Mistress of Night and Dawn

by Vina Jackson

  Tristan interrupted the film and then played another, and another and another. An endless montage of Andrei in his role of Protector making love to every sort of woman that Aurelia could imagine. Young, old, firm, soft, petite, large, beautiful, plain. Eventually she did not pay any attention to their features at all, but simply read the pattern of lust and requited desire that swam across their faces and across his. She’d seen that expression spreading across his features, that particular twist of his lips and the line of his brow drawing together so many times when he had come to her bed and entered her with all the fury of a man possessed in asserting his ownership over her flesh and she had not been able to resist disobeying the Network’s instructions and opening her eyes for just long enough to catch a glimpse of the man she loved as he came inside her.

  ‘Enough,’ she said at last. ‘I’ve seen enough.’ Even Aurelia was surprised by the steady coldness of her voice.

  Tristan switched off the projector, carefully returned the reels of film to their respective cases and orderly position on the racks and then escorted her back through the endless passageways to the elevator. Not a word was exchanged between them until they reached the outside world again and Aurelia immediately raced for the doors that led into the gardens where she breathed a deep sigh of relief at no longer being locked up indoors and waited for the sense of peace that she always found when surrounded by the clean lines of the neatly trimmed hedgerows and the gentle rustling of the leaves on the trees and the soft sound of water rushing over smooth stones to wash over her.

  She’d almost forgotten about Tristan when he finally spoke.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You’ll do it? What I suggested? And choose between us?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aurelia replied. ‘I’ll choose.’

  She turned and walked towards her glass-walled bedroom within the pagoda without looking back.

  PJ was waiting for her with a warm infusion of rosewater syrup and honey served in a pale-pink teacup, and a plate of sliced mango that had been subtly flavoured with the smallest drizzle of lime and decorated with one of the vivid purple flowers that grew in the far corner of the gardens. PJ had become so devoted to his duties as servant and companion that he had developed an uncanny ability to sense her needs, desires and appetites that bordered on psychic. Often she was not even aware of what it was that she was in the mood for until PJ handed it to her.

  Today, though, she did not impart her usual instructions.

  ‘Fetch Madame Denoux for me please, PJ,’ she requested.

  He rushed immediately to do her bidding and returned a short while later accompanied by the dark-haired woman who had overseen the majority of her training.

  ‘You summoned me, Aurelia? This is most unusual,’ said Madame Denoux, delicately rearranging the folds of yet another long velvet gown. This one was the same pale pink as the rosewater syrup that PJ had prepared. Madame’s dresses all seemed to be cut from the same pattern but Aurelia was certain that she’d never seen her wear the same shade twice. She had as many different coloured velvet gowns as Aurelia had pairs of underwear. ‘Though I must confess that I am curious,’ she added.

  The only sign of surprise that appeared on Madame Denoux face as Aurelia summarised the situation and explained her proposal was the barest hint of a smile playing across the usually straight-faced woman’s lips.

  Silence stretched out like an eternity between them until finally Madame Denoux spoke.

  ‘It’s an ancient custom,’ she said, ‘and one that has not, to my knowledge, been invoked in recent times. But you are correct. As Mistress-in-Waiting you may choose a consort, and if you feel, as you say, unable to choose then you are entitled to call upon the selection ritual. I will ask Andrei to return as you have requested and arrange the other necessities.’ She gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave, before turning back at the last moment.

  ‘Aurelia,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Madame?’ Aurelia responded, out of habit more than politeness.

  ‘Are you sure about this? Once the selection ritual has occurred, it cannot be turned back. You may choose to cast your die, but you will be stuck with however they land. Or whomever they land upon.’

  ‘I understand.’ Aurelia nodded. ‘And I am sure. It is the only way.’

  Sleep evaded her that night and she tossed and turned, seeking the comfort of peaceful dreams that never came. Finally she roused PJ and asked him to give her release through his ability to pleasure her.

