Shadow And Light

by K. R. R. Bridgstreet

  Jurad began to recognize the clan’s songs as they came closer. He felt his stomach tighten and his heart speed at the memory. As a child, he had witnessed clan Sakaki once with his father when they arrived into his own clan’s canyon. They danced their dance of lights, and with their insistent, joyful song, they had coaxed even the most reserved from their homes to join in their celebration. Jurad had only been eight at the time, and his one vivid memory was of a lovely young woman who made eye contact with him in the middle of an intricate dance.

  Bells were sewn all over her blue and silver dress, and the tinkling sound was reminiscent of the songs he heard when flash floods receded from the canyon, leaving slow, trickling streams behind for a few moments before the sun and earth consumed them. The thought of her smile made him hard, and he quickly averted his thoughts to his current decision. He wondered if an interaction with the clan Sakaki would be acceptable to the council. He had been directed to avoid human contact until he experienced his vision. “Bloody feet,” he swore, and he began to search among the rocks for a place to hide while they passed.

  “Where are you headed, stranger?”

  Jurad started and turned toward a voice that came from behind him. He looked for its source, squinting against the sun. “Hello?” he called. “Is someone there?” He used his hand to shade his face as he moved his eyes over the crop of rocks that stretched out above him and into the foothills.

  “I’m here!” the voice said, and a woman hopped down startlingly quick from a tall boulder only twenty feet away from him.

  Remembering his perpetual hard on, he turned his body away from her and pretended to search through his pack. He tried desperately to fill his thoughts with images of festering wounds, his grandmother...anything to relieve the tension in his groin. He found his water and took a large swallow, finally turning to look upon the stranger.

  “Water?” he offered, and stretched his skin toward her. All his efforts at control immediately failed him when she smiled and took the skin from his hand. Her full pink lips framed straight, white teeth. She had the same warmth behind her smile as the woman in his memory. Bronzed golden from the sun, dirt streaked her cheeks and forehead, probably from climbing over the boulders, but the dirt only worked to enhance her smooth features. Her tan skin set off bright, close-cropped blonde hair that drank in the sunlight. When he met his green eyes with her blues—and Gods, were they blue!—his breath left him. He held his pack in front of his waist and felt his cheeks grow hot.

  “Do I know you?” he asked stupidly.

  “We are all brothers and sisters in spirit, my friend,” she said, and handed the skin back to him. He took it and stood there, wondering if that meant she wanted him to think of her as his sister. That thought finally took care of his perpetual boner. The lovely woman laughed at what must have been a very confused expression, and the sound of it made him smile. He had never seen someone who looked so genuinely happy. Her face seemed to dance with it as she turned it toward the sun.

  “My name is Kara,” she said.

  “I’m Jurad,” he replied, relieved that he didn’t stumble over those simple words. Now he knew the council would not approve of this meeting. His time in solitude was instrumental in inducing the vision that would help him aid his clan. Guilt impelled his next words, “I am in the middle of a vision quest, and I should not be speaking with you.”

  “Am I interrupting your vision, Jurad?” she asked seriously.

  “No, Kara. I have not found my vision yet.”

  She smiled again, “But what if I am your vision?”

  Jurad found himself smiling back at her. “You have a point,” he said, and his grin became wider. How was he supposed to know what his vision looked like? The shadowed council was so bloody secret with the details of this rite that it was a miracle anyone came back from their quest. He had to return having met and counseled with a spirit guide who would instruct him how to best serve his people.

  Could his guide be this young woman, with her enveloping smile? He imagined running his fingers through that short, bright blonde hair and tracing a finger around her perfect earlobe. Earlobe? Good Gods, Jurad had been alone for a very long time.

  He reached up and touched his own earlobe, fingering the spot on the back where he knew his diamond-shaped birthmark showed on his skin. His mother used to tell him the mark made him special, so he would wear his hair over his ears to cover it. If there was anything Jurad didn’t want, it was to be considered different or special. Then he’d never get laid.

