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*
Theirs was a love story, but it didn’t start out that way.
*
They were five, the first time they met. Odette tried to be sweet and nice, the perfect princess; but Derek, well, he was just mean.
“Girls are boring,” she heard him whine to his mother as she searched out his practice swords. She and her father had been here a week, and she’d tried to be a lady, because that’s what Father wanted her to do, but it wasn’t getting her anywhere, and now she was bored. “She’ll want to play with dolls, or something stupid.”
“Did you ask her what she wanted to do, dear?” Queen Uberta asked, her voice rising in pitch.
“No,” Derek muttered. Odette stopped and leaned against the wall, just beside the doorway. “But I know she’ll want to play with dolls. I hate dolls.”
“You just haven’t given her a chance. Go on, find her! She is your guest, you should be entertaining her!”
Odette ducked towards the stairs, fists clenching. Boring? She’d show him boring.
She spent the rest of the summer thrashing him in every duel, every card game. The only sport he was better at than he was archery, but what good would that do him, after all?
“Did you have to beat him so thoroughly?” Father asked wearily as they rode away from Uberta’s castle at the beginning of September.
“Yes,” she said shortly. If Derek was going to marry her, he would have to earn it.
*
Between the ages of seven and ten, Odette eschewed ladylike traditions. She wore breeches, she excelled at swordplay, and she continually thrashed Derek summer after summer. Therefore, it was no surprise when the summer she was eleven, he had a new friend named Bromley and a club just for the two of them.
No Girls Allowed, they taunted over and over.
It enraged her. She was no girl. She was a princess.
So, she kicked a plank, out of sheer frustration. There was no way a tree house for a prince could be built so shoddily as to come down from the pressure of an eleven-year-old girl.
Alas, the tree house came crashing down around her. Odette ducked and threw her hands over her head for some protection, but it was fairly useless. Wood planks smacked into her and clattered around her. The boys yelled and screamed as they hit the ground. She coughed through the dust and the rubble, clutching at her arm.
Father would be so mad.
“Odette!” Derek yelled. She heard clattering and clambering over the wood.
A warm hand closed over her ankle and she hissed in pain. “Hey!”
Through the dust, Derek’s face came into close view, peering at her. “Are you all right?” he asked urgently.
She blinked, completely floored. This was the most concern she’d ever seen him show for anyone other than himself, and it was for her. “It’s just my arm. And some bruises. I’m fine,” she muttered, trying to crawl away from him.
From her other side, Bromley coughed. “I’m fine too!”
Derek hooked his good arm around her waist and tugged. “I was not expecting that,” he muttered, pulling her against him.
He was warm, and being so nice--she didn’t know what to make of it. “I’m fine,” she said crossly, trying to shift away from him.
“Brom, come give me a hand!” he called, easing to his feet with a groan. He pulled her up along with him. There were scratches along his forehead and cheek, blood welling at a deep cut on his brow. She put her hands at his shoulders, steadying herself.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out after a moment, the two of them standing there in the rubble. Bromley shifted in front of them, hurling himself up to a stand. In the distance, she could hear guards coming, and Uberta’s high-pitched squealing. “I’m so sorry. You’re all right, aren’t you?”
Odette stared, mouth agape. “What?”
“Well, I am! Stupid tree house,” he muttered.
“I didn’t think you knew what those words meant,” she retorted.
“Well you’re the one that kicked it down!”
“And what does that say about the quality of workmanship in your country?” she snapped back.
“Would both of you stop it? I have a raging headache,” Bromley whined, stumbling over to them.
Odette gritted her teeth and shoved away from Derek. “I’m fine,” she repeated, straining to keep herself upright with the pains running through her body. “And apology not accepted!”
“Fine,” Derek snarled, turning away from her.
Those are the last direct words they speak to each other that summer.
Her and her father’s visit was cut short that year. Father said there was business at home they had to attend to; she thought it was because of the accident. Father had been quiet for much of the summer, his usual pressing and joviality dashed away by something, but he wouldn’t say what.
“Your mother and I didn’t get along at first, either,” Father said as they rode through town towards the docks.
Odette immediately stopped trying to reach the itch under her forearm cast, staring at him in shock. He never spoke about her mother; she died giving birth to her, after years and years of trying to have a child. Odette only knew the barest of facts about her, and her life with her father before Odette was born.
“Really?” she squeaked out after a moment.
“Yes, really. It was an arranged marriage, of course,” he said, a smile playing at his mouth. “We met each other only a few times before we were married. I thought she was spoiled and bratty, and she thought I was insufferable. Rather the reverse of you and Derek, I imagine.”
