Once upon a time, there was a prince who shattered his own heart to save his people from the monstrous Raven who preyed upon them.
Once upon a time, there was a knight who sacrificed his life defending his prince from the Raven and was reborn as a boy from a family of storytellers.
Once upon a time, there was a human girl stolen away by the Raven and raised to be a dark princess, never knowing her own heritage.
Once upon a time, there was a duck.
This is her story.
Peace of Heart
by K. Stonham
first released 21st October 2006
Fakir knew the power of fairy tales. He was, after all, a character from one. He was the Knight reborn to defend his Prince again. He was also the descendant of Drosselmeyer, with the power of creation running in his veins. And he was a dancer through whom tragedy and joy alike were given form.
Fakir knew that not all stories ended happily. At best, happiness was tempered by the defeat of the villain, the sacrifice of the innocent, and the lack of closure for the secondary characters.
For himself, he was not bothered.
For Ahiru, he was.
He didn't begrudge Rue and Mytho their love. He'd written each of their feelings as he and Ahiru had struggled to bring Drosselmeyer's cursed tale to an end, and knew how deeply they ran. But there was a small part of him that felt that it wasn't fair that the prince had chosen the other princess, that Princess Tutu had struggled so hard, fought so long to restore the prince's shattered heart, and not kept any of it.
Mytho loved everyone. But he'd loved Rue more than he'd loved Tutu, and Tutu had suffered the consequences of that choice. He was the noble Prince; of course he had chosen the princess who needed rescuing rather than the one who had so many times rescued him.
After that final fight, after Mytho and Rue had flown away in their golden swan-pulled carriage, Fakir had taken Ahiru to the lake just outside of the town. There'd been a derelict cottage on the shore; he found out who owned the building and purchased it with the money he'd had in trust from his parents. That spring and summer he spent his free time fixing it up, sawing and hammering and painting and digging a garden in the back. Ahiru spent her days peacefully swimming on the lake. In the evenings, when it cooled down, Fakir danced or practiced his sword work. He occasionally caught her looking at him, an expression in her eyes that reminded him of how she'd been as a girl, watching the advanced dancers with awe and delight. After a while he stopped feeling guilty, realizing it wasn't his fault that he was human and she was not.
At night, Fakir read aloud to her from the books he checked out of the school library, stories of science and myth. Both of their favorites were the fairy tales, though, no matter how sad some made them feel.
He couldn't read stories anymore and not know that the characters might have been real, the way he was, or Mytho, or Rue, or Ahiru. That their pain might have been real. That it was only chance if they hadn't been written by a storyteller as powerful as Drosselmeyer. Or himself.
Somehow the duck who had been a girl who had been a princess from a story had become closer to Fakir than anyone, even Mytho, ever had. "After all," Fakir mused one fall night when fog rose off the lake and Ahiru rested in his lap, looking at the illustration in their book, "we both loved him and protected him." Surely that had set the bond between them.
It was almost the end of winter, however, before Fakir made a realization, and he felt foolish for not having seen it before. "Ahiru," he said, "I think you're becoming a swan."
"Kwa?!" she replied and rushed over to the mirror, examining herself first on one side then the other.
Fakir laughed softly and knelt behind her, watching. "It suits you," he commented. But his laughter died when she turned around and looked at him with wide, serious eyes.
"Kwa kwakwa kwa kwa?" she questioned, and he understood her. It was the power of the writing. If he listened just right, he could hear the universe described, and understand the voice of Ahiru's heart. "Fakir, is this another story?" she asked.
"It's not mine," he replied. "I wouldn't write you without your permission."
"Kwa kwa kwa kwa?" she asked. ("Then whose is it?")
Nothing more happened beyond the usual pattern of the days and Ahiru's feathers growing whiter and whiter, and so it became spring again, almost summer, before the story had its way with them. Fakir was tending the beans in his garden when Mytho and Rue visited, stepping through the space where a gate should have been. Fakir had never built one, leaving the door to his garden open. Ahiru might have been able to flutter over a fence if she chose, but he hadn't wanted to put her to the trouble.
"Mytho!" he said, surprised, kneeling with dirt on his hands as a prince stepped into his garden.
"Hello, Fakir," Mytho said with a small smile that still warmed Fakir's heart.
"Hello," Rue the Raven's daughter greeted, a warm shadow in the shining prince's wake.
Fakir stood, dusting off his hands. "Is everything all right?" he asked. "Nothing's happened, has it?"
"No." Mytho shook his head. "Everything's well. We just wanted to see you."
Obscurely relieved, Fakir invited them indoors, checking discreetly on the lake for Ahiru. He saw her swimming on the far edge, unconcerned. Mytho didn't notice Fakir's glance.
Rue did.
They talked of inconsequentials. Fakir's garden. The Academy. Neko-sensei, who had asked the pair to give a demonstration during the break in their touring. Finally, of a wedding.
"It would mean so much to us if you could be there, Fakir," Mytho said earnestly.
"I'd be honored," Fakir replied, unsurprised. The Prince and the Raven Princess being wed had only been a matter of time.
To Fakir's eye, Rue's face showed her happiness to be tempered by a shade of guilt. He wondered if Mytho also saw it. "Please bring Ahiru," she said softly. "She should be part of our happy day as well."
Fakir looked away, out the window at the lake. "She's become a swan," he said quietly.
Rue's eyes widened, color draining from her face. "Really," was all she commented, but her expression spoke volumes.
It prompted Fakir to speak the thought he and Ahiru shared. "If a duck turns into a swan," he said slowly, "it means another story's started."
"But what kind of story is it?" Mytho asked.
Fakir shook his head. "I've tried writing it to find out, but I don't know where it's going. I only know that she's in it, and so am I." Realization struck him, that moment of looking and seeing how the shape of things fit. He wondered for a second what it would be like to live in a world without symbols and wolves and girls in red capes, without princes and ravens. "And so are both of you." He looked at the shape of the story, where his friends fit into it. He rubbed the scar on the back of his hand, trying to soothe away the itch for paper and quill. "Though the story doesn't revolve around the two of you this time."
"Is it a story to turn her human again?" Mytho asked.
The knowledge fractured, skittered maddeningly away. Fakir sighed. "It's gone," he said. "I don't know."
"Kwa," Ahiru said softly from the open doorway, drawing eyes to herself. She looked at the floor, scuffing a foot against it, then looked back up at Fakir. Her eyes held something that looked like hope.
