The Price of Longing

  ***

   

  Months passed, and Rapunzel’s prince didn’t come. Neither did her monthly bleeding. What did come was nausea, every morning. She knew what that meant; it was the same with her friend, who married the farmer’s boy, who wanted Rapunzel to be her maid of honor before Rapunzel’s mother spirited them away into the middle of the forest. Soon her gowns would be tight around her belly and there would be no hiding what had happened. Rapunzel hoped that Caleb would return before then. She waited at the window every day for him, her braiding in her hands, moving automatically as she fixed her gaze outward.

  She found it hard to keep food down, and her preoccupation with the prince’s return and fear of her mother discovering her secret left her with a hollow, haunted look. She found herself awakening in the night and rushing to the window thinking she heard hooves beating outside. But the forest was always empty.

  One day, the witch came up to find Rapunzel still in bed, her hair stringy and unwashed, her face gaunt and pale. “Momma,” she breathed, “I feel awful.”

  “I know, child,” the witch said, hiding her anger behind a gentle smile. “I brought you some tea; it should help you feel better.” She held up a little wooden container. The witch set about heating the water in the kettle and filling the teapot with the herbs. Rapunzel lay in bed, watching her.

  The witch poured the brewed tea into a cup. The scent was herbal and fresh; it smelled like mint and lavender with a hint of lemon verbena. These were purely aromatic, to mask the smell; she had drilled Rapunzel in herbs and their uses, and the girl could identify them by appearance, taste, and smell. The witch couldn’t risk her daughter identifying one of the herbs and realizing what the tea really was for.

  The witch knew what was happening. She had helped a child or two into the world, before moving herself and her daughter here, and she saw the signs in Rapunzel. The sickness. The fact that she hadn’t bled for two months, though the crafty girl soaked her rags and pretended they had been soiled. The witch could smell that no blood had flowed. Her suspicions were realized.

  No matter; this would take care of that little problem. Angelica and blue cohosh to stimulate the uterus. Black cohosh to open the cervix. And just a bit of pennyroyal and tansy. It was the brew the witch used to drink herself every month at the time of her bleeding, to ensure its coming. She never thought Rapunzel would have to use it so early, especially with her living in the tower and inaccessible.

  She needn’t have worried; Rapunzel was so unfocused that she barely noticed what was in the cup. She drank the cup dry, gulping against her rebellious stomach, aching with dry heaves and despair and worry. She lay back in bed. Her mother soothed her brow with a gentle hand, satisfied and yet ashamed of what she was about to put her daughter through. But she brought it on herself, Rapunzel did. Spread her legs for the first man wily enough to breach the tower. The witch clung to her anger, stoked it until it was hot, to steel herself against the pain she would feel watching her child suffer at her hand.

  Rapunzel cried out as massive cramps gripped her. It was as though a fist was squeezing her. Her body was wracked with pain. She was certain her mother had poisoned her until she felt the warm, slow seep of blood between her legs. She reached down and touched herself; her hand came up bloody, shaking. She cried out again and again, sobbing, snot running down her face, stomach heaving. She cried until she choked. “Why?” she cried, tearing the word out of her throat. She couldn’t see her mother except as a blur through her tears, couldn’t see the hard expression, the thin set of her mouth.

  “Whore! Slattern!” the witch spat. “Lifted your tail like a cat in heat for the first man who would pet you. What did he promise you? Riches, power? Did he say he’d marry you?” she asked, her voice mocking. “Was it worth it?”

  “Yes!” Rapunzel screamed, face red, teeth clenched. The witch pulled her hand back and gave her daughter a crack across the face. Rapunzel’s screaming sobs began fresh; the witch paid them no heed. “How did he get up here? How?” She shook Rapunzel by the shoulders so hard that Rapunzel’s head jerked back and forth. She couldn’t speak, but wailed.

  The witch began to tear the room apart, overturning tables, pulling out dresser drawers. Then she spied the mattress, and thrust her hand beneath it, coming out with the braided rope clenched in her fist. “Oh woe betide a woman with a crafty child! I should have known the Devil was in you! With all my powers I couldn’t foresee this, and with all my magic I couldn’t keep you from working against me, to your own ruin! And now I’ve saved you and you weep?” The witch was frothing now, in a frenzy. Rapunzel wailed and choked. The witch whipped the rope into the fire; it caught quickly, the natural oils in the wool fueling the flames.

  “I bet he said you were the most beautiful woman he ever saw, and that he had to have you. I bet he told you that you have such beautiful hair,” the witch growled, her voice again becoming cold, hollow, creaking like old wood, rasping like gravel. Rapunzel saw a flash, just for an instant, of a face older than she could imagine, lined and cracked like a boulder. Then it was just her mother again, her rage twisting her and making her fearsome and ugly.

  The witch pulled out a sharp knife. Rapunzel squealed and recoiled, thinking that she was dead at last. But her mother seized her braid instead, and in one swipe cut it off at the nape. She cast that into the fire too. The room stank of burning hair; smoke billowed out of the fireplace. “See how beautiful you look now,” the witch spat, holding up the hand mirror.

  Rapunzel beheld herself. Her face was greasy, unwashed, puffy and red with crying. Her eyes were pink and runny, her nose streaming. Her beautiful hair, which used to fall in shining golden waves, stuck out from her head like the straws of a broom, ragged and split. It was dull and stringy. She hiccupped. The witch dashed the mirror to the floor, where it shattered.

  She raised her hands and sent the bundles of wool, one by one, out the window and floating toward the cottage. “I can’t have you making any more ladders, can I?” she explained. “And just to make it more difficult.” She began to murmur again, tracing symbols in the air with her hands. “Spirits of leaf and thorn,” she whispered. “Shoot up… uncurl and feel the wind through your tendrils.” Outside, on the ground below, green shoots were pushing out of the dirt at the base of the tower. The witch continued, “Climb, wrap yourselves around this rock, take hold, so that none can shake you down, no wind unwrap you, no blade hack through you.” The vines grew upward, all the way up the tower, digging tendrils into the furrows in the stone, holding fast. They thickened, becoming stronger. “Now protect yourselves, grow sharp needles and blades.” Thorns burst from the vines, slicing into the air, wicked hooks and barbs dripping with the sap of the vine.

  When she was finished, the entire tower was strangled in thorny vines. There was no place free from them. “Let’s see him get up that,” the witch hissed. She went to the window, reached out, and waved her hand over the vines that wreathed it. Tendrils pushed up, budded, and bloomed. “For your comfort, my dear,” she said to her daughter, her voice still icy around the tender words. “Roses.”

  Rapunzel said nothing. “Pull yourself together,” her mother snapped. “Clean yourself up, and this place as well. And stop crying. He’s not coming back. He never intended to.” She stepped out the window and was gone.