Her nose was pressed to the coarse scratch of his tunic and its old stains, some of which she’d impressed there herself. Her voice was muffled against him. “Do you get tired of teaching me?” she said. “Teaching Egil, teaching Erik, teaching me.”
“The boys learn quickly,” he smiled. “You’re a little slower.”
She sniffed. “May the gods preserve me. Any faster and I’d be dizzy.”
“I’m taking you south with me when we go,” he answered her abruptly. “I don’t expect it to be particularly dangerous, but if you don’t understand some things, you could make it more dangerous than it need be. For you. For me. For everyone. So I have to teach you.”
“Then explain to me,” she said at once, “why everyone is so sensitive about the Shift. Even you. Is it ticklish?”
Thoddun paused in the act of leaning down to kiss her, and blinked in sudden surprise. “What?”
“Like something you can’t bear to be touched,” sniffed Skarga.
“Silly little hatchling,” he said, amused. “Now listen to me.” He reached down abruptly and began to unpin the big heavy broaches which attached her tunic to the shoulder straps and the torn shift beneath. “Would you bring a strange woman into bed with us, to watch what I’m about to do to you? You’re even shy about pissing. Privacy is a personal choice amongst us all, but the Shift is a man’s love play between himself and his channel and that’s personal to most of us. The joy he feels as he Shifts can be extreme. I’ll bring you into that with me one day if I can find a way to do it. But only you. Only me. No audience.”
She looked up, startled, and blushed. “Shifting feels – like that?”
He laughed. “Indeed it does. After all I’ve said about Shifting, have you never realised?”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “I learn slowly. Like you said.”
He discarded her two tunic broaches, tossing them to the floor. “I told you I’d replace these, didn’t I. I don’t like you wearing my mother’s things.”
She nodded. “I’ve no clothes fit to wear. I might as well lose the pins too.”
He flicked away the released shoulder straps of her tunic, turned it down, and began to unclip where she had attempted to repair the front opening of her shift. “Sit still,” he commanded when she wriggled. He continued removing the pins. “If you struggle against me,” he said softly, “it may arouse the wrong part of me. I suggest you sit quiet. Do you still not trust me? I’ve no intention of hurting you.” He tipped the last clip to the floor and spread open her shift. Its torn collar fell wide. As she sat obediently quiet, he smiled and said, “In fact, it’s your ability to follow me into the Shift that interested me long ago, when I took you on board my ship. I’ve never found that with any other human. Not that I’ve tried. But at first with you, I didn’t try either. I knew you weren’t transanima. But there was the chanting and some of the crew went overboard for Shifting and I went with them. I felt you alongside me, in my head. Somehow the chanting called you too. I didn’t want you there. I sent you back. But it haunted me afterwards. How did you do that, when you understood nothing of the chanting, and nothing of us? It has puzzled me ever since.”
She said, “Afterwards you took me swimming with the orca. That was – magical.”
“Of course it was magical, silly little weanling.” He laughed, grabbed her hand and brought it, palm flat, to the beat of his heart. “It was also a test. You passed the test.”
She sighed. The small candle light lit one side of Thoddun’s face, striping his hair into corn fields. “And the flying? More tests?”
“No,” he said. “That was my pleasure. A gift to us both. But you were brought back too quickly. The Shift and the Shift back, are very different skills. The next time I’ll bring you back properly, slowly, smooth as the sunrise.” He had spread the torn opening of her shift, exposing her, his hand slipping across her nakedness. His fingers brushed the soft darkened skin of the aureole, then slid beneath, cupping the weight of her breast. “When I took you running as the bear with me a few days ago, that was pleasure too. Great pleasure, and sufficient to make me ponder, and almost conclude, the desire to mount you there, dream bear to dream bear. I resisted. But I can’t always do everything the way you want me to, my love,” he whispered to the small warm hollow at the base of her neck. “I’m arrogant, and autocratic. And also because I’ve never coupled with any creature I felt this way about before. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, except perhaps in childhood. To discover love after all these years, and for her to be of all things human, astonishes me. It didn’t please me at first. Now it does.” He kissed the top of her hair, like a little hot breeze. His fingers were tighter on her breast, her nipples had risen hard and a warm insistence was tugging at her groin. She sighed, knowing he would read her private thoughts. “Hush,” he said, “and let it. I can lead you into this in the same way as the Shift. Perhaps, in a way, that’s what it is.” Then he leaned over, pressing her head back against the pillows, and kissed her. Her lips were still sore and a little swollen but he was elaborately gentle, the tip of his tongue tracing the swelling of her lower lip, then across the surface of her teeth. He cradled her head again. “It’s utterly new to me,” he said, “this strange tenderness. The desire to care. As new to me, as arousal is to you.”
