The Princess of the Kingdom of Plenty wore silk.
The insects that made the silk were tended by peasants who wore linen, or wool, or fur. The princess sometimes wore those too, when they were the most comfortable option for the season or created the sort of silhouette she wanted to present. But she was the only one who wore silk, the only one who slept on silk.
She ate savory roasts and fine herbs and spun sugar. These, a few other people ate. It wasn't very plentiful to have one person at a meal eat something different from everyone else, or to have the Princess eat alone in her room. Besides, if you were going to butcher a pig, it would yield more meat than the Princess could eat by herself. If you were going to send sailors on a voyage to a distant island for beets and dried exotic fruits to render into desserts, you might as well fill up the cargo hold. So the Princess's banquets included not only herself but also the nurses who'd brought her up, the playmates she'd been close to since childhood, the court astrologer, the friends she'd picked up at her parties and dances.
The Princess of the Kingdom of Plenty threw a lot of dances. Everyone was invited to these. Dances weren't a luxury, they were open to anyone who could move and even some of the peasantry who couldn't; the Princess herself would scoop up little children with rickets and spin them around the floor sometimes. The court astrologer was old and feeble but he saved up his energy for the gala balls and kicked up his heels with the head cook. The Princess loved dances best of all.
One day, the Princess asked the astrologer, "Why do little children have rickets?"
The astrologer stroked his beard. "It is a deficiency of the blood, in peasants who do not drink enough milk, or work in the dark mining salt or iron."
"Can I fix it?" asked the Princess. "I have milk whenever I want it. I want it for the children."
The astrologer shook his head. "You have milk whenever you want it, enough to fill one stomach, or even the stomachs of all your friends. The kingdom contains many hundreds of children. To give them all milk the peasants would need more goats, and more land to graze them on."
The Princess furrowed her brow, but she did not in fact have goats, or land to graze more than one or two of them on.
She threw another ball, and the great ballroom overflowed into the palace gardens where they stood full of fragrant roses and heavy-boughed pear trees. Her people spun, hand in hand, in rings and ribbons around the orchard; they rested their feet and sang, sitting on the benches among the flowers. The Princess danced with a woman she'd seen just the previous week with a baby on her back. "Where is the little one?" asked the Princess.
The woman shook her head. "This one didn't make it," she said. "Please, I'm here to think of anything else -"
So the Princess asked her nothing more, just danced and passed her on to another partner, but later, she asked the court astrologer, "Why do little babies die?"
"Most often, it is because of an impurity in the water," replied the astrologer, twirling the end of his beard around his fingers. "Causing a sickness that a healthy adult will often survive, but a fragile infant likely cannot."
"Can I fix it?" asked the Princess. "I have clean water, as much as I need. I need it for the babies."
The astrologer shook his head. "You have water for all your needs, enough to slake one thirst, or even those of all your friends. The kingdom contains many hundreds of babies. To give them all pure water the peasants would need more wells, dug deep and built solid."
The Princess frowned, but she did not know how to dig a well.
The next time the Princess had a banquet, one of her old nurses who'd played with her as a little child, kissing her scraped knees and brushing out her long hair to put it in plaits, was not there at all.
This time the astrologer could guess, before the Princess even asked, what had troubled her. "My dear," said he, "I could tell you what troubled the poor woman, what made her fall ill with the flu instead of with malaria, what made it strike now and not last year - but on the whole, people do not die because they get some specific malady at some specific time. It's no more the fault of the flu than any one oat is responsible for your breakfast, or any one star creates the constellations. If it were not the flu, it would be something else. There are many things that people can die of. Curing the flu would be a great accomplishment, if it were in your power. It would not allow anyone to live to be even twice my age, let alone forever. Not even you, Princess, though were it possible to protect you we would surely do so. And why this should be, even I do not know."
The Princess retired for the night to her chambers. She paced in her silken slippers; she sipped sweetened tea. She looked out the window at the mountain valley that was her kingdom, the streams and the meadows, the farms and the villages, the swathes of green where mulberry trees for the silkworms rustled in the wind.
The next morning she was up with the dawn. She marched straight to the astrologer's rooms, not too far from hers in the palace. "Astrologer," she said, while he rubbed sleep from his eyes. "I don't want the peasants to make me silk clothes any more. I can wear linen and wool and fur like everyone else, when what I have now has worn out. I want them to dig wells, instead."
