by Неизвестный
Xavier began a slow rhythmic movement and her groans became a steady, unbroken keening. Jean released her mouth and the sounds spilled out into the night. He knelt up and, touching Paige’s cheek, brought her mouth to his sex. Giselle watched enviously as the girl sucked her brother. Her neglected breasts, imprinted with Paige’s teeth marks languished and Giselle was obliged to caress herself, to squeeze hard and pinch cruelly at her own nipples. Then Jean swung a leg across her chest and his sex came to her mouth. Paige lifted Giselle’s head so that Jean could fuck her more easily. He fucked her as she wanted Xavier to fuck her, hard and fast, jamming into her throat. Then, abruptly, he withdrew and Paige used her fingers to milk him. Gelatinous semen rained on to Giselle’s face as he arched his back and cried out. The stream seemed endless and Paige – pumping the brother with one hand, cradling the sister with the other – directed the flow to cover Giselle’s face completely.
‘The perfect baptism,’ she murmured as Jean gave one final cry and slumped to the ground. He watched with sleepy, hooded eyes as Paige husbanded the semen into Giselle’s mouth, using tongue and fingers. There were soft words and girlish giggles as they shared in the liquid feast.
Then Xavier began to move more quickly, torturing Giselle with the pleasure that he refused to bring to completion. As Jean rested his hand on Giselle’s chest, she fought for air to fuel her gasps and sobs.
‘You will kill her,’ Paige told Xavier. It was Paige’s pity, her fingers at Giselle’s sex, that brought the relief of orgasm. The lightest of grazes across Giselle’s clitoris was enough. She screamed and Xavier fucked her hard, pounding her behind into the soil as if he would first kill her, then bury her.
He didn’t come. He fucked her until she was too exhausted to respond, then pulled out and took his place on the tree. Sweat glistened on his body but his expression was the same as ever. He had changed her for ever but had been untouched himself.
Giselle closed her eyes as Jean lay his head on her chest. She felt Paige curl around her and the girl’s cheek settling on her belly. For a moment there was absolute peace and Giselle felt that at last she belonged. She could have stayed as she was for ever, but others wanted her. Paige’s head was pushed aside and a boy’s sex was hurriedly buried within her belly. The first was Billy. He was quick from the beginning, almost frantic. She lay her hand on his back and stroked him with the patience of a mother as he pistoned his desire. He came in a rapid series of spasms and she rained kisses on his neck and cheeks as he yelped out the pleasure.
Before Billy had completely finished, Thierry appeared, lifting the smaller boy by the shoulders and pushing him aside. Thierry’s sex was long and thin. He was clumsy but strong, and she came again. He laughed crazily as she writhed with pleasure but it wasn’t cruel or mocking. There was exhilaration and joy in his voice. His rough energy pushed her to further madnesses. She took Jean’s hand and sucked his fingers as she came, revelling in letting them see her greed. Thierry came in a disjointed cataclysm of thrusting pelvis and shouted obscenities.
‘I’ll take her now,’ Xavier said as Thierry finally rolled aside. They had all had her but, from Xavier’s tone, Giselle guessed that it was only the beginning. There were other places to go, new rites to perform.
Xavier stood and fetched one of the torches that always lay ready in the shadows. He thrust it into the flames and the sudden flare of ignition highlighted the muscles of his chest and abdomen. He took Giselle’s hand gravely and, pulling her to unsteady feet, led her out of the circle and into the night. She was shaking from head to toe and her thoughts swam as if her head had filled with treacle.
