Sarah Diemer's Blog

Imagine a future America where being gay is punishable by death.

Piper doesn’t have to imagine. She lives it.

Adopted siblings Piper and Easton aren’t careless. Their parents raised them with the knowledge that if they ever give themselves away, they’ll be sent to the Borstal, a dilapidated prison where deviant children–Recreants–undergo brutal treatments to cure them of their “sins.” By command of Liberty’s leader, Voice Wright, if the Recreants fail to be cured, or are ever caught committing another sinful act, they are sent to the Void. And no one ever returns from the Void.

Despite their caution, a freak Enforcer raid on an illegal party catches Piper and Easton by surprise. They and all of the other queer kids at the party are immediately shipped to the Borstal–which proves to be even worse than the whispered rumors had predicted. When Easton is falsely accused by a tormentor–and sentenced to the Void–Piper dares a desperate, and almost fatal, escape, beginning a journey across Liberty to chase after Easton in the hopes of saving his life…without losing hers.

Set in a future America where a deranged dictator supposedly hears messages from “the One,” where being queer (or promiscuous, or unwholesome, or rebellious) is punishable by death, MOTH is a button-pushing novel of oppression, resistance and hope, written by award-winning author S.E. Diemer.

Available on Amazon

Lots of changes coming, sooner, rather than later, I hope!  :)

Basically, this is a place holder, and a blowing-off-the-dust sort of thing of this here ye ole blogue. :)

Warmly,

S.E. Diemer

Excerpt from my upcoming novel, ROSE WITCH: the lesbian, YA retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” in verse. COMING SOON!  Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when ROSE WITCH is released!

—-

“I want you,” Grace tells

the spiraled girl,

the freezing girl,

the monstrous girl,

“to live.”

From the depths & darkness

of the frozen mud,

from the irreversible act

of forever sleep,

Perish rises.

Excerpt from my upcoming novel, ROSE WITCH: the lesbian, YA retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” in verse. COMING SOON!  Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when ROSE WITCH is released!

—-

And Perish kisses

a star.

Later, that is how she will

come to think of it.

All that came before

& after that kiss

are as separate as two lives.

Before, there was only darkness.

And after?

Well.

Then came the light.

It’s coming.

For every girl who was ever told that she wasn’t good enough, beautiful enough, strong enough, brave enough, quiet enough, comes a story of a girl named Perish…a girl who is none of those things. Perish is an angry girl. A girl who will carve out a place to live in a world that does not want her. A girl who, despite a world against her…will learn to thrive.

Imagine “Beauty and the Beast” with a lesbian protaganist. Imagine a POC Beauty. Imagine a dark carnival of a palace, a beastly girl who dreams of love, a magic so dark and deadly that it could pull the world asunder. Imagine a fairy tale told in verse for every girl who couldn’t find someone like them in the fairy tales they loved…

Rose Witch is coming. And it’s going to be dark and raw and pained and bright and within its pages will be the fairy tale that I, as a lesbian growing up obsessed with fairy tales, never had. It’s coming this year. I’ll let you know a firm date when the novel is completely finished.

Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when Rose Witch will be released!

“Mightier,” by Sarah Diemer

YA/Dark Fantasy

Cleo is one of the Mightier, a mysterious group of people who can change the world with the stroke of a pen. But, one night, her new powers are tested when an angel-like creature needs her help to prevent a massive disaster from happening.

(photo by Kathryn Denman)

(Part of Project Unicorn: A Lesbian YA Extravaganza, full of free, original, never-before-published YA short stories featuring a lesbian heroine. Also, every story is a work of genre fiction [Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Post-apocalyptic, etc.].)

The moon is a ghost, a satellite, turning and rising. Not real. Gram told me that when I was little, told me the story of how the moon fell, how it disintegrated when it touched earth like so much spun sugar. Gone. And somehow, the next night, the moon was back in the sky. People panicked. People were bound to panic, she said, nodding to herself and stirring the cookie dough once more around the bowl, just for good measure.

And then the stories came out. Mass hallucination. The moon hadn’t really fallen. The videos for it were deleted. No one knows how. Everywhere, the videos, gone. People wrote the story that it all was a story, and it was believed.

“The pen’s mightier than the sword,” Gram had said then, looking at me closely. I’ll never forget the expression on her face, as if she expected something from me in that moment.

“Sure, Gram,” I’d told her, thinking about how the moon would taste.

Maybe like sugar.

*

I’m thirteen when I find the sword under my grandmother’s bed.

I was vacuuming—most loathsome of chores—and listening to music, not really paying attention to much of anything, except for my awesome dance moves, when the vacuum thunked against something hard twice. I knelt down, peering under, and my heart stopped. I thought I was seeing things, but no. There was the sword, resting on the carpeting as gray as mothballs. I dragged the heavy metal thing out from under the bed, the shiny surface of the blade flashing in my palms like a fish. It was lighter than I thought it would be. It’d looked so heavy.

The blade was covered in words.

