The Tattooed Princess

The Three Paths

The next morning as the warm summer light peered over the top of the great Altai Mountains from the east and landed upon the foothill palace of Sharvur, both Svetlana and Zaria anxiously met. They had arranged to be at their bathing pool in the rocks earlier than usual to discuss their future plight and hopefully see their friend Branka. They could only imagine her ordeal and what she was forced to endure with the king in his bed the remainder of the long night.

Svetlana undressed quickly and stepped into the water. "What ever it is Branka felt and had to do for him, I will soon have done to me," she lamented sadly to Zaria. They both moved to the sides of the bathing pool where the heated water was being added. The three older women, former captives from the Slavic tribes who attended to the fires, silently kept suplying the heated water.

Zaria, mindlessly took a handful of the green soap from the golden bowl and spread it over her chest and soulders as she remained deep in thought. "I know you will both suffer in the beginning," she finally said, rinsing her face, as well. "But as I remember hearing from the women in our village, there will be a time . . . soon . . . when there will no longer be pain with it. And you will find the nights to be tolerable. You will even want him to touch you and bring you to pleasure."

"Never!" Svetlana shouted. "That is something easy for you to say, Zaria, as everyone knows you will not have this curse Branka and I must go through."

"Yes. And that was never my choice nor ever my doing!" Zaria shouted back to her. "You, nor Branka, nor I could never have believed this false prediction put upon me. I am a young girl just like the two of you. There is no difference among us. I am not special. This is just the curse that has fallen upon me and me only"

"What curse, Zaria? You will never have to submit to Sharvur's desires. You will not go through the pain Branka has already . . . and I will soon. You will be treated as a royal woman in this palace and we as slaves of the worst kind!"

"Do you really think my life will be any better, Svetlana? I will still be a slave to Sharvur. Staying with him each night until he sends me away when he chooses to be with Branka. I will be no more than his beautiful pet, sitting at his side when he wants me there or wishes me to leave."

Svetlana spashed the warm water over her legs and thighs. She pretended not to hear as Zaria contiinued.

"And what of the pleasures I will someday want to have with a man. Svetlana? Do you think now I will ever have that chance? Which of our lives is truly the worst? Your life with Murka may be the best of all of us. If he. . . in his hansomeness, turns out to be a decent man. And what will you have to do, other than please him the nights he wants pleasing?"

Svetlana took the soap bowl angrily from her.

"No, Zaria. Two of us will still be slaves. And one will not. You have not yet seen your new place to sleep here in the palace. Do you think it will be as bare or as cold as mine will remain?"

At that moment Branka appeared from the hallway and walked up slowly to the edge of the bath-their former meeting place. She remained silent upon connecting her eyes with theirs. The two other girls waited for Branka's comments. But there were none. As she took off her clothing they could see the faint, barely perceptible marks upon her buttocks and thighs, suggesting she had been lightly whipped or teased from the long night of Shavur's lust. She also had signs on her neck and breasts that his rough mouth had been there as well, to leave its marks of passion.

Branka entered the pool carefully and dipped her naked body below the surface of the now hot water. She gently took the soap bowl from Svetlana and covered her body with the oily substance, vigorously attempting to wash away the experience of her first sexual night with the king. The other two girls did not have to ask her anything.

There were clearly three paths ahead for the girls as they would progress into young womanhood-earlier than they had all planned. One of those paths was now all too clear. The second path, Svetlana's path, would be realized soon, over perhaps the subsequent nights.

But the third path was certainly the most mysterious, as Zaria could not predict how her future would play out, being kept indefinitely as a princess and at the same time a prisoner. She saw it as a life perpetually locked away in a false world. And so she now could only anticipate with a disturbed joy, that visitor who would be seeing all the girls later in the day--the artist to scratch onto their skin a commemorative image. For Zaria that emblem would mark only the gateway for her painful release of anger and sorrows. A future was set in motion of more iconic images which would become even more fantasmagorical, more psychologically complex, and at the same time, more beautiful.

* * *