K. L. Noone: The Dark Sky, Dusty With Stars

As K. L. explains it, “this is a bonus scene, or an epilogue, perhaps, for ‘In Lines of Light,’ my little m/m sci-fi falling-in-love-on-a-starship-observation-deck story from JMS Books! (JMS link: https://www.jms-books.com/kl-noone-c-224_279/in-lines-of-light-p-4667.html  Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Lines-Light-K-L-Noone-ebook/dp/B0C1RMHPWC/ ) I think it’ll stand alone okay if you’ve not read the original, though there might be more context if you have!

The title, like the title of the original story, comes from the Hope Mirrlees poem “The Shooting Stars,” which I love – Hope Mirrlees lived from 1887 to 1978, knew Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, and wrote the strange and brilliant and folklore-steeped fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist. “The Shooting Stars” is one of my favorite poems: relatively short, simple but beautiful imagery, complexities of emotion and the relationship and word choices, and the sense that there’s more to come, those future fortunes, written in lines of light.”

***

Pic credit: Papafox on Pixabay.com

The first night that Federated Planets Ambassador Tamlin Rye spent entirely in Val’s captain’s cabin, on that beautiful space-washed courier starship, Valentine did not have a nightmare, and in fact slept well, or so Tam hoped.

Gazing at those shut eyes, at the fall of blue and violet and ink-swirl hair against his own shoulder, he thought that Val looked peaceful. Tam had certainly done his best to ensure they both ended up worn out. Pleasurably so.

A week, they had. A week, for Val’s slim star-dancer Calliope to deliver him home, after this last peace-brokering mission. A week to get to know Val, to learn Val, to memorize every detail: colorful, shy, literary, wounded.

He rested his head against Val’s, and shut his eyes.

It didn’t last. Tam should’ve known. Val had told him. No secrets, nothing held back: Val was the sort of person who told people stories, which were true, but delivered in a gentle or amusing or teasing or self-deprecating way, such that the listeners never felt uncomfortable or afraid, not even when Val casually mentioned the disastrous Cronus evacuations and his own first-ever mission as a captain, because if Valentine Perrin was good at anything, he was good at being a courier: in motion, charming, flitting from place to place, dyed hair shimmering in the evenings when he took it down from serious pins and let it fall in a rhapsody of black and purple and sapphire, summoning a lover’s hands for this week, this joy.

Tam got to be his lover. Tam had not met him before the day Val had run down the Calliope’s ramp and announced himself as the ambassador’s ride home from that successful mission, hair swinging, eyes sparkling, long limbs graceful in the way of someone used to slightly different gravity. Val moved like ballet, like veils, like ribbons, Tam had thought even then. Like flying thistle-dancer seeds in Eridian’s winds, thin and swift.

Of course he’d fallen head over heels. Val, on the other hand, had tried to behave: breathlessly enthusiastic but achingly polite to a reputable senior ambassador. Val had, at first, tried to apologize to him on the night they’d found each other on the observation deck, even though Tam had been the one interrupting him under dark late celestial swirls.

That’d been the night they’d realized they liked each other, not just as ambassador and courier. In starshine, in swiftspace, bathed in light.

The first night Val accidentally woke him—the fourth night they’d spent together, into the second half of the journey back to Terra—Tam had guessed it might be one of those nights. He knew they happened; Val had told him that as well. No secrets, no concealment. Once Valentine had decided to open up, it was that simple.

In that captain’s bed, he’d watched Val try to fall asleep, had heard breathing not settle into a rhythm. Felt Val’s tiny movements against him, the shifts of someone trying very hard not to disturb another person.

He ran a hand along Val’s back, tracing smoothness and distress. “You can stay up if you want.”

“I shouldn’t. I’ll be on the bridge in the morning…”

“What might help?”

“You,” Val said, and reached for him. “Distract me.”

Later, naked and replete in Tam’s arms, he murmured drowsily, “You can play with my hair,” and Tam nodded and did, and hummed softly while doing so, an old lullaby he didn’t know all the words to but recalled one of his parents singing.