  ‘Yes, Mistress,’ he said in a tone that was full of adoration before gently lowering his head and pressing his lips to Aurelia’s labia. She arched her back and lifted her hips and grasped him by the nape of his neck and pressed the tip of his nose against her cunt and held him there until an orgasm tore through her body and wiped every thought from her mind.

  The release was like a drug and she slept through all of the following day. Her attendants arrived in the evening to prepare her for the ceremony that would be held at midnight. It had been deemed important that the future Mistress’s choice should be made as soon as possible, paving the ground for the Inking to be concluded at the next Ball with no further delays.

  She meditated as they busied themselves with sponging down her skin and then meticulously washing and drying her long hair and rubbing the usual perfumed oil over the full expanse of her flesh. This time she had requested a darker scent. Something woody, musky, reminiscent of the earth. A fragrance that would remind her that she was grounded and powerful.

  When the moment came, she was blindfolded. Aurelia had asked for her vision to be obscured rather than rely upon the strength of will that it took from her to purposefully keep her eyes closed. She wanted to concentrate all of her awareness on her physical sensations without any other distraction.

  The first man to take her was Tristan. She recognised him only because he was not Andrei. His breath was laboured with excitement and something else – the frenzied edge that comes from being too close to madness, perhaps – and he gripped her forearms so tightly that his embrace was like the confines of a straitjacket. She had been lying back, relaxed on a pile of soft coverlets and pillows with her legs spread apart waiting for one of her possible consorts to arrive and take her and Tristan had simply grabbed hold of her and flipped her over with a driven passion and thrust his cock inside her with little more warning than the pressure of his hands on her shoulders. He used her body as the anchor that allowed him to pierce her so fiercely that Aurelia thought that he might split her in two.

  It was raw and wild, and yet . . . there was something equally feral within Aurelia, a passion that was as close to madness as Tristan’s was and that had been simmering under the surface of her skin awaiting only the permission of a lover who defied convention to set it free. Aurelia screamed her rebellion and as she did so the heat of her markings burned across her flesh with familiar intensity. With an almighty burst of strength she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees with the weight of his body still pressing against her back and she flipped him off and straddled him, pinning his wrists down onto the bedding and then climbing back onto the straight length of his still-hard cock. He responded in kind and they wrestled and rolled like animals across the cushions that had been laid out, until they tumbled onto the damp grass lawn. Every tattoo on Aurelia’s body flamed into life and burned as brightly as the stars in the sky.

  Already her inflamed senses were screaming at her to choose him. Choose danger. Choose Tristan. Complicit in the lie that Andrei’s affection and lovemaking were maybe too timid, too traditional, and that the way forward for her mind and body should journey through a road of fire and discord.

  At the same time, the Aurelia of old counselled patience, and faithfulness to an earlier dream.

  There would be time still to reach a decision.

  Time to refresh her soul at the original source that had triggered the world of pleasure inside her.

  A bell rang. Low, ponderous. A heavy note that tolled history and
tradition. And, Aurelia knew, signalled the end of the first would-be consort’s turn.

  Andrei’s touch, when it came, was as cool and soothing as a gentle breeze on a hot summer’s day. He bent down and eased his arms beneath her and lifted her into the air, setting her down onto the coverlet again as if she were made of the most delicate china. He lowered his head to the scratch on her shoulder and pressed his lips softly against it. She inhaled the scent of his skin with each in-breath as if she was absorbing every element of his soul by osmosis. She sighed with pleasure and buried her hands in his hair, pulling him down so that he lay alongside her with his head tucked against her shoulder. They made a pair as easily as any of the birds that frequented the Network’s gardens.

  The whine of Tristan’s voice floated into her ear as if in a dream. ‘Hey . . . that’s not how it’s supposed to be—’

  Andrei interrupted him with his own words.