“Is it arousal,” she whispered, “that you’re teaching me? Or about the danger of marching south. Is it dangerous because your people resent me? Or because of the cold? Or the wolves?”
He smiled, the warmth of his breath against her eyes. “None of those things. And all of them, I suppose. When everything is new, everything needs learning. But most of all, you must learn to trust me.”
“You read my mind,” she said. “Don’t I trust you? I think I do.”
He rubbed his face down against hers, kissing her ear. “Not the way I need you to. Not unquestioningly, as the bear, or the eagle. And I need that. I need to know you’ll follow my orders, whether you want to or not, because you’ll trust my judgements.” His fingers drifted restlessly across her, gentle and aimless. “You asked me before about owning you. I know you’re nervous of aggression. Enslavement. And I know why. Because of the past. And with me in your arms, knowing something of what I am and what I can do, you have to be afraid, or you have to trust. It’s a choice you need to make.”
“You’re teaching me to trust you?”
“Am I not?” He sat back a little, looking down on her, and his fingers came finally to rest. “By all the laws of the transanima and of this community, you belong to me,” he said abruptly. “You are dominant female here, but to the leader, his mate is utterly subservient. I don’t need your agreement, even to make you mine. If I want you, you come. I can, by law, beat you, rape you, exile or kill you. I could force you to do any number of strange and dark things for my own pleasure, if that were my pleasure, or cause you pain, should I wish it. No one would ever cross me to help you. No one. Not even your friends.” He continued to smile into her eyes, his hands now around her waist. “But that is all totally and utterly irrelevant,” he continued. “It need not ever concern you. The law means nothing. It is what I do that matters. And with my strength, I could make you do anything I wished, whether or not the law backed me. Against me, you have no hope of either escape or retaliation. As a man I could snap your neck between my fingers. And the bear? If I Shifted in anger?”
She nodded, which was all she could do.
He chuckled into her ear. “So forget the law, which is always a fool to be cheated. And forget my own power, which I will try never to use against you. Just remember, my little cub, that I’ve discovered I need you, which is so unnaturally wonderful to me that I would never do anything to risk losing your love for me, which I know from your mind in equal wonder, that you do feel, just as I do.” His voice softened. “So, will you trust me, and come to me when I want you?”
“You said I have to make choices. I’ve already made that choice.” She sighed. “Of course s
ometimes I’m nervous. You could so easily hurt me without meaning to. Without even knowing. Couldn’t you? Being what you are?”
He shook his head. “I’m always in control. I need to be. Coming back too fast from the Shift, half man half bear, then I could hurt you. But it would only be the urgency of wanting you. And if you ever think me rough, then push me away. I’d accept that. You have power too, and once you trust me entirely, I’ll teach you how to use it.”
Skarga smiled, bemused. “I can’t imagine me ever pushing you away. I doubt you’d even notice.”
“That depends,” he laughed. “In sensitive places I’d notice alright. At sensitive moments too.” The candlelight lit his smile like sudden sunshine. “I’ve claimed you now, little cub,” he said. “You do realise that, don’t you? You’re now my female and my consort by all the laws of our society. And speaking again of the law, that gives you rights too, not against me but with regard to the community. They’re all worried about it. They believe taking orders from a human shameful. I’ve told them you won’t do that. By law you could but it’s justice that counts, not the law.”
