The Fairest of Them All

1

I was seventeen when I first saw him. I was drying herbs by the fireplace in the main house, as I sometimes did back then, enjoying the scent of the burning pinecones and wood, when I heard a knock at the front door. Loup, our cat, was curled up on the couch next to me, and our falcon, Brune, was perched on the mantel. Mathena was out back, tending the garden that grew behind the crumbling tower I lived in. The tower was a space of my own, and I loved sitting in the window, from which I could see the whole forest and even, on clear days, the king’s palace in the distance, while I brushed my hair and sang to the sparrows that gathered in the trees around me. But on those late summer afternoons, when the air was just starting to chill, I found myself in the main house, stealing time by the fire.

Without even thinking, I got up and opened the door, assuming it was another lovelorn client come to tell Mathena and me her woes and get a spell to fix them. Instead I found myself looking into the eyes of the most handsome man I’d ever seen, dressed in rich clothes that were unfamiliar to me: a velvet tunic, a neat cap, an intricate sword stuck through his belt. His mouth was full and curved into a smile. He had sparkling eyes, grayish blue, the kind I’d only ever seen in cats, and there was a mischievous joy about him that made me like him instantly. No one had ever looked at me like that, either, like he wanted to devour me, and in that instant my whole body changed into something new.

When I say he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, I have to admit: at that time, I’d barely seen any men at all.

You see, I’d grown up hearing about the dangers of the male portion of our race. Mathena had disavowed men altogether, and was quite convincing in her reasoning. “Men will ruin you,” she’d say. “They’ll drive a woman mad more surely than the plague. Just look at what’s happened to Hannah Stout.” I’d shudder, thinking of our once-beautiful client, nearly bald now from having ripped out her own hair, hair that had been lush and shining before her new husband ran off with his stepdaughter. Mathena had cures for love, like yarrow root, which could halt infatuations when added to bathwater, or elderberry bark, which could numb a heartache when boiled down and pressed against that most fickle organ. You could tell sometimes when a woman was suffering from love, from the cord twisting around her neck, from which the bark performed its duty.

Most of my experience with men came from the stories Mathena and I heard every day, from the women who sought out our cures. Men themselves did not consult us for ailments of the heart, especially as it was considered women’s work to have a heart at all. Day in and day out, I heard tales of men seducing ladies, abandoning wives, abusing daughters. I’d sit and help Mathena dispense salves and teas and potions and think how strange it was that so many women succumbed to foolish notions, as if one man could make them feel full and complete, even when he was married to someone else. But I knew so little then. I had barely set eyes upon a man in all my seventeen years, other than the occasional troubadour or marksman—or group of hunters, sometimes accompanying the king—who dashed by, through the woods.

It was only the daughters for whom I felt real sympathy, back then. If it hadn’t been for Mathena, I would have ended up like one of the bruised, tear-stained girls who showed up at our door. Once upon a time, Mathena had lived in a cottage next door to my mother and father, in the center of the kingdom. She kept a wonderful garden with a brilliant patch of rapunzel that my mother, who was with child and could see the garden from her bedroom window, longed for so much that she refused to eat anything else. She began wasting away, Mathena told me, until one day my father climbed over the wall into Mathena’s garden to steal the rapunzel, trampling over all her carrots and cabbages in the process. He came back and back. Even after I was born, my mother cared only for the plant, which was never enough for her, and she’d take out all that need and frustration on me. When I was seven, Mathena rescued me from my parents and brought me to the forest and made a potion for me so that I’d forget everything that had happened before, all that I’d suffered at my real parents’ hands. For that, I thought I’d be forever loyal to her.

Then there he was, this beautiful richly dressed man at my door, so close I could count his eyelashes, and I understood for the first time what all those spells and salves and magic teas and baths and candles were for.

