In the land of dreams, things were chaotic and unpredictable, yet there was a rhythm to the place if you were cunning enough to find it. And for those who found it and learned to harness the magic, almost anything was possible in the dreamscape. Each inhabitant of the dreamscape lived within his or her own chamber composed of tall mirrors, each of them reflecting different images showing the dreamer events from the outside world connected to the dreamer. Some dreamers simply sat and watched the events pass by, while others learned how to control the mirrors and command what they saw in the mirrors. The odd sisters, who were already well versed in mirror magic, had no problem mastering the mirrors in the dreamworld. They found the rhythm. They harnessed the magic. For them almost anything was possible. And that was how they were able to watch Gothel.

They saw Gothel and Rapunzel standing in front of a large mirror in their tower. “Oh, look, Sisters. She’s there!” said Lucinda.

Ruby and Martha clapped their hands, stomping their feet. “Oh, let’s see what kind of mother she makes!”

“Shhh! Look! I think she’s saying something to us in the mirror!” said Lucinda, pointing at the image of Gothel and Rapunzel reflected at them in the dreamscape.

“Rapunzel, look in that mirror. You know what I see? I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady!” Gothel was smiling at her own reflection and then said, “Oh, look! You’re there, too!”

The odd sisters shook their heads. “She isn’t acting at all like the mother Rapunzel knew from her dream,” said Martha.

“We didn’t tell her to,” Lucinda said, laughing.

“Shhh! Listen! They’re talking!”

“No, no, no, can’t be. I distinctly remember, your birthday was last year.” The odd sisters laughed as Gothel tried to pretend it wasn’t Rapunzel’s birthday.

“That’s the funny thing about birthdays, they’re kind of an annual thing.” Rapunzel sighed and went on. “Mother, I’m turning eighteen, and I wanted to ask, uh, what I really want for this birthday…Actually, what I’ve wanted for quite a few birthdays…”

“Spit it out, dear!” yelled Ruby at the mirror as she watched the poor girl struggling to find the words.

“Okay, Rapunzel, please stop with the mumbling. Blah-blah-blah-blah, it’s very annoying,” said Gothel.

“She couldn’t act like a mother if she tried!” said Martha.

“This is even better than I thought it would be!” said Ruby, laughing so hard she fell to the floor and rolled around in fits. Soon Martha joined her, and the two were laughing so hard they were crying, causing their makeup to drip down their hysterical faces.

“Sisters! Sisters, please! Stop this!” screamed Lucinda. But her sisters couldn’t stop laughing at Gothel’s ridiculous mother act.

“You’re missing the entire thing, Sisters!” yelled Lucinda. “She’s singing a song, for goodness’ sake!” But her sisters couldn’t stop rolling around on the floor, laughing so hard the mirrors in their chamber were shaking.

“What would Circe think if she saw you now? Ruby! Martha! Stop this at once!” Immediately the sisters stopped.

“No fair conjuring Circe!” said Ruby, tears still running down her face.

“I didn’t summon her. I’m just reminding you that we need to conduct ourselves properly if we want to ever be let out of this place!”

“Did I hear you say Gothel sang a song?” asked Ruby, trying to muffle her laughter.

“You missed it. The girl asked to see the lights, and Gothel pranced around the tower like a chicken, singing of the terrors and dangers outside the tower.” Lucinda couldn’t even keep a straight face while she tried to recount the story. “Just shut up and listen,” she said, trying to keep herself from laughing. “Gothel is saying something else.”

“Don’t ever ask to leave this tower again.”

The sisters fell into peals of laughter again. “Don’t ever ask to leave the tower again!” Ruby screamed. “Does Gothel really think that is going to work?”

“She’s an eighteen-year-old girl!” said Martha. “Of course it won’t work!”

“Oh, Rapunzel, I love you more!” mocked Martha.

“I love you most?” Lucinda laughed. “Princesses may be stupid, but I don’t think Rapunzel is stupid enough to believe that!”

“Where do you think Gothel is going?” screeched Ruby. “She’s leaving the girl alone!”

