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cymorilcinnamonroll · 29 days ago

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And Lilith Sewed the Seam - Sapphic Short Story

The frost came early that year, the year the Queen of Night came to Karelia. We lived in Sharon, a little shtetl in Grand Russe on the Finnish border that was known for its beautiful alpine aerials and lakes like beads of blue glass. The ocean, too, was refreshing to swim in – provided one went to the banya afterwards. I was a young lass in the rime-laden harbors and forests. We Jews of Sharon were a sailing, seabound lot, making our living off fishing and the waves. But mama, bubbe and I? We were seamstresses of the finest caliber. Some would say we were magick. They called us, and our shop, The Weaving Wives.

The boyars ordered traditional kaftans straight from bubbe’s shop, woven with the earth goddess Mokosh and her lovers Veles and Perun on the breast. I had grown up toeing the line between two faiths. I learned both the myths of Baba Yaga eating unworthy children and the Night Howler Agrath screech-dancing on the roof to mark a house that her husband, Sammael, would strike down as dogs bayed at his twelve-winged flight. Sometimes, late at night, I could hear them.

Or perhaps it was only a storm…

Word of bubbe’s and mama’s and my craftiness spread. The year I turned sixteen, the tsarina herself ordered a fashionable cape from us. It was based off the tale of Father Frost’s granddaughter, Snegurochka the Snow Maiden. A tale I had always loved. It was the first project over which I was given complete ownership.

I embroidered white, pale pink and dove gray pearls on the powder blue cape in little clusters of wings shaped like snowflakes, then stitched eiderdown into the golden seams. Bubbe dusted it with malachite flakes to bless it from far off Azov, the riches of the earth piling high upon the tsarina’s head.

Mama, bubbe, and I were the treasures of Sharon. We were married to our thread, the men and women of Sharon said, and they—from the hunters to the midwives to the rabbi, to my own father, a ship captain and whaler—guarded our secrets with their very lives.

We Weaving Wives were a protected, cherished lot. And our craft was our very soul. There was a deep magick in that sewing. For in truth, we were good witches. We could summon sunlight to make yellow fabric like a peach. Melt down rusalka hair in our oven to create the finest threads. Our secrets were the stuff of legends, and we were glad not to tell the rabbi about them, or even dear papa. And the menfolk knew better than to ask, but the women always wondered.

The cape was the talk of the kingdom.

No wonder, the tsarina was pleased.

As fame of our clothing grew, the Weaving Wives gained esteem. Through charitable works we lifted our community up and filled the synagogue coffers to the brim. Our family did good works in Adonai’s name. All so that Peniel – the Face of God – might shine down after the three of us wrestled long with a hill of fabric, like female Jacobs and a needle-bound angel.

But the frost came early the year I turned eighteen, and it stole my bubbe away. Crying tears like glass beads, I looked into my mirror after shiva was over and found myself a changed maid: my long black curls were winsome, I was plump and rounded to please men, and my cornflower eyes could break hearts. I needed a husband. Only… the village maidens had always been far more winsome.

Fair Shayna, with eyes like silver coins. Comely dark Miriam, with a heart like a thorny rose. And Delilah, the marigold of my garden. I had tossed and turned with all of them in the fields and furrows on Ivan Kupalo, what the Western countries called St. John’s Eve, as we searched for fern flowers together to promise bonds of eternal love. Shayna’s lips were soft. Miriam’s grip on my hot hips was hard, determined, just like Malakh HaMavet striking only holy blows.

But Delilah? She was mother-of-pearl dissolving in Cleopatra’s wine. A beauty wrapped in a carpet, delivered to Marc Antony.

I wanted Delilah more than life itself. But Shayna and Miriam had already taken husbands. We were eighteen, after all. Only Delilah, with her red hair, pale skin, full form, and freckles, was left, and to me, she was more holy than any synagogue, a word on the tongue of G-d that would make Chava take an apple all over again, but this time, a blessed fruit. Delilah was a pearl of great price that could redeem. A benediction and wonder that would lighten the load of the Azazel goat on Yom Kippur and set the Temple right.

