Dreaming to Awaken

Once upon a time, in a hospital bed, lay a girl with hair the colour of a crow's wing at dusk. Her milk-white skin was turned blue by the soft glow of the machines that crowded the bed. Pristine white gauze competed with her skin  to see who was whitest of them all, contrasting sharply with the deep purple smudges that hung beneath her closed eyes.

Words floated around her, swirling and blurring into a confused fog. They were warped and distant, as if she were deep underwater, but some of them made it through the soup.

"...coma."

"...unsure she can wake up…”

“might not make it through the night....."

Marking the rhythm of the words was the steady metronome of the machines. They glowed and crowded, ominously displaying their myriad of numbers and lines on shining digital screens that were reflected on her night-black hair.

"Can she hear me?”

The words warbled on after that, going back to the blurry, garbled sound that whirled around her.

Time passed, marked by the steady beeps. The machines' blue light kept the night at bay. A sensation of warmth and pressure at her left hand. Wet warmth at her cheek. Gentle whispers in her ear. Then nothing but the machines and their steady heartbeat.

And then someone arrived. Or something.

The night thickened, shadows pooling slowly into the room with the slowness of cold honey. The blue lights dimmed.

The shadows continue to gather, coalescing enough to create a vague form.

The girl wasn't scared, not exactly, despite the coldness of the new presence. It was both here and not here. The darkness at the centre of the form had a limitless depth to it, the kind found in the unseen bottom of fathomless chasm. The darkness had a gravity to it, too, like a black hole that can swallow planets. It was as magnetic as the edge of an abyss, the kind that calls to people, drawing them to the edge, drawing them to fall and fall and fall…

The girl could feel the call, and if she had been able to get up and off the bed, she would have stepped up to that edge simply to feel the relief of letting herself fall.

HELLO AGAIN.

The shadows spoke in a voice like the creaking of old cartwheels, like the sighing of the wind, like the sad and lonely whisper of a tumbleweed rolling across an empty desert. Something about the voice, about the presence was familiar

"Hello," the girl replied, although she didn't actually speak the words. But they hung in the air nonetheless.

IT IS TIME FOR ME TO FETCH YOU.

The voice was like the clacking of bones.

"Ah." The girl sighed.

The machine's beeping got louder suddenly, urgent. The girl had a distant impression of activity around her.

"Sorry I kept you waiting," the girl said.

THAT’S ALL RIGHT. SOMETIMES I HAVE TO COME MORE THAN ONCE FOR THE SAME PERSON. IT DOESN’T MATTER. I AM PATIENT.

"That must give you a lot of work to do."

The shadows moved in something resembling a nod.

"Would you like to take a rest for a while?" the girl asked.

I CANNOT REST. I HAVE MANY PEOPLE TO ATTEND TO.

"Of course. “ The girl paused. The silence was only broken by the distant buzzing of whatever was happening in the hospital room. The machines were beeping wildly now, screeching in distress. “Before you get to work…can I tell you a story?”

A STORY?

"Yes. I have story that is precious to my heart. I never got the chance to tell it. It’s just one story. I will come happily with you, but let me just tell it to you while it still beats in my heart.”

YOU KNOW YOU CANNOT FIGHT ME.

“I know. I didn’t try to fight you last time,” the girl pointed out. “If anything, I called you.”

The shadows nodded.

YES. THAT IS TRUE. SOMETIMES PEOPLE CALL ME, AND YOU WERE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

“I’m not trying to bargain for more time or delay things. I just want to tell you this one story, and then we can go.”

YOU CAN TELL YOUR STORY TO THE DEAD.

“But I want to tell you the story.”

WHY?

“I don’t know, I just feel it wanting to come out now. Like you are the…the one who is supposed to hear it.”

The shadows shifted, hesitating.

NOBODY HAS EVER TOLD ME A STORY BEFORE.

“That doesn’t surprise me. Would you be willing to try? To see what it’s like to hear a story?”

IS IT A LONG STORY?

“I don’t think so. I haven’t told it before, but I wouldn’t have thought so. If it were big, it wouldn’t have been able to live so long inside my heart without being shared.”

VERY WELL. ONE LITTLE STORY I CAN DO. BUT AFTER THAT YOU MUST COME WITH ME.

