The Pure and the Profane

"The Pure and the Profane"

    Last night, I dreamed of a black horse. Upon waking, I looked in the dictionary of dreams I keep in my bedside table, to see if there is any significance to this particular nighttime vision. It seems a dream of a black horse is a dream of passion. Considering all that has happened in the past weeks, I am not surprised.

    For I awoke that long-ago night to darkness, the moon and stars obscured by low-lying clouds. Cold. Mist swirled thick and nearly tangible, like the tattered remnants of a cloak. And buried within the mists and clouds, the lilt of pipes and chimes echoed merrily, enticing, beguiling.

    I found myself in the dooryard of my cottage, without any memory of how I had gotten there. Morning glories slept beneath my fingers as I traced the lintel, swaying toward the music. My unbound hair swept near to my knees, and I toyed with the long locks, wavering.

    The music shrilled once and hovered on a mournful note, dropping in pitch and tone, grieving in the night. Near weeping for my coldness of heart. And so I stepped toward it, once. Hesitated. The stone path was cold on my bare feet, and my nightdress was thin for the chilly night. Again, the mournful note, tugging at me, heart and soul.

    Twisting a lock of hair in my fingers, I drifted into the mist.

    I do not remember...clearly...how I arrived there.

    Memory was a mist to me, and I wandered lost, and cold.

    Then I was neither.

    The water lapped at my heels, warm and silvery blue, and I walked up the hill, beneath apple trees that blossomed sweet and full. Golden apples hung heavy on their boughs, too tempting to resist. I drew one down, finding the sweet fruit almost melted on my tongue, and the juice dripped from my fingers. Bite by bite, I finished it, dropped the core in the dust at my feet, and licked the juice from my hand.

    The hill rose steadily, a path moving leisurely upward, until hill and path crested, and a valley swept below. Spring lay thick and heady at the path just before me, but to the west, autumn had begun to bare the branches of the forest, and they rolled red-gold on half-hidden hills. To the east, the green forests of summer, and north, winter-bared trees slept beneath their blankets of snow. None more or less beautiful than the others, in its way. And in the center, a gleaming palace that looked carved of crystal, ivory, and marble.

    None of this seemed remarkable to me at the time. My only thought then was that it would be a very long walk to the palace.

    And with no further pondering, I set off down the slope, steeper than the one I had ascended. In some places, I caught myself from tree to tree, for the ground was treacherous with damp earth and dew-soaked grass. Toward the end, the hill nearly tipped over, and I half-fell, gasping, against a cherry tree at the base, sliding down its bark to catch my breath.

    A shrill whinny echoed across the verdant meadow, and I looked up. Black as the night sky, his coat dappled with stars, a stallion galloped toward me, dancing on silver-shod hooves as he drew near. His eyes were dark and wild as he approached, bending his great head to look at me. He snorted, as if pleased with his assessment, and dropped down on his forelegs, nudging me up. I slid atop, finding his coat almost too soft for purchase, and tangled my fists in his mane, feeling as if I had wrapped them instead in satin.

    The stallion stood easily and started off at a trot, gaining speed as the path widened to a road, breaking into a gallop as orchard and meadow faded into a vast plain, wheat rolling in sunkissed waves. Other than its rippling and the stallion's heavy hoofbeats, there was no sound.

    The palace drew near rapidly and the wind whistled in my ears, brought tears to my eyes. Close up, the sunlight reflected off the walls and dazzled me.

    He stopped at the gates, dropped on his forelegs to let me dismount. Standing, he paused and nuzzled my forehead, blowing softly. Nudged me toward the fine-wrought arch. Shaking his mane, he departed at a gallop.

    There, at last, I paused. There was a strangeness in all this, and I vaguely remembered the cottage, the music, the endless walk in the mist. It seemed I had lain down on the crest of hill there, among the roots of a naked winter tree, and slept...did I sleep still? Did I dream?

    I could not think of it. But the stallion had brought me here, nudged me toward the gates, and through the gates I would go.

