The Witch's Daughter Page 4

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Ailynn, where did you go?” Rapunzel insisted. She knew that something was out of the ordinary- why else would I leave her in the middle of the night?

  “Mother took me out.” Since I was already worried about Rapunzel and ashamed of keeping secrets, the pleading look in her eyes made my stomach twist, breaking my defenses almost instantly. “Mother is building something to keep you safe,” I said hesitantly.

  “She thinks that I am still in danger from that man?” she asked, pulling her warm body away from mine so that she could look at me.

  “Not from that man, but from others like him. The world is often cruelest to the innocent.”

  Rapunzel stared at me, her expression confused and unfocused. “And she is trying to protect me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She has found a place where no one can hurt you.”

  “Oh… where no one can hurt me…” she mumbled, burying her face into the crook of my neck and breathing against my skin. She was asleep almost instantly.

  Something felt wrong with Rapunzel’s dazed responses. I held still, idly stroking the crown of her head as I thought. Surely the attack had not completely extinguished the inquisitive spark that endeared her to me so. Something else was making her dull and pliant.

  Slowly, I untangled myself from the sleeping Rapunzel’s arms and padded into the kitchen, the grain of the wooden floor scraping roughly against the bare soles of my feet. My mother was sitting in her carved chair. Anyone else would have thought that she was sleeping, but I knew that she was alert behind her closed eyelids.

  “What did you do to her, mother?” I asked in a cold whisper, leaning against the doorway.

  “Nothing.” She opened her eyes, staring at me too innocently. My mother was a masterful liar, and I could seldom tell when she was spinning a falsehood, but this time I was sure.

  “You’ve drugged her, haven’t you?”

  Mother moved fluidly, tossing her curls over her shoulder as she rose from the chair. She tilted up her chin, drawing herself up to her full height. I did the same. Already well into my seventeenth year, I was almost as tall as she was. “It’s for her own good, Ailynn. I thought about what you said to me and you were right, a girl locked away in a tower would go mad. This will calm her.”

  “You’ve taken her will away!”

  “I’m doing it because I love her,” my mother protested, reaching out to touch my shoulder. I shrugged her hand off of me.

  “You’re insane.”

  “Cautious, not insane. What I’m doing might seem cruel, but it’s what’s best for her.”

  “Then why not lock me away?” I spat. “Would that be best for me, too?”

  My mother looked towards the slightly cracked door to the bedroom and glared at me. “Keep your voice low. Do you want to wake her? And of course I won’t lock you away, you foolish girl. You can defend yourself, but Rapunzel…”

  “I can protect her, mother.”

  “Perhaps you are strong enough to defend yourself, little one, but you’re weak in matters of the heart. You are letting your feelings cloud your judgment.”

  “My feelings?” I asked softly, creeping away from the doorframe. “What do you mean?”

  My mother’s lips curled up in a chilling smirk. “You shouldn’t underestimate my powers of observation, daughter. You are of my blood, and I know how you think. How you feel.”

  “I don’t understand…” I said, my anger draining out of me and leaving only a panicked confusion.

  “Either you are a better liar than I thought, or you are still naïve,” my mother said thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have not realized it yet.”

  “Realized what?”

  “That you are in love with her.”

  The words struck me like a physical blow, clawing into me. I winced with pain and shame as I realized that what she said was true. I did love her. I had sworn to care for her since the first night she spent in our home. I loved the joy she brought into any room she entered. I loved the way her lush imagination created stories and pictures out of simple, everyday things. I loved how she saw beauty in everything. I loved her innocence and kindness.

  “But I- she’s…” I stumbled, shaking my head.

  “A girl? Twelve years old? Almost a sister? Take your pick.”

  “I’m not,” I said, leaning against the wall for support. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not…”

  “If you’re not, then why are you crying?”

  I reached up to touch my cheek with my fingertips and felt hot tears on my face. “No,” I mouthed, but my voice was completely gone.

