So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction

by Christopher Barzak

  "How strange," said Michael, "that cell phones work there."

  "You thought, what, the magic would disrupt the signal?"

  "Well, kind of," he said. "I don't know how it works."

  "If I meet Piaras I'll ask him."

  She came back a few hours later, and he greeted her with, "So, what kept you so long? Did you meet a boy?"

  "Daaaad," she said, whacking him in the shoulder playfully with her book. "Noooo. But the woods are very pretty. It must've been great to be a kid here. We should go for a walk together tomorrow."

  "We will," he said absently.

  Lying in bed later, Michael wondered where Piaras was. These were his woods, and he was their youthful champion forever. He must be there, somewhere. He must have known Jane was there--every tree would have told him. Did he know who Jane was? Could he recognize her connection to his love of thirty years back?

  Perhaps I've been forgotten entirely, Michael thought. Thirty years are like a moment to a faery--perhaps many have come and gone since.

  "Am I the first?" he had asked Piaras one afternoon, lying half-naked in late morning sunlight, arm blocking his eyes from the glare. Piaras had been sitting on a rock next to him, chucking pebbles into the brook, and he'd glanced over with a wry smile.

  "Well, no," he'd said. "No. But if it makes you feel better, you're the first in a long time."

  "So you're shy?"

  "Shy?" Piaras had said as if slighted. He'd leaned back and rolled off the rock on top of Michael. He'd planted an extremely sloppy kiss on Michael's lips, and while Michael spluttered Piaras had laughed and said, "Selective!"

  Michael realized with a start his overwhelming relief that Jane ­hadn't met Piaras out there, and then felt guilty about that relief. There would be nothing wrong, he told himself, with Jane meeting Piaras. He'd raised her, almost without thinking about it, to be a friend to the faeries. In fact, there was a way in which she deserved to know Piaras--deserved it more than Michael himself, really, who'd just been a stupid kid who'd happened to catch Piaras's eye. And Piaras was such a part of his history--it was like keeping part of himself from Jane.

  Perhaps that was exactly it. Piaras was his youth, his memory, like a character in a beloved book. Let Jane enjoy her wild youth, he thought, just let her enjoy it in some other woods.

  But then why had he come back? They were woods of childhood. They could no longer be his.

  "Piaras, Piaras, always Piaras. You won't shut up about Piaras," said George scornfully in his mind. "Look at you--you think he wants someone who gets winded like you? With bags under his eyes like you?"

  Michael rolled over. He had to at least try to sleep.

  ---

  Jane was what people politely called an introvert, certainly--she craved and enjoyed her time alone--but after a couple of weeks Michael wondered why even he was too much company for her. She'd taken to leaving just after breakfast for the woods, and often she didn't even take a book with her--she would bring a sandwich and come back around twilight. Or she'd spend the day at home but then disappear after dinner for hours with a flashlight.

  She'd never been the kind of teenager who'd kept things from him, so he wondered what was going on. He liked to think that if she had a boyfriend--or a girlfriend--she would tell him. But was that even feasible? Who was around? There were only a few houses in walking distance, and none of them had anybody under the age of forty in residence. Maybe somebody's nephew or niece had decided to come for the summer? Not Piaras, don't let it be Piaras, he thought. Maybe some other faery, someone he hadn't heard of. And that Piaras had never mentioned. Would she tell him if it were Piaras? Would she be embarrassed, nervous? If it is Piaras, I don't want to know. He paused. What a liar I am, he thought. Of course I want to know.

  In any case, Jane was so shy, he didn't want to press. He trusted her. It was, after all, sometimes hard to tell people things. He remembered how hard it was to tell George about Piaras, how surprised he was when George believed him and took it well.

  He wondered now if George just thought of Piaras as an extended metaphor. He couldn't reconcile the young man who'd found Michael's stories delightful with the middle-aged man desperately grasping onto modern technology to keep him young and sneering at Michael's own natural aging.

