The Funeral of Mother Gothel
Rapunzel pulled back the curtain of vines. The leaves were withered and dying, shrunken and brown much like the hair which now protruded over her forehead. She brushed her hand across her scalp, uncomfortable with the similarity. Stepping through the plants, she emerged out the other side of the stone passage. In front of her, murky grey skies hung above the quiet waterfall and river that now rested still along the fringes of the landscape.
Before this scenery, her childhood home stood tall and proud, a hidden monument to her adopted mother's dedication. An eighty-foot-high stone tower erected in this distant corner of the kingdom, which neither royalty nor peasant knew existed. Rapunzel knew that people would flock to see it, if only they were aware. They would come in disorderly droves, wanting to glimpse for themselves the place where their lost princess had been imprisoned for eighteen years.
Despite having spent her entire life inside, the princess herself had only seen her tower from the outside three times. The first time, she had been far too distracted by having finally set foot outside her window to spend time examining it closely. The second time, she had been distraught by the belief that Eugene had abandoned her. The third time, she was overjoyed that she had saved his life, and had put all other considerations aside. Aside, and locked away were no one could find them.
It was there they had stayed, until her mother – her real mother, the queen – had fought back her tears of happiness enough to ask how she had managed to find her way back. Eugene had noticed her reluctance to speak and jumped forward immediately to explain what he knew. This served to satisfy her parents in the short term.
Rapunzel knew that her parents deserved to know how she had grown up, and what the life of their only daughter had been like. They would want to know about her numerous hobbies and her cooking and pottery and guitar skills, all of which she desperately wanted to share. Especially her painting – she was very proud of her capacity to create art. That very art was what had shown her who she truly was. Rapunzel didn't fear sharing any of it. She hadn't even been embarrassed demonstrating her voice-throwing skills in front of the entire royal court, although Pascal had turned a particularly humble shade of red.
Several days after the reunion, the king and queen had gone deeper in their inquiries. It wasn't their intention to pry, Rapunzel knew. They only wanted to know their daughter better. Her parents had been so grateful upon having her back that they had offered the man who rescued her anything he wanted as a reward, up to and including half of the kingdom. Eugene had smirked and asked if a palace on an island all to himself was out of the question, which the monarchs accepted as a perfectly reasonable request. He had then winked at Rapunzel and said that although that was very interesting, all he really wanted was his charges dropped so that he could spend more time with the woman he loved.
That brought up even more details about their adventure and journey to see the floating lanterns – about their dancing and decorating in the capital alleys and their boat ride under the stars. The keys to those hidden considerations fluttered into the cheerful atmosphere like a butterfly, innocuously hovering between the lines, no one mentioning the woman of whom they all desperately wanted to know more: the woman Rapunzel had spent eighteen years of her life calling "mother."
The keys inevitably dove down like hawks and smashed their container into pieces. Rapunzel had refused to think about them, refused to accept them, and now they stood between her and her family across the now-enormous few feet that rested between them. She used to have a mother – a mother who had died, while she, the world's most insensitive and unloving daughter, had felt nothing. Before the king or queen could say another word, Rapunzel had absconded from their presence in tears.
The subject hadn't come up again. In the several weeks following, her parents seemed to realize her need to come to terms with the matter on her own, and instead encouraged their daughter to demonstrate the various skills she had acquired in isolation. Rapunzel had taken to her painting with passion, and made it her mission to thematically redecorate the entire palace. Blues and greens dominated the west wing, symbolising water and life; oranges and yellows blossomed through the east wing, resembling the different permutations of the dawn. Various shades of violet ensnared the formerly drab corridors frequented by the servants. Outside in the courtyard, all the stone embankments had little chameleons basking on them in the sunlight – but by some clever illusion they seemed to disappear completely whenever evening shadows approached.
It was when Rapunzel had taken a brush to the wall above the fireplace in her own room that her dedication faltered. The brush in her hand simply would not move. For nearly an hour, she stood with her arm outstretched, willing herself to make a stroke. For a girl who had spent her entire life hauling around all the hair she had ever grown, maintaining the physical stance was trivial. But for all her efforts, not one drop of pigment came in contact with the wall, and she knew exactly what was holding her back.
She didn't tell anyone where she was going, even though only one person other than herself knew the way. She left a note telling her parents that she would return within a few days, not wanting to risk them sending a group of the royal guards to follow her. She needed to make this trip alone. Armed only with a travelling cloak and a picnic basket which contained some food and a frying pan, she set off.
