Lindworm: Chapter 1

(This is a little over half of the first chapter I had planned to share the whole thing, but then I realized it was 7,000 words. You can buy and read the rest of Lindworm here!) 

“Thank you so much for thinking of me,” Marit said, “but really I would rather not marry a monster.”

Marit would not have thought herself the sort of person to talk back to kings, had she ever had cause to contemplate such matters. But then she never would have thought the king the sort of person to sacrifice a girl to a lindworm, and yet here she was, the third victim.

She was only seventeen, and this wedding was a death sentence.

Six months ago, Prince Harald had set out to find a bride, and had been stopped by a great serpent in the road. Since then, the serpent—the lindworm—had eaten two foreign princesses, both after a sham of a wedding. Both women had thought they were coming to marry Prince Harald.

Here, in the forest outside the capital city, rumors had flown. Rumors that they would shortly be at war with both kingdoms that had lost a princess, and rumors, more interesting to their small family with no members likely to be sent to the battlefield, of the lindworm, of why a man-eating dragon would be welcomed to the palace and fed. Rumors that said the lindworm was Prince Harald’s brother, that the king humored it instead of killing it because the monster was family.

Marit didn’t know how much truth there might be to such rumors. She didn’t know how a queen could bear and birth a serpent, but she did know the world was full of strange, incomprehensible things.

The king stared at her, his men standing stiffly by. It had not, of course, been thoughtfulness that led him to her cottage in the woods. Marit knew this, and knew that the marriage was not optional, and that one could not speak to a king in this manner and expect to keep one’s head. But when one has already been sentenced to death, such things as respect for royalty matter very little.

“It is not an offer,” the king informed her when he found his voice. “It is a command, and you may choose to obey or not, but willing or unwilling, you will find yourself before a priest in my great hall one week from now.”

One week, she thought. One week to live the rest of her life. She could run—could she run?

No, if the king was leaving her a few days to say her goodbyes, it was only because he knew she could not run. There would be guards posted. She would be caught and brought back. She would still end the week dead, and likely her father and sister, too, if the king suspected they had helped her. As they certainly would.

Her family—they were away from the house now, deeper into the woods, scavenging. There was little left to eat, their winter stores almost empty by March, and the ground still too frozen to begin the year’s planting. She had stayed behind to tend to the animals, too likely to slow them down after twisting her ankle yesterday, falling from a tree; it had barely hurt, and would be healed by tomorrow. The king would be long gone before they returned, and it would fall to her to explain her upcoming death.

“There will be a bride price, of course,” said the king.

Marit wasn’t quite sure what a bride price was, thought it may be like a dowry—she’d sewn items, slowly, over the last several years for her dowry, but doubted the lindworm would demand her linens as well as her life.

The king went on to explain the bride price, the amount of money her father would be given for this farce of a marriage—the opposite of a dowry, then, and a staggering amount.

It had been a long, brutal winter following a short, dry summer, and for that price Marit may have volunteered herself. Any number of young women may have; it was enough to save not only their own small farm, but those of a few near neighbors. Enough to buy a second goat, a few more chickens, enough to pay all of their debts in the city and have their broken tools repaired.

For such a sum, she would have volunteered. She would have gladly given her life to so dramatically improve the lives of her father and younger sister.

But the king had not asked. The king had demanded, and Marit knew she would resent him for however many days she had left to do so.

He left her, as she’d expected, with guards posted nearby, and she led the animals back to their shed and let herself back into the cottage, not wanting to look at them, their clean uniforms with shiny brass buttons, their polished boots slowly gathering mud, their faces as they avoided her eyes, because they knew, must know, that this was wrong, and yet they were loyal to their king, and would not let her run.

~

Marit watched through the back window, working idly on her knitting, unable to stay focused on the difficult stitch she’d meant to master this week, until she saw her sister and her father coming out from the woods. She ran to meet them, and hurried them inside before they could ask about the soldiers scattered about. And then she told them.

“Why you?” Greta cried. “Why you?”

She hadn’t asked how he’d chosen her, out of all the unwed maids within walking distance of the palace. She didn’t think she wanted to know why it was her that must die, and not Annette, who had no father to protect her, or Martine, who was more beautiful, or Signe or Gretchen or any of the other girls she knew.

She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who wished death on her friends, either.

Besides, the lindworm had already eaten two women, and there was no reason to expect he might stop at a third. They may all be dead before this ended, Gretchen and Signe and Annette and Martine, and the younger girls, Greta and her friends, all the forest, all the city, someday all the kingdom sacrificed to satisfy the appetite of a monster that should have been killed the moment it showed itself to Prince Harald.

She could only hope that the fathers of the dead princesses would declare war, that they would kill her king and his lindworm with him before the whole country was devoured.

King Olaf had always been known as a kind and noble king. He’d lowered taxes and held festivals and been much loved, before these last six months, and Marit didn’t understand. She didn’t understand how a good king could become a bad one overnight because of one monster.

Maybe it was his son. Marit would throw the whole world over for Greta, she knew, but she’d been at Greta’s side since she’d emerged from their mother’s stomach, been the first to hold the new baby, tiny and wrinkled and red, getting blood all over her vest, as their father had said his goodbyes to Mama, only turning his attention to Marit and the new baby when his wife was gone.

For Greta, for her father, for Mama if she’d lived, Marit would do anything. But if a boar walked out of the woods and claimed to be her long lost brother, she wouldn’t take him at his word, wouldn’t escort him into the city to trample the blacksmith just because he asked her.

She didn’t think the king could hide a paternal relationship with a lindworm for several years. They must have met only when he stopped the prince on the road. And Marit didn’t understand.

She gathered Greta in her arms and listened to the younger girl cry, unable to shed any tears for herself, unsure why. She looked over Greta’s head at her father, and saw the same desperate sadness in his eyes that she had seen when she was five years old, and her mother was dying in childbirth. Her father loved her, but he could do nothing to save her, and they all knew it. He could not defy the king; to try would only make him angry, would likely risk Greta’s life too.

He came and wrapped himself around them both, and Marit thought, but was not quite sure, that he wept too. She sat, dry-eyed, between them, for long hours, until it was time for dinner and bed.

They watched out the window as a new group of soldiers marched in, and the first group left. At least they weren’t expected to feed and board their prison guards.

In the morning they found that the soldiers would let Marit go where she pleased, but one or two would always follow, from a respectful distance. No one followed her sister or father, so they went in three different directions, to the neighbors and to the city, Marit to make her farewells, and all of them to give warning. The king is feeding maidens to his lindworm. Marit is the first; she will not likely be the last. Send your daughters quietly to family in other cities, if you can. Marry them quickly to boys in the village, if you can. We do not know why the lindworm wants weddings, but he does, so make your daughters unweddable.

Gretchen, when Marit told her, said it probably had to do with a dragon’s fondness for virgins. She then said that if the king came to her, she would rid herself of virginity with the first man she could find before she would go to the lindworm, with the whole town to watch as proof, if necessary.

Gretchen’s older brother, the only other person there save the guards, too far away to overhear, made a sound of disapproval in the back of his throat, but said nothing.

Marit wondered if it was too late to try Gretchen’s plan for herself, and concluded it probably was—if the lindworm demanded a virgin, then the soldiers would not let her cease to be one. The small chance of success wasn’t worth giving herself to a man she didn’t want and wouldn’t be allowed to keep. And the kind of man who might cooperate with such a plan would likely not make it a happy experience to cherish in her final days. She reminded Gretchen of the soldiers before moving on to the next neighbors.

