by Lisa Cach
A satyr gripped my purple cloak, tugging. I tugged back, but then a nymph joined him, and another, and I could not hold it against them. They jerked it away and sent it flying into the shadows, as they themselves fled my reaching hands.
I spun round, seeking the curtain through which I’d come, intending to flee. I couldn’t see it; nymphs and satyrs ran round me, confusing me with their shouts and laughter, and behind them stood the great bull, staring at me. It bellowed again, and in a blind fright I ran.
The nymphs chased me, grabbing at my gown, while the satyrs watched and laughed, their erections huge and red above their goat-haired thighs. I heard the tear of fabric, and felt air on my back. Another tear, and one shoulder was gone. A nymph stepped in front of me, wearing a wicked grin, and jerked the front of my gown down to my waist. I shoved past her, crawled over a couch, ran behind the grape press—but there were too many of them, and they routed me from my corner and stripped the last of my garments from me.
And then I felt the lash of a laurel branch upon my buttocks. I yelped in surprise as much as at the stinging pain, and to my horror the chase began anew, with nymphs bearing leaved branches pursuing me, thrashing at me, whipping whichever body part they could reach. I felt the slap of leaves on my hand, and felt a warm dripping; I raised my hand to my face and saw it wasn’t blood, but perfumed oil. It was the same heady scent I’d encountered during the lesson with Sygarius. The branches were soaked in it, and each strike coated my skin with more.
Only this time, instead of arousing me, something in the perfume terrified me. It spoke of darker memories than sex.
I still ran from the thrashing branches, but I began to tire, my breath coming in heaving gasps, my legs slowing. Drunk and half crazed with their sport, the nymphs started to strike each other as well as me, and then the satyrs were sliding their hands over the nymphs’ oiled bodies, fondling breasts, pinching nipples, and delving with long fingers into the slick folds of their cunnies. Beside me, a satyr tumbled a nymph to a couch and plunged himself within her, his buttocks flexing as he thrust, one of her ankles over his shoulder. I stared, unable to look away, until a nymph dealt me a stinging blow across my breasts.
Startled into anger, I sprang at the nymph, wrenching the branch out of her hand and turning it on her. I got in one good strike before a flood of nymphs came at me, whipping me, until I cowered with my arms over my face and shoulders hunched. They drove me before them, toward the bull, and then satyrs grabbed my wrists, jerked them above my head, and fastened them to ropes hanging from the ceiling. Nymphs tied my feet to rings in the floor so that I stood, spread-eagled and naked, my body coated in perfumed oil, before the glowering bull.
I shuddered, dreading what that bull might do to me. For why else would I be spread-eagled before it, if not for some dark, disturbing purpose. Deflowered by a bull, taken as had been Ariadne’s mother Pasiphaë, though she at least had been willing. I pulled weakly against my bonds, but I had no strength left and they had tied me well.
Lady Lydia came to stand beside the bull. A satyr brought a small table and placed it beside her, and then another brought the grapevine basket I had seen once before. Lady Lydia moved behind the basket and removed its lid. As she reached inside, she began to recite:
Come, blessed Dionysius, various-named,
Bull-faced, begot from Thunder, Bacchus famed.
She lifted out something made of polished, dark wood: it was the size of my forearm, with a tapered bulge at the top and two large egg shapes at the base.
It was a phallus.
Lady Lydia looked at me as she continued to recite:
Bassarian God, of universal might,
whom swords, and blood, and sacred rage delight.
She came toward me, bearing the phallus. I pulled wildly against my bonds. She wasn’t going to put that in me; I wouldn’t let her!
But my legs were spread, my body oiled. My cunny was open, and vulnerable to her assault. The musicians played over and again a simple tune heavy with the beat of drums, growing louder with each repetition. The pounding hit my flesh like blows and roused a deep, primitive terror.
Lady Lydia paused before me, holding the phallus before my face until my eyes rolled, and I knew she was about to shove it harshly inside me. But then she turned away and went to the bull. She bent down at its side and, reaching under its belly, fastened the phallus to it.
