Beauty's Kingdom

by Anne Rice

  I dared not look at his face. I closed my eyes again.

  The kingdom. Bellavalten!

  Oh, Sybil, I pray your hours have been as eventful and as glorious as mine have been!

  “Tell you what, you tasty little sausage, you may be headed to the stables all right, but not for a few nights, not till Queen Beauty and I have had some fun with you.”

  He stared at my cock. It was already hard again.

  vi

  It was full night but the gardens were as brightly lighted as if it were day. The roar of voices was all around me, with music rising in waves above it.

  The Queen led me on a scarlet leather leash by a scarlet collar around my neck. She’d combed my hair herself with the gentlest fingers, and she pulled me along on my hands and knees beside her skirts. I was not to lift my head on any account, or a wider collar would be used for me that didn’t allow me to lift my head, and she didn’t want for that to happen.

  On and on we walked over the great floor of carpets and soft grass and carpets once more. I glimpsed figures dancing, heard the quick rhythm of drums or tambourines. And everywhere great shining explosions of laughter and excited conversation.

  Again and again, people to the right and left bowed to the Queen: “Your Majesty!” The hushed and reverent voices hurled their whispers at her feet.

  I couldn’t bear to think of what they saw if they looked at me, if they even noticed me at all, but then my heart would swell with pride. She had chosen me for this, for her pet, to be led like her favored puppy alongside of her. She had chosen me and on my very first night in the kingdom!

  Now and then a paddle smacked my bottom hard. But it was not the Queen who did this, but Lady Eva. “Straight back now, Brenn,” she said. “That’s it. Now, look up just a little, as you must climb this step onto the dais and you must do it gracefully. The entire Court is watching you, young man.”

  I obeyed.

  “Under the table now, that’s it,” said Lady Eva. “And you’re to kneel there.”

  “Ah yes, and now you may crouch down, and rest back on your heels and lower your shoulders and rest on your forearms,” said the Queen. “And put your head down, yes, that’s very nice. And don’t move and don’t speak. You might want to sleep now. You can be a good little footstool and still sleep. But when I prod that pretty cock with my slipper, I want to feel it wake.”

  I obeyed. The carpet under my feet was soft, and the light poured gently through the thin linen and silk that draped the table, making a long golden corridor here in which I knelt.

  Right in front of me, I saw another slave being put into place in the very same manner, but he was large boned and had balls even bigger than mine. He settled down just as I had done, and I saw a man’s fancy boot plant itself on his back.

  A gush of silent tears came out of me. I had never been more devoid of tension, more limp, except for my cock of course.

  The voices of the party were muted, but I could hear the Queen above me chatting with Lady Eva. Her slippered foot suddenly rested, small and light, on my back.

  I lay still, my heart thudding in my ears, my cock, which had been hard all this while, was softening a little, and I became sleepy, wondering if I could hold my position perfectly while I dozed.

  Then a delicate hand appeared before me with a bit of fruit, and I heard the Queen speak. “Here, precious Brenn, here.”

  I hadn’t eaten since morning, and I licked the bits of fruit from her beautiful and graceful fingers.

  I was dozing when a dish with more fruit was given to me to eat. It contained a thick sweet meat sauce and bits of meat that were savory and delicious.

  “No hands, darling,” she said. “You eat like a good little slave, like a good little puppy dog.”

  I would have done anything she said, any way she said to do it. I had obeyed all the others to be admitted, to be received. I obeyed her because I loved her, because every word from her thrilled me. And when I heard the King’s deep voice above, when I heard him talking to her and laughing in that natural spontaneous way of his, I knew I loved him too. And to think I would become their pony, a pony for Her Majesty and a pony for His Majesty. I had no real idea what it meant to be a pony, but only that I would be theirs, their very own, and I would do all in my power to please them forever.

  Ah, Beauty’s Kingdom. I have made it so far. I am at home. I am the pet of the Sleeping Beauty herself. I am here. And nothing beyond this kingdom any longer matters at all.

