A Letter To Save A Lonely Girl

Dear whoever is reading this,

I know what you’re thinking. That I’m a lying cheat who deserves everything she got, curse included. I wasn’t trying to damn everyone in exile. It just happened that way. Accidentally, I promise. While you probably don’t trust me, yet, please be open to the story I am about to tell, because this is the only time I’m going to get to tell it, and if you don’t listen, we may all be cursed forever. That was dramatic, I mean I’ll be cursed, and everyone else will be in danger.

This story starts the way most fairytales do, with a lonely girl locked in her castle with nothing to do but think. Living with one’s thoughts for company sounds deplorable, I know. Of course, the part most fairytales forget to mention, I was a little crazy. How could you survive 23 years basically all alone in a tower and not become clinically insane? You can’t. And fairytales are just that anyway, a tale. No one would like it if Rapunzel used her hair to strangle people, or had frequent thoughts about dying. So stop judging me and maybe start judging the stories you know and love.

Okay let’s get back to my life. I say basically alone because of course I wasn’t completely alone. No, I don’t have a talking animal sidekick, I’m not cool or interesting enough for that. But, I obviously had to have someone looking out for me or else I would have starved to death a long time ago. Also, I wouldn’t know any language and probably would be way crazier. So, I was basically alone. Back then, I wasn’t entirely sure where I was or why I was there. From what I gathered from the guards that delivered my food, I was in a castle. My tutor growing up wanted nothing to do with me. She tried to teach me grammar, and I would respond with questions about why I had to be here and when I could leave. I’m very smart, despite never learning to read. Not to toot my own horn, but you don’t need to know how to read to be smart, you just need ideas, and I had plenty of time on my hands for that. So with all that time to think, I made escape plans.

You would think this is where my story went south, but not yet, just wait for me to get to it, stop jumping ahead. I had been trying to escape since the day I became conscious. No, not since the day I was born that doesn’t make any sense. And no, I wasn’t born inside the tower, that would be weird. I was born somewhere else and brought to the tower later, how soon after I do not know. From basic human anatomy and child development rules, probably like 2 years old, but you never know really, because I’m crazy.

So back to my escape plans. I got very creative with them as I grew up. I tried digging myself out with my utensils, but the scraping sound on the cement was not very subtle and I was caught quite early. I had to eat with my hands after that. Lost my cutlery privileges. You can see now why they think I’m so gross. Imagine a girl with gross tangled hair, relatively unwashed, eating with her hands for each meal. I probably looked like a rabid animal. Again, key choice of words. Relatively unwashed, because I was given a bucket to wash myself once a week, but knowing what I do now that I’m out, that’s not very frequent at all.

After that, there was the incident with my tutor, and why she stopped coming… I may or may not have tried to smother her and sneak out the door behind her. Unsuccessfully, of course. No, I didn’t kill her, that’s not why she stopped coming, I just scared her. A lot. She’s a pretty large woman, you see, and being 11 years old, it would have been pretty hard to overtake her, but I gave it a valiant effort. I had no idea there was such a thing as magic then, so the odds were really stacked against me. A few more attempts ensued, none very interesting, because I never made it out, but you can’t blame a girl for trying.

And here is where it all goes south. I was spending my day like I normally did. Woke up, ate my breakfast of tasteless porridge, my favorite, tried cartwheeling, unsuccessfully, ate a lunch of potatoes and mystery meat, and I was drawing on the walls when I heard a sound. This is where you’re like, drawing? I thought you had nothing to do! And also, stop copying Rapunzel, that's her thing you wench. Drawing for me was tracing my finger along the walls in imaginary shapes for hours until I was satisfied with my “painting”, and standing back to admire my fantastic work. I said I was crazy. Now back to the sound I heard, stop interrupting. Please.

It was a sound I had heard before, the grunting of men, but it was accompanied by shouts and groans of pain. It grew closer as I pressed my ear to the iron door. I heard metal clanking and the squishing sound of blood. One of my most exciting days, but I never know if I’m imagining something due to boredom or if it’s really happening. So I didn’t have the common sense to back away from the door in fear of danger, unfortunately. When the pounding of a sledgehammer began to hit the locks, right where my head was on the other side, I was knocked silly. Dazed on the floor, holding my head in my hands, the door sprung free, swinging open to hit me, because of course I still hadn’t the sense to move. Thoroughly beaten around, I clutched my throbbing head and curled into a ball, the world spinning around me. I looked up to see a man staring down at me, and then threw up and passed out.

