Eighty Days White (20 page)

The sound was light and playful and unlike any tolling church bell that I had ever heard.

‘The shows are beginning,’ Grayson said to me. ‘You’re going to love this.’

She had already begun to move towards the French windows, which had theatrically swung open at the sound of the bell, seemingly of their own accord.

Grayson took my hand and I followed him out into the garden.

The air was soft and warm and filled with the heady scent of tropical flowers, although the garden itself contained only a large field of grass on which the marquees sat, ringed by ordinary London plane trees.

‘Where is that smell coming from?’ I asked, inhaling deep gulps of air.

‘The heaters, I think,’ Grayson replied, ‘although I’m not entirely sure. There’s always been something a little magical about these parties.’

Tall glass cylinders, each containing a glowing flame, were dotted around the patio and the lawn and I noticed when I stood near one that every minute or so they hissed, exhaling a little scented vapour into the air.

‘Your first night here too?’ said a cool voice behind us as I was trying to decide whether the flames suspended in the heaters were real. From a distance, the glass cylinders were invisible so it looked as though a dozen tiny fires were suspended in the air across the lawn, as if the party had been gatecrashed by a dragon, or a group of marauding Vikings.

The voice belonged to a tall, blonde woman who was dressed in a bright red, blue and gold Wonder Woman outfit. When I looked closer, I realised that she was in fact completely naked and her costume was merely body paint. In one hand she held a lasso, and in the other, a long, dark wig.

‘It was too scratchy to wear for long,’ she confessed when she saw me staring at the length of hair in her hand. ‘I’ve been looking for a pot plant to hide it in.’

I began to giggle, until Grayson shushed both of us.

‘I’m Lauralynn,’ she whispered into my ear as we slipped through the entrance of the first marquee and she slung the wig around a tent pole.

‘Lily,’ I replied, but it just came out as ‘Lil …’ as the last syllable was lost when my jaw dropped in response to the sight in front of us.

We had entered a forest.

The tent was full of large, squat trees. Each one of them with gnarled and twisted branches as if it were a hundred or more years old with roots that travelled far into the earth.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I became aware that the twisted limbs of the trees were not all made of wood. Some were human. Each tree was covered with thick hessian rope and tied within each mess of rope was a naked human being. Some were suspended between branches as if trapped in a spider’s web. Others were tied onto the base of the tree as if they were a part of it, melded to the very core of the trunk, blending with the roots. Yet others again hung in bundles from the branches’ ends, as if they had sprouted there like fruit. In the very centre of the room hung a tree that wasn’t buried in the earth at all but rather tied from the roof of the tent with ropes that ran all around it and then into the ground like roots. Tied to the base of the tree were a man and a woman, embracing. The rope ran from them over everything. Binding, twisting, connecting, joining, making the forest whole. One.

On the ceiling in glowing lights was the word
Earth
and below that the phrase
What constrains us also sets us free.

‘Wow,’ Lauralynn said. ‘Deep.’

I could have stayed and stared at the rope forest for an eternity. There was something peaceful about it. The faces
of the nude and bound men and women were radiant and unblinking. They were like earthly angels.

But I could see the flash of red from Grayson’s coat heading for the exit and hurried after him. She was no doubt miles ahead of us by now and I didn’t want to miss anything.

Within the next tent was a large lake with a spotlight blazing into the very middle. It appeared to be completely empty. Not even a ripple decorated the surface of the water, yet I could see that Grayson and Lauralynn, along with the rest of the party-goers, were leaning over the pool and seemed captivated by whatever lay beneath the surface.

I crept to the rocky edge, again grateful that She had provided a loop on the train that attached to a bracelet on my wrist so that I could hold my dress off the ground to avoid ruining it.