I stared at them, my heart in my throat. They’re tiny, so small, my nose is almost pressed against the blade before I can make out that one line here says, The moon didn’t really fall. Mass hallucination. And then another, here, There were no aliens at Roswell. Conspiracy. And here, There will be a war in…

“What are you doing?” My grandmother is in the doorway, and I drop the sword. It almost slices off my toes, but it doesn’t, because Gram is there, catching it, somehow, and sliding it back under the bed in one smooth move that no sixty-something woman should be able to do. Her eyes are wide, flashing, angry. I’ve never seen her like this. “It’s not time for you yet,” she tells me, her voice shaking with rage. “You must never touch this again until I say so. Do you understand?”

I don’t understand, not at all, but I never argue with Gram. And when I go back to find the sword again, because it draws me like a light, a beacon, a star, the sword is not under the bed.

It’s gone.

And I don’t find it again.

Not until she gives it to me.

*

Gram’s dying. She’d had cancer for years, but the treatments aren’t working. I’m seventeen. Terrified. My grandmother’s going to die. What will I do without her?

Angela stays over a few times a week now. Gram says nothing. She knows I need comfort as much as she does. But one night, when I tell her that my best friend is coming over, Gram stays my hand, shakes her head, lips quivering. “Not tonight,” she says, voice grave. “I have something to show you.”

I’m in my bedroom, writing poetry, words skipping across the page like they mean something. I feel the press of the words against the page under my fingers. They feel real, the little raises and bumps and curves, and with my pen against the paper, they almost seem to come alive.

When Gram comes into my room, she glances at the notebook wordlessly, takes it from me. I know she’s not going to read my poetry, but it surprises me when she presses her fingers against a random page, too, tracing some of the words with the skin of her fingertips.

“You can feel them, can’t you?” she asks, and I don’t know what she means, so I look at her guardedly, careful. The doctors said that the cancer could make Gram a little crazy, and it makes me sick when I think of it, because Gram’s the most together person I’ve ever known.

Is it finally happening to her? Is she starting to lose it?

She stares at me clearly, unwavering. She doesn’t look like she’s starting to fade. I don’t understand.

“Feel what, Gram?” I ask her then, making my words light.

“The words. You can feel them. They have weight.” Her voice is heavy, and I still don’t understand, so she gets up, leaves my room, and comes back a moment later.

She’s holding the sword.

It’s not like I remember it. I remember it being bigger, but I was smaller then.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, because I’ve searched through our house for years, searching desperately for this, because it called to me. It’s always called to me.

Gram sets it gently into my lap, as if she’s a queen, bequeathing a blade to a knight, and I stare down at the shining length of the blade, the sharpness of it, the words scrawled over it, again and again. Some of them in my grandmother’s neat handwriting, some in writing I’ve never seen. So many words, so many tiny sentences.

I look up to my grandmother standing over me, who places her hands on her hips and nods to me.

“This is your inheritance, my dear,” she tells me, and she sits beside me, crumpling down like she’s suddenly very tired. “It’s time that you understand what we are.”

So she tells me.

“The world is an illusion,” my grandmother whispers, “So much is built on story that I could never tell you all of the things that are true and all that aren’t. Everything is a story, and that’s what we do. We tell the…right story.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, so Gram points to the line on the sword in her own handwriting. The moon didn’t really fall. Mass hallucination.

“The moon up in the sky is a ghost,” Gram tells me, “because I wrote this. I kept the tides from coming, the quakes that would have destroyed the earth, saved millions of people’s lives because I wrote this upon the sword.”

I stare down at the blade, spellbound.

“We call ourselves the Mightier,” says Gram dryly, “but we aren’t. Not really. We take our orders from others as to what to write. But this is how the balance has been maintained. It’s what we do. It’s what I have done. It’s what you must do. You must guard this sword with your life,” says Gram, “and you must know that what you write upon the blade will come true.”

I don’t even think; I don’t even question. I take my sharpie from my bedside table, and I write, quickly, in a small section of the blade: Gram is not dying of cancer. She’s healthy.

“You can’t…” she’s saying, but then she doesn’t look like she has for months and months. She’s like she was before. Healthy. Happy. Whole. But glowering at me. “You can’t use it for things like that,” she says, exasperated, and I snort at her, shake my head, hold the blade to my chest. “You can only use it when one of the messengers comes to you,” Gram’s telling me. And there’s a knock at the door, right at that moment. A special knock. Four long raps, two short, four long.

Gram pales. “Stay right here. With the sword,” she admonishes me, and she rises easily—not like she’s done in months—to go answer the door.

I stare at the Sharpie in my hand, at the blade across my lap, realize, as the adrenaline pools out of me, that what I wrote just actually happened.

“Cleo, can you come out, please?” calls Gram’s voice.

With the sword? I stare at it, the cold metal sprawled over my lap, back to the door, and make the instant decision. I rise off the bed, the sword coming with me, gripped in two hands, blade pointed down.

Out in the hall, I can hear two soft, murmuring voices: one’s my Gram’s, but the other one? A woman. Maybe a girl. I round the corner, and my suspicions are confirmed. There’s a girl standing in the living room. It’s odd, because I think that she looks familiar, but I can’t be sure. It’s just a feeling I get, in my gut. I’ve seen her before.

