The Fairest of Them All

by Carolyn Turgeon

  “I didn’t know you were so important!”

  She laughed at my enthusiasm. “I gave her advice. Spells. Like what we do now for the women who come see us, I did that for her then. She was a great believer in the stars. I expect she still is.”

  “You read the stars for her?”

  Our work suddenly had a glamour to it that hadn’t been there before. I imagined myself, sitting beside the queen—I pictured a stunning woman draped in jewels—reading her cards, her stars, her tea leaves.

  “She wouldn’t do anything without checking the sky. People used to be like that then.”

  “At court? I thought magic wasn’t allowed there. That’s why we can’t call ourselves witches.”

  She looked at me sharply. “Don’t ever use that word, Rapunzel. Not even here. Do you understand? People can be hanged for that now.”

  I sat back, reprimanded, but her words were hard to understand when such terrors seemed so far away. I set my tea down on the floor.

  “Things were different then,” she said, leaning back on the couch. “It wasn’t a bad thing to be known as . . . an enchantress.” She smiled at the word. “People believed in magic. They still do, obviously, but things changed in the palace before I left. A new priest came. The king reformed, and it became a crime to talk openly about such things.”

  I nodded, but I was already far away, imagining Mathena and the queen sitting side by side, the queen’s jewel-covered hand upturned on a table between them.

  I wanted a life like that. I wanted to have more in my life than this cottage in the forest.

  “Here,” Mathena said, setting down her tea and grabbing my wrist, “let’s go outside.” She dropped the branch she’d been holding. In front of us, the fire leapt up as if to grab it.

  We walked outside, the sky black and clear above us, scattered with thousands of stars. The garden squatted down next to us. Above us, the tower seemed to stretch indefinitely.

  She sat, cross-legged, on the grass, gathering her long skirt into her lap. I sat next to her, despite the cold. Breathing in, I smelled smoke and rotting leaves.

  “I spent a lot of time at court just staring at the sky,” she said.

  I stared up with her, wondering at the mysteries embedded with it. Already I could make out the characters in the great stories she’d told me. Pegasus. Orion, Artemis’s lover, with his bright sword. Scorpio, who killed him, stretching his tail across the sky.

  “Can you see anything about my son?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “I think he will be born in Cancer,” she said. “Do you see it up there, the crab?”

  I followed her finger to the faint spots in the northern sky, the line of stars splitting into thin claws. “Yes! Hercules kicked the crab into the sky, right, after Hera sent it to him? While he was battling the Hydra?”

  She smiled. “You remember. It’s been years since I told you those stories.”

  “I remember all of them,” I said.

  “He will be strong and gifted,” she said. “Like his mother.”

  We lay back, side by side, watching the stories in the sky. I imagined my own body being placed in the heavens, outlined by diamonds.

  I felt a rumbling through the earth before I heard it. I sat up, instinctively placing my palms over my belly. It sounded as if a whole army were heading toward us, with hundreds of horses storming over the ground, their massive hooves shod with iron.

  Mathena sat up and put her hand on my shoulder, keeping me seated. “It’s all right,” she said. “Stay where you are.”

  The hooves got louder. Leaves shook on the trees around us, rattling together, and then I saw several figures—five, I counted—men with sacks raised up in their arms, knives and crossbows strapped to their sides, approaching through the woods. In the dark, their bodies were hulking shadows and it was impossible to tell where man and horse divided, so that it seemed as if great mythic beasts were bearing down on us.

  Bandits.

  My heart hammered in my chest. They came right toward us. I ignored Mathena and scraped at the ground, trying to move out of their way, but I felt as if my own feet were covered in iron. The sound deafened me, the earth shook beneath me. All the while, Mathena sat calmly watching.

  And then they were upon us, we were right in their path and there was no way to move. I bunched myself into a ball, tears streaming down my face, waiting to be run down.

  The sound, the smell of horse and man passed over me. The horses ran right through me as if I were not even there. I twisted my neck and watched their shadows disappearing into the woods on the other side of us.

