But you are right. I am digressing again.
With Sal I came to understand the healing side of love.
The more gently I kissed him, the more he talked afterward of his wounds. Of course, his stories simply stirred my newly developing attachment and compassion, and made me want all the more to unite with him in what I once called a carnal fashion and now understood as body and soul. I found a spot just below the proof of his Mereling birth and just above his marvelous cock which drove both of us wild with desire. The soft mound of flesh there belied the crustiness of his attitude in the world. I would nibble there, and take the halo of hair at the base of his manhood into my lips, pulling gently, sensing the pumping of his desire so nearby.
He’d turn me around so we could nuzzle each other until we were so taut with passion we could not bear to be two separate beings. Then, slowly and deliberately, he would position me against the great branch in whose crook we nestled and straddle me. He would rub the tip of his cock against me till I grew wet and wild with desire then slowly push into me. The feeling of enveloping his throbbing cock inside me is one I remember and cherish still.
We were lovers for many months, and some years, till the inevitability of his temperament and physique combined with his age. One morning, shortly after we climbed down after a particularly vigorous session of love and delight, his heart burst. Mine would have, too, out of the exquisite pain and tenderness I felt for him, felt for losing him, save for the fact that, like you, old man, I do not age by the same calendar.
I did, however, feel another piece of me go with him to his grave.
Now all that remained of our unusual household were me and the youngest, Shug, now also the only and, therefore, also the oldest.
Chapter Seven
Shug
Three quarters of myself enveloped in endless darkness now, only Shug with his caring, careful, sweet attitude could comfort what remained of me. We were well matched, for three quarters of him had gone to the Underworld, too; one fourth with each of his lifelong, dear friends, each of who had if not given him his life certainly saved it on many occasions.
“I was too young to remember the journey,” he told me one night. We sat in the branches shrouded in the mist of our grief. It gave us a bit of privacy I didn’t usually have, though I was experiencing it more and more. Merelings, for whatever reasons, preferred looking at me in my fullest form, and so, each time a piece of me went with a lover to the Underworld, and I grew thinner and paler, they looked at me less.
He continued his story. “I do remember missing my mother terribly, and I would climb into Sal’s arms, close my eyes with my head against his chest, and cry myself to sleep. The older ones were absorbed in the great adventure, or so I thought at the time. I realize now what they were doing. They disguised their fear in order to focus on their responsibility to get us all to safety. We traveled for nearly two years until we were three languages removed from our native village and had not gotten news for many months of the war and occupation which had turned our lives inside out. This gave us hope the conflict would not reach our new home, and if it did, the reasons our own parents were targeted for death would be obscured if not forgotten.
“We told all who inquired we’d come from a village where a sudden flood had swept through the valley, which we escaped only because we’d climbed the mountains the morning of the torrent to find ripening thimble berries.
“Amaro knew, and explained to me, it had to be something natural: fire or flood. Anything even hinting at disease would make the people upon whose hospitality we depended fearful. Anything hinting at politics and civil discord would oblige them to detain us and report our presence to authorities.
“So we passed from village to village, land to land, until we finally arrived here. As you have learned, it is distinguishable by the great number who abide here of dour and circumspect people, but fortunately for us, they seemed to know almost nothing of the world beyond this village. Their ignorance constituted if not our bliss at least our measure of safety. Amaro and Acer found work immediately because they were clever with their hands and could make things, but also they could read and write. Sal went to school but hated it. He lagged behind in everything and struggled to learn yet another new language.
“I was not quite ready for school, but I possessed a lively curiosity, so Sal read stories to me, showed me how to cipher and make letters, and drilled me in geography facts.
“The geography facts led to you.
“You see, our book contained a tale of a land with light at night, not bright as the sun, but bright enough to see shapes by. We told Amaro and Acer of the tale, and they made it their business to learn what they could by other means.
“Little by little, over many years, they gleaned what knowledge they needed to plot a plausible course in hopes of discovering this place. They also saved every bit they could. ‘If we can find the secret of this light,’ they reasoned, ‘and capture it, we will become rich. No one will ever question our origins.’ One day, the year I’d turned eighteen, we set out. And the rest, you know.”
He stayed with me in the tree all night, night after night, and we simply sat there holding each other for weeks, not talking much, just giving and taking solace in the embrace.
Finally, one night, under a cloudless sky full of bright stars, Shug asked me the old question that had so long ago made me think of him a bit more gently than I thought of the others. What would I like?
“What would you like, dear one, that might bring you back a bit of the pleasure you used to take in this world? How can I help?”
And there, old man, is an example of yet another quality Merelings possess which is unique to their kind. It is the ability to see need in another and want to meet it. It is, in a word, mercy. Immortals, in my experience, are merciless. I myself had my merciless streak. My brother, too, is quite capable of beating down mercilessly.
I was moved greatly by his kindness. I nestled closer in his arms. A sudden pounding inside my chest alarmed me. “What’s this?” I cried.
He placed a hand on me. “It’s just your heart,” he said.
