Zel

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Zel sits. “Stay till the sun comes.” Her voice is the murmur of deer nuzzling clover. It touches barely, leaving the grass in wonder. “All I can say to the moon is ‘Who?’ Do not be a man who goes with the moon.”

  Konrad flies to her side and hugs her. He should not have let himself get so caught up in the job at hand. There is plenty of time to ride to the castle and be back before noon. Zel needs his reassurance. He has heard enough, guessed enough, to understand why. “Believe in me. I am. Just as you are.”

  They lie in silence, kissing. These kisses are at once less urgent and more forceful than yesterday’s. And this passion so far exceeds that of his youthful dreams and fantasies, Konrad knows: He would willingly give his life for Zel. He gets up at last and dresses once more. He walks to the window.

  Zel follows without a word. She lowers her braids over the ledge.

  Konrad climbs to the ground. He goes uphill to where he has left Meta this whole night. He does not look back, though he knows Zel wants him to. He cannot, for fear that he won’t leave.

  Konrad approaches the tree where he tied the mare. This is where she should be. But the tree itself is gone and the horse is nowhere around. Her reins, bridle, and bit lie on the ground. Konrad looks around in alarm.

  He peers at the trees, every muscle tense. The horror returns—that horror he felt in the scrub cedar when he first saw Zel’s braids fly from the window and watched Mother climb. He expects something, anything, a sign of watchful eyes, eyes responsible for the fate of Meta. “Advance,” he says aloud.

  No one attacks.

  Instead, he hears the familiar whinny. He takes the reins and bridle and rushes through the brush and trees to a small meadow. Meta grazes. She turns a placid eye to him. Her smell, the ripple of her withers, they are like always. Her mane is tangled, but then, she has been all night on her own. She gives no indication of being enchanted. Konrad weighs the risk; he takes it. The bit and bridle slide on.

  He rides with Zel’s words in his mouth: “Don’t disappear.” His blood runs wild. This is what love is. This is what life is.

  Chapter 28Zel

  el watched Konrad dress. She remembers the lock of hair that swings over his eye when he lowers his head, the glint of the belt buckle, the white flecks in his nails. Her mind draws him now. Her heart feels him. Her tongue tastes him.

  She stares at where Konrad disappeared into the brush. She thinks she called after him, “Don’t disappear.” She thinks her call was loud. But she does not know. She thinks he was here, but she does not know. One moment can reverse the next. Life is slippery. Zel looks up: No stars are left in the sky. She turns around: No words are left in the room. She gulps the air. She would burst.

  But she mustn’t. All is near. She closes her mouth and forces the air through her nose. Her eyes can see the room and what fills it. Believe the eyes. Believe the man.

  She makes no noise. If she violates the air with words, she will dissolve, like salt in water.

  Zel touches the stain on the sheet, her wedding sheet, for last night she and Konrad vowed to love each other till death do them part. Konrad spoke in crystal tones. He said he would love her beyond death. And when she asked what that might mean, he looked at her in silence. Then he said they’d have much to tell each other in the years ahead.

  Zel pushes the mattress to one side and looks at the scratches in the floor. She cannot add one this morning. The sharp stone that had been her only night friend is lost in the woods. Zel traces the marks with her fingers. She would like to add one final mark as part of saying good-bye. Konrad is going to bring back a dagger. She can scratch the floor with the blade.

  But what will Konrad do with his dagger?

  Zel thinks suddenly of Pigeon Pigeon. When she climbs down, she will search, for Pigeon Pigeon deserves a proper burial.

  Zel sits. A coldness enters her bones. Life is slippery. She mustn’t stand or she’ll fall. She has been happier this night than she has dared to hope for in these past two years.

  But life is slippery.

  She stretches out on the mattress. She turns her face to the window and gazes at the deepest blue of the sky. Her job now is one she’s been well prepared for: She waits.

  * * *

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

  Zel stirs from the semiconscious state she knows how to ease into and out of at will. She rises from the mattress. She feels she walks on a cushion of air. Mother is here, but it cannot be noon yet. Mother is here and Konrad has not returned. Zel does not allow herself the indulgence of fear. Konrad has asked her to believe in him.

