Indigo, or, the Swordswoman's Tale

2. What's Past is Prologue--Two Ways to Climb a Hill--

When first I met Molly, it was almost twenty years ago; I was but
seventeen, and fleeing (again) the agents of Madame Dugal, and
she, she was easily as young as Lucy, though not nearly so
confident, nor so cruel. She had been working at her uncle's inn
for maybe five days when I arrived there, had traveled one
hundred and six leagues by stage from her father's home in near
Malchurch, which was then suffering quite thoroughly from the
perennial potato blight which has yet to convince them something
in Harrowdale hates tubers. She was sent off to her uncle so that
her parents would have one less mouth to feed, and it was
understood this favor was great enough at the time that food and
board would stand in lieu of wages, even the meager five crowns
six specified as "pin money" for hospitality domestics in the
Imperial records of that year. (In fact, when she took her leave
of her uncle some two years later--Mortimer, I believe his name
was--he attempted to bill her for the "education and training" he
had provided, in her new "career.")  She left home wearing a worn
brown skirt of her mother's, an undershirt whose patches had
patches, her father's third-best sweater, far too big, mismatched
woolen socks, her wooden shoes, and a pair of scratchy grey
knickers that bunched and lumped and chafed her thighs and
buttocks as she sat on one hard and splintery coach seat after
another. In Adenpool, in the mountains, her third day on the
road, she found an old and battered carpet bag in the refuse heap
behind the inn, and she took it, her heart in her throat,
terrified that she would be caught out, accused of stealing,
clamped in the pillory in the town square for nicking a ratty,
moldy, threadbare old carpet bag thrown out by some traveling
entrepreneur because a brass clasp had broken, and she cleaned it
that night, washing it with stale water from the pitcher in the
common room and darning it by candlelight in the garderobe, all
so that she would not have to endure the shame of traveling
empty-handed. She carried that carpet bag with her across two
hundred Imperial miles of rough road and then through the
three--or is it four?--inns (and one brothel) in which she has
worked. She has it still, I know, I am certain, for all that I
never saw it this last time we met. Molly was never one to throw
things away.

Except those knickers. When she arrived at Mortimer's, her pretty
bottom rubbed raw, the skirt with a new rip along one seam, she
was shown to the bathhouse behind the inn, given a starchy black
dress and white apron and freshly laundered mob cap, and told to
make herself presentable. And when she had stripped off her
clothing, and scrubbed herself free of road dust, and rinsed out
her hair and squeezed it dry, she turned to put those rough grey
knickers back on--and couldn't. She slipped the black dress over
her naked body, tied on the apron, settled the cap on her head,
bundled her old clothes into a tight ball, and dropped the
knickers on the rag heap on her way back inside.

Now, she was to room with the other domestic, a girl named
Ginger, who would show her her duties, and the routines of the
inn, and what would be expected of her. They were to share a tiny
room hived off the attic, far away from the main rooms, at the
end of a rickety flight of stairs and across a long and dusty
hall steeply rooved and lit only by cracks in the shingles above.
Imagine her surprise, when she opened the door to her new home,
dressed in an uncomfortable dress too short by far, and loose on
her skinny frame (already she dreaded having to bend over, or sit
down, or climb steps before some of the pretenders to the name of
"gentleman" who frequented such establishments as her uncle's;
already she regretted the rash action of throwing her knickers on
the rag heap), carrying a dingy carpet bag with the only other
things she owned in the world--imagine her there, in the doorway,
confronted by a girl not much older than herself, kneeling on the
bed, wearing only a loosely laced grey corset of shiny, worn
satin and a pair of lacy drawers like a palm's width of cobwebs
held in place by a bit of silk string, counting out silver coins
between her pale golden knees.

