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rainbowfic2012-02-11 10:38 pm
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2012-02-11 10:38 pm
Iceberg 10, Lust 22, Metallic Gold 7: The Mountain
Author: Kat
Title: The Mountain
Story: In The Heart
Colors: Iceberg 10 (winter wonderland), lust 22 (mile high club), metallic gold 7 (skill).
Supplies and Materials: Modeling clay (soul), yarn (a haloed moon), nub (the glass mountain story mentioned in winter), pastels (telling a story), portrait, eraser (fairy tales AU).
Word Count: 5155.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: I was born my parents' only child, and there the trouble began.
Warnings: stillbirth, death in childbirth, isolation, neglect.
Notes: Isana asked for The Glass Mountain with Gina and Ivy. MONTHS LATER... last iceberg!
I was born my parents' only child, the only heir to their kingdom, and there the trouble began.
When my mother first knew I lived within her, it was cause for great rejoicing, for my parents had been married many years and yet they had no heir to show for it. My father proclaimed a day of thanksgiving; my mother showed her growing belly proudly to any who asked. Gifts came from near and far, expressions of joy from the people and from neighboring monarchs relieved that there would be no civil war.
Their joy did not last for long.
Like a cold wind the witch came, walking in rags through a sudden summer snow. The guards at the gate tried to stop her, but she waved her hand and they fell back, afraid. She walked into the great hall; the courtiers cowered away and made a path for her to the dais where my parents sat on their golden thrones, their crowns upon their raised heads.
She walked toward them, smooth and steady, and they could see in her face that she came for no fair purpose. My father cried out to the guards to remove her immediately, but none of them could move. My mother clutched her belly with a trembling hand, threw up an arm to ward her off, but still the witch came forward, her black hair tangled 'round her face, her feet bare and blue with cold.
She met them with a mocking little bow, and in a voice like the howling of the wind, said, "Your Majesties, I have brought you a message." and turned to my mother, knelt before her, placed her hands on my mother's swollen belly, on the bulge beneath which I lay. Her hands, my mother said later, were cold as ice. She trembled at that touch, but could not move away.
"This child you carry is a daughter," the witch said, her voice soothing and singsong. "She will be a great beauty, with a clever mind and quick hands, a sweet smile and a dulcet voice. Summer's daughter, born in the blizzard, skin of snow and hair of raw-spun honey, she will be a great queen, all that you hoped and more." The witch looked up then and smiled at my mother, a smile as cold as her hands. "But first, she will destroy your lives. Many men will seek her. Many men will die for her. No man will have her; she has another destiny. And none of you will live to see her wedding day."
My mother screamed and doubled over, her pains beginning on that dread word. She was carried to bed and before the snow stopped falling, she was delivered of a fair daughter, sweet of face and round of limb-- me. She should have delighted in me, but she could not; she could only clutch me to her breast and weep, for she knew that I was cursed.
It was long before anyone thought to look for the witch, and by then, she was gone.
My father thought long on the witch's prophecy, and by the end of my first day of life, he knew he could not allow it to come to pass. Do not judge him harshly-- he sought not to punish me but to spare me, his daughter, and the people he ruled. A king must always think first of his kingdom, no matter the personal cost; I, who was a princess, who am a queen, I know this better than anyone. My father did what he thought best, and I do not blame him for it.
I could wish... but wishing is pointless, now.
On the second day of my life, my father decreed that a great mountain should be built, to be finished by the end of my first year. Inside that mountain would be built a vast and winding staircase, accessible only by a secret door, to be completed by the end of my second year. Atop that mountain would be built a vast palace, with a park and a ballroom and all the wealth and resources anyone could require, to be stocked by the end of my third year.
And by the end of my fourth year, he decreed, I would be taken to that mountain, carried up the stairs, and placed in the palace, there to live out the rest of my days in safety and solitude.
My mother cried when she heard this plan, and rose from her sickbed, clutching me to her breast. She went to my father and threw herself at his feet, begged him not to take her only child from her. She told him of the horror that rose in her at the thought of my lonely life, and pleaded with him to find another way.
My father raised her up and took me from her arms, gave me to a nursemaid, and kissed her forehead. He told her there was no other way; that things were not as bad as she thought.
After all, my loneliness was not meant to be complete. The staircase would be there, a constant secret means of access; my father intended to send up it not only food and clothing, but also nursemaids, playmates, even perhaps the siblings he and my mother still hoped for. I was to be cared for, educated, entertained as befitted my station. I was simply never to leave my palace atop my mountain, never to be seen by the world, to live a life free from the impertinence of suitors who sought my beauty and my wealth. It was kindly meant, what my father did; my mother soon saw this, and resigned herself to it.
But kind intentions do not kind actions make. I learned this lesson well before I was five years of age.
Construction began immediately upon the great mountain. It so happened that this kingdom of my birth was home to a great many glassblowers of great fame and talent. They came from near and far at my father's call, their trumpets and their tools slung over their shoulders, converging upon the chosen site that lay not far from our home, and to save their homes and protect their new little princess, they gladly bent their skills to my father's decree. Work proceeded so fast it seemed as if my father willed the mountain into existence as he stared out the palace windows, watching the walls and crags grow higher and higher.
I lay in my crib in the nursery, or curled warm in my mother's arms, while in the east the great glass mountain caught the dawn light and held it imprisoned, a cacophony of rainbows and sunbeams that looked, somehow, foreboding.