  “Darling, beautiful girl, come here,” my mother cooed, drawing me into her arms. I did not protest as she rocked me gently, rubbing my back as I shook with sobs. “It’s all right. She isn’t really your sister and she will grow. She is going to be a beauty in a few years, more than she is already. She is yours if you want her.”

  “You’re doing it again!” I screamed, the words tearing from my throat, too angry to care that Rapunzel was sleeping in the next room. “You’re treating her like a present that you can give to me.”

  “She was a present that I gave to you. I took her so that you could have a playmate, remember?”

  “I wish you had never brought her here,” I said, my voice trembling and unsteady. “None of this would have happened.”

  My mother was silent for several beats. Finally, she spoke, but her words didn’t seem to be directed to me. “You truly do love her, Ailynn,” she said softly. “You love her enough to give her up for her own happiness.”

  “I want her to be happy, and I know that no one can find happiness in a locked tower.”

  “That’s what the herbs I gave her were for, to keep her content.”

  “They make her dull. She isn’t fully aware of what’s going on around her; she talks and moves as if she’s in a dream.”

  “She probably wouldn’t object to becoming your lover in a few years, you know,” my mother said, changing the subject. “You are the only person she has ever known aside from me.”

  “I won’t take advantage of her, especially not now. I’ll wait. I’ll wait until she’s old enough to understand. Then, I’ll offer myself to her. If she wants me, I’m hers. If she doesn’t, I’ll help her find whatever else she wants instead.”

  “You are too kind,” my mother said. “You could easily make her love you with all of the knowledge I have given you. But you won’t do it, even for your own happiness. You would be good for her, Ailynn.”

  “Addling her brain to win her love goes against my principles,” I said, staring at my mother coldly. “I had thought it went against yours as well.”

  “Principles be damned,” my mother said with a sigh, shaking her head. “Love has made you weak. Someday, you will thank me for protecting our little girl so well. Think, Ailynn! Rapunzel will never know pain beyond what she has already seen. She will be completely unspoiled by the world. Pure, trusting, innocent… everything that the girls in the village aren’t. Protection is the greatest gift that I can give to either of you.”

  “You’ve gone mad, mother,” I said forcefully, turning away.

  My mother put her hand on my shoulder again, and I was too muddled and confused to bother removing it. “Here, I’ll fetch you some tea,” she said, working busily behind me to prepare a new kettle. Tea was my mother’s solution to all of our arguments. I took a long draft, hopping that the warm brew would calm my nerves. If I had been a little more sensible, I might have noticed that my mother wasn’t drinking any.

  “You should rest, daughter,” she suggested as I took another sip of the heady drink. “Rapunzel might wake again.”

  “We have already shouted loud enough to summon spirits. I’m shocked that Rapunzel is still asleep.”

  “She needs her rest,” my mother said simply. She took my mug away from me before I was finished, and I didn’t think to protest. “So do you, my beautiful princess. Now, go
to bed.”

  Strangely, I wasn’t angry with my mother anymore. I didn’t feel anything except a strange, heavy tiredness settling over me like a thick blanket. “Perhaps,” I yawned, hauling myself out of my chair and across the room to the door.

  “Rest well,” my mother said. I didn’t have the strength to answer her as I stumbled through the door and collapsed onto the bed.

  …

  Chapter Six:

  When I woke the next morning, Rapunzel was not resting in my arms. All that remained was a warm indent in the mattress where she had been and a pile of rumpled sheets. After a few blank minutes of staring at the place where Rapunzel should have been, I guessed what had happened. Mother had taken her in the night after I had fallen asleep to make sure that I did not interfere with her imprisonment.

  A strange taste lingered in my mouth and I swallowed, trying to identify it. I realized suddenly that my mother had drugged my tea the night before. My tongue felt thick and heavy and my head ached. At this stage in my education, I could detect almost any poison or sleeping draught by taste, but my mother knew far more about herbs than I did, and she had probably found some way to trick my senses.

