Day 271,

What follows is a rough draft of the story I’m considering telling at the equinox.  Over the next week I’ll try practicing with Vernon.  Cass too if I can get ahold of her.  It definitely needs revisions.  There are certainly parts that work better in written form than spoken that I’ll need to figure out how to handle.  Those alone might force me to choose another story.  We’ll have to see.

But for now:

“A figure stands in an ancient ruin, bare feet on crumbling stone.  Her gown far too fine, her sword much too dark.”

Those are the words by which the story always starts, although the details change from one telling to the next.  Sometimes the ending changes too, but that’s more contentious.  Is it because there are many princesses, all given the same task but all of different character?  Or is it because there are many tellers, all drawing from the same archetypes but all with different messages to impart?

For tonight, let us say both.

And so I say again…

A figure stands in an ancient ruin, bare feet on crumbling stone.  Her gown far too fine, her sword much too dark.  She is not yet afraid, abandoned at the entrance by her retinue as she may be.  Why should she fear?  Afterall, her life has been spent preparing for this ritual.  Her bare feet are armoured in calluses that the first princess - driven so long ago by need and desperation - never knew.  Her fine gown flows with her movements without hindering, a marvel that her ancestor surely would have envied as her remnants of decadence tangled and caught and tore.  Even the sword she can’t unclench her hand from is not so heavy as those she was made to practise with, dreadful as its appearance may be.

Why should she fear when her mother already succeeded in this same trial when she was her age?  As did her mother’s mother.  As did her mother’s mother’s aunt.  Her mother’s mother’s cousin had failed, and they no longer spoke of her.

You exist because of failure.

The princess stops, only steps past the threshold.  She’d been told the sword would speak to her.  It was the only specific of her trial she was allowed to know.  But this was her first time hearing it.  It spoke in her head, in her own voice.  Not the voice of her mouth that others hear, but the voice of her mind.  That private voice each of us have that only we know.  The voice that we truly think of as being us of which the vibrations we send through the air are but crude mimicries.

She shudders despite herself at the violation.  She knows it isn’t her own thought for its words drip with an acid cynicism unbecoming of the heroine she knows she must be.  She would never doubt herself so, and she answers the perceived challenge in kind:

“I exist because of success after success.”

Noble words.  You sound like you believe them.

She ignores the goad and presses on into the darkness.

As she walks, she thinks on her purpose here.  To return the sword where it belongs, yes, but why?  Her tutors and instructors all told her that it was a test of her worthiness to rule, but what did lugging a talking sword through a ruin have to do with ruling?

If you were worthy you would know.

She finds light again before she finds enlightenment.  The moonlight reaches down through a hole far above to illuminate the matched set of doors before her.  One is shining white with a centre mote of gleaming black.  The other is gleaming black with a centre mote of shining white.

She moves to the door of white.  It does not budge.

You have the key in your hand.  Use it already.

She looks down to the blade with a start.

“I didn’t expect you to be helpful.”

I can be if you trust me.

She lifts the blade.  Aligns its darkness with the darkness at the light door’s heart.  Thrusts.  It slides in easily.

“You really are a key, aren’t you?”

I am many things.

She begins to turn the lock.

Yes!  Here we go!

She stops.  The sword is too eager.  The choice of door too obvious.

“I don’t trust you.”

She resets the lock.  Slides the sword back out.  Moves to the black door.  Brings the dark blade into the core of light.  Turns.  Hears a click.  Pulls out.  The door opens.

Seeking the point of light in the darkness are we?  How droll.  And what makes you think I belong there?

She does not answer as she crosses the threshold.  She’s too busy wondering if this was the sword’s intent all along.

Beyond the door is a tomb.  As the princess walks on she passes between rows of sarcophagi, each topped with a graven effigy of their occupants as they appeared in life.  All women and girls, each bearing a familial resemblance to her neighbours.  To compare the first and last one might strain to find the similarity, but taken in a chain, the passing of features over generations becomes clear.

