The hands left his hips, moved around front. His cock was caught and held tightly and then the hands began to stroke. Time became meaningless. Light and dark interchanged. He wasn't sure if the wings were moving, opening and closing, or if he imagined darkness and light within the wings as the hands stroked out the rhythm, faster and faster, the cock slid into him and pressed in and out until both Theo and his teacher caught their breath and the being pressed in, in, in while Theo gasped and twitched and everything he had ever known changed as he shot come onto the pearl white wings and the being inside him filled him with mystery.
When the wings parted he saw Ari first. She lay against the wall with her head cradled on the breast of a woman who lay beside her, a slender, long limbed being with midnight skin and raven's wings. Ari's ball of string was undone, wrapped a dozen times around her wrists and ankles. Her skin shone with sweat, a healthy gleam. She looked utterly content as she smiled up at Theo, completely naked and unconcerned. From behind him the Minotaur spoke.
"You have passed the test, solved the mystery of the labyrinth which is no more or less than the mystery of your souls." A pause, while the creature turned Theo and held his eyes. "You are released." No one ever returns from underground. No one. Ever. Theo rolled down the wall, legs spread out before him, jeans-clad once more. The jeans were shredded, but serviceable. Decent. The shirt he discarded. The Minotaur had torn it. Ari slowly unrolled the string from her ankles; Theo had freed her hands after the beings had departed, their wings moving together as they disappeared into the darkness.
Ari rolled the string into a ball, slowly, seeming to savor the feeling of it between her fingers, the way it spun off her ankles until she was free and even then she kept her ankles crossed together, as if recalling the feeling of being bound even as she was freed.
When the only piece of string that remained unbound was the strand that led back into the hallways, she stood reluctantly and held out a hand to help Theo to his feet. "I guess we go back," she said. Theo didn't speak. A pleasant ache spread through him, a quiet confusion and louder contentment. He couldn't see any reason to go back, or even to answer her. There was no reason not to be where they were.
Until Ari said, "There's no food here," and looked at him as if he'd spoken his desire to stay.
Theo's stomach rumbled on cue and he laughed. "No one ever returns from underground." He looked at her seriously. Others must have come this far before.
Ari shrugged. "Maybe no one has ever solved the maze before. We can only try." She winked at him and moved forward into the dimness, rolling the string up as she went, and Theo followed her. It took less time to go back than it had to go out in the first place. It always seemed that way on trips, especially when you didn't want to return. There were no landmarks, only repeating hallways, but they both knew they were getting close. Just before the last turn Ari reached out and took his hand and Theo, afraid and uncertain why, took it.
The others lay where they had fallen. Liam, beautiful Liam with the willowy thinness and sculptured muscle and perfect hair, lay face down on his laptop. Blood pooled under his body, spread to mingle with Kimmy's where she lay against a hallway wall, cell phone still trapped in her hand and a message repeating, tinny and strange, "We're sorry, but Gold Co cannot allow Silver Peak calls on this frequency. Please try your call again later."
Stephanie and Brad had fallen together. Maybe a last ditch effort to preserve the way of life they already knew. They were still co-joined where they lay together on the floor, the blood seeping out from between them and neither Theo nor Ari felt any need to discover where the blood came from. The others were dead; that was all. There was nothing more to be said. No one returns from underground anyway; there would be no questions in that regard.
Ari looked slowly at the others, then stiffened her shoulders and stepped away, held out a hand for Theo to join her. There was a future ahead of them, different from what they had ever expected for themselves.
They were leaving underground.
"Have we slain the Jabberwock?" Theo asked. He kept his back firmly turned toward the others and faced the elevators where he stood.
Ari gave the others one last look and turned to him. "We have bested the Minotaur," she said, "and we have slain our demons. That will have to be enough."
She pressed the button to call the elevator and they stood listening to the clanking of machinery as the car came, neither speaking, each lost in their own thoughts.
Passage
By Lawrence Barker Oha'i's smooth chest flexed as he lifted the cloth-wrapped body of King Wana. He fastened the corpse to his broad shoulders with a vine rope. Oha'i fingered the aluka shell necklace, the badge of slavery, about his neck. He glanced at old Coconut Skin, his master. (The old man's name was actually Hilananua, but his complexion made Oha'i secretly name him 'Coconut Skin'.) Despite Coconut Skin's age, the old man's eyes were as watchful as those of a nohu fish, skulking on the bottom to poison and devour whatever approached.
