So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction Read online

  So Fey

  Queer fairy fiction

  edited by Steve Berman

  Lethe Press

  Maple Shade, NJ

  Also by Steve Berman

  As Author

  Trysts

  Vintage

  Second Thoughts

  As Editor

  Charmed Lives

  So Fey

  Magic in the Mirrorstone

  Wilde Stories

  Copyright 2009 by Steve Berman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

  This book was originally published by Haworth Positronic Press, 2007.

  This edition published as a trade paperback by

  Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Ave, Maple Shade, NJ 08052

  ISBN 1-59021-049-2 / 978-1-59021-049-9

  Book Design by Toby Johnson

  "How the Ocean Loved Margie" copyright 2007 Laurie J. Marks, first appeared online at the Journal of Mythic Arts. "The Faery Cony-Catcher" copyright 1998 Delia Sherman, first appeared in Sirens & Other Daemon Lovers (ed. by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, HarperPrism). "The Price of Glamour" copyright 2003 Steve Berman, first appeared in The Faery Reel (ed. by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Penguin). "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland" copyright 2002 Sarah Monette, first appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 11.

  _______________________________________________________

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  So fey : queer fairy fiction / edited by Steve Berman.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-59021-228-2 (alk. paper)

  1. Gay men--Fiction. 2. Gay men's writings, American. 3. Short stories, American. 4. Fantasy fiction, American. I. Berman, Steve, 1968-

  PS648.H57S6 2009

  813'.0108358086642--dc22

  2009019123

  To Holly, who I owe a tremendous debt for she has brought so much enchantment and wonder into my mundane world--I could not ask for a better, truer friend.

  Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

  --Oscar Wilde

  Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.

  --Sappho

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraphs

  Introduction

  Steve Berman

  A Faun's Tale

  Tom Cardamone

  A Scent of Roses

  Catherine Lundoff

  The Wand's Boy

  Richard Bowes

  A Bird of Ice

  Craig Laurance Gidney

  Charming, a Tale of True Love

  Ruby deBrazier & Cassandra Clare

  Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland

  Sarah Monette

  The Kings of Oak and Holly

  Kenneth D. Woods

  Detox

  Elspeth Potter

  From Asphalt to Emeralds and Moonlight

  Aynjel Kaye

  The Price of Glamour

  Steve Berman

  The Coat of Stars

  Holly Black

  How the Ocean Loved Margie

  Laurie J. Marks

  Isis in Darkness

  Christopher Barzak

  Touch

  M. Kate Havas

  Attracting Opposites

  Carl Vaughn Frick

  The Faerie Cony-Catcher

  Delia Sherman

  Exiles

  Sean Meriwether

  Laura Left a Rotten Apple and Came

  Not to Regret the Cold of the Yukon

  Lynne Jamneck

  Mr. Seeley

  Melissa Scott

  Year of the Fox

  Eugie Foster

  Ever So Much More Than Twenty

  Joshua Lewis

  Mr. Grimm's Fairy Tale

  Eric Andrews-Katz

  About the editor

  So Fey

  Introduction

  Once upon a time...

  Since 1393, the term "fairy" involved supernatural beings, a myriad of shapes and demeanors. Some good-natured, some dangerous. Brownies and hobgoblins, pixies and kelpies. Elves that lure mortals away to live under the hills, never to be seen again. How extraordinary that gay men would come to be identified with these beings. Yet how fitting, as faeries have long been seen as handsome and eternally young, and so much of contemporary gay culture is linked to the cult of youth and beauty. And how many men have spied an attractive guy and known he was trouble? How many have had to leave home--disappearing, seldom seen again--in pursuit of their identity?

  The first recorded usage of "fairies" as slang for effeminate gay men is in 1895, in the American Journal of Psychology, which reported a secret homosexual organization in New York City calling itself "The Faeries." What a wonderful notion: a secret cabal of limp-wristed plotters out for urban domination. The term homosexual had been coined only three years earlier. In his book, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, author George Chauncey offers that these proclaimed "fairies" had a sense of "otherness" among queer culture, defining their sexuality as different by adopting effeminate mannerisms and dress.

  While lesbians do not have a similar link through slang to the fey world, modern writers of the fantastical have transformed the Queen of Elfland figure into a Sapphic icon. The Queen, with her regal pose and dominant sensuality, represents the allure of a mature woman, a blend of maiden's beauty and the crone's wisdom. For lesbians, Faeryland promises freedom from the restraints of society and the dominant patriarchy and holds the illusive possibility of acceptance.

