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Once upon a time
(Do you see the town's circled walls, in black watercolor on sepia?)
there was a king who had three daughters.
(A man's desk, covered in papers. A man's shadow over the desk. Three smaller shadows beyond him.)
He wished to know which daughter loved him best.
(Oh, do you see? The shadows are puppets. Look how they move their arms at the joints.)
To her he would give his whole kingdom.
(The town again, its clock tower looming above the walls.)
The eldest daughter said, "I love you more than my life."
(One puppet spins in a pirouette.)
The second daughter said, "I love you more than the sun and all the stars."
(Another puppet leaps into the air.)
But the third daughter said, "I love you as meat loves salt."
(The last puppet stands still.)
Now, the king was very angry at his youngest daughter. But which of the daughters really deserved the kingdom?
—
Princess Tutu, The Chapter of the Egg: The Duke's Daughters. Overture, King Lear, M. Balakirev.
—
"Let us have a tragedy today," declared the Man Without Hands. "An old one. I'll make it new again. Set it on a winter's night, the coldest night of the year. It will be an excellent story, don't you think?"
Twelve marionettes rose to their feet obediently and pulled at the cranks of the great machine. Far above them, up in the town, clouds slid into the sky, and a chill wind dropped the last leaves from the trees.
"Oh, yes," said the Man Without Hands. "There will be snow tonight. And you," he said, gesturing with his gloved arms at the thirteenth marionette, "you know what you are doing, don't you, hmmm?"
The thirteenth marionette lifted a box and opened it. She arranged a set of jewels in neat rows inside the box. She closed the box, set it aside, and tested the tuning of her barrel organ. It was in perfect tune. (It was always in perfect tune.) Then the thirteenth marionette took the box and the barrel organ, stepped onto a slowly-spinning gear, and let it wheel her up through the machine and out, through a hidden doorway, into the town.
The Man Without Hands waved his right arm as if it were a baton. "Now then, music! Timpani and horns, there, and the violins, there, yes. Very good." The clockwork orchestra whirred and began to play.
—
The thirteenth marionette, whose name was Edel, wheeled up into the town and listened to all of its sounds. She was part of the great machine, after all, and so was the town. Edel heard the beginning ballet students chattering:
"A performance at the Duke's castle! Isn't it exciting?" Lilie rested her right foot on the barre and stretched over her leg.
Her friend Pique stretched as well, and slowly slid into a split. "Only the advanced class will be dancing. I wish we were allowed to perform."
"Yes!" Lilie's grin was more than a little alarming. "Then our little Duck could dance too, and she would probably fall down in front of the Duke himself!"
"I would not," answered the third girl in the beginner class, who was gamely, if inelegantly, attempting a straddle stretch routine. Edel knew her, of course; she was the Duck. "I didn't even know we had a Duke."
"Oh, Duck," laughed Lilie, "You don't know anything, do you?"
Edel glided past the windows of the salle. The Duck cried out, and lost her balance, but Edel thought that no one else had seen her pass by. From the west window, Edel saw the advanced ballet class practicing its routine for the performance:
"Yes, yes, Miss Rue," the Cat was saying to the Raven Princess, "support your arm just like that and hold it. Do you see her perfect form, ladies? Imitate it. Now, Mytho and Fakir, remember that you are the Clock, and your only duty is to tell the time. Don't look sour, Fakir, look like a clock."
Edel watched the Prince and the Knight move, the two arms of a great invisible clock. She watched the Raven Princess lead the other dancers around them. She watched them step and spin and stretch, a corps of marionettes, dancing as the puppetmaster commanded them.
—
"Oh, it's a fine stage, the Duke's castle," the Man Without Hands had said. "It will be a pleasure to use it properly."
Edel came inside through the servants' door, when the butler and housekeeper weren't looking. She passed through the kitchen, up the back staircase, and into the ballroom without difficulty. Edel knew all the houses in Gold Crown Town, after all, and had no need to ask for directions. In the ballroom, she found an empty niche between two statues, and stood still, one more statue ornamenting the Duke's household.