Rue slipped from her seat and knelt on the floor. "Hello," she said quietly. "You'll come to our wedding, won't you?"
"Kwa? Kwa kwakwa kwa kwa!" Ahiru quacked excitedly, rushing to Rue. The two hugged like sisters.
Fakir looked at Mytho. "I don't know who's writing this tale, and that worries me," he confessed. "I don't think it's Drosselmeyer--we finished his last story."
"There's no one you can ask?" Mytho replied.
"Maybe," Fakir answered, thinking of the distant cousin who'd been so obsessed with Drosselmeyer. It was worth it to ask, at least. Which incited another thought, but he didn't think Arthur had the power to control reality through writing. "Drosselmeyer may have been the most powerful, but he can't have been the only one with that ability."
Mytho smiled. "He can't have been the most powerful. You defeated him, after all."
Fakir shook his head. "I defeated a ghost, and only with help. If he'd been alive, I never would have won."
"You underestimate yourself," Mytho replied, and something in his voice reminded Fakir that this was his Prince before him, as well as his friend.
He looked away. "That power is dangerous," he murmured. "Sometimes I think they were right, and it should have been locked away, out of this world."
"'They'?" Mytho asked, his voice equally soft.
Fakir smirked mirthlessly and met Mytho's eyes. "Drosselmeyer didn't leave the best local impression. All of the stories in the school library have had their endings torn out by a sect that wanted to keep them from coming true. They tried to cut off my hands, the way they did his, to keep me from writing."
"What?!" Mytho whispered, shock and horror in his voice.
Fakir shrugged and looked at Ahiru and Rue, who were also listening, similar sentiments echoed in their eyes and postures. "They have a certain point. After Drosselmeyer's story was ended, they decided I knew well enough to be left alone." His voice hardened again. "And if they change their minds, they can try to take my hands."
"Kwakwa kwa kwa?" Ahiru questioned. "Is that why you kept your sword?"
"Yes," Fakir answered, nodding. "I may not be much good as a knight, but I can manage to defend myself against townsfolk carrying axes."
"Fakir," Mytho said softly, drawing his attention again, "I never knew."
"I never told you," Fakir replied.
That night, Fakir opened the trunk that lay at the foot of his bed and dug deep to the bottom, pulling out the torn, repaired clothing he'd worn as the Knight and the sword he'd carried now through two lifetimes.
He didn't remember much of the first except dying horribly, torn apart by the Raven's talons as he attempted to defend Mytho. The scars of that failure had followed him into a second lifetime, painted across his body from the day he'd been born.
He pulled the blade a few inches free from the scabbard and examined his reflection in that well-used steel. He'd been born knowing how to wield it, it seemed, needing only a reminder now and again. Learning smithcraft from Charon had built up his strength; going into the Academy with Mytho and studying how to dance had increased his flexibility. Identity was destiny, he supposed. Fortunately it wasn't fate.
He slid the sword home and laid it on the bed, turning to face Ahiru where she peeked around the corner of the door frame. "It's just in case," he said, knowing that she disapproved of his using the sword. "If anything happens, I'd prefer to have it at hand."
She nodded.
Fakir was struck by a thought and reached into the trunk again, pulling out a small black box. "I have something for you."
"Kwaaaa?"
He knelt and took the object out of the box, holding it up for her to look at as she waddled closer. The jeweler had reminded him of Edel and so he'd gone closer to her stall. When he'd seen this locket, he hadn't been able to resist its purchase. Dangling from a wide black velvet ribbon with a clasp in the back, the crowned heart gleamed soft gold in the lamplight. "Kwa," Ahiru breathed softly, and Fakir smiled and undid the hidden latch, opening the locket. Within, a tiny ballerina dangled, mid-pirouette. Her hair was short and feathery.
"I thought of Princess Tutu when I saw it," Fakir explained. Ahiru looked up at him, her eyes wide. "It's not a magic necklace, but I thought you might like to have it."
She looked back at the necklace then leaned forward for him to fasten it around her neck. His fingers slid across warm white feathers as he did so. In becoming a swan, Ahiru had become much more elegant, Fakir vaguely thought. But sometimes, when she was in a hurry, she returned to her duck-like clumsiness, and that made him feel glad. He would have felt like something had been lost had she ever become wholly Tutu and Ahiru disappeared forever.
She straightened and he centered the pendant for her, closing it with careful fingers. She looked down at it once, then up at him and said a "Kwa!" that Fakir clearly understood to be "Thank you!" before rushing off to the mirror in the next room to examine her reflection.
Fakir left for the Academy a bit earlier than usual the next morning, with a warning to Ahiru to be careful and to come to the school if anything seemed amiss. She glared at him for thinking she needed to be told what to do, he glared back, and they parted ways with a huff.
Fakir had had offers, of course, from various dance troupes just as Mytho and Rue had. He'd turned them all down, though, conscious that there was something missing in his dance. In tranquil moments, as he fished and wrote, sitting on the dock with Ahiru floating nearby, he could put a name to it, remembering a girl with red hair and freckles whose dance hadn't been perfect, but warm...
He lacked an appropriate partner, and leaving Gold Krone town to go out into the world wouldn't provide him with one.
Instead he'd stayed and taken on an assistant teaching position at the Academy, helping Neko-sensei, who was these days both less flexible and less feline than he used to be, in the dance program, teaching silly girls and sillier boys how to grow and become dancers more befitting dreams. He thought he was good at it. Certainly some of Ahiru's year mates by now were becoming passable dancers, even if nothing in their hearts spoke of star material. Listening to their voices within, though, had helped Fakir grow more tolerant toward most. They were silly boys and silly girls, to be sure, but they dreamed dreams too and had hearts that could be bruised or broken. He wrote about them sometimes, trying to ease them through the worst pains and give them moments of inspiration and insight to help them grow.
It was a small pride to Fakir that the number of students who dropped out of the school or quietly "disappeared" had grown less since he'd started doing so. Ahiru, in fact, had been the last student to vanish, and no one, not even the two who had been her closest friends, remembered the clumsy first-year anymore.
Of all the people in the world, only he, Mytho, and Rue knew her...
Neko-sensei watched Fakir warm up with a guarded gaze. It said something about body control that nothing of his disturbed thoughts showed up in his form, and the two of them discussed lesson plans and how to divide the student groups during practice as though absolutely nothing was happening in Fakir's life. Rue and Mytho arrived halfway through and Neko-sensei left them to go take care of his beloved cats, letting the three friends and former classmates finish up their exercises together.
