#king lindworm

The spell has been broken, and the monster is a man. But the trouble is just beginning.

Chosen as the third bride for a lindworm who had already eaten two wives, armed with nothing but strange advice and a few extra layers, Marit never expected to survive her wedding night. She certainly never thought that she and the lindworm might both survive.

But somehow they have, and they are equally baffled by the strange new world of their married life. Marit doesn't know how to be a princess, but her husband doesn't even know how to be a man. Now, as tensions rise and the threat of war looms, Marit and Davey must learn to depend on each other as they find their places in a royal family.

This special edition hardcover includes a new epilogue, 7 deleted scenes, and 6 essays, as well as a translation of the fairy tale "King Lindorm."

I noticed recently that there is another "lonely" tale that got very famous in the English-speaking world and thus removed from its original set of stories. "Prince Lindworm". I realized recently that it was a Danish fairytale by Svend Grundtvig. I didn't even knew Grundtvig's name until a few minutes ago - I always was under the mistake Prince Lingdworm was another Absjornsen and Moe Norwegian story. Not only this but "Prince Lindworm", the title everybody uses, is actually the English translation-title. The original name is "King Lindworm", "Kong Lindorm", the same way "The Frog Prince" actual name is "The Frog King" in the Grimm's tales.

And when it comes to how "King Lingdworm" reached the English-speaking world, Wikipedia mentions how it appeared under the name "Prince Lindworm" in the 1914 Kay Nielsen-illustrated, London-published, VERY famous book "East of the sun and west of the moon, Old tales from the North"... Which ALSO contains "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". And Prince Lindworm/The Three Billy Goats Gruff/East of the sun, west of the moon ARE the trio of the three "big" Norse fairytales in the basic Anglo-American knowledge, despite nobody actually being aware of their original source or mistaking them for British (or Russian in the case of East of the sun).

by Allister Nelson

The maidens went in full flesh, rosy-cheeked, white dressed.

They came out clean-picked bone.

The lindworm had come, hungry and demanding, to the town crossroads as soon as the prince had set off to find a bride.

“I AM THE ELDER. A BRIDE FOR I BEFORE A BRIDE FOR YOU.”

Then promptly swallowed the king and queen’s heir.

They say, you can hear the prince and lindworm’s betrotheds, weeping, deep in his scaly belly.

Something of a white rose and red rose, a greedy-fingered, belly-swollen princess with a barren womb, and a hazel-thorn witch, better left alone. Fey are mercurial, and roses have thorns. Better to be a palace maid like me and only gossip, not rule. It was I who washed the bloody chamber of the lindworm each morning, paying his tithe to Hell. From chest up, Prince Lindworm was a feral, handsome man – long tangles of blonde, stark white muscle and arms, then below waist? Serpent tail, dragon leg: wings and hide and horror.

He watched me from his lounging bed, gnawing a wife’s bone, as I washed the latest wreckage of his appetite from his torn, dirtied sheets.

“TOLINE. THOU ART PRETTY ENOUGH TO EAT.”

“Tut tut, Mattias. I’m no princess and cannot break your curse. Only she of pure heart can. Your soulmate.”

“I AM NOT CURSED. FAR MORE WHOLE TO BE A BEAST. AND I HUNGER. WILST THOU FEED ME, TENDER TOLINE?”

I collected a discarded pinky of his victim from last night and tossed it into his nest – the bedsheets soiled with guts and grime. “You’ll need this.”

Prince Lindworm chewed it with needle teeth, no propriety. I grimaced.

“Never say I do not serve princes well, Prince Mattias.”

“WHY DO THEY CALL ME MATTIAS, TOLINE? I AM PRINCE LINDWORM. I AM BEAST. NOT HUMAN. NE’ER HUMAN. I EAT HUMANS.”

Prince Lindworm’s – Mattias’ – yellow sclera glowed like coals as I blew out the lantern, leaving him to his dusky, rotted peace.

“Beats me, prince. I know not the ways of royals. You’ll have the last of the princesses tonight to kiss and wed. Place your hope on this to be your soulmate – the diviners say she is your last chance. The other countries have caught on to your murderous wedding nights – no more princesses are coming.”

He picked his fangs with a girl’s rib. “BAH.”

I closed the door and crossed myself, locking the monster in tight.

*

The thirteenth attempted wedding to Mattias the Lindworm happened as usual. The princess soiled herself in attempting to kiss Mattias. We could all smell the piss and shit. Prince Lindworm bit her gently on the lip, devoured three oxen roasted with sweet autumn apples, then carried the princess – wounds and vomit – in his coils away to his bedchamber.

Then, he bedded his princess and broke her neck from the force of his bestial rutting. I knew because I was always the one to check to see if they survived, head chambermaid of the Lindworm, for the king and queen hated my father, as he had once hunted for my dead mama in the King’s Woods for food for my pregnant mama and killed a royal hart. That got us through the winter, but the Hazelthorn Witch cursed mama to die – back when the queen still trusted fairy doctors and witches and had not been tricked herself into birthing a monstrous twin to her beloved, now devoured, royal heir – the younger twin: sweet, innocent prince that fell to his dragon brother.