In heaven rejoicing, mad, loud-sounding God,
furious inspirer, bearer of the rod.
Nymphs danced round the bull, petting it, reaching under to fondle its new phallus.
The deep, blasting bellow came again, and again, from the chest of the beast. The phallus at is belly flexed, and its hide quivered. My knees quaked, my muscles gone liquid with fear, and I hung helpless from my bonds.
By Gods revered, who dwells with human kind,
propitious come, with much-rejoicing mind!
The great bull shuddered and bellowed, and its hide moved in waves as if some inner creature was trying to break free. A seam split between head and body, and a man’s shoulders rose out of the beast. The bull’s head rose with them, and then the back of the bull came apart and fell to the sides, revealing a gigantic man-beast, with the head of a bull, the bronzed torso of a man, and the thick wood phallus springing from the pelt at its groin.
The Minotaur.
Drums beat a mad tattoo as the creature emerged from the wreckage of the bull. It stretched its arms and flexed the mass of muscles in its chest, and then put one foot forward, toward me.
I shrieked, then shrieked again as it came closer and all around me horns blew, echoing the sound of a roaring bull. The creature was twice my size; three times. My head came only to his nipples, and his mass was several of me over again. The phallus bobbed, pointed forward like a lance, ready to impale me. I screamed, pulling against my bonds, scraping my wrists raw.
Cymbals clashed in a sudden, deafening cacophony. In through the crimson curtains burst two tigers, then two more, harnessed with golden ribbons. Behind them came a chariot, wound round in grapevines, Sygarius holding the golden reins to the great cats. He wore a wreath of vines on his head and a blue toga over his naked chest, and on seeing the Minotaur he threw down the reins and shouted to the cats, “Save her!”
The tigers bounded at the Minotaur, chasing it from me. Sygarius leapt down from his chariot and with a dagger slashed through my bonds, catching me as I crumpled into his arms, weeping in relief. He lifted me up and carried me to the largest of the couches, where he lay me down atop bedding thick with the spotted furs of leopards.
I babbled hysterical thanks, my hands clinging to his chest as he came down beside me and kissed my cheeks, my eyes, my lips. His mouth moved down my throat to my breasts, his hands stroking gently over my whipped and tender flesh.
I turned my head and saw the tigers chasing the nymphs; one of them pounced on a nymph from behind, forcing her onto all fours as he reached down to shove aside a flap of fur over his groin, revealing a most human-seeming prick. He pierced the nymph with it, and then all I could see was the back of the tiger, covering the nymph and rocking his hips against her buttocks in animal fervor.
And there was Lady Lydia, lying on her back on a couch, with a nymph lying belly-to-belly on top of her. The Minotaur stood between their doubled thighs; his wood phallus slid into the nymph, while a second, human-looking phallus below it thrust into Lydia. The women clung together, mouths locked, hands in each other’s hair as the Minotaur thrust between their legs, taking them both at once.
“Don’t let them have me,” I whimpered.
“Never,” Sygarius murmured, his lips on my nipple as his fingers traced up my thigh, then stroked lightly, delicately, over the folds of my sex, leaving a trail of shimmering sensation in their wake. “No one shall ever have you but me. You’re safe now, Nimia. Safe forever.”
In some distant, confused part of my mind I felt there was something I needed to remember, something about no one having me but him . . . I caught a glimpse of it, but then forgot as Sygarius’s mouth moved lower, and lower, until he was pressing his lips to my cunny, his tongue laving at my folds. I moaned at the shock of it, the pleasure. All thoughts fled as my thighs parted wide of their own accord, welcoming more. His hands slid up my waist, moving easily across my oiled skin, and coming to rest on my breasts. He gently kneaded them, rolling my nipples between his fingertips as his tongue worked me below.
“Please,” I said, not knowing what I wanted; knowing only that I needed more. His tongue, his hands—they created more desire than they fed. I burned like a fire, seeking fresh fuel, my flames licking outward to burn down the house of my body. “Please. Please.”
