Parody of “The Entwife”, words and music by
Summer Russell
For
more information
and other parodies, see
www.songworm.com
Parody lyrics ©2021-10-30 by Bob Kanefsky. All rights reserved. The copyright of the original lyrics and music remain with the holder(s) of the original copyright.
Summer's song is about a mythical species in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien where all the females of the species are gone. My parody is about a mythical species in the works of Seanan McGuire where all the males of the species are gone.
~
Seanan’s narrator, Verity Price, is from a family that split off from the Covenant of St. George the dragon slayer and has spent generations studying and aiding the surviving "cryptid" species. I highly recommend the novel (Discount Armageddon: Book One of InCryptid Series), but the following excerpts are all you need to know to understand the song:
~
“there are over nine hundred races of cryptids on the planet, and maybe eighty of those look roughly human, ranging from the Sasquatches and gorgons to dragon princesses and cuckoos.“
~
“Dragon princesses look like curvaceous, drop-dead gorgeous human girls; as the name implies, there are no males, and their exact method of reproduction is unknown. Near as anyone can tell, dragon princesses evolved solely to care for dragons. They’re born craving gold and spend their lives pursuing wealth—and if they get it, they promptly use it to buy more gold. They gather in Nests, sleeping in tangled harems on beds of 24-carat loot. ... There’s really just one problem with the dragon princess gig: dragons have been extinct for centuries, leaving their symbiotic pets to gather gold for nobody, and worse, leaving them stranded in the cryptid world with no natural weapons to speak of. Dragon princesses don’t have fangs, claws, or poison.
They don’t burn
but there isn’t much call for the asbestos blonde. The thing is, dragons didn’t go extinct. They were made extinct by the Covenant
. That was long before either the Healys or the Prices left the Covenant, and it turns out dragon princesses carry a grudge
”
Verity was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when we met her in this book, and one of her coworkers is a dragon princess who doesn't like her much, because the Price family "is part of the reason she’s been reduced to cocktail waitressing—us, and the rest of the Covenant.”
~
She's lucky enough to see a Nest first hand and describe it: “There was no furniture; instead, there was gold. Where I would have expected chairs, beautiful women sat or lounged on heaps of piled-up jewelry, mixed coins, and even a few gold bars. Where I would have expected couches, more women did the same on larger heaps of precious metal."
~
The song contains a minor spoiler for something revealed in the first half of the book: “the big secret that they’d been keeping all this time, probably since the conflicts between the humans and dragons first began. Dragon princesses didn’t exist. There were just
dragons. Big dragons and little dragons, but still dragons, regardless of whether they had scales or supermodel-quality skin. One species.
‘a case of extreme sexual dimorphism combined with parthenogenetic reproduction’”
I did take one major liberty by implying a siren-like strategy. The novel implies the opposite: that knights kept “rescuing” the females from their mates unasked. But I couldn’t resist the line at the end of the third verse.
You’ve got to see where we were from.
Why we bemoan what we’ve become.
We lived aloof, no need to slum,
When we had mates,
And daughters still had sons.
Then Prices slew our lovers and
the little ones they’d spawned.
Yet still we lounge on heaps of gold
Of which our kind are fond.
Those in our nest, like all the rest,
Are beautiful and blonde.
Forgotten times; so sorely missed.
We lured men with a promised kiss,
With practiced pout and sultry lisp
’Til dinner time
When knights were warm
and crisp
The price of gold we don’t yet hold
Grows high while ours is kept.
While wages wane to minimum where floors are swept.
Our very health requires wealth,
The kind our kind expect.
Begotten boys: a bygone path.
Now every girl grows up bereft,
Not once to feel the warm caress
Of tongues of flame
From incandescent breath.
No price, we thought, was equal to
That loss none can redeem.
How sad our secret sisterhood
Held truth in low esteem
Then found, full-scale, one stunning male
we once could only dream.