I dropped the hollyhock in my hands. Immediately I was conscious of my unwashed face and ragged clothes, the cloth wrapped around my hair, which Mathena let me unloose only in the tower, so as not to attract too much attention from birds as we worked . . . the fire crackling in the background, which made me smell like smoke. I felt like a savage next to this man’s clean velvet shirt and gleaming sword. I could feel my face grow red, and the heat seemed to come right from the center of my body.

“Good afternoon,” he said, refusing to turn away despite how visibly embarrassed I must have looked. He took off his cap and bowed, though he watched me the whole time, that same impish smile playing about his lips.

“Good afternoon,” I stammered. “May I . . . help you?”

Just then Brune flew from the mantel and to my shoulder, where she perched herself menacingly. The man looked from the bird to me and back again, and seemed more delighted than perturbed.

“Well, I feel a little awkward,” he said. “But I was on a hunt a fortnight ago and I heard a young lady singing, and I was wondering. Well, I was hoping to find her.” He paused, clearing his throat, looking down shyly and then back up at me. “I have not been able to forget that voice. That song.”

I could feel my face flushing, as I remembered the hunting party passing, the way I’d sung out to them. I’d called him to me, I realized. I’d wanted to know who they were, where they were going; I’d been excited by the violence of the hunt. And here this man was, at my doorstep. My heart raced.

It did not occur to me that he might be feigning his own nervousness in order to woo me.

“Oh, yes,” I said, finally. “I saw the banners, but I couldn’t see your faces. I heard shouts and cries.” I remembered, too, the song I’d been singing when I heard the pounding of the horses’ hooves on the forest floor, how I’d aimed my song at them. Something I’d made up about the sparrows feeding their young. Their hungry mouths, their hungry hearts, the glowing worms they rip apart.

“It was you, wasn’t it? Singing up in that tower? With that glorious hair hanging down?”

The way he said it made me feel as if he’d come upon me bathing naked in the lake. “Yes,” I whispered, touching the cloth covering my hair now.

“Ah, I thought so the moment you opened the door, though you have hidden that hair away. Do you live here alone?”

The flirtatious, almost predatory note in his voice made me remember the stories and the warnings. My body tensed, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to push past me, into the house. Then he smiled, and I realized: I want him to come inside. It was a feeling I’d seen but never experienced, the feeling in those grieving women: I want to be broken.

“No,” I said. “I live here with my mother.”

“She’s a witch, isn’t she?”

“No!” I said. “Of course not.” I knew enough to know that witch was a bad word, a dangerous one, especially with those who came from the kingdom. “At court, a woman can get killed for a word like that,” Mathena had said.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said. “I heard stories, when I was inquiring about you.”

“We only heal here, sir, we do not practice bewitching.”

“I might have to argue with that,” he said, raising his eyebrow. I could not help but laugh at the funny expression on his face. “What is your name?”

“Rapunzel.”

“Isn’t that a type of . . . lettuce?”

“Yes,” I said. “Though I’ve never seen it myself.”

Just then, the back door opened and Mathena stepped into the room, her hands dirt-covered from the gardening, her dark hair damp with sweat. The sight of the man visibly upset her; I watched shock, then fear, pass over her face.

“Your Highness!” she said, falling into a curtsy. Brune left my shoulder for hers, her wings spanning out in warning.

I looked from Mathena to the man and back again, confused by her reaction.

Mathena rushed forward, causing Brune to fuss, and put her arm around my waist. “Excuse her, sire, she is just a country girl and does not know the royal manners.”

“Oh, I am not yet a king, madame,” he said, causing a blush to rise from Mathena’s chest to her cheeks. “I am still subject to the rule of my father, as we all are.”

I breathed in with surprise, and attempted to curtsy as Mathena had done.

“Of course,” Mathena said, stepping in front of me. “It has been so long since I’ve been at court, I forget the proper addresses.” She curtsied again. “I am Madame Mathena Gothel, and this is my daughter Rapunzel.”

He bowed to us both. “Enchanted,” he said. “And I am Prince Josef. You have a fine falcon, I see.”