She has short black hair that’s spiked in all directions, and deep green eyes that look almost like contacts, they’re so bright. She gazes at me fiercely, almost angrily.

“This isn’t just about you, you know,” she tells me then, arms crossed in front of her. It’s not what I was expecting, and my jaw drops a little, but Gram’s waving her hands, sighing.

“Estella,” says Gram warningly.

“It’s not. She can’t be selfish about this—way too much is at stake.”

“Estella, this is my granddaughter Cleo,” sighs Gram, eyes heavenward. “Cleo, this is Estella. She’s one of the messengers I was just telling you about.”

“This isn’t a fairy wishing magic stupid thing,” says Estella, rattling off the words and stepping forward, stabbing a finger at me. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt with an unsmiley face on it. It seems to fit her. I bite my lip and frown.

“Who the hell are you? What are you talking about?”

“The sword! You can’t just write shit on it that you want,” she says, running her hands through her hair and groaning. “There’s only so much room on that blade, and when it’s filled, it’s filled, and the world ends, you idiot.” She practically snarls, and I take a step back and then hate myself for backing down even one inch.

“You mean what I just wrote for my grandmother?” I ignore obvious questions like how could you have possibly known what I just wrote. “She’s my grandmother, and she was dying, and now she isn’t. It’s not that hard to follow.”

“That blade has existed since time began,” says Estella, advancing on me. This time I hold my ground, and I think this surprises her. She stops, folds her arms in front of her again. “You can’t just wish for random things. I’m sorry Miss Connie was dying, but that’s the way of things, right? For mortals? They die?” The words seem a little anguished, out of place, and she rubs her hand over her face before she sighs for approximately five minutes. “You can’t write random things on the blade,” she says then, sort of deflating. “That blade is important. For everyone.”

“My dear, why have you come?” asks Gram then, her voice gentle.

Estella looks up, the fight back in her eyes. “There’s been an explosion. Five hundred people dead. It needs to not have happened.”

“Right,” says Gram, looking to me expectantly. “My dear, you’re going to do the writing this time around. It’s going to be much different from what just happened with me,” she says, as Estella steps forward, mouth twisted into a wicked little grin. “You have to be at the scene in order to change it. Estella will help you get there. She’ll help you know what to do.”

“How will I get there?” I ask her, suddenly a little panicked. I stare down at my pajamas, at the sword, but then time seems to slow down.

When Estella grabs my hand, her skin is warm. And then the world around us sort of…shifts. And changes.

I blink: suddenly we’re not standing in my grandmother’s living room.

We’re floating in the air.

I panic, thrash around a little, but Estella tightens her grip on my hand so hard it hurts, and I give a little squeak, holding tighter to the hilt of the sword, gazing down.

We’re floating above the ocean.

“There,” says Estella, pointing past me to a sinking ship. It’s…massive. A cruise ship? There are dead bodies floating in the water, I realize, staring down at them, my heart pounding so quickly, blood rushing through me, I can’t breathe for a moment.

“You have to write exactly what I’m going to tell you on the blade,” says Estella, and when I glance at her, it’s strange, because it seemed, for a moment, that behind her back, shimmering, was the outline of wings.

“Right,” I mutter, uncapping the Sharpie. My hands are shaking so hard, I let the cap from the Sharpie drop into the waves beneath us.

Estella glances up, grimacing. “Shit,” she mutters, looking to the right and the left. “We have company.”

“What does that…” I begin, but then I’m yanked to the side, and we’re skimming low over the waves so fast, I can’t make out individual waves at all, and the blue of the water’s blurring in my eyes.

Behind us comes a screech, and I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder. It’s fleshy, what’s coming after us. The day had been so bright, the sunshine spilling over the water, still spilling over the water, but where the creature comes, pumping wings filled with holes, seems to be darker, less bright. Muted.

“Don’t look back,” Estella mutters, and we’re dodging through the wreckage of the ship. “We’ve got to hide, or the… Well. We’ve got to hide,” she says, through gritted teeth.

The hull of the ship is smoldering, and I can smell the stench of burning flesh. I begin to gag, and Estella rolls her eyes before I blink, and then we’re in a room. The room is completely sideways; we’re standing on the wall, among the tumbled contents of the room: tables, chairs, books. The smell of burning is still all around us, and water is beginning to leak in through the open door beneath my feet, but I still manage to hold the blade in shaking hands.

“Are you ready? Write, ‘There was no explosion on…’” begins Estella, but she stops as she glances past me, growling.

I turn to look.

I really wish I hadn’t.

Crawling across the floor—or rather, wall—toward us is something that looks like it’s five human skins all stitched together and fitted over a construct shaped a little like an ape. I can see flattened, individual human faces all over the creature that stares at us out of slits in the skin. A mouth made by a gash in the skin opens…smiling, I think. I whimper a little, fall over as I try to back away.

“No,” says Estella briskly, and then there’s a shimmering length in her hands. Another sword? It’s invisible, except for the edges that dazzle.

“Not this time, Estella,” says the creature, in a voice that sounds like five voices spoken all at once. “This time, the tragedy stands. It will remain.”

