Lillith

by Kate Gallwey

  I went down to the beach again and just up in tree line I build my home. I really built it, not just created it with my magic. Though I created the tools I needed to build the house.

  Again learning though trial and error I tried to build my home and found I was useless at it. Hammers and saws look ridiculously easy when humans use them but though I understand the theory the practical is something different again. I have no talent with the practical side of building things.

  Well, you can’t be good at everything.

  I created a small rough porch area in the front and small uneven steps leading to the main room, where I had a large not square desk and many books scattered untidily about the place. Another large room at the back gave me my bedroom completed the house. A small kitchen and bathroom was added later as I began to have visitors that needed food.

  The roof gave me the most trouble, I am very glad I didn’t have to put plumbing in then for I had no knack for pipe work either.

  I carved much of the walls from thick jungle trees, people who visit comment that it is ‘interesting’ and ‘different’; I know they are being polite for it is very rough. But I like it that way and I can be quite stubborn in some areas. The next time I would use magic for I am not skilled in house building and lost patience many times with the whole irritating project. Humans make it look so easy.

  I wove spells that it would stay standing in stormy weather and not let the rain in and that the wood not age or rot. I hung a hammock on the front porch and watched the waves and the dolphins play in the lagoon, they are very playful happy creatures that have a simple language of sorts, I can talk with them if they are willing and they do understand many things but they are mostly flighty creatures with little mind for serious discussion.

  I brought in some books and caught up with my reading and relaxed, I felt quite contented with life for the first time in years.

  I eventually wanted company, as it always happens with me. So I went walking once again.

  I started off at the ruins of Babylon and was sad at what I saw but still convinced that I had to do what I did. The old valleys and rivers where humankind started life were changing so fast and humans were returning again to the area.

  I wandered across the Indus Valley and remembered the huge demon battle that I had instigated and the demon friends I had made and lost. The memory of those flaming dragons scorching the advancing enemy will always be in my mind in this area of the world.

  To Asia, across deserts and to the jungles of abandoned Mù, and remembered the huge orgies of pleasure the humans and I had there and the great temples of arts, healing and magic that had been build to last forever now rotting in the heat of the jungle.

  I went north into the plains and the achingly beautiful mountains of China and then up into the Steppes and the West again to the lower part of what is now the Siberian forest.

  People were still all over these places, living their lives unaware of the past that they grew the crops on and built their homes on.

  The past was remembered in some of the songs but mostly the problems of today were their main concern, which is how it should be but it made me a bit sad. Nothing lasts forever.

  Demons left in these areas were only those that haunted the shadows of the deep woods and jungles, leaving everybody alone unless you blundered into their territory. There were others that blended into the human populations or became the gods or spirits of the deserted areas.

  Sickness, war, childhood mortality and hunger plagued these people, but I had come to except that that too was the way of things.

  I could not stand by and do nothing so I set myself up as a travelling human healer and used herbs and medicines as a cover for my ability to heal at a touch.

  I bought two horses and stocked one with various dried herbs and flowers and rode the other on armed only with a long wooden staff.

  I had many interesting encounters with enterprising brigands and bandits of the roads and left a few broken and battered heads behind me and after visiting a few of the larger settlements and towns I got the reputation of being an amazing healer.

  It was a nice life for a few years, reminding me of the first humans that I looked after. Delivering babies, healing bites, wounds, dysentery and all that follows the short-lived humans around. I got involved with the lives of my patients for just a short while, and then moved on; people didn’t notice that I didn’t age that way.

  CHA

  PTER EIGHTEEN

  stOlen BriDe

  I settled for a while in a high walled town of horse warriors. They had no healer and there were many families springing up in the relative safety found behind the walls. They had some wonderful traditions, one of which included that the young men from the age of sixteen lived outside the town at a camp nearby. They caught and rode the wild horses and if one of the fire beacons were lit within the town they would come and defend the town.

  They could come and live in the town if they had a bride, these they had to steal from the town and nearby settlements. It was a very trying custom of the young men sneaking around at night breaking into their selected bride’s home and carrying her off, when they returned they were considered married.

  This was the theory anyway, in practice there was the bribes to the guards on the gate and at the wall, and many pretty girls having more than one suitor, all trying to take her away at the same time and breaking up her home with fist fights with her father and brothers. All going on in the middle of the night and of course girls that no one wanted throwing themselves at anyone on a horse that was riding by.

  It got very noisy in the spring.

  I was a prime target for about two weeks and had to dissuade over a dozen with my long staff. I had always thought that young men desperate for sex are fairly dim and those few weeks just proved it. I admire persistence up to a point.

  Each evening I would sit in my treatment room and wait for them to blunder in and then light the lamp and say very clearly “No!” It never worked, young men don’t understand how lethal a female can be if her ‘no’ has not been heard and sometimes afterwards I just dragged the unconscious ones and dumped them at the gate, other times I just threw them out and a pile of groaning moving bodies was found by my door in the morning.

