by Joey W. Hill
“It is hard to prove you can protect me if I am the one rescuing you from your own foolishness,” she said. “I will return at sundown. Be aware of that.”
Just like that, she was gone, as if she’d had a pressing doctor’s appointment or something. Since, up until his mishap, she’d been watching him, he had to assume it was her way of saying she wasn’t interested in chitchat.
She also hadn’t returned the eye mask to him, a further warning that the jury was still out about him. Nevertheless, as he lay there, getting his breath, he pumped a victorious if shaky fist in the air. He’d made it, and she was too curious about him to let him die outright.
He remembered a scene he’d done with Olivia, a lush, redheaded sub he’d trained for another Master. He’d instructed her to make his dinner, lay it out according to his specifications, and then blindfold herself and kneel by the door at sundown to prepare for his arrival.
Maybe he could figure out what to make Medusa for dinner. What would she think of finding him naked, kneeling and eyes closed, waiting for her? He managed a half chuckle at the image. Well, not only did he not have the blindfold, that would be way too much, too soon—you think? It sure gave him a nice and needed spike of adrenaline to reverse the roles and picture her in the same position, though.
With a groan of relief, he stripped off the backpack, rose and rolled his shoulders, and took a look around.
“Fuck me.”
He’d expected something rudimentary, like a hut or lean-to. He stood on a clay tile patio attached to a sturdy stone, wood-framed home. The patio offered a stunning three-sided view of the ocean, blue-green waters sparkling with sunlight. The forest spread out below the patio and gradually descended toward the beach, a set of rolling green hills made up of tree tops. Glancing over the edge of the patio, he could see just how steep the cliff face was he’d mostly traversed.
Yeah, she’d had to save his ass the last few feet, but she damn well should be impressed he’d made it as far as he had.
Pivoting, he looked into the rest of her home. She’d kept it three-walled, open to the patio, no enclosed box for her. It wasn’t opulent, but it was far better built than he would have expected from one small woman building it on her own. A clay tiled roof protected a clean and inviting living space decorated with flowers, shells and draped pieces of cloth he expected she’d salvaged from the boats. There were a couple chairs and a table she might have made herself.
The table had a chaotic pattern of grooves along the surface, a maze of circling and straight lines that looked almost like a piece of sheet music where the parallel lines had been freed to rise, fall and loop like the musical notes normally written upon them. A rope cot with a mattress and pillow of stuffed grasses was nestled in the back corner.
A creek passed through the western side of her home, and she’d dug out a shallow water basin in it, providing a sink of sorts. When he followed the creek out of her home and around to the rear, non-cliff side, he saw a half-wild, half-landscaped garden. Large rocks had been hollowed on top to form semi-comfortable places to sit for contemplation. She’d created arbors with sticks and rope, training vines laden with colorful flowers along them. A path traversed the garden area, disappearing back into forest.
He returned to the indoor living space to study the small handful of personal items she’d collected from a world she no longer inhabited. Two books, a broken plate with gold edging. A bracelet with silver beads and black stones. She’d strung some of the pieces of salvaged cloth over the cot to form a canopy.
What drew his interest most of all was the stack of papers carefully placed in an alcove cut into the back wall. Some of the paper was rough, natural-colored pulp, perhaps parchment she’d made herself. Some of it was water-stained pages torn from ruined books. From the ink on her legs, he knew she’d figured out how to create ink from the vegetation. Here she’d done more artwork, the colors a pleasing and unexpected variety of hues painted over the words of the books or blending with the colors of the pulp paper.
She wasn’t an artist, but her drawings had a rough charm, like that of a budding naturalist alone on a deserted island. He saw animals and flowers, the sea. She wrote expressive lines to go with the pictures, words that spoke of her life here. As he read them, he revised his opinion. Not a naturalist after all, but instead a poignant poet.
Looking out at the sea, sunlight glittering off my face.
Soft rabbit, heart pounding, no need to fear my touch.
How wild and free a prison of the mind can be.
He was glad Maddock’s translation spell worked on the written word. But as he paged to the bottom of the stack, his mood shifted from pleasure to darkness.
Monica had worked at a battered women’s shelter. One day the women and their children were on a field trip and he’d volunteered to do some handyman work. Monica had shown him some of the residents’ therapy art, which chillingly reminded him of this.
Medusa had drawn a female demon with forked tongue, demonic eyes, a twisted body and wings lined with spikes. Snakes wrapped around her, fangs sunk into her flesh while she clawed at them with talons as long as her fingers. This was how she saw herself.
As he paged onward, he realized, with some relief, that the pictures likely had been stacked in the order in which she’d done them. The ones closer to the top were more recent. While they had some bittersweet images, they did not possess the angry darkness of those closer to the bottom.
He noted a common theme in all of them. Spirals. In multiple colors, styles and patterns, she incorporated the shape into the bodies of animals, twisted the trunks of trees, and made the clouds and sun reminiscent of a Van Gogh. Every picture had coils. Like snakes.
