November 2008

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DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

Little Radish
by Angela Slatter

All I ever wanted was the tower.

I dreamt of it when night coloured the sky. When the sun threw yellow light over everything, I would lose myself in daydreams of the silence of stone resting upon stone. Since I was small, the thought of the tower had been with me.

There was no tower near my home. Not even a castle. We lived so deep in the woods there were only cottages scattered here and there. Neighbours were few and far between: woodsmen; old women deserted by their families, despised and feared; brigands; folk who simply liked the quiet of the woods.

My mother loved radishes beyond reason, so it’s only proper that I should have my own mania.

I lived in quietude, but I longed for utter silence. I imagined a stillness like nothing else, held in by granite, a barrier that nothing could penetrate. I desired air untroubled by the vibrations of sound, a vacuum through which nothing could pass.

My parents did not understand. Distance grew between us. We could sit in the same room yet not speak, not touch, not even breathe in time. They gave up trying to communicate with me and I happily wrapped myself in the fabric of nothing, of utter quiet. My siblings delighted in making noise, rough and tumble like puppies. I would flee to the forest to find a quiet place, to sit and eat the stillness.

When I was sixteen I wandered from home. I would, I thought, find the tower – it must be there, I could not simply have imagined it. Whatever it cost me, I would find the tower, for it was where I belonged.

* * *

I spent four days in the forest before I stumbled into a clearing. An old cottage sat, like a creature waiting for something to come; perhaps it wanted prey, perhaps company. Hunger and thirst propelled me and I fell against the door with a cry, crumpling to the stoop.

An old woman peered down at me. A walking stick held her upright. She wore a dress that had once been the colour of a dark forest but had been washed back to a faded green, a cap, and an apron stained with yellows and reds. Her glasses were smudged and she wrinkled her nose to move them back into position on her face.

‘Who are you?’ she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again, the sweet timbre restored. ‘Sorry. Who are you?’

‘Rapunzel,’ I replied. She smiled.

‘Is your mother the one who’s nuts about radishes?’

I nodded wearily.

‘Come in. I’m Sybille.’

She fed me thick, buttery cheese with stodgy bread and gave me tea to drink. When I had finished wolfing it all down, we spoke.

‘So, what are you looking for, little radish girl?’

‘A tower. The tower. The one I’ve dreamt of my whole life.’

‘No towers around here,’ she answered.

‘Then I’ll keep walking until I find one.’

‘Stubborn.’

She sighed and got to her feet. A bookcase leaned haphazardly against one of the walls; she shuffled over, grabbing a thin book from the warped shelves.

‘There used to be a tower. Don’t know if it’s still there. Some years ago it became invisible after some nasty business with a king not paying his due to a wise woman.’

‘You?’

‘Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,’ she hedged, pointing her finger at me. ‘Any road, there is a tower there for the taking. As you seem determined, you may as well have it.’

‘How do I find it if I can’t see it?’

‘Hold your horses, missy. Always in a hurry, young women.’ She clucked her tongue, opened the book, and flicked through it, running a finger down each page and muttering “nope” as she reached the bottom. After a time she gave an “ah ha”.

‘You’ll need the key, of course,’ she said and plucked an ungainly key from the back of the ragged book. ‘Now, walk north for three hours and when you bump into something you can’t see, then you’re there.’

‘And?’

‘Say this: tower fair you seem not there, take pity on this girl and your glory now unfurl. That should do the trick.’

‘And if I should want it invisible again?’ I asked and she rolled her eyes.

‘Then – and make sure you’re inside first or you’ll have to mess about making it visible again so you can find it – say: tower clear and tower bright, fold yourself back into night.’ She rolled a lump of bread and cheese in a cloth and handed it to me. ‘I’ll come see you sometime.’

She pulled two small, carved stones from her pocket and held them out.

‘If you need anything, send the cat or the raven. Blow on them and say ‘bid your mistress come to me’. Sometimes you might want the cat for company, so blow and say ‘malkin black or malkin white, bring thy company into my sight’. He’ll sit around for as long as you want. To send him back try ‘malkin black or malkin white, get thy company from my sight.’

‘I’m not a witch,’ I said.

‘You’re a woman, aren’t you?’

I had to agree. I gave my thanks and was on my way. She watched me until I disappeared into the trees and, I suspect, for a long while after that.

* * *

I found the tower. Literally I walked into it. Bam. Ouch.

