Love Wins

by David C. Dawson

  IN THE end, Aubergine descended from the tower via a combination spear-and-rope ladder and the hair landing cushion. The guards were only too happy to help, and readily agreed to escort Aubergine, the blonde lady—“Just call me Punzi; everybody does”—and Miss Persimmon’s students back to the castle in case any wandering assassins suddenly became unlost. The guards claimed they were doing it because Queen Prunella did not respect them as humans, although Aubergine suspected the fact that Miss Calendula kept smiling at them didn’t hurt anyone’s cause.

  “She’s really kind of down on men,” Punzi explained as they walked back through the woods. “And anything she deems ‘traditional womanhood.’ I mean, it’s great that she wants women to have power and respect, but then she doesn’t respect anyone’s individual choices. All I want to do is stay home and raise my three sets of twins”—Aubergine had already seen the full set of miniature portraits by this time—“and she’s all, like, you have to go back to school and get your degree! Your Miss Persimmon is great, by the way. I love her classes at the academy.”

  Miss Persimmon and Rex the coonhound trotted along on either side of Aubergine. The coonhound kept trying to lick her hand.

  “How do I get her to reverse the Transmogrification spell?” Aubergine asked.

  Punzi laughed. “I doubt she’ll just do it if you ask, since that would reverse it back on her. But if you get her big spellcasting ring away from her and scratch the diamond, it should reverse whatever was the last spell she did.”

  “Would you mind if I did?”

  “Would I mind if you turn my mom into a dog, you mean? Not too much. She actually might be happier as a dog for a while. I mean, he certainly was.” The coonhound started barking. Miss Persimmon growled at him.

  “Be polite, please, you two,” said Aubergine.

  “Do you want me to translate?” Miss Vervain asked, skipping to catch up with Aubergine and Punzi. “I speak Dog.”

  Aubergine stopped walking and regarded the dogs. “Well?”

  Rex gave a happy “woof” and licked her hand. Miss Persimmon, she could have sworn, raised one spaniel eyebrow and said nothing.

  “Just this one,” said Aubergine, and she let Rex lick her hand again.

  Rex launched into a series of short and long barks as they continued on their way out of the woods, guided by Miss Purslaine’s navigational skills. Miss Vervain translated as they went.

  “He’s saying… he’s very sorry. He wants you to be happy any way that you are… tail wag? Probably happy. He is very happy as a dog, and that was totally unforeseen, so who knows, right? I’m paraphrasing. And then something about bitches? That doesn’t seem appropriate.”

  “He means female dogs. I get it.” Aubergine plopped down on the path and patted her lap. Rex came closer and laid his head on her skirt, looking up at her with his expressive hound eyes. She scratched behind his ears and smiled. It wasn’t at all how she’d pictured any kind of reunion with her father, but he wasn’t dead and he didn’t abandon her on purpose and he still loved her, and none of that needed translation at all.

  They reached the castle around midday. Additions had been made since Aubergine last saw it. It looked more like a modern mansion now than an ancient keep. It didn’t look bad, actually. Certainly less drafty.

  The guards escorted them all the way up to the side gate and then took the students back to the academy. Aubergine, Punzi, the children, and the dogs—and the raggedy dog-walker—continued through the halls toward the courtyard, where, Punzi assured Aubergine, Queen Prunella would most likely be waiting. Along the way, a tall, broad blond man in glasses stepped out of the kitchen passageway and joined them.

  “Hey, babe, would you take the twins for a bit? Henna may have eaten some hair.” Punzi handed off the toddlers.

  “You got it. Nice to meet you, miss.” He waved to Aubergine, then ushered his daughters back the way he’d come with promises of fresh ginger cookies.

  “He’s so great with them,” said Punzi. “Neither one of us wanted to learn about management, which my mom found horrifying in me, and—actually, she really doesn’t pay much attention to Hatch. Kind of acts like he’s not there. Anyway, if you turn her into a dog, you’re going to take over the whole ruling business, right?”

