Reaching Out from a Mind as Dirty as All Outdoors

If you get lucky enough, I might post adult-only material from time to time, so be 18 or over, or please be elsewhere.

I'll be discussing erotica here, the writing of it and the people who write it, as well as what we've written. I find all these aspects stimulating, but if any of them bore you, feel free to skim. You never know what you might miss, though.




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Saturday, February 24, 2024

Charity Sunday "Junkyard Dawg"



My charity today is Disabled American Veterans, DAV, chosen to go with my story rather than the other way around. 

DAV’s Mission Statement: 

For over 100 years, DAV has been advocating for better federal veterans programs, benefits, health care and transition services for the men and women who served, their families and survivors.

www.dav.org

I have to admit that among all the charities I get mail from, I’ve never paid attention to veterans’ kinds before. But in fact there are two military plaques in my family cemetery, and there are two big triangular boxes containing skillfully folded American flags tucked away in my house, both handed to me by soldiers at the burials of my two most beloved men. One was in the Army in WWII, and the other was in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Just writing that brings tears to my eyes. Neither was injured in war, but I do have respect for veterans.

My story here , though, is in no way worthy of much of anything, and I probably shoudn’t be rambling on like this. I chose “Junkyard Dawg” at first, because it’s one of my shortest,  and also old enough that it’s very unlikely to be remembered (or to have been read at all.) It’s also not one of my best. I’d forgotten it myself, until I dug deeply into some old documents. It was published in an anthology from Alison Tyler, but I can’t even remember the name of the book or the year.

Well, in any case, here it goes. You know the drill. I’ll contribute $1 for every hit on this blog, and $2 for every comment. And probably more.


Junkyard Dawg

by Sacchi Green

“Hey, Dawg, get your tail on out here!”

But Dawg doesn’t hear me. Not my yell, not the rude squack of my horn, not the clank of the pickup’s tailgate as I lower it, not the tangles of rusty metal spilling out. The guy’s got some kick-ass concentration going when he gets in the groove with fire and hammer and tongs. Sometimes seems like that’s the only time he comes alive since he came back from the war,limping just a bit with a metal foot. Folks have got over by now joking that he must have made it himself. He doesn’t pay attention to much besides his forge.

The forge isn’t the only place he’s been lighting a fire. This time, when I deliver a truckoad of metal scraps, I’m determined to let my heat show through. 

 With a few pieces of metal over my shoulder, runners from a child’s antique pony-sleigh with a lovely curve to them, I weave past the “Junkhouse Dawg” sign at the curb and through the whimsical “Junkhouse Dogs” and other iron creatures scattered across the yard. He welds them together from old tractor parts, tricycles, rakes, scythe blades, cogwheels, springs, and the assorted detritus of a vanishing rural life. They bring in good money at fairs and craft shops around Vermont.

Out in back, fenced away from the casual tourist’s gaze, Dawg’s more serious works are gathered. Surreal, tortured, mythic, they’re gobbled up by New York galleries when he consents to let them go. I like the horned ones best, demons with sharpened hay-fork tines on their arrogant heads, drill-bit teeth in their mouths, and whangs made of anything from hose nozzles to ice-climbing drills to rotary eggbeaters.

“Dawg!” I call again. “Got a load of prime junk for you!”

Dawg shuts out most folks, but we’ve got along okay in the months since I took over my Dad’s antique-and-junque business. What better use for a degree in art history, right? Besides, dealing with Dawg, who takes all my unsaleable bits and pieces of old metal, has been an unexpected bonus.

 I’m about to make it even more so. He never says much, but he’s sure been looking lately, with that dark, piercing gaze of his. I wonder how long it’s been since he’s had sex. Longer even than for me, I’ll bet. It’s high time I had more than his eyes on me.

I set down the sleigh runners outside the forge, shrug out of my denim jacket, adjust my low-cut tank top for maximum bra-less display, and step through the door. Dawg, wielding an acetylene torch, eyes shielded by a safety visor, doesn’t see me. For a minute, until my eye adjust, I can’t tell what he’s working on, and then, when I do see, I can’t believe it.

He’s constructing a woman.

There’s no mistaking the curving wrought-iron torso, or the pair of tin funnels welded to it, although I still can’t make out much detail. But what’s he doing aiming the narrow torch flame right at those pointy tin tits? My breasts tingle and burn in sympathetic excitement. Then, when I realize that he’s melting the funnel tips into nubbly nipples, my own nipples seem to melt and harden in exquisite contradiction.

This is it. No time for thought. I yank off my tank top, fling it onto the molten metal, and watch it flame into brief glory. Dawg swings around, reflexively switching off the torch. 

Now, at last, I have his attention. In the relative dimness, with the torchlight gone, his visor reflects the red glow from the furnace, making his face look as wild and eerie as that of any demon lover. 

“Is that your dream girl?” I ask. “Looks like you could use a real model. Just for starters, this—“ and I cup my breasts, flicking their hardening, aching nipples with my thumbtips, “is how an aroused woman really looks.” 

Dawg draws a shaky breath. “Just for starters?”

“You come and take over this part,” I say, barely stifling sobs as I work my breasts harder and faster, “and we’ll see about the rest.”

He’s on me hard and fast, shoving me against the wall. “You’d better mean it,” he growls, pulling off his visor, still looking, with dark tousled hair and fierce eyes, like the demon of my dreams.

“Try me.” I wriggle out of my cut-offs and guide his hand between my thighs. I’m so wet and ready steam should be rising from my cunt. I want to say, “Is that a hammer in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” but I’m too frantic to get my hands on him to take time for quips. 

Dawg’s heavy work shirt comes off, and then his jeans, tossed at our feet. I pay no attention to the metal foot. His fingers tease and twist my breasts, while mine stroke his butt and then grip his iron-hard cock. If I could bear to raise my mouth from the heavy muscles of his shoulder I would slide down to taste the droplets I feel where he presses against my stomach. But Dawg’s urgency, once triggered, is too fierce for any delay. He lifts me high until my legs start to grip his hips and my cunt grinds against him, then lowers me suddenly to the floor, onto his sprawl of clothes. I open to take him in, lift to lure him deeper, meet his hammering thrusts with my own demand, and I shout my rough release along with his when our need crests in a huge burst of joy.

“That,” I say, when I can say anything, “is still just for starters.”

“You’d better believe it,” Dawg says. “It’s gonna take a long, long time before I can can get this all done right with nuts and bolts and sleigh parts, now that I’ve got a model, but it’ll be worth the effort.” 

I swat at his fine ass, and he grins. The first real smile I’ve ever had from him, and the longest conversation.  

I think I just found my own way of making great art out of things you find in a junkyard. It’s definitely going to be worth the effort.     


For more of this month’s Charity Sunday, go to Lisabet Sarai’s blog:  https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com  




Saturday, November 25, 2023

AGAIN AND AGAIN: GOING POSTAL

 



My charity this time is UNRWA USA, an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization that provides support for the humanitarian work of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees .

UNRWA USA: Showing Palestine refugees that Americans care

https://www.unrwausa.org/ -

How does the story I’m sharing fit in with this charity? I’ve been twisting and turning trying to figure out how “Going Postal” fits, but I finally have to admit that it just doesn’t. Political rather than charitable, set many years ago at a time when a questionable Presidential election seemed like doom (though not as terrible as one we may be facing soon.) Fear of war is as close to linking the story to the situation of the current charity, just a flimsy link.    

Yet here I go, with a political story written many years ago, and with reference to political times even years before that. So you get history, a bit of amusement, and hot, hot sex.

And, as usual, my charity gets $1 from me for every hit on my blog, and $2 for every comment.

Going Postal

Sacchi Green


     "Hey, are you all right?" She rang the bell again and knocked, hard. I couldn't seem to move. What was the point? What was the point in anything? The world was going to hell, with my own country toting the handbasket. 

     "Lynn! Ms Rackham!" She pounded until I could feel the vibrations through the floor. I pictured her big strong hand, knuckles reddening at the impact with my door, a hand I'd imagined so many times impacting other places... Some part of me stirred, though not, as yet, the parts that could move me out of my huddle on the couch.

     "Look, I know you're in there. The lights and TV go on and off, but you haven't picked up your mail or UPS deliveries in three days. If you don't tell me you're okay, I'll have to either notify the police or break down the door myself." 

     Three fucking days--no, fuckless days--of despair. The bastards had won. In spite of the exit polls, known voting irregularities, and statistical impossibilities, no recounts in Ohio or Florida were going to make any difference. The voters had cast away all reason, and, in the states where gay marriage rights had been trampled into the dust, all sense of human decency as well.

     Not that decency in the conservative sense had ever concerned me much. What the hell possessed people, anyway, to be so obsessed with the kind of sex other people were having? And so unconcerned about their own government's campaign of war, destruction, arrogance, and downright stupidity?

     She knocked again. "Last chance," she called sternly. Her tone of voice had begun to play tricks on me. If I'd been standing up, my knees would have wobbled--which suddenly made standing up a more appealing prospect than it had been in a while. "Looks like some galley proofs in the mail," she added. "Are you such a hotshot writer your editors will let you blow off deadlines?"

     I tossed off the quilt and shuffled around for my slippers. She must have heard me, because she waited silently on the other side of the door, all imposing, silver-brush-cut, six feet of her. I realized suddenly what a mess I must look. Well, why not, when the future looked even worse? 

    Time was, my mother used to say, when your postman knew everything about you short of your underwear size. This one had been delivering my mail for only about three months, but she already knew my politics, my taste in porn, and the publishers who were buying (or rejecting) my work. She'd asked me to autograph an old copy of On Our Backs a couple of weeks ago, and since then I'd been doing my best to make sure that even my underwear size was no mystery to her.  

     It had been a game, inching along toward something major-league. She'd been playing along by knocking and hand-delivering all my mail, even if it was only pizza coupons, trying to suppress her amusement and maintain the official role belied by the gleam in her eye. I'd been planning, if all went well, to dispense with the underwear altogether and appear at the door on the day after the election attired in nothing but a map of the country drawn across my torso, with the blue states colored in. Maybe the whole thing could have been tilted to make a bright blue Florida jut downward in its most interesting possible alignment, pointing the way to glory.

     But all hadn't gone well. For the past two days she'd rung my doorbell, and I hadn't responded, unable to face the world except through the furious online filters of Daily Kos, Buzzflash, Agonist, Fuckthesouth, until even the bloggers' convincing but unprovable conspiracy theories became more than I could bear.

     Now, on the third day, under threat, I opened the door.

     "You look like hell," she said brusquely, a frown denting her wide brow. For a moment I was tempted to throw open my bathrobe and flash my unmapped nakedness at her anyway, until I remembered that I hadn't showered in three days. Or possibly longer.

     "When was the last time you had a meal?" She kicked the door shut behind her, moving inexorably into the kitchen. I followed, and looked vaguely into the sink. Traces of macaroni and cheese had been drying on the unwashed dishes there for at least two days, but I was pretty sure there were more recent cracker crumbs sprinkled across my computer desk.

     "I'm not hungry," I said, with some attempt at dignity. 

     "Well, I am. And you will be." She thumped the stack of mail down onto the table and backed me against my refrigerator, trapping me there with one muscular arm braced on either side, her large body blocking out the rest of the room. And the rest of the world. For a brief moment I felt the warmth of protection and the tingle of challenge, all merged together. A smile threatened to take charge of my lips. 

     Then I saw the postal service insignia on her sleeve. Stylized, streamlined, invoking speed and reliability; but still an eagle. Still the symbol of war. I began to shake.

     "What...?" Then she saw where I was looking, and backed off, leaving me shivering even harder without the warm shelter of her body. I stifled a whimper. "The uniform? Damnit, you're even farther gone than I thought! Have you been getting any sleep? You haven't been home more than three or four days a week in the last two months. No wonder you're crumbling." 

     Her voice was rough, with an underlying note of concern. She'd noticed, I thought. Kept track of me. Well, I'd had to tell her to hold my mail whenever I was away working on voter registration and getting out the vote in states where it might matter.

     Except that nothing I had done had mattered. I slumped back against the refrigerator and began to slide down it. "All that work...we tried so hard..." Tears burned in my eyes and stung my throat. "I did my best..."

     She dragged me upright with her big hands under my armpits. Her thumbs pressed into the sides of my breasts hard enough to leave marks. The pain was a welcome distraction, I realized. Amazingly welcome. My nipples began to harden, and the tears retreated just a little.

     "Yes," she said soothingly, "you did..." She broke off abruptly and looked intently into my eyes. Her tone changed, seething with scorn. "Sure, you tried, but you didn't try hard enough, did you? You call that doing your fucking best?"

     I couldn't flinch away from her bruising grip. Her words seemed brutal, biting--but oddly familiar. My own words, in fact. I discovered that I didn't want to flinch. What had I written next in that story she must have read? Never mind, I'd just wing it. "I'm sorry," I muttered, ducking my head so that my brow rested between her breasts. If I leaned one way or the other, if I turned my head, my mouth could...  No, I hadn't earned such bliss. "It's all my fault. I know it is."

     "You bet it is," she growled. "And you're going to get what's coming to you." She yanked me over to a high chair at the kitchen counter and dumped me there. I watched in awed anticipation as she pulled off jacket and shirt and stood flexing her hands, her white wife-beater clinging to the tantalizing contours of the flesh beneath.

     I started to untie my ratty old bathrobe, but she slapped my hands away, then lifted me from the chair, swung around, and suddenly I was sprawled across her lap. My bathrobe was bunched up around my waist, leaving my ass hanging out in all its chilly vulnerability, so much more humiliating than full nudity. No amount of wriggling and kicking could make my feet reach the floor. I whimpered.

     "You want something to cry about?" Whack! Her hand came down full force, no warm-up. I yelled, and braced for another hit, but she pinched and squeezed hard for a few seconds, probing for sensitive spots, not that there was an inch of flesh that wasn't either aching or aching for more.  

     Whack. Whack. WHACK!  A relentless rhythm, repeated with variations, making me realize, as much as I could think at all between gasps, that I'd had no conception at first of what full force could mean. 

     On and on, with no let-up except to get me off-guard, interrupt my expectations. From my ass to my thighs I was hot, throbbing, quivering before and after each impact, and my whole body jerked with the intensity of each strike. The tears were back, flowing down my cheeks, snuffling in my nose, but the wetness squeezing from my cunt under her relentless pressure made a keener impression.

     "Please," I whispered, but she ignored me. "Please," I cried louder, wriggling my crotch against her thigh, then trying to raise my butt, straining against the forearm steadying me across my waist. She paused.

     "'Please,'" she mocked. "You think you've had enough? Ready to forgive yourself, are you? You think this is it, we're finished?"

     "No, please...I need...I'm so hot..."

