THE FROG KING

THE FROG KING

Lance stood on the edge of Mogg Lake and gazed at the forbidden island in its midst.  Fog had dampened his sandy hair, and the cool night air, scented of bog algae, showed his breath.  Dressed in leather armor, he’d stashed a dagger in a strap at both boots, and a broadsword swayed along his hip.

“Haunted?  Oh, certainly!” Lance said, peering through the mist at the ancient ruins in the middle of the island.

Sometimes at night passersby might note a mysterious light burning in the windows of the ruins, and at other times, screams of pain echoed about the lake.  But Lance, bastard son of King Alistair’s first mistress, had a rational theory for the strange phenomena.  He suspected someone inhabited the ruins and was trying to scare people away, and he wanted to find out whom.  He didn’t believe in witchcraft or ghouls.  He felt the prophets and wizards were all charlatans—so too the oracles who’d prophesied his father, the king, would die at his wife’s hands.  Lance couldn’t imagine how that could ever happen.  His stepmother, Alba, was a decrepit cripple, left blind and bed-ridden by the plague.  How would an invalid like her assail his father?  Attack him with a battle ax like an ogre?  No, he mused; he’d justly dismissed the oracles for their quackery.  
   
Nearly twenty-five, Lance remained his father’s only child, the spawn of an indiscretion with a lady in waiting, who later was murdered in a castle brawl.  Though the king had married twice since the whoring of his youth, widowing his first wife, or so the story went, before marrying Lance’s step-mother, Alba, he never fathered another child, certainly not a legitimate heir, leaving Lance a guarantee of eventual reign.

Yet despite his stately destiny, tonight Lance intended to break the laws of state.  That evening, while everyone else in the kingdom attended the annual harvest festival, he’d schemed to board his little canoe and row out to the forbidden island to investigate the ruins.  All boats were prohibited in the lake—and swimming too.  Though the king allowed the peasants to stand at the shore to fish, nobody could pass into or along the water on account of the haunted ruins, known to gypsies as the Haven of Devils.

Lance scooped his oar into the water with a splash, first on one side of the boat and then on the other, drawing nearer to the island.  A lusty fervor propelled him as he labored with the paddles, his obsession with the island, the subject of his recurring dreams, coming to its fateful fruition.  

He reached the island’s shore and stepped into the shallow water in his waterproof boots.  He pulled the vessel onto the beach, away from the little ripples lapping at the land.  Through the trees the crumbling ruins loomed, seeming bigger than they had from a distance.  

Wind ripped through the pines and willows, rattling dry leaves, and the October moon unleashed its light, so full and bright, as the crickets sang and the bullfrogs burbled blearily.  Lance moved ahead through brush and briar, his heartbeat thumping with life.  He reached a clearing before the fallen structure, built of quarried stone, and stopped.  Two headless gargoyles protruded from the rock above the entranceway, and propped up upon the wall the bodiless heads gawked at him, bug-eyes bulging, tongues projecting from each demonic mouth in mockery.  

Lance approached the entranceway until he stood directly before it.  The design and calligraphy chiseled around the doorway was that of ancient times, was that of catacombs.  He touched the cold rock.  Beyond the entranceway, steps led down into darkness then disappeared.  Lance paused, second-guessing his decision to explore the ruins.  What might be lurking down below within the innermost recesses of the earth, the darkest bowels of Hell?  And why hadn’t he brought a torch?  Then, like a sliver of star, a hazy light began to glow from deep within the gloom.  Like a beckoning finger, it drew him, despite his better judgment, to descend.  

The light grew slowly brighter, dispensing with the darkness the brunt of Lance’s fear. I knew some soul abided here.  But who? he thought.  He placed one foot upon the stair, took a deep breath, then started down the steps that soon turned sharply left.

The stairs continued for quite a ways, and the air grew dank and earthy.  Lance marveled at the depth of the descent as he passed further and further into the tomb, torches lining the walls.  I hope those fires don’t give out, he thought.  

The staircase ended at a corridor sweeping right.  He crept down the hallway, careful upon his feet, so his boots wouldn’t echo throughout the passageway, yet he’d a strange premonition whoever resided there expected him.  

Lance reached the end of the corridor that opened at the left to a banquet hall.  He stepped into the room.  A fire blazed in the hearth, torches lined the walls, and a table was set with a silver platter of grapes as the centerpiece.  

