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Rapunzel
If Rapunzel could wish for anything, absolutely anything in the world?
Obviously, she would love to ride a dragon. Or learn how to speak five hundred languages. Or visit that house people say is made of candy (and, ideally, eat some of it).
Things that involve going outside in general are high on the wish list.
But that’s not her biggest wish.
Rapunzel’s biggest wish of all . . .
Is to be absolutely, 100 percent ordinary. Ordinary as old boots. Ordinary as dry toast. Ordinary as paint chip-ping off a fence.
“Rapunzel!”
Because absolutely nothing about her is ordinary.
Dust motes spin lazily in the Library’s late afternoon light. Rapunzel clutches a rag in one hand; the other is gloved, holding an oil lamp. The room’s edges are round, and its shelves are crammed with the rarest, most magical, most forbidden objects from around Reverie, like enchanted quills, shiny hooks, cores of cursed ap-ples, a wolf’s tooth.
“Focus, bunny.” Lady Grimm snaps her fingers, looking up from her living map. “If you keep scrubbing at that rate, you’ll let the genie out.”
“Sorry, Mother.” Rapunzel runs the rag over the bronze oil lamp, hurriedly placing it back on a crowded shelf.
“And don’t touch that with your bare hands,” Mother snaps.
“I know,” Rapunzel says.
The lamp is a new addition, in from Ambrosia. DO NOT LET GENIE OUT reads a very stern note tied to the neck. “Not” has as many underlines as the years that genie has probably spent inside.
Rapunzel’s a little tempted to run her bare palm over it, just once. Maybe a genie could help her. Especially this one. It must be pretty powerful, for someone to bottle it away.
But if Mother thought the genie would help them, then she would have said something. Mother knows best. That’s kind of a given when you’re one of the most powerful fairies in Reverie.
“Get your head out of the clouds, bunny,” Lady Grimm commands. “Has our work stopped being of interest to you?”
“Sorry, Mother.” Rapunzel scribbles down the oil lamp’s condition and the date. The Grimmoire is a record of all the objects in Reverie; Mother uses it to document when they receive something and to keep track of what objects are in their possession.
As the head of the Dreamwood Council, Mother’s role is to oversee balance in Reverie. And part of this is to run the Library--recording, loaning out, storing, or disposing of these magical objects. Keeping track of all the stories of Reverie, as Mother says.
Much of Rapunzel’s responsibility, now and forever (and ever and ever), is to help her. Assistant Librarian, Mother will say fondly, patting Rapunzel’s hair. How lucky, for a strange, Cursed child like you to have such a noble life planned.
Rapunzel brushes the backs of her knuckles against a pretty miniature ship that’s been in the Library for a while, which Mother has gotten down from the shelf once or twice recently. In the Grimmoire, it’s labeled: “Magic Level: Medium. For: a swashbuckling story. Caution: sea sickness.”
Rapunzel lets her fingertips rest on the ship’s wooden hull for the briefest of seconds. She loves the thrum of magic, warm, so close to the surface the magic could just spill straight into you.
What would a swashbuckling story look like for her? She’d probably go to the beach and order an ice cream so big, she wouldn’t be able to finish it before it ran cool and sticky over her fingers. She’d get a sunburn and would likely need to fly a kite.
Lady Grimm stands, rolling her shoulders.
“Disappointing.” She glowers at the living map. “You’d think a trident would be easier to find.”
Lady Grimm is not the kind of fairy who goes to parties and answers the occasional wish. She’s not a fairy godparent, and she sneers at those who are, like Durchdenwald, who has caused a few problems lately. She is superior to all those fairies, she tells Rapunzel, because she’s mastered very challenging magic and done many important things that no one else would dare. She’s also a little obsessive, very clever, and very, very old.
Not that you’d know the last bit by looking at her.
Her skin is fair and smooth. Her gold-and-silver hair is brushed back into a bun. Sometimes it’s bright red and to her waist; other times, it’s ebony and chopped at her chin. The style is often dictated by what a nearby queen or royal or otherwise beautiful woman has adopted.
“She thinks she looks so lovely, does she?” Mother would snarl, staring into the claw-footed mirror, before her hair shifted to be just that much shinier, just that much lovelier, than anyone else’s.
Rapunzel turns her attention back to a large oak table covered with unrecorded items, her responsibility to sort through and document. An important task. Magic is dangerous in the wrong hands. It’s important to know what objects are safe in the Library or are floating out there, a threat.