Yay! A man came to save me! Think again, it’s never that simple. No, he didn’t do anything weird to me while I was passed out. Plus, I was only out for like a second. In the movies, when people pass out for hours it's incredibly unrealistic, you would probably have brain damage and wake up speaking french, or not at all.

When I woke up and saw the man again, I wish I could say I reacted rationally, but let's remember, I wasn’t properly socialized. Also, I had never seen a man before. My tutor was a woman, and while the guards did drop off my food and necessities, they never showed themselves. I wasn’t offended that they never talked to me, it's fine. Whatever. So this whole new species broke into my room in the middle of the day, what was I supposed to do? Say hello? Stop comparing me to Rapunzel, I didn’t smack him with a frying pan. And also Rapunzel is based on me, not the other way around. I grabbed his sword and stabbed him with it. It was only logical, please.

As he lay bleeding out on the floor, he mumbled something, but I didn’t catch it. Not all of us are perfect. He could have spoken louder, I could have not stabbed him, it’s all water over the bridge now anyway. Or is it under the bridge? Sorry I’m still trying to get those phrases down.

Peeking past the almost dead man, I saw my freedom. In his wake were more dead men littering the stairs. I couldn’t believe this guy had killed all those people but fell to a scraggly girl, but I guess now it makes sense. It makes sense because he’s a douche, not for any other reason.

After all my attempts, I’d never made it past the door. The door that enclosed my entire universe. I felt as though I would explode or spontaneously die if I crept past. Standing there for a moment that bordered on too long, I decided to take my chances. One toe over the line that separated me from everything I’d wished my whole life to see, so I could burn it all down.

I know, I know, that totally plays into my evil villain stereotype, but I promise I meant that in an offhand way. Like how you casually say you want to murder someone for eating the leftovers you’d been excited for all day. I’m allowed to be angry about being locked in a tower my whole life, alright, like cut me some slack here. I was only going to burn like a few people down, not all of it.

Right then is when I became rational and bolted down the stairs as fast as I could, not stopping to see the gore I ran past. When I hit the bottom, I threw myself out the door and into the insides of a huge castle. Chaos was reigning down, servants running every which way, dead people lining the halls, medics crouching over bleeding out bodies. I stood there, and no one even noticed me. That man I killed had done some damage. Maybe it was a good thing I killed him, seeing as he had killed like a million people (my perception of amounts of people was very off, as before that moment I had seen only like 2 or 3 in my whole life). So amid the craze, I just walked outside. Pretty anti-climactic if you ask me. So many escape attempts just for me to walk out of the castle unnoticed. Well, as you know now, I wasn’t supposed to leave that castle, and in doing so, I kinda messed everything up. Maybe if they had told me why I was imprisoned, I would have been happy to twiddle my thumbs there for eternity, but they didn’t, so really this is their fault not mine.

I’m sure you’re asking, who’s them? I’ll get to that in a second, God. Let me tell you how exciting it was to smell fresh air for the first time, stop being so self centered. My bare feet touched the dirt road, dusty and foreign, and I kinda hated it, but it wasn’t my tower so I loved it. I sniffed the air, and it wasn’t stale. I smelled grass, titled my face up to feel the sun, tasted freedom in my mouth, and felt life rush into my body. It was the most amazing, all encompassing moment of my boring life. And then it happened. See, that rush of life wasn’t joy, it was magic. Earth shattering magic. Magic I hadn’t been taught how to wield, and also magic I was cursed to never use. When my mother was pregnant, a psychic had told her of my fate. That I was to be the most powerful magic wielder ever born, but I would not bring good into the world. Yes, psychics are real, not lying quacks like they are where you live. My mother confided in my father, who told the authorities. My parents willingly went to the king, afraid of what I would become, and allowed him to call in a witch. He told the witch to solve the problem and take my magic away, but fate does not work like that. When she cast the spell, it didn’t work, and instead removed my magic only if I stayed in the castle where she cast it, and if I tried to use it anywhere else, it would come back tenfold. So they all agreed I was to be locked in the tower, never to leave the castle. They couldn’t kill me because a part of the spell my mother had pleaded for was that they couldn’t kill her baby, her last effort to save her child. She died in childbirth. And so I was locked away. But I knew none of this then. All I knew was that fire was running through my veins, and I needed a release. And so, accidentally, I really did burn it all down.

