But when she returned from her most recent trip to the village and saw not the golden ladder of hair but one of wood propped against the tower, the witch knew she’d betrayed Rapunzel in some fashion. She dropped the reins and leaped from the wagon. The horse, so gentle and loving, simply continued forward to meet its sister. The witch scampered up the ladder, her hands catching on the rough grain so much she had to claw her way to the window.
There, in the center of the room, Rapunzel stood. Around her, strands of her hair whipped and whirled, the ends sharp and deadly. Like teeth. Like claws. A monster of a thing. On the floor? A man.
A dead man—a dead nobleman from the looks of his clothes—one who had suffered the death of a thousand cuts, a thousand bites. One whose breeches were around his ankles. One whose hand had torn away the bodice of Rapunzel’s dress.
“He surprised me. I never heard him until he cleared the window.” Rapunzel stared straight ahead, her gaze on the window, not on the man, and not on the witch, a hollow look haunting her blue eyes. “And then … and then … Mother, I’m … I’m …”
“No!” While flight had never been one of the witch’s skills, she flew across the room, cradled Rapunzel to her. “You are not sorry. This is not your fault.”
“But—”
“He is dead. A lone nobleman, venturing out on his own, in the borderlands? This will surprise no one.”
“Turn him,” Rapunzel said, her voice devoid of emotion, a dead thing.
Panic gripped the witch, had her by the throat. With a foot, she complied, heaving the dead man onto his back. Fair hair. Royal crest.
The war prince’s brother.
“He will come searching, won’t he?” Rapunzel said. This was no question. “The war prince will search for his brother.”
“Perhaps. The borderlands are vast. It may be months before we see him again. And by then?” The witch surveyed the man, the window, and considered how they might accomplish this next task.
“If your hair can lower him to the ground, I shall bury him in the woods. I feel winter in my bones. An early snowfall will be welcome.”
Rapunzel nodded. “I shall scrub his blood from our floor.”
Without another word, Rapunzel’s hair wrapped the man from head to foot and lowered him through the tower’s window. When the witch reached the ground, she was surprised to find the longest strands of hair in a dense copse behind the tower, the claws already digging a grave.
By the time the witch found a shovel, the man was deep in the ground. So she took up an ax and splintered the ladder into kindling. And by the time she finished that chore, those beastly strands of hair had scattered dry leaves across the grave, the fresh-turned soil all but hidden.
She eased a hand beneath a lock of that hair. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for protecting her, thank you for being so fierce.”
The strands wrapped and unwrapped themselves around her wrist before caressing her cheek.
* * *
Despite her own words, the witch knew. A dead prince was still a dead prince, and justice would be served. A week later, when the war prince rode up with a contingent of his soldiers, she was ready to face that justice.
“Good day to you, Mistress Witch.”
The witch stood at the base of the tower. “And to you, Your Highness.” She bowed low. She liked this dark and masked prince, even though today he would, no doubt, declare her death sentence.
“I wonder if you can help me.”
“I will try, Your Highness.”
“My brother has gone missing. You met him on our last patrol through these parts. Did you happen to see him or even converse with him?”
Behind the prince, one of his soldiers unleashed a dog. Oh, yes, the witch thought, he knew the answer already. A moment later, so did everyone else. The hound let out a howl before digging at the fresh grave.
“Tell me, Mistress Witch, how did he come to die?”
She drew herself up tall, raised her chin. “I killed him, Your Highness.”
To her surprise, the prince laughed—a dark, somber laugh to be sure, but a laugh, nevertheless. “I doubt that.”
“Doubt what you will, Your Highness, but do you see anyone else here?”
“You have just admitted to murder, and of one of the royal family. Do you wish for death?”
“I am but an old crone, and death does not scare me.”
“I suspect you might scare death itself,” the prince murmured. “But you leave me no choice.” With a sigh, he addressed the soldier next to him. “Arrest her.” He returned his attention to the witch. “Unless you can give me a compelling reason not to.”
