Zel (22 page)

stand and watch Zel whipping from branch to branch, from tree to tree, the forest taking and yielding like hands passing a lit candle, until the girl is gone from sight and silence returns to the wood.

I fall back onto the mattress, exhausted. I am barely conscious. Only slowly do I realize what has just taken place. Zel is gone. Forever gone. How can it be? Twice defiled.

If only she had let her tears fall.

When Zel still stood before me, I closed my eyes. I saw within her womb to the cells that split and multiplied, to the act of God that punished me worse than anything else. Zel had it without a price. She had what I longed for. Women everywhere have it so easily and now Zel joined them, joined the legion of women who have what I never could.
Oh, God, what savage trick you played, to pick for barrenness a woman who couldn’t bear to exist without a child.
Too much unfairness. Too much brutality.

That’s when I heard green wood rubbing on green wood.

I am powerless against myself. I know the hideous.

*   *   *

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

The man sings in the same tune I use, the tune I have played on my fiddle so many times. I hadn’t even heard the hoofbeats. But I knew he would come. I stand. My hands take hold of the ends of Zel’s braids, ends ripped ragged by my iron teeth. I toss the other ends from the window. I feel the braids plummet, like dead birds.

The man’s weight is less than mine. Just as Zel said, I am heavier.

His head appears, one leg climbing above his shoulder level, spiderlike. He sees me and stops, frozen. He blocks the sun; his face is lost in shadow. Nevertheless, I can see his skin is fair. Just as Zel said, I am darker.

“Count Konrad. You failed to kill the goose.” I consider the rope coiled over his shoulder.

He works his way onto the window ledge. His eyes search the room. His shoulders jerk spasmodically. He crouches. He is thin. Just as Zel said, I am plumper.

Still, I am amazed I found the strength to hold on to those braids while this man climbed. First the trees stole my energy. Now this count used up more. Hardly any remains, and what there is can barely sustain the life
within me. I pant in the heat. I still hold to the braids, more to keep myself standing than anything else. My mouth speaks with words that come from nowhere: “Life is slippery.”

Konrad wipes the sweat from his lip. He pants as well. “Where’s Zel?”

I consider the dagger swinging in his pouch. “I’ll never see her again.” I want to lean against the wall. I want to become the wall.

Panic plays in his eyes. His voice comes tremulous. “Where is she?”

I look at this ridiculous man, with the peg and hammer tucked in his belt. He thought he could steal her away so easily. He knows nothing, understands nothing. He will live his simple life and die his simple death. And he’ll never know what ruin he brought to Mother and Zel in his clumsy stumbling into our lives. “You’ll never see her again, either.”

Konrad thrusts his neck forward, though he remains in a crouch. His eyes go to Zel’s dress on the floor. He scans the mattress, the walls. Finally, he looks at me once more. And now I see his face well. His eyes. His mouth. He holds more misery than I realized a man could feel. And instantly I know what I never wanted to know, what I hate knowing: He is my soulmate—he loves my Zel. No! What have I done? The world is wrong.

Konrad’s head falls back as the scream empties his
lungs. When there is no more left, he draws the dagger. “I will find her. I cannot bear the pain of living without Rapunzel.”

“Nor can I,” I whisper, each word costing more energy than I can afford, “but such is our fate. All is inevitable.”

Konrad’s eyes flame. He begins his lunge.

My fingers open as my hands rise in a move of self-protection. The braids fly. In that split second, from nowhere comes the image of Pigeon Pigeon being smacked from the window. From nowhere comes her squawk. And I know what will happen. I would grab the braids back, but they are already gone.

The braids whip Konrad from the window. Gone like the bird. Gone like Rapunzel.

No! I close my eyes and squeeze my hands together and use the final reserve of my strength.

Konrad is caught and pierced by the brambles that have sprung up around the base of the tower.

He lives.

I die.

Chapter 30
Zel

alnuts. And pines. They carry her. And oaks, aspens and birches, chestnuts, larches, and now cedars and cypresses. Hour after hour, tree to tree, around lakes, across rivers, over mountains. She thinks nothing. She sees a sharp peak like a giant cat’s tooth. She is in the branchy hands of a colossal sycamore, the skeleton hands of stubby olive trees. The cows change from brown with white faces to all white. Day after day, tree to tree. No tree hurts her, but no tree releases her.

And now she thinks. She knows. This is a careful conspiracy of leaves and branches. Night and day. And then darkness.

Chapter 31
All

young woman stands on earth of many colors. People come from far away to see the range of those colors, from deepest ochre to palest cream. The woman paints on paper, inspired by the colors of the earth.

She doesn’t always paint. She often uses that earth to fashion pots and dishes, vases and cups. Everyone who has the money buys her pottery, and those who can’t afford to buy receive gifts.

She lives in a small home attached to other homes on both sides and below. She has become accustomed to the stone walls of this home, cold like the stone of the tower, so unlike the warm wood of her alm home. She no longer shrinks away when she touches those stones.

She loves the closeness of town. She talks to everyone who passes beneath her window, and today she talks to the travelers on the road as she paints the meeting of the sky with this land.

This land differs from her homeland—from the Alps of her past—in ways that turn her heart. She stops for a moment
and lets her eyes follow the road till it twists out of sight through hills that tumble down to the sea. This is salt sea, whitish water, not sweet lake water. But, though she loves the sight of the sea, especially when it’s turbulent, she has gone there only twice. She doesn’t stray often from town. Fear can still seize her.

Three years ago the trees handed her over to a vine that stretched and stretched and deposited her in mounds of sand. The vine retreated. She slept.

When she woke, she saw only the glare of sun on sand. The air seemed calm. She refused to be fooled. Would they reach out for her again? Was this a way station or a final resting spot? She would not wait to find out.

She stood and called. Her voice fell dull on an empty world. Though she was bruised in all parts, hungry and dry and naked, she walked. With every step, gratitude filled her heart. Sand beneath her feet was a thousand times better than the stone of the tower. Freedom, even lost and alone, was superb.

When she closed her eyes, loss and fear and, finally, rage burned red inside her head. So she worked to keep her eyes open. She blinked only when they were so dry she screamed from pain.

Night followed day followed night, and she lost track of time. But her feet wouldn’t stop. There were no
curved walls to limit her path. She could go as far as she dared.

And then her energy was spent.

She opened her eyes finally to water trickling across her cheeks. People stared at her, speaking in a nonsense tongue. The crickets screamed in midday, “Desert, desert, desert.” She looked around and saw the town hugging the hill. The insects were crazy—for this was no desert. She had walked to a far better land. She gaped at pink and red and white oleanders, blue hydrangeas, yellow mimosa, violet bougainvillea. She shook her head with wonder at the palm trees and yucca, things whose names she had yet to learn.

The wind, a dandelion seed on a summer day, whispered, “Banishment.” That tiny wind was as foolish as the crickets. Banishment to these colors could have been a blessing in disguise for an artist, if the taste of water at last hadn’t brought the longing. She trembled at how quickly the longing came and settled within, at how quickly her mind absorbed what had happened and didn’t close up at the horror but took it all in and in and in, then stayed open to welcome the longing for him.