As work proceeded upon the mountain, as it spiraled upwards towards the sky and crowned itself with turrets of icy glass, my mother once again grew tired and heavy-eyed. As the glassblowers fixed a smooth, flat peak upon the mountain, once again my mother's step grew heavier, more labored. As the staircase began to wind its way up the inside of the mountain, my mother's belly once again began to grow.
As the staircase reached its halfway point, smooth banisters of silver and steps of glass as slick as ice in a delicate spiderweb spiral, my mother folded over in pains that came too early, too sudden and strong. She died two days later, still striving to bear a stillborn child.
I knew nothing of this, lying in my cradle in the sunny nursery built back when my parents still had some hope. I do not remember my mother as more than vague impressions; a wisp of sunny hair here, a soft hand there, perhaps the hum of a gentle lullaby in the back of my mind. But the kingdom mourned; construction on the mountain stopped for nearly a week. And my father--
I am told his grief was terrible. But as I said, I do not remember.
The glassblowers whispered in their encampments that it was the mountain that had killed my mother. The glass ever shining through in her window had kept her from sleep, had made her pace up and down the corridors with me in her arms, dreading the day I would be taken from her. They said it was not good for a woman with child to always be sorrowing so; they said it was that sorrow that killed her and the child within her.
The servants in the palace said it was fear that killed her, the constant apprehension of what might happen to this child that she carried. Me, they said, she had given up for lost, resigned herself to losing, but the child that she carried she thought she could keep. She feared the witch's reappearance so much that in the end she died rather than see another child torn from her arms.
My father blamed me, and the curse that lay upon me. You will not live to see her wedding day, the witch had said, and indeed my mother had not. My father looked at me then and saw my mother his wife, whom he had loved very much, in joy, in agony, and then in death. He looked at me and saw the witch, who with her poisoned words and icy hands had taken my mother and my future from him. He saw the life that could have been, the siblings I could have had, and after a time he could look at me no more, for the grief overwhelmed him in waves.
He decided to send me away as soon as possible. I have never been able to fully blame him for this.
After my mother's death, construction on the mountain sped up by my father's decree. The glassblowers worked day and night, the carpenters and masons doubled their efforts, and by the time I was two and a half years old, all was in readiness, and my exile began.
It was always winter atop the mountain.
I do not mean this literally. The snow did not always fall. Spring came, and with it, growing things, new babies, flowers to brighten the park. Summer brought the warmth of the sun and greenery as far as I could see, spread out all over the land I could see from the topmost turrets of the palace. Autumn turned those leaves brilliant colors and sent them spiraling to the ground. But still, whether flowers bloomed or fields greened or leaves fell to crunch on the ground, it was always winter on the mountain.
It seemed to me then that I brought winter wherever I went. The snowstorm at my birth, though I was born in summer; my mother's death in the bleak depths of the season. I felt so cold then, always, no matter how I bundled up, no matter how close to the fire I sat. The absence of love can do that, to a child.
I was two and a half years old when my nursemaid carried me up the long stairs. Behind her came a procession of men, carrying my belongings, the things deemed necessary for me to have. Toys, books, clothes and supplies for the making of them. Food, plates, wine in barrels and goblets of gold. Chest after chest of gold and silver coins, fine silks, the wealth of a nation. My father spared no expense making me comfortable in my exile. Perhaps for him it was a way of making up for it, for the way he could no longer look upon his own daughter.
The nursemaid had but one bundle of her meager belongings. In the bustle, it was left behind.
For three years, she stayed with me; for three years she was the only human being I saw. She taught me to move gracefully, to speak softly, to mind my manners and her authority. She cared for me, kept me away from the rough men, the criminals doing hard labor, who toiled up the long staircase to bring us our perishables and necessary supplies. She bandaged me when I fell, told me tales to put me to sleep, scolded me when I deserved it, praised me when I deserved that. I think she even loved me, for when the time came for her to leave me, she wept.
I did not know why she wept. I tried to cheer her up. I behaved my best all day, picked her lovely flowers, sang for her, danced for her. She smiled through her tears and praised me, brushed my hair, sang me a lullaby and tucked me into bed. I went to sleep with a troubled heart, for she was still weeping, and I did not know why.
When I awoke, she was gone, so completely and so suddenly it seemed as if she had never existed. I never even knew her name.
It was ever thus, in those years.
A governess followed her, then a tutor, and a succession of playmates, daughters of my father's nobles and of neighboring kingdoms brought to me to keep their parents in line. Oh, we had a fine time running and playing with each other in the green park my father had built for me, sitting at my tutor's feet and reciting our lessons together. I think my comrades did not even know they were hostages. It did not occur to me until I was thirteen that he had not sent them entirely for my benefit.
Even when I realized that, it did not occur to me to resent it. They were sent at least partly for my benefit, and a child who has nothing will take a part and gladly. I thought him the kindest of fathers.
There was one girl in particular I remember, a sweet girl with curly brown hair who climbed the long staircase around my fourteenth birthday. Her name was Olivia, and she was, she told me, the daughter of my father's mistress, put up with me to keep her out of the way. We were much of an age, she and I, in a time where my other playmates were all much younger; we became particular friends, and as the other children descended the staircase one by one, we stayed, side by side on the topmost turret of the palace, whispering secrets.
It was there that she told me her mother had stolen her from her father. It was there that she told me how much she missed him, the man who had sired her, how much he had loved her, what care he had taken of her. It was there that I learned that not all fathers were distant, that not all fathers saw their daughters only once a year, when they climbed the staircase for summer birthdays, that not all fathers looked at their only child with a weary and bitter sadness.
