“Did this land ever have a king?” the princess asked one of her best customers, an old woman who had lived there for many years but could no longer see well enough to do her own mending.
“Oh yes,” the old woman said. “It still does.”
“It does?” This surprised the princess for she had not heard such a thing before.
“The Owl King,” the old woman said. “He lives on the mountain beyond the lake. He sees the future.”
The princess knew the old woman was joking with her, for there was nothing on the mountain beyond the lake except for trees and snow and wolves. This Owl King must be a children’s bedtime story, like the Rider on the Night Wind or the Starless Sea. She asked no further questions about the former monarchy.
After several years the princess became quite close with the blacksmith, and some time after that they were married. On one late night she told him that she had been a princess, about the castle she grew up in, the tiny dogs who slept on silk embroidered pillows, and the shrew-faced prince from the neighboring kingdom she had refused to marry.
Her blacksmith laughed and did not believe her. He told her that she should have been a bard and not a seamstress and kissed the curve between her waist and her hip but ever after that he called her Princess.
They had a child, a girl with huge eyes and a screaming cry. The midwife said she was the loudest baby she had ever heard. The girl was born on a night with no moon which was bad luck.
One week later the blacksmith died.
The princess worried then as she never had before about bad luck and curses and about the baby’s future. She asked the old woman for advice and the old woman suggested she take the child to the Owl King, who could see such things. If she were a bad-luck child, he would know what to do.
The princess thought this silly but as the child grew older she would scream at nothing or stare for long hours with her large eyes at empty space.
“Princess!” the girl said to her mother one day when she was beginning to learn words. “Princess!” she repeated, patting her mother on the knee with a small hand.
“Who taught you that word?” the princess asked.
“Daddy,” answered her daughter.
So the princess took the girl to see the Owl King.
She took a wagon to the base of the mountain beyond the lake and climbed the old path from there despite the wagon driver’s protests. The climb was long but the day was bright, the wolves asleep, or perhaps the wolves were a thing that people talked about and not a thing that was. The princess stopped occasionally to rest and the girl would play in the snow. Sometimes the path was difficult to see but it was marked with stacked stones and faded banners that might once have been gold.
After a time the princess and her daughter came to a clearing, all but hidden in a canopy of tall trees.
The structure in the clearing might once have been a castle but was now a ruin, its turrets broken save for a single tower, and its crumbling walls covered in vines.
The lanterns by the door were lit.
Inside, the castle looked quite like the one the princess had lived in once upon a time only dustier and darker. Tapestries with gryphons and flowers and bees hung from the walls.
“Stay here,” the princess told the girl, placing her on a dusty carpet surrounded by furniture that might once have been grand and impressive.
While her mother looked upstairs the small girl amused herself by making up stories about the tapestries and talking to the ghosts, for the castle was filled with ghosts and they had not seen a child in some time and crowded around her.
Then something gold caught the girl’s eye. She toddled over to the shiny object and the ghosts watched as she picked up the single shed feather and marveled that so small a girl could wield such a magical talisman but the girl did not know what the word wield meant or the word talisman so she ignored the ghosts and first tried to eat the feather but then she put it in her pocket after deciding it was not good for eating.
As this was occurring, the princess found a room with a door marked with a crown.
She opened the door into the still-standing tower. Here she found a room mostly in shadow, the light filtering in from high above, leaving a soft bright spot in the center of the stone floor. The princess walked into the room, stopping in the light.
“What do you wish?” a voice came from the darkness, from all around.
“I wish to know my daughter’s future,” the princess asked, thinking it was not truly an answer to the question because she wished so many other wishes, but it was what brought her here, so it is what she asked.
“Let me see the girl,” the voice said.
The princess went and fetched the girl who cried when taken from her newfound ghost friends but laughed and clapped as they followed in a crowd up the stairs.
The princess carried the girl into the tower room.