     "Flaming hot," she agreed, pinching one buttcheek hard. "And getting pretty tender. Maybe it's time to stick a fork in and see if you're done." There was no time to process what she'd said before two fingers and then another thrust into my hungry cunt. The tines of her "fork" seemed to spread apart, clench together, probe commandingly just where my need was most demanding, until, just as her other hand came down in a sharp, solid slap on my sore ass, the wrenching spasms hit and shook me from my toes to my streaming nose.

     It was a long time before I could fumble the sleeve of my robe up to wipe away my tears and snot. She was stroking my reddened ass gently now, but for a little while I still sobbed softly, wringing every drop of release from that magnificent catharsis.

     Finally she carried me to the couch, and we cuddled for a while. I started to work my mouth surreptitiously across her undershirt, millimeter by millimeter, but suddenly I sat upright. "Don't you have to finish your route?" I asked. 

     "Nope. I have the afternoon off. Just came by to check on you."

     I snuggled back. "You did a good job," I told her. "I'm so glad the postman never gives up."

     "Neither snow nor sleet nor stolen election," she agreed. "I've been around the block enough times to get some perspective. And so should you. A little food might help, though." She set me aside. "C'mon, I'll take you out for something spicy enough to get the circulation flowing, if you can manage to get dressed."

     My circulation was already in fine shape, but I was suddenly ravenous. In fifteen minutes (ten for a mutual shower that nearly derailed our plans) we were heading toward her station wagon.

     "Just a minute," she said, her hand on the door. "Extra credit if a young whippersnapper like you can tell me what those are about." She motioned toward two weather-worn bumper stickers held on with strips of duct tape.

     "'McGovern/Eagleton,'" I read. "Um, '72? But...wasn't it McGovern/Shriver?"

     "Yeah, eventually," she said. "Close enough. But look it up. Politics is always messy. How about the other one? I saved ‘em both when I finally had to junk my first car. They don't make 'em like Dodge Darts anymore."

     ""Don't Blame Me, I'm from Massachusetts.'" I had to think about it. '72...'73... "Nixon? Watergate? The impeachment?" She nodded, but still waited. "Okay, right," I said. "Only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia went for McGovern."

     "And even then," she pointed out, "McGovern got 40 percent of the vote. Don't go forgetting how many people are still on the same side you're on. And some of them are getting their rears in gear to fight on." She opened the door and didn't wait for me to say anything else, which was a damned good thing, because I didn't have anything else to say just yet.

     She just let me relax as we rolled onward toward food and fellowship, her hand on my thigh and my head against her shoulder, my thoughts for once not so much on politics as on what I hoped to get with all that extra credit.


For more of this month’s Charity Sunday, go to Lisabet Sarai’s blog:  https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com

   

  

        

      


     

           

        

              

            




Saturday, July 29, 2023

A Dance of Queens--GLAAD

 



 

Charity Sunday

 

My charity for Charity Sunday this time is GLAAD, glaad.org,  a major source and support of  LGBTQ media. Their columns are generally upbeat, a bit of relief from the tsunami of horrifying news stories about state laws terrorizing trans folk, especially the young.

 

You know the drill. You read, I donate $1 for each hit on this blog, and $2 for every comment.

 

Every once in a while I see casual references to Shakespeare’s time, when boys played the female roles in his plays. That has nothing really to do with today’s transexual people, but some years ago I couldn’t resist writing a story about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” way back when the play was brand new. The genders of my characters—the players of Titania and Hippolyta--seem revealed once, then take turn after turn. Queen Elisabeth herself is there, and so is Puck, who can cheerfully switch genders any time.

I must have posted “A Dance of Queens” on my blog some time or other, but I’m too lazy to look for it now. Fair warning, the story is quite long.             

 

A Dance of Queens

Sacchi Green

 

Midsummer's Night, the play safely done, dusk sweet as a languorous touch on yearning flesh...and still I could not take my love into the greenwood and lay her on my cloak and be consumed in her fire.

I cursed my own impatience. We should have pressed on without pause, but Quenta had tormented me so, slipping a hand beneath my shirt and then down into my breeches until I could scarce walk, and must stop for a taste of the feast to come.

So the Queen's messenger had caught us. And truly, by the shimmer in the air at the instant she appeared, I knew there had never been hope of escape. In the Welsh hills and valleys we have tales, more than tales, of such creatures, though I had thought the filth and disbelief of London must repel them. At another time I would have been glad that the green countryside along the Thames still held such folk. Glad or no, we had no choice now but to let the greenwood's promise fade into shadow.

Frustration pounded in my veins. I jerked away from Quenta's touch, the mere brush of her hand making me forget that I must not even think of "him" as "her" until we could be blessedly alone.

I focused on the wide skirt sailing just ahead. Though the farthingale was not devised with a lady dwarf in mind, its absurdity was more than countered by the messenger's bearing and the Queen's crest broidered on her sleeve. It scarcely needed Quenta's nudge to put me on guard against those keen, merry eyes, though they looked up at me from about the level of my belt.

Such danger should have chilled my ardor. But surely the Queen would waste little time on us, might have forgotten already her whim. At most there could be a gracious word or two, perhaps a small purse. Why, then, command that we bring our play-garb? A jest among her ladies?

But in the great bedchamber we found Her Majesty alone, a slim, pale figure whose aura crackled through the paneled room like heat-lightning.

Our diminutive guide swept a curtsy. "The player boys, Madam. Quentin O'Connor and Kit Rhys."

Bright, tired eyes assessed us. "Well enough, Gwen. Now keep us private for a bit." The attendant gave me a wicked sidelong glance as she went to sit between the great oak door and the carven screen before it.

Quenta elbowed me sharply. I joined her in an elegant stage bow, feeling the royal glance caress our snug-hosed calves. Her Majesty was said to have ever an eye for a well-turned leg; if it went farther than a look, or a leg… But I had never heard so much as rumor that it did.

Her voice was cool enough. "So,. You played the queen's part well, each in your own way."

"Never so well as you, Your Highness." Quenta's green eyes gleamed wickedly, and I suppressed a groan. This was no time for her sly wit!

An answering gleam lit the Queen's eyes. "Ah, but I have performed the role far longer!"  Her face seemed less weary now; it was hard to credit that she had more than twice our years. "Do you not think I could play Queen of Faery as well as England's monarch?"

I tried to break the manic current between them. "Yes, in truth, Highness. Or Queen of Amazons, or any ruler ever conceived." I knelt with Hippolyta's tunic and gilded leather breastplate across one knee. Her gaze turned toward me, lingering on my long legs; I felt as when Quenta would stroke me from calf to thigh and beyond, and my flesh would melt and surge in sweet torment.

"I have not your height, lad, to play the Amazon," she said. "You did well enough, though one could scarcely credit that you would ever yield to Duke Theseus, whether in battle or in marriage bed. But come, it was bravely played, if a slighter part than Titania's." 

She turned to Quenta with a thoughtful look. "Have you two played Master Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet?' You would suit well as lovers."

Did she toy with us? What hope had we against the wits of one who played with envoys, kings, even the Pope, for her own and England's gain?

"Quentin is acclaimed as Juliet," I answered cautiously, "but to tell truth, Hippolyta is my first speaking part, and well may be my last. I am more like to play an accompanying lute, or rattle distant armor."

"It is an awkward age, I know," she said. "Your voice is nigh too low already for a woman's part. Indeed..." Those keen eyes scrutinized us closely. "I might think you both somewhat old for boy players."

I tensed inwardly, forcing my body to reveal nothing. To stifle Quenta's special genius would be a crime against art, against life itself! But if she were judged to be a woman... A woman appearing upon the public stage was such outrage that the penalty could only be surmised.  

Quenta laughed, and in that instant the tilt of her head, the cock of hip and shoulder, were entirely those of a brash youth. "I can play you any age, Lady, any sex." She took on the bombastic voice and gestures of Bottom the Weaver. "I can play you a roaring Lion, or a most excellent Wall..." and then her voice softened, its husky purr making my flesh quiver with longing for the velvet touch of her tongue. "Or I can be the Lady Moon herself."

She stepped toward the high window, every motion, every line now utterly female, despite the padded trunk-hose muffling the sweet curves of her hips. Had I been a jot closer my hand would have slipped of its own accord between cloth and smooth, seductive skin. And had she turned, and my fingers found what waited between her thighs.... 

"Look you, Lady, how the new moon burns, no silver bow, but a crescent slit through which the passions of the sky pour forth. Can you not see in me that same bright fire?"

 And she was, in truth, the very essence of the new moon, its tremulous yearning in her slim grace, its hot intensity in her smoldering eyes. Then I stepped toward her and broke the spell, and it was not her madness but mine that gave us away.

"Sirrah! Do not force me to see that which were better kept hidden!" If the Queen sensed that we were lovers, she had no wish to bring it to an issue. I did not think that she had yet sensed more.

"But Titania may see what England's Queen may not." Quenta knelt, proffering her red wig, leaf-green draperies and silver demi-mask. "On Midsummer's Night, the fancies of mortal and fairy alike may roam free. Come with us, Lady, to observe their merry frolics!"

Even through my outrage I saw what Quenta had recognized at once. Though the Queen might conceal it even from herself, it was for this we had been summoned.

A moment of hesitation; then she took the silver mask. "In truth, I have a fancy to see my host's estate by moonlight. You shall escort me, and together we shall see 'what fools these mortals be.'" She caught my eye. "Yes, lad, I know, none better, how mortal and therefore foolish even a queen may be. That is my own affair. Send Gwen to me, and wait behind the screen." But Gwen was beside her already, the sole evidence of her passing the twinge of a playful pinch upon my rump.

When the Queen was ready Gwen went sedately enough before us. I could not discern how she bespelled each guard we passed, but it was clear that none could see her mistress until we were well outside and mingling with the crowd.

The Lord Chancellor's estate was alight as though to cancel out entirely this shortest night of the year. Near the great house lords and ladies strolled the torch-lit paths, or clung together in the shadowy embrace of shrubberies. Farther off, where the village clustered around the river landing, a bonfire flared and crackled and smoke hovered in the sky like a lecherous ogre.

Habitual command mingled with laughter in the voice that urged me forward. "Come, they can have devised no cruder games than when last I walked free on a Midsummer's Night, though it were half a lifetime ago."

Quenta, just behind me, slid her hand between my thighs, and I had no choice but to move forward or turn and punish her as she deserved.

Two Quentas imprisoned me, both shimmering with manic energy, both intent on torture. The green-draped lady on my right had every movement, every gesture, even the voice of Quenta-as-Titania. No actor could have surpassed her.

On my left pranced my infuriating love in full boy-mode, her russet hair swept up under a jaunty feathered cap. At every step her hand and hip and shoulder nudged and stroked me. The Queen might not see, but Gwen, trotting behind, smiled slyly.

Much more of this and I would be unfit to walk at all. In the bedchamber, as we had waited behind the screen, Quenta's seeking hands and mouth had maddened me until I grasped both wrists and held her away. Then she flicked her mobile tongue at me, and I could only muffle my groans in the hollow of her throat. This too Gwen had seen as she came to fetch us.

My arousal was mounting all too close to pain. "Quentin, you unmannered lout, take the Lady's other side!"

 The Queen cocked a brow at my strangled tone, but held out a regal arm, and Quenta moved to take it. A glance behind showed a broad grin on Gwen's round face.

The Queen seemed drawn to all the bawdiest displays. She cheered on village maidens belaboring the pale hairy bum of a hapless stock-bound miscreant, and would have taken a switch to him herself had I not diverted her attention to two buxom wenches admiring the massive virtues of a docile bull, while their blushing swains tried to draw them onward.

A cluster of tipsy revelers drew us to the village square. I could hear the clown Will Kemp's falsetto above the laughter; he was a noted player in our troupe, and always rare entertainment. Then I saw his companion, and hoped short Gwen would take no offense.

Will pranced in strumpet's garb across a rough stage, swinging padded rump, while Long Tom the tumbling dwarf somersaulted in mock pursuit. Another time I would have laughed at their antics, and later bought an ale for Tom and traded japes in Welsh; he was a good man, philosophical, adept at using what he had to earn his living.

What he had, besides acrobatic skill and a merry black-bearded face, was the largest codpiece I have ever seen and ample means to fill it. A stallion might have envied his endowment.

Will crouched, and swung his bum into Tom's jutting cock. Tom tumbled and bounced and vaulted back, while the crowd howled, and my face burned. I tried to back my party out of the throng.

We were almost clear when I heard a gasp of outrage. I turned, and saw whose hands clutched at Gwen, and perversely welcomed this vent for my frustration.

That sniveling whoreson weasel's whelp Dick Fry, talebearer and eternal understudy! "Ho, Rhys," he hailed me. "Come help me toss this hobgoblin up on stage with t'other! What, no stomach for sport?"

Quenta gripped her dagger. Gwen narrowed her eyes, and Dick's ears and nose began to lengthen and grow hairy. It would have made a rare spectacle, but the Queen must not be found out.

"The lady is with me, you lout! Would you feel my fist smashing through that empty travesty you call a codpiece?" I moved so close he had to peer upward at me. "Do you wet yourself dreaming of my fist mangling your puny balls?" Fear flickered in his eyes, and rage, and something else; I pushed him away in disgust and led my company past the gawking bystanders.

"Lucky for that one you were here," Gwen muttered in Welsh, and spat in the direction Dick had gone.

A slim, imperious hand gripped my shoulder. "Enough, lad. You have done nobly, but the Midsummer's magic I recalled is gone forever." 

"Nay, lady, there is magic still!" Quenta's eyes glowed cat-like in the torchlight. "Kit has found a place a fairy queen might lie, and takes me there this night. We shall see what magic three queens together may ignite!"

I could have wrung her slim white neck. The Queen, though, waved dismissively. "I doubt not such a tryst is meant for two alone. Only see me back to the Hall, and then be off wherever youth and Midsummer madness lead you." She took my arm. "You may divert me as we go. Is there indeed 'a bank where the wild thyme blows.... With sweet musk roses and with eglantine?'"

"As to that, Lady, the scent was more of mint and fern. I saw daisies but no roses, though there were berry brambles aplenty. Perhaps by daylight you might view it."

"Ay, perhaps." Her voice was bleak.

"Now!" said Quenta. "Now, by moonlight, or not at all!" Her fierce eyes held mine, her meaning all too clear. When I turned toward the greenwood the Queen, a gleam restored in her eye, did not demur.

The way was not so far that the Queen might tire. Indeed, I recalled, Her Majesty was known to out-ride and out-walk her courtiers, and out-last them on the dance floor, too, however fast or subtly sensuous the steps.

Earlier in the day I had followed a stream upcurrent to a place where the waters split and merged again, leaving an islet in their midst. Wading across had been easy, cutting my way through brambles harder, but the reward had been a grassy glade spangled with flowers and hidden from all but the sky.

