So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction

by Christopher Barzak

  In the morning you open the door and move into the garden, surround yourself with the familiar aroma of rosebushes grown wild. When Jake arrives with dinner he is excited by this overnight change in your disposition. You wave him away impatiently, his distraction interfering with your vigilant search for the message. He retreats to the apartment, puts on classical music that fills the air with tangible notes.

  When the vision reappears, the letters are already familiar, their shape implying meaning like Japanese cuneiform--yet this language is more foreign and elegant. You lean forward, the image growing stronger. A transmission from somewhere... someone. You reach out to run invisible fingers over the smooth lines, translating their essence through touch, like Braille. Entrance. Invitation. You bark out a laugh when you uncover each piece. Jake returns to say how good it is to hear you laugh again; hugs you awkwardly. The message vanishes.

  ---

  The alien invitation appears for days in a row; you look forward to it the way you once enjoyed writing. At times the image is strong, the words vibrant, strung tight like a piano. More often the message is a pulsing signal--you reach out to it, strengthen it with your own will until it swells to fill you with humming illumination.

  Once, instead of snapping off like a light, the invitation fades gently. Beyond the brackish gray light of the garden stands a man. You sense him more than see him, his aura of dark green light flickers like a flame. Tall and slender, a tower of sinewy muscle like a college basketball player. You understand that the man allows himself to be seen, just as the letters revealed their meaning. The man whispers, not aloud but within your mind as if the thought were your own yet in his voice. Come.

  You stand to face the green fire. The voice repeats, a quiet demand weakening. You keep your gaze fixed on the singular light as it leads to a corner of the garden. Without your help. We die. Cold crawls across your flesh. The world rushes over in a flashing wave of panic. The bats. You withdraw, spilling into your cool bedroom. Your skin clammy. You sprawl onto the hard floor, ding of pain echoing through you, shielding yourself from remembered blows.

  Jake finds you cowering on the floor and asks what's wrong, what happened. You inch away from the door, afraid of him seeing the man outside, of losing that one true secret. Your friend helps you out of your sweat-soaked clothes into fresh pajamas, urges you to relax, soothes you with a tranquilizer and a glass of water. You take them both with hands that betray your fear. The boys and bats blare in your mind like a car horn, then wane. The vision of the man shines forth. Come, he had insisted, but you retreated like a frightened child. Worse. A grown man afraid of ghosts from the past.

  ---

  Wet days drag by inside your apartment, and the vision of the man remains a disruptive memory. You ignore Jake's constant worrying and focus on the image burned in your mind. You run your hands over the finely tooled lines, revealing more of the message like fog burning off the landscape. Trapped beneath the earth. Our story lost. You understand these things the way you know the message is from the man in the garden, that he is not a man, not human, but alien, other, fragile. Wounded eyes stare at you from the void of your memory. You have seen him before, in the garden, the thin man with the sad smile.

  A small fire lights in your mind, like hunger forcing you to eat--he is there. You jump out of your chair and test the wall for the French doors leading outside. You grab the doorknob, twist. Locked. Jake locked it after your recent fright. The green flame flickers in the garden; you're afraid he'll disappear before you can get to him. You throw your weight against the door, budging it slightly. You repeat--an endorphin rush propelling you--the doors fly open with a tinkling of shattered glass.

  The thin man retreats. His green light turns and extends an arm, points to the corner, then fades with the scent of ozone. You rush forward, upsetting terra cotta pots and waterlogged plants, searching for him within the walls of the garden. You reach the corner, dig your fingers into the cement lines between mossy bricks, memorizing every inch in your search for the exit he used. There is nothing. You cry out, tilting your head to the vague gray of the sky, a muted square above your head.

  The message flares in your mind, the lines shifting, altering the words, revealing a hidden meaning. You race your mental fingers over the letters, tracing out the new communication. Entrance. Trust. You think of the man, his wounded eyes staring out from the past; his breath fills your mouth. A word comes alive, taking on a sound full of ancient vowels.

