Once upon a time, in the northern reaches of the Land of Faerie, those wild and wondrous forests at the very edge of fia sídhe dominion, there lived a Princess. Her coat was tawny and lustrous, with not a hair out of place. Her legs were slender and shapely, ending in dainty cloven hooves. Her eyes were large and clear as mirrors; bucks swore that, at night, they could see entire constellations reflected in her eyes. If rulership of Faerie was still given to the fairest in the land, as in the old days, then this Princess would have been High Queen.
Instead, she was fifty-ninth in line for the throne. Even within her own family, House Dealan Dé, she was the least, with seven brothers and seven sisters, all older than she. So no doe or buck expected her to ever rule, least of all the Princess herself. Her peers who hoped to someday be Kings or Queens spent their days learning statecraft, history, and poetry. However, the Princess fell in with peers who had no such aspirations, who spent their days throwing stones at birds in flight, pulling the legs off dire spiders, or making sport of the occasional pony that stumbled onto their parents’ land.
In time, a Prince of House Seillean sought the Princess’s hoof in marriage. He had eyes for her surpassing beauty; she had eyes for his great wealth.
So, one fine morning, the Princess embarked for the Prince’s estate, wearing her dark cerulean traveling cloak to guard against the season’s chill. She rode in a palanquin borne by six servants, and was accompanied by a full score of soldiers. It was a journey of a full day and a full night, so she also brought a cart loaded with fresh greens, bread, cheese, cured meat, and barrels of wine—enough to feed the entire retinue, with food to spare.
Just as twilight began to darken the sky over Faerie, an old crone emerged from the woods bordering the road. Her face and body were concealed by her traveling cloak, but her crooked, slumped posture revealed her years. As the Princess’s palanquin passed by, the crone cried out, “Hail, Princess!”
The Princess had nothing to say.
Undeterred, the crone continued, “Can you give a piece of bread to a poor, hungry traveler? Surely, one as noble and wealthy as you can spare a single loaf.”
“Nay!” the Princess replied, without even looking out her window. “My bread is my own, and I shan't share it with batty oldlings from the wilderness!”
The princess continued without another thought for the crone. The path went on, and the sky grew darker. When the first night-moon was half-risen, another crone emerged from the woods, again concealed by her cloak.
“Hail, Princess, fairest in the land!” she called out. “Can you spare a morsel of cheese for your humble servant?”
This time, the Princess deigned to look upon the beggar. Leaning out her window, she answered, “My servants know their places, but you don’t even know that much. Get out of my sight, old nag, or instead of food I’ll give you a taste of the lash!”
With that, the Princess drew back into her palanquin and turned away from the crone. Had she not turned away, she would have seen the cloaked figure make no move to flee—she just gave exaggerated obeisance and waited for the Princess to depart.
The path went on, and the sky grew darker still. Just after the second night-moon had risen, and the first had reached its crest, the Princess’s retinue rounded a bend and found a third cloaked figure, this time in the very center of the crossroad ahead.
“Hail, Princess!” she cried out. “If bread and cheese are too dear to you, can you at least spare a blessing, one word of kindness, for one so poor as I?”
At that, the Princess realized: this ancient beggar, and the previous two who had vexed her, were all one and the same. The Princess leaned out her window and smiled at the crone, but her eyes were like ice. “Kindness?” she said.
She gave a signal to the captain of her guards, and in an instant, a full score of longbows were readied and aimed at the crone.
“Next to the punishment I would like to heap upon you, death will be kindness.”
Every archer released, and every arrow flew true. Yet, a foot from the target, some magic swatted the arrows to the ground, whereupon they transformed into serpents and slithered off into the forest. The guards attempted to nock new arrows, but suddenly found their bows covered in stinging hornets. They dropped the bows, which took root in the ground and grew into strong saplings.
Then the crone threw off her cloak, and with it, her concealing glamour. She straightened her back and her legs, standing taller than any buck. Her coat was red, and although she was a doe, her head was crowned with antlers, from which hung wavering ghost-lights.
She was the Goddess, Macha Fionnadh Ruad.
Recognizing her, every soldier and servant abandoned the Princess and fled. The Princess alone stood firm, haughtily meeting the Goddess’s star-like gaze, even as her own limbs quavered. With a slight nod of her antlers, the Goddess pulled the Princess out of her palanquin, which shrank and became a hive of wasps, then floated up to rest on a tree branch.
“Princess! Daughter of House Dealan Dé!” the Goddess proclaimed, her words falling with the weight of great building-stones. “You had nothing to say to me, but I have much to say to you. Your own actions have paved the dolorous road which you must now trod. You, who would let others go hungry, shall know a hunger that can never be sated! You, who have hidden cruelty and selfishness beneath a beautiful face, shall henceforth wear a face as that matches your hideous heart!”
