Moon Love

by Hester St. Jean

  As he listened to me, something stirred. I wondered for the first time since the Beginning if I could become attached to one man. No, there was no theory to it. I wrestled not with the question of if I could become attached, but with the reality that I was becoming attached. No question about it. Being heard aroused me in a way I’d not known before. I began to experience excitement that went beyond the heat in my loins.

  Here was a Mereling who truly knew me! When I spoke of my love of the night creatures, he nodded. I talked of missing the childhood closeness I’d had with my brother, Sol, and he sighed in sympathy. My account of my abduction caused his eyes to grow wide with compassion and indignation. In the realm of the Immortals, all Beings were in some sense omniscient so there was no need to tell one’s story and be heard. At least that’s the way it used to be in the realm I used to know. But in this circumscribed place, where beings were born and lived and died and knew only their own point of view, to truly be listened to was extraordinary.

  Something came over me. A powerful longing for a connection I never before knew I needed, never before missed.

  “What is it,” he asked, and took my hands in his. A current passed between us, an electricity, a circuitry completing itself that had been waiting in each of us.

  “I may,” I whispered, husky with emotion, “be falling in love with you.” I pulled him to me, began kissing him softly at first, on the top of his head, his eyebrows, his ear lobes, the back and sides of his neck. I ran my tongue around the outside of each ear then, made bold by his passivity, I traced his lips with a fingertip and planted a full kiss on him.

  He responded, not like any of The Four ever had, but like a curious and frightened fawn might, eyes wide, wary, he watched me disrobe him, ready to bolt. But he stayed.

  I touched every niche of his young body with my fingertips and tongue. Employed every trick of my trade, but they were not tricks this time. Rather, a focus so intense I thought at times I might pass out came into play, and I did many things I’d never even thought to do before. I flicked my tongue on his nipples, nibbled at his toes then turned him over and dragged my tresses the length of his back and legs. While he lay there, allowing me to love him, I pulled my dress off, never once breaking contact with his body. I pulled him onto his back again and flipped my hair back and forth across his chest, his groin, his thighs then began teasing the tip of his splendid young cock.

  He responded by lacing his fingers in my hair, moaning, pulling me up to mount and ride him. Was it my skill? My authentic passion? My willingness to listen and not to judge? For whatever reason, he wanted me. And I wanted him. I wanted him more urgently than I had ever wanted a lover. I wanted him to be so deep inside me there would be no difference between us. I wanted to pound and grind. When we finished, we rolled over, still one. He stayed hard inside me. I wrapped my legs around his back, my arms around his neck, clung to him while he pumped, and moaned in delight.

  One of the uncles outside at the base of the tree moved his chair. “Listen!” I heard him say to the others. I covered the lad’s ears so he wouldn’t be distracted and let my own pleasure roar. Like an ice jam giving way in spring rains, my feelings burst through, flooding my every fiber. He responded in kind, laughing and sobbing and letting loose inside me, over and over, inexhaustible, until….

  We finished in a heap of sweat, fluids, and sighs, when the dawn was just beginning to show pink at the horizon.

  The Four, wanting to be assured of their profit, had all assembled alongside the uncles and recognized in my screams of pleasure what they’d never heard before, not when they’d first visited my oak tree, and certainly not since. The uncles, jubilant their nephew had proven his manhood and would not disgrace them, paid the balance of the agreed-upon price happily.

  The Four were less pleased. Each in his own way evidenced more than a little jealousy. The tall, thin one grimaced and harrumphed, the suspicious one spat, while the paunchy one, hard-pressed to think of a joke, snorted and said to the uncles and their nephew, “Well, I guess you got your money’s worth.” The fourth looked sad, and if I understood the complexity of his look, I’d say he also looked regretful.

  From my cave room later, I listened through the wall as they discussed the situation. The youngest spoke first, “We must be careful.”

  The oldest spoke next, “Perhaps we should limit her time.”

