by Willa Okati
“Aleksi —”
“No!” He no longer cared if anyone marked his leaving. Aleksi ran — no, fled — out into the snowy dark of night, away from the light and noise and laughter. Away from Berin’s eyes and lips and hands.
He shook hard as a leaf in the wind all the way back to his cave. “Solstice,” he said, as if it were an oath. “Solstice be damned!”
Love, be damned.
As hope should be damned.
As he knew himself to be.
Chapter Two
If the Solstice is not celebrated, the gods will be angry indeed. Mighty is their wrath unless we take care to keep them happy. The oldest writings tell us that is why our world is forever cursed with its never-ceasing snows: we failed to recognize their bounty in giving us seasons of warmth and light, and so they took away all but the winter.
However, all was not lost. Some gods’ wrath passes quickly, and some have kinder hearts. They are not as powerful as others, but when moved to pity, they do what they can. These are the deities who lightened the blow to our people. They bargained things no man can contemplate to purchase us our brief growing season, a time of harvest, game that thrives despite the blizzards, and plants for food and healing that survive even beneath snowdrifts.
Yes, there are kindly gods. To thank them, we celebrate Solstice in honor of their mercy. It is so very important that we remember and keep to these old ways. For if we anger the gentle ones, who knows what end is to befall us?
Rolling over on his hard bed, a badly woven contraption of rope and skins suspended from the ceiling of the cave he called home, Aleksi remembered his old priest-teacher’s words about the Solstice. He’d gone on and on beyond that, of course, explaining the whys and whenceforths of the food, spiced ale, dancing, gathering together, and making love until even Aleksi grew bored.
He’d ended up doodling the picture of a fine, strapping young temple servant who winked and smiled at him every so often, in the margin of his scroll.
It had been a good drawing. He’d had the knack of bringing a picture to life with a few strokes of his quill. The best script, too.
Aleksi had always been the best at everything.
“A game,” he startled himself by saying out loud as he turned over, seeking a comfortable place to lie amid the lumps and bumps. Once started, the words poured out of his cold-numbed lips, his anger heating.
“A plaything of the gods. They gave me the world, all the better to laugh when they took it away. Celebrate Solstice? Kindly ones? Pfah! To Chaos with the kindly ones, if they exist. What have they done for me?”
Aleksi spat on the floor. “I had it all,” he said softly. “Now I have nothing.”
He tossed a bit more. The scent of cinnamon and cloves clung to his hair, hanging loose around his face; the smell reminded him of shame and unhappiness and pushed sleep yet further away. Brushing his locks back with a hand only released more of the spicy smell. Made him think more and more of what he had lost, what he could no longer have, of Berin…
Sometimes he wanted to rage against the skies. Shake his fist at the heavens. He’d started, a time or two, but in the end he hadn’t the heart. They’d taken that too.
Aleksi felt his gaze harden as he stared at the cold stone of his home cave walls. Hard as his heart, cold as his soul, barren as his magic. “If you do exist,” he muttered, “prove it. However you choose. Until then, I’ll worship you no more. Solstice be damned.”
Cold, Aleksi pulled a ragged fur up over his head. “Fuck you all,” he said, his words bitter as ashes on the tongue.
He drifted off to sleep, shaking with the chill of his home, his heart, and his hearth.
* * *
A drop of water bounced off Aleksi’s nose.
Blinking, he sat upright. Water? Was there melting ice in his cave? How? A fissure in the roof? He stared above his bed, but saw nothing. The ceiling was dry and dead as ever, the stone long past its time of dripping water and new formations.
The cold of the cave pressed in, more oppressive than usual. Aleksi shivered, drawing his furs closer to himself. No use; they no more kept out the chill than a net full of holes. Poor things, but they were all he could afford.
No — all he’d had the heart to buy. What use were rich, soft furs when you lay on them alone? Aleksi ran his hand down one rough pelt, feeling the badly cured underside catch on his fingertips, and gave a snort of distaste. The skin wasn’t fit to wrap a criminal’s corpse!
He remembered when he’d gone into the local furrier’s workshop to choose his blankets, he’d deliberately picked out only bad cast-offs made by the burly man’s young apprentice. That had earned him an odd look, to be sure… but no questions. “Holy men” often sanctified the flesh through punishment.
Later on, he supposed they figured him to be stingy, or daft. Either one. It didn’t matter.
Wistful, he stroked the coarse skins again. If only… if only… if only they were better. Bear-skins, his favorite, lush with thick, pure white fur. Their insides would be cured softer than velvet, caressing his skin. His skin, and the man who he suddenly dreamed was lying beside him.
Berin.
With Aleksi’s eyes half-closed, he could not stop the dreams from flooding in. He all but saw Berin, stretched out on one side, smiling at Aleksi and reaching out to trail a finger down his chest. Nude, yes, both were gloriously bare, and unashamed. They were lovers, after all. True lovers, bound heart and soul and mind.
“Time was, I thought I’d never get you here,” dream-Berin whispered. He toyed with dream-Aleksi’s nipple, thumbing it into a hardened nub. Real-Aleksi gasped and shivered with a thrill of pleasure.
