Once Zel had a colony of lice. Her impeccable searching led to their discovery in the paper covering her boiled eggs. Mother must have set the freshly gathered eggs near the paper before she cooked them, for these lice were of the kind that live on hens. Zel kept the lice rolled up in plum skin. She fed them daily, a drop of blood from her tongue, which she would bite. She invited them onto her head. If they would only have taken up residence in her hair, she could have persuaded Mother to shave her head. But they preferred her tongue blood. She tried denying them blood altogether. They waited patiently. One day she dropped them into her crimson ink. Zel, who had once considered all life to be admired, wiped out the lice colony.
The ants eat the peach. Zel could throw the peach with all her strength. Then she would be an ant killer, too.
Zel and the sharp stone. Zel and the squirrel. Zel and the ants.
And that’s not all. Zel throws her head back and warbles deep in her throat, passionately like a pigeon in love.
Pigeon Pigeon flutters to the window. Her graceless body bounces heavily on stick legs; her eyes are stupid. Her gray belly matches the stone, but her head is white with brown speckles. A thoroughly unattractive creature. “I love your ugliness.”
Pigeon Pigeon warbles.
“Ah, you’ve been sitting on the roof, have you? You heard the horse stomp inside my room. You swooned in the horsey air.”
Pigeon Pigeon warbles.
“Oh, you were so excited you almost plummeted from the tower like a stone, you clumsy creature?” Zel steps back. “Are you trying to make me envious, talking of plummeting?”
And now Pigeon Pigeon is silent.
But Zel knows the bird will speak again soon. Pigeon Pigeon is a chatterbox. They used to argue over matters of import, like what the alm must look like on a May morning, or the smell of the cottage kitchen at dusk, or the thickness of Zel’s rabbits’ fur in winter. But Zel no longer listens to that sort of talk.
Pigeon Pigeon was the one who taught Zel to warble, to bob her head forward and backward. In turn, Zel taught Pigeon Pigeon to say, “Who? Who?” to the moon. Who is it that stalks Zel?
The moon is Zel’s last friend. The moon listens to Zel and Pigeon Pigeon’s questions, but she never answers. This is a deep kind of friendship, a union of cores.
Mother doesn’t know about the moon. But she knows about Pigeon Pigeon, and she is repulsed by her droppings. Zel puts her finger in a fresh dropping now and draws a chalk-white pigeon head on the back of her hand. She does not yet think about how she will conceal this drawing from Mother. She is titillated at the danger of leaving the drawing on her hand.
Once Pigeon Pigeon built a nest on a window ledge. Mother swept the twigs away and rubbed spores of toxic mushrooms on the stones.
The mountain girl Zel was loves those windows. The mountain girl she was knows the world beyond the windows is not a dream.
Dreams are full of horses. And a youth.
Pigeon Pigeon coos.
Zel coos back.
Pigeon Pigeon never tried building a nest on any window ledge again. Zel took to cleaning up Pigeon Pigeon’s droppings with bread crust. She throws them in her waste bucket. Friends can be intimate.
Like dreams.
Zel and the sharp stone, Zel and the squirrel, Zel and the ants, Zel and the pigeon. Zel and the moon.
Sometimes Zel hates them all. They come and go as they please. Even the moon seems to have ways to control her appearances, contriving special events with the clouds.
Zel thinks again about the youth with the horse. He had mixed feelings about her, feelings she saw in his eyes, feelings she often dwells on through the long hours. Their memory makes her warm when the whole world is frozen.
The youth has dark hair. Zel has light hair. The youth is rich. Zel has only her papers, quills, paints, brushes. The youth travels the world on a horse. Zel makes a world of a tower room. That they ever met was an accident. That she remembers him is but the result of her inexperience. She has no reason to picture the high curve of his eyebrows. She has no reason to yearn to put both hands on his face and let his eyesockets leave their imprint in her palms.
Zel looks at Pigeon Pigeon now with a fierce and sudden need. Fat Pigeon Pigeon can fly. But thin Zel cannot even move freely within the tower.
