once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a young woman from a distinguished house, rose like smoke so easily into the ranks and splendor of the royal court. so handsome and so rich was she that the king and queen appointed her their son’s squire, trusting her with all affairs of the prince’s privy chamber. the blushing prince was himself known for a heatedness of blood and lust for pleasure that rivaled only his father’s. his mother insisted the prince had a mirror's worth of his father’s face, and so set about to copy it on all the coins of the realm, ordering the exchequer to stamp his young highness’s likeness into his majesty’s gold so the people may trade his image for all the things they might need or want.

the king—his increase constrained only by the ready supply of gold—set about to conquer the neighboring kingdom and smelt their gold with his. the king ordered all the young persons in the fields and shops to fight, and leading them into the fray would be no one other than the prince himself. so he and his appointed squire brought down an army of rogues upon their neighbors, in a fierce and bloody orgy, stretching on for weeks without end.

but on the siege's final day, when victory was most assured, with the fields strewn about with guts and shite, the prince himself at last succumbed to a hafted axe to the head. overcome by guilt and fearful for her life, his faithful squire fled the battlefield. pulling her skirts through the mud and mire, deeper and deeper into the woods she fled. for days she trudged headlong into the forest, slowly stripping away the armor and fine threads of her birthright. she vowed never to return and face her cowardice, and wept openly into the palms of her hands.

but one morning she woke from beneath the puckerbrush to discover a pack of wolves surrounding her on all sides. they demanded to know where she was escaping to and whether she was alone. she had trespassed into their kingdom, and as penance would pay with her life. and yet from behind the nearby trees a young person emerged. they carried bags of flaxseed around their shoulders which they dropped at the first sight of wolves. they held out their hands and unleashed their voice and bore down on the pack with hot magic. the wolves whelped in pain and in madness gnawed off their own tails. the survivors retreated into the darkness of the woods. the young one approached the frightened squire, who was cold and hungry.

who are you? she asked.

i haven’t a name, they said. i am a cambion creature, conceived by my mother and an incubus demon. i don’t know where you came from, but you need something to eat. come back to our home, and my mother will feed you.

and so off they went until they reached their cottage built beside a stream and beneath a giant tree. the creature's mother was broad-shouldered and tight-lipped, and she painfully surrendered the goat’s cheese and peanut brittle her child had promised the squire. she said nothing till dinner, preferring to observe her habits and note how the well-bred women received questions and conversation offered by her child. at last, after the three had shared a hearty feast of guinea fowl with redcurrant jam and the young woman convinced her she posed little threat, they all sat by the fire and heard out the old woman’s tale:

do not be fooled by my humble appearance, by the dirt beneath my fingertips or the soot across my face. i was once a princess in a faraway kingdom, the second of three, all of legendary beauty. but a beauty that was to be our curse, for it lured the attentions of an incubus suck who slithered into our privy chambers. he came first for my elder sister who was brave and defiant. but when she resisted his advances, he ate her in full view of the court, slurping her beautiful locks of hair like pasta noodles. shocked and frightened, my parents ordered me to receive him and watched from their perch as he took me and enveloped me and defiled me. but i did not wait for him to devour me. instead i snuck away in the night, and ran from that place, foregoing all my rights as princess of the land, and escaped deep into the nearby woods where he could never, ever find us. the demon married my youngest sister, always the weakest, who gave no thought to the matter and eagerly lapped up his attentions like a stupid cat to a bowl of cream. and so the fiend inherited our kingdom as his own, and rules it to this day—or so i hear—with a single prince as heir.

the squire—convinced that her king and this incubus were one and the same—told them everything that had happened. as lone survivor, your child is heir to the throne, she explained. hopeful once more to prove herself, she offered to lead them back to the kingdom. we'll raise an army, she commanded, unsheathing her sword, and end the tyranny of this demon creature.

but the old woman rolled her eyes and patted her on the head. cede your claim now over temporal power, she warned. live here with us in the woods where the demon will never find us. we’ll grow squash in the fall and read aloud to each other as the season turns cold.

but with the old woman finally to bed, her child let their feelings be known. despite what my mother thinks, i wish to return to our kingdom and confront the man who murdered my aunt, abused my mother and stole our birthright. justice must be done, they said, and so the young woman agreed to flee with them. together they snuck out under a dark new moon, smashing the locks that held fast the windows. they grabbed what little they could carry and soon they were traveling through the woods on foot.

it won’t be long before the old woman wakes and comes looking for us, the cambion child uttered. they would have to travel by night and sleep during the day. so at sunset they came to a musty cave where they agreed at long last to stop. no sooner was the squire’s head flat against the stone, but the cambion child clutched tight her body. they loved her, they insisted, for all her kindnesses to them. and when i am sovereign, they promised, you will rule beside me. the thought of all that earthly power invigorated the squire, and so she took him there in the darkness of the caves.

