“I must know, Rose Red. I must be sure of your love for me. I must know, when I am far from my homeland, that you long for me, and for no other.”
A jolt of memory startled her. Unbidden in her mind, the image arose of Black Bear reclining by the hearth, watching her as she sewed, his dark brown eyes drinking her in. Another image filtered into her consciousness, the night when she saw Black Bear’s manhood. A shudder escaped her throat as she turned suddenly wet in that secret place, that place where a woman stores all her heavenly secrets.
Tarquin, watching her closely, nodded. “So you do love me?”
Tears shone in her eyes. “I do. You are the only man for me.”
And that was, she realized, the truth.
“Meet me tonight in the meadow,” Tarquin whispered in her ear. “You know the place.”
“Aye.”
“Till then, my sweet.”
At that moment, they heard a whinnying sound. Startled, they turned to look. In the next instant a retinue of black-coated royal guards, dressed in green and gold raiment, swept toward the village green. They rode on enormous horses, caparisoned in metal armor. The villagers stopped to watch. The riders slowed as they drew near the center of the village. The guard at the front of the row of riders glanced about, then gestured for the corps to follow him out of the village. The horses stamped their hooves and snorted as the riders goaded them. They headed west, toward the low-lying lands.
“What was that all about?” Rose Red asked.
Tarquin smiled faintly. “Our King Stephen sends his guards on routine patrols to search for his missing son.”
“Oh, that’s right. Prince Caspian. The eldest son?”
“Yes. Don’t you recall? He disappeared about two-and-a-half years ago. He went hunting in the woods one day and never returned.” Tarquin’s features darkened. “Some believe that Queen Guinevere’s bandits captured him and killed him. That’s one reason why we go to war. To preserve the borderlands to the east.”
Her brow furrowed. “Poor King Stephen, to lose his son.”
“All is not lost. Prince Caspian may yet be found.”
“Yes, perhaps.” She glanced toward the green again, at the young men gazing dispiritedly at their commissions. “And yet, I know for certain that a great many other young men will be lost to this war.”
“War is a necessary evil,” Tarquin said.
“If you insist.” She sighed. “I must retire home.”
“I shall see you tonight.”
“Yes, tonight.”
She left the village green, with Tarquin standing in the road looking after her. She hurried away home, her heart full with the prospect of her evening assignation with Tarquin. Without understanding the why of her decision, she knew that she was embarking upon a perilous journey, and she did not know the final destination. What she did know was that she must travel this path, no matter where it took her.
***
That night, Rose Red sat with her mother and sister as she always did.
“Rose Red,” Mama said. “My dear, are you quite all right?”
“Oh, I’m fine, Mama.”
“You’ve hardly touched your tea. Are you ill?”
“No, not at all, Mama.” She set aside her sewing with a fretful sigh. “But now that you mention it, perhaps I would benefit from a spot of fresh air.”
“As you wish, my dear.”
“I should check on the animals too, while I’m outside.”
“Very well.” Mama glanced over at Snow White and looked back at Rose Red with a meaningful smile. During this entire exchange Snow White, ensconced in her sitting chair, drowsed in a kind of vaporous fog. “My dear,” Mama murmured, “whatever is the matter with you? My goodness, both my girls, sitting about, listless and wan all evening long.”
Snow White managed a wry smile. “We’re spinsters, Mama. That’s all that’s wrong with us.”
***
Rose Red stole out of her mother’s cottage and hurried across the meadow to the place where she and Tarquin arranged to keep their secret tryst. Tarquin had arrived first and was now spreading a downy soft quilt upon the ground. He pulled his leather pouch from his shoulder and set it down for her to rest her head upon. Rose Red gazed about half-fearfully. It was daylight still, for the days grew longer with the spring. The welcoming blanket of darkness, under which the lovers planned to carry out their tryst, would not arrive for another hour or so. She gazed about her with a shiver of apprehension, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. “We can be seen from the road.”
“Nonsense. The dead cornstalks will shield us from view.”
