Once Upon a Fairy tale: A Collection of 11 Fairy Tale Inspired Romances

by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney

  Hanzo held completely still, willing himself to become nothing. To disappear. The scent of blood hung in the air, and death was waiting to pounce. While Hanzo’s heartbeat thundered in his chest, the warlord turned back to the archery target and held out his hand for his bow.

  The crowd hushed and the atmosphere took on the gravity of a funeral procession. Then the unthinkable happened. Lord Itô, with his hand held to the gaping hole that had been his ear and his fingers soaked in blood, knelt down before the daimyo—and bowed in apology.

  This was a code of behavior Hanzo did not understand and would never understand. Was this what a samurai’s honor and loyalty demanded of him? Flesh and blood and silence? Lord Mizunaga fitted an arrow to his bow, drew back until his arm was held taut, and let it fly as if nothing unusual had taken place.

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  “Karakuri-sensei is younger than I imagined.”

  A melodic tone broke through Hanzo’s trance. He’d spent the rest of the day after leaving the archery grounds with his head down, hard at work. It wasn’t the study of the archers that inspired him. Rather it was the thought that the sooner he completed his work, the sooner he could leave the madness behind and return to his hut in the mountains.

  He looked up from his work to see the lady from the courtyard. She’d managed to enter his chamber unnoticed to stand before him with her hands folded in her sleeves.

  “They said there was a karakuri master at Koriya,” she continued, her tone and inflection immediately marking her above him. “They say he is clever. They say he is tensai-desu.”

  Heat rose up Hanzo’s neck at the compliment. A quick glance over the lady’s shoulder showed the shoji door closed behind her. He’d been so absorbed in his task, he hadn’t heard a rap on the frame or the slide of the panel.

  “Hime…Hime-sama.”

  Perhaps he was being overly polite to address her so, but she made no introduction. Her lips curved ever so slightly, a smile and not a smile, like the faces of his puppets. Able to portray a multitude of meanings by not committing to any one.

  Hanzo managed an awkward bow. A strand of hair fell from his topknot to cover his face while his pulse raced. Hanzo ran his hands over the fold of his yukuta in an attempt to straighten it. Surely she was a noble lady, able to come and go as she pleased. Yet why was she alone in his quarters?

  “Your puppets are so charming.” She bent to touch a light hand to the tea-bearer’s tray.

  “They’re—” He had to swallow to find his voice. Everything about this visit was so confusing. “They’re not puppets, hime-sama. I don’t control them. They move themselves.”

  “Machines,” she murmured. “But you do design their movements. You grant them your intentions when you make them.”

  Her interest had moved on to his more complex designs. A magician performing a magic trick. The two dueling samurai. She paused at a figure of a dancer on a wooden platform. The doll rose only to the height of the lady’s knee.

  “How does one make her move?” she asked.

  “The winding mechanism is hidden beneath the wooden platform.”

  Hanzo considered winding the machinery himself, but the lady was standing too close to the mechanical dancer. He would have had to move past her, brushing against the silk of her sleeve. The scent of her perfume would surround him like fog, making him lose his way.

  She shouldn’t be here. With him. Alone at this hour…what hour was it? Hanzo looked at the clock to see that it was evening seven. Almost time for sunrise.

  The lady knelt to wind the device, appearing no less enchanted for knowing its secrets. The doll came to life, drawing the red fan open. Then she lifted her arm to wave the fan in a graceful arc.

  “There were machines in the tea houses in Edo that would sing songs,” the lady remarked as she watched the dancer. “They were quite delightful, but could only sing the same songs over and over. Inevitably the patrons grew tired of them.”

  “New songs could be added,” Hanzo proposed, remaining at a respectful distance. “Or one might create a karakuri capable of picking up an instrument and playing back what it has heard.”

  “Is that truly possible?”

  With the dance complete, the doll returned to its starting pose. The lady moved on to the shelf where the clockwork nightingale was perched. The creature opened its onyx eyes and cooed as she stroked its metallic feathers. She imitated the nightingale’s call as she had done in the courtyard.

