Faerie Stories*

*A Dark and Ugly Tale

Once upon a time there was a young princess. She was beautiful and kind and just at the age where her father began looking for a suitable husband. There were many young lording’s and princes who had potential, but she denied each one. One day, quite by accident, the princess met the prince of a neighboring kingdom and fell deeply in love with him, and he in love with her. There was one great problem, her kingdom and his had been at war for time immemorial, and neither of their parents approved of their love.

I met my true love at a mummer’s performance in the king's hall. There was feasting and acrobatics and music. He was one of the musicians. The whole time he played he kept his head bowed, his eyes closed, and his body so still as to be a statue. Except for his hands, his hands captivated me as they danced like water on the many stringed instrument cradled in his lap. When the players were done they came to the high table to pay fealty to the king. I was already in love, but when he straitened from a respectful bow and I saw his gentle, laughing, hazel eyes for the first time I knew it was all over. He met my gaze, and neither of us could tear away.

I had been betrothed to the king when I was seven and he twenty. I lived in his court, and occasionally he would send me gifts, little trinkets and games when I was young, as I grew to womanhood the gifts turned to jewelry and fine silks. But I rarely saw him and knew him only by the rumors spread among the ladies of his court. Whispered horrors of whores and hanged peasants, hanged noblemen,who displeased him. Between his infrequent and impersonal gifts, and the rumors I grew to fear and hate the man I would marry. So when I met this young, kind musician with the laughing eyes and silver tongue I lost myself.

At first they met in secret; at masquerades, quiet corners of gardens and out of the way inns and music halls. They made a game of their meetings, and found a thrill in the forbidden. But soon they were found out; after all, how long can two members of royalty keep their romance from the gossip mongers? Their parents were furious and forbade them from seeing each other ever again. The princess was confined to her castle and the prince was sent far away on an unnecessary diplomatic mission to a kingdom ruled by a young and handsome queen who had been recently widowed. You see, they doubted the strength of his love, and hoped he would marry the queen and forget all about his princess. They were wrong.

We would meet in the gardens, or at the far end of the banquet hall when the king and his men were right drunk on heavy mead. He wrote songs for me, told me stories. Sometimes we would sit for hours without a word, simply lost in each other’s presence. The first time he kissed me my stomach fell out between my legs like a baby. But of course, the king found us out found us out, he beat me and dismissed him from service. But of course, it was only a matter of time before my betrothed, the king, discovered us. He beat me himself with a thick willow branch across the legs and buttock and back. It was the most time I had ever spent with him. He dismissed my musician from his service and banished him from the city. I did not see him for a moon phase, and I thought I would die from the depression.

But we found our elves, he and I, thinking ourselves so clever. Our love was true, it must triumph. A few of my ladies, and some serving boys who respected me helped smuggle him in dressed as a maid. Or perhaps he was a new servant in the kitchens brining me my mid-day meal. But the king had many eyes and the castle servants feared him. When he found out us again we were both beaten and I was confined to the castle. And yet we persisted, stealing whatever corners or seconds we could. On moonless nights he would climb up my knotted gowns and bedsheets and we would sit and talk and cry and laugh and make love. His musician’s hands were clever and strong, and those hazel eyes would hold mine as our bodies melded. We were young and beautiful and in love. Nothing, not pain nor the gods nor the wrath of the king could part us. What fools we were.

When the prince returned un-wed, he snuck into the castle and stole away his princess. Seeing that they could never be together in the world they knew, they fled together deep into the enchanted woods that no man rules and sought refuge with a band of elves. For a time they were happy, they did not mind the simple life for they were in love. It was not to last however, for they had two entire kingdoms out searching for them. Eventually the reward for information regarding their whereabouts grew so high that it tempted the elves, and they gave up the lover's secret. When they were found, there was a terrible standoff and nearly a great battle between their families' armies. But the lovers could not stand to see death in a place that they had been so happy and so they conceded and went home with their families.

When he discovered us a third time we were not beaten, but thrown into damp stone cells with moss on the walls and not a bucket to piss in. They did not feed me. They did nothing to me at all. I just sat there, learning the stones, and learning the screams of my lover. At first every cry of pain I heard was torture for me. But after time I began naming the different cries. There was splinter-under-the-fingernail at one end of the pain, and red-hot-poker-to-the-eye on the other, with a whole host in between.