"One story, and I will come with you.”

WE HAVE A BARGAIN.

The shadows moved, drifting towards the bed. They gathered at the foot of the bed, clotting into a dark form that had a little more shape than before. Somewhere the distance, the machines had calmed down. The wild buzz of activity receded a little.

The girl took a breath. She could feel the story fluttering in her chest like a butterfly trapped in a glass jar, could feel its papery wings beating against the cage of her ribs. It was time to let it out.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl with long, long hair, as black as a crow's wing at dusk. The girl lived in a simple room at the top of a tall tower. There was no door, no entrance to the tower, only a solitary window at the edge of which the girl sat every day. She had a small paring knife that she used to slice the pears she ate while imagining what it must be like to be in the world she could see from her window.

Since there was no entrance to the tower save for the window, the only way for her to get food was when the old crone came to the foot of the tower. She would call up, her voice creaky and impatient, and the girl would lower her long plait of hair.

The old crone would grab the plait and climb up to the window, the knapsack on her back filled with provisions —"

I KNOW THIS STORY. A PRINCE WILL COME RESCUE THE GIRL AND KILL THE CRONE.

"No, that's not at all what happens. Also, it's rude to interrupt a story," the girl said reproachfully.

OH, SORRY. I DIDN’T REALISE.

The voice had softened to the sound of a mournful wind passing through a cemetery’s iron gate.

"That's okay. I know the story you’re referring to, but this is not that story. This story is mine, and mine alone. You have to wait and see what happens rather than place expectations on the story. We made a deal, you and I, for one story. You must let me unfurl it at its own pace, in its own way. If you try and force it to be something its not, it will come out a misshapen, sad thing.”

YES, YOU’RE RIGHT. I WON’T INTERRUPT YOU AGAIN.

The shadows shifted, thinning out temporarily before coalescing again, leaning against the bed's footer, like it was making itself comfortable.

"You are right, though," the girl said. "A prince does come along. But as I said, it's not that kind of story. I will tell you what happens instead.”

The shadows nodded.

"The girl lived in her tower for a long time. Years, without seeing anyone but the old crone. Sometimes the crone had new books for her, to swap against the old ones. Those the girl devoured with far more relish than the sharp, hard goat’s cheese and the soft bread rolls, or even the roasted chicken thighs dusted in pungent spices. The first book she always tore into, unable to hold back her gnawing hunger for newness, for anything of the world beyond her tower.

The other books, she read slowly, savouring each word, rolling them over her tongue. Sometimes she read aloud, relishing the feel of the sounds. Dramatic passages or particularly beautiful lines, she boldly recited from her window, projecting her voice like a theatre actor and delivering the words into the wind’s care. She read about daring adventures, frightening enchantments, wicked queens, beautiful princesses, and of course daring and handsome princes.

At night she carefully eked out her candle, reading in her bed, while savouring the crisp sourness of a green apple. Every story ended happily, promising a life full of joy for the heroes, and severe punishments for the villains.

The girl wasn’t unhappy, but she wasn’t happy either. More than anything, she yearned. She wanted. She gazed at the world beyond her window and yearned and wanted and desired for just one day, just one moment, just one chance to feel for herself the ruggedness of a tree’s bark, the flow of a river’s water, to smell the forest at dusk, to walk barefoot in cold, damp grass.

In her wilder moment she dreamed of even more than that. The touch of another. To feel the eyes of another on her. To hear another’s voice.

Every insect that came into her room was a treasure to be cherished. Every leaf the wind brought her was carefully pressed into one of her books, until it was dry enough to be tucked away into her keepsake box full of other rustling treasures. They were bittersweet treasures—pieces of the great world that she could touch, but such poor fare compared to the riches described in her books. The books, the leaves, the insects slaked her thirst for a short moment before it returned, raging more powerfully than before, sending her back to her window to gaze at the world that was inaccessible to her.

She asked the crone who brought her food numerous times why she couldn’t leave the tower, and the crone inevitably replied the same thing.

“The world is too dangerous out there. Too cruel for someone like you. In this tower you have everything that you need. Safety, comfort, good food, and even books to distract you. You can see the world from your window, you can experience it in the books, but you need never get hurt.”