Edel saw the two elder daughters as they entered the ballroom: two tall rats in silk gowns, snarling and biting at each other's tails. But when the troupe of young dancers came in to take their places, with the rest of the audience behind them, the daughters stopped squabbling. They smiled bland smiles through their teeth. The old Duke, a gold circlet on his wrinkled head and thin white whiskers on his snout, settled in the seat of honor, with his youngest daughter on his left. The Cat and the beginner and intermediate ballet classes seated themselves on the floor, along with a dozen party guests from elsewhere in the town.
"Tonight," announced the Duke, "is a special night. Tonight I choose which of my daughters will inherit my castle!"
The party guests murmured in excitement. (The Duck was whispering, "Did you know they were rats?")
"But before I make my decision, I have brought us an exciting treat. I have commissioned a small dance from Gold Crown Town's own brilliant Mr. Cat, Director of the Gold Crown Academy Ballet School, to be performed by his best students."
The Cat stood and bowed, smiling with his mouth closed so as not to alarm his patron, the rat Duke. "We are honored to serve you, sir," the Cat answered. "May I present the Waltz of the Hours from Coppélia?"
Twelve danseuses danced in four precise lines (assemblé, balancé, changement), with the Raven Princess at the head of the first line.Two danseurs stood behind them, mimicking the clock as it struck: first position arms, third, tendue, and repeat. Edel knew the dance well. It was the dance of the great tower clock. The Prince and the Knight showed the time, while the twelve members of the corps were the automata running the clock, the gears and the pulleys that caused the hours to strike.
In the great machine of Gold Crown Town, Edel's twelve sisters were doing the same work, stepping the same steps, as the dancers in the Duke's ballroom.
The Duke applauded the performance politely. His daughters, and the other guests, clapped along with him. Among the ballet students, the Duck cheered wildly while her friends attempted to quiet her. The dancers curtsied or bowed and joined the audience.
Then the Duke stood again. He was taller than Edel, and his paws trembled with age, but he was a dignified old rat. "My thanks to Mr. Cat and the Ballet School. Daughters, will you come up and join me?"
The three daughters, in their three silk gowns with their tails sticking out from the backs, came to stand beside the Duke.
"As you all know," continued the Duke, "I am very old now, and I am ready to give my castle away to one of my daughters. But to win the castle, my daughters must each answer one question." The Duke had been speaking quietly, but now his voice rang out through the hall, and he shook his white whiskers at the crowd. "Tell me now: how much do each of you love me?"
(In the audience, the Raven Princess flinched and covered the flinch with a smile.)
The Duke's eldest daughter smiled a toothy smile. "How much do I love you? I love you as much as my very own life. I love you more than my dreams and more than my wishes."
The Duke, satisfied, pointed to his second daughter. "Now, you."
The Duke's second daughter smiled an even toothier smile. "How much do I love you? Just as much as my sister does, if not more. I love you like the sun in the morning. I love you like the moon at night. I love you as much as anyone has ever loved another person."
"Very good. Now, Rattelia, how much do you love me?"
But the Duke's third daughter was not smiling. She said, "What do you want me to tell you? I love you as much as you deserve. That's all. No more. Do you want me to make silly comparisons like my sisters did? Should I tell you that I love you like the gates of Gold Crown Town, the ones that never open to let anyone out?"
"Be silent!" snapped the Duke. "You are a heartless child and unworthy of the gift you are asking for!"
The party guests were staring at the Duke and his youngest daughter, so of course no one was watching Edel. In her niche by the wall, Edel opened her jewelry box and touched a ruby. It glowed red. A moment later, so did the Duck's pendant.
"A heartshard!" whispered the Duck. Louder, to her friends, she said, "I have to—er, I have to—I have to find the bathroom, yeah, that's right, the bathroom." The Duck ran past Edel and out of the room, managing not to trip over her own feet.
Thirty seconds later, Princess Tutu danced into the room, serene and perfect, bringing a wind of pink flower petals along with her. Edel adjusted her vision for a moment, so she could see what the guests were seeing: a great white swan, flying in through an open window. The guests whispered to each other: how strange, a swan in a ballroom.