“Again,” he rasped, imagining dream-Berin’s fingers stroking, pinching, soothing, teasing, tickling. The sweetest torture, and dream-Berin had only gone so far as his chest. “Kiss me?”
Berin’s eyes sparkled with wicked humor. “Oh, I’ll kiss you all right.” He bent and drew the nipple into his mouth. Hot and wet, he nipped with his sharp teeth and laved away the sting with his clever tongue.
He laughed softly as Aleksi moaned and arched up. “You’re sensitive as a woman. Better, in my opinion,” he said against Aleksi’s chest.
Aleksi felt dizzy with delight. “And why is that?” he asked, able to tease in his dream.
Dream-Berin chuckled. “Many good reasons, more than I have patience to name. But most of all, you’ve got this to your credit.” His hand slid down and circled Aleksi’s cock with a hard squeeze.
“Ah! Ah, Berin!”
“Hush, now. I know what you like.” Berin’s hand began to move up and down the length of Aleksi’s cock. Languorous, as if he had all night to enjoy his task. “Relax, and let me feel you. I’ve got it in mind to remember this tumble.”
Lost in his fantasy, Aleksi reached for his cock with his own hand. Touching one’s self was never as good as the feel of another’s caress, but ah! He ached for it. Burned with the need for touch and hope of release. He pumped fast and hard, working the movements into his fantasy.
Dream-Berin laughed as dream-Aleksi writhed, his hands clutching at Berin’s bare shoulders, arms tangling around the man’s back. “More,” he gasped. “Harder. Faster. Please, Berin. I have waited long and long. Too long.”
“Lucky you, then.” Berin brushed his lips across Aleksi’s. “You’re close,” he said on a soft breath. “I can feel it. You’re shaking as if you’d been caught out naked in the snow. Breathing as if you’ve run through a storm.”
Aleksi caught hold of Berin at last, a good solid grip, and dragged him down for a better kiss. Their mouths warred, lips moving hungrily against lips, the passion between them a brightly-burning flame that would never die. It didn’t matter to Berin that Aleksi was a failure. He loved Aleksi all the same. Had, did, and forever after would. Aleksi poured his gratitude and lust into the kiss, and Berin returned it in spades.
Both men were breathing hard as their mouths parted. Berin’s hand had shuddered to a
halt on Aleksi’s cock. His dancing eyes stared into Aleksi’s. He nuzzled the tips of their noses together. “I love you,” he whispered. With a grin, he began once more to move his hand.
In his bed, alone, the real Aleksi tossed and groaned. His cock pulsed in his hand, thrumming and jerking in time to his racing heart. “Berin,” he cried, soft and low. “I need you so. But I can’t — I’m not good enough — I —”
He froze, his back arching up. The orgasm he so desperately wanted, that he’d needed ever since the real Berin’s lips had touched his cock before, rushed upon him with a mighty roar. The pleasure became pain, reaching to the highest pinnacle. Aleksi opened his mouth to scream —
And…
Nothing.
His body jerked in a massive cramp, pain shooting through all his limbs, twisting his balls into a knot. He did scream, but in agony, as the release backed up as floodwater behind a dam. No orgasm, no seed, nothing but the pain that drew cries of agony, not pleasure, from deep within his chest.
His cock went soft in his hand, a useless lump of flesh. His testicles throbbed angrily, hard as walnuts, sore as if they’d been slashed.
Aleksi raised his voice to the heavens and howled. No. No! Why? Why take this from me, too? You’ve taken everything else — and now I am denied even the basest pleasure of the flesh?
Damn you!
No, it was too much. More than any man should be asked to bear. Heedless of the pain, Aleksi swung his legs out of his hammock and hit the cave’s stone floor running. The cold burned his bare soles, but he paid it no mind. His groin ached with a fierce, fiery pain. Tears ran unheeded down his cheeks.
Naked, he stumbled out into the snowy clearing before his cave. He fell, then, down on his knees in mounds of ice. Not thinking if anyone might hear, not that he would have cared, Aleksi raised his face to the cloudy, darkened heavens that hid the moon and bayed with the rage-filled pain of a lonely wolf.
“Why?” he roared. He beat at the icy crust on the snow with both his fists. “What did I do to make you this angry? Why do you play your games with me? Leave me alone! All of you, leave me alone! Turn your backs on me forever, or give me back my life!”
Silence. A moment of silence that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, broken only by the ragged sound of Aleksi’s hitching breaths.
Then, from the east and north, there came a mighty wind. Aleksi saw it bending the evergreens near in half a split-second before it hit him with the power of an open-handed slap. He heard himself cry out as he was knocked onto his back, pounded into the snow, and laid out flat as a dead man.
The wind roared and screamed, all but stealing his breath away. He struggled for air, the pain in his lungs and throbbing groin joining to turn his body into the essence of agony.
“Why?” a voice demanded, somehow louder than the wind. It echoed through Aleksi’s ears and drilled deep into his skull. If he could have, he would have shuddered away from the sound. Rolled into a ball and stuffed his fingers in his ears. The wind held him captive, and prevented it.