Rose Red hesitated another moment, irresolute, until Tarquin gestured for her to lie down beside him.
“What will happen,” she asked, resting her head on the leather pouch, “if you put a child in my belly?”
A soft smile glimmered in his brown eyes. “Then I will make an honest woman of you, won’t I?”
“How can you do that, when you’re off fighting a war?”
“They’ll grant me a furlough, time long enough to marry you.”
“Oh.”
He lay by her side, brushing his fingers across her cheek. “Does that suit you, my sweet?”
“I suppose it does.”
With the moment upon her, with her back on a soft quilt, and with the bright blue April sky gleaming down at her, a wave of ease washed over her. In another hour or two it would be dusk, and then night would fall.
If I am fortunate, I will return to my mother’s house this evening with Tarquin’s seed inside me. I may bear his child. I may become his wife, a soldier’s wife.
Tarquin’s fingers traced down the length of her bodice. She fetched a heavy sigh as the whalebone stays released her and the first welcome full breath of air filled her lungs. She knew, from her own practice of dressing herself in the morning, that her breasts perked through the thin cotton muslin. She watched as Tarquin’s eyes grew large at the sight of her taut nipples, her ruby pink areoles, her erect breasts. His wonder at the sight of her body filled her with a strange kind of dread. Would he be disappointed in her? She certainly hoped not.
Tarquin eased himself between her legs, spreading her thighs apart with his hands. He raked her skirt and her petticoats up to her waist, draping her petticoats on her hips, her sex exposed to him.
“Oh, my,” he breathed.
“It pleases you?”
“Yes, most certainly.”
He reached inside his breeches and pulled out his cock. She gaped at the sight of it. With the exception of that one night, when Black Bear accidentally revealed himself to her, she’d never before seen a man’s cock. This was not quite what she’d expected to see. That was because in her mind’s eye she kept seeing Black Bear’s manhood, erect, firm, and Black Bear gazing at her with those dark brown eyes.
“Are you ready?” Tarquin asked in a husky voice.
“Oh, yes,” she said, spreading her legs wider.
Tarquin slid his cock between her thighs. It stopped short at her labia. He gazed down at her. “Are you sure?”
She hesitated for only a moment before nodding. “Yes.”
He thrust himself inside her and rested his chest against her breasts. He gazed down into her eyes and slowly began easing himself in, then out.
She felt—she wasn’t entirely certain how she felt. One part of her fought against this moment, telling her of her sin, her betrayal of herself to allow a man to enjoy her before marriage. But another part of her, the reflective, prosaic part, recognized the fact that this might be the last time she’d ever see Tarquin. And if she wanted to keep him, she must produce a child.
He groaned deep in his throat and his thrusting movements became more pronounced. She relaxed into the sensation of this man inside her body. She closed her eyes and allowed her senses to be fully aroused, fully exposed. As his cock drew out, with every exhalation, she released her breath. With every thrusting inward, she inhaled and held
her breath. Little by little, she lost her sense of time and place. She found herself in a distant land, where the air, sweet as honey and fragrant as the morning dew, warmed her face, and where nobody spoke of such terrible things as war and death and loss.
As she gyrated her body in keeping with Tarquin, a strange sensation stole over her. The delicious sensation of great warmth began in her cunt and worked its way upward and outward, stretching its tickling tendrils into her heart. At last she could bear it no longer, and she reached her crisis point. She reared her head back, crying out her agony and her joy as the tickling sensation bore her away, reverberating through her body with a wave-like motion.
Tarquin shuddered, reached his crisis, and then subsided. After a moment, he withdrew his cock and tucked it inside his breeches.
She rolled onto her side and hugged her knees, feeling curiously empty. Sad. Curled into a ball, she watched as Tarquin tidied himself. He glanced over at her, his eyes filled with affection. “Lovely.”
“Yes.”
“I say—what was that?”
“What did you say?” she asked, stirring.
“I saw something, in the woods.”
“Do you think someone saw us?”
“I can’t tell for certain. I thought I saw an animal.”
