February 26 is annual Tell a Fairy Tale Day. This year I am celebrating by sharing a sneak peak of my latest fairy tale retelling. You ready? Lilies, Dragons, & Rain is a retelling mashup of Rapunzel and the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It’s a story I first thought of a dozen years ago when I was rocking my son to sleep as rain beat against the windows. Rain in Mississippi is something to behold. The book, which will be a full length novel, is dedicated to him.
Below are the prologue and first two chapters. This project is in the dravision (drafting + revision = dravision) stage of my process, meaning I have written around 40K messy words and it is high time for me to organize and sort some of the ratsnest before I keep going. My hope is to have a draft to my editor by the end of May this year. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Prologue: Mothers and Daughters
The ocean had no business falling in love with a man, but she did. It had no business creating a tabernacle for her love out of sea foam and high tides, but she did on Tuesday morning when the full moon was still glowing like a giant pearl in the violet sky. The glow of moonlight and the approach of dawn were too insubstantial of materials for a mortal daughter’s soul. The immaterial of sea sponges and the heft of seaweed blossoms were added to thicken the primordial mixture. The scuttle of crab legs and the sheen of a mackerel’s scales were not spared in creating the flesh of ocean’s love.
When the ocean’s daughter rose from the waves and washed ashore like a common shipwrecked princess, the moon’s magic had faded from the morning sky. And in the sunlight glow of an ordinary Tuesday, the ocean feared what she gave body and soul too.
It’s perfectly fine for the ocean to love a sailor, to favor his particular vessel and to ensure that his trades across her waters are fortunate. It is only natural that the beautiful, powerful ocean would be interested in the most beautiful and powerful kings of men. But it is something altogether unholy to create a young woman, particularly when her only other children had been the tides and squalls. Like the fading moon in the now pale azure sky, the ocean receded from its mortal child’s life. Abandoning her to the crueler parents of fate and chance.
Damien loved the ocean. As a man he had every right too. His kingdom, which he inherited out of pure decency, was prosperous because of her. The ocean brought him and his people trade and wealthy friends. More impressively the ocean brought Damien answers. Life was quixotic. The ocean was patient and calm. The ocean was available constantly for discussion. Her conversation, a rhythmic lull of waves on the shore, unriddled mysterious of the heart and mind. Damien loved the sea. He wished her sweet dreams every night, even though he knew she did not sleep. He came to greet her every morning. And so Damien was the first to find ocean’s daughter, lying naked, helpless, and beautiful in the sand.
“Who are you?” was the first question he asked the sea maiden. But this young woman had inherited her mother’s brutal insight. The question she understood was, “Will you please marry me this instant?” That question she could answer.
Damien and Meredith, Mer was her preference when anyone asked but no one did, were married. The kingdom rejoiced that such an insightful, beautiful, and learned woman was now their queen. Wonderful that she had a command of all those languages. Mer had inherited her mother’s many native tongues, although she also commanded an excessive use of profanity. Sailors are perhaps not the best teachers.
Damien and Mer’s happiness was indivisible. They soon prepared to welcome a child. Mer begged to birth the baby in her mother’s open waters. Damien happily agreed, but then recanted when pressured by doctors and physicians. What unseemly nonsense was he thinking? Did he not care at all for the health of his wife and child? Nothing could be more dangerous than trusting a medical emergency like childbirth to the open, unforgiving ocean. Mer was bound by her swollen belly to her bed. Her beating heart constricted and would not slacken its pace. Rest was the remedy. Bathing in the ocean was unthinkable. Mer felt the bright full moon of her life begin to pale in dawn’s approach. Her body that was still so new and so untested by mortality would not relax after the baby’s birth. It protested its misuse violently. Had Mer’s body the experience of young women who’ve a score of years before attempting anything so rash as childbirth, it would have relented before it was too late. Mer’s infantile body was too reckless, too childish to understand.
They could not name the child Dawn, as she was certainly not the sun’s daughter. Nor could they name her after the mother that had abandoned her. They named her Anne. She was a beautiful baby. She grew to be an even more beautiful woman. Mer’s body was returned to the ocean in the most eloquent and fitting state funerals. Damien and the little daughter in his arms continued to converse with the ocean at dawn and eventide. The ocean listened, but marked with a quiet horror, the age lines of Damien’s face, the small paunch at his gut, the flecks of grey in his golden curls. Damien must remarry, but the ocean, although still fond of him in the way one soul will always be fond of her first love, would not be forging any more corporeal brides for his happiness.