Flushing, she shifted uncomfortably on her horse. Her ribs were aching, and her stomach felt unsettled just at the idea of being at sea once more. “He’s awful and selfish,” she blurted out. “And I don’t see why we always have to come here. Why can’t he come to stay with us? At least I’ll be on safe ground then,” she muttered.
“We go to them because they are the richer kingdom,” Father said, voice suddenly very serious. “We need them more than they need us.”
She couldn’t help but stare at him, shocked. He had never been so direct with her before, especially in terms of official kingdom business.
Sighing, he reached over to stroke her hair. “We are in a dangerous time and place right now, Odette. Queen Uberta is helpful, but we need something stronger than friendship to sustain this relationship. It’s why I need you to try to like Derek. He will grow out of all this foolishness.”
The horses clopped along as she turned her eyes to her cast. Her whole face flushed with shame. She thought then of how Derek had searched for her in the remains of the tree house, of how warm and worried his gaze had been. Her stomach turned. It was a weird feeling, a hot melting in her middle.
“I’ll try,” she said quietly.
“Thank you,” Father said softly.
After a moment, she glanced at him again. “You did love Mother though. Eventually?”
His whole face seemed grayer, heavily lined than just moments ago. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
*
Between the ages of twelve to fifteen, Odette grew out of her awkward phase.
She could still beat nearly anyone at a duel, and at cards. But she spent more time searching out the library, and learning to manage her thick blonde hair. During the autumn, winter, and spring, she thought of Derek often. Their parents wrote to each other, but they did not. She wondered what he would do, if she wrote to him; whether his hair was still short, or whether he was letting it grow out; whether he’d read any of the books she suggested to him summer after summer.
She also wondered whether he was still a jerk.
For the most part, he was. In the summers, he still ignored her in favor of hunting and roughhousing with Bromley. When he ditched her, she spent her time in his libraries and his city, exploring the kingdom that may be hers one day. Her father was right; Uberta’s country was richer, more well-off and flourishing. Every harvest at home, the crops were smaller and smaller. It almost felt as if there was a curse at work on her homeland, but Odette didn’t believe in magic.
She still beat him at cards and the occasional practice duel, when his mother made him pay attention to her.
“I don’t think he’s trying as much as I am,” she told her father as they set off for home after the fifteenth summer. Derek had been sullen much of the time.
“He’s grown up just with Uberta as a guide,” Father said. He looked older and older every year. “To him, she is what women are like. You are not like her whatsoever, so he doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“I am trying,” she said fervently.
“I know. He’ll grow out of it soon enough,” he said wearily.
“How many more times do you think you’ll say that before he just doesn’t?” she asked.
Father sighed. “I don’t know.”
Odette chewed on her bottom lip and looked ahead, out towards the sea waiting for them. She was still scared of the water.
She was scared of failing her father, too.
*
“Don’t you think you’re a little too friendly with the guards?”
Odette looked up from her book, shooting Derek a glare. “Excuse me?”
Derek shrugged, looking a little mutinous. He was growing into his height; at seventeen, the gangly limbs and the knobby knees were melting into strength and muscle. He was attractive, and would grow even more so; though, his ego was large enough that he didn’t need to hear it from her.
“You know. With the flirting, and the giggling and the hair flipping,” he muttered.
Smoothing her thick braid to the side, she set her book on her lap. Her father urged her day after day to sit like a proper princess, but she liked to read like this, her knees over the arm of the chair. “Is it really any of your business?” she asked archly.
“Well they’re my guards. I can’t have them distracted,” he said sharply.
“Too weak to defend yourself? I remember beating you up at nine, but I was sure you’d grown out of that,” she said with a sharp smile.
He tossed his head, hair falling across his brow. “Look, just don’t do it, okay?”
She looked him over coolly. “Is this about the card game?” she asked, voice saccharine.
He gaped, flustered and flushing. “No! It’s just—you’re a princess, you could try to act like one, instead of some common wench,” he retorted hotly.
Rolling her eyes, she picked her book back up. For that, she’d have to get out her slingshot before they left.
“I’m perfectly capable of behaving however I feel I need to. I certainly don’t need your judgments and opinions,” she said, turning a page in her book.
Of course she had to make conversation with the guards; all Derek talked about were looks and sports. He was entirely too shallow for any sort of real conversation. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him pick up a book in the sixteen summers they’d spent together. He was rash and quick to judge; by this time, she’d hoped he would have grown out of it. But like every summer, she was disappointed.
“I’m trying to help,” he said stiffly.
“Go help some other princess. I don’t need it,” she said flatly.
