PRINCESS STEEL (5)
By:
August 26, 2025
W.E.B. Du Bois wrote “The Princess Steel” between 1908 and 1910; it remained unpublished during his lifetime. As usual, the author was exploring philosophical and sociological views — in this case, about the pitfalls of industrial capitalism and the possibilities of revolution. The story was originally titled “The Megascope,” referring to a device allowing one to see through time and space. (John Jennings has named his comics imprint Megascope in honor of Du Bois’ novum.) HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize the story for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.
The maiden had at the first onset stood like a stone, then slowly she wakened, at first bewildered, then half confused at the quick wondrous dancing of the men. Then she became grave, excited, mad: her voice came forth in little sharp cries and faint sweet moans. Pain and sorrow wrote themselves on her face. She threw her hands, wildly unloosed and tossed her silvery hair until it went whirling like a great white misty web above her dark blue glowing face and golden eyes and to her face struggled the memory of other worlds and other battles; so from the face of a maiden it became a woman’s face and with a woman’s great bereaved cry she threw herself on her fallen lover, ripped off the helmet and tore aside the breastplate staunching the blood with her silvery hair, and lay panting and murmuring above him. Then the hair seemed to her coarse. She rose, hesitated, and stood there all silver until she spied a thin round stone lying in the dust. With deft strength she clove a hole in its middle and gripping it lightly in her fingers wheeled and whirled it and so spun a strand of her hair to a long thin beautiful thread and wove it carefully round and round the bloody body in cunning fashion until it lay there hearsed in burning breathing silver.
“The Lord of the Golden Way awoke, gasped and painfully dragged himself to his knees. He saw the wonderful covering and he knew that the treasure he wanted was the spun hair of the maiden. The sweat of greed oozed on his forehead. He crept forward, stealthily, silently. The maiden never deigned to notice him but crouched there all clothed and gowned in her burning curls. She watched the wan cold face of her lover’s, whispering to him and making mystic passes above his bier. Stealthily, silently the Lord crept on till he had seized lightly a single strand of her hair; then he slipped quickly and more quickly down the hill, toiling and trailing after him.
“Then came long days of work and sweat; he rigged a great wheel and spun the silken steel — clumsily and coarsely but finely enough to joy him to ecstasy. Upward he crept stealthily and seized another strand and spun it; and another and another; and then bold and ever bolder he seized a great curl and setting up a mighty loom wove to a great tough solid mat that rang and pealed till the Lord screamed with greed and joy. And yet ever the maid sat, silent, save for the mystic whispering; motionless, save for the mystic waving of her hand above the bier, there on hills over the Pit of the imprisonment to which her spun hair held her as it stretched across the world.
“I bent forward and watched her — There it was I first saw her,” said the Voice — “that bluish radiance above the western hills, wondrous beautiful, all crowned in silvery cloud, and I caught the low full voice in some language of all Languages: ‘I watch and ward / Above my sleeping lord / Till he awake / And then woe World! When I shake / My curls a-loose.’”
I started, for I too heard those mystic words and the answering voice of the old man, from afar: “What then? O Princess?”
She laughed. Her laugh was like the beating of the billows on the bar, angry with softness. One hand lashed up and with a quick sharp grasp she pulled a single curl. I watched where the curl wended its way past Chicago, past Omaha, past the great plain and the sad mountain and the rough roaring of lands toward the sea and San Francisco; and suddenly the world whirled in San Francisco. The fire burst, the earth trembled, buildings fell, great cries rang round the world. Only the Steel stood silent and grim in the treacherous innocence — I gasped in fear — again lashed that blue and fatal hand: another curl trembled and far down in Valparaiso the earth sighed and sank and staggered, and the steel stood cold and grim; again, and the Isles of the Sea quivered, a great ship shivered and dove to its death. Again — but I cried in horror, “Hold — hold O Princess —”
The hand sank and low the voice came sad and full of awful sweetness. “I watch and ward / Above my sleeping lord / Till he awake / And then woe World! When I shake / My curls a-loose.” The voice ceased but on the plain where the Lord of the Golden Way held the mill and guarded the things that rolled thither on the silver threads, I heard the crash and roar of battle as the four robber knights bore down upon him.
“How will it end?” I cried to the Voice at my side. “I know not, nor shall we know in many hundred years. For a day to the Over-World is a thousand years to us and even the megascope is slave to Time.” I dropped the ends of the machine and sat back astonished. My wife sat looking at me curiously.
“Well, what on Earth have you been doing?” she said.
“Didn’t you see — didn’t you hear?” I cried.
“I’ve been watching Broadway.”
“But the cliffs? Saw you not the cliffs and castles and the Lord?” — I hesitated.
“I saw only the great towering cliff-like buildings,” she said.
“Did you not hear the roar of the waters?”
“I heard the roar of passing wagons and the voices of men.”
“And the space above the hills? Did you not see that?”
“I saw clouds and the rising moon — for really Robert, it’s late and we must go —”
“It was not tuned delicately enough for her,” said the old man — “Next time —”
But we greeted him hurriedly and passed out.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.