The Maiden in the Tower

Just something fun.

            Once upon a time there lived a maiden in a Tower. All her life, she desperately wanted to be free, but a terrible Wizard kept her captive like a butterfly in a glass.

            As the years went by, the maiden's hair grew longer and longer, shining like a bolt of silk cut from midnight. The Wizard insisted that she keep her locks unshorn, for upon her birth, a prophecy had been uttered by all seven hundred seventy-seven seers in the Kingdom. The prophecy told that the Princess--for all good maidens trapped in Towers are inevitably of royal birth--would grow marvelous hair that would attain for its master all the powers of Death.

            The Princess perhaps might have become a great Scholar-Queen had she grown in the castle, but that destiny was swiftly and greedily snatched up by some other bright-eyed daughter or another. The Wizard had no inclination to educate his lifelong prisoner, so she grew silently and stupidly, valued only for her fabulous locks. And the Wizard waited for the day her heavy hair would reveal its deathly powers, while the maiden spent her days for nearly eighteen years combing out the long, winding lengths of black hair.

            At the dawn of prophecy, the Princess awoke more exhausted than ever by her life of loneliness and captivity. Recognizing this as a sign for her to take action, she set about trying to discover her hair's power for herself, in order to free herself through the death of the wicked Wizard.

            She brushed her raven hair against the Wizard's various animal subjects, but neither golden songbird nor emerald chameleon was stricken by her terrible locks. She ran the sinuous length against every living thing in the Tower, endeavoring furiously to discover what power of death her fabulous hair held, but Death remained a gold medallion unearned.

            Finally, she shrieked to the high, lonely Tower room, and sadness welled in her lonely heart as she peered at a chamber empty of the promised magic, strewn only with her limp, tangled locks.

            A distant blast of trumpets called her to the window, from which she spied royal pennants making their way through the thick forest toward her lonely Tower. Though she had no words, the maiden knew in her own way who surely approached.

            A Prince! A Prince come to rescue her from the lonely Tower and the heartless Wizard. She peered through the curtain-like webs of her black, shining hair, searching for any sight of her crowned savior. Further and further she leaned out the window, eager for salvation and love, until...

            She tumbled from the Tower in a blur of yellow silk and black hair. Her cry of surprised was choked short as her hair tautened with a sound like dry leaves cracking. There was no thud of impact with the ground; instead, the maiden hanged, suspended between green Earth and stone Tower by a solemnly straight noose of black hair, hair like a bolt of midnight. As light left her eyes, breath fled her chest, and a rare smile graced her lips, seven hundred seventy-seven seers throughout the Kingdom moaned with the shared ecstasy of fulfillment, only for a moment.

            In the Tower chamber, the door burst open as the bespectacled, bewildered Wizard flew in.

            "No!!!" he cried when he saw the black river of hair shining out the window. Then, the collective moans of seven hundred seventy-seven echoed to him from beyond the forest canopy. With a sob, he crumpled to the floor in devastation, realizing his quest for the ultimate weapon had ended.

            Outside the Tower, a noble party of horsewomen rode up, garnished in purple and gold. At the forefront sat a young Scholar-Queen. The monarch gasped when she beheld the limp body of the Princess, and declared, "In my studies, I encountered a record of a Princess who was taken by a Wizard. I had hoped to save this lost sister, but I see I am too late."

            The yellow-clad corpse swung lightly in the breeze, black hair groaning with pressure, and all the nobles agreed that the Queen was most assuredly correct.

            "But what of the Wizard?" cried one of her noble attendants.

            "We must search the Tower and all the Kingdom for the murderous mage!" proclaimed the Scholar-Queen with a flourish of her pen-scepter. Her decree proved unnecessary, however, as the Wizard in question promptly flung himself from the window above, wrapped in yet another noose of oily black hair.

            The royal court watched and noted him silently and avidly as he thrashed to death, their pens anxious to record every detail for posterity, should the details of death by hair be useful in the intellectual crises of some future Scholar.

            When the two bodies were sufficiently deceased, they were untangled and brought down. The Wizard was burned; the Princess shaved and buried happily beneath a shroud of raven hair; and the Tower dismantled, no stone left standing upon another. And the golden songbirds and emerald chameleons lived many years in the forest, unmolested by Wizard or maiden.

 

The End.

Author's Note

As always, feel free to critique.