All_Out_The_No-Longer-Secret_Stories_of_Queer_Teens_throughout_the_Ages_-_Saundra_Mitchell
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Take a journey through time and genres and
discover a past where queer figures live, love and
shape the world around them. Seventeen of the best
young adult authors across the queer spectrum have
come together to create a collection of beautifully
written diverse historical fiction for teens.
From a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in war-torn 1870s Mexico
featuring a transgender soldier, to two girls falling in love while mourning
the death of Kurt Cobain, forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish
convent or an asexual girl discovering her identity amid the 1970s roller-
disco scene, All Out tells a diverse range of stories across cultures, time
periods and identities, shedding light on an area of history often ignored or
forgotten.
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ALL OUT
Edited By
Saundra Mitchell
ANNA-MARIE McLEMORE
NATALIE C. PARKER
NILAH MAGRUDER
MACKENZI LEE
ROBIN TALLEY
MALINDA LO
DAHLIA ADLER
KATE SCELSA
ELLIOT WAKE
SCOTT TRACEY
TESS SHARPE
ALEX SANCHEZ
KODY KEPLINGER
SARA FARIZAN
TESSA GRATTON
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
TEHLOR KAY MEJIA
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For Jim McCarthy.
Thank you for trusting me with your baby.
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Contents
Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore
El Bajío, México, 1870
Author’s Note
The Sweet Trade by Natalie C. Parker
Virginia Colony, 1717
And They Don’t Kiss at the End by Nilah Magruder
Maryland, 1976
Burnt Umber by Mackenzi Lee
Amsterdam, 1638
The Dresser & the Chambermaid by Robin Talley
Kensington Palace, September 1726
New Year by Malinda Lo
San Francisco—January 21, 1955
Author’s Note
Molly’s Lips by Dahlia Adler
Seattle—April 10, 1994
The Coven by Kate Scelsa
Paris, 1924
Every Shade of Red by Elliot Wake
England, Late Fourteenth Century
Willows by Scott Tracey
Southwyck Bay, Massachusetts, 1732
The Girl with the Blue Lantern by Tess Sharpe
Northern California, 1849
The Secret Life of a Teenage Boy by Alex Sanchez
Tidewater, Virginia, 1969
Walking After Midnight by Kody Keplinger
Upstate New York, 1952
The End of the World as We Know It by Sara Farizan
Massachusetts, 1999
Three Witches by Tessa Gratton
Kingdom of Castile, 1519
The Inferno & the Butterfly by Shaun David Hutchinson
London, 1839
Healing Rosa by Tehlor Kay Mejia
Luna County, New Mexico, 1933
About the Authors
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ROJA
BY
ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE
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El Bajío, México, 1870
They all gave him different names. The authorities, who had been trying
for months to catch him, called him El Lobo. The Wolf. La Légion called
him Le Loup.
His mother, back in Alsace, had christened him with a girl’s name,
though he had since forgiven her for that. It was a name he had trusted me
with but that I knew never to speak. The sound of it was too much a
reminder of when he’d been too young to fight the hands trying to turn him
into a proper demoiselle, forbidding him from running outside because
young ladies should not do that. His heart had been a boy’s heart, throwing
itself against his rib cage with each set of white gloves for mass.
I called him his true name, Léon, the one he’d chosen himself. None of
this was strange to me, a boy deciding his own name. The only strange
thing was the fact that he knew mine.
No one outside our village called me or anyone else in my family by our
real names. They worried that letting our names onto their tongues would
leave them sick. The rumors said our hearts were dangerous as a coral
snake’s bite. They carried the whisper that the women in my family could
murder with nothing but our rage. They pointed to our hair, red as our skin
was brown, and insisted el Diablo himself had dyed it with the juice of
devil’s berries, to mark us as his.
Abuela had told me our rage was a thing we must tame. Though
everyone else feared that our rage might kill them, the lives it more often
took were ours. Poison slipped from our hearts and into our blood, she said.
The venom spread to our fingers and the ends of our hair.
But even she found a little joy in it. She flaunted it. So we would have
enough to eat, she taught me to crush red dye from the beetles that infested
the nopales. They were pests, ravaging the cactus pads, but if caught they
made a stain so deep red we could sell it. My grandmother even tied tiny
woven baskets to the nopales, luring the insects to make nests.
That only added to the rumors. Las Rojas, the grandmother and
granddaughter whose hearts blazed so red it showed in their hair, and who
made the same color and sold it with stained fingertips. We heard whispers
as we passed churches, families drawing back from us, afraid we could kill
them with a glare.
Now, as I stood in front of Deputy Oropeza’s polished desk, I wished all
the stories were true.
“You want El Lobo released?” Oropeza rested his boots on the smooth-
finished wood.
The toes of his boots, long and pointed as a snake’s tongue, narrowed and
curved up toward his shins. They had become the fashion of rich men, who
now wore them not only for celebrations but in the streets, the forks nipping
at anyone who got in their way.
“Tell me you’ve come here as a joke,” he said. “Tell me one of my
friends sent you to see if I would be taken in. Was it Calvo?”
His hand flashed through the air. I flinched, thinking he might strike me.
But he was halting me from speaking.
“No, don’t tell me,” he said. “It was Acevedo, wasn’t it?” He clapped his
hands. “I swear on the gospel, that man stops breathing if he isn’t trying to
trick someone.”
If Oropeza attended church, if he worshipped anyone but himself, he’d
know better than to swear on la Biblia. But I kept silent.
“How much did he pay you to do this?” Oropeza’s boots thudded on the
tile floor. “Because I’ll double it if you help me play my own little trick on
him.”