We wept together, that day on the turret-- she for the father she had lost, and me for the father I had never had.
Young as I was then, I knew that all things must come to an end, that all people would leave me. Olivia stayed longer than most, longer than anyone but my nursemaid, but in the end, just after my sixteenth birthday, her mother fell from favor and the pair of them were sent away from the kingdom.
We clung together when they came to take her away, weeping. We held to each other and whispered promises that we would never forget, that we would hold each other in our hearts as long as we loved. I kissed her forehead and her cheeks, wet with tears; she kissed my hands and my hair and vowed to come back, after I became queen.
In the end, they tore her from my arms and carried her, still weeping, down the staircase.
I never was allowed to keep anything, in those days. I wonder that I still hoped for it.
On my seventeenth birthday, the year before I came of age, my father did not climb the long staircase to visit me.
I had waited for him, by myself because for months now I had been alone atop the mountain. The last of my playmates and comrades had descended the staircase in the winter of my seventeenth year, and I had seen no one since then but the guards and the criminals who carried my things, to whom I was forbidden to speak. I dressed for my father, then, with great care, because he was my father, and because he was now my only human contact.
He liked to see me dressed as befitted my station. I brushed my hair and braided it, set my golden crown atop the braids and pinned it carefully in place. I dressed in my favorite gown, white as befitted a maiden, silk as befitted a princess. I went to the head of the staircase and I stood there, waiting, as the sun rose and arched overhead and scattered colors across the horizon as it sank, and still my father did not come.
He had come on my birthday every year of my life. He had looked me over, examined me in my accomplishments, approved or disapproved. He had given me a present, he had patted my head, and he had left, gone down the staircase, not to return until another year had passed. But this year, he did not come.
I had known loneliness, I had known anger and sorrow and bitterness. I had never in my life until that moment known fear.
The next day, a guard in his bright scarlet uniform climbed to the top of the staircase and came to find me where I sat in the palace's entrance hall, staring at a book in my lap without reading a word. He bowed before me, his hand to his chest, and addressed me as "your grace."
"You should call me your Highness," I said. "I am your princess."
"Your grace," he repeated, "your father is dead. His horse slipped on a patch of ice yesterday--" winter, again! Always winter-- "and he fell, and was killed. Your uncle has come to rule the kingdom."
I stood then, my book tumbling heedless to the floor, my heart reeling from so many shocks at once. "He cannot," I said, or rather heard myself saying, for what was me was far away, floating, feeling nothing. "I am the heir. I am the queen."
"Your grace," the soldier said, "you are too young. You cannot be queen."
He spoke the truth, I knew it. "Then what am I?" I asked, through lips gone numb.
"Your grace," he said, "you are nothing at all." He turned away from me, where I stood frozen beside my fallen book, and marched away.
I do not know how long I stood there, contemplating the suddenness of fate. I do not know how much later it was that I heard the staircase shatter.
I will say this for my uncle; he did not intend me to starve. Before the staircase was shattered, a block and pulley system had been built; by this means he sent me up food and water. It was of course inferior to what I had come to expect from my father, but what else should I ask for, from a man who had usurped my throne and taken my only means of escape from me?
I spent much time thinking, in the years I spent alone atop the mountain-- there was not much else to do besides think. I thought of my parents, of my mother who had died so young and left me with nothing but vague sense memories, of my father who had died just as my freedom seemed within reach. I thought of my playmates over the years, especially of Olivia and where she might be, whether or not she ever found her father again. I thought of my nurse, gone so suddenly, of my tutor, the only man besides my father I had ever seen atop the mountain.
I thought of my uncle, and what he might want with me, that he would abandon me up here and yet not leave me to starve. I pondered on this for many months, but it was not until my eighteenth birthday that I truly understood.
It was the clamor that woke me, that morning. In my year of isolation I had taken to sleeping long and late, until the sun slanted over my face and woke me. On my eighteenth birthday a great noise of clashing arms and armor, a bustle of voices, a coming and going such as I had never heard in my life drifted up from the base of the mountain and pulled me out of sleep.
I dressed quickly in my simplest, oldest gown, and pulled my hair back in a tail; then I hurried to the edge of the mountain, and what I saw left me speechless.
At the base of the mountain, my mountain, swarmed a huge group of people, mostly men, some in armor, some barely clothed. I could see them quite clearly, bright ants clustered around a spilled droplet of honey. I had never seen so many people gathered together in my life; I thought there must be thousands, and every one moving and bustling and shouting. I did not know why they were there, but I knew, whatever the reason, it did not bode well for me.
One of them must have seen me, for a great shout went up, and suddenly hundreds, thousands of faces were turned up to me. I fled, but I could still hear the shouts behind me, the sheer greed in them.
They were here for me. They had been promised me.
Suddenly I knew my uncle's plan.
It was in all the stories, all the tales my nursemaid had told me to put me to sleep. The handsome prince saves the princess, marries her and gains all her wealth and kingdom. I think that my uncle must have intended to keep the kingdom-- from the little I knew of him, he had always wanted to rule, and he must have thought that if he offered me and all my riches to whoever could climb the mountain, he could remove the heir and keep the kingdom for himself. He need not even reward my rescuer; my person and my possessions were reward enough.
My uncle planned to get rid of me in the kindest of ways, and I could not even blame him.
I knew fear again, in those long days listening to the men attempt to climb my mountain. When I was a girl, listening to those stories, I always wondered how the princess had felt, forced to marry a man who had merely been strong enough or clever enough or lucky enough to conquer the obstacles and win her hand. I had imagined myself in the place of those princesses, a possession to be won or lost, and I had shuddered at the thought.
