Speculation Publications has a new folklore/fairy tale anthology that includes LGBTQ+ tales (lesbian, poly): Yule: Tales for the Winter Solstice.
During the cold winter months, we mirror the Earth as she lies quiet, waiting for the return of warm days. We gather around yule fires and perform rituals to lure back the sun. Drinking wassail, singing songs and exchanging gifts, some of us tell stories of the longest night.
Stories of new love and old magick.
Stories of the Holly King and his fight for the season.
Of death and lives well lived.
Of succumbing to the most feral parts of ourselves.
Of the Wild Hunt, and the wrath of Perchta.
And of fey magicks and sacrifices made for love.
Light a candle and bundle up. Within these pages you will find what you need for a hale and hearty Yule, a reconciliation with the shadows and a joyful return to the light.
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Excerpt
From “By the Blades of Grass and Knife”
The mid-morning sky was a blue bell jar, scattered with a few lazy, puffy clouds. A breeze scented with honeysuckle and rose eddied around Ria. She lifted her chin and closed her eyes. On this sun-drenched, flower-surrounded porch, she felt star flung from her chores, her hangover and her disagreements. The previous day’s midsummer festival had been vibrant.
“Ria! Come quickly!”
“A man’s hurt in the wheat field!”
Wrenched from her reverie, Ria’s training took over. Pausing to grab the always-ready field bag, she ran alongside the youths towards the fields, long grass whipping her legs. She didn’t contemplate what she might find. Perhaps she should have.
Out of breath, she encountered the foundling in the wheat field, encircled by field workers.
The man lay unconscious, splayed among the long, green-bladed stems, barely denting them. He was so thin, an insect caught in the web of sunlight, and smeared with blood, some still glistening wet.
The clothes he wore, or what remained of the stained, torn fragments, hung off his starved frame. He looked like he’d been hungry for months, angular and wasted. The exposed skin that wasn’t bloody was waxy and pallid. Ria’s hangover dissipated in her concerned confusion. He looked vulnerable, a beached creature from the depths of the sea now thrown into daylight. The sun draped them in hot silk, and her skin still smarted with the season’s first sunburns. She and the rest of their town had plumped from a bountiful spring. They were still weighed down from yesterday’s midsummer feast. Sweet, ripe soft fruits eaten just-picked, apricots, strawberries and the first peaches; tender, herby vegetables, asparagus and summer squashes; young, melting meats; butters and creamy cheeses from cows fattened by fresh grasses; and nearly-naked salads of new shoots.
Ria knelt beside the unknown man. She listened to his shallow, almost undetectable breaths but found a strong pulse. In examining him, she found no broken bones. He could be moved safely. Some cuts were deep but had stopped bleeding. He was clammy, even in this solstice heat.
“He needs to be out of the sun, and I need to properly deal with his injuries. Can you take him to Healer Locke’s?” Ria turned to the team leader, a six-foot-tall woman, her arms and shoulders already bronzed. She lifted the man as if he were a sleeping child, floppy and unresisting in her arms.
Beneath where he’d lain was a dagger and scabbard among the red-stained stalks. They were dirty, encrusted with dried mud and blood, but Ria could see ornateness beneath the muck. Wrapping them in a cloth, she put them in her bag as she followed the carried, unconscious man.
She noticed from his folded limbs that if he could stand, he’d be at least as tall as the woman cradling him.
The other field workers followed, some running ahead. By the time they’d reentered town, a curious crowd waited.
Healer Locke met them, running down the steps of the same porch where Ria had been sitting a little while before.
“Bring him in, oh stars, what a mess,” the older woman muttered, indicating they enter the building, the infirmary of the small town.
Loredan, Healer Locke’s other apprentice, joined them. The three of them took the unknown man from the worker’s arms and lay him on a pallet bed. Though they shared the load, Ria still felt the man’s delicate lightness. He barely sighed.
“Go away! We need to work! Go back to yours!” Healer Locke shooed the peering children and townsfolk, shutting the door on the gossiping onlookers.
They set to work.
Loredan boiled herbs and water and Ria brought rags, needles and thread. As Healer Locke narrated her examination Loredan made copious notes in his books, consulting the texts he’d brought with him from the city.
Together they stripped the patient. The linen he wore was blood-sodden, dirty, dissolving with age and leached of colour. The leather on his forearms and chest hung in hairy scraps.
“He wasn’t in good shape before whatever happened to him,” Healer Locke said. Ria looked at the wasted body. Skin stretched over pointed bone, a sheen of sickness under his paleness.
As she and Loredan took the clothes away, Ria saw Loredan’s brow was knotted in confusion.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“See here?” He indicated beneath the blood on the fabric. By concentrating, she saw embroidery, but she couldn’t make out what it depicted.
“It’s just needlework.”
“Not just, this is fine work. More skilled than anything I’ve seen on the city nobility. See how even and delicate these stitches are? And don’t even get me started on the leather, which looks like it could’ve been armour.” He gestured towards the leather remnants they’d removed from the man.
Ria had learned to look past Loredan’s aloofness. Many in the town thought him arrogant, taking offence at his prideful behaviour. Ria knew he sometimes wore his city knowledge inelegantly. When he’d arrived the year before, wanting to learn from the famous Healer Locke, he’d alienated people quickly. But in working alongside him, Ria now saw beyond the smugness and knew his centre to be genuine. Even if they did still often bicker.
“Let’s set the pieces aside, then, and wash them,” Ria suggested. “Maybe they’re precious to him?”
“Perhaps. Why don’t you do it?”
“Why don’t you? It’d teach you how to do your own laundry!”
“Hush, both of you! Come help sew him up.” Healer Locke’s tone interrupted them. Loredan closed his mouth from his almost-said retort.
They worked on the sleeping man. Though they applied salves to cleaned cuts, and sewed the deeper wounds, the man barely moaned. Once there was a faint exhale, hinting at a voice far behind the breath, but otherwise nothing.
“It’s strange there’s not much new blood, isn’t it?” Ria asked Healer Locke, who merely shrugged.
About the Publisher
Speculation Publications is a women owned indie press, based in the Philadelphia area. They publish the collection of utter speculation series as well as other speculative fiction anthologies. It was founded by LC Allingham with River Eno and Susan Tulio.
Editor and Author River Eno is vegan, a pagan, an editor and writer of urban fantasy, alternate history and pagan themed stories. River is part owner and managing editor of Speculation Publications. River lives on the East Coast with people she loves, rescue dogs and turtles.
| Author Website | https://www.speculationpub.com/authors |
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