"Maybe you should tour with us for a while," Rue said. "The school will close down in the summer, and there's an opening in our troupe."
"Who would take care of her?" Fakir asked. "She's not Princess Tutu anymore. If a hunter should come along, or..." There were so many possibilities, so many ways things could go wrong. It made him sick thinking about it.
"I just thought a change of scenery might do you good," Rue offered, "and if you're not here, maybe the story might stop."
Either that, or it was part of the story. He would go away for a season, come back, Ahiru would be gone, and he'd never know if she was dead or... Fakir could see how that story might work. He'd title it "The Foolish Knight." He shook his head. "Whatever I do, it would be part of the story," he answered. "Besides, I've put too much work into that garden."
Rue and Mytho exchanged a look, but mercifully dropped the subject.
When they danced before the class, it was like they danced on air. Watching them, Fakir could see in each step, in every movement, the love they shared, and how pure their bonds to one another were. It eased his heart. No wonder they were becoming the talk of the ballet world.
When the two of them finished, Neko-sensei stood, clapping. "Thank you very much," he said graciously. "In order to demonstrate something to our students, however... Miss Rue, may I ask you to partner for a few moments with Fakir-kun?"
That hadn't been in the lesson plans, and caught Fakir off-guard. However, he certainly had no objections to partnering Rue for a few moments, and did so with her assent.
Their dance was technically perfect, each step precise and filled with symbolic meaning. They'd been in the same classes for so long that a partnership between them was easy, with no missed signals or false expectations. However, there was no frisson between them, no spark of electricity, no warmth aside from the understanding between two friends.
When they finished, Neko-sensei and the class applauded again, but it was quieter. "Now," Neko-sensei addressed their students, "can you tell me what was present in the first dance but absent in the second that changed the skill level between two equally skilled sets of partners?"
Hesitantly, Pique raised her hand.
"Yes, Miss Pique?"
"Was it... love, Sensei?" she asked.
"Yes, love!" he declared. "In dance there are two kinds of passion: first, a passion for the dance itself. Second: a passion for one's partner. Without the second in a pas de deux, though the dance itself may be exquisite, there will be no heart to the story, no meaning, no resolution, no m-m-marriage of the souls!" He blinked and ran his fingers rapidly through his hair to calm himself of the shivers that had run up and down his spine at the exciting thought.
"In dance," Fakir continued, while Neko-sensei tried to collect himself, "though we dance each alone, it is the ultimate goal to express ourselves clearly to others without words, and in life, to express ourselves to that one person who will matter most." He glanced at Mytho and Rue, and smiled. "Dance is a meeting of the body and the soul; love, its ultimate goal."
It was no secret that Fakir wrote. His fingers were always stained black with ink and his favorite shirt had developed a few black marks at the cuff as well. No one ever saw what he wrote, of course, but the old man who ran the used bookstore where Fakir purchased his paper and ink always questioned him carefully as to each story and its careful disposal. Fakir answered honestly, if shortly, well aware that there were certain individuals opposed to his use of his power.
He wasn't expecting, however, for Neko-sensei to ask him to write a new short ballet for the students to perform at the end of the term. He didn't agree immediately, asking for time to think it over. His writing was dangerous, and he didn't know if adding the power of a performance onto it would intensify the results or not.
"They shouldn't be able to do anything to it," Arthur declared. "They're only students."
"Even students can have power in their dancing," Fakir retorted quietly. They were in the library, after all. "Besides, do you think it would stay at just the one performance? Every ballet started in just one place, one performance, one time. It's what would happen after that which worries me."
"If a story takes life," his distant cousin mused, fingers stopped on the page of the book he'd been reading when Fakir asked his question, "then there's nothing that can be done to stop it. The only thing to stop that from happening is to make sure it never leaves your control. A performance would destroy that. Everyone performing or watching would go away knowing the story."
"Maybe," Fakir mused. "The only thing to do is make it a happy story. That way, no matter what happens..."
"Minimal collateral damage," Arthur agreed.
Ahiru rested in her basket that night, watching Fakir attempt to write by candlelight. She didn't know if it was a new story, or something to do with the one they were caught up in, but the day had been long and hot and she was content to lay there, feeling a cooling breeze blow in from across the lake, listening to the chirping of the frogs through the open door.
Frogs! Her mouth watered slightly at the thought, and she glanced at Fakir again. She had the vague feeling that he wouldn't like the fact that she ate frogs and snails, so she tried not to eat in front of him. The small fish would probably be okay, though, she mused. Fakir ate fish too. Personally, she didn't think he had much room to complain. He ate eggs. Though, to be fair, she'd never seen him eat any other kind of bird-related food. She wondered if he had, if he'd once upon a time eaten chicken or quail or even (she shuddered, then preened her feathers smooth again) duck, and given them up for her.
It was food for thought.
He sighed and lowered his quill. "I can't write it."
"Kwa?" she asked. ("What?")
"Our story. Whatever's happening to us."
Ahiru considered for a second. "Kwakwakwa kwa kwa?" ("Is it because it hasn't happened yet?")
"Maybe that's it." He rolled the quill between his fingers, twirling it. "Rue asked me if I'd like to go on tour with them."
"Kwa?!"
Fakir smiled at her. "I said no. Going away won't change things." He stared off into the distance. "Change things..." he murmured, and Ahiru was quiet, letting him think aloud. "Stories are about change. What is being changed? You? Or me?"
She thought about the story of Swan Lake, about how it might have gone differently. She wondered if there was an "afterward," if after Odette had sunk into her dying pose, the prince married to Odile, there might not be a brave knight to wake her with a kiss... but that was another story, and Ahiru was mixing up her fairy tales. She wasn't human anyway, only a bird, and stubbornly pushed away the memory of a pas de deux danced at the bottom of a lake of despair. That dance hadn't been danced in love, but in friendship. Fakir was her friend and she was his, and being a duck or a swan with a human heart and mind, Ahiru was sensible enough to know that was more than she really had any right to expect. He'd promised to stay with her forever, and if forever for her was going to be shorter than forever for him, well, that was the way things were.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
Rue dreamt of a new ballet, a reworking of Swan Lake. There was Prince Siegfried, and the white swan princess Odette. There was the half-crow Count Von Rothbart and his daughter Odile. And behind them all, armed with sword and quill, was a knight. They danced, and fell in love, and fought, and though she could never see Odette clearly, Rue knew that she would have red hair, as surely as she knew that Odile's face was her own. But here Odile was, if not an innocent, merely a pawn of her father, and the prince pitied her. For her, he broke his vow to Odette and struck down Von Rothbart. And Odette, trapped forever in the form of a swan, returned to her lake to forever mourn. At the end, only the knight remained on the stage, standing helplessly at the edge of the lake.
