The light finally began to fail when, with aching legs and nodding head, he found himself surrounded once more by trees, and by those mountain people. They stood in between the trees like scrawny saplings, marking him silently as he went by. Silence, their eyes, and the gloom were smothering him, poisoning him. He reached for his knife, but it was already in his hand.
“Do not stop,” he told himself. “Do not let them near you. Keep going. Do not stop. Do not stop until you reach home again, where your own people wait for you.”
The Lady of Shalott
Carrie Vaughn
As far as she could remember, the Lady had never been outside the tower. She might have been born here. She assumed she had been born, but maybe not. Maybe she just appeared, her complete adult self, flowing red hair and porcelain skin, dressed in a gown of blue trimmed with gold, with no memory of anything outside these rounded walls.
All day, every day, she wove a tapestry set on a loom against the wall. She might have been weaving forever, and she didn’t know if she would ever finish. The cloth was filled with pictures: ivy climbing up an old stone wall, willows dripping into rivers, tangled rose vines, flocks of birds soaring in a blue sky. At least, she thought that was what she was making. She could only shape what her mind told her, not what she saw.
She knew one thing for certain, as firmly as she knew she had bones inside her skin and flesh: she must not look out the window set in the wall of her tower. She must never look outside, because that was her curse.
And what would happen if she looked out? She didn’t know that either.
A knight must do good.
Make a name for himself by doing good, by going on quests and such. Succoring the weak. Slaying monsters. Or all of them at once, if the opportunity presented itself.
Sir Lancelot found a task that might encompass all the fame and virtue he could wish for. If only he could be clear as to what this was actually about.
“A curse, you say?”
“On the tower,” the lowly swineherd replied, pointing.
“That tower there?” Lancelot asked, also pointing.
“Aye, that’s the one.”
Across the vale, past a river, down a glen, and nestled in the middle of a dense copse, the tall stone edifice stretched straight up. The top was crenellated, and a single window gazed out. The space was black, nothing visible within. He hoped there might be a maiden looking out, brushing her hair while humming with a sweet voice.
He had seen the tower from the road. It looked promising, so he asked around. Nobody seemed to know anything about the storm-gray tower, except that it was cursed.
“Does anyone go there?” Lancelot asked.
The swineherd scowled. “No. It’s cursed.” The grubby man looked the knight up and down, squinting, appraising. Encased in shining armor, Lancelot sat mounted on a powerful white steed, great sword secured to the saddle, all bedecked in bright colors and heraldry, but the fellow didn’t seem very impressed. Well, after all, this was the road to Camelot. Knights passed this way all the time.
“How long has that tower stood there? And who built it? What banner does it fly? What manner of folk travel to and from it? Are they armed?”
Clearly overwhelmed, the swineherd gaped at him.
“Then simply tell me this: How many men guard the tower?”
“None, sir!” the swineherd declared. “There’s just a maiden lives there, but she’s cursed!”
The knight brightened. “A maiden? Then she is a prisoner. I must rescue her and lift the curse!”
The swineherd gaped at him again and said, “I need to be going, sir.”
“Right then! I thank you!”
The grubby man trundled off, walking stick digging into the dirt along the side of the road. There were no pigs in sight.
Lancelot could not find anyone who knew the manner of this curse, so he assumed it was the usuaclass="underline" a witch, envious of her beauty, had locked the maiden away until some true knight might rescue her. This was going to be a good day, he decided.
The silk thread she wove with had always been there, piled in a basket by the loom. Sometimes in the evening, when the sun no longer came into her chamber, and her eyes grew too weary for weaving, she’d light her lanterns and sort the thread into colors and thicknesses, imagining what pictures she might make of them, what scenes they’d be best for. Then she’d gather them all up and sort them again, seeing different scenes and shapes this time. She’d stroke the fibers, brush the skeins along her cheek. They felt so rich.
Only rarely did she wonder where the thread came from and why she never seemed to run out, no matter how much she used or how long and ornate the tapestry became. She had never taken the whole thing down to measure it — the finished length of it was rolled up on the loom’s cloth beam, waiting. The rolled cloth seemed quite thick. Surely she’d woven enough and could finish — bind off the edge, pull it down, consider the whole of what she’d made.
But she never did. She kept weaving because it was all she had. She might throw all her thread out the window just to see what happened, but she never did that either, because doing so would require going to the window, and she did not dare look out. As long as there was always thread in her basket, she would keep on. She hummed to herself sometimes, but apart from that, all she ever heard were sounds that came in through the window. A breeze, maybe. Distant thunder. The music that she knew came from birds. She had seen a bird once — it flew in through the window and perched at the top of her loom. The drab little thing had brown streaked feathers and a black eye. But it made such beautiful sounds, warbling and trilling through its tiny beak. It only stayed for a minute or two, hopping back and forth, fluttering its wings, obviously distressed. When it finally took off and swooped out the window, she almost watched it go, almost looked out to see the sky that must be there. But she did not.
One morning, a new sound came from outside the window, something she had never heard before, and she could call up no image in her mind to match it. It was like the sound when she dropped a bobbin on the floor, wood and stone crashing together, but much louder. Like pigeons clambering on the roof. Like banging on a rug to clean it. Rhythmic, loud, like thunder but going on and on. And there was shouting. There were voices. Other voices, not hers. Outside the window.
She couldn’t ignore it, and she couldn’t look out.
It was the curse coming to life, and she curled up on her pallet with her arms around her ears, trying to block out the noise, wondering what she’d done wrong — she hadn’t looked out, not even once, not even to see the sky.
Once, she tried to cover the window to curb her fear that she might accidentally steal a glimpse. It was difficult, attempting to peg a blanket from her bed to the stone, while also not, again and always, looking out the window. She managed it somehow, but the air in the room grew quickly stuffy and smoky. With the sunlight blocked, she only had lanterns, and they filled her chamber with fumes. She had to leave the window open or suffocate.
Truly, she was cursed to be trapped here without knowing why. She wondered if she had angered someone, but she couldn’t remember who. She couldn’t remember how it had begun.
The noise stopped at dusk, but started again in the morning. When she tried to weave, her hands shook with every beat and banging. She left the loom to wash her face and brush her hair, to distract herself.