  When he spent time with Piaras, he could tell him anything. Anything. It was not so much that Piaras understood--after all, much of Michael's American teenagehood was completely inexplicable to a faery--as that Piaras listened, always intently, and in those moments he seemed much older than the laughing boy of minutes earlier.

  "Are you sure you haven't met someone?" Michael asked Jane at dinner the next night. He kept his voice carefully teasing.

  Jane looked up in surprise and said, "Who would I meet? I've just been taking walks. You should come with me tomorrow--it's so pretty and all the renovations stuff can wait a day."

  "Sure," he said distractedly, hating his suspicion, hating the gap between them. Maybe this is what it means to have a daughter grow up, he thought. Maybe this is the leading edge of a wedge that will keep us forever on opposite sides of some gulf. Am I turning into George, eaten by my own jealousy of youth? Am I finally so far gone that I envy even my own daughter? I've never been jealous of youth before, he thought. I don't want to think of Jane as some symbol of youth. I just want to think of her as Jane.

  The next day Jane left in the morning, and he repainted the fence in the backyard.

  ---

  The house had a sharply gabled study on the upper floor, almost an extra room tucked into a corner--unusable as a bedroom but perfectly suited to a writing desk and (once upon a time) some candle sconces and a window above spreading light like butter on the dark wood eaves and the surface of the desk. Michael discovered that when he stood on the chair and pulled down the top pane of the window, he could see clearly into the shallow part of the woods across the street, when it was day or when there was enough moon. He must have looked ridiculous standing there, but no one was around to see him.

  He saw Piaras on the third night. Piaras tended to blend in, of course, being generally the same color as the trees, but even thirty years later he recognized that distinctive gait, the natural way he dodged and gamboled over the rocks and under the branches. Behind him was Jane, following like a ghost, light blue dress highlighted by the full moon. A knot tightened in Michael's bowels, and he stepped down quickly. He sat down on the chair and stared at the surface of the desk. He turned the desk lamp off, and then back on. His mind raced blankly.

  A few minutes later, he was across the street, in a hastily donned coat. He thought, Piaras is mine. He thought, Piaras isn't anyone's. He thought, Jane deserves a summer romance just like I had. He thought, Jane is mine. He thought, are faeries always bisexual? He thought, once I was Piaras's, and once I was Jane's, and now they are each other's and I am neither of theirs.

  He walked blindly through the woods. Years-hidden memories pulled themselves into consciousness out of sheer survival instinct, and he walked unmarked trails the way he once had, through reflex. He called George's cell phone number and to his surprise, George picked up. "Hello, Michael."

  "George," said Michael. "I... I... just wanted to let you know that... Jane has a boyfriend."

  There was a pause. "Well," said George slowly, "that's great news! I mean, she's so shy, I worried she wouldn't let anyone get close to her... isn't it great news?"

  He was being good, thought Michael--he is being polite, as the saying goes, for the sake of the child.

  "It is," said Michael in a tone of utter despair. "Great news."

  "Michael," said George, "are you all right? You don't sound all right."

  By your lights, I haven't been all right since my hair started going grey, thought Michael, but he didn't say it. Nor did he say-- well, you see, Jane's new boyfriend is my old boyfriend-- as that sounded creepy. Instead, he said, "It's like she's gone. I've lost her." And you.

  There was a long pause, and
when George spoke, his voice was kind, as kind as it had been that day a year ago when they fought. "She was never yours, Michael. Or mine. Children are children, and we are grown up."

  "I feel like saying, 'Old man! Old man, get out of me,'" Michael said.

  George was silent. There were many things he could have said, and Michael was grateful that he did not say any of them. Instead, Michael got hold of himself, ended the conversation, and stumbled his way back to the house in the dark. When Jane got home, she found him already asleep.

  ---

  The next day at breakfast Michael said, "I really miss spending time with you. Let's spend the evening together, just us, the way we did that first night here. Will you stay home at the house, and just hang out?"