“Thank you,” she said. She reached out her hand behind her, as if to make sure I was still there. To keep me there.

“My father is quite a passionate falconer,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and now her voice was hard, cold, “and a very fine one at that.”

I began to feel dizzy. Not only because of Mathena’s behavior and the fact that there was a handsome prince standing before us, but because I had called him to me, using my own magic. I was sure of it.

“This is a charming house,” he continued. “I sometimes wonder what other kind of life I might have had, in a place like this, for instance.”

“I assure you it is much less exciting than your life in the palace. You would be quite bored here in the forest.”

I watched this exchange with fascination. I’d never seen Mathena speak the way she was speaking now, or stand the way she was standing, with her spine straight, her shoulders back, her chin lifted. She seemed years younger, suddenly. I knew that she’d spent time at court as a young woman and was versed in the royal decorum, but she seemed more defensive than courtly. Her body had become a fortress holding me back, as if her arms had grown and were stretching out from wall to wall. She was doing everything she could to make me disappear behind her, much as I was trying to stay in his line of vision, and keep him in mine. Who knew when I would next see a man this close, let alone a prince?

“Perhaps,” he said, ignoring her clipped tone, “if I did not have such delightful company. But if the lovely Rapunzel has not been to court, maybe it’s time to bring her? The harvest ball will be taking place on the night of the equinox. I do hope she would like to attend.”

I was equal parts astonished and delighted. A ball! Visions flashed before my eyes. Men and women twirling across a marble floor. And a palace—a place full of sunlight and diamonds and a richness I couldn’t quite visualize but knew I craved. A blurred, bright idea, like a child’s image of heaven.

“That is a generous offer,” Mathena said, yet it was clear from her voice that she did not find it kind at all. She was usually not so rude, and I bristled with embarrassment. Of course, she was not usually addressing princes. Brune didn’t help matters, jutting her beak forward and staring at him threateningly from Mathena’s shoulder.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. I craned my neck around Mathena and tried to look my most alluring. I reached up nonchalantly to move the cloth back so that he could see a swath of golden hair.

“You’re both invited,” he said. “And I hope you will each do me the honor of saving a dance.”

“We’ll try to attend,” Mathena said, “though the harvest here promises to be very demanding.”

He took Mathena’s hand to kiss it, and then somehow managed to angle past her and take mine, which I extended to him. The moment he touched me, I felt it through my whole body, shooting out as if he had fire burning in his palms.

“I look forward to seeing you again,” he said, looking straight into my eyes before turning back to Mathena. “It will be my pleasure.”

“You’re very kind,” Mathena said, with the same sharp edge in her voice. He took a step back. I wanted to pinch her, force her to invite him in for tea.

“Well, thank you,” he said. “I am pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

He bowed to us, put his cap back on, and turned. I watched him walk to a black horse draped in a velvet and silver harness, tied to a tree. Within seconds he was gone.

For a moment, I was not sure if it had even happened at all, or if I’d dreamed it. The woods sounded just the same as always: the birds in the trees, the leaves rustling, dropping to the ground.

And yet, everything was different. Just minutes ago, the room had seemed so calm, with its crackling fire and dirt, its rug-covered floors, the simple tapestries on the walls. Now, suddenly, it felt like the loneliest place on earth.

I turned to Mathena. She was trembling—with rage, or fear, or sorrow, I could not tell. Brune was leaning into her, as if to offer comfort.

“You cannot go, Rapunzel,” she said, before I could speak.

“What?”

“You must forget this ever happened.”

I stared at her. “But . . . why?”

With a small flick of her wrist, she returned Brune to her mantel. The bird stared down at us disapprovingly, then turned away. Mathena took my hands in hers and led me to where Loup was still sleeping on the couch. “Sit, and listen to me,” she said. She reached up and pulled the cloth back down to my forehead. “You must forget that the prince ever came here. I cannot let you go to court, Rapunzel, not yet. The palace will ruin you.”

