Rapunzella, Or, Don't Touch My Hair, page 1
For Celina, who always knew.
And, of course, for You, who witnessed and endured.
Ella McLeod is a proud South Londoner, Pisces and daydreamer. She lives in Peckham, with her partner Michael and their cat HRH, Princess Persephone.
Contents
Part one: Seed
The Prophecy
The Seer
The Salon
Cynthia and Ama
Avocado Oil
King Charming
The First Dream
The Ripening
ALittle Magic
The King’s Command
Baker And The Secret
The Strike
Knowledge
I Want To Be A Mermaida
After the Strike
Coven
The Weaver’s Son
I Want To Be A Princess
The Weaver’s Departure
Power Nap
In-Between Trouble
The King’s Heir
Fear is Catching
The Changing of the Wind
The Protagonist
The Poison
Final Year
The Curse
Stolen Salad Days
Par t 2: Sprout
Five Years After the Curse
Fifteen
Long Summers
August
In The Chair
Two-Faced
The Lost Boy
September
Kamaka
Persea
Boundaries
October
Interloper
November
Cake
Sankofa Sixteen
Coming of Age
Party
December
The Weaver’s Crossing
Christmas Break
What Can I Give Him, Poor As I Am?
January
One Day My Prince Will Come
February
The Source
March
Part 3: Flower
Baker, Banished
Fairy Tales
The Burning
Easter
End of the Rainbow
Testing
Galvanized
Coming Forth to Carry
What’s in a Name?
Stay a While
Knight in Shining Armour
In-between Trouble Again
Taming
Freedom Seeker
The End
APRIL
Epilogue: Fruit
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Part one
Seed
The Prophecy
In a garden, beneath a tower,
where dwelled witches, robbed of power,
gave breath and life to an avo-pear tree,
all fruit will ripen and set them free.
A son born of witch and might,
a thief who will learn to fear the night,
if witches’ magic he steals and drains,
the King will Persea with darkness stain.
One girl will be more powerful than all the rest;
two girls will in dazzling white be dressed;
three girls will fight, two will stand,
the other of us, and yet not of this land.
Keep them secret, and all will return;
say it’s a story, say it’s a game,
listen to our whispers, the truth you’ll learn,
Do not let him take her name.
The Seer
The Seer from Persea was friends with the trees.
Well, as friendly as one could be with trees. It was this that made her so good at her job. The great stretch of forest at the edge of Kingstown was the same stretch that had lined the horizon, just visible from the King’s palace and its surrounding estate, where she and her coven had worked for many years. She had often stared at that great, dense expanse, leaves stretching towards the sky as though trying to claim some part of it. Had often wished that she too could reach for the clouds, brush her fingertips against the sun and suck in the cool mossy air that surely tasted of freedom.
She had covered her crudely shaven head against the heat of the sun and left her coven that morning, headed deep into the forest looking for the right one. Long had her people known of the wisdom held in that age-old bark. Other plants had their own power, but willow trees were her favourite. The interconnected network of roots growing beneath the damp, fragrant soil had the capacity for far more than mere water absorption. This earth magic was what gave her coven power – power harnessed by the King.
Sneaking away from the palace was never without the quick two-step of anxiety in her breast, but her dreams had never steered her wrong before and it was worth the risk. There was a message for her today. The trees were calling to her. She could feel their whispers prickling along her skin. She walked among the willows, pressing her hand to their barks in a sign of respect and she felt, rather than saw, them bow in response. Eventually, after several minutes of treading carefully over fallen branches, stepping lightly over the sweet-scented mulch of dead leaves and decaying fruit, the Great Forest opened into a wide clearing and a river.
The great River Aphra was the most powerful source of magic in all of Xaymaca, guarded by the River Mumma, a mermaid of terrible wrath and beauty, who protected the river and the land that sourced it. The Seer bent her head as she ducked under the tree branches, before crawling into a cross-legged sitting position at its base. Touching her hands to the place where bark, roots and earth all meet, she tipped her head upwards. Smiled. Breathed. And began to sing:
There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tralalala
There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tralalalalala
Brown girl in the ring
Tralalala
She looks like the sugar in the plum
The trees, her friends, sang with her in their soft whispering way. She felt the magic ebb and flow, until she was part of every willow in the land. As they sang, she felt her body thin and dissolve. Become liquid and gas and sparkle as the tree wrapped itself around her, absorbed her until she and the tree were one. And when she opened her eyes, she saw the great truths that the magic would only show to her.
And she was afraid.
Her people had not been free for a long time. They worked in service of the King, within his palace and its grounds. For generations he had bent their backs, bruised their skin, blistered their hands, bled them dry. The Seer was the only one who knew how old the King was, the only one who remembered a time before his darkness, before her sisters had been forced into submission.