  Hours passed. I slept. The dish was gone. Now and then both the Queen’s feet rested on my back, sometimes only one.

  Then I was waked and pulled by my leash, and once again walking as I had before only now the garden seemed livelier than ever.

  I felt my cock stirring again, getting hard.

  I heard Lady Eva say, “Yes, perfect.” And something feathery touched my cock, and I jumped. “He’s a natural,” she said. “Perfect attitude, perfect responses.”

  This seemed a dream of uncommonly vivid intensity, something too palpably exciting to be mere real life.

  It was not easy to move up the stone stairs on hands and knees and Lady Eva corrected me several times on grace.

  In the Queen’s parlor again, I was led to the side of Lady Eva’s chair.

  “Now, spank that luscious little bottom,” said the Queen. “I want to see it bright red.”

  What had I done! But then I realized I’d done nothing! I was being enjoyed, not punished.

  “Up over my knee, little faun,” said Lady Eva. “And put that pretty chin in my left hand. The Queen wants to see your face. And don’t try to hide it.” A pause. I could feel and hear the paddle in my mind, but in fact all was silence.

  I lay across her skirts, over her knee, hands pressing into my neck with feverish pressure, and waited. Her skirts tickled my cock, tortured it.

  “Your Majesty, don’t you want to enjoy this little repast yourself?” Lady Eva said.

  “I do, but I’ll enjoy it even more,” said the Queen, “if you do it. You do it better than I do, Eva.”

  “Your Majesty!”

  “No, truly you do.”

  “Well, this precious little porkling hasn’t been spanked over the knee yet,” said Lady Eva, as though reflecting. “And I do so love doing it. Brenn, I want perfection now, little boy, do you hear me? Lips sealed, hands clamped to your neck as if they were bound.”

  “Yes, madam,” I said, and this unleashed a sob in my throat but my lips didn’t release it. The tears rose in my eyes. This was infinitely more humiliating than standing for a beating with a belt, more humiliating somehow even than being walked on a leash, puppy-style, in the gardens. When my groom, Fane, had done it earlier, it had not registered with me so intensely. It had been abrupt, simple, brief. But now in this perfumed parlor with the Queen herself to watch what was happening, it seemed the greatest test of submission I had yet to endure. Yet it never occurred to me to beg, plead, or try to move away, or to protest in any way. I was delivered utterly to the moment, helpless as if I were bound hand and foot.

  Though my eyes were half closed I looked at the fire and wished with all my heart I could see the Queen, at least see her slippers.

  It was a paddle, not a belt as I expected it would be.

  “Count the spanks, little goatling,” sang Lady Eva.

  “Yes, madam, three, four, five, six . . .”

  The delicious simmering pain spread through the skin and then deep into my backside, or so it seemed.

  “Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen . . .”

  Soon with all my might, I was struggling to lie still, my arms tensing, my fingers rigid as I struggled not to move, not to reach back like a helpless child to shield myself, and I knew my legs and bottom were moving.

  At last, Lady Eva stopped. She gave a great sigh.

  I lay waiting, my bac
kside so hot surely it must glow in the shadows, my thighs blazing. I had counted some thirty spanks. I was coughing and shivering with sobs. And lips closed or not, I couldn’t keep quiet. It was impossible. My body was spasming with my sobs.

  I heard the fire crackling loudly. Suddenly the pain in my sore hindquarters increased. Then softened and spread out all through me in a warm, delicious way. And my tears flowed even more freely.

  I belong to you, my queen, I was thinking. If only I could say it, and to you, Lady Eva, who lifted me from the new applicants and brought me here. I only want to please.

  “Kneel up now, Brenn, over here, before me,” said the Queen.

  At once I obeyed, struggling to withdraw from Lady Eva’s lap without touching her in any disrespectful way. The sensation in my cock doubled and kicked, and throbbed.

  I moved forward towards the Queen’s skirts on my hands and knees.

  “Closer,” said the Queen. There was the long delicate hand again, with its shining nails, and a lovely perfume rose from her skirts as though they’d been washed in rosewater.

