The Narrator: Prologue

3 August 2011 | Filed Under My Writing Excerpts 

Author’s Note: This is actually sillier than the rest of the novel. I blame the original author, whose words appear in bold. The narrator’s words are in regular typeface.

Princess Arianna had spent her whole life in towers, and was therefore not much surprised to find herself living in yet another one. She had been born in a tower, the highest tower of her parents’ castle in the capital of Delmara. After the revolution a few years later, the king and his family moved to the country, and little Arianna claimed the only tower in the manor for her bedroom. When things settled down and the royal family moved back to Delmara, Arianna lived in the North Tower of the palace.

And now she was living in the clock tower of Faraday Castle.

It wasn’t so bad, she decided. She had books, and pretty furnishings. She had a window which overlooked the castle grounds and the surrounding forest. But the most interesting things about the clock tower was the clock. In place of numbers, there were strange symbols, and the hands moved at uneven speeds. Arianna liked to sit on her window seat and watch it tick away. She also liked to mark her own time on the clock.

Every day, before she was brought her breakfast of wiggly eggs, fattened ham, and slightly crunchy toast, Princess Arianna leaned as far as possible out of her window and carved a notch in the side of the clock frame. She was very proud of the clock on her clock tower, though she could never decide why that was.

She regarded her collection of notches thoughtfully. Today would be her 100th day anniversary of captivity. One more notch, and she would have been here for one hundred days, with no rescue in sight.

Like every other day, but with a certain air of ceremony, she leaned out of the window. She imagined her fingers stretching out like taffy, and her small penknife brushed the side of the clock. When she had carved the one hundredth notch, the small door across the room flung open. Mrs. Stockard entered and placed the breakfast tray on the table with a generous amount of wiggling from the eggs.

“Your Highness!” cried the easily unnerved maid.

Princess Arianna leaped down immediately, hoping she wasn’t too late to avoid Mrs. Stockard’s seeing her collection of notches. She was, however, too late to avoid Mrs. Stockard’s fluttering and cluttering about heights and royal necks.

“Why, my cousin Eric, he was stable master to the Duke of Yore. His Grace took a jump too high for him and broke his neck, poor soul.”

“What happened to the horse?” asked Arianna. She sprinkled expensive cinnamon on her toast.

“Horses?” spluttered the maid as she bustled around the room, leaving a tidy mess in her wake. “What have horses to do with his bad jump?”

“But you said – Mrs. Stockard?”

“Yes, dear?”

“What’s this?” The princess gracefully pointed out the letter nestled between the milk jug and the vase holding a peach blossom and sprig of holly.

“That’s for you, dear. Now my niece Laura, she was seamstress for the Countess of Clytch and…”

Princess Arianna frowned. This was not according to plan; she never received any letters. Nobody knew where she was. Unless…

Composing herself, Arianna slid the letter out from its nest and unfolded it. With every subsequent line her face paled significantly.

“It’s from him.” She washed down her cinnamon toast with the iced milk. “I’m to make myself presentable and be in the Phoenix Hall in a quarter of an hour.” Subconsciously, she glanced at the recently notched clock outside her window.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Stockard, who was in the midst of retelling the death of the Queen of Shelton by a rabid moose. “You haven’t even chosen an outfit yet!”

With a snap, Mrs. Stockard bustled on a whole new level, stuffing Arianna into itchy lace underthings and untangling wretched curly knots, and had the princess out of her tower door in twelve minutes flat.

“Now His Lordship is very particular,” Mrs. Stockard instructed as they tunneled deeper into the dungeons of Faraday Castle.” And he has a thing about manners. You mustn’t stare, you mustn’t cough, and you certainly mustn’t mention – “

A young man, barely twenty by the look of him, and very well kept and gentlemanly if Arianna was any judge, appeared around the corner. He waited patiently, hands neatly folded behind him. Mrs. Stockard jumped, and placed a protective arm around Princess Arianna’s shoulders.

“Thank you, Mrs. Stockard.”

Arianna felt the woman bristle at the friendly tone. “If you will excuse us, we are late to see the master.” She tried to push past him, keeping herself between the man and Arianna. He stopped her.

“Your services are no longer needed,” the man informed her.

She stopped. “Who are you, sir?” she asked bravely, but the girl’s body trembled from the force of the maid’s upset.

He bowed. “I am Mr. Pennington, His Lordship’s new assistant.” He smiled at Princess Arianna, but she could only glare back at this man who was preventing her duty as a guest, a day she had been anticipating for the past one hundred days: the chance to visit her captor.

Mr. Pennington seemed unimpressed by her little show of hostility. “You are free to return to your duties, Mrs. Stockard,” he said to the flustered maid.

“I’ll take it from here.”

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