Twelve Sisters

Content warning: implied domestic violence

Don’t you wonder what happened afterwards?

Yes, yes: a king was plagued with twelve daughters who, despite being locked into their bedroom every night, wore holes through all their dancing slippers by morning. His solution? Invite any passing adventurer to discover our secret and inherit the crown. After many failures and messy beheadings, a grizzled soldier with a cape of invisibility followed us to our underground revels, brought back proof of our adventures, and claimed the eldest princess in marriage. Everybody knows that much, thanks to the Brothers Grimm.

And now you shall know what happened next.

“It was my fault,” said Anya. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Married him? You had no say in the matter.”

“Argued with him. I should know by now…” She dabbed her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

I couldn’t see an injury at first—not until I realized that the shadows sheltered by her high collar were actually fingermarks. I unclenched my teeth and turned to the maid in the corner. “Grace, fetch a hot posset for Princess Anya. Plenty of Madeira.” A trip to the kitchens and back. Time to heat the cream, grate the sugar, steep the mace. Twenty minutes’ privacy, perhaps.

“Sister, I don’t need…” Anya shivered, and her beautiful posture began to crumple.

“Go,” I said, and Grace fled. When the door closed behind the maid, I wrapped a soft shawl about Anya’s shoulders. My touch was gentle. She flinched nevertheless. “Come,” I said. “Sit by the fire.”

She lowered herself cautiously into an armchair, as though it might take sudden exception to her presence. And here, by warm firelight, there was something else about her that looked…different. A familiar kind of different. “Oh, sister…” I couldn’t quite bleach the chagrin from my voice. “Are you with child again?”

She stared at me, aghast. “Sweet heaven, do you think? So soon?”

I was no physician, yet it seemed so obvious. The subtle swelling of her face, the new languor of her movements: her body engaged, once again, in that most magical and ruthless of feats.

“Are you sure you’re not a witch, Ling?” Her smile was small, stiff. “You have never been wrong before.”

Twelve years ago, a few moons after her marriage to the soldier, I had noticed the changes but not understood their import. Since then, I’d observed them at the start of each pregnancy. “Don’t you feel it yourself?” How could she not sense such a transformation in her body’s workings?

Anya’s tears flowed faster. “I don’t know what normal feels like anymore. I scarcely recognize this carcass as mine.”

I could well believe that. Anya had birthed eleven daughters, running down in age like steps on a staircase. The youngest was still an infant. People thought princesses soft and idle, but Anya’s body was as worn as that of any farmwife. Even her speech was different: losing half her teeth robbed her of the crisp hauteur that had been one of her defining traits.

“Maybe this one will kill me,” she said. Her voice was wistful.

It was the bleak heart of winter, the snows were deep, and our father, the King, was dying. Within a few days or weeks, Anya’s husband would become king—all according to the proclamation made in order to solve the mystery of our worn-out dancing shoes.

Shoes!

For such were the lives of princesses: every pirouette need be accounted for.

Anya’s soldier had not seemed monstrous, a dozen years ago. Surly, yes. Arrogant, certainly. We had not liked him, but neither had we feared him. Three nights in a row, Anya gave him the sleeping draught in the antechamber of our bedroom and we watched as he “drank” it, rivulets of mulled wine trickling down his chin. We hid our smiles, thought him merely greedy and clumsy. We hadn’t seen the sponge concealed within his untrimmed beard, didn’t realize he was only feigning sleep.

When he put on the cloak of invisibility and followed us down the enchanted stairway, I felt his tread catch the hem of my gown, the heat of his breath on the back of my neck. I was alarmed. But I was the youngest, a child of twelve, with a habit of obedience. Anya insisted that all would be well. I set aside my instincts. Later, in the ballroom, I saw invisible hands lift my wine goblet, watched unseen lips drain it, repeatedly. I didn’t realize he enjoyed my terror.