They followed a path that she hadn’t noticed before; one that led them into the centre of the island. The flickering light of the torch on their naked bodies made them seem like spirits, as ephemeral as fireflies. The path became tortuous; they had to squeeze between rocks and scramble up steep inclines using the roots of trees as hand-and footholds. Xavier helped her, but said nothing. Finally, they reached a clearing and paused to recover themselves. As her breathing eased, Giselle became aware of a profound silence and absolute stillness. The water of the lake was gone; its perpetual movement was lost. This was the island’s sanctuary, a respite from things fluid and changing. Xavier allowed her to experience this for a few moments, then drove the torch through the covering of pine needles, deep into the soil. Once it stood safely, he led her to a place beneath a tall, broad fir tree. Symbols had been carved into the rough bark, indistinct in the half-light. She could make out birds and fishes, signs of the zodiac and men and women crudely sexualised. Tatters of fabric hung from the overarching branches. Attached to them were dolls roughly made of straw. At the base of the tree, the carpet of pine needles had been cleared and there was compacted soil, as if the place was used regularly.
It felt as if they had slipped somehow, passed into another world. The dolls, as they turned in the light breeze, chilled her. The images of men with erect phalli and the women with inflated breasts and bellies were shocking – not because they were sexual but because they were keys and signposts to something archaic. He was leading her somewhere, taking her further from her known world. She wondered if these were the gates to a place that the priests called hell. Xavier would qualify as guide and demifiend to that place. The torches on his chest lit passageways that sense and fear occluded. There was also moonlight, pushing its fingers into the clearing and turning their naked flesh a silver blue. He told her to squat and then knelt between her opened thighs. He kissed her and told her to pee.
It wasn’t easy. She was self-conscious. Her belly hung between her open legs like a hard, unripe fruit refusing to yield its juice. He stroked her face reassuringly. So many fluids had issued from her that evening, but this was the hardest. Finally, with a great sigh, she relaxed and the sphincter eased.
The fluid issued in a steady stream, hot and strong. He mixed it into the soil with his fingers where it fell. Once the self-consciousness had gone, it was strangely erotic to urinate with a stranger watching her. It was even more erotic when he slipped the fingers of his left hand inside her belly so that the stream played over his hand and ran back along the inside of her thighs. The liquid caressed her like a tongue, found her most sensitive places, seethed in hot swirls across the pouting lips of her anus.
The fingers of his left hand were still inside her as the fingers of his right made the sign of benediction. He took in lips, breasts and forehead as before, but this time her sex as well. At the extremity of each sweeping pass, his fingers pressed into her flesh, leaving a dark mark, an amalgam of the island’s soil and her own fluids.
Anointed thus, he led her to the other end of the clearing, plucking up the torch as they went. Half-hidden behind a bush was a dark, narrow opening. Xavier squeezed through first. When Giselle followed she found herself in a low passageway. They had to crouch and edge forward like crabs. Narrow spaces had always made her nervous. When the torch brushed the roof, stones fell, bringing a feeling close to panic. There was a sharp turn to the right.
Suddenly they were in a large, high-ceilinged chamber, lit not just by the torch but by a column of light in the centre. As Xavier moved forward the column became brighter and she realised that it was pure rock crystal sparkling in the light of the lamp. The crystals were large and well formed, their geometry striking amongst the rough-hewn walls of the chamber. Xavier walked around the column slowly and Giselle followed. She remembered the rock crystal at the summit of the island and wondered if the mineral vein ran clear through the island, from base to summit. Peering within the transparent pillar she could see refracted images of Xavier and reflections of her own awed eyes.
They walked twice around the pillar, then Xavier knelt and gestured for Giselle to do the same. The feelings that she had had as a girl in the Church of Saint Saviour filled her breast. Then, she had knelt and gazed in awe at the statue of the Virgin Mary. The pillar had the same power and was a greater mystery – a natural column that pie
rced mother earth like a phallus.
Xavier reached out and touched the column, his fingertips tracing the edges of the crystals, testing the sharp edges, encompassing the octagonal sections. There was reverence, and surprise, in his eyes though he must have seen them many times before. This unselfconscious absorption was so different to his usual coolness.
