Written for twinenigma, my LJ Secret Santa recipient, who suggested a version of the "Swan Maiden" tale for a prompt, and may be getting a lot more words than expected. It's a very good prompt.

The tale was true long before the Kingdom existed. Fifteen years ago, the Prince returned, having defeated the Raven and won the hand of his daughter. Now the King and Queen and their family confront a far older power than Drosselmeyer's hand in their story, while others are drawn in just as unwillingly. REVISED 1/19/11

Always a Price-ch3

Once Elsa started flying, once the shock and terror wore away, it was wonderful. By that time she was well over the Long Lake, migrating toward her ancestral home.

As a swan she could see more, and better, and further. Her hearing seemed to be sharper. And remembering how to ride on the air–

Remembering from where? Or when? The question intruded into her enjoyment, and she resented it. Was this the first time she had ever done something on her own, that her parents hadn't decided or approved, and her brother hadn't spoiled for her? Aside from exploring the Residences. There was no comparison, though, was there? The sky today was fresh and new. No human had built it, there was no blueprint, there were no workmen or servants who knew what was in it for her to find. All hers.

Her parents and her brothers could have the Kingdom and the dance floor, if she could have the sky.

Soon enough, the illusion of freedom burst. Another swan was in her wake, above and behind her. A black swan? They didn't even live here... Of course. The last of the skins had been black. It had to be Mother. How on earth did she persuade Father to let her do such a thing?

The black swan merely followed her until she was tired. Well, no one ever called her mother stupid. When Elsa came down in the water, splashing clumsily, she realized that she didn't know everything yet about being a bird.

Something about her reflection... She twined her neck back far enough to look at herself. She wasn't white, even though the skin had been white. Of course she'd had to change into an adolescent cygnet. An ugly duckling. Naturally.

The black swan landed gracefully, and immediately seemed at home in the water, while Elsa was still working out how to paddle. Of course. Mother's the Queen, and a prima ballerina, how dare she not do something perfectly? The resentful thought died a quick death. Mother hadn't known what to do to stop this.

Having been a swan even for so short a time, Elsa was rather glad it hadn't been stopped.

Meanwhile, Rue had found a place where she could get up onto the bank. There she stood, awkwardly for once, shifting her weight from foot to webbed foot, when suddenly she grew taller–

She stood, still in her practice outfit, the black- feathered shape wrapped about one arm, shivering a bit.

"Elsa. Come here. Can you take it off? Can you stand?"

The Princess tried, but the wish for human form eluded her. A swan was so much better. She shook her head: no, I can't.

Rue sighed. She'd been afraid that Elsa would be too confused to change back. Or worse– She knelt in front of her child.

"Elsa, listen. I want you to try again. The skin might not let go of you all the way, but you should try to be yourself again for a few minutes. If you don't do it now, it may just be harder to do later, or you might not be able to change back at all. You need to be able to control this, or it will control you."

Well, thought the Princess, put that way–

She tried to stand.

She remembered the pain, remembered screaming–

She couldn't take that again, not yet. How could Mother face it?

In the end, she had to shake her head again. Better to stay a bird than have to undergo the agony.

Elsa was very tired indeed by the time the urge to fly was finally quieted the next day. Above them soared a sheer cliff. Not visible from the water at its base was the castle above.

Flying was a little different like this, but it wasn't as much effort as humans thought it was.

Now she had a huge wingspan, compared to what she'd been used to. The rest came back quickly: the feel of the air currents, geography from above, seeing almost all around her instead of just to the front. Few things would try to eat her when she was this size, she knew, and that was one less concern.

Where she was to go was a far greater worry. She was heading due west- south- west when the moon sank, and the only thing she had for a guide was a feeling that she must keep on through full dark.

The mind tried to play tricks with such a task, especially after the moon set: was she still on course, how hard had that gust of wind been, should she compensate more? It was much easier once she remembered to pick a star on her heading and follow it until, as it sank near dawn, a castle by a lake caught her eye.

The lake was narrow in proportion to its length, but that was no feat: it vanished into the horizon. Its surface was hardly visible. Even as she looked the morning mist thickened over the water.

The castle below seemed to beckon in the pre-dawn light. As she circled, she felt– something– take hold, not quite like she remembered experiencing Fakir's gift. She obeyed the impulse– she doubted she could do otherwise– and set down, awkwardly and a bit painfully, atop a relatively low and squat, but very big, tower. It would be far easier to come down in water; but whatever wanted her here was giving her no choice. Suddenly she was standing up again, human. Clothed, thank goodness; that was such an improvement. She'd barely felt herself change, except for the momentary pressure at her neck. The thread had snapped as intended. The chain was still intact, her ring safe.