Derek stomped off then without another word. Moments later, she looked out of the large window in the library and saw him with Bromley, setting up for archery practice. She liked this, though; from a distance, when he didn’t open his mouth, he was almost nice to spend time with.
*
When she was seventeen, she thought she might have fallen in love with him.
She slipped off her horse and onto her feet, without waiting for a squire for help, and suddenly there was a large hand on her elbow, steadying her.
“I’m fine,” she said, looking up into Derek’s face. Her breath caught, just for a moment.
He released her, stepping back. “Just thought I’d try,” he muttered, bowing before stalking off towards the castle.
For a moment, she watched him walk away. She could hear her father speaking with Uberta at a distance, the scurrying of the squires to unload their trunks, but she just stood there and watched. It was a bizarre moment; she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, herself.
That summer was very different. Derek vacillated between irritating obsequiousness, sullenness, and genuine interest when she was around. A lot of the time, he was in meetings with Lord Rogers and his mother, and participating more in the governing of the kingdom. Other times, when they ran into each other, he stuttered and fumbled and hurried away. Sometimes, he completely avoided her, and spent hours on end with Bromley for company.
They also had moments, moments she couldn’t quite explain. Sometimes, when they were alone in the corridors, he would move towards her, his hand outstretched towards her, and she would duck and weave past him. He found her in the gardens at night, and spoke civilly and gently. Once, he had helped her practice her archery skills; the feel of his body close to hers had left her weak in the knees. They went on rides together through the kingdom, and he stopped to say hello and play with every little girl and boy who called out for them.
She thought it might be love. She really couldn’t be sure. It was confusing and unsettling and he was still so self-absorbed that she didn’t want to define anything at all.
One day in mid-July, it was too hot to even stir outside. Her father was entrenched in a private meeting with his advisors. At breakfast, Derek had ignored her the entire time, so she assumed today was a sullen day. She made herself comfortable in the library, sitting at the window seat with her tried-and-true favorite novel.
At just about the half-way point, the doors opened and Derek stalked in. He froze upon seeing her. She sighed and went back to her book.
“That one again, then?” he asked after a long moment.
“It is my favorite,” she said, friendly enough. But she did not look up from the page.
Footsteps sounded near her, and suddenly he was sitting on the other end of the window seat, watching her intently. She could see flecks of green at the centers of his blue eyes. “I read it, you know.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh really?”
“This past spring. I liked it,” he said. “Thought the girl made him work too hard for her, though.”
Bristling, she snapped the book shut. “Just because he’s handsome doesn’t mean she should fall all over him,” she said evenly. “There’s more to people than just looks.”
He stared at her, hair falling across his brow. “I know that,” he said, a little too defensively.
“One day, you ought to prove it,” she said before getting up and walking from the library. Her heart beat a hard inconsistent tattoo against her ribs.
In August, the heat wave still hadn’t broken. She spent afternoons handing out water and food to those less fortunate. Derek joined her, sometimes; on those days, he was charming and caring and dedicated to his subjects, and she wondered how one person could be so many different people at different times.
Yes, she could have fallen in love with him then, with the kind prince handing water to the thirsty five-year-old girl in the city square. But there was the insufferable immature shallow boy that came out nearly three times as often; it was too hard to reconcile them both.
*
Despite the lack of formal definition, there was an unavoidable inevitability to her match with Derek. Odette felt it in the nine months between their summers together, with her father’s sad eyes on her with every letter from Queen Uberta.
“He’s a good man, Odette,” her father said on her eighteenth birthday. It was the tail end of winter, slush still flooding the streets. “He’ll be a good king.”
She looked out the window in her sitting room, arms crossed over her chest. Torchlight flickered through the graying darkness all along the streets of the city. The kingdom was gloomier and gloomier with every passing day, the crops weaker than ever. “I’m sure he will,” she said evenly.
“You really haven’t given him a chance, you know.”
Looking over her shoulder, she gaped at her father as he stood in the doorway. “You must be kidding. I’ve participated in every ridiculous ritual for years now. I played his games, and he’s only ever treated me like some burden to bear. Why should I expect him to be any different as an adult?”
“Because children do stupid things, dear.”
“He hasn’t been a child for years now, Father,” she said coolly before turning back to her view from the window.
The truth was that she didn’t hate the idea. As she grew older, and as she paid more attention to the kingdom and its needs, and her own education, she understood that it would be the best move for both their kingdoms. Derek was handsome, and he wasn’t completely dull; he cared for his country, and she went out of her way to find information about his good deeds with the less fortunate. But there was a lack of depth to him that bothered her day and night. Could she really spend the rest of her life with someone so shallow?
