Golden (11 page)

I did not go back home in the end, of course.

You've heard the saying, better the devil you know than the one you do not? What a load of poppycock. In fact, if I had to make a guess, it would be that whoever came up with that particular phrase was never called upon to face any sort of devil in his or her life.

What did I have to go back for, after all? I'd only be going right back into danger, the very same danger I'd just gone to such great lengths to avoid. It was hardly as if there would be anyone at the end of the road, or even anywhere along it, waiting to welcome me with open arms.

It wasn't all that likely there would be open arms if I went forward, either, but at least I would be going into the unknown. And here is a fact of life that those who are quick to speak of devils never mention: As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.

If I went forward, I might imagine that I could
somehow pass this impossible test. Maybe my heart
was
stronger than I knew, and all would yet be well. So, on the morning of the fifth day, going forward was precisely what I did. On the morning of the sixth day, I saw Rue's tower for the very first time.

I might have guessed there was some magic at work in its construction, even if I had not been told this ahead of time. Surely any sort of structure should have been visible for miles away in that flat land. Instead, you could see the tower clearly only when you had actually arrived. It rose up out of the ground like a great tree trunk of hard, gray stone, its roots indistinguishable from the very bones of the earth itself.

The tower the wizard had created to house the innocent victim of his curse was perfectly cylindrical, perfectly smooth. I could neither see nor feel one seam or chink to show that the stone had ever been cut. At what I thought of as the tower's back, though this was merely my own fancy as a circle has no such thing, was the river. A dense forest held it in a great, green embrace on its other three sides. All around, just as wide as two carts abreast, ran a close-cropped greensward.

If I leaned back and shaded my eyes, I could see a wrought-iron railing, intricately carved, running around the tower's very top. Just behind it, a circle of windows caught the light. But no matter how many times I walked around it, three to be precise, I could find no sign of any door. At the end of my third circuit
I stopped beside the sorceress and said, “How do we get up? I assume that's what you have in mind.”

Conversation between us was still stilted, at best. Among all of us, if it came to that. Even Mr. Jones had kept silent during the last day of our journey, as if wrapped in his own thoughts. Not that there was much use in talking. It would be deeds, not words, that would end the story and decide its outcome.

While I walked around the tower and Melisande stood perfectly still, Mr. Jones unhitched the horse and let her wade into the river, which here was broad and shallow. As if he had no other care in the world, the tinker washed clothes at the river's edge, then spread them out to dry. I knew what he was doing, of course. He was letting the sorceress and me sort things out on our own. Mr. Jones was hidden now by the bulk of the tower, for Melisande and I stood with our backs to the forest, and the river was on the other side, out of sight.

“More wizardry,” Melisande replied now. “There's a password of sorts. Rapunzel, I—”

“I really wish you wouldn't,” I interrupted swiftly, suddenly afraid that I might cry. I was trying to do what Melisande herself had done—what I thought was right, what I thought I must. But I was still hurt and uncertain, and more than a little afraid. If we stood around talking about it for very much longer, chances were good I'd lose my nerve entirely.

“By my own free will, I shall go up,” I said. “But I cannot promise I'll be willing to stay, not from down
here, anyhow. Your daughter and I must decide that together, I think.”

“Fair enough,” said Melisande.

I pulled in what felt too much like my last breath of free air. “Okay,” I said. “I'm ready whenever you are.”

Melisande took a deep breath of her own, as if steeling herself. Then, in a loud, firm voice, she pronounced the following words:

“One so fair, let down your hair. Let me go from here to there.”

What on earth?
I thought.

For many moments nothing seemed to happen, unless you count the fact that my heart suddenly began to pound. Then, with a start, I realized that the tower was changing before my eyes. No longer did the stone look dull and gray. Instead it seemed to flush. Veins of color suddenly appeared, spreading upward, branching out as blood runs through a body. They shimmered as they caught the light.

It looks alive,
I thought. As if the tower had been sleeping as bears do in the winter, and Melisande's words were the harbingers of spring, the wake-up call.

Together, the sorceress and I watched the flush of color rise all the way to the tower's top. Then, with a sound like a flock of birds all launching themselves into the air at once, a single pane of glass flew back, and a thick woven rope came flying out. It wrapped itself twice around the iron railing, as if it wished to anchor itself more firmly, then plummeted straight over the side to land at our feet with a soft
plunk.

It was the most beautiful golden color that I had ever seen. Braided tightly together, almost too thick for my hands to close around. At its end was tied a ribbon of so dark a red it was almost black.
Heart's blood,
I thought. And in that moment, I thought I understood, and could have sworn I felt my own heart stop.

This wizardry is a terrible thing,
I thought.

Then Melisande reached for the golden braid, and I saw that her hand trembled for the one and only time in all the years that I had known her. At this, my heart gave a great jolt of pity within my breast, then began to beat in its normal way once more. But before Melisande could take hold of the braid, a streak of copper caught my eye. Running as hard as he could, Mr. Jones, the cat, streaked around the side of the tower, gave a great leap with all four legs outstretched, landed upon the golden braid, and began to scramble upward. Halfway up the tower he stopped and seemed to glance back at us over one furry shoulder.

What are you waiting for?
his expression inquired. Clearly, this was the most exciting adventure in the world, and only a fool would decline to be a part of it.

“After you,” I said. Melisande's fingers wrapped around the golden braid. We began to climb upward in single file.

It was hard work. Much harder than it looked, particularly if one judged by the cat. The braid was thick
and soft, difficult to hold. More than once I had the feeling that, if I loosened my grip for even a second, the braid would slip right through my hands and I'd tumble to the ground. Several times I wished for Mr. Jones's claws. Not only that, the braid wouldn't stay still. No kind of rope ladder ever does, I suppose. Melisande's exertions pulled it one way, while mine pulled it another. Slowly, we made our precarious and strenuous way up the side of the tower.

