by Vina Jackson
As promised, the hop to the island took under an hour, which came as a relief to Aurelia, who, despite having been brought up by the sea, had never had much in the way of sea legs and had been apprehensive about the crossing, fearful of being sick and ruining her dress in the process.
As the ferry docked, there was a rumour of voices on the bridge above them as instructions were called out and the pitter-patter of feet increased. They had been sitting in a corner below, huddled together in silence although Aurelia had been full of questions.
Lauralynn rose and took her hand again and Aurelia followed, still unaccustomed to the enforced darkness, taking care not to stumble when her feet came across steps. Arriving on deck into the open, it felt like night, a distinctive chill in the air, and her senses were assaulted by a complex swirl of fragrances; the aroma of the sea blending with an intoxicating palette of sweetness, spices, fruit and other notes that teased her senses. It felt as if the island they had landed on lived outside time and was not subject to the normal laws of humankind, bathing in a glow and an odour of its own, unlike any other.
Before Aurelia could fully absorb her new environment, she felt Lauralynn’s hand let go of her and heard a whisper in her ear: ‘Welcome to the island of Doctor Wells . . .’
It was Tristan’s voice.
And then, from Lauralynn, ‘I’ll see you later, sweetie. I have matters to attend to,’ followed by the sound of departing footsteps.
She could hear the murmur of her fellow passengers welcoming their arrival and the gentle sound of the sea beneath her as a hand she guessed was Tristan’s took hold of hers and guided her across the deck. She gingerly manoeuvred herself, with his help, onto the lowered walkway that descended towards terra firma.
She finally set foot on the island, felt others brushing against her and heard a chorus of sighs rising as the guests realised they had finally arrived at their destination.
Tristan’s hand rose and loosened her mask.
Aurelia found herself just a stone’s throw from the shore. There was no port, no building, just a shingle beach, a scarred line of wave-swept rocks and a thick wall of trees facing them. She shivered.
‘What is this?’ she asked Tristan, a hint of anxiety creeping into her voice. She had not anticipated an uninhabited island.
‘Don’t fret,’ he replied. Through the cloud of night that surrounded them, she could see many of the other guests crowding around her and appearing similarly nonplussed by their situation.
‘It’s the reason this particular island was procured. Discretion.’ He tugged on Aurelia’s hand. He was wearing white leather gloves.
She followed his nudge and saw her fellow visitors being similarly prodded on by their minders. Stepping hesitantly, the small group broke through the line of trees and, in an instant, were rewarded by a flickering set of lights ahead, colours juggling with each other, bright reds and greens and every variation of the rainbow, like will-o’-the-wisps dotting the night.
Encouraged, their step quickened and the guests advanced in single file towards the illuminated area that was coming into focus.
As they got closer, it became apparent there was a forest inside the forest, with a group of outlying one-storey buildings dotted at irregular intervals along its periphery. A world within a world. They crossed the first row of lights and the ambient temperature rose as if by miracle, the night breeze magically fading away under the powerful attack of the hundreds of lights bathing the inner forest in warmth.
Broken shards of music threaded their way towards them from the distant heart of the woods – the sound of calliopes tinkling away, the melancholy strain of violins and the swing of entrancing melodies Aurelia was still unable to put a name to. The guests surrounding her purred with excitement and began to break ranks, drawn to the festivities and the line of lights with joyous abandon.
Aurelia wondered whether she should rush after them, seek out Lauralynn. Maybe Siv was somewhere ahead? But Tristan still gripped her hand and they came to a standstill as a multitude of guests emerging into the bay of bright lights overran them. Where had they all come from? There must have been several ferries disgorging them onto the island, not just the one she had travelled on, she guessed. Arriving from shores scattered up and down the Oregon coastline and further afield.
Her apprehension was melting away.
