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Story of a Princess.

October 1, 2020 by Exangel

by Wendy BooydeGraaff.

There once was a prince, (we all know stories about princesses require a prince), dashing and rich, who was utterly in love with a certain woman—you know the type: toned biceps, determined walk, clipped diction, married. Yes, married (not to the prince), and with no forecast of divorce. This certain woman loved the prince, but alas, they could not inherit the throne together as king and queen according to the laws of the land.

The people of the land, however, required an heir, and to have an heir, there needed to be a princess, preferably one who had been locked up in a tower and who maintained long, lustrous hair.

The prince toured the land, or, on most days, had his knightly assistants tour the land, looking for towers and shy young maidens who qualified as potential princesses. He and everyone else had determined that shy meant weak and easily influenced, and therefore in need of saving. He found such a maiden, watching the sheep, or rather his knightly assistants found her, and told him where to go.

The prince arrived on the scene just as the potential princess was taking a break to eat some cheese on a stone bench out on the sheep pasture. As he strode toward her, she jumped up. Aha, he thought, she really IS The One. She recognizes me and is overcome with welcome. She will look fine on my arm in the royal parade, and everyone will stop harrassing me about that heir.

When he got closer, he saw she was dancing around the bench, shaking her hair, while a spider frantically tried to climb up her long strands. Here, the prince knew he could be of heroic help, so he grabbed the spider with his brawny hand and squished it against the stone bench. You are free, he told The One, and Bonita knew at that moment the opposite was true: she would never be free again. She, too, had grown up hearing princess stories, and knew one should never turn away the attentions of someone as valiant as the prince, especially when one is a mere shepherdess. And what attention he paid! Listening to her shy thoughts when she felt comfortable to offer them, seeming to want the same things she wanted: peace and amnesty; and even when she broached the topic of spiders, he listened to how she wanted them to live, just not in her hair.

Therefore Bonita cut her hair so as to avoid more needless spider deaths, and when the people saw her on the arm of the prince, the long-haired ones cut their hair, to emulate her beauty. Bo ducked her head and blushed, which the people thought charming and befitting of their future princess.

Lady Bo and the prince married in a grand ceremony with thousands of lilies (a funeral flower, but the princess adored lilies). She grew more honest and more understanding of the people who asked her to listen to them. While she listened to the people, the ones who were enduring natural and war-made crises, she noticed the people began to listen to her, and in turn, to each other.

The prince, however, was angry because he had married a shy and reclusive prospect, one he assumed had the requisite docile character of a stereotypical princess, and he expected Lady Bo to honor that ideal always. But now, the princess told him thoughts about making life better for the people which directly contradicted his need to grow power, and play polo, and do whatever suited him. The people were for shaking hands, and appeasing. No one needed their input. Conversely, the princess had married a prince who listened to her, but now he only shouted at her before she could get the entirety of her words out.

Amidst the shouting, they somehow ended up with two heirs to the prince’s throne. The gallant prince, who himself still loved the married woman, could not bring himself to love this princess who was exhibiting determination, initiative, and influence. However, the people loved Princess Bo, and when she and the prince walked the royal parade together, the people wanted to touch her hand, or give her flowers, or say a kind word with flushed face. The people ignored the prince.

Because of all the shouting and the knowledge of where the prince’s heart resided, Princess Bo could not give him loving looks from under her bowed brow in public anymore; she did not give him loving looks at home, either. She was honest. And her fame had only made her more honest, and more interested in the people and what they needed.

The prince found a tower, and tried to put the princess in it, but the people were paying attention, and they saw the princess did not want to be locked away, and therefore, they protested the very existence of locking towers, and frustrated, the prince rode off to where his heart resided, which was with the married woman, and there he stayed.

The princess looked inside herself and found her heart had been mashed like potatoes. She showed her heart to the people, and they loved her all the more because they also had hearts that were mashed or macerated or punctured.

The princess went back to the sheep, to become regular Bonita again, but there was someone else shepherding the sheep, and anyways, Princess Bo felt what she really had wanted was to go back to the place where her heart had still been hopeful. The pastured sheep instilled some peace and calm, which sutured a few bits of her heart.

She took her stitched-up heart back to the people who loved her, and worked among them, creating a new vision for princesses, one where a princess drew attention to the matters of the people. She touched people who were damaged by wars and cyclones and epidemics.

But someone else was watching her. Someone who was not the prince but had just as many resources and people working on his behalf, perhaps even more. The observer was rich and handsome and had many potions, and we all know princesses will drink whichever potion with which they are presented, even though, of late, Princess Bo had only been drinking sparkling water. This potion, presented to her, was in a cut glass goblet, and bubbled with mystery and allure, the very two qualities that had latently intrigued Princess Bo. After all, why not try a different mode of personal life? She had already lost so much. She drank and oh, it was exciting, fast-paced, delicious, though the end of her story followed soon after, for though mystery and allure are very good, they can also create a crushing audience of overly-interested individuals who will chase down Princess Bo and her potion-bearer for want of exposing the mystery and allure, and as in all stories, the chased will flee, helter skelter, which makes the mystery and allure all that more mysterious and alluring, until the chase results in the inevitable smash, only to find that when cracked open, there is nothing more to there than raw pulsing hearts with the pink chambers exposed.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Fall 2020: Sort Of.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
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  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
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In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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