Now there was no need to imagine; now there was only inevitability. That too was in all the stories. Someday some man would be strong enough or clever enough or lucky enough to climb the mountain, and I would have no choice but to marry him.
I knew the kind of men who flocked to these challenges. Second sons, poor soldiers, ruthless men who would rather win their fortune in one act than work a day. A man like that would value me only for my riches and my beauty, not at all for what lay within me. If I was lucky, he would be kind.
If I was not...
I did what I could to keep them from succeeding. I poured oil on the glass every morning, until I ran out of oil and had to resort to the wine and the water that I did not drink. For a time it seemed to be working. Men attempted to climb and slid back down. Some few had tricks that got them higher, but never more than halfway. I began to relax a little.
But never did I cease my watch on the slope. And never did I let my guard down completely. I knew too well that the moment I did that, someone would arrive on my hill, and my freedom would be lost forever.
I was sleeping when it happened.
An eagle's screech woke me. I sat up in my bed, looked out my window, and saw to my horror that there was someone in my garden, someone red-haired, with hands covered in blood.
When I was young, my tutor had taught me to use a knife to defend myself. He told me some day I would need to know it. When I was young I had discounted that, but I had learned my lessons as requested. Now, I seized the knife I kept under the pillow and ran outside on silent, bare feet, and thanked God that I had learned.
The man stood with his back to me, hands on his hips, looking up into the trees. His hair was rather long for a man, to the middle of his back, slightly wavy, the red of flickering flames. I wondered, if I touched it, if it would burn me-- it looked as if it should. I crept forward, my dagger in my hands, and raised it, ready to stab.
Then the eagle screamed again and the man whirled and he was not a man at all but a woman, with blue eyes and a sharp face and a mouth that opened wide in shock. "Whoa!" she said, and seized my knife, threw it away.
It went spinning off into the shrubbery and I stumbled backwards, my hands out. "Don't hurt me," I said, begged, rather. I am not proud of that, for I am a princess and a princess does not beg, but I knew somehow that this woman would not tell.
"I won't," she said, stepping forward, her hands out and palm down. "I won't. Don't worry. I didn't know you were up here."
I looked at her, and my skepticism must have been written all over my face, because she looked rather defensive. "Oh, all right," she said. "I knew someone was up here but I didn't really believe them. You must be the princess."
I nodded, still wary, but relaxing more with every second. There was something about this woman that made me calmer, something that eased my mind. "I am," I said. "My name is Gina."
She smiled at me, a smile that darkened her eyes to a deep sea blue. "I'm Ivy," she said, simply. "I'm pleased to meet you."
We sat together and talked for hours, as the sun arched over head, as the sky darkened and the stars came out, one by one.
I washed her hands and bandaged them, wincing at the deep cuts in her palms. She told me they had been left there by the eagle, who had flown her up to the top of my mountain. She told me that she could speak with animals, that she had been able to do this all her life, that now she traveled the world, helping and healing them, speaking for them when they could not speak themselves. She told me she had come here because horses were being hurt, that she had helped them escape from the men who forced them to try and climb my mountain, and then she had asked the eagle to fly her to the top so she could see what all the fuss was about.
She told me too of her family, her mother and father, her brothers and sisters. She told me of her youngest sister, who had been taken by the Snow Queen, with grief in her voice and sorrow in her eyes. I drew her head down on my shoulder then and held her while she cried, and something inside me began to burn.
I told her then of my life, of my mother's death and my father's distance, of my nursemaid gone from me, of Olivia taken from me. It was her turn to hold me on her shoulder, against her breast; she wept for me as I had wept for her.
Her heart beat against mine as we held each other, and then, drawn by something I could not name, I bent down and put my lips against hers.
What happened next I cannot name. Ivy brought her hands up and cradled my face between them, kissed me back, our cheeks both wet with tears. Her hands moved down my body, left a trail of rainbow sparks behind them prickling along my skin. I touched her in return, tentatively at first and then bolder, her shoulders, her breasts, her hips. Skin on skin and mouth on mouth, we lay together in the velvet darkness, and I knew what the prophecy had meant.
No man would have me, for in that soft, warm darkness of hands and mouths and skin, I had given myself, whole and entire, to a woman.
She lay with her head on my breast, after, my heart beating beneath her ear, her red hair spilling over my shoulder to mingle with my honey-gold hair. I held her as her breath deepened into sleep, and looked up at the haloed moon that smiled down at both of us.
She was a miracle, my Ivy, like the haloed moon. And she was mine.
Now we stand on the edge of the mountain, hand in hand, the eagle circling above us. I have dressed very carefully for this day, in a dress of gold and royal purple, my golden crown pinned secure in my hair. I have dressed Ivy just as carefully, in a vine-green dress and a silver crown that I wore when I was a child. She looks beautiful, strong and regal, her hair braided down her back, her chin lifted high.
We will jump, soon, she and I, and we will fly to the bottom of my mountain. The eagles will catch us as we descend. The men camped at the bottom will be so astonished to see us, I think it will not be too hard to send them all away. Then she and I will go to the palace, and we will confront my uncle, and we will take my kingdom back.
I will claim my crown. I will be queen. I will bring Olivia back, and nothing and no one will ever be taken from me again.
And I will marry her. I will marry Ivy. She will be mine, and I will be hers, and together we will rule my kingdom as well and as wisely as we can.
