Chapter Text
Once upon a time, a princess dropped a golden ball into a well and found a frog. Once upon a time, the princess kissed the frog and found a prince, and they lived happily ever after.
This story is a little different.
-
Lin Shu is the only daughter of a princess and a general, and as children of people who are in love often do, she grows up loved.
She also grows up beautiful and willful, but it is only her beauty that people remembered. Remembered and talked about, so much so that as soon as she turns of age, suitors were already arriving from all over the land, seeking her hand.
The only response these suitors ever receive from Lin Shu is delighted laughter. “If you can best me in a fight,” she would grin, her eyes as hard as marble and as cold, “then you may have my hand in marriage.”
They never win, of course. It is easy to be underestimated by those who are only after you for your beauty, and they all fall so prettily.
Still, the suitors did not stop coming, and neither did they ever learn. This persisted for a year and a day, until one day an imperial decree came down from her uncle the emperor, carried by a royal eunuch.
Princess Lin Shu, the eunuch says, and Lin Shu saw that he was careful not to look her in the eye. His Majesty has ordered you to choose a husband by a year’s time.
“If I don’t?” Lin Shu had asked, defiant in the way only someone who has never been told no can be.
If you do not, her uncle had said, and he did not smile like the uncle she remembers, the uncle who had flown kites with her and given her rides on his back, who had fed her sweets from his own plate and told her she could have anything in the world should she wished, then I will choose a husband for you.
-
It is not in Lin Shu’s nature to bend when pushed, even by a king whose will is as inexorable and mercurial as the wind. She sets forth a decree of her own.
She will marry, but she requires three gifts.
The rose that blooms in the snowfields of Meiling. The golden leaf from the nan tree that grows at the top of Langya mountain. A pearl from the Eastern Sea as large as a pigeon’s egg. Only the one who can bring her all three is worthy of her hand in marriage.
It is impossible, the suitors say, dismayed. The ice in Meiling has not melted for a thousand years, and nothing is capable of growing there. The top of Langya mountain can only be reached by climbing a sheer cliff, and none has dared to attempt it. And there has not been a pearl of any size, much less one as large as a pigeon’s egg, seen in the Eastern Sea for generations. It would mean certain death for anyone who attempted one of these tasks.
Ah well, Lin Shu says. Her smile is not exactly kind.
And the suitors all turn away, burning in their resentment but powerless, in the end. All, that is, except one.
-
His name is Xiao Jingyan, but to everyone else he is the Forgotten Prince. The seventh son, forgotten by both birth and circumstance, he has lived in a quiet corner of the palace all his life. Some might say there is a curse laid upon him, condemned to slowly fade from memory, if they had not also forgotten about him. Even the emperor seems to have no memory of his youngest son.
But there is one thing Jingyan himself has never forgotten, and it is Lin Shu.
-
But she doesn’t remember him. Not yet.
-
The first gift of a rose, perfect and still with frost kissing its petals, arrives in the capital.
Lin Shu touches her finger to one ivory petal. The rose is faintly cold. The petal yields slightly under the pressure.
The maids crowd around the flower in awe. One brings a porcelain vase. No one has seen anything like it. Even Lin Shu has to begrudgingly admit, it is singularly lovely.
Two weeks later the petals are just as fresh and supple as the day it arrived. It is still cool to the touch, even in the heat of summer.
“It’s just the first one,” her father says. Lin Shu doesn’t know who he’s reassuring, her or himself.
-
The second gift arrives two months later. The leaf casts sharp shards of gold across the ceiling beams, even in the dim light of the hall.
“This suitor of yours, he’s getting close,” Xia Dong is back in the capital on one of her rare visits. She twirls the leaf idly between her fingers. Lin Shu envies her, envies the difference in their status.
“He could yet fail,” Lin Shu says.
“He could,” Xia Dong agrees, “but he’s gotten further than anyone else. Have you thought about what you’ll say to him, should he ever succeeds in bringing back all three?”
