The Demon

The Demon lived on the back of the Princess’s neck.  In its dormant state, it was a minute aberration of texture on her otherwise smooth skin, nigh invisible to the passing eye, even when it was not curtained off by her long hair.  It caused the Princess no physical discomfort — no aching pain, no nagging itch.  Nor did it limit her faculties of movement, with infirmity or control.  The Demon was above such cheap tricks.  Its taste for torment was far more refined.

The Princess didn’t know when the Demon had taken up residence on the back of her neck.  Its first emergences had been subtle — faint shadows at the fringes of her vision, twisting with the shapes of tendrils and blades and cruel grinning teeth.  The Princess had dismissed these as mere phantoms, passing products of her imaginative mind.  But over days and weeks and months, the Demon’s manifestations had grown bolder.  It had stretched and unfurled as a relentless, colorless cloud, consuming more and more of the Princess’s world.  Now, whenever it emerged, there was nothing the Demon did not reach.

In the early morning of a crisp autumn day, the Princess hiked to the crest of a favored hill, a secluded spot in the splendor of nature where the clamor of industry was distant.  The sunrise set the landscape alight with resplendent colors — the leaves in their fiery hues, the green grass, the stream glinting below.  From her pack, the Princess took out a canvas and paints, and set to capturing the majesty of the view with her craft.

But the Demon emerged from the back of her neck.  It slid down her body like a wet cloak and seeped over the land as far as her eyes could see.  It turned the colors to dull shades of grey.  It swept over the sun and enfeebled its rays.  It blurred boundaries and distorted distances such that the sky and the land and all the distinct features in between swam together in a nauseating meld.  The Princess closed her eyes to the warped scene and set down her paints, the beauty of this corner of her world lost to the Demon.

One evening, on the occasion of the Winter Harvest, the Princess gathered friends for a celebration at her seaside estate.  The group was a spirited medley of minds — of artists and intellectuals and entrepreneurs — and the conversation flowed as readily as the plum wine.  A childhood companion told tales of treasure hunting abroad while a classmate from the academy held forth on cosmology to a small but devoted audience.  A woodwind quintet arrived from the city and performed lively numbers that inspired even the most demure to dance.

But the Demon emerged from the back of the Princess’s neck.  It flowed through the reveling people and interspersed itself cunningly between mouths and ears.  It contorted spoken truths into wicked lies, seeding anger and envy and mistrust amongst the otherwise congenial crowd.  It modulated the music into a grating noise.  And soon the conversation turned to scorn and the dancing stumbled to a halt.  And the Princess buried her face in her hands as her guests vanished into the night, the warmth of their company lost to the Demon.

In a weekly visit to the temple orphanage, the Princess floated through a flock of giggling children, giving out gifts and hugs and kind words without prejudice.  She remembered each of the children by name and listened to their little stories of their little days with earnest attention.  The children delighted in her affection and she adored theirs — a pure love that seemed to salve all the world’s hurt.

But the Demon emerged from the back of her neck and toyed with the children’s pliant minds.  It showed the children frightening visions that summoned their meanest selves.  Their deepest fears — of abandonment and deprivation — engulfed them, sending them into tantrums of violence and greed.  They wrestled the Princess’s gifts from each other and shrieked at the Princess for more.  And the Princess pried herself from their clawing hands, hid from their hungry eyes, away from the lost beauty of their former innocence.

In the dark of her chambers, the Princess despaired.  She stood in front of her dressing mirror and stared at her reflection — a dismal version of a once fair face, whose unclouded eyes had looked upon the world with wonder and hope.  From a drawer, she grabbed a pair of shears and cut away the lengths of hair that hid the Demon from view.  She twisted around to see it in the mirror: that small, wriggling blemish on her skin.  Then, with a trembling hand, she raised the shears and plunged the sharp tip into the back of her neck.  Tears filled her eyes and blood trickled down her spine as she dug the cold metal down and down.  But even as the pain coursed through her, the Princess could feel that this assault on herself was in vain — for the Demon’s roots ran deeper than instruments could reach, and she could not carve its curse from her flesh.

She let the shears clatter to the floor.

“Demon,” the Princess cried out, “What do you want from me?  Why do you haunt me?  What can I give you so that you would leave me be?”

The Demon emerged from its abode within the Princess and filled the space of the room with its oppressive emptiness.  It emitted a cackle that sounded from all directions and the Princess covered her ears at the horrid mockery of mirth.

In a salivating voice, the Demon spoke.  “Princess, there is no deal you can strike with me.  No contract, no compromise, no negotiated settlement — nothing that can satisfy me more than what I can already take from you of my own volition.  For it is your suffering from which I draw my pleasure.  I savor it — the ruination of all that you desire.”

The Princess fell to her knees and pressed her face to the floor, in utter misery.  And the Demon’s laughter echoed endlessly through her head.

