Zel (18 page)

Zel is spellbound. This vision is new and so real, it hurts. It moves. Horse and man disappear into the pines. Zel jumps into the tower room, her arms clasped across her chest. She hugs her own ribs in terror.

Chapter 22
Konrad

he linen-paper bird is painted intricately, beautifully, mysteriously. Konrad keeps his eyes on the equally mysterious tower as he weaves his way through the trees. Did he really see her? His heart pounds.

Meta stops and stamps under the empty tower window. “Hello. Hello up there!” Konrad controls his heart. There’s no reason to be frantic. He calls again. “Hello!” He listens hard. He hears nothing. He sees no one. But a woman was there. He holds the paper bird over his head and shakes it. His hand trembles. His heart trembles. “I saw you. Please come to the window again!”

“Tell me what my hands do,” comes a voice from within.

Konrad is at a loss. He is dizzy with hope, and now she makes a command he has no chance of satisfying, and all that hope shimmers in the heat as though it would evaporate. He turns the bird in the sun. “They paint paper. They fold birds. They make magic.”

Silence. Then, “Tell me my name.”

Konrad’s mouth goes dry. He must speak, and if he is wrong, his dream is gone. Oh, God, let Konrad be right. “You are Zel. You are my Rapunzel.”

“Aha!” The woman’s head and shoulders appear over the window ledge. “No real man would know my name. You are no one. You disappoint.”

It is Zel! O blessèd day. “Come down. Come out.”

“Tease me, will you? Well, that doesn’t hurt, for you are no one. If you’d been real, I might have jumped into your arms. Which would have been mad, since then we’d both die.” She laughs. “You terrified me at first. But now you do nothing. Go on; move back so I can see you better, no-one man.”

Konrad shakes his head in confusion. The girl shows the same inexplicable impudence she showed at the smithy two years ago. And now he grins. Thank God for that. He pulls down on the reins and Meta backs up. “I am Count Konrad.”

Zel laughs. “A count. Never in my wildest dreams did I conjure up a count before. And on sweet Meta.” She laughs again. “You are more fun than the other visions, after all. Please go on. Amaze me, O superb vision!”

Konrad suspects now that the girl is addled. And though he can see only her shoulders, he knows she is still naked. She was healthy in body and mind when he met her in the smithy. Something has happened. She is
ill; she needs help. “Put on clothes,” he shouts. “I’m coming up.” He jumps off Meta and walks around the base of the tower. It is filthy. Who comes and throws filth on the base of his love’s tower? He is now back to Meta, who grazes contentedly in the dandelions. How can he be back to Meta without having come across the door? He walks around the tower again, this time pushing the ivy aside, pressing against the stones, looking for those that might move. And here, at last, is the door. But it feels as much stone as the rest of the tower. It is immovable.

Konrad stands below Zel once more. “How do you get in and out?”

“If I could get out, I would not be here.”

“What!” Konrad’s breath comes in swells. “You are kept prisoner?” It’s monstrous. “Who is your captor? I will fight him! I will imprison him two days for each day the scoundrel has kept you in this tower. And his prison will not be a lofty tower, but a dungeon, a hole, a grave!”

Zel stares down at Konrad and speaks excitedly. “How dare you say words I would never think! I am not Mother’s prisoner. I am her charge. She protects me. Even in my most wretched moments of despair, I never think of putting her in a dungeon. You shame me, wretched vision.”

Zel’s head sticks out too far for Konrad’s comfort. She shows signs of recklessness. And her talk of her mother
makes him wary. He needs to know more, but he hesitates to ask her too much too fast, especially while she is up so high. “How did you get up there?”

“Ah, pretending to be dumb? You can’t fool me. You remember everything I remember, since you are my vision—and I remember very well. I climbed the walnut tree.”

There is only one walnut tree on this side of the tower, but it is clearly stunted. Konrad runs once more around the base of the tower, but there are no other walnut trees, only pines, and all have branches that come no closer to the windows.

“How long have you been up there?”

Zel shakes her head at the question. “Two years and three days. Tomorrow will be my fifteenth birthday. You know that. You know all and only what I know. You disappoint again. You bring me nothing new. But tomorrow Mother will bring me something new. Sheaves and sheaves of papers.” She laughs so hard, she ends wheezing.

