Embittered, the ageing Shifpan-Sho spent more and more time away from his people. In broad daylight, he flew far from Shifpan-Ur. From high above he spied on the women, men and children that the Green Blue and Brown God had entrusted to the Shifpan-Shap’s protection. The lustful eyes of Behl Jezath fell on the young men just old enough not to be called boys. He saw them play with their burgeoning genitals, enjoying themselves and each other.
The Green Blue and Brown God had forbidden the Shifpan-Shap from fornicating with mortal animals, upon punishment of having their wings torn from their backs, but Behl Jezath’s lust was overpowering. Day after day he flew high in the sky spying on the young men, lusting after their muscular bodies and their smooth phalluses, tempting himself with this forbidden passion.
One day, Behl Jezath decided to hide behind some trees, near a spot where the young men often gathered for their sex games. He wanted to be close to the young men. He wanted to be able to smell their muskiness and to see their beautiful bodies up close.
The young men came as expected, and the hidden Shifpan-Sho smelled their young manliness and admired their muscular bodies. Their proximity was intoxicating to the old warrior. Behl Jezath took his wrinkled phallus in the palm of his claw and rubbed himself to ejaculation. So intense was his pleasure that his wings unfurled in splendid glory. He uttered a great shrill cry. The young men scattered in fear.
Behl Jezath flew away, back to Shifpan-Ur to rest in preparation for that night’s battle with the nightmare legions of Yamesh-Lot. And as he had been doing with increasing frequency, he dreamed of the young men and the sex games he yearned to play with them.
That night, a nightmare embroiled in close combat with Behl Jezath smelled the lingering aroma of his dreams. The nightmare whispered into Behl Jezath’s ear and said to the Shifpan-Sho: “Warrior! My master, Yamesh-Lot, can make your dreams come true. Let me go to him now and let us meet again tomorrow night in this very spot. I will bring you the means to fulfill your dreams.”
The lust coursing through Behl Jezath’s veins was very powerful and he let the nightmare return to its dark master.
The sun rose. The nightmares retreated. The Shifpan-Shap uttered their cry of triumph and returned to Shifpan-Ur to rest in preparation for the next night’s battle.
Behl Jezath could not sleep all day, restless with anticipation.
The following night, the nightmare returned as promised, clutching a bottle. The creature whispered in the old warrior’s ear: “Let me pass and you can take this bottle, the cornucopia of ambrosia. This drink will transform you into your heart’s desire. One sip, and you can disguise yourself as a young human male – or whatever you desire – veiled from the wrath of the Green Blue and Brown God and free to enjoy the bodies of young men. As long as one drop remains, it will forever replenish itself. This bottle is Yamesh-Lot’s gift to you, warrior, if you let me pass and enter the realm of dreams.”
Behl Jezath replied: “How do I know this is not a trick, nightmare? You could easily be lying in order to win the war for your dark master.”
The nightmare immediately answered: “Warrior, I propose a test! Form a clear picture in your mind of your heart’s desire, and I will let a drop of the ambrosia fall on your tongue. One drop will transform you only for a short time, but it will be enough for you to believe in the power of this beverage.”
Behl Jezath agreed to this test. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself as a young Shifpan-Sho with his wings rich and dense, his scales bright as little suns, his phallus smooth and large, for that was his true desire.
The nightmare let a drop fall on the tongue of the ageing Behl Jezath. The Shifpan-Sho felt his wings fill out, he could see his scales glitter even in the darkness of night, and his phallus was restored to its full girth.
He remembered the smell of the young men and his newly-young body was filled with lust for them. Then, the effect of the one drop of ambrosia wore off, and the body of Behl Jezath regained its true age.
The nightmare said: “Well, warrior, that was the effect of only one drop! Are you convinced? Are we agreed?”
Behl Jezath hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, we are agreed, nightmare.”