Lin Shu is silent. Resentment and curiosity wars within her, both in equal measure. She hates him, this unknown faceless prince, for defying odds she had thought impossible, for having the luxury of choosing, even if that choice is her. But she’s curious too, about this man who is willing to risk everything for someone he’s never met, a minor princess not even highly-ranked.
“I haven’t thought about it,” she says finally.
Xia Dong looks at her. “Then let’s hope he fails.”
-
The third and final gift comes with an unexpected companion.
The pearl itself is beautiful in its flawlessness. It is the largest pearl Lin Shu has ever seen, the largest that anyone has ever seen.
But there is also the frog.
The maid beside her had shrieked when Lin Shu opened the box and found him, clutched around the pearl like a particularly ugly protector. Having spent too many childhood afternoons bringing home various insects to Princess Jinyang’s exasperation to be so similarly undignified, Lin Shu plucks up the small slimy body and stares at it. In defiance of the natural tendency of all living creatures, it did not struggle.
“Why would the prince send this?” The maid wonders, from some distance away.
“I suppose it might have gotten into the box by itself, my lady,” The courier says. The tone of his voice suggests he wasn’t much convinced.
“I suppose it would be rude to simply get rid of it,” Lin Shu says, dubiously. She squints at the frog consideringly.
The frog stares back. Balefully, she thinks, sullen.
“I’ll go find a pot,” the maid says.
-
The pearl makes three, as much as Lin Shu wishes it did not.
The entire household is up in a fervor, preparing for the arrival of the prince. Her mother’s eyes are sad when they look at her, and the lines of her mouth has never looked as hard, but she directs the staff in their preparations as if nothing is amiss. Her father sits with his jaw set and his fist tightly clenched, but in the end there is nothing else to be done. A royal decree is a royal decree, he says, and you have set your own price.
Lin Shu begins to sleep with a dagger under her pillow.
But Xiao Jingyan doesn’t come, and doesn’t come, and doesn’t come.
Lin Shu stops sleeping with the dagger. Perhaps, she says to her frog sitting in his pot, he never will. The way back is treacherous. It would only take one accident, one moment of carelessness.
Her frog croaks at her, softly.
-
It’s the night of the new moon. The weak watery light is not enough to penetrate the heavy clouds that have descended over the capital. Even with candles, the room is dim with shadows.
Lin Shu had just blown out the last candle when she feels a gentle breeze swirl around the room. She pauses for a moment, confused. She was sure the maids had tied the blinds securely before retiring for the night.
There came a touch on her shoulder. Whirling around, she strikes out blindly, fumbling toward her bed for a dagger that wasn’t there.
“Please,” comes the voice in the dark, “don’t be afraid.”
“I am not afraid,” she replies, indignant, because she was not.
“But I will not stand for intruders in my private chambers. If you do not wish to have your throat slit, you had better give me a good reason.”
She is bluffing. She does not have a blade, and she wishes bitterly that she had not put away the dagger in her arrogance, but she can hear blood rushing in her ears and she will claw his throat out with her nails if she must.
“Please,” said the voice again, and it sounded sad, and kind. “My name is Xiao Jingyan, and I mean you no harm.”
The name stirs something in her memories. They’re sluggish, and it takes a great deal more effort than it should to think. She frowns.
“I’m the seventh son of the emperor, and you’ve met me before, although you wouldn’t remember.”
Has she? She doesn’t know. But there is something else.
“You’re the one who’s been sending the gifts,” she says. “What are you doing here? Do you expect you can just barge in as you like to my personal rooms, just because you are the only one who has completed the tasks?”
“No, princess,” Xiao Jingyan says. “I would never presume so. But I am under a curse, doomed to only appear under the cover of darkness, when no light nor human eyes can touch me.”
“But why are you here in my rooms?” She wants to know.
“That I do not know,” Xiao Jingyan replies.
“Assuming I believe you, and that you are indeed cursed,” Lin Shu says, “you may not stay here. You can go and be cursed elsewhere.”
There was a faint rustling, and soft footsteps. Then-
“Hm.” She hears Xiao Jingyan say.
