“Eeee, here she is again, snakes and all,” squealed the roast pig from its platter. “Oo, horrible, horrible!”

I tossed my head; the snakes became agitated. All the room’s shiny things – plates, goblets, weapons hanging unused – writhed with the reflection of me.

The roast pig glanced toward the door. “Uh-oh.”

I heard leather-sandalled feet on their way along the corridor. Jogging. Eager.

“This way,” I called. The footsteps paused, then resumed at double the speed. The latest hero stumbled through the door, head turned to the side. His shield, of course, was highly polished. He raised his sword, trying hard to aim using the reflections.

“Wait!” I cried, weary of this tragedy, endlessly repeated. As the snakes moved in gentle inquiry about my head, I said, “Talk to me a while.”

“What?” he said, with a panicky laugh.

“No? Then let me.”

I began to speak. Marvels, dusty rooms, gravestones in dry-dirt yards, gilded onion domes in the sunset. I took him with me down stony corridors and over grassy plains, through jungles, over bitter-cold mountains, and to the suffocating depths of the sea. I told him jokes. I sang songs that made him weep aloud. In the end, I told him things I had never told anyone: anguish, fear, grief. I told him of my bright and righteous fury, the hot, brazen anger that brought jets of flame from the mouths of the snakes.

He had long since placed his sword on the ground. We sat, not quite looking, as I talked and talked. The reflection of his face in the shield, in the plates and weapons, in the copper samovar, glowed with yearning.

“Love me,” I said, for the very first time. “Love my anger and my snakes, love my roar and hiss, for I am very beautiful in my rage.”

“You are,” he whispered. “I do.”

I turned my head, just a little, and saw the tears, warm and wet, streaming from his soft, soft eyes.

“Don’t look!” cried the roast pig.

But in that instant, the hero’s eyes met mine.

As the snakes grew quiet and my limbs fell with the weight of sudden stone, and the tiny bones in my ears became ice-hard, the last thing I heard was the voice of the roast pig.

“Told you not to look.”