After Anya was wed, there remained eleven of us. In order of birth, each a year younger than the previous: Bunmi, Chanda, Damla, Esther, Fatima, Genevieve, Hasnaa, Isolde, Johanna, Keiko – and I, Ling. The glories of our dancing nights became common gossip. Courtiers and diplomats never asked outright, but all wanted to know what else we’d done in the nether world besides dance. Were we certain we’d only allowed the princes to row us in those enchanted boats? Had we only dined in the castle – and all together, always? And what of the cut of our ballgowns? Did we truly expect them to believe…? The King cursed, he threatened, he trebled our dowries. After that, my sisters found spouses.

Now, the King’s bedchamber would be crowded. Anya and I lived here, at the castle, but our ten sisters and their families were expected on the morrow. Tomorrow was not only the beginning of our deathbed vigil; it was the first time the twelve of us would be reunited since the scandal.

Next morn, I set out early for a walk. Fresh snow squeaked under my fur-lined boots, the sky pressed low under its burden of clouds. There was nobody about for miles. Until, suddenly, there was.

A cloak of coarse brown, battered men’s brogues, a bundle of kindling in her gnarled hands: she was so much the picture of a hedge-witch that I wondered if I’d imagined her. As a child, I’d had a book of tales that showed just such a crone as this. But when she doffed her hood and looked up at me, I blinked at the steel-rimmed lunettes balanced on her nose. I would never have invented a hedge-witch with spectacles.

“The King is dying,” she said, by way of greeting. Her voice was both deep and sharp.

I inclined my head. So close to the castle as we were, this was common knowledge.

“Are you prepared?”

“The remaining princesses arrive today.” I turned and pointed to the castle chimneys, two dozen of them wafting smoke. “All are making ready.”

“Are you prepared, Princess?”

I swung back to look at her more closely. “You recognize me?”

“Princess Ling, of course.” Her eyes gleamed, even behind glass. “The unmarried one.”

As the youngest daughter, I was never destined for marriage; my duty was to our aging father and the keeping of his household. Yet I cherished my spinsterhood. How could I not, with the example of Anya’s husband ever before my eyes? Besides which…I had a secret.

My sisters were dispersed and our nightly revels undone, but I held fast to our history. They were now queens and empresses of far-flung nations, but in my underground domain, I reigned supreme. And each time I descended to our secret dreamworld, I felt as close to them as we’d ever been, a dozen and more years ago.

I chose my words with precision. “Am I prepared to bid farewell to my father, the King? He has lived a long and useful life.” Despite his very careless handling of his daughters, the King had been a monarch who avoided war and fed the poor. One could not hope the same of Anya’s mercenary.

“And have you made preparations for his successor?” asked the hedge-witch. She was enjoying this interview.

I hesitated. “What sort of ruler do you predict he’ll be, mother?”

“You don’t need a scrying-glass for that, Princess. You know precisely what sort of king the soldier will make.”

He was a brute and a braggart and a bully. A sneak, too, who used his cloak of invisibility still: to eavesdrop on Anya and me, to make free with the treasury, to frighten the King into doing his will. Why would any of this change once he wore the crown? Thick sadness clogged my throat. “Excuse me, mother,” I said. “I must go.”

Her hand twisted the soft wool of my mantle. “A minute more, Princess.” She was very strong.

“Why?”

“I have a confession to make.”

“Then you must find a divine.”

“Oh no,” she said slowly. “You, Princess Ling, are the one who must hear my confession.”

“Is that so?” I had been an obedient child, but nobody said “must” to me, anymore.

“I gave him that cloak of invisibility,” said the hedge-witch.

I stared, wondering if I could possibly have heard aright.

She looked furtive and sour, and I realized it was an expression of shame. “I had planned to give the cloak to a good-natured swineherd. But the swineherd was delayed—his pigs got loose—and when the soldier came along at the right time...” She sighed and tapped her spectacles. “I couldn’t see so well, back then. Didn’t have these. And the two men were of an age, and his sword looked quite like a swineherd’s staff…”

“You mistook a sword for a stick.”

