Free Hope by Emma South Page B

you go you will derange the minds of all the men around you.  You will haunt their dreams at night and fill their thoughts in the day.  They will become unable to resist their lust for you and will come unto you, to their downfall.  This curse is upon you until you fall pregnant to a man who loves, rather than lusts after, you, though you now be infertile.  Go forth and spread misery wherever you tread.”
    I rose to my feet in a daze and walked to the stairs.  I felt like I climbed upwards for years and years.  When I reached the door at the top of the stairs and opened it I expected to see Sylvester’s mansion but the door opened into a forest.  How that was possible I do not know, there were no turns or different stairs to take.  I stepped off the rock, on to the grass and when I looked behind me the door and stairs were gone.  I was naked, lost and alone.  Thus began my first day of forever.
    I didn’t consent to my curse with full knowledge of exactly what was going to happen to me but even after centuries I couldn’t forget the hopelessness that I lived my first twenty odd years in and I knew I had been ready to let Sylvester do anything for a chance to escape what I thought my fate was.  I consented to fulfilling his need, even though I didn’t know what it was when I gave that permission.  If I knew then what I knew now…
    I was naïve at first.  I thought my simple good looks and pleasant nature would allow me to, one day, find love.  As for being infertile, well, I thought accidents could still happen.  I was so very wrong.  Everywhere I went I spread chaos through the population.  One man, two men, three men, entire villages had their way with me whether I wanted them or not.  They couldn’t stop themselves and I couldn’t stop them either.
    I was hunted as a demon, forever chased.  Many wanted to kill me but if any men got too close, they wanted to lay with me instead and for a precious few minutes or hours afterwards they were putty in my hands so I was always able to escape.  I was lucky with a few stray arrows shot at me from a distance though.
    Wallowing in depression and self-loathing I began to hate people. Men, women, everybody and, I am ashamed to say, I started to take a sick pleasure in the anarchy I spread.  My life was destroyed, so why shouldn’t theirs be?  On the small scale I ruined relationships, on the large scale I brought down entire kingdoms and toppled religions.  I was becoming corrupted by the power, cursed though it was.
    It took centuries, but eventually people changed and it sparked a revolution in my own way of thinking.  After countless generations of people being stuck in the same mind-set a new paradigm spread almost overnight from my perspective.  Concepts about equality of race and equality of gender sprouted and took hold, spreading like ripples around the world.
    At the same time I began to see the pain I had brought, and continued to bring, wherever I went.  I walked for weeks until I found a little clearing in the middle of a huge forest far away from anybody.  I built a little house and thought I could stay until the end of days without causing any more hurt.  I was wrong again.
    Years went by in my happy delusion before a starving man arrived at my doorstep.  After ravaging me he revealed that hundreds, maybe thousands, of men had died or gone missing in my forest over the past few years.  The men who were found were said to have talked gibberish about looking for something or someone and soon returned to the forest if they weren’t locked up far away.  He said it was like a ‘bermuda triangle’ for men.  With a little experimentation it became clear that my allure became stronger and more far reaching the longer I went without sex.
    There was no escape from it, the curse was all encompassing.  I couldn’t hide and it turned out that when overcome with lust there were no men who had the restraint to try to get to know me and fall in