Zel

by Donna Jo Napoli

  No one anywhere should harbor ill will toward Zel. No one anywhere has Zel harmed.

  So who is this terrible enemy?

  Zel shouts again: “Come into view, coward enemy!” A bush at the base of a pine rustles. “I’m ready for you!” Zel points at the bush.

  The wind rises. The bush moves, as do all the other bushes, as do the trees.

  A flash of black and a birdcall. It is musical, not the harsh caw of a crow. It sounds like the chough, the highest flier of the Alps. What would that sublime bird be doing so low? In her wanderings above the tree line Zel has watched choughs ride the wind upward, then suddenly tumble and twist and somersault for the pure joy of it. The call of the rare bird now feels like a beckoning.

  The urge to run grips her. “I am a mountain girl. I need the open.” She makes the Jauchzer, the modulated yell common to the people of her mountains. She learned by mimicking the herd boys.

  Zel hears no responding Jauchzer. Incipient panic burns her eyes. She needs responses.

  She looks at the shrunken walnut branches. If they would only stretch out to her, she could coax the squirrel into her room the next time it comes around. But Zel cannot make the walnut grow like Mother can. Mother has a way with plants, an amazing, powerful way.

  And Mother says that Zel will have a way with animals when she is ready. She says Zel will be able to talk with animals. Zel longs for that.

  She dips her brush and paints the squirrel nibbling furiously at a dough pellet. The tail is poised for flight. Zel paints an ear, each hair separate, coming to a single sharp point.

  Chapter 13Konrad

  he fall air pokes Konrad like the needles of evergreens. He feels snappish and half wild.

  Three months have passed without satisfaction. But at least they have passed without interference from his parents. The changing church took care of that. The church police have been busy purging the town. They strip altars, they smash organs, they break the stained-glass windows. The count and countess spend their time trying to ease confrontations between the old church and the new.

  But this reprieve from his parents’ interference had to come to an end sooner or later. So today, when Konrad comes downstairs to find his mother awaiting him in the dark of pre-morning, he is not surprised.

  The countess stands with hands stretched toward him. “Tell me, Konrad. What ails you?”

  “Nothing, Mother.”

  “Your pain shows in every move.” Her voice catches.

  Konrad cannot bring himself to say Zel’s name. But his heart responds to his mother’s sincere entreaty. “I’m looking for something.”

  “What? Let us help you.”

  Konrad shakes his head.

  The countess lowers her chin and looks up at Konrad with eyes that implore. “And this search matters so much that everything else must be forgotten?”

  “Nothing else matters right now.”

  “What about your education, Konrad? You haven’t had lessons for months.”

  “Didn’t the minister say secular learning is an insolent conceit?”

  The countess takes a step backward. She looks amazed. “You’ve never quoted the clergy before.”

  Konrad gives a sheepish smile. “He said something useful for once.”

  “Useful to him, not to you.” Her disdain shows in her tone. She looks around the room quickly and moves closer. “Speak your own mind, Konrad.” The countess puts her hand on Konrad’s arm. “What do you search for with such frenzy?”

  “I can’t talk sensibly about it.” Konrad swallows the lump in his throat. “I don’t seem to understand anything.”

  “That’s hard for me to believe of the youth who rattles off mathematical formulas, making his tutors rejoice. You can do anything you put your mind to, Konrad.”

  Konrad gives a small laugh. He wishes it were that simple.

  “I’m worried for you.”

  “Youths my age take up arms for pay to fight in foreign wars. All I do is ride through the countryside. There is nothing to worry about.”

  “There might be.” The countess tightens her grip on Konrad’s arm. “One night this August I saw the constellation of Perseus burst into a shower of comets.”

  “What does Perseus have to do with me?”

  “He is the great horseman. He rides Pegasus. Please, Konrad, though you have your doubts, respect my beliefs. Even medical students study astrology. As you ride under the evening skies, watch Perseus. If that was a warning, you must heed it.”

  Konrad puts his hand over his mother’s. “I’ll take care of myself.”

