Cursed by a witch, p.4
Cursed by a Witch, page 4
When I reached the top, I barely had a chance to look behind to see how far ahead I was. Her arms wrapped around me, just below my breasts, pulling me close. Her rod pushed between my legs, the shaft rubbing against my slit.
“Oh!” I cried out in surprise.
Her hand moved up and grasped my breast roughly. I could barely keep my balance as she pushed herself between my legs, rubbing the length of her shaft along my opening. I looked over at the cottage, just a few yards away. Ethelwyn wasn’t even able to wait to get inside.
She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down to my hands and knees. She continued the insistent pressure, pushing my face into a soft patch of clover. I obediently lifted my ass into the air for her.
She didn’t even wait for me to be ready before pushing inside. I groaned as she slowly but forcefully entered me. I wasn’t entirely dry, but I certainly wasn’t ready for her girth pressing against my inner walls. The friction stung for a moment, until she pushed all the way inside up to the hilt. I felt stretched out almost to the breaking point.
She paused for a moment before slowly pulling out all the way. The cool air brushed against my inner lips for a moment before she pushed back in, just as forcefully. Each thrust was a little easier as I grew slicker to accommodate her.
She’d never taken me so insistently before. Each thrust made my body bounce forward. She was taking me with no concern at all for my pleasure, only her own. But somehow, that very fact only increased my pleasure. I huffed and squeaked as she took my body.
I heard a loud smack and felt a sharp sting on one cheek of my butt. The pain tingled as it faded into pleasure. And then a second, on the other cheek. I was stunned. I hadn’t been spanked since I was a lad of six. It should have been the worst of humiliations, but instead I couldn’t get enough of it.
I gave a guttural moan into the clover.
“Oh, I see you like that.” said Ethelwyn from behind me. Followed by a third crack. I moaned again. My butt was tingling and starting to get a little numb. Between the slapping and the rod pushing roughly into me, I felt my orgasm beginning to rise.
“Yeees,” I moaned.
The hard abuse of my ass cheeks continued as she hammered me.
“More,” I gasped into the sweet clover. “Harder. Please.”
SMACK! This blow pushed my breasts into the ground. My whole backside was on fire now. I moaned even louder. I could tell that I would be bruised later, but I still wanted more. More.
Two more blows, and I nearly fell to the ground entirely as my body shook with pleasure. I lost control of my limbs as I came. She grabbed my hips and pulled me back up as she picked up the pace, hammering my sex with powerful thrusts.
And now she was starting to moan as well. She placed her hand on my head, pressing me into the ground as she took full control of my body. And with a final thrust, she uttered a groan that was more of a roar and spilled herself deep inside me.
She released my head as she pulled out. I felt her cream dribble down my thighs. I sat up next to her.
She pulled me close into her chest and kissed me gently on the forehead.
“Mmm,” she murmured, “I’m sorry I was so rough with you, Willa. Your manhood has such urgent needs. You have just no idea what you do to me.”
“It’s okay,” I said into her breasts. “I think I liked it.”
I reached down and took one of my sore butt cheeks in my hand and gave it a squeeze. There was something satisfying about the pain.
◆◆◆
That evening after dinner, after we had laid down in bed, she apologized for her earlier roughness with a long, languid bout of lovemaking. I came twice on her tongue before she ever entered me, and once more as we came together. After she had filled me once more like a cream pastry, we rolled over to sleep.
She pressed herself up against my back. Her hands ran between my tangled hair. Who was this woman? I had been here for a week, and she hadn’t told me the first thing about herself--whether she was born in the town or had moved here. How old she really was. Who her sister had been.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Mmm,” she replied. I took it as an affirmative.
“How did you become a witch?”
She stopped running her hands through my hair and reached her arm around my waist. She pulled me a little closer.
“Do you want to be one?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s just--”
I wasn’t sure whether it would offend her or not to say what I was thinking. I took the plunge anyway.
