The Fairest of Them All

by Carolyn Turgeon

  “You’re very kind,” Mathena said, with the same sharp edge in her voice. He took a step back. I wanted to pinch her, force her to invite him in for tea.

  “Well, thank you,” he said. “I am pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

  He bowed to us, put his cap back on, and turned. I watched him walk to a black horse draped in a velvet and silver harness, tied to a tree. Within seconds he was gone.

  For a moment, I was not sure if it had even happened at all, or if I’d dreamed it. The woods sounded just the same as always: the birds in the trees, the leaves rustling, dropping to the ground.

  And yet, everything was different. Just minutes ago, the room had seemed so calm, with its crackling fire and dirt, its rug-covered floors, the simple tapestries on the walls. Now, suddenly, it felt like the loneliest place on earth.

  I turned to Mathena. She was trembling—with rage, or fear, or sorrow, I could not tell. Brune was leaning into her, as if to offer comfort.

  “You cannot go, Rapunzel,” she said, before I could speak.

  “What?”

  “You must forget this ever happened.”

  I stared at her. “But . . . why?”

  With a small flick of her wrist, she returned Brune to her mantel. The bird stared down at us disapprovingly, then turned away. Mathena took my hands in hers and led me to where Loup was still sleeping on the couch. “Sit, and listen to me,” she said. She reached up and pulled the cloth back down to my forehead. “You must forget that the prince ever came here. I cannot let you go to court, Rapunzel, not yet. The palace will ruin you.”

  What she didn’t see was that I was already ruined.

  “But he is a prince,” I said, clutching at the words. They floated in front of me, like pieces of a shipwreck. “He . . . invited me. How can I not go?” I imagined running to the stable and untying our own horse, and following after him. But I was not yet that brave, and so I burst into tears instead. “He came here looking for me. It was like something out of a fairy story!”

  “Only the kind where the maiden’s hands get chopped off.”

  I had rarely seen her so upset, and she flashed and sparked with it, her brown eyes glittering. She stood and stalked over to the fireplace, stoking it with a branch. I watched her as she stabbed at the flames. Her hair whirled about her face, hung down in curls along her cheeks.

  “It’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve been cooped up in the forest for so long. Why can’t I see what life is like at court?”

  She turned to me. “Someday, Rapunzel, you will have the life you long for. But not yet.”

  “Why not yet? He came here looking for me! I’ve been invited to a ball!”

  “Because he is promised to someone else.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. A terrible burst of pride moved through me. I was young and beautiful. I had hair like sunlight. I had heard passing minstrels composing songs to my beauty, at the tower window as I sang. “You just want to keep me here,” I said. “I will go to the ball and make him forget anyone else.”

  “No,” she said. “I forbid you to go.”

  I stared at her in shock. We had never argued before, and she had never forbidden me something I wanted.

  But I’d never wanted this.

  “You can’t do that,” I said.

  “I already have.”

  She stood over me, looking right into me. I looked away, but could still feel her eyes burning through me. Already I could feel myself waffling, my heart softening. Mathena was a witch—I had lied before, to him, when I said she was not, to protect the both of us—and for the first time she was turning her powers against me.

  I leapt up. “You cannot control me,” I cried. “You can’t forbid me to go!”

  I strode to the door, then turned back to her. She was so beautiful and majestic, even when I hated her.

  For a moment we just eyed each other. I knew that something was changing between us then, and was tempted to go back and throw my arms around her.

  Instead, like the child I was, I slammed the door behind me.

  I stormed to the tower, stomped up the many curving stairs to my room. Until the year before, I’d lived with Mathena in the main house, but on my sixteenth birthday she’d let me move into my own little room in the crumbling tower with vines climbing up the side. She’d helped me make a colorful quilt for the bed, and given me one of her tapestries to hang on the wall, next to the old, oval-shaped mirror that hung by the hearth. I’d always loved that tower, where I spent many happy hours playing, sticking my head out of the window and letting my hair hang to the ground as if I were a girl in a storybook.

  Little did I know then that it would become my prison.