“Oh, Goddess!” The Princess sprawled on the ground before her judge.
But the Goddess had no ear for her pleas. “Those who give no mercy shall receive none. And that shall remain your fate, until such time as you learn to love someone besides yourself. Goodbye, Princess.”
The Goddess stamped her hoof once, then disappeared in a flash of light. The Princess wondered if the encounter had just been a dream or a passing fancy, but a glance around confirmed that she truly was alone in the forest, abandoned by her retinue.
She cast an appraising eye over her body, and felt her own face in her hooves, but noticed no change. “Ha! ’Twas but an empty threat! And I’ll not be so easily cowed.”
But as the Princess stood up, she heard a terrible growl, loud enough to be mistaken for some carnivorous beast. Yet it was no beast—the sound came from her own belly. In spite of the filling meals she had eaten that day, the Princess was hungry. She fell upon her cart, devouring all the food that was left, yet the succulent greenery and rich meats were like ashes in her mouth, then air in her stomach. When the food was gone, the Princess was left even hungrier than before. After she had screamed to the sky of her suffering, she realized there was nothing to do but tighten her cloak about her and trudge on to the estate of her Prince.
The path went on, and the sky grew ever darker. “A pox on that Macha,” The Princess muttered to herself. “A pox on all the Goddesses and all the Gods!” Her belly groaned once more, and she groaned with it. Distracted by her wrath and her hunger, the Princess didn’t even notice the stones littering the road, how they cut deep into her unshod hooves. And when the hanging tree branches dug into her cloak, she pulled the garment free without noticing the tears in its side.
“We deposed them once before,” she said. “When my Prince becomes High King, I shall make war upon those divine fools.” With every step, her hunger grew, a slowly building fire in her belly, a fire with no heat. The rocks beneath were like caltrops. The branches to the side were sharp talons, snatching scraps of cerulean fabric as she passed—and then, patches of her own tawny fur.
“I shall kill them utterly, and wipe even their names from history!” An especially sharp stone tore straight through her pastern, but she shook it free as she continued onward. Naught remained of her traveling cloak but scraps, mostly clinging to her neck and haunches. Every time she stepped into a shadow, a little more of the blackness stuck to her when she emerged.
It was a half-mile before dayfall when she finally arrived at the Prince’s estate. As she came to the cavern entrance, the night guards recoiled from her in shock. They did not recognize her as the fairest Princess in Faerie, nor as a member of House Dealan Dé; no, they did not even recognize her as a deer. She had the thick, dumpy proportions of a pony; a dark cerulean mane and tail hanging limply, like rat-eaten tapestries; the sharp angles and hard, black carapace of some insect; and gaping holes through her limbs, like a nightmare of decay.
The Horror who had been a Princess opened her mouth to demand entry and a meal, but what came from her throat instead was a bestial groan from the pain of her hunger. Hearing this, the guards took her for a mindless creature and loosed a volley of arrows at her. Four of them flew true, striking the Horror in her side, and the pain sent her to the ground. One guard approached to ensure she never rose again, and he stabbed a spear through her forehead, pinning her skull to the earth with such force that the shaft broke in half.
But the Goddess’s curse could not be escaped so easily. As the Horror twitched and breathed her last, the hunger-fire from her belly poured out out her mouth, then washed over her whole body. Under those green flames, the broken spear in her head became a unicorn pony’s horn, though jagged and twisted. The arrows in her side flattened and became a beetle’s wings and elytra. When the fire receded, she opened her eyes and rose to her hooves, living again—and hungering again.
The Horror snarled at the guard who had speared her, then opened her mouth to devour him whole—but stopped at the last inch, as she noticed his fellows preparing another volley. So she beat a hasty retreat. As soon as she found cover, she called back, saying, “You will not be rid of me so easily, oh Prince, oh House Seillean! Upon my return, I will eat your fawns alive—and that will be mercy compared to the doom awaiting the rest of you!” And then she trudged away, her head held low, with pain in her empty belly worse than any spear.
The path went on, and her mind grew ever darker. She marched back the way she came, until a puddle of water caught her eye. Gazing into its surface, she saw for the first time what the Goddess’s curse had reduced her to. Great sorrow welled up in her breast, surpassed only by her hunger—now a vast, mindless aching, as if her belly had been replaced by that dark void beyond the stars. Goaded by her belly and her heart, she made all possible haste along the road, her pockmarked hooves carrying her towards home.
