Things were bad before she was born.

A man and a woman were going to have a baby and the mom had cravings, which happens a lot. She told the man that she had to eat a plant stolen from their neighbor’s garden or she would kill herself and the baby, which also happens more than you think. The man could have hit her to make her shut up but he didn’t, because of the baby. He didn’t try any other things either, he went straight to the neighbor’s garden to steal something.

The neighbor had a tower and a huge garden surrounded by walls with a lot of flowers in all different colors. The ones the woman wanted to eat were little, blue and spiky. He brought some back and she asked for more.

The man went back and ran into the neighbor, who was a witch (author’s note: I do NOT agree with using this word for magic users, but it is the one that the book writer used!) and she was mad as hell. The man had no magic and he was scared of the witch blowing him up so he said he would do anything for her and probably said he had a baby on the way, because that usually stops people from hurting you. The witch thought about it and said he had to give her the baby when it was born.

The man said yes. So his wife had her flower salad and her baby was born and they gave the baby to the witch.

The witch took the baby just to make the man feel bad. She didn’t know what to do with it after. But she couldn’t just throw it out the tower. She let the baby stay in the tower and grow into a girl and named her after the plant that her mom liked. It was not a pretty famous plant name like Rose. The witch called her Rapunzel.

Rapunzel had very long blonde hair that she never cut, and she had a really strong neck from doing prison workouts in her tower, where she lived all her life. When the witch visited, she would say Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair and Rapunzel did that. The witch, who had really strong arms from going up the tower this way, climbed up using the hair as a ladder.

One day a prince appeared and came to the tower because he heard singing. He saw the witch call for Rapunzel and the ladder trick. He decided to try it himself. Rapunzel had never heard anyone else’s voice before, so she thought it was just the witch with a sore throat calling and let down her hair.

The prince started to visit Rapunzel a lot. He made plans to help her leave and they even fucked sometimes. The witch found out eventually and screamed at Rapunzel for letting someone just sneak in, like her dad had done. Then the witch took a huge pair of scissors and cut off all her hair in one big chop. The next time the prince came, the witch was waiting. She let down the hair rope and pulled the prince up with her strong arms and laughed when he saw Rapunzel wasn’t there. He thought she was dead and jumped back out the window. He broke his legs and his eyes blasted out in the fall, but he wasn’t dead, and the witch wasn’t interested in chasing him, so he crawled away safe.

But the witch had actually let Rapunzel go. Maybe she let her out using the hair ladder, or the tower had stairs and a door that were locked before.

After crawling around blind for years and years in the forest, the prince found Rapunzel again. He recognized her by her singing voice. He asked her to take him back as her boyfriend, even though he was like a different person by then. She must have been different too even though he couldn’t see her. He never asked why all that time she didn’t try looking for him.

But she did take him back. That kind of thing happens more than you think too.