The next day, the Green Blue and Brown God was furious with the Shifpan-Shap for letting a nightmare into the land of dreams. He punished them by turning them all into immortal skeletons, forever denied all sensual pleasures. When the Green Blue and Brown God meted out his punishment, Behl Jezath was hidden from the god’s view. He was disguised as a young man, trying to find other young men with whom to play sex games. However, the young men no longer played sex games amongst themselves. Their new nightmares taught them to fear such things. Frustrated, Behl Jezath flew back to Shifpan-Ur. His punished brethren saw his unspoiled form. They knew then that he had betrayed them to Yamesh-Lot, and they banished him from their midst for all time.
And so it came to pass that Yamesh-Lot won the war over the land of dreams. However, his nightmares no longer covered the night sky and the shining stars were the source of new dreams for humanity, dreams outside the reach of the dark lord.
Trembling slightly, I sat on the floor, silently but nervously pondering this story. After a while, I calmed down again and read the rest of the collection. There were no other references to these characters, to this tale. In an appendix, the author quoted some sources and suggested further reading for each story. “Why We Dream Nightmares” had but one reference: Ambrosia: The History of a Cornucopia of Transformation.
I picked up the bookmark, remembering the many hours spent at Lost Pages. I knew I would not find the volume anywhere else. The book was on the shelves of the shop, waiting for me. It had to be.
It would have to wait, I thought. The next few days were filled with engagements from which I could not, in good conscience, extricate myself. I suppose I could have called the bookshop in advance to make sure they had the book, or to ask to have it put aside for me, or to ask to have it delivered to me. But I needed to visit the place once again, to find the book myself.
I knew in which box to find the bottle. I took it out and held it up to my face. The pool of liquid was now several centimetres deep, the bottle nearly half full.
Three days later, tense and anxious, I was on a plane to my home town. The last time I’d been there was to settle the last of my parents’ affairs, about eight months ago.
As I had hoped, I found the book at Lost Pages.
Inside the bookshop, I recognized the young boy who had once been the shopkeeper’s assistant, now grown up. He appeared now to be running the place with an assistant of his own, a girl in her early teens. I did not attempt to identify myself to him as a long-lost customer. I quickly made my purchase, promising myself to return one day and take the time to enjoy the experience. This short trip was an indulgence my schedule could barely accommodate.
I took a cab to the airport. The terminal was bustling. Long queues writhed in irritated impatience. Indecipherable announcements fizzled from unseen speakers. Porters and travelers crisscrossed the huge room every which way.
A hand brushed against mine. I was aroused by the intensity of that elusive touch. I looked around, in vain, hoping to find the source of this furtive sexual thrill.
Frustrated, I joined the line for my airline and eventually secured a boarding pass. My plane was scheduled to start boarding in fifty minutes. I settled on a bench and savored the anticipation of cracking open my new acquisition, eager to find answers to questions I’d long neglected.
About ten minutes later, I suddenly felt very dizzy, as if all the blood was rushing out of my head. I had to brace myself on my neighbor. At the contact, he turned his head toward me.
His face was beautiful. He now appeared to be about my age, but how could I not recognize the features of the boy who had been the first to kiss me? His greying hair had lost some of its luster, but I thought I could still glimpse a hint of green, blue and brown.
Staring at the bul
ge in my pants, he laughed. I noticed my conspicuously large erection.
I regained my composure – partly because of the pleasant nostalgia his good humor called up, but also because I recognized the comical nature of my situation. I chuckled, but then a spiky chill tore down my chest.
I knew who he was, now. What he was.
I opened my mouth, ready to . . . interrogate him? Plead with him? Or . . . I never found out what I would have said. He placed two fingers on my mouth, tenderly silencing me. He looked hurt. No. Something else. Some emotion I couldn’t grasp. I longed to know him better, to understand his every gesture, his every expression.
He seemed to shrug off that feeling, and he smiled. He gave me a look – of deep compassion, perhaps? It made me feel overwhelmingly lonely.
I realized then how, these past few years, I still hadn’t learned to care about anyone. I still protected myself against intimacy. Now, I was overcome by how much I wanted to care about him, care for him. It suddenly seemed so obvious to me that I’d spent all these years trying to recapture the transcendence I’d felt when he’d seduced me and, failing to ever again reach those heights of ecstasy, how I’d shielded myself against my inevitable disappointments.
