The Princess's Tale

When it takes longer than expected for Princess Aria to be rescued from her tower, she turns to an unorthodox solution.

This story was first published in Bards and Sages Quarterly, Volume XV, Issue III. Unfortunately, Bards and Sages has permanently closed, due to an unmanageable influx of AI-generated submissions. “The Princess’s Tale” is republished in its entirety below.

---

When she was eighteen, like her mother before her and her mother’s-mother before her, Princess Aria Calendula Villanella was locked into the topmost three floors of a remote tower. Her father had started construction on the tower shortly after she was born, and it had been carefully built and furnished with her comfort and interests in mind. There was a library, and a kitchen, and a bath, and even a small greenhouse on the tower’s flat, crenellated roof. The floors below were outfitted with traps and snares of the appropriate difficulty for guarding a king’s daughter, and the egress separating Aria’s apartments from the lower levels was carefully walled over once Aria and her possessions had been moved in. Not the worst it could be, Aria told herself, surveying her new temporary accommodations. Some princesses’ fathers could only afford towers with one or two rooms to live in.

Her father had also provided this tower with a Lar, a household spirit animated from the same pale marble as the tower bricks. Shaped like a swan, it waddled after Aria as she paced from room to room, the tapping of its feet muffled on thick carpets. “I hope everything is comfortable, your Highness,” it piped up as she ran a finger along the gleaming wood of a bookcase.

“Very, thank you,” said Aria politely. “But I’m sure I won’t be here very long.”