“It’s not written that it happened,” says Estella with a growl, crouching and holding the somewhat-invisible sword aloft. “And you know that, you fucking asshole,” she adds, and strikes.

The thing moves faster than I thought possible, dodging as it run about on all fours, limp arms and legs flapping behind it from the stitched-together skins. It turns, slit eyes wild, and it lunges for me.

But Estella is in front of me then. And she slices…

The thing falls in two. I can see wood for bones and rusted bolts for joints before it disintegrates, disappearing completely.

“Write, ‘There was no explosion on the Century,’” pants Estella, dropping to one of her knees. “Please hurry.”

I write it, my fingers shaking.

I blink.

Suddenly, Estella and I are standing in a ship’s cabin. Everything’s right-side up. I can hear laughter outside. All I can smell is pina colada.

Estella drops down in the plush chair beneath the porthole, still panting. “Good job,” she tells me, letting her head rest back. “Fucking asshole,” she repeats, under her breath.

“What…just happened?” I manage then, and the sword drops from my hands, clattering dully on the carpet at my feet.

“Be careful—you could lose a toe,” says Estella companionably, reaching forward on the low coffee table and grabbing an apple out of a cobalt-blue bowl. She lifts the red fruit to her red lips and bites into it. “You kind of need all your toes, I’ve heard,” she says around a mouthful of apple.

“Again,” I tell her, crouching and gritting my teeth, “what just happened?”

She rolls her eyes and rattles things off as she ticks her fingers. “I saved your life from one of the Skinners. The people that are…opposite to me and my kind. The Skinners love destruction. They want the world to end. We’ll combat them as we do each task, but with me at your side, you’ll be safe. And I did just save you,” she says, one brow arched as she grins wickedly. She glances down at my lips as she says, “Don’t I get any sort of thanks for that?”

Adrenaline is still pounding through me as I stare at her lips, too. Her beautiful, blood-red lips.

Is she an angel? Didn’t I see wings?

My entire worldview just shattered right in front of me and is slowly being put together in ragged, torn pieces. So I don’t think anyone is more surprised than myself when I lean forward very slowly, keeping my gaze locked on hers.

Her lips turn up at the corners as we connect. And I kiss her. She tastes sweet. And like the bite of apple she’d just swallowed. When I sink back onto my heels, she reaches forward, threading her fingers through my ponytail, tugging gently at my hair.

And then she leans forward, too, kissing me.

The second kiss is even sweeter. And then she settles back into her chair with a very satisfied grin, and she’s laughing.

“I look forward to working with you,” she murmurs, head to the side, gazing at me with bright, intense eyes, her smile making my heart skip a pretty long beat.

I pick up the sword, stare down at the writing on the blade, hundreds of different writing styles, hundreds of different people who have changed the world.

And there, among them, my words, too.

“Come on,” says Estella, grabbing my hand and standing in one smooth motion. “Don’t cruise ships have swimming pools?”

I follow the maybe-angel out onto the deck of the cruise ship we just saved, out into the sunshine of an impossible day.

If you liked “Mightier,” you can now enjoy entire collections worth of stories in Project Unicorn, Volume One on your eReader or in person in paperback form (I’m a real book!), and support the project at the same time!

Available On:

Amazon (for Kindle)

Barnes and Noble (for Nook)

Smashwords (for all other eReaders + online reading)

Createspace (paperback)

Sarah Diemer is an award-winning author of lesbian young adult (YA), speculative fiction. Her debut novel, The Dark Wife, the YA, lesbian retelling of the Persephone myth won the 2012 Golden Crown Literary Award for Speculative Fiction, and was nominated for a Parsec Award (first two chapters of the audiobook). She writes her lesbian adult fiction under the pen name Elora Bishop, including the Sappho’s Fables: Lesbian Fairy Tales series, which she co-writes with her wife, author Jennifer Diemer.

Connect with Sarah on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook!

If you love what we’re doing with Project Unicorn, the two greatest things you can do to support it is to talk about it on your social network, blog or web site, and purchase each eZine as it comes out.

Project Unicorn is a very large undertaking, but we’re deeply dedicated to giving queer-girls stories they can identify with. Thank you so much for being supportive, and please consider purchasing an eZine to help us continue with this project! (You can also show your support by buying our other books, or simply donating to buy the authors a cup of tea.

Please sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch and be the first to know when we release anything new!

Jenn and I are doing a lot of stuff differently this year. Writing is this wonderful, all-encompassing thing in our lives (I try to–no joke–get 100K written every month, and MOST MONTHS I GET PRETTY DAMN CLOSE, just to give you an idea ;D), and as we start to write more YA again, we’re putting our creative resources more towards our YA work, too. This means that we have fewer resources for other creative endeavors, and–in order to flourish–we need to know when it’s time to end certain things.

We were very sad to decide to close down our Etsy shop, the Fable Tribe, but knew it’s the right time to end that chapter in our lives. And, while we’re at it, we decided to shut down our other Etsy shop, Sappho’s Boutique.

