And the woods vanished.
Chapter Twenty-one
In the Tower
Alarmed, Zel watched her hair grow. New hair spilled out of her scalp at a rate of one inch per second. Already she had twelve feet of hair. Coiled on the floor, it looked like a golden boa constrictor. Fresh mounds slid over each other as it grew.
She knew what would happen next: first a witch would come, then a prince. Later, she would be banished to the desert, and the prince would be thrown on briars and blinded. Later still, she would find him and cry on his eyes. And the second her tears touched his eyes, the story would end and she would forget.
She had to make reminders. Quickly. Zel cast about for something, anything, to shape into clues for herself. Bare stone walls. Dirty floor. The Wild knew so many of her tricks. She’d have to be clever if she wanted any chance of leaving a reminder it wouldn’t transform.
She’d forgotten so much already, just from living. She could only vaguely remember what Julie’s father looked like. He’d had green-blue eyes, like the ocean in New England. His eyes used to crinkle when he smiled. The rest of him was a blur, but she remembered his eyes, and she remembered his hands. His hands could cover hers easily.
She looked at her own smooth, pale hands that hadn’t scarred or tanned or aged in five hundred years. Five hundred years. Zel could bear to lose all of those years except the last twelve. She didn’t want to forget Julie.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me!”
At the command, Zel yanked at her hair. The coils slid and flopped. She didn’t want to forget the day that Julie was born, when she first looked at Julie’s pink, scrunched face and felt as if the sun itself had flared up inside her chest.
“Oh, Rapunzel?”
She didn’t want to forget Julie’s first steps: how she went straight from walk to run to fall. She didn’t want to forget the way Julie used to leap into Zel’s bed or the way she cleaned her room by throwing everything in the closet or the way she argued with Boots over TV channels.
Compelled by the Wild, Zel leaned out the window. Down below, Gothel waited, broom in hand and black dress billowing in the breeze. “Are you waiting for Christmas?” Gothel called. “Come on, Zel, lower the hair!”
Zel blinked. That was strange. Gothel sounded like herself. She’d never varied from the witch’s lines before. “Mom?” she called down. “Are you all right?”
“Just peachy!” Gothel called back.
She was herself! What did it mean? Were things going to be different this time around? With the Wild growing so fast and subsuming so many new people, all the story bits were jumbled up. But did that mean there was truly a chance for change for the Wild’s original residents? Did Zel dare hope? “Hair’s coming!” Zel shoveled the mounds of hair onto the windowsill. It teetered there, a massive heap. She pushed it over. It tumbled down the tower wall. She braced herself on the window frame as the weight of it pulled her forward.
Gothel grasped it, and Zel’s scalp was yanked forward. “Yow!” Another thing she’d forgotten: how much this hurt.
“Ow-ow-OW!” It felt as if her head was going to pop off like a Barbie doll’s. Gritting her teeth, Zel hung on to the window frame as Gothel climbed the outside wall of the tower.
Zel gasped as Gothel, scrambling over the windowsill, released her hair. Blinking back tears that had popped into her eyes, Zel reeled her hair inside. Sitting down on the puddle of hair, she massaged her scalp.
“I’ve never understood why I don’t just fly up here,” Gothel said lightly.
Zel grunted. It was going to be even worse when the new prince came. Any prince the Wild picked was bound to be heavier than Gothel. It didn’t matter if Zel’s scalp was strong enough; it still hurt. She really hated this.
Gothel was silent for a moment as Zel conquered the pain. When Zel looked up, her mother was staring out the window. “All the years outside and here we are again,” Gothel said. “I had hoped that after five hundred years, my role would have changed.”
Zel didn’t know what to say. Gothel was right: five hundred years out of the Wild, yet Zel was still the girl in the tower and Gothel was still her jailer. “Mother . . .”
Continuing to stare out the window, Gothel said, “I have some news you’re not going to like.”
Zel felt the bottom drop out of her stomach, and her hair was forgotten. Something had happened to Julie. She knew it. Her baby was hurt, and Zel was unable to go to her. She clenched her fists, wishing she could pummel the walls until they fell. She’d been unable to keep her daughter safe from the Wild. She would never forgive herself. “Tell me,” she said.