Here I could bring my love where the rush of water would drown the wild, raw cries her touches forced from me. Always in the city I must stifle my voice, and my pleasure. But here, alone...

To be alone! But, now, not to be.

I waded across with Quenta first. She resisted being carried, but I clung to that remnant of my fantasy despite the temptation to drop her in the deepest water. When she guessed my mood and clung, other temptations rose to nearly overwhelm me.

"It was you who taught me, love, that the magic must be shared," she murmured, and laid a trail of kisses across my throat.

 "Between two, yes! Solitary pleasures are paltry trifles! But three? And one of these the Queen? Your madness goes too far!"

 "Yours has ever kept pace before! Truly, Kit, you always know my needs, better than I know myself. Open yourself to hers!"

"'Open?' You cannot mean..." but she had slipped from my grasp and danced away, her torch flickering eerily through the brambles.

I hoped that the Queen might have regained some sense, until I saw the torch set into the stream bank reflect from eyes gone fey and feral. "It is the Queen of Faery who goes abroad this night," she murmured, "and all she sees shall be no more than fairy-tale."

As I lifted her she leaned her head far back to watch the moon and trailed one hand into the stream, and I had to press her close for balance. She felt so like Quenta--or perhaps moonlight on the water dazzled my eyes and other senses--but when I set her on the bank my blood raced despite the water's chill.

Going back for Gwen did little to cool me. Anger played as great a part as arousal; both vixens would be well served to be marooned while I looked elsewhere for ease of my throbbing flesh.

I noted again how compact in form Gwen stood, her mouth scarcely above the level of my loins... 

Gwen knew that look. "Nay, youngling, my taste is for meat less tender. Do we but get my Lady safe home before dawn, I am appointed to meet a certain short tumbler and countryman for deep conversation." She gave my thigh a shove. "Go to, distract the Queen from her melancholy. For once she shall be entertained by earthly pleasures on a Midsummer's Night. When she lies safe again in her bed both Tom and I will thank you; for now, I wait and ward here."

Across the water light flickered from the torches left in readiness.  No doubt Quenta had also found my bed of heaped sweetfern and the basket of strawberries and flask of wine. Damn her capricious impulse! I ached so for the promised tryst...

Gwen whacked me ungently across the buttocks. "Go to, young fool, or they'll begin without you! And do not doubt that I shall see all!"

I went.

Such moonlight poured across the little glade that the slender crescent seemed to burn as fiercely as my desire. Pale daisy faces glowed with inner life, and fireflies' lanterns pulsed in shadowy bushes--or had Gwen provided fairy lights? The torches were scarce needed.

The Queen reclined on the cloak-spread bed, but I had eyes only for Quenta. Moonlight bathed her pale, smooth skin, flowing over every inch, as she stood, her back to us, naked and trembling and lovely before our eyes. When she looked over her shoulder her eyes were moon-glazed jewels.

"Now, sprite," said Titania, "now that your companion is come, you may reveal what you truly are, if you think I have not guessed."

I could scarce keep from laying hands on Quenta. There was no way now to play this scene save by whatever mad script she had devised, though my heart ached that my acceptance, my love, was not enough to allow her to accept herself. 

"Some would call me hermaphrodite, Lady," she murmured huskily. "My mother named me son on scant evidence, and my father so wished to believe that he deceived himself. You will find me writ on the parish roles as male."

The Queen raised narrow brows. "I do not presume to question parish records, but I would judge of this evidence myself."

I held my breath as Quenta turned, all bravado fled.

For long moments the Queen surveyed her; the small tilted breasts; the slender waist curving into gently flaring hips; the small, dainty cock nestling amidst tawny curls above the woman's shadowed cleft. 

When at last it came the royal voice held not shock, but years of anguish.

"Had I shown evidence twice as scant, my mother's neck had escaped the ax! Could my father the King have believed me a son...." Her voice sank almost too low to hear. "How many noble souls might have been spared...."

I fell to my knees before her. That she should feel self-loathing, after all she had done to make England strong!

"Nay, Madam, never wish yourself other! What was't you said before the troops when the Armada threatened? That you had 'the body of a weak feeble woman...but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too...' Such a heart in such a body serves England best of all!"

"It may be so." She summoned up a smile and spoke to Quenta, who knelt now beside me. "Enough of idle speculation. I had guessed, of course, that you were no boy; I would not have come merely to witness love of Plato's Athenian sort." She turned to me. "You tell me, sir, is this eldritch chimaera male or female? I'll warrant your judgment can be trusted on that score!"

"She is my love," I said simply. "Her form is to me perfect and unique, but I would love her had she horns and a tail."

"You might well love me even better!" Quenta sprang up and twirled around the glade, her wild mood renewed. "Come, show how you love me!" She pulled me up and pressed tight against me, fingers busy in the lacings of my doublet.

"Show you? You know all too well!" I caught her hands. "Is it the audience you play to that quickens your blood? Best be sure she has a taste for such display!" 

Titania's eyes were dark behind the silver demi-mask. "Play on," she murmured, and in her tone I heard regret, and sorrow, and the yearnings of a passionate heart too long reined in.

"Nay, Kit, truly, you alone inflame me." Quenta's eyes held mine; my hold slackened and her hands slipped free to brush my face, my lips, my throat, and then my chest in quicksilver, fire-trailing strokes. "Please, Kit, please, touch me, let me touch you..." Her husky voice deepened, throbbing in resonance with the pounding of my blood.

I pulled her close to still her fingers, but the press of her firm breasts was yet more maddening. I ran my hands over smooth back and waist and hips, cupped them over pert, rounded buttocks and lifted her whole body tightly against my hunger. "Your skin is chilled, love."

"Then give me your shirt." She laughed into my face and pulled open my doublet. When she drew up my shirt and worked her mouth across my chest I knew that I was lost, that not even the icy stream could quench this fire.

"And take off your hose and breeches, too, you are so wet against me!" One hand slipped far down between cloth and flesh and I felt myself grow ever wetter, and hotter too, despite the chill from the wading of the stream. 

"Which will you bare first?" she purred, a wicked light flickering in her eyes as fireflies flickered in the grass around us and their throbbing points of light seemed to spark in my own depths.

It scarcely mattered. I chose what might by a fraction be the lesser shock. I tossed my doublet aside and pulled off my shirt, draping it around Quenta's chilly shoulders while she tore at bindings grown unbearable and let my aching breasts surge free.

"Not Athens." My breath caught as Quenta's soothing strokes became a torment that made me ever fuller and more sore. "Not Athens, Lady, but Sappho's Isle of Lesbos. Though I resist the constraints of a woman's body, I rejoice always in its pleasures."

This, she had not foreseen. The mask dropped; her eyes were wide.

"Please, Kit, please..." Quenta tugged at my belt while her hot mouth drove my breasts and nipples taut and aching with the need for more. "Please, I must..." Her voice was muffled against my swollen flesh.

"Slowly," I soothed, though I could scarcely speak. "The slower the sweeter, love."  As ever, she who had teased and maddened me for hours was now all desperate haste, while to me each stab of pleasure promised such further, keener pangs that I would not give up any part to leap too quickly to release.

I kicked off wet boots and wriggled out of breeches and hose, Quenta's hands more distraction than help. Then I half-turned that the Queen might see I had no such exotic equipage as my love. 

Her gaze moved over me from head to foot, taking in my length and strength and the incongruous swellings of a woman's body. A fierce longing for her approval swept me; now I understood what drove Quenta to reveal herself.

"You are the Amazon indeed," the Queen murmured at last, "and you," to Quenta, "a most exquisite Queen of Sprites." Then she laughed. "Master Shakespeare had it skewed, to say Hippolyta dallied with Oberon and Titania with Duke Theseus. Yours promises to be the better play, in truth!"

"Not so much play as dance, Lady, with intricate and subtle steps." I gazed into Quenta's eyes, holding her to stillness as my hands devoured the sweet curves of her body. She tried valiantly to wait, to savor, as I put my mouth to her small pouting breasts. She trembled, and her breath came in quick soft moans, as I licked and gently bit at her thrusting nipples.

Then her hips began to sway, and twist, and she clutched at me, and since the bed was occupied there was nothing for it but to lift her up along my body until that sweet seeking little dagger, no more in truth than a greatly inflated clitoris, pressed against my own.

She cried out, and clung to me with arms and thighs. I stilled, knowing her needs, that every movement must be hers now, every pressure, lest the rapture of her wondrous engorgement turn to pain. The lightest stroke of my hand, my tongue, could tip the balance.

As steadily as could be I endured the piercing stabs of pleasure. Rough moans escaped me as she arched and writhed against my mound, but from her there came only a keening so faint it might have floated from a distant world.

All at once she flung back her head, the moon mirrored in wild, half-closed eyes. "Now love, now!"

But already I had slipped one hand between our bodies and into her ready heat. Two fingers, deep and gently deeper, probing and pressing into her hunger; and now at last her cries burst forth, her slippery depths clutched at me, her great hard clit vibrated against mine; and my joy in her joy came near to overwhelming me.

Still there was more I must, would, have. I held her while spasms dwindled into trembling and her breath at long last slowed. Then I loosed my hold, and she slid gradually down my length, her mobile mouth teasing and caressing all the way until she knelt before me.

"Do you lag behind, love?" Her laugh was still unsteady. "Come, you will overtake me yet."  She moved her hands over my hips until they pressed into my tingling buttocks, then pulled me toward her. My clit, still aquiver, leapt at the subtle flick of her tongue.

I tangled my fingers in her moon-burnished hair as she drove me to new extremes. Moans racked me as she nudged my thighs apart and thrust her long supple tongue up into my molten cunt. Deep inside me a bright slim moon seemed to pulse and swell into full roundness.

Pleasure surged and pounded through me. My own rasping cries seemed far away as I rode the waves, striving still for more, and more, needing something more with an incoherent desperation....

And then a warm body pressed against my back. A voice murmured low into my ear, "Surely this figure can be danced by three!" Slim arms wrapped about me from behind; long clever fingers cupped and weighed my full breasts, making the aching pressure build and build; and when she curved her palms around my nipples and circled them so lightly that the hardened tips must strain and thrust into her touch, it was the final stroke. My clit strained and thrust too, and my cunt clenched and swallowed at the firm flame of Quenta's tongue, until the moon exploded inside me in a roaring burst of tangible light.

Or perhaps the roaring was my own. When at last awareness spread beyond receding ecstasy I felt hot breath on my shoulder, and a voice, hesitant yet tinged with laughter, murmured in my ear; "And can you make me sing so, as well as dance?"

Her arms were tight about me as her body swayed and rubbed against mine, breasts stroking my back, soft belly pressed beseechingly into the curve of my buttocks.

"Yea, Lady, you shall sing as full and sweet as any!" Quenta toppled us both onto the sweetfern bed and sprawled atop us; and there indeed we tasted royal flesh and royal passion, and taught the woman within to sing, taught her most thoroughly the joys of the body fate had decreed.

We had no doubt that the spirit of Midsummer accepted our triple offering as graciously as that of any mundane coupling. As wave followed wave of pleasure my lovers took on a glow of celestial light, Quenta the silver of the moon, our Queen the royal gold of the sun; while I, the dark earth, absorbed and radiated back their overlapping aurae. Bright sparks like stars flashed and swirled above us, while a swooping comet bore the grin and wicked eyes of Gwen.

Much later we laughed together and soothed our throats with wine and berries. When Gwen's muted whistle sounded we looked up bemused; the moon hung low and the first faint harbingers of morning streaked the sky. I thought of her assignation with Tom and felt some guilt, but when we had made our way across the water she only smiled at the sweetfern clinging to the Queen and made no reproach.

"Ah, Gwen," said her Lady, somewhat ruefully, "I doubt but that I have forfeited the name of 'Virgin Queen.'"

"No such thing, Madam," Gwen said cheerfully, hurrying us along deserted pathways. "It is the Queen's English, after all, and means whatever the Queen decrees."

She brought us to the great house sooner than humanly possible, and maid and mistress slipped in through a small side door that took shape even as we watched. When Gwen reappeared with jeweled tokens from the Queen, I bade her give Tom my apologies. Her grin flashed bright, and then she sobered.

"No matter. Our sweet Lady has more need of you than you can know, for service quite apart from this night's frolic. Neither of you will strut upon the stage much longer; who would credit such protracted youth? But two who act so well can do it on the Queen's behalf, and be her eyes and ears about the world. Be sure I will send soon to tell you of her needs."

"We are truly hers, body and soul," I said. "But Gwen...who, or what, are you?"

"Need you ask?" she said impatiently. "The realm of Faery takes yet a care for England's welfare, and for her rightful monarch. As for me, think you the Puck must be ever prisoned in male form?" It took her sharp pinch to make me close my gaping mouth.

"For now, begone, before suspicious daylight catch us all." She gave us each a solid whack across our flanks.

Daylight be damned. I held Quenta close as we went toward the players' quarters. 

"There is much danger in this business, Love," I warned her.

"'Tis true," she answered, "but you know as well as I there is no drawing back. We are as bound now to our royal mistress as to each other."

She spoke the truth. I lengthened my stride to match the skipping haste of hers, feeling anew the desire that was ever my torment and my joy; and when I squeezed her hand I felt within my grasp as well the long, slim, sensuous fingers of the royal hand that would ever hold us fast.

 

 

     

   

        

    

            

            

 

     

      

     

     

      

                              

       

           

               

 

 

 

Charity Sunday

 

My charity this time is GLAAD, glaad.org,  a major source and support of  LGBTQ media. Their columns are generally upbeat, a bit of relief from the tsumani of horrifying news stories about state laws terrorizing trans folk, especially the young.

 

Every once in a while I see casual references to Shakespeare’s time, when boys played the female roles in his plays. That has nothing really to do with today’s transexual people, but some years ago I couldn’t resist writing a story about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” way back when the play was brand new. The genders of my characters—the players of Titania and Hippolyta--seem revealed once, then take turn after turn. Queen Elisabeth herself is there, and so is Puck, who can cheerfully switch genders any time.

I must have posted “A Dance of Queens” on my blog some time or other, but I’m too lazy to look for it now. Fair warning, the story is quite long.             

 

 

A Dance of Queens

Sacchi Green

 

Midsummer's Night, the play safely done, dusk sweet as a languorous touch on yearning flesh...and still I could not take my love into the greenwood and lay her on my cloak and be consumed in her fire.

I cursed my own impatience. We should have pressed on without pause, but Quenta had tormented me so, slipping a hand beneath my shirt and then down into my breeches until I could scarce walk, and must stop for a taste of the feast to come.

So the Queen's messenger had caught us. And truly, by the shimmer in the air at the instant she appeared, I knew there had never been hope of escape. In the Welsh hills and valleys we have tales, more than tales, of such creatures, though I had thought the filth and disbelief of London must repel them. At another time I would have been glad that the green countryside along the Thames still held such folk. Glad or no, we had no choice now but to let the greenwood's promise fade into shadow.

