Zel (11 page)

Chapter 13
Konrad

he fall air pokes Konrad like the needles of evergreens. He feels snappish and half wild.

Three months have passed without satisfaction. But at least they have passed without interference from his parents. The changing church took care of that. The church police have been busy purging the town. They strip altars, they smash organs, they break the stained-glass windows. The count and countess spend their time trying to ease confrontations between the old church and the new.

But this reprieve from his parents’ interference had to come to an end sooner or later. So today, when Konrad comes downstairs to find his mother awaiting him in the dark of pre-morning, he is not surprised.

The countess stands with hands stretched toward him. “Tell me, Konrad. What ails you?”

“Nothing, Mother.”

“Your pain shows in every move.” Her voice catches.

Konrad cannot bring himself to say Zel’s name. But his heart responds to his mother’s sincere entreaty. “I’m looking for something.”

“What? Let us help you.”

Konrad shakes his head.

The countess lowers her chin and looks up at Konrad with eyes that implore. “And this search matters so much that everything else must be forgotten?”

“Nothing else matters right now.”

“What about your education, Konrad? You haven’t had lessons for months.”

“Didn’t the minister say secular learning is an insolent conceit?”

The countess takes a step backward. She looks amazed. “You’ve never quoted the clergy before.”

Konrad gives a sheepish smile. “He said something useful for once.”

“Useful to him, not to you.” Her disdain shows in her tone. She looks around the room quickly and moves closer. “Speak your own mind, Konrad.” The countess puts her hand on Konrad’s arm. “What do you search for with such frenzy?”

“I can’t talk sensibly about it.” Konrad swallows the lump in his throat. “I don’t seem to understand anything.”

“That’s hard for me to believe of the youth who rattles off mathematical formulas, making his tutors rejoice. You can do anything you put your mind to, Konrad.”

Konrad gives a small laugh. He wishes it were that simple.

“I’m worried for you.”

“Youths my age take up arms for pay to fight in foreign wars. All I do is ride through the countryside. There is nothing to worry about.”

“There might be.” The countess tightens her grip on Konrad’s arm. “One night this August I saw the constellation of Perseus burst into a shower of comets.”

“What does Perseus have to do with me?”

“He is the great horseman. He rides Pegasus. Please, Konrad, though you have your doubts, respect my beliefs. Even medical students study astrology. As you ride under the evening skies, watch Perseus. If that was a warning, you must heed it.”

Konrad puts his hand over his mother’s. “I’ll take care of myself.”

“It is not yet fully light out. Check the skies now.” Her tone is urgent. “Check them every morning. Every evening.”

Konrad kisses his mother’s cheek. He ascends the stairs and throws open the doors of his balcony to the blast of icy air. The sky shows no stars. But maybe Konrad needs to be higher to see them. He jumps onto the
balcony ledge and climbs over the low roof. He swings himself onto an upper walkway, takes the stairs at a run, and he is in one of the four turrets. The sky is empty and pure.

Konrad looks out across earliest morning on the lake. He tingles with anticipation. Though he cares little for the talk of Perseus, he feels strengthened by his mother’s belief in him. He races down the steps and outside.

Konrad picks up a stiff-bristle brush and enters the paddock. The mare greets him. He brushes her well. Then he presses his cheek against the mare’s neck. She whinnies with a hesitant gentleness.

Konrad thinks again, for the thousandth time perhaps, of how Meta pressed against Zel’s new breasts. The peasant girl should have been coarse as her bread, yet she was tenuous as a memory. She was not pretty. Still, there was something oddly pleasing about her looks. Will she recognize him when next they meet? Konrad saddles Meta and mounts.

“Young sire.” Annette runs from the kitchen. She holds up a sack to Konrad. “The countess had me pack you a hearty meal.”

“With much thanks.” Konrad takes the sack and leaves. He follows the road south, his eyes on the changing leaves of hardwoods scattered among the pines. The colors recall the oranges and blues of the frescoes in the church belfry. The forest evokes reverence. He goes
hushed and slow, until Meta finally announces her needs in a loud whinny. He eats by the lakeside. Meta nibbles on the dry grasses and drinks fully. Konrad, too, puts his face to the lake and drinks. Then he leads Meta by the reins into the woods. He uses his teeth to pull the cork from the bottle. He drinks as he walks. Then he recorks the bottle.

He goes all day. Darkness falls. The trees huddle together, almost as though they fend off the moonlight.

Hunger begins as an annoyance. His parents will be worrying about him by now. He mounts Meta, and the horse breaks into a trot. A branch catches Konrad’s sleeve and rips it like a claw shredding a spider web. He turns to look at it, and another branch knocks him from the saddle.