Val did fall asleep, and Tam counted that as a win; but he wondered, and he was proven right about an hour later. He’d mostly managed to drift off himself—tired, but wanting to stay awake in case—and the fantastic bed was soft and the captain’s quarters were quiet and dark, stars flowing in the viewscreen, lights down. Val’s hair held the scent of oceans and sweetness, clean water and salt and honey, and Tam liked the buoyant slim strong weight of him, growing familiar now.

Val tensed against him, and stirred, and made a sound; Tam snapped to awareness. Before he could do much, Val made the sound again, a scream that didn’t escape, a gasp; and then jerked upright. The night limned his hair, the tumble of his emotions.

“I’m here,” Tam said, sitting up too. “I’m here.”

“I…” Val hesitated, glanced away: at a crumple of blanket, at Tam’s knee. “I’m so sorry.” He tried for a smile, a joke: “Well, I did say I like sharing things…recipes, stories…bad dreams, apparently…”

“Do you want to talk about it?” He held out an arm. “Or not. Either way. But I’d like to hold you.”

Val’s smile became more real, more fractured; but he came back and accepted the cuddling. “Are you practicing tactful ambassadorial techniques?”

“Yep. How’m I doing?”

“Very well, thank you. I’m all right, it’s just a nightmare.”

“I remember you said you get them.” Not pushing. Coaxing. Letting Val set those terms. Wrapped up in his arms, because Val had accepted that, and easily so.

“Yes.” Val nestled in closer. “I can tell you if you want. You can probably guess, though.”

“Cronus, and the fires?” Tam let his hand rub Val’s arm, lightly. Warming him.

“It’s not always that one, and sometimes it’s not exactly…” Val hesitated. His eyes were in shadow, but glimmering, grey as phantoms and stones and veils. “It is, because that’s where it starts—that was my second mission, first real mission, the first assignment was only an in-system cruise to test the drive improvements. And seeing that, the burning, the death of a world…knowing we’d run out of time…”

“I know.” Tam kissed the top of his head, very very gently. “I’d say you did everything you could—the whole Fleet did—but I know how it feels. When you did do everything, and people still died.”

“Yes.” Val sounded forlorn. “Thank you. I know it wasn’t anything I could have changed. I do know. It’s just…I was there.”

“Yes,” Tam said. “You were. It happened.” That was true, and real. “And you feel it because you’re a good person. Because you remember them.”

Val made a soft noise, and hid his face in Tam’s shoulder.

Tam whispered, hand stroking a colorful fall of hair, “I’m here. I’m here now. With you. Holding on to you, if you want.”

“Oh, yes, please.” Val relaxed a fraction against his shoulder “It’s better, now… It’s not always Cronus.”

“Hmm?”

“Sometimes the fire’s someplace else, home, my family’s farm…this ship, she’s on fire, and I can’t do anything, can’t stop it, the way we couldn’t stop it then…I know it’s not real. I think I’m a good captain, or I try to be. But in that dream there’s nothing I can do.”

Tam hurt for him, with him, hearing the fracture in his voice: the break, the wound, the tiny helpless need to make nothing ever went wrong, no one ever died again, no nightmares came to pass. Valentine had been very young, he remembered again, on that disastrous mission. A captain, but only just. Left with scars across all that newly-minted optimism.

The stars shimmered in voiceless wistful compassion, out in the universe, in swiftspace glow.

Tam kissed him again. A bit of nuzzling, his beard against soft skin, because he knew by now that Val liked that. “If it were real—a fire, a danger—you’d react. You’d protect your people.”

“Of course I would.”

“You know you would do everything for them. For anyone you could save. You did that already. Back then.”

“I know,” Val said, not exactly clinging to him, but not not doing that, either. “I did the mandatory Fleet counseling after a traumatic mission, you understand.”

“Yep, and you told them you were fine, didn’t you?” He ran a hand over Val’s hair again. “Like more than half the captains out there would. So you could get back to doing more good.”