“And have regretted my mistake ever since.” She paused. “The swineherd was far from dashing—oh, how he reeked!—but he was a decent man.”

For long moments, I was too livid to speak. She regretted her mistake? When Anya had paid for that blunder with her dignity, her health, and the entire course of her life?

“You understand, Princess Ling, that the kingdom ought not suffer the consequences of my error.”

I fixed my gaze on the glittering white horizon for several deep breaths. Then I straightened my spine and asked, “And will you grant me a gift, mother, to aid in his defeat?” I would steel myself to any horror for this task.

“I will.” She proffered her right hand and chanted, “A kingdom’s hope: the midnight knell. Twelve sisters work a timely spell. A cape changes the soldier’s shape, but answers to the shell.”

I peered at the small, brown orb lolling between the deep creases of her palm. So much for a vial of poison, an enchanted knife, or my own cloak of invisibility. The hedge-witch was offering me…a walnut? “And what must we—I—do with this?”

“Fair’s fair, Princess: I can but give you the tools. You must make your own fate.” And, by extension, the fate of the kingdom. Just as the soldier had.

I took the walnut.

My sisters arrived laden with spouses and children and maids and jewel-cases and accounting books—and, in the case of Bunmi, a pet snake named Ejò from which she refused to be parted, despite the shudders and complaints of Genevieve. After supper, in the vast, chilly dining hall, I requested a private gathering of the twelve princesses; nothing official, merely a fond sisterly reunion. Their consorts—even Anya’s soldier—smiled and waved their fingers indulgently.

Once in our old sitting-room, the infants consigned to their nurses and the others to cups of spiced wine, a sense of expectation settled upon us. “Charming idea,” said Fatima. “But why are we here, Anya, and not attending the King on his deathbed?”

“Anya, sister, you look utterly exhausted,” interrupted Damla. “All that childbearing…do you truly think it wise?”

“Really, Anya, we know you are devoted to our mother’s memory but there is no need to recreate her life so exactly,” said Johanna. “Do you want to die giving birth to your twelfth?”

Esther and Hasnaa rushed to defend her, but Anya held up her hand for silence. Then, holding Johanna’s gaze, she unwound the lace scarf from her neck. “No, Damla,” she said quietly. “I do not think it wise.” The bruises were purple by candlelight.

A parched silence descended upon the room. The fire crackled. Someone exhaled. I watched my sisters string together echoes of stray remarks and casual moments, like beads on a silk strand. Their eyes grew dark.

“He must pay for this,” hissed Keiko.

“What can be done?” whispered Isolde.

Anya shivered. “Ling has a proposal.”

They stared at me in astonishment. Finally, Chanda grinned. “The tadpole has grown up. Speak on, Ling.”

“Before we begin our vigil for the King, I suggest that we visit our dreamworld one last time.”

There was another startled silence—and then an explosion of protest, all aimed at me. Esther’s voice rose above the rest. “Our father, the King, destroyed the enchanted lake and castle a dozen years ago!”

“We all heard him declare its destruction complete,” said Fatima. She sounded as choked and heartbroken as we’d all felt that terrible evening, on the eve of Anya’s wedding, when we’d been hauled before the assembled court. Officially, it was the king’s proclamation of our purity and repentance. In practice, it was a ritual of humiliation, a demonstration of his mastery over us, and a warning to wayward daughters throughout the kingdom.

Johanna’s cool voice broke the silence. “And how does this relate to Anya’s…problem?”

“I promise you, it does.” I paused, feeling a drift of warm, stale air on the back of my neck. Or perhaps I’d imagined it? “While the King dammed a river in order to drown our dreamworld, he failed to destroy it.” Eleven perplexed faces looked at me. “I discovered this myself, quite by accident, ten years ago. It is still there.”

“If it’s submerged like a shipwreck, I consider it destroyed,” said Keiko. “How much use or pleasure can there be in moldering rowboats and barnacled trees?”

The others murmured agreement but I shook my head. “It is protected by enchantment. We must swim to it but, once there, we can breathe freely.”