  Jurad, still a young man, had reached his twentieth nameday three weeks ago. That morning he left on his quest with nothing but a pack holding a skin of water, a blanket, and a knife. The rite seemed silly to him, a relic of an ancient past that was no longer relevant in an age when the Conservatory over the mountains had discovered the secrets of the stars.

  But he respected his elders, and he owed his clan, and he did not want to disappoint them. When he returned from his quest, he planned to journey to the Conservatory and ask the Chancellor for admission. Only three times in the clan’s memory had an aspiring student made the journey and succeeded in gaining access to the school; such was the length of the journey and the disadvantage of the western border clans.

  The clans had their own songs, and they often did not appeal to the refined and perfect music of the eastern lands. Jurad had no idea if they already knew his water songs, but he was determined to find out. It was known, though, that the approaching clan Sakaki originated in the east, and their songs were offshoots of his revered eastern harmonies. Jurad began to believe the Gods truly did send Kara to him.

  Kara reached once more for Jurad’s water skin, and he gladly handed it over. “Why don’t you rest with us this evening?” she asked. “Tonight is the summer solstice, and it’s a full moon. If there is any night that will induce visions, tonight is it.” Jurad could not think of any polite way to refuse—he could barely think at all while Kara looked at him—so he just smiled and nodded, making what he guessed to be an affirming sound.

  They walked together toward the gathering of clan Sakaki. The clan had stopped their wanderings in the middle of the valley, still at least a mile away. Framed by the Two Mountains Standing, they looked like nature’s own family reunion. Bees soared around Jurad and Kara, their tiny black legs stopping to quiver in pools of yellow pollen, as the two traversed the meadows together toward that milling collective of blue and silver clad people. Their combined efforts radiated the heat and intensity of the longest day of the year.

  As they walked, Kara told him of the shadow dance, a farewell to the sun they performed each year on the evening of the summer solstice. She said that tonight, since the moon was full, they would perform the dance without their traditional lights and garb.

  “We will shine in the moonlight alone,” she said, and she smiled down at her blue linen vest that carried her clan’s sigil, the full moon. She wore her vest open over a white shirt that flowed loosely around her waist. Tall leather walking boots reached the bottoms of her thighs over tight brown leggings. Her shirt was unbuttoned just enough so that he could see her cleavage. She looked strong and athletic. He made himself avert his eyes and asked her about the dance.

  “We have been performing it each year since I can remember,” Kara said. “No matter where we are, we rest on the solstice, have a simple dinner, and then dance through the night. Most of the women in our clan lose their virginity on a solstice night. Such is the energy of our hot summer sun, and with a full moon, our clan’s power rises to its peak.” She said these words without a hint of embarrassment. Jurad took this as an opening.

  “So, did you lose your virginity on a solstice night, Kara?” He couldn’t believe he just asked her that. She was going to slap him, he knew.

  Amazingly, she answered without pause. “No, not yet. I’m only eighteen. Typically women wait until they reach their twentieth year. The elders counsel us that if we start any earlier, we would be too distr
acted to learn the clan’s dances.” At this, she laughed. Jurad let loose a nervous exhalation that was part laugh, part choke. He had never been with a woman except in his fantasies. His friends had begun to pester him in earnest about his sexual conquests.

  Those guys seemed to have had many, and it was all they talked about anymore, but Jurad always put them off with mumbles about “a gentleman never tells...” He felt like a child. All he could think about lately was sex. And Kara, this beautiful woman, now talked candidly with him about her own feelings about sex. His breath was coming in short, rapid bursts now, and his heart beat insistently behind his own white linen shirt. He noticed he had left it hanging open to the waist today, with the bottom tucked into his loose walking pants. He swore he caught Kara checking out his chest and abdomen. He’d left his shirt open, knowing the hard life of a farmer had molded him a strong body. He took this as another sign that fate had brought him to this moment.