Eventually I felt the braid give a great jerk. I looked up, startled, just in time to see Melisande throw one foot over the iron railing. In the next moment, she had disappeared over its side. Then her head reappeared, and she reached down and helped to pull me up after her. I tumbled over the railing in a great ungainly heap, then lay flat on my back, on a wide shelf of stone at the tower's top. After a few moments, Mr. Jones came over and sat upon my chest, gazing down at me with pleased and excited eyes.

“Show-off,” I muttered. “It's considered impolite to gloat, you know.”

He licked one paw, then sprang from my chest so abruptly that what little air I had in them shot from my lungs. As I sat up, I caught a glimpse of the golden braid uncoiling from around the railing, then whisking out of sight inside the tower.

Still more wizardry,
I thought. Did that great shining mass actually possess a life of its own?

Melisande reached down and helped me to my feet.

“Don't be afraid,” she said. “Nothing here will harm you.”

If you say so,
I thought.

Melisande took a step forward, toward the open pane of glass. Almost before I realized what I was doing, I stopped her, clutching tightly at her arm. Suddenly I was dizzy standing at the top of that tower, made of the bones of the earth and topped by the light of only-a-wizard-knew-how-many stars. The air blew cold against my skin, and it seemed to me that it was a very, very long way down to the ground. A very long way from anything I knew or understood.

“What happens if I cannot help?” I panted. “If I try and fail? What happens to your daughter then?”

What happens to me? Will you still love me?
I thought.

“Nothing but what happens to us all,” Melisande replied after a moment. “My daughter will grow old and die. During the years she has been imprisoned in this place, time has not moved in the same way for Rue as it has for you and me. Her days have been a waking dream, peaceful and quiet. At the turning of each year, she has aged a single day, no more. With our coming, time has resumed its normal course. Whether you leave or stay, whether you succeed or fail, from this day forward, Rue will move through time as the rest of us.”

“Merciful heavens,” I whispered, appalled at the ramifications of Melisande's words. Rue had been
safe, in a way, while she'd been left alone. But our very coming had set in motion a sequence of events that could not be stopped. Now the sorceress's daughter would no longer be spared the passage of time. Instead, she would be free to count every single moment of her captivity. This would be the only freedom I would give her, if I failed to find the way to awaken her heart.

“What have we done?” I whispered.

And Melisande answered simply, “What we must.”

I looked at her then, standing still as the cold wind at the top of the tower blew against us both. It came to me, in that moment, that Melisande was old. For more years than I had been alive she had carried the wizard's curse within her heart. She could have let it turn her hard and bitter, but she had not. Instead she had found room inside her heart for me. She had kept her hopes for her daughter alive.

How strong her heart must be,
I thought. Could mine learn to be as strong?

That was the moment I thought I understood. I could let two days of pain and confusion wipe away all the love that had come before. I could make that the full measure of my heart. If I did, I would fail us all, but myself the most.

No,
I thought.
I will not repay love with selfishness. I will not bring down such a curse upon myself.

Yes, I was afraid, clear through to the marrow of my bones. But I could not afford to take the easy way
out. I would not let my fear be stronger than my hope. I would take this test, of my own free will.

“We might as well go in, then,” I said. And prayed that, when I discovered my hearts true strength, it would be strong enough.

It could have been no more than fifteen paces from the tower railing to those great and shimmering panes of glass, one of which stood open to allow us inside. But moving across that short distance seemed to take as many years as I had been alive.

Now that I was close upon them, I could see that the panes were curiously made, curved even as the tower itself was. Their surfaces were as shiny as mirrors. I could not see through them to the tower's inside. I could see only my reflection and Melisande's as we stood together. I had my favorite kerchief on, the one with the black-eyed Susans embroidered on it that Harry had given me long ago.

At the thought of Harry, I stopped dead.
So much for promising to stay out of trouble,
I thought.

“Rapunzel?” said Melisande.

“Coming,” I said. I walked the last two paces, trying very hard not to think about Harry, and stepped inside.

It was beautiful. I swear to you that this was my very first thought, as every other fled in wonder from my mind.

The room at the tower's top was high-ceilinged, soaring upward on great wings of stone. Far from
being the cold gray it had seemed at first, the stone now seemed to give off its own light, glowing warm and golden. In the room's center, protected by an elaborate wrought-iron railing much like the one outside, a great staircase curved down. Beyond that, I could see a loom strung with all the colors of the rainbow. Its shape contained the only straight lines I had yet seen in this place.

But it was the young woman standing beside the loom who drew and held my eyes.

She was about my age, just as Melisande had said she would be, though that was the wizardry at work, of course. Slim and straight and taller than I was, with skin so fair I could see the blue veins running underneath, see the throb of the pulse at her temple and throat. Without thinking, I counted the beats and so discovered that they precisely matched my own. Her eyes were a color I had seen only in the garden. Dark, like the faces of pansies.

Beautiful
, I thought once more.

But frozen, like a plant that had bloomed too soon and been caught by a sudden frost. The sorceress's daughter still possessed her outward form. But inside, it seemed to me that everything was brittle, holding its breath, as if waiting to discover if the next thing to come along would be the frost that would kill it, or the thaw that would bring it back to life.

I will be that force of nature,
I thought. By my actions, I would determine both Rue's future and my own.

She moved, then, almost as if she'd heard me, as if I had spoken my troublesome thought aloud. No more than a tilt of her head, a shift of her shoulders, but it was enough. Enough to show me that my eyes had deceived me in one thing: It wasn't the stone giving off the golden light. It wasn't the stone at all.