  The notion behind an anthology of queer fey tales is not entirely my own--I was inspired by a growing literature of queer speculative fiction stories involving the Fey Folk (I could use the term Fair Folk but they are rarely that in folklore). However, such offerings were scattered about the literary landscape, few and far between for readers. I decided to go on my own faery hunt, seeking out stories--some old, but most new--that I felt best showed the vagaries not only of faery demeanor but also of queer life--of romance and grief, of ageism and adolescence, of coming out and standing out. I am grateful that so many talented writers brought me a myriad of wonderful pieces.

  The stories that follow offer a blend of queer sensibility with fairy-tale magic, and the pains of self-discovery, acceptance, and of finding and losing and finding love once more. Here are heroes and heroines seeking their own path, and at times when they stray or waylaid, the journey back is all the more interesting.

  Legends tell that one should never taste the food or drink of Faeryland or else risk being trapped there forever. So, too, I hope that you find yourself trapped in the pages of this book. Though queer vocabulary has changed over the centuries, it is my hope that these stories will serve to remind readers of what faeries truly are.

  Steve Berman

  Winter 2005

  A Faun's Tale

  Tom Cardamone

  Christopher was about to make his first foray into the Ramble. He slipped out of the apartment while Barrett and Hector conspired in the kitchen. Pilfering an apple from a street vender in Union Square he leisurely strolled up Broadway as the sun set a florid pink fan down across the horizon. Reaching the park as the sky finally darkened, he hopped the low cobblestone fence bordering Central Park West and stood still among the nearest trees, their shadows wrapping around his ankles, e
nticing him further toward mystery.

  He knew the general direction from the gossip of other fauns and set off on the winding path as the park's lampposts flickered to life, dim stationary fireflies held by rusty tethers, their low, constant electric rumble adding to the menace permeating the air. He knew that once he crossed either Bow Bridge or found the path above the boat basin he would enter the Ramble. A slight dread tightened in his chest. As the chill coming off the pond crept into the freshly brushed pelt of his thighs he stepped into the plaza woven around Bethesda Fountain. The moon's nimbus stung the clouds into bits of floating charcoal. The lilting laughter of unseen fauns in the distance comforted him. It was still too early for wolves to bay.

  Steeling himself, he sprinted over the bridge. Almost immediately he felt a difference, a sexual energy, a tangible addition to the multiple layers of shadow expanding with dusk. Men stood within the thicket. He could not make out their faces, but he knew he was being observed. I'm here! Christopher thought, exuberant, frightened, and aroused. He decided to trot further down the path, deeper into the woods, worried that his budding arousal would prematurely attract attention-- he wanted the night to last. Since entering faunhood he had entertained wild fantasies of sacrifice, invisible beasts tearing at him through impossible fields of darkness, biting his neck while ravaging his backside. Many a night he would wake up from such dreams panting heavily.

  As he moved among the trees he sensed that the men within were changing. Beside the trunk of one massive gnarled oak a man squatted on all fours, having shed all his clothes. Christopher watched the man shiver in delight as blades of hair rose across his shoulder blades. In the moonlight he could see the man's emerging claws push into the earth. Hypnotized by this transformation, the spell suddenly broke as the werewolf returned his gaze with a primordial lust, eyes narrowing into silver canine mirrors reflecting an indifferent moon.

  Christopher backed up slowly and took off down the path, his heart racing. He ran past shifting shapes, men groping wolves as they themselves sprouted new, black manes and long, sharp teeth. He nearly bolted over the bridge and out of the Ramble but paused, the edge of the park was in view, the neat silhouette of skyscrapers hovering far above the waving trees behind him... should he part the curtain and entertain the feast? The Feast. The Sacrifice.

  Shivering, he held himself, feeling his slender bones beneath gooseflesh, imagining them snapping like twigs in the hanging jaws of some wolf gone mad. Christopher was startled as two frolicking fauns skipped past. Titling heads drawn close together in whispering, effervescent gossip, one with fur so white it shone silver in the moonlight, the other a complexion of rich chocolate, a fine, shaggy coat ending in a nimble, upright little tail. Each hand-in-hand swallowed by the Ramble. The black vacuum of their sudden arrival and departure left him cold. Then, instinctively, he knew. This was his true invitation. For after the feast as well as before, there is only darkness. Leaping back down the path Christopher knew that tonight he belonged to the Ramble.

