Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  "Is it too much?" He asked, when my shaky little cries reached a new pitch. "Am I not giving you what you want, girl? Is that it? Perhaps you are still hungry and it's another rabbit that you want, and not –"

  "No! No – I want you – I want –"

  "Is this what you want?" He crooned into my ear, just before plunging himself into me again – deeply, completely – and holding himself there for a few seconds.

  I couldn't even speak to answer, all the air being pushed out of my lungs with the sheer force of him. And then he did it again, slow and deep, and I felt the first little twitches inside me, the first little ripples of what was to come.

  He was close, too, even as he did a much better job of maintaining control than I did. His eyes were closing with each thrust, and when they opened again they were glazed, almost unseeing.

  "Magnus!" I squeaked as he thrust his hips down again and then I suddenly found myself close to the airy peak of the mountain. "Magnus! Please!"

  That was the end of his control, right there – that moment. He looked down at me once more before placing his forearms on the ground on either side of me, bracing himself. And then he began to fuck me harder, and faster, until very quickly it was all too much and I was suddenly overcome by the hot, sweet bliss that exploded deep inside me and sent its shockwaves out into every part of my body.

  "Voss," Magnus said again, his brow shiny with sweat and his jaw set. "Heather, oh, voss, ohhhh..."

  And then he was coming, before I'd even finished, as I was still tightening around him, drawing it out of him as he let himself spill into me. His whole body stiffened. His hands – one buried in my hair and one clamped onto my shoulder, pushed my body down so he could thrust deeper and. He opened his mouth against my neck, shouting his pleasure into my flesh.

  Afterwards, we lay side by side in the dirt beside the fire, its light revealing the glistening sheen on our naked flesh as we caught our breath. It had never been like that for me before, the build-up never so tense, never so perfectly played. And the orgasm – my God. I was thankful he didn't ask me for anything as we lay together, recovering, because I would definitely have given it to him, whatever it was. My heart. My soul. Anything.

  I woke at what seemed to be dawn – unusual for me – and immediately sat up in a panic when I remembered where I was – and saw that I was alone.

  My clothing lay scattered around and the leather vest-type thing that Magnus had been wearing, as well as the length of leather that he had worn tied around his waist, were wrapped around me.

  "The dew fell in the night," a voice came suddenly from behind. He hadn't abandoned me. "You shivered in your sleep, so I covered you with my dressings – your own aren't fit to warm an infant."

  I noticed then – and to my great and admittedly somewhat childish amusement, that he was completely naked. He did not seem to be concerned about it, though, as he unwrapped what I saw was my t-shirt and let about eight oysters fall out of it and onto the ground.

  "No rabbits," he said apologetically. "I should have woken earlier and –"

  "Magnus?"

  "What?" He looked up, perplexed as to why I was interrupting. "What is it, girl? Are you not hungry?"

  I chuckled. "You're naked."

  "I am," he agreed. "Must I comment on your powerful skills of observation, is that it? Do you want to be praised before you eat the breakfast I have found for you?"

  I sat up and moved closer to him, nestling my face into his warm shoulder. "Did you just go to the beach and gather oysters naked?"

  "What is this concern with my nakedness?!" He replied, taking one of the oysters in his hand and nudging the top of his small knife just underneath the lip of it. "The day is already warm, girl – it's summer. Why would I –"

  "But what if somebody saw you?" I giggled. "What if the Angles –"

  "It's probably best if they do see me naked, without the dressings of a man of the North. What is this worry for my dressings, anyway? Come on, get up, you should eat something."

  But I did not get up. I was still in that place where I had gone the night before, the one where no man had ever even done a little of what Magnus did to me. I smiled to myself as I held tight to his shoulder, feeling safe with him, cared for. It was an unfamiliar state, and all the more intoxicating for it.