That did not sound very good. “Hm, what?” she asks.
“I appear to be unable to leave.”
Her heart sinks. Perhaps in some ways she even expected this.
“Well, it seems that we are stuck together, at least for the moment. You may stay there,” Lin Shu says, as imperiously as she knew how, gesturing unnecessarily towards him in the dark, “but if you stray from that corner I swear I will stab you straight through the heart.”
“I would not dare,” Xiao Jingyan’s voice, when it came again in the dark, was wry. “I have long admired the princess’s prowess with a sword, and am not so eager to put my own skills to the test.”
There is humor in his voice, and it is both surprising and familiar all at once. Lin Shu flushes, pleased despite herself. None of her suitors had ever complimented her on her skills, before. Not while they were singing her praises, and certainly not after she has left them bleeding in the dirt.
A rustle, as Xiao Jingyan settles himself on the floor. Lin Shu stares out blindly into the solid blackness of the room, listening for the sound of any movement. Aside from the even ins and outs of his breath, there were none.
Lin Shu settles warily back down. The silence isn’t oppressive, exactly, but it is not comfortable.
“You say you’re a prince,” she remembers suddenly, “then why have I never seen you before?”
“You have, once.” Jingyan murmurs.
-
Jingyan is seven years old.
Jingyan is seven years old and he has never known a life outside of the palace, although he will one day be called to war, and be victorious, and eventually, be forgotten. But Jingyan at seven years old does not yet know any of this. All he knows is the safety of a mother’s loving regard, the comfort of their little home within the palace, the surety of knowing the world beyond these walls is waiting for him, one day.
He also knows that he loves oranges, and that these ones are precious. Gifts from the emperor do not come frequently, especially not fresh oranges from the South, with slices full of juice that burst across your tongue, sweet and tangy and tasting like a hot summer day, the way the sun warms you right through as it gently blisters your skin.
Jingyan is peeling an orange, carefully saving aside the peels for his mother to use in her desserts later, when he hears the voice.
“What are you saving those for?”
He looks up.
The girl in front of him is small and clutching a wooden toy sword. The tip of it drags carelessly in the dirt.
“I’m Jingyan, who are you?” Jingyan asks instead of answering. His mother taught him to be polite, and also not to speak to strangers, although he’s not sure another child counts.
“I’m Lin Shu,” She rolls her eyes, as if that should be obvious.
“They’re for my mother,” His question answered, Jingyan explains. “She makes the best pastries in the world.” He adds, because that’s important.
“My mother said I can’t have any, because I didn’t leave any for Father last time.” The interest in her eyes is unmistakable.
“You can have the last one,” Jingyan offers, because he was brought up to be generous, even though reluctance makes the words sticky in his mouth.
Lin Shu takes the proffered fruit in her hand and immediately crams half of it in her mouth.
Jingyan watches her eat the orange.
“Thank you,” she says after a moment, as if just now remembering her manners.
“Mother says these are grown in the south.” Suddenly eager to share his newly gained knowledge, Jingyan tells her. “There’s a valley with rows of trees as far as you can see, and flowers so sweet that you can smell from thousands of leagues away, and you can bend and pick up fruits straight from the ground, rather than wait for it from the ships.”
She finishes the other half, then asks, “Will you tell Mother I ate yours, even though I wasn’t supposed to?”
“Of course not,” Jingyan says, offended. He starts to gather the remaining peels in his sleeve.
“I like you, Jingyan-gege,” Lin Shu decides. “When I grow up, let’s go to that valley together.”
-
His voice is low and soothing. The coiled muscles in her back relax, just a little.
“I don’t remember it,” Lin Shu says.
“No,” Jingyan says, and for some reason Lin Shu wants to believe him. Does believe him. “You wouldn’t.”
-
“How did you come to be this way?” she asks.
That is a tale for another night, he says.
How long has it been, then? She wants to know. He doesn’t have an answer.
“Is there anything you miss?” she tries instead.
His corner of the room is silent for a moment.
