“Let me begin simply,” the other said. “The water, and perhaps the soaproot I see there. And, if I vow solemnly not to use it otherwise, a knife to cut off this matted hair!”
When she reclined at last in the silver basin, legs dangling over the rim, her hair was cropped short as the Greeks of ancient statues, but there was no mistaking her for a male. “It is gracious of you not to inquire,” she said, noticing her hostess’ intent gaze on the breasts rising like islands from the water, and choosing to misinterpret that interest. “But no, we do not mutilate ourselves, despite your legends. One fabled archer, perhaps, in the distant past—or perhaps not. Even Queen Penthesilea, who stood with Troy against the Athenians, had both her breasts when Achilles slew her. I knew elders in my youth who had known elders who had known those who fought beside her.”
“So few generations gone? But the Trojan War is scarcely more than legend now!”
The Amazon sighed deeply, head resting on the rim of the tub, tendrils of damp hair curling about her face. “Perhaps the bath has weakened me after all, but I will repay your hospitality with tales of my land and my people, if you like.”
“It is a world of which I often dreamed,” my mistress said, pulling up a stool, “when I was young and destiny uncertain. Perhaps that is why I wished to meet you.”
“Perhaps,” the other agreed, yawning widely. “I did not think you truly doubted your Roman, nor even that you wished to try your hand at seducing a queen, for variety.” Her half-closed eyes held a wicked gleam.
My Queen’s skin flushed, but she quickly took the offensive. “If I wished to do such a thing, it would be easily done.” She poured oil from an alabaster jar into her palm. “Like this, perhaps,” and she tilted her hand along one naked shoulder and then the other so that the oil ran down in rivulets. Those she spread first over the pulse point in the hollow of the other’s throat, and then, with the tip of a finger, around the curves of her breasts above the water.
The Amazon drew deeper breaths, and her nipples hardened into peaks, but her voice was cool and steady. “Have you considered the dangers? This battle has its wounds, like any other.”
My Lady gave a low laugh and leaned closer. “I fear no battle of the senses.” One hand dipped low beneath the water, and lower. Her dark hair brushed along the other’s throat, and downward, until its ends traced ripples on the water’s surface and her tongue teased at the flesh rising above it.
For all this show of confidence, her scent of rising arousal was tinged with nervousness. In all past matings she had seized her pleasures with never a loss of control, always holding greater goals in mind; this aura of uncertaity, of tremulous awe, was something new.
The warrior tensed. Her body arched, then settled once more. With a long, shuddering sigh, she raised her head and leaned down to the exposed nape of my Lady’s neck, pressing her mouth to the soft skin there hard enough to force the other’s face more firmly against her own flesh. Low moans escaped her, and her hands clenched the basin’s rim so tightly that her knuckles whitened.
But suddenly she loosed that grip, grasped a handful of the dark hair brushing over her, and pulled it forcefully backward.
“Good,” she said brusquely, at my Queen’s gasp of fury at such handling. “Hold fast to your anger. It may serve you better than desire.” Her face was wet with sweat that owed nothing to the bath water.
It was the first time I had ever seen my mistress speechless.
“What if you kept on as you wished,” the other went on, “and received the same and more in return? What then? Do you imagine you could maintain mastery of body and mind while my hands and mouth and whole being showed you the depths of what you most crave? You do not know its power. The Goddess gives us this gift, and I would not profane it while a mere spoil of war.”
Outrage restored my Lady’s voice. “Do you imagine, barbarian, that I would be such clay in your hands as to allow your escape?”
“The danger,” said the other, her voice as harsh, “is not that I might escape, but that you might wish with all your being to escape with me. And if you did, and such a thing could be done, Goddess forgive me, I would take you.”
The bitter scent of lust denied rose from both women, sharper even than their voices.
Again my Queen, more woman now that ruler, searched for words. “You presume, barbarian,” she began, attempting her customary regal disdain. Then she paused. “For argument’s sake,” she said after a moment, “what then of my people? And yours, if my armies and Rome’s thought me in need of rescue?”
