THE BUTTERFLY AND THE PRINCESS: An Indonesian Folktale by Amanda Bergloff

She sang a song of love so sweet, the butterflies around her stopped to listen...

Long ago, in a palace that stood next to a great river, there lived a beautiful young princess named Kembang Melati. With the warm summer sun shining down on her, she sat on the bank of the river weaving her wedding gown. While she worked, she sang a song of love so sweet, that the butterflies around her stopped to listen, to the delight of the princess.

Not only did Princess Kembang Melati’s song call to the butterflies, but also to Rajah Banjir...the Monarch of the Rains. His great palace, that was all the colors of the rainbow, stood on the other side of the great river.

Rajah Banjir felt his heart stir when he heard the princess’ song, and when he went to the window of his rainbow-colored palace, he saw the beautiful girl in the summer sun and instantly fell in love with her.

He hoped that she would raise her head and gaze upon him, but she was so intent on her weaving and singing that she never did. With a heavy heart, Rajah Banjir realized that she would not return his love if she did not even look at him, so he wept. Since he was the Monarch of the Rains, the tears he shed in longing for the princess caused the waters in the great river separating them to rise.

As the waters rose higher and higher, Sarinah, the old nurse that had cared for the princess since birth said, “We must go inside now princess, before we are swept down the great river by the rising waters,”

The princess agreed, so they left the bank for the safety of the palace.

Rajah Banjir was even more distraught when he could no longer see the princess weaving by the water’s edge, so he devised a plan. He knew that the princess loved butterflies so he changed himself into a butterfly that was the golden color of the sun overhead. He fluttered across the great river and heard Princess Kembang Melati’s song coming from a window in her palace. He was drawn to it and flitted back and forth by the window. The princess, being dazzled by the enchanted golden butterfly outside, held out her hand for it to land on.

“Oh beautiful butterfly,” she said. “You are the color of the sun on a cloudless summer’s day.”

Rajah Banjir was overjoyed that he pleased the princess and gently settled in the princess’ palm. He kissed her fingertips with his butterfly lips which made her smile. Then, the golden butterfly fluttered up to her cheek and whispered into her ear, “Dearest Princess Kembang Melati, your bridegroom will soon appear, so be quick and weave your wedding dress.”

The princess only heard the word “bridegroom” before the golden butterfly flew off through the window and asked, “Where is my bridegroom?”

Now the old nurse, Sarinah, had a selfish and wicked son named Nasiman who happened to be outside Princess Kembang Melati’s window. Nasiman overheard her when she asked where her bridegroom was. He thought that he would pass himself off as the bridegroom she was looking for, so he went to his mother and asked for her help.

“Go tell her that I am her bridegroom, and I have come to claim her,” he said to his old mother.

Sarinah did not want to help him for she knew her son to be selfish and cruel. “You can never marry Princess Kembang Melati, my son, for you are not of noble birth,” she told him, but he insisted. The old nurse was frightened of him and his wickedness and thought he would harm her, so she went to the princess and told her that her bridegroom had now arrived.

The princess made herself ready to meet him, but the golden butterfly returned through her window and whispered in her ear, “The one waiting for you is not your true bridegroom. Do not marry him! He is Nasiman, the son of your old nurse. Wait for your true bridegroom to come to you, as this one is false.”

Princess Kembang Melati watched her golden butterfly flutter out of the window and turned to her nurse. “I must wait until my true bridegroom comes to claim me, Sarinah, so I will not marry today.”

The old nurse trembled for she was afraid of what her wicked son would do. “Please...please marry him now, princess, or we will both come to harm,” she begged.

Princess Kembang Melati did not want any harm to come to them, but she thought of what her dear golden butterfly had said to her and knew she must wait for her real bridegroom.

“Go tell Nasiman that he shall wait seven days for me to contemplate marriage to him, and tell him to stay on the bank of the great river until I send him my answer.”

The nurse obeyed and told her son, who agreed, and went to wait at the river’s edge with seven days of food and drink until the princess made her decision.

