The Princess in the Tower

Once Upon a time…

In the beautiful land of Aslepp the King and Queen brought forth a daughter who was not only beautiful, and kind, but also thoughtful and punctual-which is not something you often find in a toddler. But that is when this story begins. The beautiful, kind, thoughtful, and punctual Princess Kumquat had just celebrated her 4th birthday when the Evil Witch exploded into the room from a cyclone of scorpions and vampire bats.

“What have we here?” the Evil Witch demanded.

“Guards!” shouted the King.

“Wait! Maybe it's a misunderstanding!” shouted the Queen.

“Cake!” shouted Princess Kumquat.

The guards stormed into the room, surrounding the King and the Queen and Princess Kumquat. But not before the Evil Witch threw a rebounding curse that bounced off every wall, turning everyone it touched into an outlandishly large butterfly.

“Bwa-hahaha!” laughed the Evil Witch.

“What a travesty!” shouted the King.

“Wait! Can't we talk about this?” shouted the Queen.

“Bubberflies!” shouted Princess Kumquat as she danced around the room trying to catch one of the befuddled courtiers, who now found themselves a butterfly.

“I'm giving you fair warning!” shouted the Evil Witch. “You have three days to declare me the fairest of them all or I shall overrun your Kingdom with all manner of great birds and turn all your subjects insects! And you, my beautiful Queen, will be a wonderful frog, and you, my King, will be a writhing worm! And I shall keep Princess Kumquat for myself and leave you to wonder if she is invited to dinner or if she will BE dinner!” The Evil Witch laughed triumphantly and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

“Oh, no!” cried the King.

“What shall we do?” cried the Queen.

“Hahahaha! Wheeeeee!” cried Princess Kumquat as she was riding on the back of one of the larger butterflies.

Three days later Princess Kumquat, beautiful, kind, thoughtful, and punctual, found herself ensconced in a dilapidated tower with only the company of an old Nurse. “For her protection” her parents said. They “couldn't give into terrorism” her parents said. And they locked the heavy metal door at the bottom of the tower. An old Hermit from the Valley was appointed to bring fresh food and water daily to the tower, and a winch and pulley system was installed to send the supplies up up up the tower to the very top where there was a lonely window almost imperceptible from the ground.

The three days passed and from their perch atop the tower Nurse and Princes Kumquat watched as a flock of birds descended on the walled Kingdom and then a swarm of insects rose up and were devoured by the birds. This went on for several days, but the Nurse stopped watching after the third day, and the Hermit kept bringing the food and water and so Princess Kumquat grew to be a young lady.

It had been 15 years since the metal door at the base of the tower had been locked, and it was covered with vines and shrubbery. The Hermit still came with food and water but Nurse was looking more and more sickly. And one day she didn't get up from her bed but lay there all day and all night and the next day she couldn't be aroused at all.

And so Princess Kumquat beautiful, kind, thoughtful, and punctual, was alone save for the squirrel that sometimes jumped from a branch near the roof of the tower. She named the squirrel, Nurse, after her only friend and started talking to her more and more as the days passed. Without Nurse- the human Nurse not the squirrel- there to prevent it, Princess Kumquat began to explore the tower. After one particularly boring day when all the old Hermit had brought her to eat were turnips, Princess Kumquat found a secret passage to another room. A tiny stairwell rose up under the roof of the tower and Princess Kumquat could only just fit through the opening. She squeezed through and found to her surprise a Wizard’s workshop filled with all sorts of books and vials and bottles and, most alarmingly, a desiccated skeleton slumped over the worktable.

Gently, Princes Kumquat pushed the skeleton back onto the seat it had fallen from and looked the corpse over to see what she could find out. It wore a dusty blue robe moth eaten and clotted with dried viscera. For half a moment she had considered using the robe to offset her scanty wardrobe (the Hermit was not much for fashion) but immediately discarded the idea. On its skull it wore a pointed hat with embroidered stars but the clumps of dried hair prevented her from touching that as well. It was wearing a leather belt which she carefully removed from the body to place around her own waist.

A slight sound near the trap door she had squeezed through brought her attention to her squirrel friend, Nurse.

“Hello, Nurse! Look what I've found!” she said.

“Chchcchchchchctttttt!” said Nurse.