***
Damien adjusted to his grief better than his second wife ever adjusted to hers. Damien had the ocean after all to console and comfort him. And Meredith was so like her mother in so many unpronounceable ways, that the aching loneliness and debilitating despair was not his familiar. Damien did not remarry until little Annie’s need for a mother became a pressing concern.
Lydia, the second wife, was a widow with a daughter Annie’s age. Lydia was a kindred soul. Lydia was also resolutely abandoned by the fates. Her despair in losing her first husband and the father of her imperfect and completely ordinary offspring led to a beautifully tragic grief, the type that shatters a life into a lead glass window of small intricate panes. It would have been breathtaking if strong mettle had been added to solder the pieces together. Alas, the pieces fell bit by bit until there was nothing left to keep the daemons from growing wild. When a wicked witch convinced Lydia the solution was as simple as brewing a deathly curse to end the beautiful princess, she succumbed to madness and agreed. Annie survived. She and Kate fled to the North Mountains where they found a cure. But even after Kate and Annie returned victorious… Even after Annie wed the young man who understood her and loved her and swore that his love would never fade like the sad moon after a gorgeous night, but would shine ever bright like the sun. Even after his love had cured and transformed her from a helpless lamb to a glorious woman. Well… This still did not a mother for Annie make.
Mothers are a biological necessity for most, but they are an emotional necessity for all. The scars of not having a mother’s love are lasting and real; they can be passed from one generation to the next. Annie knew she must do better for her own children. And she did. She had four sons and loved them fiercely, dutifully. And just as her youngest was turning five and had decided that he had sufficiently tested his mother’s bottomless love. Just as Annie had crested exhaustion from the onslaught of mothering and was settling in, ready to enjoy the fruits of her labor and focus again on her seaside kingdom that she was now queen of since papa Damien’s passing. Then. Just then. She was surprised by the birth of a daughter.
The day of Lilly’s birth it rained. The sky and ocean conspired to form a thick wall of wet drizzling grey. Annie felt nothing. She felt numb and empty. A daughter. A daughter as small and helpless as she herself had been. A daughter who demanded that Annie now be the mother that she had never once herself enjoyed. A daughter who screamed punitively for nourishment, warmth, safety, and love. A daughter who demanded another five years tribute and no small lifetime of sacrifice with the promise that one day she would abandon Annie too.
The skies darkened. The ever young and beautiful ocean turned grey with worry in an instant. And rain began to fall.
Chapter One
Baby Lily lay screaming in Annie’s arms. Rain pelted the window. Annie was too emptied by her painful scars to notice anything but the way the water slid down the pane.
“Well, we need not worry about Lily’s health.” Nathan said lifting his infant daughter from her mother’s motionless arms. “It’s always the healthy babies who have no qualms about their demands.” Baby Lilly continued to scream. “Do you remember, love, how quiet pale little Ethan was when he was born?”
Annie’s tears fell like the rain outside: prodigiously.
“Love, you’ve done such excellent work yet again.” Nathan said admiring their little girl with the fierce pride of a new father of a daughter. He gingerly sat next to his wife on the bed and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Annie. Look at the beautiful daughter you’ve made.”
Annie peered at the red faced and screaming infant. Nathan watched carefully and marked the exhausted disinterest in his wife’s eyes. He knew, as any man whose marital happiness is cherished, not to bring up the subject of the baby’s hunger, as he had no means, none, of providing relief or support. He was quite relieved to hear Annie broach the subject.
“She sounds hungry.”
“Do you think so?” Nathan asked as casually as possible.
Annie moaned with exhaustion. “Give her here.”
Baby Lilly was attached to her mother’s breast constantly. Still she screamed. Still she remained small and red. Three weeks from the birth, the unfading worry in the midwife’s smile was a concern. “Prince Nathan, sir. Might I have a word.”
“Of course.” Nathan quietly shut the door on his sleeping wife. His daughter was fussing in his arms.
