I wonder why Tom is looking at me as he speaks, instead of Teddy. He seems to be waiting more for my nod than for Teddy’s. I nod in a rusty, reluctant way. I feel faintly giddy, I notice abstractedly that my heart is pounding. Too close, we are getting too close to truth, and the truth Tom must never have is that the brown man was my imaginary friend before he was Teddy’s. I wonder briefly at this shared insanity, the common delusion, is it genetic, have I passed my defects on to my son, and then my body is rising, my voice is asking Tom, “More coffee, dear?” and Teddy is escaping to the living room, flashing away like the little silver fish in the stream flash away from his fingers.
“Yeah, please,” Tom answers, and then calls after Teddy, “So we going haying tomorrow, or what? Something to think about is this. Haying only happens once in a while, and it’s kind of fun, even if it is work. You might not want to miss it.”
“I’ll go haying,” Teddy says, and shoots me an oblique glance. Tom does not miss it. His eyes grip mine for a minute, and I see hurt in them, but I dare not wonder what it is that gives him pain.
They are up and off early the next morning, a brown bag of sandwiches and brownies clutched in Teddy’s hand, Teddy’s other hand clutched in Tom’s. “Don’t forget to check my pony and other stuff,” Teddy calls back to me. I nod reluctantly. I should not check his “other stuff” but already I know I will.
I do each dish carefully, ignoring the hammering of my heart. I try not to think that today I am alone, that today no one will notice if I slip away. I won’t stay long, I promise myself as I shake Houdini’s grain into its bucket. He comes at a gallop, whiffles up his grain, and then plods off disgustedly when neither more grain nor Teddy appear. The feed shed is dark and cool as I put the bucket away. There are goose bumps on my arms, and a shiver in the pit of my belly. When I come out, the strong sunshine strikes right through my clothes and warms my skin instantly. It is a perfect day, warm, with a small hint of wind. A beautiful day. I keep wiping nervous smiles from my face. I make myself do all my chores before I go.
In the few short weeks since I showed him the way, Teddy’s feet have worn what was scarcely a rabbit trail into a recognizable footpath. With every step I take, there is more spring in my knees, and my heart grows lighter. I don’t notice when I start running, it is only when I am standing by the stream, catching my breath, that I realize how I have hurried. I crouch to palm cool water up to my mouth, and then straighten and glance around. It annoys me vaguely that he is not here waiting for me, even though there is no way he could have known I would come today.
After I drink, I sit down on the bank to wait. Hurrying here has made me sweaty. I pluck my shirt away from my body, let cooler air slip up under it. The day is clear and still and warm, humming with tiny lives. The sun is bright on the moving water. I stare at it for too long, close my eyes to stop their watering. I lie back, putting my head into cool shade while leaving my body in the dappling sunlight. A bird calls, distant and sweet. Another answers it, echoing the melodious challenge. I breathe deeper, feel myself starting to drift on the slow spirals of midmorning sleep.
When I scent him, I am too deep in relaxation to react. I lie still, feeling the sun, the air, the damp of the moss beneath me, breathing him with the other earthy smells of the forest. I know when he reaches the clearing, I can feel him looking at me, and it makes my skin tingle and tighten to know his eyes are on me. He breathes across his pipes, a trailing scale as I open my eyes to him. The sun is too bright at first, he is no more than a dark silhouette, horned head atop muscular shoulders, against the brightness of the sky behind him. I lift an arm, peer up at him from the sheltering shadow of my forearm. He grins at me, teeth so white against his tanned face. I smile up at him.
He stoops to take my hands and pull me to my feet. It is not a day for talking, I know that instinctively. There is nothing to say in words, anyway. This is one of those days stolen from the dream time, when he will lead and I will follow, without question. Like crossing a line, I enter his world to abide by his rules, to see with his eyes. One of his hands keeps hold of my hand. The other hand is for his pipes. He breathes across them lightly, almost inaudibly as he draws me off into the forest, a different path this time, one that follows the water upstream.
