Happy Ever After

by Selena Kitt

  Giselle Renarde has contributed short stories to numerous anthologies, including Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories (Cleis Press), Love Bites (Torquere Press), Coming Together: With Pride, and Coming Together: Out Loud (Phaze). Online, Giselle has contributed erotic content to such websites as For The Girls and Hips and Curves, and editorial content to Lucrezia Magazine.

  For desirous commentary and hyper-analysis of every facet of social existence, visit Giselle’s blog, Donuts and Desires or visit her site here!

  BLACK AND GOLD

  By Tessa Buxton

  Once, a long time ago, before men started measuring these things, there were two worlds—the world above inhabited by men and the world below inhabited by fairy. These two worlds were as much as one as the other and the men and the fairy walked side by side under the sun of the world above and through the waters and mist of the world below.

  Over time, the two worlds split apart—the bright and shining retreated to the world below and the men, brutish and strong, turned to the world above where the living was harder. When the fairy needed to, they walked among the men to drink their breath and their life and become stronger, and as such, the millennia passed.

  Just as the world above formed into kingdoms and clans, gathering under charismatic leaders and their children, then so the world below. And just as the people of the world above changed, so each clan was distinct unto each self, then so too did the fairy, and each had a task.

  The Cancanagh were golden and shining, drinking the lust and life of the men above. They wove stories and, when the men above told tales of the fairy, it was the golden Cancanagh they spoke of.

  Hidden deep in the lands below was the Demon Door, the door joining the world above and the world below. It was guarded by a clan of fairies who named themselves for birds, who kept to themselves. Their lord had wings of darkest night and eyes which could open a dimension. Of their clan, it was said, a girl would be born with wings the color of the sun of the world above and the two would marry and protect the gate from all and everyone, married at birth and destined to love each other.

  But as the fairy separated more and more into clans, they formed into two people—the Daoine Sidhe and the Unseelie Court—and each formed into kingdoms with monarchy, and the crowns became cruel and demanding.

  One king of the Unseelie took his warriors and took slaves from each of the people, and took a boy with wings of solid black and placed a powerful seal over his eyes so he could not open a dimension to harm them. To win the favor of his queen, he gave her the boy with the black wings along with a golden boy of the Cancanagh whom she called Findbhair.

  * * * *

  Now it happened that Findbhair was favored of the queen—he had golden hair and shining golden eyes, and when he laughed, it sounded like light upon rippling water. She dressed him in the richest cloth of finest streith—the way they wove light into clothes. She would sit and brush out his golden hair, and rub oils onto his golden skin and cradle him to her breast and sing sweet nothings into his ear.

  So the boy, Findbhair, became spoiled, and as he grew older, he grew lovelier and the queen doted on him more. She offered gold and diamonds for his hair and rose petals for his bath. She gave him small mischievous fairies to make him laugh and slaves to wait upon his every whim.

  The boy, Findbhair, saw the dark boy with the seal over his eyes, who was of an age with him, and found his greatest pleasure in tormenting him. He would pour cold water over his skin whilst he worked. He would order him whipped. He would sit beside the boy and laugh and laugh and his laughter was like the light falling upon the rippling waters of the lake.

  It amused the queen to see her favorite so happy as she fed him sweet meats and sweet breads, candied rose petals and the drops of water that caught in the folds of orchids. She would sit beside him, stroking his hair and watching as he tormented the nameless boy with the black wings and the seal over his eyes.

  The boy never responded.

  When Findbhair knocked the food from his hands—coarse bread—with cruel laughter, the boy said nothing.

  When Findbhair poured icy water over his head, the boy said nothing.

  When Findbhair struck him, the boy said nothing and continued with what he had been doing.

  Findbhair was fascinated by him. He wanted him to react, and when the queen cuddled him in the night in her palace, it was the boy with the black wings he dreamt of.

