THE TALE OF PRINCE ANURA

A Deep Fantasy Short Story #2

A version of this story (Song of the Frog Prince) was first published by Zahir Publications, in Unforgettable Tales #4, Summer 2004. www.zahirtales.com

This edition: SOV Media Australia, The Tale of Prince Anura, A Deep Fantasy Short Story #2, 2017

The Tale of Prince Anura © copyright by KS Nikakis 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

KS Nikakis asserts the right to be identified as the author of The Tale of Prince Anura.

Cover by AS Nikakis: http://asnikakis.com

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Learn more about KS Nikakis and her deep fantasy books at: http://www.ksnikakis.com

The Tale of Prince Anura

The first world is the world of the egg,

the second world is the wild drifting water.

The third is where the sun holds sway,

of the fourth world, we do not speak.

Those who go there are lost to us,

and there are always some.

The Mothers

The first world is closed. Awareness grows. Restlessness gnaws. Confinement becomes . . . intolerable. I fight. Release is sudden and complete.

The second world is green. Bright emerald where it arcs; deep moss where it plunges. The world is never still. It wavers and ripples, and flickers with life. Its mud crawls with larvae new-spawned, and beyond its skin, midges dance with moths. I drift with others who escaped the egg’s first world.

My memories of stirrings in the jelly of that smaller life fade. I don’t need to remember; birth-sacks are all around me. The new ones break free, uncurl, drift. I leave them behind.

I seek the Mothers but their voices are muted. They are far from me, in a place unknown, yet always known. When the world turns ebony with night, they scissor back through the water, legs sinuous with grace, wide eyes filled with distillations of other worlds. They sing to me, prepare me for the third world, beyond the skin of this time and place.

Their song roils my blood. I strut the streambed with puffed chest and belly pulled tight, and then the anger subsides, to leave me empty. I thrash the water, as blindly as a hatchling and seek escape in the Mothers’ throaty melodies, from what ... I do not know.

The voices that spoke to Anura,

were not ours.

The Mothers

The world flicks between brightness and dimness, and time passes. Moments of madness and mildness run together. I yearn to be where the Mothers are, to sing as they do, to curve in great leaps through a world made fragile with age. Yet I long to stay here. The water moves always away, and I watch the new ones’ dark tails uncurl even as mine withers. I loiter near the water’s skin. It is perilous here with the harsh cries of creatures that would devour me. Their ragged shadows darken my soul. I seek an ending, but not the ending of death.

Sometimes I hurl myself into that other place, but my time there is only ever momentary. The air scours my skin then the water’s cool fume welcomes me back. The Mothers tell me to wait, that one day soon the water’s skin will peel back, and release me into the third world, but I cannot wait.

The third world is the world of water and sky, of the sun-blest heads of reeds and of their deep stagnant roots. It is a world of heat and shade, of desiccation and resurrection, of cool bubbles, and of hot, waterless air. It is the second world and itself, but I yearn for the next, unnamed one.

Anura went on alone.

He sought no company or guidance.

The Mothers

Some say you must die to enter the fourth world and perhaps I did. Perhaps I do not live at all but am part of some vast enchantment, the sway of trees and the sun upon my skin, the deft stroke of a wizard’s hand, an illusion held together only by magicked intent. I do not know. The memories of the third world are dim now. Their imprint peeled away like the moist slipper of skin that once clad me. But sometimes I sit beside the pool from whence I came, and wonder.

I still hear the Mothers’ call on moonlit nights, but they do not stir my blood like they once did. They were the price I paid when I pursued the golden orb deep into the water’s depths. I can still feel the shock of it, the violent throb of its passing, the starkness of its brightness against the green as it plunged from the third world.

Almost as terrible was the great lamenting that filled the skies above, as strident as the slap of water against stone. It is said unimaginable monsters roam the fourth world and this seemed to be one. Pale as the bones of dead fish it was, and bent as a broken reed. It crouched by the pool flapping at the water with pallid hands, moaning and wailing.