A shadow moved.  Then a woman strode into the room from one of two corridors at the far wall of the banquet area.  Lance gaped in wonder.  She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen!  She wore a satiny evening gown of crimson, and her hair fell in copper ripples to her waist.  Gold bangles adorned her arms, and the scent of her spicy perfume filled the air, causing Lance’s ears to tingle.  He took a step forward toward the comely face with fine features and skin like mother of pearl.  

“So it has come to this, has it?” the woman asked.  

Lance grinned at the cryptic question.  Very well, my dear, he thought, I shall play your game.  “Yes, it has, milady,” he said, smirking.  “I am Prince Lance, son of King Alistair, at your service.”  He bowed, throwing his hand out at his side, proud of his nobility.  How right I was to have come here, he thought.  Hideous demon?  Hardly!  He burned with relish, lusting at the vision before him, his mouth practically foaming.              

“I’d hoped you’d come,” the woman said.  

Lance’s gaze shifted to a burgundy sofa near the fireplace.  It would easily hold two lovers.  No wonder these ruins have haunted my dreams, he thought, taking another step forward.    

“I am Lady Kabbara, a weird woman.  Welcome to my abode.”  She lifted her arms in a hospitable gesture, her golden bangles clanking.  

“Weird woman?  You’re much too beautiful for a witch,” Lance said, recalling drawings of haggish sorceresses from the fairy tales of his boyhood.  

“A silver tongue.  How cunning.”  Kabbara gazed at him from over one shoulder, not seductively, but distrustfully.  “How charming you are.”  Somehow, her smile was prim.  

Another shadow darted from the hallway from which Kabbara had entered.  She turned.  

“Mother, is he here?” a girl’s voice asked.

“Yes, Trista.  Come in, my child,” Kabbara said.

Meekly, the girl entered the room.  She appeared not much older than fifteen.  Lance marveled in amazement at her beauty.  If possible, she was even lovelier than her mother, with waves of ebony hair cascading to her hips, exotic eyes of azure, and smooth, olive skin.  She wore a modest dress of lilac with puffy, pink sleeves—the waistline just below her bosom, lending her a virginal look.  

“Is that the prince, Mother?”  She surveyed him with shy curiosity, standing behind her mother as if the matriarch were a shield.

“Yes, my child,” Kabbara said.  

“So you both were expecting me?”  Lance grinned, perplexed yet pleased.  “How did you know I’d come?”   He swaggered to the table and plucked off a grape then tossed it into his mouth nonchalantly. Sweet juice exploded across his palate.  He licked his lips, his eyebrows flitting up and down, obscene thoughts flooding his brain.  He placed one hand against the table, leaning toward it, one foot crossed over the other, hoping to seem debonair.  I am a prince, after all, he thought.  “Hmm?  How did you know?”  He glanced at his nails.

“Didn’t I already tell you I’m a weird woman?” Kabbara clenched her fists as if Lance’s attitude offended her.

He laughed.  “I don’t believe in the superstitions of peasants.”  

He’d just torn off a generous clump of grapes when the pain rent his body.  It felt as if every joint in his frame was being ripped from its socket, a burning fire consuming him.  But the torment quickly faded.  Lance opened his eyes to find himself in a room almost like a torture chamber.  He lay fastened to a wooden board, facing the ceiling, naked from the waist up, arms behind his head, shackles strapping his wrists and ankles.  Kabbara and Trista materialized into the room, seeming to pass right through the wall.  

“Where am I, and how did I get here?”  Lance struggled with the shackles.  “What are you trying to do to me?”  He peered at Kabbara with labored breath.  

“I lured you here to ask you a favor.”  Kabbara tossed a shock of red hair over one shoulder.  

A woman with peculiar desires, Lance thought, chuckling grimly despite his arrest.  “I’d be happy to perform all kinds of favors for you, milady, and your lovely daughter too, and I’d be more than willing to accept them in return, but this is not the way to go about the matter!”  The shackles were beginning to cut into his skin, his arms stretched to their limit behind him.  “This is preposterous!  I insist you release me at once!  I wouldn’t want you to do anything to embarrass yourself.”

Kabbara huffed.  “Your audacity is shocking.”  She placed a protective arm around her daughter.  

“Clearly, Madame, you’ve left me at a disadvantage.  Now what do you want with me?”    

“Let’s discuss the favor you’ve agreed to perform for me.”

“I haven’t made any promises, but go ahead and tell me your mind.  I’m only curious.”  Lance winced, still striving in his discomforting holds, hoping to maintain his princely dignity.    

