“They make for wonderful servants, but they don’t understand abstract ideas like gratitude.”
After that day, she felt different about the servants. The woman was so sure of herself. Bernadette had been inclined to agree with her. She stopped thanking her servants after that. They gave no indication that they saw a difference but sitting by their fire with a child in her lap, she was angry that she let some woman make her second-guess herself.
Adam’s thin arms wrapped around her neck. “I know the difference now.”
“You do?”
“You’re nice to look at. Not like Otto or Cal.”
She laughed, but he wasn’t wrong. It was natural for them to feel attracted because she was a woman. “That’s the heart of it, I suppose.”
“I’m plenty nice to look at,” Otto declared with his hands at his hips. After a moment of consideration, he amended his statement. “Though Adam is right. I can’t help but look at you. I know it’s because you’re new, but there’s also something else.”
Alexi had to be somewhere nearby, she reasoned. She could only hope he would return. In the meantime, Jon and Tom returned with several small animals on a skewer. They set them across the fire and turned the sticks to cook the meat evenly. She was fascinated with how self-sufficient they were. Here they were, children, taking care of themselves. If Bernadette were left alone in the wilderness, she wouldn’t have survived the night.
They joked and played as though there weren’t a care in the world. The jungle boys didn’t share the same concerns as Bernadette did. They were not depended on by an entire tribe to procreate to save their people and culture. They just woke up and existed, free to do as they wish. Bernadette found herself envying the boys, but she couldn’t help but worry for them. They were without protection such a dangerous place.
After they ate their supper, Tom and Jon slapped their hands on their laps in a rhythm. Their voices sounded the same when they sang, and it was hypnotizing. She couldn’t tell which voice began or ended. She had never heard the servants at the Mármaros do anything like this.
Adam became excited by the noise and shouted, “Yay! Dance time!” before hopping off Bernadette’s lap to dance wildly around the fire. Hoots from the older boys signaled that they, too, would join in the dance. Soon all six boys were dancing around. She laughed and clapped along with Tom and Jon before Cal and Otto pulled her up to dance with them. Gabe was the only one not dancing. He was in a tree watching the whole spectacle.
“Dance!” they cried.
Bernadette tried her best to oblige, but her limbs were heavy and her gait sluggish. She couldn’t hop about the way the children did. Instead, Bernadette opted to move in a slower, deliberate motion. Moving her hips to the rhythm, she swayed as her thighs parted, allowing for more movement. She thought about Alexi and how she wished he were there with her.
She opened her eyes to see all six of the jungle boys, eyes wide, gaping at her, but she didn’t stop dancing. Bernadette allowed the ache between her thighs travel throughout her body. She thought of only Alexi. Otto and Cal began to investigate up close. They caressed the smoothness of her arms and smelled her hair. Their eyes seemed transfixed on her chest and hips.
Bernadette didn’t shame them for their curiosity. She had the same feelings, just for someone else. Adam was also interested in her physique, but he was so young that he would quickly dismiss what she was doing. Tom and Jon continued their song but watched with a fevered look in their eyes.
Cal cupped one of her breasts. She removed his hand, firmly but gently. He didn’t try again, but he kicked the dirt in a dance that expressed his frustration.
It was Otto who tried to lift the skirts of her dress.
“No, no,” she said removing his hand
“I just want to see underneath,” he said while trying again.
“And I said no.”
Otto was growing frustrated, but unlike Cal, he challenged her further. “There’s nothing wrong with it. We see each other naked all the time.”
“It’s different with me.”
“Because you’re a she,” Otto said mockingly.
Gabe had climbed down several branches, sensing the confrontation. It was Adam, sweet little Adam, who pushed between her and Otto and yelled, “She said no!”
Cal was behind Otto, supporting him loosely, ready to step away if the argument was lost. Gabe was now yelling down at them. What side he was on, Bernadette did not know.
Otto was still smirking playfully. Unafraid of Adam, he pushed the little boy aside and pressed himself against her. His hands were on her buttocks, feeling the space between her thighs.
“You are different!” Otto announced.
Embarrassment and rage made Bernadette’s mind go blank. For what seemed like a decade she stood there, unmoving. She heard little Adam yelling at Otto and could feel Otto’s erection through his trousers. Gabe was screaming with excitement. The whole moment was a daze, and all at once, it became real. She pushed Otto away before backhanding him across the face.
Chapter Four
The jungle went silent, and all the boys looked at them with gaping jaws and wide eyes. Bernadette’s breath was labored from the adrenaline and in fear for the boy now lying prone on the ground. They were soft people. A hit from her was enough to kill them, and he was just a boy.
Tom or Jon—she couldn’t tell them apart—kneeled to investigate their brother. He barely touched the boy before Otto rolled over and rubbed his jaw. “You hit harder than a boy.”
Bernadette felt relieved. She thought to explain the reason she hit so hard had nothing to do with her gender, but perhaps it was better this way. “You must never touch a lady without her consent,” Bernadette explained.
With their newly established dominance in place, the party slowly resumed. Adam remained protectively by her side while Gabe climbed back into a tree somewhere. Otto played drums while the twins sang a slower, sweeter song in the same eerie fashion. Individually they only made vowels and sounds but combined. They sang a song.
