Born to Rule

you have been reading about all this time. You see, my dear, our destinies are joined. Not only did you read about me, but you really believed in me and felt my troubles as if they were your own.”
    Alicia put a hand to her cheek in astonishment. The book that her sisters often teased her about reading was part of her destiny. She followed the ghost through the doorway at the top of the stairs.
    They were in a small room. In the dim glow of the ghost princess’s dress, Alicia could just make out a tapestry on the wall. She walked toward it as if in a trance. The woven cloth did not look like it had aged, but she could hardly make out the design. As Alicia lifted her finger to touch it, shapes seemed to appear through the cloth. It was almost as if ghost actors were walking onto a stage. Alicia saw a regal woman who wore a coif fixed by a coronet, and over the coronet, hanging like mist, was a long veil.
    Alicia turned slowly around toward the lovely ghost. “This is you,” Alicia said. The princess nodded.
    Alicia couldn’t help but feel that the princess looked familiar to her, and not just from the portrait. Something about her hair and sparkling eyes did indeed remind her of someone. She just couldn’t remember who.
    “What happened? How was your heart broken?”
    “You know my story,” the ghost princess said. “My name is Kyranala, and I come from the Kingdom of Kerrwyn. After my mother died, an evil princess from another kingdom lured my father into marriage. My poor sister had to go live with them. A short time later, my stepmother poisoned my father, and my sister managed to run away. My stepmother became known as Queen Guthstab the Remorseless. She terrified everyone.
    “There was a small order of knights who remained loyal to my father’s memory. They protected me. One of these knights, Sir Roland, and I fell deeply in love. We were married, secretly. But Guthstab found out, and she hated my happiness. She had the Blood Guard capture Sir Roland. She ordered him put to death. I ran here to Camp Princess, where my sister and I had been so happy. They let me stay on as the needlepoint counselor.”
    Alicia had been looking closely at the tapestry during the princess’s story. As she spoke, the cloth began to suggest a design, a design to be stitched that told a story with great meaning. Alicia turned to the Princess Kyranala. “Do you have a needle and thread?”
    “Right there, my dear.” She pointed to a section of the tapestry where a needle was tucked in next to several others, all with different colored threads. Alicia began to stitch. She blinked in surprise. In no time she had done a perfect row of split stitches, and her fingers began to move even more rapidly.
    “Goodness!” Alicia exclaimed. “I just did the butterfly stitch—that’s the hardest stitch of all! My older sister can’t even do that one!”
    She felt a kind of energy traveling through the thread to the very tips of her fingers as she stitched. “This is like magic.”
    “Not like magic, my dear. It is magic.”
    Princess Kyranala’s face seemed to glow now almost like a living person’s. It had a tinge of pink, as if blood coursed through her veins.
    Can it make the dead live again? Alicia wondered. Am I bringing her back to life, or am I putting a spirit to rest?
    Alicia sensed new urgency for her task now. She turned back to the tapestry and continued to sew. As she stitched, the figures became clearer. She began to see a forest of trees with shining crystal bells instead of leaves. She saw a small figure crouched behind a tree trunk. Could it be Berwynna? On another panel she saw a scene with a cage at the princess’s feet.
    “You are kneeling here at the edge of the Forest of Chimes. There is a cage, and inside I can see the outlines of a bird. A bird to be freed, or a bird to be stitched? Is the cage door opened or closed? I cannot tell.” Alicia felt her heart beat rapidly. “What is it?”
    “I have a long story to be stitched, too much for one night. The sky grows light, and you must be back in your bedchamber,” replied the ghost princess.
    “Please, can’t I stitch the bird? He looks so much like my weeb.” Alicia knew then that what she had suspected was true. The weeb and the spirit of this princess were connected in some mysterious way. Bird, book, and spirit! she thought.
    Princess Kyranala seemed almost to read her mind. “You must wait just a bit longer. Tomorrow night, after the