“I can give you that reason.”
The voice came from above, and it rang high and clear and unimpeded over the borderlands. The witch whirled, her chest constricting. No. Not Rapunzel. No. She shook her head, but the daughter of her heart paid her no heed.
Without another word, Rapunzel stepped onto the window’s ledge. She jumped, her hair fanning out behind her before rushing to the ground to cushion her fall. She landed on her feet, knee-deep in golden locks.
“Your Highness, no,” the witch began. “Please listen. She—”
The prince held up a hand, silencing her. “Let her speak.”
“I killed him, Your Highness,” Rapunzel said.
“Did you now? And you are?”
“Rapunzel.”
“Rapunzel? With hair of teeth and claw?”
“I … is that what they call me?”
“You are but a legend, a whispered story. I—” He broke off, his gaze drawn to the woods where the younger prince was buried. “My brother spoke of you.”
“I am very real, Your Highness, and I have killed your brother.”
“You confess to murder, then?”
“In self-defense, but yes, I do.”
The prince fell silent. The soldiers behind him shifted in their saddles. The one who managed the dog corralled and leashed the beast. Then with a single, deliberate motion, the prince removed the black leather mask to reveal a face crisscrossed with scars.
“Look upon this face, Rapunzel,” he commanded.
And she did.
“I have lost my only brother.”
“I am sorry for your loss, Your Highness.”
“You must understand that yes, he was my brother, and I confess to loving the boy he once was, but not the man he became.” The prince contemplated Rapunzel as he spoke, as if taking in her full measure, as if sizing up an opponent. “That, perhaps, was unfair of me, unfair to him.”
The prince drew his sword, the metal blade singing out. He aimed the blow directly at Rapunzel. A cry lodged in the witch’s throat, and it took all her strength not to sink to her knees.
Rapunzel’s hair whipped and whirled. When the frenzy subsided, she and the prince stood mere feet from each other, the tip of his sword poised at the hollow of her collarbone, the claws of her hair wrapped around his neck.
His soldiers sprang forward, weapons drawn.
“Stand down!” the prince called. When no one moved, he sheathed his own sword and said, “Stand down. She doesn’t intend to injure me.”
“True. I don’t.” With Rapunzel’s words, her hair unraveled from around the prince’s neck.
“And why is that?” He rubbed the skin of his throat, the move born of curiosity rather than pain.
“You did not intend to hurt me.”
“And your hair.” He gestured to the locks undulating along her back and on the ground. “It knew that.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
A smile lit the prince’s scarred face, then a laugh made it almost handsome. “Then I am lucky, for that was only my guess.” This time when he contemplated Rapunzel, his gaze was lit with interest. “And now I face another sort of dilemma, for I not only lost my brother, but my best fighter.”
The witch’s heart caught. The tips of her fingers grew cold, her legs numb. “Your Highness, you can’t p
ossibly mean—”
Once again, the prince silenced the witch’s protest with the barest flick of his wrist.
“I mean everything I say, Mistress Witch.” He directed his gaze toward Rapunzel once again. “Will you join my company and replace the man you have killed?”
Murmurs rose from the assembled soldiers. One stepped forward, probed a lock of hair with the toe of his boot. The strands curled around his ankle and the man landed on the ground.
“She is but a girl!” another called out.
“I am strong,” Rapunzel said. She hefted her hair in both her hands. “I have been carrying the weight of this all my life.”
“A burden for certain,” the prince said.
“How will she ride?” someone else asked. “We have no cart for all that hair. We travel light.”
Before the soldier even stopped speaking, her hair swirled. It wove complicated patterns, fitted itself to her body until she was covered in what looked like golden chainmail.
“It seems I won’t need any armor,” Rapunzel said. “Or a cart.”
“Any more dissent? Perhaps you’d like to confer with my brother.” The prince gestured at the grave. “I’m certain he has an opinion on the matter.”