  ‘Your future is not written in the past, Aurelia,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘You can choose it. Carve your own path. Our path.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, and in that moment she knew what would come next. She took each of Andrei’s hands in her own and gripped him tightly and then she focused all of her attention, every synapse in her brain and the tip of every nerve ending in her body, on accessing the power that she knew she now held within her and then she directed it towards Andrei, multiplying the current that always flowed between them when they touched by a thousand fold until she felt him twitch and shudder against her as if in the throes of orgasm.

  The congregation around them hissed sharply. A ripple of shocked whispers passed through the crowd.

  Andrei’s body went limp in her arms.

  Aurelia tore off her blindfold.

  There it was, on his chest, clearly visible beneath the silvery light of a moon that was nearing fullness.

  The bright-red outline of a tattooed heart, beating directly over his own. A perfect mirror image to the one that was etched on Aurelia’s chest and was now pumping in unison.

  Andrei opened his eyes and looked down at his chest and then up at Aurelia, who was bent over him, gazing at the mark on his skin in wonderment.

  Tristan?

  Andrei?

  Even though her mind was still torn between the two men, opposites of each other in lust and personalities, it appeared that her heart had reached a decision. Her hearts.

  ‘I am yours, Aurelia,’ Andrei whispered softly. And Aurelia’s hearts and body told her that all the women he had experienced in the past were only shadows that passed in the night and that, when dawn came, they would always belong together. The dark, inviting cloud that Tristan had briefly and tantalisingly become began to recede from her mind and his superficial marks on her body faded into insignificance.

  She rose to her feet and there was a solemn hush.

  11

  The Illustrated Woman

  The Ball came to Aurelia in a dream.

  For five days and five nights she was consumed by images, as if being assaulted by the very fabric of her own mind. Her body was racked by powerful orgasms as she slept and she often awoke clammy, shivering and aroused well beyond any usual measure. Sex had become the focus of not just her life but her entire being and Aurelia fairly vibrated with it. She had now harnessed the power of her tattoos and with one focused thought she could evoke a tapestry of pleasure across her flesh or signal her mood, needs and desires by displaying a particular individual illustration but when she was in her bedroom, removed from her responsibilities and curled up in Andrei’s strong embrace, then her skin was like a landscape across which every emotion and thought that entered her head also burned across her frame in bright pictorial form.

  Sometimes they made love as they slept. So in tune were Aurelia’s desires with her mind, heart and physical needs that she could not always discern which part of her it was that moved her limbs. It was as if her body and brain had married so completely that the notion of conscious thought or deliberate movement now seemed obsolete. When she was together with her consort and free to be herself without regard for convention or restraint then she behaved as an animal, and so did Andrei. Together they were like the eye of a storm. When her body was joined with his, then the rest of the world fell away. As he moved inside her, Aurelia felt at once as though she was flying, floating permanently on wings of lust and as if she had come home, grounded upon the island of his flesh. She was no longer just a traveller or a citizen of the Ball, permanently on the move. Andrei was her anchor and she his. Each of them was the axis around which the other’s world revolved upon.

  And so, when a still-slumbering Aurelia shuddered in Andrei’s arms and he held her tight as the markings on her skin burst into vivid pictures that seared across her belly and her breasts and thighs, it was Andrei who read the patterns of the Ball aloud to her, as if the lines of her tattoos were a map that would lead them to treasure, or at least a clue to what the theme of the next celebration would be. The date had already been set and each day that went by without an answer from the Mistress-in-Waiting was another day lost that could have been used to make the necessary arrangements. Time was ticking by, as Madame Denoux never failed to remind her.

  ‘You’ve been dreaming about rope again,’ Andrei said to her when dawn broke and Aurelia’s eyelids finally fluttered open. She was nestled into the crook of his arm, her head resting in the space between his head and his shoulder. Her arm was haphazardly slung over his chest and their legs were entwined. They often woke together to find that they had wrapped themselves up in each other’s arms like a parcel in the night, as if their bodies sought the closeness that their souls had already found. Since the formal element of her training had been completed, Aurelia had been offered a much more elaborate suite in a central downtown Seattle hotel that the Network used as a base to accommodate its more exclusive clientele, but Aurelia had declined. She had grown used to the restful surrounds of the Japanese gardens, the light that streamed in over the bed through the expansive glass windows and the comforting presence of PJ, who still occasionally slept at the foot of her bed when Andrei was absent on business.

