Abdication
[cw: consensual sex in surreal circumstances,
small amounts of blood and harm to an animal]
Leda stares up from the ground at the sandy-yellow patch of sky that might be the sun, its brilliant rays neutered by eternal fog. Her eyes, quavering with fatigue, meander along the forest’s fractal edges, where it bleeds celadon into the low clouds. Her wandering gaze avoids only the gap in the trees where she must never look. Sloshing water and ruffling feathers reassure her the swans still inhabit their pond, stuck with her outside of time. They ask nothing of her, and she loves them.
A man’s foot squelches in mud. With great effort she turns her head, grass crinkling in her ear. A swan stands on the shore. She blinks, and he is again a man, every inch of his skin bare and familiar. She blinks again and he preens, water beading on pearly feathers. Again, and he stretches, shaking out sodden black curls.
“Leda.” He drawls her name, like he’s savoring it. She does not know his. This is important, but she can’t remember why.
She attempts to rise but falters, clumsy from countless hours languishing on soft moss. She’s forgetting something. Somewhere she should be, maybe. The gap in the trees veers dangerously close to her field of view.
“No, Leda. No need to get up.” His voice is the rushes and the water, rustling and deep. “I’ll come to you.” He kneels between her sprawled legs, hazel eyes radiant like sun behind fog, filling her vision. Between her and the trees. “Let me have you again.”
Temptation blooms low in her belly and eases up her spine. Memory drifts by. This has happened before, this pleasure, with this man. It can happen again. She can lie down, forget again, be responsible for nothing.
He waits for her whispered yes.
Then, he brings her bliss, ebbing and flowing like breeze rippling the pond. Like wings beating air above water, preceding the stillness of floating.
He leaves her adrift, content.
Nothing happens for eons. Leda rests. Sometimes she sees her lover, who comes and goes.
#
It is one time, like all other time.
Animal bleating shatters Leda’s reverie. A wounded cygnet stumbles from the mist. Behind it is its parent, giving chase, beak open and bloody.
The chick’s shrill peeps finally ask something of Leda. Before conscious thought, she lurches upright, scooping it up, holding it close, her heart full of inexplicable gratitude. Her shaking legs are still powerful enough to support them both; her flightless bones, too solid to float forever. Fierce joy surges in her. She towers over the ordinary swan, a fearsome giant by comparison. She stamps a bare foot into the moss with a dull thump.
It hisses and retreats, leaving its child behind.
Another memory floats by. In a bounded habitat lacking room for growth, swans sometimes kill their own young. She read that aloud from a textbook, once. At a kitchen table, while someone’s school-aged children looked on, following her finger.
Her children.
She remembers.
She left them behind.
Leda cradles the infant to her chest. It tucks its beak beneath a bloodstained wing. Near weightless, it’s destined to fly, but it pulls her to earth like a lead plumb. For it, she can find the strength to look where she’d chosen never to look. She can force her feet down the path that makes the gap in the trees. Past the stone circle where she once summoned a white-winged lover, bargaining her name for a reprieve outside of time, for as long as he could keep her.
For those she loves, she can bear weight again.
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
S.C. Mills (she/they/he) writes stories about finding unusual and queer connections with others and creating the divine and holy from the mundane. Their work has been published by Humour Me Magazine, Sci-Fi Shorts, The Circus Collective, and others, and they’ve won the Writing Battle microfiction contest. Find them in Seattle, where they like to hike in the dry season and train martial arts while it rains.
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