So, that night in my anger and mourning over losing bubbe too soon, I looked into my mirror, in the flickering light, and I cast a magick spell. I made a wish on bay leaves and some goldenrod I had dried earlier that year for Delilah to be mine. As I was threading the bay leaves through a needle, to string them over my dresser, I pricked myself on my thumb.

A bead of red delicious blood bubbled up. Suddenly, the mirror swirled into a gorgeous Ashkenazi royal woman with long black ringlets of hair done up in silver bands, a purple wine-dark dress with gold threading, yellow-green eyes like parched grass, and pale, ghostly skin. Her bruised pink lips were bloody, and there was hunger in her eye.

“Pu pu pu!” I said, warding off the demon, frightened. I clutched the red thread always tied to my bandeau and threw salt at the mirror. It sizzled as it hit the candle, putting it out. Then, silence.

I had not a day before the Queen of Night came to Sharon. She was the talk of our little shtetl, rumored to be disgraced Romanian royalty who had bathed in maiden’s blood and newborn calf spittle to retain her youth. She was old, she was young, she was invisible, they whispered. Dressed head to toe in a black veil, riding in a carriage like a hearse. It was pulled by black bulls, and scarlet, bloody-colored ribbons were woven round the black bulls’ necks.

Just like the blood from my thumb.

Lailah, she was called. I was so lost in fear of her, I did not hear the clinking of bells at our shop. Bubbe was gone, Delilah was not mine, and I was haunted by a ghost.

I was manning the shop till, daydreaming about the demon. She… had been beautiful. Lailah was said to be hideous. To be virginal and pure. To be a vampir or dhampir or G-d knew what! Only, this Romanian countess or ghost or queen had come to my shop, now, smelling of lavender and patchouli. She had been watching me, and I felt like I was drowning.

A musk radiated off her that reminded me of eating dinner between Delilah’s thighs.

Suddenly, Lailah let her veil and robes fall, and the demoness from earlier in the mirror stood naked before me, perfect as a pale statue of Dark Venus, brimstone the farthest word from her.

Her eyes were a poisonous, mesmerizing yellow. Her pubis was lightly thatched with slashes of black, her sex an enticing pink wound. She seemed to be carved from alabaster, her legs ending in owl’s feet, great sooty wings on her back, and a night storm cloud of ebon ringlets framed her sharp, small and upturned nose and wicked ruby-grapefruit lips.

“Lilith?” I squeaked. I did not have it in me to “Pu pu pu.” To reach for metal or iron or salt. To even clutch my red thread.

I knew immediately that if this beautiful, treacherous Queen of the Night asked, I would be her slave. I would be a dog in her yard, licking fruit off her feet, honey off her lips. All to taste… majesty. The divine.

She demurred, smiling to reveal needle teeth that only heightened her beauty. “You have grown beautiful, Jael.”

“Oh. No. I, Lilith, with all my pleading, please, flee this place. We are holy. Adonai shall smite you. And you are too beautiful to suffer,” I said, rambling, not making sense, soaking in Lilith’s beauty, her temptation, her smirk, the way her thick hips and ripe breasts swayed as she walked towards me slowly, like a leopardess stalking its prey.

“But, if I flee, you will be nothing. An adamant bloom plucked too young to thrive. You have all the talent of your bubbe Abigail, and all the strength and industry of your mother Bina. There is a reason our faith is passed on through women, Jael. You are the perfect vessel.”

I froze. “You mean to possess me?”

Lilith narrowed her yellow eyes at me. Oh, how I wanted to reassure her I was not scared. And yet, I was. Highly terrified. The Witch of Endor was in my shop, and darkness filled the corners, Sheol the depths of the yard; the windows were blotted out by the realm of husks. It was only Lilith and I at the axis mundi of the worlds.