  “No more than an hour,” added the fat one.

  “Charge more,” said the suspicious one. “Five times more. And hire a guard to make sure she doesn’t try to leave with anyone.”

  “Agreed,” said the youngest. “Our needs must come first.”

  The next night the lad came alone, and asked for more of my time. Paying the premium price, he secured an hour of my time. He asked for privacy, so we walked, he and I, into a small clearing in the woods at the edge of town. I lit the way, of course, and he followed. I knew of a mossy spot, comfortable as any feather bed and more private than any house, with its nosy neighbors, and certainly more private than the oak, with The Four likely listening at its base. When we arrived, I began to disrobe, but he stopped me.

  “I just want to talk,” he said, so talk we did.

  It marked the beginning of something new and wonderful and terrifying for me. Before, I’d enjoyed my work and making pleasure with Merelings, but my heart never engaged. I was of a different world, a different sensibility, and I’d never looked for friendship with Merelings and never expected to do anything other than wait for however many thousands of turns my brother might have to make around the Earth for there to be a chance for us to go to our Home with the other Immortals. Now, I began to care about my young man, and even think of him in a proprietary way. He was “mine.”

  He came to see me frequently. Sometimes we played pleasure games with each other, but more often we lay side by side, fingers interlaced, and shared our thoughts. Sometimes, he fell asleep and I simply sat and watched him, studying every inch of his beautiful body in repose. It was with him that I learned what Merelings meant when they talked of love. It was not the presumptuous carnal lust which governed so many of the affairs of the Immortals. It was a feeling one was whole in the presence of another.

  He talked of his love of nature. “I grew up on a small farm,” he told me. “As a child, it was my job to tend my family’s flock of goats. I could interpret their bleats and tell their moods from the ways they switched their tails.”

  “I think I understand,” I told him. “I can tell what the owls say, and when the bats are communicating with one another or simply finding their way to their next meal.”

  He had learned how to make cheeses and how to steel himself for slaughtering season, when all in his family would gather with the neighboring farms to butcher, to make sausage, to dry strips of meat for winter use, and to make a savory stew enough to feed the dozens upon dozens who gathered for the event.

  “What I never got used to,” he sighed, “was the pain of butchering an animal I’d known its whole life.”

  I thought my heart would burst from the tenderness and affection this revelation roused in me. Make note, Ancient One. These were new and startling feelings for me.

  For my part, I told him of the game of tag my brother and I played when we were children, and the places we found to hide when we wished to avoid our chores. After a time, I opened up more, and told him how I’d helped bring my brother into the world, and how, when our mother was humiliated, we avenged her with poisoned arrows, killing the children of her tormentor. His eyes grew wide at the realization I would be capable of such a deed, and seeing it through Mereling eyes, I was suddenly aware of the sting of conscience for the first time myself. Conscience! A truly Mereling concept.

  After these conversations, in which we bared our souls to one another, the physical intimacy grew every more exquisite. Beyond anything I’d ever known. He touched my breasts, lightly rubbing my nipples. Sending a current through my very core. I nibbled on his neck, and the same ele
ctricity surged through his body. Taut with desire, we traced patterns on each other’s skin with lips and fingers till we couldn’t stand it and had to unite. Sometimes he mounted me from behind, his long, rock-hard cock filling me, while he stroked and rubbed all the sensitive places on the front of my body, bringing me to screaming climax.

  I thought of him belonging to me, in every conceivable way. My love layered on itself deepened daily. I had a lover, but also a friend, a brother, and felt a responsibility for him one might feel for a son.

  Before you condemn me for indulging in sexual relations with someone whom I characterize this way, allow me to remind you Immortals have different standards than Merelings, not to mention different reproductive capabilities. Consider the birth of Athena, for example.

  I was intensely happy during these times. I began to change. I became softer, more available. I didn’t even mind tending to The Four as long as I had my hourly meetings with my beloved boy. Every day brought the possibility of seeing him, which made all the other hours burst with anticipation.

