“Hello?” she said, raising both hands higher. “They didn’t cut out your tongue, did they?” She squinted at him. “No, they would’ve given it to me.”
The puppet on her right hand was made of a dark green sock with a pair of googly eyes attached. It had a rainbow-colored horn for a nose. If not for the horn, it would’ve looked just like Kermit the Frog. The other sock was orange with three eyes spaced far apart; this made it look wall-eyed. Its nose was a sunflower decal.
“Neither one is scary,” Apollo finally said.
The woman turned her hands so it looked as if she and the puppets were staring at one another. “I was afraid of that,” she said.
“You’re Cal.”
She nodded and sighed as she watched the puppets a little longer. “That’s me. It’s short for Callisto. Come closer.”
Apollo limped halfway across the room but still must’ve gone a little too fast for comfort. From the edge of his vision, he saw movement. The two darkened corners of the room seemed to shiver, tremble, then out from the darkness came two women draped in the familiar dark green robes. The shadows had hidden them, but now they wanted to be seen. Each was armed with a club, just like the women in the courtyard, except the tips of these clubs jutted with nails. Makeshift maces. Surprised, terrified of another beating, Apollo stumbled backward. He would’ve fallen except Cal was there and caught him.
“It’s all right,” Cal said. Apollo couldn’t tell if she was talking to the guards or to him. She’d taken off the sock puppets, and her nails scraped his jacket. “They’re very protective of me. But you’re not going to do anything bad, are you?”
“No,” Apollo said.
He felt the firmness of Cal’s grip and realized she was actually holding his arms down by his side. If he’d fought back just then, he couldn’t have broken free before those two imperial guards got close enough to drive a nail through his brain.
“I’m putting on a show for the kids tomorrow night,” Cal said. “Why don’t you help me make a good puppet?”
Cal walked back to the table, and from here Apollo could see the kinds of materials that were laid out. Bags of socks in every color, sticks of glue and a glue gun, piles and piles of felt in different colors, lengths of string in black, blue, red, yellow, and green, multicolored bundles of pipe cleaners, two adult scissors and a dozen smaller safety scissors, tiny hair ribbons and clip-on bows, miniature bow ties. There were two small “sets” on the table, too. A cardboard box that had been made into a cottage, and another, this one standing upright, with a single window cut out at the top.
“Can you guess which story I’m going to tell?” Cal asked, pointing to the shoeboxes.
Apollo watched the guards, who hadn’t moved back into the shadows yet. Each clutched her mace in her left hand. Their narrow faces and high-set eyes made them look like a pair of pharaoh hounds, elegant but wary. They were quite tall, Patrice’s height, and slim—this was clear even under their cloaks. Their stances were the same. They were twins. She waved them back. They moved three steps, and Cal waved them back farther. Finally they returned to the shadows, but Apollo could never unsee them.
“How about now?” Cal asked, pointing to the cardboard sets again. “Can you guess?”
She moved behind the upright box, pulled a new puppet onto one hand, and slipped it through the tower window. A pair of rough, raggedy orange braids fell from the scalp, so long they reached the table.
“Rapunzel,” Apollo said.
“That’s it,” she said. “You probably think you know the fairy tale, but I’ll bet you don’t remember all of it. Can I practice it on you, before I do it for the kids?”
“AN OLD MAN and woman had long wished to have a child, but they had no luck. Every night they prayed and prayed for a change. One day the woman looked out her window into the garden nearby. There she saw a field of rapunzel, and she longed for it. She told her husband what she craved, and he wished to see her happy, so he decided to go and steal some rapunzel, even though that garden was the property of an enchantress, known and feared throughout the town.
“Nevertheless, he climbed into the garden and stole the rapunzel and made his wife a meal, and she enjoyed it. But because she was now with child, her cravings didn’t go away, so her husband climbed into the garden a second time. This time when he plucked the rapunzel, the enchantress appeared.
“?‘How dare you!’ she shouted. ‘Thief! I will make you pay!’
“The old man pleaded for his life. He explained he stole only to feed his beloved wife, and this answer moved the enchantress. She agreed she wouldn’t curse him and he could take as much rapunzel as he liked, but when the baby was born, he had to give it to her. The old man felt so terrified, he’d agree to anything just to save his life. And on that day when the baby came, the enchantress appeared and took the child and named it Rapunzel.
“The girl grew healthy and strong, but when she turned twelve, the enchantress took the girl and hid her away inside a tower that had no doors and only one window. The enchantress visited every morning and got in by calling, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’ The girl would drop her long braids through the window, and the enchantress would climb up.
“One day a prince rode by on his horse. He heard Rapunzel singing in her tower, and her voice was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. He found the tower but couldn’t guess how to get in. He returned many times until one day he saw the enchantress call out, and the braids came down, and up the old woman went.
“The prince waited until the enchantress left at night. Then he went and called out, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’ When the hair came down, he climbed up, and Rapunzel was quite scared. He explained he’d heard her voice and had fallen in love with her. With time he soothed Rapunzel’s fears. He returned to her each night after the enchantress had gone. When he asked her to marry him, she came up with a plan. Return each night with a handkerchief. When they had enough, she would make a rope and climb down with him, and they would run away.
“But one day while the enchantress was there, young, na?ve Rapunzel asked why the enchantress had such a hard time climbing her hair when the young prince climbed up so easily. ‘Ah-ha!’ the enchantress shouted. ‘You conniving girl!’ She grabbed Rapunzel’s braids and wrapped them around one hand, and with a pair of scissors she cut them off! Then she took Rapunzel from the tower and exiled her in the desert, where she would never be found.