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; see Author's Notes at the end of Chapter 8 for more information.

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.

Always a Price2–ch4

"Autor!" Fakir burst out suddenly.

Autor jerked awake. "What?"

"'Three swan- mays, horse and hound and fox faithful beyond life, judgments of iron, the curse descending through the generations, sins arising black as the Pit, the mercy of the heartless.' What's it from? I can't remember!"

Autor steadied his breathing and his temper. "It's a bit of doggerel from Drosselmeyer's notes, some early ones from when he was working on A Strange Man. It's just a bunch of references to fairy tales strung together; it didn't really have any connection to that particular story. After some other such it goes on to say 'From them and for them I have found a place, and added thereunto.' There's a bit more but it was overwritten with what he was really working on. It was all just tucked into the margins anyway."

"But that was years before The Prince and the Raven!"

"I did mention that," said Autor. "I see. You think it's an early reference to Siegfried's story."

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Well, maybe now it is, to you," snorted Autor. "Drosselmeyer might have wanted to start it somehow with the swan- maidens' story. I wonder what he wanted to do with that; maybe it was with the pages the Bookmen took, provided he ever wrote it down. I never found anything further on the subject, but some of those references turn up in later works, under varying degrees of, well, disguise. He was a genius, of course, but that doesn't mean he had to invent everything out of whole cloth."

"We've been assuming this Swan- Maiden story played out like in the original folk- tale, and that for some reason it's is repeating itself," said Fakir, slowly, only half- listening. "Autor– What if it's more or less the same story, but never completed within Drosselmeyer's work, the way Mytho seems to think? Would that make it 'the curse descending through the generations'?"

Autor considered. "At this point, I doubt it makes any difference to King Siegfried or the others. The same conditions should apply, as far as we know. But Drosselmeyer might have altered that to add his own twist to the story. Since neither of us has read any such thing, it's safe to say that we'll never find out before seeing what happens to them next. But maybe you should concentrate on recording what that old hermit said, word for word."

Try as he might, the King had been unable to come up with a better solution to his problem than that given in the story.

The ovens were indeed in use during the day for the workers. A cart or so was laden each morning, full of tools, foodstuffs (including the flour) and whatever other supplies might be needed for the day. An unsprung cart. It wouldn't be comfortable.

The workmen didn't start out until dawn, and the carts followed them. It took quick thinking and fast talking, and a mix of bullying and money, from one of the King's guards to keep the miller and the carter quiet and get the King hidden without being recognized, and an excuse figured out for both guards to go along; but the Lieutenant, decided the King, earned himself a promotion that morning. It was still morning on the third day since Elsa's departure, a mere hour or two since he and Rue had parted by the lakeside.

Flour sacks were all well and good in a story, Mytho found; but aside from knowing that he'd emerge white as a ghost, he found that even covering his nose and mouth didn't stop the need for stifled sneezes and blown noses. The cart bumped and heaved its plodding way up the Rock in the morning chill. He could see nothing out of the close- woven bag. Finally there was shadow and an echo of a gatehouse tunnel, then a second time for the inner wall. Then he was being lifted down and carried, as a creak of wheels suggested that the cart was moving on.

Rustling gave way to light, and he was stepping out of the bag. The fast- talking officer had his orders, and said nothing as he helped his cramped, bruised lord to stand. They were not at the main door of the old keep, but at a small postern hidden by an odd angle of wall, exactly as he'd described to his men. They merely nodded to each other, and then the King entered his family's fastness and shut the door behind himself, a lantern in his left hand and his drawn sword in his right, a pack on his back. If he was imprisoned, he'd have food and water, enough to survive for a few days.

Do not speak...

The king sheathed his sword for a moment, his back to a wall, and set the lantern down.

...whatever happens...

The cloth he'd used to mask his nose and mouth was long enough.

...for three days.

Gagging wasn't a good idea, at least not yet, but he could tie his mouth shut.

He went exploring.

And it was nothing like he remembered.

"Mother, in here."

Rue sighed in relief at her daughter's whisper, and joined her in the hallway, outside a door. "Are you all right? I had to find your father. I saw the skin upstairs, and I could take mine off too, the whole way–"

"Yes. I think I fell asleep as soon as I landed, and when I woke up this morning it was there. Anyway, Mother– someone else is here. I don't know her, but she dances and she knew who I was because I look like you and Father."

"Oh? Not because you told her who you are?"

"Um. I wasn't sure whether I should... Anyway, I said I was Marie Stahlbaum. That's when she seemed to recognize me. She only stayed awake for a few minutes. She's asleep again."

