The Fairest of Them All (8 page)

I wanted to learn everything, the spells that could change the order of things. Not just the salves or teas that could mend hearts or make a man desire you or ease the ache of a sore shoulder. Not just the bewitching that had made a prince come
to me in the tower, or the spells that could make a garden flourish. I wanted to alter lives, and history. With knowledge like that, I might one day have the power to change a man into a stag, a stag into a man, a child into a king.

A murderess back into a woman who could win the love of a prince.

One day I asked Mathena to scry my future, the way she sometimes did, scattering the tea leaves
and seeing what stories they shaped themselves into. As she did, her brows furrowed and I could see that something was wrong.

“What is it?” I asked.

She passed her hand over the leaves, gathering them up, and
tossed them into the fire. They hissed slightly, and glittered as the flames consumed them.

“What did you see?”

“There will be great changes,” she said, watching me with a strange mix
of sadness and something else, something I could not pinpoint. “Things are happening now . . . that were not destined to happen before.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“You have changed your future.”

“How?”

“By killing the stag and breaking the spell. There was powerful magic at work. Interfering with it always comes with some cost, but I can’t tell yet if it will benefit or harm you. Either way,
you need to be ready.”

“For what?”

Mathena did not answer. She brought out an old book of spells, which I’d seen her consult for as long as I could remember. An ancient, crumbling thing she’d inherited from the line of women who had preceded her. I had never before wanted to read it myself. I’d never thought I needed to.

“Take this,” she said.

And I did, with trembling fingers. The grief emanating
from the book almost suffocated me. Not only Mathena’s, but that of all the women who’d consulted it, their longings, their pain and anger and sorrow, their dark, bitter hearts.

A
few days later we had news from the kingdom. We were resting, having tea by the fire, when a woman told us that the
king, Josef’s father, had died unexpectedly and that Josef had ascended to the
throne.

“So he is king now,” I said. “And she is queen.”

“People think King Louis might have been poisoned,” the woman told us, leaning in to whisper.

“I would not doubt it,” Mathena said. The sharp tone in her voice surprised me. She had known this king, of course. I sensed that she had not liked him. “Though whenever a king dies before his time, people talk of murder.”

“He was fine when
he went to sleep,” the woman said, “and the next morning, he was gone. People say that King Louis and his son never took to each other much.” The woman crossed herself. “God rest his soul.”

“He was a difficult man,” Mathena said.

She did not say any more, but I knew he had changed during his reign, when the new priest came, and that people no longer spoke openly about magic afterward. I knew
that her lover couldn’t have been sentenced to die without this king’s approval. It made sense that news of his death did not come hard to her.

Over the coming days, we heard all the stories and gossip, and I saw a bitterness in Mathena that I had not seen before, as she listened. But she did not say any more about it.

I did not press. My main thought, which I kept to myself, was of my child,
and I ran my palms over my swollen belly. It was a thrilling idea: that I was carrying the child not of a prince now, but of a king.

S
pring finally came, as it always did, and the forest awakened slowly. The snow melted into little rivers.
By then, I was heavy with child, and I was soothed by the notion that I could redeem myself through this new life. My own parents had mistreated me, given me away, and now I would bear an infant I would love in a way my parents had never loved me. It filled something broken and black inside me, and this was not something I could explain, especially to Mathena. We went back to the garden, to
tend the soil, loosen it for the planting. The flowers burst open around the house and along the edges of our garden, long before they would anywhere else, in the forest or kingdom.

We waited for the soil to warm, and then one morning we went back to the clearing to bury what was left of the man I’d killed.

We measured our movements by the sun. Brune flew alongside us. The forest felt like a
graveyard, despite the life everywhere, which seemed only to be paying homage to the dead.

“Was he the reason you left the kingdom?” I asked.

“I left for you,” she said. “To save you.”

“But why did you have to leave and come to the forest? Was it Marcus? The king?”

“I’ve told you, Rapunzel. We came to the forest so you would be safe.”

She strode in front of me, though I had not told her where
we were going. Her black hair was a mass of curls behind her. She stepped quickly over brush and branches, as if she knew exactly where each one was located. The forest floor was a map of roots, veins, bones, and all of it seemed to speak of my own grief. We passed the split oak tree, moved along the riverbank. I moved awkwardly compared to her—and now even more so—though I was a daughter of
the forest, too.