‘In daytime there is a snake that dances in this column,’ he told her. ‘The energy of the sun is drawn downwards, concentrated, metamorphosed. Sometimes, too, on nights such as this, when the moon is full …’
He snatched up the torch and buried the head in the soft soil. Abruptly, they were in darkness. Giselle’s feeling of claustrophobia returned. She had to wrestle with the feelings of panic, push them into the corners of her mind.
They remained silent as their eyes adjusted. Then, Xavier grasped her hand suddenly, making her jump.
‘Look! There.’
He ran her hand across the column but, at first, she saw nothing. All was blackness. Then, as she looked more closely, she was aware of movement. In the midst of the column there was a faint blue light, a snake that coiled and uncoiled before her astonished eyes. It was one of the most beautiful things that she had ever seen, as mesmerising and seductive as the gaze of a lover.
‘It is the moon,’ Xavier breathed.
‘How?’
Even as she spoke, she remembered the crystal at the tip of the island and realised that the column really must be continuous. Somehow, the light of the moon had been captured and transmitted through the column, down through the island itself, passing beyond them to depths that she could only imagine. She remembered the tattoo on Xavier’s sex, the gold and blue snake that writhed as he came to erection. It was a symbol of power, but not corporeal, not the power of flesh. The essence before her was spirit, a natural magic whose power was wonder.
The memory of his sex fired baser feelings; there was a jolt in her belly as if she had been touched deep inside. The knowledge of their nakedness, an awareness of the hard body beside her, produced a need to be filled. In the darkness and isolation she felt weak, and that weakness amplified her desires.
Perhaps it was her hand squeezing his that transmitted those feelings, perhaps he heard her breathing snag, then quicken. It seemed that something prompted him to push her to the ground and enter her. His hardness in her belly was a revelation, as if the darkness had parted to reveal the gardens of Elysium. The arousal she had felt when he had taken her beside the fire was a mere taste, a foreshadowing of the arousal that swept through her body there in the bowels of the earth.
All sense of who she was disappeared. His flesh was an envelope. He was her air and earth; the feelings in her belly were fire and water. The thing inside her moved slowly. The teeth at her neck bit deep. There were words and groans as if overheard. Perhaps it was her cries that filled her ears, perhaps it was the creatures of the island. In the darkness, her eyes made their own images. Snakes of blue and gold danced. Crossed torches blazed. Beautiful boys touched and tore at her. In the centre of all this was the pleasure – high and fine like a stretched piano wire. He struck chord after chord from her womb and the chamber reverberated to a mighty symphony. His sex was a hardness that burned and her belly was consumed in its flames. When he withdrew, her screams were suddenly real. She lay in the darkness, alone, not knowing who or what she was, and the sense of loss was complete. It was as if she had woken from sleep in deep space, without even the comfort of the stars.
Then there was a flare of light and she saw Xavier holding a match to the torch. It blazed with a sudden golden light. The pillar gleamed and she quietened herself.
When he knelt and looked down at her heaving chest and disarranged limbs she had the sense of being read. Without the strength to resist, she let him thumb through her as if she were a text written in blood and sweat. It felt good to be so known. She was grateful that an inventory was being taken. If she ever forgot herself completely, he could reinstate her, make her who she was again.
‘You will be mistreated,’ he told her softly. His expression was regretful, as if the decision was beyond his power, as if external agencies had made the decision. ‘You will not be Paige to be doted on, or Joan to be tolerated and indulged.’
She looked at him in surprise. He talked for a long time and it felt as if she was being instructed in inescapable facts, as if he were helping her to accept a fate that couldn’t be altered.
‘Your innocence and beauty fit you perfectly to the path of suffering,’ he said at the end, after he had spoken for what seemed hours, but could only have been minutes.
