Darkest Love (12 page)

“Your very fit, toned ass,” Annie offered him warmly.

“Feel free to put that in. Mention my leaps and bird-like glides as well.”

“'Bird' doesn't capture your physique, Mr. Mistern. You are a beast. I wish I could have recorded all that muscle flying around.”

They kissed. Annie sighed happily as Rain's tongue played with hers. She was warm and happy to her very core, with the sun beating down and her hands on this man. Both their hearts were still pumping after Rain's perilous little adventure. Annie slid a hand down to his ass. Rain's own hands were squeezing her breasts. Annie relished the moan that came from deep in his throat as he felt that fullness he loved.

“I want to fuck you on this cliff,” he hissed. Annie squeaked as he pinched her nipple, then reached around to grip her buttocks much more violently, territorially. He paused to give her clitoris a teasing rub under her dress. Annie's neck fell back as the pleasurable tingle streamed out from her hips and down her legs.

“Oh, Rain. I want it, too.” The Kaamo were beginning to mingle below. “The spirit of the ceremony has gotten to us.”

“Your body is what got to me. These
tits.”
He cupped them, examining them like an antique appraiser, eyes shining with lust.

“We need to focus.” Annie placed a ‘just wait' hand on top of his wrist. She nodded down at the tribe.

Hoot and hollers were travelling up from the valley. Tiltu was about to begin.

Sola stood and raised her arms to the sky.

The animal skins over her torso parted like curtains to reveal perfect brown breasts. The men didn't notice at first; they continued their squatting and leaping until the Kaamo women started to jeer, imploring them to sit tight and listen.

One by one the men settled into their squats and stayed there. Those who sat early were at risk of a knee to the chin or a groin in the face–slower-minded kin kept throwing their bodies into the air. Eventually everyone was seated, or squatting, and Sola could begin.

She chanted a lively incantation, which Annie and Rain could not hear. They saw her lips move then heard the words repeated as the tribesmen all spoke at once.
We begin the time of bonding to each other.
Annie translated it mentally, resolving to make a note in her journal. She had learned enough Kaamo language while she was here alone to translate that.

Annie saw a few emotions pass over Sola's face in the distance. The princess added another thought, loud enough that Annie could hear it this time:

“The demon bird has fallen, and will beat its wings no more on this day,” Sola called in Kaamo. The tribesmen cheered.

Next Sola took a clay vessel from one of the warriors and dipped her hand in, throwing the contents over the squatting tribe–the women now squatted too–with flicks of her hand. Annie watched the red liquid settling in pretty streaks over the arms, chests and faces of the tribespeople. She was not sure if it was blood or red ochre.

When the liquid had been cast to Sola's satisfaction she sat down again. At that signal the four warriors at her side rose to their feet, took a grip of the throne-bearing sticks in a hand each, and hauled the throne away. Annie watched the head of the boar turn between the princess's legs, looking more menacing as the midday sun caught its dead eyes and made them flash. The rays had caught the eyeball residue, or perhaps some moist cartilage that was still lodged in the skull.

“Now they'll start,” Annie said. “Paulo–the linguist–he was here for the last Tiltu ceremony. He says it lasts until sunset.” Annie winked at Rain, who didn't see–he was still peering through the binoculars. “I'm not walking past them with a lantern, or your torch. The Kaamo men go crazy from the group sex. The smells and sounds from all the couples around them are supposed to help them bond, but it also drives them a bit crazy. They merge into a group. It's just ecstatic. Very Dionysian. A pack mentality takes hold, like you'd see in violent sports stadiums in the West, when a soccer ground goes postal.”

“It's beginning,” Rain said, miming for her to shush.

The women were milling through the crowd, identifying their partners. The men were still panting from the exertions of the squat-and-leap they'd done for twenty minutes. Annie watched one of the first couples embrace at the edge of the pack. The woman bent over, buttocks facing the man and eyes turned towards Annie and Rain on the cliff. She flicked her boar-skin loincloth up with a twist of her fingers, exposing her bare rear to her partner. The skin stayed in its fanned position on her back, sitting like a peacock's tail. Annie and Rain watched with interest; the boar-skin loincloth arc framed her face
perfectly
, as if a brown sun was rising behind her head.