  A deep thunder, rocks tumbling, and a tunnel yawns before your outstretched arms. Your fingers lead you forward with a simple tug like a warm hand welcoming you home. You step down into the earth, testing the smooth walls with your fingers, tracing antique words near the entrance. The rock noise repeats and you are sealed into the humid air, thick with the dust of ages. There is no one around, but the fear of the boys, of those unseen, follows you underground.

  The tunnel is a tributary leading to a larger one. Dozens of smaller passages wend off in other directions as the main tunnel curves down. You wonder which will take you to the green man. Your steps falter and silence looms.

  You breathe in to sniff out your quarry. The dense air carries hidden aromas that wrinkle the nose: spoiled meat, unwashed skin, ripe bite of standing urine. Something's not right. You about-face and run back haphazardly, but are unable to remember which tunnel you came from, turning this way and that, winding yourself into the labyrinth. Your panting ricochets off the rounded walls. You dash into a large room, its size judged by the echo of your heavy breathing. You shrink by comparison.

  At the other end of the hall, a flickering light, the man from the garden. Finwë, your mouth speaks his name. You rush toward him, hands outstretched, wanting to embrace the being who allowed you to see. Come. His image stutters, flares, and burns out. The floor beneath your feet tilts sharply and you slip, grappling against the slick surface. You slide off, float through rushing air, fold and roll across the dirt floor, intense pain as your legs rejoin the earth. Liquid panic grips you, thrashes your heart, steals your breath; you hyperventilate until white spots race across your mind.

  A strong voice, your own, tells you this is no time for fear, you must stay in control. Surreal calm settles into you with the weight of deep sleep. Your breath slows, you cough, the stench burning into your lungs. You methodically check your legs; your left ankle flares and you bite down to stop from crying out. Quickly assess the situation: it is silent, the floor is uneven and tacky, the stench like a slaughterhouse, your ankle possibly broken. You build a shaky hope that you'll escape.

  On all fours, you send your fingers out to map the sticky earth around you, counting off seconds to judge the distance. Ninety-three seconds from where you started, your hand lands on a slick surface. You slide fingers over its fragile concave shell into gaping holes, over teeth... your hand jumps back as if burned, refusing what it has discovered. You move in another direction, come across the tattered remains of another lost soul. Your hands fan out, uncovering an open grave beneath the earth.

  Terror swells like fire, erupts in a scream, bulleting over the unseen dead, victims of this malevolent invitation. You collapse into the ground, the gummy earth against your face, imagining what it will be like to die here, alone in the dark, slowly starving to death. You claw at your neck, unable to breathe, vomit boiling in your throat. You sit up and tuck your head inside your shirt. The smell of your own sweat comforting through frantic hours of denials and accusations.

  Stop. Clear your mind. You banish the boys and their bats, the creature's flickering image, even Jake's awkward embrace, and focus on the message. It had provided the password for the entrance in the garden, it must also offer an escape from this place. The letters melt, reshaping into crosshatched lines. They don't make any sense; random scratches in the green surface. You turn away from it, cry into your shirt, feeling more abandoned than that night of the attack. You'd survived that to end up here, buried alive in an unmarked tomb. The irony of th
e situation strikes you and you laugh, unable to stop yourself, hysterically joking that at least you'll have someone to eat. The laugh trumpets out of you, a huge noise in the cavern, giving you a strange confidence in the face of certain death. You wonder what Jake will do when he finds you missing. Would he be tricked below ground, joining you here in a marriage of corpses?

  The thought of them trapping Jake freezes your blood. The uncontrollable laughter chokes off. You can't let that happen to him, not to anyone else. You sit cross-legged, the way you did in kindergarten, and formulate a plan. You have to navigate back to the surface and make sure the secret doors were closed forever, but first you need to get out of here.

