Stellify: The Princess and the Troll Tiara

Beauty for Hunger

It was my fault Mother died in shards of violence. I brought the humans down on us! I made an evil wish the night before that sunrise ambush, and it followed after me . . .

"Why does the Daystar hate us?" I'd asked Mother the last evening before her death.

I couldn't stand then how half my life was always lost to holes and dark spaces to keep the first bright slant of dawn from stellifying me into a crystal husk.

"Don't blame the sun for its spite. The Daystar simply wants to take back what Astralei stole a thousand years ago, but no troll will ever surrender it." Mother bared her fangs in a smile and the translucent tips glowed under the soft light of the night. "Not even in a hundred thousand more years."

Astralei—that was the name of the Orbed Lady who ruled the night. Standing on the edge of a white quartz cliff with Mother, I gazed up at the gentle face of the moon in confusion. "The moon was once a troll, like us?"

Mother clacked her claws twice in the customary salute to the Orbed Lady. "Yes, one who could walk boldly under the sky whether day or night. Only, Astralei desired to learn the language of deep earth and bedrock; but her blood was far too cool to break down the stony syllables. So she siphoned a single drop of sunlight that turned her heart into a seed crystal of molten fire—the first stelliferite."

I started as Mother slammed her fist onto the white quartz ledge. Spidery cracks spread into a crater from the force of her blow. Winking lights twined from the cracks into a wreath of snow-colored flowers. She set the gemmed wreath on my head as if it were a crown. "Now, all trolls may speak the language of stone because of Astralei. We thank the Orbed Lady—"

"Well, I won't," I interrupted crossly. "I'd rather curse her!" Mother's wreath crumbled into sparkling dust as my fingers clenched the delicate interlaced stems. "Because of Astralei, just one sunrise will burn me alive. No other creature in the world is quite so fragile as a troll."

"Fragile?" Mother laughed, clearly bemused by my pronouncement. "What stronger creature would you be then, my daughter?"

"I wish—I wish I were human!" I said, my guilty rebellious thought freed at last. I refused to hang my head in shame even though the worst enemy of my people was also my secret dream. "They fear nothing under the sky, no matter the hour."

"Oh? You dishonor Astralei's gift." The disappointment in Mother's voice twisted through me like a hot noon ray. "Human lives are bound by the hours far more than ours. Men must scrabble in grime to grow crops and hoard livestock just to survive, only to waste half their life as sleeping dead for the price of all their toil."

Mother placed both hands over her chest and an amethyst light fluttered like the wings of a butterfly as she drew on the power of her stelliferite. High, exquisite vibrations sang through the evening air and rang off the peaks and foothills of the Sidral Mountain Range. For a precious strand of seconds, every stone for miles glowed with a prismatic gleam more fierce and wild than all the stars pinned in the sky.

When would the weak flicker of fire dancing in my own stelliferite heart ever kindle such a melody of colors, I wondered?

I blinked as the afterglow died down and revealed Mother bowing before the moon, her long gray silk braids swaying like the fronds of a willow in the breeze.

"Trolls have no such curse—our lives are spent in declaring beauty in this world, ultimate beauty, Geode," Mother said. "Nothing is more beautiful than a troll who speaks with the silver tongue of Astralei."

"Nothing," I repeated, bowing before the moon in dutiful reverence.

Seeing Mother glowing under the lunar glory of the Orbed Lady like a fallen star made flesh, I could almost believe her words. But beauty saves no one in the end. Beauty is only another name for hunger—

For wasn't it the ravenous wish of Astralei that drew the humans to hunt the crystal fire in our hearts?