"Why you silly kid," she said in shock, taking on her mother's voice, "what ever has come over you?" And she heard an extraordinary thing. She heard the ram, it must have been the ram, say "Thou hast come over me, my goddess, my queen." And the ram stood up, and then stood on his hind legs, and she thought its face changed, and looked more like the face of her brother, or her cousin, than like a goat, and as she looked again, she saw that it was not the ram at all, but a wide-shouldered, hairy man, not too tall, not even taller than she, but delicate and strong at the same time, looking at her with a tenderness, a longing and pitiful – what she could not name but knew to be – desire.
"Do not be afraid," the little ram-man said, "If you would only stay a bit and know me, I think you will be glad that you did. I have been waiting for you. I know you are tired. Let's sit in the loft, as you were about to."
Cora let the little man guide her arm to the ladder and she climbed up. She was a little startled, but not afraid. He must be a magical animal, she thought to herself. And I am like the little girls in the stories, who are shown great wonders and live great lives.
Cora scampered up the ladder, the ram-man following. She noticed that his legs were still that of a goat, and his feet still hard little hoofs. He seemed to have no trouble with the ladder, and was beside her before she had even settled herself.
"Are you magic, like in the stories?" she asked him, touching his face, just to make sure he was solid. He grasped her hand in his hairy one, and kissed the palm.
"Oh yes, magic for thou, and thou alone. Do you know what tonight is?"
"The harvest feast. How could I not know, I have been the slave of it for weeks."
"And now, thou shalt be its queen, my little one. Do you know how, in the spring, the people lie in the fields, and seed is spilled into all the fertile places, to the earth, to the water, and to women's wombs?"
"Of course I know that. Everybody knows that. I see the grownups rutting out there, and hear them in the house, besides. My sisters and brothers and cousins, my playmates are all doing it now."
"And it displeases you that you shall be among them, perhaps next spring."
"Well, it doesn't seem like something I want to ever, ever do. But I suppose I shall have to. I guess I will just change."
"No, I don't think you will change. I have been watching you, and you are another kind of ewe altogether."
"How would you know something that I would not know myself?"
"I know, because She Who Knows Women told me. And she sent me here, to your mother's barn to meet you at the harvest festival. Do you know who I am?"
"Do I have to guess your name?"
The goat-man laughed, whinnying and wheezing at the end, like a donkey. "No my little one, I am not telling riddles today. I simply asked a question. Do you know who I am?"
"I don't think so."
"And I don't think you ever shall. I am Man. I am the man, I suppose. I am The Life of the Fields, the Lord of the Dance. The Hanged Man, the Dying King, the Babe in the Manger. I am the spark in the fuel, the light in the clouds, the plow in the furrow, the sword in the cup. I am the best of every man that ever lived. And thou shall not – and yet shall – know me."
"That sounds like a riddle to me."
"I believe it was. But I shall solve it for you, my queen, my goddess, my love."
"Why are you calling me these names? I'm just a girl."
"I only speak the truth, my voluptuous one, oh bringer of joy and joining."
"You address me with the names of the goddess."
"And I only speak the truth, the truth, my queen of heaven. And I am sent here to complete a task, as charged by the Queen of Heaven and Earth."
Throughout this exchange, the goat had moved closer to Cora, until he was sitting before her crossed legs, as Cora rested against the wall of the barn. He leaned his face close to hers. She could smell him. He still smelled of goat, but the strong sweet goat smell, the clean smell of a healthy animal, fresh from a day in the fields, or sated on harvest corn. The smell of him, and the touch of his breath on her face made her head swim.
"I would kiss thee, my most powerful queen, my source of every delight. I would kiss thee, if thou would suffer my rough mouth and capric scent."
Cora only hesitated a moment, before remembering that this was a magic animal, and she was in her mother's barn. No harm could come to her under her mother's roof and protective spirits. Perhaps this was a dream she could wake from, or a story she would tell in the future. With nothing to lose, she closed her eyes, and said, "Yes, kiss me, funny goat man."