Eventually, the clearing opened up before us. I braced myself for what we’d find there.

The light poured down through the tree branches, illuminating the massive, dark green plant that was growing there, its zigzag edges. It was the length of a man, with leaves spilling in all directions, like hundreds of flailing limbs.

Mathena gasped next to me. “Rapunzel,” she said.

I turned
to her. “What is it?”

“Rapunzel,” she repeated. “The plant I used to grow, that your father stole from my garden. The plant you’re named after.”

“This?” I leaned in. She’d told me it would not grow in the forest, and I looked up at her, waiting for an explanation.

The scent wafted over to me then. Sweet, slightly spicy. I breathed in and a series of images passed before my eyes, making me dizzy.
A girl running through the forest, a knife flashing in the moonlight.

I blinked.

Mathena stepped forward. The breeze fluttered through her hair, her dress, as she walked to the plant and knelt down next to it. I moved to her side, and sat on the grass next to her, inhaling the scent of the plant. All kinds of words pressed against my tongue, questions, but I stayed silent and waited.

I watched
her inhale the scent, which I swear came off the rapunzel in whiffs of glittering smoke. I saw it, and then it disappeared. I looked up overhead, just as Brune passed over us. A nest of birds twittered from one of the tree branches.

I reached for a leaf, shining and green.

“Don’t,” she said, snatching my hand back.

I stared at the leaf in my hand, shocked. I had been about to eat it. I tossed
it back onto the plant, nearly gagging. “This is him, isn’t it?” I asked. “This . . . plant?”

She nodded. Gently, she ran her fingers across the rapunzel, the leaves shooting out in every direction, a bright red flower bursting from its center. I hadn’t seen it at first, that blooming scarlet thing, right where his heart would be. As I watched, she reached in and—to my horror—she plucked it out,
in one quick movement.

Mathena whispered words into the leaves and then stood up, holding the flower out in front of her, clasped between her hands like a wedding bouquet.

“We will tend this place,” she said. “And plant fennel all around it for protection.”

She tore the flower in half and handed one of the pieces to me. I grabbed it, opened my palm. The petals fanned out, an intense red against
my pale skin.

“Now,” she said, looking at me directly, her expression purposeful. “Eat it.”

“Why?” I looked up at her.

“To honor him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He was a powerful man. Though you didn’t mean to, you took his life, and now you must honor him, take his strength into you. We both must.”

I looked down, feeling suddenly faint. I stuffed the flower into my mouth. Its tang extended
out like fingers, making me shiver with pleasure. I felt something drip from my lips, and without thinking wiped my chin with the back of my hand.

A strange, woozy feeling went through me, as I stood in the liquid sunlight and saw Mathena cupping the flower in her palms and drinking it in. For a moment I was sure we were underwater, that the birds passing overhead were fish, the trees’ spears
reaching for the surface.

I looked down, and my hands were stained red.

We walked to the river, and bent down to wash our hands and arms in it, splash the water on our faces. Every water droplet like a diamond, suspended in the air and on our skin.

I
don’t know if it was because of the flower we ate or not, but I felt better that spring. I was filled with the pleasure
of moving my fists into the earth, burying seeds within it, knowing that those seeds would grow into the lush fruits and herbs the summer would bring. It was arduous work, especially with my expanding belly, but I reveled in the exhaustion that blotted out everything else. We planted the seeds we’d gathered the autumn before, and we saved scraps of food to turn back into the earth. Mathena bent over
the garden, thinning the vegetables, while I did less taxing work in the kitchen, cooking our meals and brewing teas for the
garden with the skins of onions, cucumbers, and quince, the ends of carrots and cabbage and wild celery, feathers and bones that I’d burnt down to ash. The earth was thirsty, starving it seemed. Every afternoon I’d tromp through the garden, pour in the compost tea, and add
in the droppings of our horse, piles of leaves, anything we could find, while overhead the sun beat down and the world came to life all around us.

Our garden grew more bountifully than it ever had. We ate great piles of spinach topped with vinegar, oil, and salt, and I boiled delicious stews of potherbs and meat while bread baked in the oven. It was far too much bounty for two women, even with
a child growing inside me, and so we gave out food by the basketful to the ladies who came to see us, often in the evening hours, when their own work was done.