The mirror’s glass had begun to warp with age.
For as long as she could remember, she had been here, in this same tower. Staring into this mirror, she realized it was her only company, and after seventeen years of use it was beginning to fall away. Seventeen years of sitting on her pristine little stool, perfecting every imaginable way she could style her majestically flowing and nearly endless golden locks, wasted. Now all she saw when she looked into the mirror was waves of herself. Her pale skin dimpled and wrinkled, her magnificent honey-golden hair straggled and limp, her fine dress robes wrinkled beyond repair. She looked like an old woman.
Consulting her lunar chart as she did every night, she realized with a heavy heart that her guardian would not be coming to see her for another three months. Why must the witch come only on a Blue Moon? She, of all people, knew that it was not because witch’s powers worked only on that day. It was not as if she were fond of her keeper, but she felt loved and cared for when the witch came and delicately tended to her. But, after the witch left, she was always left behind, lonely once again.
She was never lonely with the Prince, though. She still remembered the first time he called out to her; her surprise, mingled with an inability to really be social from lack of practice, had made for an interesting first meeting. The Prince had scaled the tower cautiously, afraid of hurting her, but she had assured him she was fine. They spent hours together, hardly speaking at all but merely staring at one another. She had never set eyes on a man before, let alone a magnificent prince. He, in turn, admitted that he had never been in the presence of so lovely a creature as her before.
By the time the prince had wished her adieu and promised to return, she had fallen in love.
Every day when he came, the prince asked her if there were a way for her to leave the tower. Each time she said no, there was not. The witch had placed an enchantment upon the tower, preventing any soul from leaving the tower unless they scaled down, just as they had up. Every day, when she told him this, the prince tried to find a way past this enchantment.
But as the months went by, the prince became more frustrated with her harrowing location in the midst of the world’s largest and wildest forest. He stopped coming after they spent a year hopelessly in love. He had grown too impatient in finding a way past the witch’s enchantments. It was one day, while she was grooming her honeyed locks in the hope he would come, she heard the sound of two horses coming her way. Excitement bloomed deep in her bosom; was this the day her prince had thwarted the witch’s enchantments? Was he here to whisk her away on his second stallion? What of her hair?
She then, with a plummeting heart, heard a woman’s voice echo out through the forest.
“My dearest, why did you bring me to a dingy old tower, of all places?” asked the lady. Crawling to the window, she peered out and saw a woman magnificently dressed in blue and bronze dress robes, riding beside her prince, bedecked in green and silver.
“Because, my treasure, this tower is a mark of my solemn vow to you,” said her prince charmingly. “Someday, this tower will no longer be simply a tower. It will be an extravagant castle, erected in the honor of our marriage.” And then, her prince reached for his new bride’s hand and kissed it tenderly.
How could she have been so easily forgotten? All of the months he had spent adoring her, coveting her glorious honeyed tendrils, and placing her upon a pedestal of solid silver. Where had that prince gone, and who was this stranger with the lady in blue and bronze?
As her prince and new princess rode away, she stared into the mirror, to see the first signs of warping.
Why, oh why must her mirror be failing her now as well? Had she not already suffered enough? Had she not been imprisoned in a tower since her infancy, with no one to care for her, hold her, love her as a governess or nurse would? Would she be forever incarcerated in this tower? What if the witch lived forever, and placed the same immortal enchantment upon her? She did not wish to live forever, especially when in such woe over her lost love!
She cursed the day she had ever been born, ever conceived. Who had bore such an unfortunate child? Why had she no parents searching for her? If a prince could find her on a leisurely stroll, certainly the parents of a caged child could find this place as well if they had been looking? But what if they hadn’t been looking at all? What if her mother and father had simply handed her to the witch? What had she done as an infant to deserve such a cruel fate?
Reaching for her golden brush to vent her frustration, she realized why the witch had brought her here. Every time the witch came, all she did was faun and care for her hair. Her glorious, ever-growing, honey-golden hair. This was why she had been taken from her home as a babe at her mother’s breast to be jailed here!
And so, spite and heartbreak wrenching at her most unbearably, she began her search.
There was only so much space in a tower to look for what she so desperately sought out. She made certain in her mind what she wanted, as it seemed the tower was always able to supply her with whatever she required at the moment (other than stairs). And yet now, as she tore at every cushion and curtain in the tower, she could not find anything she needed.
Recognizing defeat, she made her way back to the top of the door-less tower and wept. She was about to give up all hope, bringing her hands away from her face only to reach for a handkerchief, when she saw them.
A tiny pair of shears.
She worked well into the night, being sure to tie the ends of the hair she had cut off so it would not become unruly, and soon enough had a glorious golden rope at her command. She held it out in front of her, admiring her handiwork, when she heard familiar words outside her tower, if not in a different voice from the witch or her prince.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”
Turning to the window and feeling an odd defiance rise up in her chest; she brandished her golden rope in her right hand, leaning against the sill of the window with her left.
“My name is Rapunzel no longer than my hair is on my head!” she cried down to the handsome knight decked in scarlet and gold. She distinctly saw a dashing smile flash across his gallant features as he pushed brown hair longer than her own from his face.
“Then what shall I call you, good lady?” he asked loudly. She smiled wickedly.
“You may call me Helga; Helga Hufflepuff!” she responded in like before tying her golden rope to one of the posts on her bed, and doing her best to scale down the tower before falling directly into the arms of the knight. “And what may I call you, kind sir?”
“I am known as Godric Gryffindor, madam. I serve Prince Salazar and his bride Rowena.” The girl now known as Helga felt an ironic smile tug the corners of her delicate lips.
“Take me to him; I believe it is time someone made a castle of this lonely tower.”
