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Once upon a time–but ah, how you have ached to hear those words, my darling! How you have begged and pleaded for them, these nights upon nights, when the shadows of your room were dark and the stories you had heard before had been worn to well-loved softness, like sanding the edges from a piece of stone one careful stroke at a time. Ice has come to warm you, and fire to cool you; lightning has brought your brightness, and sunlight has brought you blessed dark. We should stop a moment, and think upon these words. How powerful they are. How beautiful. How long you have waited.
But I see your patience is at an end, and so I shall begin again, and this time, shall speak without stopping. Once upon a time, very far away from here, there was a kingdom built at the very edge of a great and unforgiving sea.
Now this may seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to you: many kingdoms have been built on the edges of oceans, and have thrived in the presence of their fishing fleets and sailing ships. The ocean belongs to no man, but does as it will, timeless and filled with secrets, reflecting the moonlight like a mirror. After kingdoms of ice and flame, how boring a kingdom on the seashore must seem! Perhaps those old, beloved stories seem less dull to you now. At least they are filled with wonder, and with magic. But what, I ask you, is more magical than the sea? Only have patience, my dearest one, and I shall show you why we are here.
In the kingdom, there was a castle, built on the edge of the sheerest cliff, so that to approach it was to climb the very mountain, surrounded at every turn by rocks and towering cairns. The people spoke of the castle walk as people in other kingdoms might speak of great monsters that devoured the unwary. But they were proud of that same danger. “See?” they said, whenever visitors from other, landlocked kingdoms came to them. “See how brave we are, how strong, how enduring. The waters may crash and the stones may fall, but the bread is delivered on time, and our princess never wants for anything.”
Because of course there was a princess: what story is complete without a princess? The tales of kings and queens are powerful, but they begin with princes and princesses, with sailors and goosegirls, and by the time the crown is set upon a worthy brow, the stories are close enough to done as to make no matter. And this princess, ah, this princess was like none I have told you of before. She had hair like the sand of her kingdom’s beaches, and eyes like the sea where it broke against the stone. She was tall, and she was strong, and she had her own ideas about virtually everything.
It may not seem like a bad thing to you for a princess to have her own ideas, for after all, we each have our own ideas. Your head is full of so many things, my darling, and some of them are common–breakfast, tea and toast, the hearts of dragons, the ways to pick a lock set into an eggshell, everyday things that every child must be concerned with. But some of those things are yours and yours alone, and some of those things could be dangerous, if you were to take them from idea to action. Most of us are burdened with a reasonable number of our own ideas, and with people who can say things like “no,” and “stop,” and “perhaps that is unwise." A princess has no such limitations. A princess may take her own ideas and act upon them even when all wisdom would say that it was time to be silent, to be still, to be doing something less subject to the whims of gravity.
She was never still, this princess; she was always in motion, racing the very wind itself as she struggled to go faster, faster, faster than any princess had ever gone before. Her mother, who loved the stones below their castle, had hoped that her child would grow up tied to the land, but no; the princess cared only for the wind, and what it could whisper in her ears. Her father, who loved the sounding sea that stroked their borders, had hoped that his child would grow up tied to the sea, but no; the princess cared only for the sails, and how they caught the breeze and turned it into motion.
"You will have to be still one day,” said her mother. “Still as the stone below you, which holds us safe and keeps us from the storm. You should learn the ways of stillness now, while you have time.”
“You will have to be calm one day,” said her father. “Calm as the sea around us, which can turn cruel when it chooses, which we love and fear in turn. You should learn the ways of calmness now, while you still have time.”
As for the princess, she only laughed, and ran faster, and knew that one day, one day, she would be the fastest of them all. One day she would catch and keep the wind, like a bauble in her pocket, and all things would be beautiful, and nothing would be still.
She is a fascinating girl, our princess, so swift, so difficult to pin down. But we must leave her for a time, because there are other things you need to see before the story ends. So we turn away from her, our golden girl running down the beach with the wind at her heels, and we turn our attention down, down, down into the blameless blue of the wide and waiting sea.
For once upon a time, you see, once upon a time there was a kingdom built at the very bottom of the sea. It was a peaceful land, untroubled by sharks and untouched by storms, for those who dwelt there had spent centuries refining their calm and powerful magics. They swam in the deepest of currents before rising to dry themselves in chambers filled with bright bubbles of air, trading legs for fins as the urge took them. None remembered who had first built the castle, nor much cared to learn, for they were happy there, and had long since come to realize that ignorance was sometimes the guardian of contentment. Once it was known that there was more to the world, it was very hard to turn away from it and be happy with what had always previously been more than enough.