Ginger made her money, and more besides for Mortimer, by liaising
regularly with a number of men who frequently traveled the
stagecoach route; all by appointment only, and no unexpected
surprises, quite humane, really. She made more money by posing
(and more besides, for herself) for Petula, the famous sculptor
of the Queen's bust. And all of these clients, the woman and the
men, gifted her with fine scraps of lingerie, filmy stockings,
gauzy chemises, all manner of clothing never meant to be worn out
of the boudoir, all of which she wore as a matter of course, a
lacy, silken surprise beneath her plain black servant's dress,
too short and small as Molly's was.

Is it any wonder that Molly grew intensely jealous of the girl?
When Ginger, who was (and for all I know still is) a perfectly
lovely girl, learned of the state of Molly's wardrobe, she freely
offered some of her own stash for Molly to wear, and was more
than understanding when Molly proved ignorant of the intricacies
of some of the garments. Is it any wonder that Molly began to
loathe the girl, through no fault of her own? Ginger made her
feel ugly, and awkward, and intensely out of place; publicly,
Molly made a show of disdaining Ginger's offer, and pretended to
be appalled at the stockings and corsets and sheer underthings,
never meant to be worn under anything at all but bedclothes.
Rebuffed by Molly's protestations, Ginger withdrew her offer, and
perhaps a little of her warmth, and things were perhaps a bit
chilly between the two of them. But in private, when she was
alone (which was often enough, Ginger being away on her
assignations), Molly would pull on a pair of stockings, or sheer,
lacy drawers, would slowly, carefully, slip her threadbare black
dress off her shoulders (listening all the while for a footstep
in the attic hall) and down her breasts, to hold up a corset and
model it in the watery metal mirror Petula had given to Ginger
some months before.

Which was how I found her, running as quietly as I could through
her uncle's inn. I'd spent a day clinging to the roof of the
stage, knowing all the while that Madame Dugal's men were not far
behind (how long would it take them to discover the theft? how
fast was a man on horseback? how fast a stage?), and when we
pulled into the innyard, I knew I might have but minutes to get
out of sight. True, they would be looking for a girl, and I had
changed my dress and stockings for trousers and a shirt and vest,
and chopped off my hair with a knife and tucked the rest under a
cap, but I didn't want to take any chances. She might have sent
Nickel Rick, or Steamer Johnson, or the Dauphin, any one of whom
would spot me in a minute--and, if I lost my cap at any moment,
well, my hair was still white as milk. So. No chances.

Good thing, too. I hurried as nonchalantly as possible through
the common room, keeping to its edges, and made my way to the
staircase. As I climbed it, happened to look out in the innyard,
where I saw the Dauphin sweeping in on a big black horse,
followed by a big burly man in a patchy fur coat, on a lathered
bay, a shorter man clinging to his backside with one hand and a
top-hat with the other, both for dear life. The Dauphin was
yelling and jerking his hand at the stage.

I wasted no time.

Unfortunately, her uncle's inn was a very small affair. The
flight of stairs led only to the second floor, the second floor
had only four doors to private rooms, all of them locked (and
downstairs I heard the Dauphin's theatrical roar, "Where is the
young girl who came, unaccompanied, on the noontide stage?"). I
was eyeing the window at the end of the hallway, which opened out
on the roof of the stable (but wouldn't he have left the little
one out there to stand watch? or the big bruiser in the coat?)
when the hatch to the attic caught my eye. I leaped up and caught
it on my first try, and pulled it open, and a rope ladder down
with it. I climbed (and heard, on the stairs beneath, "We'll just
see about that. Hold him, Bo-bo," and wondered if Bo-bo were the
big man or the small), rolled away from the hatch, and scuttled
along the floor of the attic, looking for something, anything, to
hide behind. Nothing presented itself but a door.

I threw it open.