What she didn’t see was that I was already ruined.

“But he is a prince,” I said, clutching at the words. They floated in front of me, like pieces of a shipwreck. “He . . . invited me. How can I not go?” I imagined running to the stable and untying our own horse, and following after him. But I was not yet that brave, and so I burst into tears instead. “He came here looking for me. It was like something out of a fairy story!”

“Only the kind where the maiden’s hands get chopped off.”

I had rarely seen her so upset, and she flashed and sparked with it, her brown eyes glittering. She stood and stalked over to the fireplace, stoking it with a branch. I watched her as she stabbed at the flames. Her hair whirled about her face, hung down in curls along her cheeks.

“It’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve been cooped up in the forest for so long. Why can’t I see what life is like at court?”

She turned to me. “Someday, Rapunzel, you will have the life you long for. But not yet.”

“Why not yet? He came here looking for me! I’ve been invited to a ball!”

“Because he is promised to someone else.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. A terrible burst of pride moved through me. I was young and beautiful. I had hair like sunlight. I had heard passing minstrels composing songs to my beauty, at the tower window as I sang. “You just want to keep me here,” I said. “I will go to the ball and make him forget anyone else.”

“No,” she said. “I forbid you to go.”

I stared at her in shock. We had never argued before, and she had never forbidden me something I wanted.

But I’d never wanted this.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“I already have.”

She stood over me, looking right into me. I looked away, but could still feel her eyes burning through me. Already I could feel myself waffling, my heart softening. Mathena was a witch—I had lied before, to him, when I said she was not, to protect the both of us—and for the first time she was turning her powers against me.

I leapt up. “You cannot control me,” I cried. “You can’t forbid me to go!”

I strode to the door, then turned back to her. She was so beautiful and majestic, even when I hated her.

For a moment we just eyed each other. I knew that something was changing between us then, and was tempted to go back and throw my arms around her.

Instead, like the child I was, I slammed the door behind me.

I stormed to the tower, stomped up the many curving stairs to my room. Until the year before, I’d lived with Mathena in the main house, but on my sixteenth birthday she’d let me move into my own little room in the crumbling tower with vines climbing up the side. She’d helped me make a colorful quilt for the bed, and given me one of her tapestries to hang on the wall, next to the old, oval-shaped mirror that hung by the hearth. I’d always loved that tower, where I spent many happy hours playing, sticking my head out of the window and letting my hair hang to the ground as if I were a girl in a storybook.

Little did I know then that it would become my prison.

I lay on my bed and stared at the stone walls, the tapestry with its images of peacocks and castles, the light that poured in through the one window and illuminated the late summer air. Outside, branches laced over each other like fingers. I caught a glimpse of my face in the looking glass and realized I was crying.

I thought back to all the ladies who’d sat in front of Mathena over the years, sobbing as they relayed their heartbreaks, and me watching them, fetching teas and dried herbs for Mathena while despising the women for their weakness. The peasant woman who was having an affair with her lord, the lady who was certain her husband no longer loved her, the rejected and weak and aching. I had not known any better. I was beginning to understand, now, the passions that had moved them.

I would go to the prince’s ball, I decided, no matter what Mathena said. I would take the horse and go. All I needed was a gown. I marked the equinox on the stone wall, with the bit of rock lying on the trunk beside me: I had fourteen days. I would steal into Mathena’s room and find something to wear. After she took me from my parents, she had packed everything she owned into trunks. These were my first memories: the two of us coming together to the forest and finding the old tower, the crumbling remains of a castle, her moving the trunks into her room, remnants from her other lives, her past selves. I’d sifted through her things—the fine gowns, the corsets and ribbons—with fascination. She had been at court once, and yet now, like mothers and would-be mothers everywhere, wanted to protect me from her own mistakes.

It was not fair.