  Jane looked down. "I'm sorry I've been gone so much," she said. "I'll stay home tonight, definitely. In fact there's something I want to talk to you about."

  She said it with innocence, but Michael found himself without any appetite. He nodded and got up from the table. "It's a date, then."

  ---

  "So, look," he said, when they'd finished the dishes, and Jane was drying her hands on the other side of the room, "I've been thinking. And you deserve a romance as much as anybody."

  She turned, looking honestly puzzled. "What?"

  "I mean..." He trailed off, and then sighed. "There's no reason for you to feel bad about... anything... or secretive... about what you may have been up to...."

  "Dad," she said, looking concerned, "can we go into the living room before we have this conversation?"

  "Sure." He followed her in, but before she'd even sat down, he said, "I mean, this is the way of things. Our generations go by--I get older, and, and, you grow up."

  "Dad," said Jane again, sounding more desperate, "can you just wait a couple of minutes?"

  Michael, however, was on a roll. "The faeries, though, they're constant; they're here forever as far as we're concerned, and it's the natural way of things that my time has passed and yours has come."

  "Just a few minutes," she pleaded, glancing at the windows. "Wait."

  "You know, Jane," he said, settling down into his chair, "most people never even slightly encounter immortality. We live short lives and we rush to fill them before they go, and for most of us, the only way we can fill them is to spend time with others like us--blind and short-lived, with no magic at all.

  "So when you do find magic, you should be thankful for it, every day--every day, and you should never give it up. You should never give up any magic you find. Never."

  "Are you saying you did?" said Piaras, and then he was standing outside the huge bay window, and then he was climbing through, and then he was standing in the living room. He towered over the furniture to Michael, the way the trees towered over him. His voice was as soft and even as it had been.

  Michael struggled to find his own voice. "You always did know how to make an entrance," he managed to cough out.

  "Your daughter and I have been spending a lot of time together," Piaras said, smiling.

  "I know," said Michael. "I saw you through the tower window the other day."

  Piaras nodded absently, as if he'd already known. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "this is actually the first time I've ever been in the house." To Jane, "I could never come in before--your grandparents would have been put out."

  "Look, Piaras," said Michael, struggling to take hold of the conversation, "I guess you've come to tell me that you love Jane, and Jane loves you. And I've been thinking about it a lot, and yeah, I'll be honest, it sort of hurts, but I understand. One generation passes--"

  "Oh, you silly, silly man," said Piaras softly. "You jump and leap and gambol at conclusions the same way you did when you were a boy."

  "I jump and leap?" demanded Michael.

  "Michael," said Piaras, "Jane and I are not in love. I love her, surely, as of course I would love any of your family. She is like you in so many ways. We have been talking, as I said. Well, mostly I have been talking."

  "He's been telling me stories," said Jane. "About you--when you two used to be together."

  "You aren't in love with Piaras?" said Michael.

  "In love with my dad's ex-boyfriend? Ew," said Jane, with relish.

  "She invited me here," explained Piaras, "because one of the things we've been talking about is how you've stayed cooped up in this house these weeks. I knew you'd come back the moment you arrived, and I was happy, and I was waiting for you. And then you didn't come. I thought you must have forgotten about me.

  "But then I met Jane, and she knew so much about me, I knew you must have told her, many times. And I couldn't figure out why you hadn't come to find me. I bet Jane that you had forgotten, that you hated me. She bet that you hadn't. And I remembered that you were a proud boy, and now maybe you are a proud man. So Jane convinced me, and I have come to ask: will you come away with me? Will you come walking in the woods like you once did? Have you kept a fire in your hearth for me?"

  Michael sighed. "My dear Piaras," he said. "Here you are in front of me again, and you are exactly the same. It has been so long, but it also feels like yesterday. How time flies."

  "Does it fly the way we did?" said Piaras artfully.

  "Do you know," said Michael, "I sometimes wonder whether I did fly."

  Jane interjected. "Dad, he's really sad. All these years you've talked about your great love, and now here he is to take you back with him, and it's the most romantic thing I've ever heard, and you won't go?"