*
No. No, she couldn’t.
*
To say Uberta lost her marbles at Odette’s rejection of Derek was an understatement.
“You won’t come out until it’s settled!” she screeched at the two of them before shutting them in the library together.
Odette, flushed and embarrassed, went right to the window. The perfect sunny day had faded into a graying evening, clouds rolling in. Her mouth was still warm from where he had kissed her. How could she have let herself go so easily?
“Odette, please,” Derek said behind her, his voice low and gravelly. “This is--this is insane.”
“Stop it,” she said shortly, keeping her back to him. “I thought--I thought you were different. I thought you looked at me as something more than a pretty face.”
“I do, but--”
“But what? If you love me, you shouldn’t have to work so hard to think of other reasons why you want to marry me,” she snapped.
“This is what everyone wants for us,” he said quietly.
“It isn’t what I want,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Her heart felt like it was breaking, cracking with every beat; she had thought that this was it, he had finally grown up and come around and started seeing her as something other than a pretty girl. She had been wrong.
Abruptly, he came up right behind her and grabbed her hands in his. “Can you give me other reasons why you want to marry me?” he asked, eyes dark and fierce.
She set her jaw, trying to tug her hands from his grasp. “You’re incredibly loyal to your friends. You’re kind to your people. You have incredible potential as a king,” she said flatly. “But you’re also rash and judgemental and you hardly ever think before you act, as we’ve seen tonight. I could accept that as a flight of youth, but I think that’s all you are, sometimes.”
He dropped her hands and stepped back, mouth open in shock. Shaking her head, she smoothed her skirts. “You hadn’t given any of this a second thought, in all these years?” she asked, feeling sick to her stomach. “I’ve spent years trying to find reasons not to completely dislike you, and I thought I had. Meanwhile, you’ve coasted along assuming I would say yes no matter what, and hoping I’d turn out to be beautiful?”
Face pale, he started to shake his head but she pushed past him, picking up her skirts. “I really--I thought I might love you, finally,” she said, choking down tears. “I was wrong.”
“Odette, stop!”
But she ran from the library, past her father and a still-wailing Uberta, to her usual bedroom. The trunks were still packed; she called for the horses.
In the rain, atop her horse, she looked over Derek one last time. Regret shuddered through her. She would never know, now.
*
Odette spent her first days as a swan hiding in the shadows of the trees. Everything was simplified as a swan; she was hungry, she was sad, she was lonely, but she couldn’t remember why she was sad, why she was lonely. It was at night, as her human self again, that she was overwhelmed over and over by the loss of her father, of her freedom, of a future.
Crying became second nature. Curled up at the shore of the lake, before and after Rothbart came to court her, she cried for her father, for her kingdom. She cried for Derek, too, for what could have been. The bickering, the back-and-forth nature of their relationship was a distant memory for her now, and not part of the future she might have. If she could do it again, she would give him more of a chance. He would have been better with her, she knew.
It was a night such as that, after Rothbart left her, that she made friends with Speed and Jean-Bob. The talking animals didn’t phase her; after all, she was a swan for most of the hours of the day. They kept her company both as a human and as a swan; it was reassuring to have some gentle contact with intelligent life, even if she was talking to animals.
“So you’re a real princess?” Speed asked as the sky lightened towards dawn. It had rained all night; Rothbart hadn’t come, so they’d spent it under the cover of the trees together.
“Yes, I am. Or was. I’m not sure any more,” she said, chin perched in her hands.
Jean-Bob settled himself at her side, arms flailing as he spoke. “And no prince wanted to marry you?”
She sighed, glancing up into the sky. “He did. But not for the right reasons.”
“What’s his name?” Speed asked. His low monotone was soothing and gentle.
Odette’s muscles shifted, her blood beginning to pulse rapidly through her veins. The night was over, and the bird was returning. Dizzy, she stood up and walked towards the water. “Derek. His name is Derek.”
“Did you want to marry him?” Jean-Bob asked, a note of jealously curling through his accent.
The water rose up around her. She opened her mouth and arched her back into the transformation. It hurt less when she relaxed into it; she’d learned that the hard way, after nights of resistance and pain. Still, the feeling of her body disappearing into a new form was strange and still sickening.
“Once upon a time, yes,” she said as the light faded. She ducked her head into her wing, and floated towards a shady area.
“So you loved him, is that right?” Jean-Bob called, voice rising in pitch.
Yes, for far longer than she had thought. She shut her eyes, and let the swan take over.
She hated the water even more now.
*
It was Speed who brought the news. He had heard it from his turtle friends along the river.
