Princess Lindworm

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a king and a queen. Their reign was a peaceful one and their people were happy. Yet the king and queen were heavy of heart, for they were childless, and though they sponsored many orphanages and fostered many children, they dearly wished for a child of their own.

The queen, one day, decided to go walking in the nearby woods to clear her mind, for all the forests and woodlands of that kingdom were held by the crown. And so she walked, spending nearly the whole of the day beneath the shade of the trees, when she came across a little hut made of earth and stone.

How peculiar, she thought to herself. Surely her loyal gamekeepers would have reported such a sight, for this hut looked as if it had existed for ages. Curiosity filled her spirit, and she walked up to the door, knocking briskly three times upon it.

"Come in!" A voice called from inside. The queen pushed the door open and stepped into the little hut.

Garlands of herbs and strange roots hung about the walls, and the heavy scent of strange spices lingered. A bubbling cauldron over a low flame, stacks of old books, and in the middle of it all, a wizened old woman who smiled pleasantly at the queen.

"Please sit down, dearie," the old woman said, "and tell me what ails you."

The queen knew herself to be in the presence of one of the cunning folk, and so she sat. The old woman offered her a bowl of incredibly odd-looking stew, which she politely declined. But it was nice to talk to someone, and so the queen unloaded her troubles.

"Ach," the old woman said, "I've seen it all before, dearie, so don't you worry about a thing. Here's what you must do: when you go home, take a large pot, the kind with two handles. Set it upside-down in your garden. The next morning, there will be two roses growing beneath the pot: one red, and one white. If you wish to have a son, eat the red rose. If you wish for a daughter, eat the white one."

The queen nodded bemusedly.

"But!" The old woman raised a finger in warning. "Do not eat both, for...unexpected things might happen, and I bear no responsibility for any of that, not on your life. Choose one, and only one. I promise you, dearie, you shall have your child."

This was all very strange, and the queen had her doubts, but the word of a wise old woman counted for much in these lands. So the queen bade her farewell, and when she returned to her palace she did as she was told.

In the morning, there were two roses, just as the woman had said.

The queen thought long and hard about her decision. "After all," she mused, "if I have a son, he may be felled in battle. And if I have a daughter, she may leave to marry into another nation's royal house. Either way, I shall someday lose my child."

Having considered the problem, the queen resolved at last to eat the red rose. But when it passed her lips, she realized with a sudden shock that it was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted. Without considering the old woman's warning, she devoured the white rose as well.

The old woman was as good as her word. All of the kingdom's subjects rejoiced when it was announced that their queen was finally with child. Eventually, the queen announced that she was going into seclusion with her attendants and physician, and the people waited with bated breath.

When the palace announced the birth of a male heir, a golden jubilee was declared, and everyone from the high nobles to the lowest peasants drank to the health of the prince. What the royal family dared not publicize was that, in fact, the prince was not the queen's only child. A white serpent, with scales that shone in the light, had also been born, though it fled through an open window and was quickly gone. All present had breathed a sigh of relief, and were sworn to secrecy, for fear of marring the joy of that day.

The young prince grew hale and strong, his hair bright red, his features handsome. Eventually, he announced to the court that he wished to venture abroad, in search of adventure and, hopefully, a bride. This was agreed to by his parents, who gave him their blessing, and he soon set off, riding a palfrey from the royal stables.

Coming to the kingdom's western frontier, however, where the forests grew thick and wild, the prince halted. Blocking the road was a great white lindworm, a massive beast with shining scales. Its body moved with sinuous grace, and its claws promised violence.

"Turn back," the lindworm hissed, "before you endanger your life, little prince. And ask your parents what I mean when I say to you this: a bride for me before a bride for thee."

Frightened, and more than a little confused, the prince rode back, relating to his parents the king and queen all that had transpired. And they revealed in turn that the lindworm had truth to its saying, for it had been born before the prince and, thus, was entitled by longstanding tradition to marry before him. Summoning forth their council, they presented to them the predicament as it stood.

"A bride," the master-of-arms mused. "Why should we give in to this creature's demands? We should send guardsmen to drive it off, and clear the western frontier once and for all."

The king shot him a look. "The creature, as you say, is still my daughter. A princess of the blood royal cannot simply be driven off like a rude beast. It would set a bad precedent."

"But a bride?" Running his hands through his hair, the castle's seneschal raised his voice. "Obligated as we are, there is the obvious problem: we cannot send for one of our allies to lend a spare princess. It would ruin our relations if...if her royal highness the lindworm were to tear them apart!" And the council murmured in agreement, for there was certainly great risk in granting the lindworm's request.

"A volunteer." The king shook his head. "It will have to be a volunteer. May heaven have mercy upon our heads."

Eventually, a volunteer was found: a young member of the palace guard, who hailed from the sun-drenched Summer Isles.

She was of distant descent from that land's nobility, although her branch of the family had fallen upon some difficult times, and she herself was no more than a fisherman's daughter. The palace guard had allowed her an opportunity to leave her village and serve her queen. Her only request was for the royal family to take care of her kinfolk, should anything happen to her.

