The First Day of Princess School

The night before school started, Princess Allison sat with a fresh sheet of paper and her backup orange crayon. When a place felt big, she drew it first. Then she could trace the road with one finger and know where she was going.

You cannot map a place you have never been.

She drew the road. She drew the gate at the end of it, the one she had only ever seen closed. Past it the paper went empty.

Then she circled the empty part twice. She packed the map and tied a coral ribbon to her satchel strap so she could find her bag among all the others. She went to bed with weather in her stomach. Small weather, but hers, and busy.

In the morning the weather had grown wings. Butterflies, people call them, which is polite. These felt more like a small argument between birds.

Her father, the King, walked her down the lantern road, cup in hand, matching her pace, and listened the way he listened to skies.

"There is weather today," he said.

"In my stomach," said Allison. "It has wings."

"Doorway weather," said the King. "It comes to everybody standing in front of a new place."

The gate stood open. Beyond it, a courtyard, a fountain running in the middle, and more children than Allison had ever seen, loud in a language of friends she did not speak yet. Her feet stopped.

The King crouched to her height and put his hand on her satchel strap. "There will be somebody in there with weather of their own," he said. "Nobody crosses a storm alone. That is the family rule, and you are carrying it through that gate."

A tall teacher with grey-streaked hair crossed the courtyard to the gate. "Good morning, Queen Marigold," said the King. "This is Allison. She has weather."

"There is room for that here," said Queen Marigold. "Come beside me. I will show you where we begin."

"Goodbye for now, little one," said the King. "I will be right here when the gate opens again."

Allison waved once, then walked through the open gate beside Queen Marigold, weather and all. The King waited until she was inside before he turned for home.

Inside the classroom there were ten children, and every one of them was holding on to something. Allison was holding her satchel strap, right where the King's hand had been.

By the window sat a girl with one long dark braid, forehead against the glass, hands still in her lap. Allison knew that stillness. She had sat in it herself once, on the bottom stair at home.

The desk beside the girl was empty. Allison did not need a map for this. She sat down and said, "Hello! I like your braid. Do you like boats?" The girl turned her face further into the glass.

Too many words. Allison remembered the bottom stair, and how the King had not tried to talk her out of anything. He had just stayed. So she stayed too, close enough to reach, and did not say another word. She drew the little boat with the patched coral sail, and the sea, and the sun.

The girl's eyes came off the window and landed on the sail. "I have a boat," she whispered. "In the harbor at home. I miss it so much I cannot breathe right."

"Mine tore in a storm once," said Allison. "We patched the sail. Would you draw yours beside mine?" She slid the paper over and held out the crayon.

The girl took the crayon and drew her harbor boat. "I am Maren," she said. Allison added another small sail, and Maren gave it a flag. By the third boat, the weather at that window had thinned.

A girl with a laugh like spilled marbles put both hands flat on Allison's desk and whispered, loud enough for the whole room, "I am Juniper. You are the boat princesses. I can draw dogs that look like bread. We should be friends, is what I think."

Then a bell rang, and Queen Marigold's voice came through the room. "This morning, the map room."

Allison sat up so fast her chair hopped. All the way down the stone hallway their shoes were loud, and hers were the loudest.

The map room was the best room Allison had ever stood in, and she had stood in a throne room. Maps on every wall, floor to ceiling. And a round teacher with ink on both hands.

"I am Professor Fig. Draw me the way from your bed to your breakfast. If a line comes out wrong, do not rub it out. Look at it again."

Juniper drew her bread dog and labeled it breakfast, and Professor Fig laughed until the whole room relaxed by one full size.

At midday Allison ate bread and jam up on the lip of the courtyard fountain, with Maren and Juniper on the warm paving at her feet. The water behind them kept saying the same thing over and over.

Allison got out last night's map. The wings in her stomach had settled, and her hands wanted a job. She mapped the school.

Past the gate, the map room. Her line to it came out wobbly, and she did not rub it out. She looked at it again. It was exactly the shape of hurrying. She circled the map room twice. The fountain, with three small figures on its lip. She wrote a name under each one.

She checked the coral ribbon on her satchel strap. Still tied.

Back inside, the light in the windows went long. A boy sat with both arms around his satchel, and this time it was Maren who sat down beside him.

Then the warm bell, and the door, and Queen Marigold keeping it. Beyond the gate, right where he had promised to be, stood the King. Two cups.

"Well," he said. "Report."

They walked home down the lantern road at dusk, and Allison talked the whole way. Warm milk with honey in the small cup, the map held flat against her chest like a flag.

"The doorway weather came in with me," she said. "I sat down beside a girl named Maren. Her storm got smaller and so did mine. Nobody ever told me that part, Daddy."

The King walked to the next lantern before he answered. "Nobody told me either," he said. "I found it out on a bottom stair, beside you." He took her hand and kept it, and they walked on like that.

That night the map went up on her wall. The empty place she had circled had three names in it now, with room left at the edge.