Work Text:
My name is Allerleirauh. I have many skins. Too many.
Once upon a time I had only one skin. I lived in a castle. I was happy. My father was the King of a prosperous land, my mother was a brilliant Queen, and we all loved each other as we should.
My mother's skin was the color of honey. She smelled of rosemary, tangerines, cinnamon. Until she grew ill; then she smelled of camphor and ashes. My skin is the color of honey. I smell of lemon and thistle.
When my mother died, my father grieved for her. Well, so did we all; for the Queen was good. She was interesting. She was an accomplished mathematician, she loved the wild countryside. She gave balls and great dinners with enthusiasm, and these provided more than the usual entertainment, since her friends came from all walks of life. She had friends of the magical sort, of the forward-thinking sort, and even one or two of the bad sort. She loved her King for all the usual reasons, but she also loved him for things others didn't see. She loved the bad poems he wrote for her; she loved his funny ears; she loved the way he whistled.
I loved him for all the usual reasons, until he made it too hard. After my mother died, he watched me always. My nurse told me my father was grief-blind, that when he looked at me he saw the Queen and not me at all. I heard the promise my mother extracted from him on her deathbed; I saw how he mistook it, and I dreaded the day he decided to fulfill it. I put on a skin of sorrows. I kept to corners and shadows, I made myself small. My father spent his days on the cliffs and bluffs and beaches my mother had loved, growing as craggy and shaggy as an old goat. I haunted the library until I was all angles and hard corners. Our skins were magnetic; we attracted and repulsed each other.
Time passed. People began to talk, as people do. It's time and past time, his courtiers advised, that the King resume his duties. And so, he ventured out. Diplomats were met, knights were knighted, Parliaments were opened, and commencements were commenced. But on one task he dragged his feet.
But time passes. The King must have a Queen. The Princess must be presented to Society. And so announcements and invitations were sent to all the corners of his kingdom; and from all corners of his kingdom marriageable ladies arrived. Once more in our kingdom there were balls and grand state dinners, carnivals and picnics. The long darkness began to lift, hearts became lighter. Everyone from the courtiers down to the cooks began to enjoy themselves again.
Except the King, who too often stared at nothing.
Except me, in my cold skin of mirrors and glass.
While the King danced and dined and rode to hounds with the most beautiful, the smartest, and the most accomplished women of the country, he searched each face in vain for a certain smile; he listened for a remembered song that no one sang. He whistled, but no one laughed. The King searched for his dead Queen, but she was nowhere to be found, and his promise turned to ashes and despair.
Then his eye finally fell upon me. For all that I changed my skin, my mask, my camouflage, he could still see her there, in my face. Marry me, he said. He thought himself in love again. He thought he made the only rational decision for the good of the country. He believed he had his dead Queen from the grave. He told himself he would make me happy.
"Marry me," my father said.
But I refused. So he locked me in the tower. Every day came to the tower to ask for my consent. Every day I refused. I grew a hard skin of daughterhood and disobedience. I was alone. Until one day a bird flew to my window. A magical bird. With advice.
"When reason fails, ask the impossible," this bird told me.
It seemed like good advice; reason had certainly failed. "What kind of impossible thing?"
"When your father asks for your consent tomorrow, don't argue, but insist that first you must have a trousseau. And that the first gown in it must be a silver dress made of moonbeams."
Moonbeams. That should be difficult for even his best spinner and his best weaver and his best seamstress.
"By the time the dress is finished -- if it's finished," said the bird, "the King will have snapped out of his folly."
I did as the bird advised. The King was joyful. I came down from the tower, with a skin of fretful patience. He put his best spinner and his best weaver and his best seamstress to work. It took a year and a day, but the dress was finally finished and fitted.
The King was happy. "Are you ready to be my wife?"
I was unhappy. "I'll tell you tomorrow," I said. I called to the bird from my window. "Tell me what to do."
The bird said: "Tomorrow, when he puts the question to you again, say you couldn't possibly marry anyone until your trousseau was complete -- and it won't be complete until you have a golden dress made of sunbeams."
Again I followed the bird's advice. The King frowned at this request, but agreed, and set his best spinner and weaver and seamstress to work on the new dress.