  Zel lowers her braids from the window. She flinches as Mother climbs. It is hard to keep the nausea from rising. Zel puts both hands over her mouth to hold in the cry. Mother will never climb up these braids again, for she can exit the tower with Konrad and Zel, by rope. Endings exist after all. An ending, this. An ending to what seemed endless only yesterday.

  Mother comes through the window and stands on the floor. She coils Zel’s braids. Her face speaks shock and grief. “Do you always sleep naked?”

  “Yes.” Zel does not say that she dresses only for Mother’s Hour. And Mother does not ask. It is clear to both that Mother understands Zel has kept secrets. They will not speak of this. A thin coating of kindness covers them—the result of yesterday’s slap. They will not cause more pain than they must. Zel is grateful.

  “The moon was crescent. The trollblooms are out.” Mother speaks rapidly. “I surprised a small brown bear, lolling in the day lilies by a stream.”

  Zel cannot understand why Mother is speaking like this. Mother never tells of what she sees on her way to the tower.

  “Did you happen to spy a rogue goat or a buck with wide antlers?” Mother grasps Zel’s wrist tight. “Did you?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “My mind plays tricks. I thought I heard hoofbeats when I was down near the lake. And yesterday I thought I smelled horse.” Mother shakes her head with sudden deliberation. “Little is served by banter, Zel. We must speak. I have something to tell you.”

  “And I have something to tell you, Mother.”

  Surprise fills Mother’s face. “What could you have to tell?”

  “I’m leaving the tower, Mother.”

  Mother sways. Zel reaches to steady her, but Mother steps back and puts a hand against the wall. “We must talk of Heaven and Hell.”

  Zel is slightly alarmed by the randomness of Mother’s words. But she won’t be distracted from what she must say. She speaks with tenderness. “I don’t have to stay here any longer, Mother.”

  Mother’s back rests against the wall now. Her eyes seem to glaze over. “You have to choose, Zel. If you stay with me . . .”

  “I will not stay in the tower.” There is no animus in Zel’s voice, only quiet mountain stones, the stones that make up a child raised on the alm. Her eyes are the fertile soil of Mother’s garden. She knows both steamy earth and frozen rock. Please, Mother, please see me. Please hear me. Please know me.

  “Of course, you’re right.” Mother nods quickly. “You can return to the alm. You can bargain for your gift there.”

  Zel hears the words, but she has trouble decoding them. Mother is rambling about a bargain. Zel must enter Mother’s words and bring her slowly around to Zel’s words. It is difficult for Mother. Zel knows how difficult, for, after all, was not she unbelieving when Konrad first entered her tower room? “I don’t want to bargain, Mother.”

  “Of course you want to bargain. That’s how you get your gift.”

  “What gift?”

  “The gift of talking with animals.”

  Talking with animals. Yesterday when Mother promised that gift, Zel’s heart lurched. Now it pounds. The gift is a natural one for Zel. “Give me the gift, Mother.”

  “First I have things to tell you.”

  Zel nods. “Hurry.”

  “We must do nothing quickly. Not
hing thoughtlessly.” Mother looks into Zel’s eyes. As she talks, she seems to sink down the wall. “The eye of God is cool and graceful. But the gift can be as passionate and searing and twisting as you want. The depths compel exquisitely. They pierce to the core.”

  The words would wrap Zel in unfathomable silky threads, they would render Zel helpless to Mother’s wisdom, but for last night. Zel has her own understanding, an understanding that allows her to find sense in Mother’s words. “Dear Mother, I’ve known passion. And I will never give it up.”

  Mother is now on the floor. She looks up at Zel with hope in her eyes. “Oh, yes, I knew you would choose me. No mother and child have loved more passionately. But I must tell you certain things first. They won’t matter, but I must speak. Then you can choose to live with me on the alm like before.”