"Princess, the peasants who farm the silkworms are not the same peasants who know how to dig wells," said the astrologer, though there was a bit of a smile behind his beard.
"Then I want the ones who farm the silkworms to mind the well-diggers' children, or cook their supper, or bring them baskets of mulberries, or haul away the dirt dug out of the well holes, and all the while look on so they can learn how to do it themselves."
"That is a better idea," said the astrologer. "But when all the wells are dug, what then?"
"Then more babies will grow up, and they will need water for their own babies. We'll need more wells forever."
"I see," said the astrologer. "I will think about how best to arrange this for you, Princess."
She nodded, and went down to the ballroom to meet her dancing instructor.
The next morning she was back. The astrologer yawned hugely as he answered his door to her knock, but smiled to see her. "Princess."
"Astrologer, I don't want the peasants to fix me and my friends pork roasts so often any more. That's so many pigs, even if we do share them. I want them to raise goats instead, and give the milk to their children. I can eat porridge and eggs and beans like everyone else."
"Princess," said the astrologer, "goats and pigs eat different things. While goats want grass and browsings, pigs will eat scraps and spoilage. Somewhat fewer pigs could allow somewhat more goats, but to switch entirely from one to the other, that's difficult indeed."
"Then I want the peasants to share the pork among themselves, and to have some more goats than they have right now," she said.
"And once everyone has the milk they want, what then, Princess?"
"Then more of their children will grow up strong enough to farm, and they will have plenty of work feeding all the goats and all the pigs too," she said, "till everyone's belly is full."
"I will consider how best your will can be done, Princess," said the astrologer.
She nodded and swept off to her singing lesson.
The following morning, she was back again.
"Astrologer," she said, while he blinked at her from under his bushy eyebrows and combed a tangle out of his beard, "I have thought and thought and thought about it, and I cannot think of a single thing I could give up that would cure the flu. I could give up my gardens, but my roses can't save anyone from illness. I could tear down my palace, but the stones wouldn't help at all. I could do all kinds of things that would take away parts of my life that bring me comfort and joy, and not a single one of those things would make the least bit of difference. Am I wrong? Is there anything I can do?"
The astrologer looked at her, a little proudly, a little sadly. "You are not wrong," he said. "There is nothing you can tear out of your garden, your wardrobe, your home, that will achieve this feat."
She bit her lip. "Astrologer, you don't sound quite as though that were the end of it."
"In the Kingdom of Plenty," he said, "there is a deep magic woven. A deep magic that may let you achieve some of your wishes."
"Some?" asked the Princess.
"Some. It is deep, but it is slow, terribly slow."
"Tell me."
"If," said the astrologer, "a great deal of luxury is gathered into one place, not just food but sugar, not just clothes but silk, not just rest but frivolity, it is a bit different. You cannot drink mist. The Kingdom of Plenty cannot drink poverty. But you can drink water, and it can drink wealth."
"How can the Kingdom drink wealth?" demanded the Princess.
"Let me tell you a story," said the astrologer, and the Princess sat down on his old armchair and folded her arms to listen.
"Many, many years ago," (began the astrologer), "people lived almost like wild beasts. They did not farm, but ate what they found. They did not weave, but wore the skins of their prey as blankets against the cold night. They did not dig wells, but went thirsty when there was not enough rain to feed the rivers. This way to live was not wicked, nor even very much more of a hardship than it is to be a peasant. But one day, we do not know precisely when or how, their ways began to change. They learned new ways to find what they needed, and they learned more about what it was that they needed, in the same way we have learned what causes rickets and what makes water impure.
"They worked much harder, and this work itself hurt them, but they began to see what more there could be. A peasant with a cellar full of grain is not better fed than a beast with a belly full of berries. But the peasant can imagine: what if this cellar were deeper and the sacks more numerous? What if the mice never came to my storeroom? What if I could keep meat the way I keep wheat? And this imagination is key. These things that the peasant has the power to want are essential to the magic. This is enough wealth to drink, but only a little sip, only enough to tantalize.
"There are two ways that a kingdom can be. Well, really there are countless ways, but consider these two. First, the peasant can imagine having twice as much of what he has, and go to his neighbor and strike him with his threshing scythe, and take everything in that cellar too. This makes one peasant a little richer. It makes the kingdom poorer. There is twice as much grain per peasant in that year, but at the next harvest there are half as many workers, if this is how the people of the kingdom treat one another. And anyone who fears his neighbor's hoe or flail will turn on him next will not plant as much; he will put a bar on his door, he will pretend to everyone that he has nothing in the larder, he will flee to the kingdom next door if he knows the way.