Frustration pounded in my veins. I jerked away from Quenta's touch, the mere brush of her hand making me forget that I must not even think of "him" as "her" until we could be blessedly alone.

I focused on the wide skirt sailing just ahead. Though the farthingale was not devised with a lady dwarf in mind, its absurdity was more than countered by the messenger's bearing and the Queen's crest broidered on her sleeve. It scarcely needed Quenta's nudge to put me on guard against those keen, merry eyes, though they looked up at me from about the level of my belt.

Such danger should have chilled my ardor. But surely the Queen would waste little time on us, might have forgotten already her whim. At most there could be a gracious word or two, perhaps a small purse. Why, then, command that we bring our play-garb? A jest among her ladies?

But in the great bedchamber we found Her Majesty alone, a slim, pale figure whose aura crackled through the paneled room like heat-lightning.

Our diminutive guide swept a curtsy. "The player boys, Madam. Quentin O'Connor and Kit Rhys."

Bright, tired eyes assessed us. "Well enough, Gwen. Now keep us private for a bit." The attendant gave me a wicked sidelong glance as she went to sit between the great oak door and the carven screen before it.

Quenta elbowed me sharply. I joined her in an elegant stage bow, feeling the royal glance caress our snug-hosed calves. Her Majesty was said to have ever an eye for a well-turned leg; if it went farther than a look, or a leg… But I had never heard so much as rumor that it did.

Her voice was cool enough. "So,. You played the queen's part well, each in your own way."

"Never so well as you, Your Highness." Quenta's green eyes gleamed wickedly, and I suppressed a groan. This was no time for her sly wit!

An answering gleam lit the Queen's eyes. "Ah, but I have performed the role far longer!"  Her face seemed less weary now; it was hard to credit that she had more than twice our years. "Do you not think I could play Queen of Faery as well as England's monarch?"

I tried to break the manic current between them. "Yes, in truth, Highness. Or Queen of Amazons, or any ruler ever conceived." I knelt with Hippolyta's tunic and gilded leather breastplate across one knee. Her gaze turned toward me, lingering on my long legs; I felt as when Quenta would stroke me from calf to thigh and beyond, and my flesh would melt and surge in sweet torment.

"I have not your height, lad, to play the Amazon," she said. "You did well enough, though one could scarcely credit that you would ever yield to Duke Theseus, whether in battle or in marriage bed. But come, it was bravely played, if a slighter part than Titania's." 

She turned to Quenta with a thoughtful look. "Have you two played Master Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet?' You would suit well as lovers."

Did she toy with us? What hope had we against the wits of one who played with envoys, kings, even the Pope, for her own and England's gain?

"Quentin is acclaimed as Juliet," I answered cautiously, "but to tell truth, Hippolyta is my first speaking part, and well may be my last. I am more like to play an accompanying lute, or rattle distant armor."

"It is an awkward age, I know," she said. "Your voice is nigh too low already for a woman's part. Indeed..." Those keen eyes scrutinized us closely. "I might think you both somewhat old for boy players."

I tensed inwardly, forcing my body to reveal nothing. To stifle Quenta's special genius would be a crime against art, against life itself! But if she were judged to be a woman... A woman appearing upon the public stage was such outrage that the penalty could only be surmised.  

Quenta laughed, and in that instant the tilt of her head, the cock of hip and shoulder, were entirely those of a brash youth. "I can play you any age, Lady, any sex." She took on the bombastic voice and gestures of Bottom the Weaver. "I can play you a roaring Lion, or a most excellent Wall..." and then her voice softened, its husky purr making my flesh quiver with longing for the velvet touch of her tongue. "Or I can be the Lady Moon herself."

She stepped toward the high window, every motion, every line now utterly female, despite the padded trunk-hose muffling the sweet curves of her hips. Had I been a jot closer my hand would have slipped of its own accord between cloth and smooth, seductive skin. And had she turned, and my fingers found what waited between her thighs.... 

"Look you, Lady, how the new moon burns, no silver bow, but a crescent slit through which the passions of the sky pour forth. Can you not see in me that same bright fire?"

 And she was, in truth, the very essence of the new moon, its tremulous yearning in her slim grace, its hot intensity in her smoldering eyes. Then I stepped toward her and broke the spell, and it was not her madness but mine that gave us away.

"Sirrah! Do not force me to see that which were better kept hidden!" If the Queen sensed that we were lovers, she had no wish to bring it to an issue. I did not think that she had yet sensed more.

"But Titania may see what England's Queen may not." Quenta knelt, proffering her red wig, leaf-green draperies and silver demi-mask. "On Midsummer's Night, the fancies of mortal and fairy alike may roam free. Come with us, Lady, to observe their merry frolics!"

Even through my outrage I saw what Quenta had recognized at once. Though the Queen might conceal it even from herself, it was for this we had been summoned.

A moment of hesitation; then she took the silver mask. "In truth, I have a fancy to see my host's estate by moonlight. You shall escort me, and together we shall see 'what fools these mortals be.'" She caught my eye. "Yes, lad, I know, none better, how mortal and therefore foolish even a queen may be. That is my own affair. Send Gwen to me, and wait behind the screen." But Gwen was beside her already, the sole evidence of her passing the twinge of a playful pinch upon my rump.

When the Queen was ready Gwen went sedately enough before us. I could not discern how she bespelled each guard we passed, but it was clear that none could see her mistress until we were well outside and mingling with the crowd.

The Lord Chancellor's estate was alight as though to cancel out entirely this shortest night of the year. Near the great house lords and ladies strolled the torch-lit paths, or clung together in the shadowy embrace of shrubberies. Farther off, where the village clustered around the river landing, a bonfire flared and crackled and smoke hovered in the sky like a lecherous ogre.

Habitual command mingled with laughter in the voice that urged me forward. "Come, they can have devised no cruder games than when last I walked free on a Midsummer's Night, though it were half a lifetime ago."

Quenta, just behind me, slid her hand between my thighs, and I had no choice but to move forward or turn and punish her as she deserved.

Two Quentas imprisoned me, both shimmering with manic energy, both intent on torture. The green-draped lady on my right had every movement, every gesture, even the voice of Quenta-as-Titania. No actor could have surpassed her.

On my left pranced my infuriating love in full boy-mode, her russet hair swept up under a jaunty feathered cap. At every step her hand and hip and shoulder nudged and stroked me. The Queen might not see, but Gwen, trotting behind, smiled slyly.

Much more of this and I would be unfit to walk at all. In the bedchamber, as we had waited behind the screen, Quenta's seeking hands and mouth had maddened me until I grasped both wrists and held her away. Then she flicked her mobile tongue at me, and I could only muffle my groans in the hollow of her throat. This too Gwen had seen as she came to fetch us.

My arousal was mounting all too close to pain. "Quentin, you unmannered lout, take the Lady's other side!"

 The Queen cocked a brow at my strangled tone, but held out a regal arm, and Quenta moved to take it. A glance behind showed a broad grin on Gwen's round face.

The Queen seemed drawn to all the bawdiest displays. She cheered on village maidens belaboring the pale hairy bum of a hapless stock-bound miscreant, and would have taken a switch to him herself had I not diverted her attention to two buxom wenches admiring the massive virtues of a docile bull, while their blushing swains tried to draw them onward.

A cluster of tipsy revelers drew us to the village square. I could hear the clown Will Kemp's falsetto above the laughter; he was a noted player in our troupe, and always rare entertainment. Then I saw his companion, and hoped short Gwen would take no offense.

Will pranced in strumpet's garb across a rough stage, swinging padded rump, while Long Tom the tumbling dwarf somersaulted in mock pursuit. Another time I would have laughed at their antics, and later bought an ale for Tom and traded japes in Welsh; he was a good man, philosophical, adept at using what he had to earn his living.

What he had, besides acrobatic skill and a merry black-bearded face, was the largest codpiece I have ever seen and ample means to fill it. A stallion might have envied his endowment.

Will crouched, and swung his bum into Tom's jutting cock. Tom tumbled and bounced and vaulted back, while the crowd howled, and my face burned. I tried to back my party out of the throng.

We were almost clear when I heard a gasp of outrage. I turned, and saw whose hands clutched at Gwen, and perversely welcomed this vent for my frustration.

That sniveling whoreson weasel's whelp Dick Fry, talebearer and eternal understudy! "Ho, Rhys," he hailed me. "Come help me toss this hobgoblin up on stage with t'other! What, no stomach for sport?"

Quenta gripped her dagger. Gwen narrowed her eyes, and Dick's ears and nose began to lengthen and grow hairy. It would have made a rare spectacle, but the Queen must not be found out.

"The lady is with me, you lout! Would you feel my fist smashing through that empty travesty you call a codpiece?" I moved so close he had to peer upward at me. "Do you wet yourself dreaming of my fist mangling your puny balls?" Fear flickered in his eyes, and rage, and something else; I pushed him away in disgust and led my company past the gawking bystanders.

"Lucky for that one you were here," Gwen muttered in Welsh, and spat in the direction Dick had gone.

A slim, imperious hand gripped my shoulder. "Enough, lad. You have done nobly, but the Midsummer's magic I recalled is gone forever." 

"Nay, lady, there is magic still!" Quenta's eyes glowed cat-like in the torchlight. "Kit has found a place a fairy queen might lie, and takes me there this night. We shall see what magic three queens together may ignite!"

I could have wrung her slim white neck. The Queen, though, waved dismissively. "I doubt not such a tryst is meant for two alone. Only see me back to the Hall, and then be off wherever youth and Midsummer madness lead you." She took my arm. "You may divert me as we go. Is there indeed 'a bank where the wild thyme blows.... With sweet musk roses and with eglantine?'"

"As to that, Lady, the scent was more of mint and fern. I saw daisies but no roses, though there were berry brambles aplenty. Perhaps by daylight you might view it."

"Ay, perhaps." Her voice was bleak.

"Now!" said Quenta. "Now, by moonlight, or not at all!" Her fierce eyes held mine, her meaning all too clear. When I turned toward the greenwood the Queen, a gleam restored in her eye, did not demur.

The way was not so far that the Queen might tire. Indeed, I recalled, Her Majesty was known to out-ride and out-walk her courtiers, and out-last them on the dance floor, too, however fast or subtly sensuous the steps.

Earlier in the day I had followed a stream upcurrent to a place where the waters split and merged again, leaving an islet in their midst. Wading across had been easy, cutting my way through brambles harder, but the reward had been a grassy glade spangled with flowers and hidden from all but the sky.

Here I could bring my love where the rush of water would drown the wild, raw cries her touches forced from me. Always in the city I must stifle my voice, and my pleasure. But here, alone...

To be alone! But, now, not to be.

I waded across with Quenta first. She resisted being carried, but I clung to that remnant of my fantasy despite the temptation to drop her in the deepest water. When she guessed my mood and clung, other temptations rose to nearly overwhelm me.

"It was you who taught me, love, that the magic must be shared," she murmured, and laid a trail of kisses across my throat.

 "Between two, yes! Solitary pleasures are paltry trifles! But three? And one of these the Queen? Your madness goes too far!"

 "Yours has ever kept pace before! Truly, Kit, you always know my needs, better than I know myself. Open yourself to hers!"

"'Open?' You cannot mean..." but she had slipped from my grasp and danced away, her torch flickering eerily through the brambles.

I hoped that the Queen might have regained some sense, until I saw the torch set into the stream bank reflect from eyes gone fey and feral. "It is the Queen of Faery who goes abroad this night," she murmured, "and all she sees shall be no more than fairy-tale."

As I lifted her she leaned her head far back to watch the moon and trailed one hand into the stream, and I had to press her close for balance. She felt so like Quenta--or perhaps moonlight on the water dazzled my eyes and other senses--but when I set her on the bank my blood raced despite the water's chill.

Going back for Gwen did little to cool me. Anger played as great a part as arousal; both vixens would be well served to be marooned while I looked elsewhere for ease of my throbbing flesh.

I noted again how compact in form Gwen stood, her mouth scarcely above the level of my loins... 

Gwen knew that look. "Nay, youngling, my taste is for meat less tender. Do we but get my Lady safe home before dawn, I am appointed to meet a certain short tumbler and countryman for deep conversation." She gave my thigh a shove. "Go to, distract the Queen from her melancholy. For once she shall be entertained by earthly pleasures on a Midsummer's Night. When she lies safe again in her bed both Tom and I will thank you; for now, I wait and ward here."

Across the water light flickered from the torches left in readiness.  No doubt Quenta had also found my bed of heaped sweetfern and the basket of strawberries and flask of wine. Damn her capricious impulse! I ached so for the promised tryst...

Gwen whacked me ungently across the buttocks. "Go to, young fool, or they'll begin without you! And do not doubt that I shall see all!"

I went.

Such moonlight poured across the little glade that the slender crescent seemed to burn as fiercely as my desire. Pale daisy faces glowed with inner life, and fireflies' lanterns pulsed in shadowy bushes--or had Gwen provided fairy lights? The torches were scarce needed.

The Queen reclined on the cloak-spread bed, but I had eyes only for Quenta. Moonlight bathed her pale, smooth skin, flowing over every inch, as she stood, her back to us, naked and trembling and lovely before our eyes. When she looked over her shoulder her eyes were moon-glazed jewels.

"Now, sprite," said Titania, "now that your companion is come, you may reveal what you truly are, if you think I have not guessed."

I could scarce keep from laying hands on Quenta. There was no way now to play this scene save by whatever mad script she had devised, though my heart ached that my acceptance, my love, was not enough to allow her to accept herself. 

"Some would call me hermaphrodite, Lady," she murmured huskily. "My mother named me son on scant evidence, and my father so wished to believe that he deceived himself. You will find me writ on the parish roles as male."

The Queen raised narrow brows. "I do not presume to question parish records, but I would judge of this evidence myself."

I held my breath as Quenta turned, all bravado fled.

For long moments the Queen surveyed her; the small tilted breasts; the slender waist curving into gently flaring hips; the small, dainty cock nestling amidst tawny curls above the woman's shadowed cleft. 

When at last it came the royal voice held not shock, but years of anguish.

"Had I shown evidence twice as scant, my mother's neck had escaped the ax! Could my father the King have believed me a son...." Her voice sank almost too low to hear. "How many noble souls might have been spared...."

I fell to my knees before her. That she should feel self-loathing, after all she had done to make England strong!

"Nay, Madam, never wish yourself other! What was't you said before the troops when the Armada threatened? That you had 'the body of a weak feeble woman...but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too...' Such a heart in such a body serves England best of all!"