Sail the black waters
Far from home
Sail the black seas
A kind alone
Sail the black seas
Home
“That’s a lovely song,” she told them. “What is it about?”
“We don’t know,” one of the twins replied.
“The merchant folk taught it to us before their people came for them,” the other twin responded.
Bernadette was about to ask more, but the boys were all staring at a point behind her. She turned to look and saw him—Alexi. She stood, holding Adam close.
Alexi looked her up and down with his cat eyes and knowing smile. He looked older up close. She could see a slight shadow of a beard and a scar in his unruly eyebrows. “So you’ve come,” he said.
She wanted to speak, to say something clever, but as the moments passed, she would’ve sufficed with anything. Still, she couldn’t seem to will her mouth to speak. His eyes wouldn’t leave her, and she felt the rest of the world falling away. Nothing mattered anymore.
Adam wiggled from her arms. She placed him down on the ground without taking her eyes away from Alexi.
“Do you remember anything?” he asked.
Her brow furrowed as she shook her head in confusion. Just what was she supposed to remember? “You mean earlier in the evening, back at the shore?”
His footsteps were confident, and his strides were a force as he approached her. Frozen by shock, Bernadette was so close to him that she could smell the leather of his pants and the herb he chewed last. It was a mint of some kind. “I’m sorry if Otto offended you. He is at that time in a boy’s life where they try to assert their manhood.”
She wanted to say it was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. It made her angry at the time, but now, looking at Alexi, she couldn’t care less. “You’re here now,” was all she could manage to say.
Alexi smiled and licked his lips. He didn’t speak like
the jungle boys. He was an older man in a youthful body. Otherworldly. His mischievous smile remained but his eyes flashed with another emotion for an instant. Was it sadness?
Bernadette was unsure of what to make of the strange boy-man that stood before her. He was young yet knowing, lean yet muscular. Innocent but cunning at the same time. She knew better than to trust him, but she wasn’t here for trust.
Alexi led her to the cut stump beside the fire. “Come around, boys.”
All six boys sat on the ground at Alexi’s feet. Even Gabe who wasn’t keen on leaving his tree. “Bernadette is my equal. You do as she says the way you would obey me.” His voice was smooth, but there was an edge, a threat behind it that sent a shiver throughout her body. She could see the strength moving underneath his skin. She could see his muscles and veins all at work. Bernadette’s people did not look like this. Every time he looked her way, she would lose her thoughts and he would smile. It was as if he knew he had her.
“Jungle boys,” he commanded. “Entertain our guest.” He draped himself over half the log beside her so that his head was nearly in her lap.
The boys lined up. Adam had a flute and blew into it to set the key for the group. The boys all opened their mouths and let out a loud bleat. Bernadette choked back a laugh, not wanting to be impolite, but Alexi laughed as well. She was painfully aware of his presence as he laid beside her, casually chewing on a roasted rabbit leg.
Adam sang out a syllable repeatedly. His voice echoed into the black jungle and the night sky. Gabe then sang out a different noise continually while Adam did the same. One by one, each boy uttered an individual sound and repeated it just as the twins did earlier, but it must have been much harder to do with all six boys.
Alexi finished the leg and sat beside her, his arm around her waist, and she forgot all about what the boys were doing.
The boy’s song was beginning to align. Each boy sang their sound until they paced up with each other. They were singing two words: “Hello, Birdie.”
They not only could sing the songs this way, but they could say anything this way right on the spot. Bernadette was so impressed by singing a language that she stood up and clapped, leaving Alexi’s embrace. She reseated herself, this time sitting as close as she could to Alexi as the jungle boy’s song slowly returned to the random syllables before finishing.
“Tell me more about the people who taught you that.”
“There were other people here not long ago. That’s how they spoke,” Alexi explained. “They taught it to Cal, Otto, and the twins. Adam and Gabe learned from their brothers.”
“They spoke like that for everything?”
“They didn’t look like you or me. The merchants were tall and could run faster than any jungle cat. They used to live outside the swamps.” Alexi’s eyes were hypnotic as the fire reflected in them.
“So, the whole tribe would sing things out? What happened to them?”
“Naw, they had a language but couldn’t talk in ours without working together. It was like each person had their own throat noise and couldn’t make another, so that’s how they spoke to us. They got on a ship and sailed into the moonlight.”
“Into the moonlight,” Bernadette repeated. It sounded so magical.
“Tell us a story!” Tom cried.
“Yeah! Story!” The rest of the boys pleaded.
Alexi gave an indulgent laugh. “What story do you want, Bernadette?”
All eyes were on her, and Bernadette felt as though Alexi were testing her in some way. “Tell me the story of how you came to be here.”
Alexi lifted his chin proudly. The boys all seemed to think that meant their leader agreed as they all settled in and watched Alexi with full intent. He half-squatted over the fire to add dramatics to his story. The shadows danced over his olive-toned skin as his long, bare arms waved over the flames.
“The world I come from is a white, endless void. Its population consisted of people who did what they were told by people they did not know and could never see. They stood on high and passed orders. That was my life. Every day.”