Perhaps Black Bear.
Tarquin craned his neck, gazing intently into the woods, and finally shook his head. “No, nothing.”
“Very well.” She scooted to a seated position, pulled a hairbrush from her drawstring bag and combed out the tangles in her hair.
“Let me do that,” Tarquin said, dropping to his knees. He took the brush from her hand and gently stroked it through her long, raven-black hair. When he finished, he returned the brush to her bag and pulled the drawstring closed. “Shall I walk you home, then?”
“Yes.”
Dusk drew long shadows across the flagstones leading to the cottage as Tarquin escorted Rose Red through the white picket fence gate. As she closed the latch behind her, he pulled her close to him, kissing her tenderly. “Good night, my sweet.” And with that, he turned on his heel and headed up the road to the village.
She watched him go. It reminded her, eerily, of the last time that she’d seen Black Bear. He’d lived with them that long winter two years ago. Then at the springtime thaw, he bade her farewell, before he too turned his back and left her, never to be seen again.
A shadow passed across her face, a sense of disquietude, of foreboding. Every man—human and otherwise—she’d ever loved, left her. Every man. First her father. Then Black Bear entered their lives, but only for a brief period of time. Now Tarquin, but he would not be here for long. Soon he would leave for the war. And what then? Would he die in battle? Or would he return to her?
She wanted to believe he would come back to her, that he would return, marry her, and become the father of her children. But another part of her, a dark and foreboding part of her, knew better.
She sometimes wished that she possessed a little more of Snow White’s happy nature. Snow White didn’t worry about her future, and she didn’t fret and brood about the past. But the past was all Rose Red knew, and it was available to her only in her memories. And in that secret place in her heart, the men she loved passed away into that distant land of blue persuasion.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 3
One fine day in May, Snow White and Rose Red browsed about in the meadow, picking blueberries. Holding their pails in the crooks of their arms, they picked the plump, juicy berries off the vines, their fingers staining blue. Snow White picked one particularly succulent berry and bit into it. A tiny rivulet of blue juice spurted from her mouth and crept down her chin.
“For shame, Snow. You’ve gone and stained your frock.”
“Oh, dear,” Snow White murmured, gazing forlornly at the crisp white blouse that now bore a bright blue stain. “I’ll need to work hard to get that out.”
“For sure you will.” Rose Red could not check the undertone of disapproval in her voice. She subsided, focusing on her blueberries and her pail, but Snow White flashed a look of anger. The sisters drew silent for a long moment.
“You’ve been particularly tetchy of late,” Snow White remarked at last, plucking a strand of blueberries and dropping them with a disdainful flourish into her pail. “Ever since Tarquin left for the war.”
Rose Red closed her eyes, fighting back the tears.
Yes, once again, Snow White captured the essence of my troubles, my disordered feelings.
This was the unerring skill that Snow White possessed, this instinctive ability to discern exactly what troubled Rose Red. Not that Rose Red truly appreciated her sister’s gift at this particular moment, she thought with wry irony.
Ever since their winter with Black Bear resting at their hearth—and could it be possible, had two years really passed since that time?—Rose Red felt a stirring inside her; a growing restlessness, a frustrated sense of wanting more, a desire that she could no longer satisfy by the usual tasks of working in the garden, her daily marketing in the village, or, as in this moment, picking blueberries with her sister. The truth of the matter was clear. She missed Black Bear. She missed him terribly.
But how were these feelings possible? He was an animal of the woods and she a living, breathing human being. Yet she longed for him, and ashamed as she was to admit it to anyone, even to Snow White, who might understand, she longed for him with every fiber in her heart.
Everyone in the village imagined that she pined for Tarquin, who’d just left to join his regiment. Yes, she missed him, too. But whenever she dreamed, she dreamed of Black Bear. She did feel guilty for not thinking of Tarquin as often. Poor Tarquin! Rose Red blinked back her tears and opened her eyes.
“I’m bearing it as well as I can,” she replied tersely.
