How to Make an Iron Maiden

Part of a character profile I'm writing up about a girl cursed with the ability to grow spikes. She is stolen from her gypsy family by a government agency willing to do anything to keep peace...

And so the child braved the storm

And screeched at it with all her scorn

She thrashed about in her blankets gray

Determined to live but one more day

 

The gypsy’s eyes had failed her, but

Through the icy snow, a path she cut

Listening for the child’s fright

To point her way through the night

 

She found the child in a stump

Nothing but a snow-covered lump

She cried as she dusted the babe off

And held the child out and aloft

 

“Oh goddess, find it in your soul

To cure this child, whatever the toll

What is a child to be subject to death

When she has barely drawn her first breath?”

 

A flash of light shown from above

Sweet as sin, pale as a dove

The goddess took the cold away

But there was a price to pay

 

“From this point on she will have no spark

Of magic, be it good or dark

No spell shall ever touch her skin

Lest she wishes to die again”

 

To show her curse was true

The goddess split the girl in two

And inside her very core

Placed a rock of iron ore

 

The gypsy took the child away

To her family, where she would stay

And though they thought they had won

They did not know what they had begun...