Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms

  WITCHES, PRINCESSES, AND WOMEN AT ARMS

  WITCHES, PRINCESSES, AND WOMEN AT ARMS

  EROTIC LESBIAN FAIRY TALES

  EDITED BY

  SACCHI GREEN

  Copyright © 2017 by Sacchi Green.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Published in the United States by Cleis Press, an imprint of Start Midnight, LLC, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Suite 3705, Jersey City, NJ 07302.

  Printed in the United States.

  Cover design: Scott Idleman/Blink

  Cover photographs: iStock

  Text design: Frank Wiedemann

  First Edition.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Trade paper ISBN: 978-1-62778-228-9

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62778-229-6

  Contents

  Introduction

  Steel

  Robber Girl

  The Princess’s Princess

  Woodwitch

  The Prize of the Willow

  Toads, Diamonds, and the Occasional Pearl

  SWF Seeks FGM

  The Mark and the Caul

  Penthouse 31

  The Miller’s Daughter

  Warrior’s Choice

  Trollwise

  The Sorceress of Solisterre

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION

  How often have you tried to envision “he” as “she” when you’re reading fairy tales? Those flights of imagination can sweep you up into worlds of magic and sensual delights—or would, if only so many heroes winning the day (and, of course, the girl) didn’t get in the way. Don’t you long for heroines who win each other?

  I certainly do, so in this anthology I wanted erotic romance and wild adventure with women who use their wits and/or weapons and come together in a blaze of passion. The wonderful writers showcased here gave me all I hoped for, and even more. Some adapted traditional tales, and some updated old stories to contemporary times, not merely changing the gender of a character but making the female aspect essential. Some created original plots with a fairy-tale sensibility, while some wrote with merely a subtle aura of fantasy. Their heroines are witches and princesses, brave, resourceful women of all walks of life, and even a troll and a dryad. There are curses and spells, battles and intrigue, elements of magic and explorations of universal themes, and, yes, sex, sensuality, and true love, all bound skillfully together into complex and many-layered stories.

  Royalty or a miller’s daughter, a woman warrior passing as a man, a sorceress in flowing robes, even a window inspector dangling in harness on a high-rise building—who better to rescue a long-haired captive in a tower?—all of them are made so real that you long to touch them, and be touched. The relationships are intense, sometimes quick to ignite, sometimes all the hotter for restraint that flares at last into a fierce blaze.

  In all my years of editing anthologies, I’ve never read so many submissions that were beautifully written and just what I’d asked for. And I’ve never had so much trouble choosing which to use to fill the finite space in this book. I can only hope that readers will get as much pleasure from these stories as I did, and that Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms turns out to be, to quote a certain beloved film with a unique take on fantasy traditions, exactly, “As you wish.”

  Sacchi Green

  Western Massachusetts

  STEEL

  Cara Patterson

  The citadel fell when the princess was fourteen.

  The guardians claimed it was impregnable, but no one warned them that their enemy was armed with a dragon. Princess Sianna and her mother fled through the catacombs of the city, leaving the bones and ashes of a king behind.

  Some of their people escaped with them, but they scattered to the four winds. It was safer, her mother said. Talbot, the man who had burned her father, was a commoner and would never be accepted as king unless he had a royal bride. He knew the princess still lived, and he would be hunting her, Mother said.

  It felt like cowardice to hide, moving from village to village, unknown, often unwelcome, yet they had no choice. Until they could find a champion, Mother said it must be so.

  Mother told her they would return to claim what was theirs one day. They would return. Even when Mother started smiling at a smith in one of the towns. Even when they stopped running, and found a small house to call their own. Even when Mother and the smith were hand-fasted, and her belly grew round with another child.

  Sianna—no longer called Princess—smiled for her mother, but with every merchant who passed through the town, they heard stories from the west, from the lands that had once been theirs. The kingdom revolted against the tyrant, but Talbot was merciless. His dragon scoured the fields of those who opposed him, burning crops and people both.

  “We will return,” her mother assured her, one child, two children, three children later. “When the time is right.”

  The time, Sianna was coming to understand, would never be right.

  Her mother would quietly wait out Talbot’s death, surrounded by children who were not of royal blood, and who would never know what it was to be hunted as a prize for a murderous bastard. Her mother could stopper her ears against the news from the lands that had once been theirs, the deaths, the violence, the cruelty.

  Sianna still had nightmares of the victims of the dragon. When they had fled through the tunnels beneath the citadel, she had pressed her hands tight over her ears, stumbling after her mother in the darkness. She had tried to muffle the sound, but there were too many people, too many screams.

  Maybe her mother had those dreams too, but she drowned them out with the wails of newborns. She wanted to forget, but Sianna knew she herself never could, not as long as people who had been her friends, her family, were dying in the flames.

  Sometimes, her mother spoke of marriage, but Sianna cared nothing for it. Instead, she worked in the smithy with the man who was not her father. He taught her the nature of metal, and how to bend it to her will. While her mother grew plump and soft, she grew hard, steel tempered in the flames of her true home.