The spell took a few moments to work, as if the words were thinking about whether or not they would do as bid; or maybe it was the tower, so used to being unseen, that was unwilling to obey immediately. Soon enough the air shimmered as if a heat haze had strolled past; a grey shadow-shape formed, wavered, and finally came to view.

It was exactly as it had been in my dreams: beautiful dark grey stone, flecked with quartz that caught the sun and threw it back at the watcher. The door at its base was huge and banded with iron. A keyhole stared at me like a curious eye. I fitted the key Sybille had given me into the lock and it turned with only a little protest.

The bottom floor was a storeroom-cum-kitchen: bags of grain still lay there, holes nibbled in their corners by fat, happy mice; jars of wine sat on shelves; and, amazingly enough, a family of chickens perched comfortably on a pile of fabric grown old and green with age. The floor was liberally sprinkled with years’ worth of chicken droppings. Gingerly, I picked my way across the midden and started up the stairs.

These were cold, hard, barely worn – the tower must have been relatively young when Sybille hid it from the king. The next floor held the library. Books ran around the walls like sentinels on guard. I had never seen so many books. The cobwebs would have to go, of course. The spiders would not be happy, nor would the mice, but so be it.

The top floor held a four-poster bed, a vanity, a polished mirror such as I had never seen before, a garderobe, and, at each of the four compass points, a window through which light and air flowed in a continuous stream. Sunlight shone through the wheeling motes of dust and danced happily on my new home.

I surveyed my kingdom and was overwhelmed by a housewifely urge. Cleaning began and, before the sun went down, I had a serviceable bedroom.

Over the next few days I cleared the chickens out and set them up in the ramshackle coop they had abandoned some time ago. Buckets of water from the well eventually washed away the layer of droppings. I planted some of the seeds from the storeroom. Carrots, corn and all manner of green things made an appearance with relative speed.

I brought the cat out after the first day. He was a strapping black and white mongrel and I called him Malkin, well, because it was easier than giving him another name. I didn’t put him back because I liked his silent company and he discouraged the mice from making a return to the tower. He never made a noise, not a miaow, not a hiss. Just swirled in and out between my ankles and curled in my lap when I sat to read one of the old books from the library. The raven I kept on the shelf, just in case.

Life was silent and wonderful. The stillness was not oppressive: I welcomed it, swallowed it in great gulps as a thirsty man would water. I passed my days in reading, sewing bits of the surviving fabric together into dresses and hangings, petting Malkin, sitting at my windows and bathing in the silence I had always sought. It was perfect. For a short time, it was perfect.

* * *

He came one evening as spring danced in on the breeze and I sat at the north window, taking in the velvet of the sky. I saw him ride out of the woods and stop, stunned at the sight of the tower. When he had dismounted and tethered his horse near the briar patch, he approached and found the door unlocked.

I waited for him to reach the top of the stairs, unsure what to do. Malkin was glued to my ankles like a bodyguard.

The torchlight caught in his red-gold hair, and flickered on the gold tassels of his princely attire. He was a good deal taller than I and he smiled as he took in my pale oval face, and the black river of hair that hung straight and glossy down my back.

‘This tower was once my father’s,’ he said.

‘He cheated a wise woman,’ I replied. He scowled.

‘A witch.’

‘Not a witch. No more than your father was an honest man.’

He glared but said no more. His eyes roamed the room and I thought how it must seem to him, raised in wealth, and how it seemed to me, who had been raised in poverty. That which shone to him must seem tarnished, old, to be thrown aside as worthless; to me that which shone was a treasure, a piece of sunlight caught and held in a solid object, to be kept safe. How must I appear to him? Dress made of twenty different fabrics, hand-stitched carefully, slowly; face and feet bare of any decoration, hands those of a girl who had scrubbed this tower to claim it, not the hands of a princess. To him I must look like a gypsy playing at being a lady.

How did he appear to me? He was golden, a thing of sunlight, royalty and richness incarnate. He was at ease, as if he belonged in my tower. The thought made me angry.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Who are you, maiden in the tower, so fair and fierce, who smells so sweet?’

‘Rapunzel,’ I answered reluctantly.

‘Little radish,’ he laughed, not meanly. Still, it enraged me, and I threw myself at him, a hissing, spitting mess of hair, teeth and nails.

It started with rage. At some point it was no longer a battle: it was clothing peeled away, skin sliding on skin, flesh against flesh and then flesh in flesh. Finally it was sighs and screams and sobs and a pleasant ache that demanded it all be done again.

In the end it was love, or so I thought.