Zel’s hair lies in braids coiled in the center of the floor. She walks around the room with just enough braid uncoiled to allow her to stand at the windows. When Mother comes, Zel lowers her braids out the window. They reach clear to the bottom. Once they were long enough to touch the ground, they stopped growing. That’s when Mother took to climbing Zel’s braids to the tower room.
Zel has asked Mother to cut her braids. After Mother has climbed in, Zel’s temples ache horribly. And, oh, after Mother leaves, Zel’s head pounds. Once she tried to gnaw through her braids, but her jaw wouldn’t do as she told it. It snapped dryly at the air.
Mother says the braids are necessary. Zel has asked her to use the walnut tree, like before. Mother doesn’t answer.
Zel walks now to the center of the room. She picks up a braid. She looks at Pigeon Pigeon.
Pigeon Pigeon warbles. The bird walks up and down the window ledge. She stops. She stretches a wing. A wing!
Zel throws the braid as hard as she can. It slaps Pigeon Pigeon from the window—squawk—it hits the tree, catches briefly, then falls away loose, yanking hard at Zel’s temple, radiating pain through her head and neck.
Zel shrieks. She has killed Pigeon Pigeon. Oh, cursèd is the hand that tossed the braid. Zel kneels and smacks her forehead on the stone floor till blood runs into her eyes.
Oh, she should fall to the ground like Pigeon Pigeon. She should be smashed and lifeless on the ground.
The ground. The ground beneath her feet, dusty in the summer, muddy in the spring and fall, frozen in the winter. Oh, to run in a straight line as far as she wants. To run so fast no enemy can catch her.
Sometimes Zel is sure that there is no enemy, that Mother is not right in the head, that Mother has imagined all. But when she has tried to question her, Mother’s teeth chatter. She grows icy. Mother knows: Something out there is a mortal threat.
This day is starting badly. The morning is already slippery. Zel pulls her braid into the tower room again.
She is almost fifteen. She should be married, with child, baking bread and weaving cloth. She should not be alone.
Zel picks at the crusted juice on her neck. She goes to her bucket of rainwater and washes body and face. She looks at the drawing on the back of her hand. She washes it away roughly. She does not deserve to hold the memory of a friend she killed.
Zel goes to her stack of papers—a thick stack of fine linen paper, another sign of Mother’s endless generosity—and lays one sheet on the floor. She paints Mother weaving a hoop basket. Mother will like it. Mother is skilled at basketweaving. After all, those baskets are made of reeds, and Mother has a way with plants.
Zel takes another paper off the stack. She knows before she begins that Mother will not like this picture. She feels her blood heat. She paints their billy goat mounting a nanny. She paints in rapid, messy strokes. Her fury fills the page. She stands and runs her hands down her body. She digs her fingers in, leaves the whitest of marks on each thigh. She bends now and crumples the paper and dashes to the window and throws the paper.
It almost hits Rascal, who chatters at her in rage. Zel thinks of digging her sharp stone from the wall and throwing it at Rascal. She could rid herself of two more friends with one throw.
Zel takes another piece of paper. She folds it down the center. She bends back the edges. The paper points, like a bird diving with wings outstretched behind. She paints on feathers, with quick, light strokes. Zel stares at the painted bird. It is not pigeon or blackbird or lark. It looks more and more like a sparrow hawk. She paints sharp, predatory eyes, extra layers of overlapping feathers. She finds she hums now, and the finding makes her almost happy. She will let her linen-pa
per bird sail into the pines. She licks her finger, then holds it out the window. The wind comes from the west. From the south window, where she is now, the wind will carry the bird toward the marvelous lake of her childhood. She holds the bird out.
But no. She can do better. She puts the paper bird on the corner of the ledge, close to the inside so it cannot fall out. She stretches her arms and holds on to the outer lip of the ledge. She pulls herself up.
Zel takes her paper bird in hand and stands. She has climbed onto the ledge before, but never stood. She lifts her arms toward the skies. If a strong wind should come up, and strong winds do come up suddenly in these mountains even in summer, she would have no grip. She would plummet, like Pigeon Pigeon.