  “It is not yet fully light out. Check the skies now.” Her tone is urgent. “Check them every morning. Every evening.”

  Konrad kisses his mother’s cheek. He ascends the stairs and throws open the doors of his balcony to the blast of icy air. The sky shows no stars. But maybe Konrad needs to be higher to see them. He jumps onto the balcony ledge and climbs over the low roof. He swings himself onto an upper walkway, takes the stairs at a run, and he is in one of the four turrets. The sky is empty and pure.

  Konrad looks out across earliest morning on the lake. He tingles with anticipation. Though he cares little for the talk of Perseus, he feels strengthened by his mother’s belief in him. He races down the steps and outside.

  Konrad picks up a stiff-bristle brush and enters the paddock. The mare greets him. He brushes her well. Then he presses his cheek against the mare’s neck. She whinnies with a hesitant gentleness.

  Konrad thinks again, for the thousandth time perhaps, of how Meta pressed against Zel’s new breasts. The peasant girl should have been coarse as her bread, yet she was tenuous as a memory. She was not pretty. Still, there was something oddly pleasing about her looks. Will she recognize him when next they meet? Konrad saddles Meta and mounts.

  “Young sire.” Annette runs from the kitchen. She holds up a sack to Konrad. “The countess had me pack you a hearty meal.”

  “With much thanks.” Konrad takes the sack and leaves. He follows the road south, his eyes on the changing leaves of hardwoods scattered among the pines. The colors recall the oranges and blues of the frescoes in the church belfry. The forest evokes reverence. He goes hushed and slow, until Meta finally announces her needs in a loud whinny. He eats by the lakeside. Meta nibbles on the dry grasses and drinks fully. Konrad, too, puts his face to the lake and drinks. Then he leads Meta by the reins into the woods. He uses his teeth to pull the cork from the bottle. He drinks as he walks. Then he recorks the bottle.

  He goes all day. Darkness falls. The trees huddle together, almost as though they fend off the moonlight.

  Hunger begins as an annoyance. His parents will be worrying about him by now. He mounts Meta, and the horse breaks into a trot. A branch catches Konrad’s sleeve and rips it like a claw shredding a spider web. He turns to look at it, and another branch knocks him from the saddle.

  Konrad hits the ground, shoulder first. On impact he rolls instinctively. He slams against a tree trunk. He rubs his face with both hands. He feels a disorientation so pervasive he fears he is lost for good. He whistles to Meta and mounts again. He fights the urge to return home.

  Konrad gives the horse free rein, for with this blackness he cannot guide her anyway. As legend goes, souls who are neither folded into heaven nor banished into hell wander the Alps at night and pass by to touch the warm hands of sleepers. Konrad clenches his hands inside his pockets and shivers.

  They emerge from the forest suddenly, to find themselves on a cliff edge over the lake. Konrad grabs the reins just in time. His heart pounds. Even in the weak light of the stars, the rocks at the lake shore far below glisten. Konrad walks Meta with care. At the first thinning of the trees, he turns the horse inward and upward again.

  They reach a small clearing. Konrad dismounts and drinks from the bottle of wine.

  * * *

  Konrad wakes. The ground is hard and so wet that his shirt is soaked. A stick is jammed against his thigh. He sits up with
a start. He senses a whir. Bats cut the weak moonlight at the top of the trees. Pine resin soaks the air. Now he remembers: He slipped off Meta to rest, and he must have slept. It is still night, though the night is no longer deep. He rubs his hands together to dispel the chill.

  His mouth is dry. He gropes for the bottle. It is empty. And his shirt stinks of wine. He must have spilled it on himself when he fell asleep.

  He puts his lips together to whistle to Meta, but they are soft and puffy, and all that comes is a light whoosh. Still, the mare knows. She trots over and nuzzles Konrad’s face. He mounts.

  Konrad licks his lips and listens hard for sounds of running water. These mountains are rich with streams. And there’s the telltale song now. They come to a small wooden bridge. Konrad dismounts, and horse and man drink.