“The priest says that someone becomes a witch by joining a witch’s circle and letting the devil sodomize you. And then you have to kiss his arsehole. That’s not true, is it?”
Her body shook a little. She was chuckling softly. I felt her breath against my neck.
“Lord and Lady, no. I’d never have been a witch if that happened. No arsehole-kissing for me.”
“So how did you do it?”
“Study, love. Lots of study. At least at first.”
“Study? You know how to read?”
“Aye. I received the books from my Master. But that’s not all. You can read as much as you like, and it won’t do you any good if you aren’t given the gift from one who has it.”
“How do they give it to you? Laying on hands, like the priests?”
“Nay, it is…” she trailed off. After a few moments of silence, she continued. “I suppose it won’t do any harm if you know. My Master took me out into the woods on a full moon, and cast a circle. He did call on someone, but it wasn’t the Devil.”
“Who was it?”
“It was a god. He called the god into his own body. And when he did that, the goddess came into my body in answer. The god and the goddess consummated their marriage, then and there, using our bodies. And when it was complete, I had the gift. With practice, all the spells and prayers in the books began to unfold for me.”
She snuggled up against my back.
“And what about you? How did you become a princeling?”
So I told her about my life. About my parents’ death in the terrible fire when I was an infant. About my being fostered by uncle Wallis in the castle. I meant to just give her a brief outline, the basic facts of who my parents were and how I grew up. My family’s lineage that gave us noble authority. But the dam broke, and I told her everything. I talked about my uncle Wallis’ contempt for my for reading. How he kept me away from weapons training with anything but wooden waster swords, and even then only infrequently. About my friend Hopkin, and how dearly I missed him.
I was weeping by the end of it, out of homesickness and loneliness. I couldn’t imagine why I would have missed that castle so much, when I had no place in it, but I did. I started to realize that this wasn’t just the first time I’d told Ethelwyn much about myself; it was the first time I’d told anyone.
She held me tight and brushed my hair as I cried, comforting me with soothing tones. Little by little, the tears relented.
“Can I ask you a favor?” I said.
“Of course.”
“I think-- I think the thing I miss most is being able to read books. Would you let me read your witch books? I know you said it won’t do me any good, but I just want something to read.” My words rushed out, my tongue nearly tripping over itself. I was afraid she would say no.
There was a long pause. My heart sank. She was going to say no. I’d have to be satisfied with whatever words I scratched out myself into the dirt, I thought bitterly.
Finally, she answered with a question. She spoke cautiously.
“Are you able to keep secrets?”
“I am.”
“You must keep them secret above all else. You must never breathe a word you read to anyone who is not a witch, or training to become a witch, under the authority of a witch.”
“I swear it,” I said.
“You must swear it on your mother’s grave, and your father’s memory,” she said. Her voice was as solemn as I’d ever heard it.
“I swear it on my mother’s grave,” I repeated, “and by my father’s memory.”
“Very well.”
With that, she rolled over and placed her back against me. She was asleep in moments. My lips tugged upward into a small smile in the secret dark. I would have books again.
7Chapter 7
The empty goat cart, little more than sticks held together with bailing, banged against the side of my knee at every bump in the road. I pulled and tugged at the scratchy dress as I walked. I’d been a woman for five weeks, and yet this was the first time I’d worn women’s clothing. They were hot and confining. Worse, the dress was of low quality, poorly spun hemp. I was supposed to play the part of the poor daughter of a rustic farmer come to market to buy necessaries. Anything nicer would have aroused suspicion.
The hemp clothes were not just scratchy, but hot. It wasn’t yet summer, and it was still early morning, but I was already sweating through my underthings.
It wasn’t just the clothes that had rankled me. It had been five weeks, and I’d not bled. That meant that the pregnancy must have taken, and I was with child.
“Good,” Ethelwyn had said, “I’ll be able to send you to the market on your own, then, and I won’t have to worry that you’ll end up carrying someone else’s child by accident.”
