Thou Shalt Not Suffer

by Joey W. Hill

  Maybe it was all a horrible prank; she had already been strung on the gibbet and the devil tormented her with this gift. In a moment, when her hope was at its peak, Grady would dissolve and she would be pitched into hell where Arthur would beat her again and again for all eternity.

  Grady was on his knees before her again and Miriam focused on him. It was not a prank. There could be nothing in the world more real than this man before her, strong and smelling of earth and honest sweat. Sarah had once said that Grady was big enough to carry two hearts in that great chest of his. It must be so, because Miriam knew for certain that he had given his whole heart to his wife. But now he offered to die for Miriam.

  “Give me a greater gift,” she murmured. “Live for me.”

  Grady hesitated, searching her face, then nodded. “I will not take off the dress if you do not wish it,” he murmured, his hand resting lightly on her knee.

  “No,” she whispered. Arthur had done it that way, rucking up her skirt just to her hips, as if she was nothing above what was between her legs, no heart, no mind. “See all of me. Let me be a whole woman to you.”

  “You’re already that, lass.” Grady studied her face. Her hard angles had gone soft, and not just from the kind touch of the candlelight. Her dark eyes burned with a fire that defied the bruises and torn skin at the corners of her mouth. He had lit a flame within her and now it illuminated the beauty that had been buried beneath hopeless endurance.

  Grady put a hand on her jaw, his large blacksmith’s palm cradling the fragile shape as if he handled the curve of a lily’s unopened bloom.

  “What is it ye mean to do, lass, and how can I help?”

  She turned her face to his touch, pressed hard, but kept her eyes on his. “Make love to me with every wish in your heart and soul, the deepest wish of every man in your heart and soul.”

  Miriam did not mean it just as a lover’s statement, a caress of words to enhance the intimacy between them. That much was clear from the expectant intensity of her dark and serious gaze. Grady thought about her words, weighed their meaning and opened his mind still further to allow room for whatever might come. Each step he had taken away from all he’d known had been a step closer to the light, and whether it was light from the fires of hell or from the glow off of angel’s wings, it was preferable to darkness. He knew the shape of darkness, knew its suffocating, anguished embrace.

  He stood. “Hold on then, Miriam,” he bade softly, and she slid her arms over his shoulders, around his neck, the neck Sarah used to say had to be thick as a grizzly bear’s to hold up his hard head, and he lifted her again, this time to take her to bed.

  But when he got her there, she did not lie down. Miriam stood before him, looking up at him, shadows of flickering candlelight making her eyes dark and mysterious, her mouth sweet and full.

  “Grady,” she murmured, “I want to dance for you. For us. I…I’d like you to take your clothes off and sit and watch me.”

  Grady had a good sense of humor, buried in deep, slow smiles like the timeless wonder of a mountain. “I think I ken manage that, lass,” he managed gravely. “But, your legs, they’re…

  “They’ll be fine, Grady. I think I could fly tonight.”

  His kind eyes dwelled on her face, the surge of life there, an energy he had never seen. “Aye, mayhap you could.” He bent down, cautiously touched his lips to that sweet mouth, felt longing and need swamp him as she clutched him, leaned into the kiss as if it made her dizzy.

  “If ye can make yerself wings, then ye do it, lass,” Grady whispered against her mouth. “Fly where you’ll be safe. Even if I can only hold ye for this one night, I’d rather see ye winging far above me in the sky than have ye never fly at all.”

  His words set off a spiral of feeling that exploded through her senses and shattered the grip of another belief. She had been certain that love, if it existed at all, had to grow over time, that it did not come in one blinding moment of light and thunder that rocked you to your toes. But maybe it had always been there, a seed crushed under a rock, only waiting for the briefest touch of sun to explode with life and promise. Could this be what love felt like?

  Miriam backed away from him. She turned away, and he had the pleasure of looking at her slender form, bathed in the moonlight streaming through the window, which turned her dark hair into a brown bird’s shimmering wing.

  Grady pulled his shirt over his head slowly, watching her weave her fingers through her drying hair. A soft humming rose from her like a waft of perfume and she began to sway, her fingers floating through her hair and out, her palms turning up to catch the moonlight in their cup and then spilling it free over her bosom like water. He watched her movement, and though he had been aware of her as a woman, Grady had made himself be very mindful of her injuries. Now this simple movement, the silver light outlining the milk crescent of her breast like a reflection, stirred a want in him so strong he almost went to her. Instead, he swallowed, and focused a moment on folding his trousers and shirt, his long underwear. He laid them neatly on the bed. He sat down on the straw mattress, but the rasp of the filling brought her around.

  Grady was a modest man as a normal course, and he suffered a heartbeat of bone deep embarrassment that she saw him aroused as well as naked, but it eased as her eyes reflected her emotions – soft, gentle, and pleased.

  It was unnatural to feel ashamed of it, he supposed. Whatever God was had brought them into the world this way, and made their bodies so they would respond to each other like this. No feature of Miriam’s he could see needed covering in any way.