Now, a few days later, she had arrived. She wished she could say it looked the same as she remembered it, but she couldn't remember what it had looked like all that clearly to begin with.
It was cold – autumn was setting in. That must have been why all the leaves were dying. Rapunzel knew from books that the leaves fell from the trees during the colder seasons, but she had never seen them this close before, only from the distance of her window. It had been beautiful there. Down here, she could feel more than just the colours, and it made her scared.
Rapunzel stepped forward, trying to evoke an emotional reaction from the tower, but none resulted. She kept walking, craning her neck higher and higher at the window and the small iron hook she used to throw her hair down. She stepped on something cloth-like, and looked down. It was her mother's cloak.
No. It was Mother Gothel's cloak.
She wanted to be angry, she wanted to scream and yell and cry and rant at the woman who had deprived her of her family, the woman who had belittled and used and imprisoned her. She wanted to kick the cloak into the river and then set it on fire, or set it on fire and then kick it into the river, whichever would destroy it forever the quickest. But she did neither of these things, and calmly stepped around the obstruction and entered the stairway at the tower's base. She climbed every single tedious spiralled step in silence.
"We're here, Pascal," she whispered, "you can wake up now."
The chameleon poked his head out of her cloak, yawned, curled away and went back to sleep.
"Pascal!"
He squeaked with a warble, slipped out of the cloak and fell, bouncing harmlessly on the floor. He rolled onto his feet and narrowed his eyes at Rapunzel. She smiled at him, and he sat down patiently, willing to wait as long as necessary. Rapunzel looked away first, glancing around with a sigh at what had once been her home. Pascal suddenly looked guilty.
"Why did I come back here?" she asked him.
He shook his head.
Her eyes drifted from the shackles around the ceiling posts to the bloodstains on the floor. She saw the pieces of the shattered mirror on the ground and her seventy feet of now-brunette hair twisted around them, some of it still folded from where Mother Gothel had made one final attempt to take it in her arms. She felt ill, and lonely.
She continued looking around. She saw the walls, still bright and cheerful with her art. The paint for them had come from the supplies that Mother Gothel had often brought back from her travels. Some of it was common and some of it was hard to find, but Mother Gothel had always gotten it for her anyway, because it kept her happy. Happy to stay inside, of course, but happy nonetheless.
A thin layer of dust covered the counter and the stove, on which a pot still sat. It was filled with cold and definitely spoiled hazelnut soup. Rapunzel herself hadn't initially cared for it when she first recalled Mother Gothel making it twelve years ago, but upon hearing it was her mother's favourite it had instantly become hers as well.
The chessboard was still set out in mid-game. While Pascal was her most frequent opponent, Rapunzel learned more by playing against Mother Gothel, who was an absolute genius at the game. The times when she had been persuaded to participate were few, but Rapunzel couldn't forget them. They were happy times, even if they were displays of the same intellect that had stolen her away.
Rapunzel removed her travelling cloak and her shoes. She took a cloth from the rack, wet it, and wiped away all the visible dust. She used the same cloth and scrubbed the blood from the floor, then picked up the shards from the mirror and disposed of them, stepping around her severed hair. She took a broom and swept in all the corners. She washed the dishes, and folded all the unfinished laundry. Pascal stared at her the entire time with his head tilted in confusion.
"Doesn't that look nicer?" she asked him when she was done.
Pascal made a sound like he was being squashed, expressing obvious disapproval.
"I didn't want to remember it that way, alright?" she told him. "I used to like it here. I didn't used to be afraid of her."
Pascal hopped onto the window ledge and looked over the edge, then back at her.
"No," Rapunzel admitted, "I'm not afraid of her now."
Her friend nodded smartly.
"I miss her."
He froze in mind-nod, and his lower jaw sagged slightly. He also made a very soft wheezing sort of noise that was barely audible.
"I mean, she was my mother for my entire life, right? I never questioned it, I never had reason to question it. And she was a good mother... Ow!"
Pascal had poked his tail hard into the back of her hand, and was now motioning a claw at her, indicating that she was mistaken.
"I loved her, Pascal!"
The chameleon stopped and narrowed his eyes in disbelief.
"When you care about somebody, even if it turns out they've been lying to you – that doesn't change how you feel about them. At least, not for me... should it?"
Pascal shrugged helplessly.
"I know she was selfish, I know why she needed me and tried to protect me. But it only took a few hours for me to discard everything she and I had ever shared together and bring it crashing down. I don't – I don't want to believe that was all a deception." Rapunzel walked over to the steps leading higher into the tower and sat down. "I want to believe that she cared."