Konrad hits the ground, shoulder first. On impact he rolls instinctively. He slams against a tree trunk. He rubs his face with both hands. He feels a disorientation so pervasive he fears he is lost for good. He whistles to Meta and mounts again. He fights the urge to return home.

Konrad gives the horse free rein, for with this blackness he cannot guide her anyway. As legend goes, souls who are neither folded into heaven nor banished into hell wander the Alps at night and pass by to touch the warm hands of sleepers. Konrad clenches his hands inside his pockets and shivers.

They emerge from the forest suddenly, to find themselves
on a cliff edge over the lake. Konrad grabs the reins just in time. His heart pounds. Even in the weak light of the stars, the rocks at the lake shore far below glisten. Konrad walks Meta with care. At the first thinning of the trees, he turns the horse inward and upward again.

They reach a small clearing. Konrad dismounts and drinks from the bottle of wine.

*   *   *

Konrad wakes. The ground is hard and so wet that his shirt is soaked. A stick is jammed against his thigh. He sits up with a start. He senses a whir. Bats cut the weak moonlight at the top of the trees. Pine resin soaks the air. Now he remembers: He slipped off Meta to rest, and he must have slept. It is still night, though the night is no longer deep. He rubs his hands together to dispel the chill.

His mouth is dry. He gropes for the bottle. It is empty. And his shirt stinks of wine. He must have spilled it on himself when he fell asleep.

He puts his lips together to whistle to Meta, but they are soft and puffy, and all that comes is a light whoosh. Still, the mare knows. She trots over and nuzzles Konrad’s face. He mounts.

Konrad licks his lips and listens hard for sounds of running water. These mountains are rich with streams. And there’s the telltale song now. They come to a small
wooden bridge. Konrad dismounts, and horse and man drink.

As the beginnings of dawn steal the stars, Konrad discerns a path down the mountainside, the direction he must go to return home. He prepares to take the path when he sees a goose.

The goose is settled on a strong-looking, high-sided nest. Konrad looks around for the rest of the flock. But this goose appears to be a loner. His groggy brain slowly sees the contradiction: The goose sits on a nest, but wild broods hatched months ago. Konrad learned that lesson only too well when he went in search of the hot goose egg for Zel.

The goose gets off the nest and wanders in the dirt, pecking at nothing, it seems. Konrad walks toward the exposed eggs. He counts five. But there is something odd about them. They vary much in size and shape. Konrad steps closer. They are stones!

The fast, high cry of a fiddle cuts the air. Konrad spies a cottage. A cock crows from somewhere behind the home. The air tastes of goat. Cypresses stand tall on the far side of the alm.

The fiddle keens with clarity. It makes his flesh tighten. If he listens much longer, he will be unable to hold back tears.

Konrad has become unused to hearing secular music—no lyres, no fifes, no fiddles in the town square
anymore. This fiddler either does not know of the ban or does not care.

The music shocks Konrad, for the anguish it speaks is thorough. This fiddler is without hope, without salvation. Rapunzel cannot live in a home wracked with misery. Yet Konrad is here now, and he has come very far to get here.

He walks to the cottage.

Chapter 14
Mother

he music uses my chest as a sounding board. My hand grips the warm maple neck of this fiddle. My fingers press strong on the strings. They hold the bow tight. They pull the bow hard across those sheep-gut strings, hard and long, all the way to the tip of the bow. My chin grows out of the top, as much a part of the instrument as the bridge. I feel the vibrations in my cheek. I am the fiddle. I am the bow.

The notes pat the fuzz of hair on my skin. They are breath. They make me know there is still rhythm to this existence.

The morning light is watery today. It slides around
the room, edging into corners, soaking the bottoms of chair legs, table legs. It enters the fiddle through my open mouth and closed eyes. It heats me, the wood of me, the sheep gut of me, the flesh and water of me. It insists.

Knock knock.

I open my eyes and stand. I set the fiddle in its spot on the shelf. I rest the bow beside it. These hands ache from the sudden, brutal lack of the fiddle. I straighten them, extending my fingers taut.

Knock knock.

Visitors are rare. I open to a bedraggled youth who reeks of sour wine. His clothes show wealth, but one sleeve is ripped and his eyes carry the weight of lost sleep. I feel his disorientation. He is not drunk, despite the stench. His demeanor touches me. “Have you lost your way?”

“I think I have.” The man’s eyes try to wander past me into the room. “Was that you playing the fiddle?”

How long was he listening? And why? “I scratch out a few notes now and then.”