After dinner Rapunzel took the prince by the hand and led him to her room. They were about the same height, and once they were inside she put her arm around his shoulder, peered into his eyes, and whispered: “As long as you don’t come to hate me, I won’t let anyone kill you. You’re a prince, right?”
Thanks to the witch’s daily combing, Rapunzel’s hair glistened as if it were made of threads spun from the purest gold, and it hung down almost to her knees. Her angelic, round face made one think of a wild yellow rose, her lips were small and as red as strawberries, and her eyes were dark and clear, with a hint of melancholy deep inside them. The prince thought he’d never seen such a beautiful girl before.
“Yes,” he answered quietly. Some of the tension inside him melted away with the reply, and tears began to run down his cheeks.
Rapunzel peered at him with those clear, dark eyes and nodded. “Even if you come to hate me, I won’t let anyone kill you. If you come to hate me, see, I’ll have to kill you myself.” She, too, had begun to weep, but suddenly burst out laughing and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Then she wiped the prince’s tears as well. “Come on,” she said brightly. “Tonight you’ll sleep with me, where I keep all my pets.” And with that she led him to her bedroom. On the floor were blankets and a pile of straw. The prince looked up at the ceiling to see perhaps a hundred pigeons, all resting on perches and rafters. They appeared to be asleep but stirred slightly when he and Rapunzel approached.
“All these are mine,” Rapunzel said. She snatched up the pigeon nearest her, held it by the feet, and shook it. The startled pigeon flapped its wings frantically, and Rapunzel thrust it in the prince’s face and cried: “Kiss it!” Then she nodded toward a large bamboo cage in one corner of the room and said: “See those crows over there? They’re the gangsters of the forest. There are ten of them, but they’re bad boys, so I’ve got to keep them locked up or they’ll fly away. And over here is my old sweetheart, Bae.” She went to the opposite corner of the room and came back pulling a deer along by its antlers. The deer had a shiny copper ring around its neck, attached to a thick iron chain. “This one, too, if I don’t keep him chained down, he’ll try to run away. Why don’t they want to stay with me? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Every night I take a knife and tickle Bae’s throat with it. He gets really scared when I do that, and starts wriggling around like anything.” Rapunzel pulled a long, shiny knife from a crack in the wall and began stroking the deer’s neck with the blade. The poor deer squirmed in distress and broke out in a greasy sweat. Rapunzel laughed.
“Do you keep that knife next to you when you sleep too?” the prince asked warily.
“Sure,” said Rapunzel. “I always go to sleep hugging my knife. You never know what might happen. But never mind that. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go to bed. I want you to tell
me how you ended up wandering into this forest.”
The two of them lay down side by side on the straw, and the prince haltingly explained how he’d got lost and separated from his servants.
“Do you miss them?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“You want to go back to your castle?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“I hate children who pout!” Rapunzel said, sitting up suddenly. “It’s better to look happy. I have two loaves of bread and some ham. You can eat that if you get hungry on the way home... Well? What are you waiting for?”
The prince jumped to his feet, overjoyed, but Rapunzel remained calm and composed. There was something almost maternal about her now.
“Oh, and put on these fur boots. You can have them. It’ll be cold out there. I don’t want you to get cold. And these are my mother’s fingerless gloves. Shove your hands in. See? Now they look just like my ugly old mother’s hands!”
As tears of gratitude rolled down the prince’s face, Rapunzel dragged the deer out of its corner and unchained it.
“Bae. I’m going to miss tickling you with my knife, because you look so funny when I do, but never mind that. I’m going to set you free now. Take this boy back to the castle. He says he wants to go back. It doesn’t matter. You’re the only one who can run faster than the old woman. I want you to run as hard as you can.”
The prince climbed on the deer’s back.
“Thank you, Rapunzel. I’ll never forget you.”
“None of that matters. Run, Bae! Don’t let our guest fall off, or you’ll be sorry!”
“Goodbye,” said the prince.
“Yeah, yeah. Goodbye,” Rapunzel said, and burst into tears.
The deer flew through the darkness like an arrow. Leaping over thickets, it wound its way out of the forest, crossed a lake in a single bound, and in no time at all left behind a wilderness of howling wolves and screeching crows, cutting through the air with a rocketlike whistling sound.
“You mustn’t look back,” the deer said as it ran. “The old witch is chasing us. But don’t worry. The only thing faster than me is a shooting star. You mustn’t forget Rapunzel’s kindness, though. She’s a willful girl, but she’s very lonely. Well, here we are.”
Scarcely before he’d realized what was happening, the prince found himself standing in front of the castle. He felt as if he were dreaming.
Ah, but poor Rapunzel! This time the old witch was furious with her for letting such a valuable catch escape. She said Rapunzel’s selfishness had gone too far this time, and locked her up in a dark tower deep in the forest. The tower had neither a door nor stairs, only one small window in a little room at the top. This was where Rapunzel was to spend her days and nights from then on. Poor, poor Rapunzel! A year passed, another year passed, and still she sat in the dark little room where, unbeknownst to anyone, she grew ever more beautiful. In her solitude she’d become a pensive young woman, and never for a single moment did she forget about her prince. Sometimes, overcome with loneliness, she sang for the moon and stars. The sorrow in her voice made the birds and trees in the forest weep, and even the moon would grow misty listening to her. Once a month the old witch would come to check on the girl, and to leave clean clothing and food, for she still loved her daughter and couldn’t bear to see her starve. But only she, with her invisible wings, was able to enter or leave through the tower window.
Three years, four years passed, and now Rapunzel was eighteen years old. Alone in the dark room, not even she was aware of her shining beauty, or of her own flowerlike fragrance.
In the autumn of that year, the prince went out hunting again and once again lost his way in the forest. As he was wandering helplessly about, trying to find the path back home, a sorrowful song reached his ears. The voice touched his heart and moved him powerfully, and he staggered toward it until finally he came to the base of the tower. Perhaps, he thought, it was Rapunzel. The prince, too, you see, had never forgotten the beautiful girl he’d met four years before.
“Show me your face!” he shouted. “Please don’t sing such a sorrowful song.”