Hart's Hope

4

How the Flower Princess lost her body, her husband, and her freedom all in an hour on her wedding day.

The Royal Progress

She came to the mouth of Burring with her father's fleet of tall ships. Palicrovol had a thousand singers meet her at the port. So perfect was their singing that the deafest sailor on the farthest ship heard all the words.

She was rowed up the river on the only galley that her father ever built, but the oarsmen were free, not slaves, and all of them wore robes of flowers. Every day of the voyage, a hundred women sat below deck, winding fresh flowers into new robes, so that every day the robes were new. And when she reached the great city Inwit, a thousand bags of flowers were released upstream, and all of Burring, from shore to shore, was a pond of petals for the coming of the Flower Princess.

Palicrovol himself met her at King's Gate, with the white-robed priests of God surrounding him, and white-robed virgins from the nunnery led the Flower Princess from her father's ship. Palicrovol knelt before her, and the carriage that met her began the Dance of Descent.

The Dance ended in the palace, in the Chamber of Answers, a room not opened for a century because it was too perfect to be used. Ivory and alabaster, amber and jade, marble and obsidian were the walls and floor and ceiling of the Chamber of Answers, and there the Flower Princess chose to wear her ring on the middle finger of the left hand, but high on the finger, to promise fecundity and faithfulness; and lo, of all miracles, Palicrovol also wore his ring on the middle finger of his right hand, high on the finger, to promise worship and unwavering loyalty. The watching hundreds cheered.

And then an imperious woman walked out onto the floor, leading a grotesque black dwarf on a golden chain, and Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin turned to face the woman, and the wedding was broken at that moment.

The User Used

"I see," said the strange woman.

The dwarf piped up in a strange little song.

Ugly Bugly, Mercy Me,

You are not as fair as she.

Palicrovol spoke from behind the Flower Princess. "Who are you? How did you get into the palace?" "Who am I, Urubugala?" asked the strange woman.

"Sleeve," said Palicrovol. "Came home to Sleeve."

"Do you know me, Palicrovol?" asked the strange woman.

"Asineth," he whispered.

"If you call me by that name, you do not know me yet," she said. Then she turned to the Flower Princess. "So you are what he loves best in all the world. I can see that you are beautiful."

Again the dwarf chanted in his strange voice.

Beauty is fair, Beauty is fair,

But Beauty chose the wrong body to wear.

"I can see that you are beautiful," said the stranger, "and so it is only fitting that Beauty should have that face and form."

Enziquelvinisensee saw the woman change before her eyes, into a face that she knew and did not know. Knew because it was her own face. Did not know because it was not mirrored, as the Flower Princess had always seen it, but exactly as others had seen it. "This is what others have seen in me," she whispered.

"Do you worship?" asked Beauty. "Am I not perfect, Flower Princess?"

But Enziquelvinisensee Evelvinin had taken a vow to tell only the truth, and she had none of her women beside her to lie for her, and so she destroyed herself by saying, "No, Lady. For you have filled my eyes with hate and triumph, and I have never felt such things in all my life."

Beauty's perfect nostrils flared a bit with rage, and then she smiled and said, "That is because you have lacked the proper teachers. So let me teach you, Flower Princess, as I was taught."

The Flower Princess did not feel a change, but she saw the watching people look at her and gasp and turn away. She was afraid of what had been done to her, and spun on her toes to face her husband, gracious Palicrovol, who loved her. But Palicrovol, too, was revolted at what he saw, and stepped back from her. It was only a moment, and then he came to her again, and held her close to him, but in that moment Enziquelvinisensee Evelvinin knew the truth: Palicrovol thought of her beauty as part of herself, just as everyone else did; he did not know her without her face. Yet she was comforted that he still embraced her, and that he spoke with courage against Beauty.

"Did you think I could be so easily deceived, Asineth?" he asked. "You may startle me, but my heart belongs to another heart, not to a face."

Beauty only smiled again. Suddenly the Flower Princess felt Palicrovol take her brutally by the waist and throw her from him onto the floor. She looked up at him in horror, and saw the anguish of his face as he cried out to her, "It wasn't I!" Then, though he tried to speak, he fell mute, but the Flower Princess had heard enough to understand. It was Beauty, it was Asineth who had used his arms to hurl her away.

So Palicrovol's hands cut the clothing from Beauty's body, which was the body of the Flower Princess. And Palicrovol, act for act, ravished her as he had ravished Asineth two years before. Only this time he did not disdain her attempt at seductiveness. Now when the body of the Flower Princess moved so subtly for him, he cried out with the pleasure of it. Now when his arms lifted his body from her, he moaned in protest. Let it not be over, cried his flesh. Let it not finish. And as long as he looked at her naked before him, as long as he remembered the pleasure that her body and her power had given him, his body again and again convulsed in pleasure; even after his seed was spent, even after the pleasure had turned to agony, he writhed against the impossibility of having her, the memory of having her, the longing to have her forever.