Val actually laughed, a ghost of sound, leaning against him. “You know other starship captains, or you’re very good at predicting people, or both.”

“Little of both. You know that sometimes things go wrong. Because you’ve seen it.” He paused, added, “It’s one reason you are a good captain. You wouldn’t be reckless. Fun—and I know you are; your second lieutenant just had to tell me the starship race story and the bet about skip-bouncing on Mallowsweet’s clouds—but you’d never put anyone else in danger. Never.”

Val laughed more, half-shy about it, accepting the compliment. “Thank you. And I won that bet.”

“I know. They told me that, too.”

“I can see my crew and I are going to have a conversation later.”

“They care about you,” Tam said, “because you care about them, about everyone you’ve met, your transports and your missions and the people you help,” and followed the line of Val’s ear with a finger, under the hair.

“I do,” Val said. “I do. I love this job—I love everything we do. I love the Fleet, and the exploration, and being part of that, even as a little courier—I love every new discovery.” His eyes found Tam’s, pale silver in the night. “I just…sometimes it’s…the other parts too. The memories.”

“Well,” Tam said, and moved both hands to cup his face, to hold him, to ensure he heard, “I’m here for those parts. For all of you, when you need me.”

“So am I.” Val looked right back at him. “For you. I mean—you’re here for me, and thank you, thank you. But I want to do that for you as well. After missions. Negotiations. Frustrations, or triumphs. If you need me, in turn.”

“I like that idea,” Tam said. “You and me, here for each other. It’s both of us.”

Val’s smile lit up the room. Brighter than the space outside.

“Think you can sleep now? Thinking about that. About us.”

“Yes,” Val said, settling back down with him, in the circle of Tam’s arms. “It’s not normally more than once a night, anyway. But…even aside from that…I think I feel better. More so than I usually do, after. More evenly balanced, perhaps. You made me laugh.”

“I’m pretty good at balance. Advanced ambassadorial techniques, and all.”

“I’ve got some leave,” Val said, a little hesitantly, but with one hand sneaking over to rest on Tam’s chest. “After we’re back…I know we’re only about three days out, I know you probably have a life to get back to, another mission, debriefing, something, but—if you’ve got the time, if you would like…I like oceans, beaches, if you also like that…water, and sailing, and—and falling asleep together, perhaps…”

“You know,” Tam told him, “I do have some leave coming up, and it’s funny, I was thinking the exact same thing about sleeping with you a lot more,” and kissed him more.

Jeff Baker: At the Market of the Two Dark Moons

This is the third installment of Jeff’s ongoing fantasy serial fantasy serial that started with “Towards the Marogas Hills” – complete with a sweet bedtime romance scene and some unwelcome news. Enjoy! And here’s hoping it won’t be long before Zayas and Zinack are continuing their adventures in episode four! As Jeff himself says: What awaits our young heroes? Exposure? Capture? Stay glued to RoMMantic Reads for more!

***

Pic credit: Clotina on Pixabay.com

            “Badr! Ghayth!” The voice rang loud through the marketplace. “The new shipment has arrived! Come quickly.”

            Zayas and Zinack had been at this marketplace at the very edge of the desert for three weeks. They had shown up half-starved and parched after the desert had blocked their way traveling in the direction of the Moons rises. They had walked along the rocky edge of the desert always watching for their Master’s men who might be still searching for them. They had no illusions that they were valuable slaves but the two young men in their twenties knew their escape had angered their Master. The magical bargain that they made for escape came with a price, but they hoped they would evade capture.

            They had arrived at the market and had presented themselves using the names “Badr,” (for Zayas) and “Ghayth” (for Zinack.) So far, the merchant Taajir, tall and bearded with bright shining eyes had not questioned their story of having been travelers who had been robbed and Taajir had given them food and a place to stay in exchange for their work.

            They had readily agreed.

