Once upon a time, there was a beautiful kingdom. It had beautiful scenery, beautiful people, and a beautiful princess. The whole kingdom loved the princess. She had a certain enthusiasm for life itself that not many ever get to have. She loved all the people, she loved the land, and she loved her life. All the people called her the Princess of the Sun, for they swore the day felt a little bit brighter anytime the princess passed by.

They all said, it only makes sense. For the princess's mother, their loyal, loving queen, had been the best queen any of them could ever hope for. She made sure all was fair, and gave as much as she could to the people. And she brought up her daughter and her son in her own ways. She taught them to be kind, noble, and brave. The kingdom loved the little prince and princess, and it seemed that nothing could ever go wrong.

Until that one fateful day. The entire kingdom could feel it. The sky felt dark, their souls heavy. The world seemed to cease turning. It seemed like it would never get better, their queen could never return to them. Their glorious light in the darkness had gone out, and they could do nothing but stumble around blindly, hoping for a glimmer of sunshine.

And one day, it came.

Out of the darkness, a single ray of sun beamed out, unafraid. The people looked up, hardly daring to hope. But it wasn't what they expected. It was the little princess. She'd grown up while they weren't looking, and the sunshine she'd learned from her mother exploded into the world.

And all seemed right again. For a long time, the kingdom was bright again. Their Princess of the Sun came into her beauty and lifted the people's spirits. The world was beautiful.

But once upon a time, a chill went through the kingdom. No one knew what had happened. They couldn't sense it immediately as when their queen had died. But a little bit of the sunshine of the kingdom went out. And though they didn't know exactly what it was, they all knew, deep in their souls, that something was wrong.

Something was wrong with the princess.

It began with small things, the kind of things no one would have noticed in any other princess.

The first sign was the morning bells. For as long as anyone could remember, the princess had thrown open her tower window at dawn and called out a greeting to the baker’s boy, the fishwives hauling their nets, and the old men playing at stones in the square. Her voice carried across the rooftops like a song. One morning, the window stayed shut. The next morning, it opened, but only a little, and only for a moment.

“She’s tired,” the baker’s boy said, shrugging. “Princesses get tired.”

But the fishwives exchanged a look. They had known her since she was a child with scraped knees and a gap-toothed grin, and she had never once been too tired to wave.

The second sign came at the autumn market. The princess still walked the stalls, as she always did, and still smiled when the children pressed flowers into her hands. But the smile arrived a heartbeat too late, like an echo, and it stopped before it reached her eyes. A little girl tugged on her sleeve and asked, “Princess, are you sad?”

“Of course not, darling,” said the princess, and she bent down and kissed the child’s forehead. “How could I be sad, with all of you?”

It was a lovely answer. It was exactly the kind of thing she would say. Still, the little girl frowned all the way home, because even a child can tell when a sentence has been practiced.

Within a month, the whole kingdom felt it. The days were not dark, not exactly. The sun still rose and the wheat still ripened. But the light seemed thinner somehow, like a candle burning behind a curtain.

The only person who saw the truth of it was the prince.

He was a few years younger than his sister, all elbows and questions, and he had never learned the art of looking away. One evening he found her in the old garden, the one their mother had planted. She was sitting on the stone bench beneath the silver birch, with her hands folded in her lap and her gaze fixed on nothing at all.

“You missed supper,” he said, sitting down beside her.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“You didn’t miss it yesterday, too, did you?” He squinted at her. “Or the day before?”

The princess laughed, but it was a thin, brittle sound. “When did you become so observant?”

“I’ve always been observant. You just never gave me anything interesting to observe.” He kicked his feet against the bench. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Pretending.”

For a long moment, the garden was silent. A single leaf spiralled down from the birch and settled on her knee. She stared at it as if it might offer an answer.

“Do you remember,” she said at last, very quietly, “what Mother used to say about the sun?”

The prince nodded. “That it doesn’t shine because it’s easy. It shines because the world needs it to.”

“Yes.” The princess closed her fingers around the leaf. “I’ve been shining for so long, I’m not sure I remember how to stop. Or how to start again, if I ever did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, and her voice trembled for the first time, “that I don’t know where the light comes from anymore.”

The prince said nothing. He was young, but he was wise enough to know that some sentences do not need an answer. Instead, he slid his small hand into hers, and they sat together as the sky deepened from gold to violet to the colour of old ink.

Far above the garden, behind the clouds, the first stars appeared. And if anyone had been watching closely, they might have noticed that one of them, low on the horizon, was a little redder than the rest, and a little closer than a star had any right to be.

But no one was watching. The kingdom was asleep, and the princess was awake, and something old and patient had begun to stir beyond the borders of the map.