    As with the orchard and the plain, the palace was eerily silent. I wandered through halls of surpassing beauty, discovering a tapestry here, a vase there, sculptures of such brilliance and poignancy that they took my breath away. I came at last to the great hall, vaulting upward on fluted marble columns, arching toward a crystalline dome that flickered with passing cloud and sunlight. There, a dias, with a great chair carved of ivory and inlaid with gold and jewels. Beside it, a golden cage, its door ajar, a bench cushioned in what looked like red velvet within. Beside the bench, a flute and a pennywhistle. What drew my attention, however, were the long tables down the center of the room, a feast that set my mouth watering. Fowl and venison, fruit and bread, sweetmeats of all kinds, and pitchers of wine and mead that poured crimson, white, rose, and gold. With a mental shrug, I sat and ate my fill. The climb and the ride had left me with a mighty hunger.

    So the day passed in my exploration, and neither sight nor sound of any other living creature did I find. Bemused, uncertain, but not yet afraid, I found a bedchamber and cast myself upon the softest mattress I'd ever known, thinking an instant before I drifted off that I had never fallen asleep in a dream before.

    I did not know it then, but I can imagine it now. The door opens and he enters in a well of silence, pausing on the threshold to gaze at his prize. She stretches across the bed as though she has no cares, luxuriating like a cat in its softness, her breathing deep and even. Moonlight pools and shatters across the bedclothes, and her hair spills off the side, a rich brown pelt with highlights of red and gold. She does not stir as he approaches, to study her more closely.

    Her face is finely boned, fragile and fair. Her lashes sweep thick and dark over high cheekbones. Her eyes, when she opens them, will be violently blue, shading to purple if she wears the right colors. He smiles at the sight of her, and doffs his clothing quickly, sliding into bed beside her, as warm and liquid as a bath.

    She sleeps as he wills it, and he unlaces her nightdress from the front, sliding it first from her arms, and then drawing her to him . He casts the nightdress away from them both, and rises to his knees beside her, sliding his hands up a narrow waist, to curve around ripe breasts. The sides, for the moment; he traces her from swell to waist to dainty flank, and then bends his head to catch a rosebud in his teeth.

    She sleeps, still, but her lips part, and a contented sigh escapes them. Lightly, he tongues first one nipple, then the other, and stretches his long body above hers, relishing the feel of her softness beneath him. Her legs have already begun to part when she stirs.

    The warmth tightened low in my belly, and the shadowy face above me chuckled, thick and rich. Lips captured my own, smothering my protests, and my hands could not find purchase on his chest to push him away. They slipped from his flesh, and when I drew them back to strike him, they struck nothingness.

    Worse, his hands traced me from breast to thigh, in between and back again. His mouth devoured me, his breath hot on my breasts as he suckled them, plucking at the tips with his fingers. He kissed me, and his tongue pressed inward, invading, conquering. I could not fight him, and he soon left my head in such a muddle, I could not try.

    Until I felt a heat between my legs, a restless inward drive, and I gasped and squealed, drawing my hips back.

    A fist caught in my hair, yanked my head back, and he caught my pulse between his teeth. I felt it as if my own teeth were upon it, like a plump crimson fruit that would burst, juicy and ripe, when I bit into it. The other hand caught both my wrists and twisted them above my head, that one hand encircling them like an iron band.

    The heat slipped up, and in.

    I gasped again, this time with pleasure. Everything I had ever been told was that the first time hurt. But this–this...

    Stars burst behind my eyelids, and the length of him stretched me, filled me. Gradually, at first–I could feel from the distance of his hips that he had not fully entered, and I was already lost. His hand slowly untangled from my hair, slipping beneath my arm to catch me at my shoulder blade, drawing me against him. When I did not resist–nay, I curled closer–he released my wrists, holding me in his arms as he slipped ever deeper within me.

    I could not breathe.

    He smelled...indescribable. The scent of him was thick in my nostrils, dizzying, the scent of clean water and growing grass, the musk of deep wintery forests, the crispness of snow. One hand slipped out to catch me under my chin, turning my lips up to his, and his tongue entered even as he abruptly lunged forward, sending the last few inches of himself into my spine, bowing me with a gasp of abrupt pain.

    My nails raked him, and I turned my face from his, sinking my teeth into a broad shoulder. The stars still burst behind my eyes, but they were red stars. He neither slackened nor quickened, and the pain died slowly, pleasure pooling in dark crevices.