Now, though, the Seer, lingering in the half-place between the Great Forest and truths brought to her by the land, could see change on the horizon. She summoned the dregs of her magic – what little had been left to her after the King had stolen the core of Persea all that time ago – and sent a message back through the tree. The willow understood, and as the Seer returned once again to solid flesh and bone, she felt her prophecy zinging through the roots and fibres of every plant and tree and flower around her. Hope and terror combined to hurry her footsteps to the path beyond the pines, which eventually would meet the road to Kingstown, and so she chased her warning, back to her sisters.
THE SALON
The beautiful lady is turning in a circle, slowly, slowly, in the empty window of the empty storefront.
She eyes each exposed brick, touching her fingertips to some. She studies each damp patch as though it is precious, as though she is a queen in her kingdom. She has reddish curling hair, almost as dense as yours, tied up with a colourful scarf, and she is adorned with many glinting gold necklaces. She is goosebumps-excitement, her smile is tired from dreaming, now brightened by the joy of acquisition, the warmth of accomplishment. A boy runs around her feet, enjoying the vast space, cluttered with an assortment of boxes, bags and various lumpy packages containing mysteries. A kingdom all to himself. A young princeling with broad, bony arms and scuffed swagger.
You recognize him.
Recognize the scrawny limbs and lanky frame of someone riding the high-energy wave of a growth spurt as he mock-boxes an imaginary friend, lighter on his feet than any dancer in your class. He manages to make every swing of his arm look graceful.
Maybe he feels your fascinated gaze on him, maybe hairs go up on the back of his neck, maybe he senses your still shade, your small half-smile, and he turns.
He smiles. There is recognition, there is joy, and with it an unfamiliar swooping inside you.
Like missing an expected step.
Your palms tingle and you bury your face in Mum’s dress, but you’re laughing.
He waves a half-greeting. His mother looks from him to you. You can sense her questions and you see the boy’s mouth form your name through the window.
“You know him from school?” Mum asks, her expression curious. You shake your head. “You’re six years old. You don’t know any other boys.”
You clasp her hand tighter. Her manicured nails graze your skin. “He boxes at the leisure centre at the same time as ballet. I’ve seen him.”
His is the first smile to outshine your mother’s.
“Well, it looks like his mum is opening a salon there.” Your mum points as movers unload a van, dragging decapitated steam dryers into the room. Amid all the chaos, the queen is unmoved. “Let’s go and help them.”
“What?”
This is too much, really, too much of her to expect of you.
“No, no, we can’t, we should go home, we should…”
“Come on, you can talk to your friend and I can find out what her prices are. It’s right around the corner from home, maybe I can finally make it to a hair appointment.”
You squirm, wishing you were loose-tongued and lovely, not sulking, matching sleeping Saffy in her pushchair. Mum tugs you with one hand, pushes the chair with the other. “Don’t be shy!”
The queen is carrying a box of rollers, cradling them like a child, when your mum stops her. They talk and you look at the boy, who looks at you.
“Hi!” he says at last. “I’m Baker, I seen you at the leisure centre with the dancers.” His accent is a beautiful lilting thing, with strangely curling vowel sounds, partway between sounding like your little patch of city and somewhere else entirely.
“Yeah, I know who you are.” You are rude in your shyness but he smiles anyway.
“These are my girls,” your mum is saying and the queen smiles down at you. She is laugh lines and frown lines in equal measure. She places her hand on your head and gently tugs a pigtail. There is a mild crackling, like an electric shock. Even Mum notices. “Ooh, static! Must be all the packing material!”
“So, little one.” The queen’s eyes hold yours and you don’t know if it’s your childish imagination, but they seem to flash like lightning. “What will it be?” Her accent is soft but stronger than Baker’s.
Mum tuts. “You’re so busy! It doesn’t have to be today; we can book in for when you’re set up?”
But the queen shakes her head, earring catching the light and sending gold dancing across the walls. “No, please. It would be my pleasure.”
You look up at her and quickly look away, squinting because looking at her is looking at the sun without glasses. You mumble something about just wanting to look like Mummy and both women laugh.
“You can’t relax your hair like mine yet, Mush, you’re too young.”
You wince at the private pet name in public, stare at the pavement.
“Cane row would be nice; all little girls look cute in cane row,” says the queen.
“But they’ll take a long time,” Mum warns. “You’ll have to be a very good girl and sit patiently.”
“I don’t have a book,” you say, horrified.
“You like stories?” Baker says. “Mum tells the best stories!”
Baker is looking at you, but you can’t look back at the son of the sun; his smile is too bright for your mortal eyes.
“Yeah,” you mumble. “I like fairy tales – but the long ones, not the ones with the pictures we read to Saffy before bed.”
