Magical Encounters

by Jean Roberta

Anthropomorphic animals in fantasy stories allow human readers to imagine inter-species romances that aren’t exactly bestiality, since animals who behave and speak like humans are not part of the real world.

My new collection of stories, Spring Fever and Other Sapphic Encounters, includes several new and reprinted fantasy stories. My story “Madame Blanche” is a version of “The White Cat” by Countess d’Aulnoy (originally written in French in the 1600s), and it first appeared in Rumpledsilksheets: Lesbian Fairy Tales from Ravenous Romance press. Both main characters feel they are under evil spells. Madame Blanche, the lady of a mysterious castle, must live in the form of a cat, along with all her courtiers.



“Prince Val,” as she calls herself, was born female but believes she was meant to be a man. Can each of them morph into her (or his) true form? As you could probably guess, love is the key.

Note that this story is romance, not erotica. It doesn’t get more explicit than this:

"Blanche had large eyes as green as emeralds, which she would fix on her guest whenever she spoke. The gaze of the little cat made Val feel as though her very thoughts were heard and accepted. She hoped Lady Blanche could not guess what lay under her manly attire.

After luncheon, all the cats and their human visitor mounted wooden horses in the stable yard, and galloped to a place where rats were as numerous as stars in the night sky. What a hunt it was! Val had brought her bow and arrows with her, and she fired at the prey while her feline companions leapt from their mounts to attack the biggest rats with teeth and claws. Some of the rats fought fiercely enough to injure their attackers, and then the wounded cat-courtiers jumped back onto their wooden horses to return to the castle where a cat-physician awaited.

And so Val spent many days in the delightful company of Lady Blanche and her companions, who grew accustomed to the human in their midst. During court balls, Val danced with the little cat in her arms to compensate for the great difference in their heights.

When Lady Blanche needed rest, as she often did during the day, she sought out Val and curled up on her lap. Val learned that her furry companion welcomed Val’s touch. Blanche often bumped Val’s hand to show that she wished to have her ears rubbed or to be scratched under the chin, and when Val stroked her back, she shivered in ecstasy. As the lady cat's eyes closed and she purred contentedly, the warmth of her little body would permeate Val’s trousers and awaken her hidden womanhood, including the button of flesh that so longed to be touched.

In short, Val fell in love in a way she found more surprising than anything she could imagine. "Lady," she told her hostess one day, "I don't know how this could be, but I love you so much that I wish I could marry you. Alas! If you cannot become a woman or tell me how to change your form, could you not ask the one who bewitched you to change me into a handsome tom-cat?"

The answer was like an arrow piercing Val’s heart. 'No, my love.'

That night, she could not sleep comfortably, even on a bed of goose-feather mattresses. Emerging from her bedchamber in the dark, she heard the quiet click of little claws on marble floors. Val followed stealthily, following the sound of cat-paws to a small chamber at the top of a tower where moonlight poured through a round, uncovered window. The little cat’s white fur gleamed in the watery light as she jumped from a table to an armoire to an old chair. She wore no clothes and seemed possessed by restless spirits. When she flung herself to the floor and crept along on her belly, singing in her own language, the Princess understood her condition. Lady Blanche was in heat. "
---------------


Another fantasy story, new to Spring Fever and Other Sapphic Encounters, also takes place in a castle. In this case, a visiting wizard named Sir Theobald has come to help Lady Elinor withstand a siege by sex-demons in the absence of the lady’s husband. The story is told by Lady Elinor’s companion, Margaret, who notices that the wizard has brought along his own manservant or apprentice, Robin, a man with goodly thighs. Two more servants, Joan the Cook and young Stephen, make up a group of half a dozen who are determined to raise sexual energy to resist intruders.

Lady Elinor says she will only mate with her own wedded lord, and the wizard tells her how to make this happen.

"When the door to the chamber was locked, Sir Theobald created a large circle on the uncovered floor with salt that he carried in a bag under his robe. 'This will have to do,' he told us, 'to control any spirits who may join us. My lady, a frosty window must serve as a scrying-glass. Stand as high as you can on a chair, and look into the frost on a window-pane. It is a world in miniature, and you must study it until you see your lord walking toward you through a crystal garden.'

Lady Elinor did as she was told. “I see him!” she exclaimed. 'He approaches!'



'Then we must all gather within the circle,' said the wizard, 'and you, my lady, must not let your lord’s image fade from your mind until each of us can see him as clearly as you do yourself.'

