The Tower: Part 6: Ostara
Post #60: In which Blue Witch and the Devil ...
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“Come in!” Rapunzel cried, and swept the two women into the warmth and light, shutting the door behind them.
Minerva threw back her hood, revealing pale gilt hair and spectacles. She smiled at Rapunzel as though two days had passed rather than two years since she’d seen her.
Rapunzel reached up and drew back Cassandra’s hood.
She had aged greatly since the last time Rapunzel had seen her. Her hair was more grey than brown now, her skin stretched tightly over sharp bones in her face. She bore Rapunzel’s inspection with child-like patience, her brown eyes moving over Rapunzel’s face.
“Gold Rope gone,” she said.
“Not gone,” Rapunzel reassured her. “I’m right here.”
Cassandra reached up and cradled the back of Rapunzel’s short-cropped head with a fragile, bony hand. “Gold Rope gone.”
Rapunzel arched an eyebrow at Minerva. She had once worn her hair in a long golden plait falling down her back and coiling on the floor; long enough, in fact, to make a ladder from the ground into a tall, isolated stone tower. One day she had freed herself from her prison, and on that day, she cut off her hair. She hadn’t met Cassandra until after that, but the seer had always called her “Gold Rope,” and Rapunzel had accepted both her uncanny ability and the name.
Now, Cassandra said, “Blue Witch.”
“She’s been calling you that ever since we left Griffin Town,” said Minerva, hanging up their cloaks. “I didn’t know why until we saw you outlined on top of the tower.”
Someone knocked on the heavy door. Minerva opened it and the man called Enzu stepped in.
Minerva took Cassandra by the arm and led her to the kitchen table. Rapunzel saw with a shock Cassandra was pitifully thin before she turned to Enzu.
This man was not Dar. Dar’s eyes had been grey, sharp and humorous. This man’s eyes were soft and brown in his olive-skinned face. Dar’s hair had been black, straight and unruly. Enzu’s hair was black, thickly curling and closely cropped.
Yet there were similarities that wrung her heart. Enzu was not quite as tall as Dar, but slim-hipped and graceful, his legs long and well-shaped, like Dar’s. Over his shoulders hung a cloak of a deep purplish color, nearly black, and the cloak was like a piece of night sky, sparkling with beads, charms, pearls and silver embroidery. On the back of one shoulder a huge glowing feather rested in exactly the same place one of the Firebird’s feathers had decorated Dar’s cloak.
“The Blue Witch, I presume?” he said with a smile, extending a hand.
“Rapunzel,” she said, automatically giving him her hand in return.
“I am Enzu,” he said simply. “The Firebird led me to Griffin Town, and there I met Minerva and Cassandra, who needed transport to a lonely lighthouse on cliffs above the sea. One road is much like another to me, so I volunteered my services. The Firebird guided us until we saw the blue light, an old companion of mine, though I’ve never seen it favor another.”
Rapunzel stood dumbly before him, her hand still in his, torn between the desire to throw herself into this man’s arms, so familiar and yet strange, and making a cooler, more dignified introduction and welcome.
“Cassandra needs a hot drink,” said Minerva.
Rapunzel freed her hand and stepped away from Enzu. “Come in,” she said. “Hang your cloak there, with the others.”
“Have you milk?” asked Enzu.
“Yes,” said Rapunzel, surprised.
“If you will heat it, I’ll bring the tea Cassandra likes.”
He went out into the night, newly alive with the sound of the sea.
Rapunzel poured milk into a pan and began heating it, glad of something to do. Enzu reappeared, hung up his cloak, and set a stoppered jar containing honey and a cloth bag holding a mixture smelling of tea and cinnamon on the counter.
In a short time, they were seated at the table together, sipping mugs of delicious spiced tea and milk.
Cassandra was obviously exhausted. She sipped the tea eagerly, and it brought a tinge of color to her face, but her thin hands trembled and her eyes were shadowed. She looked ill. Rapunzel realized it was quite late. Now was not the time to embark on lengthy questions and explanations.
Enzu drank his tea, looking around the stone-walled room with appreciation, appearing completely relaxed and at home.
“You and Cassandra can share the biggest bed,” said Rapunzel to Minerva. “I’ll sleep in the smaller one.”
“I sleep in my cart,” said Enzu. “I pulled it into your shed and unharnessed Galahad.”
“Will you be warm enough?”
“Certainly.”