"Go now," Coconut Skin commanded. Oha'i checked the unlit torch at his waist. He glanced down the sacred cliff, so tall that a man thrown from the top would not strike bottom for many heartbeats. Oha'i grabbed the vine rope and slid down the cliff's sheer face.
Since the beginning, dead kings had been interred in lava tube caves. Proper burial was crucial, since death did not diminish a king's mana, the royal power. Disaster -- exactly what no one who knew would say -followed if someone removed a dead king's woodrose seedpod lei, all that held that mana in check. That was why the elders kept, except in the most general terms, the secret of a dead king's burial place. Oha'i snorted impatiently. With one king per cave, what would happen when the caves were exhausted? Let elders worry about such matters. A slave, like Oha'i, needn't care.
But old Coconut Skin had promised Oha'i his freedom. All Oha'i had to do was hide the royal remains in a particular cave on the cliff overlooking Laniki Bay. Freedom was as important to Oha'i as food or warmth. It had -- so far -- eluded him.
Halfway down the cliff, Oha'i paused at one of the few ledges overgrown with ferns. Oha'i gazed over the island that had been his home for the past nine years. The sun, a sinking orange flame, warmed his tired flesh. The next island's snow-covered mountain peaks teased him with their promise of cool relief. The pounding surf, where Oha'i had watched King Wana ride the waves in royal glory, formed an extended sigh. Images of the king, muscles bulging as the earth-bound god skimmed the waves, danced in Oha'i's mind. Once, Oha'i had even gotten close enough to smell King Wana's musky sweat. The King's nearness had left him giddy. But then the king's four wives -- three young men and one woman, the latter taken to secure an agreement with another island -- had descended and shooed him, just a young slave, away. But that would happen no more; King Wana had fallen from his board and drowned.
"Move your worthless bones!" Coconut Skin called from above, ending Oha'i's reverie. Oha'i glanced upward. Coconut Skin might wear mourning's traditional palm-leaf necklace, but the old man sounded more impatient than mournful. What else might one expect? King Wana ignored Coconut Skin when the old man spoke in council. In contrast, Kalamahi, King Wana's nephew, hung on Coconut Skin's every word. The island's dreaming kahuna, who always dreamed true, forecast that Kalamahi would wear the feathered royal robes after Wana's death. That settled matters -- Kalamahi would become king three days after King Wana's burial. Then Coconut Skin would number among the island's most powerful men.
With a sigh, Oha'i slid down the vine rope. The mouth of the selected cave was wide, but so low that Oha'i could barely crawl through ... if the sharp stones allowed that. Oha'i glanced at the other cave mouths. Several were large enough for him to stand upright.
Oha'i lowered himself to the next cave down. What would looking hurt? How many opportunities were there to examine the sacred burial caves, poised between sea and sky?
The stones about the lower cave's mouth were smooth, unlike those of its immediate neighbor's. The island's chill
breath poured from the cave's mouth in the form of a cooling breeze. The wind lapped the sun-beckoned sweat from Oha'i's skin. He shivered with pleasure. Oha'i made a decision. "I am at the proper cave mouth," he called up. What did his lie matter? Who would know the difference?
"Are you sure it's the right one?" Coconut Skin replied. The surf almost swallowed the old man's voice. "Absolutely," Oha'i lied again. He removed the hibiscus sticks and bundle of coconut fibers from his pouch and pulled himself out of the cave mouth's breeze. He wrapped the sticks in the coconut fibers and rubbed the sticks together. The fibers smoked, then burst into flame. Oha'i lit the torch and waved it about.
"Now hide the body so it will never be found." Coconut Skin ordered. "And I will be free?" Oha'i fingered his aluka shell necklace.
"I have so promised," Coconut Skin replied.
Oha'i shouldered King Wana's body. He slid down the vine rope. He slipped inside the cave.
The torch's flickering orange light revealed a black-walled lava tube, far more uneven than the cliff. Oha'i hefted the dead king. Torch in hand, he strode into the depths. As Oha'i left the sun's light behind, the sacred cave grew wider and taller. Firelight no longer reached the walls and ceiling. Eager, Oha'i raised the torch high. In the shadows lay twin heaps, clearly not part of the lava tube. Curiosity aroused, Oha'i approached for a better look.
