Loathsome (or, The Hedgehog Bridegroom’s Bride)
by Ella Leith
Content Warnings: Coercion, Ageism, Body Shaming
It was a somber affair, the wedding. The king and queen stood ashen-faced. The courtiers sat in tight-lipped horror or muttered darkly amongst themselves. The poor princess—so young, so fair—was like a waxen doll, her rosy cheeks blanched and her bright eyes red-rimmed from crying. The creature on her arm towered above her, a frightful spectacle of spines and wiry hairs, his breathing a groveling snuffle that even the organ music could not mask.
As the music died, the priest began to speak. He stumbled over the words, his eyes darting pleadingly around the church. When he spoke the crucial refrain—“if any person knows of an impediment to this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace”—he paused for too long, letting the silence hang indignantly. It seemed impossible that no one would speak out, that no one would make a stand and refuse to let this nonsense continue, that no one would point out the obvious: the bridegroom himself was an impediment to this union. It could not, must not go ahead.
And then, just when all hope seemed lost and the priest raised his hands despairingly to bless the couple, the church door creaked open, and an old woman stepped into the nave.
“Stop!” her voice rasped out. “The marriage cannot go ahead!”
The congregation turned in a mixture of relief and bewilderment. The old woman was withered and stooped, a hideous hag. She lurched forward, hair a straggling nest of filthy gray, clothes ripped and soiled. She clanked with each labored step. On her feet were shoes fashioned from iron, but the soles were worn almost to nothing. Her weather-beaten face was lined so heavily that her eyes were almost lost in the folds. Slowly, she processed down the aisle and stood before the couple: the princess, hope flooding her beautiful features; the creature, inscrutable. The whole congregation held its breath.
The old woman held a misshapen finger aloft. Her voice creaked, but as she addressed the creature, it took on the sing-song quality of an incantation.
“O beloved, I am that most beautiful princess who could not keep her promise for one more night,” she said. “In my impatience and my vanity, I disrespected your mask in my desire for your face, and I have sorrowed for it long. I have walked the world to find you. I have worn out the soles of three pairs of iron shoes. A hundred years have marked me and turned my hair to gray. But I have come to claim you. I have come to release you from the curse that binds a hedgehog skin to your back.”
With that, she flung herself onto him. He staggered backwards and struggled, but she clung to him fast, her frail body writhing to keep her hold, his spines piercing her papery skin. With a roar, the creature threw her bodily from his side. His skin came away in her arms.
There was a moment of frozen silence. The old woman stood, bloodied and triumphant, clutching a mass of hedgehog quills. And where the monstrous creature had stood was the most handsome young man ever seen, clothed in a suit of gold thread bedecked with jewels.
A moment of frozen silence, and then an eruption of cheers. Such rejoicing! The king and queen clasped each other in relief. The courtiers cried out blessings and thanksgiving that so terrible an enchantment had been lifted. The priest, beaming from ear to ear, raised his prayer book and turned to the young people: this most handsome prince-to-be and this most beautiful princess, her features transformed from despair into radiant joy. They gazed at each other in mutual rapture.
“Dearly beloved! We are gathered here today to unite these two beautiful people in holy matrimony!”
“Excuse me,” said the old woman. “That’s my husband.”
A moment of stunned silence, then a buzz of whispering, of choked disbelief, even of laughter. Surely this could not be true? The bridegroom was young, vigorous, handsome—how could he be wed to this foul old crone?
“I beg your pardon?” asked the priest.
“That’s my husband. I married him under the same conditions that this pretty little girl was about to. A bargain made with a monster, you know how it goes. Same old, same old. So you’re off the hook, by the way, my dear.”
She smiled benignly at the princess, who looked in wild disbelief at first the hag and then her prince.
“But I don’t want to be off the hook! I want to marry him!”
“He’s much too old for you, dear,” the old woman said kindly.
“No, he isn’t! He’s beautiful!”
“Yes, well, he’s been hiding in a magical skin, hasn’t he? He hasn’t been traipsing all over the world on foot for a hundred years. I assure you, I was also beautiful back when I was in your shoes.”
“Enough of this.” The bridegroom stepped forward. He took the princess’s hand in his and held it aloft. The congregation swooned. “The curse is lifted. The feast is prepared. Let the wedding commence.”
“That’s bigamy, dear,” said the crone.
“But our marriage… I haven’t even seen you in a hundred years!”
“And whose fault is that? I’ve been looking for you since the moment you left! If you had just left a few clues—but no, you had to go off in a big sulk just because there were a few teething problems in the early days of our marriage.”
