by David Miller
From where I sat I could see down into the space behind the wall, see the rows of plants and trees planted there. And by the tower was Jinka’s hut, its door closed despite the heat.
Maybe it was the carelessness of the afternoon, maybe it was curiosity, but as the minutes passed I found myself filled with a desire to enter the garden, to look inside her house. And so, moving quietly, I dropped to the ground and clambered over the wall.
Inside the air was warmer still, heated by the stones of the wall, and thick with the scent of grass and honeysuckle, and the golden peaches on her trees. Taking a peach, I bit into it, feeling the juice run down my chin.
Moving as quietly as I could, I approached the hut. From outside, it looked like a ruin, yet closer up it seemed different somehow: larger, more substantial. Through the window I could see a table and a bed, a fireplace of stone, a pot above it; from the roof and eaves hung charms and talismans: garlands of herbs, a fox’s tail, a string of knucklebones.
Outside the door I paused, glancing back across the gardens to the gate. In the distance I could hear a crow calling, but otherwise the air was still. Then, lifting a hand, I placed it on the door, and began to push.
The door swung open, but as it did I felt something behind me. At first I froze, then quickly turned and began to run. But although I was fast, she was faster, and in one sharp movement she grabbed my hair and pulled me close.
“Who’s this snooping in my house?” she hissed.
Writhing in her grasp, I did not answer, and so she twisted my hair and pulled me closer.
“Well?” she asked, her face so close to mine now, I could feel the hot fug of her breath, see the filed points of her teeth in her mouth. Afraid now, I fell still.
“What? You thought I hadn’t seen you lurking in the trees? That I didn’t know you were there?”
I tried to shake my head, the pain of it making me whimper. For a long moment she held me immobile, then with a snort she loosened her grip and released me. Stumbling back, I landed heavily on the path. She stared at me, then she smiled.
“Your mother, too,” she said, and laughed.
When I did not reply, she shook her head.
“So what did you think? That you would climb the tower? Visit your sister? You should be glad I don’t take you there, lock you up with her.”
Pulling myself to my feet, I rubbed my arm where I had fallen on it. “Why? I’ve done nothing.”
She smiled. “No? You’ve taken nothing that’s mine?”
As she spoke, I remembered the peach.
“No,” I said.
In a flash she grabbed my face.
“Liar!” she hissed, her nails biting into my skin. “You come into my garden and steal my fruit and you think I am so stupid I will not know?”
I was about to tear free and make for the wall when she paused, and, eyes narrowing, drew me in again. Then, as abruptly as she had grabbed me, she let me go. With a convulsive movement I jumped back, but she made no move to follow me.
“Would you meet her?” she asked.
I hesitated, watching her. Then I nodded.
I wonder now how much of her art was really magic. Much of what she knew was simply women’s lore: the knowledge of berries and plants, the making of medicines. Yet there was craft there, too, for she could mix a potion to make a woman throw a baby, or to draw desire from the heart or loins, and in the dark she would mutter spells and charms and curse those who offended her. Beneath it all, though, I suspect she was just cruel, and took pleasure in people’s fear of her, in the power that it gave. There was something black inside her, something cold and cunning, and that power pleased it, made it stronger.
Had I been older I might have realised this, and wondered at her readiness to show me her secrets, but that day such thoughts were banished by the idea of what she was offering me. And so I followed her to the tower, watching as she called to Rapunzel to cast down the rope.
She went first, scuttling up the side of the tower like a spider or a rat. From below I watched as she climbed onto the ledge beside the window and unlocked the cage. Then she looked down at me, and nodded.
Before that day Rapunzel had been more an idea of a girl to me than a person of flesh and blood. Indeed, it was not until I let go of the rope on that ledge beside her window and heard her asking Jinka who was outside that it occurred to me she might have her own past, her own thoughts, or that learning there were others in the world beside Jinka and herself might be frightening.
I was nervous, too, of course. Yet as I swung down from the window I could see Rapunzel was far more so, her face pale and body tensed as if for flight.
For a long moment nobody spoke. Then at last Rapunzel took a step back.
“Who’s this?” she asked, not letting her eyes stray from me.
By the fireplace, Jinka smiled. “Ask her,” she said, the harshness of her voice outside replaced by something cloying and sweet.
Still unwilling to let me out of her sight Rapunzel glanced quickly at Jinka, then back at me again.
“Well?” Jinka said.
Rapunzel hesitated. Up close she was smaller than I had imagined her, slimmer, and, if anything, more beautiful. Then, as if reaching a decision, she gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
“Who are you?” she asked.
I looked at Jinka. Down below she had made me promise I would not tell Rapunzel anything that would make her suspect we were related.
“Juniper,” I said, “my name is Juniper.”
Opposite me, Rapunzel nodded.
“Where have you come from?” she asked. “How did you find us?”
Again I looked at Jinka. “I live nearby,” I said, “in a house in the forest.”
“Mother?” she asked. Jinka smiled, her face cold.
“She means us no harm,” she said. “Would I have brought her here if she did?”