Sappho’s Boutique is where we’ve been offering signed versions of our books, and we LOVED being able to offer those. Awesome, awesome fans have purchased those books, and we’ve loved connecting in that way, but a lot of time and effort was spent going back and forth to the post office and packaging things. Since we’re concentrating on our YA writing more, something had to give.

Since we assume that you guys would much prefer if we put out new things, we decided that shutting down the shops was the best use of resources.

This means that Sappho’s Boutique is shutting down, and–after this–the only way to get books signed by us is to see us in person. :)

We don’t have many books left, so if you always wanted a signed copy of a book, now’s the time to do it!

This is what we have left in the shop!

The Benevolence Tales, Volume 1 — Four copies

Twixt — Three copies

Love Devours — ONE COPY

Project Unicorn, Volume 1 — Three copies

Project Unicorn, Volume 2 — ALL GONE

Cage the Darlings — ALL GONE

The Dark Wife — Eleven copies

Sappho’s Fables, Volume 1 — Nine copies

A really amazing fan, Touweny, contacted me about a year ago, offering to translate The Dark Wife into French. Very much a labor of love, the translation is now completed–and, like its English counterpart–will now be offered for free so that everyone can have access to books with lesbian protagonists. :)

Please enjoy!

Find out about The Dark Wife in English here, and buy a copy of the book here.

~*~

Traduit par Touweny

Il y a trois mille ans, un dieu a dit un mensonge. Maintenant, seule une déesse peut apporter la vérité.

Perséphone a tout ce que la fille de Zeus pourrait vouloir… tout sauf la liberté. Elle vit sur la terre verte avec sa mère, Déméter, grandissant sous le regard toujours averti des dieux et déesses du Mont Olympe. Mais quand Perséphone va rencontrer l’énigmatique Hadès, elle découvre quelque chose de nouveau : le choix.

Zeus appelle Hadès “le seigneur” des morts, comme une blague. En vérité, Hadès est la déesse des Enfers, et nullement l’amie de Zeus. Elle offrira à Perséphone un sanctuaire dans le royaume des morts, permettant à la jeune déesse d’échapper à son destin olympien.

Mais Perséphone trouvera bien plus que la liberté dans les Enfers. Elle découvrira l’amour, et elle se trouvera elle-même.

L’épouse des ténèbres – libre PDF

So, almost two years later, we take up the…ah…sword again.  :)  Project Unicorn: A Lesbian YA Extravaganza (a project of [eventually] ONE HUNDRED free genre YA short stories featuring lesbian heroines!) is (slowly!) starting up again until it’s finished!

The month that we were currently on (when we went on hiatus) was on the theme of “Swords and Spaceships.”  We both had all of the stories finished for this one (two years ago!), but they needed to be edited.  They will now come out until the month’s theme is finished, and we’ll keep going on the project.  :)  THIS IS VERY EXCITING and I’m stoked about it!  :)  We have always loved Project Unicorn and are VERY excited about being able to finish it.

This story is dedicated to Terry Pratchett.  Thank you for everything, sir.

~*~

“The Princess Sword,” by Sarah Diemer

YA/Fantasy

Princess Lexandra is frustrated with the gender roles that have been assigned to her from birth. But a meddling goddess–and a lady in waiting–are about to change her life.

(photo by June Yarham)

(Part of Project Unicorn: A Lesbian YA Extravaganza, full of free, original, never-before-published YA short stories featuring a lesbian heroine. Also, every story is a work of genre fiction [Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Post-apocalyptic, etc.].)

Once upon a time, a princess swore.

It was a very small expletive, and it was for a very good reason, Princess Lexandra thought, her hands on her hips and her breath coming in short puffs.

“What did you say, young lady?” her mother asked severely, brows so high upon her forehead, they were in danger of falling off.

“I said fiddlesticks, and I’ll say it again!” said Lexie, huffing air out of her nose like a disgruntled pony. “Look here, Mamma, you’ve always held with all of those ridiculous notions of what a lady must and mustn’t do, and I will be thrice damned—”

Her mother let out a horrified gasp.

“—if I’m going to let the conventions of society dictate what I’m allowed to do as a hobby!” said Princess Lexandra, glowering at her mother.   “And I want to learn embroidery, and I should be allowed to learn embroidery if that’s what I’d like to do.”

Her mother sighed and put her hands on her hips, too. Queen Tonette stood at almost six feet tall, and when in full armor (including the helmet), she was quite impressive.

But Princess Lexandra would not back down.

“No daughter of mine—”

Lexie sighed for a full moment, cutting her mother off. “Look,” she said, holding up the embroidery needle that she kept tucked into her belt. She’d had it painted to resemble a tiny sword, just because she knew this day was coming. “It’s like I’m wielding a sword. And needles can be deadly if not used properly!”

