Would she find Sallie here, though, or would she only find echoes of her grandmother’s past? There was only one way to find out. She walked the rest of the way down the hill, Anandra following close behind, and approached the mansion’s front door. It was unlocked, and so she turned the silver knob and stepped inside.
Chapter Nine
Iris had only seen this mansion from the outside, so nothing about its entryway was familiar, nor should it have been. Still, she had a feeling—a powerful sense—that she’d been here before, if only for a day or two. Not that this sense made sense, but it definitely was there, strong and undeniable.
Vases of dried flowers sat on each of the entryway’s tables, in shades of blue, violet, and pink, all obviously from the garden they’d just left. The very last of the afternoon’s sun wasn’t needed to light the hall, because round, pearl-shaded wall sconces were placed every few feet or so, their warm glow lending an air of comfort to the place. A painting hung on the wall at the end of the entryway, where there were two hallways, one going off to the left, the other to the right. The painting was of a woman who was just as familiar to Iris as the mansion, a woman whom she’d mostly just seen in pictures—her grandmother’s deceased partner, Brenne.
She looked quite young in the painting, and a large gold lion sat at her feet. Both Brenne and the lion looked proud, but kindness shone in each set of eyes, too, clear enough for anyone to be able to see it. Her grandmother had always told her how kind Brenne had been to her, and it was nice to see that goodness preserved in such a beautiful piece of artwork. Apparently, her grandmother’s skill at painting could have been called “otherworldly” in both senses of the word.
“You’re spending a long time looking at that painting,” Anandra said. Her voice made Iris jump a little, because she’d been so lost in thought.
“It’s just…it’s just very realistic is all. Very good work.”
“Indeed it is. But we should continue. I want to make sure no surprises are waiting for us in here, like those dangerous statues. Who knows what else might be guarding this place from intruders, and you can’t spend all night singing that song you stilled the statues with. As beautiful as it was, and as skilled a singer as you are, I still want both of us to be able to sleep soundly tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll need to find our way out of here and back in the right direction. Although I wasn’t planning to come to this place, wherever it is,” and here she cupped Iris’s elbow and began to lead her away from the painting, “it will do quite well as somewhere to spend the night, especially if we find some more delicious food prepared for dinner. Those sandwiches were scrumptious, and I look forward to seeing what else we might get to dine on while we’re here.”
Iris allowed Anandra to lead her down the hallway to the left of the painting, where she began to hear what sounded like a small waterfall. And that was exactly what it was, because at the end of the hallway, and through a door Anandra insisted on walking through first, was the most incredible swimming pool Iris had ever seen.
Its waters were an enticing aquamarine, and it had to be Olympic-sized, or at least close. A few lounge chairs sat along its edges, and the front of the room was where the waterfall-like sounds had come from, where a very natural-looking artificial waterfall fed into a small, round pool that in turn flowed into the much larger one. Iris approached, staring down into the clear water and taking in the turquoise and lapis mosaics that decorated its walls and floor. “Do you like skinny-dipping?” she asked Anandra. But instead of waiting for an answer, she started to remove her clothes.
“Skinny-dipping? Is that what you call swimming in the nude? I do, yes, and although I don’t really advise taking off all our clothing and leaving my weapon out of reach, it seems like there’s no way I’ll talk you out of getting into that water. And…it seems like there’s no way you’ll enjoy yourself enough if you don’t have a swimming partner. After all,” and with these words Anandra arched one of her snow-white brows, “I don’t know how good a swimmer you are, and after your previous dip in the water, I’m guessing you may wind up needing mouth-to-mouth.”
“I’m not that bad of a swimmer, you’ll see!” Iris was completely naked now, and so she stepped to the edge of the swimming pool, judged the depth of the water adequate, and dove in, surfacing a few yards away. “Mmm, the water’s warm and silky. And it smells like flowers!”
“Are you sure it’s not you who’s perfuming the water?” Anandra looked pleased at her compliment. Either that or she was pleased to see Iris naked again, which Iris thought seemed more likely, albeit still surprising. Jane had almost never told her she was good-looking, and she’d never really told her she was more than slightly above passable, and so Iris had taken to believing she wasn’t especially attractive. But Anandra had never hesitated to compliment her looks, starting right when they’d first met, so maybe she wasn’t that bad after all.
Anandra dove in near where Iris had entered the water. Anandra was far from bad looking, Iris thought, and this was especially obvious to Iris as her friend’s well-muscled, lanky form cut through the water like a knife. She broke through the surface only a few inches away from where Iris was swimming in place, the water’s sudden displacement sending slight ripples off from her cresting head. Anandra closed the distance between them and gave Iris a long, deep kiss, her mouth as moist and warm as the water that surrounded them, her lips’ pressure against Iris’s causing even more wetness to caress her bare skin.
She couldn’t possibly have been happier right then, and Jane wasn’t even the one in her arms. It was strange, but thoughts of Jane and her love for her had started to fade while she’d been in this new world. Maybe her therapist had been right. Maybe she did need to put an ocean between herself and Jane to get over her…an ocean, and a universe. Well, if that was what it took to finally get over her ex, then so be it. And if what it took was letting Anandra slowly move them over to the waterfall and smaller pool as she kissed her, Iris decided that would have to be fine, too. She wasn’t about to start putting up a fight now, not with the pressure of the waterfall on her back and the pressure of Anandra’s lips on her front, lips that were more than welcome to keep up what they were doing for as long as her friend wanted.