And then he was above me, and with a hard thrust he was in me. I cried out, surprised at the sudden intrusion, my muscles clenching against the forced stretching of a passage unaccustomed to such use. It stung, and I wiggled my hips, trying to escape his rod.
“Shh, Nimia,” Sygarius whispered into my hair. “Shh. Give it a moment. Relax, my love. Relax.” He stroked my hair and dotted butterfly kisses on my temple.
I tried to do as he bid, letting his murmured words of endearment soothe me. I felt the weight of his body, held slightly off me by his elbows, but still heavy enough to leave me helpless beneath him, his thighs firmly between my own, his mentula locking me in place.
“Let it happen,” he murmured. “You can do nothing; you need do nothing. Let this happen, Nimia. Let go.”
His words soothed and caressed me. I felt safe beneath him; safe invaded by him. Safe enough to relax.
“Ah, there you go,” he said, feeling the change. “Slow and easy now . . .” He began to move, in slow thrusts to only half his length. “Do you feel that, Nimia? Do you feel the place within you that gives pleasure?”
I did. It was a quiet pleasure—not the outrageous, overwhelming sensation of his mouth on my cunny—but a pleasure all the same, and as his careful strokes continued, the pleasure built. I grabbed at his buttocks, pulling him to me, wanting more.
“It’s in the wanting that you find the greatest joy, Nimia.”
I wrapped my legs around the backs of his thighs, trying again to bring him more deeply inside. “Please . . .”
But he was the same in coitus as he had been in all the years leading up, savoring with inhuman patience the pleasures to be found in anticipation and control. He rewarded me after several short strokes with one long one, filling me completely, but then would torture me by pulling out entirely, hovering at my entrance with the head of his mentula barely pressing against it, making me cry out with wanting; making me twist my hips, trying to bring him inside.
His control was beyond my understanding, and I fell to his power, responding as he wished to every touch, every absence, until I lay throbbing beneath him, hovering on the brink of orgasm even when he had lifted himself off me. The anticipation of his next touch was all my body waited for, all it needed to careen into the stars.
My vision clouded with shimmering gold, and I heard the familiar hum of a thousand golden bees. Images flashed before my eyes, but flitted away before I could grasp their meaning; the drug that had befuddled my senses was still coursing through my blood, shattering my perception. There was a quick glimpse of the bowl I’d seen in the forest, only now it sat on an altar, with light shining through it. I saw Clovis, rising naked from a river, his hair streaming. Myself, heavy with child.
“Turn over,” Sygarius said, and brought a thick cushion under my hips as I obeyed. He held my thighs together, his outside of mine, and then pressed his rod into the tightened corridor of my entrance.
“Oh,” I gasped, as he slowly forced his way in. He felt twice as large, my cunny twice as small, and as tight around him as a clenched fist.
“Nimia, my love,” he groaned, sliding deeper.
“Please, Sygarius,” I moaned, as he resumed his aching, tantalizingly slow pace. “Please. I’ve waited so long.”
I felt him lean close over my back, his mouth near my ear. “Have you wanted this?” he asked, moving within me.
“Yes.”
“Have you ached for it?”
“Yes!”
“Have you ached for me?”
“For years,” I said, “I’ve dreamt of you inside me.”
“Nimia,” he said, and with one hand reached beneath my hips to finger my stamen as his thrusts came harder, deeper. I ground myself against his hand, and was aware of nothing but the places where our bodies joined. The images in my mind came faster and less intelligible, twisted by the drug, and then fell apart completely as my body rose in a crescendo of sensation, hovered at the peak, and then fell in waves of release.
I must have fainted, for next thing I knew, Sygarius was washing my thighs with a cloth and murmuring, “So much blood; I’ve never known a virgin to lose so much.”
When he finished, he lay down beside me, took me into his arms, and drew the furs up over us. We dozed together I knew not how long, waking only when I felt him lift me in his arms.
