Becoming Rapunzel

Pt. 3: Widow

Thinking back on these events, even now, years later, causes my head to ache and my belly burn.

I promised to tell the tale of how I became a woman, of when my innocent was ripped from me, and I have done so. I could end my story here.

But I shan't.

This isn't the end, thankfully. My life went on, and that is a part of my story too.

For a split second, everything went black and silent. The rage within me only burned brighter. I screamed, but heard nothing. Then suddenly it sounded all around me. I fell to the floor and landed in a pile of old leaves and new grass.

Sobbing without tears, I continued to scream into the warm earth. After many moments of hot breath, choking sobs, and flushed cheeks, I looked up.

I was in the middle of a forest. The woods were old and peaceful. Most of the tree trunks were so thick I could not wrap my arms around them and touch myself. Moss covered most of the bark and roots around me. The knobby roots rippled into the ground, carpeted by the lichen and dirt. Wild saplings sprung up around, bare of any leaves. There were large boulders scattered about as well, also covered in a generation's worth of soil and moss. It was a remote hillside, far from any human settlement. Birds sang overhead, and small shafts of sunlight glinted through the trees and landed around me.

Gothel had cast me off.

The thought made me laugh—I know not why. It wasn't humorous, but laughter bubbled out of me, brittle and angry. I looked around, trying to catch my bearings. It appeared to be the Darkling Forest, but I could not be sure. Gothel had sent me into the wilderness to die in loneliness and misery.

I was angry. Oh, so angry. I tried to look up through the trees to find the sun's position in the sky. If Ansel was still alive, his broken body suffering at the foot of the tower, I had to save him. I had to.

Without warning, I retched. I bent over double, spewing any leftover food in my system onto the last autumn's leaves beside me. When I finished, the racking pain stopped and I wiped my mouth dry with the back of my hand. I looked around me at the great old trees.

My head felt odd—light and free. I turned to look at my hair, but there was nothing piled around me. I reached back and felt my head, the tangled hair, and ran my hands down. My hair was gone. It ended in jagged, angry strokes above my shoulders. I grabbed the ends of my hair that I could reach and began to cry anew, my wroth melting into sorrow.

Ansel was dead. No one could survive that fall. Gothel would make sure of it.

Ansel was dead. The picture of his body, lying so far below, could not be erased from my mind's eye. I growled in frustration and rubbed my eyes. Dirt clung to my lashes. Ansel was dead. "What do I do?" I asked the ancient oaks beside me. "What do I do?"

They were silent. Trees are patient that way. I looked at them through my tears, the mix of evergreens and towering oaks, and they looked back at me. The wind was still. No one cried with me, not even the wind.

I rubbed my eyelashes free of the dirt and crawled to the base of the largest tree near me. The bark was rough, the patches as large as my palm. I curled up by it, nestled between two roots as large as my thighs. "What do I do?" I whispered as I stared into the hillside forest.

In the middle of the night I startled awake. I dreamed that Ansel was beside me, his breath in my ear, his body against mine. I opened my eyes, hoping to see him beside me, but all I saw was darkness. The wind taunted me, drawing my loose hair against my ear and cheek to tickle me.