So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction

by Christopher Barzak

  Anger filled her with the thought, driving out the fear that held her silent in the doorway. "You drunken sot! Have you done nothing but lay here all day? Did you even go to the castle to see if Lord Edmond would have you as a guard?" She stalked toward the fire without waiting for an answer, for she knew there would be none that would please her.

  "Ah Janet, lass, you know they'll have none of me up at the castle. Better I should come to the fields with you and work the soil at your side." He ran trembling fingers through his brown curls, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees.

  "You cannot till the soil, and the cattle tremble when they see you. You are good for nothing but the sword and the lute and pleasing the Fair Folk's Queen until she saw fit to tithe you to Hell!" As soon as the words were spoken, Janet wished she could call them back.

  Tam Lin gave her a look of pure agony, all cloudiness gone from the blue glory of his eyes for a moment. She felt his pain as if it was her own and she dropped a gentle hand to his shoulder as she went to stoke the fire. It was not all his fault that he was not raised to the farm and that the castle would not have him. Yet if he would try harder and drink less, they might yet make their living from this farm and the herd her father gave them as a parting gift. She sighed, wondering if she must fight the battle anew tonight.

  Instead, he stood unsteadily. "I'll fetch the kine."

  "No Tam, they fear you. I'll do it." She turned toward the door, remembering her earlier terror with a start.

  He was there before her, wordlessly unbarring the door and vanishing into the darkness beyond. She started to follow him, then changed her mind and went to put on the remains of the morning's porridge for their dinner. Perhaps the beasts would grow accustomed to him with time. Unthinking, her hand caressed her cheek as if the Queen's fingertips were still there. She watched the fire for a span of breaths, seeing a beautiful face out of dream instead of her humble cauldron.

  She was still standing there when Tam came back from stabling the cattle. He barred the door quietly and came up behind her to wrap his arms tight around her waist. She could feel his lips in her hair as he held her, desire stirring sluggishly inside her as if waking from a long sleep. She smiled at him over one shoulder, then swung the pot of porridge away from the fire before turning to kiss him. When they paused for breath, some impulse made her whisper, "Do you still dream about her?"

  Tam pulled away from her as if stung. "Why must you ask these questions? You won me, heart and soul. Must you have all my thoughts as well?"

  Janet gaped at him and stammered, "I only..." She stopped at his upraised palm and the shake of his head. Perhaps there had been too many words already tonight. Silently, she ladled the porridge into the wooden bowls and equally silently, they ate. Little more passed between them until Janet, weary of the silence heavy with unspoken thoughts, went to their bed alone leaving Tam to brood before the dying fire.

  The dreams that came to her that night would have seen her barred from their humble church. The Queen rode through each of them, the bells jingling at her horse's bridle to signal her coming. Each dream began with her touch, sometimes her fingers on Janet's cheek, sometimes her lips. As the night wore on, her fingers and lips tasted Janet's breast and her tongue traced the outline of her belly. Then the curved roundness of her thighs. Janet started awake before that tongue could go elsewhere, sitting up to gasp for air and shudder at the burning in her loins.

  Beside her, Tam slept like the dead, hearing and feeling nothing of her distress. She put out a tentative hand and rested it on his bare shoulder, then lay down at his side, pressing close against him. How could she want such things? Surely, this was the Devil's work and she was under a glamour. The Queen had tasted her tears. That must be how she did it. Tomorrow, she must go to the kirk and beg for shriving. Only that could save her soul. She lay awake, listening to Tam's heavy breathing and shivering under the burden of her thoughts until dawn.

  "I must go to the priest," she told Tam when the cows were fed and they had eaten their meal. "Will you come with me?"

  He shook his head but did not meet her eyes. "The damned fool will scrub all with holy water if he sees me. I cannot bear the stench of fear and hatred that hangs about the old man. Today I will feed the cattle and go to the field." His jaw was set and his face was grim when he described these simple tasks and Janet could not help letting a small sigh escape her lips. A quick and furious glare came hard on its heels to meet her eyes, then Tam caught up the tools and was gone.

