Darling Rapunzel, come to me!" he cried.

She backed away. "Simpleton," she said. "Next time I shall tie something to you and haul you up slowly and painfully."

"But dearest-"

"My head is killing me," Rapunzel replied. "And you are an ass."

The next day the knight returned and stood at the bottom of the tower. "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," he called, being a young man of extraordinarily short memory. A golden cascade of hair fell from the window and again he climbed up. Again he held out his arms to the princess who now held a skein of flaxen hair in both hands.

"Why, you've cut your hair." The knight stared at the stubbly blonde scalp of his beloved.

She smiled and ran her hand over the bright yellow spikes, all that remained of her long lovely hair. "Do you like it?"

"I don't know," he said slowly. "It's-well, it's just not you."

"Au contraire," Rapunzel said while she tossed her boyish head from side to side. "It is most definitely me."

"How long will it take to grow back?" the knight asked.

"Oh, I will be an old woman by then," the princess answered. "Surely you have no desire to wait that long."

"No, I don't believe I do. Well, goodbye then."

"Yes. Goodbye."

"I will miss you."

"Yes, I think you will."

After he left, the days passed one like another. Weeks became seasons, then years. No one told her when the king died, but a succession of gawky lads from the castle continued to bring her provisions twice a week, propping a long pole studded with wooden pegs against the window and scrambling up like mischievous monkeys while the royal guard waited below.

From her window, Rapunzel watched and dreamed until one day a young monk from the nearby monastery passed by. "Sir! Herr Bruder," she called. The next day a youth clambered up the pole with a handful of blank pages, a bottle of ink and a sharpened quill.

As the years went by, the villagers forgot why she languished in the tower and talked amongst themselves of strange and curious events that happened while she lingered at the windowsill. As she aged, the rumors grew more frequent and more malign until the people in the countryside began to cross themselves when they passed the tower or spoke her name.

Then one day, after many years had passed, a horseman rode by and stopped when he saw her at the window. "Hello," she said. "You are the young man who climbed up my hair. How old you have become."

She, too, had aged, but he had learned much in the intervening years and, after all, she was a princess. "Have you been in the tower all this time?" he asked and she nodded.

"But the king is dead. You may descend whenever you wish."

"No, I quite like it here," she said and added shyly, "I write verse."

"Ah." The gray-haired knight called himself a poet, but no one came to his readings or set his verses to music.

Rapunzel folded one of her small sheets into an arrow and let fly. He opened it and read:

Sun, moon, stars fade;
Again the sun 'til evening shade;
Thus eternal day and night;
Each lit by round and heav'nly light.

"Very nice," he said before he rode off. "May I come tomorrow?"

When he returned, he did not tell her that her little verse had brought him acclaim at last, but merely asked if she had more. Again a sheet floated to the grass and he read:

A chink of dirt and in it grows
A tiny seed of green;
As if the leaf within it knows
The tower brick would ne'er be seen
Next to ivy's graceful trail;
So weightless and so grievous frail.

He smiled as he thought of the applause of the royal court.

The poet came daily, dressed in new and glorious raiment, to receive one of Rapunzel's poems. He published a small book, and troubadours now sang his verse to the strumming of lutes.

One day, no one appeared when he rode up. "Halloa!" he called. "Rapunzel?" Several moments went by before she appeared and she held on to the windowsill as she spoke. Her hair again hung down her back, long and thick but golden no more.

"Are you ill?" he said.

"I am writing," she answered.

"A thousand pardons. I will be back tomorrow."

The next day she did not appear, nor the next. When the lad came with her provisions, the gray-haired knight charged him with seeing if a soothing draught or the application of leeches might restore her.

But when the lad climbed in the window, he saw at once she was dead. Bits of paper covered the royal bed, and he crossed himself as he laid a hasty fire and threw them in. When he descended, he told the knight in a voice that trembled, "Mein Herr, the princess is dead. It is safe to ascend for I have burnt all the paper in the fire. Spells I doubt not, sir."

"Blockhead!" roared the knight. "Out of my way!" and he climbed up the pole as quickly as he could without renouncing age or dignity. He found the princess on her royal couch like one asleep, and after a glance at her closed eyes, he rushed to the fireplace where bits of paper poked from still-glowing embers.

He knelt and examined each piece in hopes of plucking one or two from destruction, but by the time he found an iron tongs, every scrap lay blackened on the grate.

"Spells, are they not?" asked the boy as he peered in fearfully. Having never laid eyes on either spells or script, he was as afraid of one as the other.

The knight did not answer. Instead he began to scan every space while the boy watched agape from the window. "Fraulein R kept things under her bed, sir," he said at last. The knight muttered to himself as he crawled under the royal couch to emerge with a linen bag that rustled in his hands.

"Gott im Himmel," he said as he knelt on the floor, his legs weak with relief. He reached in for a square of paper and read,

There's no breath
In tower of death;
Save my hair,
Descend to air.

He pulled open the drawstring and flapped at the squadron of tiny moths that flew out and circled his head before they lined up to stream out the tower window. Inside the bag was the braid of hair she had cut off those many years ago, now moth-eaten and fragile. He sat down beside Rapunzel, stared at the moths that eddied outside the window, then looked again at the princess. He noticed that her lips now appeared to curve in an enigmatic smile. His head gradually sank ever lower on his chest, and his half-closed eyes fixed on the sparks of firelight until they winked out and crumbled to ash.

Born in Chicago, graduate of Northwestern University, Carol Papenhausen's short stories have appeared in many literary quarterlies such as North American Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner and Colorado Quarterly; two received honorable mention in Best American Short Stories. She has also published two stories in online magazines. A fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Carol has written several articles for various magazines and newspapers, including the Sunday magazines of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Milwaukee Journal. Her poetry has been published in some half-dozen magazines.