“Follow her in the mirrors,” said Lucinda. “I will keep an eye on the girl.”

Ruby went to one of the other mirrors and watched Gothel wander the forest. Lucinda kept an eye on Rapunzel. She almost preferred the dreamscape to the real world, with so many mirrors at her disposal. Sometimes you saw things within the mirrors of the dreamscape you didn’t even know you wanted to see until they appeared before you.

The sisters saw Gothel taking the path that led to the dead forest. “The queen of nothing is headed to her ruined lands.”

“Tragic!” screamed Martha.

“She’s searching for something,” said Lucinda, taking her eyes off Rapunzel for a moment, noticing something in one of the other mirrors. “Sisters, look! It’s him!” Lucinda pointed to a mirror that showed a young man going into the cave entrance to the valley. “It’s Flynn Rider! He has the crown!”

“Who?” asked Ruby.

“Flynn Rider!” snapped Lucinda.

“What kind of name is that? Flynn Rider?” asked Martha.

“Sisters! Please. He’s the young man I told you about,” said Lucinda. “Shhh!”

“Ah yes, the one you compelled to take the crown and bring it to Rapunzel!” said Martha.

“Which crown?” asked Ruby.

“For Hades’ sake, Ruby! Rapunzel’s crown! Remember she’s a princess!”

“Yes, yes, yes! There’s so many stories to keep track of! So many princesses! Stop getting so annoyed with us!” cried Ruby.

“Lucinda! He’s breaking into the tower! He’s there!” Martha said, pointing at one of the many mirrors in the chamber.

“Oh! She hit him in the head!” said Ruby, laughing.

“Serves him right, breaking into the tower!” said Martha.

“Martha! Please do keep up! We want Flynn to break into the tower!” Lucinda said, shaking her head.

“Do we?” asked Martha.

“Yes, we do! How else is he to get Rapunzel the crown?” Lucinda walked away from the mirror, more frustrated with her sisters than she’d been in quite some time.

“Oh gods! Look at the way Rapunzel is looking at him! Why do princesses always fall in love with the first boy they see?” asked Martha.

“Because that’s the way fairy tales are written,” said Lucinda, sighing.

“Ha! No! She hit him with the pan again! Good girl!” Ruby said, laughing. “She’s shoving him in the closet!”

“Sisters, listen! Pay attention, both of you! We want Flynn Rider in the tower! We want them to be friends. We need him to help Rapunzel find her true family again.”

“But why?”

“We don’t want Gothel to wake her sisters, now, do we?”

“Of course we don’t!” Ruby and Martha said.

“Hades! She’s on her way back with a sleeping potion! Look!” said Lucinda, pointing at Gothel in one of the mirrors.

“Is it one of ours, Lucinda? One of our sleeping potions?”

“It doesn’t matter! Flynn is in that closet, and we need Rapunzel to get rid of Gothel and talk Flynn into taking her to see the lights!”

“Yes! If she doesn’t kill him with that frying pan first.” The sisters laughed.

“And what about Gothel? What about the sleeping potion? She’s going to try to put that girl back to sleep!”

“The girl will have to get rid of her before she tries to use it!”

“Oh! Look! Look! Rapunzel has the crown! She’s trying it on! She’s trying it on!”

“Let’s just tell her now she’s the Princess!” squealed Ruby.

“We can’t talk to her through the mirror, idiot! She doesn’t have magic! And even if we could, I wouldn’t want to spoil all the fun of seeing Gothel squirm!” said Lucinda. “I want her to think she’s won. I want to fill her heart with hope and then see it destroyed!”

“She’s there! Gothel’s there! Look!” said Ruby, pointing to one of their mirrors, where Gothel was calling up to the tower window.

“Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

“One moment, Mother!” called the Princess after stashing the crown in a vase.

“I have a big surprise for you!” called Gothel

“I have one, too!” said Rapunzel.

“Why has Gothel been using that strange singsong voice? It’s ridiculous!” said Ruby.

The odd sisters were transfixed by the images in the mirror as they listened to Gothel’s and Rapunzel’s voices dancing around each other. Each was too consumed with her own plans to listen to the other.

