The 12 Wild Princesses: An Erotic Fairy Tale for Women Who Will Not Be Tamed.
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Once upon a time, in a land carved out and fenced in by wounded and power-ravenous egos, 12 women affirmed what it was to be wild.
Their father, a long-reigning king, was quite beside himself by the time he called for the old soldier, and the crowned patriarch sat hunched on his majestic throne, head in bony, bejeweled hands, when the bounty hunter finally arrived. The king did not know where to begin, ashamed to tell anyone, let alone another man, that his daughters were beyond his control.
How could they continuously disobey him, dishonoring his name and casting their royal bloodline into the murky shadows of sin, debauchery, and lawlessness? How could his 12 princesses have grown to be so unabashedly wild and blasphemous? Where had their blessed purity gone?
The hunter stood before the weeping ruler, holding the red cloak gifted him by the wire-haired Witch in his hands and pondering his pending mission. He heard the whispers on the streets about the wild women who had stopped going to church and rejected the rules of their father’s house.
He heard their high-heeled, designer shoes were found muddy and ruined every morning from long nights of erotic dancing, and the royal seamstress was busy constantly sewing new undergarments to replace the torn and defiled ones. The king locked them in their room every night, had the strongest iron bars placed on the windows, but still these wild ones would not be contained.
When the king collected himself enough to speak, he did not tell the hunter anything new. The royal one droned on about shame and punishment, calling his daughters the same vile names all sensually awake women had been called since the rise of man’s rule, and the soldier found it all very tedious.
He stared at the deep, garnet velvet fabric, and let his mind drift to the memory of the Witch’s instructions: The king will ask you to stay in his daughters’ room, to seduce them if you must, and to find out their wild secrets by any means necessary. Mind you, the man is desperate, unable to control the bodies of his precious princesses, and he may ask you to do terrible things in the name of righteousness and honor. Do not be fooled by the king’s promises of power and glory, for his rule is coming to an end.
She had given him the red cloak then, and told him to put it on as soon as the daughters were locked in their would-be cage for the evening. All will be revealed to you in time, Hunter, for you are an awakened man.
When the king finally finished insulting his daughters’ strength, and promising the hunter immense riches if he could reveal the princesses’ dearly kept secret, he led the soldier to their room. The hunter expected to find an orgy of cackling hedonism, a coven of naked priestesses chanting and howling, but when the king opened the door, the sisterhood was quite subdued.
Several of the princesses were painting their faces with sacred symbols, still others were singing softly to themselves and staring distantly through the barred windows. Two of the young ones were wrenching their full-bodied sister into a corset, apologizing for every pull of the beastly strings, and others were sweetly snoring underneath their red canopied bed.
Resting up for a long night with the devil, no doubt, growled the king. Say all your open-legged prayers tonight, my daughters, for tomorrow I will surely know all of your secrets. I hope it has been worth it, all this lustful rebellion. I can’t find a single man willing to marry any of you now. Such dishonor! Such a waste of my royal blood! Oh, how I wish your mother had been able to give me a son!
Most of the wild ones just rolled their eyes at their father’s words, but a red-haired one painting a pentagram on her freckled cheek muttered It’s been worth it and smirked at herself in the mirror. The king’s veins throbbed, and he moved to raise his hand to her for speaking out, but the soldier held him back.
Let me do my job, king. Leave us. The hunter and the king stared at one another for a long moment, the princesses frowning in perplexity at the soldier’s apparent fortitude. Eventually, the king conceded and left, but not before he spat on the pile of new shiny shoes by the door.
Alone with 12 women rumored to be fearless temptresses, the hunter’s heart-drum thundered in his chest. He clung to the red cloak the Witch had gifted him, and realized he was quaking with belly-born trepidation at the sight of these unapologetic, so empowered creatures. They all moved to encircle him, and he swallowed. He could see their wildness now, erotic divinity in their eyes and righteous rage in their hearts.
He wanted to know them, to taste this fierce feminine juice and to lick the holy water off their bare thighs. He wanted to understand this raw, red power, and to hold hands with the wild. He wanted to weep, to lie in a whole-body prostration to their beauty, to write sultry hymns in the name of these she-gods.
They were so close to him now, these 12 priestesses, and he could smell their unwashed desire for liberation. Part of him wanted to strip naked and surrender, not caring if he died there and then in the presence of the Holy Feminine, but he remembered the Witch’s words. The princesses watched him fumble and drape the red cloak over his quivering shoulders, pulling the soft sensual hood over a head used to the weight of a helmet.
The Coven of the Royal Wild smiled then, knowing it had begun.
We have been waiting for you the full-bodied princess affirmed. Tonight, you come with us to the wild place, but you will not return the same man. Are you ready?
The hunter would have done anything for them, and he watched as they — one by one — retrieved their own red hoods hidden in dark corners and behind gold-threaded pillows. He watched as they adorned themselves in their robes and gathered their shoes in their hands.
Yes he managed to finally speak. Yes, I’m ready. Take me with you!