The rage in me shuddered and trembled. It felt like it was flickering off
my eyelashes.
“No one sent me,” I said.
The richest men in El Bajío couldn’t have paid me to be here. But I had
begged every official who would see me.
Most I found by stopping them in the street. The ones who listened
bowed their heads to tell me there was nothing they could do, not for any
Frenchman, least of all El Lobo.
The ones who didn’t want to hear me—Senator Ariel, Governor
Quintanar—shoved me to make me move. They backed away from me like
I was crafted out of mud, as though if they came too close I might dirty
them.
I was not a girl who could ask for things. I was not powder and perfume
and lace-trimmed fans. The kind of women who could wheedle favors from
wealthy men wore dresses in the purples and deep pinks of cactus fruit.
They wore silk and velvet ribbons tied as necklaces. The owners of blue
agave farms sent them sapphire and emerald rings.
They were not girls in plain huipils.
But Deputy Oropeza had agreed to see me. Hope had bloomed in the
dark space beneath my heart. Yes, he wore the pointed boots of rich men,
but he hadn’t gotten into the same competitions the others had, driving one
another to have boots made with toes as long as I was tall. Maybe there was
reason in him.
“Please,” I said now.
The war had ended. But the hills still lay scorched and barren, and Léon
had been captured as an enemy Frenchman. Un francés. And now a
blindfold and a bullet waited for him at dusk.
“He didn’t even want to fight with them,” I said. “He deserted.”
The things Léon had seen had driven him to betray his own country. I
hated la Légion for what they had done to Léon. He hated them for letting
their soldiers loose on this land. They raided villages, throwing women
down on the earth floors of their homes, killing the men and keeping locks
of their hair as trophies.
And those were only the things he had been willing to tell me, as though
I myself had not known families killed or scarred by the French uniform.
But he didn’t see the brown of my skin and consider me less than he was.
He did not see the red of my hair and decide I was wicked. He saw me as
something soft, a girl he did not want to plague with nightmares.
By the time Léon deserted, he had grown to hate not only la Légion but
his own country, for starting this war in the name of unsettled debts, and for
doing it while los Estados Unidos were too deep in their own civil war to
intervene. So Léon had done the small but devastating things that earned
him the name Le Loup. At night, he strolled into French camps wearing his
stolen uniform. The blue coat with gold-fringed epaulettes. The red pants
that tapered to cuffs at the ankles. The stiff yellow collar that rubbed against
his neck when he nodded at the watchmen as though he belonged there.
He stole guns, throwing them into rivers. He set horses loose, driving
them toward villages too poor to buy them. He pilfered maps and
parchments, leaving them burning for the men to find. The rumors said he’d
even called wolves from the hills, scattering the camps. But when I’d asked
him about that, he only smiled.
Now the memory of Léon’s smile stung so hard I looked for the cut of it
on my skin.
“He was working against them,” I told Oropeza.
Oropeza looked out through the silk curtains and onto the rows of curling
grapevines.
“Then he is a traitor,” Oropeza said. “He is not even loyal to his own
country. What would make you think he would be loyal to you?”
He turned his gaze to the square of tile where I stood in my huipil. In that
moment, I saw myself as Oropeza must have seen me.
Men like Oropeza would never consider me worth looking at. I was
short, wide hipped, a girl from the villages. I had only ever been told I was
pretty by my abuela.
And Léon. My lobo.
Oropeza laughed. “The little campesina thinks el francés loves her?”
Campesina. I knew what that word meant to him, how he wielded it as
both insult and fact. It was a word men like Oropeza kept ready on their
tongues, a way to show their judgment both of where I had come from and
the shape of my body. To them, my height and form marked me. A
peasant’s shape, men like Oropeza called it, a shape made for work close to
the ground.
“All he told you was lies,” Oropeza said. “He might have thought you
were a little bit interesting.” He gestured at my hair. “A distraction.”
The salt of my own tears stung.
“One day you will thank me for what I’ve saved you from,” Oropeza
said.
I set my back teeth together. He considered me and everyone like me a
child. Men like him thought they had more of God in their hearts than we
did, as though they held it in the lightness of their skin, or, for a few of
them, in their eyes as blue as the seas their ancestors had crossed to claim
this land.
Oropeza lurched forward, clutching his chest as though it had cramped.
And then his stomach, as though he’d had a portion of bad wine.
I stepped back.
The venom in me, carried in my family’s blood, was spilling out. It had
built in me, spun and strengthened by my rage. Then it had flowed into the
air between me and Oropeza until he was sick with it.
This was the poison of Las Rojas, the venom our rage could become.
I kept myself back, pressing my tongue behind my teeth to stop myself.
I could not let the poison in my blood make Oropeza sick. If he’d heard
the stories about my family and realized they were more truth than
superstition, he would have me dragged into the street and killed as a bruja.
One of Oropeza’s men showed me out. My steps led me over the
polished tile, and then out into Oropeza’s front gardens.
Léon had stayed for me. He had kept himself here, caught between la
Légion he’d deserted and this country that considered him an enemy. And
he’d been taken for it.
He’d never had the stomach for la Légion. He’d told me the night I found
him, once I’d given him enough water for him to speak and he’d come out
of the fever enough to make sense with his words.
He’d only joined because it had given him a way out of Alsace. He’d
been told that la Légion would never check on the name he’d been born
with, the name that would give away more than he ever wanted anyone to
know of the body he kept beneath his clothes. The chest he bound down.
The shoulders and back he worked hard enough that they could take as
much weight as any other man’s.
And la Légion hadn’t checked. They did not want to know. They
preferred their légionnaires forget who they’d been.
