Dark Enchantment (22 page)

Upstairs, of course, things did change. My father remarried: a mousy woman from Thera whom I despised. I grew taller and stronger and changed in other ways. And I discovered another entrance to the Palace Below – a cupboard around the corner from my room that had once been a stairwell. It now contained old masks and props from the Bull Festival and was rarely entered, but at the back, I discovered, was a badly mortared brick wall and when I pulled out enough bricks I found a descending shaft choked with rubble. Surreptitiously, one piece at a time, I removed that rubble, enough to make a narrow slot I could squeeze down into the dark below, where it came out in an obscure corner of some abandoned storeroom,
behind
a stack of roof tiles. It became my private entrance and I never told anyone, not even Asterion, that this was how I gained access.

You will note that I never had any plan to clear the stair completely. I did not want to release Asterion into the world; I knew his capacity for violence. And, though it shames me to acknowledge it, I was proud to be his only link to the world above. Beneath the innocence of my pleasure in his friendship was a more selfish pleasure in having him all to myself.

And we
were
friends. It might seem impossible to believe that such a man could crave company of more than the most basic sort, but Asterion was lonely. He was gruff and short-tempered, but he tolerated my girlish chatter and my teasing and even my clambering upon his frame. He listened to my stories and complaints, and when I grew older I passed on to him palace gossip and news of the outside world. I treated him carelessly, only visiting when the mood took me, blind to his feelings. Until one day I tried to sit on his knee and he brushed me off.

‘No. Stop that.’

‘But I want to sit there!’

‘You are too heavy now, Ari.’

‘Too heavy?’ I was outraged. I slapped his huge thigh, as hard as a slab of oak. ‘You mean you aren’t strong enough to take my weight on your skinny legs?’

He shifted uneasily. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Don’t you like me sitting on your knee?’

‘No, I don’t.’

I put my fists on my hips. ‘Why not?’

‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re too young.’

I glared. ‘I’m too heavy
and
too young?’ That made him growl deep in his chest, but my pout gave way to a smile. ‘Don’t you
like
my bottom, Asterion? Isn’t it soft enough for your lap?’ I turned my back briefly, pulling my skirt tight so I could wriggle it at him.

‘Ari!’ His warning rumble was like distant thunder.

But I was all heavy-lidded eyes and sly smile now. ‘Why don’t you want me sitting on your lap, Asterion? Are you scared I might touch something I shouldn’t? You scared of my soft little bottom pressing against your naughty –’

‘Ari. You are too young to play this sort of game.’

‘Too young?’ I repeated, cupping the curve of my breast. My tight bodice nipped in my waist but left both of them bare and enticingly framed, and I knew it. ‘Have you not noticed these?’

‘Stop this. You are just a child.’

I bared my teeth. ‘I am not! If it wasn’t for this stinking vow to Artemis I’d be married by now. I’d have a husband and a baby!’

‘Don’t mock the goddess. She will hear you.’

‘She won’t.’ I cast a disparaging glance at the ceiling. ‘She walks the hills and doesn’t come down beneath the earth. I think she’s scared of you.’

‘Don’t. The gods are merciless, Ari.’

I stuck my bottom lip out. ‘Let me sit in your lap. I want to.’

‘Why?’

‘I like it. Go
on
.’

He glared at me, his exhalations loud. But he didn’t stop me moving in to his knees. This time I didn’t sit demurely on one knee, though; I picked up my long skirt and straddled both of them, facing him. His legs were hard under my thighs and bottom.

‘Don’t you like this?’ I asked in my meekest voice.

‘You shouldn’t be doing it.’

‘I’m not a baby any more, you know. Look.’ I gathered the
flounced
linen folds in my hands, drawing them up my pale thighs. Asterion looked down between us and seemed to stop breathing, as I revealed the dark delta at my groin. ‘I have fur.’

His brown eyes widened.

‘Would you like to touch it?’ I asked softly.

Very slowly, he shook his head.

With a
moue
of disappointment I let the cloth fall again, veiling my immodestly spread thighs. ‘Can I see yours?’