That same day, the golden butterfly returned to his human form as Rajah Banjir, the Monarch of the Rains, and wrote Princess Kembang Melati a letter of love from his rainbow-colored palace. He sent for his fastest and best messenger, the white crow, to deliver the letter, along with a small chest full of gold and jewelry. The Monarch of the Rains placed the letter in the crow’s claws and bound the chest to her back and bade her take both to the princess without delay. The white crow promised to fly as fast as she could to deliver the Monarch’s message.

As the white crow flew over the great river, she spied Nasiman sitting on the bank eating fish which was the crow’s favorite food. She circled him and called out, “Could you kindly spare some fish? I am so very hungry as I have flown fast carrying this letter and chest to deliver to the Princess Kembang Melati from the Monarch of the Rains.”

Nasiman never wanted to share anything, but he did not want the princess to receive anything from the Monarch of the Rains. He let the crow land by him and told her to take the chest off her back and put down the letter so she could eat the delicious fish he offered to her.

The white crow did as she was told and was soon so busy eating that she didn’t notice Nasiman had opened the chest and took the gold and jewelry out and replaced it with spiders and scorpions. While the crow continued eating, he also quickly took the letter full of loving thoughts from the Monarch of Rains to the Princess Kembang Melati to his mother and ordered her to change it so that it was full of hateful thoughts instead.

When the white crow had greedily finished all the fish, she had no idea the chest and letter she carried had been altered. When she delivered them to the princess, the princess was shocked.

“My true bridegroom has sent this horrid letter, filled with hateful thoughts and a chest full of spiders and scorpions!” she cried as she threw both out the window into the river in a rage. “My golden butterfly lied to me, and now I shall not marry anyone!” The princess wept and ordered her nurse to take away her wedding dress and weaving stool as she would never work on it again

When the Monarch of the Rains, in his guise as the butterfly, flitted into Princess Kembang Melati’s window and whispered in her ear, “Why, o beautiful princess, are you not wearing the gold and jewelry that your bridegroom sent with the white crow?” she waved away the butterfly with her hand. Rajah Banjir was puzzled by this and said, “You will meet your true bridegroom in the morning. He will take you to his palace where the summer sun transforms it into the colors of the rainbow, so be quick in finishing your wedding gown.

The princess frowned and angrily swatted at the butterly. “I once thought you dear, golden butterfly, but you have lied to me. You must leave and never return!”

Upon hearing this, the Monarch of the Rains became infuriated and caused the great river to flood that night, causing the palace of Princess Kembang Melati to float away.

The princess’ drifting palace neared the bank on the other side of the great river, where Rajah Banjir angrily watched the flood. He turned his head away when she cried out to him, asking for help, but Sarinah, the nurse, knew the trickery she and her son Nasiman had played, which caused the flood and confessed.

“Oh great Monarch of the Rains,” the old nurse called out. “Please save the princess, as it was I who changed the words in your letter of love to her to hateful ones, and it was my son, Nasiman, who took the gold and jewelry from the chest and replaced them with spiders and scorpions, while your white crow messenger was eating fish.”

At that, Rajah Banjir understood why the princess had acted the way she did and immediately forgave her and caused the rising waters to stop. He saved the princess and all those in the palace, but left Sarinah and her wicked son to be covered by the flood waters, never to be heard from again.

The Monarch of the Rains also punished the white crow for her greediness in eating fish and allowing Nasiman to trick the princess. He turned the white crow’s feathers black and took away her ability to talk. After that day, the crow could only say, “Kaw...kaw!”

Then Rajah Banjir gently took Princess Kembang Melati’s hand and told her how he had fallen in love with her the first time he heard her sing and saw her weaving her wedding gown in the summer sun. He explained that it was he who had changed into the golden butterfly to be near her and tell her that her true bridegroom would come for her.

The princess looked into the eyes of Rajah Banjir and recognized her dear golden butterfly. She understood that he was indeed her true bridegroom, so she finished weaving her wedding dress.

The two were soon married, and the Monarch of the Rains and the Princess Kembang Melati lived happily until the end of their days in the rainbow-colored palace on the banks of the great river.

Amanda Bergloff writes modern fairy tales, folktales, and speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in various anthologies, including Frozen Fairy Tales, After the Happily Ever After, and Uncommon Pet Tales.

