At last Jezebel put her arms around the conjure woman, kissing and stroking her head and hair, while Becky moved her own wise fingers in an act of self-love that was the artful acme of all previous climaxes. Awed and incredulous, Jezebel Stronglaces held Rebecca Tsunami while the old woman came, and came, and came.
It was later, in the crystals' dim light, after Becky's intimate loving of Jez's body, that Jezebel noticed a difference in the cave room's ambience, as if solid objects were becoming unstable, subtly straining to hold their form in place. At first she assumed it was simply an effect of their afterglow, but as she changed her position, the stone floor beneath her felt soft and unsteady.
"Becky," she whispered.
"Pay no mind, it's just surface tensions relaxin' a little. You've seen it before."
"It feels like. . ."
"That's what it is. A shapeshift tide, just passin' through." She draped her arm around Jez's shoulders. "Come here to me, Jezzybell."
Instantly the words reawakened Jez's blood. She stretched toward Mad Becky, and felt herself pulled into the embrace of a younger woman, a stronger woman, a woman whose hands lay both heavy and gentle on her back and thighs, a woman who pressed upon her the warm weight of smooth muscles. This woman's lips covered a full complement of teeth, and her short-cropped hair was dark, almost black.
Jez opened to the probings of the woman's powerful fingers, spreading her legs to them in a rush of longing. She gasped at the first touch of the silver tongue on her nipple and encouraged the rhythmic rasp of the rough cheek on her breast. She raised her legs and bent them into an embrace of his buttocks. With her hands she maneuvered his torso to its proper place, drawing his head near her own, and urging him toward her open thighs.
He made deep easy love to Jezebel, moving in and out of her with gradually increasing intent. At the top of the highest wave, he held the moment so that both of them crested, plunged and rode down together. Jez was crying, holding him close, when suddenly she wanted him again, wanted him more ferociously, more profoundly. They rose another time, her cries driving them high with a keen desperation utterly strange to Jezebel Stronglaces. They blazed together in a passion all the wilder for the precision and balance of their mutual husbanding of its power.
Her cry filled the West Virginia mountain and sang its way back to the pallet where her partner lay, withdrawing from her body but pushing his hand gently against her crotch, sealing a sacred doorway.
Jez narrowed her eyes and peered at him. Another figure roved the terrain under his muscles and smooth skin, the shadow of a crone, almost emerging, then subsiding once more into his solid physique.
He kissed her lightly, then slipped down her body to spread her legs apart and set his mouth into her dense thatch of brown hair. His tongue and lips caressed the dark rosy flesh there, as if to open again that avenue of delight. He focused his attention upon the tiny rod, massaging it with his tongue, lightly then insistently. Jez felt a deep change overtake her blood and tissues, animating his efforts. His hands slid under her, lifting her hips. His tongue and lips stroked on.
She embedded her fingers in his short-cropped hair, pushing and kneading, savoring her phallus's tantalizing engorgement as it filled his mouth. The knowings of her every cell centered in that newborn agency and the vessel that it probed. She was cast into an unparalleled world of bright intensity.
She matched her rocking hips to the sliding suction of his tongue and palate as they drew her into him, expelled her and encompassed her again and again. He took her to the edge of release, denied her the fulfillment, took her there once more and again retreated. When at last he brought her exploding into freedom, her long scream shook the caverns of her consciousness.
She hardly felt him turning her body to its prone position, his hands separating the cheeks of her buttocks. Unthinkable hunger flooded her haunches. She arched her back, her hips rising to an entreaty.
His fingers made ready the passage, easing the flesh and sinking deep to awaken in her an unaccustomed core of craving. Jez caught her breath as his phallus played at the entrance, pushing gently against her sudden tautness. He reached under her and clasped her testicles. Jez's own penis stiffened and her buttocks relaxed. She opened herself and engulfed his phallus, drawing it smoothly in again and again, until it reached into the center of her strange, her huge new appetite. There his steady thrusts brought her to a deep fulfillment, totally new, totally unlooked for.