"Kill her!" he cried, but his guards had long since fled.

"Help me," he whispered to Urubugala, but the dwarf only said a little rhyme:

In the morning

Heed no warning.

In the night,

No respite.

"Weasel," said Queen Beauty, "you know how I was served. Tell me—is my vengeance just?"

"You were wronged," said the Flower Princess.

"Is my vengeance just?"

"You are just to take vengeance."

"But is my vengeance just?" Beauty smiled like the blessing of a saint.

"Only if you avenge yourself on those who harmed you, and only if your vengeance is equal to the wrong done you."

"Come now, I heard I could count on Weasel Sootmouth to tell the truth. I ask you a fourth time—am I just?" "No," said the Flower Princess.

"I'm the one who wronged you," Palicrovol said. "Take your vengeance on me."

"But don't you see, Palicrovol, that it is part of my vengeance on you, that you know your woman and your friends suffer unjustly for your sake?"

Palicrovol bowed his head in helplessness.

"Look at me, Palicrovol," said Beauty.

Against his will he looked up and convulsed again in passion for her.

"Here is my vengeance. I will not kill you, Palicrovol. I despise you even more than you despised me when I was weak. You may keep your army—as many as you want. Fill the world with your armies and bring them against me—I will vanquish them with a thought. You may keep your Antler Crown—I need no crown to rule here. You may govern all of Burland outside this city—I can overrule you any time I please. You will send me tribute, but not so much that it will harm the people—I do not have my father's greed. I will not undo your laws or your works. This city will still be called Inwit. The new temple you are building to your God may continue to rise. All the worship they give your God will please me, for I also rule God. I will leave you everything except for this: you will never enter this city again while I am alive, and you will never be alone again while I am alive, and you will never know a moment of peace again while I am alive. And Palicrovol—I will live forever."

Urubugala somersaulted and sprawled on the floor between them. "There are limits on the life of a daughter and a wife!" he cried.

"I know that," Beauty said. "But when my power wanes, I will simply have another child. Next time, I think, a twelvemonth child. Find some wizards, Palicrovol. Have them study that in their books. She laughed then, and compelled Palicrovol to gaze upon her, throwing him into paroxysms of rapture until he sprawled on the floor, exhausted and retching.

As she laughed, a powerful-looking man strode boldly into the hall, carrying a sword and wearing heavy armor, though the helmet was cast away.

"Zymas, run!" cried Palicrovol.

"Oh, stay, Zymas," said Beauty. "Today would not have been complete without you."

Zymas did not pause to listen to either of them, just kept moving relentlessly toward Beauty, his sword rising above his head. He was nearly upon her, and they all knew a moment's hope that perhaps Zymas's direct action was the antidote to this sudden sickness that had come upon the world. But no. Suddenly his hair turned steel grey, his face went old and wrinkled, the sword dropped from gnarled, arthritic fingers, and he staggered feebly under the weight of the armor.

"Zymas, so bold, so brave, is dead," said Beauty. "In his place is the Captain of my palace guard. Craven, I call him. Craven, we all call him. Because he was such a coward that he was afraid of a woman."

Outside the city waited a few of his bravest men, who dressed his naked body and carried him away. A nun was there, and she prophesied that the man who killed Beauty would enter through that same gate. Because of that, Beauty had the gate sealed up, never to be used again.

Within a remarkably short time, the city of Inwit was back to normal and better than normal. All the laws of Palicrovol remained in force, and all the freedoms he had granted remained intact. Beauty ruled gently enough in her city that the people did not mind the change of rulers. And her court became a dazzling place, which the kings of other nations loved to visit. They soon enough learned not to visit Palicrovol's court themselves, for they found that if they gave Palicrovol the honor due him as King of Burland, they would develop the most uncomfortable infections. So they had to send ambassadors, who soon learned to revile Palicrovol whenever they spoke to him, in order to avoid the plagues that otherwise came upon them.

Beauty ruled in Inwit, and the exile of Palicrovol had begun. Yet as the years passed, she knew that her vengeance was empty and incomplete. For with all her abuse, she did not change you, and she did not change your three captive friends. Our flesh she could alter, our lives she could fill with misery and shame, but we were still ourselves, and short of killing us she could not make us other than what we were. We remained always beyond her reach, even though she had us always within her grasp.