Follow her on Twitter @AmandaBergloff

Check out her Amazon Author page HERE

Cover Layout: Amanda Bergloff

LADYBUG CAKE by Loie Dunn

I am captured by shimmering violet and cerulean and topaz rose petals falling all around me...

Never eat a ladybug cake.

Even if it is dripping in delectable icing that hints of lavender and sunshine. Don’t do it. I promise you, it will save you heaps of embarrassment and perhaps a run in with an abrupt and handsome man. Or, if you are like me, you may want that run in.

Fire shoots through the air in crackling spindles. I am dressed in musical notes and cannot break free. I spin and dance and shout. A warm hand grips my wrist, with more than a hint of warning, but I cannot hear for instead I am captured by shimmering violet and cerulean and topaz rose petals falling all around me –

Seleeta!

Someone calls my name, repeatedly. The wind pops with passion and my dress matches the maroon flames snapping about. My vision clears and for a moment I gape at the man before me, for he is more exquisite than anything I have seen this midsummer night’s eve.

His eyes are the color of the depth of the sea. Power simmers around him with the force of the strongest breakers.

Who is he?

I pause and smile obligingly at him, pointing at the band and the fairies whirling all around us. Won’t he dance with us? There is plenty of wine and cake leftover. His grip becomes viselike, and I wince. This isn’t part of my dancing routine.

“Let go!”

“Seleeta.” His voice rumbles like waves crashing at midnight. “You are to come with me. I told you not to eat that ladybug cake.”

“I ate a ladybug?” I giggle, placing a hand over my mouth. How silly.

His brow wrinkles, and I can tell – even in my state - that he is getting frustrated. Since when did handsome men look more attractive when mad? I play with a bouncy red curl and my gaze dips down to his full mouth. I wonder what he tastes like.

Heat spirals through me, and before I can say another word, he is pulling me away from the fairynight dream and towards the thunderous cobalt sea. Something wiggles in the back of my mind. A flicker of a memory. I came here for something. Suddenly, I am aware of a heavy weight resting above my chest, tucked beneath the lace chemise. It pokes, and its edges are sharp.

“Time to come with me, princess.”

“But I only just arrived,” I reply, pouting, hoping this will help my case. Peering over my poufy coiled shoulder, I sigh in wonder as the band of frogs and grizzly bears reach a deafening pitch. Papered lanterns the color of shredded stars float above us, flickering. I can smell incense – a heady mix of lavender, frankincense and something else.

“You are a handful,” he mutters. “How you are the sea’s best thief is beyond me.”

Right. My mind clears as my vision sharpens across the dancing fold of the midsummer night festival. In our sea kingdom, we harbored a great treasure. A treasure that could turn the commanding tide and tug at the moon until the stars crashed to earth. This was a relic we guarded with utmost severity. Or so I had thought. A wood nymph had managed to seduce one of our own and sneak into our kingdom last week.

Hence, why I was sent here tonight, to this celebration that hinted at the wonder and magic of the fairynight. One didn’t know how the fairies still managed to remain alive and well when they were hardly seen day to day. I only knew one thing: they threw a damned good party.

Smirking, I shake my head. “Oh, ye of little faith.” Gripping his warm hand in mine, I deposit what I came for. The sapphire of the sea.

“You actually found it?”

“It wasn’t that hard to find.” I glance back at the crowd that has begun to disperse and my heart skips a beat. There is a feverish frenzy to the music, and I see one of the fairy guards with spikey fuchsia hair shoot a glare my way.

We had better get going and fast.

The handsome soldier of the sea gapes at me and I shrug prettily. “Just because I had a mission doesn’t mean I can’t dance a little. But next time, no ladybug cake.”

Loie Dunn is a full-time writer of fiction, blogs, and articles. Loie is currently revising her sea-faring young adult fantasy and plans to query in June. She has travelled to Ireland, Haiti, Israel, Mexico, Rome, Scotland, and England.
Please visit her at: loiedunn.wordpress.com
and on Twitter: @loiedunn. She loves to meet fellow writers and connect with them.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

SELKIE by Phoebe Cramer

Perhaps the roar of the waves
would make her feel close to him...

.

