The Fairest of Them All (2 page)

“Good afternoon,” he said, refusing to turn away despite how visibly embarrassed I must have looked. He took off his cap and bowed, though he watched
me the whole time, that same impish smile playing about his lips.

“Good afternoon,” I stammered. “May I . . . help you?”

Just then Brune flew from the mantel and to my shoulder, where she perched herself menacingly. The man looked from the bird to me and back again, and seemed more delighted than perturbed.

“Well, I feel a little awkward,” he said. “But I was on a hunt a fortnight ago and I
heard a young lady singing, and I was wondering. Well, I was hoping to find her.” He paused, clearing his throat, looking down shyly and then back up at me. “I have not been able to forget that voice. That song.”

I could feel my face flushing, as I remembered the hunting party passing, the way I’d sung out to them. I’d called him to me, I realized. I’d wanted to know who they were, where they
were going; I’d been excited by the violence of the hunt. And here this man was, at my doorstep. My heart raced.

It did not occur to me that he might be feigning his own nervousness in order to woo me.

“Oh, yes,” I said, finally. “I saw the banners, but I couldn’t see your faces. I heard shouts and cries.” I remembered, too, the song I’d been singing when I heard the pounding of the horses’
hooves on the forest floor, how I’d aimed my song at them. Something I’d made up about the sparrows feeding their young.
Their hungry mouths, their hungry hearts, the glowing worms they rip apart.

“It was you, wasn’t it? Singing up in that tower? With that glorious hair hanging down?”

The way he said it made me feel as if he’d come upon me bathing naked in the lake. “Yes,” I whispered, touching
the cloth covering my hair now.

“Ah, I thought so the moment you opened the door, though you have hidden that hair away. Do you live here alone?”

The flirtatious, almost predatory note in his voice made me remember the stories and the warnings. My body tensed, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to push past me, into the house. Then he smiled, and I realized:
I want him to come inside
. It was a feeling I’d seen but never experienced, the feeling in those grieving women:
I want to be broken
.

“No,” I said. “I live here with my mother.”

“She’s a witch, isn’t she?”

“No!” I said. “Of course not.” I knew enough to know that
witch
was a bad word, a dangerous one, especially with those who came from the kingdom. “At court, a woman can get killed for a word like that,” Mathena had
said.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said. “I heard stories, when I was inquiring about you.”

“We only heal here, sir, we do not practice bewitching.”

“I might have to argue with that,” he said, raising his eyebrow.
I could not help but laugh at the funny expression on his face. “What is your name?”

“Rapunzel.”

“Isn’t that a type of . . . lettuce?”

“Yes,” I said. “Though I’ve never seen it
myself.”

Just then, the back door opened and Mathena stepped into the room, her hands dirt-covered from the gardening, her dark hair damp with sweat. The sight of the man visibly upset her; I watched shock, then fear, pass over her face.

“Your Highness!” she said, falling into a curtsy. Brune left my shoulder for hers, her wings spanning out in warning.

I looked from Mathena to the man and
back again, confused by her reaction.

Mathena rushed forward, causing Brune to fuss, and put her arm around my waist. “Excuse her, sire, she is just a country girl and does not know the royal manners.”

“Oh, I am not yet a king, madame,” he said, causing a blush to rise from Mathena’s chest to her cheeks. “I am still subject to the rule of my father, as we all are.”

I breathed in with surprise,
and attempted to curtsy as Mathena had done.

“Of course,” Mathena said, stepping in front of me. “It has been so long since I’ve been at court, I forget the proper addresses.” She curtsied again. “I am Madame Mathena Gothel, and this is my daughter Rapunzel.”

He bowed to us both. “Enchanted,” he said. “And I am Prince Josef. You have a fine falcon, I see.”

“Thank you,” she said. She reached
out her hand behind her, as if to make sure I was still there. To keep me there.

“My father is quite a passionate falconer,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and now her voice was hard, cold, “and a very fine one at that.”

I began to feel dizzy. Not only because of Mathena’s behavior and the fact that there was a handsome prince standing before us, but because I had called him to me, using my own
magic. I was sure of it.

“This is a charming house,” he continued. “I sometimes wonder what other kind of life I might have had, in a place like this, for instance.”

“I assure you it is much less exciting than your life in the palace. You would be quite bored here in the forest.”

I watched this exchange with fascination. I’d never seen Mathena speak the way she was speaking now, or stand the
way she was standing, with her spine straight, her shoulders back, her chin lifted. She seemed years younger, suddenly. I knew that she’d spent time at court as a young woman and was versed in the royal decorum, but she seemed more defensive than courtly. Her body had become a fortress holding me back, as if her arms had grown and were stretching out from wall to wall. She was doing everything she
could to make me disappear behind her, much as I was trying to stay in his line of vision, and keep him in mine. Who knew when I would next see a man this close, let alone a prince?

“Perhaps,” he said, ignoring her clipped tone, “if I did not have such delightful company. But if the lovely Rapunzel has not been to court, maybe it’s time to bring her? The harvest ball will be taking place on the
night of the equinox. I do hope she would like to attend.”

I was equal parts astonished and delighted. A ball! Visions flashed before my eyes. Men and women twirling across a marble
floor. And a palace—a place full of sunlight and diamonds and a richness I couldn’t quite visualize but knew I craved. A blurred, bright idea, like a child’s image of heaven.

“That is a generous offer,” Mathena said,
yet it was clear from her voice that she did not find it kind at all. She was usually not so rude, and I bristled with embarrassment. Of course, she was not usually addressing princes. Brune didn’t help matters, jutting her beak forward and staring at him threateningly from Mathena’s shoulder.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. I craned my neck around Mathena and tried to look my most alluring. I reached
up nonchalantly to move the cloth back so that he could see a swath of golden hair.