Sunlight poured through a high, narrow window. A big wooden bed
piled high with white pillows stood beneath it, and scattered
across its counterpane were several gauzy underthings the color
of a rainy day. Molly, all of fifteen years of age, knelt at the
foot of it, wearing garments that Ginger had not offered to lend
her: black woolen stockings that came up to the middle of her
thigh, held up by knotted red ribbons, the very same grey corset
she'd seen Ginger wearing, a gift from Petula, and the same
silken drawers, like a scrap of cobweb laid over the small brown
thicket of her sex. A shard of mirror lay between her knees, and
she stared at herself in it, and ran her hands over her thighs. I
must have gasped in wonderment, or maybe she heard the Dauphin
roaring behind and below, "Well? Is she there?" for Molly looked
up, her face flushed, her mouth opening to speak. I raised my
finger to my lips, hardly daring to hope she would not scream.
She did not, though she took a deep breath, so that her breasts
swelled like a wave beneath the taut corset, and I felt a thrill
run through my blood even as I heard someone, the little one, I
thought, fumble his way up the attic ladder. Kicking the door
shut behind me, I walked across the grey dusted warped wood floor
to the bed where she knelt, all in black and grey, her hand on
her thighs, her hair tied loosely behind.

"I," I said.

"Who are ye?" she said. "And what're ye doin in my room?"

"Please," I said. "You must help me. Stand up." For a scheme had
entered my brain. I fumbled with the buttons of my stolen
trousers.

She flushed. "Sir, I--if ye do not leave, I shall--"

I grabbed her arm with my free hand. "Please, I beg of you, just
for a moment--we shall pretend--" I heard shouting out in the
attic proper. She looked past me, at the closed door; I pulled
her to her feet. Gently, gently.

"What is--" she started to say. I spun us around, like a dance,
save that she ended up facing the door and I ended up behind her.
"What do they want of ye?"

"Please," I said. "Pretend with me." I pulled her close against
me, pressed myself against her, wrapped my arms about her. I
leaned forward to kiss her shoulder. Gently, I thought to myself.
Though if she fights, the illusion might still work. But better
if she doesn't. She was tense, uncertain, pulling away.

"What are you--" she said. She felt my breasts, small as they
are, pressing into her back. "You're a girl," she said, even as
my hand slipped between her thighs.

"Shh," I said. Something fell over with a crash outside. She
jumped, and I clutched her close, kissing her throat. I ran my
fingers along her drawers, and found the silk hot and damp to the
touch. "You were dressing up," I whispered, trying my clumsy best
to think of something seductive to say. Madame Dugal's girls had
never been reluctant, of course. This girl was trembling in my
arms, ready to run, ready to holler at the drop of a hat. I
thought if I could just caress her, touch her the way that Madame
Dugal's girls liked to be touched... I slipped my fingers deftly
through the side of her drawers, and found her wet and open. She
jumped like a scalded cat.

"Stop!" she cried, struggling.

"Hold still!" I yelled. She kicked one leg up as I clamped my
other arm about her shoulders and chest, holding her down. She
kicked again, wrenching her hips, knocking my shin with her
stockinged heel. Something shredded in my fingers; as she kicked
once more, my hand came away, clutching the ruins of her cloudy
grey drawers.

"No!" she cried.

The door burst open.

Bo-bo, presumably, stood there, the big man in the fur coat, like
the pelt of some sick wolf. Molly, luckily, fell still and silent
at the sight of him: his eyes had the cast of the Eastern
barbarians; his cheeks, bulging up in a snaggle-toothed smile
like shiny brown apples. His bald head was covered in a tight,
brightly embroidered skull-cap, like a fanciful doily. He
chuckled at the scene before him--a young man, pants at his
knees, clutching a half-naked whore to him. I was, perhaps,
silent a moment or two too long--I, too, was rather intimidated
by his girth, and only half believing this mad scheme would work.
Remembering my part--my coitus most certainly interruptus--I
bellowed in the lowest, most aggrieved tones I could manage, "Do
you mind?"

The chuckle died in his throat; the smile melted, those teeth
mercifully hiding behind his thick, wind-chapped lips. "Most
terribly sorry, guvnor," he said, in a thick but cultured accent.
He bowed slightly, backed sheepishly out the door, and closed it.

