Damsel

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The castle seemed to grow from the cliffs that cupped the shoreline. Its jagged-peaked turrets pierced the rain-heavy clouds above; its windows were gaping mouths and gored-out eyes. Between the slate-gray cliffs and the smoke-gray sky and the churning gray sea and the ghost-gray mist, it was a gray place, indeed. It was so thoroughly gray that a traveler who lost his way could be blinded by it—by the overwhelming grayness that permeated everything, erasing vision entirely.

Stay too long in this gray world, the legend went, and risk your eyes turning gray too. Risk your skin growing ashen. Risk your hair dulling to iron.

Yes, it was a gray world.

Sitting upon the broad back of his night-black steed, Prince Emory of Harding scanned the vast gray scene around him. There was the beach, quiet waves lapping upon the shoreline like a kitten at its dish of cream, the tameness and gentle repetition belying the fierceness Emory knew the great sea had hidden within it. There beneath his horse’s hooves was a short, pebbled beach, peppered with stones of all shades of gray, from nearly black to nearly white. Emory and his steed, whom he called Reynard, had emerged onto this beach from a dense forest through which there was no trail. Emory had been obliged to lead his horse much of the way, slashing a path for them with his sword.

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