All I knew was this, this stone cottage and this crumbling tower. My memory began in the forest: the call of birds, the howling of wolves, the way the wind rustled through the trees. The forgetting potion had erased all memory of what came before, the life I’d had in the kingdom. I remember how we came upon the ruins of the castle, the magical stone tower thrusting through the forest canopy. How I raced up the crumbling stairs and into the round room at the top, twirling around with delight. There’d been a girl in the room with me, with hair like sunlight, and I’d moved toward her, moved away, delighted by this fantastical creature who mimicked my own movements in the piece of glass propped up on the floor. It was Mathena who first showed me how a mirror worked, and who hung it from the wall like a painting.

Now I watched the sun dropping in the sky, dusk filtering through the forest. In the distance, the spires of the palace glittered. The world was so alive and open. I was meant to be out in that world, beyond the woods. Otherwise, why would I have been made the way I was, with hair like the sun?

Sleep was impossible. Once the sky was dark, and the moon and stars bathed the forest in silver, I stole out and gathered fresh thyme, lavender, and rue from the garden, along with a pile of soil from where his horse had stood, then returned to the tower. I lit a fire in the small hearth and carefully scattered the mixture in a half circle around me. I pressed my palms into it, sifted it through my fingers. The earth remembered him, kept something of him in itself. I just had to let it work its magic.

I stood and stared at myself in the mirror, flame shadows playing against my face. My eyes were huge, blue, like pools of water. My cheeks flushed. I let my hair stream down like a river along the floor behind me. I looked different, I was certain of it. My body felt lush and soft, touchable. Womanly. I was ready for a man like this.

“Love me,” I whispered. I used my fingertip to draw the words into the mixture. “Love me.”

Outside, I could hear the sounds of the forest: the wolves and owls, the wind moving through the branches and leaves, the rush of river, the sound of the moon scraping across the sky.

I slipped off my shift, and imagined him in the room beside me, that my hands were his hands, traveling the length of my body.

The half circle glittered in the moonlight, from the stone floor. The mirror moved in and out, watching.

Love me.

The next morning I gathered the mixture from the stone floor and filled a sachet with it that I wore around my neck, against my heart. It was basic magic, using the land around us, the energy of growing, living things, the mystery of plant and earth, to link one soul to another.

I acted as if everything were normal, dressed in a high-necked gown to cover the talisman I wore, and joined Mathena in the garden. I could feel her watching me as I knelt down, but I did not look up. There was work to do, as we prepared for autumn. The air was just beginning to crisp, and though it was still summer, the trees were already changing color.

“Are you all right, Rapunzel?” she asked finally, leaning back on her haunches.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You know I only want to protect you.”

“Yes.”

Tears stung my eyes and I turned away. We worked quietly together after that, the way we’d done forever, our hands in the soil. I’d always loved these moments with her, surrounded by vegetables and fruits and flowers, being able to feel a plant’s roots moving into the earth, knowing from a touch what it needed to thrive.

Mathena’s hands were defter than mine would ever be, as she packed the soil with bark.

While I worked, I imagined him at the ball, watching for me, waiting for me. I touched my dress, feeling for the sachet underneath, filled with the earth and herbs that connected me to him. I kept him around my neck. I did not want to take any chances.

A few days later I stole into Mathena’s room, when she was out hunting with Brune. I dragged her trunks from below her bed, and opened them until I found the one I was looking for. Inside were gowns in rich colors, corsets, and gems. I breathed out a sigh of relief. She’d cut up many of her old clothes to make curtains and blankets, which decorated the house in fine fabrics—swaths of night-blue damask, crimson taffeta, gold brocade on purple silk—but there were several gowns still stored away. They were covered in dust, but they were finery nonetheless, clothes I could wear to a palace ball. I sifted through until I found a red silk dress that I knew would suit me, with its jewel tone and simple, striking design. Carefully, I spread it on Mathena’s bed and returned the trunks to their places. I draped the gown over my arm and rushed to the tower, terrified that Mathena would discover what I was doing.