Yet she laughs now. She can see much farther than she ever dared to hope. And the sun helps today. The sun is not being evil, after all. Zel can see a great expanse of green lake. She can even see the peak beyond which she knows their alm lies. She can see the dark opening of the grotto that she passed on her way to market. She breathes so heavily, her chest rises and falls. It is hard to keep her feet from dancing.
She kisses the paper bird. “Be my soul.” She leans as far out as she dares and waits. A wind comes. Oh, merciful nature. Zel lets her bird fly. Over the pines and away and . . .
Oh! Zel teeters and catches her balance. A man on horseback has come riding from the north. The paper bird swoops. The horse rears. The man jumps to the ground and picks up the paper bird. He looks Zel’s way. He waves the bird. He shouts words that are blown back into his mouth. His horse is Meta.
Zel is spellbound. This vision is new and so real, it hurts. It moves. Horse and man disappear into the pines. Zel jumps into the tower room, her arms clasped across her chest. She hugs her own ribs in terror.
THE KISS
Chapter 22Konrad
he linen-paper bird is painted intricately, beautifully, mysteriously. Konrad keeps his eyes on the equally mysterious tower as he weaves his way through the trees. Did he really see her? His heart pounds.
Meta stops and stamps under the empty tower window. “Hello. Hello up there!” Konrad controls his heart. There’s no reason to be frantic. He calls again. “Hello!” He listens hard. He hears nothing. He sees no one. But a woman was there. He holds the paper bird over his head and shakes it. His hand trembles. His heart trembles. “I saw you. Please come to the window again!”
“Tell me what my hands do,” comes a voice from within.
Konrad is at a loss. He is dizzy with hope, and now she makes a command he has no chance of satisfying, and all that hope shimmers in the heat as though it would evaporate. He turns the bird in the sun. “They paint paper. They fold birds. They make magic.”
Silence. Then, “Tell me my name.”
Konrad’s mouth goes dry. He must speak, and if he is wrong, his dream is gone. Oh, God, let Konrad be right. “You are Zel. You are my Rapunzel.”
“Aha!” The woman’s head and shoulders appear over the window ledge. “No real man would know my name. You are no one. You disappoint.”
It is Zel! O blessèd day. “Come down. Come out.”
“Tease me, will you? Well, that doesn’t hurt, for you are no one. If you’d been real, I might have jumped into your arms. Which would have been mad, since then we’d both die.” She laughs. “You terrified me at first. But now you do nothing. Go on; move back so I can see you better, no-one man.”
Konrad shakes his head in confusion. The girl shows the same inexplicable impudence she showed at the smithy two years ago. And now he grins. Thank God for that. He pulls down on the reins and Meta backs up. “I am Count Konrad.”
Zel laughs. “A count. Never in my wildest dreams did I conjure up a count before. And on sweet Meta.” She laughs again. “You are more fun than the other visions, after all. Please go on. Amaze me, O superb vision!”
Konrad suspects now that the girl is addled. And though he can see only her shoulders, he knows she is still naked. She was healthy in body and mind when he met her in the smithy. Something has happened. She is ill; she needs help. “Put on clothes,” he shouts. “I’m coming up.” He jumps off Meta and walks around the base of the tower. It is filthy. Who comes and throws filth on the base of his love’s tower? He is now back to Meta, who grazes contentedly in the dandelions. How can he be back to Meta without having come across the door? He walks around the tower again, this time pushing the ivy aside, pressing against the stones, looking for those that might move. And here, at last, is the door. But it feels as much stone as the rest of the tower. It is immovable.
Konrad stands below Zel once more. “How do you get in and out?”
“If I could get out, I would not be here.”
“What!” Konrad’s breath comes in swells. “You are kept prisoner?” It’s monstrous. “Who is your captor? I will fight him! I will imprison him two days for each day the scoundrel has kept you in this tower. And his prison will not be a lofty tower, but a dungeon, a hole, a grave!”