He groaned. ‘Ari …’

‘It’s not like it would be the first phallus I’ve seen, silly,’ I chided him. ‘I’ve been to the games, and seen the bull-dancers. And Cholios, when he’s on guard outside my room, he always touches himself when I walk past. And his sticks out under his chiton. He rubs it like it itches, but that just makes it stick up harder.’ With great daring I put out my hand to touch the bulge beneath Asterion’s tunic. He was wearing the simplest of short chitons, under one shoulder and pinned over the other, with no belt. Undyed linen, it had the labrys pattern of the royal household worked in red thread around the border. It might even have been a piece I’d woven myself; weaving was after all the principle duty of the women of the palace. ‘I just want to see.’

‘Why?’

‘To see whether you’re the same as other men.’

It was easy to pull the cloth aside; he did not stop me. A sigh escaped my lips. His phallus lay flopped in a curve on his upper thigh, smooth and soft-looking like the finest kidskin, but stirring restlessly even as I watched. His foreskin pouted, wrinkly.

‘Am I the same, then?’ He sounded a little bitter.

‘You look bigger. Can I touch it?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Strain was audible in his voice as he said, ‘Because if you touch it, it might get angry, and then I will hurt you.’

I bit my lip. ‘Will you hurt me
with
that?’

His chest heaved. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

‘You are only little.’

I fiddled with the edge of my bodice, stroking my breast. ‘What if I were to stroke it very gently – would it get angry then?’

‘I fear so.’ His phallus stirred, straightening as it filled out. It trailed a smudge of wetness across his thigh.

‘But I can stroke you here.’ I ran my hands down his chest. ‘You like that, don’t you? It doesn’t make you angry?’

‘Ah,’ he grunted.

‘And I don’t mind you stroking me, Asterion.’ I took his hands and placed them on my breasts. They were warm, and they cupped and enfolded me. They felt so strong that I was washed with dizziness, and pressed myself into his caresses. ‘That feels nice, see. Just stroking.’

‘Yes.’

‘Shall I tell you a story?’ I wrapped one hand around his phallus. It was definitely bigger now, and almost standing upright, and as I squeezed experimentally I felt it harden under my hand. Asterion did not object; he seemed mesmerised by my breasts, which he was playing with. I’d never touched a man’s phallus before. I was delighted how warm it was, how silky to the touch, how alive. My fingers could not quite circle its girth. It was difficult to take in all the new sensations and to talk at the same time. ‘This is the story: back in the Golden Age, when the gods had first made human beings, men and women were the same as each other and everybody was happy. There was lots of food. There was no fighting. But there were
no
babies either and although everyone lived for hundreds of years, people started to die eventually and the gods got worried. So they took all the people one night and Hypnos put them to sleep, and Hermes cut a piece out of every woman and stuck it onto a man. Since then people have been able to make babies, but the wounds have never healed properly – women still bleed sometimes. And
everyone
is unhappy. Women miss the flesh that used to be inside them and long to open their legs and take it back; the phalli are desperate to return to the bodies they came from, so all men want to do is stick it into any woman they meet.’

‘Who told you that story?’ he rumbled.

Both my hands were now sliding up and down his length. He was big – really big – and his ruddy helm was poking from its cowl. ‘Just the servant women, while we were weaving. They always talk about that sort of thing.’ I didn’t tell him that this stroking motion was one that had been demonstrated with much ribald laughter on a wooden shuttle. I was most gratified that it seemed to be working, and that the column of flesh in my hands was no less hard now than the wood had been.

His voice, when he spoke, was oddly thick too. ‘Well, they are wrong. Women do not welcome the entry of the phallus.’

I licked my lips. ‘No, they’re right. I can feel it inside me: an emptiness. A wanting. Sometimes it’s so horrible I want to cry. I have put my fingers in that hole just to make it feel better. Would you put your finger inside me now, Asterion?’

Without a word he slipped one hand between my open thighs, cupping the fuzz of my mound in his big palm. His middle finger slid between the lips of my split.

‘You are wet, Ari.’

‘Yes. The first time I played with myself I got so wet I thought I had brought on my bleeding. But this feels good, Asterion.’

‘Good?’ He seemed bemused. One finger, seeking the source
of
the moisture, plunged into mouth of my sex, sinking deep. I whimpered. ‘Am I hurting you?’ he breathed.

‘No! Oh, that is good! It feels nice when I’m filled up like that.’ I had to whisper my next words: ‘I know what you do to the Athenians.’

His eyes widened, showing rims of white.

‘I would like to feel your phallus inside me.’

‘No … If I did that it would hurt you. I am too big.’