In the morning, the Princess went reluctantly to her mother, the Queen, who was the fierce ruler of their lands and who loved her only daughter with the intensity of the summer sun.  When the Queen saw the Princess’s ruined state, she erupted from her throne in a rage, demanding the perpetrator of her daughter’s harm and calling forth her legions to deliver retribution.

But the Princess merely bowed her head, and the Demon emerged from the back of her neck, huge and proud.

“Little Queen, it is I who torments your daughter,” proclaimed the Demon, “I have dominion over her soul, and no petty power you command — no mass of mortals, no arms — can drive me away.”

The Demon wrapped itself possessively around the Princess, and the Princess shuddered in its embrace.

The Queen saw that the Demon would not be threatened and, with wisdom, tempered her stance.  “Mighty Demon,” she said, “You have found yourself a fine soul.  But surely a single soul is too meager a prize for one of your eminence.  I can give you so much more from the bounty of our lands: a thousand souls I offer you in exchange for my daughter’s, of any shape and kind that you may demand.  Name those that would be yours — from the hardy souls that work our distant fields to the supple souls that serve in this very court — and I will bring them to you in chains, for your pleasure.”

The Demon laughed its sickly, reverberating laugh.  “Little Queen, your selfish disregard for those souls under your care is truly an inspiration to us who trade in suffering.  But even a million souls I would not take in exchange for your daughter’s.   For I have traveled far over the contours of space and time, and I have never found a soul as beautiful as hers.  It dreams such exquisite dreams, of the world as it could be.  And there is no greater feast than its denial.”

The Queen’s mask of diplomacy dropped and her face was once more an image of fury.  And the Princess was ashamed to feel her own disappointment — that she could not trade her torment for that of others.

In the days that followed, the Queen sent fleets across the seas and lands, to seek out minds and means that might free the Princess from the Demon.

In the first month, a medicine man was brought to the court from the vast jungles of the south.  The man exhibited no command of words, but expressed his understanding of the Princess’s plight through curt bows and quick shakes of his head.  He brought with him a panoply of substances from his home: roots and flowers and stems, buzzing insects trapped in shells, the technicolor scales of strange creatures, and a gourd of bubbling mud.  With these, he prepared bitter potions, which he pressed on the Princess at various phases of the moon.  The Princess took them eagerly, with the hope that they might imbue her with some new strength — a strength with which she could cast off the Demon.

But the potions did no such thing.  Instead, they deadened the Princess’s senses and muddled her thoughts, such that soon all stimulation and experience was a distant haze.  The Demon was pushed out of her perception.  But so too was the rest of reality.

When the Queen saw her daughter — bedbound, writhing, gasping for a world she could no longer grasp — she sought out the medicine man herself, with her warstaff in hand.  And the man fled the court, fled the Queen’s wrath, leaving the Princess to recover her senses, to be plagued by the Demon once more.

In the second month, an esteemed scholar of sorcery was brought to the court, plucked from his place of study in the Filigreed Library on the isthmus of the eastern continent.  The man wore long, lurid robes and an embroidered cap in the style of the ancient emperors.  He sat on soft pillows and walked on soft slippers and traveled with a train of twenty apprentices, who attended to his every whim.  He spent eleven days and eleven nights indulging in the comforts of the court, listening idly to accounts of the Princess’s condition.  Then, on the twelfth day, he strode to the Princess’s chambers, where she had secluded herself, and sealed himself inside.

The man’s apprentices waited at the doors.  They heard him pronounce powerful incantations, in a hundred languages, with rhythm and rhyme and arcane logic.  At first, the man’s voice was strong and forceful, filled with confidence and command.  But as the hours mounted, and night descended, his voice grew hoarse and weak.  It withered to a croak.  Then to a whisper.  Then to a choking plea.

As the sun rose on the thirteenth day, the doors to the Princess’s chambers flew open and the scholar emerged, stumbling and gibbering.  His eyes were vacant.  His mind was shattered.  And inside the room, the Princess remained, curled up on the floor, with the Demon cackling away.

In the third month, a patchwork procession of people arrived at the court, from every corner of existence, drawn by the Queen’s many proffered rewards, and by her intimidations.  A master craftsman with twenty pneumatic limbs; a wild girl astride a feathered beast; a coven of women who spoke in unison; a colossal figure with a body like amber — these and countless others crowded the court, filled the lengths of its vast halls, awaited their audience with the Princess.

But the Princess refused them all.  None, she knew, could challenge the Demon.

Hidden in her chambers, the Princess formed a desperate plan.  She packed a satchel and disguised herself in the rags of a vagabond.  Then, under the cover of night, she left the court — left her home and her station — and set out alone along foreign roads.  She left in pursuit of a legend, faintly recalled from distant memory.  In her earliest years, she had heard stories sung of a mystic mountain in a far-off land, whose summit was said to grant miracles to any with the will to reach it.  And the Princess willed herself towards this mountain now — towards the feeble promise cradled in this childhood fantasy.