“Boring!” Otto taunted.
Alexi leaped over the fire and stood before her. “Then, one day, a great big hole opened in the floor. It was a gaping black void. The others warned me to stay away, but I could no longer bear living in the monotony. I’d rather die. So, I jumped.
“I fell through the hole and realized that it wasn’t a pit of death. It was like a river. It twisted and turned as it flowed through many, many lands. I saw a land with great tall buildings made of glass with flying metal birds.”
Bernadette was in awe of Alexi’s storytelling. As his body moved, his shadows painted pictures of all the places he was describing. When she was a child, she used her hands to make shadow pictures on the wall, but nothing quite like this. Alexi was art in motion. The boys were all just as fixated as she was.
“I saw a world with no stars and a world with people who could jump so high they looked as though they were flying. A world with no rain and a land made of salt and crystal.
“Eventually, the river dried up. Things moved at a slower pace until I landed on the alpha moon. The hole collapsed, and my people left me there as punishment.”
Alexi leaned in towards Bernadette. “Don’t tell them, but I like it here very much.”
He stole a kiss from her lips and all the boys around her made noises of disgust. Bernadette was wholly intoxicated by the man who kissed her, more by his story than the kiss that did nothing to quell her desires. She knew his story was just for entertaining the children—that it didn’t need to make sense—but Bernadette wondered if Alexi always lied.
By now, the larger moon was overhead, and the smaller moon was hardly visible. She had trouble seeing the stars through the jungle canopy as well, but the giant moon was in the shape of a crescent on this night. The fire cracked as it broke into another log. Cal and Otto were fighting over the last piece of rabbit. A shock of panic startled Bernadette when she realized she couldn’t find Adam.
“Adam?” she called.
Alexi looked at her and smiled sadly. She wondered why. “He’s asleep over there,” he said as he pointed to a jungle patch between the cave and the fire. Little Adam was curled into a ball. He looked so peaceful asleep. Bernadette looked to Alexi whose smirk had still not faded.
“It’s time for bed, boys,” he announced.
The jungle boys scampered into the darkness. Their voices echoed around them as they settled down for the night. Alexi took her hand and pulled her upward. Bernadette’s heart pounded in her chest as he led her into his cave. “This is what you came for, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted.
It would have been the scandal of the century in the Mármaros. A female—a fertile one at that—copulating with a jungle boy. But Alexi wasn’t an ordinary jungle boy. There was something more about him. He wasn’t like her, but he wasn’t like the boys around the fire either. The way his eyes reflected the moonlight was not natural. Not that it would have mattered to her people. They would’ve hated him all the same.
In that instant, she took a deep breath and followed Alexi into his lair. Her mind raced through a thousand scenarios at once as he led her to a flat stone covered in soft furs. He could see without any trouble and seemed to know that she couldn’t see at all for he led her, holding both hands gently.
Alexi unfastened the buttons down the back of her dress so quickly and easily. She was scared and excited at the same time. Half of her wanted to push him down on the bed. The other half wanted to run back to the Mármaros like a frightened little girl.
When his lips found hers, all the anxiety and second-guessing left her. As her dress slipped around her feet, Bernadette pulled at his leather pants and returned his kisses with more urgency. Alexi’s hands trembled as he traced them over her body. It was as though he was touching a sacred icon or some long-lost lover. Laying her on the bed, her mind was still at last.
C
hapter Five
The jungle did not sleep. It was wide awake. Life and death bloomed from all corners of the jungle, but none of it dare disturb them in that cave. Afterward, Bernadette fell into a restless sleep. She woke from fever-like dreams induced by her adventure and new experiences with Alexi.
At some point, her sleep deepened. It must have, because she dreamt that Thius was slapping her across the buttocks with a crop in front of the whole council. Her mother appeared to refuse to look at her, the only person in that cold rock palace that loved her, and she had let her down. Shame and embarrassment couldn’t begin to describe how she felt. Bernadette resigned herself to her punishment. She hoped she hadn’t let everyone down. It always felt like she had even when she had yet to do anything wrong.
She couldn’t see him, but it could be no one else but Thius who administered the punishment. The heat that rose from her face was hotter than the whipped flesh. All she could do was hide her face in disgrace. Her behind and mound were on display for everyone to see. While his face wasn’t there, she knew that Thius was enjoying himself. The slaps of the crop against her flesh made a sharp whipping noise with each strike, like a shoe on marble.
Whip...whip...whip
While she dreamed of the punishment, Bernadette became aware that it was a dream. She realized that if she returned to the Mármaros, she would never be the same. She would need to make a stand or spend the rest of her long life hiding in the jungles. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing just so long as Alexi was there.
Bernadette opened her eyes, but the strikes continued. The hits focused on her labia, which was alarming as it was uncomfortable. She was sleeping on her stomach with one leg raised, exposing her naked body to the elements. She rolled over to find Adam kneeling at the bed holding a slingshot.
“Were you the one hitting me?” She asked.
Adam cocked his head. “Where’s your pee worm?”
“I don’t have one. Is that why you were snapping at me with your sling?”
Daughter of the Mármaros Page 4