“I didn’t know I had one,” I confessed.
“Of course you do,” he said, laughing. “A very large one. A very large one, indeed.”
I snuggled closer, till I could feel his heart, too.
I imagine you expect to hear, now, of how we made love. Of the rhythms of our bodies, the targets of our tongues, the places our fingers found on each other to tickle, stroke, and rub. Perhaps you imagine I am about to describe how deeply he thrust, and whether from in front or behind. Of how sharp and staccato or slow and wavelike our orgasms.
The fact is, we did not make love. Not physically.
And this proved to be my final lesson in learning the ways of Earth. Just as I learned there was more than physical appetite to be appeased in a relationship with a beloved Mereling, I learned the physical appetite was actually the very least of the urge. To love a Mereling was to seek a meeting and melding of the spirit.
We had not much left of ourselves. We were slim shadows of what we’d once been. But we had our understanding of each other, and our companionship, and our shared grief which day by day grew more to resemble celebration than tears.
He began to tell stories again. He told of following Sal to school. The rough boys threw stones at him and told him to go home. He detoured, instead, and after the children had entered the little schoolhouse, he sat outside beneath the window and listened to the lessons. Just before the schoolmaster would dismiss his students for the day, Shug dodged into the woods again, and waited until Sal came by. Then followed him at a distance.
Once, when the boys bullied his friend, Shug threw small stones at them. They turned to seek him out but he ran fast and made his way through the woods back to their hut. Sal found them outside the door where Shug had barred the way with a cross beam. Sal joked with them, but managed to let them know they would be wise to realize they should no
t trifle with Shug.
“He’s small,” he told the bullies, “but don’t think he isn’t fearless. I watched him take down a black bear once. His aim is deadly. If he hit you in the arm before, well, it’s just his way of giving fair warning.”
The bullies backed off after Sal’s warning. “And a good thing, too,” said Shug. “The words were all bluff and bluster. If they’d come after me....” His mood shifted to somber, and I asked him what troubled him.
“I miss my friends,” he said simply.
“I do, too,” I said, surprised at the truth of it. “I even miss Old Fishbreath. Remember him?”
How long we stayed in the old oak, holding on to each other and telling stories, I cannot say for sure. Shug helped me pull branches around during daylight hours. We stopped eating. We stopped drinking. We just sat together, murmuring memories to each other.
We might have stayed there forever, except one night a ferocious storm came up. All around us, lightning split the sky and thunder shook the earth. The oak tree, which stood taller than any other in the vicinity, must have seemed like a taunt to nature. The gash of light struck at the same moment my ears went deaf from the splintering, roaring crack.
Chapter Eight
Reunion in the Underworld
At first I wasn’t sure what had happened. I perceived only a feeling of solidity which had begun to elude me, beginning with Amaro’s death. The more I came to full consciousness, the more I remembered the storm, the pounding rain, the spectacular streaks of lightning, and, finally, the one that struck my tree, my lover, and me.
The air had a musty quality, and there were no stars to be seen. Nor clouds, either. All was uniformly dark in my first moments of awareness, followed by a glow that seemed to spread everywhere.
Then, all around me, the sounds of yawns, of grunts, and groans began to emerge. I looked to see figures everywhere waking, stretching, blinking, rubbing their eyes, shaking their heads to clear them. As they came to wakefulness, they’d look in my direction and laugh in delight.
My lovers were all there right next to me.
It came to me I’d awakened in the Underworld. The sensation of inexplicable wholeness became explicable after all; all the pieces of me following my Mereling loves beyond their deaths had finally reunited. My body had mended! All together again, all in one place.
Not only could I feel the strength and fullness of my body, but my light was shining now in a place which had never known anything but utter darkness. And, as it shone, it prompted life. Can you imagine, Ancient One, how the din ensued as one after another of the dead, who’d been in the dark and drear of the Underworld for anywhere from hours—including my beloved Shug—to eons, awoke, able to see again?
The shouts, in every Mereling language ever spoken. The joys when they realized they’d been in repose near loved ones. They seemed not to be near enemies, for no fighting broke out. What did break out? Music and dance! In every corner of the Underworld, musical instruments appeared. In each area, someone began a song in one language or another, and others joined in. In every spot, first one then another and another would rise and take a step, testing balance, then begin to sway to the music then break into full exuberant dance.
The pounding of the feet and the vibrations of the music pulsed through my very core.
It pleased me greatly, and this in turn caused me to glow more brightly. With each escalation of my light, more of the dead revived, joining in the festivities.
The Merelings were doing everything they’d loved to do in life: making song, dance, art, and love.
Amaro, Acer, Sal, and Shug joined hands to perform for me. They stomped, kicked, skipped, dipped, circled round first in front of me and then with me at the center of their circle.
You may think, old man, it must have been a total cacophony, but you would be wrong. Somehow, all the instruments, from the skins the cavemen and women beat upon with the thigh bones of mastodons, to the lyres and harps of those who called themselves Phoenicians, to the horns and cymbals of the Merelings who’d lived at the top of the surface and the flutes and whistles of those who’d been at the opposite side.