Rapunzel hesitated, then shook her head. “No, Mother,” she said.
I did not stay long that day: half an hour, little more. Then Jinka bade me leave, and sent me back down the rope.
Outside in the forest I moved lightly through the trees. It was still hot, and although on another day I might have returned home to eat, today I had no desire to, preferring to be in motion, to follow the paths through the shaded spaces of the forest.
It was growing dark by the time I found my way back to my parents’ house. Although it was late I knew my father would not be back for another hour yet, for he had been working in a valley to the west. I was surprised, though, to find my mother seated on a log outside our hut, her sewing in her lap. As I approached, she called to me, and I crossed to where she sat.
She did not rise, just looked up, her eyes taking in my dirty feet and ragged dress, the tangles in my hair. In the summer sun my skin had taken on the grey-brown tan and freckles those of my colouring are prone to.
“So late,” she said.
I did not answer, and she smiled, extending a hand.
“Come here,” she said, “let me see you.”
Obediently I knelt before her, allowing her hand to caress my hair, my head.
“You’re growing up,” she said, and I nodded, feeling her hand come down to cup my chin, turn my face to hers.
“Where do you go? What is it you find out there?”
I shrugged, holding her gaze.
“Nowhere.”
“Are you sure? Do you have no friends? I hear you are sometimes in town.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
For a moment she was silent. “And today?” she asked. “Where were you today?”
I hesitated, my heart beating fast, then shrugged again.
“Nowhere,” I lied.
The next morning I slipped out before my mother rose, making my way to the tower through the dawn light. As I came through the gate, Jinka appeared at the door to her hut.
“You come back?” she said, and I nodded.
“Yet I did not say I would let you see her agai
n.”
No doubt my face betrayed me, for she smiled coldly. “What? You thought you would just scurry up there, take what is mine?”
When I did not answer, she gave a short laugh. “Stupid child. A witch’s gift is never given freely.”
I hesitated, but when I spoke I held my voice level. “What is it you would have me do?”
For a moment or two she stared at me, then she smiled. “Not much,” she said, “just little things.”
That morning the price was two hours spent in Jinka’s garden, for which I won another two in the tower. Yet as the weeks passed, and summer faded into autumn, the time I spent with each grew longer and longer. Sometimes Jinka would keep me in the garden, other times she would send me running through the forest in search of bark or fungus, or to catch some wild thing.
Taken on their own, these tasks were not difficult, and, truth be told, I took pleasure in pleasing her. Although her moods still frightened me, she could be kind as well, and somehow the fear of her anger made that kindness all the sweeter. And piece by piece I began to learn something of her craft, watching as she made her spells with strings and bones, berries and bark.
I do not remember most of what we spoke of in those early days. Rapunzel knew so little of the world, and because I feared Jinka’s anger I was afraid to tell her anything that might make her wonder about her confinement. And so I answered her questions as I could, filling in blanks with little lies, and telling stories as they came to me.
She did not believe herself a prisoner: Jinka had told her she was the victim of a curse, and if she left the tower she would die, but when I pressed her for the story behind the curse she grew uneasy, and said it was her father’s work, that he was a great wizard, and it was only Jinka’s love for her that kept him from finding her.
“This wizard, your father,” I asked, “have you ever seen him?”
Rapunzel grew uneasy, then nodded.
“Once he came to the gates to look for me, dressed in a woodsman’s suit. My mother bade me hide, and drove him off.”
Looking up I saw Jinka watching me, her eyes cold, and dead, and in that moment I knew the man she described was not just any woodsman but my father, come to beg once more for Rapunzel’s return to him.
“Tell me about your mother,” Rapunzel said, and something froze inside of me.
“My mother?” I asked, looking at her.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “What is she like, what does she look like? Why does she let you roam alone in the woods?”
I glanced over at Jinka, who stared back at me. Clearing my throat, I shifted my hands, adjusted my dress.
“There is not much to tell you,” I said. “She was a lady once, but now she lives in the forest with my father.”
“So they married for love?”
“I suppose.”
“And is she beautiful? What does she look like? Like you?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, “not like me.”
I wonder now exactly why I gave myself to Jinka. Was it for Rapunzel’s sake? For my own? Or was it because I saw in her a way to harm my mother, to make her suffer for her coldness, her lack of love?
Whichever it was, the reckoning was not long in coming. Two months after that first afternoon I returned home one evening to find my mother waiting.
I knew at once, I think. Something in the way she held herself told me without words that she had been at her tree, had seen me in the garden or the tower.
She did not speak as I entered, just lifted her eyes and looked at me. I had thought she would be angry but she was not: instead her face was pale, cold.
“How long?” she asked. “How long have you been going there?”
I shrugged. “A while.”
“And the witch, she is your friend?”
Suddenly afraid, I gave a small nod.
“You do her bidding?”
I nodded again.
“Why?”
I shrugged. My mother sat, staring at me, her face pale, as if she had been hollowed out. Yet when she spoke her voice was clear, calm.