We walk beside the stream for a way, and as we follow it uphill, the forest walls close over us, roofing us with the shade of the trees that arch over the stream to tangle their branches over our heads. The stream is a strong, steady flow of water, cutting its own trail down the hill. In places we are walking through a ravine, and several times it gets so narrow that we walk in the stream itself. He breathes over his pipes, echoing the susurrus of the water over gravel, and when it makes me smile, his fingers tighten on mine. He has not even needed to turn back to see my face, but now he does. He pulls my captive hand around him, hooks it on his goat-haired hip, and then, both hands free, begins to play the day for us. He plays it sweet and long, almost sleepy in the dappling of bright light and cool shade. We are walking in the stream again. I envy Pan the way the cold water beads off his hairy ankles. My sneakers are soaked and squishy, my wet jeans slap against my ankles when the channel of the stream finally widens and we are able to walk beside it again. My arm is still around him. I walk in the circle of his scent and warmth.
I am beginning to see beaver sign, the gnawed stumps and nibbled trees. When I look up, I see sunlight ahead of us, and suspect what it is he has to show me. He breaks off his playing, lets his pipes fall to dangle from the thong around his neck and bounce against his bare chest. He takes my hand again and hurries me from the shadowy forest into the open clearing of gnawed stumps, to the place where the stream sings and gurgles from the dam.
The dam is a wonder of natural engineering. Twigs and branches thrust in every direction, grasses and small plants grow from the soil trapped in every nook and cranny. So disorganized and so perfectly constructed. It cradles a beaver pond of blue sky and reflected trees, of tall reeds and the arrowhead trail across the water that shows where someone has just dived to escape the scrutiny of intruders. I know from experience that life will cluster and thrive around a pond such as this. It is a biological maxim that the greater the variety of life in an area, the more niches there are for other life forms. This beaver dam and pond are like the hub of a wheel that spreads out in all directions, beckoning life, providing a place for frogs and fish and insects to lay eggs in the still, warm water, nesting sites for water birds, and good hunting for foxes and coyotes. Here deer can come to water, and hawks can get a clear shot at the mice and moles that make their narrow paths through the grasses of the meadows. And the beavers are the custodians of this ecosystem, opening their dam to release water, building it higher, cutting back trees to open the meadow. I feel dizzy thinking about it, like a kid looking down at a carnival with all its random clockwork movement and music and teeming life.
We explore. Tiptoeing gingerly across the top of the dam itself, balancing like acrobats on the high wire. Skirting the edges of the pond past a heliport of dragon-flies and darning needles, sending a flotilla of frogs launching themselves into the water, until I give in and take off my sneakers and socks, and knot the laces so I can sling them over my shoulder. Then we wade together, bare legs and goat legs, out into the lukewarm water, sending pollywogs and fingerlings scattering into the reed-choked recesses of the pond. We emerge to find the green bones of a winter-kill deer, and birds’ nests right on the ground or woven into the low bushes. A wasps’ nest sends us both floundering back into the water, which is suddenly deeper than I expect. From knee deep to hip deep is but one step, and as I lose my balance I see his grin and know he has known all along I’d end up soaked. I go under, the water closing tea-brown over my head. I struggle back up, spitting and blowing. The water is thick with plant life, carpeted with tiny single leaves with trailing white roots, or clusters of flat green leaves and waxy yellow spatterdock flowers. It all seems to cling to me as I gain my feet. Water streams dow
n my face from my hair and the plants clinging in it. I reach out a hand for him to help me out, then set my feet and drag him in. He ducks me as he goes down, and we both surface spluttering and gasping at the coldness of the deeper water. When we wade out, we are both festooned with plants and shivering despite the heat of the day. One sock has come out of my shoes, and I see it float merrily away on the invisible current of the pond.