She is mine, and I am hers, and with her, I can do anything.
"Fly," she whispers.
And I do.
Title: The Mountain
Story: In The Heart
Colors: Iceberg 10 (winter wonderland), lust 22 (mile high club), metallic gold 7 (skill).
Supplies and Materials: Modeling clay (soul), yarn (a haloed moon), nub (the glass mountain story mentioned in winter), pastels (telling a story), portrait, eraser (fairy tales AU).
Word Count: 5155.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: I was born my parents' only child, and there the trouble began.
Warnings: stillbirth, death in childbirth, isolation, neglect.
Notes: Isana asked for The Glass Mountain with Gina and Ivy. MONTHS LATER... last iceberg!
I was born my parents' only child, the only heir to their kingdom, and there the trouble began.
When my mother first knew I lived within her, it was cause for great rejoicing, for my parents had been married many years and yet they had no heir to show for it. My father proclaimed a day of thanksgiving; my mother showed her growing belly proudly to any who asked. Gifts came from near and far, expressions of joy from the people and from neighboring monarchs relieved that there would be no civil war.
Their joy did not last for long.
Like a cold wind the witch came, walking in rags through a sudden summer snow. The guards at the gate tried to stop her, but she waved her hand and they fell back, afraid. She walked into the great hall; the courtiers cowered away and made a path for her to the dais where my parents sat on their golden thrones, their crowns upon their raised heads.
She walked toward them, smooth and steady, and they could see in her face that she came for no fair purpose. My father cried out to the guards to remove her immediately, but none of them could move. My mother clutched her belly with a trembling hand, threw up an arm to ward her off, but still the witch came forward, her black hair tangled 'round her face, her feet bare and blue with cold.
She met them with a mocking little bow, and in a voice like the howling of the wind, said, "Your Majesties, I have brought you a message." and turned to my mother, knelt before her, placed her hands on my mother's swollen belly, on the bulge beneath which I lay. Her hands, my mother said later, were cold as ice. She trembled at that touch, but could not move away.
"This child you carry is a daughter," the witch said, her voice soothing and singsong. "She will be a great beauty, with a clever mind and quick hands, a sweet smile and a dulcet voice. Summer's daughter, born in the blizzard, skin of snow and hair of raw-spun honey, she will be a great queen, all that you hoped and more." The witch looked up then and smiled at my mother, a smile as cold as her hands. "But first, she will destroy your lives. Many men will seek her. Many men will die for her. No man will have her; she has another destiny. And none of you will live to see her wedding day."
My mother screamed and doubled over, her pains beginning on that dread word. She was carried to bed and before the snow stopped falling, she was delivered of a fair daughter, sweet of face and round of limb-- me. She should have delighted in me, but she could not; she could only clutch me to her breast and weep, for she knew that I was cursed.
It was long before anyone thought to look for the witch, and by then, she was gone.
My father thought long on the witch's prophecy, and by the end of my first day of life, he knew he could not allow it to come to pass. Do not judge him harshly-- he sought not to punish me but to spare me, his daughter, and the people he ruled. A king must always think first of his kingdom, no matter the personal cost; I, who was a princess, who am a queen, I know this better than anyone. My father did what he thought best, and I do not blame him for it.
I could wish... but wishing is pointless, now.
On the second day of my life, my father decreed that a great mountain should be built, to be finished by the end of my first year. Inside that mountain would be built a vast and winding staircase, accessible only by a secret door, to be completed by the end of my second year. Atop that mountain would be built a vast palace, with a park and a ballroom and all the wealth and resources anyone could require, to be stocked by the end of my third year.
And by the end of my fourth year, he decreed, I would be taken to that mountain, carried up the stairs, and placed in the palace, there to live out the rest of my days in safety and solitude.
My mother cried when she heard this plan, and rose from her sickbed, clutching me to her breast. She went to my father and threw herself at his feet, begged him not to take her only child from her. She told him of the horror that rose in her at the thought of my lonely life, and pleaded with him to find another way.
My father raised her up and took me from her arms, gave me to a nursemaid, and kissed her forehead. He told her there was no other way; that things were not as bad as she thought.
After all, my loneliness was not meant to be complete. The staircase would be there, a constant secret means of access; my father intended to send up it not only food and clothing, but also nursemaids, playmates, even perhaps the siblings he and my mother still hoped for. I was to be cared for, educated, entertained as befitted my station. I was simply never to leave my palace atop my mountain, never to be seen by the world, to live a life free from the impertinence of suitors who sought my beauty and my wealth. It was kindly meant, what my father did; my mother soon saw this, and resigned herself to it.
But kind intentions do not kind actions make. I learned this lesson well before I was five years of age.
Construction began immediately upon the great mountain. It so happened that this kingdom of my birth was home to a great many glassblowers of great fame and talent. They came from near and far at my father's call, their trumpets and their tools slung over their shoulders, converging upon the chosen site that lay not far from our home, and to save their homes and protect their new little princess, they gladly bent their skills to my father's decree. Work proceeded so fast it seemed as if my father willed the mountain into existence as he stared out the palace windows, watching the walls and crags grow higher and higher.
I lay in my crib in the nursery, or curled warm in my mother's arms, while in the east the great glass mountain caught the dawn light and held it imprisoned, a cacophony of rainbows and sunbeams that looked, somehow, foreboding.
As work proceeded upon the mountain, as it spiraled upwards towards the sky and crowned itself with turrets of icy glass, my mother once again grew tired and heavy-eyed. As the glassblowers fixed a smooth, flat peak upon the mountain, once again my mother's step grew heavier, more labored. As the staircase began to wind its way up the inside of the mountain, my mother's belly once again began to grow.
