Free PRINCESS BEAST by Pamela Ditchoff

the shield of water that covers and hides the living root from which I grew.  Then he swept me onto the horse, and I reached my arms around him, wanting to lay my cheek against his strong back and ride with him forever, but a force repelled me, burned my face and fingers.   He drew a golden censer from his robe and the horse flew on the winds to the bog.  We flew in circles above the water while Michael held high a cross, chanted mass, and sang a hymn.  Reeds shot forth blossoms and the dark waters became covered by a tapestry of water lilies.  In the center lay a sleeping woman, young and beautiful. I thought I was seeing my own reflection, but it was . . ."
    "Your real and true mother," Rune whispers.
    "Michael lifted the woman onto his horse and flew us both to shore.  When we touched ground, a cock crowed, and Michael and the horse disappeared into mist.  I watched his image fade and I thought surely my mouth will stop breathing, my heart will stop beating.  Then the woman said:
Is this my own image I see reflected in the deep waters? You must be my daughter, flower of my heart! 
She embraced me and I knew for certain that she was my real and true mother."  Helga's reaches into the water, picks up a lily, kisses it, and her aura turns golden.
    “This is a bit too precious for me to stand,” Elora smirks, “better check on the real and true mother."
    Hearing Rune's words speak from the mirror, Beauty stops and collapses in a patch of cotton grass.  She's been running for ten hours, without food, without water.
Her real and true mother--could Rune possibly think she's not my daughter?  When I catch up with her, I'm going to make her wish I wasn't!   After I hug her till my arms fall off.
    Her ears twitch with the sound of water running over rocks.  She follows the sound to a nearby stream, plunges her enormous head beneath the surface and inhales three gallons of icy cold water, as well as four trout.  She shakes her head vigorously and again lifts the mirror to her face.  Helga is now seated beside Rune, her aura grows brighter and she speaks in a rush.
     
    * * *
     
    “I have got to stop here—how could I have forgotten the most cloying sex story ever told, more precious than babies growing under cabbage leaves or flea-infested storks dropping a diapered bundle on the doorstep.” Elora says. “Only in Andersen Land can sex be turned into flowers and birds and God, well maybe in a nunnery. Elora snaps her figures and shape-shifts into Helga’s mother, the Egyptian princess, from her golden snake headband to her leather jeweled sandals. “In a swanskin I came here and I shed it by the dark lake, then I sank down into the deep mire of the bog and it closed around me,” Elora wraps her arms around her body and Croesus lays at her feet.
    “Something drew me down and down, I felt a pressure on my eyes, and I slept and dreamed I was back in Egypt. I was in a stone chamber and in front of me stood the trunk of an alder tree. I looked closely at the cracks in the bark and they became the hieroglyphic writing on sarcophagus of royalty. As I stared, it opened and out stepped a mummy black as pitch, glittery like the black slugs that creep in the forest.”
    Croesus raises his hackles and growls as Elora shifts again into a black mummy, bandages dangling like old wallpaper.
    “Was it a mummy or the Bog King?” Elora asks in the sweet voice of the Egyptian princess. “He flung his arms around me and I felt I would die, but life did not desert me. I felt a warmth in my chest,” Elora says, switching back to the princess form, and places her hands on her breasts. Croesus jumps to his feet and wags his tail.
    “The king was gone and a little bird was singing and flapping its wings,” Elora says, lowering her hands to make bird wings over her mound of Venus. “Up up it flew toward the dark ceiling, a long green string connecting the bird to me, and it sang Freedom! Sunshine! A longing for the father of