Zel

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Zel rushes to me, her face speaking elation. But once she is in my arms, her grip tightens. Dry sobs rack her body. I hold her at arm’s length. “Zel, Zel, my baby. What is it?”

  Zel shakes her head. She puts her hand over her mouth. She chokes on a dusty sob.

  I won’t have this misery. I slide the bag off my shoulder. “I’ve brought your favorite things.” I hold forth an oval blue-black plum. “And there are grapes for your breakfast tomorrow.”

  Zel’s hands are in constant motion, pressing on her cheeks and throat. “You brought no lettuce, no rapunzel.”

  I have not allowed my eyes to rest on that lettuce since the day I erred and said Zel had inherited the love for it, the day everything went wrong. “I can bring endive and chicory. Or southern lettuces: romaine and radicchio. Tomorrow, Zel. Whatever you like, tomorrow.”

  Zel takes the plum and throws it out the window.

  I watch where the plum disappeared. Zel cannot mean her action. She needs the food I bring. She is grateful. I fumble in the bag and bring out a package. “Ham. Oh, my precious, my sweet. I gave a passing peddler a whole round of fresh cheese for his smoked ham because I know you love the taste.”

  Zel stares at my lips and brushes at her cheeks, as though she were really crying, though no tears come. She blinks continually.

  I take encouragement from her intent eyes. I hold out a white bun. “I put a spoonful of sugar in the dough. It will be more delicious than ever. It will contrast with the salt of the ham. Tonight you’ll have a special meal—for tomorrow, you know what tomorrow is.”

  Zel reaches out one hand and touches my lips. Her other hand wipes imaginary tears. She stares.

  I brush her hand away. “Tomorrow is your birthday, Zel. I will bring you surprises. And, Zel,” I say slowly, “if there’s something you’ve been longing for, tell me. I’ll do my best to bring it.”

  Zel still wipes at her dry cheeks. Her sobs are raucous. My daughter has never acted like this before. Something must change. Or maybe something has already changed. I am pulling at the skin on my neck. “Tell me, Zel, did something happen? Are you sick?”

  Her eyes register sudden understanding. She nods her head vehemently. “I had another vision.”

  I nod, as well. “Goats?”

  Zel shakes her head harder and faster. Her hands go to her temples. She screams in pain.

  I grab her by the shoulders. “Stop that!” I slap.

  Zel stops. No part of her moves.

  My hand stings from the slap. In all her life, I have never slapped my child. I am numb with shock. I dare not feel.

  Zel’s eyes widen.

  I must go on. I move my face very close to Zel’s. “Did you see the horse vision?”

  Zel nods.

  “Your hair is crusted with blood at the forehead.” I am breathless. “How did you hurt your head?”

  Silence.

  “Did you fall?”

  “What a stupid question. People don’t fall on their foreheads.”

  Her words sting equal to my slap. I am tired of these loathsome visions. I walk to the mattress and press my hands all over it. “See? It is whole. The horse is unreal. The vision eats nothing.”

  “What is unreal can eat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Tell that horse to go away.” I reach down and grab hold of one corner of the mattress. I lift it and inspect beneath, making a great show of my actions. “See, the vision ate nothing!” There are scratches in the floor. “What’s this?”

  Zel looks over my shoulder. She laughs.

  “What did you use to make those scratches?” I take her shoulders again. “You have something sharp. What? Where is it?” I shake her. “Tell me, foolish child. You aren’t well. You mustn’t have anything sharp. It is dangerous.”

  Zel flops in my hands. “My birthday,” she says.

  I stop shaking her. “Your birthday.”

  Zel steps to one side. She takes my bag with steady hands. She reaches in and throws the roll out the window. Then the ham. Then the grapes. She looks at her hand.

  I have never been sadder. I grope at the air. She must let me feed her. At least I can feed her. That is a mother’s job. “You will go hungry tonight, Zel. You will wake on your birthday hungry.”

  “You can make me happy, Mother. There is just one thing I want for my birthday.”

  My heart stops. I whisper, “What?”

  “Freedom.”