  “Hoo-hokekyo…”

  The gears hummed as the mechanical bird answered back.

  A thoughtful look crossed the lady’s face. She tapped the bird on the head, and the creature hopped back and forth on the shelf, chirping happily.

  “A puppet that responds to commands. So clever. Tensai-desu.”

  Hanzo knew little of courtly etiquette and even less of conversing with women, but by now he was certain she was no noble lady. Her manner, speech, the elegant way which she held herself—she had indeed been taught these skills and taught well. As a master of artifice, Hanzo saw her manner for what it was. An illusion. She was not a noblewoman, but rather the faithful recreation of one. The realization made his skin prickle.

  The lady had reached the archer, or what was to become an archer. A metal cage stood at the center of the workroom. Two skeletal arms stretched out from the frame. As the lady passed by, they appeared to reach for her. It was grotesque, practically menacing.

  “Is that how they all appear underneath?” she asked in awe.

  “It’s…it’s unfinished. The noble lady shouldn’t be looking at it in this state.”

  His palms begun to sweat. Her inspection was too invasive. As if it were his skin that had been peeled away and his open chest she were peering into with such curiosity. If she could see his heart, it would be throbbing, throbbing and unable to find a steady rhythm.

  “You don’t have any apprentices?” she asked, while he stood frozen behind her. “No one to help you?”

  He swallowed. “A karakuri maker is protective of his art.”

  As a young boy, Hanzo had knelt before his sensei’s door for five days and five nights without food and water before being allowed into the workshop. Once inside, he’d had to prove himself, taking apart karakuri piece by piece and recreating them. There had been no books, no stern words of instruction.

  “A courtesan must be protective of her art as well.”

  The lady turned to reveal a playful tilt of her chin and a quirk in her left eyebrow that transformed her previously pleasant expression into something sly and mysterious. It was said that a courtesan’s every look and gesture was practiced. Perfected. In many ways, she was like his karakuri dolls. Acting in a specifically crafted fashion.

  “When they brought the song machines into the tea houses, we laughed and clapped with delight along with the guests. But late at night, my courtesan sisters and I rose to stab our hairpins into the controls. Did they think our hard-won skills could be replaced so easily?”

  As she approached, Hanzo noticed the lady was uncommonly tall. She was as tall as he was and as graceful as her silhouette had appeared though the paper screen around Mizunaga’s chamber.

  “You are Lady Yura…from Edo.”

  Her pretty eyes didn’t blink. “Yes.”

  “The lady shouldn’t be here.”

  She didn’t appear insulted. Instead Lady Yura glanced back at the steel skeleton. “There are also machines in Edo that can be used to execute a man,” she went on. “Kill him quickly and soundlessly. Do you think such a frightful act should be taken over by something without a soul, Karakuri no Hanzo? By something without a heart?”

  Hanzo’s own heart was pounding, his skin cold. Despite her talk of death, her voice remained like water and silk. He finally recognized the source of his fear. It was only partly due to the image of Lord Mizunaga slicing off his vassal’s ear at the mere mention of Lady Yura’s name.

  Hanzo understood now why the chanc
ellor had brought him here, and why Sakai showed such interest. Hanzo also knew what a warlord would want from a puppet maker. Karakuri were nothing but harmless parlor tricks. It was easy to hide something more sinister within them.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Lady Yura,” he repeated with more conviction.

  A look of loneliness crossed her face before her expression became blank, as smooth as a still pond. With a graceful bow, Yura turned to leave. The edge of her kimono whispered over the tatami mats as she departed. Her feet barely made a sound.

  *

  Lady Yura didn’t come again. The next time he saw her was at the tail end of one night, before darkness faded into morning. He had stayed up assembling and disassembling, caught up on yet another one of the chancellor’s demands. When he stepped out of his workshop for fresh air, he’d spied a pale figure in a kimono moving through the courtyard.