  As the beginnings of dawn steal the stars, Konrad discerns a path down the mountainside, the direction he must go to return home. He prepares to take the path when he sees a goose.

  The goose is settled on a strong-looking, high-sided nest. Konrad looks around for the rest of the flock. But this goose appears to be a loner. His groggy brain slowly sees the contradiction: The goose sits on a nest, but wild broods hatched months ago. Konrad learned that lesson only too well when he went in search of the hot goose egg for Zel.

  The goose gets off the nest and wanders in the dirt, pecking at nothing, it seems. Konrad walks toward the exposed eggs. He counts five. But there is something odd about them. They vary much in size and shape. Konrad steps closer. They are stones!

  The fast, high cry of a fiddle cuts the air. Konrad spies a cottage. A cock crows from somewhere behind the home. The air tastes of goat. Cypresses stand tall on the far side of the alm.

  The fiddle keens with clarity. It makes his flesh tighten. If he listens much longer, he will be unable to hold back tears.

  Konrad has become unused to hearing secular music—no lyres, no fifes, no fiddles in the town square anymore. This fiddler either does not know of the ban or does not care.

  The music shocks Konrad, for the anguish it speaks is thorough. This fiddler is without hope, without salvation. Rapunzel cannot live in a home wracked with misery. Yet Konrad is here now, and he has come very far to get here.

  He walks to the cottage.

  Chapter 14Mother

  he music uses my chest as a sounding board. My hand grips the warm maple neck of this fiddle. My fingers press strong on the strings. They hold the bow tight. They pull the bow hard across those sheep-gut strings, hard and long, all the way to the tip of the bow. My chin grows out of the top, as much a part of the instrument as the bridge. I feel the vibrations in my cheek. I am the fiddle. I am the bow.

  The notes pat the fuzz of hair on my skin. They are breath. They make me know there is still rhythm to this existence.

  The morning light is watery today. It slides around the room, edging into corners, soaking the bottoms of chair legs, table legs. It enters the fiddle through my open mouth and closed eyes. It heats me, the wood of me, the sheep gut of me, the flesh and water of me. It insists.

  Knock knock.

  I open my eyes and stand. I set the fiddle in its spot on the shelf. I rest the bow beside it. These hands ache from the sudden, brutal lack of the fiddle. I straighten them, extending my fingers taut.

  Knock knock.

  Visitors are rare. I open to a bedraggled youth who reeks of sour wine. His clothes show wealth, but one sleeve is ripped and his eyes carry the weight of lost sleep. I feel his disorientation. He is not drunk, despite the stench. His demeanor touches me. “Have you lost your way?”

  “I think I have.” The man’s eyes try to wander past me into the room. “Was that you playing the fiddle?”

  How long was he listening? And why? “I scratch out a few notes now and then.”

  “Never fear. I won’t report to the church police. I also love music.”

  The church police? The words sound ridiculous on this isolated alm. I fear no forces of the Lord. I take no part in the petty struggles of society. I nod, purely to hurry him along.

  “Do you have a family?”

  I stand tall. There is nothing aggressive in the man’s posture, but his question is bold. A woman is always at risk.

  “I don’t mean to alarm you.” He speaks quickly and with a gentle tone. “I was looking for a family.”

  Ah. So he stumbled across this alm by accident. Good. I hold the edge of the door, ready to close. “I live here alone.”

  He hesitates. “Could I ask you a strange question?”

  His eyes are now childlike. I could never refuse a child. I cross my arms at the chest. “Ask.”

  “I was wondering about that goose.”

  That wretched goose that stays though others have already migrated south. “Go ahead, kill her. Take her home and eat her.”

  The man steps back as though surprised. “Well, she’s sitting on a nest and . . .”

  “Kill her.”

  I close the door and close my ears. I will not listen for the sounds of the man killing the goose. Let her simply disappear. I stand in one spot for a long time. Long enough for our alm to be empty of the stranger.

  My fingers reach out again into the morning air. If I could rip the sunlight away, wring it in my hands like laundry, I would. I want the night back. I can barely face another day of this.

