The Fairest of Them All

pure for the man that you will marry.”

“No,” I said. “I want this child!”

For the first time in weeks, something like joy entered me, and it started to sink into me, the miracle happening just below my skin. There was a child inside of me. Already I loved it. I knew it was a boy. I could see his gold hair, his bright eyes.

I looked up at her and laughed, and it was a laugh that came from pure happiness. The way I sometimes felt watching the flowers and plants come back to life every spring, when it had seemed impossible only days before, when the world was covered in snow and ice and frost. The natural world was full of miracles. This body of mine was a miracle.

She watched me, worried, as I leapt up from my seat and spun around, right there in the little room, in front of the fire, with our sewing strewn around us and batches of dried sage hanging from every window and doorway.

“A child, Mathena!” I said.

I imagined myself happy, glowing, my son against my breast, swathed in my hair. It was the warmest image I could conjure, perhaps because my own mother was lost to me. This would be a child born of love. It did not matter that his father was, that very day, wedding another. I would love our child enough for both of us.

I danced over to Mathena, grabbed her hand, and pulled her to her feet. Brune and Loup just watched suspiciously, most likely wondering if I’d gone mad. “Be happy for me!” I said. “Think how beautiful a child it will be. How much life he’ll bring to this house.”

Perhaps it was in my mind or perhaps the child reached to me, in that moment, unfurling his fist like a flower, uncoiling himself, pressing himself into my heart and making me whole again.

“Please,” I said, gripping her hands in mine, “help me bring this child into the world. Help me be a good mother to him, as you have been to me.” I looked into her dark eyes, inhaled the comforting scent of spices and bark that clung to her all the time.

She did not answer me, not then, but when she took me into her arms and passed her hand over my face, stroking my cheek, I thought it was her way of saying yes. That she loved me and would love my child, no matter what.

And for the first time in weeks, I felt entirely at peace.

It changed everything, knowing that I would be a mother. My whole life seemed to shift into focus. Even when reports came of the extravagant royal wedding, how beautiful the bride was, how happy the couple seemed, I thought only of my child. My body suddenly was an alien, wonderful thing, and now that the garden was ready for winter, I spent hours up in my tower alone, my hair strewn around me, watching my shape in the mirror, looking for every little change. I rubbed oil on my belly to help prepare it for what was coming. I asked Mathena to teach me every spell she could, to make my child strong, handsome, a warrior. A king.

I asked her, too, about what life had been like, for her, at court, now that I was carrying the child of a prince.

“What did you do there?” I asked one evening, as we drank tea together next to the fire. “What is it like to live in a great palace?”

“I spent much time with the queen,” she said. The flames threw shadows across her face. Outside, the air was crisp and clear, the world bracing itself for the first snow.

“You mean . . . his mother?” I was surprised she had not mentioned such a thing before.

“Yes,” she said. “Queen Anne.”

“I didn’t know you were so important!”

She laughed at my enthusiasm. “I gave her advice. Spells. Like what we do now for the women who come see us, I did that for her then. She was a great believer in the stars. I expect she still is.”

“You read the stars for her?”

Our work suddenly had a glamour to it that hadn’t been there before. I imagined myself, sitting beside the queen—I pictured a stunning woman draped in jewels—reading her cards, her stars, her tea leaves.

“She wouldn’t do anything without checking the sky. People used to be like that then.”

“At court? I thought magic wasn’t allowed there. That’s why we can’t call ourselves witches.”

She looked at me sharply. “Don’t ever use that word, Rapunzel. Not even here. Do you understand? People can be hanged for that now.”

I sat back, reprimanded, but her words were hard to understand when such terrors seemed so far away. I set my tea down on the floor.

“Things were different then,” she said, leaning back on the couch. “It wasn’t a bad thing to be known as . . . an enchantress.” She smiled at the word. “People believed in magic. They still do, obviously, but things changed in the palace before I left. A new priest came. The king reformed, and it became a crime to talk openly about such things.”

I nodded, but I was already far away, imagining Mathena and the queen sitting side by side, the queen’s jewel-covered hand upturned on a table between them.

I wanted a life like that. I wanted to have more in my life than this cottage in the forest.

“Here,” Mathena said, setting down her tea and grabbing my wrist, “let’s go outside.” She dropped the branch she’d been holding. In front of us, the fire leapt up as if to grab it.

We walked outside, the sky black and clear above us, scattered with thousands of stars. The garden squatted down next to us. Above us, the tower seemed to stretch indefinitely.

She sat, cross-legged, on the grass, gathering her long skirt into her lap. I sat next to her, despite the cold. Breathing in, I smelled smoke and rotting leaves.

“I spent a lot of time at court just staring at the sky,” she said.

I stared up with her, wondering at the mysteries embedded with it. Already I could make out the characters in the great stories she’d told me. Pegasus. Orion, Artemis’s lover, with his bright sword. Scorpio, who killed him, stretching his tail across the sky.

“Can you see anything about my son?” I asked.

She hesitated. “I think he will be born in Cancer,” she said. “Do you see it up there, the crab?”

I followed her finger to the faint spots in the northern sky, the line of stars splitting into thin claws. “Yes! Hercules kicked the crab into the sky, right, after Hera sent it to him? While he was battling the Hydra?”

She smiled. “You remember. It’s been years since I told you those stories.”

“I remember all of them,” I said.

“He will be strong and gifted,” she said. “Like his mother.”

We lay back, side by side, watching the stories in the sky. I imagined my own body being placed in the heavens, outlined by diamonds.

I felt a rumbling through the earth before I heard it. I sat up, instinctively placing my palms over my belly. It sounded as if a whole army were heading toward us, with hundreds of horses storming over the ground, their massive hooves shod with iron.

Mathena sat up and put her hand on my shoulder, keeping me seated. “It’s all right,” she said. “Stay where you are.”

The hooves got louder. Leaves shook on the trees around us, rattling together, and then I saw several figures—five, I counted—men with sacks raised up in their arms, knives and crossbows strapped to their sides, approaching through the woods. In the dark, their bodies were hulking shadows and it was impossible to tell where man and horse divided, so that it seemed as if great mythic beasts were bearing down on us.

Bandits.

My heart hammered in my chest. They came right toward us. I ignored Mathena and scraped at the ground, trying to move out of their way, but I felt as if my own feet were covered in iron. The sound deafened me, the earth shook beneath me. All the while, Mathena sat calmly watching.

And then they were upon us, we were right in their path and there was no way to move. I bunched myself into a ball, tears streaming down my face, waiting to be run down.

The sound, the smell of horse and man passed over me. The horses ran right through me as if I were not even there. I twisted my neck and watched their shadows disappearing into the woods on the other side of us.