~

Marit spend her days wandering, mostly. There was work to be done, and she helped, or tried to—her father said not to trouble herself with anything in these last few days, and when she insisted, she often found herself too distracted to finish, or at least to finish well, haunted constantly by imaginings of what the lindworm might be like, how it might feel to be eaten. She remembered breaking a finger in a slamming door as a child, the sharp crack of it, the pain. She imagined the pain and the cracking both amplified as an enormous snake swallowed her whole, as snakes will do, and then, bizarrely, imagined cowering on a banquet table as the lindworm sliced her to pieces with a knife held in its tail, popping each slice into its mouth one at a time, sometimes dipping a slice in a butter-sauce first.

She still had not cried, though she had found herself several times laughing hysterically at humorless jokes she couldn’t explain. Greta didn’t need to know about the butter sauce.

When there were two days left before the wedding, she went out intending to collect eggs from the chickens, and her feet carried her, instead, deeper into the woods.

The guards followed at a distance.

Marit stopped when she saw an old woman ahead. She was short, with white hair spilling from her cap, bright and cheerful in a blue skirt and red vest, and she smiled like an old friend at Marit, and asked why she was so sad.

Marit wasn’t a fool. She knew how it was with mysterious old women in forests, knew they were to be respected. Knew how often they carried magic within themselves. Knew that to cross them was idiocy, and that to be kind and respectful could change the course of one’s life.

So Marit told the woman her troubles, and the woman smiled again. “It will be all right,” she said. “If you obey me, it will be all right. Now, here is what you must do.”

Marit wasn’t foolish enough to think she might live through this, but she wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the gift of a wise woman in the wood, either, even when that gift was the strangest advice she’d ever been given. Wear ten shifts beneath your dress, have milk and lye and whips waiting in your bedchamber.

She was already going to die; what did it matter if the king’s servants thought her a madwoman?

Ten shifts, though, would not be an easy thing to manage. Marit had two shifts, and two night shifts, which were wool instead of linen, with sleeves too wide to be hidden beneath her dress. She would have to rip them off. Greta owned the same, not much smaller as she was tall for her age, but Marit could not deprive her sister of all her undergarments, so only took one day shift and one night shift from her. That brought her to six, and four more yet to find. She couldn’t buy them; the king’s money wouldn’t come to her father until the day after the wedding. She had her dowry linens, unneeded now, and could use the fabric to make more shifts. But she had two days left to live, and wasn’t willing to spend her last precious moments sewing. With Greta’s help she converted one white bedsheet into a shift, but would sacrifice no more time when she had so many goodbyes to say—to friends, to livestock, to trees and streams and every future she had ever imagined for herself.

She begged one more shift from Olga, whose family was wealthier and who had one to spare for an acquaintance going to her death. Eight shifts, eight, two short, and no time to find more. It would have to be enough.

~

The morning she was to be taken away, Marit’s father pulled out her mother’s wedding dress and offered it to her.

Marit shook her head. “It should go to Greta. To a real wedding.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” her father said. “Take it, so your mother can be with you, as Greta and I cannot.”

So Marit put on her eight shifts, and she put on the dress. She was a bit smaller than her mother had been when she married, and it still fit despite the extra layers. Greta had wanted to make her a crown of flowers to match, but there were still few flowers in bloom, so she wove the crown from evergreen branches instead, coating her hands in sap, and placed it carefully on her sister’s head.

The three of them waited, solemnly, for Marit to be taken away. There was nothing left to say. All of the goodbyes were finished, all of the plans made. The next morning someone would come from the palace with the bride price and whatever was left of Marit to be buried. Her father would sell the animals and the house, give them away if he couldn’t sell them fast enough, and he would hire a wagon to take them far, far from the capital, to start a new life where the lindworm would never touch Greta. They’d gone over the details last night. Greta had cried again.

Marit still hadn’t cried, and thought she might be able to, now, but would not let herself; she didn’t want her tears seen by whoever took her away. She found she was more angry than sad. She felt a sharpness growing within her. Her life was forfeit, and so too was her sense of obligation to respect, to loyalty. The king, the queen, the prince, the priests who’d performed the weddings and the soldiers and couriers who’d stood by—damn them, she thought, damn them all, and damn the idea she owed them the barest amount of anything.

The king came to fetch her himself, and she refrained from spitting in his face only because of the guards that surrounded him, the fear they might kill her where she stood and cost her father the bride price.

The king was different, not angry and demanding as he had been a week ago, but stiff with an awkwardness that might almost be shame. Marit hugged her father and Greta one last time, and followed him back toward the city, his guards forming a circle around them. She didn’t care that he may feel shame; she had enough anger by now for the both of them.

He was quiet, and Marit didn’t want quiet. Not quite understanding the compulsion, she found herself goading him.

“What will happen after this?” she asked, and the king looked at her, then quickly away again. It was a long walk on foot, and she didn’t know why a king wouldn’t take a carriage, but she didn’t mind the extra time in her forest.

“You will be prepared for the wedding by lady’s maids. The wedding will be in the great hall, and after that we will have a banquet.”

“Not tonight,” Marit said, spurred by the thought of Annette being sent hundreds of miles away to an uncle she’d never met, of Gretchen searching for a man to defile her rather than be eaten. “Not to me. What will happen to your kingdom? After me, you’ll kill off every maid in the country, and then I suppose you’ll have to go to war, and find slaves to feed his appetite? Discipline is important for growing boys, Your Majesty. Learn to say no to your son.”

He raised a hand as if to slap her, and she tilted her chin forward, daring him—let him hit her, here surrounded by a small army, let all these soldiers, already uneasy with their roles, go home and report to their friends and families that their king was a man who struck defenseless maidens.

He lowered his hand, leaving Marit oddly disappointed. It would have been another reason to be angry, and her anger was protecting her from her fear.

The king sighed heavily. “We all do foolish things for our children.”

She wondered if he meant the lindworm, or only Prince Harald, who could not be married until it was satisfied. It didn’t matter—the result was the same for her.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, suddenly exhausted. Maybe a king could afford to do foolish things for his children. Her own father had to be sensible—foolishness would only have hurt Greta. She felt the anger draining away, the fear rising up again. She didn’t want to die.

~

They arrived at the palace from a side gate, not taking the wide, paved road beneath the cherry trees, where any number of people might have seen their arrival. The king and his soldiers handed her off to a large group of women, some more elegant than others, and she asked him, before he left, what time the wedding would be.

“At eight o’clock,” he said. “Will that give you enough time to prepare?” One of the more elegant women assured him it would, and he told her, “Give the girl whatever she wants. It’s her wedding day, after all.” He laughed, unamused, more bitter than cruel, and then he was gone.

“Is there anything special we can do for you, miss?” asked one of the plainer women, who was likely a maid.

Marit thought of the old woman in the forest. “This is going to sound a little strange.”

All of the more plainly dressed women left to carry out her last request, leaving Marit with a flock of beautiful women whose most simple everyday clothes were likely ten times more expensive than her mother’s wedding dress. They tried to have her out of it, into borrowed silks instead, but she refused. It was the last gift from her father, the only familiar thing in this place. She kept her evergreen crown as well, but let them take it away long enough to clean away the sap, rubbing it from the branches and brushing it out of her hair.