“No, I mean to pay you,” Lilith laughed in a sultry tone, then quickly softened. “I have need of a dress for a ball Ashmedai is throwing. Ashmedai and Sammael are both my husbands, but they are at war as of late. I need to dress for battle. For the manner in which I fight, and who I choose as consort, shall determine the course of Kingship in Gehenna.”

My jaw dropped. “Like the Maid of Orleans?”

Lilith smiled. “Dear Jael, I have been at this for millennia longer than any Frenchwoman. Now, this I must ask you: can you make me a ballgown the color of a mirror, that reflects all it touches, that can withstand hail and hellfire? If you do, you will be wealthier than the tsarina. As you know, the Shekinah often rests with Sammael, and as the Shekinah’s Handmaiden, I ascend to G-d in turn. He lets me do what I like, you see. The world, for me, is freedom. As I mean it to be for all women, Jael. Your namesake certainly agreed. We had plans, Jael and I.”

“The girl who drove a tent spike through her enemy’s head?” I piped out, voice squeaking yet again. I nervously chewed my hair, then spat it out. “Yes, I can make a dress like that. But I do not need riches. Just Delilah.”

“Lilah. Delilah. She is similar, yet nothing like me. A seal, then, of our bargain?” Lilith leaned against the counter and kissed me, deep. “Yes, you taste just like Jael as well. She was one of mine, you know. Perhaps… but no, Jael. Let sleeping Judges lie.”

With that, Lilith disappeared, and the pale, ghostly light of winter trickled into the shop.

I reached for the red thread on my bandeau and snapped it apart, welcoming the demoness in.

For the fabric, I captured moonlight in a jar. I made it slitted at the train, so Lilith could stride across the burning floor of Ashmedai’s ballroom like the Queen of Sheba did to win Solomon’s heart. I wove the bodice of form-fitting silver silk, loose and dyed from rain under the morning star. Do not ask how the Weaving Wives work our magick. We simply do. It was in bubbe’s blood. It is half in mother’s blood. And I?

I surpass them both.

I wrote Delilah a letter that night. A letter to come room with me. It did not say much other than “bosom friend” and “bubbe’s room is empty” and “mama and papa are leaving for America, so it shall be just us, and I could use a shopkeeper.” But I sprayed perfume from Moscow on it, kissed it thrice, and slipped it in a pink bow and thick sturdy envelope into our hiding tree. An alder.

Delilah wrote me back: “If your gown for this cursed queen goes through, then you will have proven to me that a woman can love a woman, like a man loves a woman, and Jael, I do think… I must not write it.”

There were tear stains blotting her delicate signature.

I cried that night. I stitched Lilith’s seam. I used bat wings boiled down to the finest veins to protect the dress from hellfire. Then I crushed the bay leaves of my witchcraft, when I met Lilith in the mirror, into the fur capelet of mink. It was my heart’s treasure. My greatest wish of all.

And finally, a hilt for a dagger, bejeweled with malachite from Mount Azov. It was sacred in Russia, from one Mistress – the Mistress of Copper Mountain – to the Queen of Night.

Lilith came the day after Sabbath.

She tried it on, the silk bunching around her in pleasing, curvaceous angles, the embroidery and pearls and malachite and mink sparkling, and she shone like the tsarina’s silver tiara.

Lilith smiled in the mirror: “It’s perfect, my Jael. Come walk with me.”

Into her dark midnight carriage with the four red-banded black bulls I went. We rode to Gehenna. What I saw would frighten Enoch himself. Dumah, at the gate, with his poisoned sword of gall. Hazarmavet, the Court of the Dead, where new souls ate meat and drank wine in perfect silence. The winnowing of souls in the fire of Sheol with the punishing, purifying angels. A glimpse of Gan Eden and the Silver City where the angels lived, attending the Promised Messiah. It was all like a crack in the sky.

