Baubles From Bones: Issue 3
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True Princess

Rachel Rodman

Beneath her mattress lay everything that had supported her family for centuries:

the bones, heads, blood

of soldiers, rivals, dissidents,

the cake they’d eaten

(while the peasants starved),

dungeons, torture,

steel,

fictions of divinity,

and the irregular heaps,

both inherited and wrested,

of gemstones, entitlement, coins.

To another sort of sleeper, this mattress would have seemed unbearably lumpy. The princess, however, was so inured to these irregularities that she’d stopped perceiving them long ago.

This is what made her royal.

Baubles From Bones: Issue 3
​Available for purchase:
Physically
Digitally
Subscribe to Patreon

Rachel Rodman

Rachel Rodman’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and many other publications. Her most recent collection, Mutants and Hybrids, was published by Underland Press. You can find her online at www.rachelrodman.com.