All right, nothing wrong with making it solemn high.
He strapped a belt around his waist, searched for his most impressive jeweled sword, and strode forth into the night, his woman to win.
Outside, he looked up at the string of moons across the sky, paused, and knelt, looking up at me. “May I be gentle and cherish her and bring her joy and pleasure.”
Not bad, fella, I’m on your side. If you hurt her, I’ll zap you, and my machine and I are pretty good at zapping these days.
They both knew what was happening and accepted it, a danger, a thrill, an opportunity. I loved them both. Flawed, arrogant, stupid, they still had courage and flair.
And curiosity.
My grace maybe kicked some of the hormones in their bodies into motion, but only to push them in a direction they both wanted to go anyway.
That’s what I told myself later when it all seemed to fall apart.
Why didn’t I make them leave their weapons home?
Well, they were warriors and warriors carry weapons. Moreover, it was not perfectly safe that deep in the woods at night, not with all the weirdos I’d observed earlier. Finally, I was too dumb to realize that in that culture, which I knew pretty well by now, a weapon can be dangerous on a night of love.
11
The Feast of the Three Moons
Humming Lenrau’s theme, B’Mella arrived at the shore of the tiny jewel of a lake. She strolled in, found a lantern, flicked it on, and glanced around in astonishment.
“That little demon.” She laughed. “Everything ready for a night of love. A bit too much scent, but how could a child know that … she will be my ilel now, too.” A happy laugh.
She cast off her shawl, considered herself in the mirror, and nodded approvingly, a lovely erotic invitation on a spring night. She reached under her brief gown, removed her vicious little dagger, and placed it on the window flap. Then she donned the shawl again, making herself look fragile and defenseless. No doubt just then she was both, and despite her self-satisfaction with her physical attractiveness, scared stiff.
She looked out of the window, admiring the glow of the multiple moons—puny little rocks by the standard of our moon—on the glassy lake, resumed her humming of Lenrau’s theme, and drummed her fingers impatiently on the fabric of the houseboat.
She frowned. If he didn’t show up, he would be in serious danger. I was playing with fire, taking outrageous chances in my naïve attempt to be Cupid in this hate-filled world.
The door panel was pushed aside, and Lenrau entered, resplendent in red and gold. Both of them hesitated, as though they were astonished at each other’s presence.
“What evil are you about now, foul-smelling whore?”
“This is my land. What are you doing here?” she demanded fiercely. “Seeking another woman to ravage like poor N’Rasia?” She reached for her dagger. “I will be a less easy victim.”
What the hell.
She charged at him like a safety blitz for the Chicago Bears, head down, dagger thrust in front of her.
He dodged away from her charge, barely escaping the thrust of the deadly blade, and swung his sword with a mighty sweep which, if she had not fallen away, would have taken off her lovely head in a fraction of a second.
I came to my senses.
STOP THIS NONSENSE, I demanded.
They paid no attention.
She jumped up, ducked under his second swing, and thrust the knife at his chest, knocking the sword out of his hand with her arm as she charged him. He twisted away at the last moment, pulled her to the floor, and bent her knife hand back so that the point of the blade was at her throat. Slowly he shoved it down so that it touched her skin. She twisted and squirmed, but he was too strong for her.
I was so surprised by the quickness and skill of their hand-to-hand combat that I acted like a spectator at a film instead of the author of a story. Only at the very last minute did I type in STOP IT, YOU CLOWN.
The point of the blade still bending the surface of her flesh, he hesitated. She continued to fight, pushing, clawing, kicking, digging her knees in search for a weakness in his body. Despair glowed darkly in her eyes. She knew death would claim her almost at once. Yet she would cling to life till the bitter end.
LOVE HER, I insisted, DON’T HURT HER.
He forced her to submission not with the dagger point but with his kisses—quick, tender brushings of his lips against her face, her throat, her shoulders, and then repeatedly her lips.
She abandoned her resistance. Her body became passive, her eyes softened, her mouth slipped open.
“You’re going to rape me before you kill me?” she gasped.
“Are these the kisses of a rapist?”
She considered that and actually smiled at him.
“No, Lord Lenrau, they are the kisses of a skilled and sensitive lover. If such a lover wishes to keep me immobilized for his pleasure, I am his for whatever he wishes.”
Wow.
He tossed the knife away, untangled himself, helped her to her feet, and laughed loudly. “I prefer mobile women, well, most of the time.” Then he recovered the dagger, bowed, and presented it to her, handle first, an obvious ritual gesture of peace.
Gasping for breath, she accepted the dagger, bowed to him, and placed the knife back on the window flap. “Why did we do that?” She clutched her hands together at her belly. “I might have killed you.”
“We might have killed each other,” he said gravely, taking her hand and conducting her to a couch.
“I didn’t want to kill you. I don’t want to kill anyone. Yet as soon as I saw you, I attacked you. Why?”
“Perhaps we are both afraid. Perhaps we have been trained all our lives to respond to fear by attacking.” He kissed her hand. “I would cut off my arm rather than bruise your flesh. I regret I stole so many kisses at knife point.”