            The Market of the Two Dark Moons, as it was called, extended a ways down the road along the rocks that marked the edge of the sandy part of the desert. The market had been there quite a while, catering to travelers who did not find many other places as they were off the regular trade routes and few tourists came to see the section of sand called “The Crystal Desert,” which was notorious for being extremely hot during the daytime due to the sands being made of the mystic crystals which glowed red in the sunlight.

            But the Market was blessed by the existence of a small pool of water close by and thus they had set up trade and supplies with other dealers. The Market sold foodstuffs, clothing suitable for travelers, a small variety of small birds suitable for carrying messages and maps which were said to be “of the most dependable sort.”

            In addition to booths of things for sale, there were storage tents and tents that served as living quarters for merchants and their families. Zinack was surprised to see several young children running around the tents playing.

            Zayas and Zinack were surprised to find the variety of foods they were able to feast upon in the evening when the tents were sealed and they all sat around the cook fires listening to stories. Even slices of Bayapple which Zinack had only heard of, never even seen.

            Having to sleep in Taajir’s storage tent, on top of a pile of fabric ostensibly to prevent thefts in the night, was the lap of luxury for the two former slaves. Outside, the breeze was blowing softly off the desert and the low sounds of night-sky-birds could be heard.

            Zayas rolled over and stared at the moonlit walls of the tent.

            “I didn’t realize a small pool by the great desert could hold so much water,” he said. “And we carried most of it.”

            “And how many times have we stacked Taajir’s rugs?” Zinack said with a laugh, eyes closed.

            “Are we re-stacking the old rugs or putting up new ones?” Zayas asked.

            “Don’t know,” Zinack said. “But even if he was not paying us in coin and food this is better than working under the whip on Master Torras’ farm until the Moons come up.”

            Zayas nodded in the dark. Zinack pressed up against him, reached over and rubbed Zayas’ belly.

            “The Master’s searchers haven’t found us at any rate.” Zayas said. “But they will keep trying even after what happened at the cave of the winds. And you have no insight as to whether they will come?”

            “No,” Zinack said, his arm resting on Zayas’ side, feeling nice and warm. “But we will only be safer on the other side of the Great Desert. We cannot cross here where the hot crystals are. Or the desert will be our grave”

            “We’ll need to keep traveling,” Zayas said. “Maybe find a caravan.”

            “And remember which of us is Badr and which is Ghayth,” Zinack said, his voice trailing off into a mumble.

            The only sound in the tent was their steady breathing.

            Day started at dawn at the Market, but Taajir called Zayas and Zinack into his personal tent.

            “More of our fabric has arrived,” Taajir said. “Along with news. North of here there are soldiers looking for two escaped slaves. They are probably two day’s journey away from here. They can only be looking for you.”

            Zayas and Zinack stared at each other and listened to the desert wind…

Kaje Harper: Book Review – Coming Out Under Fire

It’s been quite a while since I ran any non-fiction in the zine but this excellent book review from Kaje has reminded me just how good it can be to read. This is a review of Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two by Allan Bérubé. The book sounds fascinating, if slightly depressing, and the subject matter is one that’s dear to my own heart as it forms the (slightly later set but still relevant) background to ‘December Roses’. As Kaje says, we’ve come a long way, but there’s still a way to go…

***

This was a fascinating, and sometimes heartbreaking and infuriating, look at the LGBTQ men and women who came out while serving in the armed forces during WWII. It includes information on being gay on the home front as well.

In the 1940’s, sodomy was a criminal act in the United States. Although there were many people who were openly gay, and who were often ignored or tolerated by society as long as they kept their preferences discreet, it was a precarious existence.  At any moment someone might object to a gesture or even a look, report you in the wrong quarters, and the result could be a long prison sentence.

In the armed forces, things were no less precarious.  With the draft, gay and bi men (and closeted trans women of that era) were given no choice about joining up.  Many also volunteered, wanting to protect their homes and loved ones from the threat overseas.  The war brought those men, and the women volunteers in female units, into close contact with members of their own sex under conditions of stress, fear and isolation from home.  And then forbade them to fall in love, or in lust.  Naturally, many of them did anyway.

