2023 Issue 5 Sept/Oct Focus - Mid-South Magazine

The Ballad of Rosie and Rapunzel
by Elaina Nicholas
There once was a princess in the Kingdom of Nettle. The
most beautiful princess there could be, christened Briar
Rose for her glorious fiery red hair. Poor Briar had come
upon the marrying age, albeit unwillingly.
“You are betrothed!” Her father, the king, roared.
“I refuse! I do not love him!” She shouted back,
“You will do as I say!” He commanded.
And with that, Briar ran away. But only so far as to bump
into her friend, the scullery maid. “Oh Anya, you must
help me!” She pleaded with her. Anya was a witch, at
least on her mother’s side.
“I’d rather die! I’d rather die!” The princess sobbed into
her friend's arms. Anya knew of poor Briar’s plight, for
she bemoaned it nightly.
“No, dear princess, you are too young to die.”
“There is no other way out!” She practically screamed.
Anya shushed her, soothing Briar, as she hatched a plan.
Briar had agreed to it, once it was all laid out.
reconsidering the finality of death. “You will not die but
sleep, frozen in time until true love’s kiss awakens you.”
Briar looked up from Anya’s tear soaked shoulder.
“But how are they to be my true love if we never formally
meet?” She asked. “Well you see, when others are in
your proximity you may enter their dreams you will be
a creature of the night realms, if they are close you may
speak to them if you choose.” Briar nodded, “What must
I do?”
Once Anya had gathered all the proper ingredients she
produced a thorn for Briar so that she may prick her
finger and begin sleep everlasting.
“Good luck, Princess” were the last words she heard
before she went on into that great night.
When the king found his daughter in such a state he was
struck down by grief and refused to tend to his kingdom.
The thorn that Anya had used on the Princess began
to grow more, soon overrunning the kingdom, and the
people grew desperate.
As the kingdom fell into despair a young couple had
found themselves with child. But they were poor and
food was scarce and the mother was always hungry. She
pleaded with the father to go into their neighbor’s garden
and fetch her some lettuce. The husband complied, but
not without reluctance for their neighbor was a witch.
But lettuce was eaten and the child was born seemingly
without penance. And once the child reached the age of
ten her parents relaxed,
perhaps the witch was more forgiving than they thought.
Their celebration is of course premature, for that very
night the witch went and stole their daughter, “a debt
overdue,” she said. So the child, who the witch renamed
Rapunzel, grew up in a faraway tower while the princess
remained asleep.
The thorn of Anya had grown into wild thick bushes that
completely suffocated the kingdom and beyond, until
one day when Rapunzel was fully grown they reached her
tower. Rapunzel had grown to despise her captor who
neglected her to the point where her hair was never cut
and it now winded around her small room in an unkept
braid. The thorns had crept into her windows, and one
fateful day she found a bird speared upon one. On closer
inspection, she realized the bird had not died from a stab
wound but rather from a poison that must have come
from the thorn itself.
Her captor had made the poor choice to sleep unarmed
that very night. Taking her revenge, Rapunzel plunged a
thorn deep into the witch's chest to make sure she never
woke again. With the aid of her hair as thick as a rope she
managed to climb down the tower and began her journey
homeward, to Nettle.
Her long hair dragged behind her making the journey
long and exhausting, so in a fit of rage she chopped it to
her shoulders, leaving most of it behind but fashioning
some of it into a proper rope tied around her body. The
journey to Nettle would take three months' time and
Rapunzel was already weighed down by the exhaustion
of the day. So, she found a patch of soft moss and
bedded down.
The scene around her shifted. She couldn’t tell you
how but something had changed. Maybe it was the
lack of thorny branches or the haziness that seemed to
accompany the dreaming—or maybe it was the gorgeous
woman suddenly standing before her.
“I must be dreaming,” Rapunzel whispered, astonished.
The lady giggled.
“And what makes you say that?” She asked.
“Because I’ve never seen someone as pretty as you
before,” Rapunzel admitted. The mysterious lady blushed
a pretty shade of pink that matched her nightgown.
Rapunzel gently took the lady’s hand and kissed it, a
courtly gesture she had seen displayed in her books.
Sept+Oct 2023 | focuslgbt.com | Go! 29