  She bit back the impulse to tell him not to lose the cows or burn down the cottage. It would do no good and was best left unsaid. At least it was better than that he should spend the day awash in ale. She was off to the kirk then. Still she found that her feet moved but slowly down the path despite her resolution. The old priest was foolish, just as Tam said. Perhaps he did not have the power to stand against a glamour like this. "Do you want him to?" The question whispered against her ear like a soft breeze carrying the breath of a lover.

  Janet trembled against the words, the heat of strange longing filling her until she was near to feeling the Queen's lips against her own. She fought it with a howl more like an animal's than her own voice. "Yes!" When the word passed her lips, she dropped to her knees in the grass and prayed as she had never done before. Desperation lent her thoughts an earnest fervor that cooled her heated limbs and drove all dreams from her until she could stand and resume her walk. It would be enough. The priest would shrive her and there would be no more dreams, no phantom touches to give her unclean thoughts.

  But the old priest was nowhere to be found when she reached the church. When she asked in the village, one had him at a deathbed in the Highlands, another at a baptism in a village some hours walk away. Discouraged, she went into the tiny church and knelt in prayer for a time. She could not say how long her head was bowed, how hard it was to send her thoughts toward heaven but when she stood at last, she swayed with hunger and the priest had still not returned.

  She made her way out and followed the stream that ran through the churchyard away from the village. She walked until she reached a clearing ringed with berry bushes nearly past their full ripeness. These she added to the hard bread she had brought in her pocket and the water from the stream. Then she sat a time, watching the water flow past.

  Her thoughts unbidden turned to Tam's tales of the Faery lands. Wild tales they were, full of a land in eternal spring, ever blooming and flourishing. There were green forests to ride through and clear streams to drink from and marvels to see with each passing day. The Queen's palace was made of silver and gems, flashing in the pale sunlight and all her folk were beautiful to hearts-breaking.

  In all, he made it seem a paradise that she had kidnapped him from. Her jaw tightened with the thought. Once and once alone, he spoke of the other things he had seen there: the redcaps, the Jack-in-Irons with his clanking chains and the other nightmare creatures of fang and claw. They, too, dwelt in that fair land and haunted its corners and dark hollows, lying in wait for the unwary.

  He spoke then too of the day he heard that the Court paid a tithe to Hell every seven years to keep them safe from the flames of God's wrath. The Fair Folk whispered that it must be he who went in place of them, for he had a soul and they had none. How he shuddered when he spoke of it! Janet herself shivered to remember it now, even in the warmth of the summer sun.

  To drive the thought from her mind, she rose and went to the berry bushes. In the thicket was the biggest, juiciest berry she had ever seen and she reached for it, straining until her fingers clasped it. A thorn caught her then and she pulled her hand quickly from the bush as a bright red drop of blood spilled over her skin. She raised it to her lips only to feel the weight of another's gaze hard upon her. Janet whirled, heart racing, to find the Queen watching her from under a great oak tree a few paces away, a white horse at her side.

  "Have you no servants, Madam, who can be trusted to spy on me but that you must do it yourself?" Jane
t asked when she caught her breath.

  "Ah, but it pleases me to watch you. I stole Tam because he was brave and beautiful and bright with mortal promise, but you, you are something more." The Queen tilted her head as if considering what that might be.

  Janet crossed herself frantically. If only the priest had been there to shrive her! She could not fail to notice that the gesture made the Queen smile and she shuddered, closing her eyes against desire and fear. Something caught her hand and she felt lips as tender as the dawn capture the blood welling from the scratch the thorns had left. All strength left her and she fell to her knees, heart pounding and flesh burning until her hand was released.

  Then she forced herself to her feet and dragged her eyelids open. The Queen was far too close and Janet staggered back away from her, welcoming the bracing trunk of a giant oak at her back. The other's face had a glimmer of wonder in it. "You still resist me. Tam was mine for a fall from his horse into a mushroom ring, yet you can stand apart from me, despite what I have taken from you. I have never seen your like before, Janet. Can you still wonder that I come to try you myself instead of sending others?"

