The Rainbow Knight
The full text of my fairy tale adventure.
This is the full text of The Rainbow Knight, which I’m trying to fund for illustration and printing. Help fund it here and get exclusive rewards. Kickstarter is all or nothing. If we don’t reach 100%, this book won’t get made. Any help is much appreciated!
On the tallest of mountains, near the top, nestled tight,
Stood a tower with a prism, made for carving sunlight.
When the sun rose each dawn, popping up in the East,
Its beams would rush in to be sliced, then released.
They went out as a rainbow and painted the world,
An old promise that swirled, twirled, and unfurled.
Red, orange, and yellow. Green followed by blue.
Indigo, then violet, side by side, all on cue.
The colors flew quick and soaked all of creation.
Every jot, crack, and nook received rich restoration.
By the door of the tower stood a knight, strong and true.
He kept safe the world’s colors, every shade, tint, and hue.
Day by day he stood guard, his sword at his side.
No one ever got in, though many had tried.
From small ants, to brown bears, old dragons long of claw,
To pirates, thieves, dark elven kings - he made them all withdraw.
Man and beast, large and small, the prism did allure,
And the knight, with polished pride, kept everything secure.
But one night came a storm, and it threw quite a fit.
Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed,
and the tower was hit!
Daylight rushed in, but the colors held back.
The rainbow slept in. All remained white and black.
“What to do?!” yelled the knight as he started to panic.
“Disaster! Debacle! I must do something drastic.”
The knight broke the glass made for such an occasion,
And pulled out the scrolls for his own occupation.
To “Emergencies Only” he flipped - the last chapter.
Each line he read twice before accepting the answer.
To fix magic prisms, you need more than tape or glue.
To mend broken rainbows, you need rainbow residue.
“Seven items of color,” he said in disbelief.
The mission would be hard, and his hunt would not be brief.
For the first time in ages, the knight left his post.
He came down from the mountains and hiked toward the coast.
He dug deep in the sand, and dove under the waves.
He trekked up steep cliffsides, and searched rough, salted caves.
At last he found a shell with a warm violet glow,
The lost home of a sea snail, abandoned long ago.
He basked long in his triumph - the first item collected,
For the hunt was about to get harder, he suspected.
The Chief Mistress of Witches had a colored mushroom,
But she lived in a fortress - damp and dark, deep with doom.
The knight snuck past her minions - ogres, goblins, and imps.
And in the middle of night, he caught a brief, distant glimpse.
The bleached fire of torchlight revealed rich indigo,
Held high by the witch, her eyes promising woe.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the witch spoke with a rasp.
“But not to hurt or to kill, or to squeeze in my grasp.”
“While I spend my days hexing and cursing and hating,
My hobby, my passion, is artisanal jam-making.”
She spoke of her toil, of her boiling, bubbling trouble:
With no color to look at, her jars were a muddle.
Grape, cherry, blackberry, mango, peach, and red plum,
All her jams looked the same, and she felt quite dumb.
“Fix the rainbow,” she croaked, and gave the knight the mushroom,
And then shooed him away, so the quest could resume.
Next, the High Elven gardens the knight sought and then found.
Not even elder magic had kept the colors around.
But in the tall, crystal domes lived a butterfly of blue,
The Emperor of Kaleidoscopes, noble and true.
The knight, on one knee before the butterfly lord,
Spoke of his plight, and how a rainbow is restored.
The butterfly’s voice filled the air and carried long
For though its body was small, its spirit was strong.
“You ask more than you know,” said the king to the knight.
“To give up our color is to give up our flight.”
“And to cut off the skies will untether my soul,
But worry not, sir knight, I will aid in your goal.”
Before any could argue, before any could object,
He flew to the knight and became a mere insect.
Then saddened by sacrifice, yet moved by the measure,
The Court of the Butterflies offered one more treasure.
Ten thousands of wings flapped in one perfect accord,
And sent forth a gale, a memorial that roared.
Toward his next destination, the wind sped the knight on,
And ushered the fallen king ‘til the next break of dawn.
So the knight met the last of the dread pirate captains,
On whose shoulder sat a parrot, with green feathered pinions.
The bird was a prince, proud and prim, a proper pill.
But the bribe of a cracker bought the knight a green quill.
He then landed on the shores of the great Lands of Laughter,
Where the Queen had possession of the last yellow sunflower.
She had heard of his task, to bring back pigmentation,
And was struck by the sacrifice of the butterfly nation.
The golden bloom she gave freely, and provided more aid,
To usher the knight closer to the end of his crusade.
To the South the knight rode, to the groves of Living Trees,
Who stood tall and guarded much with their long, steady leaves.
The old forest offered scents that it puffed out with pride,
Of apples, of citrus, smells that drifted far and wide.
But just one tree had color, a bounty bright and beaming,
Of oranges that were orange, which seemed quite befitting.
He raced back to the tower, through many a sunrise.
He raced to the top, and laid out each colored prize.
He put them in order, started counting them quick,
But when the sum came to six, his heart sank like a brick.
He then saw what was missing, and smacked his own head.
In his haste, in his rush, he forgot about red!
The knight fell in a chair, exhausted, defeated.
Where would he find the last thing that he needed?
A rare ruby, stone of blood, from the heart of the earth,
Was vital to achieve a multi-colored rebirth.
The old Dwarven mines? They were half a world away.
The City in the Clouds? There the Dragons held sway.
The knight looked in the mirror as he thought and he thought.
He looked down at his chest - and saw the red that he sought!
Jumping up, moving fast, all the items he blended.
With a flash, with a bang, the broken had been mended.
The rainbow rushed out in chromatic stampede,
And it painted the white of the world with great speed.
Red, orange, and yellow. Green followed by blue.
Indigo, then violet, side by side, all on cue.
The colors brimmed with life, for it is no minor thing,
To be grafted with the body of a butterfly king.