Molly and I stood there a moment, then two, unmoving, though her
breast still heaved from her struggles. I heard voices out in the
innyard, and let her go; she staggered towards the bed, clutching
at it for support, as I ran to the low gable window. Outside, the
Dauphin was mounting his horse in a swirl of black cloak. The
little man was holding the bay (and, still, his top- hat) as
Bo-bo came bounding out of the inn, mounting the horse in a
single leap over its rump, then, wheeling it around, bodily
lifting the smaller man by one arm. "She must have dropped off
earlier on the route! Back-track, boys! She can't have gone far!"

And out they rode, with dust and the thunder of hooves.

I was still congratulating myself on this luckiest of breaks when
a low growl of anger and frustration reminded me I wasn't out of
the woods yet. I turned to face the bed as Molly launched herself
at me, her fists screwed up, punching at my shoulders and chest
and face as she bowled me over. "You--! You--!" she gasped,
crying. I grabbed at one wrist, then the other, and rolled us
over on our sides, pinning her with my leg--slight though I was,
I still out-weighed her. "You," she gasped again, and it occurred
to me she had no idea what horrible names to call me. I cooed to
her, and held her close, gentle but firm, trying, clumsily, to
comfort her.

"Ye ripped em!" she cried, at last. Ah. Her undergarments.

Gradually, haltingly, the story came out: Ginger, and her uncle;
the inn; what Ginger did; the potato blight; her poor parents;
the horrible, shameful grey knickers. And I apologized, and held
her close, and promised her I would replace them, and kissed her
tears away, and told her a little--very little--of who I was, and
why they were chasing me. "Oh, and ye're from the Smoke?" she
asked, and I smiled, and kissed her mouth. And a little later,
she asked me, "What is that ye're doin to me?"

"You like this?" I asked.

She nodded, biting her lip.

"And you've never done this for yourself?"

She shook her head, and the little lost look in her eyes filled
me more than all of Madame Dugal's painted pretty girls ever had.
But I am getting ahead of my story, or behind it, rather, in the
complex shape this narrative of my life has chosen for itself. I
was writing of what had happened less than a week ago, in another
inn, when I met Molly for the last and not the first time, and
met the girls, my girls, and embarked upon this latest and what
is most certainly the last mad scheme of a life that has been
nothing but one mad, half-baked scheme after the next. I have
spent so much of it improvising that it comes as no surprise when
I sit down to write it out, that I do so without forethought,
spilling memories across the page willy-nill.

To return, then, to that other inn, that night. My bath was drawn
as I came into my room, and it steamed in the candlelight. Molly
greeted me with a long, lingering kiss. Sweat from the heat of
the night and the steaming bath beaded on her forehead, her
shoulders, the slopes of her breasts, coiled the tendrils of her
hair and plastered them to her cheek. She'd hiked up her skirts
to show her long fine legs and undone the throat of her dress to
show her small fine breasts. I reached out to undo the stays of
her corset but she slapped my hand away.

"Not yet, you," she said. "You're the one wants relaxing, not
me." She reached out to undo the row of hooks-and-eyes on my
jacket, but I caught her hands in mine.

"There's something that needs tending, first," I said. "Monsieur
Orphe?"

He can be quite still and silent, when he wants; I have seen him
coax songbirds onto his shoulders in the woods with his utter
immobility. So it is no wonder that Molly did not see him, and I
smiled a little as she jumped, when he stood up out of the
shadows.

He is one of the sylvan folk, the savages who haunt the forests
of the New World; he is tall, and quite thin, and he moves with a
certain inevitability that lends him an air of grace and strength
that seems utterly alien to the trousers, the weskit, the jacket
I'd had made for him. He owes me his life, and so, by his code of
honor, he must give his life to me, in any way I ask. I have had
many a sour smile since, realizing that out of all the world the
one man I can depend upon is this supposedly faithless savage.

"There is a door." I told him of its location. "Behind that door
lie two girls. Nothing is to disturb them until I come for them,
a few hours hence."

"As you like." He nodded once, and left.

"I do not care for him much," said Molly.