His mouth was not rough, nor did his goaty smell offend her. His kiss was a caress of each of her lips, his mouth seemed solely formed to please her. Cora did not want the kiss to end and it did not. The goat man gently pulled her away from the wall and laid her down on her side, and he laid with her.
"I am to be your consort, this evening, if you would have me," he whispered. Cora answered with a kiss of her own. She wanted this strange magic animal to complete his task. Whatever it was to be seemed far away different from the rutting she had seen all her life. No magic animal-man had ever come to any of her sisters or cousins.
"I am to be thy only consort, however. Thou art not to be a lover of men. When you grow to be a woman, your pleasure will be – elsewhere."
But Cora was not listening, because during this speech the little funny-shaped man had unlaced her tunic and loosened her trousers. And more, his penis had appeared between his legs, erect, strong, pointed and dark. Cora looked down at it, and blinked. "My penis, yes, it is thine. All between my head and foot belongs to The Goddess, to thou, my goddess."
The goat-man pressed his penis between her legs where it rested just beyond her vulva, a vulva lightly dusted with dark hair, not yet even curled.
He kissed her face, and neck, murmuring the invocations of love that the son of the goddess must know. All her names, all her titles, Queen, Mother of Barley, Moon Mistress, Star of the Sea, Heavenly Virgin.
He named each bit of skin under each kiss, and worshiped every hair, mole, and blemish. His tender hands cupped her breasts, and he sucked her nipples with the earnestness and tenderness of an infant. For an instant, she was herself as a mother, a real babe in her lap; and then returned to the moment, as the ram-man lifted her up, holding her hips in his hands as he kissed her cunt, licking with a prehensile tongue, sucking with an insatiable mouth, pressing and rubbing with a skill and focus that she would remember as divine.
She had already become intimate with her cunt; months before her fingers had found her special spots and routines for eliciting a growth toward, and then a gasp of, pleasure. She thought that now she would reach something like that climax, but not to the low childish squeal of pleasure that she had known. This goat-man was sensing her tides, and both riding them, and sending them onward.
"For thee, my Queen, my goddess, my love, all for thee," the goat man's voice was in her head, still murmuring his prayers to her. "Thou art goddess, and I am thy son," he was saying, as her pleasure overtook her body in shudders and flows and winds and fires. "I am thy creation, I am thine, yet I call out to you from across the abyss, I love thee." She called out, in a voice that rang in her head, in echoes of pleasure and joy and power. She felt as large as the world, she felt that her cunt was an ocean, and her body the sky. And the strange creature who lapped at her vulva, was hers, was of her body and spirit, yet was also a living being, far, far away.
Slowly the feeling of transcendence ebbed from her, and the barn and straw around her became more real than her visions. She was sorry that it was ending, she was unsure of what to do next. "I know," the ram-man said. "Shall we rut?" At that moment, she longed for something she had never known hunger for, but a cock in her cunt was exactly what she wanted, and she vigorously nodded. The ram-man helped her turn over, and he entered her cunt with his strange hot black penis giving her satisfying pleasure. He could fuck her as fast or as hard as she wanted. She
only needed to think what she desired, and his hips and cock responded to her every changing whim. For some minutes she wanted him in slowly and deep, and then, a change to shallow and fast. She wanted his balls to slap against her, or wanted them hard against her lips, and he complied. "For thee, my Goddess, I am for thy pleasure alone," he murmured into her ear and fucked and fucked and fucked her until she reached to the stars again, and became her mother, and every mother, and every woman, and every female thing that ever was, and cried out, and sank into the straw, exhausted.
She rested there for a few minutes, the goat man wrapped himself around her and warded off chill with his great heat. When she came to her senses, he spoke again.
"My Queen, I beg of you. The goddess whom we serve tells me to ask you but one thing. It is a small thing."
Cora turned in his embrace, and he was changing, his arms were already growing thin and stiff, his fingers shorter, blacker, and hard. "What?" she asked in surprise and trepidation.