Fatima’s eyes were wide. “You’re saying it’s still there, in perfect condition? The lake, the trees, the castle, the princes?”

“Oh, the princes,” murmured Isolde. A chorus of tender sighs filled the room.

“It’s not exactly as it was.” It had taken me years to understand why. “Twelve years ago, when we danced there every night, our dreamworld was constructed by Anya’s imagination. She invented the silver, gold and diamond groves. The lake with the rowboats. And the princes who danced all night. It was her dreamworld, and she made it real.”

“Why Anya?” demanded Bunmi, with a second-born’s full measure of indignation. Ejò rippled against her neck.

“Primogeniture,” I said, with a grin. “If we had kept going after Anya was married, it would have been your turn, Bunmi. And then Chanda’s, and Damla’s, and so on and so forth.”

Genevieve shuddered. “Heaven preserve me from Bunmi’s snake-filled fantasy life.” She yelped as Bunmi pinched her.

“So as the last unmarried princess, it is now your dreamworld, correct?” asked Hasnaa.

“Ye-es.” But it was much more than a frivolous fantasy to me. While my sisters exchanged girlish dreams for political sway and families of their own, I remained powerless and alone. In the void of my adult life, the dreamworld became my inheritance: a legacy for the youngest, the unmarried. The left-behind.

“What is it like?” asked Esther.

When we were young, my sisters never inquired after my opinions or my dreams. There had always been so many of us, so much noise, so much busy-ness. Now, I felt terribly exposed. How could I explain that my dreamworld was more than mere consolation or diversion? It was a necessary outlet for the exercise of my mind, my will, my desires. “I kept the silver trees,” I said, slowly. “I always preferred them to the gold and diamond ones.”

“So much for good financial sense,” sniffed Johanna.

“Shut up,” muttered Keiko. “It’s her dreamworld.”

“I kept the lake, too, but instead of…” I shook my head and stood. “Sisters, if you want to know what it’s like, come see it.”

There was a long moment of hesitation. My sisters were no longer carefree princesses who spent their nights dancing holes in their slippers. They were monarchs and peacemakers, wives and mothers. They were women who negotiated with ambassadors and commanded lord chamberlains. They nursed children through fevers and knew how many haunches of venison would suffice one hundred guests. They were women who, granted one night of perfect freedom, would choose to spend it in dreamless sleep. But we were all here now. Our girlhood bedroom was just upstairs, its magic intact. I held my body perfectly still. I looked. I listened. When I heard the faintest of inhalations over my left shoulder, I bit back a smile.

I felt the room complete.

Keiko jumped to her feet. “Lead on, sister.” And suddenly they were all rising, striding towards the stairs.

“Wait!” I called. “This evening, we proceed in reverse birth order. Keiko, you follow me. Then Johanna, Isolde, Hasnaa, Genevieve, Fatima, Esther, Damla, and Bunmi. Anya, you will come last.” Her gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance and I felt a queasy rush of anxiety. “Anya? Are you feeling unwell?”

Her face was set like a mask but she settled her shoulders and said, “Entirely ready, dear sister.”

We entered our former bedroom in silence. Anya paused in the antechamber, her gaze on the straw paillaisse: the bed where our would-be betrayers had slept. The bed where the soldier had feigned sleep. She looked up at the rest of us, watching her, and tried a little smile. “It was here that I first thought, At least I won’t have to marry him.” After a moment’s pause, she closed the door firmly behind us.

In the chamber proper, our twelve narrow beds were still in position: six against one wall, six against the other, spaced with mathematical precision. They were draped in dust, not silk, but nevertheless they looked ready to receive us. Was that a momentary weight on the hem of my gown? I waited for the goose-pimples to subside. “Are we ready?”

My sisters nodded as one.

I set down my lamp on a chest of drawers, where it cast weird shadows on the walls. At the foot of my former bed, I clapped my hands thrice. The wooden frame sank down into the floor, revealing a trap-door that creaked open. Inky water lapped at its edges.

