Oh there was a kingdom of curlews and inkberry, snowy mountain and tangled byre, a kingdom of bristling meadows and secretive pools of water only you know about. The hawk circled such pools, and fish darted swiftly under the surface.
In the centre of the kingdom presided a king and queen. Gracious and attentive to their people, distributors of favours, settlers of disputes, throwers of banquets, you never heard a bad word about them. But at night a sorrowful grief hung between them. They could not conceive a child. This nibbled away at the queen, slowed her every step, and so she took herself off to the surrounding forest, hoping a stroll would calm her anguish.
Under the bough of an oak tree she met an old woman, who recognized the tension in the young woman’s face. When the queen unburdened herself of her concern, the crone claimed she had a remedy for the issue, and if she followed her instructions exactly, then all would be well. She spoke:
“You need to give voice to what you truly desire. Get your breath on it. Tonight at dusk, walk to the north-west part of the garden and, as you go, speak everything you wish to see arise. Finally, speak the last words into a double-handled cup, flip the cup onto the dark soil and go to bed. In the morning there will be two flowers under the cup. One red, one white. Eat the white, but under no circumstances the red. Eat the white and you will have that which you cherish the most.”
At the end of the day, the queen did just that. She strolled and spoke, whispered and crooned everything that was in her heart. Gave every fissure of longing voice, then blew into the cup and flipped it onto the soil. That night she made love with her husband.
In the morning she walked to the cup and turned it over. Just as the old woman had said: the red and white flower. She remembered exactly the instructions of the crone.
Ah, why do we do this? Why do we do this? Why do we do this?
Before she knew it she was on all fours gobbling up the red flower, every last bit of it. In the doing of it, her body rang out like a struck bell of rapture. Every nerve ending accomplished itself in an exfoliation of ecstasy.
And then, slowly, she came back to herself. This wasn’t what the old woman suggested. In fact it was the opposite of what she suggested. Guiltily she reached for the white flower and consumed it. She and her husband made a decision—no one needed to know—it was settled.
Well, the old woman’s magics worked; she immediately felt new life nibbling at her energy and nine months later she went into labour. A centre that had been barren was about to demonstrate its fertility again.
The strangest thing happened: it was not a child that exclaimed itself from the queen’s womb but a small black snake, a worm. Such was the shock of the moment, the midwife grabbed the writhing serpent and hurled it far out of the window into the darkness of the forest. Only minutes later a baby boy was born, and the snake was forgotten, never to be spoken of.
Years passed and the boy became a young man. A man that wished for a wife, a love, a companion. And that sort of thing requires searching for; it requires a quest. He went to his parents, and they gave him permission to travel out and see if such a one existed. They gifted him a white horse and white saddle and bridle for the occasion.
Such high spirits as he galloped from the castle, heart a-rat-a-tat-tat in his chest.
Farther he went into the forest, past the typical hunting spots he had enjoyed, far deep into the dreaming. He came to a crossroads, and it was there that his life utterly changed.
Rearing up before him was a huge, scaled, black serpent. Steam from its nostrils and a raw bellow from its snapping jaw: “Older brothers marry first! Older brothers marry first!”
Sensibly, the young man fled, but for the rest of the day every crossroads he came to there was a serpent bellowing: “Older brothers marry first!”
Exhausted, shaken, he returned to his parents that night with a question:
“Is there anything about my birth that may have slipped your mind to tell me? Anything involving a furious black snake that claims to be my older brother?”
His parents went blank at the query. We don’t know if they recalled or not. Whether they were stalling or innocent of memory. What we do know is that all three of them visited the midwife and asked her the same question. By now such a tiny woman she could have taken residence in a matchbox, she finally spoke: “No, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no.” They heard that yes secreted amongst the the nos, and suddenly she was adrift in confession.
“Well, I don’t quite like to recall, but yes, maybe definitely there was a wee black worm that shot from the queen. A terrible-looking thing. I held it for a fraction of a second and then hurled it into the dark and the rain. And now look at you, handsome prince, why bother thinking of a little freak like that when we can enjoy you?”
The family went very quiet. But it was a useful kind of a quiet, a deepening, and from that deepening something extraordinary was hatched. They king spoke:
“If it is true that this is your brother, then we must not send hunters into the forest to slaughter it. We must send the poets, the musicians, the storytellers to court it from its lair. It needs to be with us. It needs to come home. We need to make a home for the serpent.”
