Zel (19 page)

Zel stares at my lips and brushes at her cheeks, as though she were really crying, though no tears come. She blinks continually.

I take encouragement from her intent eyes. I hold out a white bun. “I put a spoonful of sugar in the dough. It will be more delicious than ever. It will contrast with the salt of the ham. Tonight you’ll have a special meal—for tomorrow, you know what tomorrow is.”

Zel reaches out one hand and touches my lips. Her other hand wipes imaginary tears. She stares.

I brush her hand away. “Tomorrow is your birthday, Zel. I will bring you surprises. And, Zel,” I say slowly, “if
there’s something you’ve been longing for, tell me. I’ll do my best to bring it.”

Zel still wipes at her dry cheeks. Her sobs are raucous. My daughter has never acted like this before.
Something must change.
Or maybe something has already changed. I am pulling at the skin on my neck. “Tell me, Zel, did something happen? Are you sick?”

Her eyes register sudden understanding. She nods her head vehemently. “I had another vision.”

I nod, as well. “Goats?”

Zel shakes her head harder and faster. Her hands go to her temples. She screams in pain.

I grab her by the shoulders. “Stop that!” I slap.

Zel stops. No part of her moves.

My hand stings from the slap. In all her life, I have never slapped my child. I am numb with shock. I dare not feel.

Zel’s eyes widen.

I must go on. I move my face very close to Zel’s. “Did you see the horse vision?”

Zel nods.

“Your hair is crusted with blood at the forehead.” I am breathless. “How did you hurt your head?”

Silence.

“Did you fall?”

“What a stupid question. People don’t fall on their foreheads.”

Her words sting equal to my slap. I am tired of these loathsome visions. I walk to the mattress and press my hands all over it. “See? It is whole. The horse is unreal. The vision eats nothing.”

“What is unreal can eat.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Tell that horse to go away.” I reach down and grab hold of one corner of the mattress. I lift it and inspect beneath, making a great show of my actions. “See, the vision ate nothing!” There are scratches in the floor. “What’s this?”

Zel looks over my shoulder. She laughs.

“What did you use to make those scratches?” I take her shoulders again. “You have something sharp. What? Where is it?” I shake her. “Tell me, foolish child. You aren’t well. You mustn’t have anything sharp. It is dangerous.”

Zel flops in my hands. “My birthday,” she says.

I stop shaking her. “Your birthday.”

Zel steps to one side. She takes my bag with steady hands. She reaches in and throws the roll out the window. Then the ham. Then the grapes. She looks at her hand.

I have never been sadder. I grope at the air. She must let me feed her. At least I can feed her. That is a mother’s job. “You will go hungry tonight, Zel. You will wake on your birthday hungry.”

“You can make me happy, Mother. There is just one thing I want for my birthday.”

My heart stops. I whisper, “What?”

“Freedom.”

I turn my back. “First things first.” I get on hands and knees. I search the floor. I feel the wall from the bottom edge to as high as I can reach. I am taller than Zel, so she couldn’t have hidden it higher than my hands know. I move clockwise, feeling, feeling. Ah, yes, here is the loose stone. I hear Zel gasp behind me. My fingers dig. The stone comes into my hand. I turn and face Zel.

Zel opens her mouth. “A sharp stone, Rascal, the ants, the moon.” The words come as if intoned. She smiles. “Oh, yes, and the lice, but they are dead, every one of them. Now you know all my secrets. It is your turn to give, Mother.”

I will not listen. Zel’s words are gibberish. She is walking the edge of sanity. I have to fight my arms. They want to cradle Zel. I wish her small again, simple and trusting. I throw the stone out the window.

“And there was Pigeon Pigeon.” Zel’s words come like arrows. I recoil instinctively. “But I killed her, Mother. I’m so sorry, but I did it.” She lifts her chin. “Your turn to give, Mother.”

I know about giving. If Zel chooses well, I can give much. “I offer the gift of talking with animals.”

“You know I ache for this gift.” Zel smiles dreamily. “But, like you said, first things first, Mother.”

I feel off balance. Zel seems suddenly older, wiser, stronger. I understand what she has said: Freedom is a prerequisite. Only then will she talk about the gift. Can I risk giving her freedom first? “I’ll be back on your birthday, Zel.” I go to kiss my daughter.

Zel ducks.

A cry of anguish escapes my throat. My eyes film over. I must keep moving. I lower the braids out the window. The lack of the kiss burns my lips. I am descending so fast I lose my grip and fall the final few feet. I half walk, half run down the mountainside to the lake.

I slapped my daughter.
Something must change.