The princess comes to a halt at the end of the line.  Not truly the end, but from here on out the sarcophagi are open, empty, and unadorned.  This statue is her mother.  For the first time tonight she’s felt fear.  She goes to it.  Tries to shift the lid.  Not an easy task with just one hand, but she can’t drop the sword, no matter how much she wants to.

Then use me!

She lifts the blade.  Turns it flat.  Takes a breath as she lines it up with the seam of the lid.

A clang of metal on stone rings through the tomb.  A shifting, grinding noise follows.

The blade is in.  How wickedly sharp must it have been to not be turned aside?  Now the princess works it back and forth, forcing it further and further in.  Enough to use as a lever.  She pushes down on the handle she cannot release with all her weight.  Slowly, agonizingly, the lid shifts.  Seems to stop for a moment, then overbalances, tips, and falls to the stone floor.

The queen shatters, pelting her daughter with dust and debris.

The princess falls to the floor, cutting her leg on the sword.

She coughs on the dust as she raises herself up.  Stumbles.  Grips the rim of the sarcophagus for support and tries again.  Takes another deep breath to steel herself and looks inside.

The sarcophagus is empty.

Foolish child!  Of course it’s empty.  You saw your mother not hours ago before you came here.  And now she has no place to rest when her time does come one day.  But maybe they’ll fix it when they make yours.

“Mine?”

Of course.  Look there, three down the line.  The girl your age.  Your grandmother’s cousin.  Succeed or fail tonight and you’ll return here one day.  It’s just a question of when.

The princess doesn’t know what to say to that, so instead she focuses on the task at hand.  She uses the sword to cut away at her gown for a bandage.  The cut is not deep, but it stings.  She tells herself that it will heal.

As she continues on through the empty tomb the sword speaks again.

Of course, you don’t have to return down here.  You’re strong.  Stronger than the first princess who started all this.  You could break the cycle and keep me.  Walk back out of this place with me in hand by choice and do whatever you want.

“I have my duty.  I would never be so selfish.”

Keep telling yourself that.

Once more the princess passes from light to dark.  She hears what comes next before she sees it.  A great grinding of gears and ticking of clockwork.  She emerges onto a precipice overlooking a deep shaft filled with the inner workings of a mechanism whose purpose she can’t even guess at.  Cogs turn, pendulums swing, pistons rise and fall.  The moon is nowhere to be seen, but an ever-shifting array of mirrors carries its light to this place as faithfully as the princes carries the sword’s darkness.  And there!  Practically spotlit far down on the opposite wall is an opening.  The path onwards.

This princess grins.  Now this was a challenge she was prepared for.

She flings herself from the precipice without a second thought.  She rolls as she lands on the nearest cog.  Stops herself just shy of falling off the edge of a tooth.  Indulges herself with the sensation of the world spinning around her as her platform completes another rotation before stepping onto the tooth of an interlocking gear with barely a glance and riding it down.

What follows is a dance.  Running, jumping, spinning, swinging, all to the metronome of the great TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK that the princess feels in her very bones.  She moves with the rhythm and the rhythm keeps her balance.  She is enjoying this.  By the time she uses the last pendulum’s momentum to fling herself across the abyss to the path beyond, suspended in a transcendent moment of flight, she is laughing.

The laughter makes her take a few moments longer to catch her breath as it dies down.

Well, that was fun.  Too bad it can’t always be like that.  Once you return me, you’ll have to give that sort of thing up to have time for all that proper queenliness.  Holding court.  Passing judgement.  Reading reports.  Of course, it doesn’t have to be like that.

The next stretch of darkness continues for a long time.  The princess is left with only her thoughts and the sword.  As she becomes used to the dark, she realises the sword gives off a strange faint light of its own.  Just enough to keep her from running into walls as the halls twist and turn.