“I miss my mother,” Jingyan says finally, and for the first time he sounds tired.
Lin Shu surprises herself with the sudden desire to comfort him. She says nothing. She who grew up with two loving parents and who had never known a life apart from them, what can she offer?
-
She doesn’t remember her eyes slipping closed, doesn’t remember being carried carefully, or the gentle touch that trailed reverently across her brow.
She’s awoken the next morning by the sun shining through the blinds. She’s back in her own bed, the covers tucked securely around her.
In the glaring light of day there’s no dwelling shadows in the room, nor any sign of her visitor.
-
Lin Shu is ready for him, when clouds once again roll over the moon three days later.
She doesn’t quite know why she blows out the last candle. Maybe it was the thought of Xiao Jingyan appearing after she’s been asleep, should the candle burns itself out, or maybe it was that he wasn’t such terrible company after all, but there’s no undoing a decision that’s been made.
The breeze this time feels warmer than before. It curls around the nape of her neck and toys with her hair. It carries with it a hint of flowers and the unmistakable presence of another person in the room. Lin Shu touches the place in her side, where she can feel the blade she has retrieved from the armory through the layers of silk.
“Princess Lin Shu.” His voice is just as rich as she remembered.
-
“Tell me about your travels,” she asks one night. The extra heavy blinds she has asked the servants to put up are tightly closed, and there’s no hint of the waning moonlight in the pitch-black room.
She can hear his breathing from across the room. The sound of it is slow, careful. Intimate.
“What would you like to know?” Jingyan asks.
Everything, she does not say. I have never been outside the palace. Sometimes I dream of the sound of waves and I don’t know why. Sometimes I want to leave this place so much it feels like I would drown if I do not.
“Tell me about the snow,” she says instead.
So he does.
-
The snowfields of Meiling is vast. It stretches endlessly before your eyes. That is, before the whiteness of it blinds you.
To find the ivory rose that blooms once in a thousand lifetimes in this wilderness, they say, is madness.
Xiao Jingyan knows he’s not mad, but the days he’s spent in this bleak whiteness are almost enough to convince him otherwise.
It is on the seventh day that he comes across the rose.
To say come across, it would be more accurate to say that he stumbled almost on top of it, having fallen down in exhaustion, snow-blind and hand nearly frostbitten.
The rose glistens in front of his outstretched fingers, tauntingly.
With the last of his strength, Jingyan reaches out and plucks off the bloom, heedless of the thorns that bury themselves in his fingers. He cradles the rose in his hand. It bleeds, sluggishly. The trickle of blood is the only warmth he’s felt in days.
The drops blossom against the snow, like petals.
-
I wish I could have seen it, she says.
-
The golden nan tree grows at the very summit of Langya Mountain, atop a sheer cliff. It is so high that not even swallows dare to fly overhead. To climb the face of the cliff is to risk a drop of a thousand leagues. From the foot of the mountain, you can just catch a glimpse of the faint reflection of golden leaves in the sunlight, if you’re lucky.
It would take more luck than all that can be found in the world to survive the ascent to the top.
It was the work of two weeks to climb the better part of the mountain. Jingyan has not seen a bird flying past since three days ago. All around him are only clouds carried by the wind. They twine around his throat and drag his breath out of him, against his will.
He’s close now, so close if he looks up he can just see the outermost branches of the tree.
Jingyan keeps his eyes firmly on the rock. To waver from his position pressed up precariously against the narrow ledge would mean death.
Blood is making his fingers slippery, loosening his grip. In his wake he scatters stamps of red that gleam wetly in the sun.
It was in this final moment, with the last heave of his arms that he has left, that Jingyan reaches the summit. The leaves shiver above him, cast dappled shadows of gold across his brow.
It takes an eternity to raise his hand, but he reaches up and gently breaks off a single shining leaf.
The edge of the leaf is too sharp. Jingyan barely feels the sting in his torn fingers.
-
Her maids stop attending to her after dinner, at her request. She stops keeping candles in her room altogether. If anyone has noticed the sudden change in her routine, no one voices it aloud.
