A speckled pattern of prism colors

When Tutu returned to the room that she had slept in, a speckled pattern of prism colors danced over the earthy walls that had been coated with some white powder. It all was nicely lit, so different from last night. When she looked up to the ceiling, the source of the rainbow specks came apparent. There seemed to be a very large crystal of a brilliant white set into the earth which in turn was held by a network of roots. “I think those belong to the birch trees. But what is this big facetted translucent rock? I have never seen anything like that. How absolutely beautiful!”

A little polite scratching on the door took her out of her musing. Two Princesses stood in the entry. “I took it upon myself to wash that small tarp of yours, I know from Princess Clover that you can not touch water. “My name is Princess Timber Brook. And my friend here is Princess Blow As The Wind, she dried the tarp with her blowing and a little help from the sun in the sky and the breeze that always fingers over the little mound by the tall stand of yarrow over there.”

“How very nice of you. May I ask you what this beautiful rock is up there in the ceiling?”

“She is not a rabbit”

Princess Blow As The Wind took a deep breath and started to speak. “You have seen the golden chalice that Princess Clover gave you to drink the delicious clover nectar out of. Those vessels are all made by the best artist we know. She is not a rabbit but a golden spider. Every one of us has one of those chalices and we use them for our various celebrations, for which Princess Clover prepares her clover wine.

“The spider's name is Brocade because of the intricate markings on her ample body. She spins pure golden strings, glues them together and rotates them, until they turn into these cups. But for her to spin this gold, we must dig down deep into the earth so she can go down there and eat gold. Often, in the process of digging, we stumble over these translucent rocks. Prince Shine Bright had this idea to use the rocks to light up our rooms when we want to. Your ceiling rock was kept covered up by Prince Night Maker. You will meet Brocade tonight, after your performance, I think you have a lot in common.”

“This is a most remarkable thing, I have seen many strange, odd and quite unbelievable occurrences working in the carnival the way I do. Even my own self - I have never met anybody like me.”

“We have never seen one like you either, but you are a very pretty girl. Do you look like your mother?” asked Princess Timber Brook.

“So he kept me”

“I do not have parents. As I understand it, there was this man, he used to make pink cotton candy for the children that visited the carnival. He would spin the sugar in this very large copper kettle and one day, so many children waited in line, he spun the kettle faster and faster and suddenly I flew out of the kettle. At first nobody knew what had happened. So Sam, that was the cotton candy maker, ran after me, picked me up and set me down inside his trailer.

“I had to cough for a long time, and he would look at me and shake his head. I did not know about this either, I had no memories of ever being before. So he kept me. I traveled with him for a while, he gave me plenty of sugar water. One day this lady came to the trailer, she did not like me very much. She said I had made everything sticky with my cotton candy. He just turned his back to me, and she scooped me up inside a towel and set me down on the steppes in front of Lady Rose's Story Castle. Lady Rose took me in. She taught me how to sing. As you have noticed, I sing everything, or whisper. So Lady Rose is my mother in a way, she is a human.”

The two rabbits left, leaving her to collect her thoughts and get ready for the big evening.

• Tutu Girl — Chapter 5: Page 10

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