He could take the fighting, and even the beatings they gave les
légionnaires to harden their spirits. But he could not stand how his régiment
let the men work out their rage on village women. How they killed brothers
or husbands who protested.
Léon had spoken up enough that they considered it rebellion. So each
night they beat him in a way they called les couleurs. Blood on one cheek,
bruises on the other, the pale, untouched stripe of his nose and lips between.
The colors of the French flag, meant to put the allegiance back in him.
The night I found Léon, he’d worn those colors. It was the first time he’d
tried running, and they’d caught him. So they’d tied him to one of the
acacia trees that bloomed yellow each spring. His back against the thin
trunk. His wrists and ankles bound behind it so he could not stand. All he
could do was kneel.
They had told him that they may or may not come back for him, and if
they did, it would be because they were curious if the wolves had eaten
him.
That night, una vieja from our village had sent me into the woods. She
asked me to bring her an oyamel branch from the fir tree she always held a
little of as she prayed. I only noticed Léon because, at the sound of brush
crackling under my feet, he lifted his head. His forehead shone with sweat.
And through his fever, the thing I would later come to know as his charm
seemed a kind of delirium, a madness. He’d mumbled a few words in
French before saying, “If I’d known a beautiful woman would be calling on
me, I would have made myself presentable.”
I unbound him and brought him home not because I was kind. I brought
him home, holding him up as his eyes opened and shut, because if it had not
been for the mercy of the other families in our village, my abuela would not
have had a proper burial. I could not have done it myself. My heart was so
weighted with losing her I was sure it would pull me into whatever hollow
in the ground I made for her.
So I brought home this tall, underfed boy with hair so blond the moon
made it look white. I boiled water and made pozole, to show God I was
grateful, and that there was mercy left in me.
But there was no mercy in men like Oropeza, and Ariel, and Quintanar.
I had failed Léon. I had lost him. And now, at dusk, when a shot rang
through the air, I screamed into the sound.
I screamed into the wind bringing me the rattling laugh of the men who
killed Léon. I sobbed into the silhouettes of mesquite and acacia, and into
the darkening blue of the sky.
Still screaming, I crossed myself, saying a prayer for the soul of Léon
Bellamy.
Léon, the boy who made me laugh when he tripped over rolling his r’s.
Léon, who had startled the village with his eyes, so pale gray that at night
they looked silver, and his hair, light as bleached linen. Léon, who had won
them over with his wonder about armadillos, how the animal rolled itself
into a ball of plate armor.
Léon, the boy who had put his mouth to my ear and told me the brown of
my skin made him think of wild deer roaming the woods where he was
born.
Even in this moment, opening under me like a break in the earth, Abuela
would have told me to find some small thing to thank God for. There was
one, just one, I could get my fingers around.
No one, not la Légion, not Oropeza, ever knew Léon as anything but a
boy. They did not know that his mother had christened him with a girl’s
name. They did not know that he had joined la Légion less out of patriotism
and more for the chance to live as who he was. If they had, Oropeza would
have thrown it at me, mocked me for it. He would have made clear what he
thought of us, Léon living among the other soldiers with his bound-down
chest, me lifting my chin in the street as though I were the equal of the
powder-pale women in their escaramuza dresses.
But even this small mercy broke in me. All of it broke.
First I had lost my grandmother, made sick from her rage over what this
war had taken. She always warned me not to let my rage kill me, but in the
end her own had spread its venom through her.
They said this war was over, even as women wept over their stoves and
into their sewing. Even now when an Alsatian boy had just been
blindfolded and shot.
My rage felt so hot it would singe away my smallest veins. There were so
many empty places where everything I had lost once fit. Now there were
only the dustless, unfaded patches where all I loved had been.
There was nothing left. Yes, there were the women who had loved me
and my abuela; my abuela had fed them when they were sick and prayed
over them when they bore children. There were even the ones who had
taken to Léon like he was a stray. But now they only reminded me of those
empty places.
I found the few clothes of my grandfather’s that Abuela had kept, the
ones he’d left behind. He had dared to hit her once, and her rage had struck
him back so quickly, felling him, he called her a witch, yelling, “Bruja,” as
he fled our village.
I hemmed his trousers with quick, rough stitches. I stuffed his boots with
scrap cloth so they would fit. I had the small, wide feet of my grandmother,
the edges rough from years of running without shoes.
Like a silent prayer, I gave her my gratitude. Abuela had wanted me to
play outside barefoot as much as I could stand, so that if ever I could not
afford shoes, my feet could go without them. Now I understood what my
grandmother had wanted, for me to keep my heart soft but the edges of me
hard enough to survive the world as it was.
My grandfather’s poncho, I plunged into red dye, the rough agave taking
it fast.
At night, the color wouldn’t show. But I would feel it against my skin.
I would not let this rage kill me. By using it, I would drive it from my
body. I would turn it against the last man who would not save Léon. The
man, who, by dawn, would be robbed of his finest things.
Oropeza’s guards, I took first.
I neared the hacienda with my head lowered. My hat hid the red of my
hair. The brim shaded my face. I left the guards no chance to wonder if I
was some messenger boy bearing midnight news, or whether they should
draw their brass-throated pistols. I let my rage stream into them. I let it
become liquid and alive.
They fell, one gripping his side, another holding his chest as though the
venom clutched his heart.
Anything I could carry, I stole. Fine cigars. Money and papers from the
desk drawers. Jewels that had once belonged to Oropeza’s wife; Abuela was
sure he had killed her with his cold heart as well as we could with our
poison.
I slipped through the house, the moon casting clean squares of light
through the vestíbulo windows. The strap of my woven bag cut into my
shoulder, heavy with all I had taken.