“You’re both invited,” he said. “And I hope you will each do me the honor of saving a dance.”

“We’ll try to attend,” Mathena said, “though the harvest here promises to be very demanding.”

He took Mathena’s hand to kiss it, and then somehow managed to angle past her and take mine, which I extended to him. The
moment he touched me, I felt it through my whole body, shooting out as if he had fire burning in his palms.

“I look forward to seeing you again,” he said, looking straight into my eyes before turning back to Mathena. “It will be my pleasure.”

“You’re very kind,” Mathena said, with the same sharp edge in her voice. He took a step back. I wanted to pinch her, force her to invite him in for tea.

“Well, thank you,” he said. “I am pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

He bowed to us, put his cap back on, and turned. I watched
him walk to a black horse draped in a velvet and silver harness, tied to a tree. Within seconds he was gone.

For a moment, I was not sure if it had even happened at all, or if I’d dreamed it. The woods sounded just the same as always: the birds in the trees, the
leaves rustling, dropping to the ground.

And yet, everything was different. Just minutes ago, the room had seemed so calm, with its crackling fire and dirt, its rug-covered floors, the simple tapestries on the walls. Now, suddenly, it felt like the loneliest place on earth.

I turned to Mathena. She was trembling—with rage, or fear, or sorrow, I could not tell. Brune was leaning into her, as
if to offer comfort.

“You cannot go, Rapunzel,” she said, before I could speak.

“What?”

“You must forget this ever happened.”

I stared at her. “But . . . why?”

With a small flick of her wrist, she returned Brune to her mantel. The bird stared down at us disapprovingly, then turned away. Mathena took my hands in hers and led me to where Loup was still sleeping on the couch. “Sit, and listen
to me,” she said. She reached up and pulled the cloth back down to my forehead. “You must forget that the prince ever came here. I cannot let you go to court, Rapunzel, not yet. The palace will ruin you.”

What she didn’t see was that I was already ruined.

“But he is a prince,” I said, clutching at the words. They floated in front of me, like pieces of a shipwreck. “He . . . invited me. How can
I not go?” I imagined running to the stable and
untying our own horse, and following after him. But I was not yet that brave, and so I burst into tears instead. “He came here looking for me. It was like something out of a fairy story!”

“Only the kind where the maiden’s hands get chopped off.”

I had rarely seen her so upset, and she flashed and sparked with it, her brown eyes glittering. She
stood and stalked over to the fireplace, stoking it with a branch. I watched her as she stabbed at the flames. Her hair whirled about her face, hung down in curls along her cheeks.

“It’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve been cooped up in the forest for so long. Why can’t I see what life is like at court?”

She turned to me. “Someday, Rapunzel, you will have the life you long for. But not yet.”

“Why
not yet? He came here looking for me! I’ve been invited to a ball!”

“Because he is promised to someone else.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. A terrible burst of pride moved through me. I was young and beautiful. I had hair like sunlight. I had heard passing minstrels composing songs to my beauty, at the tower window as I sang. “You just want to keep me here,” I said. “I will go to the ball and
make him forget anyone else.”

“No,” she said. “I forbid you to go.”

I stared at her in shock. We had never argued before, and she had never forbidden me something I wanted.

But I’d never wanted this.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“I already have.”

She stood over me, looking right into me. I looked away, but could still feel her eyes burning through me. Already I could feel myself waffling,
my heart softening. Mathena
was
a witch—I
had lied before, to him, when I said she was not, to protect the both of us—and for the first time she was turning her powers against me.

I leapt up. “You cannot control me,” I cried. “You can’t forbid me to go!”

I strode to the door, then turned back to her. She was so beautiful and majestic, even when I hated her.

For a moment we just eyed each other.
I knew that something was changing between us then, and was tempted to go back and throw my arms around her.

Instead, like the child I was, I slammed the door behind me.

I
stormed to the tower, stomped up the many curving stairs to my room. Until the year before, I’d lived with Mathena in the main house, but on my sixteenth birthday she’d let me move into my own little
room in the crumbling tower with vines climbing up the side. She’d helped me make a colorful quilt for the bed, and given me one of her tapestries to hang on the wall, next to the old, oval-shaped mirror that hung by the hearth. I’d always loved that tower, where I spent many happy hours playing, sticking my head out of the window and letting my hair hang to the ground as if I were a girl in a storybook.

Little did I know then that it would become my prison.

I lay on my bed and stared at the stone walls, the tapestry with its images of peacocks and castles, the light that poured in through the one window and illuminated the late summer air. Outside, branches laced over each other like fingers. I caught a glimpse of my face in the looking glass and realized I was crying.

I thought back to all
the ladies who’d sat in front of Mathena over the years, sobbing as they relayed their heartbreaks, and me watching them, fetching teas and dried herbs for Mathena while despising the women for their weakness. The peasant woman who was having an affair with her lord, the lady who was certain her husband no longer loved her, the rejected and weak and aching. I had not known any better. I was beginning
to understand, now, the passions that had moved them.

I would go to the prince’s ball, I decided, no matter what Mathena said. I would take the horse and go. All I needed was a gown. I marked the equinox on the stone wall, with the bit of rock lying on the trunk beside me: I had fourteen days. I would steal into Mathena’s room and find something to wear. After she took me from my parents, she
had packed everything she owned into trunks. These were my first memories: the two of us coming together to the forest and finding the old tower, the crumbling remains of a castle, her moving the trunks into her room, remnants from her other lives, her past selves. I’d sifted through her things—the fine gowns, the corsets and ribbons—with fascination.
She
had been at court once, and yet now, like
mothers and would-be mothers everywhere, wanted to protect me from her own mistakes.