Story by Deena Fisher
Once upon a time a princess lived in a slick, black glass tower. Out her windows she saw nothing but slick, black glass. The world was glass; the trees reached black glass branches to a black glass sky. Black glass birds teetered in the black glass limbs.
As befits a princess, she had a lady in waiting.
Every day, between meetings with councilors to find a solution to the glassiness of the world, between scheduled activities meant to strengthen her as a ruler, or give her surcease, or help her people, during all these things in which the princess was often forced to bite back screams of rage and pain though she wasn’t sure why…in between, the princess looked out her windows at the black glass world and wept, though she never knew why she did that, either. She only knew that she was sad, or angry, or bereft, or grieving, or all of those things at once, and that she wanted something different.
Many times she wondered if, were she able to fly across all the landscape she could see, there would be unending glass until she went all the way around the world and returned from the other direction. She wondered if the world was made of glass, but was almost sure it was, and didn’t really want to see. It would break her heart completely to be proven right. She often imagined her heart was slick black glass as well.
Sometimes, she wondered if she should stand up on the slick, black glass windowsill and try to fly, because she knew she couldn’t. She looked down, down the long slick sides of her tower and wondered what it would feel like to shatter on the black glass thorns below.
Then one day she heard a word, trailing mystery through her tower, and she followed it.
She followed around and around the twisting glass stair of her tower, up and down, through council rooms and boudoirs, through bathing rooms and ballrooms, through linen closets and conclaves, until finally it faded away at her very own door.
She went in and found her lady-in-waiting, who sat and worked at some arcane and magical box, and, it seemed the princess saw her lady, her friend, for the very first time. She was focused, intense. “What, what are you waiting for?” The princess asked.
“For rain.”
The princess puzzled this, but she didn’t ask, for fear of what new thing this rain might be.
And so the days went by, with councilors and crying, until one day she felt a change in the air. It made her angry, and then she looked out the window and saw the change coming and it made her afraid.
She went to her quarters, and there was her lady-in-waiting, humming a tune as she worked at some strange and arcane thing.
“How can you be happy?” the princess asked in frustration, anger, fear.
“The rain is coming,” her friend said, and she looked up and smiled.
She smiled.
It may have been the very first smile the princess had ever seen. She could not recall another one. She did not know what it could mean. It struck terror and sorrow through to her very heart and she cried out. “What is this rain?”
The lady-in-waiting came and took the princess by the hand and settled her on a settee by the window, wrapped her in blankets, brought chamomile tea. They sat together in quiet for a moment, and then the lady began to speak.
“It can be destructive, crazed lightning striking down trees that land on houses, with flooding, and wildness, electric in the air. But, it can also be amazing, causing trees and flowers to grow, making rainbows. Rain is magic and it’s time.”
The princess, afraid to look up, looked anyway. “Rain is hope.”
Strange sounds reached their ears, a patting tapping tick. A slipping sliding, kissing sound. The princess and the lady turned as one and looked out the window. Rain.
At the far horizon black clouds piled deeper and deeper and lightning slashed, bright silver bursts and lines that traveled all across the sky. They made the princess’ heart leap. Closer, the clouds continued, less dark, still thick, and from them, coming closer and closer, a silver curtain. And here, then, at her window, the silver resolved itself into individual drops of light, clear, bright.
The princess reached out and captured some in her hand. It tickled and tingled and she laughed suddenly, in delight.
Startled by the laughter she froze for a moment, and then, frenzied, she hung herself halfway out of the tower to capture more, piling the rain on top of her, capturing it lest it escape. More and more, glinting black with reflected glass, white from shards of lightning. Black and white, deeper and deeper.
Her lady-in-waiting laid a hand on the princess’ shoulder. “Look.”
The princess looked up, and out. Her world had changed. The black glass tower still stood, but here and there she saw the golden brown gleam of fresh turned soil, and trees, with pale green leaves trembling under a pale blue sky. A drab brown bird with a scarlet breast sang. Birdsong, how wondrous.
“The rain?”
The lady smiled and nodded.
“Will it come again?”
“Oh yes.”
“How will I know?”
The lady gestured, and the princess looked down.
Covering her lap was a layer of interlocking rain, black and white, locked into a magical pattern.
“There it is,” the lady said, “the promise that you made.”
And it was true, all the work the princess had done, with councilors and wise ones, biting back screams, despite all the tears, the princess had brought the rain.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said to her lady.
The lady thought about it a moment. “I think you could; perhaps it would have taken longer.”
They laughed together, and then the princess took the coverlet of rain and draped it around the lady’s shoulders.
“For me?”
“Yes, I made it for you. Because you believed in rain.”
