Rose shook her head with surprise, and ran her arms all up him, all up Nana, and lifting herself up his body, by some magical acrobatic feat, somehow lifted up Nana’s skirt as she came, and wriggled down the pouch, so out popped the gigantic rearing waving almost howling snake, red-hot to bursting. And supporting herself on his shoulder, while Wolf-Nana held her up by his hands cupping the smooth round little curves of her bottom, Rose sank on to the snake, absorbed it deep within her divine recesses, and so began to dance.
“Oh Nana—how big—how big—”
Wolf pushed hard against and into her. He must think of other things. Not silk, not being danced upon. Not her wonderful enfolding vagina, that had him now as if it would never let him out. And not—decidedly not—about the white breasts rising up now from the neck of the dress, blinking their two adorable shy pink eyes at him, going in again, creeping up again, appearing, vanishing, and creeping up—
Think about the wood.
Think about the city.
Think about the stars.
But the wood is all thick and twinkling with white, half-naked young women, their breasts playing hide-and-seek, their naked bottoms filling the hands, and their legs wrapped tight about the waist where the corset is, and the silk, and the brassière above, tweaking him innocently so two ravenous little stars ignite there, and Rose is throwing back her head, her neck is arched, her breasts rise like two moons, first with a faint flush, and then with her nipples all bare and upright, and he is going to, again—going to—
Think of the moon.
The moon is a breast.
Think of—think—of—the subway—
A tunnel, lined with wet eager velvet—clinging, surging—the train is—coming—
Think—
“Oh Wolf—faster—”
He is on the couch—did they fall?—and she is on top of him, and he is thrusting, and thrusting her home upon him, with his hands on her bottom, and her dress is just a red rope round her middle, and her breasts tickle his lips, and he is nuzzling them, and now she is gasping, and now giving a little sound nearly like the start of the first word of a sentence—Oh come, Rose, come, oh, come into the garden, Maud—oh, Rose, Rose, come, before it’s too late—
And then she comes.
She makes a noise like laughter, and she shudders all over, again and again, and he sees her, shuddering, laughing in ecstasy, her breasts and her hair, and he rushes her body up and down the length of him, and tingles and rills and impossible yawns of unbelievable pleasure tumble up his spine and across his blood and through his penis, until he detonates, in what must be the firework display of the century, but, alas, all invisible inside her.
• • •
In the early morning light, punctual as a clock, after her six or seven hours, Ryder wakes and joins Rose and Wolf-Nana, and they shower together and eat a small but healthy—and nourishing—breakfast, and go back to bed, which is Ryder’s bed, all lambent with her scent and the size of Central Park. And here the two women praise all Wolf and Nana’s virtues, which are many, and play games all over him, until in the end, in a knot of limbs and hair and laughs and shudders and spasms and shrieks, they are coming together, and coming apart, and coming and coming and coming.
And perhaps, being so well-suited as they are, at the top of that cliff in the city wood, they will live happily ever after.
My Life as a Swan
1
MY FATHER DIED. That was the end of us, my mother and me—she too old and I too young, so we counted for nothing. Bitter was the cup of my youth. Never shall I try to recapture the beginnings of my human life.
But neither, ever, even in the silver hell to which I shall finally fall, can I forget when first I saw him: Hrothgar, the Enchanter. My Fate.
• • •
The dark lake spread so far, and was like a sea, or so I thought, then. For of course, I have never seen the ocean.
Others, who had beheld such things, compared the lake to an iron mirror. Black, yet polished and therefore reflective, it stretched from the skeins of trees, tumble of rocks, away and away.
The sky was dusken. To the east, several of the bird-white stars were beginning to show. And I, the stupid one, a woman yet a child of perhaps seventeen years—for how could I then, or can I now, be sure—stood on the brink, staring out toward the coming night.
How slender and determinate, however, the night.
It sped toward me. I realized, in fear naturally, since anything unusual was probably a threat, that a part of the darkness had come away from the fastenings of the sky. It had wide wings, and a body with a curious shape, a face, and two eyes that were stars. These stars were not pale, but red.
Obviously I had been instructed in the idea of evil gods and entities. And, evidently, I had taken such ideas into my mind.
So, during those moments, I turned to run.
One wing brushed my head. It seemed to comb the very top of my skull. I felt the contact of it all through my scalp, and through my hair to its ends.
But it was warm, living. It was vital yet caressive. Oh, what had I known? Many blows and scratchings, wicked words, and the tongue of a whip. This was unlike any of these.
In wonder I gazed upward, and as it sailed on along the hem of the darkness, the great owl, whose eyes were forges of red molten gold, glanced back at me.
I fell in love with it, the owl. How not? Of them all, of all things, what else, who else, had looked at me? Who else—what else—had I to love?
• • •
Soon there was discussion of the owl all along the lake shore. The two villages talked of it, and all the cots and hovels scattered about. Owls were birds of ill-omen. Their cries indicated bad news, tidings or warnings of death. They were the familiars of witches. Worse, perhaps, they skimmed other birds and small game from the forests, that was there only to feed men. Such a large owl, too, some of the men said, might pick off even hares, even a lamb. For they had watched the owl intently by that time, as it was flying in the dusk of night or dawn. Never had so great a flying creature been seen in this locality. The wing-span, they said, was wide as that of two full-grown men placed head to foot.