  Janet shivered against the tree. "What glamour have you thrown on me, fiend?"

  "I cast no spell. Come to me of your own free will, Janet, and I will show you all the wonders of Faery. Only come to Miles Cross to ride at my side on Hallows Eve." With one last near wistful smile, the Queen of the Fey vanished into the woods with only the faint jingle of bells and the frantic racing of Janet's heart left to mark her passage. Janet seized her bag and took to her heels, running toward the village as fast as she could, her long skirt tangling in her legs. Only when she staggered into the churchyard could she bring herself to look at the scratch on her hand. The flesh had begun to heal itself under a gossamer web like a spider's. Staring at it in horror, she fled into the church, the priest's name on her lips. Her words echoed into emptiness and she fell sobbing on her knees before the altar.

  It was anger, finally, that drove her to her feet and onto the path that led back to their cottage. It seemed God's reward for saving Tam's soul was to put her own in danger. Bitterly, she cursed the impulse that had led her to Miles Cross and the night that she first spied the Queen of the Fairies in her bold, bright fury. Would that she had left Tam to his fate and born his bastard in the comforting concealment of her father's castle. He would have married her off to one of his knights and she could have continued a life free from want and desire alike.

  Frowning, she imagined a life without Tam or the Queen. The thoughts sat heavy on her shoulders until the cottage came into view and she quickened her pace to reach it. Enough of might-have-beens. She made her choices at Miles Cross and Carterhaugh and there was no more to it than that. Now she had the kine to tend and the porridge to make. Her cousin had even promised her a chicken and a rooster before winter came. They would make their own ease and if she loved Tam a little less for the life they now led, it was not so different from other married folk.

  Her back was straight and firm and her jaw set in resolve when she entered the cottage. The fire was cold in the hearth, but at least there was no silent figure in the chair, no empty jug on the floor. Tam must still be abroad in the field. Well and good, she must be about her own chores then. With a will, she set to setting the cottage to rights, starting the fire anew and placing the pot on the flames to boil. The floor was swept and the cobwebs in the corners cleaned away with scarce a shudder when Tam returned from the field.

  He looked weary and red with the sun but she could hear the cattle outside. All was well and her lips curved into a welcoming smile as she kissed his cheek. He gave her a startled look and a shy smile in return and so they sat down to their stew at the table. "Did the priest shrive you then?" He asked after a few moments' talk.

  Janet jumped in her chair, her hand going to her cheek as if the Queen's fingers still lay there. She made herself shrug as if it was no great thing, as if her fears and wants were like the washing and the mending. "No. He was away in the Highlands. I will go back another day for shriving." Tam nodded and returned to his stew, leaving her lost in her thoughts.

  That night, they tried to recover some of what they had lost in the warmth of kisses and hot skin against skin until they fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms. No dreams about the Queen came to trouble Janet that night or the next or the ones that followed.

  Instead, she began to see herself as she would be ten, twenty years hence when work on the farm had taken its toll. When she and Tam had no more love for each other but remained together from long habit and fondness. A great emptiness filled Janet when she woke from these dreams and more and more her fingers stole to her cheek or to her hand. She remembered the wild elation of Miles Cross, the knowledge that she alone had succeeded in defying the Queen of the Faeries. She remembered feeling alive and the dreams that she had now were repugnant to her.

  More than once, she tried to speak to Tam of it but the harder he worked in the fields, the more silent he became. Sometimes she found him polishing his old sword and once she saw him fight an opponent that none could see but him. His dreams at night seemed as troubled as her own but she found no words to ask him what he feared. Nor did she tell him anything of the Queen, though once she tried to get him to tell her about his time at her Court. He gave her a sharp look and asked. "What have you to do with mushroom rings and those that dance within them?"

  "Nothing. I but remember the tales you told me before." She stumbled over the lie and she could see that he knew it for what it was. He said nothing more, only reaching over to press her hand, a look of pity in his eyes.

