The King Who Crossed the Storm

The storm came up the coast at bedtime, the way storms like to, when the lamps are lit and everyone is nearly cozy.

Princess Allison stood at her tall window and watched the rain arrive sideways. She was not worried about the palace. The palace had stood through a hundred storms and planned to stand through a hundred more.

She was worried about one small thing.

That afternoon she had sailed her little boat at the stream landing. She had built it herself through four slow evenings: a wooden hull sanded smooth, a mast the length of her hand, and a sail she had cut from coral cloth and hemmed with her own careful stitches. She had tied it to the willow root to dry, meaning to fetch it after supper.

Then the sky had changed its mind about the evening.

Thunder rolled somewhere far off, more grumble than growl. Rain drummed the glass in gusts. Somewhere out there in all that weather, one small boat with a coral sail was tied to a willow root, and the stream was rising.

She found the King in the long hall, where he was walking the windows and listening to the weather the way some people listen to music.

"My boat is at the landing," she said. "I tied it to the willow root. The stream will rise."

The King looked at her for a moment. He did not say it is only a boat, because he knew it was not only a boat. It was four evenings of her hands.

"A storm is for waiting out," he said. "First light is for going."

"But the water," said Allison.

"Will do what water does," said the King. "And a good knot will do what good knots do. You tie good knots. At first light we will go and see which of them did its job better."

"We?" said Allison.

"We," said the King.

Waiting is easier with a plan in it.

Back in her room, Allison lit her small lantern and spread a fresh sheet of paper on the floor. She drew the stream in one long blue line. She drew the willow, and the landing, and the way the water bent.

If the knot held, the boat would be at the willow root, riding high and cross about the weather.

If the knot slipped, the stream would carry the boat the way the stream carried everything: past the reed bend, over the stone shallows, down to the old fallen log where floating things went to get caught.

She drew all three places and numbered them with her orange crayon.

The King leaned in her doorway, watching her work.

"Reed bend, stone shallows, fallen log," he read. "In that order?"

"In that order," said Allison. "The stream only runs one way."

"That," said the King, "is the thinking of a person who gets her boat back. Sleep now. First light comes early, and it does not wait for princesses."

The storm spent the whole night arguing with the roof and lost.

Allison slept the way you sleep when somebody has said we. Her map lay folded on her boots so it could not be forgotten, because a plan left behind is only a drawing.

Sometime before morning the thunder packed up and moved along the coast to bother somebody else. The rain thinned, then softened, then stopped.

The last thing the storm did was rinse the sky clean for what came next.

First light found two people crossing the courtyard, and it was proud of both of them.

Allison wore her boots and her crown and carried the map. The King wore his long robe and carried his coffee, the steam rising off the cup and hurrying away on the wind. The world was rinsed and dripping. Puddles lay across the stones like small silver countries.

The wind was still combing the last of the weather out of the sky, and it tugged at the King's robe and at Allison's sash, and neither of them minded.

"Left over from the storm," said Allison, meaning the wind.

"Every storm leaves a little behind," said the King, and drank his coffee while walking into the teeth of it, which is a thing he could do without spilling, and always had been able to do, and never once explained.

The willow root wore a wet loop of string and nothing else.

Allison stood at the landing and looked at the empty knot for a moment. The knot had held. The string had not.

"Reed bend next," she said, and did not cry, because a good plan expects a no or two on the way to its yes.

The reed bend held three ducks, one barrel lid, and no boat. The ducks looked as though the storm had been their idea and it had gone very well.

"Two more places," said the King. He said it like a man reading a list, not like a man losing hope, because he was not losing any.

The stone shallows nearly fooled them.

Something coral lay against the far stones, and Allison's heart jumped, and then it was only a ribbon of weed, curled the way a sail curls.

She stood very still with the disappointment. It is allowed to stand still with a disappointment for a moment, even for princesses. Even with a plan.

"The stream only runs one way," she said at last, mostly to herself.

"Then we know exactly where everything it took has gone," said the King. "Your plan has one place left, and the stream has nowhere else to put things. I like our chances better than the stream's."

The old fallen log lay across the slow water like an arm gathering everything the storm had dropped.

And there, tucked against it, riding low and patient with its coral sail soaked dark, was one small boat.

"There!" said Allison. "Past the branch. Left of the big stone."

The King finished his coffee before he stepped near the water and tucked the empty cup safely away. Then he took a second plain cup from his satchel.

"Hold this for me," he said, and handed it to Allison. "Both hands, while I use mine."

He waded in with his robe hitched up, boots finding the shallow places, steady as a bridge. The water came to his knees and no farther, because he had picked his path the way she had drawn her map: one sure thing at a time.

"Left," called Allison from the bank, both hands around the plain cup. "Now right. There."

His hand closed around the little hull.

They sat on the bank while the boat drained and the sun climbed.

The sail had torn a little along one seam. Allison turned it in her hands and looked at it the way she looked at everything: to see what it needed.

"I can mend this," she said. "I will dry the hull by the window, and wax the string, and sew the seam. Then I will handle the rest."

"I believe you will," said the King.

They walked home the long way along the stream, which lay flat and innocent in the sunshine, pretending it had never taken anything from anyone in its life.

That evening the little boat stood drying on Allison's windowsill, its mended sail patched with a square of brighter coral, which Allison decided was not a scar but a story.

The King came to say goodnight and looked at it a long moment.

"You will lose small things," he said. "Everybody does. Storms happen to everybody's willow roots. But hear the other half, and keep it: there is no storm I would not cross to bring you back what matters. Any storm. Every storm."

"With your coffee finished before the wet part, Daddy," said Allison.

"Well," said the King. "A wet crossing is a very good reason to finish good coffee on the bank."

Outside, the lanterns came on along the walls, one gold ring after another, and the rinsed sky settled itself down for a quiet night.