* Author : Victoria Sandbrook * Narrator : Sofia Quintero * Host : Setsu Uzume * Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh * Discuss on Forums Originally published in Sword & Sonnet. Rated PG-13. El Cantar de la Reina Bruja By Victoria Sandbrook Mothers, hear me! I am alone but for your graces. My mistakes have bound me. My weaknesses have hobbled me. My pride has torn me from you. Alejandra pricked her finger on her rough iron chains and whispered lilting iambs until all appearance of fatigue fell from her. When they came for her, she would look herself again. Well. Not her true self. Not even the self she’d donned a decade ago to snare herself her king. What chaos there would be if her husband’s guards — nay, the entire kingdom! — discovered that the bruja chained in the metal palanquin had been their queen these ten years. “I must hide you from the priests,” Ciro had said, pallid with self-pity over his own deceit. “They would burn you for heresy.” Thus, Alejandra discovered what husband-kings did with unwilling, powerful wives. Now he risked much by dragging her on this yet unblooded campaign. But he had a rival to conquer: a widowed queen he thought to wed. With his wife’s help, of course. The cabos — honored soldados, yes, but still babes with new chains of rank about their necks — held swords aloft when they opened her door. Unnecessary but flattering. One motioned Alejandra forward, her voice as stern as a sargenta’s. “You’re to survey the battlefield, Doña Alejandra.” Doña! Alejandra locked her jaw against the reply that boomed in her head. I was a goddess, wretch! I am your queen, dung-hurler. Avert your eyes and hold your tongue lest I find a better use for them. She — Alejandra Isabella Celia de Las Vientas, Reina Coronada, Daughter of the Wind Women, Rightful but Secret Queen of the Valle — rose with the power of her ethereal forbears at the tip of her tongue, ready to fell the insignificant caba with the thunderclap of a curse. But her own enchantment stopped her. The same spell she’d originally used to slough off her gossamer goddess soul. The same spell that had given her the form to seduce the delicious young King Ciro she’d spied from above. The form he’d bedded after exchanging whispered vows that made her his queen. The form that could be chained as her windborne self could never have been. The form that could not bear enough magic to break the spell that made it. So she — Alejandra Isabella Celia de Las Vientas, Reina Coronada, Daughter of the Wind Women, Rightful but Humbled Queen of the Valle — demurred and did as she was bid. I will suffer the great pain I have wrought. With a whim, I bought but tears and chains. With my words, I will buy freedom. They skirted around the camp, parting dense, high grasses in silence. Birdsong, ever Alejandra’s companion in the palanquin and in her tower-room in the palace, lilted and swirled on the breeze. The morning air was damp, cool against her wrinkled red gown. The stiff stalks tried to seed her hair with burrs and dry bits, but the chaff fell from her like dutiful supplicants. The insolent caba behind Alejandra would have no such luck. A quarter-mile from camp they stopped at the still-bleeding stump of a newly-felled tree before a field thick with mist. There stood her husband-king, not yet in his mail,