A/N: Why hello! this is my next story after finishing Tower of Dove (a Romeo and Juliet retelling, i sure love retellings, don't i? haha). i really, really hope you enjoy! sorry if the prologue is boring, but please don't give up on it! the rest of the story after the prologue will be told in the first person POV. please enjoy and please review, let me know what you think :) ~ Victoria

Strawberry Stair: A Rapunzel Retelling

Prologue: A Desperate Soul

"Please, can you help me? My wife—she's dying. No doctors are able to cure her, but I hear you have techniques unlike any other."

Calandra's lips pursed as she looked down at the young man who had appeared on her doorstep. The rain was beating down mercilessly, and he was drenched straight through his ugly brown jacket and worn jeans. His red hair was matted around his face, and he was looking at her with fervent eyes. He was a handsome man, and she found it odd for someone who would surely be desirable among woman to have married so young. He couldn't be a day older than twenty. She glanced behind him, past the porch and down her lawn, but she saw nothing besides her white picket fence and the glum houses across the street. A few cars sped down the road, spraying fallen rain as their tires scraped the blacktop and filling her nose with the smell of wet grass and car exhaust. She didn't see anything suspicious, but she could never be sure. She'd just settled in this area; she couldn't afford another move. She looked back at the young man.

"Leave," she said. "I have no reason to help you."

She moved to close the door, but the man pressed his hand against it. She glared at him, but he only looked desperate. She felt faintly sorry for him, but not sorry enough.

"Please," he begged. "I'll do anything you want. Just don't let her die."

Calandra nibbled the inside of her cheek and leaned against her doorway as she contemplated the outcome of doing so. "What ails your wife?"

"Leukemia." After a pause he added, "She's also six months pregnant. We hadn't planned for it; she's only eighteen."

At that, Calandra became much more interested. A child. She'd been looking for a new princess. "What's the gender of the babe?"

The man looked confused. "Uh, the gender? A girl."

Perfect. Just what she needed. She grabbed the man by the sopping collar of his jacket and jerked him forward, her face only an inch from his. He looked almost fearful as he stared into her eyes. She couldn't blame him; they were the deep black of a demon and never-ending. "Are you with the guild?" she rasped.

"Uh—the—what?"

She shook him violently. "The guild! Are you with them?"

"No, I—I have no idea what that is!"

His eyes were huge and scared as she searched them for any sign of deception. She found none, so she let go. He took an immediate step back and slammed into the door frame, looking at her as if he had seen her for what she really was. She wiped a piece of her pale blonde hair behind her ears and turned to walk inside. "Very well. Come with me."

"Th-thank you so much." He closed the door behind them and followed after her. She led him quickly through the living room of her new home and down the plain white hallway, the sound of his shoes squeaking against the wooden floor obnoxiously loud. She stopped at the door at the very end and looked at him over her shoulder. His Adam's apple moved as he swallowed nervously. She smiled and twisted the brass knob, opening the door and stepping into the greenhouse.

Exotic plants found in only the deepest parts of ancient forests or species of her own creation thrived in this immense greenhouse. The humidity pricked at her neck as she took in the flowers and trees springing at them from every angle and growing high towards the stormy sky through the greenhouse glass. She took a deep breath of the suffocating perfumes and turned back to the young man, basking in all her glory. If only she could show off her lab as well.

He looked awed as he gazed around at her creation. "So you like gardening?"

She felt her temper flare; she wanted to kill him for comparing her to someone as insignificant as a gardener, but she needed his cooperation to obtain his child. She chose to disregard his ignorance and smiled. "Something like that. Come." She motioned for him to follow her deeper into the greenhouse.

She led him to a rosebush; the smell of her sweet babies was far more pungent than that of normal roses, as was their vibrant red color. They were so bright that they practically glowed. She glanced at the young man as he stared at them, as if mesmerized. The glow of the flowers ignited in his blue eyes, reflected off of them as they drew him closer. When he came too close for Calandra's liking, she put a warning hand in front of him. His trance broke and he looked at her like a confused sheep.