After some time, all the time, no time at all, they threw him into my cell, broken, bloody and shrunken. I crawled to him, not sure if it was truth or one of the hallucinations that had started coming to me in my hunger and fear. He did not move until the tips of my fingers brushed his solid cheek. Then he cried out tried trying to roll away until his panic and pain stricken face turned towards me. There were burns all along his arms and legs, raw and leaking yellow-green puss. Two fingers on each hand we blood crusted stumps the rest were twisted all wrong. Never again would those clever hands be able to make an instrument sing. One eye (his perfect hazel eyes) was swollen shut and looked like it intended to stay that way. For a time I cradled his head on the sharp bones of my lap and we did nothing but weep. When we were dried up, I laid on the stone with him, heedless of the layer of offal and kissed him deeply, sucking the blood from his split lips and taking it into myself, as if I could leach away all of his hurts and pain. Our bodies did not feel the same together as before. Where once we had been soft and plump in youth, now our bones bumped together, clacking and clattering like wooden wind chimes. With each movement, caress, thrust, there was pain and our moans were anguished, mournful, desperate. After, he began bleeding afresh from his many wounds and I passed out from exhaustion. And yet I had never felt my love so deeply, nor ever been so satisfied by our trysts.

Now they were under heavy guard, never given a moment alone lest they try to run away again. The days passed, the full moon came and went once, twice, a third time. It seemed the lovers had forgotten one another, but this was not the case. Indeed, their love only grew stronger until each thought they would go mad with desire. At last the prince found a crack in his guard, and snuck through it quick as could be. He broke into the castle again, and again swept his princess away. They ran for a time, and hid, but ever were the hounds of their parents on their heels. Farmers who harbored them watched their field’s burn days later at the hands of the kings. Inns where they begged a bath and a bed discovered dead rats in their wine and heavier taxes at the hands of the kings. Eventually the young couple could not stomach the pain that followed in their wake. They grieved deeply, but could not bring themselves to part a third time. Eventually they visited a witch who lived right smack on top of the border of their two kingdoms. She brewed for them a poison, one that would be painless and quick, for she had once been young and had an ill-fated love as well.

When I woke I said the only word. "Why?"

His lips gave no answer, but his one eye held me with such intensity and sadness that I knew. And we both wept again. I can't tell you if we spoke but we did not make love again, that I know. I think we just sat there cradling each other, perhaps sleeping, perhaps weeping. Once there was a fit of manic laughter that tore itself from our cracked lips, (like the wild trills of the faerie or very young children before they are truly human) and echoed in that tiny stone room as though it was a grand chasm in the mountains.

Then, after no time, some time, all the time, they came back for him. He did not turn or stand when they entered, so they wrenched his arms up behind him and the rest of his body followed evoking a moan I had named scuffed-knee-pain. The king stalked in after the guards, and gave me a long stare over the shoulder of my beloved. Then he drew a sharp glittering knife across my beloved’s throat. The blood that spurted forth was not the crusty brown like on his hands, nor the sluggish dark of his other wounds. It was the depthless red of the ruby on the pommel of the knife that killed him, bright and full of life as it spattered across my face. The guards let him fall and the blood pooled around him and around me where I still knelt. It coated my naked body, wormed its way under my finger nails and between my toes, soaked into the hair between my legs. I was silent. It was like all of the breath had been sucked from my lungs, or my guts turned outside of me rather than in. I knew the knife would come. I waited for it in eager silence, staring into that hazel eye, but it did not come. Hands wrenched me to my feet and began to lead me away. My king grabbed my chin, forcing my face up, forcing my eyes to his cold blue ones. He leaned in, I thought he would kiss me, and if he had I would have bit off his tongue and been dead on the floor alongside my love. Instead he whispered, almost gently, "I do not tolerate infidelity".

