The moon reminded Lorelei of tears.
Soft as silver, they bubbled up in the wake of the crescent moon. The lady-in-waiting who found her pillow soaked felt her forehead and called for a doctor. Lorelei, as perplexed as she, lay in bed while the bespectacled man lifted her eyelids, prodded the fleshy underside of her arms, and peered down her throat as though into a cavern. He gave Lorelei a viscous green syrup to take every three hours, and billed the castle.
Her royal parents watched from the doorway, worry in their eyes.
Soon, a steady flow of tears bathed Lorelei's cheeks. They slid down her cheeks in curling rivers, unquenched by the steady flow of people who called with offered cures. Servants stripped her bed of the salty sheets from tears she'd shed in sleep. The king and queen called in philosophers and astronomers, foreign wizards and shamans who spilled bones across the carpet and danced through smoke. Jesters came with silly stories and tumbling acts so ridiculous, the ladies-in-waiting held their stomachs and grasped at chairs to keep from fainting of laughter. But Lorelei's tears continued. She listened to the troubadours tune their instruments and hazard the first notes of sad songs about her.
"Ahhh," said someone at last, an old woman with filmy blue eyes. Her forehead relaxed with compassion. "I understand. You know that he loves you, don't you? And you feel it."
"Who loves me?" she whispered into the midnight shadows. Her lids burned with salt.
The woman smiled gently, unwrapping a handkerchief from her pocket. "The moon does. He's pining for you, isn't he? No, these tears won't stop, I think, until you climb to his kingdom."
A tear rolled off of Lorelei's nose, but she took the handkerchief and turned her face to the window. Moonlight gleamed silvery along her tear-stained cheeks.
"The question is," the old wise woman said as she rose, "how to get there?"
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