“Did you build this dragon?” Gorga asked. He nodded rapidly.
“You’re a clever little worm,” she told him. “Put out that fire. We’ll go together to your cave and see about these maidens.”
The man hastened to obey. He walked into the cave with Gorga’s sword prodding his back. Torches were burning along the walls. In several chambers deep inside the cave, Gorga saw workshops with various kinds of machinery, fire pits, even rooms with rugs and bedding and cooking utensils.
Inside a large chamber at the heart of the hill, seven beautiful maidens sat despondently within an enclosure of iron bars. They jumped to their feet at the arrival of their captor and his captor, shrieking in horror at the sight of Gorga’s mask.
“Relax, I’m only a woman like yourselves,” Gorga said, removing her helmet. “This little worm here claims that you haven’t been harmed. Is it true?”
“It’s true that he hasn’t injured us,” one of the maidens said. “But he has kidnapped us, scared us, made us and our families very unhappy, and forced some of us to have sex with him. We have agreed among ourselves, though, never to reveal which ones of us are no longer technically maidens.”
“Never mind about that,” Gorga said. “The point is that now you can all go back to your homes. The dragon is officially dead—not that it was ever alive. And this little worm will be punished. What do you think his punishment should be?”
Some of the maidens immediately cried, “Kill him!” Gorga’s intuition told her that those were the ones who had earned the man’s “special privileges.” Others said, “Lock him up in this cage to starve.” One maiden, not quite so beautiful as the others, said, “Put him into the country’s service as an inventor. He is very clever, and his intelligence shouldn’t be wasted.”
“We’ll go back to the town, and you can tell your stories,” said Gorga, pushing the inventor forward to open the cage. When the maidens had filed out, she shoved him inside the bars, took his key, and snapped the lock. “He can wait here until the king’s guards come to get him.”
Gorga and the seven maidens left the cave, passed the now silent, abandoned dragon machine, and returned to tell their stories in the king’s castle. The maidens were greeted with tears of joy by their families, who had believed them dead, and by their sweethearts, who didn’t seem to care whether they were still technically maidens or not.
The king’s guards went to the cave to arrest the inventor but came back to report that he was not to be found. Somehow he had escaped the cage and fled, taking with him many of the workshop tools and provisions. In later years there were no further reports of dragons, so it was assumed that he never built another one. Much later, however, it was said that a very clever inventor had arrived in a distant country and had so pleased the king with his gadgets that he was allowed to marry the beautiful princess, even though he was only an ugly little man.
Gorga the Amazon received half of the kingdom of Poutia and became an intimate friend of its prince, whom she trained in martial arts, helping him build himself a fitter, stronger body. Eventually the prince got used to her homely appearance and came to realize that he had fallen in love with her, as she had with him. So they married, rejoining the two halves of the land of Poutia. They governed peacefully together because the prince was wise enough to defer to Gorga’s greater wisdom. In this way they lived happily ever after.
The story of the snake-haired Gorga was told and retold down the corridors of time. In later centuries she was metamorphosed into a knight named George, because no one any longer believed that a woman could slay dragons.
FIVE
As a child I always liked frogs. They were lively, yet fairly easy to catch and play with. They couldn’t bite. They were shaped something like tiny humans. They had the most beautiful eyes in the animal world. And their unique life cycle, with its strange fishlike, water-breathing tadpole childhood, was eternally fascinating. When I read the story of the frog prince, I couldn’t understand the heroine’s frenzied reluctance to kiss the frog. Personally, I wouldn’t have objected.
Much later I discovered that frogs were once widely viewed as sacred to the Great Goddess, totems of Venus and Hecate, and consequently often characterized as witches’ familiars in Christian times. Since female frogs are usually larger and stronger than the males—who, indeed, may sometimes change their sex—it seems that the frog may serve as a naturally feminist symbol.
She hopped up on the moss and placed her snout next to his lips.