And when he held her in the long embrace of their afterlove, Jez placed her rough-shaven face alongside his as they marveled at their maleness and their muscled beauty.
The circles of their loving spun on through the night. Buoyed by a tireless energy, Jezebel Stronglaces and Rebecca Tsunami moved in and out of the shapeshifting tides, generating countless combinations of bodily love.
In one of her female bodies, Jez lay long and languorously with a man of delicate touch, weaving together rainbow webs which bound, unbound and bound them again into a single tapestry. At the center of this Oneness, a phallus lifted and a softness rose to meet it, and Jez understood at last the male and female yearning for each other, their organs fine-tuned by nature for simultaneous excitation.
And there was no trace of violence in either — not in him, not in herself.
It was in that same body that her mind beheld a wondrous parade. Its participants were all the bodies and personalities that she had ever inhabited over the millennia: the female ones, the male ones, the ambiguously sexed ones, each unique in its attraction to another individual body or personality. Those who suffered or themselves brought hurt — all, all were herself.
And it was in that particular man-loving body that Jezebel Stronglaces at last set aside the rock.
In this finale, her lover was a short man, a little over five feet in height, corpulent in body yet with long elegant fingers and a smooth hairless head. He rode her high, driving her short breaths into tiny taut vocalizations. Together they filled a seed pod that every second promised to explode into lush flowers. On the thin edge of its breaking open, Jez sensed the familiar and unmistakable rush of the icy wind sweeping through her chest, bound toward freezing any life to come. Instantly, she intercepted its progress, consigned it to the conflagration in her groin and swam into full-body throes of rapture and release. Bright blossoms covered them both.
They slept.
* * * * * * *
The Earth had moved more than a quarter turn on Her axis when Jezebel awoke. She lay still and spoke to each of her bones and organs, each of her body's intricate systems: blood, nerves, air, lymph, electromagnetics, digestion, elimination. The ardors and ardures of the long night had entirely subsided, and she felt washed by a joyous yet unfamiliar peace. With a deep certainty, she knew that she would never endure seizures again, that her cells had realigned into health. She felt brand new.
Becky was already up and brewing something over a glowing mound of quartz filings.
"Pokeweed tea," she said, squatting beside Jez with a battered tin cup. "Starch you right up."
Becky wore fresh white long-johns. Her black eyes were shining. Jez took the cup, set it aside, and held out her arms. Becky grinned.
"Jezzybell, I don't aim to jump back in bed with you. Else we get nothin' done all day."
She took one of Jez's hands in her own.
Jez searched the old woman's face and for a dizzying moment watched the sensuous passage of all the faces she had worn so recently in their loving. Reluctantly curbing the wanting that rose within her, she settled her eyes again upon the woman before her. She saw warmth there, and happiness. And a firm resolve. She nodded, then spoke with her own determination.
"So. What do we do today?"
"Lots. You ready?"
Jez braced herself with a sip of tea.
"Yes. I am."
Becky nodded as well. She dropped Jez's hand and settled cross-legged by the pallet. "Watch close," she admonished, as Jez obediently blinked her eyes into full alertnes
s.
The conjure woman sat before her, framed against the gray stone of the wall behind her, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her belly, her face a picture of snaggletoothed joy. She began breathing, full and deep. As Jez watched, the old woman's energy rupa expanded and then brightened; her hands shook with tiny vibrations. Suddenly, Jez saw through her to the gray wall behind her.
The mountain crone had disappeared, long-johns and all.
Jez cried out, reaching to touch the emptiness. At that moment Becky bounced back again into full visibility, her body a very present entity.
"That," she said through another tooth-gapped display of satisfaction, "is how you go shy."
"Go shy? You just. . .your clothes. . ."
"Everythin' that's vibratin' goes right with you." She picked up the battered cup and disappeared again, with the cup. Seconds later she was back.