“Prince Derek is looking for you,” he said one morning. They were swimming laps together around the lake, for a lack of anything better to do.
She looked at him. “He won’t find me,” she said sadly. Hopes and dreams were for girls, not swans.
“He’s trying. Just thought you should know,” Speed said.
The Odette inside the swan wanted to fly out and find him, squawk at Derek until he understood what she was. The swan was content to loneliness and bugs.
*
It had all happened so fast, so brutally, that Odette wasn’t certain it had happened at all.
Derek had found her. Even as a swan, she remembered his mouth on hers, the warmth of his arms around her. It had been moments of sheer joy, the locket pressed into her hands, and then nothing but cold darkness and loss. The one chance she may have had to break back into freedom, gone.
And now, she had pulled Derek and Bromley into ruin as well.
The bottom of the wall was dark and deep. She could see well enough, and kept her eye on Bromley. He looked absolutely terrified, as he should.
“I’m going to kill Derek,” Bromley said, clutching at the chain for dear life. Cold was settling in; she could see him shivering through his clothes.
Odette swam in circles, around and around. She knew the outcome of this evening, knew it all the way to her bones. Derek, rash, impatient Derek, would see the lookalike, see the locket, and declare that love once and for all. Quite honestly, if he was that eager, she wondered if he really meant it at all.
“Please don’t eat me,” Bromley whimpered towards her every time she passed him.
She glared at him, and picked up her speed.
“All for Odette. Ridiculous,” he muttered moments later. “Tons of princesses at this ball tonight, and he only wants her. She’s dead somewhere, and he still wants her.”
Her heart beat erratically against her breast. She ducked under the water for a moment of silence and solitude. Dead, and he still wanted her. He had known she was alive, even in the face of uncertainty.
First, she had to get out of this mess. Then, she could get all the answers she needed.
*
Odette could feel again. Her skin was skin, not feathers. Her brain was full to bursting. Her hands clutched at Derek’s shoulders, gripping them with all the life she felt. The weight of magic melted away from her muscles, the spell broken. She sighed in relief. Puffin, Speed, and Jean-Bob left them to check on Bromley, and she was grateful for the moment alone.
Derek held onto her tightly, almost too tightly. But he was warm and his shoulders were shaking and she thought he might be crying. She’d never seen him cry before, even when she’d beat him twelve times in a row in duels when she was eight.
“Derek?” she whispered, soft and low into his ear.
He pressed his face into her neck, his hands moving in her hair. She put her hands to his shoulders and pushed him back, to meet his gaze. “It’s okay,” she said gently.
“It’s not okay,” he said, voice wrecked and ragged. “I almost killed you, again. This is all my fault. All of it, it’s my fault.”
“You didn’t set Rothbart on my kingdom. We all could have done things differently, but it’s not all your fault,” she said quietly.
They sat together on the grassy stone remnants, his arms still tight around her waist. It was a dark evening without the moon, silent and gentle. She breathed in and out, body aching from transformation and from her fall. The pain was a welcome reminder of her human form, of freedom.
“I should have told you--I’ve loved you for years,” he said after a long silence.
Mouth falling open, she stared at him. “What?”
“After the tree house, when it fell on you, I thought you were dead. I was--I don’t know, I thought--”
“For that long?” she asked, shocked.
He ducked his head. Scrapes and the beginnings of bruises lined his face. “Well, I don’t know. But I tried, and I wasn’t good at talking to you. I just--I wanted--”
“You read my book,” she said softly. That had been a sign.
He curled his fingers into her waist, hair falling across his eyes. “Not just that. I wrote you letters.”
She touched the cuts along his brow. “I never received any letters.”
“That’s because I didn’t send them,” he said, sounding utterly wretched. “I was always too scared, or too stupid to send them. Ask Bromley. He was there the whole time.”
Shaking her head, she brushed the hair back from his eyes. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
Derek shrugged, looking absolutely wretched. “I didn’t know how this was supposed to work. My father died so young, and my mother--well, you know my mother. She’s impressed by stupid shallow things. I didn’t know how to talk to a girl who wasn’t. I don’t know how to express anything, really,” he said gruffly.
Except he did, just moments ago.
“Why do you love me?” she asked, as a soft wind rustled between them.
He met her eyes, the lines of his face fiercely set. “You’re the bravest person I know. You’re kind, and smart, and loyal. I don’t deserve you, and I probably never will. But after all this, I want to try to.”
Slowly, she smiled. She would take that.
“Take me home,” she whispered, and kissed him softly.
*
It didn’t as a love story, but it became one.
Far longer than forever was how long it took to get it right.
*