Zel stares down at Konrad and speaks excitedly. “How dare you say words I would never think! I am not Mother’s prisoner. I am her charge. She protects me. Even in my most wretched moments of despair, I never think of putting her in a dungeon. You shame me, wretched vision.”
Zel’s head sticks out too far for Konrad’s comfort. She shows signs of recklessness. And her talk of her mother makes him wary. He needs to know more, but he hesitates to ask her too much too fast, especially while she is up so high. “How did you get up there?”
“Ah, pretending to be dumb? You can’t fool me. You remember everything I remember, since you are my vision—and I remember very well. I climbed the walnut tree.”
There is only one walnut tree on this side of the tower, but it is clearly stunted. Konrad runs once more around the base of the tower, but there are no other walnut trees, only pines, and all have branches that come no closer to the windows.
“How long have you been up there?”
Zel shakes her head at the question. “Two years and three days. Tomorrow will be my fifteenth birthday. You know that. You know all and only what I know. You disappoint again. You bring me nothing new. But tomorrow Mother will bring me something new. Sheaves and sheaves of papers.” She laughs so hard, she ends wheezing.
The girl has been in this tower for two years. While Konrad was wandering the mountainsides, she was pacing the stone floor. Even in his worst moments of loss and need, he had been a thousand times better off than Zel. He would tear the tower down stone by stone if he could. He quells the shout in his throat. He may need Zel’s cooperation if he is to get to her, and, though she is half mad, she is bound to turn away from him if he shouts. “Mother comes tomorrow,” says Konrad finally.
“Mother comes every day. You know that. Mother will be here within the hour.”
Konrad speaks almost nonchalantly, not wanting to alert Zel to the import of his words. “Will she come up into the tower?”
“You know she will. Your pointless questions tire me.” Zel rolls on the ledge. Now all Konrad can see is the back of her head.
“How does Mother come up?”
Zel disappears. “Go away, vision. Paper is better than you.”
Konrad thinks of calling to her, then thinks better of it. This Zel is unpredictable. The tiny prickle of incipient horror makes his ears tingle. He cannot wipe away the image of a body falling from the tower window.
Responsibility makes Konrad instantly clearheaded. He rides Meta up the hillside till she is out of sight of the tower. He is almost certain Mother will come from the lakeside. He ties the mare to a tree, making sure she can graze easily. Then he breaks a lower branch off the pine and races back to the tower. He brushes away all prints of horse and man, walking backward into the scrub. He thinks of climbing a tree for a better view but remembers Zel’s fantastic claim that she and Mother climbed the walnut tree to enter the tower. He must not be near the walnut tree when Mother comes.
Konrad positions himself entirely within a
scrub cedar. The bush scratches at him. He can see two sides of the tower. If only Mother comes to one of those two sides. He realizes that if he can see so well, then anyone who scrutinizes the scrub cedar may see him. He digs both hands into the dry earth and rubs dirt on his shirt and cheeks. His face is feverish.
Chapter 23Mother
walk to the cabinet I have built for my fiddle. I play slow and fast. Soft and loud. As I play, my memory works past veils of pain and deception to thirteen years of happiness. The memory aches exquisitely.
I put the fiddle down. It is time to head for the tower.
I walk out, my cheek turned, so that I will not see the goose sitting on the seven silent lumps in her nest. Cursèd, faithful goose, who comes every year.
The day is hot. My blood warms like a turtle’s. I want to remember Zel as the effervescent child, but I cannot deny that that child is now withdrawn like a turtle. Something must change.
Sweat pours down my temples and neck, soaking the back of my dress as I lean into the slope of the mountainside.
At last I arrive. For the next hour I can simply be Mother.
My nose betrays me. It smells horse. But this is wild land. There can be no horse around here. Yet the odor is unmistakable. It is already noon, and Zel awaits me. I will investigate the odor later, when I descend.
I sing up, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let me climb your golden hair.”
Zel’s braids drop from the window. I climb quickly. Then I stand in the center of the room and coil the braids neatly. “My Zel.” I open my arms.
Zel Page 11