  I blinked my eyes slowly, trying to think. I knew that I had to do something to stop mother, but I was still too dazed to figure out what actions I should take. However, there was something that I did remember, something that had been drilled into me since childhood, one of the most important herbs any healer needed to know: the properties of Wormwort.

  Used in small doses, Wormwort cleared your body of unhealthy substances. The only problem was that it was a slow-working drug, and some fast-acting poisons killed too quickly for the Wormwort to take effect. The only way to speed up the process was to take a large dose, and too much Wormwort was just as fatal as any poison it might be used to block. Wormwort was what I needed to cleanse myself of whatever my mother had given me, but I needed to find Mother and Rapunzel as soon as possible.

  I thumped out of bed, feeling as though a net woven with stones had been draped over my shoulders. Somehow, I managed to drag myself into the kitchen. There, waiting on the table for me, was a small container of ground Wormwort root and a fresh mug of tea. Knowing that it would be pointless for my mother to drug me twice, I poured some of the Wormwort powder into the drink and drained it in one gulp. Then, I slipped the vial into my pocket, slumped into a chair, and waited.

  After a few minutes, my head began to clear. My body still felt drained and heavy, but my mind was responding more quickly and I could move a little more easily. I picked myself up out of the chair and hurried towards the door on unsteady legs, grabbing a shawl to wrap around my shoulders as I slipped outside.

  The morning forest was oddly quiet, as though the birds and insects could sense my unease. I picked my way over roots and dried leaves, the sense of urgency never leaving me. I already knew that it was probably too late to stop my mother from imprisoning Rapunzel in the tower, but a small part of me still hoped that I would arrive in time to do something.

  Far too late, I burst into the clearing. The pegs that had been carved into the tower wall were gone, leaving only smooth stone behind. I ran up to the tower, pressing my hands against its side, hoping that I was wrong. I felt nothing save a few strands of ivy and creeper.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stared up at the stone balcony above me. “Rapunzel!” I called, forcing my words out past the tightness in my throat, “let down your hair to me!” At first, nothing happened. I waited, my heart hammering against my breastbone. Then, a small, pale face peered over the edge of the balcony.

  “Ailynn?” said Rapunzel. Her voice seemed small and frightened, even from so far up. ”You came!”

  “Wind your hair around the hook,” I said, “then, let it down to me.”

  Rapunzel moved to another spot on the balcony and ducked her head down. Seconds later, a heavy braid of thick golden hair thudded onto the ground at my feet. I tugged on it once to make sure it would hold and began to pull myself up.

  Scaling the tower was very difficult, although bracing my feet on the stones helped to ease the burden of hauling my own body weight thirty feet into the air. Only desperation allowed me to complete the task as quickly as I did. Finally, I managed to clamber over the balcony, falling onto my hands and knees as Rapunzel hovered over me. “Did I hurt you?” I panted, pulling myself up.

  “The hook took most of the weight,” said Rapunzel, hauling her braid back over the balcony’s edge. She finished, and I took her into my arms, holding her tight against me.

  “Oh, Rapunzel, I’m so sorry…” I said weakly. “I tried to stop her, but mother won’t listen to reason…”

  “Will I stay up here forever?” she asked, tears rolling down her flushed cheeks.

  “No,” I said, trying to ignore the stinging in my own eyes and hold the rest of my tears at bay. “I will find a way to free you. Mother drugged me so that I would not see how she performed the binding spell, but I will find a way to undo it, I promise you.”

  Remembering the drugs that my mother gave to me, I checked Rapunzel’s eyes. They were clear, and there was no sign of the dreamlike film that had covered them earlier.

  “Can you be brave for me, beautiful girl?”

  “Y-yes,” she sobbed, still crying into my shoulder.

  “Mother has been giving you herbs to make you calm. Answer me truthfully; do you think that you can stay here without them? Being confined to a tower might drive the sanest man out of his wits.”

  Rapunzel thought about it, chewing on her bottom lip. “I-I think I can…” she said. “I will read my books to keep my mind busy.”

