Work 9 Story: Damsel

Hase-Hime remembered a story that her mother used to tell her, about a poetess. The story spoke of a gifted woman who had the affinity for poetry, and the people of the kingdom adored her. However, her fellow people’s land had been ravaged by famine. The poetess, doing what she did best, wrote a poem that moved the gods, and it brought rain. She was a hero to her people. 

The young princess thought that maybe, if she wrote a good enough poem to please the gods, that it would get her out of the mess that she was in. The rope that wrapped around her wrists was chaffing at her skin, and the gag that her step-mother’s servant, Katoda, choked her.

Alas, nothing ever came of her poetry, except the adoration of her father – Prince Toyonari - and the Court, and even the young Emperor, who had ordered her to send her poetry to him. But even the Emperor, who had offered her a position as Chinjo – the lieutenant-general, could get her out of her debacle.

How did she end up here? She had been knocked out while doing her chores, carried on what she assumed to be a palanquin, and thrown in a dark room. She had to be somewhere in the mountains – the temperature was cooler than down in the valley where she lived. She shivered as she was reminded of the cold.

Palanquin, And a Guy on a Horse. Found on gettyimages.

Hase-Hime had lost track of how long that she had been kept in her prison; Katoda only untied her to feed her, and even then, she had the threat of his knife to worry about.

“Why are you doing this?” She had asked Katoda once, her voice hoarse from disuse. He had only shaken his head, muttering her step-mother’s name under his breath, before slamming the door behind him and leaving her, once again, in isolation.

Since the untimely death of her son, Akuma – a strict woman who had married Hase-Hime’s father after her own mother had passed away from illness – lost herself. While she had never seemed to have a fondness for her step-daughter, she took on a new form of hatred. Everything that Hase-Hime did was wrong. Everything that she said was silenced. At one point, she had even struck her when the food that she had made for them was too cold after she arrived at the dinner table late. Hase-Hime had noticed the difference, but had not thought that it would ever come to this.

To her kidnapping, and potentially, to her death.

Hase-Hime let out a breath and shifted, uncomfortable after sitting in the same position. Weeks ago, she had been sure that her father, or even the Emperor, would have found her. But she was beginning to give up hope; maybe she was too far in the mountains to be found.

A horse whinnied, and Hase-Hime went on alert. Katoda stayed here, in her prison, with her. There had been no one for weeks.

Maybe it was Akuma, finally coming around to finish the job.

“Hase-Hime!” She heard her father’s voice. She must have been hallucinating. Again, her ears deceived her, as her name was called again. More noises came from outside her door, a shuffle, a loud thump, and then there were shadows underneath the small crack where the door did not quite meet the floor below it.

The door swung open, and the young princess squinted up as her eyes adjusted to the sudden onslaught of light. A familiar figure stood before her, and he was suddenly in front of her, and not in the doorway.

“Father?” She forced out, her strained voice muffled even more by the fabric gagging her. She tried shifting closer, but her restraints forced her to keep herself in place.

Prince Toyonari was reaching around her, and suddenly, her arms were free, followed by her legs. She reached up herself and grabbed the gag, throwing it away before she flung herself towards her father. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and his moved to wrap around her waist.

Hase-Hime had never been emotional, but as she breathed in the familiar scent of her father, tears built up in her eyes. Each of them pulled away at the same time, Hase-Hime to ask how he found her, her father to look her over and make sure that she was okay, at least for the most part.

Everything seemed to move in a blur. As her father brought her out of her quarters, she noticed that the Emperor was there. In his royal finery, he held Kotoda in his grasp, a fierce expression on his face. He let out a relieved breath when he laid eyes on Hase-Hime himself, and nodded towards her father. Her dad smiled gratefully, and brought her outside, lifting her up onto his horse and pulling himself up behind him as he did so. Then they rode.

As they made their way far from the cottage, her father explained to her what had happened. When he had come home from traveling to realize that Hase-Hime was gone, he had not question his wife at first. However, he knew that his daughter would not simply run away with no explanation, so he dug deeper. The servants were the ones to tell him the truth; they all adored the princess, and they had seen what Kotoda had done, and why he had. He did it for Akuma. When all of it was revealed, he confronted his wife, who at first denied all allegations, but after some lengthy persuasion, he was able to find out from her where he had sent Hase.

Hase-Hime smiled tiredly as her father told the story. She would have to ask where they were going to go from there, what had happened to Akuma, why the Emperor had been there. But that would be for another time. At the moment, she was safe, and she did not even have to write a poem to get her wish.

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Author's Note: So the story of Princess Hase is about a princess whose mother passes away, and she ends up getting an evil step-mother who hates her. At one point, the step-mother ends up trying to murder Hase-Hime by poison, and she kills her son instead. Hase-Hime ends up being adored by everyone and the mother hates her and sends a servant to kill her. In the original, the servant is loyal to Hase-Hime and treats her well. Her father comes and saves her and everything turns out happily ever after! In my version, I cut out the first part of the story and went right to the part that starts with her being kidnapped. Instead of making the servant loyal to Hase, I made him loyal to the step-mother to put more conflict into the tale. I made it third person, but from Hase's perspective, so you could see her thought process. I didn't go into much detail about the background of her story, but I wanted her relationship with her father to be important in the story, because it's important in the original. I also made her relationship with the Emperor a little more than it was, because I love love, and in the original, the father forces her to marry some random guy instead.

Bibliography: The Story of Princess Hase from Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908). Link to online reading.