  “Oh. Yes. Probably.”

  “Awesome. If you need advisers, I have, like, seven cousins who used to be birds. I’m sure they’d love to help out.”

  “That’s… thank you.” Aubergine’s head was already spinning. She figured if she simply agreed to things, other people would stop talking and she could sort out the rest of it later. Any minute now, she felt her mind would fry like it did after too many hours of sitting in the sun. All the details, all the people, new faces, and confusingly familiar bits of walls showing through new plaster….

  The courtyard was no longer a straw-floored gathering place for all the castle animals, but a brick-paved patio with statues in the corners and a fountain in the middle. Aubergine did not take the time to examine her feelings about this. She walked to the center of the courtyard, trailing both dogs, and climbed on the fountain rim.

  “Queen Prunella?” she called, her voice echoing slightly. “Queen Prunella, I’ve come to file a formal complaint!”

  A small man in a jester suit came scurrying out of the far-side corridor. He bent his head and presented a stack of paperwork and a pen.

  “Please fill out these forms in triplicate,” he mumbled quickly, eyes on the floor.

  “Mr. Chard?” Aubergine asked. “Mr. Chard, the steward?”

  The man looked up. “Princess? Your Highness!” He dropped the forms, pages scattering, and knelt before her on the bricks.

  “Please get up, Mr. Chard. Why are you wearing that? And… forms?” Aubergine bent and lifted a sheet. Close-written lines and little check-boxes littered the page.

  “The Queen insists that all male support staff wear these outfits,” said Mr. Chard, still addressing the floor.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It’s fine,” he assured her. “It makes getting dressed in the morning easier.”

  “Where is the queen, Mr. Chard? I need to see her.”

  “Up—upstairs. But I really wouldn’t if I were—”

  Aubergine had already gone.

  Her feet flew up the stairs—at least the stairs were in the same place—the sense of urgency building in her chest. It was too much, all too much; she felt she would fly apart, and she was the only one who could fix all this mess.

  A skittering of doggy toenails, and Miss Persimmon caught up to her on the stairs. Aubergine sat abruptly on the top step and caught the spaniel as she rocketed into her arms. She held her close and buried her face in Miss Persimmon’s fur, rocking gently. Miss Persimmon licked her ear.

  “Not again.” Queen Prunella sighed loudly behind them. “Isn’t that little lettuce man good for anything? Kale!”

  “It’s Chard, Your Majesty,” said Mr. Chard from the bottom of the stairs. “Kale is Mistress of Revels.”

  “Whatever, doesn’t matter. Come up here and take this girl and her dog down to the dungeon, and round up anyone else you see while you’re at it.”

  “No,” said Aubergine.

  “What?”

  “No.” She gently placed Miss Persimmon on the carpeted stair runner. “I’m not going back in another prison, and you are not looking after this country anymore. You aren’t being fair to people. Your own daughter wants to stay at home with her husband and children, and you tell her she can’t, which is just as bad as people saying that’s all a woman can do, and just as bad as locking me away for wanting something my father didn’t understand.”

  Aubergine walked forward and grasped Queen Prunella’s hand. “I heard about you all the time when I was growing up, as an example of how parents know best. But you don’t. No one does. No one can say what’s best for another person because they aren’t them. You just have to let them be and give everyone a fair shot at their happy endin
gs.”

  She slipped the diamond flower ring off Queen Prunella’s stunned and unresisting finger. “I’m really sorry,” she whispered.

  “What? What are you doing, girl? Give that back!” Queen Prunella lunged for her. Aubergine sank down to the carpet and scraped the diamond ring across her skirt, feeling the diamonds catch and scratch against each other.

  Queen Prunella disappeared.

  “I am so very sorry.” Aubergine was shaking now. She scratched the surface of the ring once, twice, across the diamond stars in her skirt, and felt a rush of air behind her and heard a joyous barking from her father in the courtyard.

  Miss Persimmon wrapped her strong human arms around her and let her turn so she could bury her face in the warm folds of Miss Persimmon’s robes.