“Why?” the voice bellowed. “There are none so blind as those who will not see, Aleksi, son of Rus! You have shuttered your eyes to us for far too long. No more. You asked us a question, and by our divinity, we will answer it. Open your eyes, stupid boy! Open them wide, and watch! See, see for yourself the truth you have refused to embrace!”
The wind caught up handfuls of snow and tossed them about in a wild kaleidoscope of starburst patterns. Aleksi could not close his eyes; he could not look away. Dazzled, he felt himself being sucked into the sight of the whirling crystals, and there, he saw —
Himself. Himself, as once he had been. Younger, healthier, cleaner. Standing tall and proud, dressed in the elegantly embroidered robes of a master in training. His shoes, of softest leather, laced with silk, made no sound as he walked carelessly over masterworks of cobblestone art that filled the Temple Great, never once stopping to look down and see how beautiful they were.
His head gleamed, shaved bare and massaged with fragrant oils. Hoops and bells hung from his earlobes, their soft tinkling sending a message to any who passed of his importance and his power. From the corners of his eyes, Aleksi saw temple servants scuttle, frightened, out of his path, while journeymen lurked in corners and scowled.
From his teachers and the high priests, there were nothing but indulgent smiles. Aleksi returned their genial approval with the smugness of a sleek cat in a rare beam of sunlight, well-fed on praise and the fat of the land. He laughed to himself at their foolishness, all those old men. He would supplant them all, someday soon.
Then, things would change. He had his plans. Dreams of magics greater than even the stories of gods’ accomplishments. He would drive away the snows. Bring back the seasons of green and gold, growth and life. Create an elixir to keep men healthy and longer-lived than anyone had dared to dream.
He would make for himself an arbor finer than a king’s. An eyrie filled with silk and brocade, velvet and fur and tapestries that depicted all his glorious works. A bed filled with pure white feathers. In that bed, the man he would choose as his whim directed. No one said him nay, for they loved him one and all. They fell to their knees and worshiped his cock; they spread themselves wanton and wide to receive his thrusts, and they always, always went mad with passion. They couldn’t help themselves. He had power over these beautiful lads, and used it for both their pleasure.
Thinking those things, Aleksi went to a window and gazed out at the drifting snow. He shook his head to hear the silver jingling, and laughed. Tomorrow, he would take his final tests and win the title of Great Master.
Tomorrow, he would be king of the holy hill.
The next day, he would set about conquering the world…
With a gasp, Aleksi spun back into his own skin, nigh frozen to the ice he lay buried in. “You forgot us,” the voice thundered. “Proud Aleksi, so proud! So sure you could do it all yourself that you no longer thought to ask our help, or thank us for the gifts we lavished so freely. You spurned us as if we were no more than dead leaves underfoot.”
“I — I did not —”
“You did! Will you lie, now? Even after you have seen?”
“But I did not mean — I did not think —”
“No. You did not. And thus, we punished you. A man so proud must be broken to remember his place in our world. Stripped of all that he has lavished on himself. Reduced to nothing, to burn away his pride.”
The voice fell silent. The wind roared on. Aleksi forced his lips to move despite the rime of ice forming on his mouth. “Please… please…”
“Please?” the voice mocked. “What is it you would ask for? A return to your former glory? The powers you took for granted? The riches you let yourself drown in?” It dropped low, cunning and devious. “Or do you plead for death? Perhaps you think it would be merciful. Drifting off to sleep in a grave of ice, your body not found until spring, or perhaps for years to come. Mayhap not ever again. You’d be alone, as you seem to want so very much.”
“Brother!” A new voice, softer, a tenor undistinguishable as male or female, interrupted the harsh flow of words. “Peace, enough!”
“You would interfere?”
“I would remind you that we are the kindly ones. Your own rage blinds you, as Aleksi’s pride shuttered his own eyes. I think…” A gentler breeze, oddly warm, swept over his forehead. “I think he has learned his lesson. Hard times have shown him how to survive, but not how to be happy.”
The first voice harrumphed. “So? What do you suggest?”
“Mercy. Pity. A second chance. Lifting the veils of sorrow and anger as we might shrouds from the dead. It will cause him much pain, but such is fleeting, and once he is truly free, he will see the truth. I believe this with all my heart. He will see why we led him here, and where he belongs. Give him the chance to win back his powers.”
“You jest!” the first voice exclaimed in outrage.
“I do not. Please, brother. Grant
me my request. I will take him as my own, and guide him whithersoever he steps. If he chooses wrong, I will let him go, and never speak of this again. Only, let me try. Once. Just once.”
Silence. Aleksi stared into the whirlwind, heart slowing from the cold even as it wanted to race with fear and wonder.
“Very well,” the first voice said at last. “Do what you like. I wish you joy of him.”
“As I wish joy to come to him, and to us all. Thank you, brother.”
The warm breeze returned, soothing the harsh wind burns that reddened Aleksi’s skin. As it brushed over him with the gentleness of a lover’s caress, the angry gale slowly blew to an end, and faded into nothing.