“Please,” Kabbara began, her disposition changing as her agenda prioritized itself.  She stepped forward, her dark eyes earnest.  “I want you to kill the Frog King.  If you agree to kill him, I’ll reward you with an extended reign upon the throne.  Will you do this for me?”  She clasped her hands as if in prayer.  

“Madame, I regret to say I’m unacquainted with this frog king.  Though I’m familiar with Blark, Barron of Barbarians; and I’ve met Dward, King of the Dwarfs; as well as Delvin, Lord of the Elves, I don’t recall the particular entity you name.”  

“I’ll take you to him with no effort on your part, just like I brought you here.  It doesn’t matter whether or not you know him.”  Kabbara gazed intently at her prisoner as if he were part of a butterfly collection, though her eyes hinted at the urgency she felt.

Lance’s thoughts grew more somber.  “Who he is matters.  I cannot wantonly take a life, especially a king, just because a beautiful woman urges me to.  I must have reasons to justify such actions.  It is the code of chivalry.  Is it not true we get back in life what we give?”

“I say you owe me!”  Kabbara scowled, placing her fist against her hip.  “Just look at you!”  She tossed out her hand.  “You break the laws of your country, prince though you are, storm into my private abode, not even knocking, with lust and ill intent exuding from your frame, devour all my grapes without invitation, and expect me to ignore such grotesque antics?”  Kabbara laughed then clasped her daughter’s shoulder.  

“You said yourself you lured me here,” Lance said, still trying his binds.

“I didn’t compel your lecherous attitude.  And now, I want a favor.  You’ll not leave this island until you grant me one, though you remain my prisoner forever!”  Kabbara lifted her chin, looking confident of her ability to get her way.

“Forever, Mother?  Really?” Trista peered at her mother excitedly as if hoping for that very outcome.

Kabbara laughed.  “Is that what you’d like, my sweet child?”  She cupped her daughter’s chin with her fingers.  “If you want him, you can have him!”  She gestured toward Lance with a hand of long red nails.  “Go ahead.  Take him!  He’s yours.”

Trista hesitated then inched forward with an impish grin, her sapphire eyes gleaming.  She stood above him, peering down.  She licked her soft lips.

“Go ahead,” Kabbara said.  “She’s never seen a man before until tonight, except in picture books.”

“Hush, Mother!”  Trista poked Lance’s pectoral muscle as if testing the worth of a piece of raw steak.  She stepped back, her fingers concealing a giggle.  “I touched him, Mother!”

Kabbara laughed.  “If that’s what you want, he’s all yours!”  She turned on her heels and disappeared through the wall.

“Mother!”  Trista ran toward the stones and pelted the wall with her fists.  “Mother, come back!  You’ve left me alone with him!”  She peered back with frightened eyes.

Kabbara’s laughter resounded.  Lance ceased his struggle, the hold on his wrists too great.  

“Mother!”  Trista pounded the wall frantically.

“Trista, he’s still chained,” Kabbara’s voice echoed.  

Trista peered back, her azure eyes running along his frame.  A naughty grin spread across her face.  

“You’re such a nice girl,” Lance said.  “Let me go.  I’ll give you a beautiful pearl necklace from the royal treasury, and you shall be my favorite subject forever!”

Trista stood above him.  She ran her hand across his torso, causing him to tremble.  She placed both palms upon his chest, her pretty face bewildered.  She leant forward and bit him hard on the pectoral muscle, gasping like a hungry peasant over a corncob.  

“Ouch!  You little vampire!”  At the expression on her face, Lance had to laugh.  “Trista, you must release me!  This is sedition!”

The terrible pulling and burning again rocked Lance’s body.  After a dizzying blackness, he awoke to find himself sprawled out on a straw-strewn, dungeon floor.  The cubicle was windowless, though dim light flittered from a nearby corridor.  Somewhere, water dripped, and the air was chill and moldy.  

Lance kicked away a dead rat at his feet then stood to his feet, rubbing his lacerated wrists.  He shook the bars then pressed his hands against each wall.  “Okay, I’ll play your game,” he hissed though clenched teeth, somewhat less convicted of that end, then rammed his shoulder against the cinderblocks.  

Solid.  

Footsteps sounded from a nearby staircase, and a light source drew near.  Kabbara appeared, lantern in hand.  “Have you tasted enough of my power to realize I can keep you here as long as I wish until you grant me my little favor?”