Cassandra nodded in front of her empty cup.
“I’ll take you up to the bedroom,” said Rapunzel to Minerva.
Enzu went out for the women’s bundles. Rapunzel and Minerva led Cassandra up the stairs curving along the lighthouse wall to Rapunzel’s bedroom. Minerva undressed Cassandra as though she was a child and tucked her into the downy bed while Rapunzel lit a lantern.
“I’ll bring you a hot stone,” said Rapunzel in an undertone.
She hastened down the stairs and found Enzu kneeling before the stove, wrapping a large stone in an old piece of hide. The fire burned brightly. He had added wood. They took the hot stone and bundles back up the stairs. Cassandra already slept. Enzu slid the stone carefully into the foot of the bed. Minerva whispered thanks, assured Rapunzel she needed nothing, and they left her.
Rapunzel suddenly felt sleepy. She yawned, and then apologized. Enzu laughed.
“I, too, am weary. Your friend is not well, and we’ve traveled a long way. Tomorrow we’ll talk. I leave you now.”
In a moment, he was gone.
Rapunzel washed their cups and tidied the kitchen, wondering what had brought Minerva and Cassandra to the lighthouse, and why the Firebird had led Enzu to them, and then here to her. She blew out the lantern on the table, wrapped another hot stone for the bed Clarissa used when she visited the tower, and climbed upstairs with the rock under her arm and a lantern in her hand. Even breathing came from the bed in her dark room as she passed through. She ascended to the smaller room above the one she usually used, thrust the rock into the bed to warm it and added a couple of rough wool blankets. She kept a window ajar in this room for Ash and Beatrice, and it was cold. The sound of the sea washing against the cliffs filled the night.
Hastily, Rapunzel blew out the lantern and undressed in the dark before sliding gratefully into bed and pressing her feet against the stone. She lay there, listening to the sea, until she fell asleep.
When Rapunzel woke the next morning, the bit of sky she could see from the depths of the warm bed was mother-of-pearl, promising sunshine. She descended quietly through the bedroom below, noting the mounded figure of one person still in bed. The wood stove glowed comfortably and someone had heated water, but neither Minerva nor Enzu were anywhere to be found. Rapunzel put on her cloak against the early morning chill and constant breeze off the sea and slipped out.
Her heart swelled painfully with joy at the sound of the sea, returned to wash against the cliffs. A flurry of gulls screamed overhead. In the shed, Galahad munched peacefully at a fragrant mound of hay. The cart stood snugly along one wall, the open back revealing neatly-packed shelves and hooks and a tidy sleeping pallet made from a thick mattress and tucked and folded blankets.
Rapunzel left the shed and spied Enzu and Minerva standing together looking out over the sea some way from the lighthouse.
As she approached, the sun’s rim rose above the horizon, staining the sky and sea with blue. She could feel the rocks vibrating under the waves’ caress. The tide ebbed and tumbled rocks about the roots of the cliffs gleamed wetly as the birds, looking white and clean as salt, dove and skimmed raucously above the tide line.
“It’s like a miracle,” said Rapunzel when she reached them. “When the sea retreated from the land, it left an ominous wasteland. There was no escaping the wrongness of it. I woke at night and ached for the sound of the sea. Why has it come back now? Did you make it return?” She looked from Enzu to Minerva.
“I wish I possessed such power,” said Minerva. “The water withdrew from Griffin Town weeks ago, and the whole place is in chaos. The harbor is dry, trade has stopped, warehouses are filled with goods we can’t send out, and we hear of shortages everywhere because nothing can come in. The fishermen blame the merchants, the merchants blame the town fathers, the churchgoers speak of witchcraft and magic, and everyone is afraid and suspicious. Oh, speaking of merchants, here’s a letter for you from Radulf.” Minerva reached into her tunic and withdrew three or four folded sheets of paper, handing them to Rapunzel.
“I only hope the water has returned in Griffin Town as well, but it’s a long way from here. Still, if it happened here, maybe it will happen there.”
“But why did it happen here?” asked Rapunzel.
“I don’t know, my dear. You tell me.”
“What do you think?” Rapunzel demanded of Enzu.
He shook his head, smiling. “Cassandra says the pattern is broken.”
“What pattern? How is it broken? Can it be fixed?”
He shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands, palms up.
Frustrated, Rapunzel turned back to Minerva. “Cassandra looks dreadful.”