He clamped his hand behind my neck and gave me a fierce kiss. He released me, and nodded upwards, silently telling me that I should go. My flight was being called.
I looked into his eyes, but they refused to yield any answers. Stifling tears, I nodded back, got up, walked towards the gate. I didn’t look back. I was afraid to see in his eyes the gaze of a stranger. The sound of beating wings drowned out the ambient noise around me. Did I imagine that?
I told myself that it was his wish that I leave.
Two days later, here I am in my house, in this upstairs room that I have yet to organize to my satisfaction. The book, Ambrosia: The History of a Cornucopia of Transformation, is closed. I have studiously read every word. I wondered how the author found all that information, and I felt a surge of envy at his ability to uncover so much about my seducer’s mysterious life.
The book mentions many of the identities Behl Jezath adopted and speculates on many more. It describes years, centuries, millennia spent in solitude – hiding and fleeing from the pride of his youth and its consequences. It tells of epochs wiped from human memory. It details how his continued life depends on the bottle of ambrosia, the memento of his terrible moment of weakness.
What will happen to him now? Why did he give me the bottle? Why had I been such a coward at the airport? I—
I stare at the bottle. It rests on the little table next to my armchair. The light from the window catches the slowly rising pool of ambrosia. Rainbows dance and swirl, flowing and erupting from the amber fluid.
Tonight, I’ll sit on the roof and look at the stars. If it’s overcast, I’ll close my eyes, feel the chill of the early autumn wind against my cheeks and dream of the furious beating of multicolored wings.
At Long Last
Madeleine Oh
This was it.
As the train slowed, I snapped my novel shut, and pulled my suitcase from between the seats. In a few minutes we’d be face to face after thirty years. Was it curiosity or obsession that had me haring up to Scotland to see the man who’d shattered my twenty-two-year-old heart when he married my cousin, Penelope?
Why was I here? To see how the years had treated Alec? Did I hope he sported a massive beer gut? Sagging jowls? Perhaps recovering from a triple by-pass and double hip replacements? Sitting in a wheelchair pushed around by his brand new trophy wife?
If he looked the same as he had at twenty-five, I’d rail against the injustice in the world. He didn’t. But he wasn’t the one who recognized me.
“Jasmine Waters! May I call you Jasmine?”
It was Emily, wife number two. One of my faithful readers.
“Of course you may. It’s my name.”
“But it seems so . . . You being so famous and—”
“You must call me Jasmine. Alec does.” She all but blushed. How deliciously English and young she was, like a fat, ripe plum, ready to drop off the branch into my hand.
“He calls you Jazzikins.”
He would. He had. Couldn’t call me Jazz or Jasmine the way everyone else did. He had to make up a special name that still had the power to tweak my soul. Standing beside her was my old heartache himself. “Hi, Alec.”
A man who left his wife with an autistic teenager and a senile mother-in-law had no right to thrive on it. But heaven help us all, he was still gorgeous! His dark hair was half-way gray, but it looked good on him. And as for the laughter lines, where had they come from? From smiling to himself as he walked away from his responsibilities?
“Jazzikins!” His smile was so sincere, I wanted to spit. “Fantastic to see you!”
I held out my hand before he had a chance to even think about hugging me. “Alec. It’s good to see you.” That wasn’t a lie. I was satisfying my curiosity and, to be truthful, he was as easy on the eyes as ever. He still had a smile to invoke impure thoughts in virgins’ minds. It had in mine. He’d just never delivered.
“Jazzikins.” I restrained a wince. “After all these years.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me into a hug before I could evade, planting a great smacky kiss on my left cheek. While I took a deep, cleansing breath, he stepped back, looking me up and down as if contemplating purchase. “I still can’t believe it! You’re here, and all because of Emmsy. Who’d have thought it?”