Lanced paused, troubling.  “I suppose you could,” he replied, his jaw tight.

“Then you’ll grant me the favor?”

“What is it, again, you wanted?”  Lance asked, his hands fisted at his sides.

“A very tiny thing,” Kabbara said, pinching the air between two fingers.  “I only wish for you to kill the Frog King.”  

“The Frog King.”  Lance sighed.  “Madame, I’d prefer not to kill without a reason.”

Kabbara set her lantern on the floor then placed two lovely hands upon the bars.  “The Frog King is a wicked beast, a vile creature, the rogue of the Wormbog Woods.  You’d only do the whole world a favor to destroy such a menace.  Please help!”  

Lance studied her expression.  She didn’t seem evil, only desperate.  He glanced at the straw-strewn floor in contemplation.  He doubted the Frog King was as diabolical as Kabbara claimed, and he preferred not to risk provoking wars through a wanton act of violence, but his awareness that she’d never let him go if he refused her compelled him to her service.  He didn’t wish to remain her prisoner forever, never live to see his coronation, rot like the rat in the corner.  What other choice did he have but to acquiesce?

“And this king is merely a frog?” he asked with resignation.

“Yes!”  Kabbara’s lustrous eyes glimmered.  “He’s an ugly toad, a hideous rogue.  And you’ll kill him for me?”  Eager, hopeful, she nodded her head.

Lance mused.  Kabbara seemed too desperate, despite her obvious power.  Maybe he could win more in the bargain.  He brainstormed.  “Earlier you offered me a reward?”

“I’ll lengthen your reign by several decades.  I swear it!”

“That’s a long time, but not much of a boon.  Offer me more.”  He began pacing.

Kabbara bit her crimson lip.  “I offer you my daughter, Trista, for your bride.  Do you love another?”

“No, and I accept your offer.  Then how should I kill this frog king?”

“With your sword.”

Lance felt his fingers on the hilt.  Leather armor covered again his upper body.  “And how will you know when I’ve killed the Frog King?  What if I do and you refuse to believe me?”

“There’ll be blood on the blade.  I’ll know for sure.  You’ve no way to deceive me.”

“And you’ll take me directly to him?”  Lance asked, still marveling at Kabbara’s mysterious powers.

Kabbara nodded.  “Are you ready?”

Lance gripped the hilt of his blade.  “I am.”

“Wonderful!”  Kabbara threw back her head, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands together with relief.  Then she faced him again.  “But I must warn you.  Don’t fall prey to the Frog King’s deception.  He’ll try to charm you.  He may call you by your name as if he knows you and act like your friend, father, or mentor.  He may call you ‘my son.’  But you mustn’t be duped by his false graces.  They’re only a spoof to trick you.  He’s a demon that must be destroyed!  Don’t forget.”

Lance nodded.  “I am warned.  I won’t let him fool me.”  He stood with feet spread, sword in scabbard, shaking his fingers to loosen them for the kill.  

Then the familiar pain again rent Lance’s body.  When he opened his eyes, he rested on one knee at the end of a long corridor.  At the other side of room, the Frog King sat upon his throne.  

The Great Hall seemed similar to his father’s at the castle, but the colors differed.  The carpet was pond scum green, not red, and along the walls stained glass scenes of bogs, lily pads, and swampland decorated the windows, a quagmire scent permeating the air.  

The Frog King leaned back in his seat, his swollen head protruding above his amphibian form, his muck green robe parting over his burly chest.  In his murky hand he held a scepter.  His bug eyes bulged as he croaked up a bubble.  “Lance, my son, how fare you?” he asked, a pleased expression upon his prognathic face.  

Lance strode down the green carpet toward the throne.  He stopped before the Frog King and fell to one knee to kiss the monarch’s foot, middle toe of the left flipper, dank with swampy aroma.  The Frog King grinned at the homage.    

Lance’s heartbeat thudded, guilt tearing him in every direction.  At first, he couldn’t lift his gaze to face the monarch, his shame at his intentions racking him.  

“What is it, my boy?”  The Frog King croaked with paternalistic concern.  

Lance peered up.  “Your Majesty, I come to seek forgiveness.”

A troubled look clouded the Frog King’s face.  He tilted his head to the side, quizzically.  “Forgiveness?  What have you done?”

“Please,” Lance said, “Do you forgive me?  Just tell me that you do.  I’ll feel so much better.  Will you?”  