What she did feel was an overpowering exhaustion. Her course presented itself, undoubtedly pre- arranged: she stepped over something still in shadow, through a door, down twisting stairs she couldn't see, through other doors into an unoccupied room. All she had to do was remove her shoes and crawl up onto the bed, hoping she'd be awake before anyone found her.

Across this arm of the lake loomed the Swan's Rock with its stone crown; three miles away, perhaps four. It showed darker than he remembered against the dawn sky.

The King stood by the water, here where the shore dipped and the bank was low, and looked. He had grown up in that hard, gray place. There he had trained, as every one of the knights of his Realm did. He had served his father as a page, a squire, and finally he had been knighted, though at a young age; he had never thought at the time that his swift progress might be for the convenience of the King his father (and certainly he had never known to take thought for his story's author) so that he could take up his duties as Prince.

Not that he had never traveled; certainly not that he hadn't noticed that life in the other residences, houses and palaces and even hunting lodges, wasn't far more pleasant and civilized than in any castle.

Was he paying for that preference now? Yes, defense was a priority– but the castle was now in the midst of the realm, not defending a trade route any more, for brigandage and piracy were not the problems they had been all those centuries ago. This fortress had been strong, but it had failed. The Raven had been stronger. He hadn't been able to see making this castle more important than the devastated towns and farms, folklore or no, since his return.

He had seldom laid eyes on the place since then. Since the battle, really. He could still see and hear the carnage. It had been the thing that pushed him to that ultimate act of forbidden sorcery, shattering his own heart; for it had already been broken before he had fallen on his sword. Either he would die, as so much of the Kingdom had before his eyes, or he would feel and remember nothing. No matter what, he would forget the grief and horror for a time at least, and so it would not send him mad.

But according to the hermit, once the King had sifted through his words, the old story had indeed taken hold here again. There were details that hadn't been included in the version he'd read in school. Three sisters had lived there, mistresses of the castle and its lands, until a hunter saw them bathing and took one of the discarded dresses, and married the girl whose form he controlled; the King suspected the disintegrating white one, which for some reason had less magic about it than the others.

And that was where so many swan- maiden stories ended, at least for the younger children. This story, however, had continued, right down to himself and his offspring. His line counted its beginning from the hunter and the swan- maiden.

There had been a cruel twist to the tale: none of the swan- maidens could be entirely whole without their half- lives as swans, and the swans were bound to this castle, until the spell was broken for all three at once.

Mytho had realized, once the hermit was far behind him, that he still did not know for certain whether the curse had been lifted for his predecessors, as it had been in the story. He could have kicked himself. He did not know how much time he had, or Rue or Elsa, and so he had to continue as he was, unknowing. There was no guarantee of a straight answer to his question anyway, he thought in frustration.

The garments had been kept, of course, locked away out of anyone's reach once the owners passed on. Every scion of his line ever since had been able to use magic, though seldom on a par with wizards. But wizards could not do the things that the King could; no one else could call the swans that enabled him to travel between realities, or even knew where they resided; none could sacrifice his own heart and live, as he himself had for so long.

He rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. The old hermit had told him to stay silent once inside, no matter what pain he must endure or what pleasure presented itself. Three trials on three days, to take place within the oldest part of the castle– that would be the old Keep tower, newly rebuilt and now haunted, which was backward. It was old and crumbling places that should be haunted. Why there? From what Rue had said, she and Elsa were outside, on the lake.

Perhaps, if there was a very rigid definition of silence, he should not enter the castle as its monarch, but incognito. Incognito could be a bit of a problem with white- blonde hair and honey- brown eyes like his father's. A hood to hide under? A bit suspicious. Workmen and supplies... Stone dust, mortar or plaster or dried whitewash powder? Not going in, they would only cake so thickly after a day's work. A baker's boy, hauling bread? Maybe. Or did they just haul a sack or two of flour up every day and use the old castle ovens? Even more likely. So, a miller, or a carter that helped to load the flour, as in the story he'd read.

From this distance he couldn't make out anything at the base of the rock; the mist was rising. Then over the course of moments, the tallest tower turned gold in the new light. He watched the light descend, begin to gild the rest of the edifice on the rock, then the outcrop itself.

A dark form passed overhead. He waited. The black swan circled, came down in the water, paddled to the bank, walked and flapped onto the grass.

