Fat Girl in a Strange Land by Bart R. Leib, Kay T. Holt Page A

world that had always been right there. She sighed against the edge of the window as the red sun set behind purple mountains…certain the world was showing off just to impress her.
    Sunset gave way to twilight then darkness, and still Aberfa did not come. Tanny worried. The routine never varied. Why hadn’t she come? Tanny lit the candles alone that night. Last of all, she lit the solid chunk of beeswax on the table. The violet fairy cake was still there, un-eaten. Aberfa’s words came back to her: will you wait til I am gone to eat it?
    Oh ! Aberfa wasn’t coming back. Was she dead? Imprisoned? Perhaps weary of the unwanted Princess? She wasn’t coming back.
    Tanny picked off the sugared violets and popped them in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. She licked along the icing swirls, thinking. When only naked cake remained, Tanny concluded that she was in serious trouble. Aberfa brought food and water every day. Aberfa was not going to do that anymore. A few provisions remained, but not enough. There was still a jug of water. Tanny knew that was the most important thing. She could probably live cannibalistically off her own stores of fat, but for how long?
    Three choices: stay here and die slowly; wait for rescue (an unlikely possibility); or leave the tower. And go where? Home to Caertraeth? They didn’t want her. But where else was there? Tanny groaned out of her chair and crossed the chamber to the eastern window. Moonlight on already pale skin made her ample flesh glow silver. It was too dark to attempt an escape tonight, but not too dark to plan a way to do it.
    Two days after Aberfa’s barrier melted, Tanny sat on the western window ledge (after complicated manoeuvring). With her stubby legs dangling vertiginously into empty space, she examined the sheer sides of her tower wall. Reddened fingers moved to the knotted fabrics at her round waist. Tanny had never been so aware of her own size before. She had never needed to be. Now, with gravity daring her to test its legal rights, she was keenly aware of just how large and heavy she really was.
    “I can’t stay like this,” Tanny decided, eyes closed to the wide open world. “No one is coming for me. I will not survive without food or water. I must find another way to live. This is an inescapable truth.”
    She turned, eyes still closed and belly flopped across the ledge. Fingers dug stubbornly into the stone window frame, clinging to the only world she had known. She shifted one hand to clutch at the knotted collection of former tapestries, ex-dresses and beautifully embroidered blankets-as-were. One end of the twined textiles was secured to her sturdy bed, the other about her stout waist. She moved her remaining hand to the rope, thrust her feet against the rough stone tower façade and, after a bit of wriggling to un-wedge, Tanny pushed herself out the window.
    “Bless you, hefty iron bed,” Tanny called out to the window above. “This is working,” she crowed. “So far.” So far … It’s so far. One question had occupied Tanny’s mind for the last two days. It returned to plague her now: will the rope be long enough? No. Tanny was half-way down the tower, panting and sweating with effort and fear, when she ran out of tapestry-dress-blanket twine.
    “Stuck again,” she muttered to herself. “Trapped on the tower rather than in the tower, but is this really an improvement?”
    “Why not fly down?” chirped a voice from her shoulder. If Tanny could have jumped, she would have. As it was, she could only think of one response.
    “No wings,” she puffed.
    “Hmm,” the voice appraised critically from behind. “Wings wouldn’t work for you.”
    “They’d have to be made of strong stuff,” agreed Tanny, swaying slightly at the end of her rope.
    “Didn’t that witch teach you any tricks?” snapped the impatient voice in her ear. Then the voice became a face and body. At first, he/she/it looked like another wayward orange flower, but with wings