  I turn my back. “First things first.” I get on hands and knees. I search the floor. I feel the wall from the bottom edge to as high as I can reach. I am taller than Zel, so she couldn’t have hidden it higher than my hands know. I move clockwise, feeling, feeling. Ah, yes, here is the loose stone. I hear Zel gasp behind me. My fingers dig. The stone comes into my hand. I turn and face Zel.

  Zel opens her mouth. “A sharp stone, Rascal, the ants, the moon.” The words come as if intoned. She smiles. “Oh, yes, and the lice, but they are dead, every one of them. Now you know all my secrets. It is your turn to give, Mother.”

  I will not listen. Zel’s words are gibberish. She is walking the edge of sanity. I have to fight my arms. They want to cradle Zel. I wish her small again, simple and trusting. I throw the stone out the window.

  “And there was Pigeon Pigeon.” Zel’s words come like arrows. I recoil instinctively. “But I killed her, Mother. I’m so sorry, but I did it.” She lifts her chin. “Your turn to give, Mother.”

  I know about giving. If Zel chooses well, I can give much. “I offer the gift of talking with animals.”

  “You know I ache for this gift.” Zel smiles dreamily. “But, like you said, first things first, Mother.”

  I feel off balance. Zel seems suddenly older, wiser, stronger. I understand what she has said: Freedom is a prerequisite. Only then will she talk about the gift. Can I risk giving her freedom first? “I’ll be back on your birthday, Zel.” I go to kiss my daughter.

  Zel ducks.

  A cry of anguish escapes my throat. My eyes film over. I must keep moving. I lower the braids out the window. The lack of the kiss burns my lips. I am descending so fast I lose my grip and fall the final few feet. I half walk, half run down the mountainside to the lake.

  I slapped my daughter. Something must change.

  Chapter 24Zel

  he pain in Zel’s temples is horrendous. She sits on the hot stone floor in her dress. She will dirty the dress. She has coiled her heavy hair around herself. Her temples bang. Her head would explode, should explode. Mother is gone without a good-bye kiss. And it was Zel who turned her face away, stupid, lost Zel.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let me climb your golden hair.”

  Zel almost swoons with ecstasy. Mother has returned. Mother has forgiven her. Mother may even be crying, for her voice is rough and broken. Oh, Mother. Mother will kiss Zel and Zel will kiss her back. She lowers her braids out the window and waits. Second chances are ecstasy.

  Zel stands, astounded. The man in the window jumps to the floor with a noise as though he is real. His weight on her braids was real. She smells his sweat. She sees the hairs of his arms, the mixture of confusion and hope in his eyes. His shirt and face are covered with dirt. “Who are you, dirty man?”

  The man wipes at the dirt on his face. “I told you already. Believe me.”

  “Count Konrad.” Zel pulls her braids up into the room.

  The man smiles. “The dress becomes you.” He blinks and adds in haste, “Though you are better without it.”

  Zel’s cheeks grow hot. “Dirt becomes you, Count.”

  The man laughs.

  Zel likes his laugh. It is unique. She could not have made it up. Count Konrad is here. Her head spins. Her hands fly in and out; they cannot stay still. He is real, she is real, he is real, she is real. “How did you get here? I mean, I know you came on Meta. I know you climbed my hair. But how, really, how did you get here?”

  “I’ve been looking for you for two years. Tod
ay I found you quite by chance.”

  “Why? Why would you look for me?”

  “Why do you remember my horse’s name?”

  Zel’s cheeks flame now. “I live here.”

  Konrad’s eyes go to the charcoal drawings on the walls, the mattress on the floor, the waste bucket, the stack of papers with pens and brushes. His voice is iron: “Not for long.”

  Zel’s eyes burn. It is all she can do to keep them open. “If I leave the tower, my enemy will kill me.”

  “What enemy?”

  “I do not know. Mother knows.”

  “There is no enemy.”

  “How can you know?”

  “I have to know. It has to be so.”

  Zel blinks now. Her eyes hurt less. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I have already made my decision.” She feels a stirring of some part of her she’d forgotten. “I’d rather be killed in an instant outside this tower than die slowly within it.”

  “You will not be killed. I will come back with a rope, and we will both climb down.” Konrad speaks with assurance. Then he hesitates. Zel sees him swallow hard. “You will come with me?”

  “I will come.”