“Go,” she said. “Leave this house. You are not my child.”
I hesitated, but before I could speak she stood, her fists tightening.
“I said go. And don’t come back.”
When I still did not move, she struck the table.
“Go!” she cried, tears on her cheeks. “I will not have you near me.”
Outside it was growing dark, the air already cold, yet as I stumbled through the trees I barely noticed. At first I walked at random, moving quickly, urgently, as if my speed might keep the tears at bay, but in time they caught me, and I broke down and wept.
When at last my tears were done, I rose, pulling my shawl tight against the chill. It was not winter yet, but I knew the forest well enough to understand I would die if I stayed out there alone.
I slept in Jinka’s house that night, but after that I took myself away, to an abandoned hut I knew of, off in the trees. It was small, and cold, but with a fire it was enough to keep me through that winter and the next.
Living alone, so far away, my visits to the town grew less frequent. And so it was I did not see Will again until the spring eighteen months after I had left my parents’ home, and when I did, it was by chance.
I was on the road, where it bends towards the bridge, when he, on horseback, rounded the corner ahead of me, one of his father’s servants behind him in livery. Seeing me there, he grinned delightedly and reined in his mount.
“So, Juniper, you still live!” he said.
“I do,” I said.
“I thought of you often last winter, freezing in your badger’s set.”
“Was it not a fox’s lair?” I asked, and he grinned.
“Perhaps it was. Either way, I’m pleased it kept you warm.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, and he glanced back at the man behind him.
“To the city,” he said, “to see to some matters with my father’s man.”
I must have looked unimpressed, because he laughed.
“What, you do not think me a man of substance?”
“I think the ladies in the city would do well to watch out for you.”
“What makes you think I have eyes for the ladies of the city?”
I looked skeptical and he laughed again.
“Oh Juniper, so young and yet so cruel.”
Despite myself I smiled. He leaned back in his saddle.
“Will you wait for me?”
“Why would I wait for you?”
“Juniper, you wound me. Do you think I have eyes for anyone but you?”
I laughed, and he hesitated, watching me. I thought for a moment he was going to speak, but instead he reached for his purse and took out a coin.
“Here,” he said, “take this. And do not trust that Tom Varney, he is a man of no morals.”
I understood, of course. Even at fifteen I had a power over men that other women did not have. Some think it is beauty we desire, but it is not. It is something else, something less easy to define. We want what is forbidden, yet will have take what is available. And so, while I might not have been the one they wanted to marry, I was the one they would settle for in the meantime.
I suppose I understood what this would make me, yet I was surprised the first time I heard another girl call me a wanton. It was that prune-faced Milly, a girl no man could ever truly want, but still it startled me.
“What did you say?” I asked, turning to her. She did not move, her mouth tight beneath her white bonnet.
“You heard me,” she said, but as she spoke I could see she was less certain now.
“I’m not sure I did,” I said, smiling easily and moving closer. Beside the pale Milly, my black hair and dirty feet made me look a wild thing. Lifting a hand, I reached for hers, but she jerked it away.
“Witch’s slut!” she spat, and for a moment her vehemence and the hatred in her voice startled me. Recovering myself, I pressed cl
oser.
“What?” I asked, and Milly pulled away.
In truth there were not that many men. And none of them mattered until Will came back for the summer. I know men, and I am sure he knew what I was, of the bodies I had known, and yet he took his time coming to me. And when he came, it was almost as if by accident. I was in the woods, by myself, when I came upon him, walking. For a while I followed behind, watching, until at last I grew tired of waiting, and, taking a stone from my pocket, cast it at him.
He turned, his face angry, but seeing me he laughed, and rode closer.
“Little June,” he said, “I had wondered how long it would be until I saw you.”
“Long enough, with the way you blunder through the woods,” I replied, and he laughed again.
“We have not all had your experience in these woods.”
“I am sure you move quickly enough in the city.”
He shrugged. “Is it true what I hear? That you are already half witch?”
I smiled. “Perhaps.”
“Must I fear your arts?”
I pushed my hair back from my face. “I thought you already feared me.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe you have already enchanted me.” As he spoke, he held a hand out to me. Seeing it I laughed, and, dropping down from my branch, slipped out of his reach.
I have heard people call him a prince when they tell this story, but he was no prince. Yet he was special nonetheless, possessed of that easy beauty and confidence that comes from being unafraid of one’s own desires, or the things that are necessary to achieve them. And that summer he was mine, or as much mine as he was ever going to be. In the forest and the ricks we lay together many times, our bodies thrown together, panting and laughing. Neither of us called it love, and so we believed there was an honesty between us, though, looking back, I wonder whether that honesty was merely a clever way of hiding a truth neither of us could admit. Sometimes he would tease me, call me his June and kiss me or touch my lips, and I would feel something between us, some electricity.
Jinka knew, of course; how could she not? Once he came to her gate, and she saw him before I did, and in the time it took me to run to meet him, to steer him away from her, I think she understood everything she needed to. Everything except what mattered.