It was a summer night, and a woman walked by the ocean. Her shoes were in her hands, her feet sinking, step by step, into the cool, damp sand. The horizon was a maroon-ish bruise. The air was hot, the breeze cool. The waves sang the same sad lullabies that had helped her drift off as a girl growing up on the coast, but the woman couldn’t sleep, hadn’t slept in weeks. She felt like a dating profile cliché, taking long walks on the beach night after night through July and now half of August. It had been almost two months since her husband left her.

When they first met, he was a seal. She couldn’t tell any of her friends this story.

When they first met, he was a seal and she was a passenger on the boat of a man she met on Tinder. Her future husband was sunning himself on an island of stone; she was sunning herself in a folding chair on deck, breathing in the scent of salt, the scent of sunscreen. Her Tinder date was at the wheel, circumnavigating the rocks.

“Look, seals!” the woman said.

The Tinder date grunted his response.

He was a very tall man, but they would never have really been compatible.

The storm hit out of nowhere. Blue skies grey in the blink of an eye. Thunder. Lightning. Raindrops so hard they felt like needles hitting skin. The ship capsized. The Tinder date drowned. The woman was saved from the roiling water by the nose of a seal, headbutting her to solid ground.

With stinging eyes and blurring vision, she watched as the man stepped out from his sealskin, approached her as a human to check her pulse, listen to her breathing.

At their wedding, there was no best man to embarrass them with the story of their meeting in his toast, no maid of honor to tease the woman about how she’d needed saving. There was just this: the two of them at city hall. She in a sundress, he in a thrift store suit.

In the year that they stayed married, they were happy, weren’t they? They were happy, the woman thought.

But there were nights when her husband would leave her in their bed. Disappear to off somewhere. There were more and more nights like that as spring came again, and the world burst into a thousand greens and yellows.

One such night, she followed him. That jealousy-thing that she’d always meant to work on but never had overcame her and she could take not knowing no longer. She saw him walk down to the beach, slip into his sealskin, and swim out, out, out into the waves until she could not see him anymore. She waited, crouched in the dune grass, for him to return. Two in the morning, three in the morning, four. When he finally returned to shore and transformed into a human, he hung his sealskin to dry over the bench of a picnic table, and wandered off to walk along the beach until the dawn.

The woman did something stupid then.

That jealousy-thing.

She crept up to the table, grabbed the skin, put it in her bag. She returned to their home and hid it in the rarely-used oven (neither of them were much for cooking) before climbing back into bed, pretending she had slept the whole night through.

She told herself she’d done it to keep their marriage together, to keep her husband close to her and the two of them intact.

All that May she watched her husband spiral into sadness, wander through their house like a wayward soul, directionless. She asked him what was wrong as though she didn’t already know. She prayed that it was something else, that his drawn face and worn-down demeanor were the fault of something other than her own actions.

Their anniversary came in June. Her husband put on a brave smile. He loved her. He trusted her. He had no reason not to.

While she went out to fetch him flowers, he stayed home to bake her cake. He sifted flour, whisked eggs, preheated the oven.

It took mere minutes for the fishy smell to fill their kitchen. It smelled like death, like dying. He opened the oven and found within: his own flesh, his own skin. Understanding hit him fast as a summer storm.

When the woman came home, bouquet in hand, her husband was already gone, the oven door left gaping like a mouth mid-cry.

The woman took to walking the beach at night, perhaps in hope that she would see him again, perhaps in hope that the roar of the waves would make her feel close to him once more. June. July. August. Each night she wondered, if she threw herself into the sea, whether he would come once more to save her. She was either too cowardly or too intelligent to try.

Then in mid-August, dawn approaching quickly, painting the world in grey-ish pink, she found a sealskin drying on a stone. She couldn’t be sure if it was her husband’s. She had never learned how to differentiate seals, but she picked it up between her fingers, felt the rubber slime of it against her human hands.

She thought of taking it, and so capturing herself a brand-new spouse.

She thought of putting it down. Walking away. Closure.

Instead, she brought the flippers to her feet and pulled it on.

