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Once there was a princess, and she lived all alone in a dark woods. Her brother had dwelt with her before, but he had left her behind long ago, and gone off to have adventures. He had promised to return, but the seasons turned, and the years passed, and the princess was alone in the forest. She longed to leave, to follow her brother, to see the world beyond the woods, but she was afraid. The birds whispered to her of a witch that dwelt among the trees. The animals spoke to her of a dark power that drifted through the shadows, and the underbrush began to grow thick with thorns.
Day by day, the woods grew colder, and the princess began to notice that the birds and beasts no longer greeted her with songs. The cries of the sparrows grew harsh, and angry, and the deer and the squirrels looked at her with unfriendly eyes. Soon she was afraid even to leave the shelter of her home, and ventured no further out-of-doors than to the walled garden behind the house. The animals ceased to speak to her at all. She knew in her heart that witch’s power grew stronger; that soon, it would overwhelm entirely the creatures that had once been her friends, and that then she would die, alone in the woods. She hoped, some days, that a prince would come to the woods to save her, that her brother would return and drive away the witch, but the days grew colder and darker, and she knew that all her wishing was in vain.
She had grown almost resigned to her fate, when one cold, winter day --it was always winter, these days-- a falcon crashed into her garden. It had been harried there by a murder of crows, and it was dying as it hit the ground. Its feathers were torn and its wings were crumpled, and there was an egg clutched in its claws, the shell gleaming white and unbroken. And though the crows were screaming around the body of the fallen hawk, and she was terrified, the princess ran out into the garden to snatch the egg that the hawk had died protecting away from the crows.
When she escaped back into her house and slammed the door behind her, there were deep scratches on her arms and face, and not a few hairs had been torn from her head, but the egg was cradled in her hands, safe and whole. She kept it warm in the ashes of her hearth, and she sang to it, as the snow began to fall and the howling of the wolves grew louder every night. And though she didn’t mind to die, she hoped now to live long enough to see egg hatch, and to see the fledgling escape from the witch’s woods.
“The Princess and the Egg” had sailed to the top of every bestseller list world wide, but it wasn’t quite right. When she’d written it, every word had felt true, every phrase had drawn her foggy memories into a little bit more clarity, but there was something lacking nonetheless. She’d only read it the once after it was done; there was something hollow at the center of it that she couldn’t stop worrying at, and so she’d sat down again at the mahogany desk (a gift from her brother when she’d declared her intention to become a writer) by the window overlooking her beautiful garden and put pen to paper again.
There was a princess with hair like spun gold and violet eyes, and she lived in a city full of lights. By day, the sun caught in a thousand panes of crystal until it sparkled like a jewel, and glowed crimson in the light of the setting sun. There were parties every night amidst the glass towers, and at all of them the lords and ladies circled around that princess like clouds of butterflies around a single perfect rose. But though she was always at the center of a crowd, though everyone loved her, though she was the apple of her father’s eye and though her brother doted on her, she was always alone.
Then one day a visitor came to the city; another princess, from a faraway land, with dark eyes and a mysterious smile. And from the moment that she entered the city, no one could take their eyes from her; all the lords and ladies that had so loved their golden lady flocked to the newcomer, and for the first time, the princess found herself in the shade. Even her beloved brother, who had always loved her best, was enchanted by the graceful interloper.
The princess was hurt, at first, that she could be so quickly cast aside, and then she grew angry, not just at those who had slighted and abandoned her, but at the dark princess who had stolen what was rightfully hers. But as she watched, and seethed, and plotted ever more elaborate schemes to destroy the woman who had become her rival, she noticed something odd.
Though the other girl was always surrounded by a gleeful throng of admirers, though her lips were always curved in that captivating smile, she never, ever looked happy. It made the princess remember when she had been the flower around which everyone gathered, and how lonely it had been. And she thought, then, “Perhaps we are not so unalike, she and I. Perhaps, in this wretched world that adored us, and isolated us, and which in the end will discard and revile us, we could understand each other.”
And she longed, then, to escape from the city that had been her everything, even if it were smashed behind her, to board a ship and cross the sea, and sail about beyond the very edge of the world.
The critics called her a modern-day Cervantes for “Beyond the Gates of the World”; they lavished praise on the deft mingling of the fantastical and the mundane, celebrated how she blurred the lines between imagination and madness. But it still wasn’t right. There was something missing, something she was reaching for that she couldn’t quite grasp, that lingered in her memory but that she could not remember.