Every woman who’d ever faked an orgasm danced there, and every man who’d ever been mocked and diminished by a shrew or bully. Every girl and boy terrorized by a priest, a neighbor, a lewd uncle or grandpa, a lascivious caregiver. Each of them stood tall, unafraid in this newfound reprieve from dreary death. Every shade who’d suffered from a world of Merelings who didn’t know the difference between sin and pleasure gravitated to the music, found the celebration, and danced, dropping pain, discarding humiliations, finding what is right and wonderful.
We danced like time had no end, and, in fact, there is no end of time on the Other Side. Our bodies twirled, twisted, bumped, sweated, stomped, celebrated our wholeness. We shook sorrow off, cast humiliation aside, and pure spirits free now from earthly limitations. We rejoiced in our perfect bodies. We found ourselves. We found ecstasy in each other.
I looked at my four lovers. They were The Four again, but no longer four abductors and masters, but the four Merelings I’d come to know and love: complicated, full of arrogance and self-doubt, rage and love, wisdom and folly. I looked past them then as they circled me in their ecstasy, and my gaze alit on the young man who had first opened my heart to the meaning of Mereling love. And he looked back me. At his side, the youth he’d left me for when he’d found the truth of his own way. His companion, too, wore the uniform of a conscript, so he must have died in the interminable war. In my light, their happiness erased any feelings I might have harbored of hurt. We smiled at each other and blew kisses.
Something else began to happen now. The revelry continued, but, two by two, lovers were finding one another and slipping off into groves and grottos, huts and houses. They were discovering one another in wonderment, running fingers through hair, pressing forehead to forehead, nose to nose, lips to lips, body to body. Sometimes, they paused to look at me. Sometimes, they hid themselves in spots where my light could not penetrate.
The sounds of their pleasure blending with the great symphony of joy resounded throughout the Underworld.
I cannot tell you how long it went on. Time on the mortal side passed, and it came to pass that mortals worshipped a different way and a different god. And there came a time when I became aware of a pounding. It didn’t fit. The rhythm struck me as angry, staccato, irregular. And then, there stood before me a bearded figure in a flowing robe. He was not a Mereling, but something about him nonetheless gave him a Mereling quality. He wielded a staff, which he rapped on the ground and, when he spoke, he did it with an unmistakable air of authority not to be ignored.
Chapter Nine
Home
“Is this your doing?” he demanded, sweeping his staff around to indicate the scene I described for you.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I only know what I see, which is the same you see, and what I feel, which is a love for all Merelings—”
“Do not speak!” he bellowed over the festive din and held his staff high in the air. “Do not speak of anything which would add to this iniquity. I am here to tell you you are disturbing the very peace of Heaven. You must vacate the Underworld immediately!”
“I don’t recognize you. Did my father send you?”
“Your father is irrelevant,” he said. “I represent the Heavenly Father, the Father of Fathers, the Holy of Holies. The None Higher, the Alpha Omega, the One Who Rules the Universe and All It Contains. While you have been cavorting in sin, the world has changed. Your kind is no more, save you and your brother. There is a new order. And it is being disturbed. You must, I say, vacate forthwith.”
“But where will we go?” I asked.
“They’ll go nowhere,” he said, surveying the mass of Merelings with thinly-disguised distaste. “It is you who brought on the problem, you who must go.”
“I can’t leave the Merelings,” I blurted out in shock. “I love them!”
“You must,” he said, his voice softening just a bit. He continued speaking, now not entirely without a hint of compassion. “I’ve already told you. You are interfering with the way the world is now. Times have changed. They’ve changed entirely. And, again, I tell you, your people are no longer the gods to whom Merelings, as you call them, look for guidance. Your people have been banished.”
Suddenly fearful, I demanded to know, “What have you done with my brother?”
“Rest assured, he is where he always is. He would not leave the world he’d grown accustomed to, especially when you were still in it somewhere. He has continued to supply daytime, though he is no longer worshipped.”
“And what will happen to my friends here in the Underworld?”
“They will go back to the state they were in before you violated the Conditions.”
“I violated no Conditions!” I shouted, indignant. “All I did was find myself whole again after I died most miserably, piece by piece. I cannot help it if my wholeness brings others to life and its pleasures.”
“You will have to leave,” he repeated, gently but persistently. “Don’t you want to see your brother again? He can’t possibly follow you down here. It would reverse the very order of Heaven and Earth, for one thing. Can you imagine Earth being plunged into eternal darkness while all the dead are blinded by his brilliance?”
His logic, I have to admit, convinced me. If I wanted to see my brother again I couldn’t stay where he never came. I realized with a very Mereling sort of guilt I hadn’t really thought of him for quite a long while, but now a stranger had reminded me, I missed him. In fact, I missed him with a sharp sense of loss. I needed time to think, not an easy thing to do in the atmosphere of revelry, rivalry, and general all-around chaos which ever-more defined the reality of my surroundings.
Moon Love Page 5
