A Retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses

[drownedinlight]

 I don't normal post things I write for class, but I'm kind of proud of this. We'll see how proud I am after I go through workshop next week, but yeah.

This story starts with a prince. No, not a princess. There is a princess in this story, twelve of them to be precise, but this story is about the Prince. What was his name? Why does he need a name? Why can’t he just be the Prince? Oh, you really think that “Cinderella,” and “Charming,” were actual names? For this story he is simple the Prince.

Now the Prince was no sort of ordinary prince, you see he lived in a place called the Underneath. What? NO! He was not a demon or a gnome or a goblin or a dwarf. He just lived under the ground in a place called the Underneath. The Underneathers were just like regular people; expect perhaps that they aged twice as slowly, and well, they were sort of fair all over. It was because they had never seen a light like ours that could change the color of your skin and your hair. There was light in the Underneath, but most because of the extraordinary plants which grew there. You see plants of stone and metal grew up from the Underneath; in place of grass and ferns, there was beryl and emeralds. The flowers grew made up of rubies, and lapis lazuli and amethyst. And no doubt you have heard of the avenue of silver, gold and diamond trees. Yes, I’m getting to that part; I just want you to understand that the Underneath sparkled, because of how things grew there.

One night there was a ball. Because one of the princes came of age; you know, I’m not sure if it was the Prince or not. He was the Prince who would be king, and he probably has already served his term as such. Now one of his great-great-many-greats-grandchildren rules there. All of that really doesn’t matter you know. Because the story ends with the Prince becoming king. And well, because it’s not why they had the ball that’s important. It’s who came.

In the middle of the ball, someone there spotted something strange on the other side of the lake (the palace stood in the middle of this lake, I’m not sure I told you that. Geology that’s why). There was a group of women, only distinguishable by their large dresses, stood on the other side of the shore. The Prince, thinking they were late comers, took his eleven brothers, and they each got into a little boat and rowed over to meet the women. That’s when they could see that these women were not from below, but from Up Above. They had so many colors in their skin, so many colors in their hair and eyes, the Princes could not help but notice they were different. And of course, they were wearing shoes. Underneathers don’t really wear shoes.

All right! If you think you know the story so well, then you tell it to me!

All right the magic door is true, and we’ve already talked about the avenue of trees. Yes, the king would be furious when he found out in few months. There will be a soldier in this tale, and a witch, but we haven’t gotten there yet. Ah ha! You see, that’s where you’re wrong, at least in this story. The Princesses were not enchanted; they went through a strange magic door, dressed in evening wear no less, of their own volition. If anything they enchanted the Princes.

I won’t ruin some of the surprise telling you how yet, but I will say this: the Princesses made the underneath feel cold. Not because they were casting a spell on the whole place, but because they were so warm and charismatic, that the air just beyond them felt so cold, and whenever one of the Princes left their sides, they always came back to those warm bodies. It’s one part of their enchantment at least.
So, the Princesses made quite an impression on the Princes, our Prince included, and on most of the people of the underneath. They always returned, wearing elegant clothing and dainty slippers, though there were not always balls, but they would spend time with the Princes and run and play in the Kingdom of the Underneath, always wearing out their shows. Yes, I will get to that! But the king did find out, eventually. But the Prince and his brothers did not know that.
Time passed and—well, it passed like time usually does. The tighter you try grab it, the more swiftly it slips through your fingers. The Princesses kept coming to the Underneath, and the Princes would entertain them. And as the year passed, The Prince’s father, the King began to consider that it was time for him to take the crown. No, he wasn’t going to die, but they had a very interesting monarchy in the Underneath. I won’t tell you about it, because you’re impatient enough as it is. What about his mother? You see what I mean? All questions and no patience with you!

But something strange began to happen to the Underneath as the time of a year passed. It began to grow darker, and darker, and no one, not the king, or his advisors, magic makers or otherwise could figure out why. Until a small shepherd boy, yes the child that shows up in many of these tales came to the king with an unusual piece of green string. He said he found it in the pastures as his sheep were feeding, and when they ate it, they would grow sick. We would recognize this as grass, and because the king had seen it in the Above world, he knew it as well. But how had it grown, in a place where there was only stone and metal sprouting from even more rock. And that’s why the light had begun to go out, because there were less and less shiny things to make the light brighter.

On the same day the shepherd boy brought the grass which should not have grown, The Prince had a terrible dream. It was filled with blood, and darkness, and a large stack of heads reeking under a ball of fire. These things were meshed together and shown to him over and over in twists and turns, until he woke, wet with fear. The Prince could not understand this, so he asked permission to visit his mother, in the above world, to make sense of it. His father let him go, but gave The Prince a mission to ask her, and many others if she could not tell him, why the stones, and metals were changing. And he gave The Prince a special cloak to protect him from the sun’s rays. He had never been under the sun before, so of course it would hurt him.

Now The Prince’s mother had never married, and as I said, she lived in the Above, in a small town, where she kept herself as a witch. Yes you see what happens when you let me tell the story? There are two things in one, the witch and his mother. No, of course she wasn’t a bad witch, she was a good witch. She had done some bad things, but you’ve done bad things and that doesn’t make you a bad person, does it?

Along the way to meet his mother, The Prince found a soldier limping along with a cane. He tried to grow close to the Soldier and help him, but the cloak was making things difficult, because it was woven from special plants that you can only find in the Underneath; quicksilver and glass. Yes, there were glass plants. After all, how do you think her shoes got made? Yes, her.

But the Soldier only smiled at him and said,

“Hail, brother, what brings you to the World Above?” Yes, the Soldier was also a son of the witch and was traveling home to meet his mother, after his war had ended.

