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“Mother, stop!” screamed Hazel. Manea flicked her hand in Hazel’s direction, sending her careering across the room and through one of the conservatory windows, the glass shattering and mixing with Hazel’s blood. “Hazel!” Gothel didn’t know which sister to run to, Hazel or Primrose. She felt helpless and afraid.
Primrose is dying. Her face was turning purple, her eyes large and bulbous. She was on the edge of death, somewhere between there and the mists. Gothel didn’t know how to stop her mother. She hadn’t taken the blood. She had no powers. And then she remembered. The flowers. Mother’s treasures! She seized one of the oil lamps that hung on hooks around the room, and screamed at her mother.
“Mother, stop! Stop or I will burn it all down!”
Manea stopped dead. She looked up from Primrose and saw Gothel standing in the center of the flowers, holding the oil lamp. “Gothel, no! You’ll kill us all! Put down the lamp!”
“Not until you let Primrose go!”
“Take her!” said Manea, tossing Primrose onto the floor in a bloody heap. “Take your pathetic excuse for a sister! I don’t want her!” Manea stepped away from Primrose. “Take her out of here now before I change my mind and kill you all! Get out of here! Now!”
Gothel rushed to her sister and tried to rouse her. “Prim, can you walk? Let’s get out of here!”
Primrose got up, wobbly on her feet, and let her sister guide her out of the conservatory to where Hazel was lying on the ground. Manea stood stark still, waiting and watching from the conservatory window to see what Gothel would do.
“Hazel, are you okay?” Gothel helped the bloodied and bruised Hazel to her feet, all the while keeping an eye on her mother. “Don’t you move, Mother! Or I will do it!” Gothel said in her most commanding voice.
The three sisters stood there for what felt like an eternity, just looking at their mother. Gothel had to wonder how the three of them looked, standing there. Did they look afraid? Did her mother think she was brave? Whatever her mother thought was not betrayed by the stone expression on her face. I think she is more afraid than we are.
“You have to kill her,” Hazel said under her breath.
“You have to!” said Primrose, still clutching her bruised throat.
“Silence, you wretched vipers!” said Manea, sending Hazel and Primrose flying with her magic and smashing them against a tree, splintering it into bits.
“Mother, stop! Please don’t kill us!”
Manea’s face utterly changed. She looked like an animal trying to make out a strange noise. “Kill you, Gothel? Never! I could never hurt you! Haven’t you been listening to me? Haven’t you read it in my journals? To hurt you would be like hurting myself! I could never hurt you, even if I wanted to!”
“Then please leave my sisters alone. Please! Don’t hurt them anymore!”
“Sisters?” Manea laughed. “Ha! They’re nothing to you, Gothel! Hazel had promise. I wanted her to be your companion in magic. I wanted her to be your guide, to help you feel, because your heart is too much like mine. Too black. Hazel would be able to help you in matters of the heart. And Primrose, well, I thought she would be a welcome distraction from your studies, something to break the monotony and toiling, but that’s all they are to you, Gothel! You, Gothel, you are mine!”
“Then please don’t break my heart. Please don’t kill them!” screamed Gothel.
“It’s too late. Primrose will never agree to stay in the dead woods, and Hazel will talk you into letting her leave, putting our home in danger. Putting everything at risk! I can’t let that happen. I can’t let them destroy everything my family has created and cultivated here. Everything t
hat will someday belong to you! I’m sorry, my darling, but they have to die.”
“No, Mother! You have to die!” Gothel hurled the lamp into the conservatory, setting the rapunzel aflame.
“Gothel! What have you done?” Manea created a protective shield around herself so the flames couldn’t touch her. “Gothel! No! Save the rapunzel!” Manea screamed as she started to wither and age and crumble to dust. She screamed in pain as the rapunzel burned. “Gothel! Save the rapunzel!”
The flames overtook the conservatory. Gothel snatched up one of the rapunzel flowers before the conservatory started to collapse, as her mother turned to dust, crumbling before her eyes. Gothel watched in horror as her mother withered into a dry husk and disintegrated.
“Gothel! Please help me!” screamed her mother right before her face fell to dust.
I killed her. I killed her! Gothel’s head was spinning. She couldn’t believe she had done this. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to try to reason with her. Give her a chance. But it was too late. Everything was destroyed. Everything was in ruins.
Sisters!
Gothel ran from the burning conservatory into the dead woods. She ran past the blood-soaked legion of the dead into the trees, searching for her sisters, calling out their names, panicked her mother had killed them. “Primrose! Hazel? Where are you?” She begged the morose skeletal creatures to help her find them and was answered with vacant looks. “Have you seen my sisters?” The skeletons just stared, showing no sign they even noticed their mistress had died. Where is Jacob? she thought. “Jacob! Primrose! Hazel!” She screamed again and again as she ran into the darkness with only the light of the flower and the burning conservatory in the distance to guide her.
Gothel stood alone on the balcony off the library overlooking the destroyed conservatory. It was still smoldering, sending tiny wisps of smoke into the air. It was a cold morning, and the tops of the dead trees were obscured in a heavy mist and choked with gray smoke and ash. The forest was silent and still, as the dead woods always were, but that day it seemed even more unnatural than usual. Gothel couldn’t shake the horrible vision of her mother dying. No matter how hard she tried to banish the vile images, she couldn’t help seeing her mother cry out in pain as her face became dust. It was the worst thing she had ever witnessed. I did that to her. I killed my own mother. She couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like, and it sent a horrible feeling throughout her entire body. She felt sick and trapped within herself, as if she would never escape the feeling of dread and guilt. She wanted to go to the burnt structure and find her mother’s remains—she wanted to put them somewhere safe—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was afraid. She had no idea what to do now. She and Hazel hadn’t taken her mother’s blood. Only Primrose was given it. By force. Gothel wasn’t given her mother’s magic. She was defenseless. They were alone. And it was up to Gothel to make sure they were taken care of.
“Gothel! Did you sleep at all?” It was Hazel. She was standing on the threshold of the balcony. “Come inside. It’s cold out there.”
“I can’t.”