  I struggled closer. I was almost touching her.

  Her fingers examined my erect cock, and my pubic hair again.

  “I’d love to see this all brushed with gold,” she said. “Yet I like the blackness of it, so very black.” She felt of my thigh, inside, and pulled gently at the hair. “Brenn, my precious faun,” she said. “My little satyr.”

  She rose suddenly, her skirts sweeping over my face and form, blinding me, and then I watched furtively as she walked to the far wall. She stood against it beside a sideboard with silver candles on it. How shapely and young she appeared with her small waist and her bright yellow hair.

  “Come here, on your hands and knees,” she said.

  I obeyed, and as I came up before her, she lifted her skirts gracefully to reveal her long wonderfully curved white legs and the golden triangle of her pubic hair. Such a delicate sex, such a sweet tender-looking sex.

  “Stand up and take me, little faun!” she said.

  I rose up at once. If I had stopped to think, I would have lost my nerve in disbelief.

  “Put your arms around my neck and your lips on mine,” she said.

  I did as she told me, her high round breasts warm against my chest through the fabric of her gown, her face against mine, soft and tender as a fresh peach. Her mouth tasted of honey.

  My cock rammed clumsily at her little cleft, but then I felt her fingers there, parting her lips, guiding me. Such a girlish sex. So shy.

  “Bad little boy!” she said. Then the hot sheath had descended on me, wet and small like the sex of a girl.

  Her hand clenched my sore backside. I could feel her little crypt throbbing against the whole length of my shaft.

  “Kiss me and take me hard, hard as if you’d found me in the street of a besieged town,” she said.

  I thrust into her blindly and madly, as hard and as fast as I could, while my lips closed over her, tasting her sweetness, my eyes looking down at her closed eyelids. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, harder, my little woodland god. Come and carry me away with you.”

  I rammed her against the wall. I bucked and rode her hard until I suddenly spent, unable to keep back a loud moan, and then she rode the wave with me.

  At last I stood, still holding her.

  “All right, little boy,” said Lady Eva. “Down on your hands and knees. You’re going to eat your supper now from the little bowl on the hearth. Come.”

  The Queen smiled at me. I looked full at her, into her enchanting blue eyes, such pure blue eyes, so trusting, so loving, and then I looked down, bashfully. She kissed me.

  I dropped to the floor to obey.

  I was so delightfully tired, my head swam. I could smell the food suddenly, beef and gravy.

  I crawled towards the steaming dish.

  “With your mouth only, piglet,” said Lady Eva. “Every morsel.”

  I wrestled with the first few bites and then thought, Why am I holding back, and for whom, and then I began to eat faster.

  “That’s it, Brenn. I tell you, Your Majesty, this is the finest little postulant to come through the gates.”

  “Yes,” said the Queen, “but I think His Majesty is quite delighted as well with the girl who came with him.”

  So the King was with Sybil? I went on eating until I was licking the empty dish. My face was smeared with gravy. But my heart leapt at the thought of Sybil pleasing, Sybil being with the King, Sybil being accepted as I’d been.

  Lady Eva pulled me up and wiped at my mouth and chin a little roughly with a napkin. “You will learn to do all this just a little bit better,” she said holding me by a lock of my hair on the top of my head. “But you are a nonpareil.”

  vii

  I lay in a small bedchamber with no furnishings. A great brawny attendant had carried me back to the Postulants’ Hall, and there a sleepy groom I did not know had bathed me and oiled me with amazing tenderness. He’d stopped to kiss me many times, rubbing oil into my fingers and my toes, and spreading some thick healing compound over my sore backside.

  He was so gentle he seemed some sort of spirit in the drowsy quiet night in which all slept.

  Then I was placed in this bedroom.

  No restraints, no holes in the bed, just Chinese cushions and incense, and a tiny silver lamp with a little shivering flame sending shadows leaping along the low ceiling.

  Of course I didn’t dare to touch myself, to try to relive what had happened and use my own hand to relive the pleasure I felt.

