The Crystal Castle
I danced across the treetops under the stars, away from the palace, clutching the book to my chest. Far behind me the shouts went up from the palace.
“Find her!”
“Find the princess!”
The low horns sounded and I dove beneath the canopy, through rushing leaves and dappled rays of moonlight. The branches bent and creatures cowered to let their royal mistress pass but still I heard the hunters coming closer. I reached into my travel bag and found the zephyr’s speed that I had purchased for a kiss the former season. With that cloak I flew away and left the hunter’s hounds to bay and beg their masters’ mercy for their failure.
One pursuer remained.
The Duke of Morning, fast as sunbeams, spurred his steed and raced my footprint trail. We passed the forest and the moor and clambered up the mountain wall and yet he was unflagging as the passing of the days. I raced the dawn from rock to snow and to the highest summit's brow where I caught my breath despite the rushing hooves that struck the path behind me. I was spent. The Duke called out. Soon he would see me.
“Princess! Give me your hand. We shall be happy lords of daybreak.”
“How can I give it to you?” I cried. “The Queen has already done so.”
“And you should accept her wisdom. Come. I shall build you a castle with sunbeam walls and dewdrop windows and give you blessings every morning as my bride.”
I shook my head.
“Nothing you make will capture my heart, Duke, for I have seen the crystal castle. A house that you could never build or see or understand. You have nothing for me.” But soon he would see me and I would indeed count out my aeons in his care, unless I slipped the noose before he came.
A flower nestled in a crevice, reaching out her arms for dawn, knowing he was close and praying he would cast his gaze her way. I had seen them yearning for him, worshipping, drinking his glances like sweet nectar. I knelt next to her and she glanced at me with spite for my imminent theft. Then I whispered to her, “I can give him to you. Do as I say and he shall be yours.”
She nodded. I tore away my glamour and wrapped it round her, and she rose from the crack to meet the Duke of Morning. I hid in her place, a humble flower, and watched the Duke ensnare her and ride off. I slipped away.
Past the mountains lay the desert, vast and parched and burning. I walked across it, wilting, catching mirages for water and hiding from the dawn beneath the sand. Each night I took my book and through its pages journeyed to the crystal castle.
A toy they had called it. A passing fancy, not fit for royalty. But when they mouldered in their graves the crystal castle would remain, eternal, a finer dwelling than their hovels weaved of lies. I knew these rooms so well by now but every one held doors still locked to me, and through each one I picked I found yet further doors, chained yet more securely. But I knew there was a guide. The sage who had written the book that led the way to the crystal castle. I would find them.
Beyond the desert was a jungle, where insects bit and panthers stalked and plants snared with their vines and mouths. My royal glamour left far behind gave me no protection. A tribe of apes imprisoned me, made me weave their chieftain robes, until I showed their sage the way to the crystal castle, and they let me go.
Beyond the jungle was the ocean, where I begged and bargained my way across the waves on the turtles back and in the whales belly and in the talons of an albatross I sang my poems to. The sun burned my skin and the salt burnt my throat but there was no thought now of turning back, away from the crystal castle.
Amid the ocean was the witch’s isle that rose from the waves, a barren cliff that I climbed, hands bloody, glamour torn. In her hut in choking smoke she questioned me with poison tongue and told me she could find the way to the sage of the crystal castle. The price was simple. Merely the book, that I still clung to my chest, water-sodden, sun-baked, precious enough to drive me from my home.
And yet I gave it to her. I had walked the book so many times that the crystal castle was ever in my mind. I went there in my dreams and in my waking hours, I saw it behind every rock and tree, more real than the world of lies I lived in. I gave it to her and she took it, and cast the bones and told me the way to the sage of the crystal castle.
The Sun and Moon and stars watched my journey. The Duke of Morning rode by in search but did not see me, so broken was my flesh from walking, no longer royal, nor even flower, but lonely vagrant, twist-footed, treading paths overgrown by the sediment of ages to worlds long forgotten by the folk.
Wrapped in rags I huddled with outcasts, by the walls of fortresses, warmed by pyres that sent refuse to the gods. They knew me strange but did not fear like their fellows did within those fortress walls, who sent me running when I fed myself and could not catch me with their wailing steeds and chains of burning iron, so swift still was I. And seasons passed as I walked between those walls until I found her in a conclave of the wise.
Her allies backed away when I approached, murmured. Some sneered at my rags, others, more perceptive, saw deeper and saw how I was not like them. The sage only stared at me, unspeaking, until I spoke to her about the crystal castle.
Now I sleep beneath her roof. By night I sing for coin in taverns, to make my way in this new world where I am no royal and my race is long forgotten. By day I walk into the palace of the sage, and with her other acolytes I bow my head to woven tree and trace out the paths through the rooms of the crystal castle.