Okay, only like, a couple miles, not the whole world, stop being so literal. But those miles contained a lot of people, don’t ask me how many I don’t know. It was a good portion of the city. And then the rest of the city fled. When news of my “escape” reached them, and they saw the destruction I had caused, they packed up and left. Abandoning their homes where they stood. Even the king, afraid of my power, left me standing outside the castle and ran off to join his people in the mass diaspora of his kingdom. So, I was all alone, so I thought, and didn’t know what the heck had just happened. I was a villain, and I didn’t know how or why. Well, I did know why, but not why, you know? And in the moment of guilt and sadness, I went back to what I knew. I walked back up the stairs and went right back into my room.

There, I was very surprised to see the man I had killed sitting up against the wall, breathing shallowly. He was alive!! One less person I had killed! There, he painfully, slowly explained my curse. He assured me he was healing, just very slowly. The sword I had impaled him with, his sword, was imbued with magic, and therefore slowed his fast healing given to him by his extensive magical abilities. It was in that moment, that I finally knew what had happened and why, was I the most angry. I was angry at all of them. I was angry at my father for telling on me. I was angry at the king for attempting to take my magic away. I was angry at everyone for locking me up without an explanation. I was angry at this man, who let me free without warning me. And most of all, I was angry because clearly they were all so stupid to think they could test fate and change it, resulting in the exact thing they had tried to avoid. If they had just let me grow up like a normal child and develop my magical skills like any other born with magic, none of this would have happened. In trying to stop it, they had caused it. So yeah, I was angry.

The man introduced himself somewhere in this mix, but I forgot it immediately. Which makes me realize I never told you my name. I figured you knew it already, because why else would you be listening to this long story, but if you didn’t, it’s Helia. Okay, now that that’s over, let’s talk about the man’s abhorrent actions and why he did them. He killed a lot of people, remember? I know I killed more but mine was an accident and his wasn’t, so shut up. I really wanted him to be some morally grey love interest that killed all those people to save me. You know the saying, the hero gives up the girl for the world, the villain gives up the world for the girl. I thought maybe he was giving up the world for me, but that lasted about a second. I’m not sure why that thought even crossed my mind because not only did he know nothing about me other than my curse, I was also dirty, and most importantly, crazy.

So no, he wasn’t there to save me, he was there to take me. He didn’t intend for me to kill everyone. He wanted to use me as his slave to do his bidding with my intense power. He thought that because I was in a tower my whole life, I was malleable, that he could convince me he was there to save me and then magically tie our souls together so I couldn't leave. Then, he could rule his own kingdom somewhere far away with my power to beat everyone into submission. He really thought he was some noble guy on a quest for the better good. Men are ridiculous, I can already tell. Obviously, I wasn’t going to let him do that, so I dragged him down the stairs and outside and finished him off before he could try. I mean, he did try, but I stabbed him again before he could fight. He should have learned his lesson by now.

So here I am, a burnt corpse on my lawn, an empty castle, half a city that could have tumbleweeds it was so deserted, and enough power to take over any country I pleased. Everyone thought I was a villain already, so why not prove them right? I sat on my stoop and thought about it for a while, but decided I didn’t feel like running a kingdom right now, I barely knew what shoes were.

So I guess that’s why I’m telling my story. Maybe if you put in a good word for me everyone will come back, other than the dead people obviously, and we can all live happily ever after. I’ll stay in the castle, as long as I can roam the halls and not be locked in that room again. It’s not even my fault in the first place so I don’t know why everyone is blaming me for all this. How about you take a good look inside and think about how everyone knew there was a poor girl locked in a tower and did nothing. Maybe it’s your fault. Okay sorry, blaming you isn’t going to help my case. I’m sick of being alone. So if you get this letter, please, please, come visit me and let me set this all straight. I won’t burn anyone or anything for as long as I live. Please.

Best,

Helia