  You bring the message back into focus, certain that it means something. When you run your mental hands over the lines, they hum like silver strings. Some lines sound long and low, others pitched high and shrill. You touch one, then another, orchestrating a strange music like a child banging the piano. Slower, forming an atonal melody, changing nothing. One long line runs across the length of the message, ending in a fat bulb. The tone of it ranges from star singing to deep frog croaks. Dozens of other lines run perpendicular to it, each with their own range of tones, sweeping out into a bloodstream of little lines, a map of... you flash onto meaning, superimpose Manhattan over this musical version, Broadway running above the long line, ending here, at the great hall, the ball at the end.

  Just to the side of the bulb, a thin line, barely a mark on the map, its tone so low that you can barely make it out. It wiggles its way north, joins another tributary, another vein, the end of the line a tinkling of bells.

  You lie flat on your back, shut your eyes and focus on the skinny line, on the deep bass note. You try to hum it, match the tone in your throat to the one from the map. You clear your throat and try again, pitching down to that impossible note, the sound resonating in your head with a violent vibration. You cough harshly and try again, dropping your hum another octave, until your throat burns like whisky, using your entire body to force it out.

  You fall back winded, ankle throbbing, unable to press on. The darkness bites down, fills your body with renewed lethargy, memory of the months spent in your chair. It would be so easy to let go and allow the earth to take what's hers. A creeping eternity is spent in thoughtless contemplation of death, your stomach grumbling impotently for food.

  The remembered aroma of Jake intercedes; the smell of his body, his powdery cologne. The image of him rises in your mind, from that first time you met, the dapper gentleman with the crooked nose. How he had made you laugh, made you feel comfortable in the gangly body you once inhabited, attempted to get you to stand on your own. You'd never said thank you to the man who had been there all along, who had taken care of you when the world tossed you aside.

  You swallow the lump in your throat, take a deep breath of squalid air, and drop your hum down as far as you can, holding that memory of Jake, his smell and his unique spirit, foremost in your mind. The note swells out of you, raspy and raw, but attained, growing outside of you. The ground drops a fraction and you dig your fingernails into the floor to prevent sliding off, but keep the sound going, filling the cavern with a deep bass. Your ear catches a sound, like the tumbling rock noise of the first gate, creeping open slowly. You crawl to it, forcing the hum through shuddering breath, face purpling, afraid of it closing before you can reach it. Your hands sweep the way clear, knocking the remnants of those who came before from your path, aiming for the sound. Stale air filters through the thick stench, funneling from a small space, wide enough for you to slip through. You wriggle through the tight enclosure, inch yourself to the small channel beyond.

  At the end you tumble to the ground, wheezing from the exertion, but life ringing in your veins. You thank Jake for getting you this far, wonder how many have made it out of that graveyard. A reply from another voice, You are the first. It is the man from the garden. Finwë.

  You pull yourself into a painful stand and limp, angry fingers searching the way, riding the sides of the tunnel. Where are you, creature? The tunnel curves dramatically to the right, and you follow it, confirming your progress against the map in your mind.

  The vision of the man appears, flickers weakly. You jerk toward it, your ankle protesting the beating it receives. A small room opens off the side, a faint green light radiates from there. He is within, lying prostrate on a low bed. You rush at him, hands ready to choke. He speaks, his voice in your mind like brittle ice on puddles. You have come.

  You stop. The thing before you is dying. You can see it in his green light, almost translucent, weaker than before. His body feels cool to the touch, his breath painfully slow, trapped in some sort of stasis. Finwë?

  The body does not respond. Our story... his voice breaks into your thoughts. An exhalation follows, one that borders on his last. Cautious you feel for a heartbeat and find a low erratic thrub. The boniness of him reminds you of the dead in the chamber below the great hall. ...must not be lost. Thin arms ensnare you, drag you rigidly to his face, his pasty mouth on your mouth, filling you with smoke.

  There are words without words as Finwë enters you. His memories fill your head, leaving you nauseous but buoyant, placed into his dream.

  There are trees and full sun. He is here, an unfaded glory. Another stands beside him, Finrod, his brother. There are dozens of their people, tall and healthy. Something in their angelic movements reminds you of the elves from your stories.