  When another convoy came, this one from the citadel itself, demanding payment for Talbot’s mercy, Sianna knew that the time had come. They had fled, but their past would follow them to the ends of the earth, and she had no intention of running anymore.

  While her mother wept and wailed to her husband in their small house, her infants sniffling around her skirts, Sianna went into the smithy. There were blades there built for her hand. She was not tall, but she was broad, strong, and the weight of the sword in her grip was right. She armed herself and slipped away into the night, garbed in clothes stolen from the smith.

  Her warm brown skin betrayed her origins, and it was known that Talbot hunted a woman of those lands, so in the shadow of the forest she hacked her hair short, and bound her breasts beneath the mail and leather she wore. None would glance at a surly squire with a short mat of black hair and shoulders thick with muscle.

  She knew she had no hope of reclaiming the citadel from Talbot, not as long as the dragon lived, but there were sorcerers and mages who could enchant a blade, and make it strong enough to kill a dragon. That was what she would seek.

  She followed whispers and legends and rumors.

  If Talbot’s men crossed her path, she fought them. Her battles were clumsy at first, but by and by, she learned. She blooded her bl
ade. She strengthened her sword arm. She smiled quietly in the darkness of taverns as people spoke of the brave knight with no sigil who stood against the tyrant.

  Talbot’s men were everywhere, though many of them were not seeking the lost royals.

  She had no doubt they sought the same thing as she did.

  If some enemy could learn how to slay a dragon, then Talbot’s advantage would be gone. What he did not think on was the fact that she could follow his men, find where they hunted, see who they sought, and when they set a pyre for a witch—save her.

  Three soldiers were little enough challenge, the rest of their legion still bent on subduing the village.

  She cut them down, and hacked through the bonds pinioning the witch.

  The witch stared at her, bruised and shaken, but defiant. “I am not your prize,” she said through bloodied teeth and lips.

  Sianna smiled mildly. “No,” she agreed, “but you will come with me.”

  The witch had no strength to fight, beaten as she had been. Sianna lifted her up onto her own gelding, Tar, mounting up behind her, and galloped away. There were shouts from other soldiers, who gave chase. Sianna cursed through clenched teeth, spurring her horse onward.

  “You’re a witch,” she snarled at the woman before her. “Do something.”

  The witch laughed, the sound racked with pain. “Save you so you can make use of me?” she whispered. “I think not. No man commands me.”

  Sianna was in no mood for words. Instead, she snared the witch’s hand and thrust it between her thighs, then returned her grip to the reins. The horse was flagging, weighed down by two, and the countryside was wild, the terrain treacherous.

  The witch jerked her hand back. She was staring. Sianna could feel her eyes boring into her face. Tar leapt beneath them, over a fallen tree, and the witch grabbed at Sianna, holding tightly with one arm. Her other hand extended toward the sky, burns from the rope visible on her pale skin, while her fingers twisted and curled as if snatching dust motes from the air.

  Clouds poured together, thick and black, and thunder cracked. Blades of lightning cut down from the heavens, catching on nearby trees. Sianna’s horse screamed in terror, picking up speed, and behind them, the burning trees fell, blocking their pursuers.

  Sianna’s heart was racing.

  She’d heard rumors of how powerful some witches could be. It was said they were element weavers, spinning the elements as some would spin thread. But to manipulate the weather so easily, and bend it to her will? Suddenly, armor and a sword and shoulders as solid as steel meant nothing.

  The witch sagged against her arm and Sianna had to transfer the reins to one hand, to hold the woman with her other arm. She did not know if the woman was playing her false or truly exhausted, nor did she care while the soldiers still hunted them.

  She knew the mountains well enough to find a cavern before the horse collapsed with exhaustion. The rain was still pouring down outside, and the damp blackness of the cave was a welcome respite. Tar’s hooves clattered on loose stone, and he refused to go farther.

  Sianna swung down from the saddle. The witch all but fell down with her, folding in her grip. True exhaustion, then, Sianna thought grimly. She looked around as her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. The cave seemed endless, stretching into darkness, but the floor was bare but for loose rocks. She hoisted the witch over her shoulder, carried her to the smoothest part of the floor, and set her down with as much gentleness as she could. It was a long time since she had needed to be soft-handed.

  Her leather cloak had kept her dry, but the same could not be said for the witch, soaked to the bone and shivering. Sianna crouched on her toes by the woman, studying her, then rose and went to Tar. She withdrew her only other coarse, homespun shirt and breeches from the pack.

  The witch was still as Sianna stripped her bare and dried her chalk-pale skin, avoiding the bruises the soldiers had left behind. She cleaned what blood there was, then dressed the witch in the clothes.

  It would do no good, she thought, as she draped her cloak over the woman, if the first witch she found died in her care.

  Tar whickered impatiently.

  Sianna smiled at him. He had done her well, and he knew it. She returned to him, removing the saddle and her packs, setting them on the ground. There was a rag to wipe him down, and he knocked his muzzle against her shoulder.