"It may be so." She summoned up a smile and spoke to Quenta, who knelt now beside me. "Enough of idle speculation. I had guessed, of course, that you were no boy; I would not have come merely to witness love of Plato's Athenian sort." She turned to me. "You tell me, sir, is this eldritch chimaera male or female? I'll warrant your judgment can be trusted on that score!"

"She is my love," I said simply. "Her form is to me perfect and unique, but I would love her had she horns and a tail."

"You might well love me even better!" Quenta sprang up and twirled around the glade, her wild mood renewed. "Come, show how you love me!" She pulled me up and pressed tight against me, fingers busy in the lacings of my doublet.

"Show you? You know all too well!" I caught her hands. "Is it the audience you play to that quickens your blood? Best be sure she has a taste for such display!" 

Titania's eyes were dark behind the silver demi-mask. "Play on," she murmured, and in her tone I heard regret, and sorrow, and the yearnings of a passionate heart too long reined in.

"Nay, Kit, truly, you alone inflame me." Quenta's eyes held mine; my hold slackened and her hands slipped free to brush my face, my lips, my throat, and then my chest in quicksilver, fire-trailing strokes. "Please, Kit, please, touch me, let me touch you..." Her husky voice deepened, throbbing in resonance with the pounding of my blood.

I pulled her close to still her fingers, but the press of her firm breasts was yet more maddening. I ran my hands over smooth back and waist and hips, cupped them over pert, rounded buttocks and lifted her whole body tightly against my hunger. "Your skin is chilled, love."

"Then give me your shirt." She laughed into my face and pulled open my doublet. When she drew up my shirt and worked her mouth across my chest I knew that I was lost, that not even the icy stream could quench this fire.

"And take off your hose and breeches, too, you are so wet against me!" One hand slipped far down between cloth and flesh and I felt myself grow ever wetter, and hotter too, despite the chill from the wading of the stream. 

"Which will you bare first?" she purred, a wicked light flickering in her eyes as fireflies flickered in the grass around us and their throbbing points of light seemed to spark in my own depths.

It scarcely mattered. I chose what might by a fraction be the lesser shock. I tossed my doublet aside and pulled off my shirt, draping it around Quenta's chilly shoulders while she tore at bindings grown unbearable and let my aching breasts surge free.

"Not Athens." My breath caught as Quenta's soothing strokes became a torment that made me ever fuller and more sore. "Not Athens, Lady, but Sappho's Isle of Lesbos. Though I resist the constraints of a woman's body, I rejoice always in its pleasures."

This, she had not foreseen. The mask dropped; her eyes were wide.

"Please, Kit, please..." Quenta tugged at my belt while her hot mouth drove my breasts and nipples taut and aching with the need for more. "Please, I must..." Her voice was muffled against my swollen flesh.

"Slowly," I soothed, though I could scarcely speak. "The slower the sweeter, love."  As ever, she who had teased and maddened me for hours was now all desperate haste, while to me each stab of pleasure promised such further, keener pangs that I would not give up any part to leap too quickly to release.

I kicked off wet boots and wriggled out of breeches and hose, Quenta's hands more distraction than help. Then I half-turned that the Queen might see I had no such exotic equipage as my love. 

Her gaze moved over me from head to foot, taking in my length and strength and the incongruous swellings of a woman's body. A fierce longing for her approval swept me; now I understood what drove Quenta to reveal herself.

"You are the Amazon indeed," the Queen murmured at last, "and you," to Quenta, "a most exquisite Queen of Sprites." Then she laughed. "Master Shakespeare had it skewed, to say Hippolyta dallied with Oberon and Titania with Duke Theseus. Yours promises to be the better play, in truth!"

"Not so much play as dance, Lady, with intricate and subtle steps." I gazed into Quenta's eyes, holding her to stillness as my hands devoured the sweet curves of her body. She tried valiantly to wait, to savor, as I put my mouth to her small pouting breasts. She trembled, and her breath came in quick soft moans, as I licked and gently bit at her thrusting nipples.

Then her hips began to sway, and twist, and she clutched at me, and since the bed was occupied there was nothing for it but to lift her up along my body until that sweet seeking little dagger, no more in truth than a greatly inflated clitoris, pressed against my own.

She cried out, and clung to me with arms and thighs. I stilled, knowing her needs, that every movement must be hers now, every pressure, lest the rapture of her wondrous engorgement turn to pain. The lightest stroke of my hand, my tongue, could tip the balance.

As steadily as could be I endured the piercing stabs of pleasure. Rough moans escaped me as she arched and writhed against my mound, but from her there came only a keening so faint it might have floated from a distant world.

All at once she flung back her head, the moon mirrored in wild, half-closed eyes. "Now love, now!"

But already I had slipped one hand between our bodies and into her ready heat. Two fingers, deep and gently deeper, probing and pressing into her hunger; and now at last her cries burst forth, her slippery depths clutched at me, her great hard clit vibrated against mine; and my joy in her joy came near to overwhelming me.

Still there was more I must, would, have. I held her while spasms dwindled into trembling and her breath at long last slowed. Then I loosed my hold, and she slid gradually down my length, her mobile mouth teasing and caressing all the way until she knelt before me.

"Do you lag behind, love?" Her laugh was still unsteady. "Come, you will overtake me yet."  She moved her hands over my hips until they pressed into my tingling buttocks, then pulled me toward her. My clit, still aquiver, leapt at the subtle flick of her tongue.

I tangled my fingers in her moon-burnished hair as she drove me to new extremes. Moans racked me as she nudged my thighs apart and thrust her long supple tongue up into my molten cunt. Deep inside me a bright slim moon seemed to pulse and swell into full roundness.

Pleasure surged and pounded through me. My own rasping cries seemed far away as I rode the waves, striving still for more, and more, needing something more with an incoherent desperation....

And then a warm body pressed against my back. A voice murmured low into my ear, "Surely this figure can be danced by three!" Slim arms wrapped about me from behind; long clever fingers cupped and weighed my full breasts, making the aching pressure build and build; and when she curved her palms around my nipples and circled them so lightly that the hardened tips must strain and thrust into her touch, it was the final stroke. My clit strained and thrust too, and my cunt clenched and swallowed at the firm flame of Quenta's tongue, until the moon exploded inside me in a roaring burst of tangible light.

Or perhaps the roaring was my own. When at last awareness spread beyond receding ecstasy I felt hot breath on my shoulder, and a voice, hesitant yet tinged with laughter, murmured in my ear; "And can you make me sing so, as well as dance?"

Her arms were tight about me as her body swayed and rubbed against mine, breasts stroking my back, soft belly pressed beseechingly into the curve of my buttocks.

"Yea, Lady, you shall sing as full and sweet as any!" Quenta toppled us both onto the sweetfern bed and sprawled atop us; and there indeed we tasted royal flesh and royal passion, and taught the woman within to sing, taught her most thoroughly the joys of the body fate had decreed.

We had no doubt that the spirit of Midsummer accepted our triple offering as graciously as that of any mundane coupling. As wave followed wave of pleasure my lovers took on a glow of celestial light, Quenta the silver of the moon, our Queen the royal gold of the sun; while I, the dark earth, absorbed and radiated back their overlapping aurae. Bright sparks like stars flashed and swirled above us, while a swooping comet bore the grin and wicked eyes of Gwen.

Much later we laughed together and soothed our throats with wine and berries. When Gwen's muted whistle sounded we looked up bemused; the moon hung low and the first faint harbingers of morning streaked the sky. I thought of her assignation with Tom and felt some guilt, but when we had made our way across the water she only smiled at the sweetfern clinging to the Queen and made no reproach.

"Ah, Gwen," said her Lady, somewhat ruefully, "I doubt but that I have forfeited the name of 'Virgin Queen.'"

"No such thing, Madam," Gwen said cheerfully, hurrying us along deserted pathways. "It is the Queen's English, after all, and means whatever the Queen decrees."

She brought us to the great house sooner than humanly possible, and maid and mistress slipped in through a small side door that took shape even as we watched. When Gwen reappeared with jeweled tokens from the Queen, I bade her give Tom my apologies. Her grin flashed bright, and then she sobered.

"No matter. Our sweet Lady has more need of you than you can know, for service quite apart from this night's frolic. Neither of you will strut upon the stage much longer; who would credit such protracted youth? But two who act so well can do it on the Queen's behalf, and be her eyes and ears about the world. Be sure I will send soon to tell you of her needs."

"We are truly hers, body and soul," I said. "But Gwen...who, or what, are you?"

"Need you ask?" she said impatiently. "The realm of Faery takes yet a care for England's welfare, and for her rightful monarch. As for me, think you the Puck must be ever prisoned in male form?" It took her sharp pinch to make me close my gaping mouth.

"For now, begone, before suspicious daylight catch us all." She gave us each a solid whack across our flanks.

Daylight be damned. I held Quenta close as we went toward the players' quarters. 

"There is much danger in this business, Love," I warned her.

"'Tis true," she answered, "but you know as well as I there is no drawing back. We are as bound now to our royal mistress as to each other."

She spoke the truth. I lengthened my stride to match the skipping haste of hers, feeling anew the desire that was ever my torment and my joy; and when I squeezed her hand I felt within my grasp as well the long, slim, sensuous fingers of the royal hand that would ever hold us fast.

 

 

     

   

        

    

            

            

 

     

      



      

 


      

My charity for Charity Sunday this time is GLAAD, glaad.org,  a major source and support of  LGBTQ media. Their columns are generally upbeat, a bit of relief from the tsunami of horrifying news stories about state laws terrorizing trans folk, especially the young.                              

       

You know the drill. You read, I donate $1 for each hit on this blog, and $2 for every comment.

For other blogs today, see https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com

Every once in a while I see casual references to Shakespeare’s time, when boys played the female roles in his plays. That has nothing really to do with today’s transexual people, but some years ago I couldn’t resist writing a story about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” way back when the play was brand new. The genders of my characters—the players of Titania and Hippolyta--seem revealed once, then take turn after turn. Queen Elisabeth herself is there, and so is Puck, who can cheerfully switch genders any time.

I must have posted “A Dance of Queens” on my blog some time or other, but I’m too lazy to look for it now. Fair warning, the story is quite long.                                                                                             A Dance of Queens

Sacchi Green

Midsummer's Night, the play safely done, dusk sweet as a languorous touch on yearning flesh...and still I could not take my love into the greenwood and lay her on my cloak and be consumed in her fire.

I cursed my own impatience. We should have pressed on without pause, but Quenta had tormented me so, slipping a hand beneath my shirt and then down into my breeches until I could scarce walk, and must stop for a taste of the feast to come.

So the Queen's messenger had caught us. And truly, by the shimmer in the air at the instant she appeared, I knew there had never been hope of escape. In the Welsh hills and valleys we have tales, more than tales, of such creatures, though I had thought the filth and disbelief of London must repel them. At another time I would have been glad that the green countryside along the Thames still held such folk. Glad or no, we had no choice now but to let the greenwood's promise fade into shadow.

Frustration pounded in my veins. I jerked away from Quenta's touch, the mere brush of her hand making me forget that I must not even think of "him" as "her" until we could be blessedly alone.

I focused on the wide skirt sailing just ahead. Though the farthingale was not devised with a lady dwarf in mind, its absurdity was more than countered by the messenger's bearing and the Queen's crest broidered on her sleeve. It scarcely needed Quenta's nudge to put me on guard against those keen, merry eyes, though they looked up at me from about the level of my belt.

Such danger should have chilled my ardor. But surely the Queen would waste little time on us, might have forgotten already her whim. At most there could be a gracious word or two, perhaps a small purse. Why, then, command that we bring our play-garb? A jest among her ladies?

But in the great bedchamber we found Her Majesty alone, a slim, pale figure whose aura crackled through the paneled room like heat-lightning.

Our diminutive guide swept a curtsy. "The player boys, Madam. Quentin O'Connor and Kit Rhys."

Bright, tired eyes assessed us. "Well enough, Gwen. Now keep us private for a bit." The attendant gave me a wicked sidelong glance as she went to sit between the great oak door and the carven screen before it.

Quenta elbowed me sharply. I joined her in an elegant stage bow, feeling the royal glance caress our snug-hosed calves. Her Majesty was said to have ever an eye for a well-turned leg; if it went farther than a look, or a leg… But I had never heard so much as rumor that it did.

Her voice was cool enough. "So,. You played the queen's part well, each in your own way."

"Never so well as you, Your Highness." Quenta's green eyes gleamed wickedly, and I suppressed a groan. This was no time for her sly wit!

An answering gleam lit the Queen's eyes. "Ah, but I have performed the role far longer!"  Her face seemed less weary now; it was hard to credit that she had more than twice our years. "Do you not think I could play Queen of Faery as well as England's monarch?"

I tried to break the manic current between them. "Yes, in truth, Highness. Or Queen of Amazons, or any ruler ever conceived." I knelt with Hippolyta's tunic and gilded leather breastplate across one knee. Her gaze turned toward me, lingering on my long legs; I felt as when Quenta would stroke me from calf to thigh and beyond, and my flesh would melt and surge in sweet torment.

"I have not your height, lad, to play the Amazon," she said. "You did well enough, though one could scarcely credit that you would ever yield to Duke Theseus, whether in battle or in marriage bed. But come, it was bravely played, if a slighter part than Titania's." 

She turned to Quenta with a thoughtful look. "Have you two played Master Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet?' You would suit well as lovers."

Did she toy with us? What hope had we against the wits of one who played with envoys, kings, even the Pope, for her own and England's gain?

"Quentin is acclaimed as Juliet," I answered cautiously, "but to tell truth, Hippolyta is my first speaking part, and well may be my last. I am more like to play an accompanying lute, or rattle distant armor."

"It is an awkward age, I know," she said. "Your voice is nigh too low already for a woman's part. Indeed..." Those keen eyes scrutinized us closely. "I might think you both somewhat old for boy players."

I tensed inwardly, forcing my body to reveal nothing. To stifle Quenta's special genius would be a crime against art, against life itself! But if she were judged to be a woman... A woman appearing upon the public stage was such outrage that the penalty could only be surmised.  

Quenta laughed, and in that instant the tilt of her head, the cock of hip and shoulder, were entirely those of a brash youth. "I can play you any age, Lady, any sex." She took on the bombastic voice and gestures of Bottom the Weaver. "I can play you a roaring Lion, or a most excellent Wall..." and then her voice softened, its husky purr making my flesh quiver with longing for the velvet touch of her tongue. "Or I can be the Lady Moon herself."

She stepped toward the high window, every motion, every line now utterly female, despite the padded trunk-hose muffling the sweet curves of her hips. Had I been a jot closer my hand would have slipped of its own accord between cloth and smooth, seductive skin. And had she turned, and my fingers found what waited between her thighs.... 

"Look you, Lady, how the new moon burns, no silver bow, but a crescent slit through which the passions of the sky pour forth. Can you not see in me that same bright fire?"