My lady lifted her skirt to step over the line of salt, and we all enjoyed the sight of her slender legs. 'Ah,' remarked Sir Theobald. 'No clothes are allowed within our circle of truth. We must all be skyclad.'

Joan began unlacing her gown, showing a deep valley between her large, rolling breasts. She paused, as though for modesty, but then I perceived that she was revealing herself in phases that resembled the acts of a play. After the debut of her breasts, she removed her cap and undid her golden hair, releasing it in waves down her back.

Stephen struggled to remove his clothes without taking his eyes off our lady or Joan. I placed my shoes near the door, then stood as close to the fire as I dared while pulling off layers of cloth and folding them into piles. I was sure my buttocks were reddening from the enchanting heat of the fire. I hoped that we would all kindle enough warmth of our own not to mind when the fire died down.

Stephen stared openly at my sturdy arms and hips, and I noted his strong preference for female flesh.

We six were soon an oddly–assorted group, as naked as lunatics or honest beasts.

'Hold hands,' commanded Sir Theobald, 'and don’t break the circle!' I clutched young Stephen’s hot, dewy palm with one hand, and my lady’s small, cool fingers with the other. The light from the windows declined like a receding tide.
'Hocus pocus penis maximus,' chanted the wiseman under his breath. 'Futuere amare vivere.'

Sir Lionel appeared in the center of our circle, and his expression showed bewilderment. His hair and beard were untrimmed and unwashed, and his skin shone with sweat beneath its coating of dust. He looked thinner than before and wore only a ragged linen shirt that showed his bare legs and his cock, which stood out proudly from its nest of greasy brown hair. The man smelled of woodsmoke and of earthier things.

'Wench?' he asked, looking at each of us until he came to his wife.

'Lionel, my love!' she screamed, as though in answer. She leaped into his arms and wrapped her legs about his waist. Without more ado, he guided his eager cock into her weeping cunt while she squirmed forward to accept it.
I felt as though we five were witnesses to a wedding night, but it was not a perfect union. The lord grunted as he thrust into her again and again. 'Ah-h-h.'

My lady leaned forward to rub her small breasts against her lord’s hairy chest as they galloped together. She looked into his eyes as though seeking something.

Sir Theobald’s cock looked full enough to burst, and I saw that Robin and Stephen were in the same state of readiness. Joan and I shifted from foot to foot, rubbing our thighs together.

The wizard moved behind Sir Lionel, and tore the shirt from his back; the cloth parted like a spiderweb when pierced by a knife. Then Sir Theobald licked one finger, and slid it slowly into our lord’s nether hole in time to his thrusts. 'My lord,' murmured Sir Theobald into his ear, 'where are you?'

I could see our lord’s strong buttocks clenching from the stimulation he was receiving, both fore and aft. He seemed unable to speak. He clutched his lady’s bottom with both hands, and pulled her tight against him in an agony of pleasure. He groaned and trembled, and it seemed clear that he was discharging inside her. Sir Theobald withdrew his finger, and backed away.

Tears spilled from Lady Elinor’s eyes and poured down her delicate face, now reddened with sorrow. She seemed unable to recognize the rutting plowman who held her, although she would not have parted from him.

'My lady,' admonished the wizard, 'calm yourself.'

'Lionel,' she whispered. 'do you not know me?'

'A fine house,' declared the lord, who seemed unaware that the house was his own. He gently pried his lady’s thighs from his hips, and set her on her bare feet.

Sir Theobald stood before our lord, took his shrinking cock in his hand, and squeezed it unmercifully. 'My lord!' he shouted.

'Ye gods of old!' shouted Sir Lionel. 'Am I dreaming?'

At last, I could catch a breath. Our lord seemed to be back in his own body, and present in every sense.
'If you were,' retorted Sir Theobald, 'you would not feel this.' He released the cock in his hand, stepped behind our lord, and smacked him smartly on the backside.

'Such unkindness,' groaned Sir Lionel, although he could not banish the smile from his face. 'Elinor, my love, you were not to venture into dangerous lands to find me.'

'The visitors’ parlor?' she retorted. 'How dare you?' she continued. Her still-unsatisfied arousal seemed transformed, by some alchemy, into rage. 'How dare you tell me how to behave as a proper wife?' She stared him in the face, and smacked his cheek with her little hand. He flinched, although probably not from pain.

He wrapped his strong arms about her. 'Please forgive me, Elinor. A wife is happier if she never sees her husband away from home.'