  Findbhair, old enough to please the queen the way she wished, asked of her a single boon. He asked that the boy with the black wings be given to him as his own slave and the queen, lying there with his golden head on her bosom as she stroked his hair, she gave him his whim.

  Findbhair found new and varied ways to torment the boy, who answered him calmly and never lost his temper. He washed his master. He fed his master. But no matter what his master did, he never lost his temper.

  Even when Findbhair threw the all of the petals from the queen’s rose garden across the courtyard and commanded he went to lift each one as he was told.

  Even when Findbhair took an entire jug of wine and poured it over his slave’s head, the boy just slicked back his hair and continued to lift the petals.

  * * * *

  But things must change, the way time means that they must. Slaves saw the way the queen favored the Cancanagh and whispers started about the boy and the queen, which were unfortunately true.

  Time took the whispers to the king, who saw his queen, beautiful as she was, stroking the hair of her Cancanagh slave, and became enraged with jealousy.

  He threw the boy aside and asked the court if his queen was unfaithful and jealous courtiers lounging upon their thrones told him it was true, that the boy was Cancanagh and beautiful and how could she resist such beauty.

  The Cancanagh seduced her, the court said—he used his golden hair and laughter like the light upon rippling water, and took her to his bed so she would favor him above all others. When they said the Cancanagh had taken the boy with the wings of solid black to his queen’s bed as well, the king was driven mad with jealousy and rage, so he asked the boys one last time if they were true to his service or if they would be condemned.

  Findbhair told how the queen touched him in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, and that he had no choice, for he was her slave, and surely that, too, was service. The boy with the wings as black as pitch said the same.

  The queen denied this—she told her husband how the Cancanagh seduced her, how she loved only him, and that the Cancanagh were seducers and not to be trusted. She said she had been wooed by his golden hair and winning smile and laughter that was like light upon rippling water. The king believed her.

  So the boys, for they were in truth barely older than children, were sent to the wild lands between the Daoine Sidhe and the Unseelie where the monsters lived to die of either hunger and thirst or be torn to pieces.

  * * * *

  The two boys walked for days through the vast empty plain, as the saliva dried on their tongues, making them thick and like leather. Their limbs were heavy and their hair, both golden and black, slicked back with quickly drying sweat in the harsh sun of the world below. Their clothes tore, thick with salt, ragged with grit and heavy with dust. They limped over stones, each driving the other one with their silence and their reticence to show weakness. The plain was ice cold when night fell and they found shadows under larger rocks to huddle together against the cold. The Cancanagh was pressed against the ice of the basalt against his back and the boy with the wings of blackest night against the chill of the sky. They would shudder, drawn up against each other, as warm as they could be whilst the night growled and expanded around them.

  Sometimes, in the shelter of their small rocks, they would hear the steps of the great beasts to whom they would be a snack, or even a morsel caught between their teeth. They would hear the slither of their great tails on the dust and packed dirt, and their roars into the chill of the night. And Findbhair, hearing them, would involuntaril
y flinch into the chest of the boy with the black wings, and the boy would curl around him just a touch to soothe him back into sleep. They never spoke, but sometimes Findbhair would reach up his golden Cancanagh fingers and touch the seal that the king of the Unseelie had placed over his eyes. The boy with the black wings would soften to the touch, and something silent, and painful, would pass between them.

  Days passed like that, through the austere heat and the icy cold, hiding from the great beasts and stumbling on, with the only hope in sight the eventual death that waited for them amongst the upturned rocks. Sometimes they froze, hearing the rustle of rough fur through wind or the sibilant hiss of scales upon scales. Sometimes they looked at the grey sky and prayed for rain, but never a word passed between them.

  * * * *

  When the beast found them, hidden in the hollow of a large black rock where some small shadow pooled, Findbhair found himself ready for death. The monster was large with black mats in its ragged fur, its golden eyes rheumy with madness and hunger as its roar shook the mountains. Claws as black as basalt unsheathed with a wet slick noise and the monster brought down its muck brown arm and Findbhair stood there and waited for death.

