allegory Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Kristen Anne Glover

{8} The Long Road Back

Day 8 of 31 Days. For Day 1, please click on the graphic above.

The prince lifted Obscurity out of the mud and placed her on his horse. He walked ahead, leading the horse safely over the treacherous road.

Later, when Obscurity recalled the story of how she came to live in the prince’s kingdom, she found it hard to explain this part of her journey. It was all at once the longest and the shortest road she had ever traveled.

All the way, the prince led her, singing softly over her when she was tired, and speaking truth to her when she was awake.

With each word he spoke, he became more and more lovely until she could hardly believe she had once been revolted by his appearance. It was as if his face was changing right before her eyes.

How unlike the Enchanter he was! The Enchanter’s beauty faded with truth; the prince’s deepened. The more she knew of the prince, the more she wanted to know.

The sky lightened, the shadows slunk away, and her eyes began to see with agonizing clarity.

But the more she saw of the prince’s beauty, the more she recognized her own ugliness. Obscurity felt she was seeing herself for the very first time, and she was stunned by the reflection. As much as a failure as she was, she had still believed herself to be beautiful, at least in some small ways.

The light revealed a much different picture. She was filthy all over. The clothes she wore with haughty pride were nothing but rags. She was broken, vile, and disgusting. She was a stranger and enemy of the prince, and when she looked at him, she was so ashamed of the contrast she wanted to retreat back down the road and into the shadows again.

And yet he had reached down in the mud for her, knowing how repulsive she was, and carried her in his own arms when she could not even stand long enough to help herself.

Fresh sobs gripped her.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“Because I am so ugly,” she cried.

The prince stopped the horse. “Who has made you feel ugly?”

“Well, you, I guess.” It seemed the wrong thing to say, but she hadn’t felt this shame until she met him, so who else could it be?

“No, Obscurity. Not me. A woman who was dead and now lives is not ugly to me.”

“But I am ugly! You can’t pretend that you don’t find me repulsive.”

“I find you in need of rescuing.”

“But I am so unworthy. I want to hide!”

“Then you have fallen for the lie, and he has won.”

Obscurity wiped her eyes and looked at the prince. She was so tired of lies. Her entire life was one big lie, and here she was, tangled up in another one just as soon as she had gotten half-way free.

“He is pursuing you, Obscurity, even now. He always will, because he hates me.”

Obscurity looked behind her quickly. But the road was empty.

“He will do anything he can to turn you away from me. If he can keep you hiding in a corner of my kingdom, he will. And if he can’t get you to serve him, he’ll have you serve yourself.”

Obscurity felt sick with confusion. She didn’t understand any of it, except for that last bit. The prince was certainly wrong about that.

“I am not serving him, and I most certainly am not serving myself!” she cried out. “I hate myself!”

“That is exactly the problem. You are turning inward, looking for some sort of worth in yourself. But there isn’t any, is there? And because you come up lacking you feel ashamed. You pity yourself. ‘Poor Obscurity. She is such a dirty mess.’ You feel worse about it than ever because now, you know what clean is, and you are far from clean.

“But I am telling you, Obscurity, I did not save you because you were clean. I saved you in spite of your filth. And if you begin now to look for some reason for your salvation other than my goodness then you are giving something to the Enchanter that only belongs to me. I rescued you because I am good, not because you are. You deserve none of that glory. So do not take it, either by pride or by shame.”

The prince’s words were sharp, as if he was speaking to the Enchanter himself, and Obscurity held her breath because she dared not breathe.

“You can run and hide in your shame but if you do, know that he has won.”

“No,” Obscurity begged, hiding her face in her hands because she could not look at him anymore. “I don’t want him to win. I am sorry, please, I am.” She paused, trying desperately to figure out the words in her head before she spoke. “Only, I don’t know what to do with all this.” She spread out her hands over her filthy dress and mud-caked feet. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Let your dirt and your filth be the reason you run to me. Don’t you see? Being sorry is a very different thing from being ashamed. Being sorry turns your eyes toward me, and away from him. Because he can’t do anything with ‘sorry.’ But I can. Let me.”

Obscurity nodded through her tears and felt the prince’s arms enfold her to himself.

“Remember what I said when I found you?” the prince asked when she had quieted.

“You said, ‘Come.’”

“Yes, and now we have come through the hardest part of the journey. It has been a long road back. But we are here.”

Obscurity looked up. Above her loomed the massive gates to the kingdom, and the prince’s hand was already on the door.

*The story continues tomorrow with Day 9. Please join us!

{4} Obscurity

Day 4 of From Enemy to Heir, a 31 Days series. Click here to begin at Day 1.

Her name was Obscurity, although she answered to far less.

Her mother had loved her, at least for the span of time between her birth and her mother’s realization that this child was not going to fix anything. Then, and ever after, the child knew little affection, except for the rare moments when a half-hearted apology was pasted on an abuse, and the child was left to do the forgiving while the abuser did the forgetting.

So she was forgotten.

And hungry. She had tasted just enough of love in her early years to know that she was starving for it now, now that she had to find it on her own.

The Enchanter knew this too because he understood the power of love, and he feared it. The only way he knew to keep his people from traipsing right after it and into the prince’s kingdom was to give them exactly what they wanted…almost.

Almost love was the best kind of lie because it was half-true. It took the prince’s own good thing and fermented it until it was so sweet and intoxicating, no one noticed how utterly unsatisfying it was. This kind of love was a feast that never made you full, and the Enchanter, who could see into the hearts of men, loved to spread his hands out over the table, encouraging all to gorge themselves on the abundance.

“The prince’s love is exclusive, limited, and binding,” he would say. “Any of you can go and eat of it, but once you do, you will never again be free.”