She leaned down and bit one of the arms that held her. He grunted, and let her go. 'You are in our house, Sir Fool, trapped in the circle of truth. I will be happier if you tell me what you truly desire, and all you have done since I saw you last.'

The lady stood like a straight white lily, and glowed like a torch. She appeared to grow taller as her lord bent his head in submission to her.

'That is a not a tale for delicate ears,' he warned her. 'My angel, I have no wish to lose your love.'

Glancing about me, I saw Robin’s thick red cock in Sir Theobald’s fist. There, at least, no love seemed likely to be lost on either side. As I watched, I saw some clear substance coating the hard cock and easing its movements as our wiseman stroked it faster and faster.

'Silence,' growled Sir Theobald, and Robin clenched his teeth as he strove to comply. It was not clear to me that the comely young man was the only one of us required to control himself. Joan openly cupped the golden curls below her belly, and I guessed that she hoped to insert a finger or three without attracting notice.

In a moment, I thought, we will all descend to our hands and knees like four-legged beasts, and reconfigure the circle by entering each other’s mouths, cunts, and back passages with fingers, cocks and whatever else would serve (half-melted candles?). The image in my mind aroused me so much that I could have reached a paroxysm without touching myself at all, but in the spirit of mutual consideration, I refrained. My cunt felt very wet.
--------------------------

In due course, Lady Elinor gets a chance to punish her lord for his debauchery with female sex-demons while he was away from her, but Sir Theobald reminds her that wise queens must not be hypocrites, and Sir Lionel has a right to know how Lady Elinor has amused herself with Margaret during the long winter months. Margaret realizes that Joan has admired her for a long time, while Stephen just wants to lose his virginity. In a land of enchantment, dreams can come true.

Fairy Tales

by Jean Roberta

The most recent book I've read is Red Caps: New Fairy Tales for Out of the Ordinary Readers by Steve Berman, newly released by his publishing company, Lethe Press. The version I received weeks ago was a PDF of the pre-publication, unedited manuscript, with some illustrations, and some spaces where illustrations would be placed later.

I’m still not sure whether I think the illustrations by various artists are a good idea. The sketches of teenage boys and fanciful imaginary beings capture a certain high-school ambience, but there is a delicate enchantment in the words themselves that lends itself better to imagination alone.

After Steve Berman’s young-adult fantasy novel, Vintage (about an openly-gay high-school boy in New Jersey who has a kind of romance with the ghost of a popular boy who died in the 1950s) received rave reviews in 2008, the author himself complained that he couldn’t repeat his success. This is a common fear among writers, since no one can rewrite the same book and still produce something new.

The current collection of stories is obviously not a repeat of Vintage. Berman doesn’t use formulas. What it shows, however, is his amazing ability to channel his inner teenager: to write with the skill of an adult writer in his prime about the larger-than life hopes, fears, giddy excitement and suicidal desperation of a person in that grey area between childhood and adulthood.

Very few writers seem able to do this well, possibly because (to draw on my own memories), adolescence combines intense emotions with a limited ability to express them. And spending most of each weekday in high school combines the experience of being institutionalized with opportunities to find a soul-mate.

The Red Caps in the title are an elusive band that are always off-stage, but the narrators of the stories collect souvenirs of them, such as red caps. The name also suggests a euphemistic term for pills which could cause hallucinations.

In “Most Likely,” the young, gay-male narrator discovers a magical high school yearbook in which school photos are accompanied by captions that express the real thoughts of students who would never write them down for others to see. This is a kind of hyper-realism which is both perfectly logical and literally unbelievable. In this story, the narrator is rescued from pouring rain by the object of his crush, who feels the same way about him. Without the magically intimate words, they probably wouldn’t have connected.

There is a droll humour in most of these stories that reaches a peak in “Gomorrahs of the Deep, a Musical Coming Someday to Off-Broadway.” Greg, the narrator, is lucky enough to have a boyfriend in school, and their relationship is tolerated by their classmates and teachers. However, Greg doesn’t want to push his luck. He is alarmed when his boyfriend announces his plan for a presentation in English class:

“’I’m going to do a whole presentation—not some sixth-grader’s book report—on the homoeroticism in Moby Dick.’

Greg recklessly tells him: 'You might as well sing it.'

Later, when Greg is walking home alone, "I soon heard my boyfriend’s car whining behind me. When he rolled down the window, music from the radio filled the air. Then he sang:

Get in the car. It’s cold. Don’t be so angry all the time.

I kept walking, but more slowly.