  "Oh, Piaras," sighed Michael. "I can't. Maybe I need to turn up the lights, so then you can see for yourself."

  Piaras twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "See what, my dear?" He sat himself carefully on the rug in front of Michael, and then he took Michael's hand and gently placed it in his green curls.

  Michael let his hands play in the hair of the boy and smiled, but it was a wet-eyed smile. "I am old, Piaras," said Michael. "I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago."

  "Did you?"

  "Don't you have eyes?" said Michael. He ran his hands roughly through his hair. "Don't you see the wrinkles on my face? Don't you see how I've become old and slow? How my hair is the color of iron?"

  "But you've also turned wise," said Piaras.

  "What good is wisdom to youth?"

  "Michael," said Piaras sharply. "I am a faery. I am many things, but I am not young."

  "You are too young for me," said Michael with despair.

  Piaras looked at Jane. "Are you hearing this? Didn't you say your father gave you a lot of faery books when you were little? Did he read them?" He turned back to Michael. "My dear man, I have seen the earth when it was young and new and fresh. I have presided over these woods since wild nature was truly wild, before this house, before that road, before you or anyone you could remember. I am not the oldest of faeries, nor am I the youngest, but me too young for you?" He laughed aloud. "Michael, you could live to the ripest age a man has ever lived, and you would still, always, be far, far, far too young for me."

  There was a long silence. Michael didn't know what to say.

  "I've read a lot of faery stories," said Jane, "and you know, there are two kinds of people who get to be with the faeries in them. There are the young and free, the spirits who are like faeries already, almost, and the faeries come to them, and they run, um, 'not yet bound to the world,' I think one story says."

  Michael and Piaras both stayed silent, and she pressed on.

  "The other kind are the wise kind--the grown-ups, the men and women, the wise uncles and grandmothers, who walk with the faeries, who know their ways, who have their knowledge of the land and the plants. They are the ones in the stories who know how to heal, and how to ensure a good... you know, crop, or whatever.

  "So they had to get there somehow, right? It's not like they could have lived their lives without any magic for years and years and then one day some pretty elf shows up and bang, they're aged and wise. And I wonder... I wonder if the wise m
en who walk with the faeries are the same as the spirited boys who frolic with them. Just, you know... years later."

  There was another pause, which Michael broke by clearing his throat. "Well," he said tentatively, "that sounds good to me."

  "I would like that too," said Piaras softly.

  "Would you?" Michael pressed.

  "I'm a faery, Michael, and faeries are inconstant as weather. Yesterday, I wanted a young boy to run with, to kiss in the meadow. Today, I want a wise man, to walk with steady steps next to, to discuss the things of the world.

  "Will you walk with me, my good man?" said Piaras, extended his hand in a formal gesture. Taking it, Michael pulled himself up and out of the armchair.

  "Now?" he said. He looked to Jane. "I asked you here because we haven't spent enough time together, and now I'm leaving without you?" Jane appeared to ponder this carefully. "Well," she said, "I don't know. You might make it up to me by coming into the woods tomorrow with Piaras and me."

  Piaras reached up and pulled Michael's head down to his, and kissed him. Piaras's mouth was a memory to Michael, a warm remembrance of youth, and it was immediate, present, a warm flood of love through him. It was both at the same time.

  Breaking the kiss, Piaras turned to Jane and formally bowed low. "Ms. Jane," he said, "may I take your father away for the evening? He and I have much to talk about."

  "I don't know," said Jane. "I like seeing Dad smile like that. I'd like to see that some more."

  Of course in the end she let them fly away together. Michael's last glimpse as he followed Piaras showed her at the window, watching them receding into the night until they were as small as stars.

  Joshua Lewis is a recovering computer geek. He is stumbling towards a post-graduate degree but is not quite sure what kind yet. He splits his time between Philadelphia and New York, these days, and often feels that he actually lives on the bus line between them. This is his first published short story.