  But I mustn’t curse the dawn. For Zel needs the light to draw by. She’s doing very well. I mustn’t despair. I can see progress already. She gets frustrated now and then. Of course she would. She’d like to be with me all the time, like before. Soon she’ll realize that I am all she needs. That’s when I can explain to her. Though I miss her more than blood itself, I can be patient.

  The sunlight is weepy. This day calls for cheering up. An onion soup. The girl loves onion soup.

  I go outside and pick my way through the garden. Some of the herbs are tendrils yet. I take care not to trample them. I pull a bunch of new onions. I lean over the herbs and whisper. They seem to shake off the morning frost and stretch, like fox cubs. I could make them grow outrageously, all the way to the sky. But I don’t. I reserve my energy for the demands of visiting Zel. I pick a handful of tiny leaves.

  The goose calls. The man left without killing her. She rises into the air, turns, and heads south. I have refused to look at her these past months. Now I need not turn my head away as I cross our small wooden bridge. I am glad to be rid of her.

  Indeed, I want never to think of the cursèd goose. If it were not for the bird’s insanity, Zel would not have asked the youth at the smithy for an egg. That youth would not have made an impression on her. He would not have encumbered her soul.

  I walk swiftly toward the bridge. I put the herb leaves in one pocket and the onions in the other. I clench both fists. I go straight to the hateful nest of rocks. My feet kick wild deathblows. Twigs and feathers fly. And my feet suddenly fly, too. I feel sharp pain.

  * * *

  When I open my eyes again, I know that I was out cold. Much time has passed. I rise and touch the swollen mass behind my ear, where my head smacked the ground. I cannot linger. Zel expects me at noon. I notice hoofprints in the dirt. The man who came and went this morning was on horseback.

  I hurry to the cottage, rotating my shoulders, working out the kinks from my fall. Dots circle before my eyes. A blackness comes, and I bend forward quickly. The nausea rises, then settles. My eyes clear again. I straighten and move more slowly.

  Why didn’t I smell horse on the man? Because he reeked of wine.

  I set water to boil and drop in an egg. The beginnings of a worry scratch at the backs of my eyes. I peel onions. I choose three apricots, wash and dry them. I cut a chunk of fresh goat cheese. I cut an equal chunk of bread. I wrap all separately in paper, then fold them together in one supper bundle. A far cry from onion soup, but nonetheless nourishing.

  I choose a ripe plum and a sweet roll. Didn’t I give her a plum just yesterday? I should have gone to the cellar and
chosen an apple. But there’s no time now. I wrap plum and bun in paper to make her breakfast bundle for tomorrow. The worry claws through to the front of my head. My eyes would split.

  The boiled egg is ready. I peel it. I cut two slices of bread, cover them with the herbs from my pocket, and dice in the egg. Steam rises, coloring my hands. I wrap the hot food. I pack all into my cloth bag. Then I add the light slop bucket. It is clean and fresh.

  My feet take the path down in little leaps. I go too fast to hold branches aside. They slap at face and arms. A branch catches my sleeve. I stop before it rips. I think of the ripped sleeve of the young man. The man in search of a family. The man who asked about the goose but didn’t kill her. I know now I have seen him somewhere else. When? Oh, when, when? And finally it comes to me: He is the man who knocked the package from my hand the last time Zel and I were in town. The noble in a hurry. He was in town the same day Zel was in town. The worry shouts in my head. He was not drunk today, yet he carried the stench of wine. Could he have poured wine on himself to cover the smell of horse? Could he have deliberately deceived me?

  I drop to my knees. I need energy for the long trek to visit Zel. Yet I cannot afford not to spend whatever energy it takes now to stop the danger. I close my eyes and raise my hands high above my head, and I command this whole forest. I command it to spin and twirl and change and change. I command it to reconfigure itself so that no one will recognize it ever again. So that no stranger can come twice to our alm.

  Chapter 15Konrad

  he fiddle tune of the lone woman on the alm plays and replays in Konrad’s head. He has to fight to keep it from lulling him into a sleep that on this precipitous, twisting path would mean sure death.