“It’s about baby Lilly. She’s not gaining weight you see.”
“Her majesty nurses the little tyrant near constantly.” Nathan said with affection. Babies were despots. More tyrannical than even his own father. Certainly, more than his brother, the new sovereign of the North.
“It might not be enough. You see supply can dwindle with each subsequent birth.”
Or with age Nathan thought. Although the midwife was too careful to broach such a delicate matter. “What do you suggest?” he cooed as he smiled at baby Lilly. She quieted at that.
“You remember Jessica, her majesty’s newest diplomat?” The midwife eyed Lilly again who had just started complaining anew. “She has just weened her second, and a fatter baby I have never seen.”
“She’s willing?” Nathan asked.
The midwife nodded. “But perhaps we should have her just nurse the princess during the day, when her Majesty is occupied with state affairs? Just to supplement, you see?”
Nathan did see. As did Annie. Although, Annie did feel a twinge of guilt agreeing to the help. “I never needed wet-nurses for our sons.” Exhaustion and despair stamped out any further conversation.
Princess Lilly thrived with the additional nourishment. She returned every night to her mother with a stomach full of rich milk. So much so that Lilly learned quickly how to sleep full through the night. Eight weeks after her birth she was moved to the nursery. Annie was so busy with demands that it fell to cheerful Nathan to fetch the princess every morning. Annie was so preoccupied with emergencies and crumbling trade agreements, crumbling ports, infrastructure improvements that had been neglected in her father’s twilight years, that she was only too glad of Nathan’s efforts with their daughter, and the helpfulness of Lady Jessica. It wasn’t intentional the separation and the divide of mother and daughter. But as Annie had herself been first and always her father’s little girl it only seemed natural that Nathan should be first and always father to the little princess.
The rain continued to fall. There was nothing peculiar about that. Wet winters were cyclical at the coast. Still if Annie had adopted her father’s habit of conversing with her grandmother, the ocean, every morning and night, she would have learned that these were no ordinary rains.
Chapter Two
If Lily screamed at the top of her lungs, she did not hear the rain beating against the glass. Lily hated the sound of the rain on the windows. Every time a raindrop hit the glass it created a harmonic. Alone the note was manageable. Together the pitches of the rain drops combined into music that was just… wrong. No melody. No tune. Random, off beat, torturous notes that vibrated in clashing frequencies, scraping and grating against Lily’s skin.
Lily tried to explain this to Isaac. Isaac was ten, a full four years, one month, and one day older than her. He was by far the most intelligent of her five brothers. “If the sound bothers you, then focus on something else.”
“Like what?” Lily demanded.
“The smell. I like the smell of the rain. Especially during planting season. It smells rich. Healthy.”
“I can’t smell the rain. I can only smell rotting leaves and soggy newspapers and wet dogs. Seaweed and—”
“Fine.” Isaac said, and ran away to hide under his favorite settee with his model octopus and submersible ship. Isaac was smart enough to understand the merits of solitude. Although why he manipulated the model octopus and submersible for hours while often repeating the same words “I’ve got you now! No, no!” and did not have to spend hours with Dr. Sonarm, while Lily repeated lists of her favorite desert flora and did, hardly made sense.
“You do know, that screaming for as loud as you can and as long as you can, is a problem?” Dr. Sonarm said. He sat in his tufted burgundy leather chair. The chair smelled of dead cows and wax. Lily had to breathe through her mouth when she sat in Dr. Sonarm’s office.
“The rain is the problem.” Lily stood as close to the fire as she dared. “Did you know rain doesn’t fall in the 49th parallel of the high desert?”
“Lily, we’ve talked about this.
The smell of the red leather was too much for Lily. So she began to spin in place. The weight of her arms as she turned in a circle balanced out the dead cow smell. “But I said ‘Did you know’ like you told me to.”
“You need more exercise. Particularly during the rains.”
“It always rains.”
“The heavy rains then. A daily walk.”
“I can’t walk in the rain. All the droplets will make me scream. I’ll have no choice but to count them and if I count them, Mama will be cross.”
Dr. Sonarm buried his face in his hands and growled like a sealion. Lily spun faster. Dr. Sonarm was allowed to growl whenever he felt like it, but when Lily growled back she was told, “That was unexpected. We do not growl. People do not growl, Lily.” If people did not growl, then why did Dr. Sonarm?