We retreat from the pond until the meadow sod is dry and firm underfoot, and then sit down, neck deep in the tall grass. I drag my hair forward over my shoulder and wring it out. Pan helpfully lifts a dangling strand of duckweed from my hair. A long green beard of algae drapes his shoulder. I wipe it away, fluff tiny leaves from his hair. His fingers deftly pluck clinging watercress plants from my shirt. His touch is lighter than a tickle, and combines with my damp clothes to send shivers running up my back. When he finishes, he lies back in the meadow sun, closing his eyes to the sky. I flop back beside him to let the sun bake the wet from my clothes. I cushion my head on one crooked arm and stare at him as he dozes. The wet curls of his hair spring up as they dry in the sun. His lips are very slightly ajar as he breathes deeply and evenly. Magic and forest and animal all, myth and archetype and friend of my childhood. He is better than anything Edmund Dulac or Kay Nielsen ever drew. I love all of him, hoof to horns, every graceful line of muscle, the unguarded awkwardness of his sleeping sprawl. Watching him, I doze off, more safe and content than I have been in a long while.
From being truly asleep I pass to a stage where I am dreaming the light fingers on the buttons of my shirt, and then to a place where I am achingly aware of their every touch, of the hushed breathing of his open mouth as he leans over me, but I do not stir, I refuse to admit I am awake. As long as I am asleep like this, then this is a thing he is doing to me, something I don’t have to decide about. He lays my shirt open as precisely as if he were doing a dissection. As he leans forward over me, I feel his shadow blotting the sun from my closed eyes. His lips graze my eyelids, settle on my mouth. I lift a hand, put it against his shoulder, wanting but knowing I must not have this. I push him away.
But the day is too warm, the smell of his musk too sweet, his mouth too knowing. He simply braces himself against my hand, uses it for support as he smells my flesh, and then tastes it, a cautious lapping of warm tongue. Heat bursts in me, and I want him as I have never wanted anything else. I lie back, my breath coming hard, let him do whatever he wishes.
He does not make love like a man. A human. I am aware of this as he fumbles with clothing catches any man would know, as he takes as great a pleasure in scenting me as in touching me. The knowledge that this person who nuzzles at my breasts is not even of my own species builds in me, creating tiny discords in the thrumming melody he plays upon my body. I put my hand on the back of his head, draw his mouth to mine, kiss him deeply to try to drown my uneasiness in him, but my fingers find the hardness of his horns, the knurled bases of them hidden in his hair. This is not a man at all. The musky smell of him is all around us, he rubs against me anointing my skin with his scent. That is the act of a beast, wrong and foreign, but the smell of him is compelling, rich and spicy and good, so good, I know as long as I ever breathe it I will desire him. It is like catnip to a cat, this scent, and I rub against him, for all the world like a cat in heat. He touches me as I have never been touched, awakening instinctive reactions I did not know I had. Making me respond like an animal. Coarse-haired beast legs are parting my thighs. Sex with an animal. A goat. The thought jolts my eyes open even as his goat legs are kneeling, bending in the wrong direction between my pale hairless legs. His hovering penis is not a man’s.
Revulsion jolts me as it nudges at my flesh, and my belly muscles jump like a frog as I jerk away from him. Panicky, shaking, “No!” I say, as hard brown hands hook over my shoulders and force me down again. For one terrifying instant I think he will defy me, will hold me down with his greater strength and plunge inside me regardless of my denials, be the animal I am seeing. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he remains poised over me, holding me down, yes, but touching me only with his hands. I look up into his face, try to read him. And for once his forest-deep eyes are not a closed place, he is not hiding in their depths. He looks deep inside me and his own eyes drag me into their depths, back through a hundred days and times we have been together, and I suddenly see that every day, every moment spent with him was a countdown to this day, this moment, this act. There is no animal in his deep eyes, at least no more than in my own. There is only Pan and whatever he is, not man, not beast, but his own faun self as I have always known him and the wordless promises we have repeated to each other a thousand times. Whatever he is, he is more like me than any other creature I have ever encountered. Our kinship goes too deep to be denied by dissimilar bodies. We know each other too well for any wall to stand. Whatever we do here is beyond the rules of any of our kinds. It is ours. The doubts are gone, leaving only the need.