“Teething problems?” His outrage outshone his fine clothes. “You destroyed our marriage when you threw my magic skin into the fire! You scorched it onto my flesh!”
“Yes, well, we all make mistakes in our youth. It’s difficult to know how best to lift a curse like that, and I received some poor advice. I rather think I’ve redeemed myself today, don’t you?”
“You think after all this time you can just waltz in here and ruin my life?” His indignance was becoming distinctly whiny, the courtiers noted. It was somewhat unbecoming in a soon-to-be prince. “I don’t believe you! You horrible old hag!”
The old woman raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” she said crisply. “I didn’t come all this way to have you talk to me like that. I didn’t release you from that enchantment—you’re welcome, by the way—for you to treat me with disrespect.”
“If you think for one moment that I’m going to pass on the opportunity to marry this delightful young lady—” (the princess simpered up at him) “—in favor of marrying you, then you’ve got another think coming!”
“You already married me, dear. It may have been a hundred years ago, but look how well our union has stood the test of time. I’m still your true love: I found you, didn’t I? I lifted the enchantment. And now we get to live happily ever after. At last.”
“You are not my true love.”
“You take that back!” the old woman shrieked, suddenly furious. Her eyes glittered strangely, deep in the folds of her skin. She raised her gnarled finger to point at him. “I walked the world to find you! I lifted the curse! I am your true love, and if you hadn’t been so stubborn and gone running off after I threw your skin into the fire, rather than staying to work on our marriage, all this time wouldn’t have been wasted. I’d still have my lovely rosy cheeks, and my hair would still be red. I’ve given my life to find you and free you, you ungrateful bastard, and if you’re not prepared to overlook a few wrinkles then I’ll curse this skin back onto you so hard that no little chit of a princess will ever be able to remove it!”
She held the bloodied spines aloft. The young man leapt back in horror.
“Now, come here and take my arm,” she snarled. “Come here and act like the husband you are.”
There was a long silence. Then, very slowly, the bridegroom stepped forward. He placed his hand gingerly under the old woman’s elbow, his gorgeous features twisted in disgust. The old woman smiled smugly.
“It’s not fair!” The princess stamped her exquisitely pretty foot. “I was going to get married today!”
“Only to a hideous creature that you didn’t want to marry.”
“But now he’s—” The princess gestured wildly towards the gold-clad Adonis. “He’s gorgeous. And I was going to marry him anyway, wasn’t I? I was going to do my duty, uphold my father’s side of the bargain. I would have lifted the enchantment myself! Why did you have to come and ruin it?”
“Yes,” interjected the bridegroom sulkily. “She would have found out tonight that I looked like this. She would have kept silent for three nights and broken the spell herself. I didn’t even need you.”
“Oh please!” The old woman rolled her eyes. “She would have done exactly what I did. You think she could have kept it to herself that that hideous giant hedgehog looked like you between the sheets? No, no, she would have told somebody, and it’d be just the same old story. Now, come on, dear.” She tugged on the arm of her reluctant husband.
“But I want to marry him!” the princess shrieked, her face growing blotchy with rage. She threw herself in front of them, blocking their path. “I will marry him! Look at him! Look at me! We belong together! But you—you’re a hideous witch, a foul hag, the most loathsome old creature in the world! If I looked like you, I wouldn’t dare show my face in daylight!”
A chill seemed to emanate from the old woman. It filled the church, and outside the birds stopped singing. The courtiers cringed back, clutching their furs about them. The bridegroom’s eyes were wide and fearful. Only the princess stood unchanged, defiant, fists balled at her sides, eye to eye with her fiancé’s wife. The old woman stared at her for a long while.
At last, she spoke.
“You are a very unpleasant young lady,” she said quietly. “And you are much too fond of getting your own way. You wouldn’t show your face in daylight if you looked like me? Well. We shall see.”
She smiled and stepped around the princess, guiding her husband with her. The congregation watched their slow and labored progress up the aisle with a mixture of apprehension and relief.
Then, behind them, came a scream. It was the queen. They turned as one, and gasped in horror. Standing in front of the altar, wearing the princess’s silver wedding gown, was an old woman, withered and stooped: a hideous hag.
Ella Leith (she/her) is a writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and occasional poetry. Drawing on her background in folklore and oral history, her work tends to explore the ways in which the past exists in the present, and how the weird and uncanny intersect with the banal. Her writing has featured in Gramarye, The Literary Times Magazine, Dear Damsels, The Fiction Factory, and Oprelle’s Matter XXIII anthology. Originally from the Midlands of England, she now lives in Malta, and is currently working on a creepy middle-grade novel and a memoir project dealing with folktales, grief, and the Green Man.