“I suppose I could, but what have you done?”  The frog orbs gazed down with kingly sentience.    

Lance grabbed the hilt of his sword.  “Please forgive me for what I’m about to do!”

Before the Frog King could think anew, Lance swept his blade from the scabbard and plunged it into his victim’s tender innards.  Gnashing his teeth, he wrenched the sword up then down, right then left, blood exploding from the injury.  

Lance withdrew his weapon and stepped back, breathing heavily with the exertion.  Crimson spurted from the Frog King’s wound, and his head lolled to the side.  Then something unexpected and horrifying happened:  The Frog King’s flesh began to change, transforming into the image of Lance’s father!

“Father?” Lance asked.  Dread filled him.  He rushed forward as the king fell from his throne and caught him in his arms.  There on the carpet, red again, but not on account of the blood, Lance cradled his father to his breast.  “Father!  Oh, Father!” he wept.  His trembling hands stroked his father’s bearded face and salt and pepper bob.

“Lance, why have you done this to me?  I loved you,” his father said then closed his eyes, breathing his last breath.

Lance felt the familiar agony.  He awakened to find himself kneeling before the sofa in Kabbara’s banquet hall, sobbing onto a burgundy cushion, his fingers and clothing covered in blood.    

“Good,” Kabbara said with a voice like stone.  “You’ve killed him.”  

Lance gazed up with horror.  Kabbara stood with vengeance in her eyes.  

“Why?” Lance asked with stupefied rage, his face soggy.  

Kabbara paced along the floor, her head ducked, her evening gown trailing behind her.  “And now you may have my daughter for your bride, and your reign will be extended.”

“Extended reign?  Not like that!  That’s not what I thought you meant.  You tricked me!” Lance pounded the sofa then rose to his feet.  “Why did you want me to kill my own father?  What did you have to gain by his death?”

“Revenge,” Kabbara said in a cracking voice, turning to face him, tears escaping her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

Lance felt like screaming, like tearing her apart, but he knew he couldn’t.  “What did my father do to you?  He was a good monarch.  The people loved him.”

“He did everything to wrong me!  He made me lose my soul!”  Kabbara’s hands knit into bloodless fists.  Agony marred her beautiful visage.  

“I don’t understand.  You owe me an explanation.”  He reached for his sword, even knowing it was useless, but it was gone.  

“My true name is Monisha.  I’m your father’s first and lawful wife,” she said with anguish, her face red and wet.

Lance’s mouth fell open.  The oracles’ prophecy crashed back into his recollections.  Could they possibly have spoken truly?  “For the first twelve years of my life, I didn’t know my father or either of his wives,” Lance said.  “I was raised in secret in a private villa in the country to hide the shame of his indiscretions.  But after his first two wives proved unable to bear him heirs, he presented me to the people as his son, illegitimate though I am.  I never met Monisha, though I heard she was very beautiful, with red hair, like you, and that she died in the forest, devoured by wolves.”

Kabbara scowled, wiping her cheeks.  “That story was a lie, concocted by your father to free himself to remarry.  I never died in the forest.  I was cast off, thrown away, left in the garbage because he couldn’t get me pregnant with an heir!”

Lance sat back down on the sofa, wilted.  “Go on.”

“I married the king when I was very young, Trista’s age.  I loved him at first, and he loved me, though I knew I hadn’t been his first lover and had heard rumors he’d fathered at least one child covertly.  Yet he was kind to me and never mistreated me.  Once an orphan of common birth, I certainly considered myself fortunate to have become queen.

“But after several years he began to mistrust me because I couldn’t bear him a son.  He grew cold and angry, and I began to fear he’d turn to another as I’d heard he’d done before.

“Then, after five years of marriage, it happened.  One night he dismissed me from the royal bedchamber, sending me to the back kitchen to sleep on a cot with the scullery maids.  All at once this woman I’d never met before or even heard of was wearing my gowns and jewels and sleeping on my satin sheets with my husband. . .” Kabbara’s voice wavered with emotion.  “That skinny-legged, blond-haired, buck-toothed bitch, Alba!”  She raked the air with her nails, veins popping in her neck.

“Indeed?” Lance said.  “Would it comfort you to know today Alba is a prematurely aged, blind, and bed-ridden cripple?”

