Dear reader,
My name will stay unknown to you. I will trust you are a good enough citizen to save a stranger. I am trapped on the top floor of Cloogen Tower. The Sarakas have invaded my town and captured me. Please help me escape this wretched place so I can rescue my town and restore it to its former glory. Weather or not you live in my town, I don’t know. But if you do then you know the tower of which I am speaking of and I hope you will save me. I am begging you, help. Until I meet you at the top of the tower, so the Sarakas don’t know who I am, I will refer to myself as Rapunzel.
Yours truly,
Rapunzel
The letter was written in neat cursive with a hand that had many years of experience. However nice the writing was, though, Jasper couldn’t decide weather or not to save a complete stranger. Normally he would have ripped up the page and thrown it away. But he had such a strong feeling in his gut that he had to save this girl, he considered risking life and limb for her.
He knew the tower she was talking about, which made it worse in a way. The previous owner was a crazy professor name Cloogen. He put curse after curse on the tower, so only a handful of people knew how to get in. There was only one window, and it was at the very top. There were no doors. And because of the curse, no one knew how many floors there were. There could have easily been hundreds, but no one knew. Jasper knew that each floor got harder and harder to get past. So even if you made it in, it was near impossible to get up to the top.
He knew of only one way he would come close to getting in and to the top. He had to get the information out of Jazz. Jazz was the towns witch. She was deceitful, hard to handle, rude, impatient, and a little crazy, but she was good at spells and could help you or destroy you at the snap of a manicured finger. However hard the townspeople over on the side of town Jazz lived on tried to get her what she wanted, she always complained about how she wanted more. Not even the Sarakas were powerful enough to make her change her ways. Of course, she could easily save the town, but when asked she replied ‘What has this town ever done for me?’ and turned away. Jazz lived as far away from Jasper as possible without passing the towns’ border.
The trip he had to take would be long and tedious, and he could easily be stopped by a Saraka along the way, most likely more than once. So with his heart filled with dread, he began to pack for the long journey ahead. He grabbed a sack from under his bed and stuffed the bread and cheese he had just bought into it along with clothes and a small blanket. A water bottle and an extra pair of shoes were next, followed by candles and matches.
Jasper slung the bag over his shoulder. With a sigh, he set out into the now dark town, alone and scared, but braver than he had ever felt before. He was ready to fight whatever tried to stop him. He had only walked a few blocks when he reached the tower. The window high up was dark. He was about to continue walking when the light went on. He stood frozen, not quite sure what to do.
A girl’s face appeared in the window. She looked scared and lonely and her eyes looked like she had been crying. But she looked familiar. Very familiar, and though it took Jasper a minute to realize who she was without her crown and her hair strewn all over the place, he knew she was the princess. When she saw him, her face lit up. Jasper wasn’t sure what else to do, so he bowed his head and began to run away for Jazz’s house, now confident she would help her. For in all her greatness, not even Jazz knew where the Princess was.