They re-braided her hair into a more elaborate style, stringing in gemstones to match her dress, and applied powders and creams to her face, which itched and made her sneeze. She watched them carefully, picking out one who seemed both kind and fancy enough to know little of a peasant’s daily life. She drew her away from the crowd and explained, in a whisper, “I haven’t any underthings. I only own the one shift, and I left it for my sister, so she would have one to wear on laundry day. I didn’t think it would matter, when I’m only to die tonight, but I’m—I’m embarrassed to have all these fine people watching me, thinking that if the light hits just so they’ll see I’m not dressed properly.”

The woman believed, somehow, that a peasant girl might have come to a royal wedding with no undergarments, and offered to find a spare shift.

“Could I have two, please?” The woman raised her eyebrows, and Marit ducked her head. “It’s a tradition—I know it shan’t be a real wedding night, but it’s a tradition to make the groom work a little harder the first time.”

The woman believed the tradition she’d never heard of, as well, and came back shortly with two more shifts, beautiful, silken things, bringing Marit to the required ten.

The next problem came when she realized the women had no intention of leaving her alone while she took off her wedding dress and put on the shifts, which was awkward for more reasons than the eight shifts she already wore. She explained that she was not accustomed to being seen undressed by strangers, and finally they left her, for the first moment of privacy she’d had in hours, and the last she expected to have in her life.

She took off the dress and put on the shifts. She paused to look in the mirror—a thing she’d heard of but never before seen—and wondered if that was what she truly looked like, or only the effect of the powders and creams. She pulled the dress back on, took a few deep breaths—she had not cried yet, she would not cry now—and reopened the door so that the women could help re-fasten the dress in the back.

They set the evergreen crown back on her head, and took her to the priest that would read her last rites.

The hall where they held the wedding was gorgeous, with shining wood floors and dark walls covered in rosemåling, blue and gold and red. All the court was seated when she arrived, dressed in their finest clothes, looking horrified. She recognized the king and the queen and the prince, familiar from a dozen parades, sitting in the front row. The rest were strangers.

And then she saw the lindworm.

It was the height of six or seven men, white like a maggot, or the mold on stale bread. It had dark wings on its back, too small to hold its weight in flight, and shiny white fangs quite visible even when its mouth was shut. It had no legs. There was a crown balanced at the top of its head, the size a man would wear, which might have been funny if it hadn’t planned to eat her.

It was staring at her with an expression of mild curiosity, recognizable because its eyes were the eyes of a man, over-large, but still small in its serpent head, the same shade of blue as a dozen young men she’d seen in the city.

 

 

Prince Lindworm: Version Comparison

Over the years, I have managed to find three different versions of King Lindorm—the one that appears in Svend Grundtvig’s Gamle Dansk Minder i Folkemunde, the one that appears in Andrew Lang’s Pink Fairy Book, and the one that appears in the Folio Society’s East of the Sun and West of the Moon. (There is no indication of where this story came from originally or who translated it, so we’re just going to call it the Folio version here.)

 I’ve talked a lot before about the origins of this story; the earliest version, Grundtvig’s, is from Denmark. The Folio Society attributes theirs to Asbjørnsen and Moe, in Norway, which we know is incorrect as it doesn’t appear in any other edition of their work. Lang attributes his version to Sweden.

So today, we’re just going to work our way through the three versions and compare/contrast. 

They all start the same way. Queen wants baby, queen can’t have baby, old woman tells her how to make it happen. Lang’s version deviates most from the others in the beginning. In the other two versions, the queen encounters the old woman while out on a walk; in Lang’s, the old woman comes to the palace and seeks out the queen specifically to impart her wisdom.

In both Gruntvig’s version and the Folio version, the queen is to eat only one of two differently-colored roses that will grow up overnight under a two-handled cup left in the garden. Very specific, perfectly identical. The lindworm comes because the queen eats both roses.

In Lang’s version, the queen is to take a bath in her room. Two red onions will appear under the bathtub afterwards, and she is to peel and eat both. Her mistake is that she eats the onions without peeling them. (Note that in this version the queen is not given the option to choose the gender of her child.)

Another little deviation in Lang’s version is that the queen apparently doesn’t know she’s given birth to a lindworm? Her waiting woman tosses the lindworm out of the window as soon as it’s born, and the queen doesn’t notice it at all.

Lang and Folio both feature a normal, human prince born after the lindworm. In Gruntvig’s version the lindworm is an only child. Since Gruntvig’s version has no siblings, he approaches the king directly to ask for a bride. In the other two, he waits until the prince goes out to find a bride, and then goes up to him and says, “Hey, I’m your secret brother, and since I’m older, I get to get married first.”

Here, again, Lang’s version deviates significantly. The other lindworms both marry (and eat) two foreign princesses, then a local shepherd’s daughter selected by the king. Lang’s lindworm marries and then eats an unspecified number of slave women before a wicked stepmother offers up her stepdaughter as a bride. Specifically, she tells the king that her stepdaughter would like to marry the lindworm, and the king apparently doesn’t question this? He for some reason finds it believable that a young woman would volunteer to marry a monster who’s already eaten multiple previous wives, without asking for any kind of compensation for her family or anything?

And, okay, Lang is going full German-Cinderella here. After the stepmom screws her over, girl goes to her mom’s grave, where she’s given three nuts. This is what happens in the place of her meeting an old woman and getting instructions in the other two versions.

Lang’s main girl goes through similar basic wedding prep steps to the others, with no indication of where she got the idea from; while the other girls have a tub of lye, tub of milk, whips, and ten gowns/shifts, Lang’s girl has the tube of lye, only seven shifts, and three scrubbing brushes. After they go through the whole take-off-your-shift-take-off-your-skin situation, Lang’s girl just, like, scrubs all the lindworm-iness out of him? She just scrubs until he turns into a dude.

The other two versions, of course, have the much more complex and disgusting transformation sequence of dip whips in lye, whip lindworm, dunk lindworm in milk, take lindworm to the bed, embrace.

The Folio version ends immediately after this, with the girl and the transformed prince living happily ever after. The other two stories continue.

In the second half of Lang’s version, the old king dies, the lindworm becomes king, the lindworm goes to fight in a war, and the girl’s stepmother steals a bunch of letters and tells a bunch of lies that result in the girl and her two young sons fleeing the palace until the lindworm comes to find them. During this time, the girl uses her magic nuts to save a man named Peter.

In the second half of Gruntvig’s version, the old king and the lindworm both go off to war, it’s a character called the Red Knight who switches the letters, and while she and the babies are away, our girl somehow uses her breast milk to help two other men who’ve been transformed into animals? IDK, I don’t have a full English translation yet, but what we do have to work with is seriously weird.

Lang’s version definitely deviates significantly from the others; it has no points in common with Grundtvig’s aside from the most basic plot—barren queen, ignoring food instructions=lindworm, brides eaten, transformation involving shedding/undressing and lye, heroine flees into the woods with children due to mail-tampering, saves someone else before reunion with lindworm.

The Folio version deviates from Grundtvig’s only in that it ends halfway through and includes a second prince.

