Then the eldest came back to her, and put an arm round her, and whispered to her, but the soldier could not hear what she said. But her little sister slumped, and rested her head against the elder’s shoulder, and they stood so a moment. Then the youngest straightened up and dropped her hands, and they turned back to the other ten of their sisters, who were still looking up the long stair. “We will go on now,” the eldest said, like a general to his tired army.
The soldier slipped the branch under his cloak and followed. The cloak clung to his shoulders as if by its own volition; but he no longer heard its whispering, and it held to him closely, motionless, not as any other cloak would sway and swing to his own motion.
The soldier now turned his eyes back to the eldest Princess as she descended the stairs in small running steps; her sisters turned round as she passed them, but none stirred from their places till she was again at the bottom of the luminous rainbow line of them. And now the soldier saw that the stair was almost ended, and before them was a wide black lake: so wide he could not see to its far bank. He blinked, as if his eyes were somehow at fault; but they were used to the light of the upper earth, of sun and moon and stars, and they were unhappy and uncertain here. He squinted up toward the—ceiling? It was a dull green, like a pool that has lain in its bed too long undisturbed. As a ceiling, it was high and vast; as a sky, it was heavy and watchful. The soldier’s shoulders moved as if they felt the weight of it, and the cloak of shadows was wrapped around him almost as if it were afraid.
He let his feet take him gently down the last stairs; they were broad and low and smooth now, and any treachery they carried was not in their shape. As he reached the shore of the black lake he saw there were boats on the water, boats as black as the ripples they threw out, and at their sterns stood men with poles. He listened to the sound of the ripples as they lapped against the shore; and they sounded like no water he had ever heard before.
The eldest Princess stepped forward, head high; and she took the outstretched hand of the steersman of the first boat, and stepped lightly into it. The soldier, watching, thought the rails did not dip with her weight, nor the small boat settle any deeper in the water. And he still listened to the small claws of the bow-waves walking on the shore. The second, then third Princesses mounted the second and third boats, and the soldier noticed that there were twelve of the black skiffs, and twelve men to pole them; and each man wore a black cape, and a black wide-brimmed hat with a curling feather; but the black-gloved hands held out to the princesses sparkled with jewels.
The soldier stood beside the youngest Princess, and stepped in as she did; and the boat dipped heavily. The Princess turned pale behind her bright-painted cheeks, but the soldier could not see the man’s face. He poled the boat around swiftly and with an ease that the soldier read as many nights’ experience of the Princesses’ mysterious dancing. There was no room for the soldier in the little boat; when the Princess had settled, gracefully if uneasily, in the bow, he stood amidships, his soft-soled boots pressed against the boat’s curving ribs. The small waves on the boat’s skin sounded with a thinner keen than they had on the shore.
“We go slowly tonight,” said the youngest Princess nervously, turning her head to look at the eleven other boats fanned out before them. The gap between them and the next-to-last boat was widening. The soldier had his back to the man, who after a moment replied: “I do not know how it is, but the boat goes heavily tonight.”
The Princess turned her head again and gazed straight at the soldier: it seemed she met his eyes. He stared back at her, unblinking, as if they were conspirators; but she took her eyes away without recognition. The soldier found he had to unclench his fists after she looked away. He breathed shallowly, and tried to time his breathing to the slow sweep of the pole, that if it were heard at all, it would sound only as part of the black water’s echo.
The man said: “Do not fear. There will still be enough dancing for you even if we arrive behind the others by a little.”
The Princess turned back to stare ahead, and did not speak again.
The soldier made out fitful gleams across the water: lights shining out against the dull toad-colored air. As they approached nearer, the soldier could make out the shore that was their destination; and it was blazing with lights, lanterns the size of a man’s body set on thick columns barely an arm’s length one from another. The soldier thought of the banqueting hall where he had dined but a few hours ago, but he stopped his thoughts there, and turned them to another road. He saw that it was not the opposite shore they approached, but a pier; and the eleven other boats were tied there already, and their passengers gone. The boats moved quietly together on the water, empty, as if they were holding a sly conversation. The soldier looked left and right, and saw the dark water stretching away from him, breaking up the chips of light from the lanterns into smaller chips, and tossing them from wave to wave, and swallowing them as quickly as they might, and greedily reaching for more. He wondered if the pier was on no shore at all, but built out from an island raised up out of the waters after some fashion no mortal could say. Then he looked forward again, beyond the lights, and saw the castle, and many graceful figures moving within it; and through its wide gates he could see eleven rainbow figures, a little apart from the rest still, turning and lightly turning, moving across the lights behind them, disappearing for a moment behind the pier lights that dazzled the soldier’s eyes, and as lightly reappearing: dancing. And each of them seemed to be dancing opposite a shadow, whose arms round their waists seemed like iron chains, breaking their slender radiance into two pieces.
Then the boat touched the pier, and the last Princess leaped out, as silent as a fawn, and the soldier followed slowly. The white castle reared up like a dream out of the darkness, hemmed around by the great lanterns that seemed to lift up their light to it like homage. The Princess stood as if standing still were the most difficult thing she had ever known; and then a man stood beside her. The soldier thought he must be the same man who had poled the boat; but he had thrown his cape and overshadowing hat aside, and the soldier, who had never had any particular thought of a man’s beauty, was shaken by the sight of this man’s face. He smiled upon the Princess a smile that she should have treasured for years; but she only looked back at him and held up her arms like a child who wishes to be picked up. The man closed his black-sleeved arms gently about her, and then they were dancing, dancing down the pier, and across the brilliantly lit courtyard and through the shining gates, till they joined the rest of the beautiful dancers, and the soldier could no longer tell one couple from the next. He could tell the walls of the castle, he felt, only because they stood still; for there was a grace and loveliness to them that seemed too warm for stone: warm enough for breath and life. And now as he looked back within the castle gates he realized he could pick out his twelve Princesses by the pale luminescence of their gowns against the black garb of their partners; but this time the soldier admired them longingly and humbly, for he saw the perfect pairs they made, like night and day. And the twelve couples wove in and out of a vividly dressed, dancing throng, brilliant with all colors.