by Liz Everly
"You're early," her mother called from the kitchen. Jeanie followed the sound of her voice and found the two women cooking jam and making preserves of the huge harvest of blackberries. Jeanie took a handful from the nearest basket and started eating them.
"I had an argument with Darren," she said with a sigh equal parts annoyance and regret. "Do you know, I screwed up my courage to tell him about our tradition of magic when we were going out in high school and he thought I was just pretending."
"Most people don't believe it, dear," her mother said with equanimity as she stirred the bubbling pot of berries.
"Your grandfather pretended never to see it." Beatrice smiled over the jar she was drying. "He didn't mind benefiting from it but I think he lived in terror of being asked about it by the minister. What was his name? Father Stephens or was it Stephen?"
"You didn't tell him?" Jeanie sat at the table, munching on the sweet berries.
"It was a different time," her grandmother said, laughing a little at the thought. "People would have wanted me locked up as a crazy woman."
"I told your father, but he never spoke of it. It was like he thought it 'women's work' somehow. Not shameful exactly," she said with a smile, "but not really his business."
Jeanie frowned. "Have there ever been men who practiced the art?"
"Oh definitely. My cousin Collinson, he did for sure. He had a big revival tent business, curing people and whatnot. Until he was jailed for seducing a sheriff's daughter somewhere in the Carolinas."
"Revival tent? Like a Christian thing?"
Beatrice laughed. "Well, you aren’t going to get southerners to go to a witch tent, now are you? And this was what? The nineteen-thirties? Oh, well back in the day."
Jeanie shook her head. "Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say. There's a lot of family history I don't know."
"Someone should write it down," Gabriella agreed.
"But you should cut Darren some slack," Beatrice said. "As the kids say, it's a lot to process. We've the advantage of being to the 'manner' born, so to speak."
"Listen to grandmother and her slang," Jeanie said with a grin. "I'll think about it." She grabbed a handful more of berries and headed upstairs, turning their words over in her mind. As she passed the jumble room door, Jeanie reflexively glanced at the wardrobe. All kinds of family history to record.
The book of the goblins lay on her bed where she had left it. Turning it over she found herself back in the scene where Lizzie rescues Laura with the fruit juices smeared on her face by the angry goblins. For a modern reader the sensuality of the lines was plain and somewhat unsettling:
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez'd from goblin fruits for you.
Jeanie looked with dismay at the blackberry stains her fingers had left on the margin of the page. Like a tiny bell ringing in the back of her mind and gradually gaining strength, an idea occurred as she stared at the blood-like prints.
Jumping up Jeanie strode across the hall to the wardrobe with a hope in her heart. "Let your secrets be revealed to me," she said with great solemnity and pressed her berry-stained hand to the seal. The vibration she had heard before intensified and without much fanfare the seal cracked in half and fell to the floor, taking its ribbon with it.
Jeanie clapped her hands together then opened the doors with a creak. Her face fell. The wardrobe was full of clothes. Not so odd that, she thought crossly. But that couldn't be all. She pushed aside the dresses and found there were three drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe. She rifled through the hand-sewn silk undergarments in the first without an appreciation for their beauty.
The second contained ribbons, stockings and garters, and the third cotton chemises, but under them lay the reason for the seal. Two rough artist notebooks lay hidden, untouched since the night the young woman had disappeared. Jeanie sat down on the floor and opened the first with eager hands.
It was a sketchbook. The initial pages were filled with familiar orchard lanes, this house and people who bore the stamp of family resemblance—the wide mouth, the sharp cheeks and the nose that was just a little too pointy. Jeanie felt a flush of familiarity to see such faces capture here by an amazingly assured hand. What an incredible artist she'd been!
As she flipped through there were more pictures of a similar nature but gradually the sketched turned to wilder fare. With a start Jeanie recognized the massive oak at the forest's edge—huge even a hundred or more years ago. The sleepy glades and the stream and yes—there!