“I do not begrudge you what you took.” She smiled.
“You are a wonder, B’Mella.” He kissed her hand again. “When you say the right thing, you say it brilliantly.”
“Sometimes rather later than I should.”
We were really moving right along. I relaxed. What a mistake.
He picked up his sword and placed it next to her knife. “For most of my life I have dreamed of meeting my enemy and speaking with her. Now I almost kill her before we can talk.”
See, I wasn’t manipulating them completely.
“Talk,” she said curtly, her body tensing with fear. “If that’s what you want.”
You little bitch.
“You are not a foul-smelling whore.” He bowed again, a good beginning. “But you are a little fool for risking your life in the forest alone on a sacred night as this.”
Sacred? No one had told me that. I made a note in my head. Better manual.
“The Lord Our God told me to come to the forest. If you were not an infidel and a blasphemer and a coward and a weakling and no man, you would not permit a mere woman to deprive you of the might of your sword. No wonder you have no children.”
So they shouted insults at one another, mean nasty words, which were more than ritual but less than completely felt, a little more colorful and dramatic than the hurtful exchange between a man and woman in our society who are frightened by and attracted to one another, but not sufficiently interesting to bore you with it. I instructed the game to make them BE NICE TO EACH OTHER; frantically it flashed, EXECUTING, EXECUTING.
Both the program and I were wasting our time.
Neither the reality nor the intractability of my hero and heroine surprised me. This was, after all, the denouement of my story. There were bound to be conflicts and setbacks. That’s what stories were about. Sure, they were up there on the screen in gorgeous (especially B’Mella) color, but in the heat of literary creation, you hardly notice that.
Like characters in my novels, they accepted my commands when it suited them to do so. No, I must be a little more precise than that. I could force them to do what they half
wanted but were afraid to do. I could push them over the line which they otherwise would not cross. (Maybe this is all that grace ever does.)
For the first time in the whole game, I was hit over the head by a terrible truth. I was responsible for these people, but I didn’t have the power to make them do what they should do. In a story I could force my characters at this point to love each other, no matter how great their terror of intimacy and no matter how strong their habits of resisting it with conflict.
Now, despite my responsibility, I had less power than I would in a novel. My hero and heroine were not listening to me.
STOP THIS NONSENSE, I told them again.
Exhausted and breathless, they paused, which they probably would have done in a few moments anyway. See what I mean by responsibility without sufficient power?
BE NICE, I ordered again.
“You know what my Ranora would say?” He chuckled and relaxed into one of the form-fitting chairs.
“That little witch who prepared this place for a tryst and has bewitched both of us.” She chuckled. “Is it a tryst we’ve been having?”
“Intermittently.”
They laughed together. He reached across the space that separated them and took her hand. She gave it to him elegantly.
“I would rather a tryst than a battle to the death.”
“A kiss better than a dagger?”
“When it is your kiss and my dagger.”
The woman had the gift of Blarney when she chose to use it.
“I have not kissed a woman in a long time.”
“And?”
“If I could, I would spend the rest of my life kissing you.”
He wasn’t bad either when he got wound up.
“An interesting prospect…” She folded her hands demurely on her lap. “What would the demon child, may the Lord Our God protect her, say about this mixture of tryst and battle?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “She would say that we are afraid to know each other.”
“She sees in me goodness I do not possess.” She removed her hand from his, but with a lingering promise, and sat gracefully on the edge of a couch, not too distant but not too close either. “She is charming, but a little unnerving.”
“If there were peace she would spend much of her time with you. She might even become your ilel instead of mine.”
“I would not take her from you.” She flared up, then relaxed. “She could unnerve both of us with little difficulty.”
“Do not say that the goodness she sees is not there, ’Ella. I see it too.”
Come on, idiots, there are better things to talk about than a mystical adolescent imp.
I didn’t mess with them. Characters operate in their own good time.
“It cannot be. Yet they are wise creatures, are they not? Strange, unnerving, of the Lord Our God.”
He cocked a skeptical eye. “Whose God?”
I hit her function key. ONLY ONE GOD.
“Come now, Lord Lenrau,” she sniffed, her back rigid, “even such a degenerate as you knows there is but one Lord Our God.”
Lenrau rose slowly from his chair, as if someone had kicked him in the rear end. “Are you sure of that?” he demanded somberly, towering over her.
“I … I don’t know.” She was flustered, indeed frightened about what she had said. “I never … thought of it that way before.”
“We pray to the same one every night?”
“I am not unaware of the implications of what I said.” She turned away from his gaze.
HE’S NOT A DEGENERATE, YOU LITTLE FOOL, I whispered in her ear.
“And I am sorry I called you a degenerate just then.”
“Only the last time and not the previous times?” Finger boldly on her chin, he turned her head in his direction, and held it there.
“That was different,” she said primly. “I am not a foul-smelling whore and you are not a degenerate. Would your little Ranora approve? Why are you staring at me that way?”
“Why are you trying to escape my gaze?” He sounded hurt. “Why do you twist to escape my hand? Do you find me so repellent that you cannot look at me?”