Breathless, I slipped on the gown. It clung to my body perfectly, though now Mathena was rounder and thicker than I. I imagined what she might have been like twenty years before, when she was my age now. Even as a woman nearing forty she was stunning. How slender she would have been before, how striking her dark hair must have been against this deep red. And I let down my own hair, and turned to face myself in the mirror. The color made my skin look like the whitest cream, my hair shine like spun gold. If I stood on my toes, I could see the way it swept down to the floor. I trembled as I watched myself, afraid that the image would vanish.

The morning of the ball, I woke up full of excitement. I planned to work with Mathena all morning as usual, and then grab my bow and arrow and pretend I was going off to hunt on horseback. Instead, I would ride to the palace, and let Brune help guide me.

I raced down the stairs that twisted the length of the tower, and pushed against the great wooden door to get out.

It did not budge.

I pushed again.

At first I thought it was stuck, and I used all my weight to press against it.

And then to my right, against the wall, I saw wine, bread, and water, enough for several days.

I screamed with rage. My scream echoed against the walls in the tower, blasted up to my room, into the sky through the only window. Never in my life had I felt the kind of fury I did then.

She had locked me in.

I pounded on the door, kicked at it, sobbing with frustration. After some time passed, I called out to Mathena, begging her to let me out, but she did not answer. I tried spells to open the door, tried to fashion a key from air as I knew she could, but my magic was no match for hers. Finally, I gave up and sulked back up the stairs. I paced furiously around the small room, stood at the window, and stared at the glittering spires, as if I could will myself to them. The hours slipped past. Throughout the day I called out to her, but she did not appear. When evening came, I could feel the king’s palace filling with wine and candles and diamonds, lords and ladies whirling about, all that life pressed in together; it was torture.

For hours I seethed and cried and called to her. Finally, I slept. When I woke the next day, I had a new resolve.

One thing I knew, from all my years of working with Mathena: it was in the focusing, and the wanting, the fashioning one’s desire into a point of light, that the magic took place. I’d called him to me before, hadn’t I? Now, for the first time, I took everything I had learned and felt and I pressed it together inside me, filled it with my own longing and need until I could see it, feel it like a blade, and turned it into that light.

“Come back,” I whispered, clutching the sachet around my neck.

She thought she could keep me away from him by locking me in a tower. But I could bring him to me. He was already tied to me, through magic, through the earth, and now I would make him return.

I looked at myself in the mirror the way he would look at me. I could hear his heartbeat, his breath, in and out, and I slipped into his mind and heart as if my whole body, my very being now, had turned to spirit.

After that, I waited. I used the water she’d left me sparingly, to keep myself washed for him, and I dressed carefully in front of the mirror, and brushed and brushed my hair, using the bit of potion I had left. To make it strong.

It would need to be. When he came, it wouldn’t matter that I was locked in a tower.

I had my hair.

The next day, I watched her working in the garden, chopping tree trunks and carrying firewood into the house, heading out into the forest to collect mushrooms and wild raspberries. I watched women come and go, into the house. I watched the candles flare up as evening came, watched the lights flame out when she was going to bed.

She called up to me a few times, but I did not answer her.

And then the next day, when she was out hunting with Brune—as I had willed her to be, when the time was right—I heard the horse’s hooves, and I knew he had returned.

I went to the window and let down my hair, let it fall from my head and out of the window, where it stretched down and tapped the ground, like a flag waving from the mast of a ship.

He rode into view just as the sun caught my hair and turned it to fire. He looked up at me, a dazed expression on his face. Never in my life had I felt the kind of power I felt right then. I was young and beautiful. I had all the magic of the forest at my fingertips. I was foolish, too; I understand this now, after so many years have passed, how I confused infatuation for true love, the power of beauty for real power in the world.

“You came back,” I said. I whispered the words, and let the wind carry them to him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You were not at the ball.”

