Princess Rainy's Arc

Chapter 1 of 12

Princess Rainy pressed her palm to the fountain, and the water rose to meet it. She was twenty-one, and she still did not know why. Why her hair was white as the moon. Why she could bend and control water. No one in the pale-stoned castle shared her look, not her mother, not her father. She pulled a ribbon of water into the air and shaped a horse. It galloped in a slow circle above the basin. Then she made a dancing couple, spinning them until the drops caught the light. She could do this. She had always been able to do this. She wanted, more than anything, to know what it meant. Her white lynx lay at her boots, tail flicking. She dropped the water back into the fountain and rubbed the cat's tufted ear. "They stare at me," she told it. "The servants. Even the guards. Like I fell from somewhere else." The lynx blinked its calm eyes. It never stared. Rainy turned. Her mother stood on the path, blonde curls loose over the shoulders of her sky-blue gown. Queen Della came often to scold her for skipping court. She did not look ready to scold. Her eyes were wet. "Mother?" Rainy said. The queen sat on the fountain's edge, close, and took her daughter's hand. "You keep asking me why your hair is white. Why the water listens to you." She drew a breath. "I never told you the truth. I was afraid of it." Rainy went still. The lynx lifted its head. "I got sick, long before you were born," Della said. "The healers told me I could never carry a child. I wanted only one. Just one." Her voice broke. "I cried every day for a year. I stopped eating. Your father thought he would lose me too." "You never said any of this," Rainy whispered. "I begged the gods every night on my knees." Della looked up at the moon already faint in the daylight sky. "The moon goddess heard me. She gave me you. That is why your hair holds her light. That is why the water answers you. You were her gift, Rainy. You were never truly ours to make." Rainy pulled her hand back and stood. The water in the basin trembled, matching her heartbeat. She had wanted an answer for years. Now she had one, and it split the ground under her. "Then I'm not from here," she said slowly. "Not really." "You are my daughter," Della said, rising. "But there are others who might know better like me or even know this goddess." Rainy's chest tightened with something new and sharp. "People who understand this power. I have to find them." Della's face went pale. She had answered one question and opened a hundred worse ones. "There is a tribe far north hidden in the mountains, They worship the old gods and goddesses, they may help you.” Her voice cracked.