Jez was agog. "Beck, where do you go?" She hung onto the old woman's leg lest she escape again.
"I don't go nowhere," Becky grinned, "cept'n maybe into a faster place where your eyes can't fasten on me." She sobered. "You can do it too, girl."
Jez swallowed. "But I. . ."
The conjure woman was on her feet.
"Nothin' to it. You get quiet, you focus, you get happy, you're gone. Refocus and you're back." She set her fists to her hips. "That's it," she beamed. Gently, she eased Jez's torso back against the cave wall. "Now close your eyes."
Jez obeyed, flattening her diaphragm to take in long breaths, wrapping herself in composure.
"Get shut of all your thoughts. Head for that sweet restin' place where you float. There, where you touch your soul, your peace."
Home! Jez thought, and caught her breath as she stepped into deep space. Home, she smiled, floating on empty eternity.
Becky crouched beside her like a bench-press coach.
"Now you're truckin'," she rasped, "you're settin' right there where it all is. Everything. Stay there, Jezzybell. Hold it like a cloud."
She waited a full minute before she spoke again. "You're goin' to start changin' the energy now," she said softly. "You're goin' to move that sweet peace up into hallelujah joy. Easiest way to do that is just to pick somethin' and focus on its best parts. Just start lovin' it. Pick that rock wall, Jezzybell."
Deliberately, Jez shifted away from the vast stillness where no thing existed into a tiny movement toward the wall behind her. It was a thing now, an object of her attention. She felt its hardness, its rough texture. She imagined its dimensions, its heaviness.
Becky's cracked voice reached her.
"Bring in appreciation, Jezzybell. Get grateful! Tell that granite wall how amazin' it is. Thank it for gettin' belched up from the boilin' bottom of these mountains, movin' in a red-hot flow, coolin' down, bein' mica and feldspar! Praise that rock for makin' up this mountain, Jezzybell! For holdin' up the soil and the trees, the blacks and the browns and the greens that live together on top of it. You got to love that rock, girl!"
And Jez did love the rock, loved it with a wild admiration and respect, loved it with the tears that fell in thankfulness for its being. She was exhilarated, riding a high energy that did not somehow carry her with it but rather flowed through her with a tremendous passion and joy. Her ki rotations were soaring. Her whole body trembled.
"Good!" cried the old woman. "You're close, right on the edge." Her voice modulated into a higher key, its tempo doubled. "Now stay focused on that rock! Keep up that pure energy! That's it!"
Jez concentrated on the great granite wall, praising its every quality. Her passion escalated and a surge of light covered her.
"You're gone!" laughed Becky.
"Am I?" Jez laughed back, her eyes still closed.
"Gone!" repeated the crone. "Your bones and muscles ain't nothin' but pure ecstatic vibrations, Jezzybell! You are gone from this world!"
Becky was right, Jez realized. She had no body.
"Stay high, and don't focus on anything, else you'll come back!"
The warning was too late. Already Jez had rematerialized. She sat on the pallet rubbing her arms, her chest.
"Becky, I did it!"
"You done good," said Becky, leaning against the wall.
Then Jez did it again — disappeared and moved around the cave room while Becky's eyes passed right over her. As they prepared and ate a hot mush sprinkled with tangy seeds, Jez experimented with her new skill until she felt adept at it. On her last return to material form, she fell on the old woman with hugs and gratitude.
"What gifts you have given me, Rebecca Tsunami!" she announced.
Becky held her a moment, then moved away from her to scrape her bowl, busily. "There's one more of them gifts," she said. "It's the one you come for." She downed the last of her mush. "We got to go outside for it. You up to that?"
Jez pushed Becky's bowl aside and took her hands in her own. "Of course I'm up to it." She lifted Becky's hair back from her eyes. "We've stepped into tall sistership, you know."
"Yep," Becky grinned. "Wrote up the affidavy last night." She sat stroking Jez's hand. "Girl, you've done give me a gift too, you know."