    I could feel his breath on my cheek, and my own was hard upon me. How long had I known him? A moment, an hour, a lifetime? I would remember the feel of him, under my hands, above me, inside me, until the end of my days.

    His chest rose and fell more rapidly, and once the moonlight almost lit his face–long enough for me to see the blue highlights in his thick black hair, the depthless darkness of his flashing eyes. Then, no time to look, no time to think, only the glorious thunder of flesh against flesh, the feel of the cabled muscles of his lower back and thighs, coiling and uncoiling like steel wires.

    Pain and pleasure mingled under the onslaught, and I began to gasp softly, to cry out, to whisper encouragement in murmurous undertones. He drew my head to his chest, holding it there, as if to brace me for the finish.

    Whatever strength was in him, he unleashed. He slipped a finger in my mouth when I shrieked, and I bit down fiercely, heedless of the damage. I wondered, frantically, how deep he could possibly go, how long he could possibly be, almost split in two with it. And then I was crying out, breathless, blind with pleasure and scarce remembering any other moment of my entire life. Dimly, I heard his deeper cries as he finished in glorious spurts. Filling me until I was sated, complete, and more whole than I had ever felt before. My head drooped.

    For long stretches of eternity, there was nothing but our breathing, our sweat-slick bodies pressed together, his slowly wilting member still thick within me. Dazed, I only half-felt him lay us both down, my head pillowed on his chest, the slow thump of his heart beneath my ear.

    I awoke to silence. The ache in my body was testament to the reality of the night, and I curled around it briefly, relishing the pain, the remembered pleasure. The sheets were cold beside me, but I could feel the weight of him there, could see the wild flash of his gaze in my mind's eye. Could feel the muscled expanse of him above me, and I squeezed my eyes shut to hold it to me.

    At long last, I rose, and almost doubled up with the pain. I could only walk stiffly, and I searched for my nightdress, for any garment. There were none.

    That was the first time fear prickled along my spine.

    At a loss, I remained in my room for most of the morning, wrapped in sheets, watching the wheat blow from my window and wondering how I had come here, what it meant...what he wanted. There were no answers in the silence. And I was ravenous.

    Swathed in the golden sheet, I finally ventured forth, clutching the satiny material to me. The corridors were a maze as I moved, stiff-gaited, in the direction of the Great Hall.

    It was filled.

    Creatures, men and women, seated in long rows at the banquet tables, creatures that shone and bent the light, sending it forth doubled. I cannot remember their faces now, but I looked at one after another, each more beautiful than the last, remembering only belatedly that I wore nothing but a sheet, that I was at best a guest here, and realizing that the Hall had fallen quiet as I stood before the doors.

    Then my eyes fell on him.

    He sat in the chair on the dias. No, he lounged, one booted foot across his knee, the fingers of one hand drumming lightly on the arm. He of the dark hair and the darker fierce eyes, clothed in samite and satin, cloth-of-gold, and doeskin boots that matched the fine cloth. He nodded to me, gestured me forward, and I went, feeling the eyes on me like a weight.

    I knelt at the dias; I could not help it.

    The ghost of a smile flickered at his lips.

    "What do you want with me?"

    "Want?" A real smile then, feral, curving.

    "Why am I here?"

    "Sit, little one. Here." He gestured to the cushion beside his chair–throne, I thought–and I merely stared up at him. One black brow arched, and he sighed. "I'd forgotten how tiresome you mortals can be." He stood, catching my hand and raising me to my feet. "I brought you here, little one, because you are beautiful, and your song is lovely. I collect beautiful things."

    It was not the answer I had expected.

    He captured my other hand, and stretched both out from my sides. Uncertain, and bewildered, I let him, knowing that I had wrapped the sheet in such a way that it would not easily reveal me. Nonetheless, he caught it where it wrapped at my neck, tugged...and it was gone.

    I could not see where it had gone, but I was nude, and I gasped, covering myself with my hands and my hair.

    "Now, little one. Sit," he said, settling back in his throne.

    I paused, torn. Run past the long tables of staring eyes, remain standing with my back to them and my hair covering everything of interest, or obey, sit beside him on the cushion, and be mostly covered, but facing the room of them.