In fact the owl became ever larger and more terrible, in their talk, as the days fell from the month.
Meanwhile it was heard crying, in the strange somber pipe of its voice, above the woodcutters’ hutment—and next morning a man let slip his ax, and his arm was cut open to the bone. He would never work ably again. Also a young woman had heard the owl three nights together, calling from the trees by Second Village. On the fourth evening she bore a stillbirth.
The hunters came together. They would go out with bows and knives, fire at the owl and bring it to earth, where they would kill it. They would burn the body, but offer the tawny smoky feathers to the hunter god.
So for several sevens of days they went after the owl, shot at it with bows, even thought once they had winged it—but never brought it down. Never killed it at all.
And then simply it went away. It was nolonger seen by anyone, and not heard once. The summer began to vanish too.
A child wandered off and failed to return, and they blamed this on the deep lake, or an early wolf. No blame now for the owl of ill-omen. Almost, it was forgotten.
Although not by me, for I mourned it, in my helpless and powerless way. I had lost most things or never had them. To mourn, then, was my sole luxury.
• • •
And I dreamed of it. I was used to dream of its touch, and of its flying away from me, and looking back with its fiery eyes. As if it called me to fly up in the air and to follow it. But where? And how . . .
• • •
My mother’s hut lay back from the shore, many steps up into the trees, as if to hide itself, poor, lonely, unworthy hovel, from the more deserving people round about.
It was a
sorry shack certainly. Half the roof was down, and in the coming winter only the snow would seal it when the world froze. My mother did not stay in the hut with me by then. Since two years ago she kept outside, under a pine. I had had to ask a man of First Village to help me dig the grave, as I had not the strength to make it deep enough the wolves, or other beasts, should be unable to get in at her. And she had had a morbid dread of that. I paid him with fresh rabbits from the traps and went hungry a little while. I hated trapped meat in any case. I would much have preferred to kill outright and swift, but none had taught me the skill. Only sometimes I managed to catch a lake fish and smash it dead instantly on a rock. That was better. I could eat that if I must.
The man had told me actually, he would settle for something else. I was surprised he wanted me for that, but I was young and put his lust down to my age. I told him I had an ailment there, it would be wrong to risk infecting him. He said I was a filthy bitch, dug the grave, and took the rabbits instead.
All those years I had remained a virgin. My mother had said I must, and examined me now and then with her bruises of fingers. She whipped me often as a child. Then, when she was too old to do that, she said I must whip myself, it was a good thing to do, the gods liked it. So I would pretend, taking the whip off among the trees, striking it on things, and groaning. If she wanted evidence I showed her marks made from berry juice. Her sight was dim. She was satisfied. After her death I put the whip in her grave, thinking she might want it elsewhere. But sometimes in the winter storms I imagined I heard it slashing inside the wind, doing her penance, or seeking for me and mine.
• • •
The owl had been gone thirty days and nights and a stray premature snow had come down. I was digging the last gourds from the hard ground. I looked up in the bloodless past-noon light to see a man, treading through the forest toward the lake.
Due to the twists of the path between the trees, I saw him oddly, first from the back.
He was tall, or looked to be, though not as tall as some. Yet how he moved and held his body, which was lean and graceful, made him seem the taller. Long black hair, thick as poured honey, hung over his shoulders, and it had a mellow color in its blackness too, when the sunlight altered. The sun came out as he turned along the track. And then I saw him sidelong. His face was not like any I had ever seen. Not among men, nor even among the old carved images of the gods. Yet his face did seem to have been carved, fashioned more than randomly produced from flesh and bone. A straight nose he had on him, and a high bone in the cheek, and a high noble forehead off which the dark hair ran. Then the path brought him round and he was full face. His brows were arching and black, his eyes deep-set and black also. He had a beautiful mouth, slim and couth. There were no such mouths among the men I had met by the lake. But he was unlike any of them anyway, and in one further curious manner. For I could see he was older yet young. By which I mean he might be some ten years older than I. Among the lake people, either they were young, or then suddenly they grew old. Their faces and their bodies became too spare or heavy, crumpling and crumbling as if a loose earthwork sagged and came down. There is no middle country for such men, nor women either. But this man, he was both older and young. And his face, his throat, even his body as he walked, even his hands, were fine. His face was full of the knowledge of wisdom. His age was this too. For every year he had lived, perhaps for every instant, he had learned.
Then he walked by the hut, and he glanced at me. The slant of the sun lit a moment red in the dark of his eyes.
His look was playful. His clever beautiful mouth partly smiled. He said to me nothing at all. But his eyes said, Do you not remember, then?
And after that he was past and gone, his boots wounding the thin white skin of the snow.
When I could nolonger see him for the trees, I went out and stood looking down at the marks his boots had left, till the sun slid behind a wide-winged cloud.