With the prince’s words, the witch knew: the matter was settled. Strength returned to her limbs, and a strange, detached determination filled her. She saddled a horse, and the sisters whinnied their goodbyes, tails swishing. She secured a bag of provisions and one of potions and remedies. If she could, the witch would have packed her heart as well, for it was too swollen and sore in her own chest.
“Goodbye, daughter of my heart.” The witch presented the reins to Rapunzel.
“Mother?” Rapunzel’s eyes grew large, as if only now she realized the consequences of her choice. “I don’t want—”
The witch hushed her. “Of course you do. It is right and good for children to leave home, to have adventures. This prince is a good man,” she added. “He will not lead you astray.”
“I can’t promise you comfort,” the prince added. “Or even safety. But adventure? That I can promise.”
Rapunzel’s gaze went once again to the horizon, her eyes lit with the promise of the adventure that it held.
“Go with him, child. Go be free.”
Rapunzel hugged the witch, mounted her horse, and joined the prince’s company. They rode off, and the witch tracked them until Rapunzel blended into the horizon. Even then, the witch stood at the base of the tower. At last she turned and confronted its surface.
“I’m not sure I know the spell to conjure up another entrance, or a staircase, for that matter.” She said these words to the horse, who snuffled and snorted a reply. “I’m not sure these old bones can stand the climb.”
Before the witch could even try, a golden ladder tumbled from the window. She grasped the silky strands, hardly daring to breathe, and climbed up to the ledge. Once she stood inside, the strands returned to the tower. They flowed through the window and into one of Rapunzel’s containers of exotic flowers, where they burrowed beneath the soil.
Then, in a moment that was no more than a blink of an eye, a stem pushed up and through, and the bloom of a lion’s tail unfurled.
A Word from Charity Tahmaseb
I love fairy tales. I love how we grow up with them, how they help us view the world, how their tropes continue to resonate in our lives. I love how flexible they are, how surprisingly easy it is to update the tales so they resonate anew.
And I love how they make me just a little bit angry. Why does the wolf need to be a bloodthirsty creature? Why can’t he and Red form a lasting relationship? What if Sleeping Beauty has no interest in palaces and princes? Why must the old crone always be the villain?
It’s this last question that spurred me to write “With Hair of Teeth and Claw”. What if the witch in Rapunzel was the protagonist? What if she were only trying to fix a situation where no one—or perhaps everyone—was at fault? Could imprisonment in a tower be seen as a last-ditch effort to protect the one thing you love with all your heart?
These were the questions I wanted to explore in “With Hair of Teeth and Claw”. Other fairy tales I’ve tackled include:
Red Riding Hood, in “Straying from the Path” (in Flash Fiction Online and Cicada), which asks why must the wolf be bloodthirsty and bad?
Sleeping Beauty, in “The Secret Life of Sleeping Beauty” (in Unidentified Funny Objects, 1), which asks why, after a hundred years, would she settle for staying put?
Puss in Boots, in “A Most Marvelous Pair of Boots” (in Timeless Tales, issue #1), which asks why is everyone in this story clueless? Why is the cat even involved?
I’ve also written my own fairy tales, including “Simon the Cold” (in Frozen Fairy Tales) and “A Measure of Sorrow and Keeping Time” (both in Luna Station Quarterly).
Visit https://writingwrongs.wordpress.com/ for links to these stories and more.
Good Hunting
by Ken Liu
NIGHT. HALF MOON. An occasional hoot from an owl.
The merchant and his wife and all the servants had been sent away. The large house was eerily quiet.
Father and I crouched behind the scholar’s rock in the courtyard. Through the rock’s many holes I could see the bedroom window of the merchant’s son.
“Oh, Hsiao-jung, my sweet Hsiao-jung…”
The young man’s feverish groans were pitiful. Half-delirious, he was tied to his bed for his own good, but Father had left a window open so that his plaintive cries could be carried by the breeze far over the rice paddies.