  “You can help me search mother’s books for a way to free you,” I suggested.

  “Alright. Will you give me something to make mother’s drugs stop working?”

  A small portion of my panic had eased. I had underestimated Rapunzel. Already her tears had faded and she was accepting the situation calmly. I forced a smile and stroked Rapunzel’s damp cheeks. “Yes, my heart. She can take away your freedom, but I won’t allow her to take away your will.”

  Mother was sitting in the kitchen when I returned to the cottage. She looked up when I stepped through the back door, watching me as I hung my shawl and stepped out of my shoes. “Where were you, Ailynn?” she asked, standing to greet me as I closed the door.

  “Visiting Rapunzel,” I said coldly, not wishing to speak with her. The hate was rising in me again, and I wanted to get away from my mother before it surfaced. I walked over to the small wooden door, trying to dismiss her, but she followed me.

  “I know what you are looking for in there,” my mother told me. “You shouldn’t waste your time searching.”

  “I’ll spend my time however I like.” I tapped on the door three times. “The library, please.” The door was in a good mood that day, and immediately took me to the library. Thankfully, my mother did not follow me in.

  My mother collected books along with the rest of her treasures, and she stored all of them in the library. Like the treasure rooms, the library was completely disorganized. Books on history and affairs of state were crowded next to bestiaries and recipe books. Volumes that did not occupy the vast number of shelves lining the walls were stacked on tables and chairs that were spread haphazardly throughout the room. Candle stubs littered the floor where there were no stray scrolls.

  The library had a cramped but comfortable feeling, and its high, wide windows made it the brightest room in the house. None of the furniture matched, and there were three fireplaces, but I was attached to the room despite its haphazard appearance. Some of my best memories were of being read to by my mother in the library, or later, of reading to Rapunzel.

  I settled myself down in an overstuffed, faded blue chair and grabbed the nearest spell volume, flipping through the pages rapidly. There were hundreds of books to search, and I knew that it might be months before I found the binding spell that my mother had used to keep Rapunzel in the tow
er. Somewhere near the middle of the book, I found the edges of two torn pages near the binding. Mother had torn out the spell I needed. Refusing to let myself grow angry, I picked up the next book in the pile.

  Seven books later, I had found three more references to the binding spell, but in each book, the pages that I needed were ripped out. My mother’s actions did not surprise me. Her paranoia had probably driven her to destroy all the pages about the spell. I was not overly disheartened, however. There were hundreds of books in my mother’s library, and surely she had missed at least one copy…

  I woke up in the library the next morning unable to remember falling asleep. There was an open book in my lap and sunlight was streaming into my eyes from one of the high windows. I squinted and uncurled myself on the seat of the chair, stretching my arms and yawning to clear my head. The book fell to the floor with a thud, and I didn’t bother to pick it up. “This is going to take an eternity,” I said to myself, staring up at the library shelves.

  I decided that looking at all of the books that I needed to read would only dishearten me more, and I grabbed a short stack of four volumes and headed for the door. Before I left, I grabbed a well-loved volume of fairytales off of a table and placed it at the top of the stack for Rapunzel. She had always loved reading fairytales, and I thought that reading them to her might improve her spirits.

  The kitchen was empty when I stepped through the magical door, and I set my books on the table. I started to head for the door again, so that I could find some Wormwort in my mother’s herb room to give to Rapunzel, but I remembered the vial of powder that my mother had left for me the morning before and reached into my pocket. The vial of powdered Wormwort root was still there. I grabbed my shawl from the hook next to the door, wrapped it around my shoulders, and picked up the books.

  The walk to Rapunzel’s tower was uneventful. The bright colors of the leaves were starting to fade, and most of the trees were already bare. Winter would come soon. The thought brought a wave of sadness with it, and I quickly shook my head to dismiss the feeling. However, some of it lingered even as I approached the grove of ash trees where Rapunzel’s tower stood.