That still stung. As if I’d let any old Ralph or Harry get up in me. As if I couldn’t spend a few hours in the town without spreading my legs. Ethelwyn treated me kindly, but that comment had made me feel like a kept woman. I suppose I was, technically, but she didn’t have to point it out so bluntly.
Ethelwyn was not able to go to the market herself, she had said. The last time she’d been, the priest had seen her, and had been acting suspicious. Besides, she had “business” to attend to in the forest.
I had no idea what that business could possibly be. Some witch thing, no doubt.
So here I was with the goat cart. It had taken a minor miracle to get it down to the road. Quite literally. When Ethelwyn had been lashing one of the billy goats to it, it had seemed ridiculous to me. There was no way it was going to fit through the dense underbrush of the forest. Ethelwyn shushed me and told me to take it down the hill all the same.
To my shock, a narrow path, just wide enough for myself and the cart, had opened up in the trees. It hadn’t been there yesterday, and I doubted it would be there tomorrow.
I hadn't seen any magic used since that first day. Now, Ethelwyn was using her power again, finally. To get a goat cart to market.
The path quickly curved toward the main highway. The highway was a wide dirt road with deep grooves left by heavy-laden carts of the farmers and merchants who came here. It was wide enough for two carts to pass abreast. But it was nothing like the broad, bustling cobblestone leading to my own family’s estate, at least as I remembered it. I had not been to visit since I was seven years old.
The goat cart’s wheels kept slipping into the grooves in the road. My cart was not as wide as the larger carts the farmers had, usually pulled by draft horses or cattle. But it was wide enough that I could avoid the grooves easily on one side, or the other, but not both. If it slipped into a groove, the bottom of the cart would scrape on the ground. By and by, though, I slipped into a rhythm. If the cart hit a groove, it was light enough to pull it back up onto the road.
◆◆◆
It was mid-morning by the time I reached the outskirts of the town. It was surprisingly quiet. The patchwork of farms around the town were being worked by plows, as is usual, but it seemed that far more fields were being left fallow this year. The fields that were being worked had fewer people.
I realized that I hadn’t passed anyone on the way in. Usually, around this time of day, the roads had at least a few farmers. And it was a rare day that there wasn’t a merchant leaving town or a messenger sent by uncle Wallis to some other county.
As I made my way to the town square, it seemed that every third house was boarded up. None of them showed any decay. The thatching on the roofs was still fresh and strong. The walls of the wooden houses were well-daubed and had no holes. But there was a strong sense of abandonment, as if much of the town had simply packed up and left just yesterday.
Even the castle overlooking the town from its perch above the hill was unusually peaceful. It seemed to have less activity on its ramparts. It made me uneasy.
I hurried to the blacksmith. Hopefully he hadn’t left as well.
The blacksmith’s yard in front of his home, strewn with tools, was quiet. There were no coals burning in the forge. At least the tools were still there. The anvil was still there. Old Arnie wouldn’t have ever moved away without that anvil--it had been in his family for generations.
I knocked on the rickety wooden door. I thought I heard a stirring inside, but no one came to open it. I knocked again, louder, and waited. Still nothing. Finally, I pounded on it with all my strength until it rattled on its frame.
“That’s enough!” Arnie’s voice bellowed from inside. “Hold yer horses! What’s so damn important that it couldn’t wait!”
The door swung open, and there was Arnie. He was wearing nothing but a long shirt that had once been a light grey, but was now thoroughly stained with brown sweat marks. It covered his enormous belly. Greasy, stringy hair seemed like it was almost floating above the balding patch on his head. His bleary eyes blinked in the sun. A fetid stench rolled off his body, smelling of sweat and piss and stale beer. It made my eyes water.
He had a mug in his hand. He held it lazily, so that it splashed all over his shirt. That must have been where the beer smell was coming from.
“Who’re yeh?” he grunted at me.
