Rapunzel

Written by Jeanette Tyson

Read by Madeleine George

This tale starts the way many tales do, with an eccentric old woman in a crumbling castle on the high hill north of a small, sleepy town. 

She was twisted and stooped as an old tree, and so much a part of the scenery she was mostly forgotten. But every spring a mighty wind blew a garlick-y, pepper-y smell through the streets and people remembered. 

They remembered how she gathered the roots of the campanula rapunculus growing wild in her garden and boiled them into a lumpy stew as her nineteen cats circled the rough pot. And they remembered as she stirred her rapunzel broth, she hummed a tune so sad, it broke the hearts of the red-breasted birds so completely they flew away into town and filled the trees there. 

(And while the birds sang sweetly, they also pooped quite a bit on the cars. Let’s just say you didn’t see many convertibles in this town.)

One day, while gathering rapunzel, the old woman found a real, live baby. Now babies don’t just arrive in gardens. They don’t spring from the ground like carrots or appear out of bushes like bunnies. But that’s a story for another time.

Let’s just say the baby was put there by someone who thought a lonely old woman would look after the child like a daughter. And the old woman did.

Like a daughter locked away in a castle.

See, the woman grew to fear losing the child and only ever being the odiferous woman with nineteen cats. So she locked the girl up and threw away the key. No birthday parties or sleepovers. No chilling at the mall. No internet!

The horror, dear reader, the horror.

But with no electronics to distract her, the girl’s imagination ran free. With a nub of charcoal, she wrote her mind’s ramblings on the wall. And because there was no one to tell her what to do, she chose only the words that glittered like diamonds and sentences lush and gnarled as kudzu. And she read these imaginings out loud in a rising, falling, sing-songing voice day after day.

Her hair grew long and dense as her sentences, for the old woman never cut it. Especially when she realized what a convenient ladder it made.

Rapunzel was the girl’s name. See, the woman greatly admired celebrity baby names like Leaf, Apple and Drake. So she cheerfully named her child after a root vegetable. And in the afternoons, she stood at the castle bottom and screeched, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

Because she was a good, and also hungry, child, Rapunzel would drop her braid out the window so the old woman could climb it.

So that was the daily: Rapunzel pouring out words no filter and the old woman climbing her hair. 

Then one day a boy stopped at the castle. He was driving his father’s convertible. You can be sure if he had a convertible, he also had a garage and if he had a garage, he also had a big fancy house. (Remember the part about the birds?) Anyway, drawn by the roaring river of unusually-arranged words flowing over the ragged edges of the mysterious tower, he immediately convinced himself he was in love.

So he went back the next day and came to see the unusual entry situation. 

Now the boy was actually the son of a real estate baron. Which meant he acted with great, unearned confidence and believed everything in the kingdom was his to take. So he decided to make the acquaintance of Rapunzel.

Rat a tat tat went the insouciant knock against the brick.

“Hello? Do I know you?”

“Hello, Rapunzel. I’m the son of a real estate baron,” he began.

“Wait, do that again.”

“I’m the son…”

“No, no, the knocking bit.”

Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat.

She repeated the beat on the table. Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat.

“Rapunzel?”

She’d almost forgotten.

“Yeah?”

“I thought you could let down your hair and I’d shimmy on up and… you know.”

Well, dear reader, Rapunzel did let down her hair. After all, company was severely limited. Once the boy climbed up, Rapunzel wrapped him in the most wonderful sentences he’d ever heard. By the time he shimmied back down, his heart was full of love and his mind was full of schemes to make Rapunzel his very own wife.

But once out of sight, the boy was out of Rapunzel’s mind.  Her mind was full of words. And now she had a new way to make them come out of her mouth: rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat.

Rapunzel paced and shouted and whispered. She pumped her hands and stomped her feet while she wove her words and stories. It wasn’t poetry, it wasn’t singing. It was just Rapunzel, herself. And all the birds flocked back to the castle.

The boy returned every afternoon, aglow with infatuation. But because he’d been taught by teachers that words could only be arranged one way, and because he was scared Rapunzel was way cooler than he was, one day he took a red marker and rewrote her sentences. And when he read them they sounded like giant bricks hitting the hard ground. And the birds left again.

“That’s how you do it,” he said, quite pleased with himself.

Rapunzel said “That doesn’t feel right to me. I like my stuff my way.”

“Oh Rapunzel, you’re so spunky! It’s cute.  And yes, some of your sentences are nice. But they could be better. It’s not your fault.  You haven’t been out in the world. But I have. I’m going to help you.”

“Help me?”

“In fact, the old woman and I have been talking about it.”

“Wait, what??”

At just that moment, Rapunzel heard the old woman’s voice. She threw her hair down and as the old woman used her incredible upper body strength to climb up, the boy reached over the windowsill to pull her in.

“Rapunzel, listen to this boy. Do what he says and we can make a lot of money.”

“We?”

The boy added quickly, “Yes. And I’m happy to do it for you because I love you.” 

He didn’t stammer or stumble tenderly over this declaration of love, but rather threw it at her, like an expensive trinket.

And that didn’t feel right either.

Rapunzel didn’t sleep at all that night. Her dinner sat cold and untouched. As did her nub of charcoal.  In fact, Rapunzel didn’t write for days. But the boy barely noticed. He and the old woman just chirped and chattered about all the things they’d do with her words. And he was happy, because when he took over Rapunzel’s words, he wouldn’t only ever be the son of the real estate guy.

Rapunzel watched the boy drive away. She got a bucket and dipped a rag into the soapy water and lifted her hand to erase her life’s work, her captivating words. Then she heard chanting—Rapunzel! Rapunzel! She ran to the window, sure she would see a crowd below, but the field was empty.

She realized her imagination had given her a glimpse of the future. But only she could write it.

The next day, the boy came around as usual.

Rapunzel’s braid was already down. He thought she was eager to see him, of course. He shimmied up, but it wasn’t Rapunzel waiting. It was the old woman.

“She’s gone,” the woman wailed, dropping to her knees. “And so are her words.”

The wall was white as a blank page.

“She tricked us,” the boy cried.

Hiding at the bottom of the castle, Rapunzel quickly tugged down her hair braid, trapping them together. Then she grabbed her notebook (of course she backed up her work, silly!) and was, indeed, gone. She made her way to L.A., a city she’d read about in the old woman’s celebrity magazines.

How did she get there? Well, dear reader, that’s an adventure involving stardust, motorcycles and a guest appearance on Def Jam.

She found an agent who didn’t want her to change a thing, especially her short, spiky haircut. And from Johannesburg to Kyoto and Belfast to Coronado, people felt her words flow around them like sweet honey.

And they loved them the way you love leaning on your mother’s chest and listening to her heartbeat.

Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat.

As for the boy and the old woman, we assume someone eventually found them. But since there was no internet and cell phone service was pretty spotty, I guess it’s hard to say.