Rapunzel

A man stole rampion from Mother Gothel's garden for his pregnant wife, and Mother Gothel let him, on one condition: she would take the baby.

She was not cruel. She fed the girl, taught her to read, brushed her hair and told her she was clever. And when Rapunzel was twelve, she put her in a tower in the middle of the wilderness with no door and no stairs.

Rapunzel did not think this was strange, because nobody had ever told her it was. Every day Mother Gothel called up, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," and climbed the braid, and they had a perfectly nice afternoon.

Rapunzel sang out of the window because there was nothing else to do, and a lost prince heard her. He watched, and learned the words, and came back the next evening.

She had never seen another person. They talked for two hours from opposite sides of the room. He told her about towns, and the sea, and the fact that most buildings have doors. "Why?" said Rapunzel.

They made a bad plan involving silk and a ladder, and it very nearly worked. Then one afternoon Rapunzel said, without thinking, "You're much heavier than the prince."

Mother Gothel cut off the braid and left her in the wilderness. Rapunzel built a hut, worked out food and water, and got quite good at it.

Two years later a scratched half-blind man came walking through the grass, and she knew him at once.