“She locked me in this tower, to keep me away.”

He left his horse, walked toward the tower.

“You have to climb up here,” I said.

“What?”

He looked around, and then headed for the great wooden door. I could hear him struggling, just out of my vision. A moment later, he was standing again under the window.

“I’m locked in,” I said.

“I’ll get the key from her.”

“No. She is not here. Climb.”

He tilted his head, not understanding. “There’s no rope or ladder.”

“Climb my hair.”

“How . . . ?”

“You won’t hurt me,” I said.

Tentatively, he reached out and touched my hair, grasped it in his fist. I could feel that touch. My hair was as alive as skin, as blood. I reeled back from the force of the feeling that spread through me. I could feel him. I knew him.

“Climb,” I said again, holding on to the windowsill and bracing myself for the pain in my scalp. But no pain came. Instead, images flashed through my mind: a bed covered in furs, a heavy manuscript scattered across a desk, bright colors blotted across stone. They were all images from his life, I realized with surprise, flowing from him to me. I’d never felt anything like it before. Of course, outside the tower Mathena always made me keep my hair tied back, hidden under cloth. Was this why? Did she know what it could do?

He hoisted himself up and I could feel his full weight, as I braced myself against the window.

“Are you all right?” he called up.

“Yes,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Just climb!”

His anxiety moved from him to me. He was afraid to hurt me, pictured me flying sideways out the window like a golden bird, my body smashing into the ground.

But my hair was strong, stronger than iron. It could hold him ten times over, and I anchored myself against the tower.

After a moment of hesitation, he stretched one hand up over the other and twisted his thighs around my hair. He began to climb. I could feel his fear dissipating, his excitement to see me pulsing through every strand.

I closed my eyes, as everything he’d ever thought or felt or dreamed passed into me, like water seeping into the soil. I could feel the way he’d ridden through the forest to come find me, stopping at an inn at the edge of the woods, for the night. Hear the songs he’d sung to himself as he rode. I could barely breathe, as it poured through me, unfurling, moving further back in time. I could feel his worry over his mother the queen, the way he’d begged her, as a child, to see him when she was busy talking to ghosts, his loneliness and hurt when she looked past him, his love for poems and stories that filled him, that populated his world, his anger at his father the king, all of it combined with a deep love for them both, a love for me . . .

It was overwhelming, feeling that I knew every part of him, feeling I was seeing all the secret parts of his heart that should have remained hidden.

Finally, he grabbed on to the stone windowsill. His face was right next to mine and he pulled himself into the room. He moved gracefully, like an acrobat.

And then he was standing before me, several inches taller than me, still clutching my hair in his hands. I looked up at him. His face was sweet and glowing. I had to look away, embarrassed to see him as nakedly as I did.

“I could live in this hair,” he said, pressing his face into it. I felt his breath, his lips, through the strands.

“Give that back to me,” I said, grateful for his silliness. I pulled it from him and yanked more of it in from the window until it reached the floor, then reined in the next batch.

He turned to help me, gathering my hair into the tower, letting it brush against his face as he did. A thousand more images sparked in front of me: painted letters on a page, banquet tables covered with gold plates and sparkling glasses, childhood afternoons on horseback chasing falcons, stretched-out canvases and the feel of a brush dipped in paint, artists and dancers and musicians . . . Infusing all of it, a deep love for art and beauty, a desire to fill the world with wonderful things. I could feel my own heart expanding as I took him inside me, and everything became possible for me, the way it was for him. More than anything else, there was joy. I had never felt the kind of joy that he did. Even at his most hurt, his most lonely, he contained this wonder inside him, a passion for the world and all its beauty. People loved him for that, I realized.

I could love him for that.

“This must be what heaven is like,” he said, interrupting the flow of emotions.

“Pulling my hair in through a window?”

“Yes,” he said.

I was giddy with happiness. “You don’t seem very much like a prince,” I said.

“And what is a prince supposed to be like?”