In this castle at the bottom of the sea, there was a princess. She had hair like the water that holds the very last of the light before the deep blackness of the trenches steals it away, blue-green and burnished like a jewel. She had eyes like tropical shoals, and when she swam, her scales were the color of every layer of the sea, from blackness into clarity, so that the very edges of her fins were visible only in the ripples that they left behind. She was very beautiful, this princess of the waves, for all that she turned her beauty inward, and did not share it with any who she felt did not deserve it.
The thing that was most forbidden in this kingdom at the bottom of the sea was swimming upward, into the light, for there was something dreadful in the sky above the water: something fierce and forbidden and better left forgotten, for it was the ultimate destroyer of contentment. It was the heart of knowledge, and once it had been seen, it could not be unseen, ever, however much you might try to shut it from your mind and memory. It would be there always, burning, and in time, it would change you in ways you could not easily ignore.
Now, the princess was quiet, for she did not feel that most people were worthy of her words. And the princess was modest, for she did not see the point in flaunting her beauty. And the princess was renowned, for her people saw that she was graceful, and talented, and did not seem overly proud–although that may have been more a matter of her silence being taken for sweetness than anything true. No one ever had a bad word to say about her, and so it was that no one had placed a finger upon their princess’s fatal flaw.
The princess was stubborn. The princess held her own ideas about the world, and having only been ever forbidden one thing, it was perhaps inevitable that on a quiet night, when all about her were asleep, she gathered what she felt she would need–a net, a knife, a mirror made of sanded glass–and slipped from the palace, and began to rise toward the surface.
It is a difficult thing, keeping track of two princesses, when they have not given us their names. But we have done it before, with four, and shall manage for so long as we must. So we return to our kingdom on the shore, and to our princess wrapped in wind. Now, even those who do not like to be still must rest sometime, and the most natural time for rest is night, when the shores are dark and treacherous, and running is more difficult. Where there is night, there is silence, and a stillness that whispers of morning yet to come.
And always, of course, there is the moon.
The princess sat in her window, toes tapping, fingers twitching, for it was always in her to be in motion, even when the world was still around her. She never closed her shutters. To close them would have been to shut the wind away, and without the wind, she worried she would lose those last traceries of motion, lose them forever, and never get them back again. The stars were small, twinkling things, ever fixed in their places, but the moon–lazy moon–moved, even if it moved slowly. She thought they might have been friends, had this been a different sort of story, had the moon not been so very far away. She thought she might have taught the moon to run.
“I am very lonely, and I do not know what to do,” she said to the moon. “I run and I run, but I cannot catch the wind, and it will not stay long enough to teach me what I’m doing wrong. Everyone here is solid, like the stone, or fluid, like the sea, and I alone am thin and swift and needy. I would run forever, if I only knew what I was running for. I am tired of running without knowing. I am tired of being still. I am tired of everything, and I do not know what to do.”
That night, she slept twitching in her bed of nets and hammocks, and she dreamt that the moon was a girl in a gold and silver dress, with silver seashells in her hair. They walked together until dawn, and most of what the moon told her was forgotten when the morning came. Most: not all. For when she woke, it was with the clear memory of the moon, hands outstretched, face sad, saying, “I cannot come to you. I am far away, and sleeping, and my friends are coming for me, but they are not here yet. They have come so far, and they have so far yet to go, and they are not here yet. I wish I could come to you. I wish I could help you, as I helped them, but I cannot, I cannot, I can dream only one rabbit at a time, and the Rabbit I am now wears a white dress that is never dirty, and knows not how to help you. Go to the sea. Go to the sea, and find your own way. I am sorry. I love you. I have always loved you. I cannot help you now.”
The princess rose feeling strangely calmed and strangely alone at the same time, like everything was going to change, even though she could not have placed her hand on why. The loneliness was more surprising. She was accustomed to being alone, and would have thought it could cut no deeper than it always had.
As always when she was troubled, the princess felt the need to run. She dressed in clothes more befitting of a stablehand than a future queen, for gowns and dancing slippers were not made for racing the wind. Silent, she slipped out of the castle and down the rocky path to the shore. No one saw her go. And when she reached the shore, she ran.
It is hard to put words to the princess in motion. She did not run like the wind, or like a rising bird, or like a crashing tide; she ran only like herself, and that running was more than enough to carry her. She ran more fleetly than any princess had ever run, and she lost herself in the action and ecstasy of it all, racing the line of the sky as if she could catch it somehow, wrap it around her shoulders like a shawl and claim it for her own.
