Night of the wolf, p.24
Night of the Wolf, page 24
“Beautiful room, this,” Lucius said. It gave him an excuse to look away from Antony. He needed one.
“Crap,” Antony answered. “It makes me feel bilious. Now, all you have to do there in the Senate is keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open. Go in, sit down if you can find a seat. Or if you can’t, lean on the wall.”
“All the Senate does is dream up new honors for Caesar,” Lucius snarled.
“Yes, Caesar packed it so nicely. Don’t you know anything about politics at all?”
“It seems not.”
“Well, my boy, the members of law-making bodies are helpless until they can form factions, cabals, conspiracies, cliques, parties, associations, or, in other words, find partners in crime. Now, what Caesar did was add three hundred members to the Senate who all owe their elevated rank to Caesar. So all our indigenous criminal class—the patricians—can do now is mill around and talk. Not that they aren’t dangerous enough when they do that.
“But no one faction is big enough to vote down three hundred new members—need I add all loyal to Caesar—so at present they’re harmless. He’s drawn the adders’ teeth.”
“Yes, but they grow back.”
“Not just yet.” Antony gave Lucius and Philo a hooded glance. “You go to the Senate and make your sister happy. Don’t give me any more trouble.” He strode out the door and was gone.
Dryas returned to the meadow. She sat in silence, watching from high up as night claimed the world. The shadow of the mountain stretched out over the plain, sliding over hills, forests, and the villas and pastures of the people.
Her people and the Romans were indistinguishable because of their distance in time and space.
As the sun sank lower, its last rays rose higher, drowning the world in shadow, enriching the heights with golden light. The long, soft, shining green grass in the meadows around her tossed, whispering in the evening wind. The tall blades caressed her ankles, calves, and thighs.
I must love him, the wolf the man-wolf, the way the grass loves the earth whereon it grows and the autumn wind that blows and kisses it to brilliance.
I must teach him to turn his fire to me. Not the way he burned the wheat fields of those who he blamed for her death, but to allow me the fire of desire that weds the fruitful earth to sunfires that draw from the soil the manifold shapes that form the kingdoms of life. The tree bending in adoration before the wind. The tall white barley, yellow wheat, orchards adorned with the multitude of flowers that become the pomes, apples, plums, pears, and downy peaches. The flowers of the waste raising their faces, pledging fidelity to the sun by day and the moon by night.
The stormfire lancing across the sky, sending its blow to earth to bless eternally the sacrificial toil that calls fire from the gods and places it in the hands of man.
Then she took her iron ring and kindled the fire from among the deadfalls littering the grass.
The sun hovered for a moment at the edge of the world, then descended into darkness. This high, her fire was balanced against the light of the ghostly crescent hanging in the clear autumn air, rather like a nail paring discarded by an eternal deity. And, as the last orange and green glow of sunset faded from the horizon, the stars peered in their myriads from the darkness above to look down on Dryas standing alone.
She drew off her shift and threw it into the flames. The fire flared very high, illuminating her flesh as she stood in proud nakedness before night and the stars.
Will he come? she wondered. She reached for the chain around her neck and her hand made a fist around the golden leaves.
A blasphemy. The thing was a blasphemy.
No one had the right to make such a thing and include in it all the stages of a tree’s life and all the parts, making it share the human universe. There, among the leaves, fruit, and flowers, she felt the dark secret roots twisted into the pattern formed by the artist. The tree informed the earth and gaia. The earth formed the tree. To include all in the circle was dangerous. Her people didn’t usually do it, always leaving something out or breaking it in spots even in a fortress or a crown.
Will he come? she wondered. Because his is the choice now. I have already chosen.
Then she heard a movement in the grass and a pair of strong male arms closed around her. She shivered for a second and then yielded to the body, warm and strong behind her.
He kissed her on the throat and ear. Then asked innocently, “Do you like this? Imona did.”
“Yes,” she answered and forbore comment on the fact that he spoke of one woman while in the arms of another. No, she thought. He is not yet a man. I must make him one—tonight.
His hands roamed over her body, searching, testing, exploring until, at last, caressing. “You are made as she was. The first time, I never knew her name; the second was Imona. I have had only two of you. Are you all made so?”
“Yes.” Then she made a small sound. His explorations were now intimate and she found herself electrified by some of the places he found to investigate.
“What does that mean? Is it a word?” he asked. “I thought I knew most words, but I haven’t heard that one . . . before.”
“No, it’s not a word, but an indication of pleasure.”
Then, very gently, he turned her around.
For the first time, she felt afraid. There was an awesome and beautiful innocence in his face. And, for a second, she had the pleasure and guilt of a ravisher who holds helpless, forbidden fruit in his hands. But then no, because there was no sense of theft. It was rather as if he were the cowering, yet eager, virgin bride and she the bridegroom burdened with the duty of initiation into the mystery, and yes, the cruelty, of creation.
But then he kissed her and pressed his body against hers and the illusion vanished. He was male, compellingly, totally male and, for a second, she was only an animal with the freedom from responsibility only an animal knows. Now she’d passed the point of no return.