Stood up and faced him.

"She went in the tower," Rue managed to get out. "As soon as it was dark last night we felt it pulling us, stronger than ever. We were in the air before I realized. I only just managed to veer away from it. Elsa– Mytho, I'm not sure how much she remembers about being human by now. She hasn't taken the skin off yet. And now she's up there." They knew, somehow, that once inside, they would be trapped until the curse was broken; and she would have to go soon, to stay with their daughter.

Something in Mytho forebore to tell Rue exactly how he was to end the curse, and only partly because he knew he didn't yet understand it all himself; instead he told her to watch for a third swan, and told her what he had in mind about entering the castle.

Which, they both knew, may or may not make any difference to Rue or to Elsa. Rue didn't know how much freedom they would have once she entered the tower, or even whether they would see each other.

Certainly neither of them had any ideas yet about whose hand was gathering them there.

"I'm sure it isn't Fakir," said Mytho. "I think that if anyone's responsible, it's Drosselmeyer. I don't mean that as an easy scapegoat or a way of soothing my conscience, either; I wonder, instead, how many other stories are ready to pounce at us."

"What do you mean, your conscience?" said Rue; but then she gave up the pretense of trying to tease him. Her voice faltered. "I'm the one that picked up this thing. I didn't dare wait for you to tell me not to. And I still couldn't help Elsa." The Queen's control slipped then, and she looked away. Guilt and remorse were so familiar. She had hoped to feel neither so strongly again, after all that Mytho had endured at her hands once, and forgiven, and never mentioned since.

He regarded her sadly. "Of all the things I should have turned the entire Kingdom inside out to find, over the past fifteen years, it was those skins," he said in reply. "But I didn't even try. I just assumed they were still hidden, or more likely destroyed when the Raven demolished the castle. Instead I let our daughter stumble across them. I didn't even tell her the story first, so she'd know to beware. You were the one who took action when you could."

"Mytho." Rue's voice would not hold steady for her, as she had made it serve her since she had come here, all those years ago. "Mytho, what happens if you can't break this curse? What becomes of you, and Elsa?"

"That, my Queen, is the only bright spot in this whole business. From the story that I read in school, I might be a little worse for the wear, but alive and well. You and Elsa as well, but still under the enchantment."

"Elsa still doesn't know how to take it off."

"But you do. You can teach her. Rue, look at me, please– She will survive this. So will we. And the curse may still be broken. This story of ours, it might be a little different than the one I know. Here, I don't know if the first swan- maiden's husband was able to lift the curse. All I know for certain is that the original three sisters lived and died in that castle. Even the hermit didn't tell me about the spell being broken then. But any curse can be ended."

They stayed together as long as they could; but all too soon, it was time. Rue could not hold the skin off any longer. The King watched the Queen dwindle to a dark speck, and thought perhaps he saw her at the top of the oldest tower; but he couldn't be sure.

Then it was time for him to consider his own ways and means.

Elsa awoke in the new sunlight atop fresh stonework. Farther above were the tops of other towers, which meant that this was probably the oldest one, which she knew to be shorter than the others.

A few inches away on the stone lay the hide, white once more. It twitched as she reached for it, but didn't seem able to reach for her. She almost picked it up, not thinking; but then her mother's words came back to her: it will control you...

She left it there. Elsa was fairly certain, from what she remembered about last evening, that she wouldn't be allowed to leave here. She had actually woken up flying a little after sunset, and had thought she was circling away from this tower, but had nearly hit it instead; she'd managed to land without hurting herself, but had fallen to the floor immediately, and woken up just now, not long after dawn. She must have slept through the night as a swan, right where she had landed.

There was a door, and a small room, once perhaps for guards on watch, and a stone cistern full of water from the rain a few days ago. She entered, and went down the spiraling stairs in the far wall to the next floor, and the next. There the stairs ended in a landing and a locked door. She went back up. The door to the top- most floor beneath the guardroom was shut, but not locked.

She was surprised to find that it led to a short hallway, with two doors on each side and a window at the far end. She looked. It gave a nice view, but that wasn't helpful.

She began to try the doors. The first one she tried opened for her.

It was furnished, to her surprise, with everything new or newly cleaned. The massive canopy bed had to have been built in place, with that tiny staircase, but the hangings were new. There were chairs, rugs, a fireplace, firewood. Unglazed windows with shutters and upholstered window- seats, plastered and painted walls, chests and wardrobes. Cushions. A jointed, carven partition, the sort of screen one changed behind. A modestly unobtrusive little door in one wall.