A fairy ring. A shiver of recognition went down her spine. It was the very same location, the very same. How long did mushrooms live? Jeanie shook her head. Surely they didn't live past the season. It was a bit of a shock to see the same ring, but there was bound to be a reasonable cause in the lay of the land.
Turning the page she got a bigger shock… goblin men. And goblin women! And they were nothing like the hideous trolls of Rackham's illustrations. They were beautiful, though they were certainly odd, too. Many did have animal heads—or were they animal masks?
They definitely had human bodies. Jeanie felt her face grow warm as she gazed on the very frank life studies of the naked goblin men. The first few were detailed and clearly caressing in their attention, but modestly incomplete. As the pages continued the artist focused on a pair of goblin men, one with a bear face and the other with a stag's.
And they were not modest at all.
She had drawn the two side by side, naked and smiling. Then she had drawn first one then the other, rigid cocks in hand and devilish gleams in their eyes, as if daring her to take part. The eroticism was undeniable. Jeanie shared their arousal and gasped with surprise as she turned to a page where the two men, masks up, caressed a young woman between them.
She could have been Jeanie's double.
Her dream the other night returned to her with sudden force. It made her wet. Her lips parted as she traced the lines of the sketch, admiring its erotic power. Taken by the goblin men, indeed!
The pages after that were blank. With an effort, she tore her eyes away from the alluring sketch and opened the other book. She experienced a shock of recognition: it was Laura's book of shadows. Jeanie had one of her own, a dog-eared red journal. She had bought a special blank book with a fancy cover that had medieval script on it, but it had always seemed too nice. She had always intended to copy over the rituals and charms she had scribbled down in the red book, but somehow it never happened.
Laura's book looked the same. Words were crossed out, pages had been ripped out, various things had been spilled on the pages. Jeanie flipped through the leaves seeing many a familiar ritual and charm, but not what she was looking for. Did she really think Laura was going to have a page entitled 'Summoning the Goblin Men'?
Of course not, but then she spotted the much-blotted page that bore the legend, "Opening the fairy ring". Jeanie felt her breath stop.
Come buy, come buy!
It was a simple enough ritual, little different from any another opening ritual—apart from the location. She had most of the required items already. But she wouldn't do it, would she? Jeanie looked over at the sketchbook, lying open to the erotic trio. Although rendered with quick strokes rather than fine detail, the figures had been made so vivid they seemed to writhe on the page.
Jeanie felt an electric urge to join their sensual feast. A warning sense of caution itched at the back of her mind.
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits
Yet an excitement bloomed inside her that she had never known before. With a start Jeanie realized, this is what passion is. And to her shame, she knew that she had never really felt it before. Not for a person, not for her work, not even for any of her hobbies. It was as if something lay unawakened in her all this time.
Jeanie picked up the books and went to her room, sitting on the bed but staring out the window as she tried to make sense of things. She couldn't really be contemplating this, could she? H
er eyes watched the dance of the fireflies outside her window and pretended she had not already answered her own question. Suddenly she gasped.
Fireflies only shone in midsummer; it was nearly autumn.
Were they trying to lure her outside? Was this the goblin men? Did they put on a pretty show then lure the enchanted away? She looked at the poem and remembered how they pinched and scratched and mauled poor Lizzie.
Jeanie frowned. She opened the sketchbook again and saw the ecstasy on Laura's face as the two goblin men took her, her leg wrapped around him as the one drove into her, his body straining against her and his fellow behind her, sharp-nailed hands on her breasts as he leaned in to kiss or bite her neck.
It made her so wet; she could almost feel the warmth of their bodies—longed to feel them wrapped around her flesh, thrusting inside her. Unconsciously her own hands had sought her breasts and she wanted them, the goblin men, and she knew it, and knew she would do it.
Swift fire spread through her veins, knock'd at her heart,
Met the fire smouldering there…
When she knew her mother and grandmother had gone to bed, Jeanie took the canvas bag she'd stuffed with the needed items and struck out the back through the orchard. No fireflies now met her, just a soft breeze that whispered summer's abandonment.
