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CRYSTAL PRINCESS
3885 words

copyright May 2001, Jessica Blythe

My name is Amethyst.  My clan named me after the lavender-hued stones that are found scattered across the plains.  We use amethyst to protect us against psychic invasion so our presence can remain pure and connected to the universal energies.

I have lived in this cave now for ages.  It is a quiet life filled with meditation and each day, in between my rituals, I uncover another mystery of the universe in one form or another.  I watched the dust eddies yesterday as they swirled in through the cave door bringing with them the scent of the wild herbs growing outside.  An animal must have brushed against them for the perfume filled my hair and remained long after the eddies had subsided.  After meditating on the meaning of the dust eddies I came upon another understanding of the forces of the universe, which move unseen and affect the physical senses. Am I physical because I feel and sense the wind?

I have pondered these mysteries for the longest time.  It has filled my heart with joy as each unfolding strengthens my inner being and protects me from the painful memories of the events which brought me to this cave in the first place.

I lost contact with my people a long time ago as they shifted their homes from south to north following the wild grain and herbs as they matured in the dry seasons and lay fallow in the wet.  Although my clan called out for me to follow, and wept for their loss as they departed, I could not go with them as my work was here in this cave and I had long since lost the urge to engage with the world.

My life has become set rigid with routine and ritual and can no longer respond to the rhythms of night and day, autumn and spring.  I would no more think of breaking the continuity of the patterns of my life than fly to the stars in the heavens above.

It is very cold outside as winter has swept the plains with sleet.  My cave is warm and dry and very little enters at this time of year to disturb my meditations.  I connect to the universe in my meditations and the energies of the stars above flow through me to connect me to the earth.  I stand on the stone pillar with my arms outstretched looking above to the top of the cave where the shaft of sunlight appears at just that moment in the day.  When it is brightest, it lights up the dust particles eddying in the whisper of a breeze so that it appears as a pillar of light combining its energies with the pillar of stone on which I stand.  We become one strong shaft from cavern top to floor– the light, the pillar and me in the middle.  It is the most wonderful feeling.

I love it when I align myself to the flow just so, and the shining light takes on a gentle lavender hue and, as I turn, it catches my robes and reflects its purple colour into every corner of the cave.  I feel invincible then and each time I achieve this another crystal is formed around me.

My work has been hard beyond belief.  I have transformed the pain I have known into the lovely crystal formations which are growing at the top of the pillar.  I fly up here regularly to meditate and connect to the universal flow.  Over the years, I have needed the outside world less and less as the light and the crystals have become my sustenance.  Now I visit the cave floor less than monthly, as the top of the pillar has become my real home.

The crystals have grown now to enclose my presence.  Each one is a long shaft of lavender coloured ice, thicker at the base with only a few long, hard edges extruding into points which catch the light like a diamond does.  I am often happily blinded when the sunlight hits them all at the same time.

I measured the crystals today.  They enclose my presence from my feet to just below my breasts and growing slowly higher every day.  They appear like the most beautiful, star-spangled dress surrounding me and I imagine myself dancing at the Prince’s Ball in my ice gown. I am happy and I am content.

Below me in the darkness there is an unusual stir.  As my gaze cannot penetrate the gloom I dismiss the disturbance as unremarkable and go back to my meditations waiting for the sunlight to break into its spotlight above me.  Gradually the light from above sends down its greeting to the cave wall across from me as the shadow creatures scurry out of the way.  I feel particularly happy today as the shaft becomes stronger and stronger and at last the lavender hue of alignment fills my heart with joy.  Today I cry out in wonder. A soulful cry of exquisite joy escapes me as the crystals set themselves in place and sparkle around me lighting up the cave sending shock waves down the pillar to shudder themselves into the cave floor.  I have become a powerful crystal being at last.

“Look at that!” someone cried in amazement and I was shocked beyond belief as the masculine voice reverberated across the walls of my protection.  My concentration unnerved, I tried to stabilise the force field flowing past me, without success.  The crystals had set too tightly around me and I had no room to move anymore.

Desperately, I quelled my surprise and astonishment and focussed my mind on the light energies until the imbalance subsided into peace once more.  It took nearly all my strength.  Gradually the sunlight passed out of range and the colours faded from the cave wall.  What was down there? I asked myself helplessly.  I couldn’t move.

