The Princess in the Tower
Princess Rosa had lived in the white tower for as long as she could remember.
It was a beautiful tower, tall and slender, with a view from the top that reached over the wood to the silver line of the sea. Every morning she climbed the hundred and twelve steps to the top and watched the sun come up. She knew the names of most of the birds that flew past, and she could track the fox's movements through the meadow below by watching where the crows complained.
But she had never walked through the gate at the bottom.
"Why not?" asked the bird on the windowsill one morning. It was a small, practical sort of bird — a robin, with very bright eyes and strong opinions.
"I'm not sure," said Rosa.
"There are bluebells in the wood," said the robin. "And a stream. And an oak tree that is older than the tower itself. Thirteen owls live in it."
"Thirteen," said Rosa.
"If you go now you'll get there before the mist burns off, and the bluebells look very well in mist."
Rosa put down her book. She went down the hundred and twelve stairs. She opened the gate, which was not locked, which she realised she had never tried before.
The wood was right there.
It smelled of earth and green things and something cool and old. The bluebells were exactly where the robin had said, spreading under the trees in a haze of soft purple-blue. The stream ran bright over brown pebbles, and she sat beside it for a long time, listening to it say the same thing over and over in a language she nearly understood.
The oak was enormous. She counted the owls: four sleeping on a high branch, three in a hollow, three more deeper in the bark, two at the very top, and one looking directly at her from a low branch with a great deal of dignity.
"Thirteen," said Rosa.
"Told you," said the robin.
She stayed in the wood until the light turned gold. Then she went home up the hundred and twelve stairs and looked out at the trees from the top.
She knew the wood now. It was part of her map.
Tomorrow, she decided, she would go further.