She thinks back to the strange man in black who gave her the sword.  An uninvited guest to her coming of age ceremony.  Uninvited, but not unexpected, for he makes the same intrusion at every such ceremony for every would-be heir.  His bow before her was theatric.  His words of obeisance mocking.  When he presented the sword to her on one knee he called it “the lightest burden you will ever have to carry.”  He seemed to think it was a great joke, for when she asked after grasping the hilt he laughed as he vanished in a cloud of smoke.

The dark halls are sloping upward now.

The princess hadn’t thought much of the words since then, busy with final preparations and travel to the ruins as she had been, but now they come back to her.  Presumably he meant that ruling after would be harder than the trial, but she had trained for that too.  All her life has been training in some form or another.  From the day she entered this world she was assigned a role and would fill it.  She’s always enjoyed the things she does, and she’s good at them too.  But now she wonders, will it be too much when she has to do those things for real and all at once?  And enjoy them though she does, was any of it ever really what she wanted?  Was she ever truly given a choice in the matter?

The incline grows steeper, enough to be an effort.

She realises that she doesn’t know what she wants from life for herself for she was never given an opportunity to consider anything but the path set out for her.  A path she likes, but what if there was something better?  More truly her? The sword seemed to be offering her a choice now, perhaps for the first time.

How strange then that now it has gone silent.

Eyes appear in the dark.  The princess’s first glimpse of them is a sheen catching the blacklight of the sword, but as they see her see them they begin to glow with an inner flame of their own.

The princess’s grin returns.  Here’s a problem she can do something about.  It will be harder in the dark, but she likes a challenge.  She doesn’t wait for the creature, whatever it is, to strike first.  Glowing eyes in the dark make for a convenient target.

A quick jab.  Wicked sharp the sword pierces true.  The princess catches a glimpse of the creature in full as it bursts into flames and disappears.  A black-furred beast, mouth all fangs, limbs all claws.  She blinks, momentarily blinded as she readjusts to the dark after the flash.

More pairs of eyes appear around her.

Good, just the one was too easy.

She finds herself agreeing with the sword.

Together they flow, dancing in the dark.  A step back to lean out of the way of a claw.  A step forward to counter with her own.  Nimble, spinning, and sharp.  Flames burst once, twice, thrice more.  Laughter mixes with the grunts and growls.  

Flame.  Dark.  Flame.  Dark.  Flame.  Dark.

The room is quiet once more, save for her panting.  She is unharmed, but winded.

We do work well together.  I’ll miss you when I leave.  Good luck without me.

She falters at the thought.  The sword’s thought.  How will she go forward after tonight?  She’d thought she’d had a clear vision of her future before now, but she’d not thought much of what actually living it would be like.  And now, a new plan was forming.  By the end of the night, she’d need to pick one, and act on it.

Such are the princess’s thoughts when they are abruptly derailed by being knocked to the floor.  

Missed one.

She feels teeth bite into her shoulder.  Claws rip the side of her gown.  Only the curse keeps the sword in her hand.  She feels the pressure on her lessen.

It’s rearing up to bite down again.

She repositions the sword.  Feels something heavy fall down on it.  Closes her eyes in time for the flash of flame.  The heat is worse this close up, but she’s not burnt like she’d expected.  She’s wounded, but she can still stand.  It was her off shoulder, so she can still swing the sword.

The princess takes a breath to centre herself and opens her eyes.  Slowly.  The light has returned again.  The dark hallways she had been wandering have come to an end before a dilapidated shrine.  Its roof sags and its pillars are covered with clawmarks and blade scores.  But still it stands.

The princess tells it she knows how it feels.

It’s just a shrine, it’s not going to talk back.

“Is this where I am supposed to return you to?”

If you have to ask, you know it’s not.  This is just a place to rest along the way.

“For how long?”

As long as we need.

“I have people waiting on me.  I can’t stop for too long.  They’ll worry about me.”

Will they really?  You have a cousin of your own, you know.

“Of course they will!  And besides… so many people worked so hard to get me to this point.  Training me for this.  Instructing me for my duties that come after.  I owe them this much.”

You owe no one anything.

“You’re wrong.  But you’re not worth arguing with.”