As the staircase reached its halfway point, smooth banisters of silver and steps of glass as slick as ice in a delicate spiderweb spiral, my mother folded over in pains that came too early, too sudden and strong. She died two days later, still striving to bear a stillborn child.
I knew nothing of this, lying in my cradle in the sunny nursery built back when my parents still had some hope. I do not remember my mother as more than vague impressions; a wisp of sunny hair here, a soft hand there, perhaps the hum of a gentle lullaby in the back of my mind. But the kingdom mourned; construction on the mountain stopped for nearly a week. And my father--
I am told his grief was terrible. But as I said, I do not remember.
The glassblowers whispered in their encampments that it was the mountain that had killed my mother. The glass ever shining through in her window had kept her from sleep, had made her pace up and down the corridors with me in her arms, dreading the day I would be taken from her. They said it was not good for a woman with child to always be sorrowing so; they said it was that sorrow that killed her and the child within her.
The servants in the palace said it was fear that killed her, the constant apprehension of what might happen to this child that she carried. Me, they said, she had given up for lost, resigned herself to losing, but the child that she carried she thought she could keep. She feared the witch's reappearance so much that in the end she died rather than see another child torn from her arms.
My father blamed me, and the curse that lay upon me. You will not live to see her wedding day, the witch had said, and indeed my mother had not. My father looked at me then and saw my mother his wife, whom he had loved very much, in joy, in agony, and then in death. He looked at me and saw the witch, who with her poisoned words and icy hands had taken my mother and my future from him. He saw the life that could have been, the siblings I could have had, and after a time he could look at me no more, for the grief overwhelmed him in waves.
He decided to send me away as soon as possible. I have never been able to fully blame him for this.
After my mother's death, construction on the mountain sped up by my father's decree. The glassblowers worked day and night, the carpenters and masons doubled their efforts, and by the time I was two and a half years old, all was in readiness, and my exile began.
It was always winter atop the mountain.
I do not mean this literally. The snow did not always fall. Spring came, and with it, growing things, new babies, flowers to brighten the park. Summer brought the warmth of the sun and greenery as far as I could see, spread out all over the land I could see from the topmost turrets of the palace. Autumn turned those leaves brilliant colors and sent them spiraling to the ground. But still, whether flowers bloomed or fields greened or leaves fell to crunch on the ground, it was always winter on the mountain.
It seemed to me then that I brought winter wherever I went. The snowstorm at my birth, though I was born in summer; my mother's death in the bleak depths of the season. I felt so cold then, always, no matter how I bundled up, no matter how close to the fire I sat. The absence of love can do that, to a child.
I was two and a half years old when my nursemaid carried me up the long stairs. Behind her came a procession of men, carrying my belongings, the things deemed necessary for me to have. Toys, books, clothes and supplies for the making of them. Food, plates, wine in barrels and goblets of gold. Chest after chest of gold and silver coins, fine silks, the wealth of a nation. My father spared no expense making me comfortable in my exile. Perhaps for him it was a way of making up for it, for the way he could no longer look upon his own daughter.
The nursemaid had but one bundle of her meager belongings. In the bustle, it was left behind.
For three years, she stayed with me; for three years she was the only human being I saw. She taught me to move gracefully, to speak softly, to mind my manners and her authority. She cared for me, kept me away from the rough men, the criminals doing hard labor, who toiled up the long staircase to bring us our perishables and necessary supplies. She bandaged me when I fell, told me tales to put me to sleep, scolded me when I deserved it, praised me when I deserved that. I think she even loved me, for when the time came for her to leave me, she wept.
I did not know why she wept. I tried to cheer her up. I behaved my best all day, picked her lovely flowers, sang for her, danced for her. She smiled through her tears and praised me, brushed my hair, sang me a lullaby and tucked me into bed. I went to sleep with a troubled heart, for she was still weeping, and I did not know why.
When I awoke, she was gone, so completely and so suddenly it seemed as if she had never existed. I never even knew her name.
It was ever thus, in those years.
A governess followed her, then a tutor, and a succession of playmates, daughters of my father's nobles and of neighboring kingdoms brought to me to keep their parents in line. Oh, we had a fine time running and playing with each other in the green park my father had built for me, sitting at my tutor's feet and reciting our lessons together. I think my comrades did not even know they were hostages. It did not occur to me until I was thirteen that he had not sent them entirely for my benefit.
Even when I realized that, it did not occur to me to resent it. They were sent at least partly for my benefit, and a child who has nothing will take a part and gladly. I thought him the kindest of fathers.
There was one girl in particular I remember, a sweet girl with curly brown hair who climbed the long staircase around my fourteenth birthday. Her name was Olivia, and she was, she told me, the daughter of my father's mistress, put up with me to keep her out of the way. We were much of an age, she and I, in a time where my other playmates were all much younger; we became particular friends, and as the other children descended the staircase one by one, we stayed, side by side on the topmost turret of the palace, whispering secrets.
It was there that she told me her mother had stolen her from her father. It was there that she told me how much she missed him, the man who had sired her, how much he had loved her, what care he had taken of her. It was there that I learned that not all fathers were distant, that not all fathers saw their daughters only once a year, when they climbed the staircase for summer birthdays, that not all fathers looked at their only child with a weary and bitter sadness.
We wept together, that day on the turret-- she for the father she had lost, and me for the father I had never had.