Elsa took in all of the medieval splendor within a few seconds. Then someone snored.

Her eyes snapped to the bed. All right, she wondered whimsically; Snow White or Goldilocks and the Three Bears?

Neither, as it turned out. The stranger was a woman in a plain white dress. Braided red hair, a bit faded with age and perhaps with sun, was bound around her head and beginning to come adrift at the edges; a long cowlick already had escaped. Her skin was not as brown as someone's who spent her life in the fields, nor so fair as Mother's; the hands were quite long and elegant as well, not a worker's hands. Nonetheless, there was a look about her– she was all muscle, and thin, even about her face.

Elsa found the shoes that had been kicked off by the bed. Very large and wide, but comfortable and a bit worn rather than stylish; shoes for someone to walk in– or maybe run, if needed? Or perhaps even dance...

What was another dancer doing here, and why didn't Elsa recognize her?

She risked a look at the face again. A few freckles, long dark lashes a bit like Father's, but nothing particularly memorable or pretty about her except for the hair, and definitely unfamiliar.

Noises from below caught her attention. She found the window that overlooked the courtyard below: workers were arriving for the day. None entered this tower, or even looked up at it. They seemed to be concentrating on the outer walls. It took Elsa a moment to realize that they were making a lot more noise than she was hearing. She watched as they went about their tasks, but none came close to this tower.

"Oh. Hello."

Elsa started. The woman on the bed had awakened and was sitting up.

"Hello. Um... may I ask your name?" Brilliant. You're a Princess, and that's the best you can do? It's a good thing Mother isn't here.

"Frau Schmidt will do for now, I think," said the stranger, who didn't seem to be entirely awake yet. "And what may I call you?"

Elsa wasn't sure what prompted her caution in what was, in a way, her own castle. Father's, anyway. She kept her face blank. "Marie Stahlbaum."

The stranger blinked, surprised in her turn, then smiled. She's much prettier when she smiles, thought Elsa, but the way she cocks her head, she looks like a curious bird.

"A pleasure to meet you, Your Highness. You look quite a bit like your mother, you know. And I'm familiar with The Nutcracker myself."

Okay, so we're one- upping each other, and she doesn't know to stand and curtsey– though she knows I'm a Princess. "Likewise, I'm sure. I thought you might be a dancer, but I didn't recognize you. I thought I knew every one in the Kingdom."

Frau Schmidt laughed at that. "Okay. You win. I'm not from your country."

"So... why are you here?"

"As far as we could tell, I was needed here," said Frau Schmidt, which was no explanation at all. "Once I was in the area, I was, um, summoned into the castle. To be honest, I expected to find your mother and father."

"The Queen should be here, I think," said Elsa, with as much dignity as she could, "but whoever's setting us all up here might not let her with us. I wish I knew."

"I wish I did too. But firstly, I'm afraid I'm not up to investigating yet. I flew all night, and was– directed– down here just before dawn. I don't remember everything, but... were you on the roof all night?"

"I think I must have been," said Elsa.

"Then I think I stepped over you, if you were a gray cygnet. I barely saw you, and I couldn't really tell if you were alive or a stone. Whatever called us here is strong enough to make me, at least, walk around half- asleep." She yawned; she looked half- asleep even now. "But that means Rue should be here too, and I didn't see her."

"Why don't you lie down again? I'll keep watch for Mother. If she doesn't come, we'll start looking when you're awake."

The woman calling herself Frau Schmidt thought for a moment, then consented. Elsa could tell that, like Mother, this woman would have to be truly exhausted before leaving a child to her own devices. And she was; a moment after she lay back down, she was asleep.

Elsa didn't go far. She just checked the other doors. Two would open, leading to similar quarter- circular rooms fitted as bedchambers. The fourth remained locked, but she didn't want to be caught flatfooted trying to open it, not yet.

The picks were still in her pocket.

She waited.

Disclaimer: Princess Tutu and all related characters and elements are the property, copyright and trademark of HAL– GANSIS/TUTU and Ikukoh Itoh and no ownership or claim on said property, copyright or trademark is made or implied by their use in the work(s) of fan fiction presented here. This fan fiction constitutes a personal comment on the aforesaid properties pursuant to doctrines of fair use and fair comment. This fan fiction is non-commercial, not for sale or profit, and may not be sold or reproduced for commercial purposes.

If anyone figures out some music, let me know. Dvorak's New World Symphony is suggesting itself but I need to work on that.