Rue felt an uprush of anger. Why didn't he do anything? Surely his love was not worth less than that of the prince! But he looked up at her through the gathering mist as the ballet drew to a close, and she saw all the weight and weariness of the world in his eyes, and her anger melted away in pity. The prince was gone with his princess, the knight's sword lay broken at his feet, and the hand that held the quill ran with blood.
His face was Fakir's.
She woke in the middle of the night to a dark room and an aching heart.
Mytho knelt beside Fakir as they worked at tying the branches of the tomato plants to a central stake. He decided he understood why Fakir liked this simple life. There was something entrancing about the green of the growing plants, the way they felt, the pungent smell of the plants as they were manipulated in his hands. There was something satisfying about knowing he'd helped create this order, this bounty.
Fakir was silent, but then he hadn't been one for unnecessary words since he was a child. It was ironic, Mytho considered, given how Fakir had eventually been revealed to possess an immense power that worked almost entirely through words. It was also somehow appropriate for Fakir as a dancer, as someone who communicated without words.
He wondered what it was like for Ahiru, to be without speech at all now. Fakir could hear her and understand, of course, but no one else. Not her friends from school, not himself or Rue. Only Fakir. It didn't mean, of course, that Ahiru was entirely without the ability to communicate. She had been a dancer, too, and still showed her moods through the way she moved and the mimes she used.
Would he have made the same choice, Mytho asked himself, had he known that he would be leaving Princess Tutu not as an ordinary girl, but as a small, powerless bird? He thought about it as his hands worked, and decided that though the choice would have been harder, he would have made it just the same. There was no way that he could have, in good conscience, left Rue to the fate the monstrous Raven had planned for her. Princess Tutu--Ahiru--had the heart of a heroine, and he believed that she understood why he'd chosen that way; why he'd had to choose that way; why he would make that same choice again a hundred times out of a hundred.
He wondered if Fakir, who possessed a writer's heart and a knight's honor, understood that choice as well. Fakir would never admit it, but he was a romantic. He'd spent a childhood expecting to be a knight to a prince, taken care of that empty prince once he'd been found, defended him, saved him...
"I never apologized," Fakir said quietly, on the opposite side of the greenery from Mytho.
Mytho jerked, surprised by the sudden speech. "Apologized for what?" he asked.
"I struck you. Twice."
He... oh. He had, hadn't he? Mytho shook his head. "There's nothing to apologize for. The first... you were frightened. The second I well deserved."
"Neither of which is an excuse," Fakir returned.
"No, you're right, they're not," Mytho agreed, sitting back on his heels. "But Fakir--if you hadn't learned of your own ability to inadvertently create pain, would you be so careful now with your writing?" Fakir just looked at him, unanswering, which was in itself an answer. "It pleases me," Mytho said carefully, "to know that I helped you grow, in whatever way, into what you needed to be in order to not become another Drosselmeyer."
Fakir looked away, down at the dirt. "I'm sorry I haven't been a better knight."
"You've been the best knight," Mytho replied honestly, surprised that Fakir could not see himself as Mytho did. "A true knight is not afraid to learn from his mistakes, to grow and change and always become better than what he was before. A false knight would be one who always remains the same, believing himself the pinnacle of excellence." He smiled. "A true knight would keep his promise to a duck, a small, helpless creature, rather than following his prince off into glory."
Fakir looked at him for a minute, then shook his head, the smallest of smiles crossing his face. "You'd better not let her hear you call her that," he advised, standing. He looked back down at Mytho. "On the other hand, since it's you..."
Mytho laughed and caught Fakir's hand, letting himself be pulled up.
Fakir, according to Arthur's genealogy chart, was Drosselmeyer's closest living descendant, and probably the one through whom the blood ran truest. He thought about it sometimes, about the concept of writer's blood. He'd been telling stories since he was a very small child, writing them down, immersing himself in a world of make-believe that sometimes wasn't quite as unreal as it should have been.
He should have had restraints, he acknowledged to himself. There should have been someone to check his writing, to guide it, to be able to place limits for him. That kind of power, even untrained, should not have been in a child's hands. But his grandfather, Drosselmeyer's youngest son, had died shortly before Fakir's birth, and the writing blood hadn't run true in Fakir's father.
Fakir's lack of control had ultimately killed his parents.
The only good thing to come of their deaths was the fact that he had stopped writing for over ten years, until he was old enough to control the power in his stories. Until Arthur was there to train him. Until Ahiru was there to inspire him. Until it was time to be a writer rather than a knight, to lay down his sword and take up a quill instead.
Sometimes it was a phrase that would inspire him to write, a clever little piece of wordplay that would amuse him and make Fakir feel obscurely proud of having realized it. Sometimes it was a mental image that he saw, something that made him wonder What is this? and explore it in written language, one sentence after another spilling out from the inkwell, following the image and creating the story. He'd discovered that there was a certain degree to which he could control the story and a certain degree to which he couldn't budge it. He could only write with the story, not against it. He could not make the ravens stop attacking Ahiru, but he could put wind beneath her wings and give her the strength to keep dancing. Some days this limitation frustrated him; others he accepted it. He wondered if Drosselmeyer ever found a way to overcome it (the interfering old man ran the entire town through his story for something approaching a century, after all), but didn't want to ask Arthur.
The idle notion of surpassing Drosselmeyer filled Fakir with a sense of elation, but more, it filled him with cold terror, disgust, and dread. He did not want to be the most powerful. All he wanted was the power to take care of those who mattered to him.
Rue and Ahiru sat on a grassy mattock a safe distance away, watching as Mytho and Fakir engaged one another.
The clash of their swords, Rue admitted, was thrilling. But the thought of more violence, of another fight between the two of them, nauseated her. It had been her fault, what had happened before. She had been the one to come between the Prince and his Knight, soaking the heart of the former in the poisonous Raven's blood that even now ran through her own veins. She had turned Mytho against his protector, and for that she could not forgive herself.