Military reactions were unpredictable.  Being gay was still considered a mental illness (sexual psychopathy) and was a reason for rejection from the armed services.  Psychiatrists even talked about two other forms of homosexuality – paranoid personalities who suffered “Homosexual panic” and schizoid personalities who displayed “homosexual symptoms.” Recruits who admitted to being gay at intake might be just rejected, or they might be labeled psychotic and psychoanalyzed, or even disbelieved as malingering and sent off to basic training. And those who did not come out at their intake interview received almost as mixed a reaction once they began to serve.

With large same-sex groups living together, some homosexual behavior was condoned.  The shows that were put together to entertain the troops almost all included performers in drag, and camping it up might be taken with amusement.  Or it might not.  There was often a gay subculture where men or women in the know could meet and interact.  But there was always the risk of being found out.

Many of the men and women were confused and afraid of their own sexual leanings.  Some only became aware that they were gay from the enforced same-sex contact they experienced after enlisting.  Some consulted Armed Forces psychiatrists. They received little in the way of real help in understanding themselves, given that homosexuality was considered a pathology.  At best they might find a sympathetic ear.  At other times the psychiatrists, who were charged with reporting a man’s or woman’s fitness for duty, might betray and report them.

The stress had to have been extreme.  On the front, men saw their lovers maimed and killed.  Some were fortunate enough to have a blind or even sympathetic eye turned by the “normal” men around them.  In forward units, camaraderie between the men often overrode other considerations. Other men who lost lovers felt unsafe even admitting their pain and forced themselves to carry on as if their heart hadn’t just been ripped to shreds.  And they never knew when some zealot might accuse and expose them. Which might result in a commanding officer looking the other way and telling them they were valuable to the unit and to just keep it under wraps.  Or which might end in a formal charge.

Once trapped in the machinery of a sodomy charge, conditions could be brutal.  Men were sometimes put in chains, transported under the guns of soldiers who might be bigoted enough that the gay man wondered if he would get out of the transport alive.  They were imprisoned, sometimes under severe conditions, often in a form of solitary confinement to prevent them from having contact with any other men. They were lumped together with all the other criminals.  Article 93 called for similar treatment for “manslaughter, mayhem, arson, burglary, housebreaking, robbery, larceny, embezzlement, perjury, forgery, sodomy, assault (including rape)…” Gay men might be treated even more harshly than the criminals, in some cases forced to sleep with the lights on 24-7 to theoretically prevent sexual acts. Some were abused, or forced to provide blow jobs to their supposedly heterosexual guards. The women were similarly treated, sometimes even more extremely reviled by their comrades in arms and their officers.

In a vicious cycle of feedback, some of the gay men under arrest became more campy than they had ever been before, perhaps to show that they could not be broken or made less gay by the treatment.  That raised distaste in some straight officers and men.  Gay men still in the closet in the forces were both painfully sympathetic and embarrassed. Visiting a man arrested for sodomy was risky, as you might end up suspect yourself.  Arrestees were asked to report on everyone they had encountered in situations where homosexual activity was taking place, and were sometimes made to sign dictated confessions of sodomy and homosexual activity with other named individuals.

Despite all this, many gay men and women served throughout the war with distinction.  Some high level officials objected to the stigmatization of the gay soldiers under their command.  But many did not.  After the war, arguments continued to rage over the release of Armed Forces personnel records to organizations like the FBI, which was charged with “ensuring public safety by identifying the homosexual menace”. As the post-war climate became even more hostile to gays, some records, personal letters, confessions and medical files were passed to the FBI and the police, especially from the offices of Naval and Army intelligence.  Men and women who had passed through the war unscathed might find themselves the target of law enforcement.

This book is long, well referenced, and painful to read.  The one light at the end of the tunnel is the realization of how far we have actually come in half a century. When I first wrote this review, gay marriage had become legal in several US states – how sweet that was, coming from a position where being gay was considered insane and criminal. And now, as I reread for a second time, it’s legal in the US as a nation, although conservatives are doing their best to undermine that, with tactics that mirror some of this bigoted past.