It was a sensible answer. An answer that made a lot of logical sense. But still the girl yearned and wanted and hungered.

In her hospital bed, the girl took a breath. “Now for the part you were expecting,” she told the dark presence at the foot of her bed.

“One day a prince did indeed come along, all in gleaming finery, with a handsome face, handsome brown hair, and a handsome white horse. He saw the tower in the distance, through the trees, and was intrigued, wondering what a lone tower was doing in the middle of the forest.

He was still in the cover of the trees when he saw the crone arrive. There was nothing remarkable about her. She was bent over with age, her black robes turned grey from decades of washing and being bleached by the sun. She wasn't a hag, nor was she beautiful. She was just an ordinary old woman with old worn clothes, bent under a knapsack.

“Girl,” the crone called. “Let down your plait.”

 

WHY DOESN’T THE GIRL HAVE A NAME?

In her hospital bed, the girl frowned. “It’s also not polite to interrupt a story with a question. If you do not yet know this information, it is because you will find it out later. Stories have a timeline, a rhythm to them. You mustn’t attempt to yank from them information too early, or you will spoil the story’s rhythm, and then it will cease to be the story it is supposed to be.”

OH. I AM SORRY, I DID NOT REALISE.

“It’s okay. After all, you don’t have experience in being told stories, so I can’t expect you to know these things without being told them.

“So. The prince. He watched the crone call the girl, he saw the girl lower her long black plait, he saw the crone climb up into the tower this way, then climb back down.

The prince smiled. He was well versed in the ways of this world. What a prize the girl in the tower must be to be hidden away like this, and by a crone no less! Most likely a witch—everyone knew that old women in black robes were always witches.

The prince waited for the crone to walk away, then he got down from his horse and tied the reins to a nearby tree. He was full of excitement as he approached the tower, ready to discover the maiden so locked away, and to sweep her away in a dashing feat of rescue.

“Girl,” he called as he reached the tower. “Let down your plait.”

Now, the girl was far from stupid. She could tell the difference between the crone’s voice and the prince’s voice. And peeking out the window she saw gleaming finery where normally she only ever saw drab, washed out black robes. She saw a handsome male face where she normally saw withered features. She saw thick brown hair where she normally saw thin, limp grey hair.

Her heart pounded hard in her chest, knocking against her ribs. Her throat tightened, and an anxious fluttering took up in her stomach. All her wishes had suddenly come true. There was someone here. Someone new. Someone from beyond the cramped confines of her tiny world.

Hands shaking with fear and nerves, breath tight with anticipation and excitement, the girl lowered her long plait of her hair through the window.

The prince was heavier than the crone, pulling awfully hard on the plait as he climbed. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her scalp, in her neck and shoulders, bracing against the window sill to stop from toppling out of the window, dragged by his weight.

And then he was there, at her window, hauling himself up. The girl took a step back, too overwhelmed to risk physical contact. Not quite able to believe that he was real, that he was here.

She gazed at him, wide-eyed. He was so much bigger than anything she’d ever seen. So much bigger than the crone, to say nothing of the birds and bats. His finery was midnight blue trimmed with gold. His beard was neat, his eyes were large and dark.

There were so many details to take in, that the girl could do nothing but stare at him, drinking in all of it - the grain of his skin, the shape of his nails, the angle of his nose.

The prince frowned as he looked the girl over. She was a maiden, that was clear, but he had expected a rare beauty—only the most beautiful of maidens were locked in towers, after all. Those were the rules of the world. What he hadn’t expected was a girl in a simple peasant dress, staring at him in a way that had him suspiciously wondering whether she might be a half-wit.

But worst of all, sin of sins, disappointment of disappointments—she wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t ugly, either. She was just… ordinary. His blood didn’t sing in his veins at the sight of her. His breath didn’t catch. His heart didn’t skip a beat.

There were plenty of good things about her. Clear, pale skin, yes. Gleaming, jet black hair, yes. Large, expressive eyes. But her features were plain. Nothing remarkable about them. There wasn’t anything wrong, either. She was just… a girl. Nothing more.

The prince glanced around the room, taking in the sparse furnishings—just a table and chair, a bed, a few well-worn books. He noted the lack of decorations on the stone walls.