Once upon a time there was a pretty green frog with golden eyes who lived on a pond in the deep woods. She was a lively little creature, always jumping for pleasure in the soft golden green sunlight of the glade, swimming quickly through the sparkling shallows in pursuit of a dragonfly or moth, or perching on a lily pad to wait for a mosquito to hover within range. Then, snap! her long tongue would whip out and pluck it from the air. She spent the slow, sweet summer days joining the croak chorus with her sisters and brothers, cooling her skin in the pond, and watching the insects darting above the glittering water. It happened that her pond became a favorite fishing spot for the prince of the country, who sought relief from the cares of state by resting, with a casually held fishing pole, on its quiet green bank. Sometimes he caught a fish or two, sometimes not. He didn’t care. His only real purpose was to be alone with nature for a while. Though he always came accompanied by his usual entourage of courtiers and servants, he would send them some distance away, out of earshot, to lay out the picnic lunch and entertain themselves with court gossip.
One day the little frog saw the prince leaning against a tree on the bank, his eyes closed, his fishing pole drooping in his hands. He was snoring gently. She felt pity on him for his weariness. She thought him very handsome. She thought about him all day, and the next day also. She became intrigued by this elegantly dressed human who seemed to appreciate her pond so much. Each time the prince returned, she watched him throughout his entire visit. Soon she began to feel that she was in love with him.
“How can I approach him?” she asked herself. “He is the prince. I’m a humble frog, not even of his species.” But, like all frogs, she knew the classic story of the frog prince. Remembering this, she told herself that magic transformations between frog and human were not really so unusual. All she needed was the assistance of a fairy.
The frog knew that the nearest available fairy lived several miles away, in a dry part of the woods where there were no ponds. To travel in that direction, she would run the risk of dehydration, a very serious matter for a frog. Yet her love for the prince became so great that she determined to make the attempt.
She chose a rainy morning, hoping that her skin would stay wet so she could travel comfortably, and went hopping away from her pond toward the fairy’s house. Unfortunately, the rain stopped before midday and the forest began to dry out. The frog halted a few times to cover herself with damp moss in an effort to extract a little moisture from it, but it was not enough. She began to feel the first dread symptoms of dehydration.
Hurrying onward, she prayed to the Amphibious Mother for a puddle, a spring, a small rivulet, anything to relieve her discomfort. She was beginning to weaken. Just when she believed herself near death from dehydration, her prayer was answered, after a fashion. She found a full canteen, apparently fallen from the kit of a passing rider. It was stoppered by a cork, through which she could smell fresh water within.
“Here’s my salvation,” she thought, “if only I can contrive to remove the cork.” She pawed at it but couldn’t get a grip with the soft webbed fingers of her forelimbs. Neither could she bite it with her toothless jaws. Despairing, she looked up into the dry, sunny air and saw a crow perched on a maple branch.
“Dear crow,” she said, “please help me. I need water desperately. There’s some in this canteen, but I can’t open it. With your sharp beak, will you pry out the cork for me?”
“Why should I?” said the crow. “If you die on the forest floor, you wil
l be one more nice bit of carrion for me to feed to my children. I would rather see you dead than alive.”
Near despair, the frog raised her gaze and saw an owl resting on a higher branch. “Please, mistress owl, help me open this canteen with your hooked beak and your talons,” she begged. The owl only laughed in a nasty way and groomed its feathers. “Go ahead and die, carrion,” the owl said.
“The birds are too carnivorous,” thought the frog. “I must find a vegetarian creature.”
Soon, in answer to her wish, came a doe with a dappled fawn following her.
“Noble deer,” cried the frog, “please help me. With your strong teeth, will you draw the cork from this canteen for me?”
“All right,” said the doe. She held the canteen down with her hoof and bit the cork out. The water gushed forth, and the frog jumped into the puddle it made.
“Thank you, thank you, gracious lady deer!” she cried. “You’ve saved my life.”
“Think nothing of it,” said the doe, walking on.