As Anandra kissed her, she guided her closer and closer to the waterfall, until they were standing in front of it, the water knocking Iris slightly off balance as it rushed around her legs. Anandra didn’t seem to be experiencing the same trouble, though, both her legs and her hands firm against Iris, firm and controlling her every move. Anandra pulled her arms behind her back, knocking her even more off balance, and gripped her wrists in her left hand, then nibbled her way down Iris’s neck.
She led Iris over to the edge of the smaller pool and sat her on its rim, the water lapping against her lower legs as Anandra scrunched down low and proceeded to begin lapping at her cunt. Her mouth was even warmer than the water, and her tongue even silkier, and Iris didn’t have enough time to be surprised that, for the second time, she was getting off first, because now she was getting off, her cries echoing through the tall, glowing room.
Glowing? Had it been doing that a few minutes ago? And then Iris realized that Anandra and she were lighting up the room, and not only that, but she was levitating above the water, and so was Anandra. That thought seemed to bring them crashing back down to the water as quickly as the orgasm had swept her up into the air.
Luckily, they landed fully in the water, as they apparently had traveled a few feet toward the center of the pool. Iris came up sputtering, having swallowed a little of the water on her way to the surface. She coughed a few times, and Anandra grabbed her and pulled her over to shallower waters where she could stand once more.
“You really can’t swim, can you?” Anandra was clearly joking, but she also looked a little shell-shocked, which was pretty much how Iris felt, only she felt so more than just a little.
“What the hell just happened?” Iris coughed again as she made her way to the edge
of the pool, where tiled steps led to a stack of white towels next to an otter statue standing on its hind legs. “And where did the statue and the towels come from? They weren’t here when we came into the room.” The otter statue opened its mouth. Statues weren’t supposed to do that, but after her experience with the ones in the garden, she half expected it to pounce on her and then try to bite her to death with its sharp little teeth.
Instead of advancing on her, it laughed, a high, cheery tittering sound, just as she’d always imagined the otters in her grandmother’s stories would sound when they found something funny. “I mean you no harm, miss,” the otter said, its voice as adorable as its laugh. “My name is Tira, and I was only supposed to lead you to the dining hall, where dinner awaits you both. But at the sight of you crashing into the water, I must say, I have not had such a good laugh since the mistress of the house left us all behind.”
The mistress of the house? Would that have been Sallie, Iris wondered? Or perhaps Brenne?
“She may have had a queenly manner about doing things, but she was a delightful woman. As was her daughter, if I do say so. Both of them as beautiful as you are, friend.” The otter was speaking to Iris when she said these words, and Iris could think of far worse beings to be instant friends with than an adorable talking otter. But the mistress’s daughter? Would that have been Iris’s mom?
All these questions would have to wait, though, because apparently it was now time to head to the dining hall. Iris tried not to feel shy once it sank in that she was naked in front of a complete stranger, but then again, the otter was naked, too, and she didn’t seem embarrassed in the least. Iris decided that it didn’t matter to an otter whether you were wearing clothes or not, even if the otter happened to speak in her tongue rather than in squeaks and barks as she’d heard them do in nature. As much of the natural world as she had walked through and looked at in this new land, its version of “natural” was nothing like what Iris was used to. This fact obviously included talking otter statues.
Many questions were coming to her as she dried off and put her clothes back on, wringing out her hair in the fluffy towel she hoped the otter hadn’t brought. She just had to ask. “Did you bring the towels?”
The otter smiled and shook her head. “Oh, no, miss! I only entered the room when I saw the glow coming from through the door. I realized that you and your lady-friend would want some privacy, based on the way I saw you eyeing each other on the way into the swimming hall. The towels, mind you, are magically generated when the room senses the pool is being used. It even brings towels when the other staff and I go swimming. Imagine that, us animal statues wanting to use a towel.”
Iris could imagine it about as well as she could imagine a statue not sinking to the bottom of the pool. But otters were very good swimmers, or at least the version of them in her world tended to be, so, “What’s for dinner?” she asked. It was time to stop thinking up questions and start thinking about food instead, Iris had decided. She could smell something delicious even through the door to the swimming hall, as the otter had called it, something juicy and meaty, something she couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into. The food in this world had proved to be exceptionally tasty, she thought, and its excellence didn’t seem like it would start faltering tonight, at least by the current smell of things.
Now dressed again, and almost entirely dry save her hair, she followed an also-clothed Anandra and the naked (as was natural) otter out of the room and back down the hall they’d just used to get to the pool. They took two lefts and then entered a candlelit room through a large wooden arch, where a long black table with a pristine white runner, surrounded by chairs filled with otters, positively overflowed with food. Iris was surprised that she wasn’t surprised to see the otters with napkins in their laps and a few of them holding their forks and knives in anticipation.