And so a messenger was sent to the western frontier, seeking the lindworm, while the fisherman's daughter was allowed some time alone.

I am about to die. The thought raced frantically through her brain. Lindworms weren't known as particularly kind, caring spouses. But it was for the good of the kingdom. She did her best to keep that in mind.

When she could no longer distract herself, she fled to the nearby woods. A walk in the solitude of nature would calm her soul and renew her courage. She walked beneath the shadow of ancient trees, and eventually came across a little hut made of earth and stone.

Odd, she thought, but she knocked upon the door, obeying some instinct.

"Come in!" A voice called from inside.

The fisherman's daughter went into the hut.

Inside, garlands of herbs and strange roots hung about the walls, and the heavy scent of strange spices lingered. A bubbling cauldron over a low flame, stacks of old books, and in the middle of it all, a wizened old woman who smiled pleasantly at the young woman.

"Please sit down, dearie," the old woman said, "and tell me what ails you."

Not expecting much, but hopeful nonetheless, the fisherman's daughter told the whole story, that of the princess lindworm and the upcoming marriage.

"A lindworm?" The old woman stroked her chin. "Why, whoever could have foreseen such tragedy? Or warned against it? No matter. There is still a way out of this for you, dear child. Listen to me carefully, for this is what you must do..."

The fisherman's daughter listened to what the wise crone said, and returned with somewhat more hope than she'd had only hours before. Going to the domestic staff of the palace, she made some very specific requests from them, and they promised their assistance.

Soon it was the day of the wedding. The lindworm, which had grown bored and was busy despoiling farmland, had at last been located and invited to the royal palace. The ceremony itself went off without a hitch, apart from the business of having a massive, deadly monster within the castle walls. But the bride, in her guardswoman's uniform, cut a very fine figure, and the lindworm was admittedly beautiful in a dangerous sort of way. And if the priest stumbled over the ritual once or twice out of sheer nerves, nobody noticed, for they were all nervous themselves.

There was a wedding feast, of course. Many of the guests were over-enthusiastic with the wine, but the (human) bride drank little, and the lindworm, being of rather more sanguine tastes, drank not at all.

Afterwards, there was the traditional bedding ceremony, which was rather rushed. The lindworm and its new bride were bundled into a very comfortable royal bedroom, one whose walls had been heavily reinforced. None of the attendants commented on the fact that the fisherman's daughter had changed out of her wedding attire; perhaps they were all too eager to make themselves scarce. When they hurried out the door and closed it, the young woman heard several heavy-sounding bolts and bars being locked into place.

And then they were alone.

"Now then, bride of mine," the lindworm hissed, "what on earth are you wearing?"

The fisherman's daughter turned round to face her inhuman spouse. "Do you like it?" she asked, the very picture of innocence, though a barely-hidden smile threatened to break through. "It is mightily drafty in this castle, and I am not impervious to the cold."

She was clad in a plain cotton shift, the sort that any peasant girl would wear to bed. Or, to be more accurate, she wore many shifts, one atop the other, so that they formed layers.

"It is our wedding night, bride of mine," said the lindworm, "and I will see you naked before the end of it."

The young woman raised her chin defiantly. "Then," she said, "you will shed one of your skins."

She flinched when the lindworm bellowed with rage, but stood firm. And at last the lindworm shed a skin, much like a snake, and slithered out of the scaly, diaphanous material. When it had done so, the young woman removed her outermost shift and threw it aside.

"It is still so very cold in here," she said, all innocence. "But if you wish to see me in my nakedness, you will shed another skin."

Again the lindworm raged, and again its bride stood firm. And another skin was shed, and another of the maiden's shifts joined it upon the floor. She was wearing other things, too. A shawl which she dropped from her shoulders, leaving them bare. Stockings, jewelry, underwear...

It was nearly an hour before the fisherman's daughter had stripped away the last of her clothes. She did her best to appear nonchalant. Did her hands still shake, if only due to the evening chill? We cannot say.

She stood, gazing down upon the lindworm, which groaned as it lay upon the floor.

"A clever trick," it rasped, "for a human like yourself. My body betrays me. But when my strength returns, I shall--!"

The fisherman's daughter did not wait for the lindworm to finish speaking. The old woman of the forest had given her instructions: she would waste little time in carrying them out.

First, a pan of milk, one of her requests from the palace staff. She dashed it over the lindworm, which blinked, clearly befuddled. Then, seizing a stout willow rod soaked in lye, the fisherman's daughter began thrashing the lindworm with it.

The lindworm roared, in surprise at first, but the magic held it firm. It thrashed and growled, hissing the most vile curses. It even tried to bite her, once or twice. She did not stop while the lindworm's struggles grew weaker and weaker.

At last the lindworm could bear it no more. "Mercy," it cried out, "for the love of heaven!"

There remained one more thing to do, so that the curse might be broken for good. Casting aside her rod, the fisherman's daughter knelt down and drew the lindworm to her breast in a loving embrace.

Two pale human arms reached out to hug her back.