  Even the way he shucked the oysters seemed to be wonderful, more proof of his superiority over all other men. He moved the knife skillfully, carefully, pushing it for each oyster just under the shell and twisting it sharply when it got to a certain point, leveraging the thick shells open and then setting the two halves down next to each other before moving onto the next.

  Which is not to say that the oysters themselves looked appetizing. They looked anything but. Gray, wet, slimy-looking things they were. I was hungry, but looking down at my breakfast I found myself wishing that there was more rabbit.

  "What is it you eat in your country?" Magnus asked, laughing, when he saw the look on my face. "Do you have roast pork for every meal, is that it? You shrank from the rabbits – although you enjoyed them in the end, with me to pull the meat from the bones for you – and now you shrink from the oysters?"

  I did not tell him what I ate in 'my country,' though, because something had occurred to me – something that would explain the seemingly inexplicable fact of where I was and how I got there. And if that something was true, then I knew Magnus would not recognize most of the things I could tell him I ate, anyway. So instead, driven by the simple feeling of wanting to please him, I picked up one of the half-shells and brought it to my nose, sniffing.

  It smelled like the ocean. I looked down. Up close, it looked even slimier. I pressed my lips together so I would not gag, and looked up at him.

  "Do you know what we say of oysters in the North, girl?"

  "What?"

  "We say that eating an oyster is like pleasing a sea-maid with your mouth."

  "A sea-maid?"

  "A sea-maid, yes. Half fish, half woman. Do you not –"

  "Oh! You mean a mermaid."

  Magnus looked at me, and there was something in his gaze that made me soften. "A mermaid, is it? Yes, well, as it is – to eat an oyster is to know what it is to be intimate with a mermaid. Perhaps if you eat your oysters I'll please you with my mouth and see if they have infused your flesh with the taste of the waves?"

  Until that day, I don't think anyone had ever paid attention to me the way Magnus did. It sounds a ridiculous thing to say, but I don't mean that no one had ever paid any attention to me before. They had, obviously. Boys included. But the attention of Magnus was different – intently focused on me alone, as if his ears had been tuned specifically to the frequency of my voice, and his eyes to the specific colors that made up my lips and my eyes and my hair. It wasn't something he spoke of or told me, it was merely the feeling I got from being with him. It put me in mind of sunshine, and of myself as a plant that has been kept in the shade and suddenly placed outdoors to unfurl its leaves and drink in the golden rays.

  I had my suspicions – very strong suspicions by then – about what was going on. If they were true, I wasn't even sure I cared, as long as I kept being allowed to bask in the warmth of Magnus' sweet solicitousness.

  So I ate the oyster because he wanted me to eat it and because even then, although it had not been so long at all, I trusted that he wouldn't ask me to do anything that would cause me harm or discomfort. And he watched me gently, encouragingly, smiling with approval when I clamped my lips shut as the first briny taste filled my mouth and I found myself having to resist the strong urge to spit it out immediately.

  "You're doing well," he commented as tears of effort and nausea welled up in my eyes, and it was those words that allowed me to close my eyes and swallow and then look up at him, proud of myself.

  "And another," he indicated, pointing to the next one. "You need to eat, girl. Who knows how much ground we will need to cover today, and with no horses or ships? You need to keep your strength
up."

  "What about you?" I asked. "You're bigger than me. You need –"

  "I ate half the oysters on the beach before you woke. Come now, at least two more. Do you not like the taste?"

  I concentrated on the tastes in my mouth – salty, fishy, oceanic. They were unfamiliar but not exactly unpleasant. It was the texture that bothered me. "It's the feeling of it in my mouth," I said. "It's slimy. It's like – it's like snot."

  "It's nothing more than brine," Magnus replied, not dismissing what I'd said but offering another perspective – one he hoped would lead me to eating more oysters. "The wetness is the sea itself, nothing more. Try another one."

  So I tried another one – something I knew I never would have done without him there to urge me on. And the second was not as bad as the first. I consciously thought of the juices as seawater, and it made the whole thing easier to swallow. By the third, although I could not yet honestly say I was a fan of oysters, I was beginning to understand why some people liked them so much.

