Rapunzel, the One With All the Hair by Wendy Mass

I pull off my dress, toss it on the floor, and climb into the tub with the soap. Ahhhh. I lean back and close my eyes. At home, Mother rushes me in and out of the tub so everyone can have a turn. But I finally have found something positive about being the only person in the room — the tub is ALL MINE. I can feel my muscles relaxing in the warm water, soaking the day’s troubles away. The soap is bubbling up around me. My brain is finally starting to wind down after all the pacing and thinking. I even catch myself humming a tune Mother and I used to sing sometimes as we scrubbed the plates after supper. I splash the water in tune and begin to sing:
    Oh, she was a lovely lass, don’t ya know,
    With a round plump face and a rosy glow,
    And wherever she went the gents went, too,
    For she always said, why marry one when you can marry a few?
    Mother said Grandmother taught her that song and many others when she was a girl. They were not as well off as we are, and Grandmother said that singing always cheered her up, no matter how bad the situation. This song was Mother’s favorite, even though she said that any woman who wanted more than one husband had ale head, for one husband to look after was more than enough.
    I sing the song once more, then begin to lather up. It takes a few minutes of scrubbing to wash off all the grime that has accumulated since my imprisonment. The water quickly turns gray, then black. Mother would faint if she saw this, but I feel almost like myself again. A hungry version of myself, but myself nonetheless. Before the dirt has a chance to latch back onto me, I stand up and dry myself with the towel. It is a good thing that my hair is under some sort of bewitchment that keeps it lustrous and golden besides causing it to grow, because truly it would have taken hours to wash it, and rebraiding it would take more energy than I could possibly muster right now. I slip one of the last clean dresses over my head and search for the armholes. Suddenly, in a rush of words and images, it comes to me. I stop moving, the dress stuck over my face. I KNOW HOWTO BREAK THE WITCH’S BOND WITH STEVEN! Even though I am twelve now and too old for such behavior, I jump up and down with glee. Of course, it is generally better to do this when not temporarily blinded by a dress over your face, a lesson I quickly learn as I fall forward and nearly launch myself headfirst into the black water.

One more day until the hunt. Father suggested I practice shooting arrows into bales of hay, and I had to eagerly obey so as not to raise suspicion. So far, while aiming squarely at the hay, I have narrowly missed two ducks who were innocently floating in the pond, one lady-in-waiting out for a stroll with a squire, and the village cobbler, who has come to make Annabelle her first pair of leather-soled shoes.
    I am truly hopeless. Andrew assures me the men will be too busy worrying about who will bag the biggest stag to bother with me. I hope he is right. Our whole plan depends on it.

I tried to keep my eyes open throughout the night so that when Steven came to collect the tub, I could share my new plan. At one point in the night, I actually had to use my fingers to hold my eyelids open. Alas, I must have succumbed to sleep even without my daily dose of sleeping powder, because the squawking of the birds has just awakened me. The tub is gone, Sir Kitty is playing with the scab on my chin, and it is almost dawn. With a sigh, I blow out the lamp and store it away in the trunk. Before my imprisonment, I saw this time of early morn only during harvest time with Father. Who will help him this year if I am not back? I shake the thought out of my head. I will be back. I have to be!
    Belly growling, I pick up Sir Kitty and we go to the window to watch the birds soar over the dew-covered treetops. Soon the last stripes of pink and orange in the east have been burned off by the sun’s glow. No doubt as thirsty as Iam, Sir Kitty