Looking sympathetic, Pascal jumped down from the window, ran over to the stair beside her and took her hand in a full chameleon embrace. The two of them sat like that for a short while.
Their silence was broken by the sound of someone coming up the tower stairs. Pascal immediately assumed an attack position, and Rapunzel just as quickly had the frying pan in her hand. The footsteps were getting closer, and she swung back to take better aim at the intruder as he stuck his head up through the floor.
"Eugene!" she exclaimed.
The former thief turned to face her, then cringed as he saw what she was wielding. "Hold it there," he said, "it wouldn't be self-defence this time, would it?"
Rapunzel lowered the pan, giving a mock sigh. "No, I suppose it wouldn't be." She stopped joking after a moment, and wondered how he had known she had come here.
He had pulled himself entirely into the room by this point. "You're wondering how I found you, aren't you?" he asked.
"No," she answered.
Eugene looked flummoxed for a second. "Oh. In that case, you probably won't find it very interesting that Maximus has a far more developed sense of smell than any horse has a right to have."
"Max? He's here?" Rapunzel ran to the window and saw the horse standing on the grass far below. She turned away and shut the wooden doors. "He won't tell anyone how to get here, will he?" She sounded more frantic than she intended.
"What's wrong?" Eugene asked, sounding concerned. "Why would you come back here and not want anyone to know about it?"
Rapunzel sat down on the stairs again. "I don't mind that you know," she said. "I just don't want anyone else to know – the guards or my parents, those people."
Eugene sat down beside her. "None of what happened here was your fault, you know," he said thoughtfully.
"I never said it was!" she exclaimed. She crossed her arms and turned away from him. He glanced at Pascal, who motioned for him to continue.
"Your parents were worried about you," he tried again. "They know you're an adult and everything, but they're still jittery about you suddenly disappearing."
"Are you here because of them?" she asked shortly.
"No," he replied, "I'm here because of you."
Rapunzel sighed. "They care about me," she said. "Why?"
Eugene was temporarily lost for words. "Why?" he asked incredulously. "Because they're your parents! They love you; what more reason do they need?"
Rapunzel kept staring at the coils of her former hair trailing along the floor, and after several seconds Eugene realised this. "No, Rapunzel," he said, "don't you even dare think that! You parents love you for who you are, not for what you can do!"
Pascal added a vehement and adorable little squeak to accompany Eugene's statement.
"What about Mother Gothel?" asked Rapunzel. "Did she?"
"She was a despicable woman," Eugene told her. "How can you ever think of her as anything more?"
The princess turned and leaned into his shoulder. "Because I have to," she replied. "I can't just pretend that the last eighteen years meant nothing to me. I can't accept that there wasn't just one small part of her that saw me as something more."
Eugene put his arms around Rapunzel's neck and pulled her close. She lifted her head to stare into his eyes. "Rapunzel," he began, "if there is one thing I've learned from meeting you, it's that love means caring for someone else more than yourself. If Gothel really loved you, she would have known you belonged with your family, not with her. She wouldn't have lied to you."
"If she had done that, she would have died."
Eugene only nodded.
"I can't fault her for that," she said.
"Would you do the same?"
Rapunzel shook her head forcefully. "Never."
"But it's acceptable from her."
"She was my mother. I loved her."
The couple pulled away from each other – not from awkwardness, but so they could converse more comfortably. "I guess I can't understand completely. What with being an orphan and everything."
"I love my real parents... but I also love her still. Does that make sense?"
Eugene nodded slowly. "Is that why you came here? Because it reminds you of her?"
"I need..." began Rapunzel, and then paused, the memory of the unmoving paintbrush rising to the forefront of her thoughts. "I need to let go. It's not here that reminds me, even though I thought it might be. I want..." She turned away, ashamed. "I need to tell her goodbye. Until then, I can never look my real mother in the eye and not see her, looking at me and knowing that I'm a lousy daughter because I felt nothing."
"You are not a lousy daughter, and you certainly aren't feeling nothing right now."
Rapunzel stopped and sniffed, wiping some of the wetness from her eyes with her sleeve. "I guess not."
"You haven't discussed this with your real mother, have you?"
"No. I want to, I want so much to let all of it go. I want them to be a part of my life. But they can't be – at least, she can't be – because I already have a mother."
Eugene smiled mischievously. "This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that she made you wear shoes, does it?"