Aurelia glanced ahead at the exotically attired guests almost waltzing between the trees. She looked up and was struck by how extraordinarily green the branches were, every leaf impossibly hand-painted by some expert jeweller so it shone with a thousand shades of life. Like a stage set up in the middle of nowhere, both artificial and familiar, a theatre of dreams where the green of the tree leaves conjugated with the solar explosion of the artfully disposed lights bathing the centre of the island with a magic circle of enchantment.
‘It’s . . . beautiful,’ she said in a hushed tone, the mere thought of being any louder an offence to the spectacle unfolding before her eyes.
‘Isn’t it?’ Tristan replied, a benevolent look of self-satisfaction moving across his full lips. ‘We plan every Ball for a whole year, with much attention to every single detail. It has to be unique. That’s the only rule.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Aurelia remarked, ‘but it makes me think of Shakespeare. A Midsummer’s Night Dream.’
‘Oh yes, it is said Will once came to the Ball years ago.’ Tristan nodded.
‘Really?’
‘We go back centuries,’ Tristan said. ‘But only the Network elders know the whole story . . . I’m only second generation.’
So he was now revealing himself. Contradicting what he had said a few days earlier. He was directly involved with the Ball, not just a guest.
Peels of nearby laughter reached their ears. Through the break between a clump of trees and tall bushes, a woman trailing a thin white veil ran barefoot, pursued by what looked like a faun. Aurelia blinked, but the couple had already moved away, just the echo of their laughter flickering.
‘We can join the festivities later,’ Tristan said. ‘There is no rush.’
All Aurelia wanted was to run into the heart of the forest and experience its delights, to seek out Siv if this was where she now was, and to see Lauralynn again, but Tristan’s voice held a quiet authority and he emanated that unsettling aura of curious attraction. Every time she looked into his green eyes, she couldn’t help but be submerged in a multitude of feelings. She knew she couldn’t truly trust him, but something inside her was strongly drawn to him, somehow perceiving that he could fill something hollow inside her and perhaps even answer many of those lingering questions that had trailed her like heavy baggage ever since she had been a child. Aurelia shuddered, a fine mist falling across her eyes. She felt dizzy. It was the intimation of imminent answers as well as a strange sense of déjà vu. A feeling of belonging.
As if reading her thoughts, Tristan said, ‘You can feel it, can’t you?’
‘What?’ Aurelia protested.
‘We were born on the same day,’ Tristan said.
‘Were we?’ Her mind was racing. ‘How can you know that?’
‘Come,’ he suggested, indicating the small bungalow on their left. Her mind was spinning in a whirl. Fuck, was he about to reveal he was her long-lost twin, and she was trapped in the convoluted machinations of some Victorian novel? Aurelia began to feel there was a deus ex machina offstage, presiding over her life, tugging on invisible strings, manipulating her, and she was fast losing control.
‘Come,’ he said again.
But they did not enter the flat-roofed and shuttered wooden building; Tristan stopped once they had reached the deck and turned solemnly towards her. Aurelia read hesitation in his eyes. In the distance were the sounds of laughter and celebration spinning around the echoes of faltering melodies, beckoning them.
He stood there, gazing at her with both longing and, Aurelia felt, apprehension. He was the same height as her, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped. A swi
mmer’s build, she knew from days spent at the local pool back home, where she, Siv and their friends had often gossiped outrageously and giggled enviously about the bodies of the sportier boys from the neighbouring comprehensive. In their tight Speedos they paraded and dived self-consciously into the pool, showing off their compact bodies under the judgemental gaze of the teenage girls gathered on the other side in instinctive segregation.
Tristan reminded Aurelia of them, the perfect proportions of his body under the fluid material of his uniform not quite in sync with the hints of both shallowness and cruelty rising from his aura.
‘So what’s this all about?’ Aurelia asked him.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘No, I don’t. Who are you and Lauralynn? How do you know who I am? How could you know when I was born?’
He ignored her questions.
‘You are here for a reason. Don’t you feel it? You’re meant to be present at the Ball.’