I glimpsed the pressing room through bleary eyes: half the lamps had burnt out, and nymphs, satyrs, and tigers sprawled in drunken slumber over the floor and couches. As the drug wore off, I saw now that the tigers were men in tiger hides and masks; the satyrs wore leggings of goat hide. The Minotaur’s hollow head lay on its side next to a snoring giant of a man who had a wigged girl snuggled to his side.
Sygarius carried me back to my new room and tucked me into bed, brushing back the hair from my cheek. “There’s always a strange sadness that comes upon a man when he gains what he most wants,” he said. “The seeking, the anticipation, the yearning: they hold the true joy. For a man who has everything he wants, has nothing left to desire.”
“Are you sad that you’ve had me?”
“A little. But rest well, precious Nimia. There are a thousand and one pleasures left yet to be experienced. This was only the first of the many erotic dreams I’ve had of you.”
He kissed me, and left.
I snuggled under the covers, exhausted and relaxed, with no thoughts of past or future. There was only now, lying alone in my soft bed with a satisfied, well-pleasured body.
It was the last peaceful moment I would know.
Nimia, wake up! Wake up!”
“Mmmrr?” I grumbled, pulling myself from the deep darkness of exhausted sleep and forcing my lids open a crack. The dim silver light from the partially open door curtain proclaimed it to be near dawn. Terix knelt beside my bed. “Tired,” I said, and shut my eyes.
He shook my shoulder. “Nimia! Linnaeus knows!”
I squinted one eye open. “Knows what?”
“The lie about your virginity. He and Hermina—Jupiter’s balls, there’s no time to explain. Get up, get up,” he said, shoving at me. “We’ve got to get out of here before they tell Sygarius.”
I heard a moan. At first I thought it was my own, of horror, but then there was a movement beside Terix. I jerked upright, the last remnants of drugged fog clearing from my head, and looked over the edge of the bed.
Kyrian lolled there, his eyes rolling.
“I got him drunk,” Terix said. “And maybe added a little bit of poppy juice to the cup.”
“Why?”
“Because he has black hair. Will you get up?”
I jumped out of bed, the danger of the situation finally putting me into motion. I started grabbing up my belongings, then looked round for a bag or satchel. I spotted a leather sack of small percussion instruments and dumped them out on the floor. They banged and clattered and rang.
“Nimia!” Terix hissed. He was hoisting Kyrian into my bed.
“Sorry.”
It took only a minute to gather my things: a few gowns, embroi
dered girdles, a comb and tweezers, breast bands, packets of wool for my menses, a small flute. The golden bee. My mind felt strangely sharp. There was a fine tremor in my hands and my heart raced, but my fear had honed itself into an arrow’s piercing focus. My soul knew there was no time for shrieks, tears, or fainting: we must flee, or die.
Terix stripped off Kyrian’s long, shapeless tunic and handed it to me. “Put it on.”
I put on a breast band first, cinching it down tight over my breasts, trying to flatten them. After I’d pulled on the tunic, Terix drew a knife. “I have to cut your hair. From a distance, you’ll look like Kyrian.”
“Do it.”
My lovely hair. It fell in showers of blackness, sliding down my body into puddles on the floor. Terix cut it so it brushed my shoulders, the same androgynous length as Kyrian’s. I felt a stab of grief, and of self-conscious shame; it felt as if Terix had sheared off my beauty, along with the length.
No matter, I told myself sternly. It would grow back . . . if we lived long enough.
When he finished, I swept the hair under the bed while he arranged Kyrian so that only the top of his head showed above the sheet. Anyone peering in from the doorway would think he was me, sleeping off a night of extremes.
But how long would Sygarius let “me” sleep, once he heard from Linnaeus?
How had Linnaeus and Hermina found out?
Terix handed me a beige knit cap like those that I’d seen Kyrian and other servants wearing on cold days. I pulled it down low on my brow. “How do we get out of the villa?”
“Kitchen. Now hush.”
After a quick check to be sure no one would see us leave the room, we left it together and ambled across the garden courtyard. We knew instinctively that nothing would make us look more suspicious than slinking about in the shadows, casting anxious looks over our shoulders. The back of my neck prickled with the fear of being watched.