The rustling of grape leaves outside and the tangle of voices stilled me.
Oropeza and his friends stumbled drunk through the dark grapevines.
Calvo and Acevedo and other men with more power than sense and more
money than mercy.
They laughed. They swapped echoes of the same questions.
“How much are los franceses giving you for the traitor?” Calvo asked.
“How did you even manage this?” Acevedo asked. “I thought the only
Frenchmen you knew were the ones you’d had shot.”
“Why didn’t I think of this?” another man asked.
“Because you’re not as smart as I am,” Oropeza said.
A question had just formed in me when I saw the figure held between
them, being shoved forward and made to walk. Blindfolded, his wrists
bound behind his back.
Because he could not see, he stumbled, drawing their laughter. The long
points of their boots needled his shins.
They were forcing him toward the road that ran behind Oropeza’s estate.
My gasp was sharp as the first breath waking from a nightmare, the
moment of wondering if, as in those dreams, my fingers were made of
lightning or the sky was truly a wide blue blanket woven by my abuela’s
hands.
Léon.
They hadn’t let the firing squad take him.
Hope bubbled up under my rage, but with it my anger thickened.
They hadn’t killed him, not yet. Instead, Oropeza was trading him to the
country that now considered him an enemy. Trading him for money, for
favors, for the currencies of men who owned so much ground but never
bent down enough to touch it.
He was surrendering El Lobo to the country that called him Le Loup, the
country Oropeza declared his enemy but still bargained with in secret.
My hope lifted my rage higher, driving it into a swirling cloud that flew
out the windows and rushed at the men. It caught them, striking them down
like el Espíritu Santo had slain them.
But this was not God’s work. This was not the Holy Spirit filling these
men. This was the work of una Roja. A poison girl, veiled in men’s
clothing.
The men fell to the ground, holding their throats and chests and sides.
The richest ones, the ones whose boots had the longest tapered points,
twisted to keep from stabbing themselves with their own shoes. Oropeza
jerked as though demons poured through him. My vengeance, a vengeance I
shared with my grandmother and all Las Rojas, was toxic as thorn apple
and lantana. It was poison as strong as moonflower and oleander.
I threw open the glass-inlaid doors to the back gardens. I stepped
between writhing men and grabbed Léon’s arm, pulling him with me. I
caught the smell of his hair. Even now, it held the scent I’d come to think of
as the countryside in Alsace. Dust and rain on hills. Fields covered in the
blue of flax flowers and the gold brush of oats. He’d brought it with him on
his skin. And when he told me the brown of my naked back reminded him
of the deer that roamed that land, he gave me a place in his country.
Even through my rage and my fear, my lips felt hot with wanting to touch
his skin. They trembled with wanting to give him my name.
Oropeza gazed up at me. His face showed no recognition, only the fear
that I was a boy born of robbers and devils.
Through the open doors, Oropeza yelled into the house for his servants.
He called them stupid and slow. He called them fools.
They ran across the tile. But when they saw the scene, when they saw the
writhing men, and me, and the blindfolded man I had stolen from their
patrono, they sank to the floor. They clutched their stomachs as though they,
too, had been poisoned.
My breath stilled with worry that I had made them ill, that my venom
was in them even though I had no rage for them.
But they caught my eyes, and smiled.
They twisted as though I was striking them down, so they could not be
blamed for letting me rob Oropeza.
They had heard the stories. Las Rojas. They noticed the wisp of hair
falling from my grandfather’s hat and onto my neck. They saw me as the
poison girl I was, a daughter made of venom, even as I hid in my
grandfather’s clothes.
I held on to Léon, leading him around the stricken men.
Oropeza and his friends would not die, not tonight. But they would thrash
on the tile and the dirt until I was too far for my anger to touch them.
“Who are you?” Léon asked. His breath sounded short more from trying
to press down his fear than from how fast I made him walk.
I cut the rope off his wrists and pulled off his blindfold and kissed him as
fast as if I had more hands than my own. I didn’t care if the act would
reveal me. My rage kept these men down like a blanket over a fire.
Léon’s lips recognized mine. He kissed me harder, setting his hands on
my waist to hold me up.
“Go,” I whispered, my mouth feathering against his jawline.
Now he smelled like sweat, and the bitter almost-rust tang that I swore
was the last trace of his fear. But under these things I found the smell I
remembered. The warmth of flax and oats, things his family had grown for
so long his skin carried the scent across the ocean.
“You have to run,” I said, my forehead against his cheek.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. His breathing came hard. I could feel
his heartbeat in his skin. “Not unless I’m going with you.”
I pulled away so we could see each other as much as the dark let us.
“They took you because you stayed for me,” I said, still keeping my
voice to a whisper. “I am poison. Don’t you see that?”
Léon set his hand against my cheek.
“Emilia,” he said, quiet as a breath. He meant it for no one but me.
The wind hid the strain of his breathing. The far lamp of the moon turned
the gray of his eyes to iron. The sound of my name made me feel like the
cloth on my body was blazing to red, my hair a cape as bright as marigolds.
“You are here and I am alive.” Now his accent turned sharp, not his
practiced Spanish. “So tell me what makes you poison.”
He put his hand on the back of my neck and kissed me, this boy who
wanted to belong to the girl I was, brown and small and poisonous.
To the men, we might have looked like two boys, one pressing his mouth
to the other’s. Tonight, we would pull off our shirts and trousers for each
other. Léon would be a boy, no matter the shape of his chest beneath his
shirts. And I would let my hair fall from my grandfather’s hat and be the
girl I had always been to him. For Léon, I would put on my best enagua just
so he could push the soft cotton of the tiered skirt up my thighs. I would let
my breasts lay against his skin. I would kiss where the rope had cut into his
wrists and the cloth into his temples.