  When the door opened, I woke with a start, realizing that somehow I must have been sleeping.

  Sybil stood in the door. Naked.

  Her long black hair hung down covering her breasts. Her pubic hair was a perfect little heart, it seemed, and her face was glowing. She beamed at me.

  “You can’t be here. This isn’t real,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m here all right,” she said. She dropped down on her hands and knees and crawled into the bed next to me. A sweet fragrance came from her skin and her hair. “Queen Beauty has sent me. She says we’re to have our recreation together until tomorrow.”

  “You mean it?” I sat up. “But I thought they would never allow such a thing.”

  “Well, in the old days the kingdom did not,” said Sybil. She turned to me, resting on her elbow, and ran her fingers through my hair. She had a glow to her. “Brenn, she adores you.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Her face was animated and flushed and she spoke excitedly, as though she’d traveled to distant lands of the mind since I’d last seen her, as if time itself was meaningless here.

  “She says slaves must have time to be with their fellows, as she puts it. She says in the old days they stole such time but she will not have such deceitfulness. She grants many slaves a respite with others. And as we came together, she says we may take our recreation together.”

  She went on, her eyes wide, and her lips glistening.

  “The Queen says we may do as we like during this time together, that village ponies had that privilege even in their punishment, recreation together, and we’re to have it. She says when it’s time for us to rest up for our duties, they’ll come and they’ll separate us.”

  “I never expected it.”

  Sybil started kissing me. Her mouth was sweet and fresh, and her hair tickled me as it fell down around me.

  “My dear,” I said. “Countless times tonight I’ve been called a little faun, a satyr, a god. But I’m not. I’m only human.”

  “Oh, come now, Brenn,” she said.

  And sure enough, I was rising to the occasion. I bore down on her, driving my cock into her, my hands holding her arms high above her head, my tongue lapping at her mouth, forcing it open. Not a thought came to my mind, not a flash of memory, only Sybil,
as it had been only the Queen and before that only the King, and all fantasies of the past were gone like thin bits of silk caught in a wind and carried heavenward.

  Before morning, I held her close and wept as I told her some of what had happened. I couldn’t possibly recount all. She was much calmer recounting her own adventures. She wiped my tears, and she did now and then become dewy eyed and a little soft with feeling, but she spoke more with distant amazement.

  Sybil’s introduction to the kingdom had been much the same as mine, though obviously they’d bathed her in compliments since the beginning as to her irresistible attributes, and I didn’t see any reason to go on about the insults I’d received.

  The infamous Lord Gregory had also paddled her to test her, and so had another prince whose name she’d never known, and also a “great lady” who had made her perform many servile tasks.

  “I never found it so pleasurable before in my life to gather discarded garments from the floor of a room, or arrange slippers in a closet primarily with the use of my teeth.” She laughed. “And Brenn, the lady’s voice was so gentle with me, and loving and comforting all the while. And then do you know what happened, Brenn? I discovered that this ‘great lady’ was none other than the Queen! She put me in her bed and toyed with me as if I were a doll.”

  In the great gardens, Sybil had been tethered to a huge X cross for exhibition, along with other new slaves, for the approval of the King.

  “Brenn, it was liberating, being bound like that, my wrists up and far apart, my ankles near the base of the arms of the cross! I thought they’d blindfold me as some of the slaves were blindfolded, but they were crying frantically, and I was not. I’d been polished with silver pigment and oil beforehand, and they decorated me with all manner of pretty blossoms. I was there for hours in a swoon. I tell you, it was a positive swoon. Passing lords and ladies touched me, examined me, played with me. It never stopped for very long. I’d fall asleep and then waken to hands stroking me between my legs, soft voices talking of the smallest details of my body, praising my ‘little juices’ and my nipples, making me blush. But I was so sublimely helpless, Brenn. So free. I could twist and struggle and it didn’t matter. Indeed, they seemed to be amused by it. My groom told me to put on a good show for my masters and mistresses, and then laughed and said he needn’t bother to teach me a thing.”