 And she was, in truth, the very essence of the new moon, its tremulous yearning in her slim grace, its hot intensity in her smoldering eyes. Then I stepped toward her and broke the spell, and it was not her madness but mine that gave us away.

"Sirrah! Do not force me to see that which were better kept hidden!" If the Queen sensed that we were lovers, she had no wish to bring it to an issue. I did not think that she had yet sensed more.

"But Titania may see what England's Queen may not." Quenta knelt, proffering her red wig, leaf-green draperies and silver demi-mask. "On Midsummer's Night, the fancies of mortal and fairy alike may roam free. Come with us, Lady, to observe their merry frolics!"

Even through my outrage I saw what Quenta had recognized at once. Though the Queen might conceal it even from herself, it was for this we had been summoned.

A moment of hesitation; then she took the silver mask. "In truth, I have a fancy to see my host's estate by moonlight. You shall escort me, and together we shall see 'what fools these mortals be.'" She caught my eye. "Yes, lad, I know, none better, how mortal and therefore foolish even a queen may be. That is my own affair. Send Gwen to me, and wait behind the screen." But Gwen was beside her already, the sole evidence of her passing the twinge of a playful pinch upon my rump.

When the Queen was ready Gwen went sedately enough before us. I could not discern how she bespelled each guard we passed, but it was clear that none could see her mistress until we were well outside and mingling with the crowd.

The Lord Chancellor's estate was alight as though to cancel out entirely this shortest night of the year. Near the great house lords and ladies strolled the torch-lit paths, or clung together in the shadowy embrace of shrubberies. Farther off, where the village clustered around the river landing, a bonfire flared and crackled and smoke hovered in the sky like a lecherous ogre.

Habitual command mingled with laughter in the voice that urged me forward. "Come, they can have devised no cruder games than when last I walked free on a Midsummer's Night, though it were half a lifetime ago."

Quenta, just behind me, slid her hand between my thighs, and I had no choice but to move forward or turn and punish her as she deserved.

Two Quentas imprisoned me, both shimmering with manic energy, both intent on torture. The green-draped lady on my right had every movement, every gesture, even the voice of Quenta-as-Titania. No actor could have surpassed her.

On my left pranced my infuriating love in full boy-mode, her russet hair swept up under a jaunty feathered cap. At every step her hand and hip and shoulder nudged and stroked me. The Queen might not see, but Gwen, trotting behind, smiled slyly.

Much more of this and I would be unfit to walk at all. In the bedchamber, as we had waited behind the screen, Quenta's seeking hands and mouth had maddened me until I grasped both wrists and held her away. Then she flicked her mobile tongue at me, and I could only muffle my groans in the hollow of her throat. This too Gwen had seen as she came to fetch us.

My arousal was mounting all too close to pain. "Quentin, you unmannered lout, take the Lady's other side!"

 The Queen cocked a brow at my strangled tone, but held out a regal arm, and Quenta moved to take it. A glance behind showed a broad grin on Gwen's round face.

The Queen seemed drawn to all the bawdiest displays. She cheered on village maidens belaboring the pale hairy bum of a hapless stock-bound miscreant, and would have taken a switch to him herself had I not diverted her attention to two buxom wenches admiring the massive virtues of a docile bull, while their blushing swains tried to draw them onward.

A cluster of tipsy revelers drew us to the village square. I could hear the clown Will Kemp's falsetto above the laughter; he was a noted player in our troupe, and always rare entertainment. Then I saw his companion, and hoped short Gwen would take no offense.

Will pranced in strumpet's garb across a rough stage, swinging padded rump, while Long Tom the tumbling dwarf somersaulted in mock pursuit. Another time I would have laughed at their antics, and later bought an ale for Tom and traded japes in Welsh; he was a good man, philosophical, adept at using what he had to earn his living.

What he had, besides acrobatic skill and a merry black-bearded face, was the largest codpiece I have ever seen and ample means to fill it. A stallion might have envied his endowment.

Will crouched, and swung his bum into Tom's jutting cock. Tom tumbled and bounced and vaulted back, while the crowd howled, and my face burned. I tried to back my party out of the throng.

We were almost clear when I heard a gasp of outrage. I turned, and saw whose hands clutched at Gwen, and perversely welcomed this vent for my frustration.

That sniveling whoreson weasel's whelp Dick Fry, talebearer and eternal understudy! "Ho, Rhys," he hailed me. "Come help me toss this hobgoblin up on stage with t'other! What, no stomach for sport?"

Quenta gripped her dagger. Gwen narrowed her eyes, and Dick's ears and nose began to lengthen and grow hairy. It would have made a rare spectacle, but the Queen must not be found out.

"The lady is with me, you lout! Would you feel my fist smashing through that empty travesty you call a codpiece?" I moved so close he had to peer upward at me. "Do you wet yourself dreaming of my fist mangling your puny balls?" Fear flickered in his eyes, and rage, and something else; I pushed him away in disgust and led my company past the gawking bystanders.

"Lucky for that one you were here," Gwen muttered in Welsh, and spat in the direction Dick had gone.

A slim, imperious hand gripped my shoulder. "Enough, lad. You have done nobly, but the Midsummer's magic I recalled is gone forever." 

"Nay, lady, there is magic still!" Quenta's eyes glowed cat-like in the torchlight. "Kit has found a place a fairy queen might lie, and takes me there this night. We shall see what magic three queens together may ignite!"

I could have wrung her slim white neck. The Queen, though, waved dismissively. "I doubt not such a tryst is meant for two alone. Only see me back to the Hall, and then be off wherever youth and Midsummer madness lead you." She took my arm. "You may divert me as we go. Is there indeed 'a bank where the wild thyme blows.... With sweet musk roses and with eglantine?'"

"As to that, Lady, the scent was more of mint and fern. I saw daisies but no roses, though there were berry brambles aplenty. Perhaps by daylight you might view it."

"Ay, perhaps." Her voice was bleak.

"Now!" said Quenta. "Now, by moonlight, or not at all!" Her fierce eyes held mine, her meaning all too clear. When I turned toward the greenwood the Queen, a gleam restored in her eye, did not demur.

The way was not so far that the Queen might tire. Indeed, I recalled, Her Majesty was known to out-ride and out-walk her courtiers, and out-last them on the dance floor, too, however fast or subtly sensuous the steps.

Earlier in the day I had followed a stream upcurrent to a place where the waters split and merged again, leaving an islet in their midst. Wading across had been easy, cutting my way through brambles harder, but the reward had been a grassy glade spangled with flowers and hidden from all but the sky.

Here I could bring my love where the rush of water would drown the wild, raw cries her touches forced from me. Always in the city I must stifle my voice, and my pleasure. But here, alone...

To be alone! But, now, not to be.

I waded across with Quenta first. She resisted being carried, but I clung to that remnant of my fantasy despite the temptation to drop her in the deepest water. When she guessed my mood and clung, other temptations rose to nearly overwhelm me.

"It was you who taught me, love, that the magic must be shared," she murmured, and laid a trail of kisses across my throat.

 "Between two, yes! Solitary pleasures are paltry trifles! But three? And one of these the Queen? Your madness goes too far!"

 "Yours has ever kept pace before! Truly, Kit, you always know my needs, better than I know myself. Open yourself to hers!"

"'Open?' You cannot mean..." but she had slipped from my grasp and danced away, her torch flickering eerily through the brambles.

I hoped that the Queen might have regained some sense, until I saw the torch set into the stream bank reflect from eyes gone fey and feral. "It is the Queen of Faery who goes abroad this night," she murmured, "and all she sees shall be no more than fairy-tale."

As I lifted her she leaned her head far back to watch the moon and trailed one hand into the stream, and I had to press her close for balance. She felt so like Quenta--or perhaps moonlight on the water dazzled my eyes and other senses--but when I set her on the bank my blood raced despite the water's chill.

Going back for Gwen did little to cool me. Anger played as great a part as arousal; both vixens would be well served to be marooned while I looked elsewhere for ease of my throbbing flesh.

I noted again how compact in form Gwen stood, her mouth scarcely above the level of my loins... 

Gwen knew that look. "Nay, youngling, my taste is for meat less tender. Do we but get my Lady safe home before dawn, I am appointed to meet a certain short tumbler and countryman for deep conversation." She gave my thigh a shove. "Go to, distract the Queen from her melancholy. For once she shall be entertained by earthly pleasures on a Midsummer's Night. When she lies safe again in her bed both Tom and I will thank you; for now, I wait and ward here."

Across the water light flickered from the torches left in readiness.  No doubt Quenta had also found my bed of heaped sweetfern and the basket of strawberries and flask of wine. Damn her capricious impulse! I ached so for the promised tryst...

Gwen whacked me ungently across the buttocks. "Go to, young fool, or they'll begin without you! And do not doubt that I shall see all!"

I went.

Such moonlight poured across the little glade that the slender crescent seemed to burn as fiercely as my desire. Pale daisy faces glowed with inner life, and fireflies' lanterns pulsed in shadowy bushes--or had Gwen provided fairy lights? The torches were scarce needed.

The Queen reclined on the cloak-spread bed, but I had eyes only for Quenta. Moonlight bathed her pale, smooth skin, flowing over every inch, as she stood, her back to us, naked and trembling and lovely before our eyes. When she looked over her shoulder her eyes were moon-glazed jewels.

"Now, sprite," said Titania, "now that your companion is come, you may reveal what you truly are, if you think I have not guessed."

I could scarce keep from laying hands on Quenta. There was no way now to play this scene save by whatever mad script she had devised, though my heart ached that my acceptance, my love, was not enough to allow her to accept herself. 

"Some would call me hermaphrodite, Lady," she murmured huskily. "My mother named me son on scant evidence, and my father so wished to believe that he deceived himself. You will find me writ on the parish roles as male."

The Queen raised narrow brows. "I do not presume to question parish records, but I would judge of this evidence myself."

I held my breath as Quenta turned, all bravado fled.

For long moments the Queen surveyed her; the small tilted breasts; the slender waist curving into gently flaring hips; the small, dainty cock nestling amidst tawny curls above the woman's shadowed cleft. 

When at last it came the royal voice held not shock, but years of anguish.

"Had I shown evidence twice as scant, my mother's neck had escaped the ax! Could my father the King have believed me a son...." Her voice sank almost too low to hear. "How many noble souls might have been spared...."

I fell to my knees before her. That she should feel self-loathing, after all she had done to make England strong!

"Nay, Madam, never wish yourself other! What was't you said before the troops when the Armada threatened? That you had 'the body of a weak feeble woman...but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too...' Such a heart in such a body serves England best of all!"

"It may be so." She summoned up a smile and spoke to Quenta, who knelt now beside me. "Enough of idle speculation. I had guessed, of course, that you were no boy; I would not have come merely to witness love of Plato's Athenian sort." She turned to me. "You tell me, sir, is this eldritch chimaera male or female? I'll warrant your judgment can be trusted on that score!"

"She is my love," I said simply. "Her form is to me perfect and unique, but I would love her had she horns and a tail."

"You might well love me even better!" Quenta sprang up and twirled around the glade, her wild mood renewed. "Come, show how you love me!" She pulled me up and pressed tight against me, fingers busy in the lacings of my doublet.

"Show you? You know all too well!" I caught her hands. "Is it the audience you play to that quickens your blood? Best be sure she has a taste for such display!" 

Titania's eyes were dark behind the silver demi-mask. "Play on," she murmured, and in her tone I heard regret, and sorrow, and the yearnings of a passionate heart too long reined in.

"Nay, Kit, truly, you alone inflame me." Quenta's eyes held mine; my hold slackened and her hands slipped free to brush my face, my lips, my throat, and then my chest in quicksilver, fire-trailing strokes. "Please, Kit, please, touch me, let me touch you..." Her husky voice deepened, throbbing in resonance with the pounding of my blood.

I pulled her close to still her fingers, but the press of her firm breasts was yet more maddening. I ran my hands over smooth back and waist and hips, cupped them over pert, rounded buttocks and lifted her whole body tightly against my hunger. "Your skin is chilled, love."

"Then give me your shirt." She laughed into my face and pulled open my doublet. When she drew up my shirt and worked her mouth across my chest I knew that I was lost, that not even the icy stream could quench this fire.

"And take off your hose and breeches, too, you are so wet against me!" One hand slipped far down between cloth and flesh and I felt myself grow ever wetter, and hotter too, despite the chill from the wading of the stream. 

"Which will you bare first?" she purred, a wicked light flickering in her eyes as fireflies flickered in the grass around us and their throbbing points of light seemed to spark in my own depths.

It scarcely mattered. I chose what might by a fraction be the lesser shock. I tossed my doublet aside and pulled off my shirt, draping it around Quenta's chilly shoulders while she tore at bindings grown unbearable and let my aching breasts surge free.

"Not Athens." My breath caught as Quenta's soothing strokes became a torment that made me ever fuller and more sore. "Not Athens, Lady, but Sappho's Isle of Lesbos. Though I resist the constraints of a woman's body, I rejoice always in its pleasures."

This, she had not foreseen. The mask dropped; her eyes were wide.

"Please, Kit, please..." Quenta tugged at my belt while her hot mouth drove my breasts and nipples taut and aching with the need for more. "Please, I must..." Her voice was muffled against my swollen flesh.

"Slowly," I soothed, though I could scarcely speak. "The slower the sweeter, love."  As ever, she who had teased and maddened me for hours was now all desperate haste, while to me each stab of pleasure promised such further, keener pangs that I would not give up any part to leap too quickly to release.

I kicked off wet boots and wriggled out of breeches and hose, Quenta's hands more distraction than help. Then I half-turned that the Queen might see I had no such exotic equipage as my love. 

Her gaze moved over me from head to foot, taking in my length and strength and the incongruous swellings of a woman's body. A fierce longing for her approval swept me; now I understood what drove Quenta to reveal herself.

"You are the Amazon indeed," the Queen murmured at last, "and you," to Quenta, "a most exquisite Queen of Sprites." Then she laughed. "Master Shakespeare had it skewed, to say Hippolyta dallied with Oberon and Titania with Duke Theseus. Yours promises to be the better play, in truth!"

"Not so much play as dance, Lady, with intricate and subtle steps." I gazed into Quenta's eyes, holding her to stillness as my hands devoured the sweet curves of her body. She tried valiantly to wait, to savor, as I put my mouth to her small pouting breasts. She trembled, and her breath came in quick soft moans, as I licked and gently bit at her thrusting nipples.

Then her hips began to sway, and twist, and she clutched at me, and since the bed was occupied there was nothing for it but to lift her up along my body until that sweet seeking little dagger, no more in truth than a greatly inflated clitoris, pressed against my own.