“Do you think she really will come?” I whispered. Today was my thirteenth birthday, and this was my first hunt.
“She will,” Father said. “A hulijing cannot resist the cries of the man she has bewitched.”
“Like how the Butterfly Lovers cannot resist each other?” I thought back to the folk opera troupe that had come through our village last fall.
“Not quite,” Father said. But he seemed to have trouble explaining why. “Just know that it’s not the same.”
I nodded, not sure I understood. But I remembered how the merchant and his wife had come to Father to ask for his help.
“How shameful!” the merchant had muttered. “He’s not even nineteen. How could he have read so many sages’ books and still fall under the spell of such a creature?”
“There’s no shame in being entranced by the beauty and wiles of a hulijing,” Father had said. “Even the great scholar Wong Lai once spent three nights in the company of one, and he took first place at the Imperial Examinations. Your son just needs a little help.”
“You must save him,” the merchant’s wife had said, bowing like a chicken pecking at rice. “If this gets out, the matchmakers won’t touch him at all.”
A hulijing was a demon who stole hearts. I shuddered, worried if I would have the courage to face one.
Father put a warm hand on my shoulder, and I felt calmer. In his hand was Swallow Tail, a sword that had first been forged by our ancestor, General Lau Yip, thirteen generations ago. The sword was charged with hundreds of Daoist blessings and had drunk the blood of countless demons.
A passing cloud obscured the moon for a moment, throwing everything into darkness.
When the moon emerged again, I almost cried out.
There, in the courtyard, was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen.
She had on a flowing white silk dress with billowing sleeves and a wide, silvery belt. Her face was pale as snow, and her hair dark as coal, draping past her waist. I thought she looked like the paintings of great beauties from the Tang Dynasty the opera troupe had hung around their stage.
She turned slowly to survey everything around her, her eyes glistening in the moonlight like two shimmering pools.
I was surprised to see how sad she looked. Suddenly, I felt sorry for her and wanted more than anything else to make her smile.
The light touch of my father’s hand against the b
ack of my neck jolted me out of my mesmerized state. He had warned me about the power of the hulijing. My face hot and my heart hammering, I averted my eyes from the demon’s face and focused on her stance.
The merchant’s servants had been patrolling the courtyard every night this week with dogs to keep her away from her victim. But now the courtyard was empty. She stood still, hesitating, suspecting a trap.
“Tsiao-jung! Have you come for me?” The son’s feverish voice grew louder.
The lady turned and walked—no, glided, so smooth were her movements—towards the bedroom door.
Father jumped out from behind the rock and rushed at her with Swallow Tail.
She dodged out of the way as though she had eyes on the back of her head. Unable to stop, my father thrust the sword into the thick wooden door with a dull thunk. He pulled but could not free the weapon immediately.
The lady glanced at him, turned, and headed for the courtyard gate.
“Don’t just stand there, Liang!” Father called. “She’s getting away!”
I ran at her, dragging my clay pot filled with dog piss. It was my job to splash her with it so that she could not transform into her fox form and escape.
She turned to me and smiled. “You’re a very brave boy.” A scent, like jasmine blooming in spring rain, surrounded me. Her voice was like sweet, cold lotus paste, and I wanted to hear her talk forever. The clay pot dangled from my hand, forgotten.
“Now!” Father shouted. He had pulled the sword free.
I bit my lip in frustration. How can I become a demon hunter if I am so easily enticed? I lifted off the cover and emptied the clay pot at her retreating figure, but the insane thought that I shouldn’t dirty her white dress caused my hands to shake, and my aim was wide. Only a small amount of dog piss got onto her.
But it was enough. She howled, and the sound, like a dog’s but so much wilder, caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. She turned and snarled, showing two rows of sharp, white teeth, and I stumbled back.
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