* * *

He stayed with me a month. I still remember the taste of him then, like the sweetest of sap from a stalk of spring grass. I remember the feel of him, and all the things I learnt straddling his lap or writhing beneath him.

I remember how the silence was no longer desired; as long as there was the sound of his voice, the touch of his skin, the taste of his sweat, the world was perfect. I could not believe that I had sought solitude when there was this sweetness, this honey, to be had in the company of another.

He told me tales of his family and his travels. I did not hear the voice of a young man obsessed with himself and his own doings, I did not hear the hint of selfishness in his every word; all I heard was the voice of my love. I thought, stupid girl that I was – stupid, silent girl – that I was important to him. That I was of the same abiding importance to him as he was to me.

Then, one day, he announced it was time for him to leave. He had tarried long enough in my presence and must go back to his duties as a prince. He would visit me, of course, when he had both time and inclination. I was to lock the door after him and never let another man near, for I was the property of royalty now.

He finished dressing, finished speaking, and stood, silhouetted against the sky in my north window. I was naked, angry, sinuous as a snake. I launched myself at him and pushed hard.

I don’t know if I meant for him to fall, to tip over the windowsill, to tumble down and land in the briar patch. My mind still strays away from looking too closely at that. He broke no bones but his eyes were put out by the briars. He cried out for help but I would not answer.

I watched him from the window; a naked fury perched on the sill. His horse came to his aid. He mounted the beast and set off between the trees.

It took a long time for my tears to fall but when they came, they came with a rage that threatened to unhinge me.

* * *

Men came, looking for me.

I had hidden the tower, and would watch them, my eyes hungry. I thought perhaps he might come himself but that was a wish made of cobwebs.

My days were spent in silence, but it was no longer a comfort. I would sit at a window, my hand smoothing my growing belly, listening for the second heartbeat that thumped in time with my own, listening to the spaces between my breaths for something I did not understand. Listening for a new noise, a noise that would remind me of him, a noise I sought no matter how much it hurt.

Malkin was constant even though I was not sweet-tempered. Now I wished he could talk, would talk, but he remained silent, still as stone. I would wake in the night, heavy and sweating, my belly aching along with my heart, feeling myself utterly alone, but Malkin was always there, flush against me, not even a breath between his fur and my skin. I would reach out and bury my fingers in the softness of his coat, comforted for a brief while.

It seemed the child would never come and, when he finally began to move, he took three days. The pain was immense and I hoped I would die. Finally, I crawled to the shelf and sent the raven to fetch its mistress.

She arrived, black and feathered, shaking her head over my swollen, infected form. Sybille fed me brews and possets, applied compresses to my brow and stroked my belly gently to coax the child out. By then there was, I thought, no pain that I had not suffered. I was numb to everything as my body rebelled against me and the child. Sybille tried her best, brought all her skill, invoked all the powers she knew.

The baby died, caught too long between its mother’s body and the air it needed.

The old woman took him away without letting me see. She cleaned away the blood and the cord, wrapped him in soft white wool and placed him in a small crystal chest she’d rummaged from somewhere in the tower. Sybille made him ageless; he would not decay and diminish before his mother’s eyes. I would need to see him, she said, when the time came.

For the first month I could not bear to look. I threw a shawl over the chest and pushed it to the far side of the room. Over the weeks I began to glance to the dark curve of the wall where my child lay. When spring again scented the air, the day came when I wanted to know his face.

He looked like a doll, my son, a sleeping doll. I thought if I poked him gently he would wake and cry and seek my breast and all would be right. But he did not wake, nor cry, nor feed and nothing was right.

* * *

Sybille went back to her cottage to check on things, staying away for longer and longer as I grew physically stronger. We would talk sometimes, to alleviate the now-hated silence, to draw the poison out of me. She did not condemn him, my prince, but suggested he was a product of his upbringing. Yes, he had been wrong to think me a toy to be played with and laid aside at whim. Yes, he had been selfish and foolish. But perhaps the loss of his sight had been punishment enough. Perhaps it had taught him things he would not otherwise have known. Perhaps he deserved knowledge of his son.

People, said Sybille, were not meant to be alone. Men and women, women and women, men and men, all should find each other. Solitude was for those broken beyond repair.

I looked hard at her.

‘I wasn’t always alone, little radish,’ she gentled me. ‘I had a husband for forty years, until three winters ago. Now he’s gone. My sons live nearby and they come to see me often. Did you think me alone, an outcast, an old witch with no love nor need for it?’

Yes, I had.