I wanted to protect his body as though it were mine.
But my own, I wanted these men to see it, and remember. I wanted them
to know that I was my abuela’s granddaughter, that I carried the blood of
poison girls.
The men still lay on the floor, gripping their chests and ribs.
I lifted my red poncho and my shirt, and I showed the men my breasts.
The moon lit the rounded shapes. It lit the fear on the men’s faces, the
horror on Oropeza’s.
I gave them only that one second, just enough to let them wonder in the
morning if they had imagined it, and then I let my shirt fall.
I reached for Léon. But it was not the men he was watching, or even me.
He stood in the moon silver on the vestíbulo floor, looking out toward the
hills. He lifted his face to the sky, breathing like he was taking a drink of
the night itself.
And the wolves came. They came with their claws ticking against the
ground and their muzzles stained with the blood of their last prey. They
came with coats the same red gold as the hills they had run down from.
They came with their backs streaked dark as the ink of the night sky.
I drew back from them, the wolves now crouching at the edges of
Oropeza’s property. Then I caught Léon’s smile, slight but intent, telling me
we had nothing to fear from them.
Léon took my hand, and we ran down the steps, the wolves filling the
space behind us. They stood as guards, moving toward Oropeza’s men only
when the men moved to pursue us. When the men lifted their heads to
watch us run, the wolves showed their teeth. When they shouted curses at
us, the wolves growled and snapped.
That was how Léon and I left them, both of us showing hearts so fierce
these men considered them knives. We fled from the feigned cries of the
men and women who worked for Oropeza but who loved us for defying
him. We fled from the howls of men who wailed more for their pride than
their bodies. We left them with the salt-sting memory of us, a brazen girl,
and a boy with a heart so fearless wolves were his guardian saints.
Many stories found us after that night. Some said the French soldier
known as El Lobo had called down from the hills a thousand wolves who
not only scattered the men but ravaged Oropeza’s grapevines. Others said a
girl known only as La Roja poisoned them all with her wicked heart, hiding
the red of her hair so they would have no warning.
Some said El Lobo and La Roja were enemies, rivals, the girl capturing
the French soldier just so she could have the pleasure of killing him herself.
Others said La Roja stole El Lobo, only to fall in love with him the moment
she first touched him.
When we hear word that every rich man who witnessed that night has
died, I will tell the rest of the story. I will say what we have done since that
night. What haciendas Léon has called wolves to destroy. What merciless
hearts I have poisoned with the rage in my own. All that La Roja, the girl
with the red hair and the red cape, and El Lobo, the boy as feared as wolves,
have done.
But this is the part I will tell now. We rode off on Oropeza’s finest
Andalusians, the wolves’ call at our backs. We vanished into the midnight
trees faster than first light could reach us. We lived. We survived to whisper
our names to each other even if we could not yet confess them to anyone
else.
* * * * *
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Author’s Note
I grew up loving fairy tales. But as a Latina, I didn’t look much like the
girls I saw in storybooks. Later, realizing I was queer, the loves I saw
portrayed in those fairy tales felt even further away.
When I went looking to reclaim a fairy tale in a historical context, I could
think of few better starting places than Leonarda Emilia. An outlaw in early
1870s Mexico, Leonarda had a short but infamous career that began when
officials executed the French soldier she’d fallen in love with. Known to
history as la Carambada, Leonarda wore men’s clothing, but became
notorious for revealing her breasts to the powerful men she’d just robbed as
she rode off.
Léon is a tribute to the many assigned-female-at-birth soldiers who have
fought in wars throughout history; though in most cases history doesn’t give
enough context for us to know what these soldiers might have claimed as
their gender identity, Léon is imagined here as a transgender character. As
this story’s interpretation of the Wolf, he, along with Emilia’s Red, are
meant to embody the spirit of la Carambada. With much respect to the
historical Leonarda, this story takes liberties in the spirit of reclaiming a
well-loved fairy tale for the communities I’m proud to call mine.
For their thoughts, advice, and guidance, I owe much gratitude to Elliot
Wake, Jayne Walters, Mackenzi Lee, Tehlor Kay Mejia, the trans boy I’m
lucky to call my husband, and of course, editor Saundra Mitchell. Thank
you for helping this story navigate the path between history and fairy tale.
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THE SWEET TRADE
BY
NATALIE C. PARKER
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Virginia Colony, 1717
Clara Elizabeth Byrd had been married twice by the age of sixteen and she
had decided she had no taste for it.
Her first husband, Mr. John du Pont, being of Huguenot lineage with an
estate on the James River, had been a kind man. Though nearly twenty
years her senior, he had not laughed when Clara suggested he might make
her a wedding gift of a sloop. Instead, he asked in what color he should
commission the sails be dyed. Clara imagined that they’d have made good
companions for one another had he not swallowed a chicken bone and died
before the cake had been cut.
It was a tragic affair, resulting in Clara’s return to her family home
farther down the river. The sloop came, too, in accordance with Mr. du
Pont’s presumed final wishes. Clara was incandescently thankful. Never
mind that she had not yet learned to sail it. She had read every novel on the
subject and was certain she could manage without too much trouble.
Before she had occasion to try, her father selected a second husband for
her. Mr. Frederick Earwood, as if the name weren’t bad enough, was a quiet
young man with no humor about him. Upon learning of his betrothed’s
sloop, he sat back in his chair, studied one corner of the ceiling so intently it
seemed he’d quite forgotten there were others in the room and then said in a
careful monotone, “We shall take the ship with us if only to dismantle it and
use its parts for firewood this winter.”