"The second way is that they can refuse to do this.
"How does the second kingdom let any of the peasants get what he imagines, you might ask," (the astrologer went on). "He has a sip of wealth, just enough to dream of what it would be like to gulp down a whole basinful. How will he ever get more than that? And this is the magic of the Kingdom of Plenty. One peasant cannot put a whole basinful together. But many of them can. As the wild beast is to the peasant farmer, the peasant farmer is to -"
"The Princess," whispered the Princess.
"That's right. But the magic cannot work, if your people come to the palace door with their pitchforks and spades. This would spread all your wealth into mist. If every peasant took an equal piece of the silk in your sheets they'd have worthless scraps. If every peasant took an equal share of your banquet into their stewpots they would scarcely taste the difference. It's different, when it's all together. And it's different, when you choose what to do with the magic you have been building all your life, of your own free will. Sometimes - some princes, some princesses, choose not to use it. This is their right. Princes and princesses like you enjoy the power you are hoping to wield now only because this is their right. It was a prince like you who gave us the ships that sail to faraway shores, not so long ago."
"What must I do?" she asked, a set of determination in her jaw.
"What do you want?" asked the astrologer. "You cannot have everything. The magic is slow. It is ponderous. It is getting faster, but it is doing it little by little. I cannot imagine how many generations lie before us before our successors have laid enough magic atop magic atop magic to have even become capable of imagining the end of death."
The Princess looked at her hands. "I want the wells," she decided, after thought. "I want everyone in the Kingdom of Plenty to have a clean well of pure water to drink."
"This you can do," said the astrologer. "Come with me."
The astrologer took her to a deep underground room of the palace that she had never been to before, where there was a great magical ledger she had not known existed. It wrote in itself, debit and credit, in spidery handwriting barely legible: so much spent on wood for a fence, so much earned selling eggs at the market, so much saved and so much lent and so much found between the couch cushions, in black and red and blue and green.
In royal purple, it listed taxes rendered to the Crown. This much silk, this much pork, some work in the garden and some work in the kitchen.
The Princess watched in wonder as it marked every grain of sugar and every broom-pass a maid made across the ballroom.
"Princess," said the astrologer. "It says here that you are very rich. You have told me what you would like to buy."
And he handed her a pen, full of ink in lustrous gold, and she took it up. It hummed between her fingers.
She wrote, on the waiting parchment of the infinite ledger: for wells throughout the Kingdom, and the pen went on of its own accord, tearing itself from her hand and scratching out what she owed in exchange.
When it was done, the Princess's silk was still fine, her pantry still full of ham for her breakfast and sugar for her toast. But there was one thing new in the Kingdom.
She and the astrologer looked out of the window of the highest tower in the palace, watching the peasants come out of their houses and dance for joy, pulling up buckets of water from their wells, singing the praises of the Princess.
"What's next?" she asked.
"Who is next," the astrologer said gently.
"...yes," said the Princess. "Who is next."
"That is up to you, Princess."
The Princess threw a ball. Everyone was invited. The peasants, joyous and many, bowed and whirled and promenaded, glowing already with better health and comfort. The Princess danced with them all, linking elbows with widows and clasping hands with farmhands and scooping up every child she saw.
By the end of the ball, a little Prince, who had toddled of his own accord to the festivities quite alone, was installed in the palace nursery, with nurses engaged for his care and silken clothes in his size laid out to soothe his chapped skin. He joined the banquet, squealing with delight at the pudding that came after the main course, too small to wonder much at his luck.
The Princess tucked the Prince into bed under his silken sheets, and read him a story out of a beautifully illuminated book.
And then she went to the astrologer's quarters. He was collecting his effects into a traveling trunk.
"Where will you go?" she asked him.
"I think perhaps it's time I saw some of those distant islands my ships have been traveling to," he said, patting her on the shoulder.
"Will you ever come home?"
"Maybe. On the high seas it is a bit of a gamble. But I am growing old, and we are not rich enough that I can be saved for a much longer life anyway," he replied, smiling gently. "So you'd best read all my books, and write a few, to be sure everything is well with the Kingdom of Plenty."
"I will," said the court astrologer.