The very next day, I bought a train ticket to New York.
•
“Mr and Mrs Midas” lived in a tall, narrow house in tree-lined avenue of a wealthy district. I had bought another copy of The Stylus at the train station, so as to neatly copy the address on to a slip of paper I could keep in my pocketbook, though I was careful not to read anything else of the journal lest I cause further inflagration.
I stood upon their steps for a very long time before I gathered my courage enough to march up and ring their bell.
A maid answered, a shy girl in a crisp uniform with a cap pulled down upon her face. She bobbed and ma’amed and led me to a drawing room so full of books that I had no doubt I was in the right place.
“I should like to see,” I said, and hesitated on the words, for no, I was not yet ready for the confrontation with Ida May. “The lady of the house. Mrs Midas.”
The maid stared at me, quite startled, and I was equally startled to see her face. She had such bright eyes, and a brow that could only be described as pallid. It was like looking into the mirror I had owned ten years ago. She could have been me. “Yes, Mrs Midas,” she said quickly, and fled.
What was I to make of that? For as I waited, I had a creeping suspicion that she had not been agreeing with me readily that she would fetch her mistress, but instead she had addressed me as her mistress.
No, that could not be.
A housekeeper came next, a stout and comforting woman, though again I had that quiet shock of recognition. She looked so like my aunt, or perhaps myself once I reached the age of my aunt.
“Mrs Midas, welcome home,” she said in a voice that was certainly not my own, though I struggled at first to recognise it. “May I bring tea? Or would you prefer sherry at this hour? Mr Midas was sorry not to meet you at the station, but he will be along for supper directly.”
“I am not,” I said, and there was something wrong with my voice, too. It was deeper, more sardonic, and yet dreadfully familiar. “I am…” But what could I say? I was Victoria Grayson, unmarried, a schoolteacher, a lover of women? Mrs Midas was a Victoria too. “I am afraid…”
That, at least, was the truth.
The door rang, and the maid answered it again. I heard her speaking to the master of the house in the hallway, and he answering her, both in that same voice, the one I heard in the mouth of the housekeeper and of myself.
“Hello, darling,” said Ida May, as she entered the drawing room. I had half expected her to be dressed as a man, all frock coat and tails, but she was dressed as she always had when I knew her, in a respectable brown linen dress and jacket.
“Where are we?” I demanded. Her voice spilled out of me, that rich sound. I was not myself any more. My clothes had changed, and my corset was tighter. I could feel myself stretching to fill her vision of me. She thought I was taller, more slender, and thus I became. “What is this house?”
Ida May Midas smiled at me with that angular face of hers, and took my hand. Gently, she led me to the window and drew back the curtains. The trees that lined the avenue outside were glowing gold with a sunlight that came from nowhere. As my hand shuddered in hers, I saw threads of bright and many-coloured grass spring up in the middle of the street.
“It’s not a house,” she said serenely, her fingers encircling my wrist like a trap, sprung. “It’s a poem.”
•
Contributors
Born in the north of England in 1984, Redfern Jon Barrett is a polyamorous pagan giant with a Ph.D. in queer literature. His fiction has been published in the magazines A Cappella Zoo, The Future Fire, and Corvus; the anthologies Bestiary and Drag Noir; as well as the book Shaped by Time. His non-fiction has featured in German newspapers Bild and BZ, as well as Scifi Methods (2012-13), Sleek, Gender Forum, Polytical, Überlin, and Witches/Sorcières. Read more at redjon.com
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Zoë Blade was born in Essex, England in 1981. She currently resides in Staffordshire with her partner Nina. She writes fiction, music and computer code. Her article “Who Watches the Watchers?” was featured in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, and she wrote most of the soundtrack to Defcon: The Documentary, about the hacking convention. Nina and Zoë are currently building a hardware step sequencer.
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A.J. Fitzwater is an author of the dragon persuasion, sending out roots in Christchurch, New Zealand in an attempt to hold two fault lines together. Their work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres Magazine, various Crossed Genres anthologies, Wily Writers and other venues of skiffy repute. They are Clarion class of 2014. Cups of tea, hair colour, feline parentage, and any further information are subject to weather and catch permitting.
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Sacchi Green has won multiple Lambda Literary Awards for her editorial prowess but is also a talented author of lesbian and speculative fiction. Her most recent short story collection is A Ride to Remember.
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Claire Humphrey lives in Toronto, where she works in the book business, and writes short fiction and novels. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Crossed Genres, PodCastle, Fantasy Magazine, and several anthologies. She is also the reviews editor at Ideomancer. She can be found online at clairehumphrey.ca.
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Alex Jeffers received a Lambda Literary Award for his erotic fairy tale The Padişah’s Son and the Fox earlier this year. His new novel is That Door Is a Mischief.
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Meda Kahn is an autistic woman and a writer of science-fiction. She lives in Colorado. “Difference of Opinion” is her first published work.
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Layla Lawlor is a writer and artist who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska. Her fiction and comics can be found at laylalawlor.com.
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At any given time, Chanté McCoy is reading a handful of novels, taking a continuing education class to dabble in her latest interest, or hiking the mountains of Utah with Elvis, her beloved Doberman Pinscher.
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Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee Cat Rambo usually lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest, but has been known to wander and may be lurking at a coffeeshop near you. She is the former editor of award-winning Fantasy Magazine. Her most recent story collection is Near + Far; her most recent nonfiction book is Creating an Online Presence. You can find more information about her and links to her fiction and other writing at kittywumpus.net.
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Tansy Rayner Roberts lives with her partner and their two daughters in Tasmania, and is one of the three voices of the Hugo-nominated Galactic Suburbia podcast. She also writes crime fiction as Livia Day.
