“I still don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, truthfully,” Emmons stated. “All I know is that I went into the woods as a normal kid. An angry—but normal—kid. And I got stuck there for years. When I came out, I thought I was going to be a fox forever. It was the only way to get out of his grasp back in the magic area. I was too big as a human. He had too much to aim at. As a fox, at least, I could dodge his arrows and jump faster.”
Dryden saw the blurred images in his memory. “Of course, yes.”
“And I obviously got out that way. But much farther along the circle. When I finally found you, you were asleep.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Emmons’s hands went to Dryden’s face, and he held his gaze. “You do not apologize. You survived. And I was wrong. I thought I would be a fox forever, which wasn’t as bad as I figured, but then I thought hard enough and changed. By myself.”
Dryden grinned. “The forest owed you one, I suppose.”
Emmons smiled right back, the joy on his face palpable. “At first I thought it was you. Maybe, if you had been thinking of me like I wanted….”
“Always. I was always thinking of you, Emmons. Even when I thought you were a dream.”
Emmons squeezed Dryden’s hand. “Well, thank you. After I realized I could control this power, though, I tried to track you down. As both fox and man, though with the lack of clothing thing, it was easier to become a fox. I found you—I found your village first, which is why Alice and I ended up being close. She was easy to morph into, but I’m losing the thread of the story, aren’t I right now?”
Dryden shook his head. “Well, maybe a little. But I want to hear it all, Emmons. You have no idea. We have time, right?”
Emmons held Dryden’s hands close to his face, kissing his knuckles. “We have all the time we need.”
EMMONS TALKED for what felt like hours. At first they walked to keep warm in the night air, then decided to double back to Dryden’s place, grab clothing and blankets, and camp outside for the rest of the night. When Dryden realized how heavy his mother’s snores were, they both decided to risk staying in his house for now.
With Emmons in his bed, his room seemed so much bigger. Dryden had spent so much time here stuck in his own mind, limited and in pain. Now he was free—freer than he had been in a long time.
“I didn’t come for you right away because I needed to know when I was—as much as who I was now,” Emmons began. “I checked where I used to live, and the house was gone. But the marketplace, where my uncle Jeffrey used to sell herbs, was still there. Jeffrey was still there.”
“He’s your uncle?” Dryden asked, amazed. “Was it his wife who died in a fire?”
Emmons nodded. “Yes, that was my father’s sister. Jeffrey is related to me through marriage, but after the death, I never spent much time with him. I feel bad about that now. First my father and his wife died, then me. Jeffrey had no one left.”
Dryden thought of the sadness Jeffrey had on his face earlier that day. But he asked for a piece of jewelry, Dryden remembered. “What about your sister? Natasha? Have you found her yet?”
“No. But I’ve been too scared to look, truthfully.”
“You can’t be. More than ever, they need you now.”
“But I’ve been gone a long, long time. It’s not fair.”
“How long?”
“Inside the magic circle it felt like a lifetime,” Emmons said, his voice soft. “But it was about five years.”
Dryden let out a long whistle. Compared to his mother’s age, five years was only a small fraction of her life. But for the two of them, it was at least a quarter of their time alive. Emmons had left when he was twenty, and now he was twenty-five. More people had left and others had died while he had been gone. And his family, already unaccepting of who he loved, would always be hard to reach.
“So I just wandered around as a fox for a long time,” Emmons admitted. “I wanted to find you, but you….”
“I stayed inside. I thought you were gone, so there was no reason for me to leave.” Before Dryden could become any sadder, he felt Emmons’s lips on him. They kissed longer this time, now with the heat of their bodies keeping them warm.
“I love you,” Dryden said as Emmons pulled away.
“I know you do. But I was worried that with time, like everything else, even that fact would change.” Emmons’s somber expression changed. “Then I went to the marketplace, and I saw you taking requests. I heard what you said to Jeffrey. I had been sitting in his booth as a fox, hiding from him whenever he came to look for herbs. Then I knew you were there, and you were fine. And….”
“And that I still loved you. And wanted you back.”
Dryden kissed Emmons this time. He moved his hands against Emmons’s waist, his strong stomach, and then under his shirt. He was so warm, so real. Up close again, Dryden could feel the scar that Emmons had on his face from Otto. They both had that scar, though in different places. This was real, Dryden knew for sure, and even better, maybe, Emmons was still magic.
“It’s odd,” Emmons said, pulling away. “That I can still change. Maybe one day it will go away.”
“Or it will stay. Just because you like something doesn’t mean you have to prepare to let it go.”
Emmons ran his hand along Dryden’s neck, into his hair, and then kissed him again. Dryden could feel Emmons grow hard next to him. He was wearing some of Dryden’s clothing to cover himself, but now Dryden wanted nothing more than to take them off again. He wrapped his hands around Emmons’s waist and pressed into him, urging and coaxing.
“Yes?” Emmons asked, between nibbles and small bites of their kiss. “Do you want anything?”
“You,” Dryden said. “All of you.”