Today is the first time I’ve read through Lang’s version in several years, at least, and somehow, despite its differences from the others, it feels the least unique? I was definitely first drawn to “Prince Lindworm,” as a child, because despite falling into my much-beloved Enchanted Bridegroom category, it felt very different from any other story I’d read. The beast as a snake-like creature, the brides being eaten, the unsettling transformation sequence—it was all just great. This was the Folio version, that I was reading as a child. But when I first encountered the second half of the story in Grundtvig’s version, it was also delightfully unique and bizarre, even if I can’t fully understand it. The lindworm’s mother—the girl’s mother-in-law, often a villainous figure—is 100% on her side, and the main person to try to help her through what happens next. And the milk situation is just—well, it’s something.

Lang’s version, despite being the same basic story, just feels bland and unoriginal. There’s an evil stepmother, which is just, sort of cliché, you know? The transformation sequence has been cut down and seriously sanitized. And then the situation where he marries an unspecified number of slave women in the place of two princesses—well, I have a number of issues with that.

Firstly, the number three is so often symbolic in fairy tales, and to replace the three total marriages with an unspecified number is lame, but that’s a dumb, nitpicky issue. The marriages to slave women indicate that this is a country that holds slaves, which I don’t love. But my big issue with this is that a significant part of the charm of the other versions is just the absolute, idiotic absurdity of marrying your monster son to a second princess after he eats the first. Like, you know what’s going to happen now—the same thing that happened last time. He’s gonna eat the princess and another powerful king is going to be rightfully angry with you. Marrying him instead to someone who won’t be missed lowers the stakes and raises the rationality in a way that bores me, and also implies that some potential brides are worth less? Like, with the first couple brides as princesses, we know they matter even though we never properly meet them, because their deaths put the threat of war over our heads—which is probably why the king and the lindworm go off to war shortly after the spell is broken in Grundtvig’s version. “A whole bunch of random slave girls died with no consequences and then we met our main character” just seems sort of…cheap.

So! While I did enjoy reading Lang’s version, I don’t think I would have fallen in love with this story if it was the first I encountered. I think the other versions are both more absurd and more meaningful.

Preorder my book based on this story here!

Lindworm Promo Series Repost: My Story

 *This is a repost from 10/8/17 with minor edits*

The curse is broken, but the transition from beast to prince isn't always that easy.

After the lindworm is defeated, Marit expects to go back to her normal life. But two princesses are still dead, and two wars are still brewing, and Marit is (technically) still married to the lindworm. Or Prince David, as they’re calling him now.

The thing about Davey is that he’s hopeless—and who can blame him? He spent the first two decades of his life as a giant snake. He doesn’t know what to do with legs. He doesn’t know what to do with hands. He doesn't appreciate the fact that he has to chew his food now. All of this, in addition to the fact that his dragon instincts have been replaced with a human conscience, leading to overwhelming guilt over the two princesses he ate.

All Marit wants is to go home to her father and sister. But instead she finds herself deeply embroiled in palace intrigue, trying to save a depressed, inept prince from himself and everyone around him.

*You can pre-order my novel Lindworm here!*

Lindworm Promo Series Repost: The Story

 *This is a repost from 9/10/17, with some edits for spelling and to reflect my current publishing situation*

Today I’m going to tell you about my favorite story. The story that built this blog. The Danish title is Kong Lindorm. The English is King Lindworm, but it’s often translated Prince Lindworm instead, and that’s how I met it, in a collection on my grandparents’ shelf.

It goes like this:

A queen can’t have children. The literal translation of this is that “nothing was written on their wedding sheets,” which I think is stunningly beautiful, and I want everyone who says that fairy tales are just bare bones, lacking in character development or imagery, to read it.

The queen goes to a wise woman, who tells her about a fancy ritual where she puts a couple of upside-down-tea-cups by the north gate and two flowers come up overnight. Queen eats one if she wants a boy, the other if she wants a girl. She is not, under any circumstances, to eat both.

So she grows her flowers and translations vary, but usually she chooses the girl flower. Then it tastes so good, she just has to eat the other one too.

Sometimes the stupidity of fictional people just makes me want to bang my head against the wall repeatedly, you know?

I have in my possession what I believe is the earliest recorded version of this story (more on that later), and this is the point where it branches off from the one I grew up with. In the first version, the queen gives birth to a Lindworm, which is a Scandinavian dragon/snake monster, usually bipedal with small wings. In my first version, she does this, and then gives birth to a normal human son, as well. Since I started with the version with the brother, I tend to prefer it—it adds to the story, but takes nothing away, so if you want a sense for the original, just quietly disregard a few sentences as I move forward here, assume the Lindworm is speaking to the king instead of the prince, whatever.

Prince grows up, wants to get married, sets out to find a bride. Lindworm, who slithered away immediately after birth and about whose existence their mother said nothing, appears in the road to say, “hey, actually I’m a few minutes older than you, so I’m supposed to get married first.”

A real interesting conversation ensues at the royal family dinner table that night.

They get a princess to marry the Lindworm. The Lindworm eats her right after the wedding. Prince goes bride-hunting again, Lindworm objects again, a second princess is provided. Same thing happens. Prince sets out a third time, Lindworm demands a bride a third time. Wising up, finally, the king recruits some random girl whose parents don’t have the means to go to war against him.

Third girl encounters a wise woman in the forest. Wise woman gives her some seriously wacky advice. Wedding happens, they retreat to the honeymoon suite, and the Lindworm tells our girl to take off her dress.

Only if you take off your skin, she says. He does. She does. She’s wearing a second dress. Same deal. Turns out she’s wearing one more layer than the Lindworm is, so that’s a disgusting mess. Then she whips him with whips soaked in lye. Then she dunks him in a big tub of milk. Then she embraces him.

When they wake up the next morning, the Lindworm is a handsome prince. The kingdom rejoices. His bloody history is instantly forgotten. We all live happily ever after.

I was drawn to this story immediately, largely because it was completely ridiculous. For years I have burned with the desire to understand all this craziness. And I more or less do now, but more on that later. This is just the beginning.

Welcome to my new series. Welcome to my new promotional tactics. Welcome to my novel.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be talking about this story in much more detail. And on April 13, my novel Lindworm will be released!

I’m really excited about this story, and I’m really excited about sharing it with you.

*Remember to follow me on Patreon!*

Publication Announcement

My first novel, a retelling of "Prince Lindworm," will be released next month! Stay tuned for more information, and if you want to hear it faster, consider supporting me on Patreon!

 

How to Support Indie Authors When You Can’t Afford to Buy Their Books

1. Share/reblog/retweet their posts about their books.

2. Visit their websites—do this frequently, and refresh the website a few times while you’re there. This will help improve their website analytics and make it easier for more people to find them.

3. If you can borrow their books from a friend or library, do so, and write a review.

4. Ask your local library to order their books! They probably won’t order a book after just one request, but with a few from different people, they’ll at least consider it. And getting your book in a library makes it accessible to hundreds of people who otherwise might never have heard of you.

Announcement

Hello! As most of you know, I now own a small publishing company, Wax Heart Press, which will begin releasing books in 2020. This means some changes in my currently available books.

My current books are Goodbye and Other Words I Should Have Said, Avalanche: A Self Portrait in Verse, thin, Dear Somebody (print and digital), and And He Became a Handsome Prince (digital only).