It was deliciously terrifying, and the Enchanter loved to run it over his lips and into the ears of his people. “Go on,” he said if any one of them looked too long on the castle walls. “Go on and let the prince capture and enslave you in the name of love. Let him bend your will and break you and turn you into one of his puppets.”

Some of the people doubted the Enchanter’s words because they had heard the old rumors which claimed that the prince’s kingdom was good and fair. But the Enchanter cinched up the snare with the best line of all. “I’d rather live poor and die free,” he said to the dirt-covered bracken on the street, and they all nodded and stood a little taller because they had made the better choice.

They might be poor, but at least they were free.

Or so the Enchanter would have them believe. Just as soon as they had taken the bait, he melted into the shadows, laughing at how easily they believed something just because he said it was so.

Obscurity grew up with those words in her ears. What she lacked in real freedom she made up for in will, which was almost the same thing. She held on to her heady obstinacy with a fierceness that brought quick slaps to her cheeks and sharp words to her ears.

She would not be broken. She was not loved, so what did it matter? What did it matter if she was beaten and trampled down? She would be beaten and trampled down if she held her tongue, so it might as well be loosed. She might as well flaunt what little freedom she had.

Not everyone agreed. She was not beautiful enough to exploit or ugly enough to be feared. Most preferred Obscurity to stay in the shadows, pushed off in the corner and dragged out only when needed, forgotten, like always.

The man who kept her was one of these, and it was he who sent her, beaten and broken, into the night. She had used her freedom to speak her mind, and he had used his to replace her with someone more compliant.

His door slammed in her face and she was left with nothing but a day’s wages. The last thing she saw was a look of contempt in his eyes–not sadness, not even anger. She wasn’t worth getting angry over. It might have been different if he had loved her.

She crawled off into the darkness. But she had nowhere to go. No one cared anything about her. No one would even miss her if she didn’t turn up for days. No one would defend her if she died from her wounds.

“That’s the trick of freedom,” Obscurity thought as she stumbled along in agony. “It doesn’t always work out in your favor.”

She looked up, reaching for air with lungs that hurt to breathe, and saw the castle floating in the night sky like a giant cloud. It would be the last thing she saw before she died, and she hated it with every fiber of her being. “How dare you?” she said bitterly. “How dare you sit up there and watch me die.”

Then she felt the darkness reaching down and pressing heavy on her eyes. And for once, she did not have the will to resist.

*Join us tomorrow for the continuation of the story.

{3} Outside the Gates

Day 3 of 31. Click on the image above to start at Day 1.

The savages who pressed against the gates of the prince’s kingdom did not know that only the prince could open the gate to his kingdom. They thought they could force their way in by means of their own strength and brute might.

They were wrong. If they wanted to get inside, they’d have to go through him. Only he wouldn’t open the doors for a banging, cursing mob. They would have to come one at at time, like invited guests, and knock.

Others had come, and the prince had always thrown open the doors and embraced the seeker so quickly and earnestly, he soon forgot any hesitation in the coming.

But there were still so many on the other side who counted the prince an enemy. If only they knew how much he longed to call them friends.

Every day, the prince looked out over that enemy kingdom and was filled with sorrow and a deep, unfathomable love for these people who had declared their allegiance to an imposter. He knew the truth about the beautiful Enchanter, and he knew that every member of that kingdom was marked for death.

So early in the morning, while most of his kingdom still slept, he put on beggar’s robes, mounted an old horse, and rode out the immense iron gates of the castle walls, seeking out a people to save.

That dangerous, dreadful land welcomed him greedily because it seemed to recognize that this prince had the power to undo it all. This prince had the power to break the Enchanter’s spell.

But the people’s eyes had become so accustomed to the beauty of their self-proclaimed sovereign, they could no longer recognize true royalty. Instead of running to embrace him, they received the prince with violence and scorn.

One day, the prince was returning to the castle, bearing on his body the marks of an excursion that had not gone well. The people he met had cursed him, thrown rocks and sticks at him, and tried to pull his horse down off the road. Blood oozed from a gash in his forehead and trickled down his cheek.

Wearily, he road for home just as the sky was beginning to brighten with the day. The early morning light made the road ahead hazy and more difficult to navigate than it was in the dead of the night.

Suddenly, something caught his eye.

The prince thought he saw a creature crawling in the mud along the side of the road. He looked more closely. It was only the waking shadows playing tricks on his eyes.

Or was it?

He guided the weary horse over, cautiously, to get a better look. It was a wounded animal, and it moaned and writhed in misery. The stench of sewage clung to the creature like the mud on its back.

“Poor animal,” the prince said, wondering how he was going to get a wounded, wild beast home on his already-nervous horse.

Just then, the creature looked up, and the prince found himself staring into knowing eyes.

This thing before him was not an animal at all, but a person.

For a moment, the prince could not move. His mind was stunned by the level of filth and depravity before him. No one in his kingdom lived like this. His temples pounded hot with anger against the powers of darkness that created this hell.

He got off his horse.

“What has happened to you?” he asked, squinting through the mud for signs of injury. All he saw was a fierce blackness staring back at him. Every feature of this person was so disguised by filth and misery, it was impossible to tell if the wretch was sick or injured, young or old, or even male or female.

“Please, I have come to help.” He took a step closer, close enough that the stench of rotten flesh rose up and gripped his nostrils. He felt a wrestling in his stomach and fought to subdue it.

Just as he advanced, the creature retreated further into the shadows.

“Come…” he offered, reaching his hand down into the vileness.

At the sight of his pure, clean flesh, this person, this inhabitant of the enemy kingdom, leaped out at him. Baring animal-like claws and half-rotten teeth, it cursed and shrieked and tore at him like the beast it resembled.

That’s when he knew. It was a woman.

*Join us tomorrow as the story continues. Day 4 is up next!

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