The Princess in the Tower

Princess Rosa had lived in the white tower for sixteen years and knew its hundred and twelve steps the way other people knew their own names.

She knew the view from the top by heart: the long green edge of the wood to the east, the river curving south, the village where, in summer, she could hear the bells on fair days. She knew which bird would appear at the east window on cold mornings (a fieldfare, methodical and rust-chested), and she knew the fox's route through the meadow, and she had watched the same oak tree through all sixteen springs.

What she did not know — and had found herself thinking about more often, lately — was what all of it felt like.

"You've never gone out," said the robin one morning. The robin was the most regular visitor to her sill, and had strong feelings about most things.

"I could," said Rosa.

"You haven't."

She thought about why. Safety, she supposed — though the tower was not a prison; the gate had never been locked. Habit. The window was a good frame. Inside it, everything was arranged and visible. Outside, the world was all the way around.

"The oak is coming into leaf," said the robin. "The bluebells are about to peak. If you wait another week they'll have gone over."

Rosa went down the stairs.

The gate opened inward. She had, as she now realised, been expecting it to take effort. It did not.

The wood smelled entirely different from how she had imagined — closer, greener, more present. The bluebells covered the ground in a wash of soft violet that shifted as the breeze moved through it, and the light filtering through new oak leaves was a yellow-green she had never seen from above.

She stayed a long time by the stream. It was the sound she had been missing — the particular, specific, unrepeatable sound of this stream over these stones in this light, the kind of thing that can only be known by sitting beside it.

The oak was genuinely old. She pressed her hand against the bark and felt the years in it — something rough and patient and entirely unimpressed by anything that had happened recently.

She counted the owls: four on a high branch, three in a hollow, two deep in the bark, three above, one watching her from below at perfect eye level.

"Thirteen," said Rosa.

The owl blinked.

She walked back through the bluebells as the light changed to gold. Up the hundred and twelve stairs. To the window.

The wood looked different now. Not larger — in fact, smaller, now that she knew its specific size. But it was hers in a way it hadn't been before. Not observed. Known.

She understood, standing there, that knowing a thing and seeing a thing are not the same. And that the gate had always been open.

She went to bed with the window ajar, listening to the wood settle into dark.