Another full day and night she trotted, until she arrived at the grounds of Castle Dealan Dé. The Horror who had been a Princess grew hopeful then. Her matriarch, Dame Dealan Dé, was an authority on shapeshifting, disguises, and transformation—all the myriad ways one could alter their form or appearance. The library in that castle had diverse volumes on the subject, filled with glamours, charms, cantrips, poultices, potions, and spells beyond number, many of them with no counterpart in all of Faerie.
“Surely, in that library there will be some cure for this dreadful curse,” the Horror said. “Oh, never have I been so happy to see the mighty stones of this hall!”
The front gate was barred.
“Open up! ’Tis I!” she cried as she beat her hooves upon the door. “Let me in!” Though the hunger gnawed ravenously at her, her strength was not lessened one whit. In fact, she was stronger than before, and the great door shook beneath her hooves.
At last, a voice called back from inside, saying, “‘I’? Who is this ‘I’ crawling to our door, begging for entry?” It was one of the Princess’s sisters, the second youngest of the family, whose beauty was surpassed only by the Princess herself. Through the bars of the transom window, she gazed out. She smiled—the first deer to offer a smile since the Princess’s transformation—but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
The Horror who had been a Princess answered, “Sister! You know me—the youngest and fairest of our family.”
“You resemble no family of mine,” the Sister said, the smile not leaving her face.
“’Tis not my natural shape, sister! A mad Goddess cursed me with this foul appearance!”
“A likely enough story from a talking spider. But there is one detail you overlooked, in this tale you’ve woven: I have no younger sister. I am the youngest daughter of Dealan Dé, the most beautiful in all of Faerie. And I always have been.”
“You … you …” The Horror sputtered and snarled. For once, words failed her.
“And,” the Sister continued, “supposing I did have a younger, fairer sister—and supposing she did leave to be courted by a rich Prince—and supposing her entire retinue returned in a fright, saying they met a Goddess at the crossroads—then the captain would have reported that my sister was killed. Not transformed into some insect.”
The Horror glared back up and said nothing.
“In my mind’s eye, I can almost see this fanciful younger sister of mine,” the Sister said. “I can invent details so vivid, they almost seem real. I can even imagine the sort of games she played as a fawn. She enjoyed pulling the legs off of spiders. Would you like me to show you?”
Scowling, the Horror backed away from the gate. She was silent, but it was not the silence of resignation. As one cannot contain the ocean in a goblet, so was her rage too vast and deep for words.
Only magic would suffice. She took her rage, her hunger, her sorrow, and—through some new instinct—pushed them all into her unicorn pony horn. With it, she reached out and felt something solid. She grabbed and pulled.
Her body shook. The earth shook. With closed eyes and gnashing teeth, she kept pulling, though she felt as though her whole body would rend asunder—perhaps even hoping that it would. Her sister cried out in alarm, but the Horror had no ears for her anymore.
The castle fell.
The Horror had used her unicorn pony magic and pulled out the cornerstone—a dark block, taller than any stag. The cornerstone gone, Castle Dealan Dé split and collapsed, with a rumble louder than a thousand peals of thunder and tremors that were felt weeks away. Not one stone stood atop another; not one soul was left alive inside.
And here is found a curious detail: the cornerstone was never seen again. House Seillean searched the ruin of Castle Dealan Dé to safeguard what treasures could be recovered—and the cornerstone, carved from a dark rock from beyond the stars, was such a treasure. But all they found were the tracks where someone—or something—dragged the stone away.
Likewise, seven books of shapeshifting magic were missing from the wreckage of Dealan Dé’s library. Thus sprang up the rumor that the Horror, who had once been Princess, still walks among us, wearing the forms of other deer. Always the form of another, and never her own fair visage—either because the Goddess’s curse won’t allow her, or because she no longer remembers her old face.
Of course, there are countless other rumors regarding her fate, each more fanciful than the last. Some say she wanders the deepest forests, her mind regressed to that of a wild beast. Others claim that she left Faerie entirely and went to the Sunlit Lands where the ponies hold dominion. Still others hold that she spawned a thousand children and lords over them, styling herself Queen. There are whispers of mighty battles against a dozen different foes: from the Oilliphéist and the three-headed hound of Tech Duinn, to the pony Sun Princess and the serpent Crom Cruach—she slayed or was slain by all of them, depending on who tells the tale.
But this teller of tales thinks she did none of that. No, the Horror who had once been Princess sailed the ocean, fighting storms and sea monsters until she reached Mag Mell. There, she found Macha Fionnadh Ruad a second time and challenged the Goddess to contests of skill and honor. And as for the outcome of the contests, even this teller dares not guess.
And the moral of the tale is: Have no dealings with Goddesses, for they are cruel and their ways inscrutable.