I am that woman. They created me in their tower, for they were vain wizards, forever attempting transformations and spells never done before. They used the limbs of pale white birch for my bones, silky rose petals from a thousand pearly roses for my flesh, ropes of heavy, bright gold for my hair, brilliant sapphire stones for my eyes and one blood red rose in full bloom for my mouth. They gave me a voice from a dozen lilting nightingales and poured crimson wine to be my blood. They cast their magics upon me and changed me into what I am now.
These foolish brothers were proud of their beautiful handiwork, the embodiment of a perfect woman. “Look,” they boasted to friends and envious colleagues alike, “Is she not the perfection of beauty?’ While they admired, I stood in perfect indifference.
They grew rich from this experiment, these two wizards. Soon, they had amassed great wealth and fame, I, their only exhibit. This was as planned and both delighted in their success. Their plan had but one flaw in it, a tiny imperfection that grew to a thousand brilliant fractures as in a diamond.
They fell in love with me. I watched as they fell on their knees, pleading for a sign of love from me. I watched when the two brothers began to hate each other, jealously fancying that I was fonder of one than the other. Their discontent made them bitter enemies, and finally the younger challenged the elder to a magical contest in which the victor would wed me and in which the loser would seek no more to trouble the other. All this I saw under a cool and dispassionate sapphire eye.
And so the date was set for the duel of the two wizards. I stood in my usual stance, watching without curiosity as they began. So evenly matched were the two brothers that they could not defeat one another. They ravaged their tower and scorched black the lands surrounding, in each direction as far as the eye could see. For ten days and nights, storms raged and blue lightning split the skies from out the tower’s windows. After ten days and nights, both were cold and still on the crumbled stone remains of the tower. Never looking back, I walked away from the destruction.
You might think I regret this needless destruction and slaughter over my behalf. You might suppose that I hate the two dead brothers with all my heart, or perhaps that I mourn for their deaths still. But you forget that I have no heart, but only rose petals and white birch branches that cannot feel sorrow or hate. And neither can stony sapphires, no matter how luminous, weep.
The idea for this story came partly from Celtic mythology in which two mages (Gwydion and Math, I believe) create a woman out of flowers to be the wife of a hero. She turns out to have a false heart. I wanted to look at it from a slightly different perspective in a slightly different story.