Someone below was moving heavy things across the floor.  The pungent odour of crushed herbs filled the air.  People were talking in low voices to each other and I heard scurrying and scraping noises of rock against…what? 
 
In the darkness I could not recognise the images.  I was held firm by the crystals I had spent so long conjuring and I could only bend a little and turn not at all.  I guess I was frightened.  I had spent so much time in familiar surroundings, and I had not ventured forth into the outside world to learn.  I had no idea what was lurking below.

All at once I was hit by a strong light from below.  The crystals sparkled with an eerie light and down below I caught a glimpse of brown eyes focussed intently upon me, glinting in the light.  “I’m going up,” he said as I caught my breath in fear. 

“No” I called. “Leave me alone.”

He only stopped momentarily, but as I caught his shape against the cave wall, I also captured the glimpse of a memory of another life and it flooded back into awareness. 

“No.  Go away.  I am happy here.  Leave me alone.” But he took no notice and went on with his movements on the cave floor. 

What could I do?  I tried to move but the crystals were too strong.  I wriggled, squirmed, pushed against them but still they held firm.  There was no recourse.  I would have to simply wait. I knew the pillar would protect me as it stood in the middle of the cave with no protruding ledges near to gain access.  I had learned to fly.  I was out of reach.  Secure in my thinking at last, I withdrew attention from the cave floor, entered my ritual of meditation again and waited for them, whoever they were, to leave.

In my meditation, my awareness led me back to the time I was with my own love.  I was very happy then, as we bathed in the rivers, shared stories of our work, entwined our arms around each other and shared our paths toward the future.  Our families supported us with their love and wished us healthy children and our friends dropped by or welcomed us to our homes.  I remember the summer grasses were high around us as we ran through them, then tumbled, fell and made love under the sun.

But winter arrived and so did a beauty with dark sparkling eyes and I lost my love to her.  The coldness of his touch was like ice and I packed my bags preferring the sleet and snow of the plains to the unlit fires in his heart.  I found peace in this cave and so I have been here ever since.

How did he find me here?  I did not call him?  “What do you want of me?” I called into the shaft of manmade light from the floor. 

“I just want to talk to you,” he replied.  “I’m coming up there to explain that what you saw was not as it was.  You left too quickly and you didn’t see my love for you unfold.”

“I saw enough. Now leave me in peace. You cannot reach me here. Go.”  I called down from the top of the pillar feeling trapped in the spotlight.

“I searched everywhere for you.  I looked in the summer grasses, in the winter caves; I searched the riverbanks and streams to find you.  I want you in my arms again, to walk beside you and share my home with you again.  Now that I know where you are, I won’t stop until I find a way for your love to flow into mine as it was once before.”

Why would I ever trust him again?  “It’s too late.”  I said angrily and turned my gaze away from him and the light.

I squirmed within my crystal gown again and felt a subtle shift.  One of the crystals had come loose.  My fingers became numb with wrestling until I jiggled it around until it was free and I pulled it out and placed it in my hand.  It caught the light and flashed like a stiletto blade.  With a weapon, at last I felt strong and I flung it with all my might towards him in the hopes it would pierce his resolve.

I watched it fall towards the cavern floor glittering in the shaft of light.  It flew like an arrow, tip first, plunging down hopefully to wound someone in the darkness below.  It disappeared into the gloom.

Somehow, he had moved closer, but I found another loose crystal and with a cry like a banshee warrior, I flung it toward his presence hoping to pierce his black heart.  Another crystal came loose and I let it fly also.  I still could not move my body but my arm was flexible and strong and the crystals flew straight towards their target.  He was coming closer but the shaft of light from the floor did not illuminate his method to me.  The light glittered along the crystal facets and was reflected a thousand times, partially blinding me.  I watched the crystals fly through the air but when they were on their target they disappeared into a mystery of blackness.

One after the other until the loose ones were spent, crystals were flung at him, but still he moved closer and closer from the cavern floor.  How did he do that?  I was confused.  Why was he so intent on reaching me?  Why had he left black beauty to find me?  It’s been so long.  He should have forgotten me by now.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried, desperately trying to control the tremble in my voice.  For it was true, he had completely unnerved me.  My safe secure haven that had protected me from the world for so long had now been invaded.

“You have no right!”  My voice cracked and my vulnerability was exposed. 