‘I know.’ I was squirming on his hand. ‘But I want it anyway. Do you want to put it in me?’

He made a funny noise in his throat. ‘Squeeze harder,’ he ordered, ‘stroke faster.’

I increased my efforts until I was actually tugging his phallus. ‘If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?’

He moaned assent, his eyes rolling. Sweat was springing up on his chest.

‘I like to have something inside me. Fingers or a weaving shuttle. But what feels best of all is when I do that and touch myself at the front here at the same time. There is a piece of flesh the size of a pea … and when I do both those things I am taken by the gods, Asterion. I come.’

‘Women do not come.’ His big frame was shaking.

‘We do. It is like a wave curling over and crashing on rocks. And I can do it over and over. Once I tried to see how often, and I got to a score before I fell asleep exhausted. But – this is the bit you must never let my father know – Do you promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘I needed something the right shape and size to put inside me, so I took up the statue of Artemis from the shrine in my room, the one made of olive wood from Delos, and I fucked myself with it, Asterion. It was all knobbly, and when I pulled
it
out it had my blood on it. I promised her my maidenhead and then I gave it to her.’

‘Oh gods …’

‘But that’s not the worst thing. After that I wanted to come again so this time I stuck that statue up my bottom and I came with the goddess in my
arse
.’

With a bellow that made the room ring, Asterion spurted seed between my fingers. It slopped on my belly and the under-sides of my breasts in big wet splashes. I was completely taken by surprise, and all I could do was hold on while he strained and quivered beneath me, his head thrown back and his throat distended. I rubbed the slippery gooey stuff over the head of his shaft.

He seemed to take a long time to come back to me.

‘See,’ I said, unable to stop my voice shaking. ‘I should have taken my dress off; now you’ve got it all messed up.’ I scooped at the gobbets on my breasts, trying to wipe them off but smearing them instead.

His chest heaving, he held me with his glare. Sweat glistened in the hollow of his throat. ‘Show me,’ he demanded. ‘Show me how you come.’

I nodded dumbly. Then I licked his seed off my fingers. It tasted grassy and sweet. I was pleased I liked it so much, and he seemed astonished that I would lick it up so eagerly. Plunging my wet fingers obediently between my thighs, I began to stir myself. Asterion pushed me further back on his knees and laid me back in his hands, holding me safely over the floor. Working my flesh, I felt the first gathering of my storm, and over my own gasps I heard his harsh breathing and little grunts. Soon I felt him reach between my parted legs and manoeuvre the head of his spent but still heavy phallus to the split wet flesh beneath my moving fingers. As my inner waves rose to mountains he pushed his helm into my tight slot. His
sweat
dripped onto my shaking breasts and he stooped to lick me, making me gasp with pleasure. He was right; his phallus was too big even for a deflowered maiden. He could only press in an inch or two, even when I fought to accommodate him. But I came squealing and kicking, my sex clenching around his fat girth.

That was only the first occasion, of course. In time he taught me to accept his whole length, administered with full vigour, in every position. My visits were sources of sustained and bruising mutual pleasure. And he had a particular liking, almost a compulsion, for licking me; he seemed to go almost into a trance while he was doing that, even when I was straining and shuddering to climax.

I worried for a while that I might fall with child to him, but perhaps it was not surprising that he, like a mule, sowed parched seed.

Then one day the ship with the black sails came from Athens as it did every year, and everything changed.

I was waiting along with my father and stepmother and brothers on the quayside as the cargo was offloaded. My father by this time was elderly, and even under the awning he found the heat of the day a trial, but the ritual is always the same; we are there for the payment of the tribute. It’s no small thing to hold the Athenians as vassals, all the way from our island. We watched as the seven young women were led down the gangplank, followed by six youths, all of them looking pinched with fear and all dressed in plain white chitons – but followed by one young man dressed in the Hellenic style, which is to say in no tunic at all, just sandals and a saffron-dyed himation draped around his shoulders. From feeling bored and weary I snapped to focus: the body of the youth was well worth displaying. He walked with an
arrogant
strut. His skin was tanned to the colour of polished amber and covered long taut planes of muscle. He wasn’t bulky like Asterion, but all of it was good. The first growth of beard graced his cheeks, but there was no hair on his chest. His phallus and scrotum were of goodly proportion and size. And his eyes were blue.