  If you thought this was to be the happily ever after, I’m afraid I must tell you it was not. I can see you are growing tired from sitting for so long in one spot. Take a walk, old man, and I will follow you. When you’ve stretched your legs and settled yourself down again, I will tell you the rest.

  It is a wondrous night, is it not? My favorite kind of night, when nothing obscures my view of all below.

  I see you’ve found a driftwood log to call home for another hour or so, and I know I must hasten to finish my saga. I know you do not wish to linger more than one night before you go to your next destination.

  What happened to me next is what happens to so many of the young women who stare at me. What happened to him is what happens to so many of the young men they pine for. He received orders to report, called to combat to fight in the same army the fellow he still pined for was serving in.

  The mayor of the town, it seemed, had made an alliance, and as seemed to be a necessary part of such pacts, risked not his own life but those of the citizenry, and specifically the youngest, strongest, most attractive specimens. His last night in our village we clung to one another and promised we would see each other again, but in our hearts, we knew few returned from the battlefields. But Death couldn’t even wait for war to claim such a beautiful soul. My lad fell, stricken by a fever, and died before he ever had to sully himself murdering another beautiful, young Mereling man.

  I was inconsolable. I pounded my pillow, wept, and raged. How could I have come to know such a level of true love, love as Merelings love, only to have it ripped from me? Sent to a senseless death?

  When The Four reminded me of my oak tree and the expectation everyone had I would be there the way I always had been there, I pulled clouds around myself. I refused their oil. I allowed myself to grow dim.

  Many a young woman in our town took to looking for me. I overheard them talking together, wishing they could see me and be reminded of the moonlight trysts they’d enjoyed with their young men before they’d lost them to the battlefronts. Oh, they’d sigh and agree, if only the moon could shine her light everywhere so we could at least imagine our loved ones gazing at it even as we do. But we can barely see her ourselves. Surely something terrible has happened, some awful affliction, and now even the Moon will not shine. They had given me this name. The Moon.

  My brother, too, was deeply troubled. When he rose in the morning he could barely see me, and, shrouded as I was in clouds, could not even send me a wink or a smile to say hello from our opposite sides of the sky. I knew this the way twins always have a sense of their siblings. He did the same as I had done and pulled deep, angry clouds about his head and shoulders, turning the land to darkness even by day.

  One night, while I hunkered in my cloud bank, the oldest of The Four climbed the steps to my tree nest.

  He settled himself awkwardly beside me. My clouds spread to encompass him in my gloom. “Luna,” he said at last, “I have not been able to sleep. I lie awake thinking of you all night long, longing to see you shine the way you used to. I’m afraid,” a tone of sharp regret crept into his voice, “we have committed a great crime against you.”

  I could help but pay attention.

  “It is entirely my fault,” he said bitterly. “I who could not distinguish between love of money and love of another. I put my friends up to it; the idea we could force you to come with us, force you to turn your pleasure to our profit.

  “I noticed,” he went on, “the glow that warmed me the first night we met went out once we forced ourselves on you. You cooled. Your heart turned to stone, even though you did our bidding.”

  “You were aware of that?” I asked, in spite of my determination to spurn his company.

  “Only a fool could have missed it,” he said, “and only a fool could have missed when your brightness returned. The young man you loved—I know you are grieving for him. Luna,” he said, taking my hand in his, “he would not have stayed with you anyway.”

  I pulled my hand back.

  He paused then finally went on. “I happened upon him one night,” he said, and there came an unexpected gentleness into his voice, “when you were entertaining another. Right there, in your light, he lay in the clearing in the woods with his next-door neighbor, a youth of the same age. I heard him profess love. He told his companion, ‘Luna helped me truly know myself. But we will have to be circumspect,’ he said, ‘until it is time to leave for the war. Then we will be together all the time.’”