"You have no right!”and I dissolved into tears.

Tears which I had retreated from for so long now found release.  They trickled down my cheeks and I felt their saltiness on my breasts as they made their way down my body.  They flowed in slow release, profusely.  I was not wracked with anguish, I did not hide my face behind my hands.  Instead, in a show of defiance, I stood erect, ready to face my fate, but my tears betrayed me completely.  At least he could not see them, I thought.  I had been betrayed and my betrayer was below me, coming for me.  I was pinned by my own creation with the only escape route below me within the cavern of my own choosing.  The space above where the sunlight entered was too small to escape through, the entrance to the cave, my only way out.  I wept and wept until I could weep no more.  The forgotten pain remembered once more.

Then something cracked in the ice gown which secured me.  I felt it cracking all around me as crystal facets one after the other, separated from one another.  The sound was like glaciers cracking underwater.  A sound not to be taken lightly as the enormous stresses in the ice ache as the water penetrates forcefully and pieces crack off under tension.  It sounds like breaking glass.  In those moments I heard the sound of my freedom.  One by one I pulled the crystals quickly from the gown and with a fresh impulse hurled them from the pillar.  I moved so fast that it must have felt to him like it was raining glass.  Each shaft had the potential of piercing flesh.  It was strong enough to pierce body coverings as well and if it reached its target along with many others I still had a chance that they would vanquish my aggressor completely.

Each crystal was sent on its way wrapped around with a memory of pain which I felt inflicted. This one is for the smile you gave her.  This for that night.  Another for your cold touch, this thin stiletto to pierce your affection for her.  This large one to bruise your arm where you held her.  And another and another.  At last he had retreated.
   
Desperately I sent a shower of crystals sharpened on my pain toward him on the floor. They were met with silence in the dark.  I was getting scared now.  I was in danger of losing my control.  Shower after shower of crystal shards had been flung at him.  I watched them disappear one after the other into the gloom but there was absolutely no response from him.  Where had they gone? Where had he gone? I had no idea what to do next.  I had nowhere to go.  I tried to fly but could not.  For some reason my body would not obey me. 

I kept throwing down ice crystal after ice crystal until all of a sudden I noticed that I had no more ice crystals to throw.  Not only that, I looked at where my torso and legs should have been but there was nothing there.  Something had happened.  The crystals had captured me.  Perhaps my body had become crystal and I had foolishly thrown myself from the pillar in my vain attempt to deflect my foe.  Terror overtook me and I screamed.  It was a sound not my own. It sounded like breaking glass and the rest of my body split into a myriad of shafts of ice crystals and clattered to the pillar ledge in a tumbled mess.  I was no more.

The ladder up the side of the pillar was placed on the dark side so that the torch beam could blind me and I would not know where he was.  He had pieced the ladder together in sections until it reached the height of the pillar’s ledge.  His friends had stretched out a canvas and held it above the floor to catch the ice crystals as they fell harmlessly into the net.  He had gathered them up one by one and realising they were a part of me, set about to join the crystal puzzle back together again. 

He tried first one way, then the next, then another as the crystal shafts defied his intention to reunite them.  “Oh I’ll never get her back again,” he cried in dismay many times as time passed slowly.. 

“This is hopeless” as tears clouded his vision.  But his companions encouraged him time and again until they all gave up in despair.

Up on the pillar top, something was astir.  The torch beam had been removed from the pillar so they could work on the crystal shafts in the light on the cavern floor.  The sunlight from above, moved slowly across the cave wall as it had done so many times before.  This time, I was not there to greet it in my usual way.  The crystal shafts lying in confusion on the pillar ledge were all that was left of me. 

As the light conjoined with the pillar as it had done yesterday and the day before, it warmed the tumbled crystals lying there and tears slowly trickled from each one.  They gently flowed as the ice crystals thawed and mingled with each other gently forming a pool dissolving the rest by embracing them.  Gradually the tears trickled toward the edge.  The abyss loomed before them.  To stay meant to evaporate into nothingness with the sun.  Falling into the abyss was the only course open to them so they trickled over the edge into the darkness of new creation.