She’d spread a clean linen coverlet on the ground near the fire. It was padded with the blanket she used when she slept in the open.
He moved her toward it, saying, “Yes, Imona liked to lie on something. In the opening in the earth where we coupled, she said the floor was cold.”
He moved her backward until she was standing on it. “I can touch you. I can smell you.” He bent her body back over his arm and buried his face between her breasts. “Now I want to taste you.”
She stood. He knelt before her. He parted her thighs with his hands.
“How do I taste?” she asked.
“Of yourself, alone.” He did something, she wasn’t sure what, but it made her gasp and she found her fingers tightening in his hair, urging him on.
“Yes, only this is you. The first didn’t taste the way Imona did and you don’t have her flavor.”
“Are women then wine, that each forms a separate kind of cup?” she asked.
But he didn’t answer. He was . . . preoccupied. A second later, so was she because her sex had begun to pulsate in time to the beating of her heart.
She found herself on the ground in his arms without quite knowing how she got there.
“You vanished from my arms last night. How can I hold you here?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Try.”
His weight shifted and she found her body’s pulsations increased. Only now the throbbing was delightful, so delightful in fact that she was sure this must be forbidden. But she could no longer resist it, no more than she could have resisted a current that sucked her down. She wanted more of such joy and she was getting it. It entered her body the way a sword enters a warm padded sheath, penetrating her more deeply by the second until she was sure it would become unbearable and then it did.
The sheer flow of raw pleasure drowned her will, her intellect, and, at last, her very consciousness of self.
The reflexes—back arching, fingers clutching, final outcry—were all no more under her control than the extinction of self in an abyss of surrender. It is the power of creation; she knew it then finally, and struggle how we will, we are all its slaves.
She didn’t know how long she slept in his arms, but when she woke she read the sky and could tell by the position of the stars that it was almost dawn.
Not a man, but a wolf lay beside her. He was a giant, even as the mountain wolves went, and she knew he had but toyed with Blaze. No mere man could stand against this creature.
The chain at her neck moved, making a soft clinking sound. One of his ears flipped back and she knew that even in his sleep, he heard the sound.
For a moment she was afraid, but then she dismissed the fear as unworthy of a warrior. In a duel where one must prevail or die, the acceptance of the mortal alternative is a precondition for beginning it. No one who is willing to join battle fears death.
He truly might kill her. Emasculation would be kinder than what she planned for him.
The fire flared for a moment in a freshening breeze, then sank to coals. The wolf slept on, muzzle on his paws, eyes closed, dreaming.
The darkness pressed around Dryas like a living thing. She heard the voice in the wind or perhaps it was the wind—for she is not simply mother of the earth, but queen of the winds as well. Do not tarry. You have not much time.
Dryas rose. She would swear she only looked away from the wolf for a second, but when she glanced back, he was a man.
The black wind hissed over the grass. She walked toward the invisible ladder up to the stone ring overlooking the valley. The long grass blades were tousled like the hair of a sleeping child.
In the night, ice had formed on their edges and burned Dryas’ feet as she strode toward the stone footholds that led out over the valley and up to . . .
Odd, Dryas thought. It has no name, but everyone knows what you are speaking of when you talk of one.
He caught her halfway across the meadow. He embraced and tried to kiss her. “Come back. You must be cold. Come back and I will warm you.”
His voice was like velvet; his lips silk.
Dryas thought of all the tales she’d heard of women who betrayed men. In the end, they were easy to fool, but to take advantage of such splendid innocence was as cruel an action as Dryas had ever contemplated. Her teachers had demanded the highest standards from her. Absolute truthfulness; the courage to lay down her life, if necessary, not only without complaint, but without a second thought.
What would they think of her deeds this night? But she knew they, like she, would weigh them against the safety of Mir’s people and, however reluctantly, accept her choice.
But they would also believe he, too, should be given the right to choose.
“I have drink above,” she said. “It will warm us.”
The black wind died down and it seemed the whole earth was still.
“It’s near dawn,” he said. “Tell me where it is. I watched you climb up there before. I’ll go up and get it. I don’t like that place. It smells and looks wrong to me. If you fall, you’ll be dashed to death against the rocks.”
“So will you,” Dryas forced herself to say.
“No, I can bring myself back from the edge of death. I have that power. Anything that doesn’t kill me instantly doesn’t hurt me at all. I am not a wolf.”
“And you are not a man.” She kissed him again, molding her body against his, spreading her legs at his hips as if asking for his heat.
“No, and I don’t want to be one. You of all beasts under heaven are the cruelest, the most malicious and merciless. You spare nothing in your wrath. A wolf understands anger. But you don’t kill to live, but for convenience only.”
She kissed him again, running her hands over his body. “If you despise us so, then why take our shape?”
“Because I’m tempted by . . . women. Women and power.”
“Then come with me. Come drink the honey mead. I put some up there near the stone circle.”
“I have had wine. I don’t know as much about mead.”
“Then come,” and her voice was subtle as the serpent’s when it spoke to Eve. “Don’t you want me again?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Yes and yes and more yesses. One for each night and then however often I can persuade you to yield to me on each and every night.”
