“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “But she did. She knew.”
I gestured to Mathena, smiling, but she pretended not to have heard. Gilles watched her as she stood to refill our mugs.
“Well, it is wonderful, anyway,” he said, turning back to me, “the way fate can twist and surprise you.”
It was comforting, being with the two of them, and with Brune above us, and Loup, old and nearly blind now, curled next to Mathena on the couch. I had the sudden, fleeting thought that I could stay like that and never return to the palace at all.
When night fell, I led Gilles and the guards to the tower, where they would sleep. It was strange, having men inside the house and tower, the only real sign that things had changed dramatically since the last time I’d been there.
“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” I said, turning to him. The guards were already laying out blankets on the stone floor.
“I will,” he said. “I love this place you come from.”
“You do?” I asked, breathing in.
“Yes.”
“You know, you can see the palace from up here. I used to stare at it, when I was a girl, imagining what it would be like to go there one day.”
I pointed to the window. A faint twinkle was visible, spires lit by the moon.
But he did not take his dark eyes off of me.
“Well, good night, then,” I said.
“Good night,” he said.
I was careful, as I turned to go, to keep my hair from touching him. It would be too dangerous to look into his heart right then. Too dangerous to look into my own.
Once I returned, Mathena sat me down on the couch, took my hands into her own.
“What is it that troubles you?” she asked. “Is your life at the palace what you hoped it would be?”
I took a deep breath. “I cannot conceive,” I said. “And the king is not pleased with me.”
She nodded.
“I need you to help me,” I said. “Give me something so I can have a child.”
“What can I give you that you haven’t already tried yourself?”
“You know so much more than I do, Mathena.”
I thought of her with Clareta and all those women who came to see us, the way she’d take their hands in her own and cast spells to heal their gardens, their children, their hearts. Surely she could do the same for me now.
A sadness crept into her face as she watched me. “Rapunzel,” she said, shaking her head. “You cannot have a child.”
“What do you mean?”
“You cannot have a child. I am sorry.”
“But . . . I had his child. I had a child.”
She shook her head. “It has never been possible, for you.”
I closed my eyes, remembering the teas and my ancient suspicions. “Did you . . . Was it the teas you gave me?”
She sighed. “No. I told you. When you killed the stag, something changed. Your fate changed. I tried to protect you when you were with child, because I knew . . . it was not right.”
“What do you mean? Was it . . . the flower we ate? Isn’t there something you can do to fix it? I must give him a child, Mathena.”
She did not answer my question. Instead she said, “He has a child already. The princess Snow White.”
“Yes,” I said, shocked at how casually she said it.
“How is she?”
“She’s a good girl. I didn’t expect to love her the way I do. But I do.”
“Ahh.” She tilted her head, watching me as if she knew something I didn’t.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m surprised that you love the child. When her mother took him away from you.”
“That was not her fault,” I said. And then I looked at her directly, trying to read her. “Mathena, did you do something to me, to make me barren?”
“No,” she said, and I was sure, in that moment, that she was lying. She smiled softly, and yet her eyes were hard as diamonds. “But it is true that you will never conceive.”
I let the information sink into me, and with it, a whole new sense of the world and what was possible, a new grief that bit into my heart.
“What about Gilles?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked, blinking up at her.
“He’s an extremely handsome man, don’t you think? You do realize he’s in love with you.”
“Mathena!” I said incredulously, as if I had not had the same thought myself. “I’m married. I love Josef.”
“Josef is a king. You can never be fully married to a man who has everything in the world.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.
I turned away from her, not wanting to hear anything more.
That night, as Mathena slept, I padded out into the moonlight to visit my son’s grave. Red, heart-shaped petals scattered the ground all around it. I focused, tried to send all my feeling down into him as if the ground were my hair in all its magic, as if my own heart—with all its love and grief, as fresh as if it’d just happened— could stream down to him, comfort him in the cold ground.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “that I could not give you life.”
The next morning, I wandered through the garden with Gilles and Mathena, picking herbs that I thought might help me, the right magical combination that might defy fate and anything Mathena had done. Each plant, herb, and vegetable in Mathena’s garden was far superior to anything we grew at the palace. I gathered fresh dandelion, mandrake, burdock root, yarrow, and lady’s mantle. For Snow White, I gathered valerian and poppies, and some of the fennel that lined the garden. It felt good, seeing the results of my own efforts over the years. Gilles watched, fascinated, asking us about the properties of certain plants.
I plucked up a bit of caraway and shook some seeds into my hand. “Take these,” I said, smiling as I dropped them into his palm. “Carry them with you, and you’ll attract a lover.”
I laughed out loud when he blushed in response.
I wished I could stop time, but the sun rose bright above us and I knew the king was expecting us in two days’ time. When I said good-bye to Mathena, I could barely look at her.
“Good-bye, Rapunzel,” she said, pulling me to her, letting her black curls brush against my cheek. “Godspeed.”
As we rode back out of the woods, the two guards following behind us, Gilles turned to me.
“Did you find what you wanted, Your Highness?” he asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Whatever it is you came to ask.”
Around us, wings and leaves flickered in the air. “Yes,” I said, through the pain in my throat. “Though I did not receive the answer I wanted.”
15
Over the next several years I was, for the most part, happy. King Josef continued to love me and to fill my