“You miss him.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
At that moment a sharp burst of screaming interrupted Rose Red’s melancholy reflections. “Help! Help! Help!”
“What’s that?” Snow White cried.
Shielding her eyes from the sun, Rose Red cast her gaze across the meadow. “There,” she said, pointing to a log. “There. Do you see it?”
“I see something on the log,” Snow White replied dubiously.
“It’s a child, and he’s in trouble!”
Forgetting their pails, the girls grabbed hold of their petticoats and sprinted across the meadow. They did not stop until they arrived, panting hard, at a fallen tree that had begun the achingly slow process of deteriorating into the ground. But no child stood trapped in the tree. Instead, to the girls’ enormous surprise, they saw a wizened, tiny dwarf, his white beard trapped in a fissure of the rotted log.
“Help me!” he screamed. “Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Help me!”
“Oh me, oh my,” Snow White cried, putting her hands on her face. “What a horrible little man.”
The dwarf shouted, “I’m not a little man, you simpleton! I’m a dwarf! And I’m trapped in this confounded tree and you’re standing there looking at me, like the moron you no doubt were on the day of your birth!”
“What a charming little man you are,” Rose Red commented dryly.
“Enough, you ugly bitch!” he flung at her. “Release me from my torment!”
Rose Red turned to Snow White. “I’ve half a mind to let him rot out here.”
Snow White fumbled at a pocket in her skirt. “I’m sure I’m carrying a pair of handy scissors somewhere in this pocket.”
“Say one nice thing to us,” Rose Red uttered tartly to the dwarf. “Or so help me, Christian upbringing or no Christian upbringing, I’ll let you stay here and rot.”
The dwarf hopped up and down for a moment, then considered. He cast his bleary eyes over Rose Red, his ugly expression changing as he took in the full measure of her. Rose Red began to regret the fact that she’d asked the dwarf to say anything at all. An eerie sensation stole over her. She imagined the dw
arf’s filthy little mind was mentally undressing her and spreading her legs apart—
“Well,” he huffed, “now that I see you up close, you’re not half as ugly as I first suspected.”
Rose Red put her fingers to her chin. “Well, well, well. For a compliment, I must say it’s not one of the finest I’ve ever heard. But coming from you, I suppose it will do.”
“Here they are!” Snow White shouted gleefully, pulling the scissors from her pocket.
“What are you going to do with that?” the dwarf asked, his rheumy eyes growing wide with horror.
“Well, how else can I release you, silly?” Snow White hastened to the log and quickly snipped the dwarf’s beard at the point where it lay trapped inside the fissure. The scissors snapped and in the next moment, the dwarf fell backwards onto the log and rolled onto the ground.
“Oh, oh, oh! Oh, you wretched, wretched cow!” He scrambled to his feet, hopping up and down in a cold fury, glaring hatefully at Snow White. “How dare you cut off my snowy white beard!”
Rose Red scoffed. “Oh, I like that. You’ve got a lot of nerve. We saved your life.”
“You hideous bitches!” the dwarf screamed in an impotent rage. “You hideous, dreadful trolls!”
“Next time,” Rose Red said, making a snipping gesture with her fingers, “I’ll cut something else off of you. See how you like that.”
“Oh, ho, ho!” the dwarf cried. “Now I see what truly wretched, vicious little bitches you are!”
“I’m getting mighty tired of being called a bitch,” Snow White sighed with resignation. “He’s as bad as the seven dwarves.”
“That’s what we’ll do.” Rose Red cried, snatching up the scissors and lunging for the dwarf. “Off with your balls.”
“Ha, ha!” the dwarf cried, grabbing a cloth bag and flinging it over his shoulder. “Fooled you!” and with that, he scampered into the woods.
Rose Red snapped the scissors closed and laughed. “Well, that’s one way to get rid of him.” She turned to hand the scissors back to Snow White, but her sister stood rigidly, staring off into space.
“Snowy?” Rose Red waved her hand in front of her sister’s face. “Are you all right?”
Rose Red and Black Bear Page 2