Her mother snorted, shaking her head. There were a few clunks of metal as she did so, folding her arms in front of her metal chest piece. “Embroidery is men’s work,” she told her daughter, stabbing a metal-encased finger at the princess who glowered at her mother. “If I’d wanted a son, I would have prayed for a son! But no! I petitioned every goddess that I may have a daughter, and—”

“And you did have a daughter. And I like embroidery and dancing and cooking and music, all things that everyone ‘agrees’ are masculine, and I don’t like sword fighting or horseback riding, and because of this, I’m apparently the bane of your existence,” said Princess Lexandra, curtseying (sarcastically) as she bristled with anger. “And that’s all right, Mamma! Sometimes,” she told her mother, sharpening each word, “people don’t fit into normal gender roles.”

“This is your professor’s fault,” said her mother, then, beginning to pace, armor clanking. “I’m going to fire him. I should never have let you be tutored by a male teacher.”

Princess Lexandra wondered if flopping down on the floor and having a good, old-fashioned tantrum would work. She decided against it.

“And another thing!” said Lexie, biting her lip. “As long as we’re being honest! Maybe I’m not attracted to all of the princesses you’ve been parading in front of me. Maybe I like ladies who aren’t princesses at all!   And,” she said, holding up her hand again as her mother began to protest, “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m cursed,” her mother said then, more to herself than to her daughter.   “It’s because I didn’t sacrifice enough to the Goddess of War this year. I know it, now. I’ve got to go get some more sacrifices done, and then my daughter will change.   Yes.” Her mother turned on her heel and clanked across the dais and down onto the floor of the throne room.

“Mamma,” said Princess Lexandra tiredly, then. The queen paused. “I’m sorry I’m not exactly what you wanted in a daughter,” said Lexie, sighing.   “But I think it’s unfair to ask something of me that I’m not, just to fit into a role that other people have decided is the best for me.”

“For centuries, our family has prided itself in the strong femininity of its queens,” said Queen Tonette, then. “I can not believe you’d go against that.”

And then, clanking like a tin peddler, the queen left the room.

Lexie sat down on the stoop of her mother’s throne dais, shoulders hunched.   She felt utterly defeated. She’d been planning this confrontation for months.   Or, if she was honest, for years. Her mother, and all of her mother’s staff and court, upheld the virtues of strength and courage and feminine pursuits that almost always involved something swashbuckling or chivalrous. It was the way her family had always ruled, for over a thousand years.

And then Lexie came along. And ruined everything.

In her defense, she was feeling quite sorry for herself when her lady in waiting came clanking into the room, peering at the forlorn princess sobbing on the dais through the closed visor of her plumed helmet.

“Don’t cry, Lexie,” said Anna, trying to crouch down beside her and giving up after a moment. She really had to oil the joint in her suit of armor’s knees.

“I tried to tell Mamma that I wanted to learn embroidery, then everything else just came out,” said Lexie between sniffles. “She’s furious with me. She hates me…” She began to sob again.

Anna sighed for a very long moment, then forced her knees to bend, the metal screaming in protest. Anna held out her arms to Lexie, who came into them, sobbing against the plate metal of her chest.

“She doesn’t hate you,” said Anna, patting Lexie’s head awkwardly with her chain mail glove. “Your mother is a very passionate woman. As are you. You were bound to clash over this eventually.”

Anna wished that she had a kerchief not made of chain mail she could offer as Lexie sniffed again.

“For what it’s worth,” said Anna, her heart pounding against the metal over her chest (Surely Lexie could hear it echoing against her ear). “For what it’s worth,” she repeated, thanking her lucky stars that Lexie couldn’t see her blush, “I think you’re lovely just the way you are. And I always have.”

“That’s because it’s your job to think I’m lovely,” said Lexie morosely.   Anna opened and shut her mouth, feeling her hopes fall, crushed beneath a thousand metal boots. Lexie pushed away from her, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her tunic. “The fact of the matter is that I need to run away,” she said, then, staring up at her lady in waiting. “And you can help me do this.”

“Ah, Lexie…I don’t think that’s such a—”

“When I live in a charming little cottage in the forest, I can embroider to my heart’s content!” said the girl resolutely, rising and dusting off her bottom.   She helped Anna stand, then, which took about five minutes and a few more curses. Anna’s armored knees had set permanently in a kneel.

“Lexie,” said Anna, puffing when she was finally on her feet again, “I don’t think that running away is nearly as romantic a venture as you’ve always envisioned it—”

“If my mother can tame the Forest of Beasts and win eight thousand wars, surely I can survive on my own in the woods without setting myself on fire in the first five minutes,” said Lexie dryly, gazing at her lady in waiting through the grate in Anna’s helmet. “Will you help me?”

“Yes, but I won’t like it,” Anna muttered, following after the princess.

Like Lexie, Anna had had something very important that she wanted to share with someone quite dear to her today.

But it would have to wait.

When Lexie reached her rooms in the palace, she surveyed them with a sigh.   There were countless tapestries on the walls, woven by the men in waiting in the castle, all depicting women setting out on battles, women fighting dragons, men and women tying handkerchiefs to their armor-wearing wives, waving them off to battle.

And that was all fine and good. But Lexie had always chafed at the idea that people were meant to be any particular way, because Lexie had never been any particular way other than not exactly liking swordfighting, and quite enjoying embroidery. And the ladies in waiting that had been her playmates when she was small would snicker at her behind their hands because Lexie wasn’t how she was supposed to be.