As of today, all print book prices will be reduced by $1. This deal is valid through December 31, 2019. Beginning on January 1, 2020, all print books will no longer be available.. The digital versions will still be available. thin and Dear Somebody will be re-released in 2020. At this time, a date has not been set to re-release Avalanche and Goodbye; if you intend to purchase these books, I would recommend you do so in 2019.

https://www.jennyprater.com/

Beauty and the Beast Reviews: Liz Braswell's As Old As Time

I reread Liz Braswell’s As Old As Time on Wednesday, and it’s not a great work of literature or anything, but it sure is fun! This is a little different; it’s published by Disney, and is a retelling of Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast, not of the original fairy tale.

The premise, as advertised on the cover, is that the Enchantress who cursed the Beast is Belle’s mom. A good chunk of the story is comprised of flashbacks to when Maurice and the Enchantress (her name is Rosalind) were young, before Belle was born and when she was a baby. We have two big things happening in this back story: there’s a plague, and anyone remotely magical is being persecuted. The king and queen aren’t doing anything about either issue. So when they both die of the plague, Rosalind goes to test their son, to see if he’ll be a better ruler than his parents.

He fails. It’s possible she overreacts.

This is where a lot of the things I really love about the story come in. It addresses all the questions and concerns I had about the movie. The Beast is a 10 or 11 year old child when the curse is placed. The story and all the characters in it acknowledge that the curse was absolutely not an appropriate way to handle the situation, and was deeply unfair to both a child and a house full of servants who had nothing to do with anything. Which I really, really appreciate. The picture in the West Wing of an adult Prince is explained, too; it’s some really mean-spirited Dorian Grey crap, enchanted to show him what he would look like if he hadn’t been cursed.

Also, the Beast can read. We see him reading. I always hated the way the musical version made him illiterate; at 11 you should have learned to read. Especially as a prince. The only acceptable exception is The Whipping Boy.

So. Back to the story. Rosalind never returns home after placing the curse. She’s grabbed by the story’s Big Bad, who’s been kidnapping anyone with magic. We’ll come back to that subplot later. Her last act as she’s taken away is to set a spell that makes all normal people—including Belle and Maurice—forget about the existence of magic, to protect any of her people who are still free. Unfortunately, the Big Bad also has magic, so he remembers.

And I think that’s enough on the back story. Belle gets to the castle like usual. The change comes in the West Wing, when she manages to actually grab the rose before the Beast stops her, destroying it and any chance at breaking the curse.

(Afterwards, she points out rather callously that judging by the state of the rose, he didn’t have much time left anyway. Did he really think a girl was going to fall in love with him in the next couple months? She then proceeds to fall in love with him over the course of the next THREE DAYS. Also, the entire story, aside from the Maurice and Rosalind flashbacks, happens in three days. It’s a lot.)

This is when information about Belle’s mom starts coming out. They go through a bunch of old census records and fail to find anything about her, including her name, but they discover in the process that the local bookshop owner was in the census a few hundred years ago, and therefore probably knows something about all the magic stuff.

They head back to town to talk to him, and find him missing, with the book store burned down. We find out later that Gaston did it, and this was how he defended himself:

(A fire hazard, Gaston? Really?)

So they go to talk to Maurice next, and Belle has the Beast wait outside when she goes in the house, considering how their last meeting went. Except she never comes out; the big bad has her and Maurice now, too. The Beast sees where she’s being taken, but there are too many people for him to overpower.

He goes home for help, and finds that everyone is gone; the furniture and knick-knacks are just furniture and knick-knacks. The Beast himself has been struggling with animal instincts since the rose was destroyed; the curse is progressing.

With no other options, he goes to recruit the villagers for a rescue mission. He has the mirror, so they can see that Belle is in danger; they decide to deal with the whole Beast situation after rescuing Belle.

Meanwhile, Belle has gotten away, rescued her father, rescued her mother who’s been held her for a full decade, and released dozens of other prisoners.

And we’re into serious spoiler territory now, so I’m just gonna say the good guys win, Gaston kills the Big Bad, and everyone present is horrified, because he deserved a fair trial, Gaston!, which for some reason I just find hilarious.

Rosalind is seriously weakened by her decade of captivity. She says that the Beast isn't in danger of giving in to his animal instinct anymore because of his love for Belle. (Three days, guys!) But she has only enough power to either restore the Beast’s humanity or the humanity of all the servants. He chooses to restore everyone else’s humanity, of course, but it’s implied at the end that he and Belle are going to go on an adventure to find all the other magical people who went into hiding, and maybe one of them will be able to fix him.

Adorable awkwardness of Beast: Yes! He really gives off strong I-try-hard-but-my-life-basically-stopped-when-I-was-10 vibes. I love him!

Stand-Up-For-Herself-iness of Beauty: Good.

Human at the End: Nope.

Who Learns and Grows the Most? About equal.

Also, one more thing; have this conversation I thought was hilarious. Idk how the stove is drinking, exactly.

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Beauty and the Beast Review: Stacey Jay's Of Beast and Beauty

This book is…a lot. There are so many things to say about it.

So we’ll start with this: technically it’s sci-fi. It all takes place on another planet. None of the characters are technically aliens, but a lot of them are technically mutants, adapted to survive the new planet. But it doesn’t feel like sci-fi. It reads like a fantasy.

The second thing is a not-so-great one. Overall I really enjoy this book. I think it’s very clever. But this one thing—well. You don’t give little blind girls reading books a blind princess to relate to, then take away her blindness as part of her happy ending. That’s bad. That implies that you can’t be blind and live happy ever after.

There were people in the background—not present enough to be considered characters—who were missing both arms and legs. Who were missing chunks of their faces. Who weren’t exactly equipped to have good lives in a setting like this. And healing them, I guess I can understand better. It’s a quality of life issue. But the blind girl and the mute girl were awesome, capable characters who didn’t need to be healed to have happy endings, so to heal them feels almost cheap. It’s not solving a problem as much as it’s taking away valuable representation.

Okay. On to the good things.

The main characters are a beautiful young woman and a man described as “Monstrous.”

But it’s the man who attempts to steal a rose, the man who is held prisoner by the woman, and the man whose departure to help his family and delayed return nearly result in the woman’s death. It’s the woman who gets the transformation scene at the end when the man says “I love you.”

And all of this is done so cleverly that it doesn’t occur to you, for quite some time, that the roles have been reversed, that the woman is the Beast and the man the Beauty. Which I suppose is what comes of getting caught up in physical appearances in a story that’s literally about how deceiving physical appearances can be.

The Beauty and the Beast relationship is usually a very solitary one—just the two of them alone in an enchanted palace. Our girl here is a princess, though, and then a queen, with a court to manage and a city to care for. There’s a lot of political intrigue that a story like Beauty and the Beast doesn’t usually get into.

The story ends with the power of love bringing life to a dying planet, everyone’s disabilities erased, and everyone’s body changing in some way to better adapt to life on this planet. The characters are surprisingly nonchalant about major physical transformations. But it’s a fun story overall.

Adorable awkwardness of Beast: Sadly none

Stand-Up-For-Herself-iness of Beauty: Good

Human at the End: Not really, but that’s because a transformation did happen

Who Learns and Grows the Most? About equal

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The Trouble with Christian Fiction Part III: Keep It Simple, Stupid

We’re going to start this post by talking, again, about the movie God’s Not Dead. The problem for today is widely prevalent in Christian fiction, and in specialty fiction in general, but God’s Not Dead is an extreme (and therefore particularly useful) example.