"He's a good man," I said. "Better than most."

She pushed at my chest. "And I do not like this game you play,
with the Baronet."

"And that is none of your concern." I smiled. "Though I'm afraid
you won't be getting your drawers back."

"It's not as if I'll be needing 'em tonight," she said, tartly
enough, though I heard some uncertainty in her wryness. But her
hands did not hesitate as they quickly undid my hooks-and-eyes,
and drew my jacket off; untied my lace ruff (stained with a spill
of wine) and pulled it from my throat. She threw them in a
corner.

"That's my good jacket!" I cried.

"Yes, and look how ye've been treating it," she said. Her hands
busied themselves with the buttons of my threadbare weskit.
"Don't ye see a tailor ever?" she tsked. The old Harrow cant of
her voice had been softened and smoothed by years of service in
the inns and taverns around the Smoke; odd, perhaps, to think of
the urban patois as softer than anything, but take my word for
it, if you've never heard the rough music of a full Harrowdale
voice. The burr of it did come back to her now and again,
especially when she scolded me, and I cherished it--my old Molly,
come back to me from those first few days.

"I've been busy," I said. "Of late." I unlaced my shirt, and,
once she removed the weskit, pulled it off over my head. She
reached out to untie the cloth binding my breasts, which I wear
more out of habit than of any real need for concealment, but I
shooed her hands away, annoyed--and then stopped, struck by how
business-like this presumed seduction was, especially compared
with that first time.

"Molly," I said. I reached out and took her hand, pulled her back
close to me, looking down into her eyes, which had, perhaps, a
few more lines about them than twenty years ago. And I was about
to say something about that day in her uncle's attic when she
laid a finger against my lips.

"I know you," she said, "only too well, and I know what ye want
to say, but ye've been drinkin, and ye're going to get all
maudlin and weepy and spoil our night together." I opened my
mouth to protest, to agree, to say something, but she had at that
point undone my belt, she'd unfastened my trousers and begun
tugging them over my hips. "Shh," she said. "Don't say it. Or
consider it said." She kissed me then, even as her hand cupped
the white curls at the juncture of my thighs, and one finger ran
along the hot wet lips of my cunt, returning the favor I'd
delighted her with in the hall. "Definitely," she murmured
against my mouth, "consider it said."

And then somehow my boots were gone, and my trousers, my belt and
rapier tossed in the corner on my poor abused jacket, and she was
unwinding the grubby cloth from my chest, as I slid her blouse
over her shoulders, kissing them, her throat, her chest, her
breasts. "Stop that!" she laughed. "Ye need a bath, to relax."

"If I were any more relaxed," I said, pulling her close, reaching
for her corset, "I couldn't stand up."

"I was bein polite," she said, and she shoved me backwards into
the tub. Water splashed everywhere, dousing the lamp on the
table, soaking Molly. She shrieked with laughter and scrambled
over to the bedside table, to grab the candle, even as I snatched
at her wrist. I missed.

She lit another lamp with the candle, and stood there a moment,
in the flickering light. The wet dress clung to her skin, hiding
nothing; her round breasts above her corset, her nipples dark and
shadowed, her soft full mound below. She smiled, and I said none
of the things I wanted to say. Silently, I beckoned her to me.


Molly knelt beside the tub, taking up a cake of Stilean soap and
rubbing it to a fine lather, which she spread along my shoulders
and my arms, my breasts (ah, so good it felt, free of that
binding, as her fingers slipped and slithered across and around
them, bringing them back to life). I lifted one leg out of the
water and balanced it on the rim of the tub. She reached across
to rub my foot, my calf; her hand darted beneath the water to
stroke my thigh; I murmured something, she shushed me, and her
fingers found the slick lips of my cunt. I leaned back against
her, cradling my head against her shoulder, as a finger slipped
inside me; we kissed with open mouths, and a second finger joined
the first, in and out, slowly, and then more quickly, her other
hand tracing lines of fire from our lips to my breasts and back.
Slowly and then more quickly, as the tension in me pooled deep
within my thighs and within my belly, gathering like a wave
there, far out at sea, but coming inexorably to the shore. I
groaned, and she shushed me, and we kissed some more; I lifted my
body up then to meet her hand until I was half out of the water,
my back arched like a bow, my head falling back away from her
mouth, and she looked on smiling, the candles flickering in her
dark dark eyes. It came over me all at once, that wave; the arrow
was loosed, and I fell back into the tub, and more water washed
over its side.