‘You sought the silence because it was easier than being with someone else. You’re a damaged creature in your own way. So is your prince.’ She reached out. ‘You’re not meant for silence, Rapunzel. Your child isn’t meant for silence. You should go into the world. Be among life, not sitting here in a living death, with only your frozen child and a stone cat for company. This isn’t living, little radish.’

This time, when the tears came, they seemed to wash the poison away. I thought perhaps I might breathe again.

* * *

With the child’s coffin strapped to my back, I walked until I found the edge of the forest and stepped into a wide field.

I had never been in a space that was not surrounded by trees. I had never seen such wide open, empty space. I shook and felt sweat break out on my brow. The space was not entirely empty, I told myself. There was corn in the field, green and lush, growing high. There was the road I must take, running alongside it. There were people on the road, walking, riding horses, plodding along in their carts, heading toward the open gate in the city walls.

A woman in a cart smiled down at me and offered me a lift. I climbed gratefully up beside her and settled myself, the weight of the child heavy on my back. Her eyes kept flickering to my tapestried patchwork dress, and my face, with its bones washed clean by pain, my eyes dark and endless. She sensed, I think, something awry in me, an emptiness occasioned by hurt, a heart with a layer peeled back, an empty space searching for something to curl inside it.

To distract her, I asked about the prince. She smiled, happy to speak of him, although he was a prince no longer, his father having died over a year ago.

The prince, blind for two years, king for one, had spent his time wisely.

The wastrel had become a careful, considered young man. Where he had once laughed at the maimed, tormented the poor, spat on the beggars, he now bestowed kind words, placed alms in the bowls of those who asked, and built shelters for those who did not. His own terrible accident had turned his heart and mind toward better things.

He could not see but employed an army of learned men to read for him and he took in their words, acquiring them by rote. Another cohort he employed to take down his thoughts: his scholarship had become known far and wide.

‘How,’ I asked, ‘can I find him?’

He held an audience every Tuesday morning, tomorrow. My companion invited me to spend the night with her family. It was a great charity, in this city, to offer hospitality to travellers.

In the late afternoon we rumbled through the great gate. After many turnings on the cobbled streets we stopped outside a tall, thin, ramshackle building. I helped her unpack the wagon, and she showed me to a small room at the top of her house. When she left I unstrapped my burden and placed it gently on the bed. I peeled away a layer of cloth and stared at my son’s face. The door opened and my Samaritan burst in, a small girl at her skirts, words dying on her lips.

Her eyes moved from the burden to my face and back again. She saw the cause of my emptiness and anguish, she saw how the hole had been made in me. She muttered an apology and backed out of the room.

I did not stay there that night. It was easier to huddle in a stable, nestled in the straw, with only the horses to watch as I curled around the chest, crystal panes separating me from the flesh of my child.

* * *

The audience was held in a great hall in the palace. I stood back, watching the supplicants come before him. Finally, when the hall was empty of all but the king and his chamberlain, I stepped forward.

The chamberlain raised his hands to tell me ‘no’, I was too late.

The king’s head moved swiftly, his nostrils twitching. His hand reached out and pulled the chamberlain away. ‘Who are you, who smells so sweet, little radish?’ Marbled-white eyes moved as if they could see me.

He ordered the chamberlain to leave us, and the man did so, reluctantly. I had thought I would stay out of reach, but his hands stretched forward to find me.

He caught at my arm, and, though I expected pain, his touch was soft.

‘I sent men to find you, little radish,’ he said. ‘At first, it was to have you punished, later I just wanted you beside me.’

‘I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry for your eyes. Forgive me,’ I whispered. His fingers flitted across my face, reached my eyes and gently caressed them, cleverly cupping the unbroken tears in his hands.

‘I cannot forgive you,’ he said, ‘when there is nothing to forgive. I did not truly see until my sight was gone, nor had I listened to my heart nor the hearts of others until my own had been wounded.

I put the casket in his hands.

‘If you can bear more pain,’ I said, ‘then know that this contains our child. He did not live long enough to breathe.’

He wept and begged me to open it and let him hold our son, just once. I slipped the catch and our tears fell onto the soft little face. The king’s hands scooped the child up, to be held against his chest.

The air around us moved, swarmed, something shifted, tore, then mended. Between our sobs, I heard something: a catch of breath in once-stilled lungs, a surprised gasp from a child new to the world. Then a cry and my son began to wiggle and to wail.

So live the blind king, his wounded wife, and their twice-born son.