Aleksey's Kingdom (27 page)

Although we indulged our other favorite pastime too.

We did not stay at the abandoned colony or the fort—that was too much association for either of us. We wound down through the forest some miles from the falls and then turned back to the river below and camped on the grassy bank upstream from where I had washed up, where the water was pure and crystal clear. The river here was still wild and tumultuous, but now it was merely wondrous to watch as the light played upon it. We erected one of the tents, and then we set about the process of healing—minds, spirits, and bodies. All needed some care. We stripped and examined each other. Remarkably, considering what I had been through, I was relatively unscathed. My burn had healed to pink scar tissue. I had the usual assortment of bruises and cuts that come from fighting, and I was very thin. I had a graze across my shoulders, which I told Aleksey was from falling to the ground when I fought the trapper. I did not remind him of my being pressed like a splatter upon the rear wall of the tunnel. The cut I had made upon my hand had healed. It had been joined, however, by a painful hole from the stick, which Aleksey occasionally regarded with awe and a papist gesture. It was going to be an interesting scar.

Aleksey was virtually unmarked, which amused him no end. The stick had only pierced the skin of his shoulder. This seemed incredible to me, for had I not seen it emerge like a demon’s finger from his very core? Aleksey said I was very stupid if that is what I had thought, and that my adornments and body paint must have quite gone to my head. He was very thin, though. He had no fat upon him to start with, but now the V-line of muscle holding his abdomen was pronounced. It pointed delightfully toward his cock, which I was very glad to see was still long and beautiful. He told me then as we were squatting naked by our fire, waiting for water to heat, that the child had tried to poke the sharpened stick into him before I had arrived so spectacularly from beneath the falls (he did not use the word spectacular, that is mine. If he objects when he reads this, which he inevitably will, I will suggest to him he write his own account of our pleasant trip to the falls, and then he can use a different word).

With his eyes downcast, he admitted the imp had almost managed to remove his breeches, trussed as he was and helpless, and push the stick
into
him. This unnoticed by his mother or the devil, who had both left the child with Aleksey unsupervised, not anticipating, perhaps, that he would attempt to ruin their perfect sacrifice. To be more evil even than a devil anticipates is some achievement. I hope the child’s last thoughts were contemplation of this before he hit the rocks. I doubt it, though.

I regarded Aleksey thoughtfully after he told me this. It had clearly taken some courage to admit, for no man wants to tell of such an experience—and especially not with a five-year-old child. I think it affected Aleksey’s view of himself, knocked a little of that sense of entitlement from him. He looked so thin, so defeated.

“He wasted his time then, did he not?”

“Huh?” Aleksey raised his eyes from contemplation of the fire.

“Attempting that with you—for that stick was very thin. You happily take a far greater thickness up your—”

He hit me in outrage and toppled upon me.

Light then sparkled once more in his brilliant green eyes, and he hit me again, then mounted me, and he came back to that sense of himself and knew again all his entitlement, for he was very entitled to my arse and all the rest of my body whenever he wanted it.

He swelled quickly, naturally, easily, and the entry was painful, for it had been some days, and although I had few outward marks upon my body, I felt as though I had fallen over a vast fall of water for some reason. But the familiarity of Aleksey’s cock pushing into me made me arch and know once more the pleasure a man’s body can feel in all its glory, instead of pain, which is all I had endured for so many days.

Lean, hungry, urgent, we did not last long, and I welcomed his wash deep inside me as mine released between us, and he fell upon it as he sometimes did, hunger adding urgency to his tongue and lips. I sank back upon the cold earth and spread my limbs with the weight of his warm body upon me and watched a bird circling overhead.

All I could hear was the noise of the river and the falls in the distance, but the vibration I could feel now was Aleksey’s heart beating against my chest and the occasional twitch of him deep inside me still, reviving, as was his wont, being still so young and so fine.

A
LEKSEY
IS
always my care and my charge, but that night a deep sense of pride came over me as I watched him eating the turkey I had snared and roasted upon the fire for him. Not that there was anything particularly attractive about either of us eating, I must say. Starving, we ripped and tore, grease upon fingers and faces, but the taste of that hot, fresh meat after so many days was wondrous.

We ate until we felt sick, and then we took the hot water we had prepared and shaved each other. Still naked, I think we would have turned this activity into something else, but we were too full and too tired to do so. It was delightful to have him so close as I sat upon a rock, his fingers spread upon my bearded cheek, his face screwed up with concentration. He told me I would have a new scar on my forehead where I had been kicked and then hit with a musket. I told him in that case I might paint it with fearsome designs to scare the next devil we encountered. He crossed himself, and I laughed at him. Which, as you can probably guess by now, got me some more punishment.

When I was done—face scraped smooth, hair washed and golden, skin sanded lightly and clean—it was his turn.

All we had been through had been unwittingly precipitated by the flawless beauty of the body in my hands. Even the dark beard could not disguise the seductive good looks beneath. People had died for this….

“Stop it.”

“What?”

Aleksey gave me a miserable look. “I think it would be better for all concerned if I fell in that fire and lost this face.”

I pulled his head to my chest, straddling his thighs. I kissed his hair. For one moment my head reeled—the effects of the huge meal perhaps on an empty stomach, the letting go of the stress I had been under, but I saw the whole place as if seeing it from the eye of the bird I had been watching: the deep, seductive green of the river; the purity of the white crests; the smooth, long pull of the waves; the multicolored rocks and pebbles, each unique in their own shape and form; the trees with their abundance of game; and the cleanliness of the air with its smell of pine resin and woodsmoke… Aleksey’s kingdom.

I ruffled his hair. “You are part of a greater design, little one. Do not question your God. He has made all things to please himself—and I have to say that I agree with his intent.”