  "Good," Magnus said as I swallowed that third one, taking the shell out of my hands and tossing it into the woods. "With luck we'll find some more rabbits – perhaps even a deer – today."

  And then he went to stand up and I saw at once that he was – excited.

  "Oh!" I said, covering my mouth with one of my hands to muffle a little sighing giggle.

  He turned back to me and then followed my gaze down to his own loins. I had never met a man so thoroughly comfortable with his own nakedness before.

  "It's your fault," he commented, catching my eye with a grin. "Something about the way you ate those oysters for me. I was just thinking I do not know if I have ever enjoyed anything so much in my life as I just enjoyed watching you eat those oysters, Heather."

  A swooning, swooping sensation ran hotly through my belly at his words, and the look in his eyes. I needed him again. At once. I needed to please him as I had the previous night. He knew it, too, because he immediately tossed the sword in his hand to the ground and moved to kneel down in front of me. Only I stopped him before he could do so, looking up from where I sat to take in his full glory.

  It was a bold thing for me to do, what I did then. I used to talk about it with friends back in L.A. – giving head. What boys were worthy of this favor, at what point it might be alright to do it for someone else etc. etc. But there was no such weighing or measuring with Magnus. With him, it happened as naturally as the sun rising in the sky over our heads. I put my hands flat on his thick, muscular thighs and pushed my lips gently over the head of him until he leaned his head back and moaned full-throatedly into the warm morning woods.

  He was big – even bigger, it seemed, now that he was in my mouth – and I was not the expert I had sometimes pretended to be to my friends back home. But somehow it was OK and I didn't worry about doing something wrong or not being able to please him the 'right' way.

  Perhaps it was his obvious, immediate pleasure? The fact that I could feel him growing and stiffening in my mouth as he turned his eyes down to watch? The way his voice became deeper and slower as he whispered my name, stroking my hair off my face and tucking it behind my ears?

  Whatever it was, it filled me with the unabashed need to go further. When I felt comfortable with the tip of him in my mouth I opened my lips a little wider, to take more of him in. At once, the salty taste of his excitement flooded the back of my tongue and his fingers tightened on my head.

  "Heather," he breathed, drawing himself out of me and then pushing back in again, going a little further that time. "Gods, girl. Gods –"

  I popped him out of my mouth and ran the tip of my tongue down his length, and then up again and back down, until I had covered every inch. I took him in my hand and ran the shiny head over my cheek and over my closed lips before opening them and taking it in again. And when I caught his eye that time, he spoke in a ragged voice.

  "If you keep looking at me in that way you're going to finish me," he said, stroking my cheek tenderly with his thumb. "You're going to – oh, voss, girl – you're going to – finish –"

  I loved hearing his voice catching in his throat, feeling the intensity building, knowing what was coming. It spurred me on, driving my lips further down his shaft and my tongue underneath, where I swirled it back and forth in a way that made Magnus' whole body tighten.

  "Voss," he breathed, through clenched teeth, and I felt him get exquisitely hard in my mouth. "Voss, Heather. Oh – girl, oh – ohhhh..."

  I didn't break eye contact when he came. I gazed up the whole time, telling him with my eyes that I wanted what he was giving me, that there was nothing so sweet as swallowing his warmth as he spilled it on the back of my tongue.

  And after he was done, I bit my lower lip and grinned with pride when he stumbled a step back and then sat down, commenting breathlessly that he thought it would be the next day before he could walk again.

  Magnus was angry when he woke up and saw, as he said, how high the sun was in the sky.

  "I should not have slept for so long!" He scolded himself, moving around our little clearing in the woods and gathering various items, wrapping his leathers around his waist before turning to me.

  "We cannot stay in the woods forever, Heather – as much as the idea appeals to me now as I look upon your face again. But no, we cannot stay. You must go home, as you say. And I must –"

  He paused.