And speaking of which… As the day was moving into mid-afternoon, the sun getting warmer, he realized the whisper of the wind through the branches framing her patio was no longer only the wind. Lifting his head slowly, he noticed a flash of sunlight against scales and felt the weight of slit pupils upon him. When he straightened and stepped back to gain a better perspective, he realized the tree branches interlaced over the patio had become populated with snakes. He was looking at a couple dozen of them in a variety of species, lengths and thicknesses. They seemed curious, not threatening, which was good. Since he had no doubt they were somehow connected to her, he didn’t want to have to fend off an attack.
They didn’t appear to be doing anything but watching him, so he moved back to her cot. Curious, he lifted her pillow and smelled it. The worn fabric, probably salvaged from one of those ominously empty ships, was filled with grasses that bore the scent of the sea and the forest, and her.
It reminded him of when she’d grabbed him. That scent had been elusive and sharp, like mist with the edge of a lightning storm. There’d also been an underlying odor of female sweat, not an unpleasant musk. She kept herself clean, probably in one of the many water sources, but she didn’t overlay her natural smell with the many products of the women of his own time.
Studying the cot, he surmised this was a lounging area, not a place to sleep, unless it was for the occasional nap. He couldn’t see how it would be comfortable for her wings. As he’d thought last night, birds usually preferred to roost.
Returning to the patio, he stayed mindful of any aggression from the snakes. They didn’t seem to care, continuing to make sibilant noises and pursue their own interests with flickering tongues and twining bodies. Stepping out to the edge of the tile, he looked up into the thick web of branches that provided the patio shade. It took several moments, but he found what he expected. A spot where a thick woven mat of branches was denser than they would have accomplished on their own. She did have a nest.
He’d wondered why she had so little concern about him being in her home unsupervised. A moment later he discovered it wasn’t only because her bed was at a higher elevation.
As soon as he put his hand on the lowest branch, intending to climb up and check out the nest, a full half dozen heads reared up in
strike position. Jerking his hand off the branch, he stepped back. The snakes reinforced the point by slithering down closer to where he was, overlapping one another on the branch he’d been intending to use as the first rung of the ladder.
“Okay, got it. Off limits.”
When he went back outside to her small, half-wild garden, he found a similar situation. He tried to follow the path into the forest, but the snakes once again barred his way just before that threshold.
They weren’t trying to keep him from leaving her home, however. When he chose another route out of the garden, they didn’t block his way. So she was only giving him access to certain areas. There was something specific down the garden path she wasn’t going to let him see. And she didn’t want him to see the place where she chose to sleep most of the time.
The nest made sense to him, but the blocked path was puzzling. As he mulled the why of it, he arrived at a more functional garden area, an open sunny spot where she raised a variety of vegetables and herbs. The priestesses at the Athenian temple weren’t much different from the nunneries and monasteries from his own time, where everyone learned and helped with food preparation and storage. He wondered if she kept multiple gardens at different points of the island, wherever soil content and sunlight was best for the foods in question.
The island didn’t lack for water, but he was impressed to see she had minimized her labor by rigging an irrigation system from the nearby creek. Following the creek to its source, he found treasure. Passing through a thick growth of trees and foliage, he discovered a deep pool. The rush of noise told him what was there before he could see it, but when he did, he was glad to have his eyes. The waterfall was about ten feet high. Rocks clustered around the pool, perfect for sunning after a dip. The trees permitted an almost perfect circle of sky above the pool. It reminded him of a cathedral ceiling with its drifting clouds.
When he circled around to the top of the waterfall, he discovered another panoramic view, this one of the interior of the island. The valley was like an excavated volcano or a crater from a long ago meteor, a deep basin that had become repopulated with verdant vegetation over the centuries.
He stepped carefully over a black snake coiled up on a flat rock, the creature enjoying the mist off the crest of the waterfall. During his exploration, he’d seen plenty more snakes that he suspected were monitoring his progress. Could she see through their eyes?
There was plenty of other wildlife, too. He glimpsed deer and shy rabbits he was surprised managed to exist here at all with the snake population.
Numerous birds dotted the landscape with wondrous colors, shapes and sizes. When she flew, did they join her? Did they dip and soar against the blue sky together, or did they avoid her, likening her to a hawk, something that meant danger to them? Her poetic line about the rabbit suggested if she took from the wildlife on the island, she did so sparingly. Based on what he knew of ancient Greek life, he suspected her protein of choice came from the sea. Fish, crabs.
He’d stood before the ruins of Athena’s temple. Inspired and awed to stand where he’d hoped Medusa’s feet had walked, he’d closed his eyes and tried to imagine it for her there. Had she loved it? Hated it? Had she had other dreams than being dedicated to a goddess’s service for her whole life?
He had much to learn of her life here, to ensure he complemented it. The garden was well-tended, but weeds were a problem for every gardener. He pulled those that he saw, but there weren’t many. Regardless, perhaps she’d notice his small effort and know he’d help out without having to be nagged. He grinned at the thought. Several of the fruits were ripe and ready to be picked, so he removed those and carried them back to her home, stacking them in a wooden bowl on the table. She might be hungry later. Or her snakes might be.
