The Five Sisters

Author's Note: This is a queer, kinky, feminist retelling of the classic children's story "The Five Chinese Brothers" by Claire Huchet Bishop. I dedicate it secretly to Judith Halberstam, whose lecture on female masochism and the "queer art of failure" at the university I attended a couple of years ago (just after I'd written the story) made me think it might have some value beyond expressing my own guilty pleasures. I hope you enjoy it too!

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There once were five remarkable women all joined in sisterhood. They lived in a house on a cliff by the sea and were rarely seen by the neighbouring townsfolk. Despite the fact that almost nobody saw them, the women were widely rumoured to possess an unusual beauty, like a spray of shadow-dappled flowers all still closed to the world. Whenever the young men of the town passed by the house –something that happened seldomer than you might think– they would glance at the windows and even sneak around to the back garden, trying to get a look in. But always, the curtains were drawn.

One day, the only son of a rich merchant family was travelling through the area when he spied a rather ordinary-looking young woman with deft, pale hands hanging laundry out to dry. The wind was strong that day, and as she flicked a sheet into the air it billowed and took wing off over the cliff. Without a moment's hesitation, the woman darted over the cliff's edge to catch it in midair. In flight, there was nothing ordinary about her at all: she was quick and light and moved just like the sheet dancing in the wind. The rich son shouted out in astonishment. The woman heard and came to him, walking through the swaying sheets on the line with her feet just barely on the ground.

"Good sir," she said, "I beg you, you mustn't tell anyone what you've seen here today."

"Good lady," he said, "I won't tell a soul, on one condition."

"Yes?"

"That you take me flying."

Shadows crossed her face from the flickering sheets. She didn't think it was possible. She tried to say so. But he would hear no excuses. He demanded that she hold him as she stepped off the cliff edge, that she show him the wonders of the air and sea. So, having no choice, she agreed to endure his embrace, and stepped out with him onto the breeze.

The rich son's face shone with amazement as she took them far out over the vivid blue sea. She kept pace with the sea birds, so that he could pluck their feathers like rare shells from the sand. She skimmed low to let him slice open the long ocean breakers with the side of his hand. She supported them both ably, for a time. Then after a while she began to tire and said,

"Please sir, we should go back."

"No, higher." He insisted. "Take me higher, or I'll expose you to the whole town as the inhuman thing you are."

So higher she went. The wind was fierce so far up. It made the exhilarating and terrifying sound of the void as it tried to slip them in its stream, but he only laughed at it, triumphant in her arms. She said again,

"Let's go back now. You can't ask any more of me."

But again he replied, "No. I want to catch a star. They're so close, just go a bit higher."

The stars were close, so she reached deep into herself and made another effort to lift him, allowing him to lever himself up full-length against her. He pressed his body to hers, thrusting his hips against her panting breast as he reached up to brush his fingertips against the papery sky. But her body could not take two; at this height, she could only move herself. Her arms shook as she said,

"I can't hold you any more. We have to go back now."

"You will keep holding me! Closer, I'm almost there, I—"

At that, her grip faltered and broke. Down the rich son fell, into dark ocean currents where he was swept away.

A rich son doesn't die unmourned, nor unavenged. His family was powerful. They found out that their son had been passing near the house on the cliff the day of his disappearance. So they summoned the women, and the first of them stood before the court to state that the town's best-beloved youth had fallen accidentally from her grip into the sea, and nothing more. The authorities were unforgiving. They sentenced her to death. To fit the punishment to the crime, she was condemned to die by the long drop: hanging.

The woman requested to spend her last night in her own house on the cliff, and this she was granted with the court's supervision. So she returned home under guard to her sisters. As it happened, another of the women in that house had the ability to control her breath. So, deep in the night, when the guards posted outside had fallen fast asleep, the two women exchanged their faces by a sensual process known to them. The second sister substituted for the first when the executioner came with the morning light to take her to the hanging grounds.

She submitted to the charges read against her on the scaffold and to the judgement with calm, deep breaths. She held her hands behind her back to be bound and lifted her chin high, allowing her collar to be unlaced so that she could receive the noose around her slim throat. With a wavering step, she crossed onto the stage and stood caught in full view of the crowd for a long, long moment as the noose was fitted and tightened. She closed her eyes, bracing herself. And then the drop. A cheer went up as her body snapped into suspension. But the moment passed, a few minutes lengthened into scores, and still she continued to move. The raucous crowing died down and was replaced by a deeply unsettled silence. She didn't struggle as hanged men do. There was a disturbing rhythm to her movement, an undulation no one wanted to recognize in this context. The executioner peered down through the shaft to see what was causing such consternation, and saw the woman's face tilted up, her mouth open wide and wet in ecstasy, though her small, high breasts stirred not at all.

It was a long time before the executioner cut her down, much longer than anyone had expected. The town doctor who was standing by to confirm her death stepped quickly to where she lay. He loosened the bonds at her wrists to feel her pulse. The moment her hands were free, they flew to her throat and plucked at the noose, loosening it just a little, just enough. She gasped once and shuddered down her spine, thighs squirming. Then she opened her eyes. The doctor stepped back. Standing unsteadily, she walked out from under the shadow of the gallows to the front of the crowd where the court and the powerful merchant families were convened. She pulled the noose down to reveal the deep red weals of the rope on her fair throat. By way of explanation, she said,

"You wanted to see it, so now you have to watch."

It was soon decided that another punishment had to be found.

