Now the tale of Rapunzel has been told on this wise: that a wicked enchantress kept her hidden and locked in a tower and so she awaited rescue by a handsome prince.  But this is, as most fairy tales turn out to be, not entirely true.

 There was no enchantress, this was an invention of the myth that followed the discovery of Rapunzel.  For people will embellish and romanticize and as the story was told over and over, imaginations added to the truth until the life of Rapunzel became a story told to young girls who dreamed of princes, when the time came for them to lay their heads upon their pillows and dream the dreams of young girls.

 Rapunzel did not always live in a tower of stone.  She lived in a village, a quite ordinary village of quite ordinary people.  Had she been ordinary, she would have been quite ordinarily happy there.   As Rapunzel grew, she realized that the thoughts of these people were not her thoughts, their concerns did not hold her interest and she spent her days alone and pondering the empty spaces inside her that she could not fill with stories of whose cow had the hoof and mouth or whose farm had produced the most corn or even which proud wife of which proud husband had produced the prize winning jam at the village fair.

Rapunzel went far into the woods on those days when the voices grew too loud and pounded in her head.  The crowded, noisy village made her lonely; and she went to a secret spot near a small pond, where she read and wrote in her journal.  

There was a peaceful busy-ness to this place. The birds carried on their coded conversations and their songs held more meaning for her than all the words that she had ever heard.

One day, as she wrote in her journal of the visions she saw drawn in the sky, the wispy dreams that floated past the sun, a voice behind her startled her out of her reverie. That was the day she first met him.

 He stood there, with the day's dying sun settling on him like burnished gold.  His eyes  had the color of the mist that rose from the water in the early morning.  His voice sounded like the music from a distant land, and called her away into him.

She met him there, day after day, travelling by his words into worlds she had not known, and her discontent with her village life increased tenfold.  Each day she awoke, full of anticipation of him, and travelled to meet him until that one day when he did not arrive.

 The next day felt his absence too, and the day that followed that, and the day that followed that.

 Soon, she stopped returning to the village even at night. She built a shelter, a make-shift thing at first but as days went on and became weeks, she built in earnest, gathering stones and constructing walls.

 In time she had built a strong tower with but one window that overlooked her beloved place.  She watched the mist rise from the water in the morning and knew his eyes, she saw the sun go red and gold in the late afternoon and knew his face and she listened to the song the birds sang to their mates, her heart struggling to sing with them.

Now, in this time, Rapunzel's hair grew long and thick and she braided it into a strong plait of gold (yes, you see, this part is true). It happened one day that a passing traveller on horseback came by her pond, and seeing the tower called out for any sign of a resident.

Rapunzel leaning out of her window, so enchanted the fellow that he begged her to allow him entrance.  Amused but slightly irritated at his insistence, she acquiesced but playfully lied and told him the only way to gain access was to climb up her braid, which she let fall down out of the window.  It was long enough now that it reached to the top of his horse's head (which stood 15 hands). The fellow was game and did indeed climb her golden staircase of hair.  

 His company wore thin after just a short time.  Her words fell on closed ears, he heard nothing of her and knew her not, he saw her visage only and insisted that she be as he imagined her to be from what only his eyes could perceive.  He was no more than those she knew in the village, and she sent him away.  

 Her heart knew only one, and he did not return.

 But word spread now, throughout the countryside, of the beautiful girl who lived in the tower and more came to find her.

 They came and stood under her window, begging for the golden staircase to be let down to them. Each proved more unworthy than the last, although occasionally one would tempt her heart, she would always find he was not true and could not see her as she truly was.

 The constant invasion of her chosen seclusion became so onerous that one night, in a moment of utter despair and heartbreak, she took scissors and cut off the means of connection to the world below.  Rapunzel took the braid and wrapped it carefully, for if he ever came, she would have it ready for him.  But when others appeared at her window now, she would show herself, shorn and with her face contorted.  She would cry out as one mad and frightened them all so that eventually, only the bravest of the village children on a dare came to see her.  Word of the mad Rapunzel in the tower spread like a fairy tale through the land.

And so it was, that is how they found her many years later. Sitting by her window, where she had watched the mist come up in the morning, and had watched the sunset in the evening, waiting for the one who owned her soul.  The unused ladder lay beside her. Stacks of journals she had written, of the one whose love she longed for, told her story.  But those who found her were not able to read and understand, and the stories of Rapunzel sprang up as different and plentiful as there were voices to tell them.  The one that lasted the longest is the one you hear even today.

Yet her journals still exist, they wait to be read and understood.  And here and there, now and again, one who has loved will read them and understand.