  It was but two mornings later that a well-dressed man rode up to their gate on a fine horse and spoke long with Tam. She heard none of their words and cared little more, thinking the stranger only a lost traveler. It was only when she came into the barn later to find Tam with his sword in his hands, his feet treading a measure with an imaginary opponent that she thought to ask, "Who was he? What did he say to you?" She sat on a pile of hay, admiring despite herself the sweep of the blade and the rusty grace with which he held it.

  He spun, beheading a shadow before he rested the point of the blade on the dirt in front of him. "He came to speak to me of a fool's errand beyond the sea, of fighting and glory and all else that a farmer's life does not offer. He spoke of gold to be won, Janet, and a name to be regained." Tam did not meet her eyes, looking only at the sword in his hands. Even so, she could see that his eyes held a fire to them that she had not seen since Carterhaugh.

  He put up the sword then, sliding it into its scabbard with an ease that his hands knew well. But she saw how his hand lingered on the hilt and she knew what his answer must be. She said nothing more, remembering with a start that tonight was Hallows Eve and Miles Cross was not so long a ride from the cottage. Her heart beat madly then for all she went about her work as though it was a day like any other. Tam, too, seemed lighter of heart but still they did not speak of their thoughts to each other.

  And such thoughts they were! She shuddered at the tithe, bit back a wail at the thought of the monsters of Faery, of what she would leave behind. Still and all, what would she do with Tam gone, even if he sent back whatever gold he won? There was nothing for her here but to grow old and lonely and bitter until even the Queen of Faeries would have no use for her. But to live at the Queen's side, that would be worth the risks surely. Her thoughts ran round and round until dusk.

  Her choice when it came found her running to the stable. She led their old plow horse out of the barn as quietly as she could. She had only just saddled the beast when there came Tam with his kit over one shoulder and his sword buckled at his side. They looked at each other for a long moment in the fading light until he spoke at last. "You go to her at Miles Cross, then?" He frowned, his hand reaching up to caress her cheek.

  She held his hand there and kissed his palm. "And you away beyond the sea to fight?" He nodded and she smiled at him in understanding. Together, t
hey released the cattle from the makeshift barn and doused the fire in the hearth. Together, they stood side by side looking at the cottage and the rocky fields around it.

  Tam spoke first. "I loved you true, Janet, with no glamour to compel it. I will miss you." He pulled her close and held her tight. "Beware the tithe, love. If I may, I will come to Carterhaugh a year hence. If you need me, leave word for me there."

  Janet wiped away a tear and smiled up at him. "Go well, love. May you be safe from all harm and find what you seek." Their lips met briefly in a final kiss. Then she mounted the old horse, glancing back to wave him on his way as they parted. Her heart almost failed her then and the night seemed full of secret sounds and whispers. Her hands trembled on the reins and she watched the shadows on either side. From far away, she heard music and laughter but she forced herself to stay on the path and closed her eyes so that she would not see whoever made the sounds. Still she rode on, turning neither to left nor right until the moon rose and the great stone cross appeared before her.

  Then she had naught to do but wait for what seemed an eternity. When she had come to rescue Tam, she had hidden in the bushes, catching the Queen all unawares, but tonight she sat in full moonlight at the crossroads like a knight from a tale. Before she had her love for Tam and their babe inside her to buoy her courage, but tonight she had nothing but her dreams and the very longings that she feared. Almost she turned her horse back, almost she rode for her father's court to ask his forgiveness. Always something held her there, waiting.

  It was nearly midnight when she heard the jingle of bells on bridles and saw the glow of riders through the trees. Her heart beat so fast she thought it would jump out of her mouth and the old horse fidgeted beneath her as he caught her mood. The faery knights came closer, the ladies of the Seelie Court on their heels and she could see that their eyes shone with colors that she could not name and that they were beautiful to hearts-breaking. All fell silent to see her there and the faery riders came to a halt at the edge of the clearing. She stared back at them, a wild excitement rising in her.