  “I’m a hypocrite,” Aubergine sobbed.

  “Shhhh, my dear.”

  “I can’t, I can’t. It’s—there are too many things everywhere, so loud and people and—”

  “Shhhh. Hush, my dear. You’ll become used to it again, I promise. I will help you. You can do anything you wish to. Shhhh.” Miss Persimmon pressed kisses to Aubergine’s hair and rocked her gently at the top of the stairs.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Aubergine whispered, gulping down her sobs. “I have to have a whole life out here where it’s loud, and it’s going to go on for years, and I don’t know how.”

  “You don’t have to know,” Miss Persimmon said, stroking her back. “You don’t have to know what you’re doing the rest of your life. You just have to know what you’re doing right now.”

  Aubergine let the words sink in, the soft kisses to her hair and Miss Persimmon’s presence calming her down. She raised her head, and Miss Persimmon looked at her so gently, and with so much warmth and understanding, that she knew exactly what she was doing, right at that very moment, with no doubt at all.

  She was falling in love.

  Aubergine reached up, slipped Miss Persimmon’s glasses off, folded them carefully, and set them on the carpet. And then she kissed her. And Miss Persimmon kissed her back.

  NOWADAYS, IN the country of Terracotta, there lives a content and busy princess named Aubergine, in a large communal living space she shares with Punzi, her husband Hatch, an indeterminate number of children, and a variety of birdlike young men. There lives a coonhound and a poodle, who share a dog house and a contentious relationship that seems to suit them very well. There lives a witch, who is also a headmistress at the local academy. And when she goes on long trips, as she sometimes does, she always brings back a new book for her love, the Princess Aubergine. And when the world gets to be too much for them, as it sometimes does, they retire to the garden they made in the castle courtyard and read the books aloud to each other.

  And everyone lived happily ever after, after all.

  L.A. MERRILL is a tiny blonde woman who loves a good story. In any genre, from opera to sci-fi, she believes that stories are the best way to share, learn, escape, and grow. She has worked as a tour guide, assistant stage director, and spent one memorable summer as a camp counselor. After five years in vocal performance, production work, and arts education, she now writes full-time. Her work has appeared in Kansas City Voices magazine, on the YouTube series The Blank Scene, and online. Ms. Merrill is inspired by Sir Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Flannery O’Connor, and Maureen Johnson, and the list of her favorite authors is several miles long. An avid knitter, she has yet to follow a pattern and has made some interestingly shaped hats as a result. She lives with her family in the Midwest, where she can usually be found reading, writing, and making things up as she goes along.

  Follow her on Twitter for feminism and fangirling at @la_mer92.

  The Importance of Pride

  By Ravon Silvius

  College history professor Patrick Levine is looking for a subject for a research proposal when he discovers his granduncle’s journal. To his shock, not only was Uncle Marty gay, but he’d been at the Stonewall riot in 1969. Will learning more about his uncle’s history help Patrick face his own fears about coming out?

  THE STEADY thudding of runners’ sneakers on the treadmills above him was a counterpoint to the grunts and occasional bangs as someone dropped their weights. Patrick leaned back against the machine, sweaty after ten reps at a weight he was just getting used to. Sometimes he wasn’t sure why he bothered.

  A good distance away by the bench press, though, was the reason he was here every day. Timothy. His arms strained as he lifted the weight, and though it was dangerous, Patrick thought it was even more impressive that he did it without a spotter. Then again, Timothy—aka Professor McCree, tenured faculty in the biology department—was known for his risk-taking. Patrick had pegged him early on as a thrill seeker, made all the more obvious by his outgoing nature. At every interdepartmental meeting, Timothy was always on the lookout for new people to meet and talk to. He had been the first professor outside the humanities department to congratulate Patrick on his new position as a history professor. Most of the other professors in the sciences seemed to look down on the humanities, but not Timothy.