In that moment Clara determined her second husband would be her last.
She devised a plan, requesting to be wed in the Lower River Chapel on the
bank of the James. From there, they would retreat to Mr. Earwood’s
holdings near the Carolina border. Her sloop would be moored by the dock
awaiting its miserable journey inland.
Which, of course, it would never take.
In all the tales of adventure Clara had ever heard, it was never young
girls who were daring. It was always boys running off to rescue a friend or
fetch much-needed medicine or stumble into good fortune. Clara knew girls
would be daring if given half the chance. And she intended to take that
chance, right from under the pale nose of Mr. Earwood.
And so it was that Clara Elizabeth Byrd took a second husband in order
to have her first adventure.
She spent the weeks leading up to the wedding putting her scholarly
knowledge to practice, sailing the sloop a little farther each day. She loved
it every bit as much as she expected. The sun on her face and the wind in
her hair, the horizon glinting with promise. She was meant for a life in full
view of the sky.
Soon, the wedding was upon her. The vows were necessary, and so,
unfortunately, was the moment Mr. Earwood was given permission to kiss
the bride. Mr. Earwood leaned close, his lips puckered as delicately as a
doll’s. Clara feigned a girlish giggle, neatly pressing her own lips to his
cheek.
Though it displeased Mr. Earwood, the congregation applauded her
charmingly modest sensibilities. No one raised an eyebrow when she
begged for a few moments alone after the ceremony. And while the rest of
the party processed toward the town green for cake and feasting, Clara
raced to the river and climbed aboard her sloop, where she’d stored
everything she would need to make her journey: a few precious coins,
clothing, some food, a fishing pole and even a sword from her grandfather’s
trunk.
The sun was just passing into the west as she raised the main sail and jib.
The air was sharp with the last chill of winter, the trees eager to send green
shoots into the Virginia sky. A thin sweat coated Clara’s brow as she
worked to unknot the ropes that kept her little boat tethered to the dock. If
anyone saw, she would surely be stopped and dragged back to the side of an
irritable Mr. Earwood.
The skirts of her black silk gown were twisted around her ankles in the
narrow spaces. She’d have preferred to wear her new green mantua gown
for the occasion; its open cut would’ve made maneuvering around the ship
much easier. But both her maid and her father had been horrified at the idea
of a bride wearing such an unlucky color, so she’d relented rather than give
herself away. Now she moved slower than she desired on account of not
wanting to trip and fall headfirst into the water.
Finally, with a ferocious shove, her little sloop drifted away from the
dock and into the steady current of the river. Though the sloop was a
modest size for traveling the James, twelve feet from prow to stern and four
feet across, it would be noticeable due to the brilliant yellow of its sails. Mr.
du Pont’s generosity was both a boon and a curse, and since she could not
obscure the color of the sails, Clara needed to disguise herself to avoid
discovery.
Stowed on the boat was a set of boy’s clothing, stolen a piece at a time
from her own father’s laundry, which she would don as soon as it was safe
to do so. For now, she slapped one of her father’s old cocked hats on her
head and kept her body hidden in the belly of the hull, emerging only to
adjust the boom when the wind shifted.
She sailed thus, lying flat on her back with her eyes trained on the gentle
billowing of her yellow-dyed sails, until the sunlight sliced orange and pink
across the sky. The air began to get cooler, the sky above darker and all of a
sudden Clara felt a chill of fear. She was alone as she had never been. Alone
with precious few possessions and no notion of where to take them except
away from Mr. Earwood and the promise of a landlocked life.
It was then that she heard it: sudden splashing in the river and shouts in
the distance. Her pulse quickened and the chill she’d felt only seconds
before was replaced by a fresh sheen of sweat. She lay on the bottom of her
boat with ears pricked and eyes open wide, hoping the sounds would pass
her by. But instead of moving off, the splashing grew nearer, the shouting
louder.
When her boat rocked sharply to one side, it was all Clara could do to
keep from crying out in surprise. She bit the inside of her cheek and waited
for the rocking to subside.
Nothing followed. Her boat resumed its course, floating smoothly
downstream. Had she bumped a stone? Had some large catfish mistaken her
for food?
“You there! Boatman!” The shout carried across the river to Clara’s ears.
The shock of it caused her to bite too hard on her cheek. She tasted
blood.
“Good sir! Pause and speak with us!”
If she lay in the bottom of her boat, they might assume it was adrift and
come out to retrieve it for themselves. If she answered, they might know her
for a girl and still come out.
Though her hands shook, she knew she must move. Lifting only her
head, she spied two figures pacing her on shore. They were smartly dressed
and bore expressions of determination and mild panic. The one in front was
tall; his stride was commanding and bold. The one behind had a flower
pinned to his brocade waistcoat and ran twice as fast to keep apace with his
friend. Here the banks of the river were peppered with long stretches of tall,
marshy grasses several feet deep. The two men had to run farther up the
hillside in order to see the river where she sailed.
Clara pitched her voice low. “Good day to you, sirs!”
With a pinch of panic, Clara noticed how the man behind seemed to
pause midstride, as though aware that something was amiss. The other
plowed on, shouting, “Have you seen a girl? She came this way! Did she
cross the river? A girl!”
For just a second Clara’s mind reeled. These men would know her for the
runaway she was and force her to return to the dreadful life she’d only just
escaped. She would be married and her sloop dismantled by sundown. But
her sense returned nearly as quickly as it had fled. They sought a girl from
their side of the river. She was not the delinquent they pursued.