“I’m here for nails,” I answered. If asked about myself, I was to say that I was sent from Newcastle to help my sick uncle, but I knew it would be better to answer as few questions as possible.
Arnie blinked up at the sun before looking down at me.
“No nails before noon. No nuthin’ before noon.” he said. I was detecting a bit a slur in his voice.
“But you’ve--” I quickly corrected myself. “my uncle said you’re always working bright and early.”
“Nay, not since that son’f’bitch Wallis abandoned us here.” He’d almost yelled the word “abandoned.” He lifted his cup to his mouth and tipped it back. I was sure some of it made it into his mouth, but most of it just splashed onto the floor.
“Abandoned?” I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Come back at noon,” he grumbled and closed the door. I heard him mumbling something about “fuckin’ farmers and their fuckin’ daughters” from the other side as he walked away.
I was left on his stoop wringing my hands. The chicken coop needed an entire wall replaced. I couldn’t come back without nails. I’d been planning to get in to the shops, buy what I needed, and be on my way in half an hour or less. Now I would be stuck for hours.
I figured I might as well do the rest of the shopping while I was waiting, so I turned the goat cart around and made my way to the mill.
One large and one small sack of barley flour were what I’d needed. The price had gone up, though. I spent twice as much as I’d expected.
I’d tried to ask the miller what was going on, but he was as tight-lipped as ever. I’d hardly ever heard him speak a word to anyone other than his brother. All you could ever get out of him was the price of a sack of flour. I hadn’t really expected anything more.
I found the weaver’s house abandoned, her doors and windows boarded up. So much for a spool of yarn and a pair of needles.
There was nothing for it but to wait until noon. I headed to the tavern. At least I could get a bit of bread and cheese, perhaps a small mug of ale, while I waited. I had a little extra to spend since the weaver was gone.
The tavern door creaked open as I came in. Light streamed in from an open window. The dustmote-speckled sunrays fell on empty tables. The bar seemed empty without the tavernkeep Dugger or his employee Bernard behind it. The whole place seemed grimier than usual, as if it hadn’t been properly swept or dusted in a few weeks.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively, in a quiet voice. And then again, louder “Hello?”
I heard a panicked scuffling behind the counter. A girl’s voice muttered, and Priscilla, the tavernkeep’s daughter popped up her head from behind the counter.
“Oh!” she said. “Sorry. I dozed off there.”
She yawned dramatically.
It was not a good sign if Dugger had his daughter running the counter instead of Bernard. She was a notorious layabout--especially for “laying about” underneath any young bard or merchant who stayed the night. The layer of dust on the bartop suddenly made sense.
“Umm…”
“Oh! Yes! What can I do for you?” It was almost painful watching Priscilla try to be a hostess.
“Bread and cheese,” I said. “Ale. And I have a couple of bags of flour outside. Can you keep them behind the bar while I wait?”
“Of course!”
I was surprised to find that she actually helped me bring the flour in. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. I sat down at a table at the corner of the room, outside of direct light. If anyone came in, hopefully I would not attract attention.
I was less surprised to find that she brought me a wooden plate with a suspicious brown stain at one edge. I nudged the barley roll and hunk of yellow cheese as far from the stain as I could. Was Priscilla running this place by herself? Unclean dinnerware was the kind of oversight Priscilla might make, but I couldn’t imagine Dugger finding this kind of thing acceptable.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Priscilla glancing over at me curiously as I ate, but she had better sense than to ask questions of strangers. Dugger had taught her that much. At least the ale was cool, straight out of the cellar. I’d missed its malty bitterness. I wanted to get a second mug, but Ethelwyn had strictly warned me not to drink more than one small beer if I stopped by. She had warned that it might harm the baby. It sounded like superstition to me--I’d seen plenty of pregnant women quaffing flagon after flagon of ale--but I knew better than to cross the witch. I had a feeling she would somehow know if I went against her.
