Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

Ro and I came back to our rooms one night to find Lucky and Brax already toasting each other with a mug of beer from a barrel swiped on our last trip to the cellars. “Back on duty tomorrow,” Lucky grinned around a mouthful of foam. “Hoo hoo!” She poured, and we all drank. I felt numb.

“Oh, sweet Mars,” Ro said, “don’t look like that. Don’t you know we see right through you?” Then he took my cup away and opened his arms and folded me into himself, and Lucky and Brax were behind me, gathering me in, stripping off my clothes and theirs. “I don’t know if I can—” I began to say, and Brax murmured, “Shut up, Mars.” Then Ro shifted his weight and sent me backwards into Brax’s waiting arms, and she pinned me down for a lightning second while she brushed her breast against my mouth, and then rolled us so that I was on top and Ro’s arms came around me in a lock, and I hesitated and he whispered Go on and I turned the way we’d taught ourselves and felt his thigh slide across my back and heard his breath hitch, and mine hitched too. And then it was Lucky with her leg across mine, strength to strength, my heart beating faster and faster, everything a blue-heat fire from my groin to the tips of my fingers. They traded me back and forth like that for some endless time, and each moment that they controlled me they would take some pleasure for themselves, a tongue in my mouth or a wristlock that placed my hand on some part of them that would make them moan; and I moaned too, and then answered their technique with one of my own and changed the dance. Then Brax reached for Ro, and Lucky and I continued while beyond us they brought each other to shouts; and then Lucky was gone to Brax and it was Ro with me, whispering Best me if you can, and then Brax with her strong arms; until finally the world stopped shuddering and we lay in a heap together in front of the fire. And later some of us cried, and were comforted.

We are the prince’s guard. When she sits in a tower window and sings endless songs to the seabirds, we are at the door. When she roams the hallways at night peering through keyholes, we are the shadows that fly at her shoulder. She dances for us now, and we protect her from prying eyes; and when she is ecstatic and spent, when she is lucid and can find some measure of peace, we take her back to her rooms and talk of the world, of the rainbow-painted roofs of Hunemoth and the way that cheese is made in Shortline. She is safer now; she has us to see her as she is, and love her.

And there is still time for ourselves, to teach, to learn, to gossip with other guards and steal currant buns from our favorite cook. Sometimes the prince sends us off to Lemon City for a day, to collect fallen feathers from the road or strings of desert beads from the market; to bring her descriptions of her beggars and smiths and shopkeepers; to gather travelers’ stories from the inns. Sometimes we carry back a flagon of spicy Marhai wine, and when she sleeps, we drink and trade wild stories until the moon is down. Sometimes we sleep cuddled like puppies in our blankets. Sometimes we fight.

O for a Fiery Gloom and Thee Brian Stableford

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI WAS KIN TO JACK-A-LANTERN: A WHIM O’ THE WISP ALLOYED FROM LIGHT AND SHADOW, AIR AND DEW. SUCH CONTRADICTORY BEINGS CANNOT LONG ENDURE; THEIR WARRING ELEMENTS LONG FOR SEPARATION AND THEIR FATED DISSOLUTIONS ARE RARELY QUIET, NEVER WITHOUT PAIN. HOW SHOULD SUCH A BEING LOOK UPON A MAN, SAVE WITH WILD WILD EYES?

La Belle Dame Sans Merci could not stroll upon the mead like any earthbound being for her footfall was far too light, but she had the precious power of touch which earthbound beings take overmuch for granted. She could not be seen by light of noon, but when she did appear—bathed by the baleful moon’s unholiness—there was magic in her image.

Salomé the enchantress knew how to dance, and stir the fire of Hell in the hearts of those who watched, but La Belle Dame Sans Merci knew how to lie as still as still could be, and ignite the fire of Purgatory by sight alone.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci was a daughter of the faery folk, but it is not given to the faery folk to know their fathers and their mothers as humans do. It is easy for faery folk to believe that they owe their conception to the fall of the dew from their father the Sky: from the dew which never reaches Mother Earth but drifts upon the air as wayward mist. That, at least, is the story they tell one another; but what it might mean to them no merely human being could ever understand. Humans are cursed by the twin burdens of belief and unbelief but the faery folk are no more capable of faith than of mass; they have the gift of touch without the leaden heaviness of solidity, and they have the gift of imagination without the parsimonious degradations of accuracy.