There had been roses, and a castle, and a field of battle suspended in the sky. There had been magic, and excitement, and terror, and she had fought for...
...for what?
She remembered the rose seal, she remembered the duels. She dreamed, and remembered that she had fought, but she could never, waking, remember who she had fought. She remembered the Rose Bride, and the way she had smiled like she could see straight through to the heart of you, and pitied you for what she saw there. She remembered her eyes, dark and loathsome and wicked and sad.
She remembered, and she would give almost anything to forget, the night she had walked in on her with the Chairman.
It had felt like she was walking through a fog for years, after Ohtori. She’d filled over a dozen notebooks with fragments of fairytale gibberish and half-remembered circumstances, and writing “The Princess and the Egg” had felt like putting herself back together. Only not quite, because there was still something missing.
She’d gotten closer with “Beyond the Gates of the World”. Most days, she felt mostly whole. But there was something she’d lost, at the heart of herself, something important, and she utterly refused to let that man take anything from her, not ever again.
However many times she had to write her story, if she had to fill an entire shelf with books, she wouldn’t stop until she’d taken back herself.
There was a princess, and her parents had died years ago, killed by the beasts that beset their lands, but she was not afraid, because her brother was always with her. Beyond the borders of their kingdom, the darkness surged and thorns grew thick, but when the prince rode out, they crumbled. He was the light of her world, and before his strength, nothing could stand.
And then a stranger came to the kingdom, a tall man, whose aura of power and majesty, and cold beauty drew every eye to him. Everyone who saw him could not help but be afraid, but couldn’t help either but fall a little bit in love, and her brother invited the stranger in. He brought with him a woman; his captive, his sister, his lover-- a great and powerful witch. He had caught her up in chains she had forged herself --that being the only way to cage such a one-- and now he wielded her power as though it were his own.
In vain did the princess beseech her brother to send his guests away, but he was enchanted, and spent long hours in conversation with the stranger, who whispered vile things in his ear.
“We are alike, you and I,” he said as they walked together through the gardens where thorny roses had supplanted the other flowers, “I was a prince, once, beyond the sea. I fought as you fight, and strove as you do now, until I saw what you too must be coming to see. The fight is endless, and the struggle useless; you can never advance any further than you have, and the reward for victory is to be sent into battle again. The only way to more forward, the only path towards change, is failure.
“I can show you. How to do what I have done, how to grow beyond what you are; how to reach true power, and destroy your enemies. How to have peace at last.”
Her brother listened to the stranger’s words, and the light in him began to flicker and dim, and the princess was afraid. Where once they had been each other’s world, now her voice no longer reached him. He laughed at her fears, and patted her on the head, and the stranger’s hand lingered on his shoulder while the witch smiled bitterly. The thorns crept across their borders, and darkness flooded the land.
But the princess gathered her courage about her, and promised herself that things would not end thus. Always she had dwelt in her brother’s light, and always he had protected her from every evil thing and now, she vowed, she would do as much for him. In the dark of night, she crept into the armory and took his sword, which he had scarce touched since first the stranger came, and stole out of the castle.
It was easy to do; the serpent who had beguiled her brother and brought their kingdom to ruin had no fear of her. The only danger to him in all the land was one he had already brought low; for everyone knew that only a prince could slay a dragon.
This dragon, though, had no fear of princes, for his captive witch --his own beloved sister-- could break the spirit of any man and bring him before her brother to be destroyed at his leisure.
But there remained yet one chance that the princess clutched to her breast along with her brother’s sword as she ran through the night, out into a kingdom grown dark and strange; a rumor she had heard from a travelling merchant in the days before the stranger came to their lands on which she now hung all her hopes.
There was a prince, he’d told her, in a faraway land, a warrior of nobility and courage, a prince who could never fall prey to a witch’s enchantments, because she was a prince unlike any other--
She was...
She...
“Oh,” Nanami whispered, as the pen clattered to the table and a thousand memories blossomed in her mind like petals unfurling in the sun. “Oh.”
Utena.
For a moment, in the distance, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she actually saw her. As though she had been summoned into being by the act of being remembered, as she must have looked on that day; laughing, victorious.
For all Nanami had gathered with the rest of the council to bear witness, in the end, none of them had seen the revolution when it came. She’d known it had happened --impossible to miss-- but she’d lost the who and the what, and it had been a gaping hole, in herself and in the world.
Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a little princess, and she was very sad, for her mother and father had died.