Let us leave her for a moment, running; she will join us soon enough. For we must walk a certain distance back along the ribbon of time, weaving it through our fingers, until we find the moment where our second princess broke the surface of the waves, and gasped, taking her first breath of air that had been created in the natural way of things, and not through clever magics. She looked around, drinking in the sea around her with her eyes, and then–ah, poor girl! She did not know!–she turned her gaze upward, and saw the moon for the first time.
Imagine, if you will, the shock of the moon when you do not expect it. Imagine looking up and seeing the great silver-white eye of the heavens looking down upon you. Imagine knowing nothing of the moon, knowing not of her love or her kindness or her tendency to walk the world in a woman’s skin, or as a quick and clever and ever-hungry rabbit. Imagine seeing only her cold, glowing face, staring, unblinking, unforgiven. The princess looked at the moon, and the moon looked at the princess, and the princess saw only judgment, unforgiving, unending judgment. Everything she had ever concealed, the moon would see.
She tried to dive, but she could not catch her breath beneath the waves. She was too dismayed, and her gills would not open, and her fins would not carry her down. So she swam instead, and stopped only when she reached the shore, where she huddled in a tidepool, and closed her eyes, and eventually, mercifully, slipped into sleep.
That night, she slept shivering in her bed of spindrift and seafoam, and she dreamt that the moon was a girl in a gold and silver dress, with silver mirrors in her hair. The moon asked her to walk a ways, and the princess refused, for the moon was a stranger, and she could not be trusted. So the moon sat down beside her, and said, “I cannot come to you. I am far away, and sleeping, and I do not think you would welcome me if I did come, for you do not know me, and you do not trust me, and it breaks my heart to see you so. I wish I could help you, as I have helped others, but I cannot, I cannot, I can dream only so much, and I cannot dream myself into the heart of one who fears me. Stay where you are, and help will come. I will whisper in her ear and ask her to come. I am sorry. I love you. I have always loved you. I cannot help you now.”
The princess woke to the sound of footsteps running down the beach. For a moment, she thought to hide herself, but where could she go? The sea had refused her. She did not yet know why. So she stayed where she was, and sat up as prettily as she might, and waited until the owner of those running feet came around the rocks, and stopped.
He was tall, and he was slim, and his hair was a tangle of knots, no doubt spun by the wind he seemed to love so well. Then the princess blinked, and he was no boy at all, but a woman in boy’s clothing, looking startled to have come around a corner and found herself confronted with a mermaid.
“Hello,” said the runner, after a moment. “I was not expecting company.”
“Yet here it is,” said the mermaid. “I suppose you are not a master of surprises.”
“I am sorry. My manners sometimes take a moment to catch up with me; I am faster than they are." The runner bowed. "I am Princess Haruka, and this is my kingdom. May I offer you some aid?”
“No, but you may offer me breakfast, which would be quite sufficient." The mermaid stood, and her scales fell away, replaced by a sensible blue gown. "I am Princess Michiru, and my kingdom is…difficult to explain. I will accompany you wherever you are going, but you will need to go more slowly, I’m afraid. My feet are tender, as I do not often have them, and so they have had little time to toughen.”
Haruka’s parents had often despared at the thought of her slowing down for anything at all. She did not hesitate to smile at Michiru, and say, “I can go as slowly as you need me to.”
She offered her new companion her arm. Michiru hesitated only a moment before she took it.
They walked, side by side, along the beach and up the rocky pathway to the castle. Michiru winced when the stones bit into her tender feet, although she tried to conceal it. After the third time, Haruka swept Michiru into her arms. The former mermaid did not protest, as that would have been unladylike, but gave her companion a sharp look.
“I would be a poor host if I brought you to the breakfast hall bleeding,” she said. “Besides, we can go faster now." And they did go faster, although it was not quite a run. As for those who were waiting at the castle for their princess to return, they were surprised to see her walking so decorously, and even more surprised to see that she was carrying a woman with hair the color of the sea. But they were well-mannered, and they were accustomed to their princess, and so they said nothing, but prepared another setting at the table.
From that moment on, the two princesses would not be separated. Michiru would accompany Haruka to the beach in the morning and watch as the other woman ran; sometimes she would clap her hands once, twice, three times in appreciation, or smile like the moonrise across the sea. Haruka came to treasure those smiles as she had treasured neither gold nor gowns in all her life. Haruka would go with Michiru down to the secluded cove where she had first been found, and watch as the other woman traded legs for scales and tried to dive. Each time, her chest would go tight, waiting for the day when Michiru’s gills opened and she did not return, and each time, Michiru would surface, coughing, and each time, Haruka would be grateful and guilty by equal measure. She did not wish Michiru anything but happiness, and yet she knew that Michiru’s happiness would one day take her away, to something better than a princess who was too thin, and too tall, and too obsessed with catching the wind.