Phoebe Cramer is a queer writer and performer based out of Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, Obra/Artifact, NonBinary Review among others. She is part of the acquisitions team for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and a volunteer bookseller at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. Occasionally, she hangs out on Twitter @PhoebeLCramer

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

THE LAST STAR by Juliana Amir

The girl never treated him like a monster...

“However will you get ahead in this life?” the mother chided her ugliest duckling.

She tilted her iridescent neck to the side. Of all her bright yellow children, this one, unworthy of even a name, had stringy gray feathers and hopeless eyes. The duckling glanced with shame at his tar-black feet. His brothers and sisters had feet the color of evening skies.

With sudden ferocity, the mother swept in, beak stretched. The duckling scattered back onto the riverbank, but in a snap, she plucked soft feathers from his tender wing.

The mother paddled off spitting his gray feathers into the east blowing wind. Her duckling was left by serpentine roots under an enormous weeping tree, alone. He stayed, flat feet firmly planted, shivering with worry.

As the summer sun set turning the river from green to vibrant crimson, long boats from beyond emerged. They sailed towards the gray stone castle towering on the hill.

The boats, some of dull unvarnished wood, and others boldly painted, held mostly young men. A few had the luxury to recline as their personal rower swiftly traversed down the sunset river. Other boats were packed full of those sharing a ride, rotating the oars themselves, toward the black iron gates.

The duckling, forgotten on the riverbank, followed the boats all the way through the gates, which were open wide in welcome. The ugliest duckling’s feet were tired, but he kept paddling until he reached the place where boats were moored. He hopped into the tall grass, still warm from the bright day, and nestled deep where he would not be easily spotted. Never had he been so far from home. The sun had vanished and sounds he had never heard lit the night.

Crowds of people laughed—a merry noise delighting the duckling. As they clinked glasses of rosy liquid, melodies composed of strings and reverberations wafted on unseen winds. The darkness became less haunting and more splendid. The crescent moon cast a glowing smile from its starry perch. Small fires burst to life along the castle grounds sending up charcoal streams of smoke.

Men were dressed identically in black, but the women swirled along stone pathways in more colors than the summer garden knew. Emeralds, reds, and buttercream yellows, illuminant in the torchlights, they adorned the grounds.  Unlike his mother, who had left him with a bleeding wing, these women seemed both beautiful and kind.

The duckling had a dull ache, but he didn’t mind it now. Especially when a woman pointed right to him. He burned warmly in that moment. The woman passed her glass to her partner and, with tea sandwich in hand, approached. Removing the top piece of white bread, she crumbled it for the duckling, and popped the rest between her rose lips.

The duckling pecked at the soft pieces on the earth. They were fresh and soothed him in this unknown place. As the couple smiled at him, he tried smiling back. The people behind them began meandering away from the river. Flamethrowers, somersaulting blazing torches into the air, grabbed everyone’s attention—including the kind couple’s. Once again, he was forgotten.

Dusk was melting, stars were on the verge of fading, and the duckling had fallen into deep dreams of being human. A human that could pluck tea sandwiches from trays, run fast so as not to miss everything he wished to see, and one who could dance as he saw couples that night: entwined, happy, and gliding, as if children on skates upon a frozen river, despite having only firm earth beneath them.

The ugliest duckling half-woke to a crunch, and leaned out of his dream to listen, and with another crunch, he was wide awake. The boats had disappeared. He waddled on short legs to the river and leapt in amongst the lily pads.

No sooner did he leap than a girl with midnight curls and a lace dress appeared at the riverside. Her strappy shoes dangled from her fingertips.

She sat down and plunged in her bare feet with her gown gathered around her knees. She sighed. The duckling tugged on a water lily to bestow upon the sad girl, who like him was unpaired, but the firmly rooted lily refused to come loose no matter how hard the duckling tried.

The sound of wild laughter split all silence. It startled him so much that he paddled back, but then, it delighted him once more.

He swam closer.

“Look at your poor wing.” She extended her scratched hand. “This is why they don’t let me pick my own berries.” She let it rest in the water.

The duckling hesitated, but crept closer. She raised one finger and stroked his good wing. “Here I was about to pray upon the last star of the night for my freedom. There are so many boring men, who don’t read poetry, you see. But, I’ll give my wish of the night to you…may you find where you belong.”

