Now, our princess, the girl who opened this story, did not feel that same pressure as her friend. You could say that she was more sheltered than most other princesses if you like. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that our princess loved riding more than she loved anything else in the world. She’d befriended one of the stable boys, to the great annoyance of her parents. Every holiday the princess was away from school, she spent most of her time going out riding with her friend. She thoroughly enjoyed seeing the forests and the meadows through his eyes, the way that he could make even a barley field look magical. It was a perspective the princess would never have thought possible and the stable boy taught her more about the people in her kingdom than any of her schooling ever had.
At this point, it has to be said that the stable boy loved chocolate cake. He’d sneak a piece out of the kitchen almost any chance he got. Certainly, every time he had a craving for cake he’d saunter into the kitchen and charm one of the cooks or the maids into giving him a slice. The stable boy would watch the princess from the stall where he was grooming this horse or that as she came in, with her hair all askew in a most unprincess-like fashion, and he enjoyed making her laugh.
The stable boy had a dream, a wish. If a fairy godmother had come up to him and asked him what his heart’s desire was, he wouldn’t have told her it was to be a prince like another might. He wouldn’t have said it was to find riches beyond his wildest dreams. No, the stable would have sighed a deep sigh and said that it was to see the princess’ big, brown eyes sparkle as she tasted a piece of chocolate cake and understood why he loved it so much. He’d prefer it if she loved the cakes he could make the most, but he just wanted to see her happy with cake.
The princess and the stable boy had talked about cake, as people do, and he’d tried to explain it to her, but… His tongue was silver honey, but he had no words to explain to the princess and the one time he’d dared offer her a bite from the cake he’d carefully baked just for her she’d fled from him so quickly he now scarce dared respond when she brought it up. It would have driven a wedge in their friendship, had the stable boy not loved the princess so much.
I’m afraid to say that the princess herself was rather oblivious to the stable boy’s feelings. He did not understand her reaction to cake at all, but he wasn’t a fool and could see she didn’t understand his words at all. More than anything, that was what kept the stable boy’s heart from breaking.
It so happened that one day when the princess came home for the summer holidays that her parents had sent the stable boy far away. They’d had enough of the princess’s sneaking into stables and out of the castle where it was safe. And, perhaps, they had learned of the stable boy’s offer to share his cake with their daughter too, but we may never know. What we do know is that the princess was utterly inconsolable.
And one night, when everyone was fast asleep, the princess sneaked out of the castle, saddled her horse and rode out into the wide world to find her friend. It was not a great adventure, nor did it involve long quests for magical items or anything of the kind. It involved a girl, riding from place to place, until she finally found the stable boy working at another castle. She rejoiced at having found her friend and asked him to run away with her. As the king he now worked for was a cruel sort, the stable boy was only too happy to agree.
So they fled into the wilderness together. And one evening, when they were both cold and hungry, the stable boy offered to share his last piece of cake with her. The princess had never known hunger before, never known hardship before. She’d never wanted for anything in her life. Now she was so cold she thought she’d never be warm again. Her clothes were torn from their flight. She was dirty and their attempts to catch squirrels had turned up nothing but some poisonous berries the stable boy hadn’t let her eat. They weren’t starving. Not yet. They still had some roots and other edible bits of plant that the stable boy had foraged the days before. But the princess thought that, perhaps, she would never get another chance to eat cake.
In that moment, she said ‘yes’ to the stable boy’s offer and tried a bite. Chocolate cake was the best cake that she’d ever tasted! Though, having never tasted any cake before, not even a bit of the frosting, perhaps that was not so surprising. What would the princess compare it to? In that moment, she thought that she finally understood why everyone always loved cake so much. She thought she understood why the princesses in the stories she’d read always went out in search of it or were willing to wait a hundred years to find their favourite cake.