I was left with a sense of awe.  These men and women and nonbinary folk (who don’t get much page time, being pretty invisible in that era) risked so much, just for being who they were.  That they lived and fought and served, and also loved and laughed and danced, is a tribute to the human spirit.  Humans have such capacity for cruelty to each other, and such capacity for love.  I hope, despite the recent backsliding, that as the decades pass, we are moving away from one toward the other.

Anne Barwell: A Trail of Dusk

I’m late posting this week thanks to a manic weekend in Real Life TM. Sorry about that, but hopefully this latest story by Anne from the files of Sullivan Investigations will be more than worth the wait! I loved the last installment and the atmosphere in this one sent shivers down my spine.

Anne explains that although she usually writes in third person point of view, this particular series seems to be writing itself into first person pov! This particular tale is set a few years earlier than the events of Shades of Sepia and A Case of Misdirection, to give you some idea how it all fits together.

***

Painting by Sir Alfred Munnings courtesy of Canada War Museum/CNN

Tobias

Cora faltered, her hoof slipping in the mud. I took a moment to stroke her mane. She was a good horse, my only friend in this war. We made a good team, her and I.

“Come along, not much longer,” I reassured her. Her nostrils flared, she held her head up, shuddered, then fell in behind me again.

I pulled my greatcoat tightly around me, but I couldn’t shut out the smell of mud and death, and the desperate calls of the lost souls surrounding us. I’d received a few pitied looks when I’d been given this assignment, but not many. They viewed me as a coward because I refused to fight by their side and charge with them into death. Instead, I drove an ambulance, delivered the injured to the field hospital, and helped ease the way for those who didn’t realise they were already gone.

I didn’t need to seek death. It haunted me quite literally especially in this God forsaken place. Bodies littered the ground, some whole, others scattered like a grotesque jigsaw puzzle. These poor blighters hadn’t stood a chance, yet had bravely fulfilled their role as fodder sent to die so our army could advance a few feet.

I signalled for Cora to halt while I bent and retrieved another pair of boots. 

Men groaned, others whimpered, all of them already fallen to the Somme. I threw the boots over Cora’s back, adding to the pile we’d already collected. Perspiration trickled down my brow, my breathing growing more laboured in my struggle to keep the voices out. I closed my eyes for a moment, desperately attempting to centre myself, to anchor my ability to this world, but like Cora’s hooves, it refused to find purchase, instead slipping further into the muddy barrier between life and death.

The deluge stopped, suddenly silenced.

I opened my eyes with a start, looking around warily. I didn’t carry a gun. I couldn’t risk someone I’d killed attaching their spirit to me and haunting me for the rest of time.

A man stood in front of me, immaculately dressed, a gentleman who hadn’t been a part of the carnage of the few hours before.

He eyed me up and down, then smiled. I averted my gaze, instinct screaming at me that if I met his eyes, I’d lose myself in them.

He licked a stray drop of red from his mouth. “I’ve heard of men like you, but you’ve the first I’ve met.” 

“You’ll not have me.” I took a step back, placing myself between him and the horse. I’d heard of men like him too. Not dead, yet not entirely living either—caught for eternity between dusk and dawn. I frowned. It was daylight. “How are you here? Now?” Surely, he should be flame and ash as his kind and the sun were mortal enemies.

He laughed, the hollow noise sending a chill through my soul. “Men seek comfort in explanations. You fear me, yet not. Interesting.” In an instant he was by my side, caressing my cheek with one cold slender finger.

I stood my ground. I’d seen too much death to fear it. Still, I couldn’t help but flinch at his touch.

“It’s not you I seek,” he whispered, his tone enticing, offering more if I wanted it. “I hunt another today, but your scent is quite exquisite so I will not forget you.”

Then he was gone, and Cora and I were alone again among the welcoming dead.