Part I: Captivity
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, lived a princess whose name was Valentina. She had long golden hair that her maids loved to take care of because of its beauty and softness. When she laughed, her plump cheeks turned a delightful shade of pink, and her bright green eyes were always lit with excitement over every little thing.
Valentina’s favorite pastimes were running after butterflies in the gardens, secretly climbing the tall trees behind the castle, and singing to the mountains in the distance. She believed that if she sang beautifully enough, people from other lands would be able to hear and sing it back.
She loved her mother more than anyone. Queen Elisa was kind and always had a gentle smile on her face. Everyone in the land loved her too. She cared about all her subjects and tried her best to deal with all their petitions. She also had the most beautiful voice in the kingdom of Pouso Dourado. Every time there was a party in their castle, the guests would always plead for her to sing. The moment Queen Elisa started her first song, Valentina would feel the melody resonate in her heart even through the walls of her bedroom.
One night, Valentina snuck out from her room and carefully checked the corridor to make sure she wouldn’t be caught by any of the maids. Once she saw she was alone, she approached the balcony to watch the scene in the ballroom.
People from all parts of the world were there, looking at her mother as if she was an angel sent from Heaven. On an elaborate stage, Queen Elisa sang with a smile on her face. Valentina never saw her this happy unless she was singing; green eyes full of emotion, blonde hair falling over her shoulders in beautiful, shiny curls, and hands raised as she followed the rhythm of the music.
When the Queen began to sing a livelier song, all the guests got up to dance. Valentina tried to imitate the adults, bowing to an invisible partner and spinning on her bare feet.
“Princess!”
She heard the voice of a maid coming from the end of the corridor and stopped immediately. But before she could run back to her room, King Jorge appeared. He stopped a few feet away, his eyes angry and mouth turned down.
“What are you doing awake?” he said in a harsh voice.
Valentina tried to make herself even smaller than she already was, but her father didn’t seem affected by her doe eyes or tense body. He came to her with quick steps and grabbed her by her arm.
“Go back to your room. Little girls can be such a nuisance,” King Jorge said as he pushed her at the maid. “Don’t let her come out again. I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of my guests.”
Valentina watched her father storm off with a confusing sense of guilt. She didn’t know what she had done wrong. The maid took her back to her bed, helped her get under the covers and closed the door behind her.
A few minutes later, her mother entered the room and Valentina tried to hide her face under the covers. It would break her heart if her mother was mad at her too. But Elisa didn’t raise her voice; she just smiled and sat down close to the princess.
“I heard you wanted to see me sing,” she said.
Valentina nodded cautiously, still uncertain whether she was in trouble or not.
“How about a little private show before I go back downstairs?”
Elisa sang about damsels being rescued by handsome princes and little girls who ran away from the monsters that lived in the forest until Valentina finally closed her eyes.
* * *
Valentina’s relationship with her father was a complicated and mostly empty one. She didn’t see him much in the first years of her life. King Jorge was always at war with some neighboring kingdom, fighting to steal their lands for the House of Sampaio. Whenever he returned home, he only frightened Valentina, constantly complaining and treating her mother cruelly. Every time he came back, he would rage at Elisa about how she cared too much for the ordinary people or even the way she did her hair. And he barely spoke to Valentina. She could tell he didn’t like his own daughter much but had no idea what she had done wrong. Over time, she stopped trying to make him happy. She knew her attempts would always be in vain.
On the week after her eighth birthday, people in the castle began to fall ill. Soon enough, both Valentina and the Queen were also bedridden, along with a great many of their subjects. For almost two months, illness ravaged the land. Eventually, Valentina recovered, but the Queen passed away.
Valentina cried for days, refusing to leave her bedroom. Never had she experienced such grief. The maids tried to comfort her, to reassure her that everything would be all right, but Valentina knew from their expressions that they didn’t believe their own words.
King Jorge became an even worse father. He’d return from his battles in a foul temper and lash out at his daughter. Valentina didn’t have her mother to protect her anymore, but she slowly grew braver.
“Stop screaming at me!” she said one day, watching as King Jorge’s face grew red.
“Don’t you dare speak like that to your father,” he said in a rage as he raised his hand to strike her.
Valentina tensed her body, preparing herself for the slap, but it never came. Still, she was terrified as he hesitated and stormed out of her room.
After that, King Jorge kept Valentina locked in her bedroom. She couldn’t leave for more than a few hours a day, mostly for lunch and dinner or bath time. The King never touched her, but his words hurt just as much. Even leaving her room brought Valentina no pleasure, because her father was always there to make mean remarks about her or her mother.
“You’re just like her,” he would say. “Insubordinate and improper.”
As the months passed, the king’s treatment of her only got worse. But Valentina continued to defy him, to the point that it seemed he couldn’t tolerate her anymore. One day, she even overheard him through her bedroom door telling one of his advisors that he wished she had died with her mother. Val was so outraged that the next time she was released from her room, she threw his favorite battle armor into the moat that surrounded the palace. They had an ugly fight, and King Jorge ordered the maids to pack up all her clothes while he seized Valentina and dragged her to the stables. The princess tried to resist him, but the King was too strong for her. After half a day’s ride, they arrived at an isolated, forbidding tower, deep in the forest.