Rapunzel snorted, grinning slightly against her will. "I hate them," she said, "but they help outside, don't they?"
Pascal looked at his claws with interest, and set them on the stairs like he was pretending to walk. He looked at the two of them, and then at their feet, and rolled his eyes.
"You've got nothing to complain about," said Eugene, pointing at him. "Everyone in the palace loves you. There's not a lizard in the world more extravagantly cared for than you."
Pascal stuck his tongue out while Rapunzel reached over and picked him up.
"Eugene! Don't you speak to Pascal like that." She petted the chameleon, both of them grinning like mad. "He's been under a lot of pressure, adapting to palace life."
Eugene gave a fixed glare in some random direction, while Pascal giggled as though he found something amusing about their conversation. Rapunzel put him back down, stood up, and walked over to the curtain over the mantelpiece.
"What are you doing?" Eugene asked. While he had been focused entirely on her while they had been talking, he now turned his attention to the rest of the tower. "Wow. It's cleaner in here than I remembered."
Rapunzel ignored him, entranced by the curtain. Pascal made some motions and squawking sounds to convey to Eugene what she had been up to. Just as he was finishing, she turned from the object of her attention and began lifting her hair off the floor and bundling it under her arm.
"I'm ready to go home," she answered as she did this. "There's just some things I have to do first."
She opened the door covering the window, wrapped one end of her hair around the iron hook, and threw the coiled mass outside, and before Eugene or Pascal could react, jumped out and slid down to the ground below. Maximus ran over from where he had been patrolling to welcome her. She returned his affections briefly, before approaching Mother Gothel's cloak that still lay on the grass.
She picked it up, folded it, grasped her hair and pulled herself back up. Her hair, much like the curtain of vines she had come through, now seemed weak and thin. It still supported her weight, but she wasn't sure whether it could withstand any sudden tension. She reached the window and climbed back inside. She asked Eugene to start a fire in the fireplace, which he did obligingly, glancing at the bundle in her arms curiously.
Rapunzel took her hair and set it neatly on the chair where Mother Gothel had always used to brush it. When the fire was finally going, she stepped forward and set the cloak upon the flames. It caught fire after only a few seconds.
"Goodbye, mother," she whispered.
Eugene put his arm around her shoulder as she fought not to avert her eyes. It took several minutes, but eventually, the cloak disintegrated completely and the fire went out. Pascal gazed down hopefully at Rapunzel from his new vantage point on top of Eugene's head.
"You ready to go home, Rapunzel?" Eugene asked hopefully.
"Just one more thing," she replied.
Rapunzel ran up the stairs to her bedroom. She ignored everything save for her one focus: the chest resting at the foot of her bed. She grabbed it by the sides, and bumping into the furniture only once or twice, rushed back downstairs and set it before the fireplace. She opened it, removed a paintbrush and several jars of paint, then climbed onto the mantelpiece and pulled aside the curtain. With the precision of a master, she carefully edited the landscape of herself watching the floating lanterns.
On either side, her parents now observed the sight with her.
"Who's that handsome guy there?" Eugene asked as she added one more person.
"That's you," she replied. "I guess you just have one of those faces people see however they want to."
Pascal gave a squeaking laugh, which Eugene was powerless to stop without hitting himself in the head. He settled for pretending to sulk. "Well, I like me anyway. But there's one thing you've forgotten."
Rapunzel looked at him oddly. "What do you mean?"
Eugene took the paintbrush and climbed onto the mantelpiece with her. He dipped it into the dark green jar and sloppily erased the entire trailing length of Rapunzel's blonde hair. Pascal hopped down to the paint as well, dipped his tail into the brown and then ran up onto Eugene's shoulder. With a few much cleaner strokes, what was left of Rapunzel's hair was now wayward and chaotically brunette.
"I like it," Rapunzel smiled. "How do you think that would look over the fireplace in my bedroom?"
"Well, little guy," asked Eugene, "what's your opinion?"
Pascal appeared to give it serious thought. Finally, he gave a self-assured nod.
"Well, then," said Rapunzel, "that's all I needed to hear."
Rapunzel never told anyone apart from her closest friends where the tower was hidden. Occasionally, throughout her life, she would return there to remember the woman she had formerly called "mother." And even though she could never change the way she cared about Mother Gothel, no longer did the memories of the time they had spent together prevent her from coming to know her true family.
This made Pascal very happy, and he made it quite clear to me in the cutest possible way that he would like you all to know that.
The End