The stars understood belonging for they were born into clusters, and just then, dawn washed away the last one.

With one hand she scooped up the duckling. He flapped his good wing, but as she brought him close, he settled down and she gently kissed his head. She placed him in the grass beside her and stayed a moment longer before returning to the castle. Soon after she disappeared, a light from the turret overlooking the river darkened.

Gardeners came to water flowers. People moved with urgency. In the afternoon, an older woman with a glistering crown meandered with a few finely dressed companions to drink tea from tiny cups. She complained of her spoiled daughter who dreamt of love. Anyone who overheard her wondered if she had anything else to say, or if she was spellbound to repeat herself for eternity.

Nobody bothered the duckling. In the late afternoon, the crowned woman’s daughter returned with her wild laugh and inspiring eyes. She had a book in hand to read to him. He didn’t know what she was saying, but he loved the way she said it. Sometimes when her voice quickened and she smiled as she read, he shook his tail to let her know he was happy too.

This is where he belonged.

Days collected into a year. The duckling stressed as his neck grew like a crooked tree. Eventually, it was no longer just his feet that were tar-black but his entire body.  A flock of green iridescent ducks bobbed through, but as soon as the ugliest duckling came close, they flapped back to where they originated. His wings were vaster and his feathers had grown in longer. He was monstrously large compared to his mother, with her short neck and pleasant chubby face, and to all the ducks he had just frightened away.

But the girl never treated him like a monster, and sometimes she packed a picnic for them. Always there was a new book. They’d sit upon a soft blanket and her reed basket would hide tea sandwiches. Under green foliage turned gold by summer, she’d munch on the cucumbers and raspberries from in-between and feed him the bread from her hand. Sometimes the bread was brown, other times white, and she even learned not to bring him the bread with seeds. His distress settled.

Other days, she had picnics with different company. Sometimes, when her companion wasn’t paying attention being overly invested in his own words, she would look at him and roll her eyes.

Like any other day, a table had been set up by the riverside. The girl appeared with her nagging mother. The mother kept her hands folded in front, but her tone was as sharp as the vengeful beak that had left the duckling bloody.

“Do not ruin this with your silly notions that have no place in reality. I warn you.” She smiled for the sake of those watching, then turned her gaze to the duckling who felt small again in her towering presence that loomed like the castle she came from.

“Scat, you filthy disease. Scat.”

The duckling flapped back into the shadows and stayed there. When the crowned woman was gone, her daughter peered into the gloom cast by the arching trees.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

A man came with a tall sunflower, which he gave with a smile and a bow, before taking the seat across from her. Before he even reached for a slice of cinnamon cake, the duckling sensed something. Instantly, he disliked him. That day remained golden by the riverside. They took morning strolls and often had afternoon tea. On a different day full of songbirds’ music, the duckling saw his instincts realized.  

When he heard their tones crescendo, he paddled from the shadows. Never had he heard her speak so harshly. The man seized her wrist and had it nailed to the table. She tried jerking free but then, she lifted the emerald kettle and poured. Steamy brown liquid splashed onto his skin.

He let go and raised his hand. The duckling stretched his vast wings, lifted his long neck, and flew. With power unknown to him, he chased the man far from the table and kept after him, squawking and snapping. The man sprinted all the way across the yard, nearly tripping over his feet, and was still running after the duckling stopped.

That was the last time she was unaccompanied during a date.

Once she seemed so happy that it filled the duckling’s own heart to see her cheerful. A few nights later, she was crying with her feet soaking in the river. The ugliest duckling now had the strength to snip the water lily from its pad and rest it in her lap. He leaned his head there too. With gentle fingers, she stroked his neck until tears stopped falling on his head like salty raindrops.

While the nights still embraced him warmly and before the moon had time to grow fat again, a black swan, his river reflection, came closer gliding like those couples on the night lit by stars and fire. He offered the dark swan a yellow lily from the water before she could disappear.  

With her there, so close, she was the most beautiful surprise ever to occur in his life. With her came the realization that he was not meant to have a short neck and chubby face. He was not mangled, nor monstrous. He was just like this potential friend. And all those worries that he kept about his lonely future, buried deep inside, he released. Just like those iridescent green ducks, they offered him nothing.

