Chapter Forty The Tale of the Princess in the Tower
Chapter Forty
The Tale of the Princess in the Tower
Once upon a time, when the world was younger and I was a little angrier, a wicked sorceress-queen imprisoned her stepdaughter in a tower deep within the trackless wilderness of Skalla.
The tower had no doorway. The only opening in the sheer wall was a single small window at the highest possible point.
Every morning, Princess Melilot’s stepmother would stop by the base of the tower and call up to her, “Will you not let me in?”
And Melilot would yell, “Do not mock me, you poisonous snake! You know full well there is no door.”
Her stepmother remained unfazed by this. “Surely any daughter of mine can use magic to grant her visitors entry.” Then she would turn and depart.
Melilot spent her first month in the tower raging.
She spent the second month moping.
She spent the third month crushed by unutterable boredom.
In the fourth month, she turned her mind to the problem at hand.
At first, she focused her efforts on mighty feats of magic that proved to be far beyond her capabilities. She attempted to summon a powerful gale to bear a visitor aloft to her window, but after weeks of effort, she managed to create no more than a light breeze.
She attempted to command roses to twine up the tower and form a ladder of vines that a visitor might climb—for she did not much mind the idea that her stepmother might prick herself on a thorn or two—but after many days, she was only able to make a few squat rosebushes sprout around the base of the tower.
The rosebushes thrashed their canes threateningly, for they had been made in a rage, and the rage remained.
But their reach was short, and they were certainly useless for approaching the window.
Melilot attempted to turn herself into a vast lake, as her sister Jonquil had once done, in the hopes that any visitors could swim to her window.
It also crossed her mind that she might employ this method to flow out of the tower and escape.
But it mattered not; at the time, she was able to become nothing greater than a puddle.
But one day, almost as an idle thought, she willed her hair to lengthen, and to her great surprise it responded, cascading first to her waist and then to her ankles before spilling onto the floor. Although she had mastered nothing else, she had at least mastered this.
Sam glanced down at me; my head was in his lap by that point. “Nothing else?” he asked. “You altered the winds and grew violent plants and turned yourself into water.”
“Only a little bit.”
“You transformed your entire body into liquid ‘only a little bit’?”
“Can we argue about this when I’m done with the story?”
“All right.” Sam sighed and gave me a wry grin. “At least I finally know why your hairstyle keeps changing.”
“You never figured that out? I told everyone!”
“Not me. I thought you were just fashion-forward.”
“So much that I stopped to redo my hair in the middle of a pitched battle?”
“Fashion doesn’t wait on circumstance.”
The next morning, when her stepmother called up to her, Melilot flung a great waterfall of hair out her window.
“I suppose that will work,” her stepmother sniffed. “Brace yourself. This is likely to hurt.” She dug her hands into the masses of brown curls and scaled her way up the tower.
Once the queen was safely inside, Melilot pulled her endless length of hair back through the window and massaged her aching head. Hair climbing, she reflected, was unlikely to become a popular mode of transportation.
“Might I have visitors now,” she implored her stepmother, “since I have fulfilled your wishes?”
“Indeed you may,” the queen conceded. “And here I am.”
Melilot scowled. “I had hoped I could see my sisters.”
“Your sisters are off on the quest you refused to undertake. When they return, perhaps I will allow you to see them, if you find some way to let them in that’s more sensible than this hair nonsense.”
Melilot was deeply incensed and shouted bitter curses as soon as her stepmother had left the tower and was well out of earshot.
Thereafter, the queen came to visit every morning, shouting, “Melilot, Melilot, let down your hair!” After she climbed up, she would stay to chat, drink tea, and bring news from the world outside, including the fact that the invading army was pressing ever deeper into Skalla—
“The what, now?” Sam asked.
“There was an enemy army attacking Skalla at the time. I’m sure I mentioned it in the first half of the story.”
“Did you? I don’t remember that.”
“Well, to be fair, there’s been a lot going on since then.”
Melilot was surprised by how much time the queen was spending with her given the dire situation.
Nevertheless, her resentment toward her stepmother grew with each passing day, especially since the hair climbing continued to be awkward and irritating, although much less painful once Melilot came up with the idea of winding it around the window handle first.
Then one afternoon, nearly a year into her imprisonment, a voice other than the queen’s called her name from the base of the tower. She stuck her head out the window and saw a man she had never met who was dressed in the clothing of a prince.
“Melilot, Melilot!” he thundered at the top of his lungs. “Let down your hair!”
Unsure what to make of this, Melilot wound her hair around the handle and tossed it out.
“Who in the world are you?” Melilot interrogated him. “And why have you come here?”
“A few nights past, while riding through the wilderness, I spied you at your window,” he cooed as he made his way up.
“I immediately fell in love with you from afar. However, seeing as your tower has no doorway, I despaired of ever finding a way to enter and meet you. Each night since then, I have approached to admire your beauty and curse my lot. But today, I chanced to arrive in the morning and saw a mysterious woman ascend the walls by means of your glorious hair. And I vowed I would do likewise.” He squeezed through the window and bowed before her.
Melilot, as you might recall, was sixteen years old, so she believed every word he said. Soon the prince won Melilot’s very first kiss. Not long after that, he won even more.