The girl has been in this tower for two years. While Konrad was wandering the mountainsides, she was pacing the stone floor. Even in his worst moments of loss and need, he had been a thousand times better off than Zel. He would tear the tower down stone by stone if he could. He quells the shout in his throat. He may need Zel’s cooperation
if he is to get to her, and, though she is half mad, she is bound to turn away from him if he shouts. “Mother comes tomorrow,” says Konrad finally.

“Mother comes every day. You know that. Mother will be here within the hour.”

Konrad speaks almost nonchalantly, not wanting to alert Zel to the import of his words. “Will she come up into the tower?”

“You know she will. Your pointless questions tire me.” Zel rolls on the ledge. Now all Konrad can see is the back of her head.

“How does Mother come up?”

Zel disappears. “Go away, vision. Paper is better than you.”

Konrad thinks of calling to her, then thinks better of it. This Zel is unpredictable. The tiny prickle of incipient horror makes his ears tingle. He cannot wipe away the image of a body falling from the tower window.

Responsibility makes Konrad instantly clearheaded. He rides Meta up the hillside till she is out of sight of the tower. He is almost certain Mother will come from the lakeside. He ties the mare to a tree, making sure she can graze easily. Then he breaks a lower branch off the pine and races back to the tower. He brushes away all prints of horse and man, walking backward into the scrub. He thinks of climbing a tree for a better view but remembers
Zel’s fantastic claim that she and Mother climbed the walnut tree to enter the tower. He must not be near the walnut tree when Mother comes.

Konrad positions himself entirely within a scrub cedar. The bush scratches at him. He can see two sides of the tower. If only Mother comes to one of those two sides. He realizes that if he can see so well, then anyone who scrutinizes the scrub cedar may see him. He digs both hands into the dry earth and rubs dirt on his shirt and cheeks. His face is feverish.

Chapter 23
Mother

walk to the cabinet I have built for my fiddle. I play slow and fast. Soft and loud. As I play, my memory works past veils of pain and deception to thirteen years of happiness. The memory aches exquisitely.

I put the fiddle down. It is time to head for the tower.

I walk out, my cheek turned, so that I will not see the goose sitting on the seven silent lumps in her nest. Cursèd, faithful goose, who comes every year.

The day is hot. My blood warms like a turtle’s. I want
to remember Zel as the effervescent child, but I cannot deny that that child is now withdrawn like a turtle.
Something must change.

Sweat pours down my temples and neck, soaking the back of my dress as I lean into the slope of the mountainside.

At last I arrive. For the next hour I can simply be Mother.

My nose betrays me. It smells horse. But this is wild land. There can be no horse around here. Yet the odor is unmistakable. It is already noon, and Zel awaits me. I will investigate the odor later, when I descend.

I sing up, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let me climb your golden hair.”

Zel’s braids drop from the window. I climb quickly. Then I stand in the center of the room and coil the braids neatly. “My Zel.” I open my arms.

Zel rushes to me, her face speaking elation. But once she is in my arms, her grip tightens. Dry sobs rack her body. I hold her at arm’s length. “Zel, Zel, my baby. What is it?”

Zel shakes her head. She puts her hand over her mouth. She chokes on a dusty sob.

I won’t have this misery. I slide the bag off my shoulder. “I’ve brought your favorite things.” I hold forth an oval blue-black plum. “And there are grapes for your breakfast tomorrow.”

Zel’s hands are in constant motion, pressing on her cheeks and throat. “You brought no lettuce, no rapunzel.”

I have not allowed my eyes to rest on that lettuce since the day I erred and said Zel had inherited the love for it, the day everything went wrong. “I can bring endive and chicory. Or southern lettuces: romaine and radicchio. Tomorrow, Zel. Whatever you like, tomorrow.”

Zel takes the plum and throws it out the window.

I watch where the plum disappeared. Zel cannot mean her action. She needs the food I bring. She is grateful. I fumble in the bag and bring out a package. “Ham. Oh, my precious, my sweet. I gave a passing peddler a whole round of fresh cheese for his smoked ham because I know you love the taste.”