Rapunzel

Long ago, in a little house at the edge of a garden, there lived a husband and wife who longed for a child. Next door was a magnificent garden that belonged to a powerful witch, filled with rapunzel — a leafy green vegetable the wife suddenly craved so badly she grew pale and weak. Her husband, desperate to help her, climbed the wall one night and gathered some for her. But the witch caught him, and to save his life, he promised her something he never should have: their child, when it was born.

When a baby girl came, the witch took her away and named her Rapunzel. She raised the girl in a tall stone tower deep in the forest — a tower with no door and no stairs, only a single window at the very top.

Growing Up Alone

Rapunzel grew tall and gentle, and her hair grew longer than anyone had ever seen — golden, shining, and strong as silk rope. Every day, the witch would stand at the bottom of the tower and call,

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair!"

And Rapunzel would wind her braid around a hook by the window and let it tumble down, and the witch would climb up, hand over hand, all the way to the top.

Rapunzel did not know what it meant to have a friend, or a family, or the wide world beyond her window. She was often afraid — afraid of being forgotten, afraid of always being alone. But she still sang, every day, her voice drifting out over the treetops like a small brave flag.

A Voice Answers Her Song

One day, a prince was riding through the forest and heard that beautiful, lonely song. He searched and searched until he found the tower, but there was no door to be found anywhere.

He waited nearby, hidden among the trees, and soon he saw the witch arrive and call up her strange rhyme. He watched the golden hair tumble down and the witch climb up like a spider on a thread. When she had gone again, the prince — his heart pounding with both fear and hope — stepped forward and called up the very same words.

Down came the shining hair. Up climbed the prince. And when Rapunzel saw him standing in her window, a stranger where only the witch had ever stood, she was startled — truly frightened, for she had never seen another soul.

But the prince spoke gently. "I heard your song from far away," he said, "and I could not rest until I found you."

Slowly, her fear softened into wonder. They talked for hours, and Rapunzel found that being seen and heard by another person felt like sunlight after a long winter. The prince returned again and again, and each time, her fear of loneliness grew smaller, replaced by something warmer.

Discovered

One day, without thinking, Rapunzel let it slip to the witch: "Why is it that you are so much harder to pull up than the young prince?"

The witch's face turned to fury. In her anger, she cut off Rapunzel's beautiful hair and sent her away into a wild, faraway wilderness, alone and frightened once more.

That evening, when the prince came and called up the familiar words, it was the witch who let down the shorn braid, tied to the window hook. When he climbed up expecting Rapunzel, he found the witch instead, her eyes cold with anger.

"You will never see her again!" she cried.

In his shock and grief, the prince fell from the tower into the thorny bushes below. The thorns scratched his eyes, and for a long time afterward, he could not see. Heartbroken and blind, he wandered the world, lost — but he did not stop searching. Even without his sight, something inside him refused to give up hope of finding her again.

Love Finds a Way

For years, the prince wandered from place to place, guided only by the memory of Rapunzel's song. One day, he came to the wild edge of a forest and heard a voice he knew at once — sweeter and sadder than ever.

It was Rapunzel, living quietly with the two children who had been born to her, singing to comfort herself just as she always had.

When she saw him — thin, tired, and blind — she ran to him and wept. Her tears fell upon his eyes, and in that moment, his sight was restored, as if love itself had washed away the darkness.

They looked at each other, both of them changed by all they had feared and lost, yet still standing together. The prince took Rapunzel and their children home to his kingdom, where they lived out their days in peace and happiness, no longer afraid.

Even in the loneliest tower, and even after the darkest fall, love found its way through — proving that courage and tenderness can outlast any fear.

Attribution: Adapted from The Brothers Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812) — public domain.