Kabbara laughed.  “I was the very reason she contracted the plague that transformed her into little more than living death while everyone else in the castle remained well.  I achieved my revenge on her long ago, unlike your father, protected from my magic by a wizard’s charm.  But nothing can comfort me as concerns the loss of my soul.”

Lance leaned forward in his seat, gesturing his frustration.  “You speak nonsense!  How could my father have possibly done that to you?”

A forlorn expression flooded Kabbara’s face.  “It happened after I fled the castle.  One day, while I sweated over my newly acquired kitchen duties, my coarse hands covered in cuts from the potato knife, I recalled a book I’d read the first year of my marriage:  The Annals of the Kings.  It told our kingdom’s history, back to the middle of the Second Age.  I remembered reading with fascination how your father’s grandfather had beheaded his barren wife after leveling a false accusation of witchcraft upon her, so he could remarry another woman to bear him an heir, and how his great-great grandfather before him had enacted for the same reason a similar injustice:  had his barren wife burned at the stake under a false charge of adultery.  

“It occurred to me that something similar was bound to happen to me.  The same thing had already occurred several times in your family history, the truth of the matter openly relayed in the annals.  Your father could not remarry as long as I lived.  

“That night, dressed in a patched up peasant’s dress, I packed a hobo bag and ran off into the night, fearing for my life.”  Kabbara ducked her head.  “To look at me, nobody would have believed I’d once been queen.  Gnarled hair framed my dirty face.  I wore broken shoes, torn soles flapping, with only a thin shawl about my shoulders, though it was cold and rainy.  After wandering through the night, I arrived at a tavern on the outskirts of town.  I entered the building, trying not to attract attention, and sat at a back table, asking the barmaid for just a flasket of water.  I had no money, not a single copper piece.  I intended just to rest there on the bench, maybe even try to sleep, then pass on the next morning, where to, I didn’t know.  But a man sat down on the bench opposite to me.

“He’d neatly parted to the side his greasy hair, and a scar ran down his cheek.  He placed his ringed fingers on the table, twiddling his dirty nails.  He showed me his rotten teeth with a stinking grin.  ‘You a working girl?’ he asked, leaning across the table.  I didn’t know what to say.  He stared at me with those shrunken eyes as if searching for something.  Then his whole countenance seemed to darken.  ‘This ain’t the right place for a lady.  Allow me to escort you some place more proper,’ he told me.”  Kabbara’s head sunk.  “He offered me that ridiculous pick up line, and stupidly, I fell for it!”

“Why didn’t you assert that you were queen?” Lance asked from the sofa.

Kabbara peered over.  “That I was queen was still the problem.  The king had turned against me.  I’d fallen out of favor.  He wanted me dead, I supposed, and had chosen Alba for his new breeder.  The probability of history loomed over me, and I’d gone into hiding.  Even if he had recognized me in that shabby apparel, at that point, I’d have denied my true identity.  

“The man I’d met took me by carriage to the west side of town, bordering the forests.  He parked beside a rundown inn with a sign, reading, “The Red Dragon.”  Inside:  raucous laughter, clinking bottles, the song of the bard.  My heart raced with hope, though I trembled with fear.  ‘I own this place,’ he told me.  ‘I’ll give you room and board if you work for me.’  Naively, I agreed.  I honestly didn’t know what he had in mind.  I thought I’d just be peeling more potatoes.  But that night, in a room upstairs, he forced himself on me.”  

Kabbara raised a shaky hand to her mouth.  “All night long he subjected me to every possible form of abuse, all the while persistently asserting that nothing he was doing to me could compare to the horrors I’d endure if I left his lodgings for the streets.  Each night after that, for several weeks, he revisited me, keeping me locked upstairs in that room, bars covering the only window, overlooking the alleyway.  

“Then one night he told me I was ‘broken in.’  He told me I’d have to entertain more men to work off my bill for room and board that I’d acquired.  I felt helpless, hopeless, ruined.  I didn’t know what else do.  My door was padlocked and impenetrable, the window barred, and down in the alleyway, right below my window, a watchman always stood guard to stop patrons from sneaking off without paying.  

“One after another, men came to take their turn with me, from villains of the most unspeakable depravity to persons of surprisingly high esteem, who sometimes were worse than the villains!  All night long, night after night, month after month, I was forced to endure them.  Even after I became visibly pregnant with Trista, I had to continue to work for the whore-master.  