Ah, Molly, direct as ever. But this was just a start. There are
two sorts of climaxes in general, I have found--only two, you
cry? Ah, like any generalization, this is as much false as it is
true. There are two sorts of climaxes, and this had been one of
the second: hard, and fast, and gone almost before I'd had a
chance to register it, and it left me drained, but not sated,
with a desire to climb that hill again, by the winding, less
direct route, one we might climb together, Molly and I, hand in
hand. But just as one can say that there are two sorts of women:
those who kiss with their eyes open, for instance, and those who
keep them closed tight--well, that does not prevent every woman
one beds from being uniquely herself.

"Fetch some wine," I said, when I could. She nodded and stood,
splashing water upon me as she drew her hand from the water.
After a moment, I followed, levering myself out of the tub and
padding after her, dripping on the floor.

"You're wet," she said, as I pressed myself against her back and
nuzzled the base of her throat with my lips. We both chuckled at
the inadvertent entendre.

"Do you think the owner will mind?" I asked, toying with the
stays of her corset. "All this water on the floor?" I loosened
them, pulled them from their grommets, unhooked the thing. She
lifted her arms. "Soaking the bed?" I unwrapped the corset it
from her and dropped it, stiff and damp, to the floor.

"Oh, she's a bitch, all right," she said. Her white dress, still
soaked, clung to her body, more erotic by far than if she were
naked. More erotic to the fancy, perhaps, and I took a moment to
drink in the sight of her, her head turned lightly to the side,
her hair in a delightful disarray; but it was an impediment to my
fingers and my hands, and my mouth, and so I knelt and grasped
the hem and slowly, slowly, peeled it up, from her calves, her
thighs. "She'll have words for ye in the mornin, I'm sure. Nasty,
hurtful words, about the mess ye've made." I lifted the dress
from her buttocks, catching and bunching the material in my
hands.

"As long," I said, "as she waits till morning." I shifted my
hands forward, to catch the spill of the front of her skirts, and
lifted, peeling it from where it clung to the slim, concave curve
of her belly.

"Ohh," she said, shivering, "I'm sure it's the furthest thing
from her mind, tonight." Carefully, carefully, pressing my body
against her chilled, damp back, warming her, feeling her buttocks
press deliciously against the bottom of my mons (and I spread my
legs slightly, to heighten this, and paused a moment, shivering
myself), I peeled the dress from her breasts. "Ah," she said. And
she half turned, in my embrace, clinging to me, as I caught the
dress and kept it lifted high, ducking my head to taste her skin,
to flick her nipple with my tongue. It swelled and strained at
the touch. "Oh, oh Indigo," she said.

I caught her behind her knees and lifted her, with a little
strain (damn the weight of the years, and my back). She pressed a
dozen kisses to my throat, my cheek, my mouth, little nipping
things gone as soon as they had landed. I laid her on the bed,
pausing a moment as she struggled free of her dress, and climbed
up myself and covered her. Naked, we embraced, and I began to
tell her with my fingers and the palms of my hands, with my
tongue and lips, with my thighs and my sex, my breasts, my
nipples, with my eyes, everything I'd meant to say with words,
and could not. And Molly--Molly had more than enough to say,
herself.