  The pain was bright and brilliant along his face, hot and wet like tears along his right cheek and mouth, the air thick with the fetid stink of the beast and the brilliant smell of copper pennies. Then he felt a second, duller ache and he fell—the boy with the black wings pushing him to the side— his sword-like basalt claws ripping the seal from the left side of his face.

  There was a sound like thunder and then the two of them were soaked in the thick and briny blood of the monster, a terrible spray as the boy with the wings of pitchest black, his eyes, blacker even than the shadows of his wings, opened the door between dimensions and ripped the monster in twain. Findbhair looked at him, his hand to the terrible wound on his face, over where his eye had been, ripped out by the beast, and wondered why, even now, thick with blood and fetid gore, drinking the blood because there was nothing else to drink, consuming its meat because there was nothing else to eat, that there were no words between them, and why the boy with the black wings had saved him.

  * * * *

  With silence as a companion between them, they travelled across the plain, keeping blood and meat as sustenance, to the end of the world below, where there was a small village whose fairies had wings like those of birds. When they saw the boy with the black wings, they rushed forward with exultant cries and lifted him, and for the first time in Findbhair’s memory of him, from when they were infants before the queen tore them apart, he smiled.

  This, Findbhair discovered, as they tended to the wound on his face where his eye had been, medicating it so to prevent scarring, was the family of the boy with black wings. He had a name, and he was called Raven.

  Last among those to welcome home their prodigal child was a girl with hair as golden as Findbhair’s own, but eyes as black as Raven’s—she was like a cross between the two, with the beauty of the Cancanagh but the silence and stillness of the boy with the black wings who was called Raven. She wore a soft pale blue gown the color of a misty morning and her wings were sun-bright golden. Raven, when he spoke to her, called her Canary, and called her his beloved wife, and something inside Findbhair died that day.

  * * * *

  Years passed there in the village in the shadow of the demon door, where the fairy with the bird wings lived and Findbhair was welcome among them, treated as one of their own. He ate with their men, as their ladies smiled at him, he ran with their boys as the women choralled their voices but stood apart from him, as Raven watched him with strange eyes, with Canary, tiny and sunflower brilliant beside him.

  And Findbhair hated her.

  The more the people spoke to him, the women with their heavy eyes and men with their soft fingers which lingered upon his skin, the more Findbhair pulled apart from them, his eyes turning to the black wings of Raven and the warm yellow of Canary where they stood apart from them, and his eyes were full of hate.

  He found a way to the human world, the world above, and lingered in the misty woods of the emerald lands where women walked, and of those with black hair and black eyes he drank down their breath until there was nothing left.

  Findbhair locked his door, he stood at his window and he watched them, drunk on the breath of emerald maidens, and the liquor men made, and saw the satin black wings of Raven and turned away.

  Just as when they walked through the lost plains, words never passed between them.

  * * * *

  Then Canary fell ill.

  It started with a cough that would not fade, that came when she laughed in her soft brittle voice. It was a cough like the braying of a donkey.

  Tinctures and lozenges did nothing to soothe it.

  She took pale and fever, bright from hour to hour, her hair slick with sweat and harsh with salt.

  Sleep abandoned her and the pain came long and hard and Raven was beside himself.

  Raven turned to the house he had put aside for the Cancanagh. He opened the door with a violent flourish and looked at the golden man sitting on his bed, his missing eye covered with black lace and he was beautiful, made perfect by his flaws and the scar that was not quite covered by the lace. It looked like he might shatter into a million pieces and could never be brought back to one whole.

  “You drank the breath of Canary,” Raven said and his voice was like a whisper, “I have felt your eye upon us when we walk, I have felt your ears when we speak. I have given you nothing but kindness in exchange for your cruelty. When we were children, I saw what was done to you and I did what I could. When we walked through the desolate plain, I shared all I was to bring you home, to my home, for you had known none. Tell me why you do this? Why do you watch us and hear us? Why would you hurt her who has done nothing to you?” He stopped, his face red with rage. “Answer me, Cancanagh.”

