Day 6.

Rapunzel

Held up aloft, here I sit and sing and wish my days away whilst I await my bitter destiny – to be some handsome prince’s trophy wife, a glittering prize for some dim-witted, craggy-jawed daddy’s boy. I float up here in the clouds, in the sky, ensconced in my nest, waiting and wishing and waiting to take flight – and then to be bound to my new captor. When will I be free?

The time is passing; the walls are cracking, the roof is leaking…this tower is threatening to split down the middle. I bind it together, hold it together body and soul with my hair, binding the fissures, blocking out the wind and the rain with chunks of my hair – keeping my nest soft and safe and snug. I’m becoming part of my own prison.

All my life I’ve been waiting and singing and waiting to escape, but terrified to face the cold hard world outside. I don’t want to be alone, I need a friend, a faithful friend. I make friends with the birds – the owls, the kestrels, the robins pad my pillows with their feathers – but, though they visit every day in the summer months , in winter they grow silent and I sing alone, getting colder, hoping they’ll return soon.

I don’t know what I did wrong, what I did to deserve this. A smashed mirror, furious shouting, a fleeting hug, and then seven years of silence, seven years of bad luck, seven years of waiting for someone to claim me. My fate.

The worst thing is, I think I could have stopped this. I think I should have stopped this but I don’t know how. Some nights I wake up with the words on my lips but I don’t know what they are, I don’t recognise them and they go before I can say them – the spell, the name – the words that would stop all this or at least make it come to an end. They just burst like bubbles a second before I see them clearly. The words I nearly breathe blow away on the wind. It’s my fault – I don’t know why I don’t know how to break this spell.

It’s like I turned my back on happiness a long time ago when I was a child; I took a different path, followed breadcrumbs down the wrong track, and I ended up here, the witches house, a fly in a web, a bird in a gilded cage. I sit here patiently waiting and dreading and waiting to be gorged on or destroyed or be loved and doted upon. I just don’t know how this ends.

I miss how it was before. I’d walk through fire to get back to where this all started and just stop this. I wish this would end.

Jack

I want to be the hero, that’s the thing, you know the kind – rugged, strong, always gets the girl – a real Prince Charming.

I reckon I can become that man if I try – just need to get my head in the right place, maybe build myself a special suit so nothing can touch me, a super suit for a super hero. That’s what I need. So I could fly, and time travel and breathe underwater – fight off all the bad guys.

It would have to be strong this suit, robust, hardy. Although then, well then I couldn’t hug my Mum when she needs it and she often needs it. She’s tired, my Mum. Brittle. In my super suit, if I hugged her, she might break.

But if I don’t have the suit I’m just a wuss. It’s hard to be brave sometimes; brave enough to head out there and explore, climb, see. Although I do try and push myself into it and when I do I love the feeling; discovering something new, using that something to change stuff, to try and make things go right. The rush of blood, the thump in my chest, the hunger to do it again, do it better. But it doesn’t happen very often. I get the better of myself.

Maybe I could mix up some sort of bravery potion that would turn me into a hero instead – sharks teeth for strength and fish scales for protection and starfish blood for resilience. That might work.

Because then, with my superhero suit and my bravery potion I could take on anything and I’d be rugged and strong and get the girl. She’d be the new thing that could make it all better. Fix things. But what if she needs fixing too? What then?

I bet I could fix her. Well, I’d try, or at least, I give it a go. Sometimes things don’t turn out quite the way I’d planned, like with Chutzy – trying to make a dog talk was a mistake, or with Melodie; she was never going to grow, no matter how much I watered her feet, didn’t thank me for it either, pretty much hates my guts now. It just feels like my head gets carried away and I can’t pin down the best plan for doing things. But I mean well though, I always mean well. Isn’t that what heroes are, really? The ones that mean well?

These are two written images of Jack and Rapunzel done, based on all the research and pieces we have done so far. We spoke about these and used these to help us develop the two characters..

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