Like a Thorn
An Anthology of BDSM Fairy Tales
Edited by
Cecilia Tan and Sarah Desautels
Circlet Press, Inc.
Cambridge, MA
Like a Thorn: An Anthology of BDSM Fairy Tales
Edited by Cecilia Tan and Sarah Desautels
Published by Circlet Press, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 by Circlet Press, Inc.
Cover art & Design Copyright © 2009 by Nick Vecellio
All Rights Reserved
Individual copyrights to the works represented in this volume are held by the respective authors and artists of the works.
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Table of Contents
Introduction by Sarah Desautels
Cinder Feet by Mari Ness
The Princess and Peony by Mercy Loomis
The Last Mistress of the Chatelaine by Kieran Wyn Dewhurst
That Wicked Witchcraft by Sunny Moraine
Skin Deep by Shanna Germain
Today, the phrase “fairy tale” evokes charming, magical, and decidedly family-friendly images to most. However, like the witch who spends her days gazing at the fairest of them all, this image has often been skimmed off the top of any given fairy tale’s original story--a far more violent and sexual original. The darker side of fairy tales has always fascinated me, so coupling it with the darker side of sex--BDSM--seemed like an obvious choice. Like BDSM sex, the darker originals of fairy tales are often unpopular. They repel because they are mediums of expression that are dark and painful, often used to express darkness and pain, and they are, indeed, designed to make people uncomfortable.
However, using BDSM to complement the stories’ darker undertones wasn’t my only reason for pairing the two: BDSM sex also serves the same function as an original, somewhat disturbing fairy tale. The elements that challenge our comfort zones are what make fairy tales and BDSM complex and fascinating, and so relatable to us. These stories address much more than a taboo taste for pain: fairy tales, bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism are tools to express universally human experiences such as intimacy, anguish, forgiveness, even playfulness--and, of course, the beauty of sexuality. From an erotic beating of penance that will lift a curse to a mischievous plan to fool a queen with pea-sized bruises, BDSM takes classic fairy tales to new erotic depths.
Please enjoy this anthology, and the wide, kinky world that can only be seen by stepping away from the magic mirror.
Sarah Desautels
by Mari Ness
She claimed the midnight curfew was only for my good. Otherwise, she said, smiling–her smile so brittle, so false–the dark fairies would come and get me, and pull my beauty all away. All nonsense, of course, but the message was clear: leave by midnight, or face certain shame.
I could cook and clean and sew and do my sisters’ hair, dress in rags and scrub her back, kneel at her feet and polish her boots, clean her skin with my tongue, lie quivering on the floor as her hands tenderly struck me, or as she placed a firm rod across my rear, beg for mercy when she touched my breasts. But she had me there. I could not face the shame. Not public shame.
“You could make them wait,” I suggested. “The dark fairies. Make them wait until dawn.”
“Oh, little Cinders,” she said, stroking my hair. “Now why would I want to do that?”
So as I danced, I watched the clock.
I ate with my sisters, who flirted and danced and giggled and sang with no sense of time. I smiled, and nodded, and listened to a young man of dazzling wit and average looks that she would later mockingly call a prince. I allowed him to stroke my hand. I felt the trembling in my body. I heard the clock begin to strike. I fled.
“My good little Cinders,” she whispered, as she ripped my dress and jewels from me. “My good little Cinders.”
When my sisters returned home, an hour or so before dawn, neither of us heard, though I later learned they had heard my unmuffled cries. The cries I could not stifle, even at her command, since even five hours had not been enough to stop my skin from tingling, to stop my need for touch.
The next night, the same. “Midnight, little Cinders,” she said, whispering in my ear as she stroked my hair, now turned golden under her hands. “Midnight, little Cinders, or I shall have the fairies pummel your legs and bruise your fair breasts.”
They were not fair, just then; they were covered in soot. She had not yet let me wash.