“I yearned to end my life but had no means to do so—no knife, no razor, no poison, no noose.  By that time, it was too late to admit I was queen.  Nobody would have believed me, and if they had, they’d have considered me a runaway adulteress.  Finally, I began my assault upon the bars at the window.  I had to find some way to escape.  After several weeks, I managed to dislodge one from its station, but by that time in my pregnancy, I was too big to squeeze through.  The second bar was easier to dislodge, luckily for me.  I kept them in their place as if they were secure, biding my time, and nobody knew any differently.

“One morning, while I leant my head against the window, about ready to go to bed for the day, I overheard a conversation below me.  Two men were exchanging castle gossip, and one said the king had taken a new bride.  I gripped the bars, frantically listening.  Yes, one of them said, the king’s first wife, Monisha, me, had been found dead in the woods, ravaged by wolves.  How shocked and dismayed I was to hear of my husband’s bigamous remarriage and my own alleged death.  I could only wish that part of the gossip were true.”

“How did you finally escape?” Lance asked.

“One night the patrons of the tavern grew unusually rowdy.  The commotion echoed up from the first floor like a stampede of trolls.  I thought they’d tear down the inn the ruckus was so great.  Men and women were screaming and swearing; glass was shattering, wood splintering.  I looked out the window, and the guard had gone inside.  The alley was dark, the streetlight broken.

“My heart racing, I tied a dirty sheet from my bed to a secure bar in the window and climbed out into the cool night air, even with my impossible belly.  There, hanging from the sill, I lost my grip and fell to the broken glass-strewn cobblestone.  I’m amazed I sustained my pregnancy beyond that fall, but I did.  No sooner had I risen to my feet than I raced away, waddling into the forest, thanking the eternal stars that I was free at last as sounds of the tavern faded away behind me.”

Kabbara laughed weakly.  “I wore the most ridiculous pink slippers, completely inappropriate for running through woods, even with a woman who wasn’t so pregnant.  I stopped by a fallen log and wacked off the high heels then kept going.  Not knowing what direction I was headed, my back aching and my face and body scratched from stray branches whipping across me as I scuttled, I pressed deeper and deeper into the forest.  At last, I sank down onto a pile of dry leaves by a burbling brook and passed out from exhaustion.

“During the last weeks of my pregnancy, I lived alone in the woods.  It was late autumn and very cold, but I knew it would only grow colder.  I survived by scavenging, digging up roots with my bare fingers.  I was always hungry, always shivering.  I clawed into a bank of earth to fashion a sod house dugout to shield me from the chill, but my efforts were pretty pathetic.  

“That’s how the old woman found me:  freezing, starving, filthy, ragged, pregnant, alone in the woods, a wretched whore ready for death, and ravenous for it.  I lay on the shore of Mogg Lake, its edges crusted with winter’s first ice, overlooking the eerie island with its cryptic ruins.  ‘Come, my dear,’ the old woman crooned through her toothless mouth, ‘why so dreary?’  I gazed up at her.  She wore dirty rags; her ratty head of sparse, gray hair hooded; her nose a ghastly appendage.  ‘I’ll help you!’ she croaked in her witchy voice. Believe it or not, I was glad to see her.  She hadn’t come to abuse me.  ‘Yes,’ I cried.  ‘Help me!’

“The old woman’s glaucoma eyes gleamed.  ‘I’ll give you everything,’ she rasped, ‘delicious food, warm shelter, every imaginable comfort, powers beyond your wildest reckoning, if only you’ll part with your soul.’”  

Kabbara’s hand fisted as if she could hardly continue.  “‘My soul?’ I asked.  ‘Yes, dear, your soul.  Just sign your name in my book of death!’  She drew forth the volume from the folds of her rags.  

“I told her I didn’t want to forfeit my soul.  I begged her to help me without such a terrible price, but she wouldn’t listen.  ‘Your soul!’ was her only answer, her glaucoma eyes rabidly eager.

“Finally, I relented.  I let her prick my finger then signed my name in blood in her book of death.  But immediately, I regretted it.  I could feel something wonderful depart my being, something indescribable I didn’t know I possessed, something too precious for words.  It floated up and out of me, leaving behind just a pang of sadness.  Believe it or not, I could see it sprinkle up like stardust into the chill night air then die away, leaving me with just my flesh.  The old woman laughed—a horrible laugh I’ll never forget.  She didn’t even look like an old woman anymore, just a mass of black charcoal with glowing red eyes and a forked tongue.  It licked the side of my face then vanished.”

