Zel (20 page)

he market in afternoon is less crowded than in morning. The fish vendor is gone, as is the cheese vendor. But the fruits and vegetables yet stand in half-depleted pyramids. I will buy Zel a fruit in every nuance of color. She will forget the slap. She will kiss me again.

I stand at a table. The vendor looks at me with narrow eyes.

I drop my head. This is the first time I’ve been to town in two years without a kerchief covering my hair and cheeks. Once I realized the man with the horse was in search of Zel, I knew I could go nowhere without covering my face. I couldn’t risk being recognized for the woman who walked with the young girl in braids. I feel suddenly naked. Yet this fruit vendor couldn’t possibly remember me from the days when I came with Zel. I will
pay and be off. But no. I have brought no money. I never planned to come to the market. How stupid it all is. I can have whatever fruits I want just by willing the trees to bear them before my eyes on the way home.

I spin on my heel and walk to the fine shops that line the perimeter of the square. I hold my head high. I don’t care if people recognize me. This is my last visit to town without Zel.

I walk into the milliner’s. I select a straw hat. I gaze at it fixedly. The hat folds in on itself, twists and curls and ages. I leave the store and wait out back. I wait a long while. The milliner is a dunce. Eventually, though, he takes stock, for now he opens the door and tosses the ruined hat into the trash pile. I retrieve it and put it in my cloth bag.

I walk into the cobbler’s. The shoes are made of leather. I cannot control parts of animal. But, yes, there’s a wooden pair from the north country. I run my fingers lightly over the surfaces. The clogs dry and split. “Ahi,” I say loudly. I suck at my finger. “This splinter goes clear to my bone.”

The cobbler looks at me with swift suspicion. Then he sees the clogs. “Forgive me, madam. I’ll use them for firewood.”

“They caused me pain. Surely they should cook my dinner, not yours.”

The cobbler seems chagrined. “Of course.” He wraps
the clogs in paper and hands them to me. I put them in my cloth bag.

And now I enter the tailor’s shop. The burghers’ wives have their garments fashioned here. A linen gown covers a wooden torso. I am lucky: The form is fresh spruce. The dress is completely stitched together and needs only finishing touches on hem and cuffs. I blow on the dress.

“Yes, madam?” The seamstress stands beside me in a black dress decorated with gold-lace filigree—proof of her skills.

“I’d like a dress like this one, but, oh . . .” I point and look disgusted.

Spruce gum seeps through the linen. Sticky stains streak the gown.

The seamstress cannot seem to shut her mouth. She stares.

I look haughty. “I’ll come back another day. And I’d throw out that torso if I were you.”

“Indeed.” The seamstress picks up the torso and sets it outside by the alley. She wipes her hands on her apron and comes back in, passing me as I leave.

I peel the gown from the torso.

Tonight I will order the straw of the hat to rejuvenate. I will order the wood of the clogs to mend. I will order the linen of the gown to rid itself of resin. Zel will have a new outfit.

And what will she do in her new outfit? She goes nowhere. The last time she had a new dress was when she entered the tower.

Something must change.

I am walking the road home. I stumble. Suddenly I remember the smell of horse, strong near the base of Zel’s tower. But Zel hadn’t seen a real horse. She spoke of a vision.

Can I close my eyes and see Zel now? This past winter, Zel asked if I ever sat in the cottage and closed my eyes to see her in the tower. When I answered yes, she made me promise never to do that again. Merely looking around the base of the tower, though, would not be breaking the promise. I close my eyes. My mind walks around the tower. Now in a bigger circle. No horse. Zel is safe. I open my eyes.

I arrive home. I eat. I sew. The starry night passes and still I sit. Moonlight assails my eyes. My back aches. The thimble is stuck, I jammed it down so hard. I lay down the needle and thread. I work the thimble free. It drops and rolls on the floor. I don’t pick it up.

I pinch the skin on the back of my hand at the knuckle. It stays in a ridge. I hold my thumb to the moonlight. As I suspected: The little indented rings of the thimble stay clear on my skin. I am not resilient. I grow old. Time is short.

Oh, for the ability to cry! Dry sobs stick in my throat.
I am as dry as Zel has been all these years. My chest heaves. What did Zel say? She spoke a strange list—ants and lice, Rascal and the sharp stone. She said she killed Pigeon Pigeon and she spoke of the moon. Oh! It is I who reduced Zel to that raving girl. Zel walks the precipice with eyes half closed. All because of me.

And the wailing in my ears won’t stop.

I pick up the fiddle to fight off the wails. But it turns on me—it screams like January winds, like a bereft mother.

I don my shoes. I will not waste energy calling up the water plants to help me cross the lake. I will need that energy later. I practically fly down the mountainside to the road. No one is about at this hour but owls and foxes. It is Zel’s birthday. And, oh, I left behind the bag of presents, the perfect outfit. But Zel won’t want it. I know that. In a burst of clarity, I know everything.

I circle around the north side of town, to the west, and then come back south, now on the opposite side of the lake. My shoulders fold inward. My skin puckers like drying fruit, like kissing lips.

Chapter 27
Konrad

erhaps it is the lack of moonlight, the stillness of the air, that wakes Konrad. He lies wide-eyed in the dark. Then the owl’s screech comes, and he realizes there is a sliver of a moon, after all, enough to make out Zel’s form beside him. She is lovely in sleep. Her breath comes in warm, gentle swells that make him absurdly happy. With one finger he runs a line down her forehead, down her nose, to her lips, which pucker now. Would that all his daughters should have such lips.

Zel opens her eyes as her head tilts toward his finger. “You are still here.”

Konrad kisses her on the mouth. “Dawn comes soon. I have to leave.”

“You are here now.” She touches his left cheek, on his dimple.

“Of course I’m here now. But I must go.” Konrad gets to his feet. “I’ll return with a dagger and a rope.” He thinks of the woman who comes every day at noon and climbs up his love’s braids. He must be back well before noon. A dagger, a rope, an iron peg to attach the rope
to, a hammer to pound the peg in. He is now all business. He dresses quickly. The eastern sky lightens almost imperceptibly.

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 28
Zel

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.