The real reason I hate this movie is that I could have loved it. I could have loved it two or three times, at least.

The thing you need to understand about God’s Not Dead is that it has, like, fourteen different plot lines. There’s the evil atheist professor (See Part II). There’s the Muslim family with the daughter who converted to Christianity. There’s a couple of depressing romances,  mostly with a focus on conflict due to religious differences. Someone’s dad is dying.

Like, just chill, guys. Not one of those stories got the attention it deserved. And they were all crammed into the space of a couple weeks.

I’ve talked before about how to salvage the evil professor bit. But do you know how much I’d pay to see a sincere, respectful portrayal of that conversion subplot? Hint: it’s a lot. I mean, think about it. The sense of betrayal when your daughter casts aside your faith. The struggle on both sides, loving someone but knowing they’re wrong, not knowing what to do, what to say to them, how to interact anymore—there is so much potential here for a powerful story about love and doubt and reconciliation, about relearning how to be a family when something huge, like your core belief system, has torn you apart.

But instead you made it a halfhearted subplot in a crappy movie full of halfhearted subplots all overwhelming each other and the mediocre main plot.

So many stories, particularly Christian stories, are like this. My wife’s in a coma, my house burned down, I have two kids, and I’m mad at God. I read that book, and the wife actually fell into two separate comas.

Look. If you’re writing a six book epic fantasy, you can include all the subplots you want. But no one has the energy for a novella where you’re mourning your dead daughter, developing feelings for a man who doesn’t share your faith, struggling to cope with the knowledge that your little brother had premarital sex, and helping your parents transfer into a nursing home, all while you’re in the process of moving to a new town where everyone is atheist and trying to found a church despite violent opposition from city officials. It’s just too much.

Find the story you want to tell. The real, main thing. Is it the aftermath of losing your daughter? Is it developing a relationship with someone who doesn’t share your beliefs? Pick a plot.

Subplots are meant to build a story up, not bog it down in inconsequential side notes.  Find subplots tat will connect to and clarify you main story. Aim for thematic resonance.

Every story doesn’t need to do everything. And you shouldn’t try to make it from a decent writing standpoint , but also because it leads you into one of the standard pitfalls of Christian fiction: the martyr.

We talked a little about this last time, in the context of the atheist bad guy, but it bears repeating. Embrace reality, people. The persecution plot? It’s getting really old. You’re a Methodist in modern Midwestern America.

The world is not out to get you, okay? It’s just not.

So if it’s not the atheist bad guy, you make it about death and unemployment and natural disasters. In order to actually be persecuted, you would have to do something other than writing crappy, self-indulgent stories about how much you suffer because of your faith.

And then there’s the Christian fantasy angle. Like, oh my goodness, the instinct to read  in the dark and hide the book in my underwear drawer is way stronger when I’m reading Christian fantasy than anything else—it just tends to feel dirty. Demons and dragons and ill-conceived allegories full of blood and gore. Distortions of love and memory. Demonic monkeys. Angelic monkeys, which frankly I find even more disturbing.

And if I let myself go any further down this road, it’ll morph into a Ted Dekker rant, so let’s move on.

Everything doesn’t have to be so uncomfortably over the top. You’re not doing yourselves any favors with the death and drama and demons. Just keep it simple.

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Lindworm Chapter 1

“Thank you so much for thinking of me,” Marit said, “but really I’d rather not marry a monster.”

The king stared at her, his men standing stiffly by. It had not, of course, been thoughtfulness that led him to her cottage in the woods. Marit knew this, and knew that the marriage was not optional, and that one could not speak to a king in this manner and expect to keep one’s head. But when one has already been sentenced to death, such things as respect for royalty matter very little.

She had heard the story—she was sure the whole kingdom had, by now. How some six months ago, their prince had set off to find a bride, and how his path had been blocked by a dragon, a snake-beast, a great lindworm who spoke with the voice of a man, demanding a bride of his own before the prince could have one. How instead of chopping him into small pieces, the prince had ridden home, and how instead of sending someone else to chop him up, the king had set about finding the lindworm a bride. How the lindworm had devoured that bride, and demanded another, which the king had also found. And now, with two princesses dead and two countries about to declare war, he had chosen Marit to be the third. She was no one, and lived near enough to the palace. He could not risk another princess.

It was rumored that the lindworm was his son. She did not know how true that might be. She did not much care.

Finally, the king found his voice. “You misunderstand me. This is not an offer or a suggestion. You may come willingly, in which case your family will be compensated, or you may be dragged off by your hair. Choose wisely.”

Kings, she thought, ought to be more impressive and aloof.

Also kinder.

There was no doubt they needed the king’s gold. It had been a dry summer, and an unpleasant winter. If he had called for volunteers, she might have gone, to see her family safe through this next year.

But he had not called for volunteers, and stood now in the mud, glaring down at her in his purple coat as if she were the one that was worthless. The chickens squawked around him.

“Ja, and what next?” she said. “After me, you’ll kill off every maid in the country, and then I suppose you’ll have to go to war, and find slaves to feed his appetite? Discipline is important for growing boys, Your Majesty. Learn to say no to your son.”

The king slapped her, but did not contest the claim he was the lindworm’s father. He did not bother to punish her further. There was no further punishment than this wedding.

“You will be collected, and the gold delivered, in one week,” he said. “Of course, there will be men watching to see that you do not run.”

“Of course,” she echoed. Her father and sister were in the back—they would not have heard the commotion. She could hear the cow mooing still from here, more than enough to drown out a king. It would be left to her, then, to explain. She did not look forward to it. They had dreamt of kings and queens and ball gowns. Greta was half in love with Prince Harald, as were most girls her age. The king had long had a reputation for mercy and kindness, before the lindworm. And now she would explain to them that he was the sort of man who struck defenseless girls in the forest.

It was three days later, wandering the woods to escape the oppression of mourning at home, that she met the old woman. She was short, with white hair spilling from her cap, bright and cheerful in a blue skirt and red vest, and she smiled like an old friend at Marit.

“And why are you so sad?” the woman asked.

“It is nothing.” She would not tell her sorrows to a stranger with the soldiers watching—she had some small pride, still.

“Come,” said the woman, “perhaps I can help you.” She leaned forward and spoke softly, so that only Marit might hear, “It is the lindworm, is it not?” Marit was too surprised to answer, and the woman led her deeper into the trees, where there was snow still on the ground. The soldiers could see them still, from their post behind the evergreens, but would not hear. “Now. Here is what you must do.”

The king came himself to collect her for the wedding, which might have been an honor, except that they had learned to hate him, these past seven days. He said that her family was invited to the wedding, of course. Perhaps her sister could be a bridesmaid.

Marit had declined his generous offer. Her father had sent her off with her mother’s wedding dress, just as if this were something real. Greta had cried.

The walk to the palace was long and mostly silent. Marit would have expected a carriage. She walked beside the king, in front of a small horde of soldiers, clutching the bundle that held her dress and everything else she might need.

If they had come through the city from the front, instead of through the woods, she could have walked beneath the rows of pink flowered trees that led to the gates. She would have liked that.

They probably weren’t blooming yet.

Greta had cried. She would not. Not in front of the king.

The terracotta waves of the palace roof were in sight when he started trying to make conversation. “What is your name?”

“Marit.”

