A Castle Made of Glass

Once upon a time an old woman lived by herself in a castle made of glass.  Each pane was beautifully crafted, and she could gaze out at an ever-flowering garden or stare at her reflection for as long as she desired.  The castle was enchanted so that each day it filled freshly new with flowers and with the finest foods, each a delicacy to the woman’s taste.  Her wardrobe was curtailed to the latest, most flattering of fashions, her walls strung with intricate tapestries and detailed paintings suited to her preference, and for furnishings, only those pieces of the rarest woods and delightful craftsmanship could be seen.  There was no thing that went untasted, or undiscovered; no jewel unseen nor unworn; no fabric unfelt.  An enchantment of all extravagances against which there was no parallel.
            There in the glass castle, she lived alone, having been tempted in her youth by the wonders of the enchantment, and sacrificing her lover for its gains in an instant.  Thus, she found herself free of all companionship, but ensconced in a world of perfection.
            As the years passed by she had grown most unhappy, and yet she could not determine the cause of her unhappiness.  She had all she thought she could ever desire.  But as she sat each day and contemplated her reflection, a sadness began to overwhelm her and she would cast her salt tears beyond the castle walls.  Of late, so long and so often did she cry without knowledge that the tears rose up before her until they made a great sea. 
            On the day when the sea began to swirl into maddening whitecaps, her hands grew cold and a ruby ring slipped from her finger.  It fell into the sea without a sound.  And suddenly a small, infinitesimal feeling of lightness seemed to pass through the woman’s body.  In strange curiosity, she took an emerald ring from another finger and threw it into the sea.  Another wave of that delicate gentle feeling passed through her, and made her feel a moment of spritely euphoria, as though some moment of her age had been cast off.
            Something twitched at the corners of her mouth.
            All at once she shook the rest of the rings from her fingers and dropped her jeweled neckless and earrings into the water.  A weightlessness began to move through her.  Off went her fine dress.  And she felt it all the more.
            She moved through the castle, and dress by dress, jewel by jewel, she tossed them all into the sea that was once her tears.  Then came tapestries, the paintings and the furnishings, dropped one by one, buoyant in the salted water, until they filled and began to sink.  Next came the flowers, and then the fine food.  And lastly, when the castle lay empty, she took it apart, glass pane by glass pane, and this, too, she let the sea claim.
            Broken, bleeding weary, and naked, she felt younger than she had in years.  She contemplated all that she had done.  Then a slow grin spread across her face.  Before her stood her lover, unburied from all her labor.  They clasped hands, then kissed.  For she was free.

Popular posts from this blog

The Woman in the Tower

Once upon a time a woman sat alone, locked at the top of a stone tower.       When the people who had come to settle near the tower first approached it, they discovered her locked inside, and set about freeing her. The question as to whether she had been put there, or whether she had voluntarily ascended was to become a moot point, for when the door was finally unlocked, she refused to descend. Indeed, so often did those who wished for her liberty come to the door of the tower and try to remove her from the top most room in which she had once been locked, that, after a time, she discovered a way in which to lock herself in—and all others out.       It is unknown how long she remained locked in the tower room, for no one could get inside to see her until a sizable knight who happened to be passing was asked to go up and use his hefty shoulder to beat down the door.       But when he did so, it was discovered that the tower had been abandoned; the woman’s whereabouts were unknown.
Read more

The Fae Wood

There were the haunted woods. You know them. The ones you walked through that night when the mists lit up with an eerie light and you knew you’d regret it if you didn’t follow the light to its source.       The source was the moon, of course. There was no surprise in that.       But the twilit pond did surprise you.       Not because it was a pond, but because of the faerie creatures that danced about it with their tiny bodies gliding about on shining wings, all gossamer and glow.       When you stripped off your jacket and dove into the pond, that surprised you, too.       Not as much as the Fae creatures on the other side who pulled you up as you gasped your breaths and told you that you would be there for the next hundred years.      Which was fine, you decided in an instant.        You didn’t mind.        It had always been a dream of yours, a fancy of wonder. It was a grand, enticing way to spend a hundred years.       W hen you came back, the world was not much ch
Read more

The Library at the Edge of the Universe

 There was, of course, a library at the edge of the universe. It was built to fit the space. That space, for the moment, was infinite. But it was the kind of infinite that was smaller than other kinds of infinite — both space and libraries are funny that way.     This library had an agenda. Most do. But this one's was more specific than most. It wanted to hold all the books in the universe, whether they liked it or not. And it got the books by poking and prodding the universe in all kinds of different ways, until it gave up the literary ghost. Well, all the literary ghosts.     So. There sat a library at the edge of space that housed all the books in the universe. It mostly sat, anyway. Sometimes it stood. Occasionally it stretched a bit. And on two occasions, yawns were recorded as galaxies doing a funny little seismic shift.     It might yawn again. In an eon or two.     Because it is waiting.     It's been waiting for an infinite amount of time. One of the smaller infinites
Read more