  “You done?” A gruff, bearded man asked, his voice wrenching Patrick away from checking out Timothy. The man’s black bandanna was decorated with tiny skulls.

  Patrick stood. “All yours.” He took a few steps away and sighed, dealing with the same internal debate he dealt with every day.

  Talk to him. Say hello. Ask him for coffee.

  Don’t. This is a rural area. You’re not even out yet.

  He’s hot. Talk to him!

  It could ruin your new career. You don’t even know if he’s gay.

  The last worry made Patrick turn to the exit. The risk was too high. If he really wanted to, he could talk to him tomorrow.

  He couldn’t help but realize, though, that he thought that every day.

  His car sputtered as he got in and pulled away from the gym, heading out onto the dusty road. He should get it repaired, but it was hard to shake the penny-pinching style that had gotten him through grad school and then his postdoctoral career. It was hard to imagine that he was a professor now, even if it was at a tiny school in the Midwest.

  And in one of the many states that allowed employment discrimination based on orientation. His old friends had told him not to go, to forget it. But it was work, and a way in to the cutthroat world of academia. They had even offered him small starting funds for a research project, although what history project he was expected to start here was still a mystery to Patrick.

  Of course, it wasn’t just work that had pulled him to this remote area. It was work and family. Patrick let out another sigh as he pulled in beside the old house, the long brush and weeds in the driveway threatening to tangle his tires.

  His granduncle. He had died alone, here in this dilapidated house, almost six months ago at only seventy-seven years old. And he had left the old place to Patrick.

  Gravel crunched under his feet, and the front door creaked when he opened it. Work never stopped. If he was going to live here, he had to clean it up, and he had been doing that every day after work, a little at a time. It was a good way to spend his time, he supposed. He had only been here two weeks, and he didn’t have much of a social life yet.

  The kitchen was mostly clean by now, only a few old boxes stacked by the door that led to the patio. It was time to start cleaning the study.

  The wooden door was warped, and he had to nudge it a few times, finally giving in and ramming it with his shoulder before it would open. He was greeted with the sight of a wooden desk stacked with folders and sheaves of paper and the scent of dust.

  Patrick sighed. He hadn’t known much about his uncle—only that he had been a writer. Or at least, an aspiring writer. He had written articles for local papers and made his living as a freelancer, but he remembered his father complaining about Uncle Marty’s constant attempts to write fiction novels that no one would buy. He wondered if some of the papers filling the room were them.


  He began lifting up stacks of paper but stopped before taking the first stack to the dumpster. It was another person’s work, his granduncle’s work. It felt wrong to throw it out.

  He placed the stack of papers back on the desk, a few words catching his eye. It looked like a murder mystery, complete with a dark and stormy night. Patrick grinned.

  Maybe he could store them instead. He picked up the stack again, the weight unwieldy, this time heading to the basement. Who knows—maybe one day he could type up the writing, and Uncle Marty really could be a published author, just posthumously.

  The basement was dim, the lighting poor, but Patrick found a spot in the corner to place the papers. Then a small, torn page caught his eye as it slipped out from the stack and hit the floor with a light sound.

  Patrick picked it up, peering at it in the dim light. His uncle’s spidery handwriting caught his eye.

  They tried to take over our inn, our place. Those damn pigs. They got what was coming to them.

  Patrick blinked. This didn’t look like fiction—it was like a journal entry, the paper obviously torn from a larger bound book. He almost put it back, unwilling to pry into his uncle’s private life, but something urged him to keep reading.

  It started with the woman. I wish I knew her name. They had raided us again, the same old bullshit. Line up, show your IDs, dragging all the transvestites to the back so they could arrest the men in drag. Typical pigs. This time, though, when they dragged us out, she fought! Cursing and screaming like a real New Yorker. It was when she yelled “why don’t you guys do something?” that we went and did something.

  I wasn’t going to move, but another man, a guy my age who was a real looker—muscle shirt and great shoulders—tapped me on the shoulder. “We should do something, shouldn’t we?” he said. His eyes were a gorgeous blue.