It would never happen again. She would make sure of that.
She glanced at Ahiru, sitting by her side, watching intently the two men in their practice. It was a kind of dance, too, Rue admitted. It was strength and precision and artistry. It was a long training of the body to obey one's commands, to dodge, to strike, to flip backwards out of range. The both of them were very, very good at it. Ballet, was, after all, originally based on fencing forms.
She wished she could understand Ahiru the way Fakir did. Rue had never had a friend before, and it was a very queer feeling. There was nothing she couldn't say to Mytho, of course, but... the thought of having someone else she could speak with from the heart, someone who wouldn't condemn her for what she had done...
It opened worlds of possibilities for Rue.
She supposed she could always speak with Fakir of such things as well, but she'd never truly felt close to Mytho's protector. They'd had a tacit agreement between them for years regarding the heartless prince, but never had it been more than an arrangement of convenience. She supposed she should get to know Fakir better. He was Mytho's best friend, after all, and Ahiru... well, Ahiru adored the knight-writer, that was plain to see.
Ahiru must have sensed her gaze, because she looked away from the two men and up at Rue, with a questioning "Kwa?"
Rue looked back at the two men. "They're very good, aren't they?" she asked rhetorically. "All the same... I hate watching this. I know it's just practice, and princes and knights need to keep up their skills, but..."
"Kwa," Ahiru said, her tone seeming to agree, and rested her head lightly on Rue's thigh. Rue stroked the smooth feathers of that head, trying to control the sudden pain that had sprung up within her. And Ahiru must have been watching her, because she moved her head. "Kwa!" she said imperatively, and Rue looked up and Ahiru was standing. "Kwa kwa kwakwa!" she said, gesturing with her wings, and started walking. She paused a short distance away to make sure Rue was following her.
Rue blinked and got up and they walked away from the sound of battle. "Ahiru, where are we going?" she asked, knowing it was useless.
"Kwa," Ahiru replied placidly.
They ended up back by Fakir's house, Ahiru leading Rue out onto the dock. She came to the end of it and looked back at Rue. "Kwa!" she said, and dove off the end, her white body disappearing smoothly beneath the water with the barest of splashes. She surfaced a few yards away, looking back at Rue. "Kwa!" she said again.
"You want me to dive too?"
"Kwa!"
"But I'm not wearing swimming clothes," Rue protested.
"Kwa?" And perhaps she could understand Ahiru a little after all, because Rue understood that perfectly to be a bright, saucy "So?"
She looked at the surface of the water and considered for a moment. Clothing would dry, she decided.
Rue dove. And surfaced near Ahiru, bobbing like a cork, laughing.
Beneath Fakir's quill a story took place for the ballet, that of four friends seeking their hearts' desire who were confronted by a Riddle Queen. She challenged each with a question before letting them pass on their journey. To his inner eye she looked a little like Edel, and he wondered if he could write Drosselmeyer's puppet back to life, bring her and Uzura both back to Gold Krone. He wondered if he should. Did he have the right?
"What is the difference between a raven and a crow?" she asked the first, the youngest.
The first stumbled in confusion for a moment before answering, "A raven is like a crow, only more so." A linguistic pun between crow, "karasu," and raven, or great crow, "oogarasu."
The Queen nodded and let the littlest pass.
"What is given up in exchange for what it most desires?" she asked another, as pale as snow.
"The heart, for love," he answered steadily, and passed also.
"When is a story not a story?" she challenged the third. "When is a dance not a dance?"
This was a setback, and the dark-haired girl danced by herself to find the answer. Finally she replied, "When no one performs it." She too passed.
The Riddle Queen turned last to the last, and looked at him for a moment before asking, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
He knew two answers, and he did not know which she wanted. He chose the shorter, the more obvious: "Poe wrote on both."
Her eyes narrowed, expression turning to a frown, and with a wave of her hand she banished him from the stage while trapping his three friends in a cage.
Fakir broke free of the writing trance with a gasp, searching wildly until he found Ahiru and Mytho and Rue laughing and splashing one another in the shallows of the lake nearby.
That was her, he realized, heart still pounding in his chest. The other writer. She was the Riddle Queen. She separated us. Why? Should he have chosen the other answer after all?
His right hand was trembling, Fakir noted almost distantly. The other writer hadn't controlled his pen, not the way Drosselmeyer had, but whatever she intended had gotten tangled up with, and warped, the ballet he'd been writing. And now he had no choice but to finish it the way it was, or risk life coming into it. He cursed himself for being a fool and writing, however veiled, of himself and his friends again.
Then the sky turned dark and the water black. Rue drew closer to Mytho, who held her in his arms. Ahiru, though, looked out toward the center of the lake, where shadows gathered, then tried to hurry the other two to the shore. But the mud and rocks beneath the surface were slippery with slime, and they could not move quickly. She turned to meet Fakir's eyes across the distance as the darkness struck, wrapping the three of them in its embrace.
"Ahiru!" Fakir shouted, vaulting the fence.
"Fakir!" he heard her cry from across the distance, then the darkness swallowed the three of them entirely and they were gone.
His feet splashed in the shallows where his friends had been as Fakir looked desperately around for any clue. He could hear throaty laughter in the back of his mind as the sunshine came back. He clenched his fist.
They'd been stolen, just as in the ballet.
The only way to find them was to write.
"Ahiru. Ahiru." A gentle hand shook her shoulder, bringing Ahiru gradually awake. She blinked.
"Rue-chan?" she asked, then her eyes widened and her hand flew to her throat. She held that hand up and flexed its fingers before her eyes, unbelieving.
She was human again.
"Rue-chan," she said, dumbfounded, looking up. Rue smiled at her, the smile a little bit quavery, but putting on a good front. "Where are we?" Ahiru asked, sitting up and looking around.
"In a cage," Mytho answered, a hand grasping one silver bar as he looked out into the darkness beyond. He half-turned toward her, a small, ironic smile on his mouth. "A birdcage."
Ahiru blinked, and looked up.
The bars of the cage rose to form a high dome above, just close enough together that it would be impossible to slip out between them. Branches, wide enough to walk or sit on, crisscrossed the cage at various angles, with a series of large hoops hanging down from the ceiling, a mirror here, food and water trays there.
