Princess of the Month

On the first morning of her month at the Royal Training Hall, Princess Allison woke before the sun and checked the windowsill. The windowsill was where the news went.

The stone was there.

Small and river-gray, with a hollow exactly the size of a thumb. Not carved. Worn. That is what thinking about somebody every single day does to a stone.

All that month the far bridges needed the King, out before light and home after stars. He stopped at her sill first anyway, every morning, and left the stone still warm from his pocket. It meant: carry my warm today.

Allison pressed her thumb into the place his thumb had made, and put it in her pocket.

On the quilt, Mac opened one golden eye and poured herself into the first square of sun. Mac was Allison's cougar, young and calm and a girl, with paws too big for the rest of her.

Down in the kitchen the Queen was humming at the tall cupboard. She took down the good honey and set it by the bread.

"It is only Tuesday," said Allison.

"It is," said the Queen. "Honey keeps a hundred years in a jar and never once gets to be honey in there. Honey happens on the bread."

Allison poured her own milk, from the big jug. The jug had other ideas. Milk went everywhere.

She froze. The Queen did not. She handed over the cloth without even turning around.

"Wet tables dry," she said. "A hand only learns a jug by pouring it. Again, my love."

The second cup came out true.

By the door the satchel stood packed with two of everything: two honey cakes, two handkerchiefs, two cups.

"Why two?" asked Allison.

"In case," said the Queen.

"Bring me everything at supper," she said at their own step. "Especially the parts that wobble."

School, with Maren and Juniper, was for letters and maps and mornings. The Hall was older. Princesses from many kingdoms had practiced its old crafts, the pouring and the curtsies and the keeping, for years and years.

At the great door, Allison's stomach made a sound. Not weather, this time. More like a tray of cups, rattling.

Inside, the floors glowed. The cups glowed. Even the quiet had a polish on it.

And Mac was already sitting in the exact middle of it all, having patted the floor twice with one enormous paw, which meant it would do. Nobody ever heard Mac arrive. You only found her already arrived.

"That is a cougar," said somebody, from somewhere high.

"This is Mac," said Allison. "She is calm about it."

"The cat stays if the cat behaves," said Keeper Quill, who had kept the Hall for fifty years and knew everyone's tea and everyone's name, in that order.

Mac behaved. Mac had never once done anything else. The floorboards hummed under her.

Three princesses were practicing, and not one had seen the door open. Princess Petronella was curtsying to the empty doorway, beautifully, without once looking up. Princess Bea was pouring tea in a thin silver arc, and pouring it back into the pot. Princess Tansy was counting jars through the storeroom keyhole.

"You will be the new one," said Keeper Quill. "They are very good. They have been very good for years."

The month began in a circle around one floor lantern.

"At the month's end," said Keeper Quill, "the Hall chooses its Princess of the Month. Not the shiniest one. The one who helped the most. It is the Hall's oldest monthly tradition. And since we have a new princess: one true thing each. Fifty years of favorite colors. Astonish me."

"I know fifty-one curtsies," said Petronella, "including two for occasions that have never occurred."

"Four thousand cups of tea," said Bea. "Nobody has ever drunk one while I watched."

"Where I come from, the winters are long, and saving is wisdom," said Tansy. "One hundred and nine jars, and every one of them is safe."

Then it was Allison's turn.

"I did not watch a single show until I was five," she said.

"What is a show?" asked Bea.

"Stories that move, in a lit-up box. My first was called Thomas and Friends, about engines who talk, and pull things, and get cross, and help each other."

"Engines," whispered Petronella.

"My favorites are Rosie and Gina and Nia. And best of all Tom Moss and the Funlings, who are not in the official stories at all. Somebody loved the engines so much they made up more."

Keeper Quill wrote something small in her ledger and said nothing.

Allison was the newest at everything. Her curtsy folded in the middle. Her tea went mostly in the cups. Nobody laughed. Petronella lent her the beginner numbers; Bea taught her the pouring breath.

By the third day she had counted the strange thing. Cups nobody drank. Hellos that never reached a person. Jars safe from everybody, even from Tuesdays. All that shine, and all of it pointed at nobody.

So on the fourth day she tried everything at once.

She came early and set the whole long table, cups steaming all the way down it, with a plate out for jars. Then she rang the little bell and announced, "Today, everything gets used!"

It went exactly nowhere.

Bea startled and spilled, and had to sit down. Petronella performed four curtsies at once and got stuck halfway into Nineteen. Tansy said, "The jars are safe," kindest of all, and pulled the storeroom door shut. A tray went over. Cups rolled bright across the floor, and Mac put one heavy paw on the runaway one, calm as furniture.