And that was exactly what happened. In the belly of the castle, a room was filled with hay to make a vast nest, and slowly, through kind words and lively music, the black snake slouched towards its family. It was so vast the doors had to be widened to get him in; tapestries got scorched by his breath. But by the end of the month, it had happened: the snake was in residence.
And from the centre of the castle, all heard the bellow:
“Older brothers marry first!”
They messaged all corners of the land: ‘dark prince seeks bride’, and the response was keen. One of the applicants was confirmed and brought to the castle. After a tour of the grounds, she was taken into a low-lit room with a priest. A vast, dark presence filled half of it. As she repeated the vows, a scaly tail wrapped itself around her legs and hips three times. In the morning there was nothing but bones in the hay, and a worm calling: “Older brothers marry first!”
You can be sure that after a few more applicants, the position took on less glamour, and rumours started to circulate. It was ‘the castle you went into and never came out’. The messengers still circulated, but for a few months everything went quiet. Even the rats were leaving the cellars of the place, let alone the servants. Albatross albatross albatross. Mary Celeste.
With this in mind, it was a big surprise when a message came through from the daughter of a shepherd. That she would marry the prince, but wished for a year and a day to prepare herself.
The shepherd had heard the rumours and was distraught at his daughter’s decision. She herself was not quite sure why she’d made it. As always in times of unrest, she took herself to the woods to think things through, feel things through.
As she sat under the shade of an oak bough, an old woman walked clean out of the tree. Not round the tree, not towards the tree, out of the tree.
For the second time in our tale, an old woman offered instruction:
“It was a brave thing to take this on, but wiser still to give yourself time to figure out a plan.
“If I was you, if I was you, if I was you, I would sew twelve nightshirts for your wedding night.
“Embroider especially around the heart. I would insist that one bath of water and ashes be prepared, and one of milk, and two great scrubbing brushes supplied. The baths and brushes are to be left in the bed chamber. And quite what do you do with this advice? Well, that’s what the rest of your preparation time is to figure out.” And with that she walked back into the core of the tree.
For the rest of her time, the young woman laboured on the shirts. She’d never worked with that kind of intricacy before, and her hands ached and fingers got pricked by the needle. But she worked on, educating herself in both delicacy and stamina, persistence and imagination. She thought about quite what it was she was marrying, and how to approach such a thing.
Time came and the day arrived. She was given the tour—swiftly—by the last remaining servant, and brought into the low-lit room. She glanced at the great, lumbering presence filling half the room. “Ah,” she breathed. “You must be my dear husband.”
With that she beckoned to the tail to wrap itself around her hips. She smiled, never taking her eyes from the despairing priest, even traced her hand slowly over the scales. Once the ceremony was finished, she turned to the worm: “Dear husband, won’t you show me your quarters?”
Even the serpent was surprised. This was not how things had been going.
In the warmth of the hay and secure in his den, the serpent growled: “Take off your nightshirt.”
She smiled. “Oh my husband. I want to, truly. Here’s the thing. You take off one of your layers of scales, and I’ll take off my shirt.”
He looked puzzled, almost touched. “No one has ever asked me to do that before.”
It is a terrible and painful affair to take off a layer of scales.
Finally, he had removed a layer and she took off here shirt, revealing another.
“Take it off,” he wheezed.
“Oh I will, if you take off a layer of scales.”
Again he spoke wonderingly: “No one has ever asked me to do that before.”
You know this dance went on twelve times. Twelve terrible layers.
And underneath? Not a man, not yet. But a kind of blubbery worm, pale and shining.
She did not hesitate.
She took the steel brushes, dipped them in the ashes and water and took to the skin of the worm. Now, if you think scale removal hurts, it is as for nothing as scrubbing the flesh. He screamed, moaned, pleaded. It took many hours.
As dawn approached, finally, there was a man in front of her, with the face of someone sent into exile a long time ago. Someone with an ordinary beauty she would love her whole life. She gently bathed him in the milk as light filled the dark chamber.
In the morning, when the king and queen gingerly knocked at the door of the chamber they saw their son and his beloved happily in bed together, laughing. Another wedding was had, a wild, rambunctious affair, a true celebration, and before too long the younger brother found his true partner too. Restoration. It’s not too late to long for it, fight for it, defend it.
In the fields the barley grows a little straighter. In the river the salmon leaps a little higher. In the sky the stars glint a little brighter.
↩ Riffing on