"Rattelia," said Tutu, reaching out her right hand in invitation, "come dance with me." Obedient, if confused, Rattelia took Tutu's hand in her paw and stepped into a pas-de-deux.
"You told your father," Tutu said gently, "that you only loved him as much as he deserved. But look how unhappy he is. Tell me, Rattelia," Tutu continued, leading Rattelia into a turn, "is that how you really feel?"
Rattelia stopped still and pulled herself out of the dance. "Yes! Yes, that is exactly how I really feel. Leave me alone!"
Tutu stopped mid-step, confused. She danced into the niche behind the nearest statue, and a moment later she was a small girl. "Oh, hello, Miss Edel," said the Duck to the statue.
"Hello, Duck," replied Edel.
"Miss Edel, what did I do wrong? There's a heartshard here, I know it, and I thought Rattelia had it, but she doesn't, and I don't know what to do!" The Duck wrapped her arms around Edel's wooden body. It felt strange, and Edel wondered what it meant. But Edel had an assignment, and right now, her assignment was to distract the Duck.
"The truth of the heart is a mystery, known only to the possessor. And sometimes, not even then," Edel answered.
(In the ballroom beyond them, the Duke was saying, "I give my castle wholly to my two elder daughters. You, Rattelia, must go now! Now!")
"So—" the Duck struggled with Edel's answer, "so maybe she does have a heartshard—and she doesn't know it?"
(Rattelia turned and stamped out of the room. "It's such a shame she had to go," said the Eldest Daughter.)
Edel said, "Everyone lives in a maze, and the maze has only one path."
("So the castle is ours now, dear?" said the Second Daughter to the Eldest Daughter. "How nice." They smiled their toothy smiles at the guests. "We'd like to thank you all for coming, but it's time for you to go home now.")
"But if there's only one path," said the Duck, "why does it matter if it's a maze? Couldn't you just walk all the way out?"
(The ballet students and the party guests left the ballroom in small groups, muttering to each other about how rude their hosts were, until at last no one remained but the Eldest Daughter, the Second Daughter, the Duke, the Duck and the the statues.)
"The path is long," answered Edel, "and there are many turns before you reach the end."
(Down in the gears and pulleys of the machine, the Man Without Hands laughed, "And the end will be tragic.")
The Duck poked her head out from behind Edel to see what was going on in the ballroom, just as the Eldest Daughter said to the Duke, "You've given us the castle, haven't you?"
"It's yours," answered the Duke.
"Then you aren't welcome in our home," said the Second Daughter. "Go find yourself somewhere else to sleep."
"It is my house, you ungrateful wretches!"
"No," answered the Eldest Daughter. "It isn't."
As Edel watched with the Duck, whose hands were over her mouth in horror, the daughters pushed and kicked the Duke out of the room, down the staircase and out of the front door into the dark and snowy night.
The Duck said, "He looks so sad. I can't leave him alone!" She ran after the Duke, her braid flying loose behind her.
Edel only smiled and took the back way out of the castle.
—
"Raise the wind!" said the Man Without Hands. "Let the storm cover the town." Six marionettes cranked the great machine, and above in Gold Crown Town, the snow rose ever higher. "Set the spotlights." Two marionettes lit two stages, both in the depths of the forest. Two more marionettes set up viewing windows. In one window, the Duke shivered in his thin robes, the snow settling on his head and arms. In another window, the Duke's youngest daughter sat, sobbing. Somewhere she'd found a shawl to cover her head with. Her silk gown was torn at the hem and covered in mud and snow.
"Good," said the Man Without Hands. "Now, for the climax!" He waved his arms towards the clockwork orchestra, and the music swelled over Gold Crown Town.
—
The Duck (Edel observed, through a small clockwork window) caught up with the Duke in a stand of firs heavy with snow. The moon was covered by clouds, but convenient lights lit the area around them. The wrinkled old Duke was sitting under a fir tree, trembling and beginning to cough.
