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Eugene stood on the veranda awaiting the rising sun. He was tired. It wasn't a physical thing—the sun-tears he carried always took care of that. Rather, he was soul-weary. A lifespan going on five hundred years and counting apparently had that effect on a man. More than that, he missed his wife terribly.
His son Harold, named after his grandfather and born shortly before Rapunzel had departed, could somehow tell. The boy was highly sensitive and Eugene knew the lad deserved more than the passing attention he gave him. That was certainly more than he himself had received as a boy, but that was no excuse. He sighed and looked into his son's twelve-year-old face.
“I'm sorry, son,” he said, the weariness showing in his voice. “What was that you were saying?”
“You're always so sad,” said Harold.
“I know. Someday, maybe you'll understand why.”
“But Sister says Mom's not dead.”
“He's right,” said Sophia from nearby.
“My mind knows it, but my heart says otherwise,” he said to his daughter. “It's been ten years, honey. Alive or dead, she's not coming back. I don't know how I know, but I know.” He looked toward the brightening horizon and sighed deeply. “So she may as well be dead.”
Momentarily, the solar disk crested over the mountains, bathing them all in golden light.
“Just take your sun-bath, Daddy,” said Sophia. “It'll make you feel better. It always does.”
“Yes, dear,” said Eugene sarcastically. In his mind, it didn't help that his eldest daughter was so much like her mother.
After a moment, Eugene stiffened, then craned his neck. He thought he heard Rapunzel's voice...but that was crazy. His daughter sounded so much like his dearly departed wife that he often had to do a double-take, especially over the last decade. But he was quite sure she hadn't said anything. His eyes flew open and he stared at the sun. Most people couldn't do that and keep their eyesight. As a sun-bearer, he could. A glance at Sophia and then at Harold told him he hadn't been imagining things.
“Do...either of you hear that?” he asked, just to make sure he wasn't somehow going crazy.
“You mean...Mother's voice?” said Sophia. “Yes, I'm pretty sure I did. But...” She trailed off as a sweet song began, its melody surrounding them. It felt to Eugene like a warm blanket of love and it nearly brought him to tears.
“I am the dawn, I'm the new day begun,” sang Rapunzel's voice.
“I bring you the morning, I bring you the sun
“I hold back the night and I open the skies
“I bring light to the world, I bring sight to your eyes.”
It was the most beautiful thing Eugene had ever heard in his long life. He and Sophia looked at each other with wide eyes and then back at the sun. Inexplicably, Rapunzel's song seemed to be coming from it.
“From the first of all time until time is undone
“Forever and ever and ever and ever
“And I am the dawn and the sky and the sun
“I am one with The One and I am...the dawn!”
The tempo changed a little and rose to take on a more triumphant tone.
“I am the sky and the dawn and the sun!
“I am the sky and the new day begun!
“I am the sky and the dawn and the sun!”
Eugene blinked. “R...r...rapunzel?!?” he stammered.
“Mother?!” said Sophia.
“Dad?” said Harold, tugging on his father's shorts. “What's happening? Whose voice is that?”
“It's...it's your mother's,” said Eugene, not taking his eyes off the sun.
Eugene's daughter Agatha and grandson Karl stepped out onto the long veranda from their own suites, both minimally clothed. “Did we hear what we thought we heard?” they said almost together.
“Good morning, Eugene!” said Rapunzel's voice, its quality ethereal and its tone exuberant. “Good morning, children! I've missed you all terribly. Harold, dear, you're growing up nicely. I'm sorry I haven't been there to be the mother you deserve, but it couldn't be helped. If I'd stayed, I'd have destroyed you all and that was just plain unacceptable. I'm so happy to be back...well, sort of.”
“Rapunzel?” said Eugene again. “Is that really you? Where are you?”
At first, there was silence. Then Rapunzel's voice spoke again. “Oh, two things first. One, please don't all try to talk at once. My multitasking is a lot better than it was when I was human, but I can still really only answer one question at a time, so I'll try to anticipate the ones I'm pretty sure you're all trying to ask...and that means all of you at all your homes, holdings, embassies, and so forth. Yes, I can see you all gawking at me and it's...well, it's kind of funny and I guarantee you're going to be picking your jaws up off the floor in a few minutes.
“Second, there's...going to be a bit of lag. It takes a good eight minutes for my light and my words to reach you and closer to ten for your words to return. So we're looking at a potentially twenty-minute round trip. It's better than e-mail back when we still had that sort of thing, better than door-based courier and far superior to ground mail. But I expect it'll still be a bit annoying.”
“Are you...in the sun??” said Eugene.
There was another pause, as though Rapunzel was intentionally leaving time gaps for things to sink in. “I trust you all heard my little song, yes? That should tell you what you need to know first about what's happened to me.”
“Wait,” said Sophia, “don't tell me you are the sun!”
After a moment, they heard a giggle. Twenty long minutes passed before Rapunzel's voice spoke again. “I believe my dear Sophia wins the prize.”
Eugene's jaw dropped. “I...I'm married...to the sun?!” he exclaimed.