The other said nothing. She could see as well as I the battle that my Lady fought within herself, and knew the outcome. “Yes, we must both think first of our lands and people,” she agreed at last. “And there is your great destiny to consider, of course, though nothing is ever as certain as one hopes.” Any hint of mockery faded quickly, and she went on, as though nothing of moment had passed between them, “Now let us but while away the time with tales of my home until you must return me to captivity.”
The current of attraction between them did not fade, but each steeled herself against giving way to it. The Amazon told stories then, with my Lady’s assent, of how time moves erratically in the valleys of the Amazons, so that years there may be centuries elsewhere; of wars with savage tribes on the far side of the Euxine Sea, for glory and the sharpening of battle-skills; of great cataclysms toppling mountains into secret passes, and others that cleave new rifts through which the adventurous may pass, in search of more knowledge of the greater world than their scryers can provide. It was thus that their queen had come to be in the path of the Roman campaign, joining cause with Parthia against the spread of Roman domination.
“But Antony’s empire,” my Queen broke in, “our empire, is to be one of alliance!”
“For Egypt, perhaps, and for others ruled by Greek or Roman blood; and even then it is domination none the less. But let it go. Do what you may with your destiny. I have none left.”
My mistress, her composure superficially restored, poured over her what hot water remained. “You have told me but little of your land itself. I would like to envision you there…”
“Though I will be there no more,” the other finished bluntly. “I have no skill at such description, nor could I bear to try.” A chasm of sadness underlay her voice.
Deep within I felt the urging of the Goddess. I came to the edge of the basin and leaned above it, watching the water as though small fish might lurk therein. To the lion-wraith looming beside me I paid no heed.
“Mnemnet…if it please the Goddess…” I dipped my head lower until the dangling amulet rippled the water’s surface. “Be very still,” my Lady told her guest, “and conjure up a vision of that which you most wish to see.” Her hand rested on the Amazon’s broad shoulder as she bent above the water; though I did not lift my eyes, I knew by her scent that she was stirred anew. The other seemed to take no notice, except, perhaps, in what she chose to recall.
The water began to shimmer, gold light resolving into blue. A world appeared, hazy at first, then clear; a vast sky above rocky peaks giving way to forested slopes and then to a broad, green valley. We looked down from heights where a torrent leapt from pool to descending pool over stone carved by wind and water into smooth and sensuous shapes.
“These are my baths,” the Amazon murmured, “and there the bathers.” A pair of naked women emerged from the rainbow mist cast by the highest waterfall. Others appeared, some laughing in the spray, some perched above the flood on sun-warmed rocks, some striving and rolling together on beds of moss in mock combat where pleasure was the prize. All were lithe and strong, whether young, in mid-prime, or with weathered skin and silver in their hair.
A face appeared close before us, gazing upward in devotion. Young, unclothed but for the mantle of unruly copper hair that flowed over her shoulders to brush across her breasts, she awaited the answer to an unheard plea.
“Maija,” the captive queen said without
expression. “She was wounded in the battle, but would not leave me until I bade them truss and carry her.” Her hands on the basin’s silver rim tightened and her bowed head obscured the vision. A single tear fell to spread ripples across the fading scene.
All at once she erupted from the bath. “Lady, you must slay me or set me free!” Her dripping back was pressed against the wall. “Your soldiers watch without, but I will seize what chance I may. You have not the strength to hold me, and Mnemnet, I think, will not move against me.”
I pressed against my startled mistress’ side, then sat and, unhurriedly, began to groom my spotted fur.
“Wait!” My Lady knelt and grasped my collar. “Let me pray for another way! Though you are not of Egypt’s blood, perhaps, for the sake of your warrior spirit and the love your bonded creature bears you…” At that the shadow lioness surged forward and stared into my face. In impatience I tried to pull free, but found I could not move, could not close my eyes to the plea flowing from her through me to the Goddess.
