Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

Into the Forest

Rapunzel watches from the window as the Prince descends quickly, hand over hand, and leaps to the ground. He looks up, calls her name. So far down, he seems no Prince, but a small creature of the forest, a fox or a weasel. He turns, vanishes into the trees. The dark sky is breaking up with dawn. A sudden desire comes: to leap from the tower, to fall down, down; her hair lifting above her like a column of smoke; the wind rushing up at her; the world’s weight gone; lovely falling; blissful dying.

Brushing

In the brightening chamber, the sorceress sits at the table by the window, brushing Rapunzel’s unbraided hair. Rapunzel sits across from her, sipping an herbal brew. Her needlework lies to one side; she looks a little tired. The sorceress fears she isn’t sleeping well, or perhaps is coming down with something; the herbal remedy should restore her. Because the hair is so long, the sorceress doesn’t begin at the top and brush down. Instead, she begins at the bottom, holding an armful of hair on her lap and brushing it free of tangles. The brush is of pearwood, with dark boar bristles; the sorceress received it from an old woman in the village as payment for curing an ache in the back. When she finishes with one lapful of hair she reaches down for another, gently pushing aside the brushed portion, which spills puffily over her legs to the floor. From a distance the hair is blond, but up close she can see many colors: wheat, fawn, red-gold, butter yellow, honey brown. The hair on her lap is a warm cat, asleep in the sun. When she is done brushing, the sorceress will plait the hair patiently into a single thick braid. The soft folds will gradually become heavy as rope, a sunshiny snake slithering along the floor. Again she looks at Rapunzel; she never tires of looking at Rapunzel. The girl’s head is turned toward the window but she is not gazing out. Her eyes are half closed; morning light strikes her neck and lower cheek; she is not blinking; she is gazing in. A penny for your thoughts! the sorceress wants to cry, but she continues brushing the hair in her lap. Suddenly she bends forward, buries her face in the hair, breathes it in, covers it with kisses. She looks up guiltily, but Rapunzel dreams away.

The Ladder

The Prince, riding home through the forest in slants of dawn-light, reproaches himself for his weakness. Once again he hasn’t asked about the ladder. Each night he brings Rapunzel a cord of silk, which she’s supposed to weave into the lengthening silk ladder concealed beneath her mattress. He might easily have presented her with a fully formed ladder, when the idea first came to him, but he wants her to engage fully in the act of escape. The Prince fears that she may not be ready to leave her sheltered life for the public life of a Princess; lately, indeed, she has avoided all mention of the ladder. This ought to disturb him more than it does, but he himself is not without doubts. Instead of asking her about her progress, he hands her the silken cord in silence. She slips it under the mattress. They do not speak of it.

Secrets

As the sorceress continues to braid her hair, Rapunzel is relieved to be spared another of those piercing looks. Can the sorceress suspect something? Rapunzel understands that by concealing the existence of the Prince, she’s cruelly deceiving the sorceress, who is also her godmother. The thought pains her like a splinter burning in a finger. She’d love to tell her all about the Prince, since the sorceress would be sure to like him if only she knew him; often Rapunzel imagines the three of them living together in the sunny chamber. An instinct tells her to keep it to herself. She knows that the sorceress adores her, spoils her, sees to her every need, but it’s precisely the intensity of her devotion that warns Rapunzel not to speak. She is everything to the sorceress; but everything leaves room for nothing else. Sometimes, at a sudden sound, the sorceress will leap up and go to the window. Then her eyes, searching the forest, grow hard and cold; her body, bent forward, seems crooked and ancient. At such moments Rapunzel looks away and waits for the change to pass. She knows that the sorceress craves continual signs of strong affection, which for that matter Rapunzel has always felt for her; the nightly visits of the Prince can be taken only as acts of betrayal. It’s also true that the Prince, while not attacking the sorceress directly, disapproves of what he calls Rapunzel’s imprisonment, and wants her to escape with him from the tower to the court. There they will be married and live in happiness all the days of their lives. Rapunzel glances at the mattress, under which the latest cord of silk lies beneath the half-finished ladder, and then at the sorceress, who is bending over and pressing her face against the folds of Rapunzel’s hair.

The Plan

The Prince’s plan is composed of two parts, the escape and the destination. He has revealed both parts to Rapunzel up to a point, but only up to a point, since each part includes complex secondary calculations that he hasn’t yet found time to discuss with her in the detail they deserve. The escape will be difficult, without a doubt. The tower is forbiddingly high — to jump is out of the question. But the Prince has thought of two ways. The first is the ladder, which requires her full participation, demonstrated over the course of many weeks. They no longer discuss the ladder, which lies hidden under the mattress like an old love letter buried in a drawer. But there’s a second way, one that acknowledges the impulsive in human nature and invites Rapunzel to risk all at a moment’s notice. When he judges the mood to be right, the Prince will reveal this second method. They will spring into action. He’ll fasten her braid to the hook and lower himself to the bottom. Immediately Rapunzel will draw up her hair, unfasten it from the hook, and fasten it a second time, using the very end of the braid. In this manner she’ll be able to descend by means of her own hair. At the bottom, the Prince will cut the braid with a pair of gold scissors borrowed from his mother’s seamstress, and they will escape into the forest, where two horses will be waiting. They will ride off to — where, exactly? For the destination, like the escape, is no simple matter, and here, too, the Prince has not been entirely forthright with Rapunzel. He has told her that he wants to bring her to the court, and this is true enough. But he hasn’t confessed to her his fear that she might find it difficult to live as a Princess among courtiers and ladies, all of whom have a style and manner that might seem to her impossible to emulate. They themselves, and in particular the court ladies, will observe her closely and judge her according to their code. Rapunzel is not familiar with the fashions of the court. She lacks the court wit, the court polish, the court gift for concise and allusive speech. Even her name will draw amused attention. The Prince is not ashamed of Rapunzel, but he knows that the pressure of polite disapproval is likely to make him impatient with her shortcomings. Even if she should make an initial impression of freshness and innocence, such qualities might, in the long run, come to seem wearisome to the court. It might therefore be better to avoid the court altogether and flee with Rapunzel to a royal residence in the remote countryside. Such residences, it is true, are supplied with large contingents of servants, many of whom wield great power within the household and are accustomed to highborn masters with an instinct for command. Gentle Rapunzel, who has no experience of public life, will immediately be seen as weak. Wouldn’t it be better, in every way, to choose a humble cabin on a wooded mountainside, far from the haunts of man? There they can live alone, without a care in the world. They will eat wild berries plucked from the vine, drink water from clear streams, and wander hand in hand in the paradise of Nature. In his mind, the Prince hears the phrase “paradise of Nature,” which pleases him, but which also makes him uneasy. The Prince knows himself; he knows that he grows restless when he’s away from court for more than a few days, for he misses the repartee, the rich feasts, the continual arrival of messengers bearing reports of wars, the sense of being at the center of a vital world. Mightn’t it be better, all things considered, simply to move with Rapunzel from place to place, staying no more than a few weeks in a single dwelling? The thought of a wandering life does not please him. It’s as if he can never imagine a settled existence for himself and his beloved. It’s as if he himself is imprisoned in the tower, and can see nothing beyond the familiar chamber, which he carries in imagination from region to region — a restless and unhappy solitude.