Rapunzel: Act I - The Beginning
People have long desired to acquire things that they should not. Perhaps this is part of the human condition. Today it is the quest for money, or power, or fame. But once upon a time in an age long since passed there lived an old couple. Rowan the cabinetmaker and his wife Hazel owned a modest cottage at the edge of the Great Wood. The clean air and abundant fresh water and game meant that they never suffered from hunger, thirst or sickness. Rowan adored his wife and she loved him in return.
But unhappiness plagued them.
The source of their misery lay in their childless state. For years Hazel had desired a child and so had her husband. They tried, and tried, and tried some more, but no matter what special techniques they employed she simply could not conceive. Hazel eventually grew past the age were she could bear. When her cleft dried up, the moon-decreed crimson flows staunched for all eternity, so did all of her hopes for a family.
Hazel was no Sarai, and Rowan no Abraham. No Angels had visited them in a mission of mercy to make her fertile once more. Their Christian God shut his ears to their pleas, His mysterious workings quite beyond their ken.
But there were other Gods besides Him at work in the Cosmos.
One morning when the old couple woke up they found themselves with a new neighbour. For right beside them, positioned around the small pool where they had drawn their water for the last fifty years sprawled a manor house of ivory. It gleamed like bits of bleached bone in the desert sun. Its crimson roof tiles sparkled in the morning light like freshly spilled blood on a field of unspoiled snow. The abode was one fit for a king. No, for an emperor!
Or, as they found out much later, for an Enchantress.
Rowan and Hazel paced around the manor house, him admiring the straight lines of the stone, the high peaked windows and the precision of every line and seam. Hazel had eyes only for the splendid gardens that surrounded it. Never before had she seen such beautiful flowers and an odd assortment of plants and herbs.
"Why look," said she, "there be a bed of fine rampion, such the like these old eyes have never seen before. Pray, dearest husband, fetch me a handful so I can make us a fine salad for tonight's repast."
"No, dear wife, the garden does not belong to us. Who knows what wickedness the New Lord might do to us?"
"Did he ask our permission before taking our pond, husband?" Hazel huffed. "We shall take some rampion as payment. See to it." Like a Queen after delivering her edict, so did Rowan's wife depart, striding away with confident, albeit exceedingly rapid steps. She knew her husband would obey her. Her husband doted upon her and would do what she desired regardless of how he personally felt about the matter. So it had always been.
Rowan crept into the gardens and violated the pristine bed of rampion, just as an unskilled suitor plowed into a virgin; tousling her hair, mussing up her sheets and leaving bloody, indelible signs of his clumsy passage. Try as he might, he could not hide the fact that two great handfuls of the precious herb had been stolen. With a heavy heart, he ran away with his ill gotten gains.
He never did see the wizened face of the onyx-eyed Enchantress staring out of the window.
The purloined greens made an excellent repast, and in the joy of consuming the delectable victuals all traces of guilt vanished like a shallow puddle in summer's heat. "See," Hazel told her husband, "the greens are lush and sweet, just as I expected." Then Hazel did something she rarely did these days, she kissed her husband full on the mouth. Rowan felt the heat in her kiss, and rose up in response, his manhood growing with each kiss she pressed against his dry lips. Soon he pushed himself into his welcoming wife, competing with his spearing tongue which penetrated the damp cavern of her mouth. He took her mouth with his tongue even as he took her sodden area of female delight with his cock. It had been a long time since she had given herself to him without complaint. A very long time, indeed. As he tupped his wife on the hard wooden tabletop he thanked God for giving him and his wife good health and a deep love for one another. Most importantly, he thanked God for making his wife desire him this very night.
He never realized that his God had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The next morning Rowan awoke violently, driven awake by the piercing screams from his wife.
"Look, oh look, dear Rowan," she wailed, despair filling her voice. "Look what evil the New Lord has wrought upon us!" She lifted her wrinkled, trembling hand and pointed out the window towards the manor house.
A high crenellated wall of white stone surrounded the manor, the top over two man-heights tall. Hazel ran to the attic and peered out of the small, dusty window in the roof. This high up she could see over the wall. Most of the garden remained hidden from view, but not the delicious bed of rampion! It filled her eyes and her heart with avarice.