Get in the car. Don’t make me beg. Don’t make me rhyme.

I stopped and turned.

Don’t call me Ishmael.

‘I won’t.” he said. “Your name is Greg.’

I took a step forward, resting my hands on the open car window.
Tell me you won’t go through with this. Tell me that tomorrow will be sane.

He shook his head.

I can’t. I won’t. Don’t you see? That would go against my grain.

They’ll laugh at you and, if I stand by you, me as well.

What else does English class do than make our lives a hell?

It’s only Melville.”

This probably wouldn’t seem laugh-out-loud funny to every reader, but as an English instructor, I was charmed.

Two stories that are fantasy from beginning to end, and not necessarily about teenagers in a modern sense, are “Thimbleriggery and Fledglings” (a lesbian retelling of the Swan Lake story) and “Steeped in Debt to the Chimney Pots” (an ambitious, atmospheric tale about a hard-luck young man who falls in with bad company—the fairy folk—in Victorian London). These two stories are well worth reading, but they seem only marginally related to the stories about magic that arises from the ordeals of contemporary teenage life.

Altogether, this collection is greater than the sum of its parts. It will suck you in like a phantom lover or a dream that seems more real than your waking life. The storyteller’s magic still works.

Magic and Transformation

by Jean Roberta

When I was a child, I was given matching hard-cover illustrated volumes of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales and the stories of Hans Christian Anderson. I noticed that many of the traditional German fairy tales collected by the Grimms were indeed grim, featuring gruesome punishments for wrong-doing and even for naivete. Even still, they were more exciting than the sanitized Disney cartoon versions.

The stories of Hans Christian Anderson were more like Danish shortbread for Christmas: sweet rather than bloody. When I read "The Little Match-Girl" aloud to my two younger sisters, they both burst into tears.

The plots of fairy tales appeared in my dreams, even when I morphed into an adult. While pregnant with my first (only) child, I dreamed repeatedly of Rumplestiltskin, that little man with a strange name (like the family name I inherited) who could enable a maiden to spin straw into gold. Turning a fertilized egg into an actual baby with a golden-brown complexion seemed at least as magical as the magic trick int he story. I couldn't help wondering if the price for making a baby would be higher than I wanted to pay.

I always found the story of Rumpelstiltskin mysterious, as though something had been left out. What was the funny little man's interest in the peasant girl who was commanded to spin straw into gold? Why on earth would he demand her first-born child as payment?

All this was in my mind years ago, when a fairy-tale contest was announced on the Storytime list of the Erotic Readers & Writers Association. I wrote a suggestive (not sexually explicit) story named "Name-Finding," loosely based on the story of Rumpelstiltskin. It is about finding an identity, among other things.

This story rarely fits a call-for-submissions, so it is currently not available in any published form. It starts like this:


Welcome to my fireside, my dears. You might recognize the old story I am about to tell, though every storyteller tells it differently. It’s not a pleasant tale, but that is probably because it has come down to us from a dark time, much like our own. A whiff of brimstone was in this tale before I got to it, so please don’t blame the teller.
Once upon a time, an ambitious young man left the cottage where he lived with his parents and his fifteen brothers and sisters, and set forth to seek his fortune. The first person he met along the road was a priest. “My son,” said this holy man, “serving God is the greatest joy that man might know. Come with me and shun the temptations of this world.”
But the young man answered, “It is not for me, Father,” and continued on his way.
The next person that the young man met was a weaver and tailor who could make fine cloth and sturdy garments. “You seem lost, my son,” said the weaver in a kindly tone. “The only security a man might know,” he philosophized, “comes from the skill of his hands. Come with me and I will teach you to clothe the world. Learn well, and you will never lack bread.”
But the young man answered, “It is not for me, sir,” and parted from him at the next turning.
The third person that the young man met was a fine lady riding a fine horse. “Will you serve me, young man?” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “My husband is very old and very rich. He will pay you well if you are strong and able.”
“Gladly, my lady,” answered the young man. At once she dismounted and led the young man into a secret opening in the woods that she knew of so that he could mount and show her his riding skills. She was well pleased, and said that he would be her personal servant. She did not ask his name, but named him Ready.
Ready served the lady for a year and a day as he cherished his ambition: he planned to become her next lord and true owner of all the old lord’s demesne. Soon after Ready became head cook in the lady’s household, her husband fell from his chair at dinner, gasping and moaning. The lady had never seen him so lively, but alas, the lord died within the hour.
Seeing Opportunity at hand, Ready grasped it firmly along with one of the lady’s ivory mounds as she knelt by her husband’s body, pulling her bodice even lower than it was designed to be worn. “Marry me, ‘Titia,” he declared. “Now you will be truly mine.”
“Unhand me, low-born stud,” she responded. “Since you no longer know your place, you must leave this house at once. My fertile hills and shady valleys are not for the likes of you to command.”
So Ready departed in despair, still wearing the lady’s livery. Even his name was not his own, and so he set forth again to find his fortune one way or another.