For a brief, impulsive moment, Aurelia wanted to storm away, suffocated by a torrent of strange feelings, assaulted by memories she didn’t know she had. That unexplained, faint smell of pomegranate reached her, the distinct song of distant cicadas, all like a film in terribly accelerated motion. Still giddy with a sense of disorientation, she felt unsure of herself. There was the sound of movement on the periphery of her consciousness and she abruptly turned round, overcome by the feeling they were being observed, but the night failed to unveil any shadows.
There was something, a kernel of lost information at the back of her brain. It floated there, suspended, unapproachable, but she couldn’t get it into focus. Still, she was aware it was important.
And she also knew that Tristan, facing her with that look of severity and veneration, was willing her to remember.
Reality receded – the forest, the bright lights, the island all retreating – until she pictured herself within an impregnable cocoon of power where the whole world orbited around her, depended on her. And she was also on the outside looking in. Watching attentively as her tall silhouette stood still, clad in opaque gauze, her long limbs a harmony of flesh, the gentle curve of her small breasts, their high line stretching the thin material that barely clothed her, the rounded outline of the curve of her arse cleverly disturbing the melodic geometry of her body.
Aurelia drew her breath as, for the first time in ages, she felt the heart near her cunt pulsing away, a steady rhythm, a drumbeat of tension. She had no need to look down, to investigate under the shimmering dress Lauralynn had devised for her to confirm its reappearance. It was alive. More than ever. Pumping the blood of desire through her veins, reaching for every extremity of her body. She shuddered. She was unable to move, rooted to the spot, fire spreading along her limbs.
Tristan extended his arm in her direction, pulled up his sleeve and turned his wrist towards her.
Carved across his prominent, bulging veins, was a picture, the tattoo of a similar heart to hers, although its colours were fading, nowhere as sharp as the one she had lower down. It was smaller too.
A mark of recognition.
‘I know where yours is . . .’ he said, his voice trailing away through the intoxicating silence that surrounded them.
How could he know?
He moved towards Aurelia.
A gentle breeze enveloped her, and she watched as her dress rose all the way to her waist, uncovering her legs and lower stomach, as if being lifted by other hands. She was unable to look round and confirm if they had been joined on the bungalow’s deck by others. The sweet fragrance of exotic fruit wafted across her face, carried like electricity along waves of night air. It was like being paralysed, although she welcomed her helplessness and had no desire to feel otherwise.
Tristan kneeled in front of her and reverently pulled her knickers down.
As he inevitably unveiled the tattoo of her heart, she saw a flash of recognition race across his green eyes.
With his hands on her thighs he inched his face nearer to her until the warmth of his lips radiated gently all the way to her labia, the hidden waves of his breath travelling across the ridge of her opening.
She felt his hands spreading her legs, his mouth advancing towards her now intoxicatingly wet slit and finally experienced the subtle roughness of his tongue inside her as his hands now tenderly opened her up and he began to taste her, like a bee diving into a flower in search of honey, like an explorer searching for treasure.
Aurelia could no longer see Tristan’s head as he began to lick and play with her. Her dress, against all laws of gravity, now floated in mid-air around her waist, forming an impenetrable cloud between them.
It was both similar and totally different to the way Lauralynn had aroused her, orchestrating the rise of her pleasure, masterfully riding the waves of her orgasm. Tristan was skilful, but there was also an element of worship in the way he delved inside her that Lauralynn had quite deliberately bypassed. She had been more savage, demanding, blissfully selfish. He was almost studious, as if he was holding back, respecting unsaid limits.
Why am I being so analytical? Aurelia asked herself. Comparing Lauralynn and Tristan was ridiculous. They were totally different experiences.
His tongue danced across the damp lips of her cunt, like a firefly; clever, sly, inquisitive, caressing her labia, darting here and there, seeking her out, drawing her pleasure, toying with her folds, nibbling her until she was unable to distinguish between pleasure and pain.
She closed her eyes and went into mental freefall as Tristan orchestrated her orgasm, swiftly and expertly, reading the journey of her lust as it travelled from pussy to heart to her fingertips to the pit of her stomach and then again to her heart.