  Jurad was relieved when they arrived in the center of the valley mid-afternoon, where the clan had begun to set up camp. He saw men and women hauling water from a nearby stream to boil over several blazing fires. Kara took his hand and led him to one of these fires, motioning for him to sit down. With a squeeze of her hand, she turned and went to attend to some unnamed duty. He was disappointed to see her go.

  He watched her hips move as she walked away, and then she stopped to speak with a woman, motioning her hands in his direction. The woman turned toward him and smiled, even offering a little wave.

  “Have some stew!” she yelled, and then she and Kara moved away together.

  Despite the heat of the day, the thought of a warm stew was comforting and sustaining. As he cast his eyes around for a way to serve himself dinner, a group of men approached, one of whom handed him a small wooden bowl with one hand as he reached out his other to shake Jurad’s. They were in high spirits, and after they all introduced themselves, they sat and ate their stew, asking questions of Jurad and his journey.

  Laughter rang through the camp, drifting on the light evening breeze intermittently from campfires in every direction. The sound of a mandolin made its lazy way through the laughter. The men opened a cask of wine, and as they lost themselves in conversation, an unmistakable expectant energy leapt through them. Night began to fall.

  The men around the fire told him a few more details of the shadow dance at Jurad’s urging. Each year, they danced from sunset to sunrise the night of the solstice, to thank the sun for its heat, and to hasten the shade of the long shadows of late summer. Part of the ritual, they said, would be to ingest a single drop of moonflower extract. As a visitor, he could not participate, but each of the clan members taking part in the ritual would take the hallucinogen. Jurad briefly wondered about his safety. A large group of people surrounded him, and they were about to shoot the moon. He figured they had to know what they were doing. The clan regarded the tradition with anticipation, and even more tonight, Jurad thought, since the appearance of the full moon only happened once every thirty years on the solstice.

  Running into a band of gypsies was not an unheard of occurrence in this part of the world, especially with the people over the mountains spending all their resources on teaching their children music. The beauty of music overwhelmed Jurad, and he loved and pursued it, but for these people, music was life. He fidgeted, drawing with a stick in the dirt as he sat on his log, waiting. Jurad’s eagerness to hear their music rivaled his desire to see Kara naked.

  He looked up and watched the full moon rise over the mountains. He began to know the moon as a presence, a watching friend, as did the people around him. He felt a thrill of expectation course up his spine as he watched and waited. The moon was up, and the sun was almost gone.

  At the moment the sun dipped below the horizon, he witnessed a spectacular disrobing of at least thirty young Sakaki men and women, including Kara. He had been sitting by the fire, gazing at its hypnotizing flames, when with the last rays of the sun a quiet hum rose around him. This music had the feeling of unreality—not of death, but of dreams.

  He raised his eyes to see after images of flame and darkness obscuring the clan people as they each stood and took up the tone of the general humming. When all were standing, they took off their clothes and dropped them carelessly on the ground. He got up to move several times, as he felt like an intruder in the middle of their ceremony, but several smiling naked bodies encouraged him to sit down with a brief motion of the hand. He sat, then, and watched each of the dancers approach a pale naked woman. She was round as an apple all over, and she dispensed an armload of moonflower stalks.

  The woman handed the dancer closest to her one flower. Quivering, she tipped its open petals to her lips. What came from the flower’s cup looked like it could have been more than just one drop of extract, but he wasn’t close enough to be certain. When each of the clan members had received their moonflower, the woman stood with two flowers left in her hands. She turned and caught Jurad’s gaze, then motioned him to her.

  Jurad hesitated. The men told him he would not be allowed to join this ritual because he was an outsider, but it seemed as if this hallucinogen dispensing woman had come to him like the vision fairy. He would have his vision tonight and travel home tomorrow.