Whatever trouble the spinner and the weaver and the seamstress had with the first dress, they had twice with this one, for it took them two years and two days, but at last it was done. It was beautiful, it fit like a glove. Like a skin of despair.
The passage of time hadn't brought the King to his senses, but only to more madness. For hours upon hours, he would sit before the portrait of his Queen. Then he looked at me. He imagined he saw the living face of his dead wife. My skin grew taut, stretched over hers as it was.
"Your trousseau has expanded by two beautiful and impossible gowns," he said. "Are you now ready to be my wife?
"Not quite," I said, still following the bird's advice. "Before I marry, I must have another dress -- to make up the magic number three. I must have a pure white dress made of starlight."
The King frowned. He ground his teeth. But he was superstitious. "One more," he said. "And that is all."
The King's best spinner, his best weaver, and his best seamstress began on the new dress, but as hard as they worked, with the King always browbeating them, it took them three years and three days. But it was finished.
The King had not snapped out of his folly. "Your trousseau is complete," he smiled. "Now we can be wed."
I despaired. The bird had new advice. "Pack your dresses. Insubstantial as they are, they'll fit into a walnut shell. Put it in your pocket and follow me."
"I loathe the sight of those dresses," I said. "I don't want them."
"I imagine you'll be needing them," the bird said. "Pack them up and follow me."
The dresses were full, grand, sweeping things, but they were made of light. They fit into a walnut shell. I followed the bird into the woods, to a spreading maple tree. Under the tree stood a white horse. Hanging from its branches was a dress all made of cat-skins.
The bird said: "Put on the dress made of cat-skins. The horse will take you where you need to go." So I put on the dress made of cat-skins. And the horse, which could run a hundred miles in a night, took me where I needed to go. I wore a skin of treason.
I fell asleep in a wood. The baying of hounds awakened me, so I climbed into a tree like a wild animal. I looked down into the face of a hunter. He looked so astonished I almost laughed. I pulled my dress of cat-skins closer and clung to the branches. But strong hands bore me down, and I was carried away -- to a castle.
The hunter was a Prince. I made him curious. But he was a Prince, with many things on his mind. I was sent to work in the kitchens. I worked hard, but I was silent and strange, and made no friends there. I grew a skin of kitchen-grime and soot.
I was called Catskin. It suited me.
Every now and then, the Prince remembered me, sent for me, and asked me questions I did not answer. I would go away, and he would forget me again. Or so I thought.
I did make one slip. Once, when he asked what country I came from, I answered, from inside my skin of bitterness, "a country where it's dangerous to be a princess."
In the usual nature of things, there was to be a great ball at the Prince's castle. The bustle of preparations made me sad and restless, remembering all the times servants had spent the day dressing me. Now I was the one polishing other people's shoes, pressing other people's fine clothes. So the evening of the ball instead of following my fellow servants as they took turns peeping at the festivities, I fled -- away from the ball, the servants, the castle, and everything -- to seek solace in the woods.
I came to an oak tree, and there stood the horse that had left me to the hunters. The bird with all the advice flew down to perch on a holly bush. "You again!" I said. "What advice do you have for me now?"
"You still have your walnut," the bird said, and flew away.
I took the walnut from my pocket.
I dressed myself in the silver gown made of moonbeams. I mounted the horse, and went to the ball. I dined on pheasant. I laughed with glittering Lords and chatted with sophisticated Ladies. For a few hours, I was free of the cat-skins; I was myself, in my old life. My skin was the color of honey. I smelled of night-blooming jasmine. I danced with the Prince. He danced well, he was attentive, and he made small talk about large subjects.
"You know, you remind me of someone," he said.
I felt my skin turn to glass. I fled the ball and ran to the woods. I put the dress away in the walnut shell, and become Catskin once more.
The next morning, the Prince called for me to bring him a bowl of soup. I was unhappy, because it made the other servants jeer at me. "Oh, ho!" says the cook, "there's an honor for Catskin." When I brought it to the Prince, he let it grow cold while asking, asking, asking questions.
"You remind me of someone," he said.
"My face is a common one," I said.