After some deliberation, the authorities decided to burn her to death. Once again, the condemned woman asked to spend her last night in her own house on the cliff, and was granted her final wish. As it happened, the third woman in that mysterious household had the ability to manipulate fire. So deep in the night, while the guards sheltered from a sky-splitting lightning storm, the second and third women exchanged their faces in their own way. The third woman was more than ready when the guards came with the livid dawn to take her to the burning fields.

Her feet were shackled in irons, and her hands cuffed behind her around an iron post to prevent her from escaping again through the vagaries of fragile rope. A high pyre was built around her, and the townsfolk gathered to see if this time she would die. Sure enough, once the pyre was lit, there was no escape for her. The flames burned high and strong, eating away the wood that screened her. The shackles and pole became red-hot but gave not a bit as she strained against them. The people cheered wildly. It soon became clear, though, that she was not fighting to break her bonds. In fact, she was trying to press them deeper into herself. Though her clothing fell away in ash, her amber flesh did not, and the tongues of flame seemed to twine unnaturally around her, caressing her voluptuous curves with lapping heat. She was bound in every way by iron and fire. But although she twisted in pain, her expression was radiant, and molten pleasure could be read in every line of her body by those who looked to see. To those who turned away, she called out through the roar of the fire,

"No! You wanted to see this, so now you have to watch."

They had to find yet another punishment.

The court grew angry and unsubtle. No more classicism, they decided, no more clean killing at a distance. She was to be beaten to death. Upon hearing this, the woman dragged from the ashes asked to be allowed one last night in her home, and was taken back under heavy guard. Once home, she went to her fourth sister, who had a body like spider-silk, slim, delicate and impossibly resilient. Deep in the night, while the sentries were distracted by a stray wolf-dog, the third and fourth women did what was necessary to exchange their faces. It was thus the fourth who presented herself for her beating when a group of townsmen, chosen for the strength of their arms and their bitterness, arrived on the doorstep the next day at noon.

She was barely ten paces from her own threshold when they began to strike her. She was not even bound, only pushed face down and held by the back of the neck as the men raised her dress and took it in turns to lash her body with a horsewhip. She was not calm or enraptured the way the others had been. Each blow cut viciously through her underclothes to her skin, and she screamed and trembled and begged for release the way a suffering woman should. As the beating continued, though, one of the men noticed she had got an arm free, and that arm was thrust beneath her on the ground, her hand delving deep between her legs. He sent up a shout of alarm. They turned her over, revealing the slickness on her fingers, the wet patch on her linens. With exclamations of horror they tried to strike her hand away from her body. She gave in to each blow, only to spring back like a young branch that bends away easily then flicks into place again. Every whip and flick brought a faster response from her, quickening her breath and heightening her colour, her vitality. The group slowly stopped beating her as they saw that they were only inducing the pleasure they meant to prevent. Below them, in a voice broken and muted with the intensity of her desire, the woman sighed,

"Oh, continue. You wanted to see this. So now, you have to watch."

They had to find one more, one ultimate punishment.

There was a royal sword in the capital that could cut through anything, a weapon of great antiquity. The rich merchant family petitioned for its use, and within a few months an appointed swordsman arrived from the capital. The beaten woman was condemned to die by vivisection. She was held in prison until the sword arrived. It was thought that she would stay there until the end, but on the night before her execution, she formally requested to see her sisters and her home once more. A right granted three times already can't reasonably be refused. So the fourth woman was returned to her house on the cliff under the strictest supervision, where she was met by the fifth woman living there. The fifth woman had the gift of transformation. Deep in the night, even while the guards were in the room watching them intently, the women exchanged their faces as imperceptibly as one shadow melts into another. The fifth woman remained just where she was, but it was she, and not the fourth woman, that the guards took when the swordsman's page came calling through the fog.

They stripped her and chained her, hand and foot, to the dais the royal swordsman had caused to be erected in the town square. Though she flinched when the chains were tightened, she kept her face cool and composed. Her crime and sentence were read out in measured tones. Again she submitted to the judgment without a word. The swordsman placed the point of the blade at her throat and paused solemnly to prepare the strike. The woman tilted her head back, baring herself in complete submission. Then, two-handed, he drove the sword in and pulled it with enormous force down the length of her body, from clavicles to venus mound. The long, fine blade cut through her smoothly, and she spasmed and bled, as a human woman should. When the blade reached the end of its stroke at the base of her abdomen, the swordsman stopped and raised his arms for applause. But in the very moment of his triumph, a voice came from below.

"Finish me," she gasped. "Finish me now."

He hesitated, unsure of what to do. In that instant, the woman twisted her wrists impossibly out of the tight chains. In one fluid motion, she curved her body, seized the hilt, and drove the sword up into her sex, crying aloud at the exquisite agony it caused her. It took but a moment. When she collapsed again, her body was still split open, but the sword was not visible in her. It was gone.

There was silence.

Then the prone woman called out to the crowd,

"You wanted to see these things done to us. You wanted to see us suffer in your power. So now you have to watch how we do it."

There was nothing more the townspeople could do. They were out of weapons. The town doctor came forward, loosed the chains at her feet, and stepped aside. After a while, the woman rose, weak, bloodied, and unstoppable. Looking neither left nor right, she walked slowly from the town until she reached the house on the cliff by the sea. Her sisters' arms gathered her back into their home. And there the five remarkable women lived out their days, together with their faces and their bodies, in the enjoyment of what each could do for the other in need.