“You’ll stay here until you’re old enough to marry a suitable man,” he said as he pushed her inside a dark room.
“What if I don’t want to marry any men?” she shot back.
“Then you’ll never leave this place.”
The King slammed the door and locked it from the outside. When the echoes of his retreating footsteps died down, Valentina realized she was truly alone for the first time in her young life. And unlike the captive princesses in her mother’s songs, no one was coming to rescue her.
* * *
King Jorge came to see her one time, telling her through the still-locked door that maids would come twice a day to bring her food. She would only be released when she was old enough to marry off. For once, Valentina didn’t argue, utterly disappointed and heartbroken that her own father saw her as a thing to be gotten rid of.
There was no food or fire that first night, and Valentina spent the entire time crying, curled up in a corner of the cold dark room. The grief she felt for her mother’s death came back even stronger than before.
The following day, a maid arrived and left some food on a broken table, candles on the dirty floor, and clothing on the dusty bed. She never looked Valentina in the eye or acknowledged her existence in any way. Still young and naïve, Valentina didn’t even think to run away as the maid opened or closed the door.
When she left, Valentina finally picked herself up off the floor. She didn’t feel like eating, but it had been hours since her last meal, and she was weak from hunger. It smelled like freshly-baked bread and grape juice; her favorite. Unable to resist, Valentina ate everything in one go—which she and her sore belly immediately regretted.
She realized then how exhausted the last twenty-four hours’ events had left her. To make the darkness less forbidding, she learned on her own to light the candles and busied herself with organizing her clothes. Tired and lonely, Valentina lay down on her bed and finally slept.
* * *
The next morning, Valentina woke up to the smell of food. There was no one there, but she noticed that a tray with some bread and fruit had been passed through a slot built into the bottom of the door. She ate slowly, saving some for later in case this was all she had for a while. After that, Valentina decided to take a look around the tower.
There was the old bed and the broken table, and some other useless decrepit furniture. The blankets were all full of holes, and the bed smelled like it hadn’t been freshened up for years. It was a jarring contrast to her former life of luxury in the palace.
There was a small faucet in the corner of her room, which she used to clean her face and hands. Thankfully, she wasn’t going to die of thirst anyway.
And she discovered another good thing: the tower had many books. There were hundreds of them, all crammed into bookcases that reached as far as the ceiling. Valentina took one from the closest shelf, cleaning the dust from the cover.
Slowly, she recognized the letters that made up the book’s title.
STORIES OF THE NIGHT.
Valentina was one of the very few people who knew how to read and write in Pouso Dourado, but she wasn’t proficient at it yet. Queen Elisa had taught her for the past two years, always hiding the fact from the King. Valentina’s father swore that he could not read and would never learn! Jorge was always superstitious; he thought books brought evil to a house, citing old beliefs that women who read too much would turn into dangerous rebels.
But here, there was no one to stop the little princess from reading as many books as she wanted.
Valentina found reading hard at first, the letters confusing and frustrating. But after a few weeks, she was able to handle the children’s books with their large letters and pictures. She recognized some of the stories as ones the maids had told her, tales of monsters who lived in dark forests, ready to snatch and devour disobedient children. Some books had long and dreary passages which often bored her to tears, or at least to sleep. The following morning, she would look for another with topics she preferred.
Some of the books were so old the words had already faded, and Valentina began to mark the time by ripping out their pages, a page for every day. She kept them safely away in a big wooden chest by her bedside.
She had torn out sixty-five pages when she found a book called ‘Dictionary,’ and that became her favorite for a month. Valentina learned the meaning of thousands of words she had never heard of before. Even better, she found more Dictionaries that told her the meaning of these words in other languages!
It fascinated her. How wonderful humans could be, creating so many different words in all kinds of variations. Some had symbols she had never seen before, and her tongue couldn’t make the words come out right. But still, every new word seemed important.
* * *
As the years passed, Valentina began to prefer different kinds of books. Where once she’d delighted in childhood tales of old kings and queens, she was now starting to love the ones about romance and adventures. They reminded her there was a world out there even if she couldn’t see it anymore, and to imagine the experiences she couldn’t have.
But she still found a lot of these stories incredibly tedious. Many were about men rescuing women, or women falling in love with men in ways she couldn’t relate to. She couldn’t see herself ever falling for a man—but that’s how all the stories went, if they had love in them at all. Every single one. Was there something wrong with her?
Discouraged, Valentina put her books aside for a few weeks. She had no need or interest in stories that made her feel strange about herself. Instead, she spent time looking through her only window, trying to imagine what was out there. What lay beyond that tall green mountain in the distance? What animals lived in the forest under her tower?
One day, as Valentina let out a long sigh, resting her elbows on the windowsill, a songbird approached her, its blue wings beating rapidly in the air.
“Hello, little friend.” Valentina smiled, extending one of her fingers. The bird gave her hand a quick little peck—but not so hard it hurt—and flew away just as quickly.