"What?!" Ahiru demanded, offended, springing to her feet. "Why are we in here? We're not birds, well, I am, but you're not..." she trailed off.
"Whoever has done this, they wanted to separate us from Fakir," Mytho said calmly.
Ahiru's hand closed instinctively on the pendant Fakir had given her. "He was watching when we were taken," she said, remembering the look of horrified realization in Fakir's eyes.
"Yes." Mytho nodded. "He'll come looking for us. We have to be ready." There was a sword sheathed at his side, Ahiru noticed, and he'd already summoned forth the raiment that was his as the Prince.
Which begged the question of what she was wearing.
Ahiru looked down at herself.
Before, when she'd changed between her bird and human forms, she'd never been clothed when she changed back. This time, it seemed, someone had taken mercy on her. She wasn't wearing Tutu's dress, though, but a long ballet gown of white with gauzy short sleeves, and white toe shoes on her feet. Seeing those sent a moment of panic through her--she'd never gotten to en pointe lessons! But she calmed herself, reasoning that whatever happened, she wasn't Princess Tutu anymore and wouldn't be expected to dance her way free. She hoped. She touched a hand to the back of her head, wondering what had happened to her braid, and found to her surprise that it had been coiled up and pinned to the back of her head.
Rue was watching her. "It's very becoming," she commented. "You're much more mature now than you were a year ago, Ahiru."
"Mature...?" Ahiru asked, then looked around. She found the lowest branch and set a foot on it, both arms out for balance for a second, and started climbing her way upwards to where the mirror was.
"Ahiru, be careful!" Rue called after her, and as Ahiru looked down she saw worry on the other girl's face.
"It's all right," she called back with a cheery wave. "The footing's secure!" Of course, that made her falter a bit, but she covered it with a laugh and continued upward.
What she saw when she reached the mirror made her stop and stare for a few minutes.
Before, she'd been a child in a child's body, flat and gawky. Now her human body was more like Rue's, with curves where a year ago there had been none. Her face was different, thinner. She thought it might be beautiful and wondered immediately, in her Juliet dress, if Fakir would like her like this. She seemed graceful, elegant.
A swan, instead of a duckling.
She touched the pendant at her throat again and swallowed, unhappy. It wasn't fair, whoever was doing this, to show her what she could have been like if she were human. It was crueler than anything Drosselmeyer had ever done to her. At least she'd entered his story willingly.
This time there wasn't even a prince she could save.
"Ahiru," Rue called up to her, "are you all right?"
"Yes," she whispered, her voice broken, then straightened up her head and stared defiantly at her reflection. She'd been Princess Tutu; whatever this storyteller was trying to do to her, she could still cling to that pride of action. "I'm fine," she called back, and looked up and around before looking back down at Rue and Mytho. "I'm going to try going further up and see if I can see anything!" she called down to them.
Fakir stopped writing for a minute, struck by the vision of Ahiru seeing at herself in the mirror. She was beautiful, as beautiful as Rue was, or as Tutu had ever been. The freckles that had been splattered across the bridge of her nose a year ago, a redhead's curse, were still there, but muted now. Her eyes were still large and crystal blue. Her neck, above shoulders with barely-there sleeves, was an elegant swan's neck.
It was cruel, showing the both of them what they could never have.
He continued writing, letting the shadows of evening gather around him.
Ahiru climbed, careful of her footing, ever higher, trying to reach the ceiling of the cage. She eyed the interlinked rings as she began to pass them, and tried not to look down from the dizzying height. Around and around she went, until she could go no higher.
"Ahiru," Rue's voice called from below, thin and far away. Ignoring it, Ahiru examined the distance between herself and the rings. She thought she could make it. Tutu definitely would have been able to, but she was no longer Tutu. Still, she had to try.
Gathering her determination, she leapt across the open air, wishing for just an instant for wings. Her fingers caught on the ring closest to her, closed, and then slipped. She fell, scrabbling for purchase as the rings fell upward and away from her.
A gust of wind pushed her into the nearest and she fiercely locked both arms around it, grateful for the save.
Realization occurred her as she hefted herself up to perch in the ring. "Fakir?" she wondered aloud, as the rings swayed back and forth.
Fakir breathed a sigh of relief.
"Was that...?" Rue asked, pulling her hand away from her mouth. Ahiru had been falling, helpless, then...
"Fakir," Mytho confirmed, nodding, his eyes watching as well as Ahiru began to climb back up the chained rings.
Ahiru hefted herself up from one ring to the next. It wasn't graceful, it wasn't ballerina-like, but she was making steady progress upward again. That was what counted.
The rings chimed against one another as she moved, soft silver sounds echoing from where her feet and hands touched them. It was like music to a dance she didn't know. She found herself humming a counterpoint, singing to the rings as they sang to her.
Finally she reached the top ring, which was gold instead of silver. She sat in it and examined where it joined to the ceiling. To her disappointment there didn't seem to be anything special about it. A small loop merely descended from the crown point of the roof and the top ring went through it. Sighing in disappointment, Ahiru kicked back and forth once and began to swing, still humming.
Fakir paused, knowing that the story had found something important and Ahiru hadn't realized it yet. A gold ring. A singing bird, swinging in a cage. A silver cage for a white bird.
He dipped his pen in his inkwell and continued to write, trying to reach her.
Somehow her song had developed a rhythm and words to go with it. "Swing, sing," Ahiru sang, "swing and sing and wings."
"Swing," someone whispered in her ear.
"Fakir?" she asked, turning to look, but no one was there.
"You weren't meant to be a caged bird," that same someone whispered in her other ear, and now she was sure it was Fakir's voice.
Blinking, Ahiru looked down and saw the long chain of silver rings beneath her swinging back and forth as well, in ever-wider arcs. The bottommost almost reached the bars of the cage now.
She wondered what would happen if the magic, singing rings broke the cage bars.
She swung harder.
"What is she doing?" Mytho demanded aloud, watching the chain of rings swing wildly.
"Mytho," Rue said, hand on his sleeve. He followed her gaze.
"Fakir?" he asked, surprised.
His friend stood across the cage, watching Ahiru's progress. Yet this was and wasn't the whole of Fakir. He was as ghostly and transparent as the transformed shards of Mytho's heart had ever been. But where Mytho's heart had been red as love, Fakir's image was blue as truth.
He looked over at them. "Trust her," he said, and his voice was Fakir's own.
Even if Fakir was just a seeming, Mytho made the decision to trust his friend. Both of them.