I will post the rest in my blog on LiveJournal (http://www.jean-roberta.livejournal.com) so you can find out what happens next.

Off with the Fairies

by Giselle Renarde

I'm glad J.P. Bowie mentioned pantomime earlier this week. I can riff on that.

Because my Sweet talks about pantomimes once in a while.  Her take is that you can't really pull off panto the same way they could back in the day, because children's sense of humour is too sophisticated.  Used to be that the adults were the only ones laughing at the dirty jokes.  Now kids have enough exposure that they understand innuendo.

I don't know if that's true, but it's never the point of Sweet's story. She tells me about the seventies, when her kids were growing up and kids in general were still naive enough that pantomimes didn't raise parents' hackles.  Her daughter's drama group put on a pantomime one year, and asked if any of the dads would take on the Dame role. Sweet jumped at the opportunity.

So, I should probably mention that my girlfriend still identified as a man in the seventies.  She'd been cross-dressing secretly since childhood, but the word "transgender" wouldn't pop up on her radar until the 1990s.  Hearing that word for the first time, and learning its implications, would become a Eureka moment.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's stick with the seventies.

See, when Sweet performed in pantomime, that was the only time she got to be herself in public.  Sure, she was basically a joke, but she didn't care.  If the trade-off was that she had to be the butt of a joke in order to wear a skirt in public... well, she was willing to laugh along.

A lot has changed in the past... holy fuck, was the seventies forty years ago?  Anyway, my girlfriend identifies as a transsexual woman now (though she's still very closeted where her family's concerned) and she shies away from any behaviour that might call her gender into question.

Sweet's stories about the progression of her identity from cross-dresser to questioning to trans have fueled my fiction for years (with her enthusiastic blessing, of course).  It seems flighty for a grounded person like me to consider any other human my muse, but her history has certainly inspired a lot of my work.

I've dubbed November Transgender Fiction Month (and I am unanimous in this) because I'm re-releasing my huge backlist of trans and genderqueer erotic romances. (Four of them have been mysteriously "declined" by Kobo, but if you want to know more about that you can check out my blog.)

To bring this post back to the fairy realm, I'll mention two titles that showcase the breadth this genre can encompass:

A Wolf in Grandmother's Clothing is an erotic(ish) adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood story.  I say "erotic(ish)" because there's actually no sex in it.  It's a fetish story, a cross-dressing story assuming that Grandma was super-into BDSM gear.  Once she's inside the wolf (because he eats her, people! it's not dirty!), he can't suppress the woman's voice in his head, telling him to shave those legs and put on some leather.

On the flip side, there's another fairy story--actually, a story about fairies--Secrets of the Solstice Sacrifice, which is set long, long ago in a mythical Welsh village.  Trysta is a mixed-roots fairy with a "female problem" she hasn't fully disclosed to her supportive caru Bedwyn.  Her anatomy doesn't quite match her heart. Trysta's only

hope to transform her body lies with Professor Selyf, the solitary magical who falls instantly in love with her.  And it's a good thing they're both drawn to each other, because the only way route to transformation is a sexual sacrifice on the solstice...

My brain is shutting down at the moment, so instead of saying something deep and meaningful I'm just going to post an excerpt from Secrets of the Solstice Sacrifice:

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she ensnared him in a kiss the likes of which he’d never imagined. He felt her veiled passion coursing through his veins as his mouth melded with hers.

Their tongues fought and surged, one against the other. His whole body was so rapt with hers he could hardly breathe. As they kissed, he ran intrepid fingers through her silken hair and down her back. In turn, she held his cheeks and his neck, his back and his sides. When he grasped the firm flesh of her buttocks, Trysta wheezed and broke free.

The look in her eyes was indiscernible but for the temptation it aroused. He almost apologized for being so dreadfully forward before realizing it was she who’d kissed him.

Grabbing her wrists, he pulled her into his arms and carried forth the sweet embrace she’d abandoned. After a moment of brave indecision, she gave in to the kiss and melted in Selyf’s arms. His tongue wrangled hers until she broke away once more.