“Olaf,” he said, and it sounded like an apology she would not accept. She had known his name already. She had not cared.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”  

“We all do foolish things for our children.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” She wondered if he meant the lindworm, or only Prince Harald, who could not be married until it was satisfied.

“We’ll probably have to go to war with the princesses’ fathers.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“You had much more to say a week ago.”

She would be dead by morning, and he wanted small talk to distract from his guilt. “What would you have me say? I’m sorry this is hard for you? Good luck with your war? I’m sure I’ll be very happy with your son? No, I really don’t mind dying before I’m twenty?”

A few soldiers stepped forward, and he waved them away. There was another long silence before the king asked quietly, “How old are you?”

Marit stared down at the ground, arms wrapped around her chest. “Seventeen.”

“I am very sorry,” he said. He did not speak again until they reached the palace.

It was stunning, but few things are truly impressive when one is about to die. Mostly, she just felt numb. She asked, dully, as a troop of maids descended, “When will the wedding be?”

“At eight o’clock,” he said. “Will that give you enough time to prepare?” One of the maids assured him it would, and he told her, “Give the girl whatever she wants. It’s her wedding day, after all.” He laughed, unamused, more bitter than cruel, and then he was gone.

“Is there anything special we can do for you, miss?” the maid asked dutifully.

Marit thought of the old woman in the forest. “This is going to sound a little strange.”

The rest of the day was spent preparing her for the wedding, as if it could possibly matter what she looked like, as if the lindworm would notice or care. Would the state of her hair really impact how she tasted?

They even had a mirror. She had only seen her reflection in rippling water before, and it was incredible, like magic, but this was much too high a price for learning she had freckles.

The worst part was that she felt special, by the end. Like a real princess, with her hair piled high, and those gorgeous soft slippers. Her mother’s wedding dress. And she was cleaner than she’d ever been in her life. So much hard work, all for her.

She didn’t want it. Her father had the king’s money, and that was only fair. She didn’t want any favors. She didn’t want to die feeling like she owed them something. Not when she was the unwilling sacrifice. She didn’t owe them anything.

The ballroom where they held the wedding was gorgeous, with shining wood floors and dark walls covered in rosemåling, blue and gold and red. All the court was seated when she arrived, dressed in their finest clothes, looking horrified. She recognized the king and the queen and the prince, familiar from a dozen parades, sitting in the front row. The rest were strangers.

And then she saw the lindworm.

He was enormous, the height of seven men at least, white like a maggot, or the mold on stale bread. He had dark wings on his back, far too small to hold his weight in flight, and shiny white fangs quite visible even when his mouth was shut. He had no legs. There was a crown on his head, the size a man would wear, which might have been funny if he hadn’t planned to eat her, and he was staring at her with an expression of mild curiosity.

That was the worst part—the look of his eyes, which were a comfortable human shade of blue.

She broke eye contact and started walking down the aisle, alone, since her father wasn’t there, and quickly—maybe the anticipation was worse than the death itself.

One could only hope.

The lindworm stared at her a moment longer when she took her place beside him, then turned to the priest, who stared silently ahead, pale—whether in anger or fear, Marit couldn’t tell. It was a mockery of a marriage, and enough to infuriate any priest.

If he disapproved so much, he needn’t have performed the ceremony.

There was a long pause before the lindworm hissed. “Whenever you’re ready, Father.”

Marit flinched at the sound of his voice. She had known he could speak—how else could he have demanded a wife in the first place? But hearing it for herself was different.

“Of course.” He swallowed. “Do you, Prince Lindworm, take this girl—” He paused, and looked up slowly to meet Marit’s eyes.

“Marit Liefsdotter.”

“Thank you.” There was another pause, until the lindworm hissed again. “Do you, Prince Lindworm, take this girl, Marit Liefsdotter, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

Marit looked about the room, hardly listening, as the ceremony continued. Her dress, fine enough for a peasant girl’s wedding, must be the poorest garment these people had ever seen. She did not want to care what they thought of her, these fine lords who stood by, swords in their belts, sacrificing when they could be stabbing, and ball gowns were not so tempting as they had been in her dreams, on these stiff cold women who did not care.

She realized that everything was quiet again, and then that everyone was staring at her. Including the lindworm, his forked tongue darting in and out below those terrible eyes. “I’m sorry?”

The priest repeated, slowly and unhappily, “Do you, Marit Liefsdotter, take this lindworm to be your lawfully wedded husband, for be—”

“I do,” she interrupted. There was no point in drawing it out.

He nodded, and mumbled something that sounded like “You may now kiss the bride.”

Marit took a step back. “Absolutely not. There will be no bride kissing here.”

The people in the audience leaned forward. Marit saw them, and wondered if the princesses had let themselves be kissed, but mostly she was focused on the lindworm, who was unreadable.

How did a lindworm kiss?

She didn’t want to know.

“Time for the reception, then,” the king said, finally, from his seat in the front row. The lindworm twisted his head to stare at him, but didn’t object.

Prince Harald took her arm to lead her to the banquet hall, the lindworm somewhere ahead. He was very handsome, their prince—well, the whole kingdom knew that. But he was also rumored to be funny, and kind, and very charming. If she had any hope of rescue outside the old woman, it lay with him. But he had already failed to save two girls more important than her.

“Could we not just be done with it all?” she whispered.

“You don’t want the reception?” He sounded surprised.

“We all know how this ends, ja? I would rather not pretend at being a happy bride.”

“There will be a banquet. You don’t want him hungry, do you?”

 “That’s your plan to save my life? Feed the lindworm wedding cake?”

He stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway. “Honestly? I don’t think anything is going to save your life. But if this gives you a few more hours, well, isn’t that worth something?”

“You’re the prince. You’re supposed to be a hero. It’s your job to kill him and save me. How can you let him do this?”

He had the grace to look uncomfortable, at least. “So I should chop off my brother’s head to save a stranger? I’m sorry. I am. I hate him. I hate what he’s doing. But there are bigger things in this world than a farmer’s daughter, or even two princesses and a war, and I will not live with his blood on my hands.”

“But you’ll live with mine.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. And then they were in the banquet hall, and she walked unaccompanied to the lindworm’s table. He looked up with interest as she sat, then ignored her as the food was served.

A short blonde girl caught the prince’s arm as he walked away. “This is dreadful. Harry, please.”

He shook her off. “Don’t call me that.”

Marit did not see the prince again. She watched as the wedding cake was cut, a golden tower of ever-narrower rings, white icing dripping down the sides.

A little boy, six or seven, charming with curly copper hair, ran forward to whisper, “If I were bigger I’d kill him for you,” and his mother dragged him away. The lindworm stared down at his plate and said nothing. He must have heard. 

Everyone ate in silence, eyes cast carefully down. They were afraid of the lindworm, and he was frightening, of course, but just then he was flicking his tongue absently at a slice of cake, and looked less deadly than he might have. If there was any chance of reasoning with him, now would be the time.

 “Not hungry?” she asked.

His head swiveled around, and she thought he was confused, and looked down to avoid his eyes. “No. I don’t eat much.”

“Oh. Maybe if you—” She stopped. But there was nothing to lose, anymore, by being direct.  She looked into his human eyes and asked him, “Will you be hungry tonight?”

His tongue stopped flicking. “I’m never hungry.”

“Then you do it for fun?”

