Once upon a time, there lived a young woman. She kept herself hidden in a small cottage upon a hill above a tiny village. Day after day, she stayed within these chambers, unwilling to venture beyond the front door because she was afraid. She was afraid of the open spaces; she was afraid of the woods surrounding the small hill, which was necessary to travel through before she could get to the small town below. She was afraid to make any pilgrimage from the tiny world she had created.

This stunted space was all she knew. Her world was held within the walls of the cottage and the small garden to the back of the house. She swept, she cleaned, she cooked and she tended to her garden every day. Day after day, it was the same.

One day a knock came upon the door! She opened it to find an eagle perched upon the porch railing.

"Good morning, Miss," declared the eagle. "What a fine day it is to soar! Might I tempt you to fly with me?"

The young woman drew a deep breath to quiet her suspicions. "Oh I see you are a magnificent bird," she cried, "and certainly anyone might feel safe with you. You seem capable of great flights. But I cannot go. I cannot leave these confines to face the terrors I would surely encounter with you!"

"Nonsense!" cried the bird. "I see that you are a fair maid. One who makes my heart ache with your beauty of face and spirit. I could love you wholly and entirely, if only you would allow. I know my journeys will be made better with you beside me."

The eagle smiled broadly and she felt her tethered soul lighten. Never before had she seen such charm, such want and need in such deeply searching eyes! She felt her heart swell at the beauty of his words, at the adventure and the freedom he offered to her.

The eagle vaulted from the railing to stand squarely in front of her. With a quick wink, he said "I am enchanted with your beauty and I can tell you are a sensitive soul. Do you not know that eagles such as I are endangered and must be well cared for?"

The young woman was softened and felt her heart open to his sensitive and needy soul. "You should come inside," she said, "and I shall brew us some tea while we discuss this journey of yours."

"No," cried the eagle. "I cannot come into your abode for cages frighten me. Instead, write me your thoughts and leave your notes in the top of that apple tree in your garden. I shall pick them up and leave my replies in the same fashion."

With a nod, the young woman agreed immediately. The eagle hopped down each step of her porch, walking a way down the path towards the woods. He stopped, turned his head to look back at her and with little effort opened his wings and soared into the heavens, leaving her to ponder what she would write to him that evening.

She raced through her evening meal and her tasks to keep the cottage tidy. It was dark when she finally sat at the table in the glow of the hearth-fire and candlelight. She began to write. Paragraphs and pages poured out of her. Poetry she did not know was in her heart flowed out upon the quickly-filled pages of her letter.

She heard the rooster crow before dawn and, sprinting from the table, she raced into the morning twilight to leave her note of love up within the branches of the apple tree. As time progressed, each morning became the same wait for the dawn. Sometimes it would come rosy-colored, sometimes strawberry blonde. Sometimes it rained with great clashes of lightning and thunder. But it was always the same dawn to her and the same eagerness to converse with the eagle.

She never saw his arrivals or departures. Always her notes were gone when she looked within the branches. Most times the eagle left notes of his own. His messages took her breath away with their sensitivity and passions, imploring or gently coaxing her to join him in his flights of fancy. He crafted his words to the shape of her heart and slowly but surely, she became obsessed with the thought of him until she could do nothing but while away the hours thinking of and writing to him.

Finally came an evening when, feeling bold enough, the young woman wrote to ask the eagle to visit with her again on the porch. The eagle responded in his own note saying he would do this for her, but only with certain conditions. "I cannot bear," he said, "to see you and not be able to fly away with you. For now, offer me this much: I will meet you on your porch, but you must remain cloistered within your cottage. It is only your voice I need for now."

The young woman was touched by his honesty and agreed to meet him on his terms. That evening she stood at her window and called gently to him, "Eagle, please come to me now. Eagle, are you near?"

"I am here, fair maiden. I am just below your window on the porch where we met."

"Are you a prince?" she asked him.

"I am what you make me to be, dear one," he replied. "I am your hero and fears, all rolled into one. Are you frightened?"

"Oh, dear Eagle, I am very much so! But I feel alive as I never have before," she breathed. "I have never yearned so much to be free, as you are!"

"Then come with me," he whispered.

"I cannot yet, dear bird. I am still afraid," she responded.

"As you wish," the eagle said. "Just sit here now and abide with me a while. We shall discover your strengths by taking down your walls. Do you prefer they should come down in one big crash or brick by brick?"

"You make my heart pound with your talk of such things," she cried. "I feel myself yearning to fly with you above the clouds, high over the town to whatever lies beyond! I believe I could be safe with a magnificent eagle-prince such as you appear to be."

The eagle only smiled into the dusk.

Many nights followed with such talk between them. At each dusk she would call to the eagle and he would soar in on the purple evening skies and they would share their voiced anticipation of each other. One night when she felt buoyed up in her eagerness to be closer to him, she asked "What would you do if one morning I sat in the top of the apple tree to wait for you?"

"My precious maiden," he declared. "I should pluck you from the branches and carry you off to a great beyond such as you could never imagine. I should be the happiest eagle in the skies if you were to offer yourself to me in that manner. My endangered life would be complete."

And the young woman only smiled into the dusk.