The Land of Stories

by Chris Colfer

  One day, the wife’s hungry gaze fell upon the lettuce in their neighbor’s garden. They were some of the juiciest greens she had ever seen. Day and night she dreamed about making a salad or stew out of the leaves. The wife’s craving for the lettuce increased every day, until she almost died from desire.

  “Oh, darling, I would love nothing more than to have a bite of the delicious lettuce in our neighbor’s garden,” she said. “Would you mind climbing the wall and bringing me back some?”

  “You want me to steal from our neighbor, my dear?” the baker asked.

  “It’ll only go to waste if we don’t eat it,” the wife said. “Besides, we’ve never seen so much as a mouse next door! No one will ever know.”

  The baker was hesitant at first, but he was willing to do anything to be a good father and husband. He figured some mild thievery wouldn’t harm anyone.

  As soon as the sun set that night, the baker climbed the wall into his neighbor’s garden and brought back some lettuce for his wife. She cooked it, and the happy couple enjoyed it for dinner without a care in the world. Little did they know that stealing the lettuce would be the biggest mistake of their lives.

  Unbeknownst to the baker and his wife, the garden next door belonged to a terrible witch, who noticed that the head of lettuce was missing as soon as it was taken. She barged into the baker’s home and caught him and his wife eating it.

  “Thieves!” the witch yelled. “How dare you steal from me! I’ll curse you for this!”

  The baker and his wife fell to their knees and begged the witch for forgiveness.

  “We’re so sorry!” the baker said. “We’ve never seen the crops in your garden harvested before!”

  “We didn’t know the lettuce would be missed!” the wife said.

  “Fools!” the witch roared. “The vegetables in my garden are not meant for eating—they’re meant for making potions! The lettuce you stole from me is called rapunzel. When it’s prepared correctly, it will bring hair back to the bald or sight back to the blind!”

  “Please take something of ours in exchange,” the baker said.

  “Yes, anything you’d like!” the wife said. “But please don’t curse us!”

  The witch was looking forward to putting a curse on their house, but their offer was very intriguing.

  “Anything I’d like, you say?” she asked.

  “Yes, anything!” the baker and his wife said together.

  The witch looked around their tiny home. She didn’t find anything that interested her until her eyes fell upon the wife’s pregnant belly. A child was something the witch had never owned before, so it was an easy decision.

  “I shall return when you give birth, and your child shall be mine!” the witch declared.

  “No!” the baker pleaded. “Anything but our child!”

  “Do not argue with me!” the witch warned. “You will hand the child over to me, or I will curse you into oblivion!”

  Two months later, the wife gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl. She had been in her mother’s arms for only a few short moments when the witch returned. Although every fiber of his being urged him not to, the baker handed his newborn daughter over to her.

  “I shall name her Rapunzel, so what you stole and what was stolen from you shall always be one and the same,” the witch said.

  She disappeared with the child, and the baker and his wife never saw her again.

  The witch took the child into the middle of the woods and locked her away in the room of a very tall tower where no one could reach her. There were no doors or stairs in the tower, just a single small window, so the witch had to climb the tower brick by brick every day when she visited.

  As the witch got older, this became a much harder and harder task, but an alternative method presented itself when Rapunzel grew into a young woman.

  Thanks to the magic of the lettuce her mother had consumed, Rapunzel’s hair grew faster, longer, and stronger than that of all the other maidens in the land put together. When the witch came for a visit, she would call up to the tower:

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

  Rapunzel would lower her hair, and the witch would climb it as if it were rope.

  Every day during the witch’s visit, Rapunzel would ask her the same question.

  “Mother,” Rapunzel called the witch, for she had never known any other. “One day, when I am older and wiser, will you let me down from this tower so I may explore the world?”

  “Absolutely not,” the witch replied. “The world is a dark and cruel place, my dear. You’re much better off staying here where it’s safe.”

  “But I get so lonely in this tower all by myself,” Rapunzel said.

  “My dear, greed is your problem, not loneliness,” the witch said. “There are maidens in this world with far less than you. They would be happy to have the protection of this tower. I will not hear any more of this nonsense. You should be grateful for the life I’ve given you.”

  Despite what the witch said, this daily exchange didn’t make Rapunzel more grateful, only more curious. She didn’t believe the world was as bad as the witch made it seem. She spent all day gazing at the woods around her, dreaming about what it was like outside her tower.

  Rapunzel prayed every day that she would find a way to leave the tower and have someone to leave it with. Soon, an answer to her prayer arrived… but she didn’t find it—it found her.

  A handsome young man was wandering through the forest when he discovered Rapunzel’s tower in the woods. He was a curious person himself and circled the base of the tower to find a way inside.

  The witch arrived for her daily visit with Rapunzel, and the young man hid from her behind a thornbush. He watched as she called up to the tower:

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

  Rapunzel appeared in the window and dropped her hair for the witch to climb. The young man’s heart raced upon seeing her. He had never seen a girl as beautiful as she, and he wanted nothing more than to climb up the tower and meet her.