My revulsion was momentary though, for there was something about its sorrow that touched me. It echoed the time I had sought solace in solitude and found none; comfort in the Mothers and felt none; peace in the river’s quiet pulse and heard only the agitation of my heartbeat.

So, when it beseeched me, with eyes as liquid as the sky, how could I refuse? I dived, deeper and deeper, to where only the rich rot of the dead lie. The orb was heavy with reluctance but I brought the golden ball back to the third world, back to where it burned like fire, back from death into the brightness of life.

The creature was grateful and rewarded me well. I ate from its plate and slept in its bed, and the spell, if it were a spell, was wrought. I became as I am, as she was; a creature of the fourth world.

Anura did not return.

His song is silent.

The Mothers

I should have been happy, for she was fair. Dark rivers of curls, skin as white as moonlight on water, breasts softer than spawn, and she loved me well. But her chamber was small, no matter the comfort of her bed, and the old feelings of entrapment rose, as persistent as gas that bubbles from rot below still waters.

I sat at the casement and listened, as I had once loitered near the watery skin of the second world, and waited. The moon grew large and small many times, but it came at last, as I knew it would. The soft lament on the night-time air, the song of a soul as confined as mine. It took me a journey of many days through the depths of a massive forest to find her tower. Stone it was and sheer, and as remote as the third world’s glimmer had been. I sang to her and she answered with sweet melodies of her own and we made love as frogs do, with our voices.

And when trust had built, she let down her shining ladder of golden hair. I had no need of it, except as a sign that my lover’s heart had opened to me. My hands are broad and I moved across the stone like cloud-shadow over water.  She was more beautiful than her song: her eyes bluer than the morning, her hair glistening like water-beads against her skin. Her arms encircled me, night after night, like the tower’s walls.

Winds blew, tossed leaves before them; frost rimed branches; buds burst bark. A traveller passed, her red cape stark against the green. It woke shadow-memories of wings above the water’s skin, of a golden orb falling; of a song like the Mothers’.  Her foot-steps were soft, but their sound stayed with me long after she had passed, and I followed.

Others followed too. A yellow-eyed wolf, that like me, can be many things, and a man with an axe who can only ever be a creature of the third world. They found her first, the wolf with his yellow eyes and the man with his axe, but she had no appetite for the death they dealt. She craved a gentler touch than the wolf’s rough hide and the man’s calloused hands.

I won her with my songs and, she tells me, with the depths of my water-green eyes. She stares into them as I hold her, and she whispers sweet words, but I say nothing. The earth below the silken sheets drums with the blows of pick and shovel, a resonance darker and heavier than a water’s ripples, but there is another sound too, of laughter, light and free.

The soles of my feet are tougher than they look, but sensitive to all that moves. The pulse of water, the flutter of midge and moth, the work of men, as nuggetty as the rocks they hew, deep under the ground. They are simple creatures, I discover, and their kind hearts no match for the evil heart of the creature who wishes their young charge harm.

There is no laughter by the time I reach them, just heavy tears around the glass-cased coffin where they have laid her. Yet she lives, if such confinement can be called living. The night is filled with storm and when they retire to warm their broken hands around their fires, I spring from the shadows and prise her prison open.

The rain washes over us, and wakes us both. She sees what I truly am and does not take my hand, or to her bed. I have been a creature of too many worlds.

In the fourth world,

the lost wander, thinking themselves free.

Proverb of the Mothers.

Karen Simpson Nikakis

Brilliant new worlds, heroes you love.

Hi, I hoped you enjoyed my Deep Fantasy short story: The Tale of Prince Anura.

Deep Fantasy asks you to look a little closer and dig a little deeper. It delivers more than the wonder of brilliant new worlds and heroes you love. Using metaphor, symbolism, motifs, and the mythic archetypes explored by Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, Deep Fantasy resonates on psychological and spiritual levels. Enjoy my Deep Fantasy stories for all the enchantment fantasy offers, and for an exploration of life’s more profound questions.

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