Hart's Hope

"Splenetic Red, from the fields of Urubugala."

"Urubugala," she said, and she laughed aloud. "Urubugala. That is the language of Elukra, isn't it? What does it mean?"

"Little cock," answered Sleeve.

"My little cock," she said. "My Urubugala." It was a good name for the creature he had become. And the name did not displease Sleeve. If it kept him alive, he was happy with it. Sleeve was not one of these weak, proud men who can be controlled by the threat of humiliation. There were times when he even enjoyed the freedom that he won through his fool's part. Beauty's daughter

Did you wish

She were a fish?

At that Beauty glowered, but Sleeve immediately raised his tunic and strutted toward her, showing off his grotesque genitals. "If you like to be a mother, I'll gladly sire another!"

"You are not always fu

Sleeve sidled up to her and whispered, "Where is the baby?"

Immediately he felt an excruciating pain in his head, as if his eyes were being forced out by the pressure of something growing behind them. After a few moments it stopped. He refused to be so easily vanquished. "The baby is dead! It lives in my head!"

"Shut up, Sleeve."

Sleve drew himself up to the full height she had left him. "My name, Madame Beauty, is Urubugala." He whispered again. "You are a very quick learner. Was all this in those books you read?"

Asineth was only fourteen years old—she was susceptible to flattery. She smiled and said, "The books were nothing. They knew nothing. All I learned was how to get the power. Once I paid the price for it, the power was its own teacher. So far, I need only to think of a thing, and I can do it. And the most delicious thing of all is that Palicrovol himself gave the power to me. Gave me the power, but only a woman can ever have it."

"A man can have it," said Urubugala.

He saw the fear leap into her face. She was not secure yet with her power. "How can a man have it, when a man ca

Again he answered her in rhyme:

If we fasten our balls to the walls,

And then if we feed on our seed,

The power will come in an hour

To pee like the sea and to fart like a flower.

"You are disgusting," she said. "No man can have a power that is the match of mine. And no other woman, either, for no woman has enough hate in her to do what I have done." She said it proudly, and Sleeve again hid his fear of her behind mockery.

"I am your minstrel and you are my monstrel. Where is your teeny one, ti

"Oh, we had an argument." Beauty carelessly tossed her head and smiled. "I won," she said. Sleeve fancied he could still see the blood on her tongue. 4

4

How the Flower Princess lost her body, her husband, and her freedom all in an hour on her wedding day.

The Royal Progress

She came to the mouth of Burring with her father's fleet of tall ships. Palicrovol had a thousand singers meet her at the port. So perfect was their singing that the deafest sailor on the farthest ship heard all the words.

She was rowed up the river on the only galley that her father ever built, but the oarsmen were free, not slaves, and all of them wore robes of flowers. Every day of the voyage, a hundred women sat below deck, winding fresh flowers into new robes, so that every day the robes were new. And when she reached the great city Inwit, a thousand bags of flowers were released upstream, and all of Burring, from shore to shore, was a pond of petals for the coming of the Flower Princess.

Palicrovol himself met her at King's Gate, with the white-robed priests of God surrounding him, and white-robed virgins from the nu

The Dance ended in the palace, in the Chamber of Answers, a room not opened for a century because it was too perfect to be used. Ivory and alabaster, amber and jade, marble and obsidian were the walls and floor and ceiling of the Chamber of Answers, and there the Flower Princess chose to wear her ring on the middle finger of the left hand, but high on the finger, to promise fecundity and faithfulness; and lo, of all miracles, Palicrovol also wore his ring on the middle finger of his right hand, high on the finger, to promise worship and unwavering loyalty. The watching hundreds cheered.

And then an imperious woman walked out onto the floor, leading a grotesque black dwarf on a golden chain, and Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin turned to face the woman, and the wedding was broken at that moment.

The User Used

"I see," said the strange woman.

The dwarf piped up in a strange little song.

Ugly Bugly, Mercy Me,

You are not as fair as she.

Palicrovol spoke from behind the Flower Princess. "Who are you? How did you get into the palace?" "Who am I, Urubugala?" asked the strange woman.

"Sleeve," said Palicrovol. "Came home to Sleeve."

"Do you know me, Palicrovol?" asked the strange woman.

"Asineth," he whispered.

"If you call me by that name, you do not know me yet," she said. Then she turned to the Flower Princess. "So you are what he loves best in all the world. I can see that you are beautiful."

Again the dwarf chanted in his strange voice.

Beauty is fair, Beauty is fair,

But Beauty chose the wrong body to wear.

"I can see that you are beautiful," said the stranger, "and so it is only fitting that Beauty should have that face and form."

Enziquelvinisensee saw the woman change before her eyes, into a face that she knew and did not know. Knew because it was her own face. Did not know because it was not mirrored, as the Flower Princess had always seen it, but exactly as others had seen it. "This is what others have seen in me," she whispered.

"Do you worship?" asked Beauty. "Am I not perfect, Flower Princess?"

But Enziquelvinisensee Evelvinin had taken a vow to tell only the truth, and she had none of her women beside her to lie for her, and so she destroyed herself by saying, "No, Lady. For you have filled my eyes with hate and triumph, and I have never felt such things in all my life."

Beauty's perfect nostrils flared a bit with rage, and then she smiled and said, "That is because you have lacked the proper teachers. So let me teach you, Flower Princess, as I was taught."

The Flower Princess did not feel a change, but she saw the watching people look at her and gasp and turn away. She was afraid of what had been done to her, and spun on her toes to face her husband, gracious Palicrovol, who loved her. But Palicrovol, too, was revolted at what he saw, and stepped back from her. It was only a moment, and then he came to her again, and held her close to him, but in that moment Enziquelvinisensee Evelvinin knew the truth: Palicrovol thought of her beauty as part of herself, just as everyone else did; he did not know her without her face. Yet she was comforted that he still embraced her, and that he spoke with courage against Beauty.

"Did you think I could be so easily deceived, Asineth?" he asked. "You may startle me, but my heart belongs to another heart, not to a face."

Beauty only smiled again. Suddenly the Flower Princess felt Palicrovol take her brutally by the waist and throw her from him onto the floor. She looked up at him in horror, and saw the anguish of his face as he cried out to her, "It wasn't I!" Then, though he tried to speak, he fell mute, but the Flower Princess had heard enough to understand. It was Beauty, it was Asineth who had used his arms to hurl her away.

So Palicrovol's hands cut the clothing from Beauty's body, which was the body of the Flower Princess. And Palicrovol, act for act, ravished her as he had ravished Asineth two years before. Only this time he did not disdain her attempt at seductiveness. Now when the body of the Flower Princess moved so subtly for him, he cried out with the pleasure of it. Now when his arms lifted his body from her, he moaned in protest. Let it not be over, cried his flesh. Let it not finish. And as long as he looked at her naked before him, as long as he remembered the pleasure that her body and her power had given him, his body again and again convulsed in pleasure; even after his seed was spent, even after the pleasure had turned to agony, he writhed against the impossibility of having her, the memory of having her, the longing to have her forever.