“Oh, Mother, I think--”
“Enough, Rapunzel.”
Rapunzel swallows her thought, which was to ask about a lone acorn on the discarded table. That’s where they put objects that are useless or have run out of magic, like random scraps of paper or boot buckles or once a strange, smelly old bean, and Mother hates being bothered about them. Rapunzel is supposed to dispose of them.
Today, Rapunzel sweeps the acorn into her pocket. It tingles with magic, but then, all living things do. If Mother says it’s to be discarded, then it is. She’s always right. Rapunzel had regretted getting rid of the bean. One, because Mother had decided she wanted it back, and she’d become so enraged it was gone that all the pans in their kitchen had melted and their floor had temporarily turned to lava. Two, because Rapunzel would love to grow a bean plant. Maybe if she can convince Mother to bring her up some soil, she can grow the acorn into a tree. She’s never touched a tree trunk before. Mother won’t let them grow flowers in here. Flow-ers have a whole language, she says, with all sorts of magic. It could be too dangerous for Rapunzel, Cursed as she is.
Mother flicks at the Vallian Sea on the living map, spraying water onto the table.
“That trident is far too powerful to be out in the world,” Mother says. She’s been obsessed with the Vallian Sea queen’s trident. It is, after all, Mother’s duty to maintain peace and balance. And Rapunzel has heard that the merpeople are causing a lot of trouble. Like that Storm.
The living map is a small model of Reverie. It showcases the entire land and the large, dark-green mass of the Dreamwood in the center. There’s Miravale, with its capital city of pink stone walls, recently recovering from a curse. And the capital city of Apfel, overseeing the kingdom of the same name, plopped in the Dreamwood, where there was also a curse. Rapunzel’s keeping track. Unlike hers, all those curses broke.
Well. That must be nice.
On the living map, you can prick your finger against the top of Unnatural Peak in the northern Glacial Halls or wet your fingertips in the Vallian Sea, not that you’d want to right now. Not with that Storm hovering over it. Even on a living map, there’s no telling what touching something like that could do.
Ever since the Storm appeared a few months ago, visible even from their tower’s windows, Mother’s temper has been shorter than usual. Not that Mother is known for a soft tongue and patience. She’s a busy, important woman. As Rapunzel has heard many, many times.
Rapunzel also knows she can’t really complain, gathering up as much of her very, very long hair in her arms as she can, the rest snaking behind her as she follows Mother back to the circular main room. She’s so lucky to live here, be safe, and have a purpose. As Mother always reminds her.
Pepper chirps as she sees them, the fox rubbing her body against Rapunzel’s calves. She scratches behind Pepper’s ears.
Beams run along the high ceilings. Sometimes Rapunzel climbs up and pretends she’s leaping through the treetops of the Dreamwood, on a quest to defeat evil or find some treasure for the Dreamwood Council.
But then she remembers that none of that can happen. Because she’s Cursed.
Cursed with a big capital C, so big its shadow is longer than Rapunzel’s hair. The kind of curse that means Ra-punzel in her tower is a little bit like the genie in its lamp: stuck there for everyone else’s safety.
A kitchen is wedged along one side of the main tower room. Next to the wall of Mother’s sand globes, there are a few armchairs and bookshelves with well-worn texts near a large window, big enough that Rapunzel can stand in it without her head touching the upper sill.
Rapunzel drifts over to it. The world is very, very far down below, because this window is very, very high up in her very, very tall tower.
The day is bright and sunny, a bluebell sky and the scent of cut grass on the breeze. But still, there’s a chill that lashes through occasionally, cast from the swirling blot of darkness that is the Storm over the Vallian Sea.
“I’m sorry to be leaving you again, Rapunzel,” Mother says. “But the Council won’t stop arguing about this lit-tle rain issue.”
Since the Storm appeared off the coast of Coralon, one of the five capital cities of Reverie’s five kingdoms, the number of Dreamwood Council meetings has surged. Rapunzel and Mother’s tower is only an hour or two from the coast, in a town called Elsweyr, and it’s gotten rainier here thanks to the Storm, which is boring for Rapunzel because fewer people walk by when it rains.