  Konrad’s face flushes. He steps forward. “Zel, oh, Rapunzel, you need time to reflect.” He stops. He licks his lips. He speaks softly. “Time to recover.” Zel can barely hear him now. “And in time, I hope”—Konrad’s words come out so slowly—“I hope you will marry me.”

  Zel looks at her hands. They seem strangers, disassociated from her. Zel is a series of separate pieces matted together with spider web. She holds her hands out to this Count Konrad, palms up, slightly cupped. “What can you put in these hands?”

  Konrad looks at them. “My love and devotion.”

  Love and devotion are wispy. They are the things her visions are made of. They paint pictures that have shape and shadow but no color. Zel waits.

  Konrad speaks a little more loudly. “Dust of the earth and beams of the moon.”

  Zel’s lips part. Some nights she is at one with the moon. Perhaps Konrad can see the moon part of her. So he is aware of shape and shadow and moonglow. But can he see the rest of her?

  Konrad looks into Zel’s eyes. He seems to swim there for a moment. Then he takes a deep breath and bows his head. He kisses Zel’s palms with the heat and tenderness of mortality.

  “Yes,” breathes Zel. “Yes.”

  Chapter 25Konrad

  onrad is insatiable. His hands press along Zel’s hairline and temples, around the shells of her ears. They follow the crest of her throat and circle the thin stalk of her neck, ever knowing. He undresses her with trembling insistence. His mouth finds her perfect. He believes he tastes the heady maturity of ripe plums; the bitter edge of small, round lettuce leaves; the sweetness of fresh milk. He believes he might die, he might burst like the constellation of Perseus in August—a shower of shooting stars—but for her call, her cry, the knowledge that she needs him as much as he needs her. The years of deprivation hone the afternoon, the evening, the night.

  He lies beside her now. Beside his true love. She is a miracle; she is woman, yet so much of what she says is childlike. She is without guile. Konrad knows Zel has been gravely harmed. Her talk is disjointed; at times she raves. And her hair. No earthly force could make her hair grow so long in two years, in twenty years, in a lifetime. Zel has suffered under an evil power. Konrad knows as well, he knows with more conviction than he’s ever known anything else in his life, that their love will restore her, their love will triumph over whatever wickedness the world holds.

  He sleeps.

  Chapter 26Mother

  he market in afternoon is less crowded than in morning. The fish vendor is gone, as is the cheese vendor. But the fruits and vegetables yet stand in half-depleted pyramids. I will buy Zel a fruit in every nuance of color. She will forget the slap. She will kiss me again.

  I stand at a table. The vendor looks at me with narrow eyes.

  I drop my head. This is the first time I’ve been to town in two years without a kerchief covering my hair and cheeks. Once I realized the man with the horse was in search of Zel, I knew I could go nowhere without covering my face. I couldn’t risk being recognized for the woman who walked with the young girl in braids. I feel suddenly naked. Yet this fruit vendor couldn’t possibly remember me from the days when I came with Zel. I will pay and be off. But no. I have brought no money. I never planned to come to the market. How stupid it all is. I can have whatever fruits I want just by willing the trees to bear them before my eyes on the way home.

  I spin on my heel and walk to the fine shops that line the perimeter of the square. I hold my head high. I don’t care if people recognize me. This is my last visit to town without Zel.

  I walk into the milliner’s. I select a straw hat. I gaze at it fixedly. The hat folds in on itself, twists and curls and ages. I leave the store and wait out back. I wait a long while. The milliner is a dunce. Eventually, though, he takes stock, for now he opens the door and tosses the ruined hat into the trash pile. I retrieve it and put it in my cloth bag.

  I walk into the cobbler’s. The shoes are made of leather. I cannot control parts of animal. But, yes, there’s a wooden pair from the north country. I run my fingers lightly over the surfaces. The clogs dry and split. “Ahi,” I say loudly. I suck at my finger. “This splinter goes clear to my bone.”

  The cobbler looks at me with swift suspicion. Then he sees the clogs. “Forgive me, madam. I’ll use them for firewood.”

  “They caused me pain. Surely they should cook my dinner, not yours.”

  The cobbler seems chagrined. “Of course.” He wraps the clogs in paper and hands them to me. I put them in my cloth bag.

