She slept in a nest of her own hair. Her tower, being enchanted and all, provided magical remedies. She couldn’t age. She couldn’t get sick. She was never hungry. She was perfectly preserved in most ways. Even her menstruation stalled. The things that magic couldn’t take away were the hairs on her head and the strain on her heart.
Why would someone want the heart of an ordinary girl who sometimes worked at a pastry shop with her mother?
At least her heart couldn’t get tangled and snagged on furniture. She once broke the mirror and used a long shard to try to cut her hair. But the strands were like metal cords. The mirror re-formed. The gash on her palm healed. Then she’d tried to bite her hair off, rip it with all the strength she could muster, but only managed to crack her front tooth. It healed that very night.
So her hair grew, year after year, like the berries on her window that gave her the only sustenance she required.
Eventually Danaë had stopped counting how long she’d been in the tower. Sometimes it felt like a century. Sometimes it felt like she was already dead, and this was her punishment from a cruel god for reasons she couldn’t understand.
But then one day, while she sat on her windowsill picking at her split ends and singing a song she’d heard on a jukebox nearly seventy years before, she heard a voice call back.
Not taunting.
Not far, either.
She couldn’t see him well at first, as it was a particularly rainy day and her spyglass was warped. But she knew she wasn’t imagining him.
A strong breeze shoved the clouds away and there he was. He was standing on the edge of the pond behind Belvedere Castle and looking straight up at her. A boy with a flop of black waves, dressed in a brown leather jacket, twisting something in his hands. Everything inside her was torn. Was he real? Did he really, truly see her? Her heart gave a painful pump, like after so many years she’d forgotten that it was actually still beating.
“Hello,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
* * *
Fabían Macías knew about the tower. Every magical person in New York did. They knew it had been built as a prison by those who hunted people like him. It trapped strong magic inside and out of the way. He knew that everyone pretended it didn’t exist because there was already someone in there, and if it ever became empty, then the hunters would want to fill it back up.
But how was he supposed to ignore the structure that split Central Park in half? How could he ignore the girl who sang every night, sometimes off-key? He could hear how lonely she was because he felt that way sometimes too.
That night, he was crossing the park to get to the movie theater and meet his friends, when a strange feeling gripped him. It said, Wait. Listen. Speak.
So he spoke.
He yanked the beanie from his head and wrung it out like fresh laundry as he waited for her to answer. He heard her before he saw her. She was sitting in the south-facing window of the tower, touching the curling end of her hair. He didn’t recognize the song right away. It was one that his grandma used to like to play, but his Spanish wasn’t all that good.
He saw her get scared. He’d seen boys around the block talk at girls from the street. Call them out from their windows. The girls would stand at the fire escape until their mom or dad or big sibling came out and got tight. Then the guys would run off.
But here, on an evening where the staff had left for the day and there was no one in the park except humans looking for trouble and magical beings coming to life under the moon, he finally worked up the nerve to talk to her.
“Who are you?” she asked. There was something defensive about her voice.
“Um—I’m just Fabían. My friends call me Fabe. Like Gabe.” He wished he could smash his own face against the side of the brick building. Fabe like Gabe? Who said that? He’d never said that in his life.
But then it was worth it from the sound of her laugh.
“What are you doing up there?” he asked.
“Taking in the view, naturally.”
“Yeah, but why are you up there?”
“Someone I loved very much left me behind.”
“You loved a hunter?” Fabían grimaced.
“What? No! What do you want, Fabe like Gabe?” she asked, leaning just slightly out the window.
“The song you were singing reminded me of someone. Usually I just keep walking, but today is different. I felt like I should say something. I don’t know…”
“So you’ve heard me before?”
“Well, yes.”
She set her chin on her wrist. “Then why talk to me now?”
“Because everyone tells me not to.”
“Do they?” She sounded so sad, and he wanted nothing more than to make her not sad.
“Everyone knows that this is a prison and that you never talk to anyone.”
“Who am I supposed to talk to?”
“Me. If you want.”
“It’s kind of hard to have a conversation while we’re shouting.”
He knew he should go home. If he didn’t leave that minute, he’d miss the movie and his moms would be pissed if he bailed on dinner, but it was ceviche night. He hated ceviche. Fish cooked in lemon juice? No, thank you.
But it had taken him too long to work up the nerve to talk to the girl in the prison tower. He couldn’t turn back now.
“Is there a ladder or an elevator?” he asked. The structure couldn’t just be a cylinder of stacked stones, right? Of course, he knew that though magic had rules, they didn’t apply to everyone in the same way.
“No…but there’s another option. Would you do it?”
His heart felt like the time he took a beating at the boxing ring. Gloved fists popping against his chest. Only now that sensation was coming from within.
“Yes! What is it?”
There was a long pause and she vanished. He could see a silver ripple in Turtle Pond beside him. A slender green creature with a bald head, wearing a lily pad as a skirt, giggled. “But how will you get down, little one?”
“The same way I come up,” he snapped.
She raked her sharp, webbed fingers across the surface. Smiling with pointed teeth, she said, “I’ll be here to break your fall.”
Horns blared in the distance, and a whiff of pretzels and hot dogs somehow made its way here, too. With his true Sight he could see the world come alive. New York City was magic in a way that no one ordinary would ever know. Fey creatures wearing human clothes slunk around smoking cigarettes, and down below across the sprawling green mounds, there were young vampire girls moon-bathing in string bikinis. They drank something dark and syrupy from 7-Eleven Slurpee cups.