The Washoe princess did something in which broke a long-standing vow that her native tribe had made with another neighboring tribe for many generations.
What she had done went against a long standing prophecy of being wed by a young native boy chosen by none other than her father, the chief. Much to the dismay of what her family and the elders had planned for her since birth, she had fallen in love and ran off with a white man who had come to the west to be a word farmer and learn the ways and means of living off the land with the native Americans.
Her father being a man of his stature, and just as well the instinctual hunter and gatherer he was, sought her whereabouts and sent her brothers to find her. Her brothers found her and the white man after a tumultuous search and brought them back to her father.
The white man was then ultimately dragged to his his death and scalped right in front of her eyes. Since the princess had unraveled a long-standing prophecy, she was to be exiled in a cave where she would spend her life in a hellish despair all alone until her death. Along the way to the cave, the princess managed to escape from her captors late one night and ran as far as she could until she reached the granite cliffs of Da’aw.
When she got to the cliffs she threw herself off the edge and into the ice cold waters of the heavenly lake without any hesitation. The pain was just to much to bear for her broken heart. Dying upon impact with the surface, she sank lifeless through the wintry depths all the way down to the bottom. Over time, the fish below ate away at her flesh, while feasting upon her beautiful bright eyes.
It was due to the protective ribcage of skeletal proportions that the fish could not eat away at her heart though, yet her soul was forever lost in the depths of darkness. The currents of the lake ran so deep, her bones whirled around and around for eternity, while her heart rested without peace like a piece of eternal driftwood petrified upon the bottom of the lake.
One day, after a century or so had passed, a young white poet who was on the lam from the law and on the hunt for gold found himself upon the shores of Da’aw with his boat in tow. Winter was right around the corner. And he needed sustenance for the looming freezing cold darkness ahead of him. So he was hoping to bring in quite the haul of fish.
The natives had long warned warned every one not to fish the waters of Da’aw, especially where the currents rise to the surface forming a whirlpool just below what was now called Dead Man’s Point. Because the waters, according to lore, were in fact haunted with cursed fish. Cursed with the poison of a lost love. And these fish, if caught, were said through old wives tales, to bring about a lifelong curse of loneliness, despair, and maybe even death.
The white man, of course, not believing in curses, and being a man on the lam that was as hungry as he was, did not listen to the natives whatsoever and thought it best for himself to go fishing instead.
The man had become so lost in his own art of fishing for his life that he didn’t even realize he had drifted so far off course and almost upon the haunted whirlpool of cursed love just below Dead Man's Point.
When he noticed the current drawing him in, he paddled with slight ease until he found calmer waters. From there, he proceeded to fish, throwing out line after line right on the edge of the whirlpool just for the sake of it.
After a few too many casts, he decided to just let the line sink as far as it could through the icy, crystal blue waters. The hook eventually snagged itself stuck on something he was not quite that aware of, and yet of all places, deep within the princess’s petrified heart.
The man felt the hook set and he tugged his tip to the air, as he thought to himself, I’ve caught myself a good one. This fish will feed me for the entire winter and maybe even longer. While in his mind he was thinking, I shall be free of all fisherman’s chores for winter’s looming season.
He then came to realize the weight that pulled on the other end of his fishing pole felt like the weight of something he could never imagine. He realized it was heavier than any weight he had ever felt. His boat began to shake with all of its might. The other end of his line jerked drastically crying out loud with eternal courage. It pulled at his so-called core strength. The man was fighting a strength he had never known.
The whirlpool started stirring about much quicker. It doubled in size in a moment’s notice. The boat began thrashing about, agitated with a violent turbulence that in itself, shook the the whole damn universe to its very core.
The man’s mind was shaken with a quaking mentality as the petrified princess’s whirling bones were trying to disentangle themselves. But the more they struggled to untangle themselves, the more tangled they became. The man’s fishing line had wrapped itself around the ribcage of her eternal being. No matter how hard she fought, the man kept reeling, dragging her upwards with his all of his heart. Yes indeed, he tugged at her heart until she reached the surface, by nothing more than that of his own sheer will.
The man turned around to grab his net in the bottom of the boat, though not paying attention to his catch because he had grown so excited with hope, he did not even notice as her skull had risen to the surface. He did not see the barnacles that blanketed her teeth, or the forest green lichen that covered her eroded skull. Nor did he see the baby crayfish that gleamed within the orbs of her skull.
When the man finally turned around the princess’s skeleton was bundled up like a blanket of bones on the back of his boat, hanging on by a silver thread snug in her heart.
Upon discovering this, the man, his soul it screamed out loud for the first time in his life. He could feel his heart beating in his knees, whilst his indigo eyes rolled into the back of his head. His ears lit on fire with fright. His face was stricken with the same fear that he felt in his knees as his scalp tingled like all hell. He shouted what the fuck out loud for the world to hear and knocked her off the back of the boat with a swift kick of his foot. He started paddling like a demon possessed for the shoreline.
The man did not realize the princess was all tangled up in his line. He became frightened all the more as he looked behind him, for she appeared to be swimming in stride with the boat. No matter what the direction it was in which he chose, she was right behind him, always within soul’s reach. Her illusive strokes spoke with a chilly wake through a winter’s fog reminiscent of certain suffering. Her arms they flailed about, as though trying to snatch the man's boat right out from under him.
