And now she was living in the clock tower of Faraday Castle.

It wasn’t so bad, she decided. She had books, and pretty furnishings. She had a window which overlooked the castle grounds and the surrounding forest. But the most interesting thing about the clock tower was the clock. In place of numbers, there were strange symbols, and the hands moved at uneven speeds. Arianna liked to sit on her window seat and watch it tick away. She also liked to mark her own time on the clock.

Every day, before she was brought her breakfast of wiggly eggs, fattened ham, and slightly crunchy toast, Princess Arianna leaned as far as possible out of her window and carved a notch in the side of the clock frame. She was very proud of the clock on her clock tower, though she could never decide why that was.

She regarded her collection of notches thoughtfully. Today would be her 100th day anniversary of captivity. One more notch, and she would have been here for one hundred days, with no rescue in sight.

Like every other day, but with a certain air of ceremony, she leaned out of the window. She imagined her fingers stretching out like taffy, and her small pen knife brushed the side of the clock. When she had carved the one hundredth notch, the small door across the room flung open. Mrs. Stockard entered and placed the breakfast tray on the table with a generous amount of wiggling from the eggs.

“Your Highness!” cried the plump maid.

Princess Arianna leaped down immediately, hoping she wasn’t too late to avoid Mrs. Stockard's seeing her collection of notches. She was, however, too late to avoid Mrs. Stockard's fluttering and cluttering about heights and royal necks.

“Why, my cousin Eric, he was stable master to the Duke of Yore. His Grace took a jump too high for him and broke his neck, poor soul.”

“What happened to the horse?” asked Arianna. She sprinkled expensive cinnamon on her toast.

“Horses?” spluttered the maid as she bustled around the room, leaving a tidy mess in her wake. “What have horses to do with his bad jump?”

“But you said - Mrs. Stockard?”

“Yes, dear?”

“What’s this?” The princess gracefully pointed out the letter nestled between the milk jug and the vase holding a white rose.

“That’s for you, dear. Now my niece Laura, she was seamstress for the Countess of Clytch and...”

Princess Arianna frowned. This was not according to plan, she never received any letters. Nobody knew where she was. Unless...

Composing herself, Arianna slid the letter out from its nest and unfolded it. With every subsequent line her face paled significantly.

“It’s from him.” She washed down her cinnamon toast with the iced milk. “I'm to make myself presentable and be in the Phoenix Hall in a quarter of an hour.” Subconciously, she glanced at the recently notched clock outside her window.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Stockard, who was in the midst of retelling the death of the Queen of Shelton by a rabid moose. “You haven’t even chosen an outfit yet!”

With a snap, Mrs. Stockard bustled on a whole new level, stuffing Arianna into itchy lace underthings and untangling wretched curly knots, and had the princess out of her tower door in twelve minutes flat.