The only one who had never laughed at her was Anna. Anna surveyed the room covered in tapestries, too, but she wasn’t seeing the sad past memories that abounded in Lexie’s head.

Instead, as Anna stood beside Lexie, she thought about all of the times she’d almost told Lexie how much she loved her in this room.

Lexie had confided in Anna once, just once, that she loved women who embroidered, and women who danced, and women who didn’t particularly like swordfighting. That these were the attributes in a woman that made Lexie go weak in the knees.

Unfortunately for Anna, Anna loved swordfighting and slaying dragons (though she’d really only ever slayed one, and it wasn’t so much a slaying as finding the dead body and hacking off its head. It still counted in Anna’s mind) and loved the idea of rescuing Lexie from some distant tower where some evil beast had locked her up and kept her.   And then, of course, Lexie would throw her arms about Anna’s neck and declare her to be the most attractive girl in all of the kingdoms, and kiss her soundly.

Anna sighed for a long moment as Lexie opened up one of her many closets and pushed past one of her many dusty suits of armor and took out a small carpet bag.

“I’m ready to go,” she told her lady in waiting resolutely.

Anna had always known that her vision of rescuing Lexie was an impossibility that could never happen. Lexie wasn’t attracted to feminine ladies, and—like Lexie—Anna could never be something that she was not.

So she followed the princess miserably down the stairs, toward the stables.

“I’ll take Nonna,” said Lexie, then, gazing down the row at all of the war horses her mother had given her over the years. Nonna, in the last stall on the right, was not a war horse, was—in fact—a short, chubby pony that Lexie had had since she was quite small. For a pony, however, the little bay beast was actually quite tall, and could still carry the slight Lexie.

Anna went down the aisle and took Sigrid out of his stall. The massive war horse snorted down at the little pony and rolled his eyes as if to say: I shan’t be seen with this creature.

Nonna bit Sigrid soundly on his rump, and it took all of Anna’s considerable knowledge of equines to keep Sigrid from exploding.

They both saddled up their mounts, and as the sun slipped down from the sky over the edge of the world, Lexie and Nonna and Anna and Sigrid rode out of the palace, completely undetected (it was, after all, sparring hour in the training ground), and out into the woods, with only Anna’s bedroll and pack of supplies, and Lexie’s carpetbag between them.

Anna sighed for a long moment as she angled Sigrid to follow the pony and Lexie’s long, red hair that billowed out over the pony’s rump.

Surely tonight, under the stars and around a magical campfire…surely she could tell Lexie how she felt about her then.

If any goddess is listening, thought Anna, swallowing, give me just a bit more courage tonight. Just a bit more.

They went down the forest path for hours, Lexie taking seemingly random turns in the path until she pulled up Nonna in a halt. Anna followed suit, glancing about. They’d gone deep into the Forest of Beasts, now, but since Anna’s mother had conquered it, there weren’t really that many dangerous beasts out and about that would give them trouble. Lexie dismounted, giving Nonna her head as she held the end of the reins lightly. “Here it is,” Lexie breathed out happily.

This past summer, Lexie had gone out into the woods almost every day, asking her lady in waiting to stay behind. Anna had complied, and worried the entire time about the princess.

(She’d also worried that Lexie was sneaking away to tryst in the woods with some lady that was the exact opposite of Anna. Anna had tried not to think about this.)

“This is what you were doing?” asked Anna, looking up, quite impressed (and more than just a little relieved—Lexie had, obviously, not been trysting with someone quite unlike Anna. She’d not been trysting at all).

A small, sweet cabin spread before the two of them, built from logs and pitched boards and wooden shingles, two glass windows in the front covered in charming, red and white checkered curtains, and a rose bush freshly planted by the front door.

“You built this?” asked Anna wonderingly, as Lexie opened the door and stepped aside, grinning, as Anna went into the cabin, mouth open.

“I did,” said Lexie contentedly. “I wanted a place that was all my own, where I could be myself.   And now I have it.” She took her little embroidery pin out of her belt and lovingly tucked it into a stuffed strawberry on the rough-hewn wooden table.   There was a lovely fireplace, built of river stones, and a rough-hewn bed in the corner, covered in a brightly-colored quilt.

Anna turned, clanking a little, taking it all in as Lexie lit a candle on the table with a flint, and the room brightened around them.

They untacked the horses, rubbed them down and tied them out to crop at the verdant grass in the meadow behind the cabin. Inside, Lexie unbound her hair, and Anna began the painstaking process of removing all of her armor.

“Let me help you,” Lexie muttered, when Anna struggled with the unoiled knees and couldn’t quite get them off. She knelt before her lady in waiting and tugged and tugged. Finally, she fell back on the floor on her bottom, the right metal boot in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” said Anna, mortified, but Lexie began to laugh, hugging the boot to her and laughing so hard that Anna wondered if she was, in fact, crying again. But Lexie smiled up at her, and Anna breathed out, heart flipflopping against her ribs. Oh, why was Anna so cursed that she fell in love with her princess, the princess who would probably never have her?