I should have known better. Two mysterious women appearing in one castle at the same time is too much of a coincidence. I pulled my cat-skins round me. I hid my face. I kept to corners and shadows. I made myself small.
This is all hindsight: the Prince was as curious about the girl in the dress made of cat-skins as he was about the Princess in the moonbeam gown. The difference was he thought he was falling in love with the Princess. That he was already in love with Catskin didn't occur to him. However much Catskin piqued the Prince's curiosity, the lady in the moonbeam dress aroused his heart. He pined for her. He grew lovesick.
He held another ball.
Could I resist it? Of course not. I left the others creeping and peeping at the ball, and fled to the wood, where the horse and the bird waited for me. I returned to the castle in the golden dress made of sunbeams.
I danced with the Prince. We talked of nothing much and of everything important. I grew a skin made of promises. The Prince said: "It's curious, but there is something about the girl Catskin. If she were born into a different station in life, you and she would be as like as sisters." I pretended to be insulted; I left him standing on the steps, still pleading as I ran away. I threw off my golden dress for my dress of cat-skins, and hid in the kitchen until the ball was over.
This I heard: The Prince sent out courtiers far and wide to try to find out the identity of the mysterious Lady of the Dresses, as she was called; he wrote to his fellow-princes and high-born friends. He pored through what his mother liked to call 'stud-books' of the nobility. He looked for a country where it was dangerous to be a princess. He was obsessed, he was lovesick, he was literally dying of curiosity. He lost weight, he grew pale. He badgered his mother the Queen to hold another ball.
The night of the third ball came. I was there, in my last beautiful dress, pure white, and made of starlight. But I was restless, nervous.
The Prince was restless and nervous, waiting on the steps of the hall watching for me. He didn't bother with dancing this time. He didn't take me in to the ball. He went down on his knees on the steps, and asked me to be his wife, his princess.
My skin was not big enough to hold Catskin and the Princess. I felt as though I were about to burst. So I said: "I might, if I were sure you wouldn't ask Miss Catskin the same question tomorrow."
"Marry Catskin?" The Prince leaped to his feet. "Don't be ridiculous!"
"Will you send her away, then?" I said. "I don't know that I'd like to compete with her for your regard."
"I -- but -- that is --." The Prince was torn. He didn't want to marry Catskin -- of course not! And yet. "I cannot send her away," he said miserably.
Two mysterious women appearing in one castle at the same time is too much of a coincidence, and yet he couldn't see me. My skin was a shield. "I must leave," I said.
"No, no!" the Prince cried. "Don't disappear again! I can't bear it!"
I felt I had become a riddle that needed to be solved. So I said: "I am leaving for the last time. If you know me when next we meet, then we'll part no more." I left quickly, before the tears came, and threw off my finery to become poor grimy and sooty Catskin.
The next morning, I was summoned from the kitchen by the Prince. He stood before his closet. "I need advice," he said, his eyes amused. His eyes which were red as if he hadn't slept. "Which do you prefer? This grey suit or the burgundy suit with the gold trim?"
"The grey, my Lord," I said.
"Is it good enough to be married in?"
"Yes, my Lord," I said.
"Do you think," he asked me, "that it would match a wedding dress made of pure blue sky?"
I was wearing a dress made of cat-skins. I couldn't speak.
"Someone said to me, 'If you know me when you meet me next, we'll part no more.'" The Prince lifted my chin and looked into my Catskin face. "Who made this riddle?"
"Allerleirauh," I said.
"Princess Allerleirauh," he said my name softly. "Tell me your story."
I told him my story, just as I've told it to you.
And so we were married. Catskin disappeared from the kitchen; she ran from the Prince's rooms into the woods, and never returned. No one ever found out what became of her. No one discovered she married the Prince, in a dress of made of pure blue sky.
My father the King was among the wedding guests. He had married a new Queen, whose skin is bark-brown, who wears her hair in a hundred braids, who is an astronomer, who writes poetry and paints great bright vigorous landscapes. He loves her as he should.
My Prince and I live happily -- if not ever-after, at least so far. When no one is around, he calls me Princess Catskin. He loves me, and I know that if I should die, he will grieve for me. I will have our first child soon. I grow a skin of green grass and zephyrs, and hope my child will be a boy.