“My surprise is bigger!” yelled Gothel as Rapunzel pulled her into the tower with her long hair. The odd sisters could see Gothel going in through the window; she was acting very animated, almost like a stage actor, or a large puppet. “I brought back parsnips! I’m going to make hazelnut soup for dinner, your favorite. Surprise!”

The odd sisters laughed. “Soup! That’s the surprise?” screeched Martha.

“Hazelnut sleeping-potion soup! Surprise!” yelled Ruby, making Martha laugh.

“Well, Mother, there is something I want to tell you,” said Rapunzel.

The odd sisters screamed. “No! No! No! Don’t tell her!” The girl couldn’t hear them, of course, but there was power in their voices, magic, and they were trying to use it to manipulate Rapunzel. “Shhh! Gothel is talking.”

“You know I hate leaving you, especially after a fight when I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong,” said Gothel. The sisters laughed. She had no idea how to act like a mother. She’d never taken care of the child when Rapunzel was little.

“Whatever happened to Mrs. Tiddlebottom?” asked Ruby. And suddenly Mrs. Tiddlebottom appeared in one of the mirrors. She was baking a magnificent cake, bigger and more beautiful than the one she had made for Rapunzel’s eighth birthday.

“Stop it! We’re supposed to be watching Gothel! Get rid of Mrs. Tiddlepants!”

“Tiddlebottom!”

“What?”

“Her name is Tiddlebottom!”

“Well, frankly I think both names are ludicrous!” Lucinda snapped.

“Is she baking a cake for Rapunzel? Does she remember her?”

“Not quite,” said Lucinda. “But something compels her to make a cake every year on this day. Shhh! Never mind her and listen. I think that stupid girl is about to tell Gothel Flynn is in the closet!”

“Enough with the lights, Rapunzel!” yelled Gothel. “You are not leaving this tower ever!”

“Oh! Look at Gothel showing her true colors!” Ruby said. “There’s the Gothel we know!”

Gothel reclined on the nearest chair dramatically as if yelling had drained her. “She’s really hamming it up!” said Ruby, giggling as she watched Gothel put her hand on her head as if she were going to faint from the exhaustion of it all.

“This is too much!” said Ruby. “Like a badly acted melodrama!”

“Agh! Great! Now I’m the bad guy,” declared Gothel, exasperated with Rapunzel and tired of the pretense.

The odd sisters knew Gothel wanted to put Rapunzel to sleep so she could take Rapunzel’s body back to her country house and wake her sisters. And as much as it delighted the odd sisters to think of the macabre scene of Gothel wrapping that young girl’s hair around her dead sisters, they weren’t about to put another princess in danger. Not while Circe was watching their every move. If they hurt one more silly princess, then Circe would never let them out of the dreamscape. And they would never see their Circe again.

“All I was going to say was I know what I want for my birthday now,” said Rapunzel.

“And what is that?” asked Gothel, annoyed with the entire charade.

“New paint. The paint made from the white shells you once brought me.”

“That is a very long trip, Rapunzel. Almost three days’ time.”

“Long enough to check on your sisters,” said Lucinda. “I think there is something wrong with them. You’d better check.”

“Yes! You’d better check on your sisters, Gothel!” cried Ruby.

“They’re in danger, Gothel! Mrs. Tiddlebottom must be old now without her flower. So frail. Your sisters aren’t safe alone with her,” said Lucinda, binding her words with magic, using them to make Gothel afraid.

“Mrs. Tiddlebottom might go down into the cellar! You’ve never been away this long!” said Martha.

“Go! Go to your sisters!” said the odd sisters at once.

“You’re sure you will be all right on your own?” asked Gothel.

“I know I’m safe as long as I’m here,” said Rapunzel.

“I’ll be back in three days’ time,” said Gothel as she took the basket Rapunzel had put together for her journey.

“I love you very much, dear,” said Gothel.

“I love you more,” said Rapunzel.

And she did. The sisters could tell.

Rapunzel actually loved her mother Gothel.