Reality returned with a sudden chill feeling in her stomach. She remembered Giscard as he had dragged her into the circle of the fire and thrown her at Xavier’s feet. She remembered the slaps – how they had shocked her, but also quietened her. Would there be more of that? Worse? She wanted to ask him exactly what would be expected. Instead, she responded like an automaton as his hand pushed her head to his groin. She sucked him as he described what would be done. His language was blunt and crude. Each obscenity was like a stab to her sex, cruel and arousing. A tingling began in her stomach as he said that she would be tied. A wetness bred in her sex when he said that she would be beaten.
She was lost again.
He turned her over and slapped the inside of her thighs. She looked up at him, mildly. The pain was a long way away; only the echoes of it touched her. Afterwards, he might have penetrated her. Or he might have licked the tears from her eyes. She seemed to remember both things. The pleasure of being treated softly after she had been hurt was intense. She didn’t protest when he told her they would use more than their hands.
She would be a toy for the boys who came to the island. She would be a sink for their most perverse desires. She would bring all evils to the surface, she would cleanse them with her suffering. She would never condemn. Her lips would bless their cruelties. She would seek out the secrets of their hearts – their darkness would be her light. She would ask if they wanted more. She would win their trust.
The great storehouses of sin would be opened and she would enter in. Her innocence would survive. She would transform all things, be the philosophers’ stone transmuting base metals to gold, remaining pure and unchanged in herself. Silver would be her colour, the moon her planet. Lacking light in herself she would be like rock crystal, lit by the lights of others. She would hold all of their images. The souls of the boys would refract through her. The impurity of the ages would flow through her and issue as golden light. The Bacchae would collect her tears in adamantine jars. Her pain would be a healing unguent, her excitement the elixir of the ancients.
His voice changed as he spoke. There seemed to be many voices in the small chamber; as many voices as there were lights. She gazed up at him, meekly accepting the metamorphoses. She saw her priest and her teacher. Her father glowered from dark eyes. He was Paige and Joan, soft but demanding. The shifting light of the torch on the rough walls allowed her to see all creatures: foxes and bats, swans and magpies. Many of the apparitions were too transitory to be named. Wild boars frightened her but her fears were contained. The chamber around her was warm like a womb. An antelope drank from a silver pool. The man touched her forehead and smiled – Xavier again. The shades that she had seen now vanished. The walls were blood red and warm.
He enunciated his words with gravity and passion, as a priest speaks. It was a voice that used a mortal frame but had no earthly origin. It seemed that the crystal spoke through him, and the island through the crystal.
She was drunk with his sex. The places that he had anointed burned. She wanted to feast on his seed, to consume his essence. She seemed to be only a mouth – formed to swallow, bred to need, blessed with the grace of giving and taking. Her throat opened as she drove down on his sex. It was effortless to take him all. A relief for the void to be filled.
The thought that she would be beaten seized her and she groaned, rubbing her sex into the beaten soil. Her
legs opened to their fullest and her belly pressed down of its own accord. When she asked, he told her how she would be beaten – those parts of her body that would be spared, those that would not. At each word she grovelled more deeply, impaled her throat more fully on his sex. There was a lust for the rivers of impurity that he promised. She wanted to be used, to transform all that is bad into the goodness of pure light. Her spirit would be crystal, her body the island. The boys would climb her, tear at her roots, bury their treasures in her, take her fruits, cast their seed and empty their wastes into her uncomplaining soil. She would be a Mary to them and a Magdalen; a whore, a sweetheart and a mother. As this madness washed through her, Xavier sat back on his heels, raising his pelvis and arching his back. The semen began to flow. She was greedy for it but he seized her hair and pulled her head away. The first pulses of white coated her lips and cheeks.
‘Agree!’ he told her. ‘Agree now and never renounce me!’
She nodded, gazing into his eyes with the devotion of a pilgrim. He released her hair and she immediately buried his sex deep in her mouth, catching the last pulses of semen on a worshipful tongue. There was a gratitude that came from beneath conscious feeling – from her muscles and bones; deeper still, from cell and membrane, enzyme and protoplasm.