Rapunzel's reply came after another twenty minutes. “Surprise! Now, I suppose you're all wondering how in the worlds I came to be the sun. Shortly after I ascended, Sol noticed me and saw how distraught I was. She's been wanting to start another star system for some time, so she offered to allow me to take her place. So I traveled far and wide, through the Oort Cloud and out to the remains of Alpha Orionis and its satellites, gathering material. When I had enough mass to fully ignite as a main-sequence star, I returned and took Sol's place. It took a few months to settle in, as it were. Trust me, it's really weird! I'm still getting used to it.”
“That's remarkable!” exclaimed Sophia. “So...what's it like...being the sun?”
Rapunzel's reply came after nearly twenty minutes. “Sophia, it's amazing! I wish you could see it out here...see it as I do, not as we saw it in all those Hubble images. It's beautiful! And Wolfgang,” she added, addressing her grandson, who was attached to the embassy in Boise, “where are your manners? A gentleman never asks a lady about her mass. I thought we'd raised you better than that. Appolonia,” she addressed her daughter in the eastern Gorge, “yes, this pretty much settles the debate about whether or not I'm human...and, well, the verdict is...no. I'm most decidedly not even remotely human.”
“Wow,” said Eugene.
“You...don't have a problem with that, do you, dearest?” said Rapunzel, a note of concern in her voice. Her reply came after only a few minutes, so she'd apparently anticipated some sort of reaction from her husband.
“No,” he replied pensively, “of course not. We have friends and family married to non-humans, other non-human friends and even several non-humanoid friends. I seem to remember promising never to leave you until the sky falls, death takes us, or the world ends. As none of that has taken place, my heart is still yours. Hell, it'll be yours even after that.”
“That means a lot to me,” she replied. Eugene could hear the warmth in her voice. “And dearest? Watch your language. You know how I feel about that.”
Eugene cringed reflexively. “Sorry.” Then, “Are...we ever going to get to...see you?” said Eugene.
“You're seeing me right now,” said Rapunzel at length. “As for whether or not you'll see me as I was...I'm working on that. Now, tell me everything I missed over the last ten years. Don't worry, I don't have anything else to do but hang here and watch space objects fly around, so I literally have all day. I know you'll all have different things to say, so I'll have to take you all one by one and day by day. It'll be even more time-consuming because of the time lag. Oh, and I'm sure you all have plenty to do, what with running the kingdom. So if you have to go to a meeting or some-such, that's fine. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here again tomorrow...and the next day...and the day after...and so on. So, Eugene, let's start with you. Oh, and before you all shuffle off to whatever you have planned, I strongly recommend we keep this classified for the time-being.”
Eugene sat down carefully after excusing his son to breakfast. His head was still spinning with the impact of his wife's new revelation. Not only was she most decidedly not dead, but she was now the sun! He was both elated that his wife lived, yet also saddened that she was perpetually out of reach by ninety-three million miles and that he would still be unable to ever touch her again. Even if he could travel to her surface via Bifrost...and he could...he'd be instantly vaporized.
He took a deep breath, let it out, and began his long-distance conversation with his beloved. He'd had to duck inside for a glass of water at one point. Things were going well enough, all things considered. The terms of her will had been executed as per her instructions. All of her possessions—which had been surprisingly few, especially given that she had been, and arguably still was, Queen of Corona--had been distributed to her family or to the poor according to certain details. Her duties had been assumed by Sophia and hers by her eldest, Catherine. That included the authority to finalize all unresolved political matters both foreign and domestic.
After seven years, Eugene had finally been convinced to allow a kingdom-wide memorial service to be held for his wife. He'd bawled like a baby, which Rapunzel seemed to find both touching and amusing.
Both Rapunzel and Eugene had, over the years, made monumental efforts toward ensuring that Corona's legal code remained as uncomplicated as possible, which extended to last wills and testaments. That had often been an uphill battle, but they'd usually won because proponents of complicating things were seldom able to mount good arguments—arguments, yes, good ones, seldom.
As Provision 2 was the one specifying Rapunzel's indisposition, rather than her death, she was still technically Queen. That had been in dispute recently, as one by one, foreign heads of state, and even a few of her own family, had begun to question, often forcefully, whether she was still alive. A few insisted that she be declared deceased, as no one had seen or heard from her since that fateful night. Yet there was little if any evidence one way or the other.
Four kings, one from San Joaquin, the second from Oertha, the third from its arch-rival Hokkaido, and the fourth from Hawaii, had been trying for the last two years to marry their daughters to Eugene. He'd politely and repeatedly refused them all, but he'd been beginning to concede that he might have to yield anyway, if for no other reason than to shut them all up. Avoiding war wasn't much of a concern, as no army on Earth could stand against Corona anyway, a fact they'd dramatically and definitively demonstrated the day they'd defeated their kingdom's previous management. With maybe two hundred combatants, they'd shattered an army of eleven thousand in less than a half-hour.
Rapunzel giggled at that. “They're going to be sorely disappointed.”
“Do you think they'll believe me?”