  It got tiresome enough that I was making ready to move on but the headwoman caught me and said she would do something about the problem.

  I was given a lovely little house on the edge of town right against the wall, with a pretty garden and I agreed to stay for a while. It had a large waiting room and a treatment room but the nightly fights just moved locations with me, and the problem remained.

  The young women of the town went down to the river out side the walls to bathe and to wash their clothes, of course the young men were there in the grasses and the trees to watch them, that was the whole point of bathing out in the open.

  I started teaching self defence moves to the girls and showed off a bit with my skills with the staff. I was fairly graphic and many young men got the message, many young girls got the message as well and I received a complaint from the men’s camp that bride stealing was becoming harder.

  One young man, however, was stirred to more levels of determination.

  He was young, about eighteen or nineteen but he had the single-mindedness of a much older man. He was huge, almost a giant, towering over everyone. He had long black hair and the black eyes of his people, but he was unmovable once his mind was made up.

  His name was Seth. He drove me nuts.

  He could ride his horses like the wind and each night, even after my demonstrations by the river he tried to carry me off. I knocked him out, I bruised him all over and gave him a damn good kicking. There he was the next night. He would leave flowers and foods for me during the day and showed off his skills with the sword whenever he could find me.

  For six months I put up with his behaviour then one night I lost my temper and I hurt him, I broke his arm in two places, cracked his ribs an
d hit him hard across the head, giving him bruises all over.

  I felt guilty in the morning and went down to the young men’s camp and asked if he was all right? I had been there before to heal broken bones and wounds and they all knew me very well. I was pointed in the direction of his tent and coral of horses, both were impressive.

  He was still in his tent though the sun was high in the sky. I pushed the tent flap aside and went to him. He opened his eyes and smiled, not really focusing on my face. I had hurt him badly. He had a large bruise down the side of his face and large fresh wounds across his huge chest and lots of older bruises across his massive back; I had been irritated by him for a few weeks now and had marked him well.

  I reached out and touched him and felt the broken bones in his arm, the cracked ribs and bruised head, I healed the breaks and cracks and the concussion but left the bruises. One can get too much of a reputation as a miracle healer.

  He had closed his eyes at my touch and murmured something inaudible. Then he sighed as the pain diminished. He moved swiftly and surprised me by grasping my wrist.

  “You are captured, you are mine.” He stated.

  I was quite tired of males telling me what to do and my temper flared.

  “I belong to myself, always have, and always will.”

  His hold on me became a caress and slid up my arm to the inner elbow. I drew in a sharp breath at the sensations that he awoke in me.

  I am still a sucker for that chemical rush of an attraction of a possible lover. “Yes, but with me you would never be alone.”

  “I like being alone.”

  “At night when you hear others with their mates and families, do you not wish for one of your own?” his arm went around my waist, caressing and then under my shirt to my bare skin.

  “I am different, I cannot have children.”

  “With me you can.” He said it with a knowing look. He pulled me close. He twisted so I rolled over him then under. He was lying on top of me.

  I sighed, how am I always getting myself into this position?

  He was smart, persistent and very hard. His look was intense and when he kissed me there was no room for negotiations, he took what he wanted and gave no quarter.

  The kiss grew and grew in such intensity that I lost my head, never had I been so affected by a human. He pushed into my mouth with all that he had and with such potency that I responded with the same.

  He tasted like honey, a warm welcoming home that I couldn’t get enough of. The little voices in my head were drowned out in waves of needs, the kind of needs and longings that one doesn’t realise that they are there until it’s too late and you are drowning in pure sensation.

  The chemistry between us was so hot and strong and I felt a rush of fear and longing at the same time. Never before had I felt fear of a human. At this thought I looked at him and pushed him away, and he tried to stop me but I was still physically stronger.

  I looked at him from the tent door and vanished back to my Paradise Island not happy.

  I had been shaken by this boy/mans kiss. I, the Goddess of Love, who had centuries of males falling over themselves to climb into my bed. I could still taste him and that made me annoyed and aroused at the same time. Couldn’t I just kill him and make this all go away?

  I went for a cool swim in the lagoon and ‘ported back to my home in the town. I had a few patients that need healing and I dealt with them quickly and went to see the Headwoman of the town.

  She was pleased to see me and I asked her about Seth, she thought I was going to complain again and apologised for not doing something about him earlier, so she told me his story.

  Seth was the son of her sister and had always been wild and unmanageable. He was unmatched as a horseman and warrior. She hoped that that he would win me as a bride and I would help him settle down and the town would get a permanent healer and Seth could have a home and family. She was very honest I could not fault her or her logic.

  I thought about it all afternoon and then made preparations.

  I watched the sun go down from my little garden and then sat in the waiting room of my cottage with my wooden staff in my hand.

  He arrived not long after and peered warily around the door and when he saw me stepped fully into the house. He had no shirt on and his naked bruised chest gleamed in the lamplight. He was no coward and faced me unarmed ready to do battle.