If you say so.  Just remember, while you’ve had help getting here, you have your own strength too.  Don’t discount it.

“I won’t forget either of them.”

Fair enough.

The princess takes another breath to clear her mind and takes a look around the shrine.  The place is lit by hanging braziers, one for each beast slain.  In the centre, she finds a poultice, bandages, and a cup of water.  One more thing to be thankful for.  To whomever put them here.  The man in black perhaps?

The sword is silent on the matter.

The princess rests.  Not for long, but long enough that she thinks she can get through the night.

Looking for a way forward, the princess finds vines creeping out of the wall at the back of the shrine.  Examining them, she finds a door, cleverly hidden, its presence only given away by the greenery pushing it open.  She pries it the rest of the way and steps though.

On the other side is an overgrown garden, bathed in moonlight.  Fountains burble and clockwork animals prance in place, both likely driven by the great mechanism deep below.  It’s a peaceful place, but the princess cares not for it.  Just one more trial to pass through.  There may be pleasures to be found with the fruits, ripe despite going untended, but she is not that hungry.  She just took a rest and now she has a duty to attend to.

What would it take to tempt you to keep me?  Wealth?  You already have that, and how would I give it anyway?  Power?  Again, you’ll have that once you’re queen anyway, and while I’m sharp I can’t make you a sorceress.

“You have nothing I want.”

Well, I am a very good sword.  Maybe I’m already granting you inhuman strength and grace.  What mere mortal could have traversed the cogwork and fought the beasts as you did?  Until you lost your focus anyway.

“Those deeds were my own.”

Were they?  You’re the one who just went on about how much you owe others.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Maybe something more subtle to tempt you with then.  Eternal youth perhaps?  An irresistible will?  The ability to captivate others so that you’ll always be loved?  Or feared.

“Can you actually do any of those things?”

Only one way to find out.  I am feared for a reason afterall.  Maybe I’ve already granted you those and you haven’t noticed because we’ve been alone.

“I’ll pass.”

Is there anything you do want then?  What of the future that’s been planned for you appeals so much?

The princess stumbles.  She tells herself it was because of a vine and not the question.

Ah… that’s what I can promise.

“What?”

You already know.

The path through the garden ends at an ornate stone door.  When the princess pushes on it, it does not budge, but the section of the carving beneath her hand begins to glow.  Continues to glow as she steps back.

She recognizes the glowing portion as a rune representing “dedication.”  It is the first of seven traits she was taught the ideal queen should have.  Taking a moment to examine the door, she locates the other six worked into the design.  There are others as well.  Distractions perhaps?

She puts her hand to the second - “confidence” - and it lights up like the first.  “Warmth” is higher up.  As she stretches to reach it, she feels the sword bump against the door and sees a new glow out of the corner of her eye.  She jumps back.  She examines the newly glowing rune - “drive” - careful not to touch anything.  She finds no difference from the others.  She tries to press it again, first with her hand, then with the sword.  No change.  It stays lit.

Using the sword, she touches the fourth proper rune.  She pauses, considers, and then presses her hand to one that appeals to her.  It is improper, but she feels a thrill.  She takes the seventh rune she was instructed on and then another that she likes better.

The door opens.

“What was the point of that?”

That who you’ll be is your choice.  And that whatever your choice, you’ll still be one who creates and that others look to.

Beyond the door is a bridge of wood and rope over a yawning pit.  At the edges of the pit the princess spies an array of mirrors, catching the moonbeams to reflect down below.  The bridge groans with each step the princess takes, but holds steady.  Echoing up from the depths, the great rhythm of TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK just barely reaches her ears.  She finds comfort in it.

There is something on the other side.  There’s a smokey haze to it, but she feels her journey is near its end.

Something in the haze shifts.  Moves.  Coalesces.

A figure stands on an ancient bridge, booted feet on creaking wood.  His coat far too patched, his sword much too bright.

A final trial then?  Good.  I’ve been wanting to see if he could do more than make taunts and disappear.

The princess grins once more.