"Tell me your name," she said.

The man blinked, as if trying to rid his sight of the roses' majesty. He sounded like a child when he said, "Ryan Sweet."

"And your wife's name?"

He swallowed hard; his drying hair was no doubt dabbled with sweat. "Elle."

"Is she very pretty, Ryan?"

"Yes." Some color returned to his dampened cheeks. "Yes, beautiful."

Calandra took him by the chin and drew his face to hers. She could smell his wet skin and practically hear the quick beating of his heart; he was scared of her. She relished in the power that his fear gave her. "I will save your wife," she said, "with only one condition."

"Anything," Ryan said.

"When your child is born, she will be given to me to raise as my own. You two will never bother with her again. She will be mine."

He looked appalled. "I can't promise you that."

"Then your wife will die."

He looked at her for a long moment, only inches from her face. He was relenting; she could see it in the weakness of his expression. She had won.

"I'll do it," he said.

Calandra grinned and released her grip on him. He jerked back as if he had been stung, but she ignored him and plucked one of the blooming roses from the bush. A thorn pricked her finger, and a drop of blood trickled down. She held it out to him, but he looked at it unsurely.

"Brew the petals of this rose and feed the mixture to your wife. She'll be cured."

Gingerly, he took the rose.

"Don't forget, Ryan Sweet"—she lifted her finger to her lips and licked away the trail of blood—"the moment your daughter is born, she is mine."

The young man looked horrified, but he nodded nonetheless. She wondered if he had truly seen through her; on the outside she was no older than thirty, but really she had lived through both world wars. She was a biomedical scientist taken to the extreme, experimenting and failing all the while. And this man had just given his first child up to her experiment.

Decades of failures had gone by as she tried one after the other to create the Grim Brother's fairytales. Her Snow White, Cinderella, Goose Girl, and Sleeping Beauty had all met with death before their fifteenth birthdays, their bodies not able to adjust to either the mutations in their cells or the poisons that entered their bodies. This time, she was determined that the little princess would live. She wouldn't come to love another just to have her taken away.

Three months passed. Most of the time she spent in her lab, mixing anaconda DNA with the cells that would help create her new princess's hair. She didn't need Ryan to call her when the time of the birth came; the rose brew which his dear wife had swallowed was a link between Elle Sweet and the rosebush itself. One day the roses glowed bright red and Calandra knew. She arrived at the Sweet's hospital room the minute the doctors were gone.

"So young to have a baby," she said as she entered Elle's room. Ryan, who sat in the chair next to her hospital bed, paled at her appearance. Elle held her little bundle to her chest and looked fearfully from the strange woman who had entered her hospital room to her husband. Calandra was glad to see that she was just as beautiful as Ryan had said—honey blonde hair, big brown eyes, and freckles sprinkling across her soft cheeks. She looked like a child and far too young to have her own, but at least her beauty would pass on. Princesses should always be beautiful.

Calandra walked to her bedside and snatched the baby from Elle's hands. The girl didn't protest, but neither did she look happy. Ryan just glared at the ground. The baby made a cooing noise, but did not cry.

"In exchange for your continued life," Calandra said as she looked down at the baby cradled in her arms, "I get to keep hers."

"Just be good to her," Elle whispered, her eyes not leaving the baby. Her hand reached out and took Ryan's. "I didn't want to have a baby, but you grow attached after nine months. Please, raise her well."

Calandra smiled at the young woman. "I will treat her as my own. You don't have to worry, Mr. and Mrs. Sweet."

She turned and walked from the hospital room, her new princess with her. She'd taken care of the legal problems that would arise from her keeping the child. As far as anyone knew, this little girl had died at birth. She belonged solely to Calandra. Being alive for so long certainly had its advantages when it came to legal papers.

She walked out of the hospital doors and into the late California winter. She smiled down at her child as she walked her to her car, and the baby looked at her curiously with eyes bluer than her fathers.

"You belong to me," Calandra whispered, "my little Rapunzel."