“When I become a princess, I’ll make permanent laws against deer hunting,” the frog called after her.
The doe laughed. “Yes, and when I grow curly horns, I’ll be a mountain goat,” she said. “Good luck to you, Princess.” She vanished with her fawn into the undergrowth.
The frog went on refreshed and soon came to the fairy’s house, a dwelling made of shells, crystals, and colored feathers. She found the fairy washing her silver white hair in a trough of clear rainwater, into which the frog gratefully settled while she told the fairy her problem.
“You don’t understand,” the fairy said, wrapping a thistledown towel around her head. “I’m old. I’ve retired from active practice. I don’t dance in the fairy ring anymore, or spin illusions out of moonlight, or work transformation charms. I’d recommend that you go to my younger sister, Maya of the Mountain.”
“I can’t climb mountains,” said the frog sadly. “It was all I could do to get this far without dying. If you can’t help me, I might as well kill myself, because I’ll never be happy again unless I can marry the prince.”
“Well, no one can call you an underachiever,” the fairy remarked. “You don’t lack ambition, that’s for sure. Tell me, if I agree to get out the old tools one more time and see if I still have the knack, how will you repay me?”
“I will pay you anything within my power, whatever it may be.”
“All right, all right. Promise me that, when or if you become a princess, you will place the largest diamond you can find for me on that altar stone yonder. Even old fairies never lose their fondness for jewels.”
“I promise,” said the frog.
“Now, then. Do you know the essential drawback in all frog-to-human enchantments?”
“No, what is it?”
“You have to be kissed. On the mouth. While still a frog. If that doesn’t happen, there’s no transformation. And if you return to the pond, the charm is canceled.”
“I’ll worry about that when the time comes,” said the frog. “Go ahead with the charm.”
So the fairy took out her dusty recipe books and paged through them, muttering. She assembled various crucibles and retorts, mixed her potions, recited invocations, gestured with her wand, and censed and bathed the frog with magical preparations. Finally she sat back and sighed, “There, it’s done.”
“Is it?” asked the frog. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Of course not. You won’t be any different until you’re kissed.”
“Somehow I’ll get the prince to kiss me, then. I thank you, and I will not forget my promise to you.”
The fairy performed a simple wetting charm to keep the frog’s skin moist on her return journey.
The next time the prince appeared with his fishing pole, the frog boldly hopped up on the bank and sat at his side.
“Well, hello there, froggie,” the prince said. “Did you come to offer yourself as bait?”
Alarmed, the frog hopped a few feet farther away. The prince chuckled, amused to see a frog apparently understanding his words. “Don’t be afraid, little one,” he said. “I wouldn’t cut up so clever a creature for bait.” Whistling softly, he turned back to his fishing pole.
The frog timidly hopped a little nearer, and a little nearer, until she was within one hop’s length of the prince’s knee. He looked down and saw her gazing earnestly up into his face with her gemlike golden eyes.
“You are a bold froggie,” he said. “I wonder, would you let me touch you?” He stretched out a finger. The frog allowed him to stroke the top of her head, though she was trembling with the effort to hold still and keep herself from bounding away. After all, he was a human and therefore a traditional enemy of her kind, even though she found him so attractive.
The prince’s touch was gentle. Somewhat reassured, she allowed him to scratch her back. Then she even dared to hop up on his thigh. The prince chuckled again. “It seems I have tamed me a wild frog,” he remarked. “How many rulers in this world can make such a claim?”
Each time the prince came to the pond after that, the frog hopped right up and sat beside him while he fished. He came to expect her. They would sit together companionably on the bank, the prince taking an occasional fish and the frog taking an occasional fly. She was eager to perform her transformation, but she couldn’t think of a way to get the prince to kiss her.
Then one drowsy summer afternoon the prince fell asleep at the pond’s edge. The fishing pole dropped from his hands. His torso sagged slowly sideways and settled to the ground, the side of his face resting on a mound of moss. The frog noticed that he worked his lips now and then in his sleep. She hopped up on the moss and placed her snout a millimeter away from his lips. The next time they moved, the kiss was accomplished.