"Reach your hand into the straw there, I cannot touch it myself."
Cora stretched out her hand and pressed it beneath the first layer of straw and felt something hard and cold buried just beneath. She pulled out a tool's handle, and the head of the tool was a double axe, each edge shaped like the crescent moon, one waxing, one waning.
"I am thy son, and thy lover," the ram-man said, again resuming the posture he made when he greeted her, bowing his head before her. "I come to thee of my free will, knowing that in thy love, thy loving kindness, I shall live forever. Thou must slay me."
She stood up, dizzy, a bit of her juice running down her leg. She touched one edge of the blade; she had never beheld one sharper. It was as sharp as obsidian, and as black. "Slay you?"
"Thou must," he said, his voice muffled and choked. "Or I shall not live again. Lay thy blessing upon me, and I shall be free of this body."
"My ble...?" she was not sure of what to do. She knew that a blade that sharp would not hurt, and clearly, she must kill the creature that lay before her, now more animal than man.
"Thou art my lover, thou hast been my son. Thou must die, so that all may live." The words from the old story came to her as if she had thought of them herself. She raised the double-axe, brought it swiftly down, and neatly severed the head of her first, and last, consort. His blood seeped through the straw of the loft, through the rafters, and soaked the earthen floor. Cora returned to her mother's house.
PIPE DREAMS
S.N. Lewitt
The curl of blue smoke reminded him of the stage, but this smelled saccharine-bitter while the dry-ice machine filled a club with a wet biting acid stench. This was only one more stage, no more. And Tim McKeon had been on enough of them he reminded himself, toured Europe and the whole U.K. and North America.
He shouldn't be afraid any more. The necromantic ritual to call up the ghost of his favorite writer was really just the creation of his imagination. There wouldn't even be a crowd watching. Not like when he played death music in the late night clubs for children with white painted faces and black-rimmed eyes, when he was somewhere between god and angel.
This was just one more piece of spectacle, cribbed from a book about ritual magic he had picked up more to impress people at the club than to actually read. But maybe the whole occult ceremonial would be the stimulant to get his subconscious on track on time. Something had to help. Nothing else had, not the quantities of gin and good hash, not the day trips from London, not the endless hours in the gym.
There was the room ready with candles and incense already burning, draped with black cloth and the altar fashioned after the one he had seen at Jimmy Page's house Boleskin. The house Page had bought because it had belonged to Aleister Crowley. In fact, it did not look so different than the set for the past two videos he'd done, both the MTV version and the one that was too racy for the telly but was well received in the clubs.
They expected this of him. It was just one more element of the collage that went into the product called Tim McKeon. Even outrage had to be calculated. Though this time there was an edge of desperation behind the facade, a purpose to the personal theater. This next album was crucial and he was frozen. The music wasn't there. The words were mud. Nothing was happening.
Unlike his fans, Tim McKeon wasn't exactly certain that there was any supernatural. But he had read enough to believe in the suggestibility of the subconscious, which was where the music came from. If going through this little act stimulated his ability, unfroze the core that he couldn't touch, then it was more than worth the charade.
And it would help his credibility, to add oblique references to calling up the shade of one of his favorite authors to help him out. His fans would believe it. He made certain to appear the metaphysical high priest in all his public dealings. It was in his bio and his publicist had coached him how to hint carefully around the subject in the interviews.
McKeon took another hit off the elaborate antique water pipe. Like the ritual, this was expected. Fortunately, this was one of the requirements he enjoyed. Drugs, sex, rock and roll. The clean and simple things in life, not all bound up with the dark and twilight. Though it was the dark that he loved more than the simple.
Two more deep breaths of the saccharine smoke, three. It was just another kink in the corkscrew life-mythos of Tim McKeon, modern high priest of Dionysus. He couldn't admit he was afraid that even this extreme measure wouldn't work. That no matter what he did there would be no new album and his whole life and career would be defined by three years and seventeen songs.