“What would make the screaming stop, Lily?”
“A new book about the desert. Or a trip to the desert.” A trip anywhere where it wasn’t raining.
Dr. Sonarm poured himself a stinking glass of fermented sugar, and took a large gulp.
“We do not gulp. People do not gulp, Dr. Sonarm.”
“You can’t be trusted with a trip anywhere if you continue screaming all day and all night here. There are rules about how a child must act when she is out in public. Particularly if she is a princess.”
“A new volume for my library then. Maybe one with plated etchings?”
Dr. Sonarm poured himself another glass of fermented sugar, this one was clear and smelled even stronger. “I’ll speak with your parents.”
Lily’s library contained books solely about the great desert.
She was not permitted to visit the palace library anymore as the last time she was there she had started ripping pages out of the books. She was only taking the pages from the great tomes that contained pertinent information about the desert. No sense cluttering her bookshelf with superfluous pages. As everyone had made it abundantly clear that they had no desire to hear anything further on the subject of the desert, she did not think these pages would be missed.
“Why do you still read them?” Isaac asked.
Time had gone by, but unlike the rest of her family Lily could not keep track of time. Their hours felt like her minutes. And her minutes were in fact their hours. When she tugged on the spun wool of time in her mind, trying to remember when or how she left Dr. Sonarm’s office, all unraveled.
Isaac kicked his legs back and forth through the air as he perused an almanac of sea creatures. “You’ve memorized them by now.”
Lily shrugged. “When I read it, I can remember how much fun it was to read it the first time. Papa is home.” Lily felt the echo of his footsteps in the hall below.
“I know.” Isaac’s brow furrowed.
“He and Mama have been shouting again. Don’t tell me I’m wrong.” Isaac only ever hid in Lily’s nursery when Papa and Mama were shouting. Although, sometimes she pretended he came because he liked reading about the desert as much as she did.
“They shout about you.”
Most grown-ups in the palace did. Lily picked up her well worn copy of Great Desert Flora. The rain was starting in earnest again so she marched in a circle and read aloud. “Bitterweed grows to an height of 10 hands and is known for a pungent witchwillow scent when the striped stems are crushed.”
“What’s this now?” Papa fell into step beside Lily.
“Have you smelled Bitterweed, Papa?” Lily asked.
“As a matter of fact,” he pulled a wooden sprig from his vest pocket and handed it to his daughter. Lily inspected the white and black striped bark and twisted it over and over in her hands. Bitterweed. It had thorns. There were no thorns pictured in her etching. It smelled bitter, yes, and like sage, but stronger, and cleaner.
“Lily, darling,” Papa gently pried the sprig from her fingers and laid it carefully on Lily’s shelf. “ It’s time for bed.”
Lily rubbed her eyes. The light had faded from her library. “Where is Isaac?”
“He went off to supper hours ago.”
“Have you been here this whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Mama and Dr. Sonarm joined me. They were amazed that you were so quiet during the thunder storm.”
“I don’t remember the thunder storm. Can I come with you and see the Bitterweed?”
“Darling, that sprig came stuck to a mineral shipment.”
“But maybe we could grow our own, in one of the glass houses.”
“We could try, although I doubt we get enough sunlight to support bitterweed here. Why don’t we try growing some of our native wildflowers.”
“I don’t like any of the weeds that grow here.”
Papa sighed, but unlike Dr. Sonarm, he didn’t chase his sighs away with fermented sugar syrup. “I know, Lily.”
***
Sometimes, often, when Lilly could not sleep she wandered the palace. In the quiet and muted colors of night, she didn’t have to scream to manage the sound of the rain. Sometimes she was caught, scolded, and sent back to her room. Sometimes she woke up screaming because she forgot she had wandered the night before and was surprised to find herself cold and alone in the butler’s pantry or the dusty old ballroom. In the light of day, even the gray rainy day, everything in the palace was garish and wrong.
On this night, Lilly wandered and found herself outside her parents’ apartments.
“It’s been blown out of proportion,” Papa said. “She inherited her mother’s curiosity about the natural world.”