The bottommost ring crashed through the silver bars and they, and the darkness behind them, shattered like glass, cracks radiating around the entire cage, fracturing their way upwards. Ahiru had just an instant to realize that this was going to be a problem before the top of the cage caved in and once again she was falling free.
She closed her eyes and thought, Ah, this is it, one hand on the pendant Fakir had given her. She had no regrets, had somehow known from the moment she'd seen herself in the Juliet dress what her fate was to be. It was enough to have freed Mytho and Rue from the storyteller's cage...
A hand caught hers and pulled her gently upright. Shocked, she opened her eyes.
Fakir stood before her, dressed as Romeo in blue, holding her hand as they stood on the darkness of forever.
The candle blew out in the deepest night.
The seat before the writing desk was empty.
He led her slowly through the pas de deux she shouldn't have been able to dance as Ahiru. But somehow it came easily, dancing with Fakir. She felt a warm glow inside of her that if this was to be her last dance, at least it was with him.
"Fakir, what are you doing here?" she asked. Shouldn't he have been writing the story?
"Looking for you," he replied. "You always get into such trouble when I'm not around."
"But what about the story?" she asked.
He smiled, and lifted her. "It's all right. It's inside of me."
From on high, Ahiru saw Mytho and Rue in the distance, dancing their own pas de deux, coming closer. She closed her eyes, grateful it had worked. "Thank you for coming after me, Fakir," she said as she returned to the ground.
He didn't kiss her hand, the way Mytho had once, but his hand closed over hers, thumb brushing across the back of her hand, and somehow that was even better.
Fakir opened his other hand, and in it lay a golden ring.
"This is..." Ahiru said, wondering.
"The ring you were sitting in," he confirmed. "The golden ring from that cage." He closed his hand back around it. "Now, let's finish this."
Mytho, only a few feet away now, nodded, and released Rue, drawing his sword.
Fakir looked at the blackness surrounding them and suddenly there was parchment and a quill waiting for him. He released Ahiru's hand and plucked the quill from mid-air.
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he spoke aloud, writing the words as he spoke them. "The Knight turned to the Riddle Queen and answered, 'One is black as ink, and the other is black with ink'."
"Well answered, sir Knight," a voice replied from behind all of them. Ahiru jumped and whirled to see a tall, pale woman with her hair done up standing there, smiling, a quill in her hand as well.
Fakir blinked and took a step toward her. "I know you," he said. "You're the jeweler I bought Ahiru's pendant from."
She nodded. "I'm most disappointed with your use of it," she said pleasantly. "When one crafts a magic necklace, one expects it to be used as such."
"But it's not magic!" Ahiru blurted.
Mytho's sword flashed, its point ending just shy of the woman's neck. "What do you want with us?" he demanded.
She looked dispassionately on him and flicked the hand that held her quill.
Mytho's sword fell to the ground as an eagle launched itself into the air. Rue watched the flight of the transformed prince with wide eyes, then held out an arm.
Mytho landed, clutching Rue's arm tight between his talons. "Mytho?" she questioned, softly stroking his feathers and looking into the bird's eye. Her expression hardened, and she looked past him to the storyteller.
"Rue-chan, don't!" Ahiru cried, but it came too late. Rue had already transformed herself into Kraehe and launched herself at the woman. She was stopped by another flick of the quill, transforming Rue fully into a raven and imprisoning her and the bird-Mytho in a common cage.
"Mytho! Rue-chan!" Ahiru cried, rushing over to them.
Fakir's face hardened. "What do you want?" he asked warningly.
"I despise storytellers who lie to themselves," the woman said. "You can't write well because you deny your own truth."
"I let everyone make their own choice," Fakir retorted.
"You let the prince make his own choice for everyone," she rejoined. "Did you choose as you truly wished, or that girl there? You let him tell your story, and you continue to abide by it when you have the power to make out of your life anything you wish."
Her fingers twined in the bars of the cage that held her friends, Ahiru listened as the two writers argued over the ending of Drosselmeyer's story. It was true that everything had happened according to Mytho's choice, but did that make any of their choices less valid? She'd chosen to give the final piece of his heart back. Fakir had chosen to stay with her. Her fingers tightened on the bars. It wasn't right for someone else to come in after it was all said and done and try to change things.
She whirled around. "Why are you doing this?" she demanded.
The woman seemed taken aback. "He's ruining both of your chances at happiness."
"I was happy!" Ahiru cried. "I had the lake, and he had our home and we had each other and then you had to come along and change everything..."
Cool fingers curled under her chin. "But you're not just a bird anymore, my dear," the woman said, not unkindly. "No matter your form, doesn't the heart that beats in your chest want more?" Ahiru shook her head, forcing away blinding tears. "You can't lie, not in this place. If you want to stay like this, between the two of you you have the power to change anything." The woman's smile was soft and bitter. "That's the power of love, after all--the power to change oneself."
"Ahiru," Fakir said, and his voice was deep and cool, like the waters of the lake. He took a step closer as she scrubbed the tears from her eyes. "Would you... like to stay like this? Forever?"
"It's not my real form," she said with a hiccup. "The real me is just a duck. You said we should both go back to being our true selves..."
His hand smoothed back her hair. "If she's right, though, the real you hasn't been a bird for a long time," he said. Ahiru looked up into his green eyes. "Is she right, Ahiru?"
Ahiru thought about it, thought about being locked away in the shape of a duck or a swan. She could fly, true, and swim deeply in the lake, but she couldn't study dance and couldn't talk. And she could only ever be friends with Fakir. And something in her wanted so much more...
She shook her head. "I don't know," she cried.
"Ahiru..."
Fakir looked at her for a moment, then back up at the other writer. "If I rewrite the ending, will you promise to stop troubling us?" he asked.
She tapped her quill against her lips, looking up into the emptiness and considering. "Yes," she said finally, looking back at Fakir. "I have other places to go and other stories to fix, anyway."
"Ahiru," asked Fakir, "what if I gave you the choice, like before?"
"But Mytho's heart is--"
"Not Mytho's heart," he interrupted quietly. "Mine."
She stared at him. "Fakir..."
"Would you like that?"
"But your heart..."
"I would hope," he said, starting to grow red, "that it would never be far from me."
She stared at him an instant longer, then hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Fakir," she whispered.
The writer clapped her hands together once, delightedly. "Well, then," she said, raising her hand.
