“Young prince,” the faerie woman whispers, rich with affectionate cruelty, stroking William’s brow as they lie together in the sweet blue-green grass of Faerieland. “Would you tarry a while? Would you lie with me?” and William squirms in dread and shame, tries to back away from her hand on his knee.
“This is Faerieland,” the faerie woman says, trailing soft fingers across his cheek. “We are garbed always in the flesh that amuses us — now fair, now dark; now tall, now diminutive. I have worn this dainty flesh interchangeably with that of the form of strapping youth — I see you, sweet boy; I see you true. Do not think me liable to shock or upset.”
William opens his mouth and pants for breath at the shock of it; the faerie thumbs at his drooping lower lip. Dreamlike, the grass and the trees’ shade is melting into unimaginably soft cushions, the canopy of a gigantic four-poster bed; he flails as if it might drown him.
His clothes are tearing away from him under stroking fingers, as if cobwebs.
“Such terrors, little prince,” the faerie croons, hands splayed across Will’s ribs, looking at him, at all of him; his hips and girlish buds, the terrible place between his legs, where he is — not. “Such terrors of being seen, of fucking, of the things you yearn for most. So much terror, you’d reel away with the faeries and imperil your life and soul entire to have them, before you’d risk a simple embarrassment a-fumbling with an earthly lass.” She nips the shell of his ear, while he trembles.
William went along to the harvest fair, where every year the faeries make a showing, ordinary as you like except for the occasional pair of dragonfly wings or set of antlers, say, and their strange rich garb, and their unearthly beauty. And every year, some few fools will trail after them and weep inside a ring of mushrooms which parts not for them; and every year, some while afterward, some lass or other will swear to the skies and the roots of the sea that she never, no never, hiked her skirts for any farmer’s boy, it were a fae that made her belly swell, with no more than a sly look across the crowd or a leaf that fell on her or in the form of an unseasonable sunbeam, honest truth!
But there are others, of course. People who stray and don’t come back; people who talk to the faeries at the fair, and instead of being turned gently away are led by the hand, starry-eyed. Perhaps even people who go to the ring of mushrooms and find it a gate, rather than a bare circle that’s no more magic within than without.
They say you shouldn’t go to Faerieland. They say you shouldn’t eat their fruits or dance their dances, that tasting their pleasures will rob your wits and chain you there, and should you escape you’ll wither and pine away for lack of them. They say you shouldn’t talk to them, that they lie and cheat and steal and twist the meaning of every word until it screams and betrays you.
People do, of course.
“How would you like,” the faerie says, loving in the way a cat is, with the mien of sleepiness and all full of willing knives, “for my faerie flesh to grow a cock, young prince, and for me to take you? Mm? You know all the stories about Faerieland, little Wiliam, about creatures like me plucking the very terrors from poor young things’ heads and enacting them — terribly, wondrously, so that they never rest a day in their lives again, fearing and desiring them again above all else. Is that why you came, sweet boy?”
“No,” William groans, hot and afraid and wanting to flee and…yet not, and the faerie laughs and presses kisses to his brow.
“I could fuck a child into you, William,” it croons. “Would you like that? I could fuck a baby into your belly; and this is Faerieland, where the flesh can be all things — you could be ready to bear, by the time you wake a-morrow. Give birth in the morning, and when you go to nurse your aching, swollen tits, the child would be nothing but faerie-stuff, leaves and cobwebs, dissolving in your hands. I’d have to parade you naked to the breakfast-table, spread you on it, have cruel-eyed lord and ladies feast on you to soothe your aches—”
William, wide-eyed, crosses his arms protectively over his terror-heaving chest.
“Oh, sweet Will,” the faerie murmurs, kissing his brow anew, and rakes nails down his belly. “I could have you sprout a row of them, like a dog or cat. Think — eight mouths drinking from your shamed squirming all at once—”
“No,” William whimpers, feeling the grind of the faerie’s cock, hard against his hip as its breasts are soft against his shoulder.
“No?” The faerie grins at him, guiding his hand to it. “But what am I to do, sweet William, if not spend myself deep in you, seed you every night? What else will you do?” and he risks a blushing glance down its now-nakedness and licks his lips in the answer he’s only, murkily, half-admitted yet to himself.
William went to the harvest fair, and minded his business as best he could; it’s hardly his fault that the faerie woman wouldn’t stop staring. It’s hardly his fault that he turned around from tying his shoe and there she was, eyes like a black-deep windless pool reflecting the stars, soft curls of nut-brown hair around her face, and William flushed and stumbled; he cannot be blamed that the faerie woman said, “Hello,” to him first.
He minded his manners and he minded the stories, and he said, “You can call me William.”
“Oh,” the faerie woman said, looking his lean body up and down; “I see,” and held her hand out. “Won’t you come along with me, William, for a while?”
Alright, maybe it’s William’s fault a little, for he took her slender hand, heart pumping like a forge’s bellows, and he went along....
The faerie moans wildy and ruts along his tongue, hands tangled in William’s hair, taking eternity and no time at all before it gasps and arches and comes — cock and spend and all dissolving to honey and snow in his mouth, leaving him panting lips to lips with equally unfamiliar cunt. He meekly laps at that, too, until the faerie clutches at his hair and curses anew and collapses boneless, and William rests his head on snowy thigh and swallows at the lingering taste of honey in his mouth, thinking you shouldn’t eat of Faerieland’s delights—
“Sweet William,” the faerie sighs eventually, and tugs him upward; wraps one languid arm around his shoulders, while fingers make simultaneous, startling discovery of his swollen, throbbing nethers.
“Would you really,” he mutters into soft shoulder, eyes shut tight, clutching across his chest.
“Sweet boy, no,” the faerie says, soft against his hair. “I can pluck the very terrors from your head; I know the difference between a terror than can be said for sport and one that can done. No tits or faerie get for Master William,” and Will curls against the faerie in soft relief, and bites his lip, and shudders on its knowing hand. “That’s it, sweet boy—”
“How does it feel, young Will, for a woman to make you a man?”
Everything, thinks William. Paradise. A little sore. Confusing.
“Can you be said to be a woman?” he says sleepily against the faerie’s shoulder.
“Master William,” it false-scolds, nuzzling his face up to lightly kiss his swollen lips. “I can be said to be anything I like, and I say as often as I please.”
“Well, then,” William says. “I feel brand new, and eldened, all at once. And sleepy.”
“I have caught me a poet,” the faerie says, amused, against his head, and squeezes him with its arms. “Sleep, then, little William,” and William sleeps, dreamless and held.
