I saw my brothers' heads floating suspended in globes outside the gates of the palace. The executioner has to have bio-electrician certification so he can wire a head into a light globe filled with amnio conductive fluid in a split second while the brain still functions. I see their eyes blinking at me like they recognize their sister dressed in men's clothes. Their mouths start moving, trying to say, "Go back."
       I want to cry seeing them with all those fool princes who traveled from near and far to stand where I'm standing now, staring up at Princess Moon Lily.
       There she sits suspended on a porcelain anti-gravity throne beside her poor senile old father, the celestial emperor. Princess Moon Lily sits above the earth, where mere commoners and nobles reside beneath a dome painted blue and encrusted with jewels to simulate the starry heavens. Fragile. Ethereal.
       Her scent of night-blooming jasmine wafts down to me. I heard workers in the factories forging mechanicals whisper all her victims whose heads light up the grand avenue, and the gates of the palace still love her. Even after what became of them.
       "Pheromonessss." The Feathered Serpent's forked tongue brushes my ear as it rears up almost onto its tail. "Thass why they did it."
       "I know it's her pheromones!" I hiss back as he sinks down to coil up on the floor.
       A woman like the Moon Princess gets born every fifty years or so to royal houses with better nutrition and less infant mortality. Like Helen of Troy or Deirdre of the Sorrows, legends to the Ancients, they're blessed or cursed because no man can escape their spell. All because the Ancients discovered the secret magic building blocks of life buried deep in cells. I'd translated some of those ancient writings "Buy DNA Beauty Therapy. Be irresistible to men!"
       The Ancients have a lot to answer for. Their science and technology created the world of their fairy tales: invisibility cloaks, genie nano swarms that live in containers, and genetically created phoenixes. Now distant descendants of the great cataclysm, whether human, genetically created species like the Feathered Serpent, or mechanical creations like Serial, have to live in this world.
       All his gears whirring within his carapace, Serial taps my arm gently. The sound of his steady ticking steadies me. "Re-mem-ber why you came here. Why we came here with you." Ding!
       "I remember."
       I'm here to haul that murdering whore's ass off that throne back down to the dirt with the rest of us. She's a virgin, but she's still a whore, all the same to me.
       "Princess, this is the Crystal Machine Man. His name is Serial." I'm bending over backward to look up at her.
       Serial speaks, ticking out the ancient word for his hard transparent exterior. "A-cry-lic." He ends with a chime.
       "And the Feathered Serpent..." I continue. He rises up from the floor. He undulates his neck, peering at the assemblage of courtiers staring at him.
       "What, no smiles that I have returned with them? Oh, right. I know damn well your bloody red lips only turn up when the executioner comes back with the head of your latest wooer...uh, I mean victim lighting up a globe."
       The silence of a tomb greets my remarks for several endless seconds.
       Then a strange, harsh, croaking sound reverberates from above, echoing through the hall. The old emperor is splitting his sides laughing.
       It takes a few minutes before Princess Moon Lily speaks. "I asked you to bring the Feathered Serpent and the Crystal Machine Man. You present them to me yet refuse to hand them over to the royal zookeeper and the royal engineer."
       Why does her voice have to be the sound of angels singing when she talks so ugly?
       "Your exact words, Celestial Princess, I call all the court to witness, were 'Bring me the Feathered Serpent and the Crystal Mechanical Man' Here they are. You didn't say anything about giving them to you."
       She sneers down at me, "You've succeeded this far, but you haven't won me yet."
       "I know. I counted those heads in globes."
       "How did you succeed at capturing the Feathered Serpent and defeating the Crystal Machine Man, Beardless Boy?"
       "I told them all about you and the quest." I say, "Then I asked them real nice."
       She addresses my two friends, "And you came for his asking?"
       "I wissshed to sseee the one who sent men to disturb me." The Feathered Serpent answered. "I lived in my cave on the banksss of a river. Men kept trying to sssspear me."
       "I want-ed to know why war-ri-ors kept chal-leng-ing me. They kept try-ing to fight me. They died. Ding." Serial said.
       The princess leans back and stifles a yawn before returning her attention to me. "Leave them with me. Forget the riddle. Go home and keep your head."
       "I'm ready to answer your riddle."
       She glares at me. "You are a bigger fool than all the others who came before you. Now answer my riddle. What am I thinking?"
       It's a cheat. It's almost as much of a cheat as "What have I got in my pocket?" She plans to say I guessed wrong no matter what I say. But I've got an answer she can't deny, and it's not love poems or philosophy.
       "You think I'm another damn fool man come to court, like all the others!" I rip open my jerkin and shirt, putting my boobs on full display. "But I'm not a man!"
       All the courtiers and guards step back in one collective gasp.
       She gasps. "You're here to court me for your king or prince. I will only be given to the one who survives my quests and answers my riddle. Not your master!"
       Serial stands forward between the courtiers and me. The Feathered Serpent drops down and slithers between the palace guard and us.
       "I'm not here to woo you. I'm going to kill you!'
       Princess Moon Lily leaps up from her throne, her mouth hanging open. "Kill them! Destroy them!"
       At her command, the voice-activated mechanical guards step forward, weapons raised. The Feathered Serpent sends the row on our right sprawling with one lash of his tail.
       Serial steps to his left to the far end of the other row and gives one push sending them all toppling down, one knocking the next down like those old games with tiles.
       At the far end of the hall, I see more mechanicals coming.
       "By her rules, I've won. Hand her over!" I shout.
       "Halt!" The old emperor's voice activates the override in the mechanicals. Every mechanical of the guard stands down.
       Gripping the arms of his throne, he pulls himself upright, "Take her. She is yours."
       Princess Moon Lily looks at her father with wild eyes. "This cannot be so! Father!"
       The old man's voice doesn't quaver but rings out across the hall. "My daughter compelled me to make an edict that I give her to the one who fulfills her quests and answers her riddle. By that edict, men have died, and I have become a murderer by law. My hands will never be clean of blood." He pushes a button on his throne, and his daughter's throne descends back to the earth. Its porcelain cracks from the impact.
       I grab onto Moon Lily's wrist and haul her butt up.
       "Why are you doing this?" She cries, "You're a woman."
       "It takes a woman to deal with someone like you. Like that Greek queen who hanged Helen of Troy years after the Trojan War. Your turn to light up a globe."
       I fling her down onto the floor and draw my sword. She stares up at me, her big dark eyes swimming with tears. I feel my resolve slipping. "Tell you what, I'll deal better with you than you dealt with all your suiters. I'll ask you three questions with real answers. If you can answer any one, I'll let you live."
       She nods mutely.
       "How many died? Count all the ones who died on quests plus the ones lighting up your city."
       She shakes her head.
       "No? How many mothers, sisters, and women who loved those men cry for them?"
       She's clasping my knees. "Please! Please!"
       "Last question. Tell me the names of my two brothers. Their heads light up your entrance."
       I raise my sword.