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure what had just happened. If it weren’t for the taste of dirt in my mouth, the overturned earth all around us, I might have thought I’d imagined it.

  I looked over at Mathena, who was steadily watching me.

  “What . . . ?” I began, not sure what to say.

  “You’re safe,” she said.

  “Those were bandits, weren’t they?” I’d heard stories about them for as long as I could remember—how they lived in a house by the river, outside the kingdom’s rule, preying on those who entered the forest.

  She nodded. “Yes, but they cannot hurt us. Not here.”

  I looked at her, amazed, this woman who’d read the stars for a queen.

  It was the first time I had seen one of Mathena’s protection spells at work.

  That night I slept in the tower and was plagued by strange dreams, in which my son was alive and whole, come to see me. His blue eyes stared up at me, his fists unfolded and became massive. Antlers rose from his skull, twisting like branches into the air, puncturing the clouds.

  I woke up with my palms under my belly, cradling him, on my side on the stone floor, clutching my stomach. I was so ravenous I couldn’t make it to the house and the cupboards there. I wrapped myself in furs and flew down the winding stairs and out into the winter frost and I dropped onto the ground, shoving leaves and dirt into my mouth. My child wailed inside me. I could hear him, blending in with the wind that whipped my hair into a storm around and above me. I wished I had two mouths, three mouths, to take it all in, to eat the earth, the leaves and grass, the acorns that tasted as marvelous as cream.

  After, I hauled myself back up the stairs, shaking from the cold, crawling on my hands and knees up the stone.

  I dropped the fur from my shoulders and looked in the mirror, and what I saw seared itself into my memory: I was reflected in the mad light of the roaring fire, half in shadows and smeared in dirt. My slight, rounded belly. My hair like a wild robe hanging to the floor and swirling on the stone, scattered through with leaves and bark and frost. My breasts, too, were becoming rounder, and my nipples were black with dirt. Earth pushing through my body, tangling around my stomach, entering my womb.

  Outside the wind howled. The moon cast its eye on everything. The fire crackled, devouring the wood. Inside me, he was screaming, and the world turned feral.

  The mirror seemed to ripple, like water, as I peered into it.

  This is who I am, I thought.

  The woman in the glass. Wild and broken.

  I thought of the stories Mathena had told me of my real mother, who craved rapunzel and wasted away without it, because she could not stand to eat anything else. She could not grow it in her own garden, apparently, which was as barren as Mathena’s was lush and full. I imagined my mother standing at the window, growing thin from hunger, longing, that inexpressible need for something just beyond her reach to fill the dark space inside, even after she’d birthed me. And me, wailing beside her until she was forced to make me stop.

  Something blasted up inside me, a memory or not-memory, a banshee cry, a feeling that there was a dark force nearby wanting to harm me and that I would fight and die to protect myself, my child, from it. And then it seemed that this darkness was inside of me. Passed down from my mother to me.

  Winter came quickly and buried us in snow, and we sewed, mended, embroidered, a
te the food and burned the wood we had gathered during the vibrant summer months and the bountiful fall. Mathena made me teas to keep me strong and healthy. The occasional woman came and went, the more desperate ones willing to march through drifts that came up to their thighs to see us—sometimes they complained of love, sometimes of hunger and bare pantries, not enough food to last through the winter. I knew these women’s desperation now, and became a better practitioner for it.

  Occasionally, we heard word from court, usually half rumors and gossip that came to us third- or fourth-hand. I was always eager to hear of it. Of him, his wife, the palace.

  One day a young woman came to our door, an already small girl thinning from disease. I was stirring a stew over the stove. Mathena was spreading salve on the girl’s back when the girl told us the news.

  “The new princess is pregnant,” she said. “People say it’s a good sign, that things will be better for us now.”

  I dropped the spoon I was holding. “The wife of Prince Josef is with child?”

