SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Princess of the Murky Mire

        Lichens and mosses threw themselves catastrophically over everything in sight. Vines draped their slender arms about the tomblike trees like languishing lovers. Hovering in the heights of the empty, twisted galleries, floating on the mist, huge fungi of awesome girth outspread their plate-like hands beseechingly.

        Speckled amid the feet of the reposing giants were many tiny flowers, straining to scatter some colour upon the listless landscape. But this was the dominion of gloom, and their hopeful petals glimmered with dewy tears.

        Upon this oppressive land, blue sky had never shone. The sun was a ghost: silver as her two sibling moons and cold as her ancestor stars, she floated in pensive and watchful solitude through the grey ether. This land was timeless, the turning of the world marked only by the periodic blackening and unblackening of the murk.

        No man dwelt on this inhuman soil, or anywhere near to it; though in the distant past they had certainly tried, as all men will, inevitably, attempt to conquer that which is not, by their terms, theirs. But the bright, zealous flickering of their souls was a disparity in a world where life was quiet and muted and death stole about them with hideous surreptition. One by one, poisoned by the noxious springs and tempted too many times by the irresistible allure of certain hallucinogenic vegetations, they succumbed. Eventually, haunted by the wraith of the sun, sickened by the grey, paranoid with fear, those that still retained possession of their senses abandoned their grand designs and fled.

        Now, in the reflections of the oily waters, bounded by tall rushes scraping softly in the silence like bones shifting in an empty tomb, the crumbling ruins of that doomed colony arose. The mist picked at the ornate carvings and, with agonising slowness, pushed stone block after stone block back into the mud.

        But the men had left behind a legacy that refused to waste away into mouldering bones. In the carcass of what was originally a small temple-- having been desecrated, long before the roots rent it asunder, in much ardent fervour by the last of the settlers in their all-consuming delirium-- in the depths of this faithless shrine lived the Princess.

        She had been human, once, to be sure, but moroseness, loneliness and ceaseless apathy had eroded away most of what could have been termed 'human'. Yet, not so her femininity. So lovely and perfectly proportioned was her figure that any woman beholding her would have crowed with jealousy and damned her for the lack of consideration she gave it. Here, there were no eyes of men to peer at her, and the dampness rotted anything it came into contact with, so the lady did not bother to clothe herself. Instead, her sirenous body was gowned in mud and the stringy green things from the bogs in which she bathed. Her hair was silvery, dark and long, and slicked down her naked back with slime. Her ears had grown large and strangely 'fingered' and webbed, and were slightly translucent. Her skin had taken on a pale, mottled greenish hue, smooth and damp, and glistened in the pallid light that dropped in misty sheets from the cracks in the vaulted ceiling.

        She was the Frog Princess, and this swamp was her kingdom, now.

        She had no court, and no finery. No crown with flashing jewels and no handsome consort with a flashing smile. No stately palace with fluttering banners and no throne save the weed-strangled decapitated head of the maligned and forgotten saint upon which she sat.

        But loyal subjects? Ah, those she had aplenty. They gathered about the ruins and the ponds and the fronds and the petrified trees in uncountable numbers: all sizes and exotic colours, with markings that glared of death, but she touched them fondly and without fear. She was their Princess, and they adored her, and she unbound her heavy heart for them to touch in turn.

        For who else would have spared such devotion for such small, cold and clammy creatures? Who else could have loved them?

        Who else could have loved her?

        Tilting her head onto an upraised hand, she played willing audience to the serenade that echoed from their tiny throats, filling the empty temple-shrine. The one seated on her knee puffed himself up to his fullest, trying to distinguish his own voice from the rest of the choir.

        If the Princess smiled, it was hard to say. The metal mask covering the lower part of her face glinted with green reflections, a match for her eyes.

        It saddened her deeply that she could not sing back or speak to her darling frogs. That is to say, the mask was not irremovable, but she preferred to keep it in place. To unclasp it, for any reason save to eat, was to risk an error of tongue that could activate the curse that had so long lain upon her, since the time when she had been a prisoner of men.

        Never, in her first ten years of life, had her breath been so grandly captured as the moment she first beheld the monstrous trees of the swamp. Her small frame had quivered as though unknown hands seized and shook her. The mist, it seemed to her, was a vast, damp curtain of cobwebs behind which all manner of fancied beasties hungrily lurked. The air was stagnant and foul, bringing to her nostril whiffs of death and decay that were unfamiliar and distressing. This place was so far from the gleaming white colonnaded halls of the Sanctuary from whence she'd come that it might well have been the Dominion of the Damned itself. She could not think what had possessed the priestesses, with their kind smiles and wise eyes and sun-embroidered togas, to release one of their youngest sisters into the arms of such doom.

        As a young girl who had never seen anything beyond the garden-filled courtyards of her temple, she had wanted to run and cry and hide.

        But she had not.

        No tears dropped; though the noisome mist beaded on her pale cheeks in mockery.

        She had come to this dismal place-- willingly-- for a purpose: a purpose she was not to question. She was to have faith in her abilities and the hands of Everwhere that guided her: so instructed the priestesses before they kissed her goodbye.

        The little priestess knew with all her heart that she would never see them again, and her fear flapped against her like the folds of her cloak. But she did not complain.