  “No sweet treats tonight, I’m afraid,” she murmured, running her fingers from his brow to his muzzle. “But the next town we reach, you shall have all the carrots you care for and as much sugar as I can carry.”

  In the quiet, broken only by the faint, rasping breaths of the witch, the patter of the rain outside, and the occasional crack of thunder, Sianna fed and settled the horse and set about lighting a small fire. It was unwise, but it was cold, and chilblains made her hands ache.

  There was little dry wood to be had. Leaves and twigs had been blown into the cave, and served well enough as kindling. Sianna huddled by the small fire, longing for the heat of the forge. She winced, uncurling her fingers over the flame, the heat easing the bone-sharp pain.

  The change in pitch of the witch’s breathing made her raise her eyes from the fire.

  The witch was watching her, catlike, wary. Her eyes were golden, Sianna noticed. Like honey in sunlight. She was not young, but she was younger than Sianna first assumed, her stature small, almost frail. Her hair was also deceptive, a sheet of silver-gray, straight as a blade.

  “Why?”

  Sianna looked back down at her hands. They were swollen already, and she rubbed them together. “Why what?”

  “Save me?”

  Sianna raised her eyes to her. “I think you suspect.”

  The golden eyes closed. “They believe I have the power to subdue their would-be king.”

  “Do you?”

  The witch’s mouth turned up at the corners, delicate lines creasing her features. “I take no part in the petty wars of men.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  “No,” the witch agreed quietly. “It does not. But neither did you.” She opened her eyes, and pushed herself up on one arm. “Tell me.”

  Sianna rested her hands on her knees, watching the flames. “I saw the citadel burn, the day Talbot took the kingdom and killed the king,” she said finally. “I heard the screams of the people. I was driven from my home, and now, he’s driving others from their homes too.” She looked up at the witch. “My mother and I lived in fear, running, knowing he would not stop until he cowed everyone. And he won’t, unless someone stops him.” She was silent for a moment. “I thought you might be able—willing—to help me.”

  “For the glory of victory?” The witch said mockingly. “To be the savior of the kingdom?”

  Sianna looked at her in contempt. “So no one else has to live as I have.” She prodded the flames with a stick. “No one should spend their lives running, afraid that they might be killed or raped or worse.” She snapped the stick, tossing it into the flames. “A king’s first duty is to protect his people. Talbot is no king.” She looked back down at the fire. “He is no man of any worth.”

  The witch laughed, a soft, musical sound. “On that matter, we are agreed.”

  Sianna rubbed her right hand with her left, trying to ease the lingering ache. “Now you,” she said. “Answer my question.”

  “Do I have the power to defeat a single man? You saw what I can do, child.”

  “You can manipulate the elements,” Sianna agreed, “but the elements aren’t men.”

  There was a flicker of approval in the golden eyes. “Indeed.” With effort, the witch sat up, drawing Sianna’s cloak around her. “And defeating a single man is not enough, when his armies are rooted now. You can cut the head off a viper, but that hardly helps when he’s only the largest viper in a nest.”

  Sianna looked down at her hands. They felt large, clumsy, useless. “I used to think it would be simple: my blade, his heart, and slaying his dragon
, and all would be well.”

  “His dragon?”

  There was something in the witch’s tone that made her look up. “The dragon that burned the citadel. His weapon.”

  The witch shook her head. “No. No weapon. Weapons do not live.” Her fingers curled around the edge of the cloak and she stared into the fire. “Better call the poor beast what it is: a slave. No dragon would willingly serve a human master. They— like those blessed with magic—have no interest in the squabbles of men.”

  “Then why does this one?”

  The witch only shrugged, watching the flames.

  Sianna remembered hearing the bellow of the dragon as it soared overhead. It was huge, the color of rust and hot iron. They said that Talbot rode it himself. They said that he was the first to be accepted by the terrifying creatures. It was said—by those who knew nothing of magical beasts—that he had tamed it.

  “We free it,” she said.

  The witch raised her eyes, startled. “What?”

  “The dragon,” Sianna replied. “You say it’s a slave. How is that any different from the cruelty he’s inflicting on the people of the kingdom? If we free the dragon, he loses his greatest weapon, and then maybe the people will be able to fight themselves. A nest of vipers is easier to destroy with no fire-breather to protect it.”

  “Free the dragon,” the witch murmured, shaking her head. “It would burn you alive as soon as let a human approach it.”

  “Talbot approaches it,” Sianna said quietly. “If it’s a slave, as you say, then he’ll have safeguards in place. If he can approach, then other people must be able to as well. All I need to do is set it free.”

  “And if it kills you, once you free it?” The witch was staring at her.

  Sianna shrugged, the leather of her jerkin creaking softly. “If it’s free, it can’t be used by Talbot,” she said. “The kingdom won’t be cowed by dragon fire anymore, and they’ll fight back.” She smiled briefly. “Whether I live or die is hardly relevant.”