  Tom Cardamone is the author of the erotic fantasy novel, The Werewolves Of Central Park. His sensual and strange short stories have appeared in several anthologies and publications and are collected in Pumpkin Teeth, forthcoming from Lethe Press. He resides physically in Brooklyn, but you can find him online at his website, www.pumpkinteeth.net.

  A Scent of Roses

  Catherine Lundoff

  The night it is gude Halloween,

  The faery folk do ride,

  And they that wad their true-love win,

  At Miles Cross they maun bide.

  Tam Lin, traditional ballad

  Janet straightened her back against the persistent ache that filled her and wiped the sweat from her brow with a grimy hand. The sun was setting slowly, blinding her until she looked away. Time to leave the field and go back to the cottage. She grimaced at the thought. Tam would no doubt have been at the ale. He'd sit by the fire again tonight, singing that witch's tongue the Good Folk spoke and telling her tales about their country as if she cared to know.

  With a groan, she picked up her hoe and her bag and began the weary walk home. Almost she wished that she'd not lain with him in the rose garden of her father's house at Carterhaugh. Almost she wished that her courage had failed at the crossroads marked by Miles Cross and that she had not saved him from the Fair Folk. But wishing would not take her back in time, nor restore their babe, sickened and dead in his cradle a year past. If he had lived, her father might have accepted Tam as his heir. Instead, he exiled her and her faery knight to a distant holding, little more than a cottage and a few rocky fields. She kicked at a rock in her path, wincing when it hurt her toes through her thin shoes.

  "No longer so proud as you once were, I see."

  The voice was cool and sardonic but it fell on Janet's ears like a burning brand. She spun around to face her tormentor but the words caught in her throat. A lady sat on a great stone by the side of the path and her face Janet could never forget. "You!" She spat. "Have you not had revenge enough but must needs come back to mock me in my fall?"

  The other woman tilted her head sideways like a bird, but no bird had eyes so fearsome and strange. Janet could not hold back a shiver and the Queen of the Fair Folk smiled to see it. "You fear me now, mortal? I was not so fearsome when you stole my knight away."

  "Would your Majesty care to try and take him back?" Janet's fists clenched and her cheeks flushed red. She dropped her tools at her feet, bracing herself as if to box.

  The Queen threw back her head with a merry tinkling laugh. "If I did not kill you then, why would I brawl with you like one of your fishwives now? You won him fair, Janet, and he is yours to mind and tend."

  "Then why are you here?" Janet asked, her voice uncertain. "I've kine to tend and bairns and Tam to feed. You've naught to do with me."

  "Do I not?" The Queen stood, her gown of green falling to her feet like a river of grass. She seemed taller than Janet remembered and she flinched away, as afraid now as she had been two years before. "There are no bairns, as you know well. Naught but my former knight waits for you and he sleeps before the fire, an empty cup by his chair."

  Janet's blood ran hot again. "Tis your fault! If you had not taken him, he would be an honored knight at the King's court! We should have had bairns aplenty and lands and . . ." Here her voice broke and she wiped savagely at her eyes.

  The Queen reached out her hand, her skin glowing a pale green in the dim light. With one featherlight touch, she captured one of Janet's tears and brought it to her lips. She gave Janet a hard stare for a breath or two. Then her face softened in an odd smile, one that made her look a bit like any village girl watching her swain.

  In a trice, she was gone, vanished like a dream. Janet stared at the spot where she had stood, one hand clasping the cheek those faery fingers had touched. Her skin burned pleasantly, sending a heat through her that she'd not felt in far too long. She took a deep breath and realized that the air around her smelled like nothing so much as the roses at Carterhaugh.

  Torn between anger and something she dared not examine too closely, she picked up her hoe and bag and resumed her walk home. Now it was growing dark and the trees' branches twined an arch across the path above her head. All around her the evening was filled with small sounds: the cry of the hunting owl, the soft crackle of a deer's hooves on fallen leaves, and above it all, the distant silver tinkle of bells like those on a bridle. Would the Queen return for her? The thought made her flee for the safety of the cottage, shivering.

  She slammed the door behind her and dropped the bolt in place before she turned to look around her, heart racing. Tam sat just as she knew he would: handsome sleeping face lit by the dying flames and an empty jug beside him. As she watched, he blinked and sat up, blue eyes puzzled as if he had dreamt of other times and places. Perhaps his dreams were full of eyes that had no color Janet could name.