“But my story’s not done yet.”
“I will get the ending soon, I promise,” Dryden said, kissing him with an open mouth. Or, Dryden thought in the back of his mind, I will never get the ending, because it will never end. He wondered, vaguely, if he still had magic as part of himself in the same way that Emmons did now. Had surviving the riddles given Dryden a gift, too? A gift other than Emmons, of course. For now, Dryden decided he didn’t need to know for sure if the woods had given him anything, because what he held in his hands and in his bed was good enough.
Soon, Emmons flipped Dryden over on the bed and took his clothing off. His mouth lingered by his nipples, sucking each one before his tongue traced his collarbones. When there was no threat from the outside world, Emmons opened up easily. Dryden followed.
“I want you,” Emmons said, nudging Dryden’s neck and nibbling on his lobe. His hands moved down between his legs, tugging on his cock, before he pressed against his most sensitive parts.
“Yes,” Dryden sighed. He kissed him over and over, whispering yes between each breath. “But we have to be quiet,” he added. “We can’t wake my mother up.”
Emmons laughed into Dryden’s side. “We need to move, you know. Find our own cabin to live in.”
“And keep people away from the woods? Protect others?”
Emmons pulled back, staring at Dryden. Emmons’s fingers moved over Dryden’s scar once again, and Dryden did the same to his.
“Yes. We can do that. But first….” Emmons kissed him: a tiny seal of approval, a final hope for the future. Dryden opened his mouth when Emmons licked his lips, then pressed their bodies closer as the kiss deepened. Emmons reached down to Dryden’s waist, grazing his fingers along his skin, before he kissed his way down to Dryden’s navel, then his cock. Dryden let out a low moan, then whipped his hand toward his lips to cover up the sound.
“Sorry,” Dryden murmured. “I should take my own advice to be quiet.”
“It’s fine,” Emmons said, replacing his hands where his mouth used to be. He rocked back and forth slowly, his eyes lingering on Dryden. “What’s the worst that could happen? She comes in, sees us, but then I turned myself into a fox! Or a butterfly, or even a tiny, tiny li
ttle mouse and hide away until you’re ready for me.”
Dryden pulled Emmons up to him again, a laugh on his breath. “My fox,” he said between embraces. “I want you to be a fox. My silly, stupid fox.”
“All right. That’s a deal.” With another quick kiss, Emmons smiled and went down again.
Author’s Note
I’d like to say thank you to the many professors and other writers who better helped me understand the complex and nuanced nature of fairy tales: Jack Zipes, Joanne Findon, Gordon Johnston, Bruno Bettelheim, and Angela Carter. I devoured these authors, and if you also enjoy fairy tales, you should as well.
I also owe a great deal of debt to Sir Walter Raleigh for the weight of smoke riddle. Raleigh was an English landed gentleman who was credited with popularizing tobacco in England. One day, while smoking in front of the Queen, he wagered that he could tell the weight of smoke. After finishing his pipe, Raleigh did what Dryden does in the story, and weighed the ashes to tell the difference. The Queen was much kinder than Otto in the story, however; she paid Walter Raleigh the wager in full.
The story of Stone Soup is a folktale that goes back until 1548, and the knights and knaves is a common logic problem that uses abstract math to solve it. Finally, Otto’s treelike transformation is adapted from the Scandinavian Skogsråns, who are women that seduce hunters, eventually turning them hollow. I really enjoyed researching for this novel and hope my adaptation of these ideas does the lore justice.
FRANCIS GIDEON is a writer of m/m romance, but he also dabbles in mystery, fantasy, historical, and paranormal fiction. He likes to stay up late, drink too much coffee, and read too many comic books. He credits music, especially the artists Patti Smith, Frank Iero, Gerard Way, Florence + the Machine, and The Pixies as his main sources of inspiration, but the lists grows every day. Since age twelve, he’s been trying to figure out what genre is best suited for a strange, quiet kid like him and so far, he’s happy to be where he’s ended up.
When not writing fiction, Francis teaches college English classes while he studies for his PhD. He has published several nonfiction and critical articles on everything from the Canadian poet and artist P.K. Page, transgender identity in the YouTube community, using fanfiction as a teaching tool, and character deaths in the TV show Hannibal. Those are all under different his “real” name, though. He writes his novels using his middle name, Francis, so that his students don’t google him and ask too many questions.
In the past, he used to own at least three cats but due to allergies, now can only own a betta fish named Mike. Both Francis and his partner live in Canada, where they often disagree about TV shows and make really bad puns. Most of Francis’s novels are dedicated to his partner because he tolerates Francis’s long hours spent locked away without contact. Also, Francis’s is a hopeless romantic at heart, in case you hadn’t already figured that out.
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Fearful Symmetry
© 2015 Francis Gideon.
Cover Art
© 2015 Brooke Albrecht.
http://brookealbrechtstudio.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63476-635-7
First Edition October 2015
Printed in the United States of America
Fearful Symmetry Page 17