She cried out, and clung to me with arms and thighs. I stilled, knowing her needs, that every movement must be hers now, every pressure, lest the rapture of her wondrous engorgement turn to pain. The lightest stroke of my hand, my tongue, could tip the balance.

As steadily as could be I endured the piercing stabs of pleasure. Rough moans escaped me as she arched and writhed against my mound, but from her there came only a keening so faint it might have floated from a distant world.

All at once she flung back her head, the moon mirrored in wild, half-closed eyes. "Now love, now!"

But already I had slipped one hand between our bodies and into her ready heat. Two fingers, deep and gently deeper, probing and pressing into her hunger; and now at last her cries burst forth, her slippery depths clutched at me, her great hard clit vibrated against mine; and my joy in her joy came near to overwhelming me.

Still there was more I must, would, have. I held her while spasms dwindled into trembling and her breath at long last slowed. Then I loosed my hold, and she slid gradually down my length, her mobile mouth teasing and caressing all the way until she knelt before me.

"Do you lag behind, love?" Her laugh was still unsteady. "Come, you will overtake me yet."  She moved her hands over my hips until they pressed into my tingling buttocks, then pulled me toward her. My clit, still aquiver, leapt at the subtle flick of her tongue.

I tangled my fingers in her moon-burnished hair as she drove me to new extremes. Moans racked me as she nudged my thighs apart and thrust her long supple tongue up into my molten cunt. Deep inside me a bright slim moon seemed to pulse and swell into full roundness.

Pleasure surged and pounded through me. My own rasping cries seemed far away as I rode the waves, striving still for more, and more, needing something more with an incoherent desperation....

And then a warm body pressed against my back. A voice murmured low into my ear, "Surely this figure can be danced by three!" Slim arms wrapped about me from behind; long clever fingers cupped and weighed my full breasts, making the aching pressure build and build; and when she curved her palms around my nipples and circled them so lightly that the hardened tips must strain and thrust into her touch, it was the final stroke. My clit strained and thrust too, and my cunt clenched and swallowed at the firm flame of Quenta's tongue, until the moon exploded inside me in a roaring burst of tangible light.

Or perhaps the roaring was my own. When at last awareness spread beyond receding ecstasy I felt hot breath on my shoulder, and a voice, hesitant yet tinged with laughter, murmured in my ear; "And can you make me sing so, as well as dance?"

Her arms were tight about me as her body swayed and rubbed against mine, breasts stroking my back, soft belly pressed beseechingly into the curve of my buttocks.

"Yea, Lady, you shall sing as full and sweet as any!" Quenta toppled us both onto the sweetfern bed and sprawled atop us; and there indeed we tasted royal flesh and royal passion, and taught the woman within to sing, taught her most thoroughly the joys of the body fate had decreed.

We had no doubt that the spirit of Midsummer accepted our triple offering as graciously as that of any mundane coupling. As wave followed wave of pleasure my lovers took on a glow of celestial light, Quenta the silver of the moon, our Queen the royal gold of the sun; while I, the dark earth, absorbed and radiated back their overlapping aurae. Bright sparks like stars flashed and swirled above us, while a swooping comet bore the grin and wicked eyes of Gwen.

Much later we laughed together and soothed our throats with wine and berries. When Gwen's muted whistle sounded we looked up bemused; the moon hung low and the first faint harbingers of morning streaked the sky. I thought of her assignation with Tom and felt some guilt, but when we had made our way across the water she only smiled at the sweetfern clinging to the Queen and made no reproach.

"Ah, Gwen," said her Lady, somewhat ruefully, "I doubt but that I have forfeited the name of 'Virgin Queen.'"

"No such thing, Madam," Gwen said cheerfully, hurrying us along deserted pathways. "It is the Queen's English, after all, and means whatever the Queen decrees."

She brought us to the great house sooner than humanly possible, and maid and mistress slipped in through a small side door that took shape even as we watched. When Gwen reappeared with jeweled tokens from the Queen, I bade her give Tom my apologies. Her grin flashed bright, and then she sobered.

"No matter. Our sweet Lady has more need of you than you can know, for service quite apart from this night's frolic. Neither of you will strut upon the stage much longer; who would credit such protracted youth? But two who act so well can do it on the Queen's behalf, and be her eyes and ears about the world. Be sure I will send soon to tell you of her needs."

"We are truly hers, body and soul," I said. "But Gwen...who, or what, are you?"

"Need you ask?" she said impatiently. "The realm of Faery takes yet a care for England's welfare, and for her rightful monarch. As for me, think you the Puck must be ever prisoned in male form?" It took her sharp pinch to make me close my gaping mouth.

"For now, begone, before suspicious daylight catch us all." She gave us each a solid whack across our flanks.

Daylight be damned. I held Quenta close as we went toward the players' quarters. 

"There is much danger in this business, Love," I warned her.

"'Tis true," she answered, "but you know as well as I there is no drawing back. We are as bound now to our royal mistress as to each other."

She spoke the truth. I lengthened my stride to match the skipping haste of hers, feeling anew the desire that was ever my torment and my joy; and when I squeezed her hand I felt within my grasp as well the long, slim, sensuous fingers of the royal hand that would ever hold us fast.



     

   

        

    

            

            


     

      

     

     

      

                              

       

           

               

 

 

 

A Dance of Queens

Sacchi Green

 

Midsummer's Night, the play safely done, dusk sweet as a languorous touch on yearning flesh...and still I could not take my love into the greenwood and lay her on my cloak and be consumed in her fire.

I cursed my own impatience. We should have pressed on without pause, but Quenta had tormented me so, slipping a hand beneath my shirt and then down into my breeches until I could scarce walk, and must stop for a taste of the feast to come.

So the Queen's messenger had caught us. And truly, by the shimmer in the air at the instant she appeared, I knew there had never been hope of escape. In the Welsh hills and valleys we have tales, more than tales, of such creatures, though I had thought the filth and disbelief of London must repel them. At another time I would have been glad that the green countryside along the Thames still held such folk. Glad or no, we had no choice now but to let the greenwood's promise fade into shadow.

Frustration pounded in my veins. I jerked away from Quenta's touch, the mere brush of her hand making me forget that I must not even think of "him" as "her" until we could be blessedly alone.

I focused on the wide skirt sailing just ahead. Though the farthingale was not devised with a lady dwarf in mind, its absurdity was more than countered by the messenger's bearing and the Queen's crest broidered on her sleeve. It scarcely needed Quenta's nudge to put me on guard against those keen, merry eyes, though they looked up at me from about the level of my belt.

Such danger should have chilled my ardor. But surely the Queen would waste little time on us, might have forgotten already her whim. At most there could be a gracious word or two, perhaps a small purse. Why, then, command that we bring our play-garb? A jest among her ladies?

But in the great bedchamber we found Her Majesty alone, a slim, pale figure whose aura crackled through the paneled room like heat-lightning.

Our diminutive guide swept a curtsy. "The player boys, Madam. Quentin O'Connor and Kit Rhys."

Bright, tired eyes assessed us. "Well enough, Gwen. Now keep us private for a bit." The attendant gave me a wicked sidelong glance as she went to sit between the great oak door and the carven screen before it.

Quenta elbowed me sharply. I joined her in an elegant stage bow, feeling the royal glance caress our snug-hosed calves. Her Majesty was said to have ever an eye for a well-turned leg; if it went farther than a look, or a leg… But I had never heard so much as rumor that it did.

Her voice was cool enough. "So,. You played the queen's part well, each in your own way."

"Never so well as you, Your Highness." Quenta's green eyes gleamed wickedly, and I suppressed a groan. This was no time for her sly wit!

An answering gleam lit the Queen's eyes. "Ah, but I have performed the role far longer!"  Her face seemed less weary now; it was hard to credit that she had more than twice our years. "Do you not think I could play Queen of Faery as well as England's monarch?"

I tried to break the manic current between them. "Yes, in truth, Highness. Or Queen of Amazons, or any ruler ever conceived." I knelt with Hippolyta's tunic and gilded leather breastplate across one knee. Her gaze turned toward me, lingering on my long legs; I felt as when Quenta would stroke me from calf to thigh and beyond, and my flesh would melt and surge in sweet torment.

"I have not your height, lad, to play the Amazon," she said. "You did well enough, though one could scarcely credit that you would ever yield to Duke Theseus, whether in battle or in marriage bed. But come, it was bravely played, if a slighter part than Titania's." 

She turned to Quenta with a thoughtful look. "Have you two played Master Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet?' You would suit well as lovers."

Did she toy with us? What hope had we against the wits of one who played with envoys, kings, even the Pope, for her own and England's gain?

"Quentin is acclaimed as Juliet," I answered cautiously, "but to tell truth, Hippolyta is my first speaking part, and well may be my last. I am more like to play an accompanying lute, or rattle distant armor."

"It is an awkward age, I know," she said. "Your voice is nigh too low already for a woman's part. Indeed..." Those keen eyes scrutinized us closely. "I might think you both somewhat old for boy players."

I tensed inwardly, forcing my body to reveal nothing. To stifle Quenta's special genius would be a crime against art, against life itself! But if she were judged to be a woman... A woman appearing upon the public stage was such outrage that the penalty could only be surmised.  

Quenta laughed, and in that instant the tilt of her head, the cock of hip and shoulder, were entirely those of a brash youth. "I can play you any age, Lady, any sex." She took on the bombastic voice and gestures of Bottom the Weaver. "I can play you a roaring Lion, or a most excellent Wall..." and then her voice softened, its husky purr making my flesh quiver with longing for the velvet touch of her tongue. "Or I can be the Lady Moon herself."

She stepped toward the high window, every motion, every line now utterly female, despite the padded trunk-hose muffling the sweet curves of her hips. Had I been a jot closer my hand would have slipped of its own accord between cloth and smooth, seductive skin. And had she turned, and my fingers found what waited between her thighs.... 

"Look you, Lady, how the new moon burns, no silver bow, but a crescent slit through which the passions of the sky pour forth. Can you not see in me that same bright fire?"

 And she was, in truth, the very essence of the new moon, its tremulous yearning in her slim grace, its hot intensity in her smoldering eyes. Then I stepped toward her and broke the spell, and it was not her madness but mine that gave us away.

"Sirrah! Do not force me to see that which were better kept hidden!" If the Queen sensed that we were lovers, she had no wish to bring it to an issue. I did not think that she had yet sensed more.

"But Titania may see what England's Queen may not." Quenta knelt, proffering her red wig, leaf-green draperies and silver demi-mask. "On Midsummer's Night, the fancies of mortal and fairy alike may roam free. Come with us, Lady, to observe their merry frolics!"

Even through my outrage I saw what Quenta had recognized at once. Though the Queen might conceal it even from herself, it was for this we had been summoned.

A moment of hesitation; then she took the silver mask. "In truth, I have a fancy to see my host's estate by moonlight. You shall escort me, and together we shall see 'what fools these mortals be.'" She caught my eye. "Yes, lad, I know, none better, how mortal and therefore foolish even a queen may be. That is my own affair. Send Gwen to me, and wait behind the screen." But Gwen was beside her already, the sole evidence of her passing the twinge of a playful pinch upon my rump.

When the Queen was ready Gwen went sedately enough before us. I could not discern how she bespelled each guard we passed, but it was clear that none could see her mistress until we were well outside and mingling with the crowd.

The Lord Chancellor's estate was alight as though to cancel out entirely this shortest night of the year. Near the great house lords and ladies strolled the torch-lit paths, or clung together in the shadowy embrace of shrubberies. Farther off, where the village clustered around the river landing, a bonfire flared and crackled and smoke hovered in the sky like a lecherous ogre.

Habitual command mingled with laughter in the voice that urged me forward. "Come, they can have devised no cruder games than when last I walked free on a Midsummer's Night, though it were half a lifetime ago."

Quenta, just behind me, slid her hand between my thighs, and I had no choice but to move forward or turn and punish her as she deserved.

Two Quentas imprisoned me, both shimmering with manic energy, both intent on torture. The green-draped lady on my right had every movement, every gesture, even the voice of Quenta-as-Titania. No actor could have surpassed her.

On my left pranced my infuriating love in full boy-mode, her russet hair swept up under a jaunty feathered cap. At every step her hand and hip and shoulder nudged and stroked me. The Queen might not see, but Gwen, trotting behind, smiled slyly.

Much more of this and I would be unfit to walk at all. In the bedchamber, as we had waited behind the screen, Quenta's seeking hands and mouth had maddened me until I grasped both wrists and held her away. Then she flicked her mobile tongue at me, and I could only muffle my groans in the hollow of her throat. This too Gwen had seen as she came to fetch us.

My arousal was mounting all too close to pain. "Quentin, you unmannered lout, take the Lady's other side!"

 The Queen cocked a brow at my strangled tone, but held out a regal arm, and Quenta moved to take it. A glance behind showed a broad grin on Gwen's round face.

The Queen seemed drawn to all the bawdiest displays. She cheered on village maidens belaboring the pale hairy bum of a hapless stock-bound miscreant, and would have taken a switch to him herself had I not diverted her attention to two buxom wenches admiring the massive virtues of a docile bull, while their blushing swains tried to draw them onward.

A cluster of tipsy revelers drew us to the village square. I could hear the clown Will Kemp's falsetto above the laughter; he was a noted player in our troupe, and always rare entertainment. Then I saw his companion, and hoped short Gwen would take no offense.

Will pranced in strumpet's garb across a rough stage, swinging padded rump, while Long Tom the tumbling dwarf somersaulted in mock pursuit. Another time I would have laughed at their antics, and later bought an ale for Tom and traded japes in Welsh; he was a good man, philosophical, adept at using what he had to earn his living.

What he had, besides acrobatic skill and a merry black-bearded face, was the largest codpiece I have ever seen and ample means to fill it. A stallion might have envied his endowment.

Will crouched, and swung his bum into Tom's jutting cock. Tom tumbled and bounced and vaulted back, while the crowd howled, and my face burned. I tried to back my party out of the throng.

We were almost clear when I heard a gasp of outrage. I turned, and saw whose hands clutched at Gwen, and perversely welcomed this vent for my frustration.

That sniveling whoreson weasel's whelp Dick Fry, talebearer and eternal understudy! "Ho, Rhys," he hailed me. "Come help me toss this hobgoblin up on stage with t'other! What, no stomach for sport?"

Quenta gripped her dagger. Gwen narrowed her eyes, and Dick's ears and nose began to lengthen and grow hairy. It would have made a rare spectacle, but the Queen must not be found out.

"The lady is with me, you lout! Would you feel my fist smashing through that empty travesty you call a codpiece?" I moved so close he had to peer upward at me. "Do you wet yourself dreaming of my fist mangling your puny balls?" Fear flickered in his eyes, and rage, and something else; I pushed him away in disgust and led my company past the gawking bystanders.

"Lucky for that one you were here," Gwen muttered in Welsh, and spat in the direction Dick had gone.