The man stumbled with panic as he and his boat ran aground. In one fell swoop, he found his way clumsily out of the boat. He hit the ground running, clutched tight in his right hand was his fishing pole, in his left, his life. The layer of snow beneath his running feet crackled like a campfire with each quicker step. The pearl tinted skeletal princess still had the hook in her heart, as the man managed to set it deeper without even noticing it.
Over a peak he ran and through the valley of the shadow of death and there she was, still right behind him. He ran passed the flesh of what little hunted wild game he had laid out to cure for the looming winter ahead.
The whole damn time though, she was right there behind him, in fact she grabbed some of the wild game and gorged upon its flesh, for she had not eaten a damn thing in at least a century.
Finally the man ran upon his campsite. He dove through a tapestry of furs into his tent as the sun had just set. He then crawled upon his hands and knees like a lost child scared in the dark.
His heart began to kick like a mighty drum. But at last he was home and felt somewhat safe and finally at ease.
You can imagine, if you like, as he lit the oil wick of his lamp and the moonlight shone through the makeshift windows of the tent, what her bones looked like laid bundled up like a blanket upon the floor of his abode.
One foot was rested over her shoulder, one of her knees in her rib, and her elbow behind her back, and the other around her neck.
At first the man’s heart was still a little petrifried but as she lay there somewhat peaceful, he began to contemplate upon himself, finding that he was no longer frightened. He felt something rather warm and familiar about the bundled up blanket of bones in shambles before him.
Perhaps it was the illuminating light from the full moon that softened her skeletal features. He couldn’t help but notice her petrified heart as he felt something kindred wash over him. He began to feel it in his breathing. He felt his own heart open up for the first time in forever.
Slowly he offered his hand to the petrified princess with a delicate touch. He began to untangle her bones from his fishing line. As he did this he hummed along to the tune of his own song.
First he unraveled the line from her toes, still humming, he unwrapped her ankles, moving next to her knees, then her thighs, finally he unwound her hips and then he pulled the hook from her petrified heart with the gentlest of ease. And even though he did not notice it, slowly her heart it began to beat. The man dressed her in wolf skin fur to keep her warm for she had been left submerged in the freezing waters for way too long. He offered the dead, as any gentlemen should, a bouquet of wilted roses and a heaping amount of frozen blackberries. Her bones now resting in the eternal being of perfect order.
The man stoked the fire within his humble abode, while he brooked upon her loving gaze of peace for hours on end. Tomorrow, he said before bed, we shall give your soul a proper burial your grace.
Under the warmth of wolves fur, she dared not utter a single movement, lest she wanted to scare the man shitless again, only to have him drag her through to the other side of hell, damning her soul for the rest of eternity.
The man after having his own dinner of bison steak and blackberries and a little whiskey, wrote for a little bit underneath a full moon, before falling drowsy and drifting off to sleep for the night.
As soon he was dreaming, and as men often do in their dreams—he laughed and smiled. Then he fell into a nightmare, and as men often do in their nightmares—he wept—and as the tears of joy and sorrow were delicately sliding down his sleeping cheek…
This is what happened next.
The petrified princess saw the glistening tears falling from his eyes through the ambient fire and realized for how long her thirst for love had not been quenched. Her bones sauntered slowly across the tent as she crawled over to the slumbering man. She put her mouth to his cheek to taste his tears—these tears—to her parched soul held a river’s worth of trust, so she sipped on them until her thirst was fully and faithfully satisfied.
Then, as her soul lay quenched beside him, she reached inside of him and took from him his beating heart, she sat upright and banged on all sides of it like a drum, while eating away at its flesh. As she drummed, she sang her own song of renewed flesh.
The more she sang, the more her skeletal body filled with her long lost beautiful flesh. She sang songs of her long flowing hair with beautiful bright eyes once given to her from the Gods themselves. More importantly, she sang a song for what were her working hands that she had once been so graced with so that she could tend to the Garden Of Revelations when the time came for it. Slowly she could feel the blood of love running with warmth through her ice-cold veins. She then sang a song of renewal for the flower-like divide between her thighs and of breasts just well suited enough to keep the man comfortable for a thousand lifetimes. Then she sang songs of nurturing because that is all she ever wanted to do before jumping to her heart’s death.
When she was done singing, she crept back into the man’s bed and lay silent, flesh to flesh with him. As she tucked in close to him, he woke up and rolled over to spoon her like a semicolon very much unfrightened. Yes indeed, she had fallen back into his proximity and her heart he had already caught for eternity. She returned to him his beating heart as they made love until sunrise. Afterwards, they slept like they had fallen by the graveside.
And that is how they both came to be awakened in Heaven, wrapped around each others soul, tangled up from one night alone together underneath a winter’s full moon, but in another way now, in a way of creative storytelling, spiritual clarity, and maybe even eternity.
The well fed village now called Lake Tahoe cannot say or remember how the Washoe princess named Dragonfly came to such ill fortune so many centuries ago, or why man they just called love was never seen or heard from again. But the lake was no longer cursed, and the village had thrived ever since his mystifying disappearance. For all those who had moved to the lake in the time since the early 1900’s were blessed with good fortune and youthful exuberance.
And it is still said by the Washoe elders to this day that beneath every winter’s snow moon, you can see the two lovebirds wandering through the darkness hand in hand, like two stars pointing in the direction of Heaven.
And it as just as well that the Tahoe locals still say that is why anytime you throw a line in that mystical whirlpool just below Deadman’s Point that spins circles for eternity, be careful boys, yet hopeful, because you might just catch the fish of your life.
Til the next time.
Yours truly & creatively,,
Ryan Love
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