Zel

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Father sighs. “I will tell the young duchess’s family that you aren’t yet ready for marriage.” Father drinks from his mug. He speaks with deliberation. “I will tell them I’ll return in a year to discuss the matter further.”

  “I will never marry her.”

  “You’ll come with me in a year.” Stubbornness strengthens Father’s voice. “You’ll meet her.” He looks to the countess, then back to Konrad.

  A year, which has always seemed a long time to Konrad, now seems like almost nothing. For his Zel is young. In a year will she be ready for . . . for what? Konrad will not allow himself to think of what. He doesn’t know the girl at all. Perhaps if he talks to her a second time, they will be bored with each other. Still, he cannot agree to Father’s plan. He cannot think of any other girl. “Not in a year, Father. No.”

  Father rises from his chair, apoplectic.

  “Tell them two years.” His mother sips her wine and speaks with a steady, low voice. “In two years if Konrad has not found a wife of his own and if this young duchess is still unmarried, then Konrad will come with you to meet her.”

  Konrad waits, breath abated. Two years, please let Father give two years.

  Father sinks to his chair in defeat.

  The next day Father rides away, a scowl on his face, muttering about how the celebrations for Konrad’s birthday, which is only on the morrow, will have to be delayed until he returns, and it serves Konrad right.

  Konrad mounts Meta at the same time and goes directly back to the smithy. After all, he left the smith with an order to get information—the smith should have completed the task by now. “Where does Zel live?”

  The smith blinks. Perhaps he thought Konrad wasn’t coming back. He speaks slowly, like a half-wit. “Outside town.”

  “Where outside town?”

  The smith shakes his head. “That I don’t know, sire. I just know she’s not a town girl.”

  “Anyone could tell she wasn’t a town girl just from looking at her.”

  The smith stares at Konrad.

  Konrad looks down. He sees he is pulling on one finger after the other. He stills himself. “Does she live on a farm or in a mountain cabin?”

  The smith shakes his head again. “I don’t know, sire. I asked around. No one knows anything about her.”

  “Think. There must be something you know.” Konrad takes a coin from his pouch. “Anything.”

  “She has no oxen or donkeys.”

  Konrad is surprised. How can the smith have learned this if no one knows of the girl? “Tell me more.”

  “She has goats and chickens.”

  Now Konrad doubts the smith. But the man appears to have no spunk. He wouldn’t dare tease a count. “What else?”

  “I can’t think of anything else, sire.”

  Konrad gives the smith the coin. Optimism stirs gently within him. The smith said they had no cart with oxen, no donkey even. So all their provisions had to be carried on their own backs. Surely that means they walked only a short way.

  Konrad looks up at the clear sky. It bodes well. He will start the search immediately. And at that determination, energy surges through him. He must begin.

  But first Konrad returns to the castle, dismounts, and races to the study. His geography tutor has spread out a map in anticipation of the lesson. Beside the map is a chessboard with pieces at the ready—a treat to follow the lesson, no doubt.

  The tutor beams and hugs a sheaf of papers to his barrel chest. “New reports from missionaries.”

  Konrad nods at the excitement in his voice. Reports from missionaries, navigators, land travelers—these are filled with amazing discoveries. Normally Konrad would be reaching for the papers eagerly, for he plans to travel himself someday. But this moment is not a normal moment. “I can’t stay. We have to put geography off.”

  The tutor looks stunned. “I thought you were fascinated by the New World, which seems to grow every month.”

  “I am. Oh, I am.” But right now other fascinations pull, fascinations this studious tutor might not understand, fascinations Konrad would not have believed possible just days ago. “We can discuss it all tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s your birthday.”

  Konrad laughs. How could he have forgotten? “Well, then, another day.” And Konrad races back outside and mounts Meta.

  He rides to the closest slope and stops at the first home. A woman sits outdoors in the shade mending clothes. “Excuse me, madam. I seek information on a girl by the name of Zel.”

  The woman shakes her head. “I don’t know of any Zel. But you could try the farm down the road there. They have plenty of people coming and going.” The woman points. “Could be they’ve heard of her.”

  “Thank you.”