One of the youngest priestesses moved a grand rug aside and raised a trap door, leading the procession of 13 hooded wild ones through a dank stone tunnel, walls carved with pagan marks and dream-visions, and into the night. The full moon shone its silver, mother-light on a vast and waving lake, water rippled by the August breeze. 12 boats bobbed near the shore, captained by ghostly, silent figures.
The soldier marveled at the ancient knotted oaks, taller than any tree he had ever seen. He had thought himself well-traveled, but this land was surely the most majestic place he had ever been.
The red-haired princess pressed her ear to the mossy bark of a willow and closed her eyes. You can hear its heart beating if you listen she whispered to the hunter, and she helped him quiet his busy mind long enough to hear Gaia’s pulse ascending from under the sacred ground. Take off your boots she ordered, and she herself began unlacing her garish gown.
He knelt to do as he was told, but was distracted by the synchronous disrobing of all 12 wild ones; they kept their red cloaks on, but the corsets dropped ceremoniously to the ground, heralded by blissful sighs of relief. The entire shore was decorated with lavish fabric and stark white under-things by the time they started climbing into the boats, all with shoes in hand.
The red-haired warrior woman helped the hunter into her boat, and he met eyes with the ghost of a holy healer burned in the name of a long-dead king. Her skin was still charred black, but her eyes were bright, and she grinned at this soldier who did not fear her.
We go to her land now the princess told him. She built the wild place out of her blood and bones, along with her sisters. They rise from their graves every night to bring us home to the Motherland.
The voyage across the water was short, and the hunter listened to the princess as she told him of the Sacred Masculine. You are not the first man who has been to the wild place, and you will not be the last she proclaimed as the boat drifted to shore. But you may just be the one we have been waiting for.
He could hear the drums of rebellion from the shore, and he could smell the fires of the Feminine Divine. The coven marched solemnly, bare feet on holy ground, led by the ghosts of burned women.
Most of them still clutched their shoes in their hands, though some had been tossed into the water, and the hunter now knew the shoes were symbols of their father’s control — intended to keep them slow and demure, just as the corsets were meant to keep them tethered and breathless.
They reached the stone circle by midnight, and the coven of princesses joined with the holy ghosts to dance bare-breasted in the moonlight, to set fire to the sacred herbs, and to pray with their whole bodies. The hunter learned who he was that night, a man discontented with the way of the world, with his king’s strong-fisted reign, with the denigration of the Earth, and with the social binds placed on the Sacred Feminine.
He wept when he saw the untamed women beat the heels of their shoes with stones, and he joined with them in open-legged worship of the holy wild. It was a night of erotic innocence and sex-prayer. It was a moving ritual for the body’s divinity. The Witch who had gifted him the cloak was there, straddling one of the megaliths and feeding a she-wolf its holy communion.
She nodded with fierce approval when she saw the hunter, knowing full well what she had done for him and the world.
The moon set just as the sky began to glow with a red dawn, and the princesses gathered their wrecked shoes and unruined souls.
The hunter protested, still lying naked on the muddy ground: Why would we go back? Let’s stay! Why would you ever return from this consecrated ground where we are so spiritually and sexually free?
The red-haired princess propped herself up next to him and answered: We go home to teach, to reject submission. We go home to show them the Feminine Wild cannot be caged.
The old Witch helped the soldier to his feet, her voice as low and gruff as he remembered it: The wild woman will not be kept under lock and key, nor will the wild man. Go home and show your king the face of the Awakened Masculine.
He did as he was told. The hunter sailed back with the red-haired woman in his arms, discussing the promise of a soulful awakening with the healer’s ghost, and planning his plea to the king. He would beg him to release his daughters from their binds to his home and name. He would call for a rewriting of laws, and he would cut deep into the ego-fueled bellies of the uninitiated.
The Coven of the Red-Hooded Thirteen marched into the king’s throne room just as the red sun rose, and the patriarch stood, face twisted in utter disgust as he saw his naked and muddied kin. They tossed their shoes at him then, knocking the crown from his head, and he boiled with anger until the hunter stepped forward, arm in arm with his fire-haired love.
The king’s pink face softened and cooled just a bit in that moment, not out of compassion but bewilderment, and the hunter spoke with authority: You do not own these women, king, nor does anyone. Their bodies are their own, and their wild psyches are fertile with the rawest truth. I stand with them, not above them but with them, and I will call out any man who thinks himself worthier than a wild woman.
The perplexed patriarch clutched his heart then, struck dead by the hunter’s words, the faces of his daughters the last beauteous sight he would ever see. The shadows cast over the land lifted, and the Coven of Thirteen ruled in unison, governing at round tables and lifting bans on all things wild and free. Daughters held steadfast to their wild roots, and corsets were burned in great bonfires of liberation.
The ghosts of the healers were welcomed home, and their skin turned soft and bright with vindication; and so was birthed the She-Kingdom of the Holy Wild, and they lived happily ever after.
All blessings be.
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Danielle Dulsky
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