Annie almost gasped when the woman's face—

striking against that boar-skin background—transitioned to a look of agony. Then just as quickly, it was ecstasy. Her mouth gaped, becoming a hole half the size of her entire head.

Just like that the boar-skin fell, toppled by the pressure on the woman's body as the man began to thrust.

“Wow.” All around that pair other copulations were beginning. Some couples stood, some crouched, and some lay down… but most went with Annie and Rain's own favorite position. That most raw and primal position: doggie-style.

“Doggie is popular,” Rain quipped, squeezing Annie on the ass. “And you're right. A mass copulation is quite a sight.”

The women kept nattering to each other even as the men were pumping them. They would break the chat occasionally to squeal or scream, then go back to hollering at their girlfriends. Annie wondered if the bonding function was primarily for them.

She watched the boar-skin woman–the first she had noticed–reaching down to massage her own breasts, then slipping a hand between her legs to work her clitoris. Her face transitioned to a new ecstatic contortion—open-mouthed and bulgy eyed—shaking to the rhythm of her massive partner pounding her from behind. The sun caught her eyes, and even from the distance Annie could see they were filling with tears of either pain or pleasure.

“Pain or pleasure?” Rain repeated when she asked him. “Probably both. Her partner is hung like a T-rex. And he's pounding…
mercilessly
. There was no foreplay. I mean, no foreplay-style preparation for the women. Is that a Kaamo thing?”

“The women prepare themselves if they need to.” Annie couldn't take her eyes off the group. “It's considered her task. And healing is the woman's task too. The elder tribeswomen may have some tears to tend this evening.”

“Torn vaginal tissue?”

Annie nodded. Then she pursed her lips. “It's considered an honor to have that particular affliction. It means your man fits you snugly. And it means you accommodated his power though it caused you pain. The Kaamo women may not even ask to have their tearing tended. They'll wear it as a badge of honor. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the young women skipped the self-pleasuring—the foreplay preparation—to maximize their chances of tearing.”

Rain and Annie watched the tribe go at it as a dust cloud gathered from the scuffing of feet and the shuffling from position to position. Soon the cluster of heads was covered with a light dusting of powder, like cinnamon on cake.

The crowd started to part. With friendly clasps of hands and kisses on the fingers the women bid each other farewell. “That's it?!” Annie exclaimed, surprised. She knew a coming-man's face when she saw it–she had seen enough of Rain's to be an expert on the contortions of the cum-face–and she had not glimpsed many of those yet amongst the Kaamo fornicators.

“Ah,” she said after a moment. “They are just giving each other space.” The women led their partners to more private spaces, far from the others, where the air was clear and the noise muted. As the dust cleared, Annie wondered how much of the red streaking on the ground was from Sola's toss, and how much was from the ravaged bodies of the Kaamo women.

Probably fifty-fifty
, she thought wryly. It occurred to her that was probably the purpose of Sola's ritual: it was to mask the coming devastation, to camouflage the extent of the bleeding. Or perhaps, given the pride the Kaamo took in woman-scarring, it was more of a warning for the earth.

Prepare yourself mother-earth, soon there will be blood raining on you. Blood from our secret, fragrant spaces.

Annie rubbed her eyes. She did not know if she had made that up, or if she'd heard it during lakeside chatter with the Kaamo women. She had been here too long, had too many conversations, dreamed too many dreams and seen too many things. It was all rolling together in her head. Reality and fantasy had tangled together like yarn.

Rain did not look weary. His eyes were alert, swooping across the dispersing Kaamo, noting the actions and positions and the faces of the fornicators. Annie admired his energy; she was ready for a nap.

“I think Sola is lucky she doesn't have to participate in this,” Annie commented, “ Some sacrifice. The virgin princess may have to sit demurely, and she may not be allowed to dance or feast, but at least her body is spared this torture.”

Rain responded sagely: “Perhaps.” He stood square-shouldered and hard-bodied, eyes flashing in the island sun, as the Kaamo continued their tribal bonding. The men pumped and the women caterwauled. If the cries died down for a moment a woman would shriek and laugh to her sisters across the dust, perhaps in glee, perhaps to bond, or perhaps to shame her man into giving it to her harder and harder.