I
WOKE
early the next morning and murmured to Aleksey that I was going hunting. He grunted, pulled his coat over his head, and went back to sleep.

If he wondered why I was wet when I returned, or why I had caught no game, he did not have opportunity to question it. He had been still asleep and had needed waking up, and I did not do this gently or prepare him in any way.

It was my turn, after all.

We stayed there a week, and I was similarly wet every morning, and he similarly woken when I returned to our tent.

W
E
WERE
,
therefore, in some ways lighter, despite good hunting, upon our return, but in other ways heavier. Quite a bit heavier. Freedom seemed to appreciate being a packhorse now, as if he comprehended the import of what he carried.

I did not tell Aleksey that I had taken the weight of a small child in gold from the pool alongside the river. He was a scrupulous man, reared in the highest traditions of honor and observance of correct ownership and title.

I say finders keepers.

The dead had no need of it, and it amused me no end as we rode home through the woods that not only was I sleeping with a king, I was now possibly the wealthiest man in the New World.

Life is strange, is it not?

But levity aside, we are changed. I cannot deny that. I hope the roar in my ears will fade, the tremor of my hand cease. They are both slightly better than when I first got home.

We are different in other ways, as well.

We are not just the two of us now.

Of course, we have not had a physical metamorphism—one of us becoming female, as we once joked about in our tent whilst trying to overcome the grief of Faelan’s passing. As I knew he would, upon our return, Aleksey went straight to the colony to enquire of the puppy the demon child had tortured.

It was well. I did not say
I told you so
to Aleksey, as he tended to hit me when I said things like this.

The dog had been heard crying. It had been discovered; the child had attempted to hide it out of earshot of the colony but had not had time to do the job very efficiently. The creature had been taken in by the officers of the colony, and thus it was a very easy job for Aleksey to extract it and bring it home. I think it was about eight weeks old when it came to us—far too young to be away from its mother, and a shaky, pathetic thing it was, if you ask me.

It improved when I told Aleksey that it must sleep at the foot of our bed, for I was not going to get up in the night to check on it tied outside.

By the time it had wormed its way up to lie upside down between us, squeezed between our warmth, I think it resembled a proper dog quite nicely.

Aleksey said she was a wolfhound. I did get hit for my response to that absurd claim. I will grant that it was more leg than dog and had eyes so big and beautifully colored that it appeared to be looking out of orbs of purest amber.

Not that I gave it much consideration, you understand.

Aleksey wanted to know what I thought about names—what I pictured when I looked at her. He did not like my suggestions: Vomit, Flea, and Shitpile.

He said he was going to call her Grace after my mother. After all, he pointed out, had not she given me to him and was thus greatly in his favor? So, Grace it was. Did I overcome some more wiggling little worms of pain when I heard this name now so frequently and in such a pleasant way? Of course I did. I no longer heard my father screaming her name as he died in agony, watching her so degraded. Now I heard
Grace
and looked to find the ridiculous thing on legs that Aleksey doted upon, for, as he said, did not wolfhounds seek out and find wolves, and would not, therefore, Grace lead us one day to Faelan in the great forest where he was waiting for us?

I said we had both been changed by our experiences.

I agreed with him. Grace would.

I must end now.

I am being called.

Have I set it all down now so it makes sense in my own mind? I am not sure. I said it was inconceivable that the laws of nature could be overcome by the world of the spirit and that by setting down this account I would prove that to myself once more.

But I cannot explain how Faelan’s body departed us or why the blueberries were left in its place.

I think I can explain the appearance of the devil in front of the poor colonists and his subsequent power over them. All men who come to this land seem overly… preoccupied… with God and how they are to live their lives obedient to him. I think they would do better to listen to their hearts, to enjoy their bodies and this land we have care for while we are here on earth. But they snivel and worry and punish themselves and thus leave their hearts vulnerable to the likes of the priest who fornicated and sinned and caught a disfiguring disease. And from that weakness, all horror descended upon us. All his madness manifested itself in that journey we took into his darkness.

Where Mary came from I do not know. How she came to be as she was will also remain a mystery to me. But… ah, this is hard to admit. What would my sister have been had she survived and grown to womanhood with the Powponi? If she had been traded away to another tribe as many captives were? Would she, degraded, defiled, brutalized, have become as Mary did? I will believe that she would not. She was hope and celebration, and I choose to believe that she would have remained so.

And the child. Evil men do not give birth to evil children—I had said this to Aleksey. But from whence, then, does evil come? Again, I do not know, but sometimes when I am lying entangled with Aleksey in the quiet hours of the night, I wonder about a man’s soul and whether if it were made tangible, someone like Aleksey would have it as a gem inside his body: shining so bright that even trapped inside, its rays spread out and illuminate. The child’s would be a small, dark kernel of black. Not even coal—for can coal not be lit?—but something truly dead within him.

And then the worst of all the thoughts comes to me. Was that child at five years old as I was at that age? Did the savagery he must have been witness to create the monster he was? And was I, then, a monster, from seeing the same and living the same life? Is that what they had all seen in me? Expecting a civilized doctor as Aleksey had described me (perhaps as he genuinely sees me), but then confronted so abruptly and without warning with me, had they seen the true face I wear beneath this favorable countenance? Is that why I had been singled out for death, but, unable to kill me, they had possessed me with the poppet to bring me down?

Perhaps.

If any of that is true, then I am glad, for whatever I am, I defeated them and their magic.

And here sits a man who once thought himself a man of science.

Perhaps, in the end, it was the falls themselves that determined how events played out. Whether natural or beyond nature, whether science or faith, what could survive in contact with that great, inexplicable power?

Aleksey and I have already experienced the terrifying fog that comes down upon all things in war, when all is confusion and pain.