A Minimum of Magic
an excerpt

The Princess
Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful young princess. She had hair the color of ebony, eyes as clear and bright as the indigo sea, lips as red as blood in the morning, cheeks as soft as a peach before it falls overripe to be eaten by maggots, and skin as pale as a mushroom raised in a dark, black cave. The beautiful princess lived with her father in an old castle on a vast, hot plain. Nothing grew on the plain except scrub grass and thing trees and the soil as hard and dusty as the bones of reptiles dead eons ago in the sea. The princess and her father lived alone. Every year, on her birthday, the princess would ask her father who and where her mother was. And every year her father replied, “You have no mother.”
In a small cottage in the shadow of the princess’ home there lived an old, ugly crone who had hundreds of children. The children gamboled and played on the hot plain in the dry wind from sunrise to sunset each day and their laughter flew with wings to the ears of the princess in her castle but the princess was never allowed out of the castle to play with the witch’s children.
“You are a princess and they are only witch’s children,” her father said. “If you play with them the witch will cast a spell on you. Once, when you were only a baby, you were left in her care and she tried to steal your soul away. She took part of it before I heard your cries. I have never let her come hence again and I will do what I must to keep you from harm, for a princess with only half her soul needs careful protection indeed.”
The princess knew her father was right, even though she longed to play and the plain and although he was a man of few words and little action, still she knew he spoke truly for beneath her heart she could feel a hole where half her soul should have been. So the princess stood every day on the ramparts and listened to the children but never played. She was ever mindful of her father’s warnings and careful of the hole near her heart.
The years went by and the princess grew to be a young woman. She was still more beautiful than the dew at dawn, more lovely than the sunset colors of the clouds at dusk, and more previous than water in the desert that surrounded her. Her father grew old and became very ill. As he lay dying, on the anniversary of her birth, the princess asked, “Who is my mother”” And her father replied, “You have no mother worth knowing.” Then he died and the princess was alone. But still every day she could stand on the ramparts of her aging castle and hear the laughter and cries of the witch’s children at their games.
More years went by and the princess grew some more to be a mature woman and then more and more until one day she woke up and climbed outside onto the ramparts. The laughter of the witch’s children rang out no more across the barren plain and the princess saw that she had become middle-aged. Her glossy hair was streaked with gray, her peach fuzz cheeks lined and freckled from the ever-summer sun and her blood-red lips were as pale and orange as the thin soil surrounding her lonely castle. The princess’ father had died many years before, and the princess realized that she had always been this alone. She bowed her head but could not weep.
“Oh, father,” she sighed. “Now what do I do for I have been so safe that I am completely alone.”
Suddenly, a voice behind her whispered,” Come to me, my dear, and I will let you play in the wind as it blows across the plain. Come to me, my love and I will show you where water runs in circles on the desert floor. Come to me, my child, and I will love you for always, for you are my one true love.” The princess looked up in fear for she had not heard another human voice those many years and there on the stone wall before her stood the old ugly crone whose many children’s voices had so charmed the princess all of her life.
“Oh, I cannot for my father has told me how you stole half my soul and I must never be left alone with you for you will bind me with your spells and steal the rest of me,” said the princess steadfastly. But the longing in her voice spoke otherwise to the witch and the witch grew powerful with her longing to possess all of the princess’ soul.

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