Young as I was then, I knew that all things must come to an end, that all people would leave me. Olivia stayed longer than most, longer than anyone but my nursemaid, but in the end, just after my sixteenth birthday, her mother fell from favor and the pair of them were sent away from the kingdom.
We clung together when they came to take her away, weeping. We held to each other and whispered promises that we would never forget, that we would hold each other in our hearts as long as we loved. I kissed her forehead and her cheeks, wet with tears; she kissed my hands and my hair and vowed to come back, after I became queen.
In the end, they tore her from my arms and carried her, still weeping, down the staircase.
I never was allowed to keep anything, in those days. I wonder that I still hoped for it.
On my seventeenth birthday, the year before I came of age, my father did not climb the long staircase to visit me.
I had waited for him, by myself because for months now I had been alone atop the mountain. The last of my playmates and comrades had descended the staircase in the winter of my seventeenth year, and I had seen no one since then but the guards and the criminals who carried my things, to whom I was forbidden to speak. I dressed for my father, then, with great care, because he was my father, and because he was now my only human contact.
He liked to see me dressed as befitted my station. I brushed my hair and braided it, set my golden crown atop the braids and pinned it carefully in place. I dressed in my favorite gown, white as befitted a maiden, silk as befitted a princess. I went to the head of the staircase and I stood there, waiting, as the sun rose and arched overhead and scattered colors across the horizon as it sank, and still my father did not come.
He had come on my birthday every year of my life. He had looked me over, examined me in my accomplishments, approved or disapproved. He had given me a present, he had patted my head, and he had left, gone down the staircase, not to return until another year had passed. But this year, he did not come.
I had known loneliness, I had known anger and sorrow and bitterness. I had never in my life until that moment known fear.
The next day, a guard in his bright scarlet uniform climbed to the top of the staircase and came to find me where I sat in the palace's entrance hall, staring at a book in my lap without reading a word. He bowed before me, his hand to his chest, and addressed me as "your grace."
"You should call me your Highness," I said. "I am your princess."
"Your grace," he repeated, "your father is dead. His horse slipped on a patch of ice yesterday--" winter, again! Always winter-- "and he fell, and was killed. Your uncle has come to rule the kingdom."
I stood then, my book tumbling heedless to the floor, my heart reeling from so many shocks at once. "He cannot," I said, or rather heard myself saying, for what was me was far away, floating, feeling nothing. "I am the heir. I am the queen."
"Your grace," the soldier said, "you are too young. You cannot be queen."
He spoke the truth, I knew it. "Then what am I?" I asked, through lips gone numb.
"Your grace," he said, "you are nothing at all." He turned away from me, where I stood frozen beside my fallen book, and marched away.
I do not know how long I stood there, contemplating the suddenness of fate. I do not know how much later it was that I heard the staircase shatter.
I will say this for my uncle; he did not intend me to starve. Before the staircase was shattered, a block and pulley system had been built; by this means he sent me up food and water. It was of course inferior to what I had come to expect from my father, but what else should I ask for, from a man who had usurped my throne and taken my only means of escape from me?
I spent much time thinking, in the years I spent alone atop the mountain-- there was not much else to do besides think. I thought of my parents, of my mother who had died so young and left me with nothing but vague sense memories, of my father who had died just as my freedom seemed within reach. I thought of my playmates over the years, especially of Olivia and where she might be, whether or not she ever found her father again. I thought of my nurse, gone so suddenly, of my tutor, the only man besides my father I had ever seen atop the mountain.
I thought of my uncle, and what he might want with me, that he would abandon me up here and yet not leave me to starve. I pondered on this for many months, but it was not until my eighteenth birthday that I truly understood.
It was the clamor that woke me, that morning. In my year of isolation I had taken to sleeping long and late, until the sun slanted over my face and woke me. On my eighteenth birthday a great noise of clashing arms and armor, a bustle of voices, a coming and going such as I had never heard in my life drifted up from the base of the mountain and pulled me out of sleep.
I dressed quickly in my simplest, oldest gown, and pulled my hair back in a tail; then I hurried to the edge of the mountain, and what I saw left me speechless.
At the base of the mountain, my mountain, swarmed a huge group of people, mostly men, some in armor, some barely clothed. I could see them quite clearly, bright ants clustered around a spilled droplet of honey. I had never seen so many people gathered together in my life; I thought there must be thousands, and every one moving and bustling and shouting. I did not know why they were there, but I knew, whatever the reason, it did not bode well for me.
One of them must have seen me, for a great shout went up, and suddenly hundreds, thousands of faces were turned up to me. I fled, but I could still hear the shouts behind me, the sheer greed in them.
They were here for me. They had been promised me.
Suddenly I knew my uncle's plan.
It was in all the stories, all the tales my nursemaid had told me to put me to sleep. The handsome prince saves the princess, marries her and gains all her wealth and kingdom. I think that my uncle must have intended to keep the kingdom-- from the little I knew of him, he had always wanted to rule, and he must have thought that if he offered me and all my riches to whoever could climb the mountain, he could remove the heir and keep the kingdom for himself. He need not even reward my rescuer; my person and my possessions were reward enough.
My uncle planned to get rid of me in the kindest of ways, and I could not even blame him.
I knew fear again, in those long days listening to the men attempt to climb my mountain. When I was a girl, listening to those stories, I always wondered how the princess had felt, forced to marry a man who had merely been strong enough or clever enough or lucky enough to conquer the obstacles and win her hand. I had imagined myself in the place of those princesses, a possession to be won or lost, and I had shuddered at the thought.