The air behind the kneeling Queen began to shimmer like ripples of heat rising from the noonday desert. Slowly a pillar of unearthly light took form.
Most rarely did a deity revealed itself so distinctly. Sekhmet’s leonine visage loomed, light raying from her slanting eyes. Hands with extended claws reached out, one toward me and one toward the shadow-beast, gripping us, piercing us, shaking and releasing us, leaving my heart pounding in a rhythm that transmuted into words, though I could not tell in whose voice they came forth.
“Two spirits…may be joined…in one flesh.”
My Queen stared transfixed at the image of the Goddess reflected in my eyes. The Amazon, dazzled by the light, hid her face with an upraised arm. The vision faded slowly from my sight, but the chant went on as my Lady echoed the words, seeking for understanding. “Two spirits…in one flesh?”
It was Lakri, the lion-wraith, who understood without a need for words. She leapt full-length upon her mistress and fell with her to the floor. In a mist suffused with flame we watched two spirits merge into one body; and, when the transformation was complete, it was the lion’s form, not the woman’s, that crouched before us.
With a great roar she leapt to the window’s marble sill. Guards burst into the room, only to see her leap far out, over gardens and outbuildings and stunned soldiers; and then she was seen no more.
•
Our vision has run its course.
“All is finished, Mnemnet,” she whispers. “I can do no more.” She looks toward the rustling basket. “Shall Egypt’s Queen be brought in chains before the jeering multitude? So much, at least, I can deny to Rome.”
She steps toward the basket, lifts its cover, and slowly, languorously, withdraws one sinuous form as though it were a rope of precious pearls. To be still requires all my strength. When the serpent twines about her arm great shudders wrack my body.
At her cry I leap. The serpent writhes, first on the stone floor and then in my jaws, but even as its bones crunch between my teeth I know it is too late.
She is half-sitting now. Two tiny drops of blood gleam on her breast. I lick them away, wondering whether even now my jaws might tear out the poison, though it leave her maimed like the Amazons of legend; but it is too late.
Her face is frozen, her lips unmoving, but her eyes, linked to mine, say clearly, “Take me to her, Mnemnet.”
The Goddess is here, but she does not command. This I do by choice.
I stretch my body over the one now growing cold. Heat fills me, flame consumes me, consumes us both; we flow and meld as molten gold.
When the fire at last subsides, and the world takes form again, we are, as promised, two spirits in one flesh. My flesh.
The Amazon and the lion wraith had but one body between them, but we have two. One must remain. The women burst into the room, wailing, tugging me from her lifeless form. I do not punish them.
One leap takes me onto the window ledge. Her great city spreads beneath us for the last time. “Look well, Lady, and quickly,” I tell her, feeling her wounded spirit begin to stir. “There is far to go.”
Far to go. Mountains to crest, plains to cross, prey to pursue, with the wind screaming past as I run; can she share the joy surging through my blood? A vision arises of a lioness coming forth to guide us, and then another vision, of a tawny woman beside a thundering torrent, entwined in fierce joy with the black-haired, smooth-skinned companion through whose eyes I gaze. Through whose body I feel.
“Can it be, my Mnemnet,” her voice whispers within me, “that when two spirits share one form, that form need not always be the same?”
A thought for the future. Now, it is my body poised in the high window, my muscles tightly coiled; and her spirit safe within.
“Take us there, Mnemnet,” she says, with perfect trust; and we leap, far out, into the unknown land.
•
The
Coffinmaker’s Love
Alberto Yáñez
Miss Lavinia Parrish was a young woman when she chose to apprentice herself to Mr Harid de Borba, a coffinmaker of great skill but odd repute. Though the two were acquainted prior to her request, Miss Parrish had not laid bare her heart to her new master, nor had she otherwise explained her particular reasons for undertaking a trade. Although considered unconventional for a gentlewoman of quality, Miss Parrish’s family money and connections bought her a fair amount of discretion from Mr de Borba. Moreover, Miss Parrish, it turned out, had some natural skill with her hands. And Mr de Borba was, it was quietly said (by those who would say such things), mad—and in all honesty, Lavinia Parrish never saw him (de Borba) do anything to disprove that allegation—but his eccentricity worked in her favor. Besides, he seemed harmless enough.