  Feeling confident and relieved, he stood and walked to the woman. She waited, still and imposing, holding a flower in one outstretched hand. Her sweet smile calmed him further.

  He took the flower, raised it in salute, and upended it into his mouth. The scent of the flower’s secretions was thick and the taste inebriating. Her smile broadened to show cute crooked teeth, and she mimicked his gesture and drank.

  She then said simply, “Disrobe,” and walked away.

  He watched her big, broad hips sway, keeping an easy rhythm with the crowd’s song. Embarrassed by his new erection, he resisted taking off his pants, but then hands reached around his waist and undid his belt for him.

  He turned, and Kara stood there, smiling and grabbing again for his pants. He moved his hips away from her, but too late. He felt her hand brush against his hard dick, and it became more visible through his trousers. Kara’s smile became wicked. She reached again for his pants, and this time he let her. She stripped them off in several hard jerks, and then she grabbed his hand and led him toward the firelight.

  “Auohmm...” the dancers’ humming grew louder, and Kara’s voice joined in. He felt compelled to do the same. In the instant his mouth opened and released the wind of his voice, the ground fell away beneath him like a spark from a flame, and the air he breathed seemed to lift him up with it. He looked down, onto the fire. Uncomprehending, he saw the voices around him growing as shadows from their hosts. He shouted at them to stop singing, but he only heard a low ringing in a sea of silence.

  His ears popped and he was back on the earth, standing next to the fire, his skin hot and sweat-soaked. His naked body stood stiff in the firelight. He didn’t dare turn and look at the dancers behind him. Their humming had become full-throated singing, sounds that reverberated off the mountains. He could hear them inside his mind, and he plugged his ears and dropped as his knees buckled. He kept feeling the sensation of dropping after his knees struck the earth. Dark humus held his legs and he felt it packing tighter around him.

  He glanced around to see if anyone had pushed him, but no one was near. Those he did see were several feet away, but these people didn’t seem to notice Jurad. A woman had also sunk to her knees, but she was clearly in control. Her mouth gripped a young man’s cock, and she directed it down her throat while she let another man enter her from behind.

  The men were singing, noises not of human creation, but stolen from the animus of the planet, an auditory translation of stored and passed energy. He noticed his hand had strayed to his own cock as he watched the frenzy of lust in front of him, and though a heavy weight of dirt trapped his legs, he thought only of sliding his length inside one of the three Sakaki he was watching, or all three of them.

  H
e lay back, and he saw the full moon blazing down on him. On it appeared the face of his lovely moonflower goddess, or so he came to understand the beautiful spirit that had beckoned him to this plane. He watched as a reel replayed the scene of her hips and ample ass swaying as she walked away from him, and he groaned.

  Above him appeared a young woman’s face. He was annoyed that she blocked his view of the woman’s ass, but once he refocused his vision and truly saw her, he smiled and joined the singing again. The lovely woman named Kara removed Jurad’s hands from his own cock and placed them on her small and pert breasts. She bent down over him and rubbed her wetness over the length of his cock.

  The nerves in his sex lit up and sent energy streaking through him. He suddenly heard nothing but his own heart beating in his ears. She then rose and danced away from him. His complete bafflement was only matched by the surprise he felt a moment later, when another woman positioned herself over his stiffness and rubbed herself against him. This happened again, and many more times. His cock was slippery with the lubrication of at least ten different women. He wanted to be inside someone, anyone. He had never felt so big and hard, and he needed to feel a wet cunt stretched out over his hard dick. His need completely enveloped him.

  The singing was growing louder now, and the women came more quickly. He looked up, and instead of the beautiful faces of the women of clan Sakaki, he saw empty darkness. He closed his eyes. His cock still pulsed and vibrated with the lust of these last moments, and he continued to respond to the women’s quick movements. He opened his eyes and once more saw that the women’s faces had disappeared, and they were consumed by shadow. God, he wanted to fuck one of these shadows. He wanted to live inside their blackness.