Just lucky, she supposed. The lady in waiting sighed as Lexie stood and began to build the fire.

They took bread and cheese from their packs, and Lexie in her princess tunic and breeches, and Anna in her undergarments, spread a blanket before the fire and shared their meager supper.

“Lexie,” Anna began, after only one bite. She was going to be sick if she didn’t tell her right then and right there.   “Lexie, I was wondering…”

The princess cocked her head and studied her lady in waiting in the disarming way that she looked at a problem that needed to be solved. Lexie was always beautiful to Anna, but when the princess gazed at her like that…well. Anna’s stomach turned and twisted, and she took a sip of water from her clay jug, trying to make her mouth less dry. It didn’t work.

Both lady in waiting and princess straightened, just then, because the sound of horses’ hooves—many hooves—began to resound in the cabin.

“Fiddlesticks,” Lexie sighed for a long moment.

There was a pounding at the door.

“I really didn’t think she’d bother until morning,” Lexie muttered, and stood, and opened the door to Queen Tonette, who stood outside on the doorstep, hands on her metal hips.

“What, exactly, do you think you’re doing?” asked the queen in a dark and dangerous tone. Lexie put her hands on her hips, too, and girl and woman stared at one another, the air between them flashing with energy.

“I am running away from home, since I am quite obviously the exact opposite type of daughter that you wanted,” said Lexie briskly. “Now please go back to the palace, Mamma. I won’t be taken back.”

The queen was gazing around at the inside of the cabin, and she lifted her visor then, her flashing green eyes wide in wonder. “Did you…did you make all of this, Lexie?”

“Yes,” said the princess, folding her arms. “Now—”

“I wanted to tell you,” said the queen gruffly, letting the helmet fall back over her face, “that I have had…ah. Well. The Goddess of War came to me and told me that I was being foolish. And that anyone can be what they want to be, and that assigned gender roles are—ah—how did she put it, exactly? Oh. ‘Stupid.’”

Lexie’s mouth could not have gotten rounder if she’d tried. “The Goddess…of War told you that?”

“Well. It was more like the Goddess of War’s wife, the Goddess of Love. Who is not my matron goddess,” said Queen Tonette quickly, “but who really…well, quite demanded to be heard. And she told me to be less hard on you. And that a needle can be a sword if you want it to be. And some other things. It appears that I’ve been quite immovable about quite a lot, over the years. And I’m sorry for that.”

To Anna’s knowledge, the queen had never apologized in all of her life. To anyone. For anything.

“You can come back to the palace tomorrow. If you want. I’ll try to be different,” said Queen Tonette, who turned to go. But Lexie was quite quick, and she’d darted forward, putting her arms about the queen’s shoulders and squeezing her tightly.

Anna couldn’t quite hear what princess and queen were saying. But it sounded very happy. And apologetic. And then happy again.

She turned to look back at the fire, her good feelings (and there were so many good feelings) fading slightly as she realized that if she didn’t tell Lexie now, she never would. And she had to tell her.

So when the queen left, and Lexie ran up to Anna and fell beside her on the blanket, laughing, and hugging her lady in waiting tightly in celebration, Anna stiffened beneath her embrace.

“Anna? What’s the matter?” asked Lexie, chuckling and leaning back, looking up at Anna.

And Anna closed her eyes, leaned down and brought the princess’ hand to her mouth. Anna pressed her lips against Lexie’s knuckles for a long moment.

When Anna opened her eyes, when they both caught their breath, princess and lady in waiting stared at one another with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry,” said Anna miserably, then. “I’ve loved you my entire life. And I know that you’re not attracted to women like me, but—”

Lexie’s eyes grew wider. She shook her head, then, and there were no more words as Princess Lexandra put her arms about her lady in waiting’s neck, dragged her down to meet her, and kissed her soundly, passionately and sweetly.

“I am attracted to the women I’m attracted to,” said Lexie firmly, then, after they came up for air. “And I’ve been attracted to you my entire life. But thought this was only a job for you, and—”

“Oh, Lexie,” said Anna, tears in her eyes. “It was never a job. It was an honor. Always an honor.”

As Lexie and Anna began to kiss again, tentatively and then more boldly, outside the cabin, the Goddess of Love stopped peeking into their window and nodded happily.   She winked at her wife, the Goddess of War, who was currently petting the nose of the stallion Sigrid and admiring the size of the creature. And arm in arm, the goddesses strolled away deeper into the Forest of Beasts, for now, their work done.

If you liked “The Princess Sword,” you can now enjoy entire collections worth of stories in Project Unicorn, Volume One on your eReader or in person in paperback form (I’m a real book!), and support the project at the same time!

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Sarah Diemer is an award-winning author of lesbian young adult (YA), speculative fiction. Her debut novel, The Dark Wife, the YA, lesbian retelling of the Persephone myth won the 2012 Golden Crown Literary Award for Speculative Fiction, and was nominated for a Parsec Award (first two chapters of the audiobook). She writes her lesbian adult fiction under the pen name Elora Bishop, including the Sappho’s Fables: Lesbian Fairy Tales series, which she co-writes with her wife, author Jennifer Diemer.

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