Clara thought of the splashing and suspected it had been no catfish that
had nudged her hull. She placed a steadying hand on the boom as the wind
shifted. The sloop rocked in response. Lowering her chin and keeping her
voice deep, she responded, “I’m afraid I haven’t seen her. There’s been
nothing but sunlight on the water with me this day.”
The taller man nodded his thanks and bolted back up the gentle hill to the
pine woods above. The shorter man didn’t follow immediately, but studied
her for a long moment. It was too far for her to see clearly, but Clara was
sure she could see some hint of malice in the slope of his shoulders.
Finally, both men were gone from sight. Clara adjusted the boom and
carefully climbed to the starboard side of her little boat. Keeping her hat
firmly atop her head, she peered over the lip of the hull and directly into the
wide brown eyes of a girl.
She clung to the side of the ship like a barnacle, her face barely above the
water as the boat swept her along. Her hair streamed behind her, and her
lips were drawn tight across chattering teeth. Clara could see that she wore
a gown as yellow as the sails above, which was probably trying mightily to
drag her down.
Without a word, Clara removed her hat, then reached down with both
hands to pull the girl aboard. The boat heaved and cold water sloshed over
the side, but soon the girl was huddled beneath the jib, safely onboard.
Clara tightened the sail at once. The wind was in their favor and moved
them swiftly downstream, away from any who might still be searching for a
runaway girl or two.
“I’m Pearl,” said the girl. She’d found the last glimmer of sunset and sat
inside it. The light made her brown hair burn and her eyes glassy and deep.
“Thank you.”
“I’m Clara. You’re welcome.”
“I suppose you’d like to know who those men were?” Pearl asked, and
without waiting for an answer, she plowed on. “The one who shouted was
my brother, William, and I do feel badly for deceiving him. He’s never been
cruel to me, at least, not intentionally. The other was Mr. Michael Pitts, my
husband-to-be, and I don’t feel badly for him in the slightest. Mealy,
indecisive and selfish. Took me to wife out of ‘the kindness of his heart.’
Pah! Well, I left him out of the meanness of mine.”
Clara had not intended to inquire, but she was glad Pearl spoke so freely.
“You ran away from your wedding day?”
Pearl raised her chin, defiance shining in her eyes. “I did.”
It occurred to Clara that Pearl’s dress was yellow. Not blue to signify
years of faithful love, not pink to announce her purity, but yellow, the color
of pagans and the wildest of flowers. This was a girl she knew already, even
as she knew her not at all.
“Me, too,” Clara answered, fluffing the skirts of her own black dress.
“And I am sorry for the disappointment my father will feel, but I am full of
too much life for Mr. Earwood. I’d have driven him to an early grave.”
Pearl laughed. “Pitts and Earwood. They should be friends.”
“After this, perhaps they will be!”
Pearl’s smile softened. “I know we certainly shall be.”
Something in the curl of Pearl’s voice called a corresponding curl in
Clara’s breath. She did not respond and the two girls drifted in silence while
the sun slowly drained from the sky. Clara sighted a particularly reedy
section on the opposite side of the river from where Pearl had just fled and
nosed the sloop inside it for extra coverage. It would be a cold night on the
sloop, but it was still too dangerous to camp on shore. They would have to
make do with what little heat her lanterns could provide.
But Pearl would need more than that.
The girl made no complaint, but she shivered in her layers of wet dress.
She would make herself ill sleeping in such a state.
“Here,” Clara said, offering her single change of boy’s clothing. “Put
these on.”
Pearl accepted them gratefully, cold fingers brushing Clara’s as she took
them from her hands. Though they were surrounded by mere reeds instead
of sturdy walls, Pearl quickly began the work of loosening her dress. Clara
helped, tugging on cold, wet lacings until her own fingers burned.
The work was so familiar that it didn’t occur to Clara that Pearl was a
near stranger until the dress slid from her shoulders, leaving only the shift
behind. Then it wasn’t only her fingers that burned, but her cheeks, her lips,
her chest. She turned away to give Pearl her privacy and tend to the stirring
in her lungs.
“I have bread and cheese,” she said, rooting through the bag she’d
stowed on the sloop ahead of time. “Jars of preserves and a few bottles of
wine.”
“You’re my savior,” Pearl said, voice muffled by cloth. “Let’s start with
the wine. Tonight’s a celebration after all.”
“You’re right,” Clara said, feeling the truth of it expand in her lungs. “We
did it, Pearl. We left.”
“And tomorrow’s all about the life we choose.”
The life we choose. The words were said with such anticipation that for a
moment, Clara felt overwhelmed. She had spent so long trying to imagine
herself inside a house she had no hand in creating, imagining the rooms and
cabinets and nearest neighbors she might have as a married woman in a new
town. Now there was no house, no town even, and the possibilities seemed
as long and steady as the river rushing past.
The girls opened their wine and tore their bread and scooped generously
of fig preserves. They drank until the bottle was gone and ate until the jar
was empty, and then they lay on their backs on the flat nose of the sloop.
“What was your plan?” Clara asked. “Just...run?”
Pearl’s laughter sounded like merry song of a wood thrush. “From start to
finish. The thought came over me all of a sudden. I was standing there, at
the entry of the church, staring down that short aisle to a long future with a
man who was already calculating the value of our wedding gifts. And I tell
you before I knew what I was about, I was running out the doors and down
the road. So, yes, ‘run’ was my plan. And it worked, I’ll remind you.”
“Barely! And by luck alone!”
“What was your plan, then? More than run, I assume?” Pearl leaned up
on her elbow to level Clara with a playful glare. “Did you steal this boat,
Clara? You might’ve chosen something less conspicuous than a sloop with
yellow sails.”
