The Star Tower

A "Fresh Start Contest Story

There’s a reason a lot of fairy tales are set during the Middle Ages.

It was a time of small towns surrounded by dark and dangerous woods, of great castles protected by grim knights.

And it was a time where belief in magic was everywhere, with tales of tricky Fae and evil witches competed with stories of magic blades and wise wizards.

Some of these stories were outright fantasy, but believe it or not, others had a basis in real events.

Which category does this story fit? Well, you’ll have to decide for yourself.

It takes place in what is now Germany, which at the time was fractured into hundreds of dukedoms and bishoprics and other such tiny states, ruled over by men whose dominion rarely extended beyond what could be seen from the walls of the castle.

Of course, they fought with each other, and sometimes one conquered another, and that’s how this story begins, with the capture of a keep.

The king of that keep died in the fighting, but his young son Alarad survived, and was captured by the enemy, who were led by a man who claimed to be a Great Lord, a relative of the powerful Borgia family from distant Spain.

Once the battle was finished, the Great Lord brought Alarad before him, and offered the boy a choice. He could swear an oath of obedience and submission to the Great Lord, or he could watch as the people of the kingdom were subjected to the old Roman custom of decimation, where one out of ten people would be executed.

The young prince could not bear to see his people treated in such a way, and so took the oath, swearing by God and his family honour to submit and obey.

The Great Lord had the prince taken to a tall tower on a hill outside the keep, which had been known for generations as the Star Tower. It had been made centuries ago, by a wise man from a distant land, as a place where he could study the sky and chart the courses of the stars.

But when the keep was built, it was turned into a storage space, until the Great Lord ordered it to be remade into the prince’s new dwelling.

Once the prince saw how the place had been decorated, he understood how the Great Lord planned to keep him under control, because the place now resembled the bedroom of not a prince, but a princess.

It was filled with lace and silk, and exotic perfume,and all the jewels and other items a young woman would need before being presented to society and the Court.

In case the prince had any doubts about his fate, the Great Lord confirmed he was to be transformed into a girl, to live his life as a princess.

The Great Lord found a woman to teach the “princess” how to look, feel, behave, and even think like a girl until very little of Alarad remained.

This process was aided by certain herbs that when added to her diet, had the effect of softening her face and body, and even causing her to grow breasts.

As for her male member, it shrank and became useless, adding to the transformation.

So within two years, she was all but fully female, and she was given a new name, Aurora, and even made her debut at court, where the nobles could have sworn she was a woman born.

Then the Great Lord had the royal surgeon remove the last remaining bit of the former Alarad, the penis.

Despite knowing this was coming, Aurora struggled to recover psychologically as well as physically.

That was when the Great Lord announced he would marry Aurora, cementing his claim to the throne through her bloodline.

But the night before the wedding Aurora somehow managed to escape the Star Tower, and vanished from the land. How she had done it was never known, but the Great Lord suffered embarrassment when his would be bride never showed up for the wedding ceremony.

Then he suffered even worse when the populace, realising the Great Lord no longer had their former king’s child as a hostage, rose up against him and overthrew him.

Meanwhile, Aurora fled north until she was found by a tribe of Norsemen who were raiding, or as they called it Viking, the towns on the coast.

Like most of the Norse, the tribe’s women were every bit as wild as the men, and the wildest of all of them was a woman named Elsa.

From first sight, Elsa fell in love with Aurora, and since the tribe had no issue with two women forming a bond, the two became married.

The pair went on raids together, adopted children, and when the Norse were given land in the north of what is now France to live, they retired there and lived the rest of their lives quietly.

Meanwhile, the Keep had been damaged during the revolt of the people against the Great Lord, and it was pulled down and a larger fortress that included the nearest town was built in its placeT

But the Star Tower was left standing, and soon it became a place of pilgrimage, as the King’s missing child became regarded as the patron saint for those who struggled with their gender.

Those pilgrims who came would leave gifts and give prayers to the lost princess, and some of those prayers were answered, but that is another tale for another time ....

End.