You may think that the stable boy had taken advantage of the princess. In a way he had, and he knew it. It gnawed at him because he loved the princess and he wanted her to be happy. They kept on travelling together for a while and every chance they found the stable boy encouraged the princess to try more cake. Maybe she wanted to try a bite of something else, such as strawberry? The princess was not interested. Perhaps she ought to try a different chocolate cake? The princess hadn’t even known chocolate cake came in different flavours, and she didn’t care.
When the two finally returned to the princess’ kingdom, her parents were only too happy to have their daughter back and for a while all was well in the princess’s world. Sometimes she’d sneak a bite of the stable boy’s cake, though she discovered that she usually preferred the icing and the fondant.
And then a day came that the king and queen presented their daughter with a beautiful and expensive chocolate cake made by a baker-prince from the neighbouring kingdom. They hoped that the princess would like the cake. It was made with the finest chocolate and carefully constructed to resemble a rearing unicorn in front of a tower. The white piping stood in stark contrast and delicately traced lines so fine it was clear the baker was a master at the craft. It was flawless, made with so much love all who saw it expected the unicorn to move at any moment. It was the kind of cake that anyone in the kingdom would have loved. (Provided, of course, that they liked chocolate.)
But not the princess. She hated it. She wrinkled her nose and fled. The sight of the cake made her want to scream; the scent of it made her want to cry; the taste of it, when her parents managed to convince her to try a nibble, made her gag. And they told her it would be all right and she’d grow to like the cake eventually. The thought of eating more… She ran. She ran to the highest tower and found her way onto the roof because she would rather die than have to eat more of that cake.
Her parents didn’t know what to do. Everyone liked cake! They offered to look into strawberry flavours, but she didn’t want them. They offered to get her vanilla, but she took a step closer to the edge of the roof. They offered to look for another kind of chocolate and she burst into tears. They told her that she was being silly, that one chocolate cake tasted much like the other, even if they looked differently. They told her that most people liked one particular cake the best — they did! — but that was no reason to throw away the others when it wasn’t available. They told her they loved her, but that her behaviour was beyond childish.
Finally, because the princess only inched closer to the edge of the roof, her parents fetched the stable boy. They didn’t know what else to do. They couldn’t understand why their daughter was so stubborn and obstinate. They hoped that the stable boy could help, though it galled them both to ask. They hoped he could convince their daughter to see sense and reason.
The stable boy did know the princess very well. He’d watched her try to understand everyone’s love of cake. He’d tried to explain it. He’d been there when she’d understood for the first time. True, the stable boy didn’t quite know why the princess thought his chocolate cake was the only cake that tasted good, but he didn’t doubt her assertions that it was.
Somehow, he managed to talk her down. The stable boy used the same gentleness that suited him so well when he worked with horses and the same charm he’d always used on people. Somehow, he managed to explain to the king and queen that the cakes they shared together tasted far better than the one in the din
ing hall now. Did they really want to eat it if they could choose?
The king and queen still didn’t understand their daughter’s behaviour, but they agreed not to try to make the princess eat cake against her wishes.
And for a while things seemed well. The princess did not eat cake. The king and queen found the stable boy a far corner of the kingdom to work in, for grateful as they were they did not approve of his friendship to the princess. Life resumed much as it always had.
The princess’ friends came to visit. They wanted to cheer her up as well as to help her with the ordeal she’d just been through. All they managed was to make her sadder because the only thing they wanted to talk about was how awful it was to be forced to eat cake when they didn’t want to. Now that the princess had found one that she liked, she felt uncomfortable with the discussion. It was awkward for the princess because she could not, in good conscience, join her friends. She was confused. Even if she only found just one cake that she’d ever been interested in, it was still a cake and she understood why people liked it.