  He started to watch for her, so often was he up during this time. Hanzo soon found that she would often return to her quarters after the Hour of the Tiger, in the gray silver light of the coming dawn. Sometimes later, sometimes a little earlier, but always when the night was nearly done.

  She hadn’t come to him with any mischief or motive in mind. Lady Yura had simply been drawn to the lamplight of his workshop. She’d seen his silhouette through the paper window, just as he’d seen her. Here was another soul who was still up.

  Hers was a life lived alone and in the dark, awake while others slept, asleep while the world exchanged courtesies and shared food and laughed. It was a life too similar to his own.

  The courtesan belonged to Lord Mizunaga, who had her sing for him like a bird in a cage. For Hanzo to seek her company would be an insult to his host—or rather his master now that he was in the daimyo’s service. In any case, Lady Yura was beyond his reach.

  So he merely waited for her every day as the night edged close to morning.

  One time, she was already out in the courtyard when he opened his door. She was sitting upon the stones in the miniature garden with her lantern hung upon a tree branch. Though Lady Yura wasn’t looking at him, he could see her face, pale and lost and lovely. Her gaze was directed upward, perhaps at the moon as it departed. Perhaps she was listening for the sound of the carp in the pond, swimming in endless circles.

  Hanzo ducked into his workshop, but only for a moment to retrieve the clockwork nightingale from the shelf. He returned to the doorway with the bird in both hands.

  The internal logic of its gears was intricate in design, yet simple in function. If tossed into the air, it would open its wings and fly until finding a perch. Hanzo did so now, hefting the creature gently upwards. He’d seen a hundred models crash to the ground in order for this one to be created.

  The little nightingale took flight and the whir of its rotors hummed softly as it circled. The bird settled on to the branch above Lady Yura. She glanced up and greeted it with the nightingale’s song. The bird answered back in kind.

  “Hoo—hokekyo…Hoo-hokekyo…”

  Yura looked toward Hanzo then. It was too far away for him to be certain, but he thought she smiled. He didn’t dare go to her, but from where Hanzo stood, he smiled back.

  Chapter Four

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  Hanzo fell upon his work in earnest like a soldier rushing headlong into battle. If Chancellor Sakai intended him to create a weapon, how was he any different from a swordsmith or a fletcher crafting arrows? Their work was honorable work, valued by the daimyo.

  And machines were meant to do something. He’d long felt a dissatisfaction for his work. Ever since his sensei had passed away and Hanzo was left to discover on his own, he’d pushed the nature of his creations, not knowing quite what he was aiming for. Perhaps what he was aiming for was purpose—something beyond trickery and amusement.

  So now he had a purpose and a practical application to drive him. His archer was not yet strong enough to pull back a samurai’s bow. The counterweights to perform such a task would be heavy. Or they would need to be dropped from a great height, requiring the archer be raised onto a towering platform.

  He could do away with the archer’s facade, but then the device would be a simple war machine. It would not be karakuri with the illusion of being alive.

  The force would have to reside within the automaton, wound into gears and springs the same way an archer’s strength was stored within tendon and muscle. But how to generate such force? The karakuri was larger than any of the wind-up contraptions he’d built in the past.

  His hands were raw with scrapes and wire cuts by the time the lantern clock struck evening five. His supper lay cold upon a tray, uneaten. He didn’t recall seeing sunlight that day.

  Hanzo let the cords snake from his hands onto the floor. The walls of his workshop had become a prison. He was used to solitude, sustained by his own work, but maybe a man needed more. Sliding open the door, he stepped outside to absorb the spring air.

  Lady Yura would be singing.

  He shouldn’t have allowed himself that thought, but there it was. Echoing in his skull. He wanted to talk to her—speak to her about coils and springs and weights. Not that Lady Yura would have any understanding of such things. He just wanted someone to talk to. If she laughed at his absurdity, then he would get to hear her laugh.

  Just wait, fool.