  "You must – what?" I asked gently. "Where will you go if you can't go home?"

  "Back to the North," he replied, a little brusquely. "I think I might go the long way back – south to Kent and then sail across the channel on a trade-ship to the land of the Franks. Eventually, I'll find my way north again, to a different place, one far from Apvik, where no one will know my name or whose son I am."

  "Just like that?" I asked, as we looked around to see if we had left anything and pushed our way through the underbrush to reach the path once more. "You'll just walk south and sail across – what did you say? The channel? With a trader?"

  "Yes," he shrugged. "What else is there for me to do? I cannot stay here – this is the Kingdom of the East Angles, and no man of the North is welcome here. And I cannot return to Apvik. What would you have me do, girl?"

  I stood looking at him on the path, just before we turned to head towards the sea again, and wondered if I was crazy.

  "Will you come with me?" I asked, taking his hand. "It's not far – just to where I saw you fight with your brother – I want to check something."

  "You want to what? Girl, must I say it again? This is the land of the Angles, and we already know their dwellings are close to here. Why would you want to seek trouble out? Surely it will find us without our helping it along."

  Magnus was clothed again, although not above the waist. His hair was pulled off his face and tied at the nape of his neck with a length of leather. I had never seen anyone with a hair tie like that before. I had never met anyone who thought nothing of walking naked in public. I had never met anyone who did not know what a gas station or a hospital was. And the whole time I had been in the new place, I had not heard a single car, nor spotted a single plane in the sky.

  "What is it?" He asked when he saw I was agitated. "I'm sorry for my irritation – it is not your fault. It was easy to lose myself with you last night – and then just now, before I fell into sleep for much longer than I should have. But in truth, worries crowd my thoughts. I do not know if I will live, girl. And knowing you as I do now, even for this brief time – it makes me want to live perhaps more than I ever have."

  I had to ask. Either he would answer yes, and we could find our ways home – and maybe even continue to see each other. Or he would answer no, and I would have to go further, ask more questions, dig deeper. I looked up into his eyes, the lashes lit just then with a slender ray of sunlight that had found its way through the heavy canopy of branches.

  "Have you ever heard of the United States of America?" I asked.

  He had not. Even before he
shook his head and told me no, I could see the lack of recognition on his face. "The Unites States of – of what? Of Amri–"

  "America."

  "America?"

  "Yes."

  "No."

  There it was. I stepped forward and rested my cheek on his chest, afraid because I knew by then that I was not dreaming.

  "What is that place?" He asked, sensing my turmoil. "Is it your home?"

  I turned my face up to look at him so my chin lay against his chest. "Yes, it is. And can you tell me something else?"

  "Just ask it, Heather – anything I can do for you, I will."

  "What year is it?"

  "What year?" He repeated. "I do not understand what you ask. It's summer, the middle of the year."

  "You don't have a number for it?" I continued. "You don't have a way to tell one year from the next?"

  Magnus frowned, confused. "An amount? For the year? Only in relation to events, girl. I can say since that since I was born, ten and ten and three winters have passed."

  "But you can't say, for example, that it is 1983?"

  He could not. I was in a place where they did not have numbers for their years, and they did not have planes or hospitals or sneakers. A place where they had not heard of the USA. And so I knew that I was not just in a place that was far in distance from River Falls, New York, but also one that was far in time. At least that was the working theory, one I had been working on since the previous day. Those dizzy spells in the woods – what if they were more than dizzy spells? What if I was – somehow – passing through time?

  "Please," I urged Magnus. "I just need to check one thing. It's close. Will you come with me?"

  "I do not seem to be able to say no to you," he mused, more to himself than to me. And then I took his hand and began to lead him back down the path into the woods...

  Chapter Ten

  Magnus

  "Don't be afraid."

  I smiled indulgently and told her not to worry, that I was not afraid.