  Findbhair said nothing.

  “She has done no harm to none. Would you hurt me for what I have done, and if so, why hurt her and not me?”

  Findbhair smiled, with his wondrous, glamorous smile, and lay back on the bed. “What would you do?” he asked Raven. “What would you give, to save her? If she died, what would you lose?” He stretched out supine on his bed, amongst the fine cloth and popped the bones of his spine with a delicious sigh. “Perhaps I am still the boy who was favored of the Queen of the Unseelie.”

  Raven looked at him, his eyes as black and hard as diamonds. “Such a child never existed,” he said with his whispery voice. “You do this for a reason other than the cruelty you would espouse given chance. I know you, Findbhair, I have known you as the boy who was favored of the Queen of the Unseelie. I have known you as the boy who walked with me through the desolate plains, and I have known you as the man that you have become. There is something that you wish from me. Tell me what it is that you are ransoming for my bride, for my golden Canary.”

  “Give yourself unto me,” Findbhair said spreading open his legs on the primrose patterned bed spread, kicking off his leather soled shoes to bare his slender toes to the lamp light of the room. “Give yourself unto me and I shall tell you what it is I wish, and I shall save your Canary for what you ransom unto me, and I shall leave here. I shall go to the lands of the Cancanagh and throw myself upon their mercy. I have known you all my life, Raven of the Demon’s Door, let me drink of your breath so that I will regret nothing when you give me what I request.”

  So Raven of the Demon’s Door stepped forward to the small neat bed whereupon the Cancanagh lay. With eyes dull and black as coal, he undid the collar of his shirt and bent down to kiss the golden Findbhair.

  He forced upon the Raven’s mouth with his tongue, moving it strong and firm as he laid himself between the open legs, toeing off his shoes as his hands moved to either side of the golden shoulders, his heat bearing down on him.

  Strong hands stretched over his back, a scent as sweet as lemons and peace roses washed through him as he
forced his hips against those of the Cancanagh, rubbing and rippling.

  It surprised him, the passion in the golden breath as Findbhair drank him in, feeling the heat of him like a burning volcano the over flowing bliss that ran through him. He had heard the Cancanagh fed off this, and had known Findbhair for almost all of his days, but he had restrained everything his entire life. He bucked into the kiss as Findbhair reached around and began to stroke his wings, fingers through the feathers as their crotches rubbed together. It felt better than anything Raven had ever known—it was fire and it was ice and it was air and it was metal at all of the time. He undid his flies and those of Findbhair so they were pressed skin to golden skin as the Cancanagh used his foot against the bedspread to raise his hips, even as he ran the fibers of the feathers between his fingers.

  It was the heat of the sun of the world above and it was the cold of the waters of the seas below.

  It was the dazzle of the court of the Unseelie and the machinations of the Daoine Sidhe.

  It was fingers and tongues and heat and rubbing and balls tightening and bodies arching and it was all of these things and it was none of them.

  It was the everything of creation and it was the nothing of chaos.

  When they came against each other it was with the force of mountains colliding, it was with the heat of volcanoes, it was with guttural cries and a stuttered golden moan.

  As Findbhair laid upon the primrose patterned bedspread, shirt ripped, feathers about him, and trousers open wide to the air, his breath hitching and catching in his golden throat, Raven asked, “Tell me what you want. Tell me what it is that will save my Canary?”

  “I want your eye.” Findbhair said as he touched the patterned lace that covered his own disfigurement, “I want the right eye stolen from me. I want all that was taken from me. I want the Emerald maiden whose blind eyes saw me. I want the Unseelie queen to suffer for what she did to me and I want you to see me. I will leave this place, as I did promise, but I want it that every time I see myself, you see me.”