“Fun,” he repeated slowly. “Is this supposed to be fun? With the cake and the terrified silence? I’m not having fun. Are you having fun?”

“No,” she whispered. He had not blinked once all night. Maybe lindworms didn’t. Normal snakes didn’t seem to, after all.

“Let’s get it over with, then.”

“I thought you weren’t hungry.”

“I’m not. That’s why I want to leave the banquet.” She let herself be pulled into those eyes again, trying to understand what he wasn’t saying, and he added, “It’s only some pathetic cosmic joke. You realize that, don’t you, Marit?”

It was the first time he’d said her name. She nodded, wishing he hadn’t.

“The other ones didn’t.” He rose, towering above the entire room, and announced, “Princess Marit has had a long day. She is bored and tired. We will retire to our room for the night.”

A few people in the crowd looked sick, but no one objected, and Marit wondered, as they started to flee, why she had wanted this. Surely, a few more hours to live would have been better.

But then, perhaps the old woman’s plan would work.

The lindworm led the way, managing stairs quite impressively without legs. Marit followed, hemmed in by fleets of maids and soldiers, as if she were foolish enough to think she could escape this now. There was no sign of the royal family.

At the door, the lindworm bowed his head, and one of the maids, trembling, went to lift off the crown. He slithered into the room, and Marit stood frozen in the doorway.  Finally, one of the soldiers nudged her, and she took a step forward.

Everyone in the hall was suddenly in a great hurry to get away, but Marit had just remembered something. She turned back to the door.

“Wait, please.” The last maid stopped, looking helpless and miserable. There was really nothing to wait for. “Can you just help me with the buttons? On my dress? It was my mother’s, and I don’t want it to be ruined when—could it be sent back home, please? After I—to my little sister. Tell her it doesn’t—I mean, she should still wear it. She’d look beautiful in it.” The girl nodded and started to undo the buttons, glancing nervously over at the lindworm as she worked.

“Good night, princess,” she whispered, just as if Marit were a real princess. And then she fled.

Marit closed the door and turned to the lindworm, who was twined around the bedpost, watching her intently. He had done nothing so far, and didn’t look too malevolent.

“All right, then.” She stepped out of the dress, so she was in just her shift, and began to fold it carefully. “This dress is a very important family heirloom. So I’m going to leave it up here.” She set it on top of the wardrobe. “You’re not to tear it or get it bloody or anything. I want it left alone, and returned to my family tomorrow. Ja?”

The lindworm flicked his tongue a few times, then nodded. “You may take it home to them in the morning.”

She felt the pressure of tears rising, and blinked them back furiously. If she hadn’t cried for the king, she certainly would not for the lindworm. “Well, that’s just mean.”

It looked puzzled.

“We all know what happens next. We’ve heard the stories, even us peasants in the forest. So don’t act like this is some kind of—let’s just get on with it, ja?”

“All right.” It slithered away from the bedpost, stopping just a few feet from her. “Would you take off your shift, please?”

The lindworm had manners. She was sure that would be a great comfort as it devoured her.

She took a deep breath. It was time to find out how crazy the woman was. “I will take off my shift after you take off your skin.”

It tilted its head, clearly puzzled, but started to wriggle obediently. “The others didn’t ask me that.”

Marit didn’t want to think about the others.

It was a full ten minutes before the skin lay on the ground beside the lindworm, long and thin and hideous. He was bigger than he had been. Just slightly. But if every skin shed led to such an increase in size—it wouldn’t. The woman had said this would help, and growing could only make things worse. She took off her first shift and laid it on top of the skin.

The lindworm seemed fascinated by the second shift, but not unduly concerned. “Take that one off too, please.”   

“You first.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to shed twice in one day. I wasn’t even due the first one for another month.”

“No skin, no shift.”

The wriggling started up again.

It was not until the sixth or seventh skin that Marit began to be really concerned. Hours had passed. It was taking longer each time, and it sounded painful. He wasn’t getting bigger anymore—in fact he was getting smaller. He was more greenish than white now. But he kept going, with no more questions or complaints.

It was not his health that worried her. If he was this determined to have her unclothed, what must he be planning for when it was finished? She could not imagine he would go so far merely to avoid the hassle of eating fabric.

She was down to her last two shifts, and he was working, very slowly, with long and frequent breaks, on the ninth skin, when he asked, sounding rather alarmingly like a little boy, “Can I be done now?”

“Not if you want my shifts off.” She crossed her arms and tried to look stern.

“I’m sorry. Only it really hurts, you see, and I’m afraid it might get messy. I don’t know how many skins I have.” He was beginning to look a little transparent. She did not tell him that he had only ten. He would find out soon enough.

While he was working on the tenth, she went to the closet to organize the supplies the maids had left for her. That she wore ten shifts was strange enough; what must they have thought about a tub of milk and one of lye?

And the whips, of course. She dipped them into the lye, now, and carried them back out to the lindworm, just in time to see the final skin slip off.

He had been horrific enough before. The first layer had been stiff and dry, and very thin. This last one was thick, slimy with blood. She looked up from the floor to the lindworm, and caught glimpses of his insides that she had not needed, and she wondered how old he was. Not far from Prince Harald, she thought, but perhaps lindworms aged differently.

She lifted the whips.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and his voice was shrill and frightened and young.

“I don’t know.”

Anyone listening would assume the screams were hers.

He shouted and whimpered and begged, and she thought that nothing right could cause a creature such pain, not even a creature like him, and would have stopped, but he would have eaten her, as he had eaten the others, who had spoken to the woman too, and who had not listened. He called again and again for Ida, apologizing and condemning her, then apologizing again, and finally Marit could bear it no more, and dropped the whips. She dragged the tub of milk to him and dunked him once, reminded absurdly of a baptismal service she’d seen last spring. Then the milk turned red with blood, and she dropped him whimpering to the floor, and found her hands and arms still streaked in it.

But they were nearly done.

She lifted him again, a quivering mass of blood and twitching muscle, and pulled him to the bed, where he fit from head to small bedraggled wings, the rest of his tail in a heap on the floor. He had lost the majority of his great size, between the shedding and the whips.

He seemed to be crying.

She looked up at his eyes, the blue even more startling now against the red.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.” The woman had promised that Marit would survive the night. She had not said how it would end for the lindworm.

He was no danger to her now, at least. She did not know how long he might survive in this state, or what she would tell the king when he woke to find him dead.

Telling the king, she would manage, somehow. She did not want to explain to those blue eyes how unlikely it seemed that he would live much longer.

“I am afraid,” he said.

“It’s all right. Just go to sleep.” She pulled the blanket over him, gently. There was already enough blood to wash out. It could not hurt to give him some warmth, or herself some distance, as she lay down carefully beside him. This was the final step—something symbolic that the woman had not explained. She reached up to catch a trickle of blood before it dripped into his eye, then closed her own eyes and lowered her hand.

The blast threw her across the room.

When she sat up, she was half convinced she’d been knocked out, and woken in some dream world.

There was a thin, pale young man on the bed, bent down with his head on his knees, arms hanging useless at his sides, crying quietly. He was completely naked, covered in long red welts.

“Make it stop,” he was saying, apparently to himself. “I don’t want it. Make it stop. Make it stop.” He repeated this, again and again.

Marit approached slowly, and touched his shoulder when he didn’t react. The boy leapt up explosively, then slumped down again. She backed away.

“Oh, gods,” he said.

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