Days passed, days upon days, until the morning Haruka rose to go running, and found her mother waiting at the door. "I must speak with you,” she said.
“I have to wake Michiru,” said Haruka.
“That is what we must speak of,” said her mother. “I have seen your friendship with her blossom and grow. She is a beautiful girl. When she returns to her home kingdom, she will no doubt find suitors waiting, stacked three deep, upon whatever serves her as a doorstep.”
Haruka did not like to think of such things. Her cheeks colored red, and in that shade, her mother saw all the answers she had feared to see. “That is for another day.”
“But while she has been here, three suitors have come for you, and gone away, all of them, empty-handed and whispering that you are more prince than princess. My darling–”
“Would it matter if I were?” asked Haruka. “I am no prince; am a princess born and raised, as well you should know, for you bore me, and raised me. I am content in my own skin, and have never wished otherwise. But if I were to love her as those suitors you speak of did not love me, would that not be better? It matters not, Mother, for she will not have me. She is no racer, to run and challenge. She is a lady, beautiful and perfect and kind, and she deserves more than I can ever give her. I will press no suits, cross no lines, speak no unspeakable praises, but yes, I love her. I will always love her. When she is gone and you trick me to a suitor’s bed, I will love her still, and I will sour my marriage by holding her name on my lips with every kiss I give. You do not have to approve. I will be more than punished for my perversions, for they are not, and can never be, shared.”
Her mother’s heart ached to hear her daughter speak so, but she had no words to offer in reply. Of all the dangers she had ever feared her daughter falling prey to, love was the last and worst she could have imagined.
But Haruka’s eyes were dry and glossy with the effort of remaining calm, and so her mother sighed, and stepped forward, and took her hands.
“The moon loves everyone,” she said. “The moon loves all who love. If you love her, if you love your mermaid, then love her, and know that the moon approves, and will bless you always.”
“Do you?” whispered Haruka.
“I am not the moon. I had thought to find you a husband, and that is a dream it will take some time to set aside, but darling, I will find my way to where you need me. I will speak to the moon tonight in my dreams–she still comes to me sometimes, for I was a princess once, and I have not forgotten–and she will tell me how to change my heart to be better able to welcome yours. There is nothing wrong with you. Love is never wrong. The only failing here is mine, that I must find my way to love, rather than arriving there naturally.”
Haruka nodded, and embraced her mother, and they stayed there for a time.
Michiru, waking to find the sun already high, thought Haruka had been so overcome with the excitement of running that she had gone down to the beach without her. This had never happened before, and was alarming. Perhaps Haruka was tiring of her…but no, that would not happen. She had shown the other woman more and more of her own secret beauty with each day that passed them, and there was so much left to share between them. She would not grow tired of her. Not yet. Not ever.
So Michiru dressed, and walked down the winding way to the shore alone. There was no Haruka there. She stopped for a moment, trying to make sense of this–and heard the splashing from the cove. Curious, she walked toward it, and stared in awe as her father rose from the waves.
“Michiru,” he said, and “Father,” she said, and flung herself into his arms, and let him hold her close.
When she finally stepped back, she looked up at him and asked, “Did you come to find me?”
“Yes,” he said. “We have been worried. Where have you been?”
“Here,” she said. “I saw…I saw the moon. I could not breathe. I came to shore, and met a princess, who has been kind to me, who has kept me close and loved me well. I am sorry to have worried you. I would not, had there been another choice.”
“The moon loves love,” he said. “She stops our gills when she sees us, for we hold ourselves apart from her, and she yearns to love us. She yearns to show us more than the seas contain. I am here to take you home.”
“Home?" Michiru took another step away. "What do you mean?”
“I have brought you something." He opened his hand, and in it was a single pearl. "If you give this to your princess, she will forget how to love you. The moon kept you here for a night, but your human has kept you here since then. She has loved you, and that has trapped you. We miss you, Michiru. We would have you come home to us. Give her the pearl. Silence her heart. Then you will be safe.”
“I can’t.”
“You will. Humans are fickle, my dear; why do you think we left them? She may love you now, but her love will fade, and you will be trapped under the eye of the moon, broken-hearted and with no one to release you. Give her the pearl. Come home." He pressed the pearl into her hand before he dove, down into the depths that were no longer hers, and she was alone.