Trying to bring up her feelings with them… did not end well and the princess felt forlorn. Her friends didn’t understand her interest in just the one cake. One of them wanted nothing more to do with her and the others did not know how to feel. Their friendship was based on more than just their mutual disinterest in cake, but it had always been a safe place filled with understanding for all of them and that, now, was no longer true. Wasn’t it? The princesses didn’t know. When our princess tried to explain her feelings, how she didn’t fit with her friends nor with the rest of the kingdom, the words got all tangled in her mouth. She didn’t know how to explain why one cake tasted fine and the others made her throw up to either her friends or her family. How could she? Everyone knew that people either liked cake or they didn’t. Even if the people who didn’t like it were few and far between, they were unmistakably there. People who liked cake only some of the time? The princess had never met anyone else like that.
Finally, she decided to pretend she liked no cake at all because it seemed easier than anything else. In time, her friends forgot what she’d tried to tell them. Her friends and family quite contently (or grumblingly in the case of the king and queen) constructed a life around the princess’s lack of desire to eat cake. She felt lonely, though.
And she never forgot about her stable boy.
One night, when it was dark and stormy and the weather was just creeping into winter, the princess fled the castle again to search for him. She wanted to run away with him to a land where no one cared about cake at all, not whether they liked it nor how they liked it. She looked high and she looked low. She searched through castles and caves. She wandered through towns and meadows, up hills and down valleys. There were still no grand adventures for the princess, no magical creatures for her to aid and be aided in return. She used what the stable boy had taught her to make her way through the world in search of him.
Finally, after a search so long the princess had long ago lost count of the days, she found him. The stable boy was delighted to see his princess again and together they decided to keep on travelling. Sometimes, they would bake each other a cake. Sometimes they would go without for weeks. Always, they travelled the length and breadth of the world together, and if they have not died then they are still travelling the world together today.
This is a literary fairy tale about demisexuality and what it is. Cake is often used within the asexual community to explain what the orientation is and as a symbol for that orientation. Since demisexuality is on the ace spectrum, it struck me as the perfect way to explain it.
And because, as you may have noticed, I really enjoy fairy tales… Of course, that was a perfectly logical format for the explanation as well!
Waiting, Nightshadow perched on a branch overlooking the lake. Below him, his brother was swaying back and forth on a mossy boulder. Dawn light filtered down the leaves and birdsong overwhelmed the quiet. A tree-glider scrambled past the trunk; Nightshadow shivered in the dislodged air, flicking his tail to regain his balance. He resettled his wings, then stretched them and yawned. He tried to think only of whether he could go to sleep, to think of anything but the Stars’ betrayal and his brother.
In time the light grew stronger, sharpening the shadows, and the pale, four-pointed marking across Starglow’s back blazed like a true Star. Low and plaintive the peeweww cried out in his sound-voice, and even so far away Nightshadow’s bones reverberated. Then Starglow sprang up to catch the air. Nightshadow didn’t follow until he was certain his brother wouldn’t notice his presence. He still feared that his brother would lose his way or get caught in a tangle of bush, branch, or vine. Grateful for the other peeweww’s bright marking to guide his way, Nightshadow zigzagged after the moving shape.
When Nightshadow reached the large boulder that marked the edge of the colony, he hovered for a moment, then decided to skirt the perimeter instead of flying straight home. Starglow always made such a fuss when he discovered anyone had followed him; Nightshadow wasn’t about to give him another excuse. He was startled by the sound of crackling, rustling undergrowth and the subsequent appearance of a prowler with its young. Nightshadow hid far out of the four-legged creatures’ reach, clinging to a vine thick enough to hold his weight and trying to ignore the sap trickling down his wingclaws and the body-oil it mingled with.
When the footfalls and the cries of the prowler’s young had died away, Nightshadow continued on his own flight around the colony, half lost in his memories.
Do I really care? The question startled him enough to freeze mid-air and drop a few lengths before he remembered to keep himself airborne.