“You’ve come to rescue me,” the girl said in a hushed tone full of wonder. “I’ve waited for so long. I’ve been so lonely.”

“Er…” The prince looked back at her. Her naturally wide eyes had widened further. Her chest was lifting up and down fast from her rapid breathing. Her cheeks were flushed. “Er….”

He took a step back towards the window. Technically that was what he had come up for. But now that he was here, in this sad little room, with this sad and ordinary girl before him, he found himself panicking.

"How will we get down?" the girl asked.

The prince reached out with a hand for the windowsill. The problem was that if he performed a rescue, he was honour-bound to marry the girl. A prince did not rescue a maiden and leave her in the wilderness. But surely no one could expect him, a prince, to marry anyone less than the most beautiful woman the world had ever laid eyes on.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said awkwardly, moving to straddle the windowsill, instantly feeling better as one leg poked out of the tower window, signalling his impending exit. Relieved, also, that this gave him something to look at other than the girl’s face.

“A misunderstanding?” the girl echoed.

“Indeed. I was merely…curious. I wanted to see who was inside the tower,” the prince explained, his face heating up. He cleared his throat. And then cleared it again.

“But…” The girl continued staring at him. He wished she would stop doing that. She was making this far more awkward than it needed to be.

“I must be on my way, now,” the prince said decisively. There was no way around this, he had to end this cringeworthy encounter.

“But…you can’t leave me here,” she said in a whisper.

The prince searched for the right words, but they failed him. Her long black plait still dangled out of the window—she hadn’t stepped far back enough to pull it all the way in—so he grabbed hold of it. “I’ll get down as quickly as I can, so I don’t pull too much,” he muttered.

The girl didn’t reply, still staring at him. Maybe she was a halfwit. The prince felt his face prickle with heat, and he found himself growing angry.

“Look, as I said, I need to be off. I have things to do. Important things. Now, I can’t get down without help. Can you please come to the window and help me get down?”

The girl shook her head. “No, you… You’re supposed to rescue me. “

“I’m supposed to do no such thing.”

“Yes, the prince climbs up to the window at the top of the tower and rescues the maiden,” the girl replied, growing agitated.

“Well in those stories, the maiden is beautiful, that is why the prince rescues her. Now I have to be on my way. If you don’t come closer to the window I can climb down anyway, you just won’t have anything to brace against.”

The girl was too shocked to protest as he swung both legs out of the window and grabbed her plait. As the heavy, pulling pain started up in her scalp, neck and back, she staggered to the windowsill, bracing her arms against it.

The prince was true to his word, scurrying down as a fast as a rat down a drainpipe. He even let go and jumped down as soon as he was two thirds of the way down. Which could almost be considered considerate of him.

As soon as he reached the ground, he hurried away without once looking back up. The girl watched him leave in silence, staring after him long after the forest had swallowed him up.

The girl remained as she was for a long, long time, unable to move for the dreadful hollowness in the pit of her stomach. She had dreamt that some day someone would come to her tower and rescue her, but in her dreams, never did that person look upon her and express such disappointment that he walked away, leaving her to her fate in the tower. The crushing weight of it made it hard to breathe.

Her plait still trailed out of the window, nearly all the way to the ground.

She watched as the sky turned pink and orange, as the sun turned into a fat yolk, low in the sky. When the yolk broke on the horizon, a sound poured out of her throat, a wailing, keening, angry sound.

The idea of another day ending in this tower was suddenly no longer tolerable. Not after she had come so close to escaping, to seeing the world, to having her painful yearning finally be fulfilled.

Somehow her paring knife was in her hand – she didn't remember getting it. She was still screaming — rage, grief, frustration, all those years of yearning just tumbling out of her mouth in a messy, incoherent sound. And the paring knife was hacking at her hair, cutting through the shiny, inky black strands.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, she stared as her her black plait of hair fell into in her hand, what remained of her hair swinging loosely down past her waist.

She dropped the knife, which fell to the floor with a clang.

There was no time for inaction. If she stopped now the dreadful hollowness in the pit of her stomach would consume her, so she had to keep moving. She looked wildly around the room, searching for something to tie the plait of hair to. There were no handy iron rings bolted to the wall close to the window.