The squirrel scampered around the room looking for nuts but didn't find any. Meanwhile, Princess Kumquat looked through the belongings of the former occupant of the tower. There were several cloaks, some pants, and shirts in a covered along with various jars of weird an unusual origin. Princess Kumquat took the clothes and books down to her room.

After some thought she decided to take the body of Nurse, which she had wrapped in a bed sheet up to the workroom and give the two bodies a burial of sorts. She pushed the body of Nurse through the small opening and laid her to rest with the mysterious skeleton on the double bed she found tucked behind a screen. She covered the two bodies with the thin blanket she found there and tried to think of a prayer she could say to send their souls to the afterlife. She couldn't think of anything to say so she fetched the oldest and most officious looking book. The words appear to be in Latin, so Princess Kumquat decided that that was as close as she was going to get.

“Convertere bubonem in hoc animali!” she said in a solemn voice.

“Who?” she heard from behind her. She spun around to find that Nurse, in a storm of feathers, had turned from a squirrel into an owl.

“What…?” she sputtered.

“Who…?” Nurse sputtered.

“I'm a wizard!” shouted Princess Kumquat.

And from that moment forward Princess Kumquat worked to master the skills of wizardry. She taught herself Latin and made potions and portents from the assembled ingredients. All the while poor Nurse implored her to change her back. She would flit around the workshop trying to find nuts but was never satisfied with the ones offered to her by Princess Kumquat. She rarely left the tower now but would sit mournfully in the tiny window hidden under the eaves of the roof. Sometimes Princess Kumquat wondered why she didn't fly away.

“If I were a bird I would be out that window so fast! And I’d fly away and never look back.” she thought to herself.

But she thought no more about it, until one day the Hermit did not come with his load of food and water. And the next day he didn't come. And on the third day he didn't come. And that is when Princess Kumquat began to think about turning herself into a bird in earnest.

For some time now Princess Kumquat had been trying to turn Nurse back into a squirrel, but she couldn't seem to find the spell that had turned her the first time. She had tried many times but nothing seemed to work. But now she put aside those spells and some others she had been working on and began to experiment on herself.

It was during one of these experiments that she heard a scraping up the side of her tower. Hoping it was the Hermit returned at last, she rushed downstairs and poked her head out the window of the tower and looked straight into the face of the handsomest man she had ever seen. To be fair, she had only ever seen the Hermit and he was covered in hair and was wearing a bird nest for a hat.

“Oh!” said Princess Kumquat.

“Oh!” said the Stranger.

“Who?” said Nurse. And for the first time she flew out the window and began pecking the Stranger’s hands and eyes.

“Get off me you crazy bird!” shouted the Stranger.

“Who! Who! Who!” shouted Nurse.

“Nurse! Stop that at once! shouted Princess Kumquat.

Nurse flew back in the window and sat on her perch with her feathers fluffed up to twice their normal size.

“Who are you?” asked Princess Kumquat.

“My name is Bellamy the Brave and I'm here to rescue you!” he said confidently as his hands, now slippery with his own blood, scraped for purchase on the slick stones of the tower. “You look awfully familiar. Have we met before?”

“Well, I've been in this tower since I was four years old.” Princess Kumquat said thoughtfully as she watched his hands slip on the windowsill. “But you do look awfully familiar.” A sudden irresistible urge to sing was pounding in her chest. The pressure pushed up through her throat and she found herself singing

“I know you, I've danced with you Once Upon a dream …” She stopped suddenly. “A long time ago I had a dream that I was free and I met a stranger in a beautiful glade and we danced. Was that you?” Princess Kumquat asked.

“I can't believe I found you! I've been looking for you for four years! What an amazing coincidence!” Bellamy said.

“I …” Princess Kumquat started to say but at that moment a cyclone of scorpions and bats was forming in her living room.

The Princess turned to face this new development and Bellamy took the opportunity to try to scramble through the window. Unfortunately, he discovered, just as Princess Kumquat had discovered, that the window was not quite large enough for a grown person to fit through.

“I knew you'd lead me to her!” the Evil Witch cackled.

“Hmpfff!” Bellamy said as he struggled to fit through the window. He had gotten as far as his sword arm in the window but now he was truly stuck.

“Fight me!” Bellamy shouted impotently.

