Blood in the Thread

by Cheri Kamei

Content warning: This story contains fictional depictions of domestic violence.

Nothing tears two women apart like the men who want and take indiscriminately. In this retelling of “The Crane Wife”, a makeup artist and her actress lover struggle to stay together as the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood transforms into a cruel and manipulative beast that threatens to pluck them apart.



At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, LGBT, Romance, Retellings, Queer

17 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 12, 2021

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no question, then: The man takes the injured crane into his home and tends to it with great patience and care. The crane seems to understand his intent, and so allows the touch of his rough hands, the stink of wood smoke and musk that stings. She bears it as best she can. Eventually, she recovers.

There is no question, then: The man must release her. He has no use for a crane, no matter how beautiful. He takes her out of the woods. The sky stretches out. The crane flies far.

But that is not where this tale ends.

most people will read this story about a woman delivered from domestic abuse as beautiful and triumphant, but i'm the lady on the fringes going "wellllll...."

this part got my goat:

“Marry me,” you say, fumbling the ring. You have only one free hand. The other holds a bag of frozen peas to her swollen rib cage. “We’ll go away from here. We’ll start over.”

There is a moment when her eyes slide away to the magazines and bundled script pages, the view from the new apartment, the billboards and city beyond. It is just a moment. Her gaze returns to you, red and puffy as a poppy gone to rot.

“Marry me,” you ask again. When you try to smooth away her tears, you only manage to rub the salt into her skin. It is then that she shows you the unsigned contract that came with the diamond and platinum monstrosity that has taken your place on her ring finger. Through your tears, she is someone you cannot recognize, bare-faced and broken.

an actress who enters into a publicity-orchestrated relationship with an abusive man she doesn't love while the woman whom she's been in a long-term secret relationship loyally covers up the bruises he leaves is offered multiple chances to get away and doesn't because she likes the fame too much? that's a hard ask, reader-sympathy-wise. i understand how difficult it is to get out of an abusive relationship when there's an emotional attachment blinding the way out of it, but staying in a sham relationship as a calculated business decision, while shitting all over someone* who's demonstrably invested themselves to your well-being seems like the inevitable result of someone who's made their own shitty bed. am i saying she deserves to be abused? obviously not, but it's a price she's choosing to pay to keep her face on billboards, and since she's accepting the consequences of this 'relationship' for her own ambition, my sympathies are 100% wth the woman who's picking up her pieces back at their home, applying make-up to her lover with such abject devotion. this isn't presented as a harvey weinstein situation, where she was railroaded into something and her career would be jeopardized if she didn't comply; it's depicted as a publicist thinking it'd be cute and lucrative if two co-stars had an offscreen romance. there aren't any professional repercussions for backing out, so it comes across more selfish than sympathetic.

i am one staunch bitch. still, the crane wife fragments were terribly lovely, and proof that i don't lack empathy, i just can't hand it out like halloween candy to people courting their own destruction.

three-and-a-half, rounded up, because it's beautifully told, but this led horse ain't drinking that water.**



read it for yourself here:

https://www.tor.com/2021/05/12/blood-...

* figuratively

**figuratively

come to my blog!

[Prabhjot Kaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

These days, when you pull your skin apart in the name of love, you do not even feel the pain. You weave your story. You set it free.

Absolutely nothing changes until everything does.

An actress is engaged to her co-star whom she doesn't love as the relationship is only a pretense who is also abusive to her. Her makeup artist who is also the actress's secret lover hides all the remnants of her abuse with beautiful makeup.

Only you have held her face between two hands and seen the truth of her, brilliant and terrified and beautiful. You think, I am going to marry that woman.

The actress's makeup artist asks her to marry her multiple times but each time she is denied. She also keep applying makeup to cover up the bruises on the actress. She uses poisonous makeup (I am not sure but that's what I understood) to save the actress in any which way she can from the co-star's touch.

If you cannot show that she is yours and you are hers, then you can at least make them all realize that their touches will be rebuffed, profane and unworthy.

The makeup artist consoles the actress each step of the way but still the actress doesn't choose her.

When you kiss her, it is not a proposal, but it is a promise and a lie all the same.

A heart-aching, heart-breaking, sad, touching and beautifully written story. I loved the poetic prose. I loved the parallels of the crane's story. I loved everything about it except that I was hoping for a different ending.

4.5 stars

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blood in the Thread by Cheri Kamei - 4/5★

Beautiful retelling of “The Crane Wife”

The short story is found in Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2021 Edition and can also be read on Tor.com.

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rep: sapphic mcs

CWs: domestic abuse

[— nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was haunting and beautifully written

[Chrystopher’s Archive · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warrants multiple readings. The prose is so, so pretty I almost got distracted from the fact that I have no idea what it means. (Hence the multiple readings.)

[Amaryllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am hurt. this was devastatingly beautiful and painful and I loved every second.

[Vanellope · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was really good, i just didn't like it. too sad for me.

[☘ · Rating 4 out of 5]

how did a 21 pages novella manage to make me this sad it was so beautiful

[LesbianBarista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, sad, and had me completely lost in it.

Read here: https://reactormag.com/blood-in-the-t...

[Anj✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, powerful, and heartbreaking.

Read: May 14, 2021

[Bobbi Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oof. That was a punch in the gut. Relevant and beautiful, though.

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really sad, beautiful story that reflects the original folktales themes about true love and sacrifice. I read two layers of the folktale in this short story: the more direct reading reflected in the text where the original tale (interspersed throughout the contemporary narrative) parallels the actress's abusive relationship with her costar (in which there is no actual love and what love is professed is disingenuous) and a more indirect reading in which the crane's sacrifice out of love for the sake of her husband's happiness is reflected in how the make-up artist gives of herself to the actress to allow the actress to achieve her goals and dreams, with all of the associated pain and loss and frustration. The underlying themes aren't quite to my taste (very sad and poisonous takes on love and dreams at the expense of the self, and some of the underlying implication seems to be that the abuse victim is opting for the situation for her own self-interest, which made me uncomfortable) and the ending seems open to interpretation, but the prose is gorgeous and incredible and tactile.

[Remy · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Today,” she says, “we are women who are actually cranes.”

The summary of this says it is a retelling of the Japanese folktale, The Crane Wife. Except it doesn't really feel that way. Said folktale is alluded to throughout the story, but I don't really see it. A makeup artist and an actress are a couple, but when the actress makes it big, she needs to get into a showmance with her male co-star, who abuses her. Her makeup artist lover is the one who has to beautify all her bruises. Okay, I can get with that. I was waiting for the shoe to drop and for the fierceness to come out, for the power of true love to save the Actress Crane.

But then she goes a step further and MARRIES her abusive co-star ??? ITS JUST ONE MOVIE!!!

Look, I know this book didn't promise me a rose garden -- despite its beautiful writing style -- but I guess I just wish it'd done more to convince me why that had to happen. Maybe I'm supposed to have read this the way one reads a folk or fairy tale -- with the knowledge that not everything has to be spelled out in great detail, but without it I'm just baffled and mildly sad.

[Holiday · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard the Crane Wife story on a Decemberists album ten years ago and I’m still haunted by the way violence and exploitation is so twisted up with love in that story. Cheri’s retelling is so beautiful, it’s still haunting but there’s real love here too between these two women, in spite of the violence of men. There’s hope.

[Shiva · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Blood in the thread” is a beautiful poetic and yet heartbreaking story of love and getting trapped in an abusive relationship. I enjoyed the poetic script which very well contributed to the theme. A masterful spin on the old story of the crane; and so the ending was sad and ambiguous for me. I had to reread it, so that I can learn what happens: heartbreaking in deed!)
4 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Dani Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is just sad even though they got together in the end because ms.famous crane reached her threshold for masochism.

No job is worth it for abuse and a farce relationship. And I sure hell don't think it's right to value it more than the only person who keeps you standing there.

3 stars.

[ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Today,” she says, “we are women who are actually cranes.”
The crane wife is supposed to fly away in the end, never to return.
“Today we are cranes because I say we are beautiful, beautiful cranes.”
Did you stop to wonder how the crane came to the man’s doorstep in the first place?
“Marry me,” you beg.
Did he shoot her out of the sky himself?

[Karen Elisabet · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And today we are cranes because I say we are beautiful, beautiful cranes"

My heart hurts a lot, such a beautiful story in just a few pages... Recommended for those who loved The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo!

[Tayler K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the dual thread of the original myth and the modern counterpart.

A little too vague and dreamy though. Put some substance on it.

[Amanda Hudgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

tw: domestic violence

Beautifully written, if a bit opaque.

[Marita_z · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, but to the point

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. A fine read but overwritten. A lot of the word count feels repetitive.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overwhelmingly beautiful. Such a delicate style of writing and unique characters!

I am speechless. This story will certainly haunt me for a while.

[Ellie Aerts · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Syeda Zainab Salam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly haunting and incredibly beautiful prose.

[Pers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a rather painful read, but excellent nonetheless.

[Constant Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over all interesting

[nizza · Rating 4 out of 5]

read here

[Şeyda · Rating 4 out of 5]

“These days, when you pull your skin apart in the name of love, you do not even feel the pain. You weave your story. You set it free.”