The lovers followed the border for several days, until they were far from the witch's cabin. They had prepared a letter, and each had a copy in their pockets. It simply read "We go now to the gods by full choice of our own in the hopes that in their halls we may love in peace". They sat across from each other, each in their own kingdom and each with their own little bottle in hand. They did not want their deaths to be an excuse for war you see. And so, their hands clutched across the border, the downed the poison without a word. The witch was good at her craft, and barely had the tonic passed their lips when their breathing cut short, and their hearts stopped. They were found there not hours later by some traveler passing through, and before the day was up their parents were at their sides. They wept, and the queens tore at their hair and the kings beat their chests in mourning. Both had been only children, and now two kingdoms were left without their beloved heirs. It was the queens who conceded first, standing over the bodies of their children they held each other and cursed their own stubbornness. The kings came to the same conclusion after some posturing, but before long they were all mourning together.

Maids cleaned me, dressed me, and force fed me until my breasts and buttocks filled back in ("we don't want you looking like some half-starved wife on your wedding day now do we"). But that little stone cell had stolen things from me. The rose of my cheeks, the depth in my eyes ("you always look so sad m’lady, try a little smile") my voice ("the wedding vows won't say themselves!"). I was a ghost. The king married me a month after he murdered my musician. As a wedding gift he gave me a knife, a knife with a bright red ruby on the pommel and blood still crusted where the blade met the hilt. He had his way with me that night, and every night for a moon phase or more. I would call it rape, but I was so numb that I simply did not care. I would just lay there, dumb and numb and unresponding until he was done and would take away his stale ale breath and sweaty slicked body. The one thing that would flicker through my head was that at least he would believe the child his when my belly started to bulge.

One day, when I was seven months pregnant (but truly eight) I watched my husband drunkenly leave the great hall with one of the more lovely young ladies of the court. He had grown bored of me, especially as the child grew and sought his pleasure elsewhere. Everywhere else. But this night was different. I knew that when the baby came healthy a month early he would know that it was the musician's child, not his. I feared he would have my baby killed. I didn't fear for my own life as in truth it had ceased that day in the dungeon, but I could not bear the idea of losing this child. I went to my chambers and collected my wedding gift. The guard outside his rooms let their wraith queen pass without question. He was on top of her, rutting and grunting, she moaning in presumed pleasure. They did not hear me enter, they did not hear my footsteps (what ghost makes noise?) as I approached, nor the metal sing as I drew the knife from its silver sheath.

I grabbed him by the hair suddenly, wrenching him back off of the woman, and pressed the knife to his throat, drawing a thin red line. "I do not tolerate infidelity" I whispered, my voice gravely and strange, and then drew the knife swift and strong and without hesitation. In truth I cut deeper than I meant to, and when the king's body flopped off the bed his head was half severed and lolled on the stones. The woman he had been with was screaming and spattered with blood. For an instant I felt pity for her, and then the guards were dragging me away, trying to quiet her, and at a complete loss at what to do with their king, dead and naked on the floor.

The two kingdoms that could not be united by marriage were now united by death. A peace treaty was signed, and a beautiful pavilion was built on the place the lovers had died and a garden planted around it. Some say the witch enchanted the garden, for even in the depths of wither it was full of blooms. Now it is a place where young lovers go to ask the blessing of the gods, and kings meet to sign treaties, but only pacts of peace, never of war, and always the sacrifice of the lovers is remembered and honored.

I gave birth to a little boy yesterday afternoon. A beautiful baby boy with a strong set of lungs, and hazel eyes. I got to hold him for an hour before they took him away and gave him to a wet nurse to suckle. They would not let me name him, but I called him by his father's name while I had him in my arms. Tonight I put pen and ink to paper, to preserve the truth. There are a few here with whom I can entrust this story. Perhaps someday my son will know it, perhaps he will believe it.

But do you see, the difference between the faerie tale, and life? In both the lovers struggle, they seek help, they fail and end up ever so dead. And it isn't the elves, or the witches brew, no, those are mere metaphors.

Tomorrow I will go to my death with a cheering crowd before me. They will rejoice in seeing the mad woman who killed their king swing, turn blue, and die. Then, when the excitement settles, they will continue their lives as ever before, and in the evening they will tell their children bedtime stories of elves and giants and lovers.