Through the Hourglass Read online

  Through

  the

  Hourglass

  Lesbian Historical Romance

  Through

  the

  Hourglass

  Lesbian Historical Romance

  Edited by

  Sacchi Green

  Patty G. Henderson

  2015

  Through the Hourglass: Lesbian Historical Romance

  A Lizzie's Bedtime Stories Anthology

  © 2015 by Sacchi Green and Patty G. Henderson. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0692559567

  This Book is published by

  The Liz McMullen Show Publications

  [email protected]

  www.thelizmcmullenshow.com

  First Edition: December 2015

  Credits:

  Editor: Sacchi Green and Patty G. Henderson

  Copy Editor: Adrian Blagg

  Book Cover: Boulevard Photografica/Patty G. Henderson, www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Our Stories

  Introductions

  Megan McFerren

  VOLVUR

  Heather Rose Jones

  WHERE MY HEART GOES

  Patty G. Henderson

  IN FULL MOON LIGHT

  Priscilla Scott Rhoades

  EMMA

  Susan Smith

  SAFFRON AND FENNEL

  Cara Patterson

  PROPRIETY

  Doreen Perrine

  A YEAR OF SILENT PROMISE

  Connie Wilkins

  THE BRIDGE

  Lexy Wealleans

  CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN

  R.G. Emanuelle

  THE RUM RUNNER AND THE SHOWGIRL

  Jean Copeland

  NIGHTINGALE

  MJ Williamz

  MY ELIZABETH

  Aliisa Percival

  WITH A SPARK

  Allison Fradkin

  WITH BALL DUE RESPECT

  Ann Bannon

  BEEBO BRINKER (Excerpt)

  Lee Lynch

  HONEYDEW MOON

  Author Biographies

  Introductions

  Patty G. Henderson

  We live in a harsh world. Technology rules and love is sometimes born and nurtured via an iPad, iPhone, or social media sites. Where is the romance?

  Lesbian fiction has its share of erotica anthologies, where passions, sex, and lust take center stage over tender romance. I yearned to see an anthology that captured those days gone by, where romance was sometimes slow and tender, but seething with passion beneath the velvet, satin, and proper restraint. I approached Liz McMullen with an idea to do an anthology honoring lesbian historical romance. It would be a first, and we would travel through history, telling tales of lesbian romance like the sands through an hourglass.

  I was honored that Liz wanted to see those stories too. And I do hope that readers who take the trip back in time to sneak a peek at lesbian love in the distant or exotic past or in not-so-distant times will be left all the more enriched and entertained.

  Sacchi Green

  Through the Hourglass has been very much a group effort, so both Patty G. Henderson and I want to share our thoughts here, and publisher Liz McMullen will outline the charity aspect at the heart of our project. What could be more appropriate for an anthology focusing on historical stories of lesbians than helping organizations that benefit senior lesbians right now?

  History, to my mind, is the greatest story ever told—or too often left untold.

  Women loving women have been a fact of life for as long as love and women have existed. Who's to say some of those sculptors of full-bodied stone or ivory goddesses weren't women? We have always been here, in every era and every area of society, even though our stories have so seldom been told.

  Fiction has its own power to deepen and intensify our perceptions and beliefs. Stories that show lesbians in well-researched historical settings, with passions fully recognizable today, rescue our past from invisibility and affirm our place through all time, past, present and future.

  The writers here are, of course, the real hearts and souls and inventive minds of Through the Hourglass , and their stories speak for themselves.

  We begin in the Old World with Megan McFerren’s “Völvur”, set in the Iceland of the 990s where the old Nordic beliefs have not yet given way to the newly arrived Christian missionaries, and girls called Wand-bearers still run free as messengers between the worlds.

  Six hundred years later, in the mid-1500s, Heather Rose Jones’s “Where My Heart Goes” takes us to the Renaissance, where a woman’s royal privilege is offset by being a pawn of political intrigue and succession, but her heart is still her own to give, however long it takes.

  By 1692-93 in the New World, we find the brutal misogyny of the Salem Witch Trials pitted against the unbreakable bond between two women in Patty G. Henderson’s “In Full Moon Light”. Then, two centuries later during the War Between the States in “Emma” by Priscilla Rhoades, a young woman passing as a man finds love in an unexpected setting before inevitably taking on the duties of a soldier.

  Meanwhile in Europe, also during the 1860s, Susan Smith’s “Saffron and Fennel” depicts an aristocratic widow taking on a man’s role in order to pursue archaeological exploration, and, with the scientifically trained daughter of a botanist at her side (and in her bed), discovering traces of women loving women as long ago as the early Cretan civilization. Just twenty years later, the characters in Cara Patterson’s “Propriety” struggle, with tenderness and wit, against class distinctions and the obligations of an Austrian Archduchess.

  Back across the sea and half a century later, in 1910, Doreen Perrine’s “A Year of Silent Promise” paints a complex scene of art and longing and the roughly beautiful coast of New England. Just a few years later, The Great War changes the world forever, and by 1917, an ambulance driver wounded in body and spirit by trench warfare in France encounters a free-spirited artist in England at “The Bridge” by Connie Wilkins. “Captain My Captain” by Lexy Walleans takes us forward four years to the postwar England of 1921 and another seacoast, where recovery and loss and memories of adolescent games of piracy affect the lives of childhood friends.