Kabbara’s countenance had paled, her mouth a gaping hole.  “Next thing I knew, I was standing in this room in the remains of this old outpost, a warm fire in the hearth, a banquet spread on the table:  basted turkey, roasted wild boar, a whole cornucopia of buttered vegetables, fine cheeses, sweet wine, breads and pastries.  I tore into the food, and for a while, forgot my troubles.  

“Just days after giving birth to Trista, I realized I’d acquired unusual powers, the cheap prize of the priceless treasure I’d bartered.  Though I’ve lived here in luxury ever since, always safe, always warm, always fed, I’m a hollow woman whose innermost being has been consumed by Hell, forever haunted by the knowledge of my own damnation, every comfort at my fingertips a superficial boon.  

“That’s why I had to avenge myself on your father,” Kabbara said, turning back to Lance, her dark eyes shimmering.  “Though I freely sold my soul to that horrible, old hag—it’s true—I’d never have come to such desperation if he hadn’t first cast me off like an old shoe.  Was it my fault I couldn’t bear him an heir?  Had I cheated him deliberately?  No.  Yet he blamed me, scorned me, banished me like a common criminal.  In the aftermath of his rejection, I was tempted beyond what I could bear, and that’s why I lost it.  I lost my soul because of him, and I can never get it back, and I’ll never forgive him, nor should I!”  Kabbara covered her face with her hands.  

Lance gazed at her with pity.  Her story was horrifying, and he couldn’t deny it.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “My father wasn’t perfect.”

“I knew you were the only one he’d trust alone with him armed, so I lured you to me in your dreams, provoking your obsession with this island.  And now you’ll return to the castle and reign in your father’s stead with Trista as your queen?”  

“How can I?” Lance said, gazing at the shadows flittering from the fireplace.  “The curse of patricide is upon me.  I’ve killed my own father.  What if I’m charged with his murder?”

“You won’t be.  He’ll be found without visible injury.  It’ll appear as if his heart failed him.  Look down.”  Kabbara nodded.

Lance lowered his gaze.  No trace of blood remained on him, his hands, his body, or his clothing.  

Another flash of pain. . .  Lance stood on the beach of the island.  The cool night air gusted about him.  His sword rested in its scabbard at his belt, and the lacerations on his wrists had disappeared.  He turned toward the ruins.  Kabbara stood beside Trista, gazing into her daughter’s beautiful face, her hands upon her shoulders, whispering private instruction to her.  Trista nodded in agreement, the hood of her blue velvet cloak wagging with the wind against her back.  Her mother bent down and kissed her forehead, sealing their goodbye.  Trista left her mother’s side and walked towards Lance, waiting by the boat.  

Lance scooted the canoe into the water.  He took Trista’s hand, about to help her into the vessel, when Kabbara called to him.  “Lance!”

He turned.  Wind whooshed through Kabbara’s red hair, sparkling in the moonlight.  “Heed my warning.  If you ever betray my daughter, if you ever wrong her like your father wronged me, I’ll destroy you.  I have the power.  I killed your father, and I can kill you too.”

Lance placed his arm around Trista.  “Don’t fear for your daughter, milady.  I won’t make the same mistake my father made.  Recognizing a mistake as such, only a fool would proceed to commit it.”  

“Very good, Lance.  Very good,” Kabbara said then turned and disappeared into the mist.

“Mother!” Trista whimpered, reaching out her hand.  

“It’s okay, Love,” Lance said.  “Your mother approves of us, and you shall be queen!  Come.”  He helped her into the boat, taking care to keep her garments dry.  He pushed the vessel into the water then stepped aboard and took a seat.  He grasped the oars and paddled backwards, studying the shoreline as the canoe glided into the haze.  

The old woman appeared, standing on the shoreline in the swirling fog.  She grinned, leaning against her staff, her glaucoma eyes gleaming.  “Come back!” she said in a crusty voice.  “I won’t bite you!”  She reached her knotted fingers into her filthy rags and extracted the old volume.  “There’s plenty of room in my book for both of you.  I’ll give you everything!”  

Lance clenched his teeth and rowed only faster away.  Trista didn’t even appear to notice the old hag as they slipped across the glassy lake and escaped into the mist.

--Grand Prize Winner, 2009 Bards & Sages Writing Contest; previously published in “Bardic Tales and Sage Advice Vol. 2” and “The Frog King,” available at Amazon:  www.amazon.com/A.-Cates/e/B006…