But the hole only grew as the princess grew into womanhood. The King and Queen were disconsolate and locked the maiden in a great stone tower. They wallowed in their own despair at having birthed their only child to such a bad omen. The princess, for her part, spent her days staring out the window of the tower down on the kingdom below. She never uttered a word or tear at any attempt to fill her heart up but just stared down on the courtyards with a sad turn to her ruby red lips.
The King and Queen were coming to their last wits at the doom that plagued their kingdom when a handsome prince announced himself at their door. Atop his great white steed he promised the King and Queen that he could fill the heart of the desolate princess. Having little other option they assented and sent the prince to the great stone tower.
The prince started up the long marble steps to suddenly find himself beset by thorned vines that seemed to come alive and grab at his gleaming armor. He drew his mighty sword and slashed at the enchanted vines, hacking his way upward. The vines wrapped around his throat trying to choke him but he refused to be dissuaded. He ploughed forward with great blows from his sword only find himself now faced with a perilous swarm of great black bats. They beat their great wings about his head and barred their fangs for his throat. Again he swung his great sword beheading any bat which ventured to close. He cleared the bats only to find a great chasm stretching before him and the door to the princess' chamber on the other side. He lifted his bow, slid a bolt home and fired an arrow across the chasm. The arrow embedded itself in the wood above the door and with the rope attached the prince swung himself across. With great might he hauled his way up the rope to the door only to find it locked. With his great fist he hammered the door until the wood splintered and gave way. He clambered into the waiting chamber.
Through many perils he had finally reached the princess' chamber. It was decorated in lush velvets and silks befitting a princess. The room warm and aglow from a fire in the stone fireplace.The princess sat at her usual spot by the window staring over the land. The prince stood straight and announced himself as her saviour and lord. The princess turned from the window to look at him with sad eyes and then turned back to the window with a sigh.
The prince huffed at the princess' slight and felt his ego stirred. After all he had faced, the princess had simply turned from him with not so much as an acknowledgement of his great deeds. The prince puffed up his chest, marched over the princess' sitting spot and demanded that she face him. The princess once again let out a lonely sigh and did not turn from the window.
The prince grew angry and jerked the princess from the window and into his arms. He announced that he was going to fill the princess' damaged heart whether she liked it or not. The princess did not fight but stared blankly over the prince's broad sholders. He carried her to the bed and roughly tossed her down upon it. He ripped her dress from her body leaving her naked and shivering on the coverlet. He laid himself over the princess pinning her to the matress.
He whispered in a dark tone in the princess' ear that the way to fill her up was to push himself deep inside her so there would be no more room for a hole or a heart. Once she was his, she would bow to him and he would lead the kingdom from darkness. For the first time in her life a tear rolled from the princess' eye and she uttered one word.
"No."
The prince was outraged claiming that it was his right as her rescuer and he would make her his. He would be her King and her kingdom would be his. Agian the princess simply said,
"No."
The prince reared up in anger striking the princess across the cheek. He reached for his belt letting his member free. He wrapped his fingers around the princess' throat and pryed her legs apart. Tears fell from the princess' eyes in great streams as the prince readied himself to enter her and own her.
Suddenly her tears stopped. What the prince did not know, nor did anyone in the kingdom, was that Death had fallen in love with the princess and saw that she did not bring bad luck upon the kingdom but that they had made her the scapegoat for their misfortunes. The little princess with a hole in her heart was innocent of any crimes attributed to her and punished for simply being born different. Death himself had seen what inhabitants of the kingdom did; slaughtering thier neighbors, conquering other kingdoms to make off with their wealth, leaving a wake of destruction in their path. Death knew all their deeds that poisoned their land and was laid to blame upon the princess.
Death had long been filling the hole in her heart secretly with stars. Stars that would burn with the fire of a thousand suns. The stars lay dormant in her heart. Even she knew not that they were there and that Death had been secretly visiting her every night to plant his shining seeds.
And in the moment that the prince arranged himself to penetrate her; to fill her up and crowd her out of her own heart, the stars flared to life. All the power that Death had planted in her heart came to bear. The prince was blinded by the light that spilled from the princess and screeched as he vainly tried to cover his eyes. He scrabbled across the floor away from the princess screeching like a banshee all the way. Suddenly from above him he heard a voice,
"Never again." The prince stared into the glowing face of the now not silent princess. Her eyes flared with a thousand fires from the depth of universe, her hair whipped about her face like a great black flock of ravens, her skin glowed like sun. Behind her he saw the dark figure of Death cloaked in blackness nod his assent. And with that the princess looked upon him and the prince knew all hope was lost.
The princess burned the kingdom to the ground with the fires in her heart. All those who tried to fill her heart up with trinkets and baubles stolen from other lands, all those who cursed the day she was born, her own parents who locked her away so they would have to look upon her, tried to flee but were caught in her great fire. Death trod by her side collecting the wayward souls and gazed upon her lovingly.
Upon the ashes of the old kingdom a new kingdom to Darkness and Light was born. The princess with now a Queen and none saught to usurp her for her will was law and Death sat at her right hand until the end of days.