Pressing her soft lips to his ear, she whispered, “I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Neither have I,” he admitted. “You’ve aroused in me the sleeping serpent.”

At that turn of phrase, her body grew limp in his arms.

“Yes,” she said. “I know only too well what you mean.”

Once Upon A Time

By Lisabet Sarai

Do not believe what you hear of me. It was not to preserve my chastity that I was imprisoned here, in this amusingly phallic tower with its sealed entrance and single window. I have not been a virgin for years; even my father knows that. In the cesspit of hypocrisy that is his court, no one cares what goes on behind closed doors. Only appearances matter.

And appearances are what landed me here in this unorthodox prison. I'm confined to this aerie because despite all blandishments and threats, I refused to cut my hair.

In a society like ours, valuing external neatness and order above else, my wild auburn locks are an offense to public decency, or so my royal parents would like me to believe. My father's crown rests upon a bald pate, shaved daily. My mother and sisters wear pale helmets of curls that are clipped back whenever they grow beyond the earlobes. Every proper citizen plucks, trims, waxes and shaves to eliminate any hint of the hirsute.

Not I. I love my hair, not just the luxurious tresses that flow over my shoulders and down to the floor, but the rest, too: my unfashionably bushy eyebrows, the soft tufts gracing my armpits, the wiry tangle that hides my sex. My hair is a source of my power. My father suspects as much. An ancient prophecy says the kingdom shall one day be lost to a red-haired sorceress and he fears I am the fulfillment of that promise.

He need not worry. I care not for the sort of power he wields. All I want is freedom - to travel the world, to think for myself, to love whom I please. To my father, I am nothing but a bargaining chip in the game of alliances. For that role, my hair diminishes my worth - as do my forthright tongue and legendary temper. I'm pleased to note that I've successfully discouraged every suitor the king attempted to lure into taking me off his hands.

His ambitious majesty sent his minions to my room while I slept, to shear me by force. When one returned with a broken arm, the other soaked with blood from the scissors embedded in his chest, the king decided prison was the only way to deal with the threat posed by my independence. He spread the tale that the servants had been injured fighting off rapists. Under pretext of guarding his beloved daughter from ravishment, he locked me in this lofty turret and sealed the door from the outside.

*****

That's the start of my story “Shorn”, an erotic take on the tale of Rapunzel that appeared in Kristina Wright's anthology Lustfully Ever After: Fairy Tale Erotic Romance. My Rapunzel, as you may gather from this snippet, is no simpering princess languishing in her tower while awaiting her prince charming. She's more a kick ass outlaw, eager to rid herself of the constraints of her position. Oh, a prince does find her - a gentle, wounded soul who's as much an outcast as she is. And of course I suggest that they'll live happily ever after, because this was an erotic romance collection and because some people are under the illusion that fairy tales follow the same rules.

Not so. The original folk stories that we identify as “fairy tales” carried a thread of darkness and violence. The Brothers Grimm deserved their name. In the original fairy tales, evil sometimes prevails – and indeed, the evil might well reside within the hero or heroine as opposed to being externalized in some witch or ogre. Selfishness – stubbornness – laziness – petty cruelty – these are the sort of flaws that lead fairy tale characters to their sorry fates. Even when the protagonist triumphs, he or she is often wounded or diminished in some way. Consider the Little Mermaid, forced to renounce her beloved ocean and to live with the constant pain of walking upon two legs.

I like the original versions a good deal more than the sanitized Andrew Lang/Walt Disney treatments. I find them more honest.

Erotic authors have traded on the eternal popularity of these stories for a long time. An Amazon search in the Books category for “erotic fairy tales” yielded 1,189 results. Kristina's collection showed up on page 4 of 100 – not too bad, I guess. The top tales for erotic retelling seemed to be Beauty and the Beast (possibly my favorite due to its obvious BDSM echoes), Little Red Riding Hood (who doesn't have the hots for wolves?), Goldilocks (a natural for a group sex tale) and Snow White (likewise!). Alice in Wonderland shows up quite a lot (though I wouldn't categorize that as a fairy tale), as do Hansel and Gretel and Rumplestiltskin. There are renditions where both the prince and the princess are guys - stories with Cinderella dominating her wicked step mother - Hansel and Gretel getting it on together... you get the picture.