    Obedience was not high on my list of priorities, but that option remained the least humiliating. Cheeks crimson, I sat stiffly on the cushion, bringing my hair over my shoulders to cover most of me, knees clamped together. And thoroughly confused. From the corner of my eye, I saw the empty cage, and the significance of the flute and pennywhistle. It chilled me.

    Leisurely, his hand stroked my back, my hair, as I would have petted a dog back home. Home. Unexpectedly, I found tears in my eyes.

    Slowly, conversation resumed around me, and I watched furtively from under lower lashes. The banqueters' eyes darted to me occasionally; the hint of a smile, and sometimes one would turn to whisper in another's ear, both then turning to stare boldly. My cheeks were hot with it, and I nearly squirmed. Other than petting, however, my lover ignored me.

    Him, too, I watched. He listened, head bent attentively when one of them spoke; he smiled, and I was lost in his smile, in his grace. He was beautiful; his face chiseled and elegant, arrogantly handsome, his throat a strong brown column rising from his open-necked tunic. I remembered kissing the line of that throat, and flushed. My hands knotted nervously before my knees, and I sat through that interminable feast, embarrassment and arousal flickering at me like a candle burning at both ends. As, no doubt, my lover intended.

    The plates were finally whisked away by unseen hands, the toasts called, and a tall woman rose from a nearby table, her lips curving with the question.

    "Will you not have your new pet entertain us, My Lord?" Her eyes caught mine and sparked wickedly.

    He glanced down at me, as if he had forgotten I was there. His hand slipped over my shoulder to caress my face, and he tilted it up with one long finger. The touch sent a shiver through me.

    "Will you sing, little one?"

    My lips would not work to form the words, and I stared at him like a simpleton. After a long moment, I managed to shake my head, albeit faintly.

    One dark brow arched, and his hand dropped from my face. "You displease me," he murmured, and called for a minstrel.

    Bereft of his touch, of even the heedless stroking, I was cold, and color flamed even more brightly into my face. Now, I could meet no one's gaze, even furtively. I felt the shame on me like a weight, and I glanced at him from the corners of my eyes, but he would not notice.

    I remembered last night's pleasure, and felt ungrateful. Unworthy. It burned in me, this shame, and the longer the music when on, the more oppressively it weighed. At last, I could no longer bear it. Like a child, I plucked hesitantly at his sleeve.

    "I will sing," I whispered.

    Another smile; this one of real pleasure.

    "In the cage, my songbird," he replied, and I paused, sucking back a swift rejection. There was some magic in him that made me unwilling to...displease him. The caress he gave me as I stood was worth any humiliation.

    I blessed my long hair as I walked to the cage, trying desperately not to feel the eyes on me. A song...I would sing, I would play, and I would not see the multitudes before me. I would sing and play for him.

    His eyes, too, were on me as I seated myself on the bench, picking up the flute first. A slow song, then; a song of hearth and home, of the green hills and mists of my country. I wept as I played, with longing; but I looked at my lover and could not have said for what I longed more.

    What was he to me? Who was he? Where was I?

    I was lost in more ways than one as I searched for the bedchamber, asking questions that were long overdue. Questions that had no answers, and the vision of him in my mind, the memory of his scent in my nostrils, sent my heart skittering and my thoughts scattering. Worse, though, the two words that echoed ceaselessly:

    Your pet?

    It almost–but not quite–chilled me.

    Time passed oddly here, sometimes in great galloping strides, sometimes with an almost audible grain-by-grain fall of sand in an hourglass. Now, it slowed to a crawl, and though the moonlight through the windows never altered its position, I was certain I had been searching hours for that room. Almost desperate enough to knock on one of the unfamiliar doors that lined this corridor, though by their shape and color–and the sounds within–I knew they were not my bedchamber.

    I nearly ran him down as I turned a corner to yet another endless hallway, and he caught me as I stumbled backward.

    "Lost, little songbird?"

    It was almost impossible to speak when I looked him in the face, and I felt my head nod, as if it were a separate weight attached to the rest of my body. He smiled, stepped back, idly tapping a flogger against his boots.

    "I was searching for you. Come."

    My gaze followed the motion of the flogger, his words failing to register. His hand caught my chin, almost roughly, and he forced me to look at him instead of the swaying tails.