As much as she enjoyed his ministrations, Aurelia experienced a twinge of regret and knew deep inside her soul that what he was doing to her was not an unselfish act of love, but an elaborate ritual, another stage in her awakening and that she was not destined to be his, nor even Lauralynn’s, who had toyed with her so well the night before. Against all logic, she was convinced there would be another. There must be. Soon. Who would know every note, every melody she could play, that could be played with her. A virtuoso. The one. Who would answer all the questions, the Ball, the tattoos, this strange journey she appeared to be undertaking like a puppet on a string.
She peaked, coming with a deep and pleasurable sigh.
Her perception returned and her body relaxed, abandoning its tenseness. She felt as though her mind had been momentarily wiped clean in that sublime second of nonexistence, but now her consciousness returned and she regained awareness of her situation: the outlying bungalow, the forest nearby and all the joyful, drunken sounds rushing through the branches of the trees, the intense brightness of the artificial sky created by the canopy of multicoloured lights, the island.
Tristan was still on his knees, his head down. Her dress had floated down again and now covered her limbs and the still pulsating fire raging inside her. She knew the heart next to her smoothness kept on burning bright; she had no need to check.
Her paralysis swept away from her and, out of habit, she brought a hand up to brush away some strands of hair sweeping irritably across her forehead.
It came as yet another shock that she now displayed a second heart, smaller, less aggressive, but similar to the first one and Tristan’s own, painted across the tight skin on the underside of her wrist. It was inert, not beating, like a years-old tattoo. She gazed at the new apparition delicately etched across her pale skin, uncomprehending, dazed.
‘Take me to the ball,’ Aurelia whispered.
A hundred steps from the deck of the low-lying bungalow. Aurelia counted each of them as if she was living in a fairy tale and there was a precise ritual to be followed for fear of breaking the enchantment. To the line of the trees through which a river of light illuminated the heart of the forest, crossing a veil of darkness shielding the spectacle like a moat. And then the world came alive.
The music, the laughter, the f
ragrant winds of spices, incense and perfume infusing the air like a palette of intoxicating wildness.
The voices of men and women rising up and down like a wave of sounds weaving a siren spell.
Her heart couldn’t beat any faster. She looked round and saw that Tristan was no longer with her. Had she left him behind, or was it written in some legendary book of days (and nights?) that she should face the next part of this adventure alone?
A melody rose majestically through the canopy of branches, swooping down on her, the crystal tones of a violin in full flight, both caressing her senses and aggressively taunting them. The tune was familiar and, after a brief second of disorientation, it came to her: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, although she was unsure which particular season this happened to be. The divine music soared and fell and carried her steps along a narrow path that led to a glade where the intensity of the light was almost blinding and she had to rub her eyes to acclimatise her vision.
The bright lights dotted amongst the branches of the hundreds of trees shone like a million multicoloured suns. People were running everywhere, every costume more elaborate and magical than the one before, floating along currents of heady joy. Materials shimmered, creased, swam in the air, heavy and courtly, light and evanescent, waves of movement blending into each other, sheer beauty in motion, with too many fleeting details and which she was unable to analyse or process in the magic of the moment.
Most here were human but others, passing too fast along Aurelia’s visual horizon to make any lasting impression, were disguised in a semblance of the animal kingdom: fauns, birds with wild plumage, dogs (or wolves – it was difficult to tell them apart), horses, lions even, cats with sly masks and furry wraps, satyrs and all sort of mythological creatures she couldn’t recall a specific name for. A bull moving proudly and with a distinct air of superiority along a path. Was it actually a bull? Aurelia hesitated as she spotted his horns. She saw a tall man in fearsome leather garb pulling a group of nude women with dark collars around their necks behind him, each with a number painted across her right buttock. Another uniformed warrior pulled a cart in which two bare-breasted mermaids were sprawling on a bed of water. They were followed by a centaur, half-horse, half-broad-chested man.