Under the lake’s surface lay twelve men. All of them blond, young, and virtually mirror images of each other in height and stature. They were arranged like the dial of a clock with their heads pointing into the centre. Only their chests were naked. From the hips down they were covered in a filmy white substance that moved in the water like seaweed. Their eyes were closed and for a brief and frightening moment I thought that they were all dead and we were viewing an underwater graveyard filled with beautiful corpses but then my eyes were drawn to the centre of the pond and I forgot everything else. In the middle, beneath the water, was another of the most beautiful women that I had ever seen. Her skin was so pale it had a gossamer quality to it and her cheekbones and eyebrows were so sharp they
verged on alien. Her white-blonde hair fell around her shoulders and spread into the water like Medusa’s crown.

She was cradled in the arms of another, much stronger-looking woman with short, cropped dark hair and an almost completely flat chest. Her hips were square like a man’s, but her waist tapered like a woman’s, and around her thighs she wore a white harness with a dildo attached to it.

So startling was the sight of the nude, still bodies within the lake that the occupants of the room had fallen completely silent. A hush spread over us like a wave.

Then a woman’s voice, Russian, sprang from the loudspeakers.

‘My name is Luba,’
the voice said.

At the same time, the water began to churn. Each of the bodies rose into the air on platforms and when they were level with the surface, the platforms clicked together beneath them as if the water had become solid like ice.

The dark-haired woman pulled Luba to her feet and they began to dance. Around them the men pirouetted and swayed on their feet, worshipping the two women in the centre. The white costumes I’d thought were seaweed under water became like feathers that glowed when in the penumbra of the spotlight. They were birds. Swans. It was an erotic version of
Swan Lake,
and the two women in the centre were dancing a dance of death.

As the dance appeared to come to an end, Luba lay limp in the arms of the other woman, who had her hands twisted around her neck in a violent embrace as the two of them turned together this way and that. Just as the music stirred into a final encore, the dark-haired woman plunged the dildo into Luba’s opening and she immediately sprang to
life again and they kissed passionately. Then the panelled floor whirred once more and the platforms sank back into place, plunging the performers under the water again as they relaxed into stillness.

Applause rang through the room from the startled crowd as the spotlight switched off and in its place a message on the ceiling lit up, like it had in the previous room. This one read,
Water,
and beneath that:
What drowns us also sustains us.

I heard the performance in the next marquee before I reached it. Over the rustling of costumes and the stifled chatter of the guests talking about the show in hushed tones came very clearly the sound of people fucking. Breathless moans and gasps, the high-pitched shriek of a woman coming and the deeper growl of a man reaching his own climax, the slapping of bodies together, the brush of skin on skin, screams that blended pain and pleasure in perfect unity.

The sight that met my eyes, though, was not what I expected. Instead of an ordinary orgy on a sea of beds, the couples were hanging from the ceiling and copulating in mid-air. Each of them wore a pair of wings and their lovemaking was both frantic and joyful, but more animal than human. The room smelled strongly of sex and, for the first time that evening, I felt a dart of interest inside in response to the bared breasts and cocks on vivid display. The other shows had seemed so ethereal that it had been difficult to relate to the participants and I had been intrigued but unaroused, as I would be if looking at nude sculptures or photographs. But in the presence of so many men and
women happily fucking, I could feel my nipples hardening and my pussy getting wet.

‘Holy shit,’ said Lauralynn, who had once more appeared by my side. ‘They’re not attached to anything.’

I looked up. One pair of each couple, the one with the larger wings coloured in luminous dark violet, shades of black cherry or deep moss green, was securely harnessed to the tent ceiling, but the man or woman in his or her arms was completely loose and reliant on their partner to keep them safe. The unsecured partners wore flimsy pale-coloured wings in varying shades of pearly white, baby pink and cream.

‘Fallen seraphs,’ whispered Lauralynn. ‘Saved by their demons. Cool.’

Someone else shushed her. It was Thomas, the man in the tuxedo with the woman attached to the chain.

Despite their precarious position, none of the ‘seraphs’ looked the least bit afraid.

The sign on the ceiling of this tent read,
Air: What makes us fall also helps us to rise.

‘Fire next, then,’ Lauralynn said cheerily, ignoring the filthy look that Thomas gave her.

I remembered that Liana had once mentioned fire play, and said that it felt like a warm hug. Nonetheless, I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

With my first step into the room I was plunged into darkness and total silence. As if all the people had vanished and it was just me in a void.