  I wanted this man with every fibre of my body and did not want to fight him anymore. I stood up and took my staff in both hands and he braced himself. Then I snapped it in two and threw it aside with a challenging smile.

  Seth was a bright young man and was not going to let an opening like this pass, and rushed forwards and flung me over his shoulder and raced back outside to his waiting horse, and we galloped into night.

  It sounds very romantic but I was thrown around like a sack of potatoes and had all the air knocked out of me several times, if I was human I would have been black and blue all over.

  We rode to a river bend with a willow tree grove and under one of the shady trees he jumped off his horse and I swore at him as I was tumbled around and pushed myself off his shoulder and ended up in a tangled heap at his feet. I had been beaten and pounded by this adventure long enough and now I was more than irritated.

  He had some blankets rolled up on his saddle and he spread them out on the cold ground, they stunk of horse and had not been washed for along time. I had a sense of humour failure and started to tell him how annoyed I was by him and his behaviour.

  I have a large vocabulary and was just getting into the flow of things when he kissed me and I shut up fast and thought about nothing more until he stopped and I was under him and we were nude. He had driven every conscious thought out of my head and I couldn’t remember what I had been irritated with him about.

  Our first time was not much to talk about, let’s say he was very eager and leave it at that, but the eighth time was incredible and the ninth set fire to every cell in my body, but the tenth had me screaming. He was unstoppable and had such stamina, he just kept going, most human men cannot keep up me but after a short sleep in the midday sun, he reached for me again. By the morning of the following day I was worried, by the morning after that and he showed no ill affects of all this love making I relaxed and just accepted that this was in his nature.

  He would sleep in twenty minute breaks throughout the night and then reach for me again, my body felt loved and appreciated all over.

  With some instruction and some nudging in the right directing he learnt very quickly what I liked and how I liked it. He was imaginative and enthusiastic and came up with many variations.

  I responded with as much pleasure as I thought he could manage and he looked at me with a fixed hooded stare and he wanted more, I gave him as much pleasure as I could thinking I would teach this young man a thing or two. He screamed and wanted me to do it again.

  I had met my sexual match and was in completely in love with my new human husband.

  CHA

  PTER NINETEEN

  a sOn

  We stayed at that Willow Grove for about two weeks, learning each others needs and wants. I told him that I didn’t need to eat, and he didn’t believe me and thought I was fooling him. When I showed him I could do magic and created clothes and blankets out of the air, he took that in his stride and asked, “Do you cook?” He had enormous appetites all round, so it was a good thing I did.

  He would hunt in the early mornings for small buck, rabbit, and pig or duck if he could get it and after he cleaned them and skinned them I would cook them. He tried to tell me that it was my job to clean and skin them but I just laughed at him, men don’t change that much over the centuries. We worked well together and he asked whether I wanted to live in the town or build a house outside the town and breed horses and cattle. It was obvious where he wanted to go but it was nice of him to ask.

  We found a hill with a flat top and built a large home and corral for the horses and cattle, and
it was beautiful. It took some doing with the building and bringing in the wood for the house and Seth had to make some major internal adjustments when I cheated and used magic. He took it well.

  My efforts on learning to build on my island paid off but Seth was much better than I was, especially with a hammer and a saw, I just lost patience with the whole deal but I learnt a lot from him.

  People from all over the area would come and visit, sometimes for healing, but mostly to buy or trade Seth’s horses and cattle. He was amazing with horses, seeing into their hearts and knowing exactly what was needed seeing directly into their hearts, and our herds grew in size. He taught me to ride with skill. Cattle and pigs also multiplied under his expert hand. I learnt all about chickens, geese and ducks, silly creatures with very little intelligence but they supplied our growing community with eggs, feathers and meat to eat and to trade.

  I planted lush gardens of fruit and vegetables and we hired people to help us with it all. Small families settled and built around our house and we soon had a farming community blossoming around us.

  Couples fell in love and we had a few weddings, then in due course babies were born. It was a time of great abundance and joy. Fields of wheat and barley flourished with magic in places that such crops were hard to grow, lush orchards of fruit bloomed and filled baskets and bellies.

  About five years passed and they seemed to glow with love and magic.

  It was if the Earth herself had blessed us.

  Then I got pregnant.

  Ok, this had never happened before and I didn’t know what was going on with my body for about twelve weeks or so. Then I could feel this heart beat and it came from within me and I freaked out– an excellent American expression there.

  I hadn’t been able to ‘port straight for those twelve weeks and this explained why. I felt sick and disorientated for the first time ever; I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  I wanted to run away to my island but I couldn’t ‘port anymore, and overland was out of the question so Seth had to put up with me. I had to eat for the first time; mostly fruit and a few vegetables, and my system went into melt down every day as it had to learn how to take energy from food and then transform it into waste and eliminate it from the other end. Which is another tale of woe that thankfully, I won’t trouble you with?