“Did you get the description of the boar eyes?”

“Yes. Do you think they were hollowed out? I think they must have been. Surely the eyeballs would rot and smell terrible in the heat. It would ruin the, uh, olfactory aspect of the ceremony.”

“Are the Kaamo sensitive to that?”

“The Kaamo are sensitive to smell and they have careful rituals around it. Dead animals are disposed of thoughtfully, buried far from campsites and dwellings, and skulls are hollowed carefully if they are to be used.”

“The head looked pretty intact to me.”

“I know. And it left with Sola. Maybe the eyeballs were in there.”

Annie and Rain had been journalling for a couple of hours under the gibbous moon. They'd left Tiltu before the orgy wound down, heading back to the hut. Annie was reluctant to stay; the dust had started to swirl around their bodies when a land breeze geared up. They had trekked the easy way down the headlands, avoiding both the Kaamo and Rain's adventurous cliff-side path.

“Didn't Sola look great? Her breasts are the breasts of a fourteen year old: big and bouncy and round, but high as if they'd just come in.”

Rain tossed his pencil on his journal cover and rubbed his eyes. A sunburn had appeared on his face and shoulders, but Annie could tell it would fade to a gorgeous tan. She'd rubbed ointment into his skin when they'd arrived back and barely resisted his efforts to pull her on top of him, knowing she had to get her thoughts about Tiltu down or she would lose them to sex and a deep, satisfying sleep. “Yours are pretty gorgeous, Ann.”

“I wasn't fishing for compliments. I'm saying she's very well-preserved. She must do
zero
trekking and no exercise with the other women at all. She stays home while they gather wood and forage for fruit. She just sits in her caves all day, eating the meats they bring her, emerging only to pluck quandongs from trees. I calculate that she is twenty.”

“How do you know that?”

Annie grinned. “The tribesmen spoke about a blazing spear of fire that lit the sky the week she was born. They took it as yet another sign of her specialness. I calculated that that must have been the Flinders Comet, which sailed past in February 1995.”

“Mmhmm.”

“That checks out with their description of a summer heat wave. They think Sola was born to douse those fires of hell, and that the comet was a demon's last effort to destroy the magic child.”

“A spear from way up high?”

“Exactly. I'm almost sure that ‘spear' was the Flinders Comet. I talked to some astronomers about it. Visibility around the equator is good. Some sailors went as far up as Hawaii at the time and got some excellent shots of the comet. So yeah, February '95…that puts Sola's age at twenty, almost to the week.”

Rain exhaled. Annie could see that he was ready for bed. “Happy birthday, princess.”

“Mmhmm. You're very taken with her, aren't you?”

Rain didn't respond, but Annie could see he was thinking. She snuck sidelong glances at him as she prepared the bamboo mats, dragging extra sections in for his wide body and long legs and covering the frame with a foamy, blow-up mattress from her luggage. By the time she was finishing Rain spoke.

“It's surreal, isn't it? Being caught between worlds.”

Anne gestured for him to come over. He did, body decorated with streaks of light from the window and the glimmering candle by the bed. “I don't feel it as deeply as you do,” Annie said.

Rain settled into bed, one hand on Annie's hip. “My father. He had the same problem. He never felt at home in any society, no matter where he went. By the end of his academic career he was travelling all the time, moving from country to country for quick fellowships and strips of tenure. He belonged nowhere. He started to see visions. He thought he saw glimpses of God, that he could see the lie in every society, the fabrications in every culture. Even his own.”

Annie laughed. “You have a bit of that in you, Mr. I-hate-the-West.”

Rain fidgeted. “Maybe. But I find it hard to laugh about. He was a mess by the end of his life. They had to put him on Fluanxol. An anti-psychotic.”

“He went insane?”

Rain nodded. Then shook his head. “Yes and no. He lost his ability to function normally. He would leave the house in his bathrobe, show up at conferences with unbrushed hair and gin breath. He delivered these poetic speeches that were kind of brilliant but also kind of…didn't make sense.”