Becoming Rapunzel

Blood Moon

I was the one who came up with the idea of using a pulley. It was one of the six simple machines I had read about.

When I suggested it, Gothel thought for a moment, then nodded. Next time she came, she appeared in my bedchamber, with a basket of food and a round metal pulley and nails to secure it to the window. She fastened the machine to the wood and then asked me how the herbal solutions were doing. I was still watching over and creating some concoctions for her, and I was getting good at keeping a calendar in my head. I now understood the importance of lunar cycles, equinoxes and solstices, and the like.

I asked her why she couldn't just appear each time, but she told me curtly that it was a drain of magic. She could only store up so much in her mind at a time, and she needed to save it for her special project. Being pulled up by my hair was a much better idea. And it did work—my hair still grew as fast as ever, and now, loose, it could reach the ground outside the tower.

Now, when I heard Gothel's voice call out, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!” my chest burned with excitement. I had something to tell her!

Last night was the dark of the moon, when the sky was darker than ever and I felt alone in the tower. When I awoke in the morning, I almost doubled over in pain. My lower bowels cramped and I found blood on my nightgown and sheets. It had begun! It was about time—I had just turned 14 two months before. For goodness' sake, even Music had started before me, almost three years ago.

In my reading on herbal remedies, illnesses, and treatises on the human body, I had long ago discovered that women bled once a month, for four or five days, usually beginning the night of the dark of the moon. Herbalists assumed that women were the most prone to pregnancy during the full moon, or the exact opposite of their menses. That was an old, old word for “month,” but for a long time now women had used it to refer to their blood courses.

As I cramped in my middle and began hauling Gothel up with my hair and the pulley, I thought of my new development. It meant I was a woman! It also meant I could have babies of my own. The thought both excited and terrified me. I wasn't sure how a woman ended up expecting a child, but I assumed it had something to do again with the moon and perchance certain herbs a woman could ingest. There were herbs that induced labor, herbs that prevented pregnancy, so there must be herbs that induced pregnancy.

I remembered now, as a young child, watching Gothel's menses, her way of wrapping moss in old rags and tying it somehow between her legs, laying an old blanket between her thighs when she went to sleep at night, or sometimes putting dead and cleaned sea sponges inside of her. I wasn't sure how to accomplish that, and I had no sea sponges. I wasn't certain how it worked or if it was safe to have something inside of me—somewhere I read that young women or women with narrow hips should be careful with that sort of thing. I had read that if a woman was having a hard time, she could not only wrap cloth inside of her, but coat it with a paste of special herbs and even honey. With the way my body felt now, I thought that sounded lovely. Maybe I should brave the inserts after all.

“Goodness, Rapunzel. That took long enough,” Gothel complained as she climbed over the window sill.

“Mother! Mother, it's my blood moon!” I told her. "I'm a woman!”

She stopped straightening her cloak around her and peered at me. “Truly? Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure! This is my blood moon.”

Actually, every dark of the moon was a blood moon, but most women referred to their first menses as their blood moon.

She sat down on my bed and stared at me. “This is good,” she murmured. She smiled. It seemed like a real smile. Ever since she had left me, our relationship had changed. She used to bring me little gifts of food, smile at me, and answer my questions. But since she found something in her grimoire for her special project, she usually ignored me, besides taking care of all of my physical needs. “Do you have any questions?” she asked brightly.