  “What wonderful news,” Mathena said quickly. “That we will have an heir.”

  “Yes,” the girl said, her feverish face shining with hope. “They say the princess has already taken to her bed. She doesn’t want to take any chances.”

  “It is a good sign indeed,” Mathena said, placing her hand on the girl’s shoulder. When the girl bent over in pain a moment later, Mathena looked over at me worriedly. Worried more for me than the girl, I realized.

  I stood there in stunned silence. I don’t know why I was so surprised by the news, but I was. Teresa was his wife, her main purpose was to bear him heirs. Yet somehow it had felt like what had happened in that tower was special, mine alone. Maybe she could have him, but only I could have his child.

  Mathena focused back on the girl. “Breathe this in,” she said, holding a packet of lemon balm and lavender to the girl’s face, “until it passes.”

  The girl breathed in. She sat back up, clearly exhausted.

  With shaking hands, I wrapped various treatments for the girl to take with her—salves and teas, special incense and potion—as Mathena helped the girl back into her dress. My shock shifted to anger, sorrow. Teresa’s child would be born in the palace, become a prince or princess, have everything in the world laid out for it, while my own son would have nothing at all.

  Mathena wove protection spells for the girl as she left, to protect her from bandits if not from the disease.

  “Do you really believe what you said?” I asked, after the girl disappeared from sight. “That it is a good sign?” My voice was hurt, accusing.

  “No,” she said, giving me a surprised look. “Of course not.”

  I nodded, blinking back tears.

  “Rapunzel,” Mathena said, sitting next to me. “You must forget him. For now.”

  The way she was watching me scared me. I could feel myself weaken, feel her magic at work. She was trying to make me tired and relaxed enough that I might not care what she did, or might find it easier to listen to her than to my own heart. I blinked, to stop it.

  “I have forgotten,” I lied.

  She sighed, not even bothering to acknowledge my statement. “It is the duty of his wife, to bear him children.” She hesitated, put her hand on my arm soothingly. “Not yours. It’s still not too late to be rid of it.”

  “Of what?”

  She gestured to my belly. “It’s more difficult now, but possible.”

  “No,” I said, gaping at her. How could she suggest such a thing?

  “You are destined for great things, Rapunzel,” she said. “You’ve become a powerful practitioner, and your beauty is a gift. A great gift that gives you strength and increases your magic. You’ll have many more gifts in this world. A child will only hinder you.”

  “Mathena! You’re speaking about my son.”

  “In the world, he’ll be a bastard. The queen’s child will have everything your own son will be denied. Don’t you want those things?”

  She continued to watch me in that same intent way.

  Her words confused me. “Yes, but . . . what can I do? I cannot have those things. It’s too late.”

  “Be patient,” she said. “Haven’t I taught you that the world can change in an instant?”

  Over the rest of that winter, darkness seemed to envelop us, so thick it was like a physical thing. The rush of women who came to us slowed down to a faint trickle of the truly desperate. The daylight, when it came, was ghostly, pale. All that mattered was keeping the fire lit, keeping food in our stomachs, making sure the child inside me survived. We spent most of our days with dried herbs spread around us, making potions and poultices for every kind of ailment, ripping pieces of cloth to wrap around particularly potent mixtures.

  My hunger did not abate. I wanted to eat everything, to lock myself in the cellar and devour every herb, every vegetable, every dried piece of meat. No matter how much we carried up and roasted in the hearth, it never seemed to be enough to fill me. Mathena even began locking the cellar at night, so that I would not run down in my half sleep and gorge myself.

  The days passed slowly. To distract me, Mathena told me stories of the old goddesses—Artemis turning Daphne slowly into a tree, limb by limb, Aphrodite rising from foam and sea, Hera ruling over all of them at the side of her brother Zeus, who was also her husband—and of the days when the queen consulted her on everything from what to eat for breakfast to which of her husband’s advisors would betray him. I loved her stories. Sometimes I would get so lost in them that I’d look down at the cloth and stalks and seeds in my hands and forget what they were, why I was holding them.