  He waited outside the tower and listened to Rapunzel and the witch’s conversation. It was the same as it was every day: Rapunzel’s requests to leave the tower were dismissed by the witch, who told her how ungrateful she was for asking.

  The young man was compelled to save poor Rapunzel from the tower and the witch. The next day he returned to the tower with a plan to meet her. He waited for the witch to arrive and hid from view as she called up to the tower:

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

  The hair was lowered and the witch climbed it to the window. The witch and the young woman had the same conversation as always, and when they had finished, the witch climbed down Rapunzel’s hair and left the tower for her home in the village.

  The young man waited until he was certain the witch was gone and then called up to the tower himself:

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

  The witch had never visited Rapunzel twice in one day. Fearing something was wrong, Rapunzel quickly lowered her hair for the caller. She never had any other guests besides the witch, so it gave her quite a scare to see the young man climb through the window.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry, I will not harm you,” he said. “Forgive me, but I saw you in this tower yesterday, and I had to meet you.”

  “Where are you from?” Rapunzel asked.

  “The village at the edge of the woods,” he said.

  “There’s a village at the edge of the woods?” Rapunzel said, and her eyes grew wide at the idea. “Please, you must tell me all about it!”

  The young man told Rapunzel everything there was to know about his village. He told her about all the roads, shops, markets, houses, and schools. He told her about his family and his friends and how they treated one another so differently than the witch treated her.

  “How wonderful,” Rapunzel said with a dreamy sigh.

  “Ther
e’s a lot more I’d like to tell you,” the young man said. “May I come back and visit you again?”

  “I would love that,” Rapunzel said.

  Every day from then on, once the witch had come and gone, the young man would climb up Rapunzel’s hair and visit her in the tower. Each day he would bring new things to show her about the world outside.

  He showed her maps of his village, maps of the forest, maps of the kingdom, and maps of the known world. He brought her books and scrolls so she could read about all the places and people she never knew existed.

  “If only I could leave this tower and see the world with my own eyes,” Rapunzel said desperately.

  “I’ll help you leave the tower so we can travel the world together,” the young man said.

  “But what about my mother?” Rapunzel asked. “She’d be heartbroken if I left.”

  “A real mother doesn’t keep her child locked away in a tower,” he said. “A real mother would want you to leave and have experiences. She’d want you to live, learn, and love.”

  And with that said, the young man kissed Rapunzel. For the first time in her life, Rapunzel felt like a person and not a prisoner. She decided to leave the tower, even if it was the last thing she did.

  “How will I get down without Mother noticing?” she said.

  “Leave it to me,” the young man said. “I’ll come up with something so the witch will never be the wiser.”

  From that day forward, when the young man visited the tower he brought Rapunzel handfuls of twine the same color as her hair. She would twist the twine into rope and then braid the rope into her hair, so the witch never found it. Once the rope was as long as her hair, Rapunzel planned to use it to climb down from the tower and be free.

  At the time, it seemed like the perfect plan. The longer the rope became, the more Rapunzel’s and the young man’s excitement grew. However, their excitement made them careless, and one afternoon the young man foolishly left one of his maps behind.

  The witch found the map and screamed at Rapunzel.

  “Tell me who’s been visiting you!” she demanded.

  “No,” Rapunzel said with a quivering jaw.

  “Tell me now, or I will curse them when I find out who they are!” the witch warned.

  “Just a young man from the village at the edge of the woods,” Rapunzel said. “Is it so wrong to have a friend?”

  Rapunzel burst into tears. The witch had never seen her so sad before. It was the first time the witch felt sorry for the girl, and she kneeled down to comfort her. However, all the witch’s guilt quickly diminished when she stroked Rapunzel’s head and found the rope braided into her hair.

  “You horrible, ungrateful girl!” the witch yelled. “After everything I’ve done for you, you were going to leave the tower and run off with that scoundrel! I’ll make sure you never see each other again!”

  The witch left the tower and returned with an axe and a rope ladder. She chopped off all of Rapunzel’s hair with the axe and then forced her down the ladder. The witch dragged the poor girl into the forest and abandoned her at a spot so deep in the woods, she would never find her way back.

  The witch returned to the tower, discarded the ladder and the axe in the shrubbery below, and waited for the young man to arrive the next day. For all he knew, Rapunzel would be freed soon, so there was an extra bounce in his step. He stood at the base of the tower and called up:

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

  The witch let down Rapunzel’s hair for the young man to climb. When he reached the very top of the tower, she pulled it out of his hands and knocked him off the window ledge.

  The thornbush below broke his fall, but the thorns pierced his eyes and blinded him. The young man wandered into the wilderness, not knowing in which direction he was headed.

  For months and months, the young man wandered the forest blindly. Every day he called for help until his voice grew hoarse, but no one ever heard him.

  Miraculously, the young man and Rapunzel found each other in the woods, but she wasn’t alone. Since they had been separated, Rapunzel had given birth to twins.

  “You’re a father,” she told him. “We can be a family now.”

