Lean, hungry, urgent, we did not last long, and I welcomed his wash deep inside me as mine released between us, and he fell upon it as he sometimes did, hunger adding urgency to his tongue and lips. I sank back upon the cold earth and spread my limbs with the weight of his warm body upon me and watched a bird circling overhead.
All I could hear was the noise of the river and the falls in the distance, but the vibration I could feel now was Aleksey’s heart beating against my chest and the occasional twitch of him deep inside me still, reviving, as was his wont, being still so young and so fine.
ALEKSEY IS always my care and my charge, but that night a deep sense of pride came over me as I watched him eating the turkey I had snared and roasted upon the fire for him. Not that there was anything particularly attractive about either of us eating, I must say. Starving, we ripped and tore, grease upon fingers and faces, but the taste of that hot, fresh meat after so many days was wondrous.
We ate until we felt sick, and then we took the hot water we had prepared and shaved each other. Still naked, I think we would have turned this activity into something else, but we were too full and too tired to do so. It was delightful to have him so close as I sat upon a rock, his fingers spread upon my bearded cheek, his face screwed up with concentration. He told me I would have a new scar on my forehead where I had been kicked and then hit with a musket. I told him in that case I might paint it with fearsome designs to scare the next devil we encountered. He crossed himself, and I laughed at him. Which, as you can probably guess by now, got me some more punishment.
When I was done—face scraped smooth, hair washed and golden, skin sanded lightly and clean—it was his turn.
All we had been through had been unwittingly precipitated by the flawless beauty of the body in my hands. Even the dark beard could not disguise the seductive good looks beneath. People had died for this….
“Stop it.”
“What?”
Aleksey gave me a miserable look. “I think it would be better for all concerned if I fell in that fire and lost this face.”
I pulled his head to my chest, straddling his thighs. I kissed his hair. For one moment my head reeled—the effects of the huge meal perhaps on an empty stomach, the letting go of the stress I had been under, but I saw the whole place as if seeing it from the eye of the bird I had been watching: the deep, seductive green of the river; the purity of the white crests; the smooth, long pull of the waves; the multicolored rocks and pebbles, each unique in their own shape and form; the trees with their abundance of game; and the cleanliness of the air with its smell of pine resin and woodsmoke… Aleksey’s kingdom.
I ruffled his hair. “You are part of a greater design, little one. Do not question your God. He has made all things to please himself—and I have to say that I agree with his intent.”
I WOKE early the next morning and murmured to Aleksey that I was going hunting. He grunted, pulled his coat over his head, and went back to sleep.
If he wondered why I was wet when I returned, or why I had caught no game, he did not have opportunity to question it. He had been still asleep and had needed waking up, and I did not do this gently or prepare him in any way.
It was my turn, after all.
We stayed there a week, and I was similarly wet every morning, and he similarly woken when I returned to our tent.
WE WERE, therefore, in some ways lighter, despite good hunting, upon our return, but in other ways heavier. Quite a bit heavier. Freedom seemed to appreciate being a packhorse now, as if he comprehended the import of what he carried.
I did not tell Aleksey that I had taken the weight of a small child in gold from the pool alongside the river. He was a scrupulous man, reared in the highest traditions of honor and observance of correct ownership and title.
I say finders keepers.
The dead had no need of it, and it amused me no end as we rode home through the woods that not only was I sleeping with a king, I was now possibly the wealthiest man in the New World.
Life is strange, is it not?
But levity aside, we are changed. I cannot deny that. I hope the roar in my ears will fade, the tremor of my hand cease. They are both slightly better than when I first got home.
We are different in other ways, as well.
We are not just the two of us now.
Of course, we have not had a physical metamorphism—one of us becoming female, as we once joked about in our tent whilst trying to overcome the grief of Faelan’s passing. As I knew he would, upon our return, Aleksey went straight to the colony to enquire of the puppy the demon child had tortured.
It was well. I did not say I told you so to Aleksey, as he tended to hit me when I said things like this.
The dog had been heard crying. It had been discovered; the child had attempted to hide it out of earshot of the colony but had not had time to do the job very efficiently. The creature had been taken in by the officers of the colony, and thus it was a very easy job for Aleksey to extract it and bring it home. I think it was about eight weeks old when it came to us—far too young to be away from its mother, and a shaky, pathetic thing it was, if you ask me.
It improved when I told Aleksey that it must sleep at the foot of our bed, for I was not going to get up in the night to check on it tied outside.
By the time it had wormed its way up to lie upside down between us, squeezed between our warmth, I think it resembled a proper dog quite nicely.
Aleksey said she was a wolfhound. I did get hit for my response to that absurd claim. I will grant that it was more leg than dog and had eyes so big and beautifully colored that it appeared to be looking out of orbs of purest amber.
Not that I gave it much consideration, you understand.
Aleksey wanted to know what I thought about names—what I pictured when I looked at her. He did not like my suggestions: Vomit, Flea, and Shitpile.