Finally, Ashmedai’s realm. A realm of exotic desert fruit and pleasure girls and winebearer ephebes. Hot searing heat, simoom winds, oases and belly dancers. It was scandalous.

Sammael’s forces of death, poison and decay camped at the door. I waited in the carriage as Lilith walked on French heels to the forefront, her dagger held high, her dress that I had painstakingly, feverishly sewed gleaming under the hot desert sun.

Lilith’s beauty sparked Sammael’s shedim and lilim and seirim into frenzy. They descended on Ashmedai’s forces as the demon king emerged from his glistening sandstone palace with his forces, dates and palm and rivers of jewels surrounding us on all four sides.

I watched as Lilith turned the tides of the battle, flirted with Ashmedai, lured Sammael. In the end, Lilith took both Ashmedai and Sammael’s crowns as they kneeled and kissed her hands off their heads. She melted the coronets down with fiery breath from her beautiful lips, then formed two gold arm bands for her pale limbs.

It seemed Gehenna had a new ruler.

I am old now. Delilah is my bosom companion. I talk to Lilith in the mirror, late at night, I am aged, Lilith is ageless, and she tells me tales of the world: the invention of electricity. War in America. Discoveries in Asia. How her plans are in motion to free women, so one day, we are not so tied to the cycles of our womb, forced to labor in birth pangs like Chavah.

Delilah and I adopted three girls, and we teach them the secrets of weaving, sewing, and stitchery. We are bringing the crafts of our shtetl into a new age. My parents died in America and seemed to have prospered. I have no intention of leaving Karelia. We are the exclusive gownmakers for the new tsarina.

It is a good life. It is a small life. Lilith and Adonai shower riches upon our community – not too much, but enough that Sharon is known as blessed. The Shekinah still roosts with Sammael, and will until the Temple is set right, and Her people ascend.

I am happy all my days. So is Delilah. When we die, we will be led by Lilith the Perpetual Regent of Gehenna to be her personal weavers and outfitters, and our daughter’s daughter’s daughters will know true freedom in the modern age.

And all because Lilith sewed the seam.

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snailchimera · 13 days ago

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If you like Murderbot, I'd also suggest you check out Ann Leckie's Radch trilogy, in which you can find a dead spaceship/horrifically mindwiped human body drone from a destroyed hivemind learning to think of herself as a person in a world where she has only been a disposable tool of empire. There are similar themes of personhood, autonomy, resistance against oppressive systems, and being an idiot incapable of understanding that other people care about you. Leckie also has some very good books with different characters in the same setting. All of them have casually queer characters.

Yoon Ha Lee's work is also very good, though *very* dark. Like every common trigger warning dark. The core thesis of his best known series, Machineries of Empire, is that corrupt and bloody systems will inevitably corrupt and bloody the people within them, and that trying to be a good person or even just hang on to your humanity within such a system will inevitably break you. It comes to the conclusion that the only way out is to break those systems, by any means necessary. It's not hard sci fi, as it does center around a functionally magical calendar, but I wouldn't call it fantasy.

The Tensorate series by Neon Yang is more steampunk fantasy (or silkpunk, to be more precise), but I don't think it's a bigger stretch than The Hollow Places. Wonderful characterization, interesting conflicts that mirror the real positive and negative effects of industrialization, lots of politics but not so much that the plot gets lost in it. Yang also wrote a space mecha Joan of Arc story that's more or less about religious manipulation and falling prey to cult thinking, which wasn't really my thing but might be yours.

Nnedi Okorafor is one of the biggest names in Africanfuturism, and iirc is the one who coined the term (as distinct from Afrofuturism, which deals less with Africa itself and more with the Black diaspora in the US). She's another one whose stories are often tragic or have prominent tragic elements; a common (though not the only) trajectory for her protagonists is "realize everything is shit, try to make things better, lose everyone and everything you love, Burn It All Down". There's also a fair amount of sexual assault or threat of assault in her work. But for all that, Okorafor is strikingly hopeful and posits that change is not only possible, it is inevitable; the question is what that change will look like. These books also have magical elements more often than not, though I hesitate to call them fantasy elements given their specific cultural and religious connotations.