  The between-wars era of prohibition in the USA forms the colorful backdrop in 1928 to “The Rum Runner and the Show Girl” by R.G. Emanuelle, followed by a cluster of stories sparked by the drama of WWII. Jean Copeland’s “Nightingale” portrays the struggling nightclub scene on the home front, while MJ Williamz’s “My Elizabeth” depicts women like Rosie the Riveter building war planes, and Aliisa Percival’s “With a Spark” varies the theme with a celebrity visiting a Canadian bomb-building factory for a patriotic fund-raiser. Just a year later, in 1944, the characters in Allison Fradkin’s “With Ball Due Respect” pitch witty banter and score with each other as team members in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

  The post-war decades bring us to times so recent that some of us remember them, and those who don’t know someone who does, but they still belong to the history that formed who we are today. Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker is an icon of lesbian literature, and here we have an excerpt from her book with
all the grit and moody tension of Greenwich Village in 1962. Lee Lynch’s stories, too, have inspired us for years and continue to illuminate our world, and her evocative story “Honeydew Moon” is the perfect conclusion to our anthology, with an older, established couple in the 1980s sharing their memories of romance and struggle during the 1950s with young lesbians just beginning their adult lives.

  All these wonderful stories, with their passion, adventure, variety, and attention to historical details, have come together because of Patty G. Henderson’s original proposal.

  From Publisher Liz McMullen

  A portion of the proceeds for Through the Hourglass will go to these charities that directly serve LGBT senior citizens: Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) and The Gay & Lesbian Association of Retiring Persons, Inc. (GLARP).

  SAGE works to achieve a high quality of life for LGBT older adults, supports and advocates for their rights, fosters a greater understanding of aging in all communities, and promotes positive images of LGBT life in later years. Learn more about their mission and services by visiting their website: www.sageusa.org

  The Gay & Lesbian Association of Retiring Persons, Inc. (GLARP) is a non-profit corporation formed in 1996 by co-founders Mary Thorndal and Veronica St. Claire to call attention to the aging issues in the GLBT community. They are currently working on creating a retirement community for LGBT seniors. Visit their website to learn more about the organization and their mission: gaylesbianretiring.org/site .

  Völvur

  Megan McFerren

  They call us halju-runnos —hell-runners.

  The missionaries gasp when they hear it. Quick fingers mark some rune unknown to me, from their heads to their bellies and across their chests, and they do not speak to us again. No matter. We laugh when they cower at milk-sweet girls only eighteen, nineteen winters alive, our hair unbound and childish, because what have they to fear from us?

  Plenty, in truth. And in moments like this, I see how we’ve earned that name.

  The earth itself opens up beneath our feet. Bare heels dig into black soil, lichens and moss exploding outward beneath our toes. There are few enough woods left in Iceland untouched by the reavers who use the trees for their ships to go a-Viking, but this one is ours, and we know it by heart. I duck a branch and grab the trunk, slips of birch flying free beneath my fingers as I spin from it and turn in a new direction. It doesn’t help. I hear the laughter of the other girls behind me giving chase, and in my delight, nearly stumble over an upturned stone from the last time we played like this.

  My legs are longer than most of theirs. I’ve grown tall and sturdy as oak, hair stiff and golden as late-summer straw. But gods, they are persistent, howling laughter like wolves after a stray lamb. Lambs, though, are not so clever as I am, and vaulting over a fallen tree, I skid sideways down a hill, feet turned to stop from losing control. Sharp rocks catch my skin, but I pay them no mind now, rolling to my stomach and flattening.

  I listen, no sound near me but the rush of my own breath and the hum from my heart, hammering. Their voices seem further away, but they may have split—one band in one direction, one in the other—and so I try to hold my breath to quiet it. The soil is still dawn-damp where I cling to it. I gather my wits again.

  Our own people call us völva —wand-bearers. The missionaries’ name isn’t wrong—we do run, and not only in the woods to burn off energy before a long day sitting stoic with herbs and ritual. No, we are the messengers between worlds, between highest Asgard and our own Midgard, between the plains of Vanaheim and woods of Alfheim, and to fog-thick Niflheim and lower still, to Hel, where those dead reside who have not been plucked by the gods in higher branches to join them. Hela, in her kingdom beneath the World Tree, waits for us to visit and return, sharing messages between living and dead, past and present and future. I have not seen her yet, but they say that half her face is pale as fresh cream with hair black as raven’s feathers, and the other half foul with decay and hollowed by rot.

  I imagine each side is beautiful, in its own way.

  “Brynja.”

  She draws my name out like a song, a galdr of our very own, and when I shiver, it’s little to do with the cold earth pressed against my belly.