Make friends with the pet, win the heart of the pet parent. Yeah, right. He expected her relationship with the snakes was a bit more complicated than that. He remembered that close strike when he’d taken the sword from her, the snake fast as a cracking whip. Talk about surviving a serious injury out of sheer luck. If he’d been a hair slower, he might have been half blinded anyway.
Scaling a wall and nearly plunging to his death could take it out of a guy. Stretching out on the floor next to her cot, he crossed his ankles and stacked his hands behind his head. Putting himself in a light sleep mode was easy as flipping a switch, thanks to the necessity of grabbing shut-eye in less than optimal surroundings. In a heartbeat, he could come awake with full awareness. It was the best kind of sleep for riding the edge between rest and survival.
That said, a snake dropping on his chest like a long, scaly brick was still a shock.
“Son of a…” He woke with a startled oath, sitting up and backpedaling as the three-foot brown spotted snake rolled away and slithered off, coiling in a corner and gazing at him in baleful challenge. Glancing up, John noticed the rafters above him now held a vanguard of snakes. Since the snake seemed as startled as he’d been, he figured it out.
“You were dozing and fell off, didn’t you?” Despite his racing heart, he chuckled. At the sound, the snake raised its head and then lowered it, tucking itself into a more comfortable knot. In the face of JP’s peaceful response, the snake’s aggression disappeared. JP recalled how they’d all gone on the offense when he tried to climb the tree, though. Curious.
If Medusa was a sorceress as some of the mythology suggested, the snake was obviously her totem animal to call.
Settling back, he shut his eyes once more. After careful thought, he crossed his ankles so the openings to his cut-off shorts were not so gapingly inviting, at least for a snake.
Yeah, it might be typically male and irrational, but he’d much rather have a pissed-off snake strike at his eye than a friendly one exploring his testicles. And he didn’t think there was a man in the world who would disagree with him.
Chapter Three
It was a peaceful place to sleep, with the sea breeze moving through the trees punctuated by the distant whisper of the ocean. Her scent was all around him, that appealing mix of elemental fragrances and woman. He dropped off without difficulty.
About an hour later, that internal trigger woke him once more. This time he kept his eyes shut, because what had woken him wasn’t an incursion of curious snakes. It was the rustle of wings and the light tread of feet landing on the patio.
His lady had returned.
She moved almost noiselessly, and through cracked lids kept carefully lowered, he saw her feet once again. Since last he’d seen her, she’d added anklets woven from tiny white flowers. The inked patterns on her legs were gone, so she must have washed those away. She still wore the toe ring, which he found incredibly sexy.
He closed his eyes fully as she drew closer. He sensed when she was standing over him, probably trying to decide what to make of him. From the quick snap of sound, he surmised she’d picked up one of the fruits and taken a bite.
She hadn’t alerted him to her presence as he’d requested. Did she hope he’d “accidentally” meet her gaze and no longer be a problem she had to solve? It was a discomfiting thought, suggesting a more precarious morality than he’d initially assumed for her. Well, there was a reason for the saying: “To assume is to make an ass of you and a statue of me.” Or something like that.
“If you have reinforcements here, they’re cleverly hidden,” she said, confirming her awareness he wasn’t asleep.
“I expect you’ve been here long enough to know all the hiding places, my lady. You would not have missed one.”
“You’ve been doing your own explorations.”
“Within the limits you have set. Your able guard kept me from your sleeping quarters and a section of your gardens.”
“A man should wait to be invited to a woman’s bed.”
“No argument there. How about a woman being invited to a man’s?”
“I’ve never known a man to set any obstacle between a woman and his bed.” The dry observation gave her voice an intriguing edge.
That was helpful, since the usual melodic rise and fall could make him hard. It had when he slept last night on the beach, his subconscious remembering it like an erotic lullaby twined with the sound of the surf.
He chuckled. “We’re simple when it comes to that. At least when we’re young. Eventually some of us grow beyond our hormones and learn to be more selective.”
“Oh? How many have you selected?”
“That’s a complicated question. Not many, technically.”
He could hear her chewing, quiet, neat. He imagined the juice of the fruit glossing her lips. “You did not harm my snakes.” It was a statement, not a question. “Many people consider them enemies. But they are allowed in our temples, because they are favored by the gods.”
“Even the venomous ones?”
“The most venomous creature ever created walks on two legs, not on its belly.”
He thought of the biblical bad relationship between humans and snakes. He expected human mistrust of the slithering creatures had been around far earlier than that and the Bible had merely capitalized on it, giving people a familiar enemy to understand.
However, he was far more interested in pursuing the dark edge in her voice than a theological discussion, but she had her own questions.
“This word…technically. It is confusing.”
“It means that a yes or no answer isn’t really the right one.”
“So it is a complicated answer, how many women you have had.”
The woman wasn’t much on small talk, that was for damn sure. “That’s probably a conversation for another day,” JP suggested. “When we know one another better.”
She made a derisive noise. “Aren’t such conversations how people get to know one another better?”
“Yes, but it’s like…a poem or song that tells a story. You don’t dive into the middle without context.”
“Charming words. You are worried what you tell me will make me dislike you.”