It was Clara’s turn to laugh, and she felt self-conscious as she did. “It was
mine, but seeing as I was married when I took it and all my belongings
were also Mr. Earwood’s, it’s probable he thinks I stole it.”
“You’re an outlaw,” Pearl teased.
“In good company,” Clara teased back, noting the way Pearl’s gaze slid
to her lips and back again to her eyes. “And my plan was to take my sloop
and ride the river to the open ocean. I’ve food and a fishing pole to keep me
fed, a blade to keep me safe and skills to keep me afloat.”
“And then what?” Pearl asked.
Clara was almost afraid to say it. For so long, she’d nurtured this secret
desire knowing anyone who heard it would think her too childish for the
world. The words had been so long held back that now they feared coming
out. But in the flicker of lamplight, Pearl’s smile was encouraging.
“Do you know of the Sweet Trade?” Clara asked, fiddling with the
delicate lace on her stomacher.
Pearl’s expression was skeptical. “Piracy? That’s your plan? Become a
pirate?”
“It is,” Clara answered seriously. “All my life, people have told me what
to do or taken what’s mine. The same is true for you! We’ve been raised
among pirates who call themselves gentlemen. And I’m ready to turn the
tables. I’m ready to take what’s mine and maybe a few things that aren’t.”
“That sounds like a lovely sort of justice.” Pearl smiled as she leaned
close, her breath sweet with figs, her lips stained purple with wine.
“Perhaps I’ll join you and we’ll rule the Carolina seas together.”
“I’d gladly take you amongst my crew.”
“And I would gladly join it.”
Clara felt warmth spreading through her cheeks. Pearl’s smile was softer
now, her brown hair falling around her face to curl at her chin near her lips.
She looked perfectly unkempt and radiant. Clara had started this day
evading a kiss she didn’t want, but she would end it with one she did.
Clara leaned up, and Pearl leaned down. Their lips met, gently at first,
then more urgently, one kiss diving into the next and the next like little
waves until they parted to breathe. Clara rested in Pearl’s arms, a sheet of
brown hair covering them both.
“We shall be the most dreadful of pirates,” Clara said, cupping Pearl’s
chin in her hand. “Because between us, we’ve left three husbands wanting.”
Silence fell around the girls. Clara watched as Pearl drifted away from
her, though her body remained so near she could feel its gentle heat. Finally,
after several long moments, Pearl sat up and spoke again.
“It won’t work,” she said. “It’s just a dream.”
“This whole thing is a dream. But we’ve made it real,” Clara protested.
“No, maybe if we were boys, this would work. But we’re not. We’re only
girls, and this won’t work.” Tears shimmered in Pearl’s eyes. She scooted
away, huddling in her boy’s clothing, her cheeks still flushed from the kiss.
“We have to do something girls can do.”
Clara knew that she hated everything Pearl had just said, but she had no
solution for it. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “We should get some
sleep.”
The girls settled down to sleep with their eyes on the stars above and
their ears full of crickets and owls and the soft shushing of the river. It all
sounded like tomorrow and like the future and like a life they’d chosen. For
better or worse.
* * *
The morning came with a cold drizzle and the sound of men’s voices.
Clara awoke sharply. Her skin was damp and shivering cold, but her
heart was thumping heat into her veins. She could feel Pearl beside her, hear
the sound of her steady breathing. Still asleep.
Making as little noise as possible, Clara rolled to her side, placed a hand
over Pearl’s mouth and gently shook her awake. She startled, but seeing
Clara’s face, she settled again at once, nodding to show she understood.
All around, tall grasses shuffled in the early-morning breeze, providing
them cover, but obscuring their view of the shore. The girls sat still in their
bobbing boat, listening again for the sounds of men.
They came softly at first. Low, indistinguishable voices threading
through the reeds. Not until they came a little closer was Clara able to
determine that there were two of them. She raised two fingers and Pearl
nodded, agreeing.
Two girls to two men. They were decent odds, but Clara felt a tremor
threaten in her breast. She stilled it with a plan.
Leaning close to whisper in Pearl’s ear, she said, “The plan is to run. I’ll
ready the boat. You get my sword and be ready to look fierce with it.”
Pearl nodded, but asked, “Where’s your sword?”
Clara pointed to the cloth bag she’d filled with everything she could
think to need, including one of her grandfather’s short swords. Now she
wished she’d thought to grab a second.
The men’s voices grew louder and the girls quieter. They pushed their
wool blankets aside and slipped around the boat as seamlessly as water.
Pearl sorted through the bag with care until she produced the sword, and
Clara eased the boat out of its moorings with smooth, steady motions. Soon,
the sloop was free, held in place only by the thicket of reeds they’d nested it
in overnight. But it would go nowhere without lifting the sails to catch the
breeze, and that was sure to draw the notice of these men.
Clara was deciding how best to execute their escape, when she heard a
shout, “You there! Lad!”
Pearl stood at the stern of the sloop, her hair tied at the nape of her neck,
one hand resting on the boom for balance, the sword in her other. She
looked every bit a boy in her breeches and waistcoat.
Without wasting a second, Clara whistled and tossed her cocked hat to
Pearl, who snatched it out of the air and pressed it on her head. Next, Clara
scooped up the still-damp yellow dress and tucked it in the narrow hold of
the sloop’s nose. She finished just as the two men spotted them through the
reeds and called out again, “We don’t mean you no harm, lad. You can put
the sword away.”
The voice was terribly familiar. By the way Pearl’s hand tightened on the
hilt of her sword, she thought so, too.