  Zel shakes her head. Mother makes no sense, after all. She persists in confusion. Zel is sorry for her, sorry for a woman who cannot distinguish between the passion of mother and child and the passion of lovers. Is that why Zel’s father left? “It cannot be as before, dear Mother.” She reaches down and rests her hand on Mother’s hair. The sun shines bright. “You are darker,” she says, thinking of Konrad.

  “Everything will out, Zel.” Mother holds on to Zel’s hand. “Your mother loved rapunzel.”

  Zel laughs at the craziness of this conversation, though it could as easily make her cry. So Mother did love rapunzel, after all. She touches Mother’s wide, raised cheek. “You are plumper,” she says, thinking of Konrad.

  “I . . . I made a trade with her. She took my rapunzel. I took hers.”

  Zel knits her brows. She is used to meaningless words In the past year Mother’s voice has often not made sense. But usually that’s because Zel can’t make herself listen to the words. Today Zel fixes those words with a steady eye, yet still they make no sense. And, worse, there is something terribly wrong. She bends and holds Mother tight, as though her body could tell Mother of the joyous change and make Mother understand, make Mother stop saying things that would disturb despite their obvious perversity. She lifts Mother to her feet. “You are heavier,” she says, thinking of Konrad.

  “We had a lovely life together.” Mother’s hands run down Zel’s back, tapping the vertebrae, playing the ribs. “Remember those years, Zel. All I had to give was my soul, and in return I got the gift that led to you.”

  Zel eases a little away from Mother. “Your soul?”

  “A small thing in comparison with all that love.”

  Zel sifts through the words. So much is babble. But the part about Mother’s soul she plucks out to pick apart. Mother always told her that her soul was that spirit with which she feels the glory of the world. Mother has traded her soul for love? How can that be? Souls and love shouldn’t be balanced against one another, for aren’t they made of the same stuff? Zel stares at Mother.

  “Good, good. Keep concentrating.” Mother smiles. “Zel, you are here in the tower because you have to choose. You can keep your soul and risk damning it some other way, perhaps never knowing love again anyway—for most people live loveless lives—or you can trade your tiny soul for a gift that can lead wherever you want.”

  Zel seizes on Mother’s first words. “But the enemy?”

  “What enemy?”

  “The enemy.” Zel’s ears fill with the thunder of blood, heating, racing. Her lips curl away from her teeth. A hiss of pain escapes her. “You said I was in this tower because of the enemy who wanted to kill me. But now you say I am here because I have to choose.” Her voice rises. “Which is right?”

  Mother raises a hand in front of her face. “They both are.”

  “No, Mother.” Anger tempers Zel’s voice. It is now hard as a dagger blade. “Which is right?”

  Mother cowers. “It was a way of speaking. You didn’t understand yet. I knew you’d make the wrong choice. So I called the wrong choice your enemy. It was just a way of speaking.”

  “You locked me in this tower; you made me think someone wanted to kill me; you kept me from the pleasures of the world, from all company but one hour a day with you, just because you thought I’d make the wrong choice? What choice are you talking about, Mother?” Zel is screaming now. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “I’m not talking of this world. I’m talking of the next.” Mother huddles against Zel’s shoulder. “Don’t yell at me, Daughter. Please.”

  And now Zel goes over all those words. “Daughter? Am I really your daughter?”

  Mother trembles. She curls in upon herself.

  “Tell me! Tell me what you meant in those words before! Did you get me in a trade for rapunzel, for a handful of leaves? Did you really?” Tears weigh inside Zel’s lower eyelids. She has not cried for two years—all for Mother’s sake. She protected Mother from full knowledge of her sadness. The irony hurts. “Do not lie to me ever again.” She steps away so a full block of the stone floor separates her from Mother, this woman for whom she has no name but Mother, a lie in the very name. And now Zel remembers Konrad’s words when first he appeared at her tower: You are kept prisoner. Yes, Mother has imprisoned Zel. Mother has betrayed Zel’s love.