“The lady of the house always insisted we dine with her,” the otter told them, “and so we hoped you wouldn’t mind if we did the same with you.”
“No, no, not at all, especially with all that delicious food, which is clearly too much for just Anandra and me.”
“Anandra, so that is your name. A pleasure to meet you, miss!” The otter made a small curtsy, pretending to lift imaginary skirts, and Iris couldn’t help picturing how cute this otter might have looked in a gown and tiara. Not that she really needed any help in the cuteness category, Iris realized, and besides, if she wanted to wear such things, the otter would already be wearing them. She judged her thought to be a mite rude and decided to help her conscience by thanking the otters for the feast that lay before them all. “I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality. Did you prepare the picnic as well?”
“Yes, the sandwiches were our creator’s recipe. She was a very good cook, even though it wasn’t what she was born to do.”
“Yes, she was,” Iris said softly. But when Anandra turned and asked her what she’d just said, Iris told her, “I didn’t say anything. Now, how about we offer some sort of grace and then eat?”
“I could have sworn…maybe I have some water in my ears, from that sudden crash under the pool’s surface. Yes, let’s eat. And grace? What is that?” Anandra slid into one of the empty chairs, and Iris sat down in the one next to her.
“It’s a human custom, usually religious, although I always thank Gaia instead of God.”
“Gaia? Who’s she?” a male otter to Iris’s right asked.
“That’s our word for the planet we live on, Mother Earth, the goddess of life and all of that.”
“How interesting,” he said, and the other otters all nodded in agreement.
“Should I thank her, then?”
“Yes, yes!” cried the otters, and so Iris took Anandra’s hand in her left and the otter’s slightly warm stone paw in her right.
Iris bowed her head and shut her eyes. “Gaia, we ask for your blessings on the food you have gifted us with. May it bring all of us the strength of the earth, your strength, and we offer many thanks for your generosity.”
“Hear, hear!” said a few of the otters, and others made a chirping sound that seemed to contain immense approval.
“I’m pleased you liked it,” she said, feeling glad she’d made them all so happy. She was very happy, too, the happiest she’d been in quite a while; she was the happiest she’d been since Jane had dumped her. “Let’s eat, then!”
Food was passed around, and Iris’s plate was soon piled with a fresh, crisp salad, some sort of herb-coated, cheese-stuffed white meat, and a delicious, creamy orange mash, which tasted like a buttery mixture of carrots and sweet potatoes, two of her favorite foods. Too bad she couldn’t take a freezer of these fruits and vegetables back with her to Earth, she thought as she took seconds of the mash.
They also had a very lovely, pale-pink alcohol that went perfectly with the food, tasting slightly sweet and full-bodied and just a little tart. It made Iris think of fresh lemonade spiked with some sort of incredibly high-quality, honey-flavored liquor. It was strong, though, and so despite her tongue’s ardent pleading, she turned down a second serving, instead choosing some iced water that the otters were drinking instead of the alcoholic beverage. Smarter than me, those otters, she thought, as she was feeling slightly tipsy after only one glass of the lemony drink.
Nothing in the meal proved to be drugged the way Anandra had suggested earlier that day, unless Iris counted the effects of an overly stuffed stomach and the touch of fuzziness in her head from the alcohol. She’d already felt very trusting toward the otters, though, especially since it had seemed that they all cared deeply about her grandmother. Her grandmother and her mother, too, from the sounds of it. Did that mean her father had lived here as well? She didn’t feel comfortable asking any of these questions in front of Anandra, not yet, at least. She knew she should have trusted her friend a little more than she realized she did at this moment in time. But…once burned, she told herself.
Yes, she had been burned the last time she’d let someone
close too fast, and she was finally realizing that hadn’t been her fault, that she’d just chosen the wrong person to let get so very close to her. Still, it was perfectly possible to make that mistake again, and besides, she probably wouldn’t be in this world much longer, especially if they could find their way from her grandmother’s estate to the castle with enough ease.
But tonight, she would just let herself enjoy Anandra’s company as fully as possible. Her company and that of the otters, each of them incredibly full of personality and joie de vivre.
The otters insisted on performing what they told them was one of their last mistress’s favorite plays, one called The Lady of the Woods. It was about a woman who rescued a young animal from a trap that a hunter had set. A little later on, the woman fell in love with the hunter, and she managed to change him from a man of violence to one of good deeds and much kindness. At the end of the play, he fell sick, then died, refusing to let his wife kill an endangered creature whose flesh was the only thing that could cure him. Iris was crying by the end of his death scene, the hunter played by a large male otter with the skills of a true thespian. His wife was played by Tira, who also did an excellent job sobbing and telling him she would always love him as he shut his eyes for the final time.
Even Anandra seemed touched by the play’s ending, applauding loudly after trying to subtly wipe a few tears from her eyes when she probably thought Iris wasn’t watching. Upon noticing Iris’s look of concern, she turned to her and said, “My eyes are just watering. I think it’s from all the flowers in this room.”
“The dried flowers?” Iris asked, nudging her with her elbow. Then she pecked her on the cheek. “I think it’s sweet that you were touched. I was, too, very much. The lady of this house, whoever she was, seems to have had good taste in plays.”
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