I put my hands on the slim goat haunches and pull him toward me. His hide is silky, the muscles beneath the hair hard, my hands slide on his pelt, I cannot get a good grip. He calmly resists, making me admit this is my own demanding I am satisfying. No graceful way to give in and simply let him proceed. This has to be my own doing. I give in, and tug harder at him, digging for a grip with my nails, and still he holds back. I glare up at him, frustrated and angry at his delay—is he mocking my need?—to find him smiling down on me. It is not, his smile seems to say, so grim a thing as I am making it. No earthshaking decision, no cataclysmic action. It is, after all, only mating, and the summer world around us is alive with the sounds of other lives doing as we are doing. The humming of the insects, the songs of the birds, the croaking of the frogs, this is what all those songs are about. We have come to a center of a circle of life, and in this place, this thing is to be done. There is no hurry, we have the whole day. His mouth comes down on mine, sweet as flowers, pungent as herbs, warm as summer. I give myself up to it, ignore the angry buzzing of an insect by my ear, ignore even the sharp jab of its stinger in my bared shoulder, so caught up in the touch of my mate that the penetration of the animal’s stinger is lost. Pan slips into me, warm, wet, and the surging goat hips beneath my hand, the rasping of the coarse hair of his legs against my inner thighs as he plunges and butts against me, are all as it should be, all as I always knew it would be.
SIXTEEN
* * *
The day is cooling. I shiver and shift, trying to get more of me under the warm weight of his body. Vaguely I am aware that we have both fallen asleep in the act of coupling, how rude of me, I think, smiling, for we are still limply joined, he is as contented as I am. Even as I shift under him he is aware of me, his grip on me tightens, and his new arousal seems instantaneous. I feel him swelling against me yet again. Some part of me knows that tomorrow I am going to be very, very sore, but I pay no attention to that as I reach my mouth to his. He starts a very lazy rhythm, sex for sleepyheads on a sunny day, a slow reciprocation that brings us both languorously and effortlessly to total satiation.
He collapses heavily onto me, and “Off,” I grunt ungraciously, poking him gently in the short ribs.
“Make up your mind,” he replies, but eases himself off to one side, allowing me to take a deep breath again.
I pillow my head on his hard shoulder, speak into his neck. “I’m going to have mosquito bites all over.”
“Probably,” he concurs. His voice sounds sleepily satisfied, but when I look up into his face, his eyes are open and alert, deeply pleased about something.
“What?” I demand.
“It’s funny. It’s always better than you remember it, but you only remember that about it afterward. And”—he turns his face to me—“it will only keep getting better and better.” He kisses me, mutters into my mouth, “Though first times have a very special charm of their own.”
I am not pleased, either to be compared to others, or to be given a sales pitch. He senses this
through my silence. After a moment he adds quietly, “Though perhaps my opinion of my performance isn’t shared?”
I think he is being sarcastic. I pull back, glance warily at his face. There is genuine uncertainty in his eyes. “No lovemaking has ever left me feeling like this,” I tell him, and he does not mistake my meaning. “I just don’t like to be reminded there have been others before me.”
“Um,” he says, and his eyes go soft and unfocused, meandering through his own thoughts as I wonder where and when and who else he has held.
“Not for several generations,” he muses aloud.
“What?”
“Racial memory,” he tells me, smugly superior. “Something your people only speculate about. But, looking back, I can recall that not for several generations in my line has there been such a mating. And even then,” he adds wickedly, “I don’t think my ancestor did as well his first time as I have done today.”
There is too much in his words for me to digest it quickly. Racial memory? Sharing the memories of your ancestors? The “your people” acknowledging aloud that we are different from each other, putting up a tiny wall. I gloss past that, consider the rest. “This is the first time you’ve made love,” I say slowly.
He shrugs, jogging my head on his shoulder. “In this body, yes. But I’ve the expertise of the ages. Shall I show you?” Tanned brown fingers skate down my body, lazily circle one of my breasts.
Cloven Hooves Page 21