Treading the path she knew so well, she found the clearing at once. The fairy ring shone white in the starlit night and Jeanie walked around it to set her candles at each of the cardinal points, lighting each one and invoking its guardian as she cast the circle. As she stood at the center, she remembered her promise to Cerridwen and smiled. "So you did give me a drop of wisdom after all."
She set the bag at her feet and lay the sketchbook open to the erotic illustration. With Laura's book of shadows in hand, she raised her athame and read aloud the summons.
"I open the ring to the goblin trade;
My purse but a golden curl.
Be merry in the dance,
For your pleasures take a chance
Let the fairy folk caper and whirl."
Jeanie knelt down and thrust her athame in the ground and waited, her heart beating fast. At first there was nothing, and then the tinkling of a tiny bell, something so small and so fine that she wondered if she had been mistaken.
Then a hubbub began and she opened her eyes and all around her the dancers twirled unmindful of her presence as she gaped. They were of all shapes and sizes, some with gossamer wings, some with gorgeous hulks, but all a wonder to her startled gaze. Over there the band played—small green figures blew on living snakes, a drum seemed to be a turtle played by a woodland sprite, unconcerned by the position of his shell, watching the dancers cavort.
Jeanie stumbled away from the center of the dance to see the other world spread out beyond. The market indeed sprawled beside the ring, stands and little barrows filled to the brim with goblin fruit: pellucid grapes and rosy apples, lush strawberries and rounded pears, peaches ripe as breasts begging to be caressed.
And everywhere the cry, "Come buy! Come buy!"
Jeanie pressed forward and there by a cart full of tart green apples stood a pair of goblin men who seemed more alive to her eyes than anyone in that magical place. They were not the men in the sketchbook which lay forgotten behind her, but they had something of the same lively sensuality that drew her to them like a strange magnet.
"What have we here?" The one said, his goat mask pushed back to reveal dancing black eyes.
"Looks like an eager customer," his fellow said, moving the stag mask away from his face to get a better look at Jeanie. His smile showed bright white, even teeth as he held an apple out to her. "Have you ever seen anything so tasty?"
Jeanie grinned, but the goat man said, "I sure haven't." His look was frankly lascivious as he ran it admiringly up and down her form.
"She may only be interested in apples," the one in the stag mask said, though he continued to smile.
"I live on an orchard," Janie said at last, feeling her tongue loosen as she gave rein to her feelings and let go her fear. "I have apples every day."
"No sale for us," the goat one said with mock sadness, stepping closer to Jeanie to take her hand. "What a shame."
"Perhaps she has other tastes," said the one like a stag. "My name's Cervus."
"And mine's Hircus," the goat boy said, kissing her hand. His lips warmed her skin with a touch that was nearly electric.
"My name's Jeanie," she managed at last as Cervus took her other hand and kissed it too, provoking a similar heat.
"Such an unusual name," Hircus said. "Why don't we take this skin of wine and get to know a little more about you, Jeanie."
It didn't seem strange at all to be walking away into the woods with two goblin men. Nor when Hircus kissed her lips was she at all surprised to feel Cervus start kissing the back of her neck.
"You've not come to the market before," Hircus said when he finally let the kiss end, leaving Jeanie dizzy with delight.
"No," Cervus murmured in her ear. "We would have certainly remembered you." His teeth gently nipped her skin and she gasped with pleasure.
Hircus grinned and let his hands slide down to her hips. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have some apples?"
"No," Jeanie said, surprised to hear how husky her voice had become. "I want you. Both of you."
"Well, that's easily arranged," Hircus said laughing. Cervus' hands moved to her breasts as Hircus began unbuttoning her blouse. "You're pretty as a fairy witch, but you don't live in these realms."
"I'm a mortal witch," Jeanie said, then gasped as Cervus pinched her nipples.
"How exotic," Hircus murmured as he kissed her belly and undid her jeans with some difficulty. "Mmmm, you smell as good as a fairy queen." His long tongue felt warm against her clit.