  Aurelia blinked, shaking the last vestiges of sleep away and coming to her senses again. Her dreams of late had been so vivid, so all-consuming, that she wasn’t always sure what was real and what had occurred only in her imagination.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, snuggling up against him and planting a kiss on his cheek. Andrei hadn’t shaved for a few days and his stubble was rough against her lips. ‘But it wasn’t a bad dream.’ She tried to replay her night-time clouds back again, but remembering the images that had filled her mind as she slept was like trying to catch wisps of smoke between her fingertips and the more she grasped at them the quicker they dissolved again. The specifics evaded her, but she could always recall the feelings and sensations that had been evoked.

  Andrei’s hands were warm against her face as he threaded his fingers through her hair, his habit when she was distressed or needed soothing.

  ‘A new tattoo appeared. A tree. Here,’ he said, tracing the shape of a trunk from her belly to her chest and a series of sinuous branches over her breasts. Aurelia took hold of his hand and pressed it against her sternum. She knew that he had memorised the position of every mark on her body, as if the images had been burned onto his heart as well as her flesh.

  The next night she dreamed of water. Of drowning and yet being able to breathe.

  ‘Your parents?’ Andrei asked her.

  Aurelia shook her head. ‘No. Not like that,’ she said. ‘Not a nightmare. I was swimming. Human but able to live beneath the surface of a lake. Like a mermaid.’

  Another night, she imagined being suspended in mid-air on the wings of angels and the next of being set alight with fire that didn’t burn. Each dream left her with a corresponding mark. On the fifth night she didn’t dream at all but was overcome by an overwhelming urge to make love and she woke to find herself straddling Andrei’s hips, his cock alread
y hard in response to the urgency of her need. He opened his eyes and she guided him inside her and groaned as he placed a firm hand on either side of the base of her spine and moved her back and forward until she began to grind her clitoris against the base of his torso and she leaned forward and took hold of his shoulders and thrust herself against him until she was spent and then collapsed across his chest. Andrei held her flat against him and they fell asleep again still joined, not waking until the shadows that tumbled in through the glass-walled pagoda grew long and goosebumps appeared on their flesh as the air chilled.

  ‘The elements,’ Andrei said to her that evening. ‘These dreams that you can’t remember and the images that go with them. Earth, water, air, fire. And the last one, energy. Aether. It’s the five elements.’ He furrowed his brow in thought. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever celebrated all five elements. Aspects of them, of course. Legend has it that there was an inferno-themed Ball, on a riverboat, once. And the zodiac signs, which include water . . . But I don’t think we’ve ever had the elements.’

  ‘Then that shall be my Ball. Our Ball.’

  She rang the bell to summon PJ, who in turn called Madame Denoux who, when advised of Aurelia’s desires and decision, began to set the preparatory gears in motion.

  Aurelia’s input was largely artistic, and as the Mistress-in-Waiting she had the final say over everything, from the theme, the location and the guest list to the shape of the glasses and the flavour of the drinks and canapés. It was a little like planning her own wedding, something that unlike so many of the other girls that she had grown up with – with the exception of the ever-independent Siv, of course – she had given precious little thought to.

  Initially the task had seemed overwhelming and she was conscious of the need to prove herself worthy of her title, but once she discovered that virtually every idea that she could dream up, even the most bizarre, expensive or downright fantastical was somehow possible through the seemingly endless funds in the Network’s mysterious coffers, the talents of the performers within their employ and that unexplainable and mystical element that Aurelia had come to think of as simply the innate magic of sex, then organising the Ball became a joy. Soon she devoted every moment to its inception, catching her sleep and meals in snatches as she worked through the process of turning her fevered dreams into reality.