-----

The palace staff dared not approach the bridal chamber, hearing the commotion from within, until well into the next morning. One of the braver chambermaids knocked timidly on the bedroom door. "Come in," she heard the fisherman's daughter call out, exhausted but clearly still alive.

They peered in, scarcely believing their eyes. For the fisherman's daughter lay in bed, the blanket covering her modesty, and beside her was curled a beautiful silver-haired maiden.

A royal audience hurriedly was granted, once the newlywed couple had time to bathe and clothe themselves. The whole story came out, and the young princess immediately announced her desire to travel abroad, for a year at the very least, to better spend time with her new wife outside the realm of politics. This was of some relief to her brother, who had been trained as the kingdom's heir for all his life, and had been worried about another claimant (technically born moments earlier) challenging his position. Indeed, now that the princess lindworm was human again, the prince immediately resumed his previous plans to secure a spouse of his own and hopefully secure the royal succession.

The princess and her bride, meanwhile, were granted use of one of the kingdom's finest pleasure yachts, crewed by loyal retainers of the palace, for however long they might wish to have it. The fisherman's daughter suggested that the Summer Isles might be a good destination for their first voyage, so that she might personally bring the joyous news to her family.

On their first night together -- after the wedding night, which didn't really count, all things considered -- the princess came to her wife and they stood for a while in silence, watching the stars.

"You don't have to, you know." The princess sounded almost abashed. "Even if I'm not a monster anymore, I don't want to force you. I mean, if you'd rather-"

The fisherman's daughter reached out to take her hand. "Hey." She squeezed gently. "I'm the one who was hitting you with a stick, remember? If anything, I'm the one who should be apologizing."

The princess laughed. "To break a curse! Why, every moment with you -- like being awake, for the first time in my life -- I just, I want..."

She paused for a moment. "I'll probably never inherit, you know that, right? I might be something of a curiosity if I play my cards right, but I'll always be the princess who used to be a terrible monster. If you'd like to find yourself a proper wife, who wasn't, like, for years-"

The princess stopped talking, mostly because the fisherman's daughter was kissing her.

"You're okay with this, too, right?" The fisherman's daughter broke away briefly to look into her eyes, suddenly worried. "This is-"

And the princess was kissing her.

"I think," she murmured, "that we might be overthinking this a little."

When the fisherman's daughter took her clothes off this time, it was because her wife (her wife!) was moving lower down her jawline, down her neck and along her collarbone. She wanted desperately to feel those lips lower still. But then a sudden flash of mischief caused her to catch her wife by the arm.

"Wait a second," she said. "If I'm going to lose my clothes, then you-"

The princess threw back her head and laughed.

"Of course, of course," she said, still grinning. "I remember our game."

She needed help with the clasps of her dress. Wriggling out of a layer of scales was far easier than dealing with human clothing.

"When I meet the inventor of the button," she grumbled, "I'll-"

The fisherman's daughter silenced her with the most effective technique that she knew.

There were other things that the princess had never done before. Her new wife was eager to demonstrate.

"Oh!" Wide-eyed, the princess gasped. "That feels...oh."

"Hold your leg still. Right, just like that. And then-"

The princess would not have traded the moment for the world.

"Here," the fisherman's daughter panted, "there's one thing that I'd, um. If you're not put off, a kink of mine-"

"What is it?"

"Bite me," she said, offering her neck and shoulder. "Make it sexy."

"Are you sure?"

"Do it, you p-"

She hardly managed to muffle her scream of delight. Then she moaned as the princess kissed and licked the toothmarks she'd left on her body.

"You enjoyed that, didn't you?"

The fisherman's daughter nodded shakily. She might have been on top of the princess, but that girl was giving her one hell of a ride.

After several long minutes -- once she'd gotten her voice back, and had endured another shuddering wave of pleasure -- the fisherman's daughter disentangled herself from her lover's arms. "There's another thing I'd like to show you," she said, moving down the princess's body. The princess watched with curiosity.

"Oh," the princess said, "I know this, this is when-"

She moaned. The sensation of her lover's tongue sliding around her pussy, so undeniably human, stole her words away.

She giggled a little bit, when it crossed a line into overstimulus. Her limbs flailed with desperation but she did not push her lover away, only grabbed her head and held her closer. The fisherman's daughter, with her lips and fingers, played the princess like a priceless instrument, and she came apart entirely underneath her lover.

They cuddled for a while in each other's arms. "That was," the princess said breathlessly, "incredible."

The fisherman's daughter kissed her.

"Maybe," she said, "we could take this to a bed? We do have sleeping quarters on this boat, you know, we didn't have to fuck like rabbits out on the open deck like this."

The princess pouted. "You'll have to carry me, bride of mine," she said. "You've fucked the life right out of me tonight, so I-"

She shrieked as the fisherman's daughter scooped her up into her arms, hoisting her over her shoulder.

"I didn't think you'd actually do it!" She was laughing as her lover carried her away. "How are you so fucking strong--hey! Don't you dare smack my ass like that, you impertinent wench, I'll-"

And they both lived happily ever after.