Chapter 24
Zel

he pain in Zel’s temples is horrendous. She sits on the hot stone floor in her dress. She will dirty the dress. She has coiled her heavy hair around herself. Her temples bang. Her head would explode, should explode. Mother is gone without a good-bye
kiss. And it was Zel who turned her face away, stupid, lost Zel.

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

Zel almost swoons with ecstasy. Mother has returned. Mother has forgiven her. Mother may even be crying, for her voice is rough and broken. Oh, Mother. Mother will kiss Zel and Zel will kiss her back. She lowers her braids out the window and waits. Second chances are ecstasy.

Zel stands, astounded. The man in the window jumps to the floor with a noise as though he is real. His weight on her braids was real. She smells his sweat. She sees the hairs of his arms, the mixture of confusion and hope in his eyes. His shirt and face are covered with dirt. “Who are you, dirty man?”

The man wipes at the dirt on his face. “I told you already. Believe me.”

“Count Konrad.” Zel pulls her braids up into the room.

The man smiles. “The dress becomes you.” He blinks and adds in haste, “Though you are better without it.”

Zel’s cheeks grow hot. “Dirt becomes you, Count.”

The man laughs.

Zel likes his laugh. It is unique. She could not have made it up. Count Konrad is here. Her head spins. Her hands fly in and out; they cannot stay still. He is real, she is real, he is real, she is real. “How did you get here? I
mean, I know you came on Meta. I know you climbed my hair. But how, really, how did you get here?”

“I’ve been looking for you for two years. Today I found you quite by chance.”

“Why? Why would you look for me?”

“Why do you remember my horse’s name?”

Zel’s cheeks flame now. “I live here.”

Konrad’s eyes go to the charcoal drawings on the walls, the mattress on the floor, the waste bucket, the stack of papers with pens and brushes. His voice is iron: “Not for long.”

Zel’s eyes burn. It is all she can do to keep them open. “If I leave the tower, my enemy will kill me.”

“What enemy?”

“I do not know. Mother knows.”

“There is no enemy.”

“How can you know?”

“I have to know. It has to be so.”

Zel blinks now. Her eyes hurt less. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I have already made my decision.” She feels a stirring of some part of her she’d forgotten. “I’d rather be killed in an instant outside this tower than die slowly within it.”

“You will not be killed. I will come back with a rope, and we will both climb down.” Konrad speaks with assurance. Then he hesitates. Zel sees him swallow hard. “You will come with me?”

“I will come.”

Konrad’s face flushes. He steps forward. “Zel, oh, Rapunzel, you need time to reflect.” He stops. He licks his lips. He speaks softly. “Time to recover.” Zel can barely hear him now. “And in time, I hope”—Konrad’s words come out so slowly—“I hope you will marry me.”

Zel looks at her hands. They seem strangers, disassociated from her. Zel is a series of separate pieces matted together with spider web. She holds her hands out to this Count Konrad, palms up, slightly cupped. “What can you put in these hands?”

Konrad looks at them. “My love and devotion.”

Love and devotion are wispy. They are the things her visions are made of. They paint pictures that have shape and shadow but no color. Zel waits.

Konrad speaks a little more loudly. “Dust of the earth and beams of the moon.”

Zel’s lips part. Some nights she is at one with the moon. Perhaps Konrad can see the moon part of her. So he is aware of shape and shadow and moonglow. But can he see the rest of her?

Konrad looks into Zel’s eyes. He seems to swim there for a moment. Then he takes a deep breath and bows his head. He kisses Zel’s palms with the heat and tenderness of mortality.

“Yes,” breathes Zel. “Yes.”

Chapter 25
Konrad

onrad is insatiable. His hands press along Zel’s hairline and temples, around the shells of her ears. They follow the crest of her throat and circle the thin stalk of her neck, ever knowing. He undresses her with trembling insistence. His mouth finds her perfect. He believes he tastes the heady maturity of ripe plums; the bitter edge of small, round lettuce leaves; the sweetness of fresh milk. He believes he might die, he might burst like the constellation of Perseus in August—a shower of shooting stars—but for her call, her cry, the knowledge that she needs him as much as he needs her. The years of deprivation hone the afternoon, the evening, the night.

He lies beside her now. Beside his true love. She is a miracle; she is woman, yet so much of what she says is childlike. She is without guile. Konrad knows Zel has been gravely harmed. Her talk is disjointed; at times she raves. And her hair. No earthly force could make her hair grow so long in two years, in twenty years, in a lifetime. Zel has suffered under an evil power. Konrad knows as well, he knows with more conviction than he’s ever
known anything else in his life, that their love will restore her, their love will triumph over whatever wickedness the world holds.

He sleeps.

Chapter 26
Mother