  She smiled as if she heard the thought, and she came toward him. She put her feet daintily one before the other, slow mincing footsteps, like a deer in the forest, her body shy and alert, shimmering with it.

  Just as she reached him, Miriam turned from him again, her hair brushing her bare shoulder blades, her arms rising and then settling gracefully with the movement, like a bird wheeling in the air to alight on a branch. She stood so for a moment, tilted her head back and Grady gave in to it, reaching out and stroking through the mane presented to him, coming out of it and tracing the indentation of her spine. His fingertips whispered over the curve of a buttock as she moved away. He kept his fingers hovering in the air before him, slightly spread, wondering at the sensitive tingle, the aftermath of the touch of flesh to flesh.

  Miriam turned again when she was nine paces away, and then came back toward him, dancing up, turning with a soft swish of hair, dancing back at a different angle, raising her arms, lowering them. The firelight dappled her skin, hiding the bruises, enhancing the gold, further marrying the image of a deer to her graceful prancing form.

  She clasped the cup of wine he had left with food for her by the bed. Miriam raised it aloft in both hands and, taking a deep breath, started to spin. Her knees straightened and bent as she came around, so that the sense of dancing continued as she spun and moved, making a wide circle as she created smaller ones with the movement of her body. The tilt of her rib cage with the lift of her arms brought her breasts up high, and as she turned, Grady watched the shift of them and her hips, and the soft glade of dark hair between her legs.

  The fire seemed to be getting brighter, hotter, higher. His body was well roused, but he felt no shame. Miriam danced for him, and for herself. All that went on between them in this room was just for them, and as ancient in its voice as God itself. Their purpose was strangely far from his mind, seemingly unimportant, as the flame continued to build.

  Miriam flung the wine about her as she spun, marking her white breasts with drops of deep red. She put the cup down on a smooth turn and retrieved one of the candles, doing the same dance again, the flame reflecting dark fire in her mysterious eyes.

  Grady swallowed. She began to sing, something gentle and strong, rhythmic like the far off beat of drums. Her dark eyes lit with desire upon him and he was able to keep himself from going to her only because he sensed it was best to let her come to him.

  T
he judges would call his feelings lust, but that was like calling a skeleton a man. There were ways for a man to take care of lust on his own and Grady had, viewing it in some wry amusement as no more or no less needing to be done than a chore to stave off starvation or thirst, flood or fire. He had done it less and less, though, because the lust brought a relative with it hard to send away – loneliness. Loneliness waited on the edges of lust like a ravenous wolf, waiting for the fire to die, as it always did.

  This feeling had no loneliness to it. In fact, as he watched her put down another candle and dance closer to him, Grady felt certain that the answer to his loneliness might be found in her arms, whether he held her one night or a thousand.

  Miriam spun to a halt between his splayed knees. She stared at him a moment, eyes wild and dark, chest rising and falling with exertion. She went to one knee before he could prevent her, knowing the pain it must cause her battered muscles, and kissed his feet.

  Grady drew in a ragged breath and Miriam rose slowly, her breasts brushing the inside of his calves. She kissed his knees.

  Her hands went to his knees for balance, and he covered them with a soft groan as her brow brushed his quivering stomach. She touched her lips to his swollen sex. Miriam straightened, linking hands with him, and pressed her mouth to his abdomen, then to the skin and fur over his thundering heart. She climbed him as if he was a tree of life that bent to her nurturing and whispered of longing as the winds of desire passed over them both.

  Her tongue as well as her lips touched his throat and he tilted his head back, wanting to take her, thinking only of taking her, melting within her fire and with her, but he held back, wanting her to have and discover it all.

  She straightened and he steadied her on her trembling legs. She pressed another kiss to his forehead and crown. His mouth and nose pressed to her breasts, that wondrous gift of motherhood and lover both.

  “Take me, Grady,” she said softly, folding her arms around his massive shoulders. “I am a chalice to be filled. Come into me, and we will bring the world back to what it should be.”

  Sweat ran down his back, and though the fire was warm in the grate, it raged like a purifying inferno through his blood. The air seemed to have heated to an intimate closeness, like sharing the blankets on a cold night, a lover’s feet tucked between warmer thighs. Grady moved his toes, found hers cold and smiled. It did not lessen his desire, but reminded him the dark eyed mystery before him was woman, not spirit, and fragile, even though she aroused and enticed him to a higher pitch than any succubus the judges could conjure in their minds.

  Grady eased her into his lap and kissed her, then turned so that she lay beneath him on the bed, her thighs open to hold him. He saw a flicker in her eyes and framed her face.

  “Don’t worry, lass,” he said thickly. “’Tis all joy, this. Way it was meant to be.”

  “Magic,” she whispered, and buried her face in his throat, wrapping her arms and legs tight around him.

  She was ready for him and he surged into her, tide rushing to meet earth. Miriam arched beneath and threw her head back, and he caught it in both hands like a delicate egg.