Abruptly he put the pipe down. He left the sitting room and went into his bedroom, stripped and pulled on a single garment of black silk. Against the fabric his hands were dead blue white like a cadaver. The scent of frankincense and sulfur and balm of Gilead clung to the robe from his previous experiments.
He needed the help and he couldn't admit it to anyone. He had told the others that he was spending the day working on new lyrics for the album, the one they were due to start recording next month. And he didn't have anything at all. The well was dry. He was burned out, couldn't write.
The band was just on the verge of a big break. The last two indie albums had done exceptionally well, they were a cult item at home and were starting to sell in the States. The A and R person at Capitol was excited about them, pitching them in the industry as the next big and coming thing. Said he expected music that would shock the world in this next album, said that in some future of the universe this would be important music.
So Tim McKeon knew he had to deliver important music, and knowing that had made life strangely miserable and grey. Even drunk or high he couldn't escape the knowledge in the back of his head. He had to deliver on time, and there was nothing in him. Nothing at all.
The house was silent. Andrew and Gordon were out doing the bars and clubs on King's Road. He'd kicked out the pale, anemic girl with the faintly German accent he'd found in his bed when he woke in the early afternoon. There wasn't even any music from all the speakers wired into every room.
Only breathless anticipation coalesced around him as he stepped into the prepared ritual space. Fear sent shivers of delight through him. He looked around one last time at the fabric draped walls, the altar with its bowl and razor and blood colored rose, the perfection of the whole area. As good as Boleskin, definitely. Better.
And on the altar was her picture. He had cut it out of a book when he couldn't find another. Those overlarge dark eyes and skin whiter than his own watched now from the altar space. She had been dead for a century. She was only the symbol for his own creative abilities, he reminded himself grimly. Just as her book had symbolized the act and the unconscious desires long before psychology tried to strip humanity of its dark and primitive belief. Her book had been perfect, she was perfect, both anima and muse, calling that from his inmost being.
He picked up the sword, held it overhead and began the incantations in Greek. At least he thought they were Greek. He'd spent enough time studying the
book and trying out various portions of the ritual before actually attempting it.
Heikas, heikas este babaloi.
But the words didn't matter, only the performance did, and McKeon threw himself into the part the way he always did when he sang. All the way, one hundred percent, and if it killed him then that, too, was one of the pleasures that enshrouded him.
Because he had to believe. The primitive in him had to be called up, assuaged, pampered.
A tay Malkuth, ve Geburah, ve Gedula, le olam omeyn.
Sword extended, he cut a pentagram in the air and imagined it flaming blue. Like the gas hob, like the electrical wires crackling in a storm. The blue burned hot-cold over the sword, up his arm like a good hit taking hold. It was strong this time. He'd done it right, really right, and that knowledge excited him far more than any of the girls he'd seen in the club last night.
The opening was finished. He laid down the sword and approached the altar. There was nothing in the huge blue book he had bought at the occult store in downtown York that gave instructions for what he wanted now, but all his doubts were gone. Instinct was his guide, the artistic intuition that somehow made the music work before.
Besides, he had set it up himself. Once he'd written a song about it, about blood and life and walking through the worlds. The fact that he had created a situation where he had to live in that, that teased at the edge of his awareness with the familiar taste of making songs. Songs that felt like clay in his hands, that he could shape but that had their own life and integrity, too. When he could find and express them the way they demanded, when he was flying. When he was creating the music that had taken him out of the ranks of the ordinary, the hopefuls and the bitterly lost.
He smiled and pulled back his left sleeve, then raised the straight razor in salute to the portrait. Like everything else in the ritual, the razor was beautiful. The handle was black mother of pearl and it was tipped in silver filigree. The blade was watermarked blue steel, shimmering like a samurai sword. He looked at the blade for a moment and tasted the fearlust and the power around him. Then he made three neat cuts across the inside of his left arm, matching the precise scars already incised in his flesh.
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