The first thing Calypso Nyx asked after climbing into Rapunzel’s tower was whether she had ever cut her hair.
Rapunzel stared at her.
Most visitors had questions about the height of the tower, the absence of a staircase, or the woman who kept her there.
Nobody had ever asked about a haircut.
“No,” she said, gathering the golden braid from the windowsill.
Calypso watched it coil across the wooden floor.
It passed the bed, curled around a chair leg, and ended somewhere beneath the dressing table.
“Never?”
“Never.”
Calypso’s eyes brightened.
Rapunzel would later remember that expression.
She would wish she had recognized it as a warning.
The stranger had appeared in the courtyard shortly after breakfast.
Rapunzel had looked down and found a woman in a fitted black dress examining the tower wall.
Her long black hair fell in loose waves nearly to her hips. She carried no traveling bag and appeared entirely unconcerned about standing alone in an unfamiliar forest.
“Where is your door?” she had called.
“There isn’t one.”
Calypso had walked halfway around the tower, then returned.
“That seems inconvenient.”
“It is.”
“How do people get in?”
Rapunzel had lowered her braid.
Calypso had looked at it for several seconds.
Then she laughed.
“Oh, I have to try that.”
She climbed with surprising ease, arriving at the window slightly breathless and thoroughly pleased with herself.
Now she stood in the middle of the room, inspecting the accumulated hair.
Rapunzel began winding it into a loose pile.
“It’s the tower’s only entrance,” she explained.
Calypso glanced toward the window.
“And the only exit?”
“For me, yes.”
“Doesn’t your neck hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
Calypso lifted a section of the braid, feeling its weight.
“You could make a rope.”
“It already is a rope.”
“A separate one.”
Rapunzel stopped winding.
For a moment, the suggestion sounded almost sensible.
Then Calypso noticed the scissors.
They lay beside a half-finished piece of embroidery on the table.
Large sewing scissors. Polished steel. Sharp enough to cut several layers of cloth.
Calypso picked them up and opened the blades.
Rapunzel watched her.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking.”
“At what?”
Calypso held the scissors beside the golden braid.
“I wonder how you’d look with a bob.”
Rapunzel reached for them.
“Put those down.”
Before Calypso answered, a familiar voice rose from the courtyard.
“Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”
Rapunzel hurried to the window.
The Prince stood below, smiling up at her.
“You’re early,” she called.
“I couldn’t wait.”
Calypso leaned against the opposite side of the window.
She looked down at him, then at Rapunzel.
“So this is a regular arrangement.”
The Prince’s smile faltered.
“Who is that?”
“A visitor,” Rapunzel said.
Calypso gave him a small wave with the scissors.
Rapunzel immediately pushed her hand down.
“Don’t.”
The Prince frowned.
“Don’t what?”
“Nothing. Stand back while I lower it.”
Rapunzel lifted the heavy braid onto the sill.
Calypso watched the movement carefully.
The hair began sliding through the open window.
Below, the Prince stepped away from the wall to give it room.
Nobody was climbing.
Calypso placed the blades around the thick braid close to Rapunzel’s shoulder.
Rapunzel saw the movement in the window glass.
“Calypso—”
The scissors closed.
The sound was small.
The consequence was not.
For a heartbeat, the severed braid rested on the sill.
Then its own weight pulled it through the window.
Golden hair poured down the tower wall and landed in a heavy coil at the Prince’s feet.
He looked at it.
Then he looked up.
Rapunzel stood motionless, one hand gripping the short braid that remained beside her face.
Calypso examined the uneven ends.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s crooked.”
Rapunzel slowly turned toward her.
“What did you do?”
Calypso lifted the scissors slightly.
“I thought that part was clear.”
Below them, the Prince picked up the fallen braid.
“Rapunzel?”
She could not answer him.
For years, the hair had been heavy, awkward, and impossible to manage without help.
It had also been the only thing connecting her room to the ground.
Calypso had severed it in seconds.
A second voice sounded in the courtyard.
“What is this?”
The Witch had arrived along the forest path.
She stopped beside the Prince, staring at the hair gathered in his arms.
Then she looked up at Rapunzel.
“Who cut it?”
Calypso leaned into view.
“I did.”
The Witch’s face hardened.
“Come down here.”
Calypso glanced at the bare wall.
“How?”
The Prince looked at the Witch.
“Can you get us up?”
“Can you?”
“I asked first.”
Their argument began immediately.
Inside the tower, Rapunzel stepped between Calypso and the window.
“You’re staying until you fix this.”
Calypso looked at the short braid again.
“I could straighten it.”
“I mean the entrance.”
“You wanted to keep all that hair?”
“I wanted to decide.”
That made Calypso pause.
Only briefly.
Then she placed the scissors back on the embroidery table.
“You can decide what to do with the rest.”
Rapunzel blocked her path.
“You don’t get to leave.”
Calypso looked toward the empty wall beside the bed.
A thin vertical line of white light appeared there.
Rapunzel fell silent.
The line widened into a doorway.
Beyond it lay a white emptiness with no floor, no sky, and nothing that Rapunzel could recognize.
Calypso stepped toward it.
“You could have used that the whole time,” Rapunzel said.
“Yes.”
“You climbed my hair when you could have opened a door?”
Calypso smiled.
“I wanted to try climbing it.”
Rapunzel stared at her.
“Then open one to the courtyard.”
“I’m going somewhere else.”
“After what you’ve done?”
Calypso put one hand against the glowing edge.
“Hair grows.”
She stepped through.
The doorway closed before Rapunzel could reach it.
For several seconds, Rapunzel stood facing the blank wall.
Outside, the Prince and the Witch were still arguing.
Rapunzel walked back to the window.
“Stop talking.”
They looked up.
“The braid,” she said. “Keep it.”
The Prince tightened his grip.
“What for?”
“Bring rope. Bring a ladder. Bring someone who knows how to build stairs.”
The Witch folded her arms.
“This tower has never needed stairs.”
Rapunzel touched the uneven ends beside her cheek.
“It does now.”
Far away, in another world, Calypso Nyx stepped out of a white doorway and heard water moving beneath her feet.
She looked down.
A bridge stretched across a rushing river. Something large shifted in the shadows below it.
A voice growled from beneath the stones.
“Who’s crossing my bridge?”
Calypso’s expression brightened.
Back at the tower, Rapunzel was still waiting for a ladder.