Jez searched the craggy face before her.
"You've done parted me from my madness," Becky said quietly. "I feel all of a piece now."
They sat without stirring, there in the deepest pool of their kinship.
Finally, Becky said, "Jezzybell, you got to be on your way soon. We're both knowin' that."
"I'll be back."
"Maybe."
"I'll come back. And," Jez smiled, "I'll teach you. . .to fly."
Becky's eyes were bright. "Mebbe." She laid a soft kiss on Jezebel's cheek. "So we got to get dressed now."
She leapt up and boosted the crystal-lume to a hot brightness. Then she rummaged in yet another trunk, this time for a down vest that she donned over her longjohns. She pushed her bushy hair into a snood; on top of it and at an angle precisely parallel to the floor, she planted a ladies' flat, straw sailor hat bedecked with artificial flowers.
* * * * * * *
It was midafternoon when they entered the woods, Becky clad like a scarecrow-come-to-tea and Jezebel in her trews and softshirt. They stepped from the cave through a narrow vertical crack that spilled them out near the bottom of a deep ravine. Just beyond them, waters wound their way down the narrow but deep draw. Jez stood with her companion, captured by the quiet, the remaining chill of winter, and the chuckle of the stream. They were much lower, she calculated, than the mine entrance, which she estimated to be almost directly behind and above them on the other side of the mountain. Her sensors told her that Dicken and the Welchtown women sat there awaiting her.
Becky led her down a rough path through the underbrush, holding back whipping arms of vegetation for her passage. The old woman walked with purpose but without speed and sometimes, Jez thought, with a touch of reverence to her gait. Once or twice she stopped to smell the bark of a tree or to scrape at it softly. Once she dropped to her knees to examine the earth.
They came to a small clearing, where the land sloped gently down to marshy ground that bordered a rill, flowing silently. Jez was marveling at the hold that winter still had on the forest when her companion halted them with a Listen! gesture.
Jez did hear something. Rather, she heard absolutely nothing, but felt as if she were hearing something. Or she heard an impending something. She sent out enfoldments. They vibrated as if about to surround someone, and then dissipated into emptiness. She looked to Becky, who was on her way again, straight into the underbrush, still careful but determined, her hat still balanced precariously on her head.
At long last they stopped at a spot where the terrain called back some of the water into a modest inlet, almost a pond, two to three meters wide. The old woman directed Jezebel to get comfortable atop some dry stones, as she herself was doing with the folding of her long bones into a compact bundle. They braced their backs against a bank and settled in for what was clearly to be a vigil.
There was no wind. Now and again Jez sensed a strange impending presence, as if someone were lurking behind them. Or around them? She scanned the area several times in vain. Nor was Becky open to mindreach. Forget any attempts at words. Jezebel suppressed a snort.
The old woman had closed her eyes.
They sat in the stillness.
The late winter afternoon stretched on.
A falling leaf intruded on Jez's peripheral vision, just a flicker of movement to her left, there, at the edge of the inlet. She turned her eyes without moving her head but failed to catch the leaf's landing.
She was about to close her eyes when the same leaf movement stopped her. She leaned forward carefully and shifted to change her sightline on the bundles of wet brush, the plant stems and bracken that lined the far side of the still water. It wasn't a leaf at all. It must have been that smaller piece of stick, the one that had just disturbed the surface of the water. It had fallen. She sighed her relief and eased back against the bank.
Then the piece of stick fell upward.
Jez stared. Yes, that was unquestionably what it had done. It hung there, a few inches over the water. Or did it? She could not see it at all now. She leaned far forward as quietly as she could.
She must have been mistaken. No, there it was again. A thin brown, no, blue, ah, a blue stick? She shifted her bottom slowly and noiselessly toward a neighboring rock. Sure enough, the stick was blue, and sure enough, it was dropping to the edge of a leaf, ducking one end of itself into the water.
The Magister (Earthkeep) Page 11