He said he was going to call her Grace after my mother. After all, he pointed out, had not she given me to him and was thus greatly in his favor? So, Grace it was. Did I overcome some more wiggling little worms of pain when I heard this name now so frequently and in such a pleasant way? Of course I did. I no longer heard my father screaming her name as he died in agony, watching her so degraded. Now I heard Grace and looked to find the ridiculous thing on legs that Aleksey doted upon, for, as he said, did not wolfhounds seek out and find wolves, and would not, therefore, Grace lead us one day to Faelan in the great forest where he was waiting for us?
I said we had both been changed by our experiences.
I agreed with him. Grace would.
I must end now.
I am being called.
Have I set it all down now so it makes sense in my own mind? I am not sure. I said it was inconceivable that the laws of nature could be overcome by the world of the spirit and that by setting down this account I would prove that to myself once more.
But I cannot explain how Faelan’s body departed us or why the blueberries were left in its place.
I think I can explain the appearance of the devil in front of the poor colonists and his subsequent power over them. All men who come to this land seem overly… preoccupied… with God and how they are to live their lives obedient to him. I think they would do better to listen to their hearts, to enjoy their bodies and this land we have care for while we are here on earth. But they snivel and worry and punish themselves and thus leave their hearts vulnerable to the likes of the priest who fornicated and sinned and caught a disfiguring disease. And from that weakness, all horror descended upon us. All his madness manifested itself in that journey we took into his darkness.
Where Mary came from I do not know. How she came to be as she was will also remain a mystery to me. But… ah, this is hard to admit. What would my sister have been had she survived and grown to womanhood with the Powponi? If she had been traded away to another tribe as many captives were? Would she, degraded, defiled, brutalized, have become as Mary did? I will believe that she would not. She was h
ope and celebration, and I choose to believe that she would have remained so.
And the child. Evil men do not give birth to evil children—I had said this to Aleksey. But from whence, then, does evil come? Again, I do not know, but sometimes when I am lying entangled with Aleksey in the quiet hours of the night, I wonder about a man’s soul and whether if it were made tangible, someone like Aleksey would have it as a gem inside his body: shining so bright that even trapped inside, its rays spread out and illuminate. The child’s would be a small, dark kernel of black. Not even coal—for can coal not be lit?—but something truly dead within him.
And then the worst of all the thoughts comes to me. Was that child at five years old as I was at that age? Did the savagery he must have been witness to create the monster he was? And was I, then, a monster, from seeing the same and living the same life? Is that what they had all seen in me? Expecting a civilized doctor as Aleksey had described me (perhaps as he genuinely sees me), but then confronted so abruptly and without warning with me, had they seen the true face I wear beneath this favorable countenance? Is that why I had been singled out for death, but, unable to kill me, they had possessed me with the poppet to bring me down?
Perhaps.
If any of that is true, then I am glad, for whatever I am, I defeated them and their magic.
And here sits a man who once thought himself a man of science.
Perhaps, in the end, it was the falls themselves that determined how events played out. Whether natural or beyond nature, whether science or faith, what could survive in contact with that great, inexplicable power?
Aleksey and I have already experienced the terrifying fog that comes down upon all things in war, when all is confusion and pain.
That place was where nature warred with itself: water, land, and the falling of one to the other as no water should go unto its death. It was not a place for men.
Perhaps we all just went a little mad for a while, living alongside the falls.
But now I really must go. I get called only so many times before I am punished.
I have a feast to attend.
We are to have our binding, just the two of us with Xavier and Freedom, Boudica and tiny Blueberry—I call him Blue; I am a man, after all—and Grace.
Laugh if you want, but what banishes horror?
What makes the world a good place to be in if not love, however you find it and however you celebrate it?
I have found it here in this wild country where water plummets beyond the human ability to comprehend and where blueberries are laid by the Great Spirit who sees and understands us all.
I must go.
I am loved.
I love—adore.
All is well.
Don’t miss how the story began!
A Royal Affair
A Royal Affair: Book One
By John Wiltshire
Doctor Nikolai Hartmann represents himself as a learned man of science who believes wholly in the rational and scientific above all else. In reality, he is a man haunted by an unusual past and running from his own nature. While the Reformation transforms much of Europe, it has yet to touch Hesse-Davia; this is a land mired in superstition with cruel punishments for crimes such as witchcraft and sodomy.
While traveling to the dying king’s bedside to offer his medical expertise, Nikolai is set upon by a bandit. Reaching the king’s ancient stronghold, he discovers his mysterious brigand is the beautiful, arrogant Prince Aleksey. Aleksey is everything Nikolai is not: unguarded, passionate, and willful. Despite their differences, Nikolai feels an irresistible desire for the young royal that keeps him in Aleksey’s thrall.
But Hesse-Davia is a dangerous world for a newly crowned king who wants to reform his country—and for the man who loves him.
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About the Author
JOHN WILTSHIRE spent twenty-two years in the military, perfecting the art of looking busy whilst secretly writing. He left as a senior officer when his tunnel was ready for use. He is now living in New Zealand until he can raise enough money to leave. Although he has no plans to return to the army, he can occasionally be caught polishing his medals.
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://johnwiltshire.co.nz
Also from DREAMSPINNER PRESS
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Aleksey's Kingdom Page 21
