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Chapter One: Constrictor Knot
A knot that ties up a bundle of items.
She did not want to steal the child. No, the heavens above knew that she could not handle a child with the grace and selflessness needed to raise one, but in the end it was the child or nothing. She realized that the moment she cut the hair of the little princess and it snapped back to a deep, chocolate brown, the power of the sun gone. When that had happened she had almost gone into one of her rages—her heart pounded furiously, and shortly afterwards her head began to ache. To top off the whole situation, she was aging rapidly, much too rapidly. She could feel the skin melting off her in folds, could see her vision dim and hear the noises of the world fade away from her ears. When she whispered the song of power her voice was hoarse, ugly, garish.
She really was in a bind.
For a single moment she let her cold, gray eyes sweep the nursery. No guards inside, door open to the parent's suite, another door leading out to the balcony. Really, it had been too easy to sneak past the watchmen. In fact, she had been doing quite a lot of sneaking lately; it was something she had always been good at—especially after hundreds of years practice. But she could not afford to dwell too much on the past, not at this moment. The baby gurgled again before her, swaddled peacefully in a crib of pale creams and golds. Anymore of that noise and the king and queen would awaken.
At the time it had been a hard choice for Gothel—after all, she did not want the responsibility of having to care for a child, and a royal one at that. A hiding place would have to be found, food gathered and cooked—not to mention she would have to teach her to read and possibly write, though for all intensive purposes that last measure wasn't too important…she sighed. Rubbing at her forehead with bending, snapping fingers, she started backwards. Her hands, gnarled like an ancient tree, met her declining eyesight and she cursed.
When it came down to it she cared more about her youth than the inconveniences of taking care of some stupid child.
She swept downward, gathering the small thing in her arms. The baby didn't fit there quite right, as if she wasn't the one meant to hold the princess, and the girl's blonde head, weighed down by an already absorbent amount of hair, lolled a little to one side. It was then that the baby realized that it was not her mother gripping her tightly in one hand, and she began to cry. Gothel almost dropped her.
The crying echoed around the empty chamber, and, wasting no more time, the aging woman moved towards the balcony doors, which opened onto the cool night air and a soft, gentle breeze wafting the lake below them. She could hear the movement behind her of the girl's parents and tried to quicken her steps.
It was difficult.
Her joints popped and cracked beneath her. Her skin withered and faded. Her thin lips dried up and she licked them, nervously, swinging open the balcony door and readjusting, rather roughly, the baby in her arms. With one last look back—back at the gold and opulence and love that this girl would never see—she was gone.
The baby cried too much, which Gothel didn't really understand at all. The stupid child had an immense bed and a large round room that Gothel had filled up with toys of every kind and paint and picture books and all of Gothel's attention. The tower was bright and warm during the day, dark yet peaceful at night—it was, in effect, the perfect home. But that didn't stop the damn crying. Every night and every day and all the time in between—the high-pitched wailing began grating on her nerves.
She had rid herself of the aching joints and things and often spent hours gazing at herself in the long looking glass she had positioned in the part of the room with the best light. But she still felt old, worn and weary, mostly because every minute, it seemed, she was trying to shut the baby up with a toy or a threat or a yell or a plead—none of it worked. Only at times like this did she wish for the flower's power as it had been: a flower. A nice, quiet flower.
For the first time in her life, everything was not about Gothel. And it frustrated her to no end.
Rapunzel. She decided to name the crying baby Rapunzel after the sun-drop flower. And, as soon as she was able to talk clearly, Gothel taught her the song of power. It was much more relaxing having the young girl sing, for then Gothel could brush and brush and brush the hair—already hanging past her waist—until its power faded into her and she felt rejuvenated and strong.
Then it was to the mirror. Always the mirror, checking for brownish age spots and growing wrinkles and other things. She had felt the pangs of being old many a time, but never had they been as advanced as the last time she let herself age, back when she had stolen the child. She could not afford to let that happen again. She had to keep the hair secret, and safe. She had to keep getting younger.
The little girl would constantly ask about going outside, mostly after she sang the song and her hair glowed a brilliant gold and Mother Gothel, as Rapunzel called her (she didn't necessarily like the name, it sounded so old), stood in front of the mirror for minutes, hours, days, years—a long time, at any rate. The very thought of losing the one thing that kept her forever, eternally young, after what she had went through to take it, sent Gothel's stomach careening into twisted knots and she would swallow back a dryness in her mouth that grew at the asking of the question.
The outside world was too dangerous. That is what she would hold onto and tell Rapunzel, her flower, because otherwise the girl would be too willing to try and sneak out herself.
It took four or five years of endless, sleepless nights filled with crying and endless, wrenching days, days that she could have spent out in the world fishing for compliments, for her to realize the most important difference between maintaining her youth in a flower and maintaining her youth in a girl.
One was easily manipulated. And if there was one thing Gothel excelled at, it was the art of manipulation.