Golden (3 page)

“Tie your kerchief tightly around your head, Rapunzel,” she said. “I will do the same.”

No woman or girl went with her head uncovered in those days. It simply wasn't proper. To make sure that I had tied my own kerchief to her satisfaction, Melisande reached down and gave the knot a tug. I opened my mouth to ask why our kerchiefs needed particular attention on this particular day, then closed it again, having said nothing at all. As an interesting side benefit of learning which questions to ask and which to keep to myself, I had developed the ability to answer many on my own.

It has to do with the fact that my head is different,
I thought. I would learn much more about what this meant before the day was done. In the meantime, however, I was excited, for, though Melisande had sometimes spoken of such places, I had never seen a town before.

The day was fine. By the time we reached the market square, I had a crick in my neck from trying to turn it in every direction all at the same time. I had never seen so many people assembled in one place, nor imagined how many buildings it might take to
house them all. Our horse's shoes made an unfamiliar sound on the cobblestone streets.

In the center of the town stood a great open square, completely filled with stalls selling goods of every imaginable kind. Through them, I could just catch a glimpse of green grass in the very center, and the tall brick sides of a well. Water was at the heart of every town, Melisande had explained as we'd ridden along. Without water, there could be no life.

She found a place to stable the horse and cart, and we set off for the stalls.

“Stay close to me, Rapunzel,” Melisande said. “The town is a big place. It would be easy for you to lose yourself.”

“I won't get lost,” I replied. Which, as I'm sure you've already noticed for yourself, was not quite the same as giving a promise.

For a while, though, the point was moot. I was content to stay at the sorceress's side. Wonderful and exotic goods filled the market stalls, or so it seemed to me at the time. Only the fruit and vegetable stalls failed to tempt me. They didn't hold a candle to what we grew at home. Eventually, however, Melisande fell to haggling over the price of needles, and I grew bored. I took one step from her side, and then another. By the time I had taken half a dozen, I had broken the invisible tether that tied me to her and been swallowed up by the crowd.

Even then, I had no fear of getting lost. I knew right where I was going: to that patch of green at the
very center. I wanted to see what the heart of a town truly looked like. I can't say quite what I was expecting, though I can say it wasn't what I found. On the lush green grass in the center of the square, a group of town children were playing a game that involved running and kicking a ball. It was just a blown-up pig's bladder, no more special than balls I had played with myself, but it was tied with a strip of cloth more blue than any sky.

At this sight, my heart gave a great leap. I was a fast runner and knew well how to kick a ball. I had dreamed many dreams in my small warm bed at night, and wished upon many a star. The wish I had breathed most often had been for playmates. So when the ball tied with that bright cloth abruptly sailed my way, I did not hesitate, but kicked it straight to the player my eyes had gone to first and lingered on the longest: a tall lad several years older than I. Right on the cusp of being a young man. If it hadn't been a market day, he probably wouldn't have been playing at such games at all.

Instantly, my action caused a great hue and cry; of joy on the part of the lad and his team, and outrage on the part of his opponents. For, until the moment I had intervened, the ball had been in their possession, and they'd looked fair to win the day.

“Oh, well done!” the lad cried. “Now let's show ‘em! Come on!”

I joined the game, running for all I was worth, which turned out to be a great deal, for all that I was
small. Like a minnow in a stream, I slipped in and out of places larger fish could not go. The catastrophe occurred in just this way, as I attempted to dive with the ball through the legs of the captain of the opposing team. He pulled his legs together, trapping me between them, then reached down to capture the ball.

This, he missed, for I managed to give it a great push and send it flying. His fingers found my kerchief instead. With one hard yank, he pulled it off. The fact that I had tied the knots so carefully and tightly that morning made not one bit of difference.

My head was exposed.

The boy gave a great yelp and leaped back. Instantly the game stopped. So profound a silence fell over each and every child that the adults in the closest stalls noticed, stopped their work, and came to see what had caused the lack of commotion. Before I could so much as reach for my kerchief, I found myself completely surrounded by curious, hostile eyes.

Eight years had changed some things about the top of my head. It was no longer white, but brown, from spending time in the sun. Its most significant feature, however, hadn't changed a bit: It was still completely smooth, and I completely bald.

I could feel a horrible flush spread up my neck and over my face, one that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I'd just been running hard. I sat as still as I possibly could, praying that the earth
would miraculously open up and swallow me whole.

It didn't, as I hardly need tell you. Instead, somebody stepped forward: the lad who had first encouraged me to join the game. He didn't look so enthusiastic now. His eyes, which I suddenly noticed were the same color blue as the cloth around the ball, had gone wide. The expression on his face was flat and blank, as if he was trying to give away nothing of what he might be feeling, particularly if that thing was fear. This I instantly understood, for I knew that to show fear was to give your opponent an advantage you frequently could not afford.