  The fire roared, the rain outside drummed the roof, and the reflection of candles on the window briefly illuminated her face for him, wide dark eyes.

  His touch, his emotions reached her and gave her what Arthur never had. Miriam had thought sex was the energy to do the magic, but now she realized it was merely the carrier of the energy, like the friction of two sticks to make fire. Emotion was the energy itself, the substance that came out of nothing and exploded into something, something that spread, consumed, illuminated… She had found her altar, the foundation on which she could build her magic.

  “Take me, Grady,” she urged again, with a long, whispering breath like silk along his cheek. “Take me, so that I can take us both far from here.”

  Grady captured her lips in an open kiss, and the meeting of moisture, of flame and breath and earth, consumed him and he gave himself to it, losing all he was in her, and letting go of all he had known.

  The wish of every man and every woman, the wish for connection, for Love, for the certain connection to whatever was God, filled him. They emulated and honored it in the joining of their bodies, hearts and souls. Their wishes and joy, their love came together, and the world exploded with magic, all possibilities.

  The wings of their souls spread, and they erupted out of the fires of hell as a pair of phoenixes.

  * * *

  When he arrived for morning duty, the miller’s son noted that the prisoner had already been taken out of the rudely built shanty prison. He went to the interrogation cabin. He shifted his flintlock to his shoulder and lifted the bolt, hoping that they might have decided to interrogate her further, so he could get a glimpse of her stripped before he was shooed out by the stiff-faced clergyman and elders.

  He froze in the doorway, cold fear making the old musket fall from nerveless fingers.

  At least three of the five candles placed around the room were still burning, though they were short stubs in pools of white wax, speckled with the red clay of the dirt floor, like drops of blood.

  The candles were at the five points of a star, engraved in the floor and circled by the stamped out pattern of footprints. Even if that had not etched out the symbol, the dozens of chrysanthemum petals would have, sprinkled in the grooves of the pentagram that pointed north.

  “Reverend Jameson. Reverend Jameson!” the miller’s son backed out, tripped over his gun, and sprawled over a basket by the door. It rolled away, spreading the smell of the chrysanthemum petals it had held, and loosening the few that had been trapped in the weave to fly away in the wind.

  * * *

  Grady opened his eyes to the touch of a hand and the kiss of the sun. Miriam smiled down at him, her angular face framed by the fall of her straight, dark hair.

  “Miriam,” he murmured. “Miriam!” He sat bolt upright. “We must---“

  He stopped and blinked, staring about him stupidly. They sat on a beach of white sand that curved like a crescent moon against an ocean as blue as the sky above it. Waves furled in toward shore with a soft rush like a mother’s lullaby, the breeze like the cool touch of her hand on his head.

  “Where are we?”

  “Where our magic brought us,” she said. Miriam sat back, folded her hands in her lap. “I am what they thought I was, Grady, but that isn’t what they think it is.”

  He smiled at the way it sounded, and earned a shy smile in return, one that brought just a hint of laughter in her eyes, something he had never seen there before.

  “So where did ye bring us, then, my beautiful witch?” he asked. His voice was gentle and his eyes curious, not wary or accusing. Miriam lifted a hesitant shoulder. “Life is just a series of spirals, Grady. I took us to another loop, a step up I think, but up and down don’t necessarily mean anything. A different turn of the spiral means we, you, I can begin again. If you,” her fingers curled, “prefer to do that alone, I shall come to no harm.”

  “And if I don’t prefer that?” He watched her closely.

  She looked at him, eyes full of wonder. “You never lose your way on the spiral, as long as you don’t forget it’s built around love. I turned away from that, and you brought me back to the center, Grady. It was as much your magic as mine that brought us here.”

  He considered that, and linked his hands around his knees, looking around them. Far down the beach, a white horse swam out of the waves and shook away the foam collected on its flank. The sun flashed on the horse’s golden horn.

  Grady looked back at her. “Well, then,” he cleared his throat. “I’m thinkin’ they might need a blacksmith here.”

  She followed his gaze, and the hint of a smile spread. “I’m not sure about them,” her face turned back to him. “But I do.”

  There was no humor in her eyes now, just yearning. Grady cradled her serious face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers.

  “If
it was the magic we created together that brought us here, then together is how we were meant to be,” he murmured. “I’m yours, lass, for as long as ye’ll have me.”

  Miriam closed her eyes, covered the rough warm skin on the back of his large hands with her palms. “All right, then,” she whispered, touching the corner of his mouth with her lips. “Let’s discover where our magic brought us.”

  They rose and followed the path of the unicorn. Grady held Miriam’s hand as they walked along the water’s edge, that magical boundary between earth and sea, and the incoming tide swept their footprints away.

  The End

  Joey W. Hill writes epic fantasy, mainstream fiction and women's erotica. For more information about her published and upcoming works, log onto her website at www.storywitch.com.