I have lain with the Queen of the World, in her bed at the center
of her labyrinthine castle, and I have bedded three of the wives
of the Sultan of Maliq at once, in their silk-pillowed harem; I
have stolen a kiss, and more besides, from the lips of the Bielli
Dama of the Zharopnijayusch, in the cold and frozen North. I have
fucked more whores than I could possibly recall, even if I make
it to the halls of my Lady the Liuitin Lorgai Nochta when I die,
and She asks me their names; and I have been fucked by at least
three men worthy to be called such. I have done something I
hesitate to call sex, with a warrior-mystic in the wastes of
Ktkskis, and to this day I feel a chill (of revulsion? of
desire?) at the thought of his--its?--rough, grey, keloid skin-
-and I even dallied with one of Doctor Twelge's fabulous
Automata, and told him what I thought. I have pledged my love and
my life not once, but twice, to the same person; and I have
broken both those pledges, and my heart. I have committed crimes
I cannot set down (not yet, not now)--though, in the end, I
should have nothing to hide from these pages. And I have stolen
my girls, and taken them away with me, hidden them in my last
refuge, and I have begun teaching them all I know of this, this
art, this instinct, this urge that, more than wine, or the sword,
revenge, or (forgive me) the love I should bear for my Lady, has
led my life down the roads it has taken. But I do not know if I
can teach them this (I do not know if we, if they, will have the
time): that this night, with Molly, only Molly, soaking wet and
sticking to the dirty sheets of an ancient, creaking wooden bed
in a hot and stuffy inn, two women unschooled but yet
enthusiastic--this night was as rich, as sublime as any night
spent on silks and velvets with a perfumed, lacy courtesan; as
fiercely desperate as any hurried clench in a rainy, midnight
alley. We kissed and rolled together upon that bed. She tested my
strength, laughing, trying to push me over on my back, and I held
her down, and pinned her arms helpless above her head, presenting
her breasts to my cruel and teasing mouth. Her legs fell open and
I felt the heat of her on my chilled thigh. She chuckled, and
hissed, at the two bright points of pleasure on her body, my lips
on her nipple, her lips against my leg, and she arched her back,
pushing against my hand that pinioned hers, and with my free hand
I grasped her buttocks, lifting and rolling, spreading my legs,
gasping at the thrill that ran through me as my sex opened
against her hip. She nearly bruised me as she wrenched again
against my hands, my legs, "Oh, oh Lady," she grunted, the strain
of the lust in her voice mixing most deliciously with the sacred
wonder of her words. I shifted my weight, sitting upright,
pulling her to me, so that we sat, facing each other, our legs
entwined over and around each other so that our sexes, our cunts,
open now, could press each against the other, and kiss like dumb,
frustrated mouths.

The harem girls of the Maliq, where it is a crime for a woman to
touch another, or to show more of herself than her eyes, have
names for every lustful and lascivious thing women can do
together, when they are hidden from their men in those soft and
perfumed walls. They call this "eq khali a' taq," "the crushing
of the roses"--and I wonder about the people who fear this thing
so much the men kill and burn whenever they find it, but the
women name it with such flowery poetry, and seek it ardently, by
night, with downcast eyes and stifled moans. Molly and I crushed
our roses together slowly at first, sitting upright in each
other's arms, embracing tightly, our breasts crushed together,
our mouths crushed together in kiss after kiss, our hands
tangling in each other's hair, on each other's shoulders,
caressing each other's breasts, flanks, bellies, thighs, tangling
together, fingers grasping fingers, this urge, half primal, to
press together, to become one. But it is a frustrated urge,
ultimately, and it is not the best angle from which to crush
roses; and at some point that other urge, wholly primal, the one
that will not be denied, welled up between our entwined legs,
levered into being by our arms and mouths and legs that were now
incidental, tangential. We leaned back, away from each other,
though we kept our sexes pressed tightly together, and they
opened more for each other, blooming, I could feel her, wet and
soft, yielding, yet hard, uncertain, slippery, the occasional
pricks of pubic hair, the chafing burn of skin sticking to skin
where it should slide, but we were connected by one cord that ran
from the bases of our skulls down our spines and through that
point, there, those roses, those cunts, those "gaping, gashed
wounds," as Jonson has written it, those lovely, mysterious
mouths, as I would counter--and when, our hands locked together
for leverage, pressing, pulling, thus! I felt the cord tighten,
and I knew it tightened in her, too, and this thrilled me,
thrilled her. For a moment, some dim part of me wished for a
dildo, that we each might penetrate the other, to satisfy deeper
itches, but that part of me, the part that worried; that mourned;
that wondered what would become of me, on the morrow, or the day
after that--how many would I have left to me, when the news got
out?--that part was banished, and all that was left was the
terrible wonderful urge, the mechanical animal mindless beast
that knew what it wanted, and had it within its grasp, and would
not be denied, not now, not by anyone, not even death. We cried
out so loudly, surprised at the size of it as it overwhelmed us,
that there was a pounding on the wall next door. Our muscles,
slowly, unlocked; our hands let go; we lay back on the bed, head
to toe, gasping with laughter and the exertion of our labors,
sweat cooling in the flickering air, hands stroking skin.