“Do you mind that you will never meet anyone else?” She asks.
Jingyan works the last pin out of her hair. The mass of her hair falls down her back, over her shoulders. His hands are gentle as he picks up the comb and runs it through, over and over.
“Not when I’m with you,” he answers. She wishes she feels as calm as he sounds.
He presses a hand to the junction where her throat meets her shoulder. She leans into him and thinks, I want to see you. She thinks, some days I don’t know if you’re even real. She doesn’t say either of those things.
-
The garden in the middle of the Eastern Sea is the loveliest in all the world. There are trees made of corals with branches as thick as a man’s waist, and flowers in every conceivable color that shy away from the slightest touch, and forests of kelp that gently sway with the current. The water is so clear the sun can reach its rays straight to the white sands below, and small silver fish casts quick darting shadows upon the ground.
Dotted among the corals are giant clams, and it is within one of these shells that one may find the pearls, if one is fearless enough.
For to acquire the pearls, you must reach your hand deep into the mouth of the clam. There are some who have attempted this, and the skeletons of these unfortunate souls decorate the garden.
It is here, within the wide yawning jaws of the biggest clam, that he sees the pearl.
As large as a pigeon’s egg, it is the most beautiful thing Jingyan has ever seen. Unlike the rest, it is perfectly smooth and round, and it gleams in the watery sunlight as if illuminated from within.
Jingyan reaches out his hand, but he was not quick enough. The jaws of the clam snap shut, like it has so many times before, trapping Jingyan’s arm within.
He struggles but only succeeds in trapping himself further. The hard edges of the shell bite deep into his arm, toward the bone.
Just when no more air is left in his lungs and his vision is starting to go grey around the edges, a witch appears, attracted by the blood.
She must be a witch, because she is breathing easily despite being underwater. The tendrils of seaweed, always greedily grasping, shy away from her.
“Who are you, that dares to trespass here and steal from my garden?” She demands.
He gives her the truth. Xiao Jingyan has never learned how to lie, nor would it have ever occurred to him to do so. And anyway, why hide anything when you’re about to die? It doesn’t surprise him that he’s now able to speak underwater.
“I will give you the pearl,” the witch says. “But for your transgression there will be a price.”
“Yes,” Jingyan answers. “Yes, I will pay it.”
-
Lin Shu traces the scar. It encircles his arm in a raised band. She touches his pinky, the one lost to the snow, one that will never again bend like the rest.
Something is unfurling at the base of her stomach, the beginning of a feeling she doesn’t yet understand. She thinks she soon will.
“Does it still hurt?” She asks. What she really meant was, do you regret it? To spend the rest of your life living this way? To not be seen?
“No,” Jingyan laughs softly. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”
-
“Princess,” Jingyan begins. It’s seven months since their first meeting. She’s gotten used to hearing the warmth of his voice. She waits for it sometimes, in the daylight. She understands what that warmth is in her belly a little better, now.
“Xiao Shu,” She corrects him.
“Xiao Shu,” Jingyan agrees. The vowels of her name roll over his tongue, smoother than she’s heard from anyone else. They sound like they belong there. She wants to hear him say it, over and over.
-
“I missed you today,” she tells him. It’s a confession, but an easy one.
She can’t see but she knows Jingyan’s smiling at her.
“I miss you every day,” she says.
“Xiao Shu,” Jingyan says.
His voice drips like slow honey down her spine. It melts down and feeds the fire she can feel growing in her belly. It’s hunger that she feels, foreign and exhilarating, and she wants more of it, wants him.
Lin Shu reaches. She has never known how to not reach for what she wants, how not to take. His hand is warm in hers, rough where his palm is calloused.
She pulls him down.
-
The next morning, she stretches languorously in her bed, reveling in the delightful new soreness of her muscles, the lingering imprint of Jingyan’s mouth, the shudder that had rolled over him when she took him into her, the way his body had surged against hers, hungry and gentle, all at once.
But the sheets beside her are cool.