“They'll probably think you're either stalling some more, or are downright crazy. I don't know how you'll convince them. I can only talk to you this way because you're a sun-bearer. You'd have to act as an interpreter and that'll make things tricky, especially with the time lag. But that might be a moot point if you're communicating with them via letter. It still won't help with the credibility. There are a lot of things I can do as a sun, though. Sol had a...uh...flares-off approach to managing the system. She mainly hung here and watched. I intend to have a much different management style.”
“You can...manage the Solar system? I though there were laws of physics and such.”
“Oh, there are,” said Rapunzel. “But I can still do a lot. Oh, and it's not the solar system anymore. Sol left, remember? You're now all residents of the Rapunzel system.”
Eugene smacked himself on the forehead and then laughed.
“You know,” continued Rapunzel, “I suppose maybe that makes me everyone's Queen.”
“Oh, I'm pretty sure you'd encounter a lot of resistance to that!”
“I do preside over the entire planet,” she pointed.
“Well...yes, I suppose you do. But until people see these other things you've mentioned that you can do...and I hope you'll explain some of that...they're not going to be convinced even that you're then sun, let alone why they should accept your authority. I'm your husband and I'm having trouble believing it...well, only a little, but still. We still have to convince them that you're alive.”
“I know. It's strange for me, too. Trust me, you have no idea how weird it is.”
“So,” said Eugene tentatively, “did it hurt? Ascending?”
“Unimaginably,” said Rapunzel.
Eugene's face fell. “Really?”
“You have no idea. There's a limit to how much heat a Firewalker can withstand. I burned...slowly...from both the inside and the outside. The transformation consumed my body and converted it into pure energy. I wouldn't have needed it in corporeal form anyway, but...take the collective pain of all my childbirthings, add to it all the pain from my daughters' childbirthings, multiply it by a hundred, and that would be like a paper cut by comparison. I don't remember if I screamed, but it would have been drowned out by all that other noise.”
Eugene gave a low whistle, then exhaled heavily. “I'm sorry I asked,” he said at last.
“What's done is done. I'm not sure if I'm sorry myself, and it wouldn't do any good now if I were. I had to do it one way or another. I'm glad to have made that sacrifice in exchange for all of your lives. And now my light keeps you all alive. Perhaps there's yet more I'm to do for you now that I'm your sun.”
Eugene had moved his chair around to the western side of the building. He was surprised at how long such a conversation took with the twenty-minute delay. Now the sun...his sun, his wife, he reminded himself...was beginning to set. He sighed again.
“I'm going to have to bid you good night, my love,” she said to him. “I'll see you in the morning, though!”
“Good night, honey,” said Eugene. He sat there until after the golden orb his wife had become had vanished over the western horizon and the light had faded into twilight. It was only then that he realized he hadn't eaten anything all day and his stomach was growling something fierce. He sighed again and stood up to head down to the kitchens.
*****
Someone had prepared each of his meals. Each still sat on the main dining table and each was stone cold. He picked up a sausage link and chewed it absently, lost in thought.
“Oh, there you are,” said Sophia.
Eugene jumped, his daughter's Rapunzel-like voice startling him. He looked up to see her and young Harold. He smiled.
“So how did it go?” she asked.
“It was mostly one-sided. I think it's your turn tomorrow. Bring a book, though. That time lag will drive you crazy otherwise.” He put down the sausage and hugged both of them tightly. “I suppose this is better than her just being gone. But it's...” His voice trailed off, unsure how to say what he was thinking and feeling.
“A torment of Tantalus sort of thing?” offered Sophia.
“Exactly.” He fought down some tears. “I'm sitting there talking with her and she's, like, right there...” He made an upward gesture. “...seeming so close I could touch her...yet I know she's still ninety-three million miles away! And even if I could go there...which I could...I'd be instantly incinerated. It's aggravating!”
“I know,” said Sophia.
“She said there are some things she can do as a sun that Sol never did. Maybe she'll think of something because as it is...well, I'll have to settle for her voice. This is all really weird, though. For one thing, since Sol is no longer present, this isn't the solar system anymore.” At Sophia's raised eyebrow, he continued. “It's the Rapunzel system.”
Sophia chortled. “You're kidding!”
“That's what she said.”
“So we have Rapunzel flares and Rapunzel wind and Rapunzel panels and so forth, is that it?”
Eugene shrugged. “I guess.”
Sophie eyed him in that same way his wife had. “I'm thinking that the next time you're inclined to say your life can't get any weirder, I'm going to go over your head and issue a Royal decree forbidding you from doing so.”
He just laughed.
“It's good to hear that,” she said. “The laughter, that is. You don't do it nearly often enough these days. I hope that improves, now that Mother's back...or...well, you know.” Sophia glanced at her father's food. “You haven't eaten anything all day, have you?”
He shook his head.
“Daddy, eat,” she ordered.
He picked up the half-eaten sausage and took a few more bites.
“More,” she instructed. “Because you need it and you know that if you don't eat it, Harold and I will.”
“I suppose there's more here than I can eat, appetite or not,” he admitted. “Please...” He motioned for the two to join him. They sat and ate and discussed some of the possible ramifications of Rapunzel having become Earth's sun.