  Mother totters and falls. “We have a bond of passion no one and nothing can break. You have chosen me.” She puts her face to Zel’s feet. “Cry for me, Zel. Feel my pain. Cry!”

  Zel shakes her head. Her tears blur her vision, but they do not fall. Her rage already subsides. She is still alive after the knowledge of the indecent trade; the wound that cleft has not killed. The woman on the floor is no stranger; this woman has been family to Zel for as long as she can remember. And Konrad is her husband now. So Zel has everything she could want. Her happiness prevails. It heals fast and deep. And this woman’s sadness prostrates her. Zel’s voice softens again. “When I spoke of passion, I spoke not of you.”

  Mother looks from Zel’s feet to her face. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, her voice comes raspy. “What is his name?”

  Zel touches the top of Mother’s head with the very tips of her fingers. This woman raised her. This woman was as good as a mother could be, until she thought Zel would leave her.

  “His name. Tell me his name.”

  “Count Konrad.” Both Zel’s hands are now on Mother’s head. They run down to cup her cheeks. What better reason for betrayal than this?

  “Pity disgusts me.” Mother slaps away Zel’s hands. “I am the one who loves you. Me!” She grabs Zel’s braids and pulls her down. She clamps her teeth and rips.

  Zel shakes her head as the hair comes away. She is so light, so light-headed. She could fly. No, she could float. She is dizzy. One moment reverses the last. What next?

  Mother whimpers now. Her fists press tight to her own ears.

  Zel is frightened for Mother. Her hands open instinctively. That’s when she hears the noise. It is whisperlike at first, then windy, then like a tempest, as the branches stretch and grow. Those branches that Zel once wished would reach to her are now, at last, reaching into the tower room and twisting around Zel’s waist. She cannot break free. Zel’s scream is barely heard above the grind of wood on wood. Even within Zel’s head the scream is almost lost.

  Grabbed and stolen and flying.

  SCATTERING

  Chapter 29Mother

  stand and watch Zel whipping from branch to branch, from tree to tree, the forest taking and yielding like hands passing a lit candle, until the girl is gone from sight and silence returns to the wood.

  I fall back onto the mattress, exhausted. I am barely conscious. Only slowly do I realize what has just taken place. Zel is gone. Forever gone. How can it be? Twice defiled.

  If only she had let her tears fall.

  When Zel still stood before me, I closed my eyes. I saw within her womb to the cells that split and multiplied, to the act of God that punished me worse than anything else. Zel had it without a price. She had what I longed for. Women everywhere have it so easily and now Zel joined them, joined the legion of wo
men who have what I never could. Oh, God, what savage trick you played, to pick for barrenness a woman who couldn’t bear to exist without a child. Too much unfairness. Too much brutality.

  That’s when I heard green wood rubbing on green wood.

  I am powerless against myself. I know the hideous.

  * * *

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

  The man sings in the same tune I use, the tune I have played on my fiddle so many times. I hadn’t even heard the hoofbeats. But I knew he would come. I stand. My hands take hold of the ends of Zel’s braids, ends ripped ragged by my iron teeth. I toss the other ends from the window. I feel the braids plummet, like dead birds.

  The man’s weight is less than mine. Just as Zel said, I am heavier.

  His head appears, one leg climbing above his shoulder level, spiderlike. He sees me and stops, frozen. He blocks the sun; his face is lost in shadow. Nevertheless, I can see his skin is fair. Just as Zel said, I am darker.

  “Count Konrad. You failed to kill the goose.” I consider the rope coiled over his shoulder.

  He works his way onto the window ledge. His eyes search the room. His shoulders jerk spasmodically. He crouches. He is thin. Just as Zel said, I am plumper.

  Still, I am amazed I found the strength to hold on to those braids while this man climbed. First the trees stole my energy. Now this count used up more. Hardly any remains, and what there is can barely sustain the life within me. I pant in the heat. I still hold to the braids, more to keep myself standing than anything else. My mouth speaks with words that come from nowhere: “Life is slippery.”

  Konrad wipes the sweat from his lip. He pants as well. “Where’s Zel?”