As they landed on his hand, so intent on reconstructing the ice gown, he turned the light at once to the pillar top to see his love had disappeared.  He stood up in disbelief and anguish filled his heart.  Without thinking he grabbed what he could of the ice crystals and shoved as many as he could hastily into his jacket.  Their sharp edges pricked his skin, but he didn’t care, he was climbing the ladder urgently to find his love.  He was going to get her back if it was the last thing he did.

His awareness shifted halfway up and the ladder appeared to stretch out further into the distance above him.  The pillar seemed to be further away the more he climbed and the crystals itched and scratched into his flesh.  He was filled with a passion at first and didn’t notice, but as he climbed higher, he found his strength failing and it was harder and harder to hold on and focus his attention on the goal.

At last, he stopped to catch his breath for a moment.  “I’m nearly there” he called to the others below to inspire him and reached inside his jacket to adjust a jutting crystal.  As he withdrew his fingers they dripped scarlet with his heart’s blood.  The blackness spread out across the cavern below him like a bottomless chasm and he felt fear tremble on his fingers as he held the ladder firm.  He was afraid he would never see his love again. 

Above he could still see the shaft of light from the sun in perfect alignment with the pillar, but no light spilled over the edges, only the dripping of tears.  He climbed again and reached the pillar top to find his love nowhere to be seen in the dazzle.

“No! she’s gone”, he cried out in anguish to the light and twisted and turned in horror as he realised I was nowhere to be found.  His anguish echoed silently from the cavern walls.

At last, he collapsed exhausted onto the pillar ledge and remembered with agony those days and nights of solemn loneliness on the long haul to find the direction of his love.  He curled, foetus like, and covered his face with his arm and wept bitter tears, for he had lost his love forever.  With the sunlight streaming down and irritated by the ice crystals still in his jacket, he pulled them out intending to discard them in a fit of useless rage.  When he glanced to adjust his throw, he saw in his hands, transformed by the actions of the climb, a very large jewel.  Its facets sparkled like a million diamonds in the sunlight and as he watched, astonished, his gaze was attracted to the very centre.  He had to turn it this way and that to capture the image at the centre.  It was a different colour, the palest faintest rose red, sometimes pale lavender and it would not flash every time, just when the light caught it just so.

 Suddenly, from deep within the jewel, a shaft of rose/lavender light emanated by itself.  It was not a reflected light; it was an energy from within.  He fumbled with the jewel, afraid to hold it and placed it on the pillar ledge and stepped back to watch.  Two lights emanated upwards, rose to the north and lavender to the south, and mingled with the shaft of sunlight.  A pool of light seeped from beneath the jewel and spilled out across his feet and over the edge of the pillar like coloured water.  As the light fell over the edge it lit up the pillar underneath and the faces of his companions far below.

The jewel stretched its presence from the pillar ledge upward until it reached his eye level, but its rosy coloured light aligned with the sunlight above and the pillar below and I became a presence within it like I had done so many times before.  I stepped forward and the crystal shards from the cave floor flew up to join me and wrap themselves around me once again.  My body took on the physical form as I stood before him in the shaft of sunlight, wrapped as a human being again. 

“Why should I accept you?” I sought resolution from him and knew, with just a nudge, I could force him over the pillar edge to his death.  With courage and a trembling voice he explained my misunderstanding.      

Our gaze met, brown to blue, and he reached out and wrapped his arms around me.

Finally, “Forgive me” was all that was needed before tender kisses were given and received.

At this, the shaft of sunlight shimmered as if its light was becoming tangible. The air filled with lighted dust and herbed perfume as the stone pillar below dissolved into a swirl of rose and lavender mist and we were suspended within the pillar of light slowly billowing down to the cavern floor supported by our love.  When we reached the floor we were surrounded by his awe struck friends who laid gentle hands upon our shoulders until they could sweep me into their arms as my lover had done to welcome me home.     

We travelled far that spring and followed the blooming of new flowers.  Everywhere we went my hair was filled with garlands which he would twine and set upon my head as his princess. 

Many times at noon, I would venture from the camp and sit on a hill by myself.  Here in meditation, I would capture the rays of the sun in my clothes and direct it to my eye and heart. 

I make sure that the warmth of the sunlight ensures that the ice crystals which I create in my heart are also melted. 

Sometimes he watches me in my meditation, but he never says anything, just watches and waits anxiously for his crystal princess to return.

If you enjoyed this story and would like to comment, click here: Crystal Princess

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