She had a mirror stored in the same little box where she kept her brush and knife and other essentials. The circle of polished bronze on a filigree handle showed her pink lips and blue eyes, locks of red hair framing her face. She did not know if she was pretty or not, because she had nothing to compare to. Moreover, she wasn’t entirely sure why being pretty was so important, but she thought it must be, or she would not have a mirror.
The mirror reflected back anything, which was how she got the idea that maybe she could hold it up to the window, then look at the mirror and not out the window.
Hunkering down, keeping her face and eyes well below the sill, she held the mirror up. Angling it back and forth, she tried to alight on some discernible image. Blinded herself for a moment by flashing a bit of sun into her eyes. But then, finally, she resolved a picture of blue sky and clouds. They must be clouds, the white smears and shapes. She angled the mirror again, panning it down, and saw trees. She knew all this, as if she must have spent some time outside the tower at some point. A great green carpet standing on tall posts of living wood. Trees, yes.
And then she saw men cutting down the trees. That was the noise, sawing and chopping with axes, the crashing as a tree fell through its fellows, ripping branches as it went. She couldn’t hear the words they shouted. Instructions, maybe. Warnings.
There were so many people, she was afraid. Who were they, what did they want, what were they doing to her tower, and did they know she was cursed? They were clearing a wide space and using the fallen lumber to build — ladders, maybe? Scaffolding? Whatever it was, a latticework of wood was taking shape below her.
She moved the mirror again, and the reflection showed her a new picture: a figure standing apart from the others, mounted on a pure white horse, observing. He was silver, his hair blond and gleaming gold in the sun. His jaw was square, his bearing noble.
A knight in armor she thought he must be, and he was beautiful. He was the moon and sun. Someone nearby spoke; he turned to the voice and smiled. She fell in love with him, just like that, without warning, without choice, without hope.
Now she truly saw the depth of her curse.
When Lancelot first went to the tower, he left his steed behind and crept forward carefully, sword in hand, waiting for the demons or ogres who must be guarding it. Nothing opposed him. The place might have been abandoned.
He shouted a hail up to the single window, but his voice fell flat, absorbed by the forest, and a chill went up his spine. Of course someone lived in the tower, how could they not? An abandoned tower would have been crumbling and covered in ivy. There would be ghosts and creatures nesting amid the broken stones. This was a perfectly serviceable tower. Only it was not attached to any castle, and he had no way of getting inside.
He must reach that window and rescue the maiden. And so he went to Camelot, to the chief castle builder, who suggested constructing a scaffold to reach that height.
It didn’t make quite as good a story, a knight seeking help from a castle builder, but he only had to think of that maiden trapped in the tower. He would do anything to help her, and so he did. Hired the castle builder, brought in all the workers and tools required, and got to work. The scaffold would be finished in a week, and then he could simply climb to the top and look within.
“But sir, my lord,” the chief castle builder said to him on the first day. “What of the curse?”
“Ah yes, the curse,” Lancelot agreed. “What of it?”
“The locals have been telling the men stories of the maiden in the tower, and of the curse laid upon her.”
“Do they say what the curse is? What will happen because of it?”
“Well, no…”
“Then that is why I must go up there.” He smiled at the window in the tower with great anticipation. “To rescue the maiden. That is her curse, that she is trapped in the tower.”
The chief castle builder furrowed his brow. “Sir, my lord — it is my impression that there is more to it, that she is perhaps trapped in the tower because she is the curse.”
Lancelot frowned. “How so?”
“Well, no one seems to know. My lord.”
“I’m sure this has all been blown entirely out of proportion.”
“You’re probably right, my lord.” The man went away to supervise the clearing of the forest and the raising of the next level of scaffold.
The Lady went into a panic. According to her mirror, the workmen below had built a third level on the scaffold. They were getting closer, and she wasn’t entirely sure what would happen when they reached her. She knew, absolutely, that she should not look outside the window. But what happened if the outside came in?
“No no no!” she muttered, putting the mirror away and pacing around her little room, tugging at her hair. Maybe they didn’t know about the curse. Maybe they didn’t realize the danger of what they were doing.
She ought to send a message. Maybe scrawled on a scrap of paper secured to the leg of a pigeon. A flaming arrow. However, any message she sent would require looking out the window to deliver it. This was terrible.
Her tapestry hung on its loom, showing mountains and forests blending into a scene of ducks flying above a silver lake, or how she imagined such things might look if she could remember seeing them. For the first time ever her heart ached, thinking she might never get to complete the tapestry, that she might never see it finished. Even though she still couldn’t imagine what she might do with it when it was finished. If it ever was.
She could send them a message. Find some way to tell that beautiful knight with his silver armor to stop building, to save them all. Maybe she could even find a way to tell him how much she loved him. Such a thing was absurd — he’d never even seen her. He would think she was mad, and maybe she was. But she had to try, and if she was going to send a message anyway, she ought to tell him.
Choosing several skeins of yarn and thread, she set up a makeshift loom, tying down the threads of her warp, stretching the warp and securing it to a weighted basket. This would be a band, like a girdle, with words crafted upon it: Stop, I am cursed, you must stop or we are all doomed. (I love you I love you I love you!)
She had to weave faster than she ever had, but the weaving also had to be clean and neat, so they could read the words she stitched. She had to do it before the scaffold grew any higher.
By the third day the scaffold was more than halfway up the tower, and Lancelot knew that very soon he’d be looking through the window. The anticipation was almost more than he could bear. Who was this maiden, and what had she suffered?
To pass the time, he rode to various settlements in the area, searching for more news about the tower and its curse. No one knew the details. But everyone was sure there was a curse, and that it was no doubt terrible.
This lack of information was frustrating.
In the middle of the fourth day, an object sailed out of the window. He’d left his horse picketed some ways off and was walking a circuit of the tower once again, searching for any detail he might have missed, when the thing fluttered down like a wounded bird. He was in just the right spot to catch it.
It was a woven band made of silk, slippery in his hand. The kind of favor a lady might tie around his arm before he rode in a tournament. It was black and red with hints of gold, a swirling pattern running through it, odd swoops and curls that drew the eye but that he could not follow. It might have been runes, it might have been some spell woven in arcane patterns. Between the colors and strange shapes, the thing hurt his eyes. The pattern seemed to writhe of its own accord.