She stomped over to her bed and dragged it to the window. Then she knelt down and tied the plait to one of the legs. But her hair was so silky smooth, so slippery, that although she could tie a knot, as soon as she pulled on the plait, the knot slipped away.

Afraid that the plait might fall out of the window, taking with it her only means of escape, she pulled it up, letting it pool on the floor. Then she tried to tie it to the bed's leg again and again, but it would never hold for anything more than the most gentle tug.

Night had truly fallen, and she lit a candle as she continued to work, frantically trying with the table, with the chair, but the knot slipped away just as easily as it had with the bed’s leg.

Cold dread settled in her belly. If the only way her plait could be used to go in and out of the tower was if it was still attached to her head, now that she had cut it off, did that mean the crone couldn’t come to visit her? What about the food she would send up to her room?

 

OH, THIS IS A STORY WHERE I FEATURE. WHEN WILL I COME IN?

"Shh," the girl said reproachfully.

SORRY, I JUST GOT EXCITED.

"It's okay. Just wait and see what happens. Now. The girl tried to wrap her plait round and round and round the legs of the chair, hoping to secure it this way, but by the time she had wound it enough times that it wouldn't slip away, there wasn't enough length left for her to be able to climb out of the window with it. It would be barely better than just jumping out of the window, and that was neck-breakingly high.

The girl tried everything she could think of, but nothing worked. She had burned recklessly through her candle, and the flame guttered as the nub of the candle was now level with the pewter candleholder, the melted wax puddling over.

Her earlier rage had completely burned away with her candle, and all that was left now was fear. What would happen to her? 

She took the end of her plait and tried to tie it to a small basket in which she put a couple of books. But when she used the plait to lift the basket, the knot slipped away in a whisper of silk, and the basket fell to the ground with a dull thud.

So that answered that question.

There was no longer any way for her to have books sent to her room. She didn't have the heart to try the experiment again with something lighter, like a pear. If that failed…

She left the mess that was her plait of hair on the floor, wrapped around the chair, and went to sit on the windowsill. The sky was clear, studded with stars and stretching infinitely wide. The moon had come out, bathing the forest in a soft, silvery glow.

What on earth would happen to her now? The girl had known frustration and yearning and loneliness and sorrow, but never fear. Her whole existence in the tower had been stifling and frustrating, but always safe. Food came dependably, books were renewed at relatively steady intervals, and she had always known what would come next.

Now that safety had been ripped away from her, and she found herself wishing she had never acted so brashly. She wished she hadn't so desperately yearned to leave the tower. It hadn’t been so bad reading and dreaming, and watching the world from her window. It hadn’t been so bad eating chicken thighs roasted in spices and cold pears and hard, tangy cheese with soft bread rolls.

If only she hadn't been so plain, the prince would have rescued her. She reached her fingers up to her face, feeling wetness, and realising that she was crying. She had never seen her face before— there was no mirror in her room—but she was intimately familiar with how her nose, cheekbones, her eyebrows felt beneath her fingers. What was it about the shape of her nose that had made the prince decide to leave her behind? Was it her ears? The curve of her forehead? Maybe it was the space between her nose in her mouth, or her chin.

What was it? What was so wrong with her? She had read the stories, she knew how it was supposed to go. The prince was supposed to enter the tower, rescue the maiden, and then fall in love with her.

Unless the stories lied.

She never should have believed them. She never should have read them in the first place. Then she wouldn’t have yearned and wanted. She’d have been happy, safely tucked away in her tower.

She leaned over and grabbed a book that was on the other side of the windowsill. They’d brought nothing good. They’d brought only pain. The crone had had it right. The world out there was cruel and mean. Inside the tower she was safe and cared for. That was all the world she needed. She flung the book out of the window.

“Ouch,” a low, gravelly voice said.

The girl started violently. The prince’s voice was the only one she had encountered other than the voice of the crone, and this was most definitely not the prince’s voice. Heart pounding hard, she leaned out of her window.

And she cried out in fear, scrambling away.

Floating just below her window was an enormous midnight blue beast, a beast whose scales matched the colour of the sky at twilight, with here and there shimmers of gold. On top of its head rested her book.