"I will write this," Fakir forestalled her icily. He closed his eyes and drew a breath, freeing himself slightly from Ahiru's embrace. "The Knight took his quill to his breast," he said, action following his words, "and took out that piece of his heart that shone most brightly. He gave it to the swan maiden to be sealed forever in her enchanted locket until the day they both died, and vowed once again to always stay by her side."
He opened his eyes, feeling the strain of effort beading sweat on his brow, in time to see a blue glow in Ahiru's hands absorbed into her locket. Her eyes, just as blue, met his and she took Fakir's hand as a water-spangled wind sprang up around them both, sealing the pact. "And I will always stay by your side," she whispered for only him to hear.
The absence of a piece of his heart was almost too much for Fakir to bear and his hand tightened on Ahiru's as he sank to one knee, wondering how Mytho had lived for so many years without any of his heart. Only looking into Ahiru's blue eyes seemed to ease the pain. "Fakir!" he heard her cry as he slipped away into blackness.
Mytho sat by Fakir's bedside, waiting for his friend to awaken. It was a disturbing, lonely vigil, making him wonder how Fakir had felt all those times he'd been the one waiting for Mytho to wake.
If Mytho had possessed any doubts about Fakir being the best of knights, or about his worthiness for the hand of one who had been a princess, they were alleviated. It had taken nothing less than sheer courage and purest love to give pull forth a shard of his heart and give it to Ahiru. It was the most generous, caring act Mytho had ever seen. Only the truest of knights could have conceived of, let alone done, such a thing.
Mytho smiled.
Fakir finally stirred, morning sunlight illuminating his face, and opened his eyes. He clenched his fist to his chest, gasping in pain. "Ahiru...!" he gasped through clenched teeth.
Alarmed, Mytho stood. "Fakir?" he asked, uncertain if he should run and fetch Ahiru or not.
The moment passed, though, Fakir relaxing by increments, breathing hard. Mytho sat back down. Fakir stared up at the ceiling, one hand still over his heart, the other by his side. "How did you stand living like this?" he finally asked.
"It wasn't easy," Mytho admitted. "You do grow used to it eventually."
"That's good to know," Fakir replied.
It was a minute longer before Mytho said quietly, "That was a brave thing you did."
"It was still less than she deserved," Fakir answered.
"I could only take away her choice," Mytho murmured. "You gave it back to her."
That made Fakir look at him, really look at him. "I'm sorry," he murmured.
"No." Mytho shook his head. "I'm sorry. It was unjust, what I did then."
"You followed your heart," Fakir said, pushing himself up to sit. "It was what we'd all wanted."
"My choice hurt so many people."
"Mytho." Fakir waited until Mytho looked at him. "You can't be all things to all people."
"I'm a prince; I'm supposed to be."
"You're a person; it's simply not possible."
When Mytho left the room, Fakir opened his hand and looked at the gold ring he still held, gleaming with promises yet unspoken. He closed his hand back around it. Not yet. But perhaps...
When Ahiru came back in from the garden, humming, her skirt full of rampion and beans, she was surprised to find Fakir sitting at his desk writing. "Fakir!" He half-turned to look at her, and smiled. She dumped the vegetables on the table and hurried to be by his side. "Are you okay? Should you be up?"
His ink-stained fingers brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I'm fine," he said. Then he blinked. "Where did you get that outfit?"
"Eh?" Ahiru looked at herself. "Oh, Rue-chan said I shouldn't work in the garden in dance clothes and loaned this to me to wear until I can get some clothes of my own and she said I should probably re-enroll in the Academy but that might be a problem because you're a teacher there and teachers and students aren't supposed to live together but I don't want to move back into the dorms when you'd be living out here all alone..."
Fakir laughed softly. "You're just like always," he said fondly.
"Should I have changed?" Ahiru asked, eyes wide open.
He shook his head. "Not at all."
Her hand crept slowly to her pendant. "It's really okay?" she asked, looking down.
Fakir nodded. "It is." He leaned over to whisper in her ear. "My princess."
"Ehhhh?!" Ahiru went bright red.
When they went into town that afternoon to buy clothing and some other necessaries for Ahiru, Fakir stopped first where the jeweler's stand had been. He was not surprised to find her gone.
"At least she kept her word," he commented, and they went on.
It wasn't until Ahiru was well and truly outfitted and they were making one last stop, at the used bookshop for Fakir to purchase more paper, that anything more came of it. The old man behind the counter peered at Ahiru. Fakir crossed his arms and glared, challenging the man, daring him to make any comment. The old man raised an eyebrow, but made no other acknowledgement that Fakir had written anything. He did, however, set down a sealed letter on top of the stack of paper. "A woman on her way out of town asked if she could leave this for you," he said.
Fakir didn't read it in the shop, or indeed at all until they reached the cottage again.
"Cousin," he read aloud to Ahiru, Mytho, and Rue, "I apologize if my actions have offended yourself and your Princess. However, I believe this to be the best ending to that story. Or, perhaps I should say, the best beginning to your story. The best of luck with your new ballet, and I wish you both 'happily ever after'." The scrawled signature was illegible.
"Another of Drosselmeyer's descendants?" Rue asked.
"So it seems." Fakir considered burning the letter to keep its contents from coming to life, but it didn't actually hold a story. It should be safe. He folded it and put it in the drawer of his desk. "Maybe Arthur will know who she was."
"In the end, though," Mytho asked, "does it really matter?"
As two couples danced late that afternoon on the green meadow beyond the house, words on a piece of paper shut in a drawer glimmered briefly.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Author's Schism
Along with most everyone else, I felt that Ahiru got shorted with the ending of the story. Oh, it made sense, and as a good friend of mine pointed out, "just because it's a tragic ending doesn't mean it's not a good ending." But something in me wanted to play with the universe, and the only way I could do that was to change how it ended. It's a rare anime that is so complete unto itself that one has to do that...
My main apology for this story is taking the liberty of translating Aotoa's name as "Arthur." It didn't make sense to me that he was the only non-animal person in the series with a Japanese name. I apologize not for my choice of romanization, but for the total misnomer it is. His name, I finally figured out, is actually "Author"... meaning "writer" the same way "Fakir" means "magician." Author, unfortunately, though, is a common enough word in English that I felt it would break the story's flow to have it as his name. So this once I chose the flow of the text over accuracy of translation, the sound over the meaning...