“I thought princes were dignified.”

“You don’t find me dignified?” He made a face at me, twisting his features into a ridiculous expression.

“Well, you are the most dignified prince I’ve ever seen, though it’s true I’ve only seen one.”

“You might have better luck if you didn’t get yourself locked inside of towers.”

I laughed, as he reached out and ran his palm along my cheek. I leaned into it. And then we fell silent, just watching each other.

“You’re here,” I said, finally. “I can’t believe it.”

“Did you not call me to you?”

I was so moved, I found it difficult to speak. I had called to him, and he had felt it.

“Yes,” I said softly.

“I waited for you at the ball,” he said, his voice curling into my ear, vibrating along every strand of my hair. “I was afraid that bandits had attacked you, that you weren’t safe; I know the dangers of the forest and the dark forces at work here. I came as soon as I could. When you called to me . . . it was as if you were inside me. I hadn’t slept that night and at first thought I was imagining things. But your voice was so clear.”

He stepped closer to me, and took me into his arms. As he held me, I could feel myself transforming, as if under a spell. My body changed into liquid, into points of light. His body became an anchor as I felt myself melting, disappearing into him. I couldn’t get close enough to him.

I knew it was too fast. I knew it was foolish, and wrong, but I’d brought him to me, the flow of feeling was overwhelming, and he was—I knew it, with absolute certainty—my fate.

The sun spilled into the room. His hands were on my waist, my neck, pulling off my dress. I let him press against every bit of my body, ensuring that I was still there, that I hadn’t dissolved into light, too. I pulled off his shirt, slid my palms down his chest onto his smooth belly. And then we were on the bed and I looked up, saw my own face in the mirror—was it only mine? I was sure I saw a rippling, another face appear beside it—for one moment before he pulled me down beneath him. And then it was only his thoughts, the press of his skin under my hands, the feel of him entering my body.

After, we lay tangled together on the bed, as the sun dropped in the sky. My hair cocooned us, humming with a contentment that moved from him to me, and back again. And then I felt, underneath it, something else. As he pulled himself up, a panic swept over me. I knew he was going to leave, that something was wrong. Why hadn’t I sensed it before?

“I must return to the palace,” he said, as I sat up next to him. “Though I’d like to stay here with you. Can you let your hair down for me again? I’ll send soldiers back here to release you. I’ll have her punished for what she’s done.”

The room came into relief. My body was a solid mass. “No, don’t send anyone,” I said.

“But she has done wrong to you,” he said.

“No! Please, don’t punish her. She just wanted to protect me. That’s all.”

“From what?”

“From you.”

He stared at me.

“She didn’t want me to go to the ball,” I continued. “She said . . . that you wouldn’t love me. That you were promised to someone else.”

He did not answer. He didn’t need to.

“It’s not my decision, Rapunzel,” he said, finally.

I pushed him away, forced him to look at me directly. “Who are you promised to?”

“I’m to marry the princess from the East.”

“When?”

“In two months.”

The room had gone cold. His heart had shifted, clouded over with guilt and pain and regret. I could feel every bit of that shift, pulsing up from him to me through my wretched hair.

Tears pricked at my eyes. He was still bewitched, I could see the glaze in his eyes, feel the strength of his desire. But it didn’t matter now. He was marrying someone else.

He buried his face in my neck, ran his hands up and down my spine.

“I’ll try to return to you,” he said.

“Marry me,” I said. “Marry me instead.”

“I do not have that freedom.”

He kissed me again, shoved his hands and arms into my hair, which made me feel his grief more intensely. He didn’t want to leave me, but would anyway. I had misunderstood the way things worked, overestimated my power. He pulled my body into his, and I kissed him back even though tears streamed down my face. And then within what seemed like seconds I once again lowered my hair out of the window, and he climbed down. His own sorrow streamed up to me but it didn’t matter, there was nothing at all I could do to change what had happened, what I’d given him.

He was gone.