Although I can admire a skillful and arousing twist to an old plot, I'm more impressed by new stories crafted in the fairy tale tradition. Back in 2006, I contributed to an erotic fairy tale anthology edited by Sage Vivant and M. Christian entitled The Garden of the Perverse. I'm not sure my offering, “Cat's Eye”, really managed to capture the peculiar flavor and ethos of a fairy tale world. However, some of the other offerings in that book were incredible. In particular, I loved Remittance Girl's creepy and delicious “Pipe of Thorns” (which you'll also find in her Coming Together Presents volume). In fact her tale is not set in the domain of princesses and dragons, but in a city reminiscent of Victorian London. However, I found the sense of menace, of a dark fate made more or less inescapable by the protagonist's flaws, a perfect fit to my notion of what a fairy tale should be.

I should also mention Jean Roberta's excellent collection Obsession, which features several stories with fairy tale echoes, including a highly transgressive Hansel and Gretel yarn. Maybe she'll share a bit of one of those stories in her post next week!

Meanwhile, I guess I'll leave you with a bit of Cat's Eye, which seems to be the only other fairy tale I've written.

*****

Generally, the village people avoided Nimon. When he was a child, they used to call their own children inside, if he happened down their street. They would peer from behind half-closed doors and whisper among themselves. Now that he was a young man, they greeted him politely, but without warmth. They bought the marvelously clever carvings he hawked from door to door, utensils and ornaments, but no one invited him in to sit by the hearth and share a glass of cider.

With his tawny skin, jet hair and lithe body, he was a handsome man, and prosperous, too, by village standards. Nevertheless the village beauties never assailed him with flirtatious banter, the way that they did the other youths. They stood awkward and quiet, with eyes downcast, until he passed. No father had approached Grandma Moira, with whom he made his home, with offers of a dowry.

Simple people fear what they do not understand, and no one understood Nimon. The rumors had been repeated and embellished in the nineteen years since his birth. His mother Leileah, a fair virgin of good family, suddenly and inexplicably grew heavy with child. Disobeying her parents for the first time in her life, she refused to reveal the father. And when her time grew near, she shunned the attentions of the midwives, fleeing on her own to the forested hills. A week later she returned with her ebony-haired, green-eyed son.

The village folk, including Nimon's mother, all had hair the color of straw, eyes the color of sky. The babe was strange in other ways, too. He would stare at you for the longest time without blinking, his oval pupils huge and midnight black. His pudgy fingers were tipped with nails much longer and sharper than a normal baby's. He never cried.

After his birth, Leileah became as silent as her child. Her lovely flaxen hair grew long, tangled and unkempt. Her cornflower eyes sparked with madness. Within a month, she left her parents' home, moving into Grandma Moira's big, ramshackle house at the edge of the hills.

Her family pleaded for her to stay. Secretly, though, they were relieved to have their stranger of a daughter out from under their roof. It seemed natural for her to go to Moira, strange drawn to strange. No one saw much of Leileah or Nimon after that. The people normally didn't tend to bother Moira, unless they needed a healing draught for their cows, or a love potion.

When Nimon was two, the wasting sickness came to the village. Nimon's mother died early; her parents followed a few weeks later. Some folk said that Leileah was punished for taking a stranger to her bed, and her parents for rejecting her afterwards. But people always like to talk. In truth, many in the village died; were all of them transgressors?

Still, tales of Nimon's mysterious parentage were always popular around the winter hearth. The father was an Arab prince, some claimed, who had galloped by the village on his white stallion and ravished Leileah as she was working in the fields. Others said that he was the Lord of the Underworld, well-known for ruining innocent virgins and carrying them back to his subterranean kingdom. A forest demon, still others claimed.
Hadn't Leileah fled to woods to give birth? Didn't the child have animal eyes and claws? Then someone would laugh, and change the subject.

So Nimon grew to manhood, orphaned, raised by a wise woman whom most people called crazy, shunned by the village. For the most part, he didn't care what the people thought of him. He roamed the forest, slinking along trails that only he could see, bringing colored stones or wild herbs back to his adoptive mother. He ran through the fields, naked and glorying in his strength, laughing when the girls busy with the planting or the harvest blushed and looked away.

Some nights, though, as he lay on the ground staring up at a ripe moon, he felt a kind of emptiness come upon him. He didn't recall his mother's face, but he remembered her smell, the warm, musky smell of unwashed female skin. It seemed to engulf him on these nights, drowning out the fragrance of honeysuckle and fresh-cut hay. These nights his penis swelled up hard as the oak logs he used for his carving. Touching himself was simultaneously pain and pleasure. He grasped his erection with both hands, squeezing and pummeling his flesh, desperate to release the demons that seemed to be warring inside him.