“Don’t you dare blame this on me,” Mama said.
“You were just as obsessed with the tidepools outside your veranda as Lilly is with the desert.”
“It was my home. My home. It wasn’t a place hundreds of miles away that I’d never seen before.”
“Lots of children dream of far off places”
“And then memorize the scientific names of hundreds of flora which they recite during thunderstorms while spinning in circles?” Mama sounded cross. “She is six-years-old. She is too old to be spinning in circles.”
“She didn’t do that this evening.”
“No. She stared at a twig for hours and hours.”
“Other doctors say that time perception is fluid to children gifted with Lilly’s abilities.”
“What other doctors have you been talking to?” Mama demanded. Now her voice was soft and viper strike still.
“I’ve not been talking to anyone. I’ve been reading. Hal sends me the journals from the North. Lilly isn’t the only child who spins to calm down. In fact I think there might be something of a family affair. I’m sure Hal became obsessed with dance for similar reasons–”
“Your brother is not Lilly’s father,” Mama shrieked.
Papa sighed. “Your father indulged your interests. There was no harm in letting you explore the tide pools to your heart’s content.”
“My father needed me out of the house because my stepmother couldn’t stand the sight of me. The tide pools were all I had until Kate took an interest in me.”
Papa’s voice turned the color of dusty pink, the color of embers and warm feet. “Kate was grieving the loss of her own father and had a crazy mother to contend with.”
“And what excuse does she have now?”
“Darling.”
Lily crept closer and laid down in front of the cracked door. Silly of Papa and Mama not to close it snug.
“You don’t understand.” Mama turned and she was not wearing her glass eye. Not even an eye patch. “I look into those beautiful, perfect blue eyes, and… nothing. She looks through me as if I were an arm chair or an uninspired embroidered cushion.”
“Dr. Sonarm says that it is not uncommon for children like Lily to detach from social gatherings or groups.”
“I am neither. I am her mother!”
“I know,” Papa kissed Mama’s forehead before wandering out of view. “And there could be no better mother for our daughter.” A rustle of papers. Papa must be at Mama’s desk. “Parliament making mischief again?”
“They want the monarchy to pass from queen to daughter. To honor Darius’s tradition.”
The rain pattered like Papa’s terrier before his claws were clipped. “Lilly… Queen?”
“An idiot queen obsessed with the Great Desert who cannot withstand a simple rain shower without screaming at the top of her lungs.”
“Lilly is not an idiot.”
“Of course not! She’s a brilliant little girl, with a mind so powerful and incomprehensible it often appears to be full of rocks.” Mama sank onto the edge of her bed.
“Is my head really full of rocks?” Lily asked. She rose and trundled into her mama’s chamber. “I hope they are the glowing orange rocks of the desert basin’s monoliths.”
“Lilly.”
“I’ve not seen inside my head, so I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Dr. Sonarm if he has seen rocks inside. Although he is more interested in fermented sugar than rocks. He drinks it at near every one of our visits.”
An odd expression flashed on Papa’s face before he turned to Mama.
“Mama. Will you tell me the story about how you lost your eye?” Lilly asked
Mama groaned and buried her head in her hands.
“Lilly, we’ve talked about this.” Papa said.
Why they didn’t want to tell the most exciting family story every day did not make sense.
“Please. Tell me about the steaming pot. And the evil witch. And–”
“Get her out!” Mama screamed. Her forehead creased and the set of neat lines between her eyes grew very deep indeed. “OUT!”
“Will you tell me the story, Papa?”
“You know the story, darling,” Papa said as he carried Lilly out of the room. “You know how sad it makes Mama.”
“If she is sad, why is she screaming and throwing things? Dr. Sonarm says throwing things means you are angry. But John and Simon are always throwing things and they are laughing, and Isaac is the one trying to get them to stop and he is screaming.”
“Do we have a book in your library about dragons?”
Why Papa was always so willing to read about dragons whenever Mama was screaming, Lilly didn’t understand, but did appreciate. Dragons were her favorite.
***
Thank you for reading this excerpt from Lilies, Dragons, & Rain. If you’d like updates on the progress of this book, consider subscribing to my newsletter. Wishing you a very happy Tell A Fairy Tale Day! May magic find you always! XO, Amy