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a whole bunch of stories set in the universe of the Ekumen, which are the space anthropologists from The Left Hand of Darkness. She also wrote a lot of other sci fi. It's definitely dated in some ways (there are actually some very interesting interviews out there on how LeGuin's own shifting understanding of gender and race as well as the expansion of what she could get away with in traditional publishing shows in these dramatic changes between her early and later works), but worth it for the way she gives her characters space to be people even as she tackles these big philosophical and sociopolitical questions. Of course books like The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven are held up as classics of the genre alongside The Left Hand of Darkness for good reason, but I'd actually recommend looking for some of her short story collections, which are usually a mix of sci fi, fantasy, and things that don't fit neatly in either category. Wind's Twelve Quarters is a good one if you can find it.

And speaking of short stories, did you know literary magazines are still a thing, and you can get them online as ebooks or PDFs? Uncanny Magazine and Apex are good ones. Luna Station Quarterly specializes in speculative fiction by women authors (explicitly including trans women). FIYAH, which primarily publishes Black authors, really leans more fantasy, but has had some sci fi special editions.

But honestly? Probably my favorite sci fi writer right now aside from Wells (and it's a close competition) is Derin Edala, who mostly self-publishes on their own dedicated site, derinstories.com. You can also find them here on tumblr at @derinthescarletpescatarian. You can jump straight into their ongoing stories about space pirates and a bug on a Chosen One mission respectively, or try some of their short stories (I'm a big fan of the one with the dragon mechs), but my strongest endorsement currently goes to Time To Orbit: Unknown, a full length novel (or duology, given it was too long to be self-published as one physical book and thus got released as two) about a Very Normal Spaceship. You should read it, and then if you have money you should buy it from their Ko-Fi shop or Smashwords.

EDIT: WAIT WAIT WAIT if we're doing movies you gotta watch Space Sweepers. You gotta. It's the law.

I'd also recommend Subnautica, Hypnospace Outlaw, and Extreme Meatpunks Forever. Honestly there are a *lot* of tiny cool indie scifi games out there and we will be here all day if I try to make a list, so instead I'll suggest spending an afternoon some time shaking itch.io upside down for a while until something interesting falls out.

do you have any good scifi recs? i recently read the murderbot diaries and realized i have shamefully little experience with scifi....

Y'know, my scifi's actually pretty limited! I mostly just like the cover art, sorry. oTL Looking at Steve Purcell's work has me thinking about influences in illustrative art of that era so that's why I was in the tag lol

Left Hand of Darkness is an interesting read (just go in knowing what era it's from and know it's mostly about anthropology on a planet where people change genders more or less at will and a lot of it is the protag going HUH????).

Ray Bradbury's The Veldt is an all time good creepy short (what is that noise in our children's hologram room? it sounds like us screaming. well i'm sure it's nothing.)

is the Southern Reach series considered sci-fi...? It's sci-fi horror at least, I'd say (what if there was a spot that was more or less a DNA scrambler and what if you were a biologist lady who loved staring at freak shit. and also your husband's a dolphin. or an owl. dont worry about it.) I still need to read the newest book, but there's a moment in book 2 where a surface is described as like a manta ray's skin that I still think about

if I'm REALLY stretching here, The Hollow Places counts as scifi for me. It's scifi horror/fantasy horror- (what if there was a portal to another world and it was sooooo safe and you should go in.) There's a part I still think about where a man had been standing in this like, waist deep pit of water for a while (years?) and the protag has some realizations about what she's looking at when she sees him that still freak me out.

Otherwise, watch MST3K. That counts, right?

#Snail rebubbles #books #science fiction #sci fi #speculative fiction #spec fic #recommendations

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