Mr de Borba had a peculiar habit of talking to his materials that Miss Parrish found endearing: he exhorted the noble mahogany, the aromatic cedar, the simple pine, to plane straight and join true. Once, Miss Parrish had walked in on Mr de Borba carrying on an animated conversation with a bolt of white Oriental silk, explaining to the fabric that it was destined to cushion the rest of a lady of quality and so should do its best not to discolor or stain—even though, he allowed, that was an unlikely prospect, given its future purpose. Miss Parrish had walked into the workshop silently, had gone unnoticed by her master, and so she had walked back out just as quietly. Miss Parrish privately opined that what Mr de Borba did in his own atelier was his own concern and none of hers, save it were a direct lesson to herself.
Such an understanding served both master and apprentice well.
Lavinia came from a good family, as such things were judged in the society of the Silvered Country; her uncle was a baronet and her mother was the youngest daughter of a Peninsular grandee viscount. (Sadly, there was no longer even a courtesy title for Mrs Parrish, as her eldest half-sister had since inherited the peerage and become Vizcondesa de Pablo.) Lavinia’s father was a gentleman whose forefathers, while not noble, had possessed significant means and had not worked in four generations. Miss Parrish’s hands were small and neat and, once taught, quick-fingered and clever with small chisel and mallet. She was not ruddy, like her father, nor olive, like her mother, but a mild pale color, which tanned nicely in summer were she unwise with her parasols. Her hair was brown, and a touch too short.
As she had not confided in them her true reasons for doing so, her parents did not understand their youngest daughter’s desire to become a tradeswoman, but at least Lavinia was quiet about it, for which they were grateful. Moreover, as Lavinia insisting on a trade likely spared them a proper dowry, and having three other daughters and a son to inherit the rest, Mr Parrish was not prepared to complain about his daughter’s odd ambitions.
Mr and Mrs Parrish were disposed to feel a certain gratitude for (and hence, liberality with) Lavinia, most chiefly arising from the unusual circumstances of her birth. Lavinia had been born blue, unbreathing and already half-claimed by death. Only a clever nurse-midwife’s quick actions h
ad saved the family from the heartbreak of stillborn happiness. As a result, Miss Lavinia Parrish was much indulged.
Yet despite the doting, Lavinia did not imagine that her family would understand if she confessed her motivations all a plan to court a wife.
When Lavinia was nearly six years old, her Welsh nanny, Miss Herriet ap Croutch, was very fond of taking her for air and exercise in the park at Plaza Grover, just two short and tony blocks away from the Parrish manor on the more fashionable side of Marqués Street. The children’s yard in the park was fenced with tall filigreed iron spikes, and only the governesses of the families who sponsored the park where allowed a key.
Thus it came as a surprise to young Lavinia when early one morning when she had pestered Miss ap Croutch into taking her to the yard before any of the other governesses or the children would arrive (to see how high she could go on the swings), that she spied a young girl she did not recognize playing in the yard, no nanny in sight.
The girl was olive (darker than Lavinia’s mother and thus near to tea brown), with black hair that glowed nearly blue, a proud aquiline nose, and a blue and white pinafore dress. A red boater and matching gloves, fine Isthmian straw and dyed kid, lay abandoned on the grass next to the slide.
Lavinia noticed that the young girl attracted no one else’s attention, as Miss ap Croutch just smiled pleasantly in Lavinia’s direction and sat on one of the small curlicued iron benches on the far edge of the yard and pulled out one of the penny-books of sensational stories that she loved and never read to Lavinia. A pair of housemaids out on errands looked up from their gossip to smile at Lavinia as they passed by, but they did not acknowledge the strange girl who was skipping nearby, singing softly.
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