  There are humans, men and women, skin soft brown, who greet the elves with reverent ceremony. It is a wedding. A steady drumbeat. A man and woman dance at a distance from each other, dance their past and future lives together. The village joins the couple; Finrod and Finwë, twin princes, are welcomed, then other elves enter the growing circle. The beat swells to unite them, man and woman, humans and elves, in one blissful dance.

  Finwë exhales, his breath within you, the corpse relaxing its grip. You break away as the green light fails. A foreigner stretches inside, fills your hands and feet with its presence. We must go; his voice.

  Within you, times change. White men drive the Natives north; they are coughing the white man's cough. The elves watch from the trees, helpless, angry. More white men arrive. Trees are felled, forests reduced to scrubby patches. Small houses squat in the mud; everywhere fences and walls rise, dividing the land into unnatural squares.

  You escape into the tight passage, your ankle rioting pain. Finwë's rapid memories overwhelm your senses as the elven leader falls ill, fades into gray death. The two princes lead the procession, rows of elves rise to honor their fallen king, their fallen father. Finrod's anger directed at the little men, calls for retaliation. Finwë wraps his arms around his brother, reminds him it has been prophesized, they must accept fate.

  You collapse, gripping your ankle, coughing around the flourish of white men, a small city emerges; drunk bawdy men and women fill muddy streets, dead animals carved in open-air shops, wild dogs tear at fly-strewn flesh. Finwë approaches as ambassador, looking to make peace between human and elf, as it has been in the past. He is captured, taunted, lowered into a pit filled with sewage. Men piss and defecate on him, laughing at their powerless captive. Finwë pales, trapped in the foul water.

  The voice within you urges you on, gets you back on your trembling feet, the images roll in faster than you can move. Finrod leads a band of elves, taking up swords to attack, driving their points into bloated flesh. Men surround them, outnumber them by hundreds, elvish blood mixes with human's, Finrod barely escapes, Finwë remains.

  The map leads the way, you edge forward as the story unrolls; a man lifts him out of the pit, washes him down, his white nudity blaring. He feeds the elf, treats his wounds, does this without speaking. Other men enter, brandishing fire irons, searing the elf's gentle flesh. They pour wine into his mouth and drag him outside, follow him under cover of darkness. Finwë stumbles back, leading the men into their village, dozens are slaughtered before they can escape.

  Yo
u slant up through ancient tunnels, slipping into exhausted sleep every few hours, crawling at last into the wet summer night. The heavy rain cleanses you of underworld odors, you open your mouth to receive heaven's gift while the elves burrow into the ground, a secret warren; Finwë imprisoned beneath their great hall. The men move up the island, stripping it bare like locust. The forest is plowed into farmland; wooden houses line cobblestone streets; houses eclipsed by massive brick buildings. Industry fills the sky with soot, the water with sewage. Fish lie dead on the banks of the rivers. The elves vanish like the Indians, a slow creeping death takes them. The dead are burned without ceremony.

  Above ground you become disoriented, the map no longer useful. You roll across a larger garden, long sweep of muddy lawn. Large trees emerge from the darkness in a symphony of raindrops on leaves. A park, you understand, Finwë's thoughts sweeping over yours, men ripping huge wounds in the earth, uncovering the elves' tunnels, slaughtering the alien creatures they find there. The passages are walled in, trapping them. The city bloats, the horses give way to cars, cobblestones covered by asphalt, bricks fall to glass towers spiraling into the clouds. The elves fade, their radiant skin pales, their elaborately patterned clothes fall ragged, muddied, dying. There is only hatred. Finwë lingers, a living corpse beneath them all.

  You limp along, the park sprawling in all directions. Hearing the wet rush of traffic, you move in that direction to find a large stone edifice. You run your hands along the edge, finding a metal plaque and touching the letters, Engineer's Gate. Central Park. You cry, thinking about the others, the procession of men and women enticed by Finwë's invitation. Their bodies spiraling into the pit, left to rot and decay.