  Konrad goes directly to the farm and makes his inquiries. To no avail. He mounts once more and rides beyond into a valley and across more slopes, stopping at each dwelling. The people want to be helpful. But they know nothing. He speaks to a gaggle of women washing laundry at the lake edge. Each has suggestions. He goes to bed that night with a plan: The next day he will send three servants to gaily painted farmhouses with adjoining barns. They will cover the land.

  Konrad sleeps well, finally.

  The next morning is his birthday, and he wakes with unusual energy. He will resume the search himself. Why not? But first he must check with that dolt of a smith.

  When he rides up on Meta, the smith comes running. “I remembered two more things, sire.”

  Konrad’s hands tighten on the reins. “Speak.”

  The smith holds out his hand.

  Konrad drops in a coin.

  “Two things, sire.”

  Konrad drops in a second coin.

  “First, she won’t be back to market till winter, and she’ll give me a visit when she comes then.”

  This is important news. This might mean the girl came from quite far away, after all. “And the second thing?”

  “Today’s her birthday.”

  “What? Today? Are you sure?”

  “July sixth it is, isn’t it, sire? Her mother was out getting presents for her birthday and putting them in a cloth sack. That she was. July sixth, the girl told me. Today.”

  Konrad’s mouth has gone dry. Zel and he share the same birthday. Surely she isn’t turning fifteen. She has to be at least two or three years younger than he is. So they weren’t born on exactly the same day. The year differed. Still, the date is important. They are connected, oh, yes, Zel and Konrad are connected by the movement of the moon, by the changes of the sky and of the world’s waters, by time itself. Zel and Konrad were born under the same star.

  Goosebumps spread up Konrad’s arms, across his chest.

  He searches all that day and the next and the next. He rides week after week. He goes alone, because now the thought of being helped irritates him.

  Daily he stops in at the smithy to see if anything has jogged the man’s memory. But the smith is thick as a tree.

  And the people whose homes he visits are hardly better. The further he goes from town and the more isolated the home he visits, the more the people answer brusquely. Some suspect he might want the girl for low purposes. They hesitate. He throws himself on their mercy, doing nothing to hide his own confusion at his growing need. Soon the tongues of even the most suspicious farm wives loosen. But the answers are the same. No one anywhere has heard of a girl with deep, dark eyes; yellow braids; a simple smock; a special way with horses; a cheerless mother (as the smith once described her to Konrad); and the name of Zel.

  Yet she’ll be back to the market in winter.

  Konrad won’t wait for winter. He can’t. And, anyway, how could a girl and her mother make their way into town when the roads become ice slicks? The smith must have misunderstood. She’ll be back soon.

  Now even Konrad’s dreams turn to Zel. He sees himself riding through an orchard and finding Zel perched in a tree. She tosses an apple core on his head and laughs. One leg dangles, uncovered
by her smock—though she does not realize this—smooth and hairless as the tree bark. In another dream he’s been riding all day. Meta stops to drink at a mountain pool. Konrad strips and jumps into the bracing water. And along comes Zel, cooing, luring the mare away with an early fall apple. She is unaware that Konrad’s clothes are tucked in a bag hanging from the saddle. Naturally he has to fetch the mare back.

  Dreams. In Konrad’s dreams Zel has all the strength of the girl who dared to undo the lip rope at the smithy and hold Meta’s head by herself. More even. She is modest but not hesitant. She laughs at his bumblings and he thrills to that laugh. But dreams lead nowhere. Konrad gnashes his teeth in his sleep.

  Then one day, on the fifth week, the smith remembers another, final detail. “She loves lettuce.”

  “Lettuce?” Konrad at this point is willing to follow any lead. But lettuce? “How do you know?”

  “Her mother said so.”

  Konrad pulls on his fingers, rubs at the back of his neck. “What exactly did her mother say?”

  “She said, ‘Let’s go buy that lettuce you love.’” He holds out his hand. “Lettuce, sire.”

  Konrad puts a coin in the smith’s hand. Lettuce isn’t much to go on. Almost every farmer hereabouts grows lettuce and sells it in the market. But if the girl lives in the country, surely she grows lettuce in her own garden. So it has to be that the lettuce she loves is somehow special. And the mother said “that lettuce,” so it isn’t just any old lettuce. All right, Konrad will go to every lettuce vendor in the market until he finds the one with the special lettuce that Zel and her mother bought.