  “Eydis.” I greet her as if it were the temple we were meeting in rather than the wild woods, as if my dress wasn’t darkened with dirt from our rough and joyous games, as if there weren’t bits of branch stuck against my hair. I roll to my back, writhing until the rocks press less painfully into my spine, and regard her standing at the foot of the hill. “How–”

  “Because I know you,” she answers, clever grin quirking one corner of her lips. “Don’t I?”

  “You know everyone. Too well.”

  “Blame the gods for that.” Unhurried, she picks a careful route up the slope, feet pressing into summer-soft mosses that squish between her bare toes. “But I know you best. I don’t have to seek you out in goat entrails.”

  “I would hope you wouldn’t find me there,” I laugh, plucking a leaf off my dress. “Maybe I should court favor with the alfar to hide me when you come looking.”

  “Would they listen? They’re fickle, and you run like a wild horse through their home.”

  “Of course they would listen. I could talk a frost giant to Muspelheim.”

  I declare this with a certainty that widens her grin, her lips an archer’s bow drawing over her broad white teeth. We have always been a people prone to bragging, although it’s typically the men who do it—and gods save us, do they ever. But our bravado dictates our actions, which we must then fulfill so as not to be liars, and our bragging spreads our legend. And we, myself and the witches, are just as free to speak and act as the men are. Our heads are bared, no betrothal ensnares us; we are married to forces greater than any man who would quiet our voices.

  “Brynja Bold-Tongue,” she calls me. “Hair flaxen as Sif’s own and all the sense of Loki who stole it.”

  Pressing earth-stained fingers over my face, I muffle a laugh. The sky is iron grey through the branches that vein it, and in the distance, I can hear the ocean in its ceaseless whittling of the fjord’s jagged rocks. When she stands above me, it is as though the sun has parted every cloud and come to rest only on me. Her hair is like a hearthfire, radiating warmth in copper curls that have never known a comb. It’s lucky to have red hair—Thor does, and he looks on favor with those who share it.

  Sometimes I think all the gods look on her with favor. It’s the only way I could explain her.

  “Surely they’ve found new quarry by now,” I tell her, resting my hands against my stomach. The muscles tense beneath my fingers as she turns her head aside as though to listen for their voices, and hearing none, brings her dark eyes back to me. “You see? I wouldn’t be worth turning over.”

  “But I know how you love hearth-duty,” she teases. “Sitting up until dawn to stoke the fires so the crones don’t fuss about their aching bones.”

  “I am kind enough of spirit to allow others to share that joy.”

  “Truly generous,” agrees Eydis. “But what victory is mine, then, if not to hear your grumbling all night?”

  “You might choose to hear another sound from me all night instead,” I whisper, grinning.

  She snorts and tosses her hair like a stroppy horse, but her eyes narrow in pleasure. “I get that already.”

  She isn’t wrong—she rarely is—but the words still brook a shiver, like cold sudden rain across my skin. With her, I feel more moved by the gods than by any sea or storm, temple or glen. Eydis makes my ribs feel too small, my breath shorten, and all at once I feel as though I might crack like a jug, splintering and spilling heat across her feet. I rest a hand against her slender ankle and trace the delicate bones, following the swell of her calf through the soft scarlet hair that grows there.

  I only reach her knee before she hums, and my hand stops. The hunt has not gone from her yet, mischievous and snared by a possessing thought as if during a blot . My
own skills pale in compare, though my galdr are strong of voice and the runes are generous to me in their knowledge. But Eydis, she I have seen become other beings entirely: gods and men, elves and monsters. I have seen her eyes go mist white as she spoke truths that a farm girl could not have known. Seeress and seidh speaker, the gods whisper in her ear as if she were their own daughter, and so when a mood catches her, it is all I can do to follow where it takes her.

  “You’ve won me already,” I remind her, as if by voice alone I could bring her thoughts back to me. “You won me the night we both arrived from the farms, and you were the only one to come and sit with me at dinner.”

  “But still you ran,” she teases, and I know there is no arguing with her until her curious mood is sated. I miss the softness of her skin the moment she steps away from me—my hand feels empty, my chest hollowed, though she is only a step or two away. “There is a practice.”

  “There is always a practice,” I groan, flopping back onto the ground again with a wince. I pluck out a rock and toss it skidding down the hill, as she takes up a thin birch branch from the forest floor.

  “There is a practice,” continues Eydis, “in the regions west of the Rus, where boys chase girls with strips of goat hide.” She shrugs out of the woven wool shawl that hid her snowdrift shoulders and tosses it aside.

  “For what purpose?”

  “Because they are awful.” Her teeth flash as she turns another grin to me before shaking her head. What little sun is left turns to molten gold in her hair, and I strain to hear her preternatural wisdom rather than let myself imagine burying my face in her curls and whispering torrid, terrible things to her.

  “Why, really?”

  I roll to my stomach, arms folded beneath my cheek, and she wanders slowly back again. “They lash the girls’ legs with them, and send them scattering, laughing, dripping goat’s blood down their skin.”

  “When we make sacrifice, we use boughs to spray it all across the carvings so the gods can have it. It’s all a mess,” I tell her. “It pleases the gods. Do they do it to make the girls willing?”