Together they swam until the stars faded, and when only the last one was still glowing, he made his wish, remembering the sounds that had brought him so much pleasure. He looked to the window overlooking the river where the light flickered on and off at all odd hours, and thought: may she find where she belongs.

It was then that the last star of the night faded out.  

Juliana Amir is a graduate of the NEOMFA. She enjoys the stars. Imagining all the stories unfurling beneath them, this story was dreamt.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

SUN KISSED by Katherine Herron

Father had a beautiful cage built for me,
bronzed like my skin...

Sunlight is one of the only things that can touch me now. Warm and bright and almost like a human touch, if you forget the tangibility of skin, the pleasure of another person’s palm lines aligning with yours, which I almost have, because it’s been so long. Father kisses my forehead, sometimes, when he visits, but Father locked me away here, so his touches don’t count or comfort. He doesn’t count or comfort.

It’s not a father’s or jailor’s touch that I want.

(I raked my fingernails against his cheek the last time he came. Then envied the blood there, the proof of human contact.)

(He has not returned since.)

No one else ever comes, no one who can touch me the way I want to be touched, so I imagine a lover into the summer sunlight that strays into my tower. I dream one into the rays leaking, looking through the sunroof—reverie that it’s a lover’s lips on mine instead of the sun’s light, rhapsodize about the patterns on those imaginary lips, invisible from a distance but so so intimate in the moment, merging with mine. His bright hands on my hips and then my waist and then everywhere else.

The bronze below me, around me, heats with the sun sometimes. Shines with it. Father had a beautiful cage built for me, bronzed like my skin. I know I’m high above the palace courtyard, but there aren’t any windows here, save the sun roof, so I can’t see anything but the blue sky above, the occasional cloud. Sometimes, I can almost hear gardeners and visitors strolling below, and I wonder what they make of the tower sitting amidst the sunflowers, if they know about the bronze box—Father calls it a chamber, but it’s a box, really, no matter the soft bed and the fine robes and the precious metal walls—I’m living in. They’ve grown accustomed to me, most likely. I’m old gossip. Argos’s princess, a gem in a jewelry box.

Where was I, the courtyard, I wish I could see the courtyard. I used to play outside these bronze walls as a girl, before these bronze walls existed, skipping around its columns with the sons and daughters of servants. Older. Sneaking through its mazes with the cook’s son, letting him kiss me into stone corners the sun couldn’t reach, loving the spices in his breath. Wanting my legs around his hips and my back against one of the stone columns and the erasure of all space. To be touched, every bit of me, consumed, all of me.

But the cook’s son only ever kissed my lips, because a princess must be pure for her prince, whenever he may come. I wonder if the cook’s son is the cook now. If his soft hands prepare the fruit bowls and breads and spiced meats I receive each day through a slit in my bronze chamber, too narrow to fit more than a plate through. (I’ve tried.) There’s a door too, but only my father has the key. Servants aren’t trusted with its weight.

When I close my lips around figs in the morning, I envision the cook’s son preparing them. It bothered me, once, that his fingers were never as pristine clean as mine, but I wish they’d stain me now. Stained means touched. If the Oracle of Delphi were to give me a prophecy, I imagine it thus:

You’ll spend your life as a ghost, aching for the climax of contact.

A prophecy changed my father’s life, ruined mine, so I’ve spent hours, days, weeks, more considering them. If my father hadn’t visited Delphi, honored its oracle, then I’d be outside right now. Wed by now. Touched by now. Loved by now.

You’ll die a maiden, untouched as a priestess in your afterlife.

Except that wasn’t the prophecy, wasn’t my destiny, wasn’t I supposed to have been loved by now? Father locked me away, you know, went mad, you know, because Delphi’s oracle told him his death would come at the hands of his daughter’s son.

So no one can touch me.

Sometimes, I wish I had a sister, and then spend hours on my knees, praying to the gods for forgiveness. The sun always chooses those moments to bathe me. Like it’s listening. My only friend. If I close my eyes, the sun has a face. The sun is a man with power enough to free me, passion enough to consume me. Knock away the bronze. Kiss away the intangibility trying to undo me. If I close my eyes, I can feel a man’s beard in the sunlight, swear that it echoes on my chin and cheeks and thighs.