He remembered the women in the fields, with their skirts tucked up above their knees and their bodices damp with sweat. He tried to imagine them without clothes. But the images of rounded limbs and rosy breasts kept slipping away. Instead he saw only a whirlwind, swirling shards of darkness that circled faster the closer he came to the climax.

*****

If you're interested, you can read the rest of the story on my website.

On Seeing Red

by Arinn Dembo

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived at the edge of the Wild Wood. She had a name, of course, but it has been forgotten, and nowadays we remember her by the cloak that her mother made for her, which was warm and woolen and red as blood.

All human languages have a word for “black” and “white”. In the beginning, quite literally, the Word divides the day from the night, the bright from the dark. But when those two words have been spoken, the first born child of creation and the first true color that will be named by humankind...is always Red.

Red is the color that blossoms at the moment that heat evolves into light. It is the color of the eldest stars in the universe, suns that linger for billions of years, wreathed in a corona of fitful flame. Red dwarves are the most frequently occurring stars in the universe, over seventy percent of all the solar masses that exist. Glowing softly in the void, the vast majority are invisible to the human eye and cannot be detected by any but the most advanced telescopes. Millions of them are scattered in the heavens above us, hidden like rubies in the room without light.

The human eye has evolved to see red. It is a gift of our lineage, a trick that lets us find the bright flush of the one ripe fruit in a cluster of unripe green, and distinguish the tender newly sprouted red leaves from their less nutritious elders. In the same stroke, the enhanced primate eye unmasks the tiger and the leopard, and every other creature that depends on mere patterns of light and shadow to conceal itself from view.

Seeing red is an ancient and very useful trick--but not all of us can do it. 7-8% of all human males are unable to distinguish red from green. Without help they are doomed to bite into the bitter fruit and miserably chew the leathery green leaves of life. Perhaps this is one of many reasons that women are the dominant gatherers, in cultures all over the world; carrying two copies of the X chromosome, they are less likely to carry the chromosomal defect that makes every berry bush and cluster of leaves a potentially fatal guessing game.

You cannot give red to a person who lacks the equipment to perceive it. I have often compared the knowledge of red to other types of perception that cannot be shared, explained or gifted to another. You cannot put the taste of the food you are chewing into another human being’s mouth. You can only say “I love cherries”, even when your friend demands to know how you can bear to eat something that looks like so many dark clots of blood. In much the same way, you can only say “I love women” when someone demands to know how you can stand making love to them.

You cannot give another person your sensual joys and desires; you also cannot give them your pain and your rage. You can try, of course. You can describe that shocking splash of pain across your face that comes when hard knuckles crash into tender lips. You can try to convey the explosion of salt and copper that follows when your own flesh splits on the unyielding stone of your teeth. But no matter what you say and how well you say it, the pain and the rage will still be yours. And some people will never understand the way you feel.

They cannot grok violence. They cannot see red.

Red is the herald of new life and the harbinger of mortality. She is the handmaiden of fire and the high priestess of passion. Red is what we are inside, and quite rightly afraid to let out. Red is the secret that serial killers search for, bent over the ruptured bodies of their victims and peering into the carnage like the ancient haruspex trying to read the liver of his sacrificial lamb.

They are looking for a truth that they’ve just chased away. The living blood goes cold and black, loses its red and thus its magic. They penetrate with the wrong instrument, and the mystery of life flees from them screaming. In the end they are none the wiser; they cannot see red for what it is. And above them the heavens are filled with invisible stars, hiding their red hearts like rubies in the black night of eternity.
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About the Author, Arinn Dembo:

Arinn Dembo has been a professional writer since 1991. Hundreds of her articles, interviews, essays and reviews of all popular media have appeared in print, web and broadcast formats over the past twenty years, in venues including The New York Review of Science Fiction, Cnet, Video Picks, On-line Music Review, Computer Gaming World, and Entertainment Tomorrow. Her award-winning short fiction and poetry have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Vancouver Courier, The Manitoba Humanist, H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, and many anthologies. She is currently the Lead Writer of Kerberos Productions, a video game development studio in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Dembo's full-length science fiction novel The Deacon's Tale was published by Kthonia Press in october 2011. Kthonia will also publish Monsoon, a collection of short fiction and poetry, in May 2012. Seeing Red, a collection of critical essays and fiction, will be released in June of the same year.