“Why do you look that way?” he asked. “What did you do wrong?”

“Nothing,” I answered swiftly, responding to the second question and ignoring the first entirely.

“You must have done something,” he countered at once. “You must have. You don't look right.”

“No one knows that better than I do,” I answered tartly. “I'm bald, not stupid or blind.”

“Perhaps she is a changeling,” another voice suddenly spoke up, a grown-up's this time. At these words, the entire crowd sucked in a single breath, after which many voices began to cry out, all at once.

“Stay away from her!”

“Don't touch her!”

“Pick her up and throw her in the well! That'll show us what she's made of. That's the test for witches.”

“Enough!”

At the sound of this final voice, all others fell silent. I saw the crowd ripple, the way the rows of corn in our garden do when the wind strikes them. Then the crowd parted and through it stepped Melisande.

The expression on her face was one I'd never seen before: grief and fury and regret so mixed together it was almost impossible to tell them apart. Without a word, she walked to my side and helped me to my feet. Then she stooped and retrieved my kerchief from the ground.

“It seems those knots weren't quite as tight as we supposed,” she said, for my ears alone, as she worked them free and wrapped the kerchief around my head once more. Her face was set as she tied a new set of knots herself, but her fingers were as gentle as always.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean for it to happen.”

“Of course you didn't,” she replied. “There's no need for you to be sorry. You're not the one who should apologize.”

At this, she turned back to face the crowd.

It's hard to describe precisely what happened then. Later I realized that I had been given my first real glimpse of sorcery. As Melisande gazed upon them, many in the crowd cried out. Some fell to their knees and covered their faces with their hands, while others stood perfectly still, as if they had been turned to stone. In the end, though, they were all the same in one thing: Each and every one of them looked down.
No person there assembled could hold the sorceress's eyes with their own.

Then she glanced down at me, and it seemed to me as if my heart would rise straight up out of my chest. All my fears were laid bare, and my hopes also. A voice in the back of my mind instructed me to look away or I would have no secrets left, but I did not. What had I to conceal? This was not some stranger, who saw only my own strangeness. This was the woman who had raised me since my birth. The only one I knew and trusted. This was Melisande.

And so I held her eyes and did not look away. After a moment, she smiled. I smiled back, and at this, my heart resumed its proper place and all was right once more.

“I thought so,” she said, as she turned back to the crowd. “This girl has more courage than any of you. Have no fear. We will not come amongst you again. But I think there will be many of you who will now come to seek me out.”

Then she reached down for my hand, I reached up to place mine within hers, and, together, we made our way back through the crowd. It wasn't until we were almost through it that anyone made a sound at all. And even then, it was just a single word muttered under the breath.

“Sorceress.”

I stumbled, my feet abruptly growing clumsy, but Melisande's footsteps never faltered at all, though she did stop walking.

“Fearmonger,” she replied. “Coward, I see what is in your heart. Be careful what you sow there, for it may prove to be your only harvest, and a bitter one at that.”

She did not speak again until we reached our own door. But, though I stayed as silent as she, that single word,
sorceress,
rang in my head all the way home.

Three

In the years that followed, some things changed.

Others did not.

The hair on Melisande's head got a little longer and began to turn gray. I turned first nine, then ten, and finally, in their proper times and places, eleven, twelve, and thirteen, and all the while the top of my head stayed as bald as any egg I could find in our henhouse.

I did blister it badly with sunburn the year I was ten, having refused to wear a kerchief or hat in a fit of pique over something I cannot now recall. But aside from that, it didn't change a bit. Mine remained a head upon which no hair would grow.

My eyes, however, functioned just fine, and I began to keep them peeled for additional signs of sorcery, watching Melisande when I was sure she didn't notice (though of course she did—not because she was a sorceress but because she was a grown-up).

She kept her eye on me; I wasn't quite sure why. But I finally figured out that she undoubtedly saw me watching her, because I began to notice that
she
was watching
me
. Her face would take on a sort of considering expression from time to time, as if she
were weighing the image of me her eyes presented with one she was holding in her mind. Each and every time, at the precise moment I decided she had finally made up her mind to speak of whatever was in it, she looked away and said nothing at all.

But the biggest change of all, I suppose, was that after that day in the town, we were no longer quite as alone as we had been before.

Melisande had been quite right when she predicted that the fact that people knew there was a sorceress in their general vicinity would draw them to her, even if they were not always quite convinced that it was altogether safe for them to come. Word of her presence and her power spread, and, as it did, more and more visitors began to appear at our door.

At our back door, to be precise, which always made me smile. It made no difference that a perfectly good road came right up to our front gate. Every single person who traveled to see us for the purposes of sorcery preferred to present themselves at the back door. Some knocked loudly, boldly demanding entry. Others merely scratched, as if, even as they asked for admittance, they were second-guessing themselves and wishing they were on their way back home.

How does sorcery work, where you come from?