Rowan's cajoling accomplished naught. Hazel would not budge from her window seat. Three days passed, three long days where Hazel moved not. She sipped on the potted water Rowan brought up for her and chewed listlessly on some of the dried meat and stale bread that remained in the kitchen, but she refused to leave the window overlooking the garden. Rowan noticed with alarm that the rampion bed grew large and juicy while his frail wife grew smaller and weaker, as if her vitality seeped into the rich earth that nourished the verdant plants.
Her disease knew only one cause, and only one cure. "Please, dear husband, steal out into the New Lord's demesne and fetch me some of that Ambrosia. Without it, I shall surely perish." Rowan knew her pleadings to be the truth. Without the rapunzel he would be a widower by month's end.
Rowan departed that night for the Lord's manor for a second time, his legs trembling frightfully the entire away. He approached the massive double doors, gates crossed by thick spars of oaken timber. He knocked thrice upon the gate, then waited patiently.
Nothing.
"What if he isn't here," Rowan thought to himself. "My wife may well perish before he returns to his land. He has many fine plants in his garden, not just the rapunzel. Surely he would not begrudge me just a little bit." So he scaled the wall with a limberness that surprised him. His body had been like this for almost three days, ever since he and his wife had eaten of the succulent greens from the New Lord's garden. His joints had stopped aching in the nighttime and he had more vitality than he possessed since he was in his thirties. More importantly, he knew again the insistent stirrings of lust, something he had thought extinguished years ago. Every waking moment he desired to bed his wife, though in her near catatonia he had been forced to relieve himself in other, less wholesome ways. The thought of his own wicked acts shamed him.
The cabinetmaker's feet touched the earth on the far side of the wall, making no more sound than did a moonbeam creeping across a creaky wooden floor at night. He stealthily traversed the garden until he faced the rampion bed. His hand reached out, trembling in his eagerness to collect that which would restore dear Hazel to normalcy once again.
It was not to be.
The entire garden lit up, flooding with daylight as if the sun's rays shone in this garden alone. But such was impossible. It was well past mid-night!
"Hold, thief!" A reedy female voice called out. "Who dares rape my garden?"
Rowan dropped to his knees, knowing that not even a powerful Lord could summon daylight to pierce Night's sable cloak. He now knew what kind of person had constructed this perfect home and garden in a single night. A magus had taken up residence beside him.
Rowan watched the small figure step out of a blazing sphere of amber luminescence. She dressed herself in shimmering robes of silk and brocade, the topaz cloth as brilliant as the mystic sphere itself. Fine velvet slippers embroidered with thread-of-gold adorned her petite feet. But she was old, much older than the cabinetmaker or his wife. Old like the world was old, if not older than that. Her eyes, though. Those merciless black pits looked eternal.
Looking into her serpent eyes, Rowan knew fear.
"Please, Great Mistress," he whined, prostrating himself in front of her, "my wife needs some rampion or else she will die. She craves it like nothing else in this world. Upon tasting it the first time she was merry and gay. Now she resembles a walking corpse, only existing in hopes of one day tasting your sweet vegetable again."
"I care not," the woman said. "Why should I fret over the fate of thieves? I saw you steal my crops, shiftless man. You took that which did not belong to you. That is why I do not care if she does perish."
"And you stole our water!" Rowan replied hotly. If he was to lose his beloved Hazel, he didn't care to go on living. Whether he died of a broken heart or in a burst of flames from a sorceress's caress, death was death. "You claimed the only fresh water for almost a quarter day's journey in any direction."
"Did I? For that I apologize. I meant no harm to you or your wife. Here, please accept this rampion plant as payment for your water rights." She pulled out the tallest, healthiest plant and handed it to him, roots, leaves and flowers all. He cupped the bulbous, long white roots in both of his hands as he gazed up at the bluish-white bellflowers that swayed gently in the nighttime breeze. Her sudden generosity stunned him. He never expected the Noble Lady to apologize, much less offer any reparations for her wrongdoing. The rich took and the poor paid; was that not how the world operated?