Thought what? That I could write? That his wife could read? That he was incapable of using anyone’s full name? I made a point of not snarling. “How could I not come? Invited to Scotland by a loyal and ardent reader?” He’d better not think I’d spent all day in a train for him. But he did.
“Alec,” Emily put a hand on his shoulder. Marking her territory, perhaps? “Let’s head for the car. I bet Jasmine wants to kick off her shoes and have a drink.”
I decided I might like her, even if she had supplanted my cousin, and hoped her idea of a “drink” entailed something more than a cup of tea. I couldn’t help wondering what Alec had told her about me. Was I his ex-wife’s cousin, the sister of a school friend, an old, lost love? Most likely, none of the above. Maybe he never remembered breaking my heart.
His dark green Jaguar was an improvement on the 2CV he owned the last time I’d ridden with him. His transport might have changed but his laugh hadn’t, neither had his voice, nor the way he drove too fast and slid through lights as they changed. He made a very Alec crack and Emily laughed, throwing her head back a little, shaking her long, chestnut-colored hair and showing the vulnerable expanse of her long, pale neck. I’d always longed for a long neck. Still, I had bigger boobs, but she had Alec.
Did I honestly care now? Come to that, had I ever really been in the running? I’d fallen for him like a felled oak. And got over him, or so I always told myself. I wasn’t the type to do unrequited love. But I’d hurt. Standing as bridesmaid at Penelope’s wedding was an agony I hoped never to repeat. Now was payback time! Alec owed for breaking my virgin heart, leaving a gaping hole in my cousin’s life, and for the handicapped son he’d abandoned. Penelope wouldn’t seek revenge. She was far too kind and up to her eyes with providing care. Simon missed his father desperately, Alec’s mother was too senile to realize he’d gone, and poor Penelope was ageing daily.
But I was here, and willing, and as we settled in the living room overlooking the garden, I prepared to settle the score. One way or another.
Trouble was, I liked Emily. I could hardly fault her for falling for Alec, I’d done the same when I hadn’t been that much younger. And she was a fan. She had every one of my books in hardback, and all but kissed my hands when I gave her an advance copy of the new one. Hard to hate a woman who admires your work and mixes a mean G & T.
By halfway through dinner, I seriously thought about smashing Alec’s face into his tiramisu as he pontificated about local politics, the virtues of his new car, and the treme
ndous responsibilities of his job. How many more “Jazzikins” and “Emmsies” and “old things” was I prepared to endure? It was the last that got to me the worst. He had two years on me and I didn’t have gray hair. Thanks science.
Emily was far more tolerant than I. That’s what love does to you. But I caught the occasional spark of irritation, and the glances of female complicity she shot my way.
I grinned back as her dark, gray eyes flashed amusement and, when she hugged me for helping load the dishwasher, I squeezed back. Her body was warm and soft and her breasts pressed nicely against mine. She was my height, her body firmer and her breasts higher but we fit together, the old and new loves of Alec Carpenter.
“How’s the coffee coming along, girls?” he called from the sitting room. Emily looked ready to give him hot coffee where it hurt.
It was an odd after-dinner conversation. Emily wanted to talk about my books. I was more than happy to oblige. Alec didn’t exactly sneer at mysteries but he came darn close. Then he committed the cardinal sin, “How much do you make on a book?”
“Tell me what you earned last year and I’ll tell you what I made.”
He declined the invitation with an irritating laugh. “Oh. Jazzikins! You’ve changed.”
In more ways than he could guess.
I broke up the evening by pleading weariness. Emily kissed me goodnight with a promise of tea in the morning. Her lips were warm and ripe and young. Hugging her was a joy. I looked forward to my early morning cuppa.
She brought it wearing a short, pink robe with satin rosebuds scattered over the yoke. It suited her, bringing out the highlights in her dark hair. She blushed deliciously when I told her so. Alec had seldom told me that I looked beautiful either. She sat on the edge of my bed and I watched her firm nipples underneath the thin cotton. I’d found my revenge. I just had to find the means.
Alec handed it to me at breakfast.
Emily was annoyed.
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