Nobody was cross. Everyone was kind, and nothing changed.

Allison walked home slow, with a no in her satchel where the honey cakes had been.

The Queen was at the kitchen sill, setting out one cup for morning. She did that every night.

She listened to the whole story without fixing one single thing.

"They said no," Allison finished. "A kind no. But a no."

When she looked down, there was cocoa at her elbow that had not been there before, in her winter cup.

"Well, well, well," said Allison, slowly, the way her whole family says it.

The Queen nodded at the sill cup. "One cup says come sit," she said. She said nothing else about it, and cut bread for the morning.

Upstairs, thumb in the stone's worn hollow, Allison thought until the thinking went quiet. Then she turned her grand plan over and drew, on the back, one small cup.

The plan fit in her pocket.

The next morning she started with one person.

Keeper Quill was lighting the lanterns, and in fifty years nobody had ever once served the keeper.

Allison touched Bea's sleeve. "I want to bring her a cup somebody actually drinks," she whispered. "But I will spill it. Yours are the only hands here that will not."

Bea went pale, then pink, then poured. She crossed the whole floor breathing wrong, and the arc wobbled once, and held. Keeper Quill took the cup in both hands and drank it all.

"Six years I have watched that arc," she said. "It tastes like all six."

"Four thousand and one cups," said Bea, slowly.

And on a plain Tuesday, Allison asked Tansy for one jar.

"For which occasion?" asked Tansy, a hand on the storeroom door.

"No occasion," said Allison. "That is the fanciest kind."

Tansy chose the oldest honey, the one she had kept safest of all, and the whole Hall ate it on warm bread.

Keeper Quill wrote something small in her ledger and said nothing.

"Which curtsy is for friends?" Petronella asked her one afternoon, the way you ask a thing you have wanted to ask for years.

They went through all fifty-one. One for kings, one for keepers. Not one for friends.

So they invented it. Curtsy Fifty-Two: the one where you look at the person the whole time.

"It is not official," Petronella breathed.

"No," said Allison. "Nobody asked permission. That is why it will be your favorite."

The Hall taught her back: a wrist turn, a wick trick, which shelf keeps a jar coolest.

Then, in the last week, the great door opened on a princess nobody knew. She was small, nine days from her own kingdom, and her trunk had not arrived, and neither had her brave.

Petronella was nearest. She did not curtsy to the doorway. She curtsied to the girl in it, Fifty-Two, eyes up the whole way, and it landed.

At tea, every princess must have her own cup, and the small princess had none. Allison had two. She had had two of everything all month.

"Keep it," she said, holding out the second cup. "It was packed for you. We just did not know your name yet."

On the last evening of the month, the Hall lit every lantern it owned. Families came from many kingdoms. The Queen was already there in the glow, looking for her.

Keeper Quill opened her ledger and asked the old question down the long table.

"Who made the month better?"

Bea stood. "She asked for my help. Six years, and she was the first to think of it."

Tansy stood, and held up the empty honey jar.

Petronella stood, chin up, eyes up.

Keeper Quill lifted the sash from the old chest. It was not new. Worn one month and passed along for years, until it went soft.

"One month ago I asked to be astonished," she said, and turned the ledger around, so the whole table could see a month of small things written down. "She has taught this Hall a thing or two. Not the shiniest one. The one who helped the most. Princess of the Month. Princess Allison."

And the whole Hall stood up at once.

The cheering had her name in it, and the Hall blazed gold to the rafters.

Tansy opened the storeroom and handed out the saved lanterns. "No occasion," she said. "The fanciest kind."

Bea poured down the whole long table, and every cup got drunk. Petronella gave Curtsy Fifty-Two to the entire room, and the room gave it back. The small princess held her cup in both hands and cheered. Mac purred until the floorboards hummed under everyone's shoes.

Keeper Quill pinned the soft old sash, and leaned toward the Queen. "One month," she said. "Where did she train before this?"

"Nowhere," said the Queen. "We have breakfast."

Allison arrived at a run, into the Queen's arms.

"It was your honey and your cups and your wet tables, Mommy. I only carried them here."

"My little girl," said the Queen. She held on, and clapped the longest, long after the loudest were done.

They walked home in the lantern light, and Mac carried the quiet.

At home, Mac found the moon square and poured herself into it.

Far past the dark fields, the King was still mending bridges. He would ride in past midnight, and he would check the sill. He always did.

Allison pressed her thumb once more into the hollow his thumb had made. Then she set the stone on the windowsill, where the news goes.

"We won, Daddy," she whispered. "It is your turn to carry my warm."