  At times, when I was restless and burning, I would take to the woods in the pure light of the afternoon with a fur wrap, often just with a bow and arrow, to hunt.

  Which was how I found myself outside one afternoon, stalking through the forest with Brune flying above me and my bow at my side, several arrows sticking out of the quiver on my back. I scanned the trees, the ground, but I was distracted, consumed as always by thoughts of what would happen, once I had brought his child into the world.

  What I would do then.

  And so I didn’t hear the swishing of branches, the light step of hooves, the way I might have normally, and did not sense the stag until it was right there in front of me.

  It stood in my path. I stopped, astonished. It stared back at me, and was unlike any deer I’d ever seen. It looked as bewildered as I did, and for a moment we both stood there in the snow, frozen. Antlers twisted from its skull like tree branches, a crown. Its eyes were big and black and round, soft. Beautiful.

  I was mesmerized.

  And then everything came into focus. I remembered why I was there, and could not believe my good fortune. Hunting was difficult in the winter, even when I was not with child, and at best I would return home with several squirrels or rabbits.

  I lifted my bow and aimed.

  “Stay,” I whispered.

  My heart pounded. I kept my fingers perfectly still.

  I released my hand and let the arrow loose. It flew through the air, and those moments seemed to stretch out and become hours, days, until the arrow landed, right in the animal’s throat. I could feel the arrow entering. I heard the wet, hard sound of it breaking the skin, entering blood and bone.

  The stag’s eyes never left mine.

  It staggered, blinking, and let out a terrible bleat.

  And then it turned and ran, and I took off after it, my fur-lined shoes pounding over earth and snow. I raced through the trees, Brune following in the sky, the scent of blood and death and dying all around me.

  I was surprised at how much life the animal still had in it, and I was forced to slow down, my body more lumbering than usual. But I was fleet and strong still, a daughter of Artemis, intent on my prey. Already I could taste the meat roasted over the fire.

  I ran through leaves and over tree trunks, past the great oak that had been split in a storm, along the river, followi
ng the animal’s tracks and blood, the sounds of it stumbling through the wood.

  And then I heard it falling, and I raced forward, toward the sound. I pushed through a cluster of trees, and found myself stepping into a small clearing.

  The tree branches swayed overhead. Brune landed in one of them, waiting for her reward.

  The wounded creature lay there, twisted in the snow, the arrow jutting from its neck straight into the air. I pulled my knife from my boot, ready to slit its throat, and moved forward. The stag shifted its head and looked up at me. I could see its anguish, hear its ragged breath, and then something pulled me up short.

  At first I thought I was seeing things. There was a glow around the animal’s body, the way it began to shimmer and shift. The antlers seemed to twist down, melt, just as everything on its body was transforming, like a tree throwing off ice and snow and sprouting green leaves. Its body was shrinking, its fur disappearing, until all that was left was pale skin.

  Human skin.

  I blinked, disoriented, wondering if I was imagining what was in front of me.

  There was a young man lying there now. Naked, wounded, blood streaming from his mouth, my arrow in his neck.

  For a moment I stood frozen, and then I ran to his side and collapsed on the ground next to him.

  His eyes were now a deep dark green, the color of leaves in summer. I placed my palms on his skin, half expecting him to disappear and for my hands to move right through him. But he was real, solid flesh, still warm. I moved my hands away.

  I knew there was magic in the forest, but I had never seen anything like this. His torso and legs were bare and muscled, his sex dangling down between his strong thighs. The only other man I’d seen naked—or even this close—was the prince, and I’d barely looked at his body, not like this, not in the sunlight, stretched out before me.

  The man’s face moved in pain, and I was disgusted with myself for caring about his nakedness.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, conquering my initial fears and taking his hand in mine. Liquid ran down his skin and I realized it was my tears. “You were . . . were you not a stag, just before? I did not know . . . ” The words felt ridiculous, even as I said them.