  And now I enter the tailor’s shop. The burghers’ wives have their garments fashioned here. A linen gown covers a wooden torso. I am lucky: The form is fresh spruce. The dress is completely stitched together and needs only finishing touches on hem and cuffs. I blow on the dress.

  “Yes, madam?” The seamstress stands beside me in a black dress decorated with gold-lace filigree—proof of her skills.

  “I’d like a dress like this one, but, oh . . .” I point and look disgusted.

  Spruce gum seeps through the linen. Sticky stains streak the gown.

  The seamstress cannot seem to shut her mouth. She stares.

  I look haughty. “I’ll come back another day. And I’d throw out that torso if I were you.”

  “Indeed.” The seamstress picks up the torso and sets it outside by the alley. She wipes her hands on her apron and comes back in, passing me as I leave.

  I peel the gown from the torso.

  Tonight I will order the straw of the hat to rejuvenate. I will order the wood of the clogs to mend. I will order the linen of the gown to rid itself of resin. Zel will have a new outfit.

  And what will she do in her new outfit? She goes nowhere. The last time she had a new dress was when she entered the tower.

  Something must change.

  I am walking the road home. I stumble. Suddenly I remember the smell of horse, strong near the base of Zel’s tower. But Zel hadn’t seen a real horse. She spoke of a vision.

  Can I close my eyes and see Zel now? This past winter, Zel asked if I ever sat in the cottage and closed my eyes to see her in the tower. When I answered yes, she made me promise never to do that again. Merely looking around the base of the tower, though, would not be breaking the promise. I close my eyes. My mind walks around the tower. Now in a bigger circle. No horse. Zel is safe. I open my eyes.

  I arrive home. I eat. I sew. The starry night passes and still I sit. Moonlight assails my eyes. My back aches. The thimble is stuck, I jammed it down so hard. I lay down the needle and thread. I work the thimble free. It drops and rolls on the floor. I don’t pick it up.

  I pinch the skin on the back of my hand at the knuckle. It stays in a ridge. I hold my thumb to the moonlight. As I suspected: The little indented rings of the thimble stay clear on my skin. I am not resil
ient. I grow old. Time is short.

  Oh, for the ability to cry! Dry sobs stick in my throat. I am as dry as Zel has been all these years. My chest heaves. What did Zel say? She spoke a strange list—ants and lice, Rascal and the sharp stone. She said she killed Pigeon Pigeon and she spoke of the moon. Oh! It is I who reduced Zel to that raving girl. Zel walks the precipice with eyes half closed. All because of me.

  And the wailing in my ears won’t stop.

  I pick up the fiddle to fight off the wails. But it turns on me—it screams like January winds, like a bereft mother.

  I don my shoes. I will not waste energy calling up the water plants to help me cross the lake. I will need that energy later. I practically fly down the mountainside to the road. No one is about at this hour but owls and foxes. It is Zel’s birthday. And, oh, I left behind the bag of presents, the perfect outfit. But Zel won’t want it. I know that. In a burst of clarity, I know everything.

  I circle around the north side of town, to the west, and then come back south, now on the opposite side of the lake. My shoulders fold inward. My skin puckers like drying fruit, like kissing lips.

  LOVE

  Chapter 27Konrad

  erhaps it is the lack of moonlight, the stillness of the air, that wakes Konrad. He lies wide-eyed in the dark. Then the owl’s screech comes, and he realizes there is a sliver of a moon, after all, enough to make out Zel’s form beside him. She is lovely in sleep. Her breath comes in warm, gentle swells that make him absurdly happy. With one finger he runs a line down her forehead, down her nose, to her lips, which pucker now. Would that all his daughters should have such lips.

  Zel opens her eyes as her head tilts toward his finger. “You are still here.”

  Konrad kisses her on the mouth. “Dawn comes soon. I have to leave.”

  “You are here now.” She touches his left cheek, on his dimple.

  “Of course I’m here now. But I must go.” Konrad gets to his feet. “I’ll return with a dagger and a rope.” He thinks of the woman who comes every day at noon and climbs up his love’s braids. He must be back well before noon. A dagger, a rope, an iron peg to attach the rope to, a hammer to pound the peg in. He is now all business. He dresses quickly. The eastern sky lightens almost imperceptibly.