You gesture contemptuously to your sister in her pram, who is clutching a blonde Barbie beauty with a big pink dress.
“Oh, fairy tales, yuh knuh?” The queen’s accent reminds you of your grandma’s. It warms you inside out, and you find the courage to look at her again.
“Yes.” You are eager now. “I like Jack and the Beanstalk best. Or Hansel and Gretel.” And now you’re on your favourite subject, the words come tumbling out. “When me and Saffy play, I’m always the witch because imagine being able to do magic and living in a house of sweets! Those kids should have never just taken them without asking. They deserved what they got. But Saffy likes the ones where the girls just sleep and have shiny gold hair and get kissed.”
Baker “Ewwwww”s in agreement and the mothers chuckle again.
“Right,” says the queen. She smiles at you. “No kissing. No sleeping. No girls with shiny gold hair.”
She holds out her hand. You hesitate – a life, a minute, a nanosecond – then take it. She smiles wider.
“I think I have just the thing.”
Cynthia and Ama
The sun was hot where they stood in the soil, as they laboured on in an endless toil.
Cynthia’s sympathy hummed in her voice,
“We don’t have a choice.”
Ama and Cynthia, two witches,
weeding and seeding and
sewing and mowing
while ruled
by a bejewelled tyrant,
an indolent king.
Their rosebush-green fingertips granted life
to his gardens, buds brimming with colour everywhere they walked,
they tasted the red and smelled the blue and saw the scent bathe the air
in an arousing rush of synaesthesia.
But this was a mere fraction of what they could do – their creation did not fill them with elation, instead a frustration,
knowing that they were trapped in so many ways,
but knowing that they had the power to slay.
Out of all the fruit they grew, only one,
a pale green pear,
would not ripen.
They respected its defiance,
Its refusal to ripen and grow,
to put on a show
for another’s benefit.
They wondered if they’d made an error
in its planting,
but that was unlikely.
They were rarely wrong when it came to plants.
Cynthia chanted as she worked,
There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tralalala
There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tralalalalala
Brown girl in the ring
Tralalala
She looks like the sugar in the plum
Ama had been practising her magic from the time she was born,
magic that defied the royal’s structured norms,
turning herself from “Amos the boy” that they misnamed her,
witchcraft feminine power soon claimed her,
and she found in Cynthia a half of her whole.
They fell in love,
bonded as one soul.
But they did not want to labour
from dawn to the grave,
would cast off their shackles with the hope of the slave.
They worked beneath the shade of the avo-pear tree – and then, through the roots – a prophecy…
AVOCADO OIL
The queen leads you inside, through the maze of boxes and bags and bits and bobs, saying over her shoulder to your mum, “We finally just had the hot water turned on today. It’s been a whole heap of palaver actually…”
“You’ve been living upstairs with no hot water?” Mum’s voice is horrified.
“We’ve had to fill the bath using the kettle.” The queen is cheerful enough, but Mum grabs her wrist, her carefully manicured nails a blush pink vice.
“Listen, we’re basically neighbours now! If that ever happens again, you come to me.” Mum is scrawling her phone number on a page torn out of the filofax she is never without.
“Ah now.” The queen is bright proud, palms protesting. “We ’uh fine.”
But Mum just kisses her teeth and stalks over to a stack of boxes, officiously imposing her organizational methods on this warm stranger, ordering everything into “zones”.
Baker shows you around.
“And over here is where Mum says the till will be and she says she’ll show me how to use it so I can help, and over there is where all the dryers will go and over here will be a big cupboard and drawers so Mum says I can help her organize all the rollers and oil jars—”
“I’d suggest this for her,” the queen says, holding out a jar.
“Oh, we never normally use avocado oil!” says your mum.
“I don’t use this often; it’s a home-made recipe,” says the queen. She tugs your pigtail again, and again the same jolt of electricity surges through your skin like a current. “Special. But for you I’ll make an exception. My first customer.”
She swoops down on you, her firm hands appearing beneath your arms, and the ground vanishes beneath your feet. You are placed gently into the lone chair in front of the lone sink. She wraps a gown around you with a “Superwoman!” and places a towel round you with a flourish.
You face the ceiling, propped up on a mountain of cushions so that your neck reaches the basin. The queen undoes your pigtails and begins to run the warm water over your hair. You feel your scalp being gently massaged by expert hands, with just the right amount of nail. You are happy like dessert before dinner, like summer playdates, like Mum coming home early from work. The queen pours three different potions into your hair, each smelling more wonderful than the last, until you can feel how shiny your hair must look. She dries it and begins to braid, running each thick curly section through with the avocado oil and your damp scalp is warmed. You feel almost immediately sleepy.