  I could not say a word. I sat at once immobilized by what I knew to be true. The lad had never been mine. When he’d answered the call to fight, he did not do it for me. When he lay fevered on his death bed, he did not long to see me one last time. He did not love me, the Immortal woman, but someone else. Someone both Mereling and male. How foolish I had been to think he and I had something stronger than any other bond. How pathetic.

  Suddenly, I began to sob. A loneliness I’d never known crashed down on me. I was in the throes of no Immortal mood swing, but a full-fledged Mereling misery. I wondered then what would become of me. I expected that I—Immortal though I was—would simply die of grief.

  Chapter Four

  Amaro

  He put his arms around me, and I collapsed against his chest. Once again there came a bitterness in his voice. “We have ruined you,” he said, “and I’ve only myself to blame. I am so very, very sorry, Luna.”

  We stayed for a long time curled together, me snuffling against his chest, him holding me.

  At long last, I calmed down and very nearly fell asleep, exhausted by all the emotion that had taken me over. He no longer appeared to me to be the tall, thin, bitter one of The Four, but a whole person. In spite of the unhappy past, in spite of the fact this man had gone from being a customer to a captor, rapist, and exploiter, I sensed in his embrace something genuine and deeply regretful for the crimes he’d committed against me.

  “Your name,” I said to him at last.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “It is Amaro, is it not?”

  “Yes,” he replied, puzzled.

  “I’ve pretended to myself not to know it these long years. I’ve lumped you and your friends together. I can’t do it anymore. Thank you, Amaro.”

  He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Forgive me, Luna,” he said. “I have always loved you. I loved you from the moment I first was told the story of your light. I knew then I would never rest until I could be near you. But would you have come with me of your own volition? I feared not. Now, if you must leave, I won’t prevent you from going.” It was his turn to sob. I remembered the very first night with him and reminded him he’d cried then, too.

  “Because I knew I’d never be able to possess you. Not the way I wanted to.”

  Days passed, or weeks, or perhaps months. One day, at Amaro’s request, in fact, his insistence, the other three agreed I would be kept captive no more, and would be free if I wished to g
o.

  But where could I possibly have gone? The only other place I’d ever been held the memory of Fishbreath’s deception, and, there in the village, the place of my captivity, I’d come to know the deepest and fullest feelings I’d ever had.

  I would be content, I told them, to continue serving them as long as I would be my own master, both of my time and of my purse. We agreed on a fair price for my services and a fair settlement for my years of servitude. I was free to set my own schedule—though I had no interest in deviating from the one that was not so much second, as first nature to me. Free to set my own rates, I was free, too, to spend my time with whomever I wished.

  I continued to repose in my tree at night, but I took some time off from entertaining. I needed time to digest the realities of love in the Mereling realm. Where motives could be mixed and feelings complex. The friends were true to their word and made no attempt to coerce me. They took turns bringing me meals, and they began to take more responsibility for caring for themselves, too, so if I chose to, I could spend entire days alternating between my cave bed and my oak perch. And I did choose, for some time, to live in this manner.

  I dreamed a great deal. Do you dream, Ancient One? Perhaps your entire life is a dream, whether your own or mine. These, by the way, were the kinds of questions my boy lover and I had discussed.

  I dreamed fitful dreams at first. Dreams I did not remember, but would wake from in a start, my heart pounding. Gradually, I began to remember bits and pieces. My abduction. The loss of agency. In my dreams, I attacked. I sat in my tree and threw great boulders down upon the heads of the men who’d taken me from my first Earth home. In the beginning, they fought back. But each night brought a new variation. Initially, I got angrier, more destructive. I wounded each of them, and each responded very much in character. Amaro would weep bitterly, accusing himself. He even, in one dream, took the boulders from my hands and pounded himself and his friends with them. Then came the day—for it was day when I dreamt, night when I kept watch on the owls and stars—when I dreamt I dashed them all to pieces, and I knew, finally, they were dead and I had prevailed. I awoke with great sadness clinging to me.