"Are you okay?" asked the Duck. She, too, had snow in her hair and uniform, but it didn't seem to trouble her. "You shouldn't be out here! I mean, I guess you can be anywhere you want, but it's a cold night and nobody should be out here! I mean..." she broke off.
"It doesn't matter." The Duke's voice was hoarse. "I have no children and no home to go to. Let the snow come."
"That's not true!" said the Duck. "There are plenty of places you could go to in Gold Crown Town! You could go to my home." Then she added, very fast, "Well, you can't because it's just a lake and the other one is a girls' dormitory, but there have to be lots of people who would be glad to have you stay with them! Miss Ebine has an inn, maybe there's a hotel there."
"No." The Duke bent his head and closed his eyes. "I am not loved. I don't care what happens to me."
"Well, you should care! I care! What happens to you is very important!" The Duck nodded enthusiastically. From beyond the clockwork window, Edel could see her braid flapping in the air.
"It's..." the Duke coughed and started his sentence over, "It's very sweet of you. But I don't need your help."
At that moment, the Duck's pendant flashed red.
—
Elsewhere in the forest, Edel turned away from her observation window and looked for the Duke's third daughter. There she was, in a patch of light, sitting on a rock and wiping her eyes with the corner of her shawl.
Edel glided closer and set her hand to the barrel organ. The clockwork orchestra quieted so that she could play, the bright and cheerful melody sounding clearly through the cold air. Rattelia looked up.
"Would you like a jewel?" Edel asked, setting aside her barrel organ and opening her box.
Rattelia stared up at Edel. "...No. No, thank you."
Edel smiled at Rattelia. "This," she said, gesturing towards a green stone that glowed faintly in the night, "is the jewel of steadfastness. Would you take a walk with me? The path to enlightenment is full of shadows, but the destination is as bright as morning."
Edel closed the box and offered Rattelia her wooden hand.
The Duke's daughter shrugged. "I don't have anything better to do tonight." She took Edel's hand in her paw and began walking.
Edel led Rattelia further and further from the place where the Duck was talking to the Duke, onthe other side of the clockwork window.
—
"You had the heartshard, after all!" the Duck cried out. She folded herself into a golden egg, and when she emerged again, she was Princess Tutu.
Tutu stepped close to the Duke and took his hands. "You said that you don't care what happens to you if no one loves you, but is that how you really feel?"
"I..." said the Duke, and coughed. "I only ever wanted my daughters to love me. Nothing else was so important. Nothing else matters."
"Dance with me," said Princess Tutu, and they danced through the snow-covered forest. Tutu's pointed toes hardly touched the ground, but the Duke began to trip on tree roots, and twice he nearly fell before Tutu caught him. His breath hissed through his throat.
At last a small red copy of the Prince emerged from inside the Duke and took over the dance with Princess Tutu. "I am the desire for love," said the heartshard.
"Thank you," said Princess Tutu, smiling at the heartshard. "Go back to Mytho now." The heartshard flickered and vanished. When it disappeared, both Tutu and Edel could see that the Duke was lying on the roots of a fir tree, coughing blood into the snow.
—
As they walked, Rattelia was saying to Edel, "If he'd just told me that he loved me, and asked me if I loved him back, I wouldn't mind. But he plays games. Why did the gift of the castle have to rest on one of us giving the right answer?"
Edel led Rattelia past the banks of a creek. "True answers and true gifts are not easy to find."
"I do love him," Rattelia said. "I even love my sisters. But I refuse to do what he asks just because he asks it. I'm his daughter, not his prisoner, not his slave, and not his puppet."
Edel forgot to move smoothly; her legs and arms jerked at the wooden joints.
Rattelia paused as well. "I'm sorry, was that offensive? I don't mean to insult puppets."
Finding her cryptic smile again, since she knew one of the spotlights was focused on it, Edel answered, "We all have strings that move us. Fortunate people can choose whether to pull against the strings."
—
Through the window, Princess Tutu knelt over the Duke. "I'll help you get somewhere warm," she said, "I'll call the flower petals, in just the same way I saved Mytho when he fell out the window." Tutu closed her eyes and extended her hand, reaching for the wind of petals.