    "You displeased me, little one. And you have lessons to learn."

    Worse and worse, but my feet were rooted to the floor. Lessons? A flogger?

    Your pet?

    My fists tangled nervously in my hair, and he caught me by the elbow, drawing me down to the end of that long dark corridor. Once, he glanced back at me, with a flash of wild dark eyes and a toss of his head. It reminded me of something. I had no time to think what.

    The room we entered was much like the other bedchamber, large and spacious, draped in fine cloths and tapestries. He collected beautiful things. I gazed around the room, remembering, very belatedly, that he considered me one of those beautiful things.

    And I had displeased him.

    I had lessons to learn.

    He had, in the time I spent gawking, seated himself on the bed and was slipping his shirt off. I very suddenly could not stand, and sought the nearest chair on shaking knees. Dimly, I thought that there was something that had been worrying me, something he had said...but he smiled at me, rising in a line of golden-brown flesh and knotted muscle.

    "Come here," he said, softly, stretching out his hand to me. I went, slipping into his arms as if I were made to fit there. He kissed me, lips and tongue and teeth, the muscles working in his neck as if he were going to devour me from the mouth down. I was nearly cross-eyed when he was done, and resisted not at all as he turned me, pressing me to the wall beside his bed.

    Something soft and strong closed over my wrists, and by the time I realized it was not his hands, it was too late.

    "We believe," he began softly, running his hands along my rib cage, "that repentance and forgiveness are as much a part of love as the act itself. Is there anything you're sorry for, my love?"

    I hissed out a breath at his nearness, at the feel of his hands on my body, and almost forgot that he was expecting an answer.

    "I..." I licked my lips. "I...displeased you."

    His hands began to catch my hair, drawing all of it up into a tail at the back of my head, which he knotted tight and slid over my shoulder, so the long mass flowed over my right breast and rippled softly just above my knees.

    "How did you displease me?"

    "I..." Could not possibly think enough to form any sort of coherent answer when he was doing...that...to me. "I would not sing when first you asked me."

    "Are you sorry for it?" He nibbled the exposed earlobe, his breath tickling my ear. Gooseflesh broke out along my shoulders.

    "Yes," I said, turning my face toward him. He kissed me again, a gentle brush of lips, and left me. His boots thudded softly across the fine woven carpets, more heavily on the marble floors, and the door opened and closed softly. He was gone.

    And so I stood, bewildered. I tested the bonds at my wrists and found that I could not slip from them, and pressed nearly flat to the wall, I could not pull strongly enough to try whatever anchored them. The room was utterly dark, utterly silent, and I leaned my forehead against the cool stone.

    His kiss still burned on my lips, the scent of him still thick enough to taste. His breath tickling my earlobe. His hands on my body. That lovely, lovely face. I had displeased him.

    And I was sorry for it.

    "I'm sorry," I whispered, and things low in my body tightened. The feel of his back beneath my hands, the ripple of muscle as he pressed inward. "I'm sorry."

    Who knows how long I stood there. Time crawled, and daylight drew no nearer. My legs were trembling, my breasts cold from contact with the stone wall, and my hair was tickling me awfully at neck and breast. Apart and beyond these minor irritations, the regret oppressed me, until I wept openly, drowning in a sea of penitence. What I would have given for him to come back...for his touch, the murmurous, rich tone of his voice, the rise and fall of his words, meant for me alone. I had thrown that gift away, I had...

    The door opened and closed once again, the familiar muted thud of his tread, and I sagged in my bonds, crying out my sorrow.

    A snap cut me short, and five tails of flame smashed into my back.

    "You are sorry?"

    In the moment it took me to catch my breath, the tails snapped again. And I found my voice, looking over my shoulder to the looming shadow. The tails kissed fire.

    I begged. I pleaded. Not for release, not for surcease, but for forgiveness. I understood. Repentance, forgiveness. As much a part of love as the act of love. The bonds rubbed hotly at my wrists, the stone cold on the front of my body, and the flogger slashed in burning lines across my back.

    There had never been anyone or anything else, and this...this was love. This was redemption. This was what I sought my life long, and never knew it.

    I breathed in shuddering gasps when he paused, and his hand moved gently over my welted back.