“Remember,” I said, “We begin by swimming.”

“How far?” asked Chanda.

“One breath will be enough.”

Damla frowned. “How can we see the way?”

“Once you are submerged, there will be light.” My sisters looked at each other. They were thinking of their children, their kingdoms, perhaps of their spouses. “I will go first,” I said, and without removing my slippers, I sat at the edge of the trapdoor and dangled my legs into chilly black waters.

I looked up, around the room, and felt twelve pairs of eyes on me. Heard twelve others sharing the stale air. “Will you follow me?”

My sisters’ eyes slid to Anya and the delicate lace wound about her throat. I saw their resolve swell twelvefold.

Keiko smiled at Bunmi. “It’s a good thing snakes can swim.”

I slipped through the portal. Beneath the surface, I watched my sisters drop one by one into radiant blue-green light, their looks of suspicion and determination melting into delight. I grinned at Keiko, at Johanna, at Isolde, at Hasnaa, at Genevieve, at Fatima, at Esther, at Damla, at Chanda, and at Bunmi—even at Ejò, undulating gently in the current. Then came a pause, and we all turned to look up at the dark square of the trap-door.

We waited.

The pressure of this enchanted water was no ordinary thing, trying to squeeze the air from our bodies. I was not anxious for my underwater sisters. Still, it seemed a very long time before we saw a pair of green silk slippers plunge towards us. Anya’s face was a montage of resolve, fear, surprise, and glee. We all laughed to see it, bubbles rising from lips and noses. Even Anya could not help but join in, even as she glanced over her shoulder.

When the bubbles diminished, I held out my arm and pointed. Below us glowed a bright orb of light: our dreamworld, furnished now by my imagination. I turned and swam down towards it and knew in my heart that my sisters followed.

Its threshold was a skin of light and air that pulsed slightly when I touched it. I peeled it back and held it open to give my sisters entrance, watching with amusement as Keiko stumbled in, amazed to find herself both dry, and on dry land. The others followed and, after Anya gave me the swiftest of nods, I stepped in myself and re-sealed the covering.

I turned and was startled to find myself bundled into a fierce, many-armed embrace. “Ling!” they whispered, “Oh, Ling! It has been so long!” For a long time, we hugged and laughed and wept and reminisced and wondered. And then, holding hands, we turned to explore this world of my creation.

The silver grove was much as it had always been and Anya, in particular, stroked the trees with an approving gleam in her eye. “Lovely, sister.” The lake was still on its far side. When we arrived on its shore, my sisters looked about expectantly.

“Where are the princes?” demanded Isolde. “And the rowboats?”

“I got rid of most of them.”

“But why?”

“Well, there were too many of them to begin with. And some of them talked too much – good lord, Esther, your prince never stopped talking about himself, hadn’t you ever noticed? And a couple of them sulked when I declined to waltz. Now there’s just the one left, for the odd time that I care to dance.”

“Where is he now?” asked Hasnaa, a small smile tugging at her lips.

“Probably in the castle library. He’s good at chess, too.”

Anya looked puzzled. “So how do we cross the lake?”

“Let me show you.” I stepped down onto golden sand, placed two fingers in my mouth, and whistled. After a moment, a sleek, dark form appeared at the water’s edge.

Fatima’s mouth fell open. “A dolphin?”

“Porpoise, actually.” I bent to address it. “Pierrot, could you call some friends? My sisters are with me.”

The plump creature vanished and, in a few minutes, an assortment of swimming animals began to assemble in the shallows: a seal, a giant tortoise, a walrus, the dolphin Fatima had been hoping for, an orca, a great white whale, a trio of penguins, and even a polar bear. Once mounted—the bear and the whales were able to carry several between them—my sisters and I traversed the lake, giggling and flicking water at each other. Only Anya lagged behind, her tortoise paddling valiantly.

When she came ashore, I caught her eye. “All well?”

She nodded just as Hasnaa and Genevieve caught me between them. “What is there to do in your castle?”

