A Princess's Burden

             I once heard of a princess who lived in a clock tower—not at the top, like you might expect, but in the very bottom, for it was her job to turn the crank that powered the clock.

            Every time the clock struck nine—after the nine chimes sang—the princess would hear the sweet, soft humming of her favorite song through a tiny, crumbly crack in the stone base of the tower.

            One day, when the humming began, a thought occurred to her.

            “I wonder if this tiny, crumbly crack in the wall is big enough that I could look through it and see who hums outside my tower?”

            Kindled by curiosity, the princess began to wiggle about in her seat, trying to get her eye to the hole. She leaned in towards the wall but couldn’t bend low enough. So she tried leaning away from the wall, as far back as she could go without toppling out of her seat, but still the crack was too low. It was no use! She just couldn’t see through the hole from her place in the little seat.

            The humming began to fade.

            Without further thought, the princess sprang out of her seat, released the crank, and knelt beside the tiny, crumbly crack. Her dress puddled around her legs. Her fingertips pressed against the cold stone.

            Suddenly, instead of the humming—which had stopped—she heard a sort of grumbling. The wall trembled against her touch. Fissures spread out from the crack. Then, the stones tumbled away, and the princess crouched before a crumbly, person-sized gap.

            She pulled herself slowly to her full height. And stepped out into the night. 

The still, silent night.

            The princess looked around her. Several feet off to her right, there stood a young man. No tune—no sound—left his pursed lips, and he stood impossibly still. He didn’t seem to notice her at all, just stared ahead with a half-smile on his face.

            “Perhaps it’s some kind of odd statue?” the princess mused.

            With a shrug, she turned on her heel and went on her way.

            The world awaited.

            When the princess reached the town square, however, her smile sank.

            As she’d hoped, people choked the square at this hour of the morning: a woman buying fish from a grumpy vender, kids eyeing candies behind their mom’s back, a long-bearded man heckling over the price of a bag of walnuts the size of his hand.

            But the princess may as well have walked into the middle of a ghost town, from the sound of it.

            No one blinked.

            No one breathed.

            And no matter how many streets she turned down or how many buildings she peeped into, no one moved. It was as if she alone was awake in a terrible dream, and something inside her crumpled.

            Convinced that all she had in this world was the shelter of the clock tower, the princess slowly dragged herself home, shoulders slumped, eyes watching her bare feet take each agonizing step back.

            Soon, she climbed back in through the gap in the tower wall, sat in her little seat, reached out with her empty hands, and resumed turning the crank.

And then a voice carved into her misery. “Princess? Is that really you?”

            The poor girl looked up.

            There, in the crumbly, cracked doorway, stood the young man, looking more alive than she’d thought anyone could ever be.

            “Who are you?” she asked.

            He bowed low. “I’m a knight of this kingdom. I was charged with finding and freeing the king’s daughter after she went missing, years ago, but I found out I couldn’t free her from her burden. And now you’ve done it yourself!”

            “I’m sorry,” the princess said, “but I haven’t. If I ever stop turning this crank and get out of my seat, the whole world stops turning, and I have no place in it. So I can’t stop, or nothing will ever work again!”

            The knight rubbed his chin. “Maybe not. I’ll be back—the next time the clock strikes nine. Promise.”

            With that, the knight marched off down the path.

            “Could there still be hope?” the princess wondered. Her spirits were too crushed to believe it.

            “This is my life,” she conceded. Crank, crank, crank.

            But, when the nine chimes sang, the knight returned—and not alone. The bearded man from the market followed him.

            “He’s here to turn the crank,” the knight explained to her. “All you’ve got to do is let go.”

            The princess looked between the two men. Slowly, she stood up from her seat.

            The bearded man grabbed the crank with one hand. Two.

            Then, one finger at a time, the princess let go.

            And so it happened that every few hours the job of turning the clock passed to a different member of the town.

Of course, the princess still took her turn, too. Every Tuesday and Thursday from nine to noon. And sometimes, when the princess sat in the base of the clock tower turning the crank, the knight would come and sit in the opening in the wall beside her and hum her favorite song while she worked.

             And when the clock rang twelve, she rested.