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Kenneth Schneyer’s stories appear in Analog, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clockwork Phoenix 3 & 4, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, Podcastle, and elsewhere. In 2014 he received a Nebula nomination and was a Sturgeon finalist for “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer.” His stories have been, or soon will be, translated into Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Czech. A one-time actor and corporate lawyer, he currently teaches business law and science fiction literature at Johnson & Wales University. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something with fangs.
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Benjanun Sriduangkaew writes soldiers, strange cities, and space opera. A finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Phantasm Japan, Dangerous Games, Upgraded, Solaris Rising 3, various Mammoth Books and best of the year collections. Her contemporary fantasy novella Scale-Bright is forthcoming from Immersion Press.
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Penny Stirling is a transcriptionist errant from Western Australia. When not typing she cross stitches pixel art and collects notebooks. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in Goblin Fruit, Aurealis, Luna Station Quarterly and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Visit her at pennystirling.com.
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Most of Robert E. Stutts’s
creative work centers around adapting older stories. He has an MFA from Stonecoast and is an Associate Professor of English & Director of Creative Writing at Presbyterian College.
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Tori Truslow a writer of strange fiction, currently living in the East of England. Born in Hong Kong, she grew up in Bangkok, and has since moved back and forth between here and there. She is a graduate of the Warwick MA in Writing, and her stories and poems have appeared in a number of magazine and anthologies, including Clockwork Phoenix 3, Stone Telling, Penning Perfumes and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her work has been a finalist for the James White Award and the Parsec Award.
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Lexy Wealleans is a scientist and writer. She spends most of her working day struggling with spreadsheets and wishing instead she lived in an Enid Blyton novel. “Counting Down the Seconds” is her first published short story.
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Alberto Yáñez is a writer of fantasies, poetry, and essays on justice, agency and art, pop culture, and the absurdity of life. With the instincts of a natural editor, he’s also a photographer with a storyteller’s approach to taking pictures. Every so often, a wonder gets worked.
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And
Melissa Scott is a science fiction and fantasy author noted for her science fiction novels featuring LGBT characters and elaborate settings. Scott studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, and earned her PhD. in comparative history. She is one of the few individuals to have won four Lambda Literary Awards for Best LGBT Speculative Fiction. This is the first anthology she has edited.
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Steve Berman has been involved in the promotion of queer speculative fiction for over a decade. His articles, essays, and short fiction have been featured in such venues as Salon.com and Strange Horizons. He resides in southern New Jersey, the only state in America that has an official devil.
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Publication Credits
“Introduction” © 2014 Melissa Scott • “Liquid Loyalty” © 2013 Redfern Jon Barrett, first appeared in The Future Fire #26 • “Terminal City” © 2013 Zoë Blade, first appeared in The Future Fire #28 • “Blood, Stone, Water” © 2013 A.J. Fitzwater, first appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #118 • “Her Infinite Variety” © 2013 Sacchi Green, first appeared in The Mystical Cat: An Anthology of All Things Feline (ed. by Dusty Rainbolt, Sky Warrior Book Publishing, LLC) • “Your Figure Will Assume Beautiful Outlines” © 2013 Claire Humphrey, first apppeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #135 • “The Other Bridge” © 2013 Alex Jeffers, first appeared at sentenceandparagraph.com, 28 August 2013 • “Difference of Opinion” © 2013 Meda Khan, first appeared in Strange Horizons, Sept. 9, 2013 • “The Bride in Furs” © 2013 Layla Lawlor, first appeared in Plunge Magazine #2 • “The Gold Mask’s Menagerie” © 2013 Chanté McCoy, first appeared in Sidekicks (ed. by Sarah Hans, Alliteration Ink) • “Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane” © 2013 Cat Rambo, first appeared in Glitter & Mayhem (ed. by John Klima and Michael Damian Thomas) • “The Raven and Her Victory” © 2013 by Tansy Rayner Roberts, first appeared in Where thy Dark Eye Glances (ed. by Steve Berman, Lethe Press) • “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” © 2013 Kenneth Schneyer, first appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 4 (ed. by Mike Allen) • “Vector” © 2013 Benjanun Sriduangkaew, first appeared in We See a Different Frontier (ed. by Djibril al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes) • “Love Over Glass, Skin Under Glass” © 2013 Penny Stirling, first appeared in Aurealis #64. • “Hungry” © 2013 Robert E. Stutts, first appeared in Daily Science Fiction, February 4, 2013 • “Boat in Shadows, Crossing” © 2013 Tori Truslow, first appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #100 • “Counting Down the Seconds” © 2013 Lexy Wealleans, first appeared in Counting Down the Seconds and other love stories for girls who like girls (Freya Publications) • “The Coffinmaker’s Love” © 2013 Alberto Yañez, first appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #131
Introduction
Melissa Scott
The Gold Mask’s Menagerie
Chanté McCoy
Counting Down the Seconds
Lexy Wealleans
The Other Bridge
Alex Jeffers
Love Over Glass, Skin Under Glass
Penny Stirling
Hungry
Robert E. Stutts
Liquid Loyalty
Redfern Jon Barrett
Her Infinite Variety
Sacchi Green
The Coffinmaker’s Love
Alberto Yáñez
Terminal City
Zoë Blade
The Bride in Furs
Layla Lawlor
Your Figure Will Assume Beautiful Outlines
Claire Humphrey
Blood, Stone, Water
A.J. Fitzwater
Vector
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane
Cat Rambo
Selected Program Notes from the Retro- spective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer
Kenneth Schneyer
Difference of Opinion
Meda Kahn
Boat in Shadows, Crossing
Tori Truslow
The Raven and Her Victory
Tansy Rayner Roberts
Heiresses of Russ 2014 Page 29