I showed them the starry-skied courtyard where musicians played all night. A library, containing every book ever written and every puzzle ever posed. (The prince in the library could be entreated to dance, of course, and he was always graceful and courteous.) A salon for conversation and friendly disputation, populated by gentlefolk who never, ever interrupted each other. There was even a garden for badminton and archery, and a trapeze suspended over a pool.

It was only when Damla screamed that I remembered to introduce the tigress, Noor, who enjoyed the freedom of the castle grounds. Between Noor and Ejò, Genevieve insisted that we return to the courtyard and there commanded the musicians to play our favorite dancing music.

We didn’t trouble the prince to leave his chessboard. Instead, we partnered each other, just as we had done in our long-ago dancing lessons, laughing and chaffing each other and playing at being girls again. It was only when I heard a distant clock begin to chime that I remembered our duty.

I stopped in the middle of the courtyard, my sisters whirling all about me. Anya, my dancing partner, gave me a single nod. The clock began to toll the hour. One.

“My sisters,” I said, and the musicians fell silent.

Two.

Breathless, merry, they stopped dancing, drew near.

Three.

I held out my hands.

Four.

They clasped hands and we formed a circle.

Five.

“We are twelve here tonight,” I said. “As we used to be.”

Six.

“Twelve sisters,” corrected Anya. “With an uninvited guest.”

Seven.

My sisters looked at each other with alarm.

Eight.

“He trod on the hem of my gown,” said Anya.

Nine.

“The weight of his body slowed the passage of my tortoise,” she continued.

Ten.

“I smelled the reek of his breath as he danced close behind me.”

Eleven.

I took from my bodice the hedge-witch’s gift. “But now he is revealed,” said Anya, and I opened the two halves of the walnut shell.

On the twelfth stroke there was a whistling sound, as of strong wind through a crevice. It flayed the cloak of invisibility from the soldier’s back and restored it, with a snap of fabric, to its home in the walnut shell.

He stood in the middle of our circle, composing his face to a sneer. “And what will you do with me now, my foolish princesses?” He spun towards Anya and she flinched. “Will you dance, my lady?”

“Not with you.” Her voice trembled but her handclasp was steady.

“And if I ask one of your sisters?”

“The answer will be the same from each of us,” I replied.

He laughed. “And when I am king? Will you refuse me then, on pain of death?”

“Soldier,” said Anya, and now her voice rang out strong. “Never will you be king.”

I opened the walnut shell again. On one side, Anya held my elbow tight. Keiko anchored the other. And the ravening wind shrieked and tore and lashed and sucked the soldier, bit by bit, into the walnut shell, where he might forever wear the shroud of invisibility that had lain for so long against his skin. The walnut shell closed itself with a snick.

There was a substantial silence.

“Sisters?” asked Johanna, for once tentative. “Do we now have a succession crisis?”

“No,” replied Anya. Despite the missing teeth, her words were crisp and authoritative. “Under the laws of primogeniture, I will inherit the crown, and my eldest daughter after me.” We beamed at her, yet her expression remained solemn. She touched her belly briefly. “If my daughter becomes queen before she is of age, I name Princess Ling as her regent.”

Another pause.

Finally, Johanna said, “Ling is an excellent choice.” She cleared her throat. “The hour is late.”

“Yes,” agreed Anya. “It is.”

We were still arrayed in our circle of enchantment. Our dresses were creased, our coiffures quite destroyed by the wind. And our slippers were nearly worn through. What would people say this time? Would there be another scandal? And what might the King attempt from his deathbed? We all looked up, towards the threshold, the water, the trapdoor. Towards our families, our duties, our futures.

“It is late,” repeated Anya, and she held out her hand for the walnut shell. When I gave it to her, she rolled it swiftly into a corner of the courtyard, a shadowy place where no foot ever touched down. Then she beamed at us: a wide, bold, mirthful smile, the gaps in her teeth like battle scars. “But dawn is hours away. Beloved sisters, shall we?”

We danced on.