‘Lauralynn?’ I said softly. ‘Grayson?’

There was no response.

Then a soft hand slipped into mine and a woman’s voice said, ‘Don’t be afraid. Would you come to see my Mistress?’

I nodded, and then realised that the pitch darkness of the room made this an unreliable form of communication. ‘OK,’ I replied, tentatively.

The hand led me around the room to what appeared, in the little that I could see, to be an alcove with a bed in it. Upon the bed I could barely make out the outline of another person. A woman. She seemed to be wearing a mask of some sort, and just the pale skin of her jaw and the shape of her mouth was visible in the darkness.

‘You will need to remove your dress,’ she said. Her voice was warm and inviting, and I trusted her. ‘And tie your hair back.’ A hairband was pushed into my hand, and then both women helped to hoist me onto the bed where I lay flat on my belly and relaxed, enjoying the feeling of the fabric cover pressing against my bare breasts and legs.

A sense of warmth pervaded the room. Then the warmth became hotter and I heard the
whoosh
of an open flame nearby. The heat increased as the flame slapped down on my body and snapped away again so quickly that by the time I had jumped in response to the impact it was gone again. Another wave of heat rolled over my back as the woman drew her fire wand over my buttocks and back without touching the skin.

Her breath was soft as she bent and whispered into my ear. ‘Is there a particular shape that calls to you?’ she asked.

The words came out of my mouth before I’d even thought about it. ‘A tear,’ I replied.

Something cool trailed over my skin. Then the wand beat down on it again and I sucked in a gasp of air as the fire
lit up the lighter fluid that the woman had applied and it blazed over my skin in the shape of a teardrop. It went out again as fast as it spread, too fast to burn. My heart pumped so quickly it felt as though it would burst out of my chest and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of happiness, as though all of my worries had been blasted away in the heat.

I collapsed back onto the bed and heard another
whoosh
as the flame was extinguished and the alcove went quiet again. The women let me lie still until I regained my senses and then helped me up to stand and get into my dress again.

‘I can’t see,’ I said, as they led me back into the pitch-black main room.

‘Follow the flames,’ they replied in unison.

Every few seconds a guest in another part of the room would burst into fire and slowly I made my way through the tent guided by human candles.

The ceiling lights flashed and another phrase appeared.
Fire: What burns us also brings us light.

Lauralynn was waiting for me as I stepped out of the tent exit and back into the garden.

‘Lily, is it?’ I nodded in recognition and agreement. ‘I hope you don’t mind my hanging around,’ she said. ‘My partner couldn’t make it tonight and I’m here solo. You seem like the kind of girl I’d get along with.’

She was grinning like the Cheshire cat. In her red lace-up knee-length stiletto boots, the only part of her costume that wasn’t painted on, and me in my flat slippers, she was easily a foot taller than me and my eyes drew exactly level with her breasts and the gold loops that adorned her nipples. In the centre of each ring sparkled a tiny ruby and I wondered if
she had decorated herself especially tonight to match the outfit or if she always wore them like that.

‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I seem to have lost my friends too,’ I added. Grayson and She had long disappeared.

‘Are the shows finished, then?’ I asked. They’d all been amazing, but somehow I still felt as though there would be something more. A climax of sorts.

‘There’s the fifth element,’ Lauralynn said. ‘In the middle tent, I think.’

It was the largest tent of them all and sat directly in the centre of the other four but, until she pointed it out, I hadn’t noticed that we had been travelling around the shows in a circle and were yet to go through the middle.

‘What’s the fifth element?’ I asked, struggling to remember the little philosophy that we had covered in my literature degree. All I could think of was the Bruce Willis film.

‘It’s Aether. Everything else,’ Lauralynn mused. ‘The energy that drives the world. I wonder what they’ll make of that. Let’s go and see.’

She strode away and I rushed to keep up with her, admiring her rear as she walked. Lauralynn was also a beautiful girl but, with her thick limbs and broad smile, she seemed much more real than the dancer Luba, or the leopard-shoed woman that Thomas was leading around.