        The men that accompanied her to the swamp numbered one hundred. An army of men, and one small girl. They carried building and food supplies fit for a small colony, and she carried the three holiest artefacts of their kingdom: the sword, mantle and mask of Saint Celestine the Glory-Maiden; these treasures they sought to hide from their enemies amid the labyrinthine corridors of stone trees. Swallowing back her doubts, the girl called from her heart a small golden butterfly which led them all deep into the cavernous gloom.

        At length, after many days of trooping, they came to a clearing that the men deemed suitably secretive for their purposes, and construction began. Soon, the mist rang with high-spirited shanties, and the tools kept the rhythm on the stones. The girl kept meekly to her own duty of blessing the clearing and the building materials so that evil would be kept at bay.

        But her words were whispered, and her glances into the drab and dripping mire were worried.

        And the holy artefacts on their makeshift pedestals glowed dimly in the gloom.

        And the days slid into weeks, and the weeks into months, one unto the other until time lost its own reflection in the ebony-mirrored waters of the swamp. Gradually, furtively, like a stealthful itch, an oppressive miasma wormed itself into the hearts of even the most wilful. Wagons became irretrievably bogged, and all efforts to disengage them from the sucking mud were futile. Buildings sank and collapsed, no matter the skill of the architect or the craftsmen. Mould and fungi spoiled their provisions, and supplies grew woefully short. Pack animals sickened and died. Tempers became choppy. Tongues lashed. Songs turned to expletives. The clouds of biting mosquitoes were unconquerable. Progress lost priority, and the settlement dissolved into confusion and disorder.

        Then the men, like their animals, became sick. First one or two, then an avalanche of stricken bodies tumbled at the girl's feet. They stumbled, moaning, into her new temple-shrine to be healed by little hands and soothed by soft words. The girl whispered blessings over them long after her voice had gone scratchy with use.

        But each evil affliction she cast from them returned days later with lustful vengeance. She could not heal them fast enough.

        They began to die.

        They died hideously.

        Their screams were unmentionable. Their eyes wept blood and their skin boiled like hot water, attracting insects that ate them alive. They died with sickly faces and clawed hands upstretched to the doleful sky, spewing blasphemies to their treacherous god. They died climbing the walls and murdering each other in their madness. Some sought relief in the mind-altering toxins of the fungi that grew about the trees, and died laughing.

        But nothing would sate their desire for revenge. Nothing... save the one that dwelt behind carven doors in the middle of the doomed settlement.

        The only one of them who had escaped the perilous curse.

        The little one, who cowered in the darkness behind the pitiless statue of Saint Celestine.

        She who had been charged with the colony's protection... and failed.

        She heard them coming. The doors boomed like thunder. At the heels of the lady-saint the little girl curled herself small, stone dust choking in her throat, cold darkness clutching her, and placed her hands upon her eyes and sought Everwhere's protection, though it had already been given.

        To her. It had only been given to her.

        The priestesses recognised no singular god, but believed that every living thing was its own deity. Everything was sacred: everything that breathed, everything that died, and every non-living thing that held the memories of the living. All essences combined were the Everwhere, and the Everwhere listened to every tiny voice that cried its name.

        The wood of the doors was not the stone skin of the trees that slumbered around them, and eventually it gave in to the ferocious pounding. Howling like animals, the men dragged the girl outside into the ashen death-light of the swamp.

        Splashes of red assaulted her vision: on walls, on trees, in muddy pools. Stark and bright it was, like paint: the only colour to be seen in a colourless purgatory.

        The butterfly in her heart spasmed inside her chest and nauseous horror swept over her like the terrible miasma that had claimed the colony. By the sadistic lionising of the throng around her, her own sweet blood would soon be wine to the tiny flowers.

        And a lion indeed was the giant, hairy, mud-matted man who clutched her throat, and vicious was the knife he held in his other fist. And the girl thought, even as she sobbed, that nothing could hurt more than the cheers of the men-- the ragged, diseased and insane men who once loved and respected her…

        Then they were fighting amongst themselves, snarling and biting and clawing for the glory of killing her. They attacked the lion-man, and his knife flashed out, splashing more blood onto the mucky ground, and the girl screamed.

        Everwhere's gift burst out of her, but not in the form of a gentle butterfly. The flare of wild, terrified light in the man's eyes could not match the brilliance of the golden mane that reared above his head. It roared like the sun descending and consumed him.

        The lion-man fell back and his shrieks were worse than those who had died of the miasma, worse than anything the girl had ever heard. She clamped her hands over her ears to block out the agonising sound pouring into them like liquid fire. She felt as though her soul was being torn apart, and was barely aware of the wails of the other men as they scattered into the fog.

        With her eyes squeezed tightly shut, and still screaming, the girl ran blindly through the wave of heat from the inferno that was once a man and felt her way back into the temple, dropping once more behind the statue of Saint Celestine. Her breath rasped in the silence like the breaths of a beast. A charred smell clung to her, making her gag. Leaping back to her feet, she ran to the inner chamber, where the three holy artefacts sat quietly on their pedestals.

        Quickly she took the beautiful silver mask from its place and between her sobs, spoke to the Everwhere. Over and over, she repeated her words and they fell into the bowl of the mask, making clanging noises as they did so, like golden coins dropped heavily upon the metal.

        "If I speak another word
        Let my vow, my vow be heard
        Let my heart then take the form
        Of the beast within me born."

        Then she lifted the mask and pressed it against her tear-stained face. There it clasped itself, moulded itself to the contours of her young jaw and locked her voice away, never to be used again.