My name is Danae, Princess of Argos, daughter of King Acrisius, but no one has said my name in such a very long time.

I swear the sun whispers ‘Nae against my earlobe, into my lips and my neck and my chest and my stomach as he kisses, bites, scorches. Snipping my name in half, just to get that much closer to me.

I wish for a sunburn. A mark. Like the love bites I wouldn’t ever let the cook’s son leave on my neck but always left on his. I want the sun to burn my entire body. Sometimes I let my robes fall, and bathe all my bare skin in the sunlight for hope it will, but it only ever bronzes. I was a never a fair-skinned girl, but I’ve never been so sun-kissed.

I wish that someone, the gods, the sun, could give me the son that my father so fears. A boy heaven-sent to free me.

I know it’s mad, but I swear my stomach truly is increasing, though my diet hasn’t changed. Though I’m spewing my breakfasts more mornings than not, just after finishing their figs and breads and honey. Because I’m spewing my breakfasts more mornings than not.

I don’t think I’ve bled in two months.

Impossible that I haven’t bled in two months.

I haven’t bled in two months.

If it’s madness to think that I could truly be with child, then I’ll pray for madness. I’d cry through the prayers, but for the sun’s gentle lips, kissing away the tears before they can fall.

My belly has grown huge. I know I’m not mad, because none of my robes fit like they used to. It bulbs through all of them. I think the sun likes my stomach bare. It fawns over the skin there, the impossible child kicking beneath. Kisses and murmurs and caresses.

A hero, I hear in the breeze that sifts through the sunroof. Our son will be a hero.

As though I care about anything but the perpetual touch of a life grown from mine. My son can do whatever he likes, so long as he never leaves me. So long as he saves me from here, because the sun, for all its radiant warmth, cannot. So long as my son avenges me.

(Perhaps I do wish him a hero.)

I won’t consider the possibility of a daughter. I refuse to trap a daughter inside this tower, chamber, box with me.

Father has found a new box for me. Made of wood now. A chest now rather than a chamber. A more honest prison, fate, punishment, a quicker death. He was all smiles when he opened the door to my room for the first time in months, ready for the desperation of a daughter dying for any conversation from any company at all. Then all faltering smiles, all horror too profound for frowning, at the sight of the infant clutched to my chest

Horror encased me too, though I’d envisioned that moment triumphant with: Look at your grandson, Father. Doesn’t he look strong? Doesn’t he look up at me so lovingly? Won’t he grow up to desire you dead, dead, dead?

Reality was a flood of: He’s going to take my son, he’s going to take my sun, he’s going to steal the light and leave me here to touch only ever bronze.

The wooden chest splinters my shoulder blades now as waves whirl around us.

“The gods loathe kin slayers,” I pleaded with Father before he nailed us away within these wooden boards.

“I’m no kin slayer,” he said, before tossing us to sea. “Poseidon can do with you as he likes.”

And then I was screaming through the slits in the wood, but the waves had already taken us. My words fell to their depths to litter the sand like shells. I wrapped my body around my son’s cries. His soft, round cheeks and tiny toes.

“You’ll kill him for this someday won’t you, sweetling,” I soothe into his ear. “Won’t you, darling? My strong, sunlight boy.”

The ocean should have swallowed us whole by now, but the sun keeps creaking through the cracks in the wood, driving the water away. Running its thumb across my forehead, its lips over my eyelids, whispering, Our strong boy.

I wonder if Father, too, has pieced together his grandson’s sire. If he’s allowed himself to recall the strange forms Zeus will take for his human lovers. A swan, a satyr, a sunbeam. It took me ages to believe it, though nothing else explains the infant in my arms.

(I’ve been ravished by a god, but still never truly touched. It’s a lacking I’ll never admit aloud, for fear of lightning.)

“Zeus will save us, won’t he, sweetling,” I whisper into my son’s soft forehead. “My sweet, strong Perseus.”

Katherine Herron is a long-time fan of all things fairy tale. She currently lives in Edinburgh, where she is working towards her master's degree in Creative Writing.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff