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  • Literary Issues
    • Lughnasadh Literary Issue (2014)
      • R + M = Love, by Lore Lippincott
      • Quests and Other Such Adventures, by Jean Kari
    • Beltaine Literary Issue (2014)
      • The Leaves are Fading, by Lucy McKee
      • May Song, by Sandy Hiortdahl
      • Love Is A Goblet of Faerie Wine, by Amy Chang
      • Stewards, Devas, Gods, and Queens, by Jean Kari
      • New Bouquet, by Eve Francis
      • First Kisses, by Daisy Cains
      • The Hero and the Palace, by Lore Lippincott
    • Imbolc Literary Issue (2014)
      • Red Wolf, by Anthony Rella
      • Beneath the Dane Hills, by BR Sanders
      • the Bride, by Sam Thorp
      • The Memory Collector, by Lore Lippincott
      • Mulan After the Return, by Amy Chang
    • Samhain (2013)
      • In the Silence, by Amanda Larson
      • frozen, by Michelle Kopp
      • beyond the veil, by Michelle Kopp
      • Desolated Summerland, by Michelle Kopp
      • Atticus of the Braithwolds, by Lore Lippincott
    • Autumnal Equinox (2013)
      • Gifts, by K. Ann MacNeil
      • Ardor, by Teal Van Dyck
      • Europa, by Teal Van Dyck
      • Persephone, by Teal Van Dyck
      • The Hero and the Chalice, by Lore Lippincott
      • Saskatchewan is not Flat, by Michelle Kopp
    • Lughnasadh (2013)
      • Lore Lippincott
    • Summer Solstice (2013)
      • The Fortune Teller’s Muse, by Evelyn Deshane
      • Transatlantic, by Evelyn Deshane
      • Frank and Gavin, by Evelyn Deshane
    • Beltaine (2013)
      • The Fairies’ Crossing, by Lore Lippincott
    • Spring Equinox (2013)
      • Ariadne merione, by Alicia Cole
      • Beautiful Girl, by Lucy McKee
      • Baby Turtle Emerging, by Emily Brooks
    • Imbolc (2013)
      • The Willow and the Dove, by Lore Lippincott
      • Snow Drops, by Allison Armstrong
      • The Horned Man, by Richard May
    • Yule (2012)
      • Cathy Bryant
      • Stephen Mead
    • Samhain (2012)
      • succubi, by Richard Ballon
      • Rowan Tree, by Shoeless Carole
      • Apple Child, by Cathy Bryant
      • The Mockingbird’s Perch, by Amanda Carl
      • Odin’s Wood, by Richard Ballon
      • Green Man before Tyranny, by Stephen Mead
      • Harvest Moon Shadows, by Joanna Owen
      • Borderland, by Michelle Kopp
      • Somnambulist, by Amanda Carl
    • Le Mysterieux Carnival
      • Lycanthropy, by Zendrix Berndt
      • October 22, 2003. 11:55 pm, by Michelle Kopp
      • The Craft, by Richard Ballon
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hyacinth noir

~ a celebration of queer paganism and literature

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Monthly Archives: May 2014

Beltaine Literary Issue

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by hyacinthnoir in Beltaine, Literary, Queer

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amy chang, beltaine, beltaine literary issue, beltaine poetry, daisy cains, eve francis, fiction, jean kari, lgbt, lgbt fiction, lgbt literature, lgbt poetry, lgbt romance, literary, literature, lore lippincott, lucy mckee, queer, queer fiction, queer romance, Sandy Hiortdahl

~ in the early dawn, a mallard swims peacefully across the pond while his mate sleeps at the shore ~

we’d like to thank our lovely contributors for sharing their words and voice with us.  The full issue is available below as well as under the drop-down ‘Literary Issues’ menu at the top of the page, as well as by clicking on the ‘Literary Issues‘ link. We’d also like to remind our readers and contributors that we’re now currently accepting submissions for our Lughnasadh issue — fantasy stories with a queer twist

beltaine_frog_2

–

The Leaves are Fading, by Lucy McKee

Beltane to me is a time of new beginnings.  With the Earth returning to green and flowers beginning to bloom,  I naturally associate the season with that of budding romances.  In this short story, I’ve tried to show that love can withstand long and sometimes hopeless winters, only to rebound with hope when spring comes around.

Scott is alone on the stage, his heart pounding.  The spotlights emit an intense heat that sends a droplet of sweat down his back where it absorbs in the fabric of his black leotard.  The floor is dusty with talc; the only sound that of his slippers brushing across the hardwood.  As he executes three perfect pirouettes, he is the star of the show.  He is Giselle’s duke, Clara’s nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty’s prince.

He stops suddenly, in the centre of the spotlight.  As it casts a warm glow onto his face and he raises his arms to the false theatre sun.  He arches his back, face to the ceiling, and admires the pale silver of his skin in the bright lighting.

Despite the protest of the half-torn ligament in his foot, he leaps across the stage, his landing a soft whisper in the empty theatre.  He lowers his arms and bows deeply.  When he looks up, there is no applause.  The red upholstered seats are empty, the stage lights stationary, the costume merely a warm-up.

(… read more)

–

May Song, by Sandy Hiortdahl

I’m one of those professors in faded jeans who wanders around campus speaking Shakespeare and longing for the winter to end in warmth and joy.  May starts the season of freedom and is accompanied by all manner of spirits and high hopes; the frenetic campus energy of stress becomes palpable, sexual, artistic.  This poem celebrates a moment in time where the academic becomes the highly pagan, where the ’emptying out’ of one aspect leaves open a May Day influx of passion and fun.  The trickster from all traditions comes alive in the stairwell, seducing passers-by with the music of dreams.  I hoped to locate it on a campus while inviting the otherworldly, with the ‘notes circling the pole of air’ representing the May pole.

Late Friday on the last day of classes,

the campus empties in concentric circles,

of sycamores, monolithic dorms, one way streets.

“Come on!” he calls, flute in hand, and vanishes

through the heavy door of Gilbreath Hall, now vacant.

(… read more)

–

Love Is A Goblet of Faerie Wine, by Amy Chang

 ‘Love Is A Goblet of Faerie Wine’ is a love story set in the spring, threaded with the imagery of seasons turning, fire and water, death and desire, true dreams, and the Faerie Queen.  A modern-day fable about love between women with the air of ancient myth, it emulates the tone from Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains’.

You ask me do I still love her?  Yes.  I have fallen in love with many women.  Am still in love with some of them, and have forgotten how I ever came to love certain others.  I will never stop loving Titania.  Nor will I ever forget the spring we fell in love.  That spring, I took the train to New Orleans to meet another woman, and she gave me a library that fit into the palm of my hand for the ride.  If we had fallen in love already, living together in that blue house covered with blackberry brambles, with two dying trees in the backyard shading the chicken coop, with rickety steps that the chickens had picked all the grubs out of which I always worried about tripping and falling and dropping her baby as I walked down to feed the chickens or fetch the washing, I had no inkling of it.

We had known each other for nearly a year by then, so you can’t call it love at first sight.  I could say that the goddess intervened, but I was thinking of my wife when I made that prayer.  Well, if you pray to fallen angels, you must be prepared for them to answer your prayers sideways, betimes, or not at all.

I had no idea I would fall in love, for I was already in love, and had been for nearly five years and several lifetimes.  Besides, we were both married.

(… read more)

–

Stewards, Devas, Gods, and Queens, by Jean Kari

Even before I embraced paganism, I knew Beltane through my favorite painting, Henri Matisse’s ‘The Dance’. The painting and the sabbat it represents capture the truth of pure being and the sometimes frenetic and sometimes graceful and always somehow wild and playful energy of the day.  The bisexuality or pansexuality of my primary characters, Danielle and Elare, reflects this energy as they find their way to each other.

Intellectually, I am fascinated by how much meaning May 1st holds: workers’ rights, fertility, protection of land and crops, and, yes, sex.  May Day – said three times – is a call for help.  In this story, I not only express each of those elements in its individuality, but I capture what those disparate elements have in common: a desire for peace, home, stability and the choices we make to realize that desire.

To her left, a muscular blond cried, “May Day! May Day!” and dived for the volleyball.  He missed.  His knuckles and forearms scraped against the black soil.  The ball rolled outside of the makeshift court and onto the grassy field where laughing partners and spouses watched the play.

“I think you need one more,” laughed a lounging woman on the sidelines who held the man’s jacket across her legs.

To her right, Danielle noticed an old stone waterway winding its way into the woods.  Behind her, a multi-racial coalition of teenaged artists prepared the next morning’s picket signs.  Their skateboards and bikes littered the surrounding area.  Old black and white Haymarket photos adorned some; catchy phrases about workers’ rights, others.  She hoped the artists could spell.

Ahead, beyond the oak trees and elderberry brush blocking her view, Danielle heard the opening notes of the Wobble, an urban line dance.  A bold orange sun, dusky blue skies and temperatures in the high 60s marked the last day of April and the day before the 5th annual South Side International Workers’ Day rally!

(… read more)

–

New Bouquet, by Eve Francis

I wanted to depict a queer couple dealing with romantic tropes and how they could rewrite them to better suit what they wanted in their relationship.  When I realized that the typical notion of giving flowers tied in really well with similar themes in queer paganism, I went with it and fine tuned it to celebrate Beltane.  It’s a short story, very simple, but is mostly about building relationships and reworking ideas that don’t fit – right down religion, romance, and even bouquets of flowers.

“I don’t like flowers,” Melissa stated rather firmly.

“Why not?” Caroline asked.

Melissa raised an eyebrow, a smirk on her face.

“I mean,” Caroline spoke again, crossing and uncrossing her legs on the park bench anxiously.  “Not that I was getting you flowers or thinking of doing that.  Not that you don’t deserve them, either.  I just… I mean…We’ve only been together a month.”

“I’ve seen people celebrate less,” Melissa said with a small laugh.  She craned her neck, combing her long red hair over her ears before she bunched her hands inside her purple hoodie to keep them warm.  She looked out at the park, and wearily, Caroline followed her gaze.

The park was across from the farmer’s market, but the booths were closed down now in late afternoon.  High school kids gathered in droves by the bright yellow slide.  Some of the young couples cuddled for warmth, while others smoked and kept their distance.  There were a few children and their parents close by, on the baby-swings near the smaller jungle gym.

(… read more)

–

First Kisses, by Daisy Cains

Appropriately my short story is about a springtime romance – springtime in every sense of the word, it is set at the right point in the calendar and at the springtime of the protagonists’ lives but most importantly at the springtime of one protagonist’s development.  That is the springtime of my sexual development because I wasn’t Daisy back then, I’m not quite Daisy now (I am mentally but physically a bit of work remains to be done).  So it’s early springtime for me as I head for a late summer flowering.  I’ve got the dress, the shoes and the purse and with luck my hair will have returned by then and I can ditch the wig.

There are many reasons why I didn’t go up to Michelle that night at the school disco and most of them are obvious.  To start with I wasn’t absolutely sure she felt the same way or if she could even feel the same way, if she was made that way.  Then there were the glaring reasons, the ones that grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and screamed ‘don’t do it!’ right in your face, the fact that I was shy, nervous, geeky and bookish whilst she was beautiful, strawberry blonde, slender, elegant and sadly vacuous.

But more that all those reasons it was what had gone before that made me hold me.  What had happened with Evie made me nervous and what had happened with Jenny made my hesitate.

Evie with her long blonde hair and long brown legs.  Her almost completely flat chest and her pert little nose.  The things we could do together, walking around Chasewater picking wild flowers.  If she could come to the Abbey Gardens with us, we would wander through the meadow surrounded by the tiny twinkling flowers of the wild garlic plants bathing in the gentle ransoms aroma before we had to do battle with the evil mulberry tree.  Next I could show her my brood of ducklings in the secret pond near the seashore where I would put my fingers inside her Aertex sports shirt and feel the buds of her slowly starting breasts.

(… read more)

–

The Hero and the Palace, by Lore Lippincott

 ‘The Hero and the Palace’, a sequel to ‘The Hero and the Chalice‘ published in the Autumnal Equinox issue of Hyacinth Noir, continues the story of Darien Price and the lesbian ladies he lives with, Lucy and Marisol.

Within ‘The Hero and the Palace’ lies many attributes of Beltaine, most notably the joy of being in a world strengthened by the presence of a warm sun, by flowers and forests finally alive and unfurling.  There are also the emotions of Beltaine, a sense of belonging to the earth, and returning to the self after the darkness of winter; of excitement and uncertainty bravely met by having an awareness of inner power, with the restlessness and animation necessary to pursue the deepest of desires.  All with a dollop of two wholesome qualities: hope and love.

As we left them at the start of the Equinox, Darien was getting ready to have his new boyfriend Piers over for the celebratory feast, with games afterward.  Flash-forward eighteen months to the brilliance of mid-spring and the exquisite beauty of Beltaine.  Thanks to a very unconventional alarm clock, Darien and Piers wake far too early on their handfast day.  But things are always a bit odd around Piers’ family farm, including Piers’ smart, sassy sister Kate, Piers’ semi-feral furry dependents, and parents who drop something of a bomb on their son and Darien.

Lucy and Marisol’s daughter, Tempest, is naturally moody about the changes to her life.  Lucy, who’s in charge of the flora arrangements for the handfast, tries to impart her patience and wisdom into the matter.  An unexpected visitor tosses another complication into the day’s zenith.  Relying on their strong love for one another, these characters let nothing stop them from enjoying a wonderful celebration.

Darien Price had grown used to waking up with Piers at his side, and had even gotten used to waking in the big bedroom at the top floor of the old family farmhouse.  Usually, Darien enjoyed the lengthy, lethargic mornings at Piers’ family place.

This morning wasn’t one of them.

He really wasn’t used to opening his eyes and finding a magenta-footed pigeon standing right in the middle of Piers’ forehead.

Screaming, flinging himself out of bed with his narrow limbs flying—now that seemed like an appropriate way to deal with the situation.  It was also masterfully effective at waking Piers.  He flew upright at the waist—pigeon taking off—small silver-white feathers swirling—Piers screaming—Darien screaming again—the rooster calling in the dooryard.  For three seconds, the quiet room in the garret brimmed with all the chaos of Discordia’s repertoire.

(… read more)

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The Hero and the Palace, by Lore Lippincott

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by hyacinthnoir in Beltaine, Literary, Queer

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beltaine, beltaine literary issue, fiction, lgbt, lgbt fiction, lgbt literature, lgbt romance, literary, literature, lore lippincott, queer, queer fiction, queer romance, the hero and the palace lore lippincott

4 May 2014 ~ Hyacinth Noir’s Beltaine Literary Issue
Post VII ~ The Hero and the Palace, by Lore Lippincott

 ‘The Hero and the Palace’, a sequel to ‘The Hero and the Chalice‘ published in the Autumnal Equinox issue of Hyacinth Noir, continues the story of Darien Price and the lesbian ladies he lives with, Lucy and Marisol.

Within ‘The Hero and the Palace’ lies many attributes of Beltaine, most notably the joy of being in a world strengthened by the presence of a warm sun, by flowers and forests finally alive and unfurling.  There are also the emotions of Beltaine, a sense of belonging to the earth, and returning to the self after the darkness of winter; of excitement and uncertainty bravely met by having an awareness of inner power, with the restlessness and animation necessary to pursue the deepest of desires.  All with a dollop of two wholesome qualities: hope and love.

As we left them at the start of the Equinox, Darien was getting ready to have his new boyfriend Piers over for the celebratory feast, with games afterward.  Flash-forward eighteen months to the brilliance of mid-spring and the exquisite beauty of Beltaine.  Thanks to a very unconventional alarm clock, Darien and Piers wake far too early on their handfast day.  But things are always a bit odd around Piers’ family farm, including Piers’ smart, sassy sister Kate, Piers’ semi-feral furry dependents, and parents who drop something of a bomb on their son and Darien.

Lucy and Marisol’s daughter, Tempest, is naturally moody about the changes to her life.  Lucy, who’s in charge of the flora arrangements for the handfast, tries to impart her patience and wisdom into the matter.  An unexpected visitor tosses another complication into the day’s zenith.  Relying on their strong love for one another, these characters let nothing stop them from enjoying a wonderful celebration.

–

The Hero and the Palace

Darien Price had grown used to waking up with Piers at his side, and had even gotten used to waking in the big bedroom at the top floor of the old family farmhouse.  Usually, Darien enjoyed the lengthy, lethargic mornings at Piers’ family place.

This morning wasn’t one of them.

He really wasn’t used to opening his eyes and finding a magenta-footed pigeon standing right in the middle of Piers’ forehead.

Screaming, flinging himself out of bed with his narrow limbs flying—now that seemed like an appropriate way to deal with the situation.  It was also masterfully effective at waking Piers.  He flew upright at the waist—pigeon taking off—small silver-white feathers swirling—Piers screaming—Darien screaming again—the rooster calling in the dooryard.  For three seconds, the quiet room in the garret brimmed with all the chaos of Discordia’s repertoire.

Darien stood in the corner.  He believed himself removed from immediate danger.  He could see the pigeon, and it wasn’t a shy one.  It sat on the edge of the curtain rod, pompous and arrogant as anything.  Why had he always thought pigeons such modest little birds?

Piers roamed a palm over his forehead.  A second and unwanted presence had left behind tingles.  He let Darien have another moment to recover.  He’d soon show that he was a force to be reckoned with—the shooer of bees—the savior of abandoned kittens.

“How do we know that’s not the same pigeon?” Darien felt in control again.

Piers eyed the avian destroyer of precious morning traditions.  It did look remarkably similar to the one that’d infiltrated the garret last June.  “There’s really no way to be sure.  I have a picture of that other bird.” From the bedside table—another elderly relic—Piers grabbed his phone and snapped a shot of the winged rogue on top of the curtain rod.  “We can compare them later.  I see how it got in.”

The screen had fallen out of the window for the third time since they’d started staying at the house.

“We really need to get that fixed before we wake up with a raccoon in bed with us.  Or one of the squirrels.” Piers gave another thoughtful rub to his forehead.  “Was it sitting on me or something?”

Darien chuckled, unable to answer: a knock sounded on the tiny door.  Though not tall, Darien still felt like a giant in that nineteenth-century house of Piers’ ancestors.  Even Piers’ parents were small-boned, round and fleshy.  They were good, polite people who doted on Piers and adored Darien.

It took a minute to explain to them what all the shouts and noises had been about.  Amid confusion, Piers just pointed to the pigeon on the curtain rod.  The gesture said it all.

“We really should get that screen fixed,” said Jim, Piers’ dad, “before we get something really nasty in here.  Like a raccoon.”

It wasn’t exactly the way Darien and Piers pictured the opening hour of the most important day of their shared life, but it certainly represented the powerful, often humorous magic of the unexpected.

–

Lucy was flushed with joy and exertion.  She sat beneath the shade of her favorite tree in her own back garden, and all around her was the pure and invigorating smell of a world teeming with life: posies and greenery, implements of creativity, and a beverage brought to her by Temmi.  Not far, the picnic table, covered in the same array of categorized disorder: flowers, herbs, floral tape and wire, little sketches in ink and watercolor she used as blueprints for the models.  Lucy had toiled at the table for hours, before the sun got too hot and she’d escaped to her old friend the oak tree.  By the cast of the sun, it was already noon—just a bit beyond.  But there was no worry, no time crunch.

She heard the screen door open and close, and there appeared her daughter, golden-haired, golden-eyed.  “She grows in miles-per-hour,” Marisol had once quipped, “like kudzu.”

Temmi was removed from her usual display of emotions and interests.  It went beyond the moodiness of puberty, too.  It roved into the realm of disillusionment.  The idea that the life she’d known at home, since the age of six, was changing for good made her uncomfortable.  Lucy and Marisol had tried to tell their daughter that changes could be wonderful and sad at identical moments, but, overall, changes kept life interesting.

Temmi threw herself down on the plush grass, next to her mom.  She picked up a daisy and spun it, watching its always-open yellow eye.  “You got a lot done.  I could’ve helped.” She hadn’t really wanted to help, though.  She was still sore at Darien for leaving, and sore at Piers for taking Darien away.  Unfortunately, she liked Piers.  He was almost as awesome as Darien.  But it still wasn’t fair.  Just something about it wasn’t fair.

“You didn’t have to help.  Anyway,” Lucy paused while Tempest let out a big sneeze, “you have allergies.”

“Mmm,” responded Temmi, rinsing the bottom of her nose across the downy pale hairs of her still childish arm.  “Which one’s mine?”

“The green and white headpiece on the table.”

Tempest glanced at it over her shoulder.  It was pretty, now that Mom had finished it.  She knew she’d look nice in it with her peach dress.  “Which one’s Darien’s?”

“The white rose with the lavender sprigs and white chrysanthemum buds.  Of course, Piers has the same one.”

On the subject of Darien and Piers, Lucy had always trod softly, in the way of Yeats, when it came to Tempest and her reaction to change.  Lucy had promised purification and cleansing rituals—an enticement to make the sudden absence of Darien Price seem like a possible portal into the new—but Tempest wasn’t interested in erasing Darien’s etheric leavings just yet.  In truth, neither was Lucy.  She wasn’t sure about Marisol.  Marisol was sporting a stiff upper lip about the entire thing.  She loved Piers, they all did, and it was important that Darien and Piers had found their true happiness.

“Want to wrap this up for me?” She handed the final specimen—the mother-of-the-groom’s corsage—to Tempest.  Nimble fingers went to work, but a troubled brow continued to wrinkle.  “Want to talk about it?”

Tempest usually welcomed these chats with Moms, but this was too hard to talk about.  The thought of Darien’s basement being emptied of his things, and never having him around again—

“I know it’s not like he’s dying and I’ll never see him again,” Tempest started, sighing.  “I’m grateful they’re not planning to move far away.”

Lucy and Marisol had tried their best to instill gratefulness in Tempest.  They went around the dinner table every night, saying one thing that they were grateful for.

“Aren’t you glad they’ll have a house of their own, and you can go and visit?”

“Well, yeah, but—but it’s not the same.  Don’t you think the house’ll seem weird without Darien? He’s a part of our lives, not just mine.  But we’re friends.  I’ll miss my friend.  Who else is going to sing Justin Timberlake with me, at the top of our lungs, when we’re cleaning?”

Lucy smirked and raised a shoulder.  “You got me there.  I can try to sing Justin Timberlake and One Direction with you, but you know that’ll just end in utter disaster—and earplugs! Darien will still sing with you, it’s just that the surroundings will be different, that’s all.  If he makes you clean his house, say no.”

Tempest had grown weary of the same “Everything changes” refrain.  It was one sentence, reformulated.  Darien was getting a life and home of his own.  But what was so wrong with the one he’d had? Tempest knew she’d only understand when she was older.

They weren’t losing Darien.  They were gaining Piers.  Regardless of how they phrased it, a sad, tiny sting remained.

–

Thankfully, Piers was far from perfect, a conclusion Darien had happily reached the night Piers came over to celebrate the autumn equinox.  Technically their first date ever, it was a potentially nerve-shattering experience drawn into serenity by the homey atmosphere and fun activities, by Lucy’s marvelous dinner and time on the patio with sangria and conversation.  Piers had been quiet, a bit stilted, but cranked free of his shell as the evening had gone on.  But perfect? No.  He’d looked a smidgen immaculate, sure, behind the counter at the bank every time Darien went in.  The strict dress code of black sweater vest and tie helped, Piers looking very snappy and gorgeous and “so symmetrical,” as Darien had once said.  The more the two of them got to know one another, the more their synergy clicked into place—and everything else fell into place, too.

Except that Piers had some weird quirks.  Darien was sure he had a few, but one wasn’t as inclined to take stock of one’s own peculiarities.  Piers’ oddities of character were just a bit more odd.

The squirrel thing, for instance.

Darien had “pet” squirrels at his parents’ place.  The creatures seemed to know Piers.  They perked up whenever they heard him approach.  They were yet wary of Darien, and had never taken so well to Piers’ parents or his siblings.  “They only like Piers, and that’s all there is to it.” It was true.  Quirky as it might be, Piers’ natural ability to like squirrels as much as they liked him was awkwardly endearing.

A few times in the last five years, Piers had brought injured squirrels from as close as Kilbourne Road and as far off as Cambridge.  If there was a squirrel in peril, Piers Westmore was the man to rescue it.

He wasn’t the only Westmore who nursed strays.  Most of the farm was devoted to the care and recuperation of animals.  The family ran the business, and had volunteers and paid staff who did the majority of the labor.  Piers, however, seemed to lack the care gene, aside from squirrels, and so had gone off to Dublin to find his way in the financial world.  What he’d learned in a year of banking had given him a splurge of self-confidence; he was again ready to tackle the mediocrity of his family’s non-profit organization.  If he could do nothing more than look after squirrels, he’d at least learned how to take care of the books in addition to destructive rodents.

How this was going to be applied while he and Darien continued to live in Dublin, no one had been able to decipher.  Sometimes the squirrels eyed Darien as if they knew how it would all work out.  He resented them their prophetic squirrel-forecasting.  Did the fluffiness of their silver tails augur rough times for him and Piers?

Darien wouldn’t be opposed to living at Cheshire Acres.  But it was so busy! Comings and goings at all hours, even after dark and sometimes at sunrise.  Darien and Piers anticipated that their late afternoon ceremony would be interrupted by the arrival of a creature in need.  They laughed about it over lunch.  Kate, Piers’ sister and an accomplished vet, said she was sure someone would arrive with a cage full of abandoned baby weasels.  Piers was sure it wouldn’t be anything so decorous.

“A cage full of baby weasels is decorous, is it?” cried Kate, refilling her brother’s glass of iced tea.  “Yeah, we’ll just give them some bouquets and tie ribbons at their necks, send them down the aisle with you.”

Another eruption of chuckles.  Six people were seated round the giant table, relations and one of the volunteers.  Darien knew why he liked them so much, the Westmores.  They were like Lucy and Marisol, always building happy memories and cultivating the essences of home and comfort.

Piers rained on his sister’s attempts at humor.  Kate was known for being “the funny one.” “Well, actually—not much of aisle.  More like an appearance.  We thought of having a curtain.” Piers flashed his gaze to Darien across the table, his turn to be funny—though they had really mentioned it when getting their ceremony together.  “We thought the owls could hold it up, then swoop it aside when we were ready to show up.  But whoever heard of owls doing anything like that outside of a Disney movie? So we axed the curtain idea.  No aisle though, sorry.”

Kate tossed herself into the chair, eyeing Piers with dubiousness.  “Are you sure there’s no aisle? From the way the set-up looks—”

Piers glared at Darien, the two of them synching their flight out of the kitchen.  In the fresh morning air, a rope of fog still clinging to the far woods beyond the first field, they stopped at the garden behind the house, and stared.  Two distinct sections of brown wooden folding chairs were separated by what was undeniably an aisle.

“Oh crap,” grumbled Piers, fisting a clump of his dark hair.  “An aisle! There wasn’t supposed to be an actual aisle!”

Darien, at first annoyed, just craned back his head and laughed.  “Great, we can send the squirrels down first, Piers.  Then the dogs.  Then the weasels.  Then us.”

Piers wasn’t listening.  “We can move them, I suppose.  The chairs.  There aren’t very many.”

“Let’s just leave it.” Darien tossed an arm around Piers’ shoulders, leaving a smooch at his temple.  “We can work with it.  We have too much to do today to bother moving them.  Like eating lunch.”

“I’m definitely not skipping a meal today! But we should’ve been out here supervising the,” Piers faltered, unsure what to call them, “the party set-up people.  It looks kind of blah, doesn’t it?”

Kate, who came out to join them, snickered.  “I’ll get Mom to string up some ribbons or something, make the chairs not look so bare.  Your friends are bringing the flowers, right, Darien?”

“As far as I know.  I’ll call them and see if they can come earlier.” Darien took out his phone—and got startled when the squirrel suddenly on Piers shoulder tried to climb on his shoulder.  It was disconcerting—and their claws were not exactly comfortable.  Piers grabbed the thing—the one with the white ears—and stuck it to the trunk of the nearest oak tree.  It hung there, as if not sure how it’d gotten there so abruptly.  Darien checked his phone, just a text message from Marisol.  He shared it aloud to Piers, Kate having already wandered off.  “‘Today’s your big day! We’ll see you soon!'”

“Marisol sent me that message, too.  I forgot to tell you.” Piers continued to be a bit down about the chairs.  He didn’t know he felt about walking down an aisle.  A real one.  It was a long way from where he thought he’d be.  “Is this really okay with you?” His doubts swam away as Darien held him close.

“It’s really okay with me.”

“Were you serious about the procession: squirrels, dogs, us?”

“You forgot the weasels, if they have the gall to show up.  Let’s go in and eat.  Today’s a worry-free day, so no more worrying.”

In the kitchen, the majority of diners had scattered, leaving plenty of food, Piers’ parents—and a decidedly cool shift in the ambience.  It was no surprise to Darien when Jim Westmore made a request with ominous undertones.

“There you are, good! We want to talk to you two about something important we’ve got going on.”

–

Tempest was a big help, though her emotions continued to stir about in her.  She wasn’t the one who’d make a mess of Darien and Piers’ big day.  But she was thirteen, and therefore capable of spouting queries that bordered on sassy.

“So why are they doing this again? I mean,” she arranged a cooler of flowers in the car, Moms nearby, “if they want to get married, why don’t they just get married? You two did.” Granted, that’d been a while ago—at least it seemed like long ago to her.  Probably not so to them.

Marisol handled this question; she’d already asked it of Darien.  “I think it’s just the way they want things to progress right now.  You can talk to them about it.  Piers is pretty honest, even if he was slightly shy at first.”

Tempest had an alternative way of seeing into people.  “He wasn’t shy.  Just not sure how to act around a twelve-year-old.  And I didn’t want to ask them because it didn’t seem like any of my business.” She’d also been hurt by the whole thing, but didn’t want to admit it for the millionth time.

Lucy threw her pretty straw hat on the top of the coolers.  “Go and grab your things,” she said to her obedient daughter.  “We’ll be ready to go as soon as your mom pees again.”

“Hey!” Marisol barked to defend herself.  “I’m not the reason we stop every five minutes on car trips.”

Tempest dashed into the house, eager to get her bag and get to the farm.  Lucy, still standing in the driveway, offered Marisol no counterpoint on the car-trip issue.  Her phone trilled a melodic tune saved only for Darien’s calls.

“Our darling groom,” Lucy said instead of the traditional hello, “we’re almost ready to go.  Marisol has to pee again.”

“I do not!” came from the background.

“She always has to pee.  Horrendous on car trips,” Darien said.  “Look, sweetie, I’m freaking out.  Can you stop me from freaking out?”

Lucy tossed an expression of concern to Marisol.  “Why are you panicking, honey?”

“Well, I can’t tell you.  Not over the phone, anyway.” His voice was tight, void of its usual inflections and modulations.  “It doesn’t have to do with me and Piers.”

Lucy’s fingertips flattened over her heart.  “That’s good news.  Just take some deep breaths.  Focus on something nice.  Go kiss Piers.  Usually works to calm me down.”

“Kissing my boyfriend calms you down? Since when?”

“I meant my lady, she calms me down.  As long as I don’t squeeze her too hard.”

“Hey!” Marisol reprimanded.

“Is it the cake, Darien? Is the cake awful?”

“No, it’s beautiful.  I’m surprised it doesn’t have two squirrels on top of it instead of two little men.  And I can’t have Piers calm me down.  He’s equally freaked, at this point.” Darien let out a ragged sigh.  From where he sat in the barn loft—the only place that guaranteed five minutes of privacy—he could see Piers in his light blue shirt and jeans walking the edge of the woods.  “When are you going to be here?”

“I have to get there in thirty minutes or less,” Lucy tried to make him feel better, “since, by then, Marisol will have to use the bathroom again.”

“Oh cut it out,” Marisol said, head stuck in the car as she rearranged coolers and satchels.

“Are you really all right? Is it something really bad?”

“Not bad,” said Darien, his perspective already altering from its original breath-taking minute, “but odd.  Very odd.  Did anyone call the house looking for me?”

Lucy let him change the subject.  He had a talent for deflecting.  When they’d tried to get him to open up about the time he’d saved his brother’s life, he wouldn’t and couldn’t.  Over a series of weeks, fits and starts, Darien told them.  Since he and Piers had announced their engagement, Darien had been breaking it to Lucy and Marisol how much he wished his family would come, all the while knowing they wouldn’t.  Pessimism didn’t staunch all of Darien’s hope, however, and so he asked and Lucy had to give a plaintive reply.

“No, no calls.”

“That’s all right,” he made an effort to sound chipper.  Kate was crossing the lawn, looking around, probably trying to find him or her brother.  The five minutes of privacy had just run out.  “Get here as soon as Marisol’s bladder will permit, please and thank you.”

When he hung up, he whistled through his teeth to announce his presence to Kate.

When Lucy hung up, she dropped the phone in her voluminous rattan handbag and eyeballed Marisol.

“He and Piers are despondent about something that happened—unrelated to the handfast.”

Marisol flung herself upright, bumping her raven head against the door.  “Ow!” She rubbed the sore spot, painting a comedic picture for Lucy.  “Are they all right?”

“Just wants us to get there as fast as we can.  Are you all right? That made a loud noise.”

“I’m hard-headed.  This we know.  I’ll hurry Tempest along.  And get a bag of ice for my head.”

Lucy opened the driver’s side door, eager to get the May breeze swishing in and out of the car.  It was a nice day, and even the smell of the approaching summer was intense and provocative.  It smelled like soft things, green and growing things; it smelled of home and love.  A brilliant day for Darien and Piers’ handfast.  Lucy leaned against the open door, chin in her hands.  She dreamed of the flowers and the ceremony and the reception, hoping again that nothing was seriously wrong with Darien and Piers.

She raised her head at a car parking in front of the house—a bland beige car out of which stepped a petite blond with stocky legs and a smattering of casual jewelry.  She was hesitant, nervous, and the moment Lucy got a decent look at her, a sharp pang of sympathy hit her.

The woman stopped five feet from Lucy.  “I’m looking for Darien.  Is he still here?”

Lucy felt her smile brightening.  “You’re Rita.”

Put at her ease, Rita showed a grin mostly gums, a glint of teeth.  So he had talked about her! “You must be Lucy.”

Whatever had shocked Darien at the Westmore family farm, it couldn’t have brought a surprise greater than the sight of his sister was sure to carry.

–

Darien glanced behind him at the swath he’d cut through the tall grass.  Suspicions confirmed: There was a squirrel following him! Huffing, rolling his eyes, Darien figured he’d better get used to it.  He did what Piers had taught him the first time they’d shown up at the farm together more than a year ago.  He knelt, set his hand in the grass and clicked his tongue.  After the squirrel instigated a handful of cautious moves, at last he zipped up Darien’s arm—the human winced and flinched—and rested on Darien’s shoulder.  Darien fished a peanut out of his pocket, continuing his search for Piers.  He didn’t have to worry about the squirrel eating him while it had a peanut.  The vet said Piers’ cordial squirrel collection was not infected with anything dangerous.  That’d be all he’d need, coming down with hydrophobia on his handfast day! Why couldn’t Piers like crows—or butterflies? Maybe it wasn’t what Piers liked, but who the squirrels liked to have looking out for them.  Piers did have a list of interesting enchantments, Squirrel Charmer being one of them.

The squirrel hopped off Darien’s shoulder to a thin tree limb within its grasp.  It followed Darien across a ripple of leafy boughs, to the spot where Piers was found.  He sat on a giant, sun-warmed boulder two feet from the creek shore.  The squirrel turned around in Piers’ lap, its hands padding the pockets where he could feel and smell peanuts.  Piers, disheartened, limply tossed one for Morpheus to chase.

“Go and get it, buddy.” It would keep Morpheus occupied for a couple of minutes, long enough for him to talk to Darien.  “Are you sure about this? They sprung the whole thing on us kind of fast.”

“I’m sure.  And please try to look happier.  I don’t want to say ‘I do’ to a face that looks as sad as yours looks right now.”

Piers grunted when Darien kissed him, startled by it.  As nice as it would be to get a good snog-fest going in the woods, he pawed at Darien’s collar and successfully, reluctantly separated them.  “I always did like the way you resolve issues.  Will that still work when we’re fifty years old, do you think?”

“We’ll find out.  Now, will you come back to the house willingly, or will I have to call forth all the Squirrel Brigade and get them to carry you? Countdown is commencing.  And you need a shower.  You smell like earth and yard rats.  Wait! Ugh! That’s me! I smell like squirrels!”

“Probably rubbed off me and onto you.” Piers continued to rub as much of himself against Darien as he could—until Morpheus climbed into his hair.  “Never mind.  If we ever get away tonight, we’ll be free to rub and romp as much as we can stand.  Sans squirrels.” Another in-shell peanut was offered to Morpheus, still perched on his crown.  He looped an arm at Darien’s waist, aiming them at the path back to the farm.  “You know, Darien, you’re pretty brave.”

“I have my moments.”

“But I guess you can’t have Darien without the ‘dare’.”

Darien had to laugh, his eyes crinkling up and the strange heat of tears igniting his face.  Piers was so—so camp and uncomplicated.  He was wonderfully refreshing.

 –

Rita wasn’t sure what to do.  She knew what she’d wanted to do, which was to find Darien immediately and hug the hell out of him.  Suddenly finding herself at a pretty farm surrounded by gentle sloping lands and deciduous forests, the constant chirping of birds and a prismatic overlay of garden flowers, she was too dazzled.  Helping her feel accepted were the handful of guests that’d already arrived, each with a task to do and a talent to provide prior to, during or after the handfast.

Handfast, a new word in Rita’s dictionary.  She’d asked Lucy and Marisol why Darien and Piers weren’t just getting married.  Marisol had chuckled, replying, “You can ask Darien that yourself when you see him.”

The intricate knots tightening in her stomach persisted as Rita followed Lucy into the house.  A large country kitchen, friendly strangers around the table in gorgeous dresses and suits.  Rita was horribly underdressed in her flowing floral chiffon blouse and belted blue jeans.  Hastily introduced to Jim, Piers’ father, Rita lacked the chance to do more than shake his hand before Lucy herded her on.

Lucy left a cheery rap on a second-floor bedroom door.  A moment later, it swished inward, and there was a half-dressed blond, tall and pale and his eyes more pink than blue.  Immediately, Darien held Lucy close.  Security and sense would return to him with his wise witch nearby.  The tentative grip he had on reality ballooned and burst the moment he saw Rita.  Lucy patted Darien’s arm, then tiptoed away unnoticed.

Darien’s guard dropped when Rita hugged him.  He wouldn’t have instigated anything so familiar, not sure how his sister felt about him.  They hadn’t talked in years.  He hadn’t talked to any of his family in years.  Once the accident had claimed the life of their baby brother, the fiery heart of the clan had been smothered.  Rita got away as fast as she could, opened a restaurant on the river with friends, and stayed away.  Darien wrapped up his two-year degree, went to work as a substitute teacher, met Lucy, Marisol, Tempest; then he’d met Piers and the aches of the past became neglected history.  Darien’s large hands rested at his sister’s wide shoulders, and even then he didn’t have more than one compulsory thing to say to her.

“I’m so glad you came.”

Rita felt the same way.  Explanations were not required.  He’d called, left a voicemail when she didn’t pick up on account of not recognizing the number, and she’d been too cowardly to call back.  Her brother had expected that, giving her all the information she needed to know about this thing he kept calling a handfast.  Rita’s blue eyes gained a brilliant spark.

“So why are you two not getting married? You could’ve had a destination wedding.” She wasn’t surprised that Darien let her go to finish dressing.  “I know most of the equal-marriage states are a hike away, but if you’d wait a while, maybe Michigan—”

“We decided not to go anywhere to get married.”

“Well, why?” It wasn’t so black and white to Rita.  Marriage was marriage, wasn’t it?

Darien’s mind ran in helpless circles.  He was tired of explaining.  It seemed so easy to them.  It seemed frustrating to Darien and Piers.

“Because we shouldn’t have to go anywhere else to get married.”

Rita suddenly saw how true it was.  Of course they shouldn’t have to.  “Oh.  Well.” She offered an appeasing smile.  “This is nice, too.”

“And it’s nice of you to keep up on the shifting attitudes of the country, Rita.  I’m impressed.” He grunted, muscles tensing.  “Why is this vest so hard to get on?” He twirled, trying to get his left arm in the wide open hole of the waistcoat.  Rita came to his rescue.  “You’d think they’d be easier to put on than a coat! Good grief.”

Rita laughed, Darien laughing with her.  That’s when Piers entered, afraid to look too hard at Darien and jinx everything, but he had to know who the woman was.

“This is my sister,” Darien told him, kissed him, and shoved him out the door.  “No more peeking, Piers!”

–

Piers was surprised by how quickly the event passed.  Suddenly there, suddenly done.  It’d not helped that, true to their comical prediction, someone interrupted the tail end of the ceremony by showing up with an injured fox that required attention.  Kate, pretty in her peach-colored dress, shifted from the overhanging branches of oaks and flower-drenched altar to examine the fox.  Piers finished his vow to Darien with an improvised line, “And for putting up with my family and our odd attachment to animals, our never-ending hours of operation, I love you all the more.” It was true.  Darien contained the patience of the moon.

The kids at the party rotated around one of the trees with ribbons in their hands.  Forgetful Uncle Willie fiddled a song he actually remembered every note to.  Adults were standing or sitting in the shade, catching up on gossip, enjoying punch and cake and snacks.  Cats sat in furtive locations, eyeing the proceedings with congratulatory airs, as if they had accomplished it all with the flicks of their tails.  Dogs puttered about, looking for scraps, pats to the head, pieces of food that fell to the grass.  In the distance, down by one of the fenced-in pens, Kate was a bright orange stick against the dark edge of the woods.  Piers again wondered if he shouldn’t go down and haul her to the party.  She’d been absent more than thirty-five minutes.  It was getting harder and harder to deter the curiosity of Lucy and Marisol.  Rita, too, knew from Lucy that something was going on with Darien and Piers.  Without Kate around, Piers didn’t want to say what he had to say.

At last, Kate made her way back, holding the hem of her obnoxious dress above the high grass.  She made one stop in her office attached to the side of one of the barns, coming out in an ugly plaid shirt.

“I’m not cold,” she told her brother, “just uncomfortable.  I feel like I’ve got things crawling on me.  Mosquitos, I guess.  No, Petrie, not now!” But reprimanding the squirrel that landed on her shoulder was breath wasted.  Darien, who’d learned not to walk around the farm without a peanut in his pocket (offering a supply of horrid jokes), gave one to Petrie, who snatched at it, fit it in her mouth, and went back up the tree.  Kate noticed the tension in their huddle of friends, even in Darien’s quiet sister.

Marisol crossed her arms and sat up straighter in the seat.  “Well, what is it, you two?”

Lucy gave Darien’s hand a loose shake.  “Don’t keep us in suspense!”

“Yes, tell them,” Kate insisted.  “But hurry up.  I have cake to eat before Aunt Phyllis gets all of it.  You know how Aunt Phyllis likes her cake, brother.  So.  Out with it.”

Darien nudged Piers.  He was part of Darien’s unusual family unit, too, capable of spilling important news.  Piers gaped at them, feeling hot under his collar.

“My parents are moving to South Carolina and they want me and Darien to live here at the house with Kate and help continue the business.” He had a very large gulp of wine as he finished.

“Well said,” Darien told him, patting his back, afraid to face Lucy and Marisol—and worried what Tempest would say.  Neither Lucy nor Marisol felt inspired to respond.  “It’s not really that much further than the house we were going to buy.  And I’m still in the same school district, whereas the other house wasn’t in the same school district, so I get to keep my job.  You can always visit.  So can Tempest.  As soon as we get that screen in the garret room fixed so you’re not, you know, inundated by hungry pigeons or cold squirrels looking for a warm place to sleep.  It’ll be nice.  At least, I think it’ll be nice—and I’m totally aware that I’m rambling, Marisol, so please stop staring.  What do you think?”

Marisol and Lucy exchanged a silent dialogue, Marisol delivering it in plain English for the rest of them.  “Of course we think it’s great!” She stood and messed up Darien’s hair, kissed Piers hard on the cheek.  “Idiots! Of course it’s wonderful, and I think it’ll make you happy.”

Lucy doled soft hugs.  “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

Kate snorted into a low cackle.  “They just found out this morning!”

Lucy understood.  “Oh.  That’s what the big freak-out was.  I see!” Hearing Tempest laughing with another group of kids her age, Lucy was reminded that Darien had yet to face his severest critic.  “She’ll be happy about it.  She likes it here.  We like it here, too.”

Piers inserted a joke.  “The house up the road is for sale—” But he was laughed at, and told by Kate to be quiet while he was ahead.  He took that advice to heart.

The event coordinator informed them that the dancing was about to begin.  As per Darien and Piers’ promise, Darien asked Tempest to dance the first with him.  Marisol was deeply touched.

“That was nice of you, Piers.”

“I have the rest of my life to dance with Darien.  Impressing a teenager? That’s one of life’s greatest challenges.”

Tempest certainly looked impressed when her hero guided her to the decorated gazebo.  Marisol and Piers followed.  Lucy danced with a candid Westmore cousin, the same age as Tempest but miles apart in personality.  An old-fashioned jazz tune flared into the waning afternoon.

Two songs later, a startled Darien eyed the oddest couple on the dance floor.  “Good grief,” he mumbled.  “They’re dancing together again.”

Piers saw what he did, their sisters circling about.  “Is it bad that I think they look rather cute together? I’m glad to see your sister.  Something tells me I’ll be seeing a lot of her in the future.”

“Good grief,” mumbled Darien again, forehead thudding to Piers’.

“Let’s focus on our happy ending, Darien.”

“Happy beginning,” Darien corrected.  He left a smooch next to Piers’ ear, grabbed his hand and tucked it between their hearts.

–

Lore Lippincott

is the author of several short stories and a free novella, The Carols of Holly House.   Please visit her website, BreezyDayStories.com, for more details.

 

 

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First Kisses, by Daisy Cains

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by hyacinthnoir in Beltaine, Literary, Queer

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beltaine, beltaine literary issue, daisy cains, fiction, first kisses daisy cains, lgbt, lgbt fiction, lgbt literature, lgbt romance, literary, literature, queer, queer fiction, queer romance

3 May 2014 ~ Hyacinth Noir’s Beltaine Literary Issue
Post VI ~ First Kisses, by Daisy Cains

Appropriately my short story is about a springtime romance – springtime in every sense of the word, it is set at the right point in the calendar and at the springtime of the protagonists’ lives but most importantly at the springtime of one protagonist’s development.  That is the springtime of my sexual development because I wasn’t Daisy back then, I’m not quite Daisy now (I am mentally but physically a bit of work remains to be done).  So it’s early springtime for me as I head for a late summer flowering.  I’ve got the dress, the shoes and the purse and with luck my hair will have returned by then and I can ditch the wig.–

–

First Kiss

There are many reasons why I didn’t go up to Michelle that night at the school disco and most of them are obvious.  To start with I wasn’t absolutely sure she felt the same way or if she could even feel the same way, if she was made that way.  Then there were the glaring reasons, the ones that grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and screamed ‘don’t do it!’ right in your face, the fact that I was shy, nervous, geeky and bookish whilst she was beautiful, strawberry blonde, slender, elegant and sadly vacuous.

But more that all those reasons it was what had gone before that made me hold me.  What had happened with Evie made me nervous and what had happened with Jenny made my hesitate.

Evie with her long blonde hair and long brown legs.  Her almost completely flat chest and her pert little nose.  The things we could do together, walking around Chasewater picking wild flowers.  If she could come to the Abbey Gardens with us, we would wander through the meadow surrounded by the tiny twinkling flowers of the wild garlic plants bathing in the gentle ransoms aroma before we had to do battle with the evil mulberry tree.  Next I could show her my brood of ducklings in the secret pond near the seashore where I would put my fingers inside her Aertex sports shirt and feel the buds of her slowly starting breasts.

I thought these thoughts as I watched Evie on the gymnastics equipment in her Aertex t-shirt and thick navy-blue gym knickers, her pelvis standing proud and the tiny mound in the centre.

Poor Evie who had so little time left.

I doted on her, she had more angles and spiky bits than me, but I adored her, so thin and brittle.  I was chunkier, gauche and awkward, she was elegant, a glider, an athlete and a gymnast and I loved her in those thick blue gym knickers, pelvis proud as she did that exercise in gymnastics that I always found impossible, where you lie on your back and push yourself up into a crab shape.  I can remember looking at her tiny mound beneath the thick blue cotton.

But she went and died in a car crash and did we get any counselling? Did we hell.  Nothing at all, it was simply not considered, not necessary, not on the agenda.

I just wanted to talk to someone, but that sort of thing was scoffed at back then.  It was something that Americans did, Americans and their shrinks, Woody Allen and spending years and fortunes on therapy.  Not necessary, we had our stiff upper lips.  I didn’t even get to go to the funeral, I wasn’t asked, no closure although the concept of closure was unknown to us as well.  Looking back I’m quite pleased not to have gone to the funeral, the thought of her tiny, pretty body heading for the flames, the bones going up in smoke filled me with horror, it still does.

We dealt with it in our own way, on our own, God how I cried.  I can still almost cry now when I think of her running, gawky but fast, she carried less weight than me, in the egg and spoon race.  We’d read Betjemen to each other, especially ‘Myfanwy’ and that was all I was left with.  Asking the hole where she’d been: “were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?”

We were both tennis girls at heart although I played hockey for the school and she was the gymnast of course.  The memory of her blue knickered crab still mesmerised me.

I changed schools very soon after Evie’s death and I found Jenny.  There she was walking around the outer edge of the all-weather hockey pitch.

Jenny, tall with long straight blonde hair, my second and soon to be superior ‘Myfanwy’ although I had to tweak the ‘Myfanwy’ stuff because Jenny wasn’t a ‘hockey girl, tennis or gym.’ She was a soccer girl and she he was really rather good and not just at playing the ball, she was equally good at playing the man or even the man’s ball.  The FA rule banning mixed soccer after the age of eleven saved many a school boy from a severely bruised shin or worse, god she’d got a kick on her.

Jenny’s Dad worked in Africa somewhere and her mom lived out there with him lording it over the natives so Jenny was marooned at the school, lonely and sad whilst everyone else saw their parents at weekends.  So when my mother and father arrived to take me to lunch on Sunday I invited Jenny along.  I invited her along every subsequent Sunday as well.  Those Sundays were fun, we ate real food rather than grey boarding school pap, saw the sights in the area such as they were and Matt misbehaved constantly for no obvious reason.  Mom told us ignore him, ‘he was just going through a phase.’

Those Sundays became less fun the closer it came to time to return to school and when we got to the hotel in the hills and my Dad bought us afternoon tea Jenny and I were close to tears.  He tried to cheer us up, two morose schoolgirls, in mufti, jeans and sweatshirts, legwarmers and ballet pumps, sitting side by side and forcing down cream cakes.  Matt was still playing up and we watched the clock, dreading when five thirty came around and the drive through the dark winter evening back to school would begin.

Once back at school, there was only supper and homework to look forward to and then a long cold winter night in a long cold dormitory that was filled with the sniffles of those still afflicted by homesickness, the snores of the asthmatics and the cloying scent of twenty pairs of damp woolly tights steaming on the inadequate radiators.  I was filled with dreams of kissing Jenny.

It was not until the middle of the summer term that I did kiss her for the first time.  The only time.  It happening during the school trip to a national park.  My sixteenth birthday was looming and I was all sophistication and spots and I sat next to Jenny on the coach.

We sat at the back or as near to it we could, the really naughty girls got the back seat, we didn’t go quite that far.  So there we were two or three rows forward, Jenny and I, laughing and touching, canoodling, a little like Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe but not a lot.  The ‘one legged jockey’ would have left us baffled and we couldn’t share each others lipstick because we hadn’t got any, we hadn’t even got a handbag with us, not on a field trip, we had to stuff everything into the pockets of our jeans.  And there wasn’t much room, because we had to make sure we had a couple of obligatory tampons, whether it was time or not, they were essential for scaring the shit out of the unfortunate male teachers who had been press-ganged onto the trip.  How those spotty inadequates ended up teaching in an all girls school is totally beyond me, they never stood a chance.  We made their lives miseries, we really were quick on the draw with the sanitary products.

We had painted our nails together the night before.  Jeans and sweats and clunky hiking boots may have been the order of the day as far as clothing was concerned but that didn’t entirely preclude a bit of glamour, so we’d shared nail varnish, mixed and matched colours, held our wet nails in water to allegedly dry them faster.  What did preclude a bit of glamour was one of our more humourless teachers, she primly pointed out that the ban on nail adornments applied even on school trip days and insisted we make us of the remover pronto.  We were left just with tell tale pale pink stains on our cuticles.

Once in the fresh air we giggled and strolled, allegedly studying the flora and fauna as we walked through the summer, grey hills.

Mid morning and we found ourselves detached from the rest of the group in a cool, lonely spot so I asked her if I could kiss her, she hesitated and I explained, we’d just be practising, so it wouldn’t look like we were completely hopeless when we came to try it with a boy.  She agreed.  She wasn’t overly enthusiastic but she reluctantly let me kiss her.  We started gently I could feel the down on her upper lip and the softness of her lovely mouth.  I probably also smelt the unspeakable packed lunch we’d just eaten, rank boiled eggs and bloody margarine.  If I did I didn’t notice and gently pushed my tongue between her reluctant, pink lips.  She didn’t respond, perhaps a little bit but in truth hardly at all.  I think I sensed that she wasn’t really enjoying herself but I delved deeper with my hesitant tongue.  She pulled away, I was breathless but only for a second as I quickly remembered myself and my cover story.  “Did I do it right?” We were only supposed to be practising and comparing notes after all.  She didn’t say anything.

Do you want to have another go?

NO.

Go on.

She looked down and mumbled something.  I bent towards her and the tip of our tongues touched.  She pulled away and ran up the path.  I ran after her, squealing and laughing.  We were two gawky schoolgirls in cumbersome hiking boots and too tight jeans stumbling along a rough, uneven track.  One of us was bound to fall.  It was Jenny, I was always marginally the better athlete.  She stumbled and rolled into the long grass at the side of the path.  I raced in after her.

Jenny are you alright?

She didn’t reply.

I knelt down and looked at her.  She wouldn’t look at me.  I crawled in beside her on the damp grass.

Are you alright?

Just grazed my knees that’s all.

Kiss me again.  I breathed.

She did, she bloody well did.

There on the side of the path, on a cold and wet typically grey English summer day.  We kissed and my hand was soon inside her aertex blouse, seeking out the elusive, budding breast in her over-ambitious bra.  She didn’t stop me.  My other hand went to her crotch.  She didn’t stop me.

It was the scream of ‘rug munchers’ that did.

Two boys from a nasty northern comprehensive school also making a tour of the beautiful Derbyshire landscape to give the kids a break from gritty urban reality and to give the teachers the chance of a doss.  The boys stood over us, first formers by the look of them, snotty and jam stained, they merely jeered at us at first but very soon they launched into a far more vicious cacophony: “dykes, dykes, dirty fucking dykes.”

They were dancing around and shouting, pointing at us and laughing; “fucking rug munchers, lesbians, lesbos.”
In normal circumstances we could have sorted them out, well Jenny definitely could, I might have been the better athlete but she was by far the better boxer, she had a more aggressive streak.  But we just ran down the path, it seemed the simplest solution.  The boys didn’t follow, we had chosen this secluded spot for, well you know what, they’d chosen it for a crafty fag.  They contented themselves with a massive bawl of “queers” and lit up.

Once we were out of sight I stopped and pulled her up.

Shall we do it again?

Not bloody likely.  I’m not risking that again.

Alright, but later, when we get back, somewhere private.

We’ll see.

Say yes.

We’ll see.

When we get back?

She said nothing and ran off in search of the main party.  I didn’t run after her, just sauntered in her wake.  Thinking to myself: “When we get back, when we get back, I can’t wait.”

Jenny was late coming into the dining room for supper that night, so we didn’t sit together.  She sat far away from me, pensive, refusing to catch my eye.  After supper we had to do homework for an hour and a half, so I didn’t get a chance to speak to her and then she went straight to her dorm, a dorm I did not share.  She was late getting down to breakfast next morning, so once again we didn’t sit together and she wouldn’t catch my eye.  Next it was lessons.  At lunchtime I caught her eye and immediately wished I hadn’t, her eyes were black, tired and cautious.  They were frightened eyes, she looked down and refused to look up again.  Finally after lunch I managed to get her alone, she managed to get away from me.

She avoided me for the whole of the next week and for much of the one that followed that and that was not easy in our closed community of erupting spots and swinging hormones.

I had to accept that I would have to find another crush.  It was not easy and with my characteristic childish constancy I cried myself to sleep every night for at least a week afterwards.  There was one day that was truly hard.  It was raining heavily and there was no games that afternoon which didn’t bother me too much because I’d gone off hockey and I never liked lacrosse, tennis was my sport that year and the courts were being refurbished, like they were every winter, God the trials and tribulations of a public school-girl.  No tennis because the contractors are in.  ‘Contractors in’ – is that a euphemism?

But without an activity to take my mind off Jenny I turned to my library book; ‘Famine’ by Liam O’Flaherty.  It’s crushingly sad and just what you need when your are already inclined to be tearful.  I put it down and tried to distract myself from thoughts of Jenny.  Soon I was in floods of tears, my chest was heaving and I cried like a child.  For a few agonised moments I knew that nothing could make things better and a few moments after that things were better.  It’s a tragedy when we lose the ability to cry like a child, the innocent release does you so much good, to paraphrase Picasso, I’ve spent my life learning to cry like a child again.

So for all of the reasons above I hung back, I hesitated and left Michelle sitting across the hall from me, two wallflowers.  It had been so different earlier in the day, we had such a great time together that I thought that maybe we could go beyond mere friendship, I thought that Michelle might return my feelings.

We’d spent the day together, sauntering around the shops in St Malo, laughing as we tried on straw hats, sitting on the quayside gazing contentedly out to sea, drinking a glass of gutrot apiece in a quaint little café and giggling nervously as we shrugged off the attentions of a party of slightly seedy men who were almost old enough to be our fathers and certainly old enough to know what they were suggesting was totally inappropriate.  This shared experience brought us together, I thought I learnt something from my earlier encounters with Evie and Jenny, that I could read the signs, that maybe Michelle was the one.  That she wouldn’t reject me.

I was convincing myself of this as I hesitated on the shabby institutional chair in the sports hall.  And whilst I hesitated Michelle was approached by a boy.  She smiled at him, she said yes and soon they were on the dance floor together.  She fell prey to his wandering hands, corrupted by his acne and cowed by his evolutionary imperatives.  He wrapped himself around her, pawed and pressed her.  I turned away and let my regrets wrap themselves around me.

I sat there burning up inside, just as I would the next day as I surreptitiously watched Michelle and her beau cavort on the school bus all the way to Caen and back.

I burnt with might have beens, might have been with Evie, might have been with Jenny, might have been with Michelle.
–

Daisy Cains

began life as Ian who was in turn a bad barrister, an indifferent teacher, a lazy antique dealer and a nascent novelist.  Ian’s novel ‘The Unsinkable Herr Goering’ a comedy set during WW2 was published by The Cassowary Press in 2013.  Daisy/Ian’s new novel ‘Never Said a Word’ the ‘true’ of the Birmingham Bombings will be published in November to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of that tragic event.

Daisy/Ian increasingly writes as Daisy and also increasingly lives as Daisy.

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New Bouquet, by Eve Francis

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by hyacinthnoir in Beltaine, Literary, Queer

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beltaine, beltaine literary issue, eve francis, fiction, lgbt, lgbt fiction, lgbt literature, lgbt romance, literary, literature, new bouquet eve francis, queer, queer fiction, queer romance

2 May 2014 ~ Hyacinth Noir’s Beltaine Literary Issue
Post V ~ New Bouquet, by Eve Francis

I wanted to depict a queer couple dealing with romantic tropes and how they could rewrite them to better suit what they wanted in their relationship.  When I realized that the typical notion of giving flowers tied in really well with similar themes in queer paganism, I went with it and fine tuned it to celebrate Beltane.  It’s a short story, very simple, but is mostly about building relationships and reworking ideas that don’t fit – right down religion, romance, and even bouquets of flowers.

–

New Bouquet

“I don’t like flowers,” Melissa stated rather firmly.

“Why not?” Caroline asked.

Melissa raised an eyebrow, a smirk on her face.

“I mean,” Caroline spoke again, crossing and uncrossing her legs on the park bench anxiously.  “Not that I was getting you flowers or thinking of doing that.  Not that you don’t deserve them, either.  I just… I mean…We’ve only been together a month.”

“I’ve seen people celebrate less,” Melissa said with a small laugh.  She craned her neck, combing her long red hair over her ears before she bunched her hands inside her purple hoodie to keep them warm.  She looked out at the park, and wearily, Caroline followed her gaze.

The park was across from the farmer’s market, but the booths were closed down now in late afternoon.  High school kids gathered in droves by the bright yellow slide.  Some of the young couples cuddled for warmth, while others smoked and kept their distance.  There were a few children and their parents close by, on the baby-swings near the smaller jungle gym.

A chilled wind came up and Caroline began to wish she had brought more than her green hoodie to keep her warm.  Though it was now spring, snow had fallen a few days ago.  The wood chips in the park were scattered, some still frozen and clinging with frost.  Green grass struggled to come up in patches, next to mud and frozen ground.  In Canada, especially Southern Ontario, this happened a lot.  Caroline often heard her mother refer to the sudden change as Second Winter.  Its presence made the T.  S.  Eliot poem have a lot more weight when he stated that April was the cruellest month.  There was a sudden hope of spring, of blooming plants, only to be frozen again in a blink.

Caroline laughed as she shivered.  That line kind of felt like the perfect metaphor for Melissa and Caroline’s relationship.  They had begun dating at the beginning of the semester, around Halloween.  Or Samhain, as Melissa insisted.  She was one of the few women on the college campus who wasn’t wearing a costume that night.  She was dressed in robes, but it was serious – not child’s play.  Caroline could tell as much from the sombre expression on her face and the way Melissa held her back.  Melissa was a serious woman – a beautiful, and serious, woman.  She was celebrating the dead that night, and when Caroline had shown interest, Melissa had invited her along.

That was how Caroline knew Melissa trusted her.  The two of them had walked into the middle of the forest, sat around candles and talked about their dead grandmothers.  After that night, they had decided to date for real.  Not just wax poetic about life and death.

But going to school, as well as maintaining a part time job, was more than an act of faith for Caroline.  She became so busy after the first few dates with Melissa that life – and maybe fate, too – seemed to get in the way of them both.  They had broken up before the ground had been completely covered with snow, during the darkest part of the year.  It had been one of those slow break-ups, too.  One where the other person doesn’t call, until finally, the relationships dissolves.

All things must come to an end, or so Caroline told herself when she realized what had happened.  Winter seemed a fitting time to back away from relationships and hibernate for a while.

But now it was spring.  At the farmer’s market, about a month ago, they had found one another again.  After the first few moments of awkward conversation, holding strawberries and apples, they had decided to try again.  They had pretty much picked up where they had left off, and so far, Caroline thought it was going okay.

“It’s really been more than a month,” Caroline said.  “If we count all the bits in between.  But I don’t like counting.  It seems ridiculous, like we’re hoarding days when we should be sharing them.”

Caroline slid her hand across the bench, nudging Melissa.  Though it was cold, she smiled as she took her hand again.  They had come to the park that afternoon to collect stuff for Melissa’s jars, her spells, and things that would help to usher in spring.  She wanted to make a wreath for her dorm room before she had to leave for the summer, along with adding a few things to her alter before Beltane arrived.  After circling the dense pines around the park, the cold had gotten to both of them, and they decided to opt for a bench.

“Flowers seem cruel, I guess,” Melissa finally explained.  “Bouquets of them, I mean.”

“How so?”

“They die.  Right away, they are cut down when they are at their most beautiful, instead of letting them bloom and die on their own accord.  We keep them inside, away from nature, and on display.  We use flowers like objects, when they are living things.  I don’t like it.  And it doesn’t make much sense, either.  To keep them around just to die.  What’s beautiful about that?”

“All things die,” Caroline said.  “I thought that was the point of Samhain? You celebrate what’s gone, so you can start again.”

Caroline moved a little closer, a smirk on her face.

“Yeah, perhaps,” Melissa answered.  “I know death is important.  But I don’t want to wax poetic about rosebud being my final words – nor do I want to stink up my apartment with a decaying rose, either.  I just don’t like flowers when they’re given by a romantic suitor.  I mean, there are enough romantic tropes out there and most of them are problematic.  Why bother conforming to something already dictated to us?”

Melissa said the last part with a glance towards one of the high school couples.  Two of them were making out, their hands all over one another.  Public displays of affection had always bothered Melissa.  She much preferred kissing in the woods, around nature that understood, instead of in front of a society that dictated, as she said, far too much about their lives.

Hand holding was the only exception to the no PDA rule, Caroline knew – and was grateful for.  She squeezed Melissa’s hand, grinning, as she longed for more than this.

“I guess,” Melissa concluded.  “I would much rather create my own ideas of what I’d like, what I’d want given to me, than depend on old tropes.”

“I get that.  That was why you wanted to be Wiccan in the first place, right? Recreate your family’s holidays, so it doesn’t remind you of drunks and stale cigarette smoke.”

Melissa smiled.  When she did, her eyes crinkled, and the freckles on her cheeks moved.

“Yeah, a little.  There is certainly something to be said for rebirth in that regard.  But you’re forgetting that the flowers were here before we decided to use them.  I wanted to be Wiccan because I wanted to go back to my roots.”

Caroline felt a shiver go up her back as Melissa turned her attention towards her.  Melissa flipped Caroline’s hand over and began to trace over her skin, touching the fine lines like a fortune teller.

Caroline paused then, thinking of how they had first met.  With Melissa’s robes, her red hair had almost looked dark – and at first, she had reminded Caroline of Persephone.  She was the dark queen of the underworld, who did not worry about death and instead revelled in it.

But Caroline now knew that twisting Melissa to fit her ideal woman, her ideal version of myth, was what had torn them apart in the first place.  Melissa wasn’t Persephone, or even the dozens of other goddesses that they could pick from.  They both weren’t a love story like that – because all those stories ended badly, and no one got what they wanted.  Instead, they were just two college students, sitting inside the park, and waiting for other people to leave so they could pick up acorns and stones to decorate an altar.

“Aphrodite must be tired,” Melissa said with a sigh.

“Oh, how so?”

“With so many people in love, asking for her help, it must seem like a never ending call-center.  I personally,” Melissa said, standing with a smile on her face, “would rather leave her alone.  I don’t want to bother her with my romance.”

Still holding Caroline’s hand, Melissa began to pull Caroline off the bench, and towards the swings.  Caroline went eagerly.  While they repositioned themselves on the swings, and began to pump higher and higher, they were silent.  Only breathy laughter was exchanged between them for some time.  Then, because Caroline could never let anything go, she pestered more about flowers and romance.

“But,” Caroline asked.  “You still wish to have a romance?”

“Maybe.  But I would rather it be honest.  True.  And flowers are… well, they’re sad to me.”

“But they don’t have to be,” Caroline said.

Melissa rolled her eyes.  She moved her legs forward more, pumping higher and higher.  Caroline struggled to keep up.  Each time her feet moved, she felt like she was touching the sky.  Around them, the high school students moved away.  The parents and their over-bundled children did too.  After a little while, it was just them.

Melissa began to swing higher and higher, a smile on her face.  Then, twisting her swing slightly, she reached out to grab Caroline’s hand.  Caroline felt warmth moved through her as their movements slowed.

“You ready?” Melissa asked, now completely stopped.

“Almost,” Caroline said.  She grasped the chain in both of her hands and continued to pump.  She braced herself, biting her lip, until it felt like the sky would swallow her.  When she jumped, she relished flying for a couple feet until she hit the ground with an oomph.

As Caroline regained her balance, Melissa was clapping.

“Very nice, very nice.”

“Thank you.”

Caroline brushed off the dirt from her jeans as Melissa moved from foot to foot, eager to get started and collect.  Their eyes met one another and they smiled crookedly.  Melissa looked around, checking their surroundings – before Caroline dove in and kissed her cheek anyway.

“I think you’re wrong, you know,” Caroline said with a smile.  She took Melissa’s elbow in her own, as they moved towards the pines.

“About flowers?”

“Yes, and about romance.  I’m pretty sure it still exists and doesn’t have to be old and boring.  And I don’t think Aphrodite’s that tired.  This is what she lives for, after all.  And how can you tire of what you love?”

“Well,” Melissa said, crouching down under a tree.  “I’m going to have to take you on your word for that.”

Melissa held up an acorn with a smile – just as Caroline kissed her quickly again.

“I’m counting on it.”

–

By Beltane, it was warm.  The snow had melted and the grass was now thriving.  Melissa woke up when the sun rose and the birds outside her window began chirping.

When she walked downstairs, Melissa was shocked to find a small slip of paper under the door.  Her name was written in big block letters.

MELISSA.  Look outside!

Curious now, she clasped the door handle and peaked out onto her porch.  A small brown box rested on the front step.  Not something from Amazon or Etsy – there was no postage, no return address.  Just a box.  Melissa kicked it, just a little bit, with her toe to make sure it wasn’t alive or something equally revolting.  Another note was placed on top, this time in an envelope.

MELISSA, the front read.  This time, as she unfolded the piece of paper inside, the handwriting was recognizable.

“Happy Beltane!” Caroline wrote.  “And whatever month we’re on now.  Even if I don’t like counting the days, I know romance is not dead.  It’s not even a bad trope that we should get rid of – but one we should recreate.  You said you didn’t like flowers, but maybe I can change your mind if we plant them together and watch them grow.  What do you say?”

Still smiling, Melissa peeled back the brown paper on the box.  There were large bulbs inside, brown like the paper, but still small like misshaped onions.  Tulips, she realized.  There was also a small, potted plant in the center, its green leaves spiralling outwards.  A spider plant.  One of her grandmother’s old favourites.  Melissa smiled again and pressed the letter to her chest.

“Not exactly a bouquet,” Caroline finished the letter.  “But just as romantic and lasts ten times as long.”

Melissa looked up just as a car door slammed.  Caroline got out, wearing green shorts and a white tank top.  Her brown hair flowed over her shoulders, long and down the center of her back.

Caroline smiled from the car door and held up a tiny shovel.  “I hope you’re up for some gardening today?” she asked, still slightly timid.  “I brought some more soil, just in case we can’t break through and…”

Caroline didn’t have a chance to finish.  Melissa ran down from the porch, leaving the plants where they were.  She wrapped her arms around Caroline, kissing her lips quickly, before burying her face in her neck.

“Thank you,” she said.  “And I am.  Most definitely.”

Caroline kissed back quickly, her arms around Melissa.  “Well good.  Happy Beltane.”

“Yes! Happy Beltane, indeed.”

–

Eve Francis

has appeared in The Fieldstone Review, Plunge Magazine, and Gay Flash Fiction.  She has a forthcoming sci-fi series on on JMS Books entitled Metal and Dust.  She lives in Canada and can be found at http://evefrancis.wordpress.com/

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Stewards, Devas, Gods, and Queens, by Jean Kari

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by hyacinthnoir in Beltaine, Literary, Queer

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beltaine, beltaine literary issue, fiction, jean kari, lgbt, lgbt fiction, lgbt literature, lgbt romance, literary, literature, queer, queer fiction, queer romance, stewards devas gods and queens, stewards devas gods and queens jean kari

1 May 2014 ~ Hyacinth Noir’s Beltaine Literary Issue
Post IV ~ Stewards, Devas, Gods, and Queens, by Jean Kari

Even before I embraced paganism, I knew Beltane through my favorite painting, Henri Matisse’s ‘The Dance’. The painting and the sabbat it represents capture the truth of pure being and the sometimes frenetic and sometimes graceful and always somehow wild and playful energy of the day.  The bisexuality or pansexuality of my primary characters, Danielle and Elare, reflects this energy as they find their way to each other.

Intellectually, I am fascinated by how much meaning May 1st holds: workers’ rights, fertility, protection of land and crops, and, yes, sex.  May Day – said three times – is a call for help.  In this story, I not only express each of those elements in its individuality, but I capture what those disparate elements have in common: a desire for peace, home, stability and the choices we make to realize that desire.

.

Stewards, Devas, Gods, and Queens

I.

To her left, a muscular blond cried, “May Day! May Day!” and dived for the volleyball.  He missed.  His knuckles and forearms scraped against the black soil.  The ball rolled outside of the makeshift court and onto the grassy field where laughing partners and spouses watched the play.

“I think you need one more,” laughed a lounging woman on the sidelines who held the man’s jacket across her legs.

To her right, Danielle noticed an old stone waterway winding its way into the woods.  Behind her, a multi-racial coalition of teenaged artists prepared the next morning’s picket signs.  Their skateboards and bikes littered the surrounding area.  Old black and white Haymarket photos adorned some; catchy phrases about workers’ rights, others.  She hoped the artists could spell.

Ahead, beyond the oak trees and elderberry brush blocking her view, Danielle heard the opening notes of the Wobble, an urban line dance.  A bold orange sun, dusky blue skies and temperatures in the high 60s marked the last day of April and the day before the 5th annual South Side International Workers’ Day rally!

Danielle conducted these 360 observations whenever she went to a new event or place.  She knew every square foot of the Dan Ryan woods, and, in fact, always visited her favorite place, the center of a triangular oak grove, when she arrived; however, attending the pre-rally warranted an observation.  On quieter visits, she rested in the grove’s energy and watched the skies.  This pre-rally celebration – noisy and festive – merited her observation since she would soon graduate with a J.D.  and a specialty in labor law.

Her mentor and crush, Alice, a successful, black lawyer of five years, believed the 360 observation offered immediate insight into the culture of potential litigants.  As a black woman and an aspiring lawyer, Danielle knew she couldn’t afford to miss a detail.  To defend her clients, she needed to know what they thought, and more to the point, why they would take a job and then join a union to strike against their employers.  After 2.75 years of analyzing legal cases and interviews, she still didn’t understand what Alice and her ex-boyfriend Don understood as fundamental to social justice and human rights.

Danielle had different antecedents.  Raised by her older sister after her parents’ death, Danielle knew the paucity of her social education when compared to her natural one; she understood ecosystems better than human nature.  A duneland child until she fell in love with these woods, Danielle had never known an altruistic sandpiper or a flattering pitcher plant.  Her biological family’s biblical and conservative argument that those who didn’t work shouldn’t eat made a natural sense.  Yet, seven years later, she still missed Don and his unnatural pursuit of social justice.  The break up after high school led to her pursuit of sociology in undergraduate at UIC and then, law at the University of Chicago and to a friendship and a maybe-one-day romance with Alice.

One night, at an outdoor cafe downtown, drunk and swaying in their seats to live music, Alice had taken Danielle’s hand, and Danielle had leaned forward to – finally – kiss.  Then, a homeless man interrupted and asked for $2.10 for bus fare to a shelter.  Danielle remembered hesitating, trying to decide between letting go of Alice’s hand and .  .  .  There really was no choice.  The manager approached and shoved the man away.  The man left, yelling out a slur made for over half the cafe’s customers.  In the end, Alice only smiled from across a table grown too wide and long between them and ordered water to prepare for the journey home.  That had been one year ago, and Danielle still hoped for more.

Leaving her grove determined to understand, Danielle found the agents of social justice before her contradictory and confusing.  Should she watch the protestors who acted like frat boys and danced to club songs? What about the artists who created sophisticated picket themes based on events that happened long before their birth? The young skateboarders knew all about labor movement traditions and sixties protest culture, but they couldn’t tell the difference between an oak tree and a locust.  Despite everything, the latter knowledge meant more to her.  More disconcerting, however, was their reaction to the sunset.  Nothing.  As in so many of her prior visits, the woods impressed her as a this-world Summerland; dusky sunlight kissed the maple and oak leaves, her grove held the elder’s spot amidst youth; the abandoned limestone aqueducts – a 1930s WPA erosion control effort – with flagstone walkways on either side wound deeper and deeper into the woods.  How could they see this and not, at least, pause or bow and worship?

Though not traditionally religious, Danielle recalled her prayers and how she had worshipped the dunes and now worshipped a far more ancient land, Blue Island, since finding it five years ago.  15,000 years ago, that land, popularly called Blue Island, was truly an island in the midst of Lake Chicago.  Over time, Lake Chicago evaporated, leaving behind the marshy wild onion-filled land that would be Chicago.  But, Blue Island had always been dry land, kissing the sky.  Danielle’s worship had thus turned from the ever fragile, infinitely rare and mysterious dunes of sand and sun to the stately elder oak woodlands of Blue Island, from Shango to Obatala, Osiris to Ra, Apollo to Zeus.

Every once in awhile, the woods acknowledged her worship: a spray of yellow and blue hepatica blossomed in her grove; Kerner blue butterflies led her hither and thither through the woods; she slept protected.  One lazy day, she fell asleep in her grove at noon and awoke at midnight.  None of her belongings had been touched, and she hadn’t been bothered.  One single lupine lay near her body; she took the flower home to dry.

Recalling that night turned her focus again to the woods and away from her observations, even though she remembered her hope for Alice, her unspoken attempts to redeem herself with Don.  She needed to understand her future clients.  Unbidden, Danielle imagined herself thirty years later at fifty-three: a fat, haggard, solid African-American elder of the people with a reputation for standing up for justice, another Dragon Lady, perhaps finally Alice’s equal and lover.  Would it be worth it?

I want to change the world and be Alice’s equal, but I also want to fall in love my way.  I want to live my life, but I also believe in planting a seed for the next generation.  Danielle sighed.  Observing these millennial protesters – young, rash, loud, dreamy, short-sighted, passionate – and their older leaders who hadn’t forgotten the sixties, and their late twenty-something and thirty-something supporters who had always yearned for the sixties struck her as strange and alienating when her heart yearned for depth and intimacy.  Still, maybe, instead of Alice, I could fall in love with one of them, she thought, staring at one of the artists’ leader – a must-be 27 or 28 year old mahogany-skinned wiry man standing near the completed signs and directing the production.  She made a note to interview him.

Looking around for other prospective interviewees, Danielle glimpsed a blue and yellow haze out of the corner of her eye.  The colors gave her pause; the smell of wildflowers and meadows overpowered her amidst spilt beer and pungent Mary Jane.  What is that? Danielle thought, turning to pin the source and bumping into a tan woman with locs and green eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Danielle said, ever polite, but still looking for the source of that smell.

“I didn’t mind,” the woman smiled, trying to catch Danielle’s eye.  “Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes.  I mean, no.  I just thought I saw,” Danielle drifted off, again glimpsing the source – a woman, the color of fertile earth, in a yellow dress, drifting along the stone waterway into the woods, who smiled in Danielle’s direction.

“You saw?”

“Nothing, really.  Excuse me.” Though she felt rude walking off, Danielle couldn’t resist.  She jogged into the forest, meeting the sunset.  Whoever that was had to be met, somehow.

II.

As the tall, slender cocoa-skinned woman approached, Elare shimmered, knowing that a five-year hunt had reached its end.  Elare had chased the woman, Danielle, almost from the first time Danielle entered Blue Island, Elare’s ancient home and jurisdiction.  Elare needed a new steward.

The old stewards, David and Anna, had been moved ten years before to an assisted living community in Florida by their well-meaning children and had promptly died.  Elare didn’t know if David remembered that part of his pledge: that the stewardship granted immortality so long as one remained a steward.  If one sought it, one could even retain the blessing of a youthful appearance.  David and Anna never sought that, so Elare supposed they knew that giving up the stewardship and leaving the land meant death.  Perhaps they simply wanted to accept the cycle of life as they had long accepted and tended the cycle of seasons, the turning of the wheel.

Elare remembered seducing David – a man that time – as he laid the flagstones with his WPA crewmates.  David had not been a hard sell; almost immediately he accepted Elare’s call.  He and Anna took care of the land with grace and love.  David kept the Great Rites with Elare year after year.  Anna sought and won legal preservation status for the woods.  Their deaths created a need for a steward to replace David, and, Elare thought, for a lover to replace Anna; the years without her had been one long harsh winter.  This time, as for many ages before David, the steward would also be her lover.  And so Elare sought Danielle.

Compared to David, Danielle was oblivious.  Time after time, Elare sought Danielle’s attention with flower bouquets and butterflies and all the old lures.  But Danielle prioritized the modern: work, productivity, school, labor, and law.  Venturing from the isle, Elare saw Danielle turn down dates and evenings out to perfect papers or prepare for briefs or study for exams or apply for internships.  Then, Danielle worked out her frustrations on treadmills or with junk food in front of a TV in a studio with bare walls and worn linoleum floors.

And yet, the woods upon the elder isle had always calmed Danielle whenever she visited.  Elare remembered the night when Danielle had fallen asleep in the grove.  As deva of Blue Island, Elare had ordered the oak dryads to keep her asleep long past the time Danielle should have awakened And yet, Danielle had not heard the call in her dream that night or even remembered her dream.  Failing to seduce Danielle that night, Elare feared the eventual fall of the woods to development, to the modern, to erosion.  Yet, the dryads swore that Danielle would return of her own will when the time was right.  And so it is, Elare thought, the May Queen has finally come.

Perched at the top of a tall oak further down the path, Elare threw a pebble, which banged against the flagstones.  She knew Danielle would hear the sound, see her on the oak, and follow.  And, so it was.

III.

Further and further into the woods they went.  Danielle noticed that she could no longer hear any music or laughing, and much darkness lay between her and the protestors’ bonfires, but the woman in the yellow dress clouded her mind with goldenrods and asters and lazy afternoons in wildflower meadows and sunlight and sunlight and sunlight.

Soon, Danielle stood at a meadow’s edge, one she thought she recognized from a dream.  The woman – irresistible to Danielle now – stood tall as a maypole in the center and held out her hands to Danielle.  Danielle forgot her crush on Alice, her pain at losing Don, any thought of law or future.  And yet, Danielle hesitated, somehow knowing a step forward meant choosing whatever this woman held in store for her.  Then, Danielle heard, “Come!”

Step by step, Danielle walked to the woman who stepped backward for each of Danielle’s steps forward.  The walk stretched to an impossible number of hours until Danielle stood before a new threshold – a glaze of light behind which stood the woman.  Having come so far, Danielle did not hesitate again.  She crossed the threshold and fell into the woman’s arms.

IV.

Danielle heard the drums and the flutes first before the flames warmed her and her own limbs moved in unfamiliar patterns.  Naked, Danielle danced with other women and girls before the bonfire.  Around and around they danced.  Sometimes holding hands and dragging each other along, the women had no breath to sing.  They danced.  The woman – she now knew to call Elare – stood not among the other women, but among the watchers.  The watchers held the space, encircling the dancing women.  Danielle met Elare’s eyes and knew that this dance would not end until some change had been accomplished.  A death must happen.  A life must be born.  Something within her, within these women, would end.  Perhaps, Danielle thought, I will die, and, if so, my death would serve the wheel.  Mote it be so.  Meanwhile, the watchers chanted of the blood and the dance and the fire and the blood and the dance and the fire and the blood and the dance and the fire that made the wheel turn and the earth grown and the life born that made the wheel turn and the earth grown and the life born that made the wheel turn and the earth grown and the life born.

At one point, Danielle left her body, and, above it all, saw her body being dragged along by the other women.  She herself chased Elare through the drummers and under the arms of the dancers, around and around the fire.  Elare teased her, let Danielle catch her and steal a kiss, escaped.  The other watchers laughed.  Somewhere along the way, they fitted Danielle with horns, but she did not notice until the music stopped, and Danielle – the Horned God – faced her queen, Elare, in the circle.  Her queen said, “Take care of me!” and Danielle said “Yes!” Before the fire, they sealed the vow of stewardship with the Great Rite and then, rising, Elare held Danielle’s hand as they stepped together into the fire.

V.

As the hunter becomes the hunted, so the seducer becomes the seduced, thought Elare.  It was meet to reverse the chasing, for it is the God who tends the green and the goddess who feeds the soil.  For five years, Elare had chased Danielle, knowing Danielle to be Blue Island’s new steward.  Even when no immediate situations – developers or dumping – threaten, every foot of blessed earth requires a steward loyal to the land’s deva.

David had been the first male steward of Blue Island, an experiment.  Elare now knew a male steward could not establish a lineage of stewards; in this, David was impotent.  It had to be a woman, who established a lineage of stewards from the first daughters.  Though the stewardship was not driven by biology, biology would have its part.  The steward’s love – sacred energy and life’s blood – had to be sown into the land through the Great Rite: Love for Love, Human for Earth, Life for Life, Light for Light.  The Great Rite, repeated annually, kept Blue Island alive.  Danielle’s first child – a girl – would establish the first in a new line of stewards.  Blessed be the child, Lady Jane.  Blessed be.  What has been sown will be reaped.

VI.

At dawn, he found Danielle, asleep and wet from the grove’s dew.  Todd had searched for her all night ever since he noticed Danielle entering the woods alone.  At first sight, he loved her.  Danielle was the queen he had been searching for all his life and not always in the right places.  Seeing her jog away, Todd forgot his purpose.  Rushing through last minute questions from the young artists, Todd finally excused himself to see what drove her.  Of course, by then, she had long disappeared, and it was night.  Entering the woods, he remembered what his father had trained him to be when he was young – a tracker.

Before his time as an organizer or an ex-convict or a high school troublemaker, Todd had been a child taught and loved in that order by a father more in love with nature and the soil and the old ways than his own family.  From the time he could walk and talk and think, Todd learned the ways of a tracker: how to tell one tree from another by examining the leaves and the bark, how to note different animal tracks, how to trail another human’s movement through woodlands.  He had spent a year and a day in the dunes as a final training shortly after completing a deserved prison sentence.  His father had taught him well.

From that training, Todd learned to love the woods as he now loved Danielle: unconditionally, sometimes like an errant daughter, sometimes like his tired mother who raised him alone, sometimes like the grandmother he never knew.  He loved her in abundance and in rest and in barrenness.  Even at night, he noted the broken branches, the traces of his love’s steps and stumbles along the walkway and then her movement along a trail, much older than the aqueducts.

The trail he followed held new air and only native plants – quite unlike any modern wood.  This, he thought, is holy, virginal ground.  The woods had opened to him like the dunes.  But why? The woodland’s sounds and whispers drew him further down the trail, intriguing and sometimes resisting him.  Again he wondered, But why? Several times he retraced his steps because the sounds led him in a circle or to impenetrable brush or away to more modern parts, and he knew somehow that Danielle had left the modern entirely.  At dawn, the trail opened and let him in.  He found Danielle in a secret meadow amidst the wildflowers.

Walking toward Danielle, Todd died to the old labels: organizer, loser, convict.  Something in the air rechristened him: Prince Charming, the Green Man, the Horned God.  The old tales his father told him over campfires became as real as the sunlight that robed his queen in gold.

Kneeling, he kissed her.

VII.

Not Elare, thought Danielle upon awakening.  Though the man’s finely chiseled cheekbones and penetrating, yet warm brown eyes blessed her vision, Danielle wept.  The night of love and dance, promises and seduction and climax made her senses raw, her mind expansive, and all she longed to see was her queen Elare’s face.  For a long time, she lay still and wept.  The man held her and sometimes rocked her, but otherwise kept his silence.  After awhile, she opened her eyes and noticed the meadow still there and the man still holding her.  She remembered everything.  This is my land; I serve and love Elare.  But what next? Why is this man here?

Not once did the man ask questions.  Not once did Danielle venture to explain.  Together, they walked back to the protesters who were just waking up themselves, ready to march on May Day.  The man led her through the trails with his hand at her elbow any time she seemed to stumble.  With every step, Danielle hoped to glimpse a yellow dress or smell wildflowers or hear a call to return.  But, everything led forward.  The honey yellow of dawn’s sunshine coating all living beings yielded to the darker damp green of morning leaves and moist brown bark; her home smelled of black fertile soil.

On the edge of modernity, Danielle asked his name.

VIII.

“Where you been, doc?” called one of the artists, noticing Todd and Danielle exiting the woods.

“Mind your business, Tony!” Todd called, “Where are those posters by the way? Did you keep them dry?”

“In the tent.  We’re ready to go, just waiting for you, man! And your lady friend.  .  .”

Arguing with Tony, Todd swore that he had glanced for just a moment into the tent.  But when he returned, Danielle was gone.

He saw her enter the first bus that would transport the protestors to downtown Chicago.

He would not lose her.  He gave chase.

IX.

In a trance, Danielle stumbled along and entered the bus.  What exactly was she here to do? Where was Elare? On the bus, she smelled her own filth and saw dirt on her arms and her nails.  She knew why she looked that way, but everyone else had dirt on their bodies and musky smells too.  She saw no need for embarrassment or shame.  The bus filled with international students from a U.K.  socialist organization and pulled away.  They chanted “Flags, Flax, Fodder, Frigg” over and over with occasional overlapping breaks into labor songs.  One gallant protester – dark haired and dark eyed – sat with her, put his arm around her, and laid her head on his shoulder.  Drifting off to sleep, she saw the man, Todd, he had told her, striding toward the bus, but the bus moved away.

X.

For a second, Todd’s mind clouded red when he saw Danielle’s head resting on another man’s shoulder.  But the bus carrying her pulled away just as he came within 100 ft.  Enraged, he charged onto the bus right behind Danielle’s and took over the chanting.  On this bus, the younger college kids wanted to “fight the powers that be”.  All they had was rage, incoherent, but lyrical and moving.  That their rage moved toward death and destruction, baseball bats to heads, slashed tires, and broken windows was of no account to Todd.  He channeled his rage – as he always did these days – into directing theirs, making it not only powerful, but beautiful: houses built for the poor, farms enough to feed the hungry, fresh water, birch trees.  May this work of transformation, thought Todd, make a world where every lover finds his mate, and my love returns to me.

XI.

She napped on the 45 minute ride to downtown.  Danielle dreamed of her own good home and of good clothes, good food, and good sex.  She saw herself nursing her child and singing a lullaby, and a man’s hand – not Elare’s – on her shoulder.  Though she knew the baby belonged to the Great Rite and to Elare somehow, she also knew this man would be the baby’s father and her mate.  Natural curiosity led her to turn and try to see her husband’s face, but then she saw yellow and smelled wildflowers, and her desire led her to seek Elare’s face once again.

Again, this time in the dream, Danielle stood at the meadow’s edge, and Elare stood once again in the center, holding a man’s hand and beckoning her.  Danielle went to Elare.  This would not be a repeat of last night, but a new turn to the dance.  At the center, the man – Todd, he had told her – held out his hand for her, and Danielle took it as Elare bade her do.

Then, Elare presided, with sunlight bursting from and through her yellow dress, over the handfasting and blessed them.  Elare kissed them both and spoke though Danielle couldn’t quite make out the words.  The bus had stopped, and her gallant seatmate was gently shaking her awake.
“We’re here, ma’am! It’s time.”

XII.

Among the tall skyscrapers, built by workers’ hands, the protestors marched and chanted.  Danielle marched and chanted with them, still half remembering the night before and the morning’s dream.  She talked with students and bankers and secretaries and construction workers and the unemployed throughout the day.  “Why are you here?” she asked, and the more she asked, the more she understood.  The immigrants wanted to stay and be citizens.  The blue-collar workers wanted fair wages and safer working conditions.  The students wanted to know that the world would be safe for them to build a house and raise a family when they graduated no matter the amount of their loans.  Others wanted to raise minimum wage to a living wage.  Still others just wanted to be part of something important, something world-changing, and hoped this day would be the surprise Woodstock that every revolutionary desires.

In her mind, Danielle saw the night before and the morning’s dream blending into a collective dream of freedom and free love and good sex and peace on earth and music and babies and equality and, yes, a living wage, and food and flax and worker’s rights .  .  .and .  .  .  Elare always .  .  .

XIII

And then, Danielle found the artists who had designed all the picket signs.  They told her of how they had worked through the previous night’s celebrations to make them.  They told her of the man who had pulled them from the streets to channel their rage into something constructive and powerful like the WPA workers or the agitprop actors or .  .  .  the taggers, someone shouted, and some snickered at that, and others insisted on the new age.  They pointed her toward a tall man with hair, the texture of wool, and hands, the color of mahogany, and Danielle remembered those hands on her shoulder in the dream and around her at dawn, and she walked toward the man called Todd to see His face.

–

Jean Kari

works in her niche, writing and teaching writing, when she isn’t traveling with friends and family, playing cards, wandering the trails of the Indiana Dunes, planting tomatoes in Chicago, or laughing.

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