After that, he forced himself to pay proper attention to his surroundings: the slight damp chill of the wait, the soft whisper of leaves or the song of birds… Here and there he paused to study the texture of moss and bark or the gnarled shape of a branch, or the scent of a flower. Nightshadow made himself study what he could to avoid the doubts and questions that never left him for long, that could never be asked. He took every excuse to put off returning home. He’d flit up to a tree, as close as he deemed safe, to study its swaying and hovering. For twinkles on end, he’d perch on a rock, or a branch, or even the slippery ground when it seemed safe. All to avoid facing his brother.
When at last he arrived at his nest, he dipped down to just below the perch, came up, grabbed hold of the supporting branch and scrambled onto the peeweww-made ledge. Once secure before the entrance, he chirruped. No response. Both Morningshade and Starglow had to be asleep already. Nightshadow hopped inside and, affirming his brother was indeed asleep nearby, went to his mate and wrapped his tail around hers, hunching down as best he could. Stars, I’m tired.
Just before dark Nightshadow was woken by the cheeps of excited children and the cries, calls, clacks and chirrups of adults. Still drowsy, he could make nothing more out of the thought-voices than that Morningshade was calling to him. Starglow was still asleep. Nightshadow flexed his wingclaws, careful not to wake his brother in the small space and, yawning, stretched his wings as far as they could go. Now more alert, he could better comprehend the conversations in the colony’s thought-voices and the agitation in their sound-voices. He hopped over to the entrance and out onto the perch, his tail brushing lightly past Starglow. He stretched again once outside, properly this time, with his wings spread for balance and the leaf of his tail raised.
Scanning the immediate area for anything that could have caused such a commotion, he saw nothing. Only branches supporting baskets of food and water and empty-seeming nests. Splotches of grey light lurked in the darkness. He couldn’t see any peeweww. Nightshadow hopped towards the edge and gripped it with his claws as he cocked his head to look down. Leaves obscured his view and he couldn’t find Morningshade. A trickle of oil ran down his back at that. No peeweww sounded frightened or hurt, but even so he was scared.
“What’s happening?” he asked when a peeweww dove down and past his nest. Sta
rtled, the peeweww stopped and hovered in the air slightly below Nightshadow’s perch. Leaf-grey bands covered the slim figure and a waterbasket rested against her breast; her leafless tail swished. “Morningleaf?” She seemed so agitated.
“Yes, Keeper?”
He repeated the question, the oil starting to run down his breast.
“Greytail and Shadowfall found a… a stranger, Keeper.”
When Nightshadow jumped off the perch, Morningleaf backed up a length, the water sloshing in its container. He let himself fall clear of the branches before catching the wind and joining the girl. Her skin gleamed bright with oil and she was cheeping so softly that he only heard her sound-voice now he was closer. Hovering a short length below, he asked, “A stranger?”
“We think –” Her tail looped in agitation and she lost a little altitude. “We think it’s a peeweww, Keeper. We’re not sure. I have to hurry.” With that she continued down. Nightshadow wanted to call after her, but didn’t. How can they be unsure whether someone is peeweww or not? he wondered privately as the youngling disappeared beneath the leaves. Whoever Greytail and Shadowfall had found was on the ground. Did more of us survive the storm? He wasn’t sure whether that thought filled him with hope or dread. He had to see for himself.
If all the colony had gathered below, it would be too crowded to land safely. Certain he could make his way to the group from the ground, Nightshadow sought out an empty landing-space and hopped his way to the source of the sound-voices. It was harder and took longer, but it would be less dramatic; the colony did not need more excitement. More than once he stumbled or had to glide a length.
When he reached the other peeweww, they moved aside for him in a rustle of shifting wings and tails. The stranger was unmistakable. Smears of dirt, blood and oil caked her skin, but those patches that were still relatively clean shone painfully bright. His heart made a loop of excitement, but he forced it down before more oil could cool his skin. He was their Star Keeper. He had to be strong. With a sharp cry of his sound-voice he silenced the murmur of the colony’s thought-voices and the undertones of their sound-voices.
Feather by Feather and Other Stories Page 25