“Not repellent.” She lowered her eyes. “I enjoyed your kisses. You know that.”
“What, then?” Harshly he tilted her head up so she had to look at him.
I would learn in time that B’Mella had a streak of recklessness in her that surprised, delighted, and frightened those who came under her spell.
“Not degenerate.” She grinned.
“What, then?” This time he shouted.
“Terrifying.”
“I did not hurt you when I could. Why are you terrified?” He released her chin, discouraged and rejected. “I only kissed you and, woman, very chastely compared to what I wanted to do.”
“Your terrible blue eyes bore into me. They take away my clothes, all my protection, everything in which I can hide. Half of me wants to escape from you as fast as I can run.” She took a very deep breath. “The other half wants to surrender to you totally, and let you kiss me the way you wanted to. Forever.”
The shameless hussy. Shameless and transparent.
He muffed it as I was sure he would. “I was thinking,” his index finger touched her cheek, “how unsatisfactory it is for one so beautiful to be an enemy.”
She shoved his hand away. “I will not be the object of your lust.”
“Only admiration,” he sighed, returning to his chair. “Cannot one admire a beautiful woman without lusting for her?”
“No,” she said promptly.
“We both have been celibate too long, Lady B’Mella,” he said sadly.
“Doubtless. Does the imp child tell you that too?”
“Every day. She can be very blunt and detailed.” He drifted off into one of his mystical trances.
You dummy, she offered herself to you a few minutes ago and you let the offer slip right by.
Silence. SAY SOMETHING, I told her. HE’S COME MORE THAN HALFWAY.
“I suppose you think our lust can bring peace?” The words were snide, but the tone of her voice was tentative, vulnerable—the Duchess with whom I had fallen in love.
“You experience it too?” he sneered.
You damn idiot.
“You know that we both came here,” she rose, crossed to him, and knelt at his side, “because the Lord Our God wants there to be peace, and our bodies are the bridge on which the angels of peace can cross.”
So they had angels.
She was a quick worker, all right. I didn’t have to tell her to do that. Poor Lenrau was terrified, as any man would be under the circumstances.
“You would give your body to a degenerate?”
She took his hands into hers and kissed them reverently. “I said you weren’t a degenerate. It was your idea that we had both had too much celibacy.”
“It was.” He encircled her shoulders with his arms. “I don’t think I could ever have too much of you.”
It was a mild compliment, not great maybe, but a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it scared her. She pulled away from him and scrambled to her feet.
“You can think only of using me for your perverted pleasures,” she wailed. “You care not for peace or for the will of the Lord Our God.”
“You’re a recent convert to the cause of peace,” he sneered back. “And everyone knows that you prefer the bodies of women to those of men.”
A new charge. STOP THAT! I demanded, quite in vain.
“And you the bodies of animals.” She grabbed her knife, stuck it in the cord of her gown, and reached for her shawl.
“You tried to seduce me,” he slumped into his chair, “to win on the bed what you could not win on the field of battle.”
STOP THIS AT ONCE, I told them. They paid no attention to me.
“You would be worthless in bed.” She strode briskly towards the door. “And you tried to seduce me.”
“I did not kneel before you with brown eyes soft w
ith desire.” He pulled himself out of his chair and reached for his sword.
DON’T LET HER GO, I keyed into the game.
“‘Ella.” The word was twisted from his unwilling lip.
“What?” She turned on her heel at the door, a haughty victor in the war of words.
“Nothing,” he groaned, admitting his defeat.
COME ON, YOU LITTLE BITCH.
Either she or the parser overinterpreted my instruction. She smiled lightly, considered for a moment, flipped the cloak on the floor, and, reaching behind her head, opened the fastening on her tunic. “We both know, ’Rau, what is to be done.” She shrugged out of the sleeves, “We both are curious, we both need each other at least at this moment. Let us not be fools.”
The gown fell to the floor. She stepped out of it, calm and self-possessed, lovely but not yet lascivious, available, oh yes, overwhelmingly, achingly available, but not insisting. The poor guy looked at her in astonishment and dismay, a man blinded by the sun coming out early and without warning from an eclipse.
DON’T BLOW IT, I demanded.
I DO NOT KNOW BLOW IT.
The damn PC was turning priggish at the wrong time.
MISS THIS GLORIOUS OPPORTUNITY.
“You are,” he rubbed his chin slowly again, “the most beautiful sight in all the world. Do not, wonderful ’Ella, confuse my slowness with anything more than a mixture of fear and admiration.” He rose unsteadily. “I’m dazzled by the light of many suns. It’s still night, but the dawn has come early.”
Well, Shakespeare did it a little more elegantly, but not under such circumstances.
She laughed, amused, confident, successful. “You are definitely not a degenerate, noble Duke. But I grow cold without my garment.”
The shameless, dirty thing, as the Irish would say admiringly.
He paused in front of her, his hand on one of the straps on her undergarment. “This is the way you pray to the Lord Our God?”
“Yes.” She was now frightened, but pleasantly so.
“He must be very pleased when it comes your prayer time each night.”
God Game Page 18