• • •
Generally I had little to do with the villagers in the social way. That is I very seldom sought them, while they avoided me. Now and then I overheard, or glimpsed one or other, or some group of them at a slight distance, and then normally I would turn aside where I could not be seen, even back into the hut, if I was near enough. Part of me though now longed to go down into both the villages, to look about and try to find if he, the man I had watched on the path, had gone there. Yet such an act had no point. Even if he had entered the villages, he would never have stayed. What had he been? Some traveler . . . a strange traveler, however, who traveled not only on foot, but apparently without any baggage. Nor had he seemed to be armed in any way. I had noted neither a knife nor a stick in his possession. His clothes had been ordinary, I thought, some rough tunic and leggings, cloak, boots. Yet I was unsure, really, what he had worn, and whether the garments were sturdy or impoverished. I had only noticed—him.
The next evening I went out over the crackle of snow to set a rabbit-trap up by the big white birch. Lightning struck this tree when I was only an infant, I could remember the terrible crack and flash, as if the sky had split. Rather than destroy the tree, the lightning made it stronger. Now it towered on the hill above all the rest.
As I was kneeling there, a man spoke quietly behind me.
I nearly sprang from my body. I was well used to being wary, and knew the usual sounds both of animals and people if they approached. This one, whatever he—it—was, had made none.
What had he said? He said the words again. “Leave that. I’ve two here already.”
Then I jumped up and round and saw it was the man I had seen the previous day.
There could be no mistaking.
I could not speak, had forgotten language.
But he held up before me a pair of large brown rabbits, both fresh-slaughtered, their necks loose. They had been killed, each of them, with a single clean blow.
“You’ll like this better,” he said, “I think.”
I said, “I haven’t any money to pay you.” I barely knew though what I said.
And he said, “Did I ask money? We’ll share the meat, you and I.”
I thought I had gone mad and was imagining this, as sometimes I did imagine things, and did think myself mad. Was I frightened? Yes, quite an amount. But I did not shake from fear, although I shook. Turning again I bent and undid the trap and left it lying, and looking back saw he had walked down the slope toward my hut, so I must go after him.
At the door he waited. Less courtesy it seemed than some other, more savage thing.
I did not believe he was truly there. Once I went in at the door he would vanish. He was an illusion of the forest, or some elemental.
I should fetch an amulet, put it between him and me. Did I have any?
After a second I went into the hut and he walked in after me, and put the two rabbits down at once on the log that was my table.
Not knowing what to do, I took my knife and set to work, my hands trembling as all of me did. There was a spinning at my center. I did not know if I hated or liked it. He only stood, and watched me.
When I had botched up the job of getting off the fur, and jointing the carcasses, I put the iron pan on the fire, and threw in some herbs that I kept to dry by the hearth. He watched that too. But when I picked up both rabbits he said, quietly, as before, “Cook yours. I will eat mine raw.”
Then I knew he was unhuman. It is unlawful to eat raw meat, the gods forbid it to men, even I knew that.
But I put the larger of the skinned rabbits back on the log, and dropped my own portion, if mine it was, in the pot.
I thought then I had better offer him a drink. I had only water, or the thin beer I brewed as my mother taught me.
So I offered, and asked what he would have.
Then he smiled at me.
His smile burned me like a flame. And his eyes, that all this while I had not quite met, black as the wood o
f the forest, did they burn too, and worse? “Look there.”
On the log stood a tall gray jug. I had never seen it before. And there seemed to be blood in it. Why not, if he ate his meat raw?
Then he held out a shiny gray cup to me, and the blood too was in that. But I realized quite well there had been nothing in his hand a moment before—empty, his hand. And the cup was not gray but old metal, silver. And it was full of red wine, that the high classes and the priests drink only.
“Taste it,” he said. I only stood there, and then I found the cup was in my hand, not his, though he had not stretched out to put it there, nor had I taken it. “Why,” he said, “is your hair that shade?”
I heard myself answer from far off, as if I were really in the corner among the shadows. “When I was small, it grew out white.” So it had, about a month after the lightning split the birch tree. As if the lightning had run also into my hair.
“Your hair shone on the shore,” he said, “like the moon fell there. Your skin’s as white. But your eyes are black.”
I had never seen in a mirror to know the color of my eyes. I wondered if they had not been black before, but only altered to it since having been looked at by his.
And all this while he looked at me.
None ever had, except my dead mother now and then, when she poked at me or whipped me.
His eyes were like the black lake. But they would not let you drown in them. They lured you in only to push you weightlessly away, only then to lure you back again.
He was an Enchanter. Of course by now I knew. A red glint of the departing sun had stayed caught under the black of his hair, and in the black water of his eyes.
And I could see myself reflected in his eyes after all, tiny and pale, like a water-bird that drifted on their surface.
We shared the wine, passing the cup back and forth, or rather the cup moved from me through the air to him, then back to me. I could taste the fire where his mouth had scorched the rim. The silver jug meanwhile had less and less wine in it, as we emptied the cup two or three times over. Then the jug was full to the brim again. Yet no one had poured from the jug, or refilled it. We said nothing else, and then the rabbit in the pot was savory and done, and I put it on the log in the wooden dish, and the dark bread to one side.