  Amazingly, a man with only a few lettuce bundles and even fewer teeth claims to remember Zel. “A gentle girl with a winning way. I yank on her braids and she laughs.” He gives an almost toothless grin. “Stupid girls are afraid of me, but not her.” He shakes his head. “She comes to me every summer and buys this.” He holds out a bunch of small, round lettuce leaves. “You can buy it. And pay once again over for the information.”

  Konrad looks at the plain, flat leaves. Why would Zel think these leaves are special? The farmer is probably making it up so he can have the money. “What makes you remember her so well?”

  “Her smile. She never came without it.”

  Konrad remembers Zel’s smile and its effect on him.

  “And her eyes.”

  Zel’s penetrating eyes, which appear in Konrad’s dreams. “How do you remember that it was precisely this type of lettuce?”

  “Ah, that’s easy. Two ways.” The farmer leans toward Konrad. “First, she asks for this lettuce in early July, but it grows best in the spring. I’m the only one around who grows it all summer.” He looks proud of himself, as though he’s waiting for Konrad to praise his wisdom in business matters.

  Konrad’s patience is tested. “The second reason?”

  “The girl’s name and the lettuce’s name are the same.”

  Konrad rubs at his lower lip. “Her name is Zel.”

  “Her name is Rapunzel.” The farmer shakes the bunch of leaves before Konrad’s face. “I grow the best rapunzel around. Where’s your money?”

  Konrad pushes the lettuce away from his face with indignation. “I am Count Konrad.”

  “So you can afford it, then.” The farmer smiles.

  Konrad laughs in spite of himself. He wonders for a moment if this farmer and the boy at the goose farm who treated him so rudely are related. He drops a coin in the well-pleased farmer’s hand.

  That night he eats rapunzel with oil and vinegar. The next night he eats rapunzel with onions and tomatoes. He has rapunzel with boiled potatoes and rapunzel with strong cheese. Rapunzel with pork and rapunzel with perch. And rapunzel plain. Every day Konrad searches for Rapunzel. And every night Konrad feasts on rapunzel. The farmer comes to expect him in the market early. He saves his biggest, best bunches of rapunzel for Konrad.

  But knowing her full name doesn’t help any more than knowing her nickname. For no one Konrad asks knows any more about a Rapunzel than they know about a Zel.

  Rapunzel, Rapunzel, where have you gone?

  LONELY

  Chapter 12Zel

  el leans out the south window. The stone is cold, but the sun has melted off the frost. She has just used the slop bucket and pushed it to the north side so she can escape the odor. The top of a lone spruce moves in the distance; a rogue bear scratches its back against the trunk. Perhaps he will pass this way. If Zel is lucky.

  Zel has lived in this tower exactly one hundred days. Mother carried up the hay for her mattress and covered it with a single sheet embroidered in vine leaves.

  Zel insisted on hay for her mattress, not straw, because hay smells sweet. And hay is what horses eat. Zel remembers the horse at the smithy, the smooth coat on the mare’s back and the dark splotches on her thin, fine legs. She remembers the youth, how he looked at her. In her sleep she sees him eating the bread she gave him. Sometimes she is overcome with the urge to touch his dimple, just lightly, with one fingertip.

  Her nights on that mattress are never peaceful. She misses being lulled to sleep by the fiddle. She misses Mother’s cool kiss and the rabbits’ thick fur and the goats’ nipping and butting. She misses climbing high until her throat aches in the cool, dry air and stepping barefoot from slippery rock to slippery rock in icy streams. She misses dirt, leaves, rain in her upturned face. Oh, she misses so much.

  Zel pushes up her left sleeve. She holds her arm out and tilts it until her fine gold hairs catch the weak sunlight. She counts the hairs from wristbone to elbow. Sometimes she sits back on her heels and rocks as she counts.

  She knows many numbers. The number of stones that make up the floor of this tower room: forty-four. Large and smooth. The number of days in this tower. One hundred days are many.

