Long past midnight, when even the ceaseless bustle and clank of the city has finally gone still and Juniper thinks she might be able to hear the distant seesaw song of spring peepers, Agnes rolls over beside her.
“I should have come back for you, no matter what. I was scared.”
Of me. Juniper doesn’t know where the thought comes from, why it sounds so certain and so sad.
“I’m sorry, Juniper.” Agnes whispers it to the ceiling, a prayer or a plea.
If Juniper says anything, Agnes will hear the tightness of her throat, the salt-bite of tears in her voice. So she says nothing.
There’s a pause, then: “I’ll come with you in the morning, if you’ll have me.”
Another pause, while Juniper breathes carefully through her mouth. “I’ll have you.” It comes out too rough, a little strangled, but she hears Agnes sigh in relief.
After that Agnes’s breath goes deep and slow and Juniper lies wide awake, thinking about venom and vengeance, praying to every Saint that her sisters never find out how their daddy died.
Bella isn’t here—Bella the betrayer? Bella the Judas?—but Juniper wishes she were. She would ask her for a story and fall asleep on a bed of once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters and righted wrongs.
She whispers one to herself, instead.
nce upon a time there was a woodcutter whose wife was with child. But she grew very ill, her golden hair turned brittle gray, and in his desperation the woodcutter went to the local hedge-witch and begged for a cure. The hedge-witch told him of a black tower in the hills covered in green-growing vines even at midwinter. Just three leaves from this vine would cure his wife.
The woodcutter found the black tower and the green-growing vines. He stole his three leaves and brewed them as the witch instructed. Soon his wife was rosy-cheeked and smiling again, her hair the brightest gold. When their daughter was born they named her after the herb that saved her:Rapunzel.
But as they named the baby there came a terrible wind from the east, smelling of earth and ash. Knuckle-bones knocked at their door and they found a bent-backed Crone hunched on their stoop. She wore a tattered black cloak around her shoulders and an asp around her wrist, like a bracelet made of obsidian scales.
She came, she said, to take back what was stolen from her. When the woodcutter pleaded that his wife had already eaten the leaves, the Crone shuffled into the house and peered down at the baby girl. The baby girl peered back at her with eyes the color of green-growing vines.
When the Crone left the house that night, trudging through the silent snow, she carried a baby bundled beneath her cloak.
The Crone raised the girl in her high, lonely tower. Rapunzel grew to love the old woman, and, inasmuch as a witch loves anything, the Crone loved the girl. By the time Rapunzel was half-grown the only sign that she had ever belonged to anyone else was her hair: bright gold, long and shining.
One day when the Crone was away, a traveling bard saw the shine of Rapunzel’s hair through the tower window. He sang to her:
My maiden, my maiden,
Let down your long hair,
Braided tight and shining bright,
A way where once was none.
There followed the usual course of events when a handsome stranger sings to a beautiful maiden, and soon Rapunzel was climbing down a golden rope woven of her own hair, reaching her hand out for his.
The Crone returned just as the pair took their first step away from the tower, hands clasped.
“If you would leave me,” she told Rapunzel, “you must return what belongs to me.”
Rapunzel raised her chin and agreed to pay any price. The Crone bade her close her eyes and touched two cold fingers to their lids. When Rapunzel opened her eyes once more the green-growing color had been taken from them, along with her sight.
The Crone returned to her tower and watched the maiden and the bard stumble together across the hills. Rapunzel did not turn back or call out.
The Crone wept, and as her tears touched the stone floor, the tower trembled and fell. Or perhaps it vanished outside of time and memory and took the Crone with it. Perhaps she waits still for her stolen daughter to call out to her.
The only certainty is the tears themselves.
My maiden, my maiden,
Let down your long hair,
