So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction

by Christopher Barzak

  "What's your faerie name?" asked a friendly faerie also watching the nymph now dancing dervishly. "I don't know my faerie name, my adoptive name is Theodore." Hearing himself say this surprised him, "adoptive" name? Who was he, really? Was this just the effect from the drugs?

  From beside himself he heard "I'm Billie Holyday. For a moment there you looked like you were somewhere else." Winkle was somewhere else, he could still feel the warm jeweled sand between his toes. Winkle excused himself and walked back to his tent in the dark of the new moon, alone. Looking up to the sky, the clarity and expanse of the vaults of the heavens entrapped him in a sweep of eternity. The star sparkle reminded him of the glittery beach he would walk again tonight by himself. So many worlds, so many times. Winkle wept.

  The whole next day Winkle shied away from the faerie humanity, hiking alone in the summer hills above the gathering. In the dark on the way back to the main meadow Winkle saw a lone figure switching around the stones of an intentional faerie circle that some human had arranged during a drug trip. Winkle crept up behind this individual that he could see was actually painting little faces upon the rocks using fingernail polish. "How pretty" said Winkle. The painter yelped then fell over, looked up to Winkle and said, "I'm caught! Want to join me in some fun?" Winkle noted he was painting in the dark, as the moon had yet to rise. This was no human faerie. "My name is Morning Glory, or just plain Glory. They were serving up that fetid gray crap again for dinner, and I had to escape the coming storm of faerie flatulence." Winkle felt hungry, but not for that. "Want to go forage in the woods for something better to eat?" offered Glory. Winkle was dumbstruck. "Yes."

  As the rising moonlight illuminated the forest, Glory found them some late summer flowers and berries to eat. Pixies always know where to find flowers. Later, in Winkles tent, they touched and kissed and loved each other. Winkle dropped his glamour with his clothes. Glory stood naked as a pixie. They embraced. The lone crystal that hung above the tent in the maple tree glowed with eldritch light.

  The next morning, Glory told Winkle it was time for them to go. Time to leave this human world of Republicans and Cheese Whiz. In the dawn they walked together in early mist to the barn, where Winkle found Barry passed out with the dancing nymph. Planting a gentle kiss upon Barry's cheek, Winkle slipped a note in his pocket along with the car keys. Glory liberated the granola for the raccoons.

  Glory and Winkle walked hand-in-hand to the stone circle, where they had first met the night before. In the dawn's light Winkle saw that what he thought were faces were instead glyphs and symbols of a sort unspoken to this world. Glory adjusted a few of the rocks, and together they stepped through the circle and found themselves on a beach aglitter with every rainbow shade.

  Carl Vaughn Frick first found faerie space in the heart of the 1980's. He has lived in Seattle, San Francisco, and now resides in Portland, Oregon. Vaughn has worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, newspaper art director, photographer, ceramicist, woodworker, set designer, and in 1987 was co-chair for Seattle's Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Pride Parade. For five years he wrote and drew an environmental comic strip called Cascadia that appeared in various newspapers. Vaughn's cartoons and illustrations have been printed in RFD Magazine, White Crane Journal and many other odd and quirky publications across the spectrum of imagination. Vaughn is currently working on two books: In Transit, stories of adventures from working for Portland's public transportation system, and The Life of Stan Stone, the complete comic strip life of a character he began drawing in the pages of Gay Comix.

  The Faerie Cony-Catcher

  Delia Sherman

  In London town, in the reign of good Queen Bess that was called Gloriana, there lived a young man named Nicholas Cantier. Now it came to pass that this Nick Cantier served out his term as apprentice jeweler and goldsmith under one Master Spilman, jeweler by appointment to the Queen's Grace herself, and was made journeyman of his guild. For that Nick was a clever young man, his master would have been glad for him to continue on where he was; yet Nick was not fain thereof, Master Spilman being as ill a master of men as he was a skilled master of his trade. And Nick bethought him thus besides: that London was like unto the boundless sea where Leviathan may dwell unnoted, save by such small fish as he may snap up to stay his mighty hunger: such small fish as Nicholas Cantier. Better that same small fish seek out some backwater in the provinces where, puffed up by city ways, he might perchance pass as a pike and snap up spratlings on his own account.

  So thought Nick. And on a bright May morning, he packed up such tools as he might call his own--as a pitch block and a mallet, and some small steel chisels and punches and saw-blades and blank rings of copper--that he might make shift to earn his way to Oxford. So Nick put his tools in a pack, with clean hosen and a shirt and a pair of soft leather shoon, and that was all his worldly wealth strapped upon his back, saving only a jewel that he had designed and made himself to be his passport. This jewel was in the shape of a maid, her breasts and belly all one lucent pearl, her skirt and open jacket of bright enamel, and her fair face of silver burnished with gold. On her fantastic hair perched a tiny golden crown, and Nick had meant her for the Faerie Queene of Master Spenser's poem, fair Gloriana.

  Upon this precious Gloriana did Nick's life and livelihood depend. Therefore, being a prudent lad in the main, and bethinking him of London's traps and dangers, Nick considered where he might bestow it that he fall not prey to those foists and rufflers who might take it from him by stealth or by force. The safest place, thought he, would be his codpiece, where no man nor woman might meddle without his yard raise the alarm. Yet the jewel was large and cold and hard against those softer jewels that dwelt more commonly there, and so Nick bound it across his belly with a band of linen and took leave of his fellows and set out northwards to seek his fortune.

  Now Nick Cantier was a lusty youth of nearly twenty, with a fine, open face and curls of nut-brown hair that sprang from his brow; yet notwithstanding his comely form, he was as much a virgin on that May morning as the Virgin Queen herself. For Master Spilman was the hardest of taskmasters, and between his eagle eye and his adder cane and his arch-episcopal piety, his apprentices perforce lived out the terms of their bonds as chaste as Popish monks. On this the first day of his freedom, young Nick's eye roved hither and thither, touching here a slender waist and there a dimpled cheek, wondering what delights might not lie beneath this petticoat or that snowy kerchief. And so it was that a Setter came upon him unaware and sought to persuade him to drink a pot of ale together, having just found xii pence in a gutter and it being ill-luck to keep found money and Nick's face putting him in mind of his father's youngest son, dead of an ague this two year and more. Nick let him run on, through this excuse for scraping acquaintance and that, and when the hopeful cony-catcher had rolled to a stop, like a cart at the foot of a hill, he said unto him,

  "I see I must have a care to the cut of my coat, if rogues, taking me for a country cony, think me meet for skinning. Nay, I'll not drink with ye, nor play with ye neither, lest ye so ferret-claw me at cards that ye leave me as bare of money as an ape of a tail."

  Upon hearing which, the Setter called down a murrain upon milk-fed pups who imagined themselves sly dogs, and withdrew into the company of two men appareled like honest and substantial citizens, whom Nicholas took to be the Setter's Verser and Barnacle, all ready to play their parts in cozening honest men out of all they carried, and a little more beside. And he bit his thumb at them and laughed and made his way through the streets of London, from Lombard Street to Clerkenwell in the northern liberties of the city, where the houses were set back from the road in gardens and fields and the taverns spilled out of doors in benches and stools, so that toss-pots might air their drunken heads.

  'T was coming on for noon by this time, and Nick's steps were slower than they had been, and his mind dwelt more on bread and ale than on cony-catchers and villains. In this hungry, drowsy frame of mind, he passed an alehouse where his eye chanced to light upon a
woman tricked up like a lady in a rich-guarded gown and a deep starched ruff. Catching his glance, she sent it back again saucily, with a wink and a roll of her shoulders that lifted her breasts like ships on a wave.

  Nick gave her good speed, and she plucked him by the sleeve and said, "How now, my friend, you look wondrous down i' the mouth. What want you? Wine? Company?"--all with such a meaning look, such a waving of her skirts and a hoisting of her breasts that Nick's yard, fain to salute her, flew its scarlet colors in his cheeks.

  "The truth is, Mistress, that I've walked far this day, and am sorely hungered."

