blistered. She tried to get away from me, and then ripped at her hair in pure terror.
I shook her hard this time.
“Gabrielle!” I said. “Do you understand me? It’s grown back, and it will every time you cut it! There’s no horror in it, for the love of hell, stop!” I thought if she didn’t stop, I’d start to rave myself. I was trembling as badly as she was.
She stopped screaming and she was giving little gasps. I’d never seen her like this, not in all the years and years in Auvergne. She let me guide her towards the bench by the hearth, where I made her sit down. She put her hands to her temples and tried to catch her breath, her body rocking back and forth slowly.
I looked about for a scissors. I had none. The little gold scissors had fallen on the floor of the crypt below. I took out my knife.
She was sobbing softly in her hands.
“Do you want me to cut it off again?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Gabrielle, listen to me.” I took her hands from her face. “I’ll cut it again if you like. Each night, cut it, and burn it. That’s all.”
She stared at me in such perfect stillness suddenly that I didn’t know what to do. Her face was smeared with blood from her tears, and there was blood on her linen. Blood all over her linen.
“Shall I cut it?” I asked her again.
She looked exactly as if someone had hit her and made her bleed. Her eyes were wide and wondering, the blood tears seeping out of them down her smooth cheeks. And as I watched, the flow stopped and the tears darkened and dried to a crust on her white skin.
I wiped her face carefully with my lace handkerchief. I went to the clothing I kept in the tower, the garments made for me in Paris that I’d brought back and kept here now.
I took off her coat. She made no move to help me or stop me and I unhooked the linen shirt that she wore.
I saw her breasts and they were perfectly white except for the palest pink tint to the small nipples. Trying not to look at them, I put the fresh shirt on her and buttoned it quickly. Then I brushed her hair, brushed it and brushed it, and not wanting to hack at it with the knife, I braided it for her in one long plait, and I put her coat back on her.
I could feel her composure and her strength coming back. She didn’t seem ashamed of what had happened. And I didn’t want her to be. She was merely considering things. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t move.
I started talking to her.
“When I was little, you used to tell me about all the places you’d been. You showed me pictures of Naples and Venice, remember? Those old books? And you had things, little keepsakes from London and St. Petersburg, all the places you’d seen.”
She didn’t answer.
“I want us to go to all those places. I want to see them now. I want to see them and live in them. I want to go farther even, places I never dreamed of seeing when I was alive.”
Something changed in her face.
“Did you know it would grow back?” she asked in a whisper.
“No. I mean yes. I mean, I didn’t think. I should have known it would do that.”
For a long time she stared at me again in that same still, listless fashion.
“Does nothing about it all . . . ever . . . frighten you?” she asked. Her voice was guttural and unfamiliar. “Does nothing . . . ever . . . stop you?” she asked. Her mouth was open and perfect and looked like a human mouth.
“I don’t know,” I whispered helplessly. “I don’t see the point,” I said. But I felt confused now. Again I told her to cut it each night and to burn it. Simple.
“Yes, burn it,” she sighed. “Otherwise it should fill all the rooms of the tower in time, shouldn’t it? It would be like Rapunzel’s hair in the fairy tale. It would be like the gold that the miller’s daughter had to spin from straw in the fairy tale of the mean dwarf, Rumpelstiltskin.”
“We write our own fairy tales, my love,” I said. “The lesson in this is that nothing can destroy what you are now. Every wound will heal. You are a goddess.”
“And the goddess thirsts,” she