so by night they galloped through the mists, stopping only to drink cool water from still brooks. don’t drink pools you can see the moon in, the child warned, such things invite bad spirits. but at midnight they were set upon by the wolves who had amassed and returned in prouder numbers. you will not live to insult us again, they howled, and at once set upon them like flies. but the child was unrestrained. without laying a hand on them, they conjured the winds to smash their feral bodies against the bulk of the trees. their necks snapped like twigs. their teeth fell in the snow like coins tumbling from a wrenched purse. and when each was dead and down, the child flayed their corpses with a paring knife, hugging their furs around their shoulders. the squire stood back in fear, so they chastised her cowardice and denied the wolves their claim of the woods. they are an illegitimate race, they marked and onward led into the woods.

soon they came to the edge of the wood. the squire hung back behind the tree line, fearful rival armies might still linger nearby. but the child ventured alone into the open field, bidding the young woman follow. emerging from behind a tree, the scorched earth lay bare and dead before her. it was as if a giant had plowed the fields with the tips of his bloody fingers. mounds of dirt shored up into high-born walls. what was left of the low grass was painted in entrails, and at the far end, beyond the pits, was an ocean of unmarked graves. the child wasted no time. placing her hand upon the earth, they incanted a spell in an ancient tongue, and all the graves opened wide. soldiers once promised a well-earned rest now stumbled about in a fugue-like stupor. the squire fell back, tripping over her own feet. for heading straight her way, eyes as black as sin, was the crown prince himself.

around the prince’s neck the child tied a gordian knot and led him like a beagle—with the rest of her ghoulish retinue close behind—to the outer gates of the kingdom. but waiting there in anger was the child’s mother who warned them what they were about to do. come back to the woods with me, she begged. but the child refused to listen. they instead crashed the city gates and drove their army into the center of town. there they climbed the hangman’s gallows and spoke with force to the assembling crowds. they spoke to the people’s exhaustion, to their indignities, to the carnal sins of their king. why do you accept such conditions, the child demanded. hearing no answer, they shoved the dead-eyed prince to his knees and cleaved off his head with one fell swoop.

the crowd roared as they jerked the head above their own to shower in its blood. to the castle they marched, the royal head clutched by the root of its hair. the squire stared into the prince’s lifeless eyes, which now had the vacant stare he’d seen so often from his lordship while he was alive, that distinct look of bored exhaustion. when she and the people came to the castle, she called out the king by name and demanded he come out to meet them. the king emerged out on the veranda, holding his wife by her willing hand, surrounded by the last of his retinue. he bore no stress and almost danced in his shoes, though his lady trembled at the site of the mob, clutching the in-sewn pearls of her gown.

i know you, child, the king bellowed. i bred you from the earth and the ashes. what is mine is yours by natural right. i cannot deny you anything, my last surviving child. though one thing i give in exchange for my life: the revelation of your name. the child tensed in the jaw to suppress a scream, and fell back in a daze. they shook their head and broadened their shoulders, and their nostrils flared like a bull on the rampage. a hush fell as the blood-thirsty crowd awaited their response. at the last they nodded a consent, and the people shook their heads for shame.

you have had many, many names over the course of your many, many lives, the king said. i cannot say i know them all. for as i am the father to you, you have long been mother and father to me. and so round and round we go, always breeding, naming and waiting further down the road. you are inanna, the first queen of heaven.

and so the king descended to the crowds, welcoming his child with open arms. yet though they'd promised to spare his life, the people had made no such pact. and when the king was at last open and exposed, they rushed him and tore him piece by piece. there they fed on his entrails and spread the jelly from his eyes on toast.

once seated upon the dais and beneath the baldachin, inanna ordered the queen consort brought before them. good woman, they said, i’ve no need of a father but am now short a mother. stay with us here as our guest, and we shall anoint you queen dowager. the woman thanked her conqueror and hid herself from court. and you, they said, gesturing at length to the squire: sit here beside me and rule.

and so they lived happily for quite some time, though not ever after. the new sovereign's political reforms floundered within a factious council. plague swept the countryside, and the barley withered and died. the masses once brought to the street never yielded and clashed openly with the royal foot guards. the kingdom’s credit dried up and the price of bread rose higher. soon the squire grew tired of revolutions and revisionists, forever locked in eternal struggle. the sovereign took note of the squire’s doubts and sadness, and so to commemorate her beauty and their love for her, they commanded her face imprinted upon the royal gold. but the squire cared not and stared absently out the windows, dreaming secretly of the woods.

so when their son was born, she wasted no time and kidnapped the child in the middle of the night. stealing him under cover of darkness, she carried him deeper and deeper into the woods. to the old woman’s house she stole the boy, and his grandmother wept to see their return. he's a mirror's worth of my lost one's face, she cried. but we mustn’t stay long, she warned, grabbing her satchel. they will come looking for him before long, and the boy must not come to know them or all will be lost. we shall drive deeper into the woods, north through the mountain passes and west across the sea, onward to the other lands.

so the three abandoned the old woman’s house, they abandoned their names and abandoned all claims to the world they knew. off into the other lands they traveled, and once safe on distant shores, they wrote poems on rocks and carved their stories into the trees. they recorded their lives in places they would not visit twice and confessed their hearts to stones soon eroded by time. they wandered as happy nomads and built no more homes or castles and soon followed one after the other, mere drops in an ocean of nameless graves.