“Come, and I will show you magic, enchantment. Come taste of love perfect and everlasting.”
“No,” he said. “Perfect and everlasting is too much to ask of . . . anything.”
He drew back. In the distance far away, a wolf howled. He turned away, listening.
“Are they calling you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “That’s . . . They don’t have names . . . I’m trying to think of a way to tell you. He has white on his muzzle, four claws on his left forefoot and very worn teeth. He is telling me where they will den today after the sun rises. Why do you ask me these things? Imona never questioned me this way.”
“I think she didn’t want to know too much about her lover.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think she did either.”
Another chorus of howls ran out. To her shock, he answered. She hadn’t known such a sound could come from a human throat.
She looked at him questioningly.
“Imona would have been frightened out of her wits.”
“I’m not Imona,” Dryas said. “What did they tell you?”
“Nothing. These were only polite greetings. Now, be sensible. Come with me.”
“No,” Dryas said, turning toward the edge of the meadow. “I want to greet the sun and I’m cold. The mead will warm me.”
He watched her draw away from him for a moment, then shrugged and followed her through the grass.
For a moment Dryas thought she’d lost, but her ears were sharp enough to detect the whisper of his tread on the ice crusted grass blades. A few steps brought her to the edge of the meadow. She was feeling for the first handhold when he came up behind her, took her hand in his, and placed it in the first niche in the rock.
“You see well in the dark,” she commented.
“I am a wolf. I do a lot of things better than a man. You are a clumsy kind. Your talents lie in other directions.”
She felt no sense of insult. His tone was matter-of-fact, neutral. She understood he was simply stating the truth as he saw it.
They climbed together.
Below, the meadow was somewhat sheltered, but here it was as it had been the first time she came. The wind seemed to blow almost constantly.
But she’d hidden another blanket and it was wrapped around a clay flask. It was surprisingly heavy, glazed on both the inside and outside. The stopper doubled as a cup.
She knelt, poured some mead into the cup, and tasted it. Her stomach was empty and the drink rocked her to her heels.
In the spring, the mountain flower crops succeed one another. First, the lowland orchards bloom with wild cherry and crab apple, then the tame fruits—peach, plum, almond, quince, and clover—begin to spread white, yellow, and scarlet.
But there are other more sinister growths: orange henbane; the ghostly white poppy; and, in the shadows on streambanks, nightshade, blue and gold, which scatters its first blossoms among the yet-green lavender hidden by the grass.
Then the oak, ash, and beech drip with male flowers, scattering pollen into the spring winds and, mixed with tree pollen, drifts that of mistletoe, carrying the key to otherworldly paths.
The bees don’t discriminate. Some things are lost. Some things will be lost, Dryas thought. For only those of Mir and Blaze’s order knew when to collect the honey and how to brew the mead, and neither would have any real successor. They would take this secret to their graves with them.
She drank, seeing that mysterious, gentle innocence in his face. He sipped.
“It has a good taste,” he said, and drank some more. And, without quite realizing it, he’d finished the jug.
Gently, she kissed the last few droplets from his mouth.
He reached out and touched her breast and a savage hunger awoke in her. She wanted him. She wanted him to wipe out her consciousness, her will, as he had the first time. But she knew with a deep sadness that he couldn’t. She was cursed by what she’d done and would now do.
He was more demanding and impatient now and she sensed the mead had done its work. It was all she could do to keep him from forcing her to the ground then and there. But she was able to lead him to the flat stone in the center of the circle.
Once there, lying on the bier, the place of the dead, she found herself afraid and her desire began to ebb. All around, in each opening in the circle, she saw them standing. She could see each clearly for only a second, then they shimmered as does a reflection in a still pond when an insect or a fish breaks the surface and the picture of trees and sky flies into a thousand scattered shards.
A skull-eyed woman in coarse, brown homespun held a child by the hand. Both woman and child had their eyes burned out. A young warrior, too young, his beard only fuzz on his sallow skin, eyes closed, tears on his cheeks, one leg a mass of blood, a scarlet stripe across his throat: he’d been wounded, his throat cut while he lay helpless. Another woman, faceless, a winding sheet wrapped tightly around her, trying to hide the fact that her skull was crushed and she’d been gutted like a deer.
They are shadows, Dryas thought.
She looked up and concentrated on his face. The wind was rising, blowing low clouds across the edges of the clearing. She could see the vapors glow whitely because the light was growing, the dead were being drawn into the boiling clouds, rising from the valley, and vanishing.
He forced her legs apart with his knee and, a second later, she felt a stab of pain and knew she hadn’t been quite ready when entered. Then she wondered if she’d been right because the slight pain was tonic and cleared her shadowed mind. She was drawn into the exquisite contemplation of the excitation of quivering flesh on flesh. Rather like being in a swing, being pushed high, she thought.
Oh, how does one describe this feeling, even to one’s self or even remember it? Higher. Don’t let this ever stop. Then highest.
Just then, the sun’s rays poured golden light into the mist. She studied his face, intent and beautiful above her, and her body was drawn into worship, submission, and an ultimate realization of absolute peace by his.