Once more she does not wait to -

The man is already on her.  He strikes again and again and again.  His blade flows like water.  It catches the moonlight and blinds her eyes.

The princess defends herself, but only just.  None of her instructors moved ever with such speed.  None of the beasts pressed with such ferocity.

The princess takes a step back.  And then another, retreating back across the bridge against her will.

My mother and my ancestors passed this test.  The frail first princess passed.  So can I.

If they beat him, then why is he still here?

The man begins to speak, yet his assault does not cease.  He is asking what kind of queen she intends to be.  Why did she take the dark door?  Why did she choose the runes she did?

Did I choose wrong?  Is that why he’s fighting me instead of letting me pass?

The princess cannot answer.  She is too focused on defending.

The man roars the questions again.  What does she want to be?  Why did she make the choices she did?

She is too focused on defending.  Still, she takes another step back.

The man is mocking her silence now.  Calling her weak, no, worse, indecisive.  She does not know what she wants.

I am too focused on defending.

The man is laughing now.  The same laugh as when he handed her the sword.

That’s MY thing!

“Let me show you!”

A sword much too bright once more comes down on a sword much too dark.  This time, the darker sword pushes back.  Angles.  Turns.  Thrusts.

The man is pushed off balance.

The princess begins to laugh.

She takes a step forward.

And another.

And another.

Her advance continues.  The man is pushed back toward whence he came.

Halfway across the bridge again.

Three quarters.

I can do this!

The man recovers.  He is attacking now too.  Their back and forth becomes a proper dance.  The princess begins to lose herself to it.  She loves this.

But you’re not making any progress.

She falters.

As their swords lock, the man kicks her side where her gown was clawed.

She stumbles.

The man stabs her shoulder where the beast bit her.

She shouts.

The man cuts her leg on the wound she inflicted herself.

She falls to one knee.

The man stops.  Asks if she surrenders.  Tells her that she can’t beat him, but he can find someone else to give the sword to while she goes and lives the life she wants.

The life I want?

“You don’t know what I want.”

He asks her if she does.

She grins, grips the board she’s kneeling on and cuts the ropes of the bridge behind her.

The bridge falls.  The man shouts as he tumbles past her.

“Now I do.”

The princess climbs.  It is hard going with one shoulder injured and the other hand unable to release the sword.  Still, she climbs.

She does not remember the final strain to pull herself over the ledge.  She opens her eyes and finds herself staring up into the moon, lying on her back, cursed sword still in hand.

One more time she uses the sword to prop herself up and take to her feet.  The haze is gone now and she sees an altar.  Upon the altar is a scabbard much too bright.

I know who I will be now.

Using the sword as a cane, the princess staggers toward the altar.  She grasps the scabbard.  She spares the cursed sword one last glance.

“I think I’ll miss you.”

There’s nothing to miss.

“What do you mean?”

Swords don’t talk.

“I don’t understand.”

Yes you do.  There’s only ever been us.

“There’s only ever been me.”

But there’s still a choice to make.

“To keep the sword or leave it.”

To forge a new life all for myself, or sacrifice that chance to do my duty.

“But I’ll still be able to choose the shape of my life either way.  I realise that now.”

Yes.  On my own or with others, I’ll still be me.  No one can change that.

“I make my own choices.”

The princess lifts the sword much too dark and slides it into a scabbard much too bright.

A figure stands in an ancient ruin, bare feet on crumbling stone.  Her gown far too torn, her hands much too red.  She takes a breath to centre herself and steps outside.  The sun is rising.  The warmth is pleasant.  She shades her eyes and spots riders approaching.  She is content to wait for them to come to her.

The queen is the first to arrive.  She dismounts with grace and hugs her daughter.  She cares not if she gets blood on her gown.

To the princess’s surprise, her grandmother is second to arrive.  The crone chuckles and says she wouldn’t miss this for the word.

The queen helps the weary princess onto her mount.  As they turn to meet the rest of the retinue she asks if she wants anything.

“I have some ideas.”