  The young man cried tears of both joy and pain. He was happy to have a family, but he knew he would never lay eyes on them. Rapunzel rested his head in her lap and cried with him. Her tears rolled down her face and fell into his eyes.

  Once again, the magic of the rapunzel lettuce proved itself useful, for Rapunzel’s tears gave the young man back his sight. The first thing he saw after regaining his vision was his beautiful children.

  Now able to recognize the forest around them, the young man guided Rapunzel and their children back to the village from which he had come. Once he was reunited with his old family, he and Rapunzel were married and continued a family of their own.

  As for the witch, ironically she had also been blinded, but by anger. She was so set on punishing Rapunzel and the young man for betraying her that she had forgotten to supply herself with a way down from the tower. The witch was trapped inside it for years and years, until she died.

  Living a life free of the witch, surrounded by friends and family in homes that had many doors and windows, made it easy for Rapunzel and the young man to have a happily-ever-after.

  The End

  HENNY PENNY

  ADAPTED FROM THE TRADITIONAL STORY

  Once upon a time, there lived an odd chicken named Henny Penny. Most people avoided Henny Penny when they saw her coming because she was such a wacky and nervous bird. She had a wild imagination and often made a very big deal out of very small matters.

  One morning she stepped out of her henhouse and a small acorn fell off a tree and hit Henny Penny on the head. She looked up to see what it was, and when she saw nothing above her but a tree, the chicken came to an absurd conclusion.

  “Good heavens!” she said. “The sky is falling! I must tell the king!”

  So away she went, waddling through the countryside to speak with the king. Along the way, she passed her friend, a rooster named Cocky Locky.

  “Good morning, Henny Penny,” said Cocky Locky. “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m going to tell the king the sky is falling!” Henny Penny said.

  Now Henny Penny and Cocky Locky were a peculiar pair, because Cocky Locky was madly in love with Henny Penny and believed everything she told him.

  “Sounds romantic,” Cocky Locky crowed. “May I come along?”

  “Certainly, Cocky Locky,” Henny Penny clucked. “Two birds are better than one!”

  So off the two birds went, waddling through the countryside to speak with the king. Along the way, they passed their friend, a mallard named Ducky Lucky.

  “Good morning, Henny Penny and Cocky Locky,” said Ducky Lucky. “Where are you two going?”

  “We’re going to tell the king the sky is falling,” Henny Penny said.

  Now Ducky Lucky made their group a troubling trio, because Ducky Lucky was so lonely, she would have done anything to be around other birds.

  “Sounds very social,” Ducky Lucky quacked. “May I come along?”

  “Certainly, Ducky Lucky,” Henny Penny clucked. “Three birds are better than one!”

  So off the three birds went, waddling through the countryside to speak with the king. Along the way, they passed their friend, a goose named Goosey Loosey.

  “Good morning, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, and Ducky Lucky,” said Goosey Loosey. “What are you three up to?”

  “We’re going to tell the king the sky is falling,” Henny Penny said.

  Now Goosey Loosey made their group a concerning quartet, because Goosey Loosey was so smitten with royalty, she would have done anything to meet the king.

  “How respectable,” Goosey Loosey squawked. “May I come along?”

  “Certainly, Goosey Loosey,” Henny Penny clucked. “Four birds are better than one!”

  So off the four birds went, w
addling through the countryside to speak with the king. Along the way, they passed their friend, a turkey called Turkey Lurkey.

  “Good morning, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, and Goosey Loosey,” said Turkey Lurkey. “Where are the four of you going?”

  “We’re going to tell the king the sky is falling,” Henny Penny said.

  Now Turkey Lurkey made their group a questionable quintet, because Turkey Lurkey would have done anything just to get away from his wife, Mrs. Turkey Lurkey.

  “Sounds time-consuming,” Turkey Lurkey gobbled. “May I come along?”

  “Certainly, Turkey Lurkey,” Henny Penny clucked. “Five birds are better than one!”

  So off the five birds went, waddling through the countryside to speak with the king. Suddenly, the five birds came to a halt on the path, because a large fox, known as Foxy Loxy, had jumped out from the bushes and stood in their way.

  “Good morning, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurkey,” said Foxy Loxy. “Where are you five fine fowl off to?”

  “We’re going to tell the king the sky is falling,” Henny Penny said.

  “Is it actually falling?” Foxy Loxy asked.

  Turkey Lurkey looked to Goosey Loosey, Goosey Loosey looked to Ducky Lucky, Ducky Lucky looked to Cocky Locky, and Cocky Locky looked to Henny Penny, because no one but Henny Penny had seen the sky falling. Perhaps they should have asked before they left.

  “Of course it is,” Henny Penny clucked. “A piece of it fell on my head this morning!”

  Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, and Turkey Lurkey all sighed with relief. They were glad their journey wasn’t a waste.

  “Then allow me to escort you to the king,” Foxy Loxy said.

  Now Foxy Loxy made their group a silly sextet, because a fox had never been seen traveling with five birds before.

  “Certainly, Foxy Loxy,” Henny-Penny clucked. “A fox and five birds are better than one!”