"Oh," I said, "we've gone and done it now. The mistress of the
house will be, will be most cross on the morrow."

"Ah," she said, "I think she'll be too tired for anythin of the
sort." We laughed, quietly, stroking. "Now," she said, after a
full and silent moment, "ye were wantin some wine?"

I crawled up the bed to her, laughing at her jest, and answered
her with kisses, held her weak and trembling body as I kissed her
mouth, her throat, her breasts; drew a line with my tongue from
her nipple to her navel, which I suckled for a time; spread her
cooling thighs with my hands, and drank there the only wine I
wanted, from the warm and lovely cup she held between them.

When she had come again, we lay in each other's arms, murmuring
meaningless words in the still, hot air. I blew out the candle,
dimmed the lamp. She rested her head on my shoulder and fell
slowly, reluctantly, muttering into my breast, "Oh, Indigo, and
what will I do without ye?" she fell into sleep.

I lay there, thinking of her, and of my Queen, and of all that I
had seen and done. I could leave it here, I thought. I could take
the honorable way out, and allow the Baronet to run me through;
as rare a creature as I am, I do not have license to live beyond
my days any more than any other. And I could take solace in the
fact that there would be many a story told about me, the
white-haired monster, Indigo, the Queen's Champion, the Woman who
would be a Man. Feh. I could also have disappeared less noisily;
could have taken Molly away with me in the morning, and she and I
retired to my country house. The world would never hear from me
again, and if there were any justice, it would not come looking
for me, and there we could spend the rest of our days. I could
have; all I needed to do was ask. But Molly had a life here, one
she had made for herself; though she may have gone willingly
enough with me, I would have to ask--and I could not ask her to
give it up.

And I thought then, of the girls; of the look that Lucy had given
me, and her sister Eliza, as I had seen them there, half- naked.
The cool mystery, the promised delights. Selfish, perhaps. Yes,
it is selfish. But I thought also of the damnable pride of that
Baronet, their father; the same suffocating, insufferable pride
as swells in the dark men of the Maliq, the pride that is so
fearful of its precarious perch it must destroy whatever it
perceives as a threat--even something so innocuous as this
feeling, this wonder, that Molly and I had shared. I would have
satisfaction, and I would have the girls. I saw in them a damosel
in distress, two damosels, endangered by a dragon they could not
see. And my one great weakness is that I have always seen myself
as a knight.

And that, too, is selfish.

I disengaged myself from Molly, carefully, and dressed in the
dark. The cloth that had bound my breasts was too grubby to put
back on; I wrinkled my nose at it, and threw it away. Buckling on
my rapier, I looked over to Molly, lying asprawl on her stomach,
naked, her legs tangled in the sheets. Something equally akin to
love and grief filled me. Silently, I crossed to her, and kissed
the small of her back, once, for luck.

Then I left the room, and went to collect my girls.

--n.

http://www.asstr.org/~nickurfe/
http://www.ruthiesclub.com/
nickurfe@yahoo.com

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