  Zel stands in her birthday dress. Mother has explained that she chose green for hope. Zel is hopeful. Mother will conquer the threat outside. Or Zel will conquer it herself. She makes a fist. Zel is a fighter. But she’d rather not fight alone.

  Mother will be here at noon.

  If only Zel could tell time from the sky. But the sky changes with the seasons and the wind. Right there, for instance, just moments ago that cloud was flat on the bottom and lacy on top. But now the cloud has formed into lumps, and Zel predicts that a breeze will soon scatter the lumps. What reward can she give herself if she’s right? Oh, she can get Mother to massage her neck. Her neck hurts these days from the weight of her hair, which grows unnaturally quickly. Every day she can see how much longer it is; she can feel how much heavier it is. She has asked Mother to cut it, but Mother says her hair will come in handy. When Zel asks what for, Mother doesn’t answer.

  Zel lies down on the hay mattress to rest her tired neck. She folds her hands on her chest. Now she can see nothing but her tower room, and that is the worst pain of all. She looks at her folded hands. She smiles. Her hands make drawings and paintings that confound her. Zel feels mystery enter her body, as though she harbors secrets even she cannot be allowed to know. Her bones grow heavy; they would merge with the stone of the tower if she stayed still too long. These thoughts alarm her; she does not recognize the girl who thinks them. She sits up suddenly, her back straight as a pine.

  Most mornings Zel paints. When it was still summer, she painted the orange poppies, the yellow ranunculus, the blue gentian. She propped her paintings up along the bottom of the walls, as if they grew there.

  Now, in early fall, she paints the greens and blues of the spruce, the browns of the occasional passing bear, the spotted yellows of the leaves that clutter the ground.

  Mother gave her these paints. Generous Mother. Zel rises and takes a sheet of paper from the stack. She lays it on the window ledge. “What would you like painted on you today?”

  A squirrel chatters from the walnut tree. Zel laughs. He flicks his tail, bushy thick for the approaching winter. “Don’t go away. Please.” Zel goes to her mattress and grabs the roll from her breakfast pac
kage. She rushes back to the window.

  Zel pinches the inner part from the roll. She shapes it in the form of a walnut. “A delicious nut just for you.” She tosses the dough pellet. It hits the tree below the squirrel. The squirrel darts upward, then stops, paws extended, skin stretched out in two arcs on each side. He chatters shrilly. The creature is angry at her. Ha! Zel takes another pinchful, squeezes it into a berry shape this time. “Look. A mulberry.” She tosses, and it hits the squirrel on the back. The animal races around to the other side of the tree.

  “Rascal.” Zel laughs. She jerks her chin forward and cocks her head, just like the squirrel did. “You are better than the racing marmots and the stiff-bristled boars and the nervous hares. When I call to them, no matter how sweetly, they scurry into the underbrush. You are much, much better.” Zel whistles.

  The squirrel peeks out.

  “And you are better than blackbirds and larks. They ignore my whistles—or, at most, glide for a wingbeat or two.” Zel whistles and whistles and whistles.

  The squirrel comes around to the close side of the trunk.

  Zel puts her elbows on the ledge and leans forward. Her feet dangle under her. “Rascal,” she sings out. Her voice is clear as mountain water. “Talk to me.”

  The squirrel darts around to the rear of the trunk again.

  “Rascal,” sings Zel. “Rascal, Rascal, Rascal.”

  And still the squirrel is absent.

  Zel is alone. For one moment she had company. Now she is alone again. Alone and alone and alone.

  “Coward!” Zel realizes she has shouted. Her pulse beats in her neck. She has shouted many times, shouted until she lost her voice—and never without fear. For her enemy could do terrible things if he found her.

  Zel has gone over every moment she’s ever spent with people other than Mother. Every moment of her life that she remembers. Oh, she lured a straying cow onto their alm once, just so she could talk with the herd boy. But he wasn’t angry. He even told her stories. And she once stole a piece of wood the handyman’s son had been whittling on. But after he gave her the cave rock, she managed to slip the wood back into the handyman’s cart. He never even knew she stole it or he wouldn’t have given her the cave rock.