Michiru walked back to the castle feeling heart-sick and afraid. Her face showed none of this. She was a great master of hiding what she felt, and could have seemed serene while she was dying. She felt as if she were.
That night, at dinner, the King looked at her and said, "We have two suitors coming for Haruka next week.”
“Papa,” said Haruka, who still had not explained her absence of that morning, or why she had left Michiru alone.
“That is nice,” said Michiru.
“She’ll marry one of them, I’m sure. You can have the other, if you lack for suitors.”
“Please,” said Haruka.
“Will that make things easier?” asked Michiru.
“Yes,” said the King. “A princess must marry. It is all that keeps our kingdom standing.”
“I see,” said Michiru. And when the steward came through with the wine, she slipped the pearl her father had given her into Haruka’s glass, and she did not watch the other princess when she drank. Michiru looked down, and her eyes were so bright with tears that the outline of her empty plate blurred, and glowed, and seemed almost like the distant, weeping moon.
They embraced before they went to bed, as they always did, but Haruka looked puzzled, like she did not understand the action. And then they slept, and Michiru dreamt of a weeping moon, and Haruka dreamt of nothing at all, and when she woke, she did not love the mermaid. She did not see how she ever could have loved her at all.
That morning, with the moon still ghost-pale on the horizon, Haruka ran and Michiru watched, and she did not applaud, not once. When Haruka was done, Michiru slid down from the rock where she had sat, wincing a little at the feeling of stones beneath her feet.
“Will you watch me dive?” she asked.
“Yes, but only for a few minutes,” said Haruka.
They walked together to the cove, and the moon was a mask upon the water, showing her face for as long as she could. The sight of that wavering orb made Haruka’s chest feel tight and her eyes burn, like there was something she had forgotten.
“Thank you,” said Michiru. “For everything." And she dove, and she did not resurface.
Michiru’s dive had taken her straight through the center of the moon’s reflection. The water splashed upward, and a few cold drops struck Haruka on the mouth, coating her lips with salt. She wiped it away, but could not stop herself from tasting it, like an indirect kiss from a mermaid who was beloved of the moon.
Haruka’s eyes widened.
"Michiru!” she shouted, and dove after the mermaid that she loved.
Now, it must be said that running and swimming are similar in many ways, and a good runner may also be a good swimmer, although not so good as a mermaid. Yet no matter how many miles a princess runs, or how many winds she catches, she will never learn to breathe the sea. That is the purview of others, of girls with blue-green hair and secrets in their eyes. Haruka swam as deep as she could, and when the water took everything away from her, she felt only regret, that she had not spoken sooner; that she had allowed her love to swim away.
There are many kinds of princess, and all of them have stories. There are princesses in fire, and they know their future, but they cannot forget their present; they are forever discovering that the world keeps secrets. There princesses in ice, and they know their duty, but they cannot forget their delight; they are forever finding the ways to meld the two together. There are princesses in forests, and they know their roots, but they cannot forget their branches; they are forever learning new ways to serve their people. There are princesses in unending sunlight, and they know their brilliance, but they cannot forget that others shine, too; they are forever seeking ways to shine that make others brighter. These princesses were princesses of shore and sea and sand and wave, of the shaking beauty of storms and the glorious swiftness of wind. They were better together than they had ever been apart, and they knew it, even if they did not know the words.
Haruka woke on the shore, her head resting on a scaled lap, a hand stroking back her hair.
“That was foolish,” said Michiru.
“I love you,” said Haruka.
“That is also foolish,” said Michiru, and lowered her head, and kissed her until the tide went out.
The moon, which had been watching, finally slipped from the edge of the sky and went back to her dreams, for they were very important, and would be ending soon enough.
As for our princesses…there are those who say that they lived happily ever after, and others who say that happily ever after is neither swift enough nor mysterious enough to have satisfied them. Those people say that they lived, yes, and that sometimes they were happy and sometimes they were not, and that sometimes sacrifices were made, until the day they found their way to peace. The people of their kingdom on the shore spoke glowingly of their love, and said that they were blessed by the moon, although it would be long and long before they met her. That story would come later, in the company of certain other princesses we have mentioned before, but who did not belong here, in this time, in this tale. One day, they would all come together, and things would change again.
But that is another tale to tell.
Now rest, my dear, and be at ease; there’s a fire in the hearth and a wind in the eaves, and the night is so dark, and the dark is so deep, and it’s time that all good little stars go to sleep.