“I actually had some ideas!” Rapunzel blurts. She longs to go to the Dreamwood Council gatherings and meet the kings and queens of Reverie and the magical delegates from the Dreamwood itself. But if she can’t go because of the Curse, then at least her thoughts could.
“That’s cute, bunny,” Lady Grimm says.
Rapunzel glances out the window. It’s the middle of the day, and down down down below, schoolkids laugh as they head home, books tucked under their arms. A shepherd’s boy chews on a piece of hay and trudges alongside a donkey. A pair of village matrons stroll in lacy hats, spinning gossip.
For Rapunzel, the world is like a delicate ornament, one that she can admire but must never touch. If she does, it’ll shatter. And as much as Rapunzel yearns, she would never, never hurt somebody, not even to feel real, soft grass between her toes or to jump into the ocean.
“Good afternoon!” cry the schoolkids to Rapunzel.
“Good afternoon!” hollers the shepherd’s boy.
“Good afternoon!” trill the village matrons.
And Rapunzel calls out to them, waving and smiling.
If she were to go down there, unbelievable misfortune would befall every one of them. They could get sick. Their roofs could collapse. All their chickens could turn to stone. According to Mother, her Curse is a curse that spreads tragedy to those around her. Except for Lady Grimm.
And Mother won’t let Rapunzel forget how lucky they are for that.
Today, the children wear yellow shirts because it’s almost Seaborn. Seaborn is the largest annual festival in Coralon, and Elsweyr, the town near the tower, falls within the kingdom’s boundaries.
People from Elsweyr never leave and hardly anyone ever arrives, which is how the residents like it. Lady Grimm’s magic keeps it secret and invisible on maps, which is how she likes it. To not be disturbed at home, she explains to Rapunzel. Separate from Reverie and the kingdom of Coralon as they may be, in the week be-fore Coralon’s Seaborn celebrations, everyone in Elsweyr puts on yellow to reflect the rising sun. On the day of Seaborn, everyone puts on blue scarves or blue hats or blue shirts, and they grill trout from the lake and make icy drinks out of fresh melon.
Mother always brings Rapunzel some, a plate and a glass that she can enjoy while hearing the music pulse through Elsweyr’s few streets.
What she would give just to leap outside and get her face painted like a seahorse. Or just . . . order her own icy melon drink.
Of course, then everyone’s trout might burn or they might all get lice.
“I may have to stay overnight again. I have a plan about that trident.” Lady Grimm pulls out a traveling cloak and examines herself in a large mirror. Like all of Mother’s clothes, the cloak is both white as a fresh idea and black as spilled ink, meant to represent the duality of stars and shadows that keeps Reverie in balance. “You’ll be fine, Rapunzel?”
“Do you think I could use the Library while you’re gone?” Rapunzel asks. “I really wanted to learn more about that lamp.”
“My goodness,” Mother spits. “Can’t you see I have things on my mind other than entertaining you? Besides, it’s dinner time. You need to keep to a schedule, bunny. Now, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”
Rapunzel bites her lip and doesn’t say anything. There’s no point in arguing with Mother. Even though she is really curious about that genie. And surely dinner can wait an hour. For once.
Instead, she braces one hand on the window frame and lets her hair
down
down
down
down
down
down
until the end of it sways just above the grass.
Her hair is forty-seven feet and three inches long to be exact, just one inch shorter than the height from the ground to the tower’s main window.
With hair like that, some might suspect that Rapunzel would be a fairy, like Mother. That magic swirls down bloodlines like bunions or a love for blue cheese.
“Pity that it doesn’t,” her mother likes to say, stroking Rapunzel’s long golden hair. “But you’re just quite ordi-nary.”
Except not ordinary enough. If only she were as ordinary as an old watering can that never cast misfortune upon anybody.
Now Mother grips Rapunzel’s hair and prepares for her usual descent.
“Do you think they’ll figure out the Storm soon?” Rapunzel asks.
Some people think it’s caused by a witch, some people think by a warlock’s apprentice who made a big mis-take, some people think by a magical object that fell in the sea and was never supposed to get wet. Some people even think it’s mermaids and are chewing on whispers of war.
“We shouldn’t be bothering with the Storm,” Mother complains. “There are much larger issues than wind. But the fools who govern us can never see that.”
It’s an old rant of Mother’s: how badly the kings and queens rule their kingdoms, how broken things are, how no one will ever listen to Mother.
Copyright © 2025 by Kim Bussing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