Valentina started to leave small pieces of bread on her window ledge, hoping that more friends could come to see her. And, happily, over time, more birds began to visit. At first, they’d just eat the bread and leave, but eventually they began to stay, and Valentina found some happiness at last. Sharing her space with other living beings made her feel less alone.
As days slowly passed, she looked hopefully at the sun setting behind the mountains, watching the sky change from light blue to various shades of orange until finally darkness fell and the stars came out. It helped a little to know there was more to life than this dreary existence in the tower, even if she couldn’t feel it herself.
But eventually, boredom overcame her, and she decided to give the books another try. This time, Valentina used her climbing skills to search the tallest shelves and found the books there dustier, yet not as old as the ones below. Her old shoes didn’t fit her anymore, and her feet were starting to hurt because of it. The maids brought clothes just a little bit bigger every year, but no new shoes. So Valentina ripped some of her old dresses, wrapped the linen around her feet and knotted them at the ankles. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it helped to relieve the soreness of her feet.
One book caught her attention—a drawing of two women in a loving embrace on the cover. And it wasn’t the only one; she found several more like it. Excited and eager, Valentina brought a pile to the floor and opened the first page.
In that story, it wasn’t men who had the adventures or saved the world, but women themselves. Valentina flipped the pages holding her breath, her eyes widening at every new word she read. There were girls kissing other girls! They could kiss whoever they wanted! And some people in the book didn’t want to kiss anyone. There were even those who didn’t call themselves men or women, but something else, something entirely their own.
Valentina finally closed the last page, overwhelmed and thrilled with her new discoveries. A smile grew on her face, and she began to sing. She slowly remembered the tunes and lullabies her mother sang to her when she was younger as her voice echoed around the tower. It didn’t even matter that no one except the birds could hear her. Finally, after all this time in the tower, she was so happy to be herself. She might dream of being somewhere else, but there was no one else she’d rather be.
That night, Valentina sat down on her window ledge and gazed at the stars, wondering if she would ever be lucky enough to kiss a girl one day. She knew nothing in the world would ever make her happier—even seeing the world beyond her tower’s walls.
* * *
As time passed and the seasons changed from spring to winter and back again, Valentina discovered exactly what sort of stories she preferred. She learned to find them by reading the summaries on the back covers—but sometimes she had to dig deeper. Some books didn’t come right out and say things, but they were important anyway.
Not all of them were good. She hated the ones where the girls ended up alone, dead or living far away from each other. Valentina yearned for happy endings, the ones she might never have herself. But, page by page, these precious books were teaching her that she was worthy and that she deserved to be happy.
Valentina knew then what she wanted to be, more than anything in the world. A heroine; helping other women, having adventures and lifting curses from enchanted princesses.
* * *
She was thirteen when she first thought of an escape plan.
During her first week in the tower, Valentina had discovered a wardrobe filled with old blankets. Most of them were full of holes and stank. Valentina knotted the usable ones together until she had a rope that could bear her weight.
When she finished tying one end of the rope to the window frame, she lowered it to the ground below. The makeshift rope wasn’t long enough to reach the ground—but that was all right. Valentina was still going to find a way.
The next time the maid came up with her food, Valentina sat down on the floor against the wall. She waited in silence until the little door opened and the tray came in.
“Please… help me.” Valentina said in a faint voice, faking a few coughs. “I need you to help me.”
For a few seconds, no noise came from the other side. But then a young voice said, “I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’m not allowed to talk to you.”
Valentina didn’t recognize the voice; she had to be a new maid, not one she’d grown up with. She wondered if her father had started to send people who didn’t know her, who were easy to persuade with money and goods.
“I just need more blankets.” One more cough. “It’s so cold. My old clothes barely fit me.”
“I-I’ll see what I can do.” After that, Valentina only heard the quick steps of the maid running away.
* * *
Two days later, Valentina woke up to a pile of new blankets in front of her door. She smiled and jumped to her feet, ready to resume her plan. It took a lot of work, but eventually, she had made a rope that she was certain would be long enough. When night finally fell, she secured one end of the rope to the window frame and let the other end drop to the ground far below. As she looked down, Valentina noticed that it still didn’t quite reach the forest floor, but she was confident that she could jump the remaining distance and survive.
Valentina got up on the windowsill and tested the strength of her rope one last time. It seemed safe. But then, as Valentina looked at the vast forest that surrounded the tower and stretched as far as the distant mountains, her courage failed her. The world was so big, new, and dangerous to her.
Where would she go?
How would she survive all on her own?
She couldn’t, not yet. It finally dawned on her that her plan was only half-formed. Valentina had spent so much time and effort on figuring a way out of the tower that she didn’t realize there was a whole other problem after that. A whole new world of problems.
Heart sinking, Valentina locked her blankets inside her wardrobe once more and lay down on her bed. That night, she cried like she hadn’t since she was a little kid, first locked away in a tower. Her long imprisonment had left her drained beyond words but hadn’t yet given her the courage to leave.