A week passed by with her stepmother visiting every morning and the prince stopping by each afternoon.
He spoke of love, and he frequently described the future life he planned for them together in the distant kingdom he left curiously unnamed.
He paid her many compliments, especially for the long and beautiful locks of her hair.
They broke off such talk only to curse the queen for imprisoning Melilot in the tower and mistreating her throughout her life.
She confessed her fury at her stepmother as she had never done before, not even to her sisters.
All the while, his whispered words evoked heady fantasies in Melilot’s mind—a future far from Skalla, in which she would no longer be at the mercy of the queen’s whims. Soon enough, Melilot wanted nothing more than to escape the tower and run off with him.
“A ladder of sufficient height would be too bulky for my horse. But perhaps I could bring you a length of silk each time I arrive,” the prince proposed. “You can weave them into a rope in secret, and when it’s ready, you shall descend it, and then together we will ride away from this place.”
Melilot was puzzled. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to bring a pair of scissors? We cut off my hair, tie a knot, and both climb out?”
“My idea would make a more thrilling story,” the prince huffed.
“But with mine, we could leave earlier—as soon as tomorrow night!”
The prince hesitated and bit his lower lip, weighing his words before he allowed them forth.
“I perceive one great flaw with either plan. Is not your stepmother a powerful sorceress?” he pointed out.
“No matter when we leave, would she not bend the very elements themselves to hunt us down and capture you once again? I care little for my own life, but I would not see you imprisoned for the rest of your days.”
“That is true,” Melilot acknowledged. “What, then, should we do?”
“I can see no other option. We must kill your stepmother.”
Melilot blinked. “Kill my stepmother?” she echoed.
“Tomorrow, when I come to your tower, I shall come armed!” he attested.
“I will stay the night, until the queen comes to see you in the morning. While you toss down your hair, I shall hide by the window, and as she comes through, I will cut off her head. The very sword we use to slay her shall serve to shear off your hair and provide our escape.”
He gave her a kiss and departed until the morrow, leaving behind nothing but the memory of his words.
The following morning, when the queen came to visit, she found Melilot curiously silent.
She was used to hearing, at the very least, barbed rejoinders from her stepdaughter and did not know what to make of this uncharacteristic reticence.
After a few minutes of one-sided conversation, the queen frowned. “What is amiss?”
Melilot did not look up from her teacup. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been seduced by the leader of the invading army.”
The queen raised her eyebrows. “You’ve been what?”
It was the first time her stepdaughter could ever recall the queen looking surprised.
“He’s been stopping by every afternoon,” Melilot continued, each word dropping from her lips like a leaden weight. “I suppose he learned there was little love lost between us and sought me out to see what advantage he might gain. He plans to assassinate you when you arrive tomorrow.”
“Ah.” The queen finished her tea and set the cup in the saucer with a clink. “Then I imagine we shall have to deal with that today.”
“I’m sorry your first boyfriend turned out to be a deceitful murderer.” Sam laid his hand over mine.
I laced our fingers together. “It wasn’t great. At least he didn’t get me pregnant.”
That afternoon, the prince came at the appointed time. “Melilot, Melilot,” he rhapsodized as usual, “let down your hair!” When the mass of curls came tumbling down the side of the tower, he scrambled up, a great sword strapped to his back.
As he approached the window, however, Melilot was nowhere to be seen.
Her hair, he saw, had been snipped from her head and knotted to the window handle.
Almost as if his plan had already been enacted.
But it proved to be someone else’s plan entirely.
For waiting for him within the tower was the queen.
“I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced,” she greeted him as he dangled below her, clinging to the rope of hair, “but I hear you’ve been seeing my daughter.”
The prince reached for his sword, but before he had a chance to draw it, the queen undid the knot that held the hair in place.
Hidden in the wasteland nearby, Melilot watched him scream as he plummeted down and down and down, landing in the rosebushes Melilot had grown at the base of the tower with her magic.
They cushioned his fall to the extent that he did not die, but they thrashed and attacked him, the wicked thorns piercing his eyes.
Cursing his fate, he stumbled away blind into the vast wilderness surrounding the tower, and for all anyone knows, he wanders there still.
But it is far more likely he died there, lost and alone.
Melilot thought her stepmother, in her anger at the princess’s foolishness, might cast her out to wander the wilderness as well.
But she did not. Instead, some days later, freed from the tower, Melilot gazed out from a palace balcony while her sister Jonquil routed the leaderless enemy soldiers almost singlehandedly, mounted on the back of a dragon.
The quest to retrieve a dragon’s toenail had been fulfilled, and the result was a complete victory over the opposing army.
From behind her, as the dragon breathed fire on the invading troops, she heard her stepmother’s voice.
“I hope,” the queen whispered, “you have learned something from this.”
Melilot laughed bitterly. “I have learned I will be punished if I disobey you. I have learned I am weak in magic and easily deceived. And I have learned I am the least of your children. Is that the lesson you sought to teach me?”
“No.” The queen seemed to be speaking directly into Melilot’s ear, so quietly she could still scarcely be heard. “But at least you have finally called yourself my child.”
Melilot whipped her head around.
But the queen had already vanished, as if she had never been there at all.
My story lapsed into silence. Sam held me close until we both fell asleep to the rustle of leaves in the soft spring rain.