Nothing moved, except that the Duke kept coughing.
"I can't," Tutu said at last. Tears were freezing on her long eyelashes. "I can't reach the flowers. It must be because it's winter and the flowers are dead. I'd pick you up, but you're too heavy. I don't know what to do."
She touched the Duke's head. "I'll find some help. I'll do something. I can't leave you alone, so—"
Tutu stood up. "If I'm going to call for help... I guess I have to be Duck again, so people know who I am." She shook her head, and then she was only a girl with a long braid and a student uniform.
"Fakir!" the Duck called into the night. "Rue! Mytho! Can anyone hear me? Mr. Cat? Fakir? Please come, I need you!"
"Fakir!" she yelled again.
The sound of her voice echoed through the woods, but no one responded.
"I bet they all went home," the Duck said. "I bet everyone's back in bed at the Academy and they're sleeping, so they can't hear me."
She sat down again, resting her arm on the Duke's shivering shoulders. "I guess I'll just have to wait here with you. Maybe someone will come in the morning. Unless—" The Duck pushed herself up again and yelled even louder than she had before. "Miss Edel! Miss Edel! Can you hear me? I know you'll help him!"
—
From the other side of the forest, and the other side of the clockwork window, Edel could, in fact, hear the Duck. She could also hear the Man Without Hands, addressing her from the great machine.
"You could help him," said the Man Without Hands. "But you wouldn't, would you? You're my puppet. You wouldn't spoil this beautiful tragedy."
Edel heard them both. She thought of how strange the Duck's arms felt, wrapped around her in the Duke's ballroom. She thought of her twelve sisters, pulling the levers and pulleys in the clock tower.
We all have strings that move us.
Edel smiled blandly at the spotlight, and led Rattelia further into the frozen night.
"You wouldn't dare!" said the Man Without Hands. "I'll disassemble you for parts. I'll use your heart to power the sewage pipes. I'll use your hair for towels to clean the gears, and then I'll burn them."
Edel smiled again, and led Rattelia unerringly to the Duke and the Duck.
In her ears, the Man Without Hands was screaming.
"Father!" said Rattelia. "Are you all right?"
The Duck ran to Edel and clung to her for a long moment. "Miss Edel! I knew you'd come!"
"I'm so sorry," the Duke said to Rattelia, between coughs. "I shouldn't ... have made you answer ... like that."
"I'm sorry too," said Rattelia. "Miss Edel, could you help me carry him somewhere warm?"
The Man Without Hands snorted. "You've already disobeyed. What's one more disobedience?"
Edel said nothing, but bent and lifted the old rat in her arms, to carry him to Ebine's inn.
—
"You! You will be operating the clock for at least a week," declared the Man Without Hands the next morning. "Don't even think of stepping out into the town."
Edel took her silent place among her sisters, making sure that at every hour, the great bells rang and the marionette dancers spun over Gold Crown Town. But she set up clockwork windows, and she watched.
Through the first window, as the clock struck seven:
The Prince, in his bed in the dormitory, was saying to the Knight, "Fakir, do you love me?"
The Knight turned his face away and did not answer.
Through the second window, as the clock struck eight:
The Duke was lying in a neat bed in Ebine's inn. Rattelia sat by the bed. The Gold Crown Town doctor peered at the Duke through his spectacles. "Take this medicine twice a day, and stay in bed for at least a week. You'll be fine. Will you help him remember his medicine?"
"Of course," said Rattelia.
Through the third window, as the clock struck nine:
The Prince, at ballet practice, asked the Raven Princess, "Do you love me, Rue?"
The Raven Princess said, "Don't be ridiculous."
Through the fourth window, as the clock struck ten:
"What took you so long last night?" whispered Pique, while the Cat was occupied teaching the advanced class.
"Yes, we were wondering if you got lost!" agreed Lilie, slightly louder. "It was such a cold night, you might have frozen, and then we never would have found you!"
"Oh, I'm fine," said the Duck, forgetting to be quiet. "It was nothing."
Back in the clock tower, Edel smiled and pulled another crank.