“I know. She’s dying, I think. She was terribly upset before the sea withdrew. She kept talking about locked doors and leaves withering and endings without beginnings. The more frantic she got, the harder she was to understand. Then, one morning, the sea was gone. It was as though an invisible barrier appeared overnight outside the harbor. We could see a wall of water in the distance, but the harbor itself stayed dry and exposed. For days, huge flocks of birds fought and screeched over all kinds of offal and the whole town stank of rotten fish. After that, Cassandra changed. She quieted and seemed relieved, but her calm was more like numbness and apathy than peace. She stopped eating and sleeping and began talking about you.”
“Me?” asked Rapunzel in surprise.
“’Gold Rope and Blue Witch,’” Minerva quoted. “I didn’t know who the Blue Witch was, of course, but it obviously had something to do with you. I offered to bring her to you, but she refused. She said the Devil was coming, and she’d go with him.”
“The Devil.” Rapunzel remembered, with a pang, how Cassandra had called Dar “the Devil.”
“I know,” said Minerva, watching her face. “I tried to tell her Dar was gone, but she insisted the Devil was coming. Then, one day a couple of weeks ago, the Firebird arrived at my workshop, leading Enzu and Galahad. I thought I understood then what Cassandra had foreseen. Enzu and I talked, and he agreed to bring us here.”
“But what does she want to do here?” asked Rapunzel.
“I have no idea. She’s hardly spoken along the way, except to Galahad, and I can’t understand a word she says. Every day she’s weaker. I have a feeling she’s hanging on because there’s still something she wants to say or do, something here at the lighthouse that involves you and perhaps us, as well.” Minerva’s gesture included both Enzu and herself.
“How do you come into it?” Rapunzel asked Enzu. “Do you know the Firebird?”
“I knew stories about the Firebird, but I’d never seen it until it came to me one night. The stories say the Firebird leads one to treasure. I don’t need treasure, but I followed it out of curiosity and wonder. I’m a wanderer by nature, always on the move, exploring, meeting people, collecting and telling stories and paying my way with trade or barter. I never thought I’d meet either the Firebird or one of the greatest and wisest weavers and businesswomen of Webbd, but the world, I find, is full of extraordinary beings and magic.”
“Where do you come from?”
“My people are desert and sea folk. I have a twin, Utu, who is a Seed Bearer and loves the sun. I love the moons best, and seek wisdom and truth on Webbd’s roads and byways.”
Rapunzel looked from Enzu to Minerva, wordless. The similarities between Dar and Enzu were too marked to be a coincidence. It was as though Dar had been reborn, slightly different, but perfectly recognizable. As though death was not an utterly dark finality, but a dim and enigmatic threshold one might cross and cross again from either direction. Confused, mystified and yet elated, she found nothing to say.
“I think we should go back in. I don’t want Cassandra to wake and find herself alone,” said Minerva.
Rapunzel seized on the opportunity to do something straightforward. “I have eggs, bacon and bread, but we’ll need more supplies.”
“I can help there,” said Enzu. “Minerva and I stopped and bought food yesterday before we arrived so as not to strain your stores too much. We knew you weren’t expecting guests. Galahad and I can go to the nearest market and buy what we need as well.”
While Cassandra slept on, Minerva, Enzu and Rapunzel made breakfast and pot after pot of tea. Rapunzel told them what she knew of Yrtym and what she and others guessed about its role in connection and the upheaval caused by its disruption, though none knew exactly the cause of the trouble.
“It does appear intentionally collaborating and cooperating repairs portals, thresholds and relationships between peoples, at least temporarily, but we’re not sure what started the breakdown,” she said. “Heks sent me here to listen to wind, water and stone and watch the sky and collect news, which comes to me via ravens and crows, Ash and Beatrice, and other visitors.”
“What have you learned?” asked Minerva with interest.
“You mean besides what I’ve told you about the Yrtym?”
Minerva nodded.
“I’ve learned more about what I already knew, that everything’s connected. I thought I understood what that meant, but here I’ve learned the hopelessness and helplessness that lies in the disconnection between one thing and another, the grief and pain of a ripped seam, the lifelessness in the places between when the meeting place is disrupted. Webbd mourns in a thousand voices as connection dissolves and lives and places move apart and into shadow across which no hand or bridge can reach.”
Minerva looked past Rapunzel and said, “Good morning, my dear.”