  "Hungered, is it?" She flirted her eyes at him, giving the word a dozen meanings not writ in any grammar. "Than shall feed thy hunger, aye, and sate thy thirst, too, and that right speedily." And she led him in at the alehouse door to a little room within, where she closed the door and thrusting herself close up against him, busied her hands about his body and her lips about his mouth. As luck would have it, her breath was foul, and it blew upon Nick's heat, cooling him enough to recognize that her hands sought not his pleasure, but his purse, upon which he her from him.

  "Nay, mistress," he said, all flushed and panting. "Thy meat and drink are dear, if they cost me my purse."

  Knowing by his words that she was discovered, she spent no time in denying her trade, but set up a caterwauling would wake the dead, calling upon one John to help her. But Nick, if not altogether wise, was quick and strong, and bolted from the vixen's den 'ere the dog-fox answered her call.

  So running, Nick came shortly to the last few houses that clung to the outskirts of the city and stopped at a tavern to refresh him with honest meat and drink. And as he drank his ale and pondered his late escape, the image of his own foolishness dimmed and the image of the doxy's beauty grew more bright, until the one eclipsed the other quite, persuading him that any young man in whom the blood ran hot would have fallen in her trap, aye and been skinned, drawn, and roasted to a turn, as 'twere in very sooth, a long-eared cony. It was his own cleverness, he thought, that he had smoked her out and run away. So Nick, having persuaded himself that he was a sly dog after all, rose from the tavern and went to Hampstead Heath, which was the end of the world to him. And as he stepped over the world's edge and onto the northward road, his heart lifted for joy, and he sang right merrily as he strode along, as pleased with himself as the cock that imagineth his crowing bringeth the sun from the sea.

  And so he walked and so he sang until by and by he came upon a country lass sat upon a stone. Heedful of his late lesson, he quickly cast his eye about him for signs of some high lawyer or ruffler lurking ready to spring the trap. But the lass sought noways to lure him, nor did she accost him, nor lift her dark head from contemplating her foot that was cocked up on her knee. Her gown of gray kersey was hiked up to her thigh and her sleeves rolled to her elbows, so that Nick could see her naked arms, sinewy and lean and nut-brown with sun, and her leg like dirty ivory.

  "Gie ye good-den, fair maid," said he, and then could say no more, for when she raised her face to him, his breath stopped in his throat. It was not, perhaps, the fairest he'd seen, being gypsy-dark, with cheeks and nose that showed the bone. But her black eyes were wide and soft as a hind's and the curve of her mouth made as sweet a bow as Cupid's own.

  "Good-den to thee," she answered him, low-voiced as a throstle. "Ye come at a good hour to my aid. For here is a thorn in my foot and I, for want of a pin, unable to have it out."

  The next moment he knelt at her side; the moment after, her foot was in his hand. He found the thorn and winkled it out with the point of his knife while the lass clutched at his shoulder, hissing between her teeth as the splinter yielded, sighing as he wiped away the single ruby of blood with his kerchief and bound it round her foot.

  "I thank thee, good youth," she said, leaning closer. "An thou wilt, I'll give thee such a reward for thy kindness as will give thee cause to thank me anon." She turned her hand to his neck, and stroked the bare flesh there, smiling in his face the while, her breath as sweet as an orchard in spring.

  Nick felt his cheek burn hot above her hand and his heart grow large in his chest. This were luck indeed, and better than all the trulls in London. "Fair maid," he said, "I would not kiss thee beside a public road."

  She laughed. "Lift me then and carry me to the hollow, hard by yonder hill, where we may embrace, if it pleaseth thee, without fear of meddling eye."

  Nick's manhood rose then to inform him that it would please him well, observing which, the maiden held up her arms to him, and he lifted her, light as a faggot of sticks but soft and supple as Spanish leather withal, and bore her to a hollow under a hill that was round and green and warm in the May sun. And he lay her down and did off his pack and set it by her head, that he might keep it close to hand, rejoicing that his jewel was well-hid and not in his codpiece, and then he fell to kissing her lips and stroking her soft, soft throat. Her breasts were small as a child's under her gown; yet she moaned most womanly when he touched them, and writhed against him like a snake, and he made bold to pull up her petticoats to discover the treasure they hid. Coyly, she slapped his hand away once and again, yet never ceased to kiss and toy with open lip, the while her tongue like a darting fish urged him to unlace his codpiece that was grown wondrous tight. Seeing what he was about, she put her hand down to help him, so that he was like to perish e'er he spied out the gates of Heaven. Then, when he was all but sped, she pulled him headlong on top of her.