  Hanzo berated himself even as he stepped through the garden. He didn’t want to wait. At the end of the night, he would get nothing but a glimpse of Yura retreating to her room. Now that he knew the way to Lord Mizunaga’s private courtyard, perhaps he could get close enough to hear her voice carried on the breeze. Just one soothing note to untangle the knots inside his head.

  He moved without a lantern using the walls for guidance. Just as before, he encountered no guard patrols as he neared the courtyard. Realizing he’d gambled too much already, Hanzo paused outside the courtyard and pressed himself into a dark corner to listen.

  There was nothing. Silence. He was a fool. Lady Yura was a very beautiful woman who was trained to engage in a pleasant conversation with even the likes of him.

  Hanzo was about to sneak back to his workshop when shouting came from the inner courtyard. And then he heard what he’d longed for: Yura’s voice, but not in song. She was crying, broken.

  His palms dampened. Lady Yura was pleading for mercy. His throat seized tight as he heard her cry out again.

  Hanzo had never thought himself a brave man. He was certainly no hero, but he ran toward Lord Mizunaga’s chamber anyway with his heart pounding.

  As he entered the courtyard, something swung out and struck him hard in the chest. Hanzo staggered, gasping for breath as strong hands took hold of him.

  “The karakuri maker,” the guardsman announced, giving him a rough shake. “You are forbidden to enter here.”

  The night patrol had assembled in the courtyard, explaining their lack of presence on the outer perimeter. They formed a semi-circle around Mizunaga’s chamber like an audience watching a shadow play. The lanterns inside illuminated two figures, one massive and broad-shouldered. One as slender as a reed.

  “Worthless!” the shadow warlord growled as he struck Lady Yura across the face.

  Hanzo’s stomach plunged. He surged forward out of reflex only to feel the hands on him tighten. All around him, the other guards stood motionless.

  Lady Yura huddled low with her head pressed to the floor. “Tono,” she wept. “I apologize. Please have mercy.”

  Hanzo struggled against his captors. “Help her!”

  His words had no effect on the guardsmen, but Chancellor Sakai arrived and the patrol parted to allow him entrance.

  Sakai surveyed the scene and then looked back at Hanzo. His expression was remained impassive.

  “Come with me,” Sakai commanded the soldiers.

  The captain and two others followed. The moment they entered the daimyo’s chamber, they too became part of the shadow play.

  The men bowed low, apologizing for interrupting Lord Mizunaga�
�s rest. Sakai addressed his daimyo with his usual calm, pausing only for a moment to flick his hand toward Lady Yura. It was the smallest of gestures, but one of the guards moved to lift her to her feet and take her from the room.

  A knot formed in Hanzo’s chest when she emerged into the courtyard, her hair askew. Her face was wet with tears as she sagged against the soldier who held onto her.

  At least she was no longer a shadow held beneath Mizunaga’s thumb. At least she was outside and flesh and blood.

  A moment later, the door slid open once more. Sakai peered out and searched until he found Hanzo being held in the corner.

  “Take her,” the chancellor directed with a nod of his head.

  Sakai disappeared back into Lord Mizunaga’s chamber and Hanzo suddenly found Lady Yura thrust into his arms.

  *

  With nowhere else to go, Hanzo took Lady Yura back to his workshop. Though his tea was cold, he poured it for her while she remained seated on the mat, head down. A curtain of dark hair shielded her face.

  He set the cup onto the floor and slid it before her. When she wouldn’t touch it, Hanzo did the same with a handkerchief, pushing it forward until it lay beside the tea. After a long pause, she reached for the cloth and pressed it to her face.

  “I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said, her voice small.

  Hanzo stood and dimmed the lanterns until only a faint glow illuminated the room. Then he remained at the wall with his hands by his sides. Helpless.

  “Lord Mizunaga doesn’t sleep,” she choked out. “He’s plagued by nightmares. They’ve driven him mad.”

  Yura stifled a sob, pressing the handkerchief to her mouth. Hanzo turned away as she fought her tears. He wasn’t certain whether to stay or go, but as hard as it was to see her so broken, he didn’t want to leave her alone.