"H'mm. That was a good thought. I think we should see, though." said the Queen, and went in. "Did she tell–" Elsa nearly ran into her back.

"Mother?" Elsa sidled around her when she didn't move, and saw with shock that her mother's hand was clamped over her mouth.

"Mother? Do you know her? Who is she?"

Too many answers to that question... "Yes, I know her. For the moment, until we know what's going on, it might be best to call her–"

"Frau Schmidt? That's the name she gave."

"Yes. Well, to you; her first name's Duck." It had been on the tip of Rue's tongue to say Princess Tutu; but just in time she remembered that what Elsa didn't know she couldn't reveal, should they meet the person behind all this. Which was doubtless why Duck had called herself by her married name.

Duck, here...

...snoring.

Rue touched her shoulder. "Duck, wake up."

"S'ryf'kr," she mumbled and turned over, and stopped sawing wood. It took a few more tries.

Elsa knew, in theory, that her parents had once been young, and students; but she suddenly realized that she knew very, very little about her mother. Of course she must have had friends, and seen none of them but Father since before Elsa was born; it was well- known that the Princess Rue had arrived without even any attendants or servants. But it was very disconcerting to see Mother, the Queen of all people, and this stranger hug so tightly and laugh until their tears ran, and to realize that it never occurred to this Frau Schmidt to curtsey to a queen any more than to a princess, or even to call her Majesty... and that it never occurred to Her Majesty that this woman should do so. Even relatives and friends followed protocol in public until given leave to drop it.

Then the name sank in. Duck? The character from the book? Mother and Father were supposed to have come out of the town controlled by a tale, true, but for one of the characters to turn up here, in the flesh...

...just didn't happen. Did it really exist as her parents said? Wasn't it just a setting for a story?

It was the beginning of a confusing day.

The King thought that he had seen every inch of this tower, decades ago. The postern should have led to a staircase inside the wall, leading up to a storage room off the Great Hall on the second story. Instead it went downward into darkness. Not only was that wrong, but it should have shown walls hewn out of rock after a descent, not a foundation of huge unfinished uprights with coarse masonry between, and a low ceiling that was no more than enormous slabs of rough stone. Mytho wasn't tall, but there were places he had to stoop in the tiny dead- end chamber he found.

He lifted the lantern, and turned around. If he looked closely, there were carvings on the wall. Symbols, mostly– and a large, tightly- carved spiral on the wall opposite the–

There was no longer an entry. There were no windows... no, wait, there was a light. A shaft through one of the monoliths. Inches wide only, far too small to climb through. It wasn't cut straight through, either, but at an odd angle– not only upwards but diagonally from one side.

He looked for the door once again. Nothing. This was where he would face whatever he was to face, silent, trapped in darkness once the sun set.

He had more candles to put in the lantern, and matches. He blew out the lantern, and waited.

Elsa wasn't as asleep as they thought. There were three rooms provided, but they were staying together, door closed, the swans' hides untouched on the battlement above. When they finally got around to going to bed tonight, she suspected, there would be someone on either side of her, and probably one would be awake at a time, all the time. Why didn't they realize that she could take her turn at that, at least?

She didn't realize that the constant thrum of their voices had indeed lulled her to sleep, until she drifted back awake. Her mother was speaking, but sadly, in a tone Elsa had never heard her use before.

"Sometimes I still remember. When I do... I remember what it was like when we came back. I could act like a Princess, but I knew nothing of this place, or the people, or anything beyond what was in Prinz und Rabe. It wasn't much of a consolation that Mytho had been gone for so long and had nearly as much to learn, all over again– he knew the nobility, but there was a whole new generation to meet. And Fa– the Raven had destroyed almost a quarter of the whole Kingdom. I spent a lot of time smiling, and trying to match names and titles to faces, and feeling overwhelmed and useless, and it scared me half to death. Some of them were doing exactly the same thing to me, smiling and making small talk, but they didn't like me."

"Oh, Rue–"

Elsa heard her mother h'mf gently. "Don't say it was my imagination. I wasn't being paranoid; they all had eligible daughters or sisters or nieces, the ones that we knew were talking behind our backs. We could never call it plotting, but there was a lot of resentment. I'd come to a fairytale kingdom, and it wasn't much different than where I'd come from, except that I was a bigger target than just the current top student in the Advanced class.

"Mytho... well, he was almost as much at sea as I was. And there I was, no real help, afraid I'd do no more than hinder him and make us both blunder, and disgrace him. Or worse, that the Raven's blood would get the upper hand in one or even both of us in the face of all that stupid pettiness, and it would be my fault..."

There was a pause in the conversation. Elsa felt it too. The sun was going down. Suddenly she wanted to fly. They weren't needed any more here, tonight. They could leave.

