On a dark and stormy night, a long time ago, in a kingdom far away, a king was tossing and turning in his regal chambers. A darkness had overtaken his kingdom for several years. It lurked in shadows and only came into the light when it wanted to feed. It required the blood and flesh of the innocent and appeared at any moment without warning. Sometimes there was peace for months and sometimes it feasted for days on end. The king had relinquished most of the cattle and other livestock. He had succumbed to the creature’s demand for the unique taste of young, virginal maidens. The creature had taken the last maiden in the kingdom, save for the king’s own daughter, Wanda.

 

Wanda pleaded with her father when the dark creature had last arose from the cavernous depths of the mountains. The shadow of its wings stretched across the sky—an omen of death. The king, blinded by fear, was unable to look beyond the dark mass that hovered above and screamed with a soul-crushing need for fresh meat. Wanda saw beyond the scaly flesh and threat of fire that was hinted by the small puffs of smoke coming from its nose. Inside this serpentine creature was a familiarity. It was a raging violence, a streaming life force that moved through her spine to the base of her. The rules and walls of the castle stifled this in her, caged her in. She felt this battling of spirit in the creature as it cried out for something to quench its desire. Wanda pleaded with her father to spare the last maiden, the last of her peers and friends. She searched her own desires for a key to resolve everything without sacrifice, believing that her insight into the creature held the key to a new way of being.

 

But the king refused to listen to his daughter and instead succumbed to fear one last time. In a blink the last young maid was gone and the dark creature remained satiated for several months. As the days wore on, the king left fear behind and turned towards rage and righteous indignation. He couldn’t stand to think of his daughter sacrificed to this black void of hunger. He decreed that anyone who could destroy this creature would have his daughter’s hand in marriage and he would bequeath the kingdom to the hero upon his death. 

 

Two brothers of common descent agreed to work together to rid the kingdom of this nightmare. The elder was known as a ranger and warrior with the skills to conquer all other beasts. The youngest was less inclined to such skills, but used his cunning to keep step with his brother. They killed a lamb and filled it with sulfur, took the lamb to the dark cave outside the city, and placed it outside the entrance. The cave called to the men to come closer and for a moment they paused to contemplate the possibility of entering to face the monster directly. The ache crawled up their spines and nestled in their stomach. The current of this unknowable rage flowed through their bodies and eventually even the brave eldest brother could no longer face the entrance of the cave. They dropped the lamb outside and ran to hide some yards away in order to watch for the creature’s appearance. 

 

Dusk turned to night until the brothers were almost unable to tell the difference between the cave and the sky. They waited until they saw the creature stumble out from the depths, straight for the lamb. It gave no wait before tearing into the flesh of the helpless creature, devouring it in one bite. The brothers felt the hunger that emanated from the creature subside and for a brief moment the creature became less terrifying. A moment later, the trap of the sulfur began to take effect inside the creature. Overcome with thirst, it crawled to the river and drank and drank and drank until no water was left. The sulfur mixed with the water inside the creature until it exploded. The horror of its body rained down on the barren, empty riverbed. 

 

The brothers, witness to this unthinkable destruction, were stunned for several moments. The oldest could hardly believe he had helped to save the kingdom, but the youngest had a secret plan. 

 

The younger brother was tired of always being less powerful, less admired than his brother. It had after all been entirely his idea to stuff the lamb with sulfur. He had only brought his brother along as a distraction. It had never been his intention to allow for his brother to win the glory and the kingdom. The youngest brother pulled a small blade from his waist while the oldest stared in awe at the pieces of dark matter scattered along the dried riverbed. He crept behind and was about to stab at his brother’s back when he stepped on a twig and without hesitation the eldest brother had drawn his sword and turned to face his opponent in one swift motion. 

 

In just a few moments the older brother had instinctively disarmed his brother and stabbed him through his chest. He stared in horror as the reality of his lifeless brother took shape in front of him. He cried out in a mad grief and fell to his knees. The townspeople flooded in to lay witness to the death of the creature and upon seeing him standing over the body of his brother they protested. No one who had committed a heinous crime such as fratricide could rule over them, it would undoubtedly bring even worse luck to the kingdom and its residents. As he mourned his younger brother and shook with terror at all the blood on his hands, the townspeople chased him into exile to the very boundaries of the kingdom, where he lived out his days haunted by the ghost of his brother. 

 

In the highest tower of his castle, the king had witnessed all of these events. The drinking of the river, the annihilation of the creature, and the subsequent battle between brothers. The bloodshed, the destruction, the horror played out in front of him daily. At night the king swore he still felt the terror of the creature hiding in his bedchambers, breathing heat on his skin. ‘The fire, the terror, the blackness, the blood,’ he’d scream at all hours of the night. With no river, the fields dried up and a great famine befell the kingdom. His daughter tried to calm him, but he could not look away from the destruction he had caused. A whole generation of young women had been sacrificed, a fraternal bond broken, and a nation allotted a century of hardship and famine under his rule. What could he have done differently? Could he have saved them?

 

Guilt burned inside the king, consuming him until he fell to illness and then to an early death. Wanda, the remaining heir, ascended the throne without consort and with small ceremony. The people were tired and hungry and still very afraid. Wanda stared at the bones of the creature, which had been placed above the entrance to the Wawel castle. She mourned its death and all the many others she had seen suffer and die as sacrifice to it. She swore to these bones that the kingdom would never be put in the same position. She knew there was another way. Wanda was unafraid because she saw the same life force that flowed through the river, flowed through her, flowed through the creature. If they had recognized this sooner, maybe there could have been relief from all this tragedy. The power of currents that can pull you under are the same, after all, as the currents that nourish the fields and bring fish to the people. She had been unable to articulate to her father that force of birth, destruction, and rebirth she witnessed in the creature. But she recognized now that the same force propelled her forward even as she left the bones and walked to where the creature had been destroyed. She knelt in the dirt and she cried and cried until the river was flowing once again.

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WRITTEN BY T.A. STANLEY