  He was not home, though very near it as he thrust at her skirts bunched up between her thighs. Though his plunging breached not her cunny-burrow, it did breach the hill itself, and he and his gypsy lass both tumbled arse-over-neck to lie broken-breathed in the midst of a great candle-lit hall upon a Turkey carpet, with skirts and legs and slippered feet standing in ranks upon it to his right hand and his left, and a gentle air stroking warm fingers across his naked arse. Nick shut his eyes, praying that this vision were merely the lively exhalation of his lust. And then a laugh like a golden bell fell upon his ear, and was hunted through a hundred mocking changes in a ring of melodious laughter, and he knew this to be sober reality, or something enough like it that he'd best ope his eyes and lace up his hose.

  All this filled no more than the space of a breath, though it seemed to Nick an age of the world had passed before he'd succeeded in packing up his yard and scrambling to his feet to confront the owners of the skirts and the slippered feet and the bell-like laughter that yet pealed over his head. And in that age, the thought was planted and nurtured and harvested in full ripeness, that his hosts were of faerie-kind. He knew they were too fair to be human men and women, their skins white nacre, their hair spun sunlight or moonlight or fire bound back from their wide brows by fillets of precious stones not less hard and bright than their emerald or sapphire eyes. The women went bare-bosomed as Amazons, the living jewels of their perfect breasts coffered in open gowns of bright silk. The men wore jewels in their ears, and at their forks, fantastic codpieces in the shapes of cockerels and wolves and rams with curling horns. They were splendid beyond imagining, a masque to put the Queen's most magnificent Revels to shame.

  As Nick stood in amaze, he heard the voice of his coy mistress say, "'Twere well, Nicholas Cantier, if thou woulds't turn and make thy bow."

  With a glare for she who had brought him to this pass, Nick turned him around to face a woman sat upon a throne. Even were she seated upon a joint stool, he must have known her, for her breasts and face were more lucent and fair than pearl, her open jacket and skirt a glory of gemstones, and upon her fantastic hair perched a gold crown, as like to the jewel in his bosom as twopence to a groat. Nick gaped like that same small fish his fancy had painted him erewhile, hooked and pulled gasping to land. Then his knees, wiser than his head, gave way to prostrate him at the royal feet of Elfland.

  "Well, friend Nicholas," said the Faerie Queen. "Heartily are you welcome to our court. Raise him, Peasecod, and let him approach our throne."

 
; Nick felt a tug on his elbow, and wrenched his dazzled eyes from the figure of the Faerie Queen to see his wanton lass bending over him. "To thy feet, my heart," she murmured. "And, as thou holdest dear thy soul, see that neither meat nor drink pass thy lips."

  "Well, Peasecod?" asked the Queen, and there was that in her musical voice that propelled Nick to his feet and down the Turkey carpet to stand trembling before her.

  "Be welcome," said the Queen again, "and take your ease. Peasecod, bring a stool and a cup for our guest, and let the musicians play and our court dance for his pleasure."

  There followed an hour as strange as any madman might imagine or poet sing, when Nicholas Cantier sat upon a gilded stool at the knees of the Queen of Elfland and watched her court pace through their faerie measures. In his hand he held a golden cup crusted with gems, and the liquor within sent forth a savor of roses and apples that promised an immortal vintage. But as oft as he, half-fainting, lifted the cup, so often did a pair of fingers pinch him at the ankle, and so often did he look down to see the faerie lass Peasecod crouching at his feet with her skirts spread out to hide the motions of her hand. One she glanced up at him, her soft eyes drowned in tears like pansies in rain, and he knew that she was sorry for her part in luring him here.

  When the dancing was over and done, the Queen of Elfland turned to Nick and said, "Good friend Nicholas, we would crave a boon of thee in return for this our fair entertainment."

  At which Nick replied, "I am at your pleasure, Madam. Yet have I not taken any thing from you save words and laughter."