“Haha ha! I will, my boy, all in good time! But first let's see to your girlfriend here!” the Evil Witch said with a laugh.

“You'll never touch her!” Bellamy screamed and threw his sword at the Evil Witch. The sword struck her in the chest but she just laughed as she pulled it from her body.

“Do you think I'd be so careless as to bring my heart to a swordfight? Ridiculous boy! You cannot defeat me!”

“Stop or…!” shouted Princess Kumquat.

“Or you'll what?” Laughed the Evil Witch.

“Si diis placet, ut magnus factus draco Volans!” shouted Princess Kumquat.

As soon as the words left her mouth, a gust of wind blew through the chamber. The daylight turned to darkness and the smell of burning filled the room

“What have you done?” The Evil Witch cried in terror.

“AAAAAAARRRRRHHHHH!” Princess Kumquat cried as her body burst into the form of a winged dragon.

She was too large for the tiny tower and stones and wood and Witch and Stranger and Nurse exploded outward as Princess Kumquat spread her wings and surged upward into the Sky. The first beat of her wings sent her soaring up into the Sky for the first time she felt the wind of freedom on her face. So she pumped her wings again and sailed farther up into the Sky. She would have kept going up and up into the Sky but for the distant cry of Nurse.

She turned her head to track the sound and saw the body of Bellamy falling from the top of the tower. With incredible speed and agility, she turned on the spot and plummeted to him, snatching him from the air in her claws. On the ground she laid him gently among some wildflowers and turned to find the Evil Witch

The Witch awaited her in the crumbled remains of her home, shaking off the dust at the collapse of the tower. Princess Kumquat landed with an earth-shaking thump and stood to her full height, ready to do battle.

“Wow! That was amazing!” said the Evil Witch.” I know this is awkward, but I've always wanted to be a wizard. Could you maybe teach me?”

“If you wanted to be a wizard, why did you become a witch?” ask Princess Kumquat.

“When I applied there were only two choices for women Evil Witch or Good Witch. Well, I'd gotten a “D” in Weaving in Prewitchery and they wouldn't let me get a Good Witch license so I had to settle for an Evil Witch license. It really wasn't my first choice, but I've made do. I didn't even know they gave Wizarding licenses to women.

“I don't know about that; I've been locked in this tower for 15 years but I just studied the books there and started doing spells.” Princess Kumquat started to explain but was interrupted by Bellamy running to her rescue with sword drawn.

He looked from the dragon to the Evil Witch in confusion. He wasn't quite sure which one he was supposed to be fighting.

“I …” he trailed off in a muddle.

“Let me try something.” Princess Kumquat said. “Reditum.” Her dragon body began to shrink and she returned to her human form. Unfortunately, she wasn't wearing any clothes, having burst out of them.

“Oh, my.” said Bellamy “Have my coat.” He shrugged out of his long coat and passed it to Princess Kumquat with his eyes averted.

“Thank you.” Princess Kumquat said as she put it on. “Now, to the problem at hand. I again thank you Mr. Bellamy for your kind services but there is no longer any danger. There is no need for you to fight me …err the dragon or this Evil Witch. It was just a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, well, in that case …” he sheathed his sword and looked at his hands bashfully. I know we only met that one time in a dream, but would you consider coming with me to be my Queen?”

“Oh, my goodness, what an unexpected turn of events!” Princess Kumquat said. She looked from Bellamy to the Evil Witch.

Nurse took the opportunity to come perch on her shoulder. Princess Kumquat looked between the two again.

“Bellamy that night in the dream glade was great but …” she trailed off uncertainly. “It's not you it's me.” She finished looking at him hopefully to see if he got the hint.

“As your Highness wishes.” Bellamy said. “Do you know where I could find any other princesses in towers?”

“I think there's one over in Adnruil, I've got her scheduled for an attack later today, but I'm hoping my plans have changed. You could easily rescue her before sundown,” the Evil Witch said.

“Great I'm kind of on a schedule. There's a curse on my Kingdom if I don't find love before my 21st birthday. Well, I'll see you later.” Bellamy said.

“So, you want to be a wizard? Let's get started. What's your name?” Princess Kumquat asked.

“Fortunella.” said the Evil Witch, I mean said Fortunella.

“Fortunella, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

And they lived happily ever after.

The End