The frog began to feel very strange. She was expanding, as if her little body was blowing up with air, like a bubble. Her nose was growing, her mouth was narrowing, her forelimbs were lengthening. Her skin prickled, dried out, and metamorphosed into human skin covered by a beautiful green silk gown. Her flesh became warm. Her gums sprouted teeth. Her head sprouted soft blond hair. In a matter of moments, she was fully transformed into an attractive human maiden with only one froggy feature remaining: her sparkling golden eyes.
She waited quietly until the prince awakened from his doze. He stared at her in disbelief. “Beautiful lady, who are you? Where did you come from? Are you one of the woodland fairies?” he asked.
“My name is Rana,” said the frog maiden, speaking the first words that popped into her head. “I’m not a fairy, but I’ve come to be your loyal companion, dear prince.”
At this, the prince graciously kissed her hand. His fishing quite forgotten, he talked for the rest of the afternoon to his new acquaintance, Rana. She had, he discovered, wondrously deep and detailed knowledge of nature, especially the hidden lives of forest-dwelling animals, birds, insects, and even smaller creatures. She told him things about the habits of fish that not even the most experienced fishermen in his kingdom had ever heard of. She knew astonishing facts about algae, crayfish, snails, water-treaders, dragonflies, and mosquito larvae. She knew how the water spiders kept their air bubbles, how the bats fed, and how the wild ducklings learned to swim.
The prince was so fascinated by her knowledge that he invited her to accompany him to his castle and be his guest for as long as she wished to stay. Of course, Rana eagerly accepted.
She was quite overwhelmed by the magnificence of the prince’s castle, and the elaborate ceremony by which he lived. The prince was king in effect, governing jointly with his elderly widowed father, who was in failing health. Despite the many demands on his time, however, the prince found hours to spend with his beautiful guest. He soon fell so deeply in love with her that he wanted to be with her constantly. Accordingly, he asked her to marry him. She said she would.
The decision caused a stir in the court. The old king and his counselors objected to Rana, on the ground of her propertyle
ss state, her lack of antecedents, and her obvious unfamiliarity with courtly manners. They deemed the prince besotted by a landless stranger, a nobody. As tactfully as they could, they advised against the match, saying that Rana was not a suitable choice for the role of future queen.
The prince, however, was too much in love to listen to them. He ignored their advice and went ahead with the wedding. Soon afterward, he was delighted to learn that Princess Rana was expecting a child. He believed that when it was born, all objections would be silenced forever.
Rana was happy to be the new princess, but she couldn’t help being embarrassed sometimes by her own mistakes in etiquette and protocol. She often failed to use the right fork, or to address visiting dignitaries by their correct titles. She yawned openly during their long, boring speeches. She didn’t understand the conversation of aristocratic ladies. She didn’t know the court dances. She disliked having to stand still for hours at a time during state receptions and diplomatic functions. She couldn’t get used to waiting each morning and evening while a bevy of handmaids dressed or undressed her, arranged her hair, and laced her into agonizingly confining corsets. She hated being weighed down by heavy, embroidered, bejeweled clothes with their stiff sleeves and multiple skirts. To comfort herself, she often spent hours at a time lying in her bathtub and dreaming of her past life.
Sometimes she escaped to the garden alone, threw off her dress, and hopped across the grass, releasing her pent-up energy in great bounds. She thought herself unobserved at these exercises, but in a court nothing is ever unobserved. She was seen, and tongues wagged.
Even worse things were observed. The courtiers noticed that the new princess sometimes ate flies. When a fly buzzed near her, she would instinctively snatch it with a lightning-fast hand and pop it into her mouth. The gossip about this habit increased a thousandfold after a particularly memorable incident in the kitchen.
Feminist Fairy Tales Page 4