“I thought law was justice.”
“It never is. Law simply regulates security. But today I’m not teaching philosophy.” He began to ease her sleeves from her shoulders, slipping the loose material down over her arms until she was naked from the waist up, the remains of her shift and tunic bunched around her stomach. He quickly unbuckled her belt and tossed it aside, pulling the rumpled gathers of material down from her hips, spreading her bare legs immediately with his knee. He leaned over her and began to tug off his own tunic and shirt, pulling them over his head and tossing them aside. “That’s better,” he breathed. “I want the feel of you.” He leaned down, warmth to warmth. Naked except for her stockings, her legs forced open by his own, her breasts felt crushed. The rigidity of his nipples pressed against hers. “Now,” he said, very quietly, “I shall teach you to Shift.”
He pushed the flat of his hand against the arch of her lower back, just above the division of her buttocks. “Start here,” he whispered. “Centre yourself. Take all your mind, your awareness of what you are, and force it here. Like a bud, tight furled around the kernel of your consciousness. Stay closed. Explore yourself. Concentrate everything you feel into the space beneath my hand.”
Thoddun’s eyes had been heavy lidded but now they snapped open. His hand pressed harder against her, as if forcing her inwards. “I can feel you,” he said. “Rest here, now. Ease yourself fully into the warmth. And breathe slowly. So, so slowly. Each breath is an expression of yourself. As you breathe, those petals will unclasp. Feel the vibration of openness, loose and trusting. Spread wide to each sensation.”
He was quiet a moment, and his own breathing, as his lungs pressed across her, adjusted its rhythm and balanced hers. His voice deepened. “Open now,” he commanded, “utterly and guilelessly. Acknowledge being. Being is the ultimate, for any creature. Unthreatened, centred, defenceless.”
She smiled, and closed her eyes. His blue brilliance remained within her eyelids before the dark closed her down.
“Now,” he whispered, “centre yourself again in knowledge, and pull yourself tight. Enclose yourself again. Where you were open, become tight. This time, as you close, pull in your heartbeat. It is too slow. You have relaxed it. Now tighten it. Faster. Like a dance. Quicken the beat. Your heart must be entirely under your control. It must beat as you tell it. Faster. Command it.”
The darkness also felt centred, as if it was listening. The one forgotten candle flame spat, narrowed and went out. “When we are men,” said Thoddun quietly, “we do not live fully contained within our bodies. We centre ourselves in our thoughts, which drift beyond us, and take us away from ourselves. We build a consciousness of distance, inhabiting space beyond our physical boundaries. No animal does this. They are centred deep within. You must become your own creature in essence first, closing off your thoughts, becoming only the body. Then you become concentrated delight. So listen only to my voice. Shut away thought. I permit you to listen, and to feel sensation. But you are forbidden to think.” The bard’s voice, the strange musical murmur of his commands, came from far away, flying on the breath of the man, and Skarga flew with him again, taking the thermals and spreading her wings. But she was neither bird nor beast. She was more utterly woman than she had ever known herself to be.
“You have no will, no thought, no knowledge, no memory,” Thoddun whispered. “You have only my voice - and the intensity of who you are, which I hold here.” His hand, still pressing, hard as stone, had crept down her back and slipped up between her legs from behind. Now he cupped her, his fingers quite still, an intensity of pressure which burned and centred her where he led. “In desire, whatever your desire may be, your thoughts inspire you. The mind makes wishing erotic. But when the wish approaches reality, you must forget the mind. Then it’s the body alone which must acknowledge power. The mind will distract and destroy the sensations of the body. Unclutter your mind and relinquish it. Send it far away. Instead of your mind, take my voice. Now I am your thought. Follow, and obey me.”
Her feelings sparkled, grasping her consciousness within them. She had no thought, only feeling. She obeyed the voice.