  I lay on my bed and stared at the stone walls, the tapestry with its images of peacocks and castles, the light that poured in through the one window and illuminated the late summer air. Outside, branches laced over each other like fingers. I caught a glimpse of my face in the looking glass and realized I was crying.

  I thought back to all the ladies who’d sat in front of Mathena over the years, sobbing as they relayed their heartbreaks, and me watching them, fetching teas and dried herbs for Mathena while despising the women for their weakness. The peasant woman who was having an affair with her lord, the lady who was certain her husband no longer loved her, the rejected and weak and aching. I had not known any better. I was beginning to understand, now, the passions that had moved them.

  I would go to the prince’s ball, I decided, no matter what Mathena said. I would take the horse and go. All I needed was a gown. I marked the equinox on the stone wall, with the bit of rock lying on the trunk beside me: I had fourteen days. I would steal into Mathena’s room and find something to wear. After she took me from my parents, she had packed everything she owned into trunks. These were my first memories: the two of us coming together to the forest and finding the old tower, the crumbling remains of a castle, her moving the trunks into her room, remnants from her other lives, her past selves. I’d sifted through her things—the fine gowns, the corsets and ribbons—with fascination. She had been at court once, and yet now, like mothers and would-be mothers everywhere, wanted to protect me from her own mistakes.

  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.

  The 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.

  The 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.

  The 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.

  He rode into view just as the sun caught my hair and turned it to fire. He looked up at me, a dazed expression on his face. Never in my life had I felt the kind of power I felt right then. I was young and beautiful. I had all the magic of the forest at my fingertips. I was foolish, too; I understand this now, after so many years have passed, how I confused infatuation for true love, the power of beauty for real power in the world.

  “You came back,” I said. I whispered the words, and let the wind carry them to him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You were not at the ball.”

  “She locked me in this tower, to keep me away.”

  He left his horse, walked toward the tower.

  “You have to climb up here,” I said.

  “What?”

  He looked around, and then headed for the great wooden door. I could hear him struggling, just out of my vision. A moment la
ter, he was standing again under the window.

  “I’m locked in,” I said.

  “I’ll get the key from her.”

  “No. She is not here. Climb.”

  He tilted his head, not understanding. “There’s no rope or ladder.”

  “Climb my hair.”

  “How . . . ?”

  “You won’t hurt me,” I said.

  Tentatively, he reached out and touched my hair, grasped it in his fist. I could feel that touch. My hair was as alive as skin, as blood. I reeled back from the force of the feeling that spread through me. I could feel him. I knew him.

  “Climb,” I said again, holding on to the windowsill and bracing myself for the pain in my scalp. But no pain came. Instead, images flashed through my mind: a bed covered in furs, a heavy manuscript scattered across a desk, bright colors blotted across stone. They were all images from his life, I realized with surprise, flowing from him to me. I’d never felt anything like it before. Of course, outside the tower Mathena always made me keep my hair tied back, hidden under cloth. Was this why? Did she know what it could do?

  He hoisted himself up and I could feel his full weight, as I braced myself against the window.

  “Are you all right?” he called up.

  “Yes,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Just climb!”

  His anxiety moved from him to me. He was afraid to hurt me, pictured me flying sideways out the window like a golden bird, my body smashing into the ground.

  But my hair was strong, stronger than iron. It could hold him ten times over, and I anchored myself against the tower.

  After a moment of hesitation, he stretched one hand up over the other and twisted his thighs around my hair. He began to climb. I could feel his fear dissipating, his excitement to see me pulsing through every strand.

  I closed my eyes, as everything he’d ever thought or felt or dreamed passed into me, like water seeping into the soil. I could feel the way he’d ridden through the forest to come find me, stopping at an inn at the edge of the woods, for the night. Hear the songs he’d sung to himself as he rode. I could barely breathe, as it poured through me, unfurling, moving further back in time. I could feel his worry over his mother the queen, the way he’d begged her, as a child, to see him when she was busy talking to ghosts, his loneliness and hurt when she looked past him, his love for poems and stories that filled him, that populated his world, his anger at his father the king, all of it combined with a deep love for them both, a love for me . . .