Fiction Friday: Fruit of Knowledge, Seed of Truth, by Andrea Howe

Fruit of Knowledge, Seed of Truth
by Andrea Howe

They claimed she tried to kill me, and called it poison. I know better.

That is how it is in tales; a stepmother is always evil, a Queen all the more so, cruel and jealous. Truth be told, I know that she let me learn things from her in secret while we moved through the confines of the story that eternally bound us. I was the very picture of innocence, but while attentions were elsewhere, I crept to the secret room where she cast her spells and stirred her potions – and she knew I watched, leaving the door open for me. There was little enough power in our world for a woman, even a princess. Even a sorceress queen.

I watched as she created tinctures and salves to make her skin soft and beautiful, and too, to make it tingle until she sighed and squirmed. I heard how she called upon creatures of otherworld to tend to her when my father the king found too much else to occupy his royal time.

The huntsman she sent into the wood with me was one of her trusted own; he never realized the charm she worked upon him to soften his heart, and free me to the world outside the confines of the castle. I found the seven little men, slight and twisted from their stooping in the mine, and they were kind to me. It was with them I stayed, and with them I waited, until she could come to me in disguise, and through the prescribed litany of supposed falsehood, give to me the apple that she’d infused.

It made me sleep, and in that thrall, they came to me. The creatures of the otherworld that so enjoyed her pleasures without chance of an accidental child were more than happy to offer me the same.

The one that came first returned the most often; so little was solid to him; eyes that burned like a sunset, and a smile like the crescent moon that would follow as, shifted into this dreamworld between the otherworld and my own, insubstantial hands slid over me and awakened my dreamflesh. I wonder if perhaps, as the seven little men mourned my fallen form, it did not grow flushed. I am told that I was the picture of health.

That one part of him was wonderfully solid, though; I was indoctrinated to the sweet joys of coupling without pain. Floating in a world without substance, he pressed to me, enfolded me with the entirety of himself, and slid unhampered between my thighs. I took him in, quite solid there, ceaseless and urgent. I took him, and he took me without reservation. That I was virgin mattered not. That I was princess mattered not.

I was woman. That mattered, and we twined, him filling and awakening me to new knowledge in my ensorcelled sleep, teaching me the thousand joys of touch, of taste, even of teeth upon flesh that could not be marked. He was the first to bring me, guiding me through whimpering and shudders to the point of screaming like a wildwoman, and them pushing me further; betimes the touch of others joined him upon me, and within me.

Perhaps my ruby lips were parted for the ghosts of the moans that soughed from me; perhaps, beneath my carefully arranged gown, there was a slow lovetrickle in the dark and hidden nest of my innocent womanhood.

It is for the best that they thought me nearly dead, ensconced me in glass upon a bier, and guarded me without inspection. How many times did the glass fog from my breath? How many times did my form quiver, unnoticed, and subside? Hours, and days, I reveled in the unbridled carnality that should never have been allowed me, until I was awakened rudely; the suction of my prince’s kiss ripped that delicious bit of apple from my throat, and I lost the taste of the otherhim’s shaft between my lips along with it.

Awoke, I, to a gaze desirous and worshipful; I had not met this man, yet he swept me from my bier, bidding me wave farewell to the little men who had watched over me, and I sat upon his lap, borne toward a new castle. I gazed into his eyes, still tasting apple, cheeks flushed with the remembrance of what he’d stolen me from, and shifted slowly with the rhythmic bounce and sway of his horse. It was subtle; after all, I am Princess, and not meant to know the effect my form has upon a man. But I knew it, and felt how he stiffened, and then tensed, trying not to stiffen.

He could not hide the glint of burning sunset buried deep in his eyes, and while he soothed me and wished vengeance upon my stepmother, I shook my head and smiled. Soon enough I too would become Queen, and he the king in my bed – but I would know how to keep him there. For my wedding gift, from my father’s kingdom, came the seedling of an apple tree, and I planted it in my private garden.

They claimed she tried to kill me, and called it poison. I know better.

–
There is no Dana. There is also no Zuul. But there is Andrea Howe! And you can find her as BlissMorgan on Twitter.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 11:59 am and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.