“Now,” the voice said, from far, far away, “Your heart rate doubles. It beats so fast that you’re breathless. But you keep breathing slowly. You do not pant, you do not stretch to accommodate breathlessness. You simply become smaller. Very small, so that the speed of your heart is just accommodated within your frame. You are very little; snug within my hand. As I clasp you, you rest in my palm. There is nothing else of you. The heart rate and the steady breathing of a tiny creature, existing only for itself.”
Her eyes fluttered, adapting herself to the new defencelessness of her size. She smiled. It was deliciously comfortable.
“I will not crush you,” said the faraway voice. “I will hold you eternally safe. You may trust me utterly. I will give you joy, and not pain. You are completely safe.”
The absolute trust engulfed her. Her skin tingled with pleasure.
“Now,” the voice murmured, as if it too now came from within her, a part of her own self, “you contain only physical consciousness. Your heart beats. You breathe. You feel. You can become anything you wish. But your wish is not free. There is that empathy tucked around your heart which calls. Which has always called. You and it are now combined. You can burst back into a greater self, either as the woman you were before, or as the thing which calls. One breath. That is all. One breath now will take you there.”
Her consciousness curled tight, holding only to the hand and the voice which guided it. She could not think and had no mind with which to choose.
“Then you will go where I choose to lead you,” whispered the voice. “Now you will Shift. You will become pleasure. You will manifest as joy. It is all you will know and all you will feel. Delight will extend from the pressure of my hand, and swell into your expanding self. You will reclaim a larger body, but it will be fashioned not of flesh and bone and blood, but of thrill and touch and vibration.”
She felt his hand move. She gasped.
“Your Shifting will encompass mine,” commanded the voice. It had become suddenly loud and strident. “You will know the action and the reception. You will feel the without and the within. You are both sword and sheath. You feel each pleasure in detail, and each intensity as an ocean.”
The sensuality suffused her. She arched her back, stretching up from the hand that engulfed her sensations and the voice which bordered her world.
“Now,” whispered Thoddun, “you have Shifted. Breathe into the new shape, the new size, the new strength. You are me, and I am you. We feel each other and are still ourselves. As I take you, you will be both taken, and you will take. Becoming me, you are more yourself than you have ever been.”
She smiled, as sweet a comfort as she had ever known. The one moment of her existence encompassed everything. She had f
orgotten who she had been before. It was the climax of totality.
“No,” breathed Thoddun. “This is no climax. It is only a beginning.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
“It’s pleasant, exceptionally pleasant,” he laughed, “to know myself so wanted.”
“Craved.”
“It’s the Shift you’re craving,” he said. “I’ll go on teaching you. But now I still have to leave.”
“You said we had two days. Have two days gone already? Little enough time to satisfy a craving.”
“You’re coming with me,” he reminded her. He stood, his body emerging polished, still sweat slick from the bed’s warmth. She liked to watch as he moved, altering balance and weight, the powerful shoulders down into the width of chest, then narrow to hip and flat hard belly. “And that’s one of the reasons I’m bringing you,” he answered her mind. “Though not the most important.”
“I actually have another purpose?”
He was pulling on his clothes, britches pushed into stockings. He put one foot up on the edge of the bed next to her, tying the first leg bands. “It’s humans we’ll be fighting,” he said briefly. He changed legs.
She frowned. “So I’m useful because I’m human too? Because of my father and my brothers? To swap? To trade? Or to spy?”
“So much for trust,” said Thoddun with a grin.
Skarga watched him wrap the bindings of his waistband, then tug his shirt over his head. The candlelit lustre of skin disappeared beneath pale wool. “Perhaps it’s you not trusting me. But I promise there’s no one at my father’s vik I’d want to save now Tovhilda’s dead. And you grew up with humans too. Don’t you ever think of them as your people?”
He was buckling his belt but looked up at her in surprise. “These are my people.”
“Was there no one you loved when you were young? Don’t boys want – even before they know how to? I loathed everyone at Grimr’s of course. Except the boy, perhaps. Though he didn’t like me.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 55