I washed and dressed and pulled up my hair for her, and squeezed my feet into those tiny shoes that made me tremble and sway as I walked, that twinkled and shone in the candlelight. I danced under the moonlight, they say. The truth is that I balanced and swayed and tried not to fall in those too tiny shoes, and to keep from falling, let the unprince hold me and joke into my ear. My sisters giggled and danced and did not look at me. I trembled in the young man’s arms, and felt his lips move down my neck.
Stroke one.
“I must leave,” I gasped. Stroke two.
“Oh no,” he said, his mouth against my neck, his body pressed into mine. “Oh no.”
Stroke three.
By midnight, my dress was halfway off, and one shoe had been left on the stone pathway.
“Oh Cinders,” she said, when I stumbled in. “My Cinders.” And she ripped the rest of the dress from me.
At least, I thought, it had not been the little fairies. And then once again, I thought of little at all.
* * * *
When he came to us later, clutching my shoe, I was busy with kissing her feet and bathing them with tears. I could almost see them, the little dark fairies, sitting hunched in a corner, ready to pounce, to rip away my beauty. Not that they were needed. As she had promised, I had stopped being beautiful, and soot and cinders dripped from me. I gave him one swift glance, then kissed her feet again.
He dropped the shoe beside me. I almost turned then, to grab him with my ash covered hands. But her hands were laced in my hair, and she was right: I could not bear that humiliation. So I kept my head down, my lips on her feet.
“I believe this is yours,” he said, voice trembling.
“Indeed?” she asked, and I could hear the brittle smile in her voice.
“Indeed,” he said.
“I did not think my feet so small,” she said.
“Not yours,” he said.
He must have made a gesture of some kind. I could not see; her foot was in my mouth.
“My Cinders?” she said, and then we both heard it, that brittle laugh. “Such a lovely thing for my lovely Cinders.”
“She could try it on,” he said.
“She could,” she said. “But it will not fit. Even if it were her shoe–for which I have only your doubtful word–her feet are swollen too badly for shoes.”
That was true. My twin nights of dancing and half falling had damaged my feet, and I was kneeling in front of her, in part, because I could hardly walk.
“She could still try,” he said.
“So she could,” she said, and she moved her toe in my mouth. “Would you, little Cinders?”
It would not fit, I knew. Still, I lifted my head from her feet, and gave the young man a nod. He brought the shoe towards me, trembling.
It had a crack in it, on one side, doubtless from dancing. I looked about the room, at her brittle smile, at the dark fairies I fancied beside the windows and in the corners. “Wait,” I said. “Bring me that,” and pointed.
He was an obedient young man, for now. He left the shoe in my hands, and brought me the knife. The knife she had so often used on me.
“What is swelling but blood?” I smiled at her. “And what can be done, other than to remove the blood?” And with that, I placed the dagger at my foot, and pushed.
Her fingers laced and tightened through my hair. Three drops ran from my foot into the shoe. The young man gulped. The dark fairies, I thought, seemed to clap and smile. I picked up the shoe, and pushed in my foot. Tight, so tight, and so much pain. And yet the shoe fit, quite well.
I smiled brightly up at her. “My shoe,” I said.
“Indeed.”
She pulled me up by my hair; I could feel my foot pulse and bleed. She pressed me closely to her chest. “Only for your good,” she whispered in my ear. “Your good, my Cinders. Your good.”
Years later, kissing the now old man’s foot, I remembered her words. Easy enough, as the more I kissed his feet, the more my own bled. The dark fairies, I thought. But they were only a fancy, and the blood that still ran down my feet was real, quite real.
Mercy Loomis
Princess Cara barely heard a word the old queen said, staring with dismay at the giant stack of mattresses that they expected her to sleep on.
“... you must be cold and weary. The maid is preparing a bath for you in the next room.”
Cara’s mind spun, but she thanked the queen graciously (with twenty years of experience, she could be gracious to anyone at any hour of the day) and walked regally toward the other room. She was good at regal too, and it gave her something to do at times when her brain failed her.