Cervus had slipped his trousers off for she felt his erect cock against ass as she squirmed. His fingers squeezed her breasts tightly, flicking her nipples while he bit her shoulders and neck with increased vigor.
Hircus swirled his tongue around her clit then surprised her as he thrust two thick fingers inside her. "Oh, look at her dance," he crooned. His fingers slipped in and out, coated in her juices, while Jeanie shuddered with pleasure.
Cervus groaned. "I want to feel that warm, wet hollow."
Hircus withdrew his fingers and stuck them in his mouth. "Mmmm, you're going to want to taste it, too. Here, you sit down." He waited for his friend to sit then helped Jeanie ease back onto his waving cock. Hircus watched her face closely as she squatted down upon him and her face dissolved in pleasure.
"Oh, gods. I think I'm going to come!" Cervus thrust up into her with groan as she continued to cry aloud. No doubt about it; the orgasm built up and exploded as he continued to thrust up.
"Oh, you should feel this!" Cervus called to his friend. "Ecstasy! All those stories of mortals—they're true." He closed his eyes and tried not to come.
Hircus grinned down at her as she panted with the effort. He held his stiff cock out before her and Janie took it in without a word, gobbling greedily at the length of it. Hircus' eyes rolled back as he moaned. Jeanie sucked the plump head as if it were a plum and felt him shudder. Gradually she found herself matching the thrusts of Cervus below her as she took Hircus cock deep in her mouth.
"I think I'm about to spend," Cervus croaked, his hips speeding up as he shook with the passion about to release. Jeanie sped up her own movements, grabbing both cheeks of Hircus' bottom as she heard him begin to cry out. The two of them came, one after the other and all three moved with sweaty passion as one.
Hircus collapsed beside them when he stopped spasming with pleasure. The two of them squeezed Jeanie between them. "You're amazing," Hircus said, looking at her intensely.
"Yeah, what he said," Cervus agreed, turning her head so he could finally kiss her on the lips too. "And when I've had a chance to recover, I am going to show you what a goblin man can do to please a woman."
"No less will I!" Hircus cri
ed, wiggling against her ass as if to urge his own body on to recovery.
Jeanie laughed. "I have been pleased so far."
"Oh, but there's so much more we will do." Cervus brought his mouth down to her breast and began to suck.
"Eat me, drink me, love, goblins make much of me," Jeanie chanted as they did just that. An idea struck her. "You two don't know of a mortal woman named Laura do you?"
Hircus lifted his head from her other breast as his hand drifted down to her mound. "Laura? You mean Arthus' woman? She came from the orchards too. Do you know her?"
Jeanie moaned as Cervus' teeth teased her nipple. "Sort of." Laura had given herself to sensual delights. Lizzie had lied—or convinced herself that Laura was wrong. It was another time; women weren't supposed to enjoy sex.
I wonder if I can go back? Jeanie wondered, then surrendered herself to the hands and tongues of the goblin men. Tonight would be a feast she had never known possible. Suddenly her confidence surged along with her pleasure. I can do anything!
The Immortal Longing of Brenna Bang
By
Liz Everly
Xander drew back his lips, savoring this moment, baring his teeth. He drew in the scent of her, gazed at her long tender neck, savoring, savoring the moment before penetration.
"Xander," she said breathily, her eyes glistening with longing. "Please."
He took her neck, her vein, her blood so tenderly that she swooned from the pleasure of it. As he bit and sucked her life force she writhed from the exploding passion. As he had told her, submitting to him would bring her the most intense passion and orgasm she'd ever known.
And that was just the beginning—for he'd yet to give her the "love bite" between her thighs. But she wasn't ready for that.
He pulled his teeth from her neck, just in time, of course. She wouldn’t die—he'd see to that. She'd just crave him above all others, and he would oblige.
He'd keep this one safe.
He sat back on his haunches and watched the woman as she bucked and moaned. He held her naked body and sunk two fingers into her moist center. Her life force was still boiling within her—now was the time to take her.