Now there was no need to imagine; now there was only inevitability. That too was in all the stories. Someday some man would be strong enough or clever enough or lucky enough to climb the mountain, and I would have no choice but to marry him.
I knew the kind of men who flocked to these challenges. Second sons, poor soldiers, ruthless men who would rather win their fortune in one act than work a day. A man like that would value me only for my riches and my beauty, not at all for what lay within me. If I was lucky, he would be kind.
If I was not...
I did what I could to keep them from succeeding. I poured oil on the glass every morning, until I ran out of oil and had to resort to the wine and the water that I did not drink. For a time it seemed to be working. Men attempted to climb and slid back down. Some few had tricks that got them higher, but never more than halfway. I began to relax a little.
But never did I cease my watch on the slope. And never did I let my guard down completely. I knew too well that the moment I did that, someone would arrive on my hill, and my freedom would be lost forever.
I was sleeping when it happened.
An eagle's screech woke me. I sat up in my bed, looked out my window, and saw to my horror that there was someone in my garden, someone red-haired, with hands covered in blood.
When I was young, my tutor had taught me to use a knife to defend myself. He told me some day I would need to know it. When I was young I had discounted that, but I had learned my lessons as requested. Now, I seized the knife I kept under the pillow and ran outside on silent, bare feet, and thanked God that I had learned.
The man stood with his back to me, hands on his hips, looking up into the trees. His hair was rather long for a man, to the middle of his back, slightly wavy, the red of flickering flames. I wondered, if I touched it, if it would burn me-- it looked as if it should. I crept forward, my dagger in my hands, and raised it, ready to stab.
Then the eagle screamed again and the man whirled and he was not a man at all but a woman, with blue eyes and a sharp face and a mouth that opened wide in shock. "Whoa!" she said, and seized my knife, threw it away.
It went spinning off into the shrubbery and I stumbled backwards, my hands out. "Don't hurt me," I said, begged, rather. I am not proud of that, for I am a princess and a princess does not beg, but I knew somehow that this woman would not tell.
"I won't," she said, stepping forward, her hands out and palm down. "I won't. Don't worry. I didn't know you were up here."
I looked at her, and my skepticism must have been written all over my face, because she looked rather defensive. "Oh, all right," she said. "I knew someone was up here but I didn't really believe them. You must be the princess."
I nodded, still wary, but relaxing more with every second. There was something about this woman that made me calmer, something that eased my mind. "I am," I said. "My name is Gina."
She smiled at me, a smile that darkened her eyes to a deep sea blue. "I'm Ivy," she said, simply. "I'm pleased to meet you."
We sat together and talked for hours, as the sun arched over head, as the sky darkened and the stars came out, one by one.
I washed her hands and bandaged them, wincing at the deep cuts in her palms. She told me they had been left there by the eagle, who had flown her up to the top of my mountain. She told me that she could speak with animals, that she had been able to do this all her life, that now she traveled the world, helping and healing them, speaking for them when they could not speak themselves. She told me she had come here because horses were being hurt, that she had helped them escape from the men who forced them to try and climb my mountain, and then she had asked the eagle to fly her to the top so she could see what all the fuss was about.
She told me too of her family, her mother and father, her brothers and sisters. She told me of her youngest sister, who had been taken by the Snow Queen, with grief in her voice and sorrow in her eyes. I drew her head down on my shoulder then and held her while she cried, and something inside me began to burn.
I told her then of my life, of my mother's death and my father's distance, of my nursemaid gone from me, of Olivia taken from me. It was her turn to hold me on her shoulder, against her breast; she wept for me as I had wept for her.
Her heart beat against mine as we held each other, and then, drawn by something I could not name, I bent down and put my lips against hers.
What happened next I cannot name. Ivy brought her hands up and cradled my face between them, kissed me back, our cheeks both wet with tears. Her hands moved down my body, left a trail of rainbow sparks behind them prickling along my skin. I touched her in return, tentatively at first and then bolder, her shoulders, her breasts, her hips. Skin on skin and mouth on mouth, we lay together in the velvet darkness, and I knew what the prophecy had meant.
No man would have me, for in that soft, warm darkness of hands and mouths and skin, I had given myself, whole and entire, to a woman.
She lay with her head on my breast, after, my heart beating beneath her ear, her red hair spilling over my shoulder to mingle with my honey-gold hair. I held her as her breath deepened into sleep, and looked up at the haloed moon that smiled down at both of us.
She was a miracle, my Ivy, like the haloed moon. And she was mine.
Now we stand on the edge of the mountain, hand in hand, the eagle circling above us. I have dressed very carefully for this day, in a dress of gold and royal purple, my golden crown pinned secure in my hair. I have dressed Ivy just as carefully, in a vine-green dress and a silver crown that I wore when I was a child. She looks beautiful, strong and regal, her hair braided down her back, her chin lifted high.
We will jump, soon, she and I, and we will fly to the bottom of my mountain. The eagles will catch us as we descend. The men camped at the bottom will be so astonished to see us, I think it will not be too hard to send them all away. Then she and I will go to the palace, and we will confront my uncle, and we will take my kingdom back.
I will claim my crown. I will be queen. I will bring Olivia back, and nothing and no one will ever be taken from me again.
And I will marry her. I will marry Ivy. She will be mine, and I will be hers, and together we will rule my kingdom as well and as wisely as we can.
She is mine, and I am hers, and with her, I can do anything.
"Fly," she whispers.
And I do.