She journeyed by foot, by mount, by train, by ship.  She moved under sun and moon and stars.  She followed faded maps and scattered paths, found by any means she could conceive.  She lost count of the days and leagues from her mother’s domain, tracked no route that could be rewound.  She traded everything in her satchel for forward passage, leaving nothing for a return.

Then, one day, she came upon it: a single mountain at the junction of four rivers, capped with white snow and ringed with white flowers, just as the stories had told.  It stood prominently above the surrounding land, a huge mass of grey rock and scant vegetation, austere and unwelcoming.  But real.  Undeniably real.  A place from myth, found to be real.  And as the Princess gazed upon the improbable reality before her, she felt in her spirit the smallest kindling of hope — that all that was sung about the mountain might be true.

She walked through the flowers at the mountain’s base, which were the mountain’s sole concession to grace, and she picked one as a token.  Then she began to climb.

Above the range of the white flowers, the mountain was an untamed realm of raw stone, sharp, hard, and treacherous.  Dust swirled ceaselessly, choking and blinding.  The slopes were steep and the Princess’s hands bled as she clambered upward on all fours.  Her feet slipped on the shifting scree and she fell again and again, such that soon her body was covered with aching contusions.  The mountain yielded no ready routes — no well-tested path of pilgrimage to the summit — and the Princess was forced to forge an exhausting, winding trail for herself, around unscalable bluffs and uncrossable chasms.  Her pores poured sweat until she had no more sweat to give.  Then the sweat caked to salt on her skin, where it mixed with the dust, and the blood.

The Demon taunted her throughout.  “Oh, Princess, how futile is your journey.  What do you expect to find atop this mountain that your dear mother could not bring to you at court?  Here, in this barren place, you have no comforts, no companions, no power, no privilege.  You have only suffering, and that only feeds my satisfaction.”

The Princess tried to ignore the Demon’s words, to suppress the truth in them that threatened to dissolve the last of her resolve.  And she continued to climb.

Finally, after impossible time, the Princess stumbled onto the flat top of the mountain.  The snow was white and untrodden.  The sun was high and its light was harsh through the thin air.  The wind howled, cold and dry.  She cast her eyes around, searching for a sign or a structure — some indication of a destination.  But the summit was bare.  There was only her, and the Demon.

Despair filled the Princess’s heart.  The Demon had been right.  Her journey had been in vain.  There was nothing to be found here — no cleansing spring, no magic totem, no benevolent god.  She had brought herself to a place bereft of beauty and had fulfilled the Demon’s wishes on its behalf.

The Demon exulted in its fortune.

On spent legs, the Princess walked to the edge of the summit and gazed out toward the horizon.  Clouds shrouded the land in all directions and the mountain was a lifeless island in their midst.  She pulled out the white flower she had brought from the base of the mountain and held it up by its stem.  Its delicate petals whipped about in the wind and, before the flower could be torn asunder, the Princess released it, to be carried away.

She followed the flower’s flight with her eyes.  For an instant, it hovered in the air, suspended by an invisible whirl.  Then it zipped out and down, off the mountain side, toward the clouds and the ground below.  And as the Princess watched the flower rush along the sheer face of the mountain — rush down and down — she felt in herself the pull of gravity, and the pull of the wind.

Then, to the Princess’s surprise, she heard the Demon’s laughter falter.  Its cruel sound faded to silence, and it emerged, from the back of her neck.  It moved in an unfamiliar fashion: slowly, carefully, all traces of its domineering manner gone.  It encircled the Princess at a slight distance, hesitant, for once, to touch her.

Then the Demon did something it had never done before: it reached out with vaporous limbs and tugged at the Princess’s body.  It wrapped itself around her — around her waist, her arms, her legs — and it tried to pull her back from the edge of the summit.  It strained in its efforts, twisting and panting.  But it could not move her.

And in that moment, the Princess saw the true shape of the Demon.  The pall it had cast over her vision vanished, and she saw through to its naked essence.  It was a parasite, that lived upon her, with false belief in its possession of her.  She saw its hunger, its need.  And in her penetration, she grasped the bounds of its power — the limits of what it could take, and no more.

She extended her hands into the open space in front of her.  And she heard the Demon whimper.  For it could not move her.

The Princess let out a sigh as a peace washed over her.  The weariness evaporated from her body and the forgotten shape of a smile formed on her face.  The rays of the sun grew warm on her skin and the roar of the wind became a melody.  She looked out once more across the expanse before her, at the clouds that covered the land.  They appeared now as blankets, light and clean, their blankness no longer an absence, but a liberation.

She breathed deep of the keen air, which now blew in a single direction.  She stood tall at the edge of the summit, braced by the clarity of her position.  She spread her arms wide, as if to release all of the world.

Then she leaned forward.

And the Demon had no more hold over her soul.