A slim, imperious hand gripped my shoulder. "Enough, lad. You have done nobly, but the Midsummer's magic I recalled is gone forever." 

"Nay, lady, there is magic still!" Quenta's eyes glowed cat-like in the torchlight. "Kit has found a place a fairy queen might lie, and takes me there this night. We shall see what magic three queens together may ignite!"

I could have wrung her slim white neck. The Queen, though, waved dismissively. "I doubt not such a tryst is meant for two alone. Only see me back to the Hall, and then be off wherever youth and Midsummer madness lead you." She took my arm. "You may divert me as we go. Is there indeed 'a bank where the wild thyme blows.... With sweet musk roses and with eglantine?'"

"As to that, Lady, the scent was more of mint and fern. I saw daisies but no roses, though there were berry brambles aplenty. Perhaps by daylight you might view it."

"Ay, perhaps." Her voice was bleak.

"Now!" said Quenta. "Now, by moonlight, or not at all!" Her fierce eyes held mine, her meaning all too clear. When I turned toward the greenwood the Queen, a gleam restored in her eye, did not demur.

The way was not so far that the Queen might tire. Indeed, I recalled, Her Majesty was known to out-ride and out-walk her courtiers, and out-last them on the dance floor, too, however fast or subtly sensuous the steps.

Earlier in the day I had followed a stream upcurrent to a place where the waters split and merged again, leaving an islet in their midst. Wading across had been easy, cutting my way through brambles harder, but the reward had been a grassy glade spangled with flowers and hidden from all but the sky.

Here I could bring my love where the rush of water would drown the wild, raw cries her touches forced from me. Always in the city I must stifle my voice, and my pleasure. But here, alone...

To be alone! But, now, not to be.

I waded across with Quenta first. She resisted being carried, but I clung to that remnant of my fantasy despite the temptation to drop her in the deepest water. When she guessed my mood and clung, other temptations rose to nearly overwhelm me.

"It was you who taught me, love, that the magic must be shared," she murmured, and laid a trail of kisses across my throat.

 "Between two, yes! Solitary pleasures are paltry trifles! But three? And one of these the Queen? Your madness goes too far!"

 "Yours has ever kept pace before! Truly, Kit, you always know my needs, better than I know myself. Open yourself to hers!"

"'Open?' You cannot mean..." but she had slipped from my grasp and danced away, her torch flickering eerily through the brambles.

I hoped that the Queen might have regained some sense, until I saw the torch set into the stream bank reflect from eyes gone fey and feral. "It is the Queen of Faery who goes abroad this night," she murmured, "and all she sees shall be no more than fairy-tale."

As I lifted her she leaned her head far back to watch the moon and trailed one hand into the stream, and I had to press her close for balance. She felt so like Quenta--or perhaps moonlight on the water dazzled my eyes and other senses--but when I set her on the bank my blood raced despite the water's chill.

Going back for Gwen did little to cool me. Anger played as great a part as arousal; both vixens would be well served to be marooned while I looked elsewhere for ease of my throbbing flesh.

I noted again how compact in form Gwen stood, her mouth scarcely above the level of my loins... 

Gwen knew that look. "Nay, youngling, my taste is for meat less tender. Do we but get my Lady safe home before dawn, I am appointed to meet a certain short tumbler and countryman for deep conversation." She gave my thigh a shove. "Go to, distract the Queen from her melancholy. For once she shall be entertained by earthly pleasures on a Midsummer's Night. When she lies safe again in her bed both Tom and I will thank you; for now, I wait and ward here."

Across the water light flickered from the torches left in readiness.  No doubt Quenta had also found my bed of heaped sweetfern and the basket of strawberries and flask of wine. Damn her capricious impulse! I ached so for the promised tryst...

Gwen whacked me ungently across the buttocks. "Go to, young fool, or they'll begin without you! And do not doubt that I shall see all!"

I went.

Such moonlight poured across the little glade that the slender crescent seemed to burn as fiercely as my desire. Pale daisy faces glowed with inner life, and fireflies' lanterns pulsed in shadowy bushes--or had Gwen provided fairy lights? The torches were scarce needed.

The Queen reclined on the cloak-spread bed, but I had eyes only for Quenta. Moonlight bathed her pale, smooth skin, flowing over every inch, as she stood, her back to us, naked and trembling and lovely before our eyes. When she looked over her shoulder her eyes were moon-glazed jewels.

"Now, sprite," said Titania, "now that your companion is come, you may reveal what you truly are, if you think I have not guessed."

I could scarce keep from laying hands on Quenta. There was no way now to play this scene save by whatever mad script she had devised, though my heart ached that my acceptance, my love, was not enough to allow her to accept herself. 

"Some would call me hermaphrodite, Lady," she murmured huskily. "My mother named me son on scant evidence, and my father so wished to believe that he deceived himself. You will find me writ on the parish roles as male."

The Queen raised narrow brows. "I do not presume to question parish records, but I would judge of this evidence myself."

I held my breath as Quenta turned, all bravado fled.

For long moments the Queen surveyed her; the small tilted breasts; the slender waist curving into gently flaring hips; the small, dainty cock nestling amidst tawny curls above the woman's shadowed cleft. 

When at last it came the royal voice held not shock, but years of anguish.

"Had I shown evidence twice as scant, my mother's neck had escaped the ax! Could my father the King have believed me a son...." Her voice sank almost too low to hear. "How many noble souls might have been spared...."

I fell to my knees before her. That she should feel self-loathing, after all she had done to make England strong!

"Nay, Madam, never wish yourself other! What was't you said before the troops when the Armada threatened? That you had 'the body of a weak feeble woman...but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too...' Such a heart in such a body serves England best of all!"

"It may be so." She summoned up a smile and spoke to Quenta, who knelt now beside me. "Enough of idle speculation. I had guessed, of course, that you were no boy; I would not have come merely to witness love of Plato's Athenian sort." She turned to me. "You tell me, sir, is this eldritch chimaera male or female? I'll warrant your judgment can be trusted on that score!"

"She is my love," I said simply. "Her form is to me perfect and unique, but I would love her had she horns and a tail."

"You might well love me even better!" Quenta sprang up and twirled around the glade, her wild mood renewed. "Come, show how you love me!" She pulled me up and pressed tight against me, fingers busy in the lacings of my doublet.

"Show you? You know all too well!" I caught her hands. "Is it the audience you play to that quickens your blood? Best be sure she has a taste for such display!" 

Titania's eyes were dark behind the silver demi-mask. "Play on," she murmured, and in her tone I heard regret, and sorrow, and the yearnings of a passionate heart too long reined in.

"Nay, Kit, truly, you alone inflame me." Quenta's eyes held mine; my hold slackened and her hands slipped free to brush my face, my lips, my throat, and then my chest in quicksilver, fire-trailing strokes. "Please, Kit, please, touch me, let me touch you..." Her husky voice deepened, throbbing in resonance with the pounding of my blood.

I pulled her close to still her fingers, but the press of her firm breasts was yet more maddening. I ran my hands over smooth back and waist and hips, cupped them over pert, rounded buttocks and lifted her whole body tightly against my hunger. "Your skin is chilled, love."

"Then give me your shirt." She laughed into my face and pulled open my doublet. When she drew up my shirt and worked her mouth across my chest I knew that I was lost, that not even the icy stream could quench this fire.

"And take off your hose and breeches, too, you are so wet against me!" One hand slipped far down between cloth and flesh and I felt myself grow ever wetter, and hotter too, despite the chill from the wading of the stream. 

"Which will you bare first?" she purred, a wicked light flickering in her eyes as fireflies flickered in the grass around us and their throbbing points of light seemed to spark in my own depths.

It scarcely mattered. I chose what might by a fraction be the lesser shock. I tossed my doublet aside and pulled off my shirt, draping it around Quenta's chilly shoulders while she tore at bindings grown unbearable and let my aching breasts surge free.

"Not Athens." My breath caught as Quenta's soothing strokes became a torment that made me ever fuller and more sore. "Not Athens, Lady, but Sappho's Isle of Lesbos. Though I resist the constraints of a woman's body, I rejoice always in its pleasures."

This, she had not foreseen. The mask dropped; her eyes were wide.

"Please, Kit, please..." Quenta tugged at my belt while her hot mouth drove my breasts and nipples taut and aching with the need for more. "Please, I must..." Her voice was muffled against my swollen flesh.

"Slowly," I soothed, though I could scarcely speak. "The slower the sweeter, love."  As ever, she who had teased and maddened me for hours was now all desperate haste, while to me each stab of pleasure promised such further, keener pangs that I would not give up any part to leap too quickly to release.

I kicked off wet boots and wriggled out of breeches and hose, Quenta's hands more distraction than help. Then I half-turned that the Queen might see I had no such exotic equipage as my love. 

Her gaze moved over me from head to foot, taking in my length and strength and the incongruous swellings of a woman's body. A fierce longing for her approval swept me; now I understood what drove Quenta to reveal herself.

"You are the Amazon indeed," the Queen murmured at last, "and you," to Quenta, "a most exquisite Queen of Sprites." Then she laughed. "Master Shakespeare had it skewed, to say Hippolyta dallied with Oberon and Titania with Duke Theseus. Yours promises to be the better play, in truth!"

"Not so much play as dance, Lady, with intricate and subtle steps." I gazed into Quenta's eyes, holding her to stillness as my hands devoured the sweet curves of her body. She tried valiantly to wait, to savor, as I put my mouth to her small pouting breasts. She trembled, and her breath came in quick soft moans, as I licked and gently bit at her thrusting nipples.

Then her hips began to sway, and twist, and she clutched at me, and since the bed was occupied there was nothing for it but to lift her up along my body until that sweet seeking little dagger, no more in truth than a greatly inflated clitoris, pressed against my own.

She cried out, and clung to me with arms and thighs. I stilled, knowing her needs, that every movement must be hers now, every pressure, lest the rapture of her wondrous engorgement turn to pain. The lightest stroke of my hand, my tongue, could tip the balance.

As steadily as could be I endured the piercing stabs of pleasure. Rough moans escaped me as she arched and writhed against my mound, but from her there came only a keening so faint it might have floated from a distant world.

All at once she flung back her head, the moon mirrored in wild, half-closed eyes. "Now love, now!"

But already I had slipped one hand between our bodies and into her ready heat. Two fingers, deep and gently deeper, probing and pressing into her hunger; and now at last her cries burst forth, her slippery depths clutched at me, her great hard clit vibrated against mine; and my joy in her joy came near to overwhelming me.

Still there was more I must, would, have. I held her while spasms dwindled into trembling and her breath at long last slowed. Then I loosed my hold, and she slid gradually down my length, her mobile mouth teasing and caressing all the way until she knelt before me.

"Do you lag behind, love?" Her laugh was still unsteady. "Come, you will overtake me yet."  She moved her hands over my hips until they pressed into my tingling buttocks, then pulled me toward her. My clit, still aquiver, leapt at the subtle flick of her tongue.

I tangled my fingers in her moon-burnished hair as she drove me to new extremes. Moans racked me as she nudged my thighs apart and thrust her long supple tongue up into my molten cunt. Deep inside me a bright slim moon seemed to pulse and swell into full roundness.

Pleasure surged and pounded through me. My own rasping cries seemed far away as I rode the waves, striving still for more, and more, needing something more with an incoherent desperation....

And then a warm body pressed against my back. A voice murmured low into my ear, "Surely this figure can be danced by three!" Slim arms wrapped about me from behind; long clever fingers cupped and weighed my full breasts, making the aching pressure build and build; and when she curved her palms around my nipples and circled them so lightly that the hardened tips must strain and thrust into her touch, it was the final stroke. My clit strained and thrust too, and my cunt clenched and swallowed at the firm flame of Quenta's tongue, until the moon exploded inside me in a roaring burst of tangible light.

Or perhaps the roaring was my own. When at last awareness spread beyond receding ecstasy I felt hot breath on my shoulder, and a voice, hesitant yet tinged with laughter, murmured in my ear; "And can you make me sing so, as well as dance?"

Her arms were tight about me as her body swayed and rubbed against mine, breasts stroking my back, soft belly pressed beseechingly into the curve of my buttocks.

"Yea, Lady, you shall sing as full and sweet as any!" Quenta toppled us both onto the sweetfern bed and sprawled atop us; and there indeed we tasted royal flesh and royal passion, and taught the woman within to sing, taught her most thoroughly the joys of the body fate had decreed.

We had no doubt that the spirit of Midsummer accepted our triple offering as graciously as that of any mundane coupling. As wave followed wave of pleasure my lovers took on a glow of celestial light, Quenta the silver of the moon, our Queen the royal gold of the sun; while I, the dark earth, absorbed and radiated back their overlapping aurae. Bright sparks like stars flashed and swirled above us, while a swooping comet bore the grin and wicked eyes of Gwen.

Much later we laughed together and soothed our throats with wine and berries. When Gwen's muted whistle sounded we looked up bemused; the moon hung low and the first faint harbingers of morning streaked the sky. I thought of her assignation with Tom and felt some guilt, but when we had made our way across the water she only smiled at the sweetfern clinging to the Queen and made no reproach.

"Ah, Gwen," said her Lady, somewhat ruefully, "I doubt but that I have forfeited the name of 'Virgin Queen.'"

"No such thing, Madam," Gwen said cheerfully, hurrying us along deserted pathways. "It is the Queen's English, after all, and means whatever the Queen decrees."

She brought us to the great house sooner than humanly possible, and maid and mistress slipped in through a small side door that took shape even as we watched. When Gwen reappeared with jeweled tokens from the Queen, I bade her give Tom my apologies. Her grin flashed bright, and then she sobered.

"No matter. Our sweet Lady has more need of you than you can know, for service quite apart from this night's frolic. Neither of you will strut upon the stage much longer; who would credit such protracted youth? But two who act so well can do it on the Queen's behalf, and be her eyes and ears about the world. Be sure I will send soon to tell you of her needs."

"We are truly hers, body and soul," I said. "But Gwen...who, or what, are you?"

"Need you ask?" she said impatiently. "The realm of Faery takes yet a care for England's welfare, and for her rightful monarch. As for me, think you the Puck must be ever prisoned in male form?" It took her sharp pinch to make me close my gaping mouth.

"For now, begone, before suspicious daylight catch us all." She gave us each a solid whack across our flanks.

Daylight be damned. I held Quenta close as we went toward the players' quarters. 

"There is much danger in this business, Love," I warned her.

"'Tis true," she answered, "but you know as well as I there is no drawing back. We are as bound now to our royal mistress as to each other."

She spoke the truth. I lengthened my stride to match the skipping haste of hers, feeling anew the desire that was ever my torment and my joy; and when I squeezed her hand I felt within my grasp as well the long, slim, sensuous fingers of the royal hand that would ever hold us fast.