Lin Shu gets out of bed. She stands before the mirror, fits her hand around the curve of her hip, imagines that it is Jingyan’s. She thinks about the contrast of his larger, tanned—she imagines—hand against her own paler skin.
She looks the same. She wishes she didn’t. She wishes last night had left some indelible mark, that anyone can know with one glance just how different she feels inside.
In the light of the morning the memories feel distant, like a faint strain of music you only halfway remembered. Last night Jingyan had pressed her in close. He had felt real then, in the dark.
You will see him again tonight, she reminds herself. She says it one more time, out loud.
The stillness of the room is her only answer. Even her frog is silent.
-
“Why did you choose me?” She asks him.
She is tracing her fingertips across his brow, his cheekbone, the seam of his lips. She sweeps her thumb over the arches and valleys, tries to map out the unknowable spaces in between. They yield beneath her fingers, shifting as he smiles, and she loses her place again.
She knows the curve of his smile now, as familiar and as dear to her as her own, but she does not know the shape of it. She knows the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he laughs, but she does not know the warmth of his gaze. She does not know the exact shade of his eyes. She does not know the arch his body makes as it bends under hers. She wants to know all these things and more.
“I had no choice,” he answers, and she can hear the quiver in his voice that means he’s trying to pretend he’s not amused. “You made it for me the first time we met.”
“I don’t remember,” she says.
If only she could see his face, she thinks, she would.
It is not the first time she has thought this. But for the first time, she doesn’t try to push it away.
-
“How do I know you’re not a dream?” She’s joking, but only just.
Jingyan laughs. His laughter is like a warm fire in a snowy campground, like dappled sunlight over leaves, and Lin Shu has never wanted anything as much as she wants to see his face, if it’s as beautiful in its joy as she imagines it to be.
She kisses him. “Let me see you,” she asks again. The words rustle like sand on her tongue, like desperation.
“You have all of me, is that not enough?” Jingyan asks. Lin Shu thinks, I have laid claim to all the pieces of you, not the whole of you.
“It’s enough,” Lin Shu says.
She kisses him again. It tastes bitter, like a lie.
-
The restriction pulls at her. It chafes at her shoulders, itches at the base of her spine. She does not understand it. She only understands her yearning, the inexorable certainty she can feel whispering at the back of her mind.
Surely nothing terrible would happen if she lights just one candle. She loves him and he is her husband in all but name and she has never seen his face. He would never have to know.
The next day she places a single candle and a piece of flint carefully under her pillow.
-
She is careful to pretend exhaustion sooner than usual that night, exaggerating a yawn and turning over to sleep after she has rocked against him, reshaped the landscape of their bodies.
She counts her breaths, lets it even out. Keeps her limbs slack and loose. Jingyan leans forward and presses a kiss between her shoulder blades, pulling the blanket up over them both. In that moment she loves him as she never has before, fierce and possessive.
The itch in her skin is the strongest it’s ever been. She is sure, so sure, that she’s meant to do this.
Behind her, Jingyan’s heart slows to a heavy, steady rhythm, now familiar and beloved.
Her own heart is beating a rabbity staccato against her chest, so loudly she fears that she would wake him. now now now now-
Gingerly, hardly daring to breathe, she turns and slides the candle out from under her pillow. Her hands are steady as she strikes the spark.
For one brief glorious moment, she sees his face. And oh, how beautiful he is. Her eyes trace greedily over his sharp jaw, his strong brow, the arch of his nose, the long dark sweep of his eyelashes. He is beautiful and he is hers, and she will remember this moment forever.
Then his eyes open.
“Oh Xiao Shu,” he says, and his eyes are the darkest amber, deep and sorrowful. “I’m sorry.”
Before she can speak or move to blow out the candle, the sound of sudden invisible windchimes fills the room. And in the next moment, her frog sits in the place where Jingyan had once been.
A gust of wind swirls violently around the room, friendly no longer. It tears the blinds free from their fastenings, shatters a vase.
It lifts up the frog—it lifts up Jingyan—into the air and then, he vanishes before her eyes.