Mother was still talking. Hadn't either of those two felt it?

"...But we stuck by each other. I think that was what did it, finally. We still danced– Mytho refused to let that go. He didn't push me aside and expect me to be the social half of the throne, either."

"Rue, that would have been a waste of your brain," said Duck. Elsa could tell she was amused.

"Why, thank you. That's what Mytho said, at one point. He– well, I didn't expect him to love me, not after just regaining his heart, and not after all I'd done to him over the years, even before I remembered I was Kraehe. Even after what he said to us all just before we left... I was expecting an authentic medieval fairy- tale marriage, to a Prince Siegfried I'd barely recognize. But it wasn't like that at all. Somehow he was still the person I knew. He'd just turned back into the Prince I knew he'd be. And, to make a long story short, we both survived until I was pregnant with Elsa. Things were easier once the Kingdom knew an heir was on the way."

The conversation dwindled, until after a few minutes they began to debate their urge to turn back into swans. They all went up to the battlement, to the waiting garments. Elsa's question about whether Frau Schmidt could transform without a bird- skin were answered when she did so, apparently at will. The Princess noticed the chain around her neck that hadn't transformed with her; Duck twisted her head around to make sure it was secure before taking to the air.

After a few hours Elsa was glad to have her as a teacher. The fruit and bread in their rooms would be gone or turned bad in a day or two, and they had no idea if more would be provided; but by dawn Elsa and Rue both learned of as many edible plants as Duck could find in the marshy shallows further along the shore, away from the Rock.

Then, as the moon began to set, they were called back to the tower.

Time weighed heavily on the King's hands.

He had brushed off as much of the flour as he could, and shaken it out of his hair and his clothing. He stretched, but the ceiling of this sealed chamber was too low to move around very much.

He had to remember not to eat and drink out of boredom. He could rest, certain that he would awaken at the slightest sound. He could watch, not the sun in its course, but the day's progress in the quality of the light from the shaft. He could hear nothing from outside.

The day passed, and the light waned. White and gold gave way to gray, then to darkness, as he craned his head to look up through the hole in the stone. He had his hand on his matches and the lantern when a silver beam of moonlight left a spot on the wall, entering the carved spiral.

He remembered not to shout. Eyes opened in the darkness in front of him. He tried to draw his sword, setting his feet–

–and something was wrapped around them. He kicked frantically, trying to free himself, and fell hard.

He tried to shove, and uncoil, and loosen, but whatever this was– it seemed to be feathered at times, and at other times scaly– always had another length to wrap around him. He remembered Rue's distraught efforts to get that skin off of Elsa, and remembered how it had clung, and thought that this might feel something like it.

The words came to his mind and almost to his tongue, the same ones that he had tried to use to free his daughter. He bit down on them, remembering; remembering also that his command had not been enough to loosen the swan- hide's grip.

He kept on, unable to stand or to spare a hand for his sword or for the knife in his boot. Suddenly it went dark, and he knew he was lost. He almost, again, shouted his defiance in the face of his unseen foe–

But it was gone.

Light, and water, and eventually a little food; he had his pack organized so that he could find what he needed, and then find the matches that had been scattered in the long scuffle. But now the bandage around his jaw had to bind his wrenched ankle.

Moonlight, he thought, moonlight down that shaft, that touched the spiral. Two more nights. No door had opened again where he had come in. He must endure for two more nights.

"Well," said Autor, "that went more or less as expected."

"It agrees with the story," agreed Fakir. "Something still feels odd, though. It's as if whoever's behind the story heard Rue talking about being a burden to Mytho, and used it against him."

"I know. If it happens again, it won't be a coincidence," said Autor. "Meanwhile, we're stuck. What was the next hazard?"

"Painful."

An exasperated sigh. "And nothing we can do from here, without just prolonging the affair."

"Hmph," grunted the writer. Suddenly he sat up.

"There's one thing I can do, I think," he said, determined, inking and blotting the quill before continuing on the same page he'd been working on.

"What can you do?"

"I think we can ease his pain a bit. We know he's got the best part of a day ahead; I can let him rest, at least."

"Good thought," said Autor. "Just remember, there might be a price even for that. The pain has to go somewhere."

"Back on whoever's imprisoning their King, if I can manage it."

"Be sure you can," warned Autor, "or it might go where you don't want it."

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.

More detailed author's notes at the end of Chapter 8.

FFN does not allow the quotation of web addresses, but the first result of a Google search of " D. L. Ashliman swan maidens" will lead to a page with several stories, including the one from Germany used throughout this story, and several others.