    "You will not bleed," he said, nipping the place where my neck joined my shoulder. His tongue traced up the column, and I nearly dropped. "You will be forgiven."

    I had no words for my gratitude. I closed my eyes, and sighed, relaxing. My back ached as if the stallion had trampled it.

    "Soon," he added, and the flogger lashed forth again.

    I hung in my bonds when he was done. Perspiration streamed down my forehead, and he cut my babbled apologies short with a kiss. Thrice he had left me, and returned. Thrice the lash had writhed over my skin, and I was sorry. Oh, I was sorry for it.

    "Come," he said gently, freeing me from my bonds, and catching me when I fell. "You are forgiven, my love."

    He carried me across the room, and slipped me onto sheets that felt like cream against my abused flesh. There he joined me, shedding boots and trousers as he came, his kisses a different rain of fire on my cold breasts. But it was not his kisses, or the bed, that made me catch him to me with a cry.

    I was forgiven.

    There was an urgency that had not been present the night before–a need for him beyond the need for food or water. And he responded to it, pinning me beneath him and entering in one long thrust that drew a scream from me, even as I writhed beneath him. I raked him with my nails, I bit. And he was rough, he was violent, forcing me down, catching my hands–even striking my face once.

    I exploded. And a moment later, so did he.

    My face was numb. My back hurt. I breathed in shallow, ragged gasps, sprawled on top of him, my head pillowed on his chest. So small was I–or so large he–that my whole body fit easily on his, and I curled in his arms, dazed with the pain and the pleasure of it all.

    How I loved him.

    I licked the sweat from his chest sleepily, vague memories of home surfacing, the shadowy recall of a place where this was a thing never to be imagined. Where such as he was only legend, half-forgotten, a story of people banished to lands beneath the hollow hills, of phantom pipes in the night...pipes that lured mortals into those hollow hills.

    People taken there vanished for a day, a week, or a hundred years.

    "You were the horse."

    I sat up.

    "The stallion who brought me here–that was you."

    He smiled, teeth flashing in the moonlight.

    "You are a beautiful thing. I collect–"

    "–beautiful things," I finished for him. My heart drummed in my chest. "How long will you keep me?"

    His brow furrowed, his wild black eyes gleamed. "Until I find you tedious," he said threateningly.

    The threat was not lost on me, and the heat of the flogger still blazed across my back. My questions were answered. The silence stretched between us.

    It was my choice. I looked down at him, willing the softness from my heart–for a moment, I promised the resultant ache, only for a moment–thinking of home, those things that I missed, the lessons I had learned here. Passion. Repentance. Forgiveness.

    Love.

    I bent my head slowly, kissed him softly. Penitently. And he returned it, forgiving.

   Last night, I dreamed of a black horse. Upon waking, I looked in the dictionary of dreams I keep in my bedside table, to see if there is any significance to this particular nighttime vision. It seems a dream of a black horse is a dream of passion.

    It was no dream.

    I bear the stripes still.

    And how I long for him.

    I am lost–in a world that no longer makes sense to me, a world where the smell of those golden apples is but a breath away, but always a step beyond my reach. I remember stories that would thrill any mortal to laughter, to tears, to sorrow and joy, and yet I cannot recall the words. My golden cage, where I sang and piped, learned their songs and their ballads...but my fingers are clumsy now, and I have put my music away.

    My days there bled into nights, numberless shadings of dawn and dusk, days spent riding, wandering through his four orchards, fingers twined in his, lost in him. And my nights...nights that I learned pleasure and pain, learned to crave the kiss of the lash, the touch of the crop, and ungentle ministrations that sullied and purified. The dance of the pure and the profane, on satin sheets.

    And at last, he bore me away, the stallion, the Lord of Horses, through the autumn forest, where the smell of berries and coming winter was thick. Up a sloping hill and to the silver-blue water. I was a beautiful thing still, but no longer his. He had nothing more to teach me.

    I remember him, the fire of him–Ahern, Lord of Horses. Collector of beautiful things. Lover. Teacher.

    I crave the kiss of the lash, I crave repentance, and forgiveness. Love. Love, above all else.

    I dream of that black horse, and I dream of things greater than passion.