I went in at dawn again.

The last hope Prince Lindworm had was dead, her viscera spilled on a bed of swan down and bones threaded through coils of snake.

“So now, Prince Mattias, you are stuck. No more brides. You’ll have to rule Norway on a throne fit for a monster, always hungering for girls, the last of your line, never to pass on the Haroldson line. The armies will rebel, civil war will erupt, the peasants and merchants will turn on us, sell-swords will come, and we will all die. Happy now, bastard?”

I was angry, gathering up the bones and burning them in the crackling fire I started in the hearth. He picked a rib clean, and the souls of the prince and princesses in his great gullet cried.

“I SHALL EAT MY ENEMIES.”

“And what of us commonfolk? Have I not been friend to you, Prince Lindworm?”

“YOU ARE MY ONLY FRIEND, TOLINE. THE HAZELTHORN WITCH CURSED US BOTH. AND THOU ABOVE ALL SHOULD KNOW WHAT BREAKS CURSES, TENDER TOLINE…”

I thought back to primary school.

“A kiss? Pfft. I hate you, Prince Mattias. Well, hate… and pity. Why would I kiss you?”

“BECAUSE NORWAY IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME.”

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. I had always been plain, and the blood on my dirty patchwork dress made it no better.

“YOU WOULDST BE QUEEN, TOLINE. I WOULD SPOIL THOU IN SATIN AND PEARLS. WAGE CRUSADES IN YOUR NAME AND BRING BACK THE SPOILS OF JERUSALEM, CHINA, AND PERSIA. COAT YOU IN MINX AND FOX FUR. FATHER YOUR BABES, FEED YOU SWEET HONEY AND VANILLA CAKES. YOU COULD MAKE ME MAN. US CURSED, THEN WHOLE.”

I cursed inwardly. He was right. Curses bounced off each other in fairytale logic, breaking each other like Cinderella’s glass slippers at midnight.

“Well, here goes nothing, Mattias. The Hazelthorn Witch cursed mama to die in childbirth, and I too. If I want to survive childbirth, I must break my curse. And I know of no one else in all the kingdoms that was cursed by that blasted witch, besides us and the terrible queen.”

“PUCKER UP, SWEET TOLINE. I PROMISE I WILL SAVOR OUR KISS.”

He tasted of charred bone.

Suddenly, a great feral wind whipped my skirts and his snakeskin up into frenzy. I held onto Mattias’ rugged arms for dear life, and the fey wind of green fire ripped his skins and hair and clothes from us.

“HOLD ON,” he hissed, bracing me tenderly against him, belying his might with gentle, steady embraces.

When it was over, Prince Lindworm, now Mattias, lay naked in bed with me – all blond man, handsome, freshly washed in a gory bed of horror – I bare in his arms.

Mattias smiled, still fey-eared and needle teethed.

And I laughed at the marvel, and lust for gold lighted in me, and a man that could sate my desire for such a majestic, fearsome creature as King Lindworm would be.

“Kiss me again, Prince,” I said, tracing my hand down his chest, hard as tan rock. His platinum hair spilled across my breast, and it turned out he knew how to pleasure a bride just as much as he knew how to hurt one, the pain and beauty of our joining an intoxicating potion.

“You are my Queen, Toline,” he whispered from between my thighs.

And we wed that night, then forced the disgraced king and queen into exile.

Mattias was ruthless but just, and everyone forgot the younger prince. The devoured princess’ kingdoms subjugated themselves and swore fealty to the bloody reign of my fey King Mattias and his fearsome bride. We ruled over all Europa by the end of his hoary reign, and he and I never aged – a strange aftereffect of breaking the Hazelthorn Witch’s curse.

When our reign had met its fiftieth year, and all our many egg-laid children had prospered, Mattias and I handed our eldest daughter the throne and keys to the castle, then eloped to the mountains.

You can still find us today, Mattias and Toline – in lupine meadows and fjords, fishing and canoodling, hunting, and sometimes, fair maidens go missing

for my husband

is always

Chapters: 3/3 Fandom: Prins Lindorm | King Lindworm (Fairy Tale), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Prince Lindworm (Kong Lindorm | Prince Lindworm)/The Girl (Kong Lindorm | Prince Lindworm) Characters: Prince Lindworm (Kong Lindorm | Prince Lindworm), The Girl (Kong Lindorm | Prince Lindworm) Additional Tags: Fairy Tale Retellings, Blood, Angst, Trust Issues, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Inhuman Morals Summary:

“Fair maiden, shed a shift,” he says suddenly. She starts.

“Prince Lindworm,” she says, feeling the weight of the ritual behind her, “shed a skin.”