No. I refuse to tell you his name. He doesn’t need a name. In all of the other stories, he is simple called—it’s the Soldier, now stop crying, it’s only a story. Yes, I’ll finish, but only if you’re quiet.

Since The Soldier was the son of witch, if a mostly normal one, he could see through the cloak, and let his brother help him along the road.

“I did not recognize you!” The Prince cried. “You’re so old now!”

“Nearly seven and twenty,” The Soldier replied, grinning brightly. “And you just age a little slower, brother. I’ll be an old man by the time you make some children.” They talked by the by, and The Prince explained why he was there to see his mother. The Soldier simply needed a place to go before he began a life of his own, and after a day of walking, they made it to a small cottage, where a woman with dark wild hair was waiting in the door way for them.

“You can take off that cloak,” said the Witch (she told few her name, so I don’t know what it is). “The sun has long since gone down, The Prince.” She invited them both inside, and hung the cloak on a hook at the door. She filled them with soup and hot bread and then bade them to tell her stories of their returns to her home.

The Soldier spoke of the war and his limp leg, how the physicians had been unable to pull a piece of metal from him, distorting his walk. The Witch leaned her hand on his leg, and then plunged her fingers inside and pulled out the piece of sharp metal, stained with his blood. The Soldier hissed in pain as she did, but sighed, just a little sigh when the metal was gone. Then The Prince began to talk. He told of the darkness, the blood and the heads, and gave his mother the grass of a dying land.

The Witch turned the browning blades over in her hand, and got up to stoke the fire. As she turned the logs in the fire place, making sure they were well ablaze, she began to speak,

“Long ago, my father was a prosperous, noble man. But when my mother died, he remarried. My new mother was a kind woman, but there was something about my new sister that made everyone love her. And it was this love everyone had for her, including my father and the man I would marry, give everything to her. My inheritance, my title,” her eyes riveted with colors in the fire light. “I thought perhaps I should not blame her, but like a fool she gloated, and said it was a power in her that I would never have. I cursed her, then and there, that her line would only be made up of daughters, until one of those daughters would bow to one of my sons.

“Much time has passed since then. Many daughters did her line bear; many sons came from my womb. Until one of her daughters ensnared a king, and sat on a throne beside him. It is her twelve daughters who travel to the Underneath every single night, their charm which ensnares you, my son, and their magic which is killing the land of the Land of the Underneath.

“The King issued a challenge that whichever man could find out where they went every night would have his choice of a bride and be ruler over the land. But he said should they fail, they would have their head chopped off.” Here, she looked away from the fire, shadowing her face from her sons. “Perhaps he merely meant to scare his daughters into telling him, but after three nights when the first prince failed, he, like many men and kings, felt he had to kill for the sake of his pride. And so a boy who did not know what magic was against him, died. For every night, the Princesses drug the Princes who would come to solve their mystery. And every third day someone tries, the pile of head which you saw in your dreams, my son, grows.”

The Prince felt a sickness build up inside his stomach, until he had to run to the window to set it free. When he stopped and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, his mother said, “I know of a way to cure the underneath, my son, but should they return, it would not help you to do so.”

“It would seem to me the only way to stop them is to break their spell, and keep them from finding their way back,” said the Soldier. “How would we break their magic, mother?”

“By breaking my curse, I suppose,” the witch said. “By revealing to the king where exactly, they go each night, without falling under their spell.”

“And how am I to know which spell not to fall under?” asked the Soldier.

“Brother you need not do this for my sake!” protested the Prince.

“Oh? You can’t go and break their spell, brother; you are needed in your kingdom. And what should happen if one them sees you in the Above?” The Prince bit his tongue, for he knew his brother spoke the truth. So, he took his cloak of glass and mercury, and pressed it into his brother’s hands,

“So they cannot see you as you follow,” he said.

“And a word of advice my son,” said the witch. “Do not eat or drink anything you have not seen them prepare.” She turned to the Prince, and offered him the piece of metal she had pulled from the Soldier’s leg. “When they have not returned to your world for twelve days, one for each of them, bleed on this will your twelve brothers, and plant it in the very middle of the Underneath and it will begin to heal the land.” The Prince took the piece of metal, and the Soldier his cloak.

The Soldier would set out the next day for the palace, but the prince set out that very night to his kingdom, so the sun’s rays would not touch him.

A great many days passed, each one making the Underneath darker, and each one clenching the prince’s heart tighter in his chest. Each time he saw one of the princesses, he felt like he tongue would burst free from his control and confess everything. More than once it bled, to remind him of what he needed to do. You and I of course know it took the Soldier many days to travel to the palace, and perhaps a few more to convince the king to let him compete. But it was not until the first day the prince saw his brother in the presence of the masses in the palace (they were having a ball again. I don’t know why), that his heart began to feel lighter.

The Soldier traveled three times to the Underneath, following the princesses, and each time the Prince saw him, his heart felt lighter and lighter. Then, after the third time, the prince counted a day for each princess, and after the twelfth took his brothers into the middle of their darkened world, and cut each of them with the piece of metal which had been sewn into his brother’s leg. Once he had torn apart of each of them open with its sharpness, he dug into the rock with it, planted it down so that only the top part showed.

It took time, but with each passing day, the Underneath grew brighter and brighter, and healed more and more.

You want to know what happened after that. Of course you do. Well, the Prince took a wife and became the King. As for the princesses, each of them steadfastly refused to marry the Soldier and with their spell broken by him, the king no longer found them so charming. No one did. I would like to think he sent them all to a convent, and adopted the Soldier and made him King later. The Soldier maybe married the princess who had agreed the least to the plan or some good simple maiden who would have made a good queen.

Maybe it did not happen this way, I see your face there, but this is the way I know it, and the way I’ve told it. If you like the other version better, where the princesses are good, though they let men get chopped up, well, that’s your choice I suppose.