One heap was a cloth bundle, identical to the one that contained King Wana's body. The other was a brown pouch of wrinkled skin, its bony knees curled to its perpetually screaming mouth. The firelight cast deep shadows in the empty pits of its eyes.
About the desiccated corpse's neck hung an aluka shell necklace. Oha'i staggered. Had slaves always hid dead kings and then been left to die? Oha'i dropped King Wana's body. He dashed back to the cave's mouth. The fading light showed that the vine rope still hung in place. Oha'i breathed a relieved sigh. His fears had been groundless.
Oha'i extinguished his torch. He stuck his head out and grasped the rope. "Is King Wana buried?" Coconut Skin shouted down.
"Yes," Oha'i shouted back. His words were almost true. He had left the body in the sacred cave.
Without a word, Coconut Skin cut the rope. It fell, leaving Oha'i holding a rope too short to do him any good.
Stranded, Oha'i screamed his shock and anger, calling Coconut Skin every loathsome name that occurred to him. After a bit, his voice grew hoarse.
Oha'i leaned against the cave wall. Was it better to curse his betrayer or to seek a way out? He relit the torch and headed back into the cave. Oha'i searched until the torch sputtered in dying flames. He had found only an opening from which the wind blew. That aperture, too small for Oha'i's hand, provided no escape route. Eventually, as Oha'i returned to King Wana and the bodies of the nameless king and slave, the torch flickered out. Darkness snapped shut.
For a few heartbeats, Oha'i felt utterly defeated. What hope did he have? Then a dark thought came. His hands trembled. Dare he commit such a crime? It would be the ultimate insult to the gods.
Oha'i's hands steadied, then became fists. Had any gods heard his prayers for freedom? Oha'i's lips twisted. "Disaster follows if a dead king's lei is removed?" he muttered. "Then let it."
Feeling his way to King Wana, Oha'i ripped away the wrapping. Oha'i's angry fingers closed about the woodrose lei, the charm that bound the beautiful dead king's mana. He tore the lei into tiny pieces. After a moment, Oha'i expended his fury. He sat beside the body. The cave's depths sheltered him from the sun and rain, but from its mouth, he would be able to see sky and sea. "Better to die beneath the stars." The moon, he reasoned, should have appeared, chasing the stars across the dark sky. Oha'i rose, intending to stumble through the darkness until he found the cave's mouth.
A hand grasped his ankle.
Oha'i's heart pounded. Panic took him. His only thought was of flight. Another hand reached up and pulled him down. The hands rose up over his body. A weight, hard and insistent, pinned him. Lips -- hard and smooth, like polished wood -- closed on Oha'i's throat. Something spear-point sharp brushed his skin. He tried to scream, but he could only produce a soft moan. He tried to struggle, but his arms and legs ignored his commands. The jagged-edge pain came again. A trickle of warm, sticky liquid ran down his neck. A tongue, hard and commanding, licked it away.
One of the grasping hands slid down his body. It stopped at his loincloth. Much to Oha'i's surprise, his ule, the center of his manhood, stood erect and solid. The lips slid down his chest and stomach, the sharpness just at -- but never quite crossing -- the threshold into pain. The fingertips traced a spiraling trail down over Oha'i's torso, each leaving a tingling trail of almost-pleasure.
Oha'i trembled. Had some god come to punish him? But, if so, why did the fingertips fill him with shivering anticipation instead of burning torment? And why did his ule grow harder by the moment?
Once again, Oha'i tried to escape. Once again, his body disobeyed. Only now he was not certain that he wanted to break free. The lips jumped from his stomach to his thighs. The tongue, hard and pulsing, drew tiny ascending circles inside his thighs. For an instant, the lips left Oha'i's flesh. A rock-hard finger plunged into Oha'i's mouth and then was removed. The finger, wet with his own saliva, slid down Oha'i's body. It pushed its way between his buttocks, deep into his pukah. There was an instant of pain, followed by a strange, pleasurable sensation.
Oha'i's paralysis suddenly ended. His extended hand felt a royal feathered crown atop the head of the body atop him. "King Wana?" Oha'i gasped, the image of the dead king's shapely torso dancing in his head. There was no response. Instead, the lips descended on his ule.
