The Fairest of Them All (3 page)

It was not fair.

All I knew was
this,
this stone cottage and this crumbling tower. My memory began in the forest: the call of birds, the howling of wolves, the way the wind rustled through the trees. The forgetting potion had erased all memory of what came before, the life I’d had in the kingdom. I remember
how we came upon the ruins of the castle, the magical stone tower thrusting through the forest canopy.
How I raced up the crumbling stairs and into the round room at the top, twirling around with delight. There’d been a girl in the room with me, with hair like sunlight, and I’d moved toward her, moved away, delighted by this fantastical creature who mimicked my own movements in the piece of glass
propped up on the floor. It was Mathena who first showed me how a mirror worked, and who hung it from the wall like a painting.

Now I watched the sun dropping in the sky, dusk filtering through the forest. In the distance, the spires of the palace glittered. The world was so alive and open. I was meant to be out in that world, beyond the woods. Otherwise, why would I have been made the way I
was, with hair like the sun?

Sleep was impossible. Once the sky was dark, and the moon and stars bathed the forest in silver, I stole out and gathered fresh thyme, lavender, and rue from the garden, along with a pile of soil from where his horse had stood, then returned to the tower. I lit a fire in the small hearth and carefully scattered the mixture in a half circle around me. I pressed my
palms into it, sifted it through my fingers. The earth remembered him, kept something of him in itself. I just had to let it work its magic.

I stood and stared at myself in the mirror, flame shadows playing against my face. My eyes were huge, blue, like pools of water. My cheeks flushed. I let my hair stream down like a river along the floor behind me. I
looked
different, I was certain of it.
My body felt lush and soft, touchable. Womanly. I was ready for a man like this.

“Love me,” I whispered. I used my fingertip to draw the words into the mixture. “Love me.”

Outside, I could hear the sounds of the forest: the wolves
and owls, the wind moving through the branches and leaves, the rush of river, the sound of the moon scraping across the sky.

I slipped off my shift, and imagined
him in the room beside me, that my hands were his hands, traveling the length of my body.

The half circle glittered in the moonlight, from the stone floor. The mirror moved in and out, watching.

Love me
.

T
he next morning I gathered the mixture from the stone floor and filled a sachet with it that I wore around my neck, against my heart. It was basic magic, using the land
around us, the energy of growing, living things, the mystery of plant and earth, to link one soul to another.

I acted as if everything were normal, dressed in a high-necked gown to cover the talisman I wore, and joined Mathena in the garden. I could feel her watching me as I knelt down, but I did not look up. There was work to do, as we prepared for autumn. The air was just beginning to crisp,
and though it was still summer, the trees were already changing color.

“Are you all right, Rapunzel?” she asked finally, leaning back on her haunches.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You know I only want to protect you.”

“Yes.”

Tears stung my eyes and I turned away. We worked quietly together after that, the way we’d done forever, our hands in the soil. I’d always loved these moments with her,
surrounded by vegetables and fruits and flowers, being able to feel a plant’s roots
moving into the earth, knowing from a touch what it needed to thrive.

Mathena’s hands were defter than mine would ever be, as she packed the soil with bark.

While I worked, I imagined him at the ball, watching for me, waiting for me. I touched my dress, feeling for the sachet underneath, filled with the earth
and herbs that connected me to him. I kept him around my neck. I did not want to take any chances.

A
few days later I stole into Mathena’s room, when she was out hunting with Brune. I dragged her trunks from below her bed, and opened them until I found the one I was looking for. Inside were gowns in rich colors, corsets, and gems. I breathed out a sigh of relief. She’d
cut up many of her old clothes to make curtains and blankets, which decorated the house in fine fabrics—swaths of night-blue damask, crimson taffeta, gold brocade on purple silk—but there were several gowns still stored away. They were covered in dust, but they were finery nonetheless, clothes I could wear to a palace ball. I sifted through until I found a red silk dress that I knew would suit me,
with its jewel tone and simple, striking design. Carefully, I spread it on Mathena’s bed and returned the trunks to their places. I draped the gown over my arm and rushed to the tower, terrified that Mathena would discover what I was doing.

Breathless, I slipped on the gown. It clung to my body perfectly, though now Mathena was rounder and thicker than I. I imagined what she might have been like
twenty years before, when she was my age now. Even as a woman nearing forty she
was stunning. How slender she would have been before, how striking her dark hair must have been against this deep red. And I let down my own hair, and turned to face myself in the mirror. The color made my skin look like the whitest cream, my hair shine like spun gold. If I stood on my toes, I could see the way it
swept down to the floor. I trembled as I watched myself, afraid that the image would vanish.

T
he morning of the ball, I woke up full of excitement. I planned to work with Mathena all morning as usual, and then grab my bow and arrow and pretend I was going off to hunt on horseback. Instead, I would ride to the palace, and let Brune help guide me.

I raced down the stairs
that twisted the length of the tower, and pushed against the great wooden door to get out.

It did not budge.

I pushed again.

At first I thought it was stuck, and I used all my weight to press against it.

And then to my right, against the wall, I saw wine, bread, and water, enough for several days.

I screamed with rage. My scream echoed against the walls in the tower, blasted up to my room,
into the sky through the only window. Never in my life had I felt the kind of fury I did then.

She had locked me in.

I
pounded on the door, kicked at it, sobbing with frustration. After some time passed, I called out to Mathena, begging her to let me out, but she did not answer. I tried spells to open the door, tried to fashion a key from air as I knew she could, but my
magic was no match for hers. Finally, I gave up and sulked back up the stairs. I paced furiously around the small room, stood at the window, and stared at the glittering spires, as if I could will myself to them. The hours slipped past. Throughout the day I called out to her, but she did not appear. When evening came, I could feel the king’s palace filling with wine and candles and diamonds, lords
and ladies whirling about, all that life pressed in together; it was torture.

For hours I seethed and cried and called to her. Finally, I slept. When I woke the next day, I had a new resolve.

One thing I knew, from all my years of working with Mathena: it was in the focusing, and the wanting, the fashioning one’s desire into a point of light, that the magic took place. I’d called him to me before,
hadn’t I? Now, for the first time, I took everything I had learned and felt and I pressed it together inside me, filled it with my own longing and need until I could
see
it, feel it like a blade, and turned it into that light.

“Come back,” I whispered, clutching the sachet around my neck.

She thought she could keep me away from him by locking me in a tower. But I could bring him to me. He was
already tied to me, through magic, through the earth, and now I would make him return.

I looked at myself in the mirror the way he would look at me. I could hear his heartbeat, his breath, in and out, and I slipped
into his mind and heart as if my whole body, my very being now, had turned to spirit.

After that, I waited. I used the water she’d left me sparingly, to keep myself washed for him,
and I dressed carefully in front of the mirror, and brushed and brushed my hair, using the bit of potion I had left. To make it strong.

It would need to be. When he came, it wouldn’t matter that I was locked in a tower.

I had my hair.

T
he next day, I watched her working in the garden, chopping tree trunks and carrying firewood into the house, heading out into the forest
to collect mushrooms and wild raspberries. I watched women come and go, into the house. I watched the candles flare up as evening came, watched the lights flame out when she was going to bed.

She called up to me a few times, but I did not answer her.

And then the next day, when she was out hunting with Brune—as I had willed her to be, when the time was right—I heard the horse’s hooves, and I
knew he had returned.

I went to the window and let down my hair, let it fall from my head and out of the window, where it stretched down and tapped the ground, like a flag waving from the mast of a ship.