The finger in his pukah wriggled as the lips traversed his ule. Pressure built within Oha'i. Just as he thought he would explode, he felt the teeth behind the lips. The teeth barely suggested themselves -- Oha'i was not certain that he would call it pain. The sensation -- cutting and sharp, but still sweet as all the flowers of Laniki Bay's shores -- filled him with roiling pressure, such as he had never known. Could he stand more? Would his spirit flee the flesh, dispelled by delirious pleasure? Might he simply ride a wave of euphoria, a roaring tide of ecstasy, away into the darkness?
Oha'i cried out, with a roar of passion. The finger drove deeper into his pukah. Then came the tsunami.
Oha'i felt himself explode, spraying hot liquid flame into the encompassing lips. All the world -- the lava tube, Coconut Skin's betrayal, Oha'i's longing for freedom -- collapsed into a point of shimmering light.
Then the lips and the finger were gone. Oha'i trembled, the last echoes of pleasure echoing through his body. Without a word, the hands drug him to his feet. "King Wana?" he asked again.
The only answer was a sound like teeth penetrating flesh. Oha'i felt no pain. Had King Wana, for some unknown reason, bitten himself?
Then the hard lips forced themselves against Oha'i's mouth in a deep and pressing kiss. A syrupy liquid, like the thick red pulp of the pukiawe berry, only bitter and astringent, dripped from the lips into Oha'i's mouth. Oha'i coughed, choking. Every instinct commanded him to spit. The lips pressed tighter. The viscous fluid shifted within Oha'i's mouth, as though it were a worm. Moving of its own accord, the fluid crawled down his throat.
The hands released Oha'i from their grip. He collapsed. A jellyfish-pain ripped through him. Oha'i's entire body itched. Waves of heat tossed within him. The darkness' very character changed, as though Oha'i's eyesight had adapted to the cave's perpetual night. Oha'i saw his surroundings -- the walls of the lava tube, the burnt remnants of his torch, the dead slave -only in colors for which he had no name.
Then he saw what loomed over him and realized why its flesh had felt hard, like polished wood. A skeletal figure, with limbs that were as small and skin as dry as the dead slave's, towered over Oha'i. A wound on its lower lip dripped a thick fluid, as viscid as cooling lava.
Neither the figure's faded crown nor its thick, but still rock-hard, lips could draw Oha'i's attention from its serrated shark-te
eth.
"King Wana?" Oha'i moaned. Could this be desiccated horror be the beautiful king?
Then Oha'i saw the bundle that he had carried, untouched. Beside it lay the other burial bundle's shredded remains. The mouth of the skeletal figure -- the ancient king that Oha'i had awakened when he destroyed its binding lei -- opened. Words emerged, in a voice like the roar before the volcano explodes in red fury. "Your mana is great," the ancient king said. "Otherwise, the fluid, the life I took from you would not have been sufficient for my needs."
"But I am a slave," Oha'i protested. "Not of royal lineage. I have no mana." The ancient king made a rough sound that might have been laughter. "Mana is mana, regardless of lineage. Most are destined to rot in the earth, or to feed the fishes. A few non-royals possess sufficient mana to take their place among the gods." The ancient king's face twisted into a mask as fearsome as that of Ku, god of battles. "I have placed your feet on that path. The rest is up to you."
"How?" Oha'i's voice trembled. "What do I do?"
"You will know, or you will not," the ancient king replied. "If not, this island suffers for your ignorance." Then he turned to stride away, back toward the lava tube's depths.
Oha'i shivered as though he had plunged into a clear stream running down from a high mountain. Then he grew even colder. Being alone seemed unbearable. Even the shark-toothed king's company was preferable. "Don't leave me," Oha'i moaned.
"Then join me among the gods," the ancient king replied. Then he vanished into the lava tube's depths.
Oha'i tried to rise. His feet buckled under him. Why, he asked himself, had the ancient king vanished back into an empty cave's depths? The cave spun around. The pain grew worse. Consciousness fled. Oha'i woke. How much time had passed? Why had sleeping on the bare stone not left him stiff and sore? And why could he now see (although colors had grown even stranger than they had been moments ago) as clearly in the cave's darkness as if at noon? He did not know.
Myths Page 7
