Raptor (34 page)

“Of course not,” said Gudinand dazedly. “But… but if she is your twin… a girl so young…”

“Alas,” I said, assuming an air of melancholy. “Not young enough to have her virginity still. There was a tragic love affair. With one of her tutors—but he proved faithless, and married someone else. That is why our guardian keeps Juhiza under such strict restraint. That is also why she has determined never to love again.”

“Well…” said Gudinand, looking radiant at the happy prospect. “Probably it is better that she is not virgin, because she will know… er… what to do.”

“I daresay. And she ought to be a most enlightening teacher at your initiation, as you call it. You will be a better lover of other women afterward, when your affliction is removed and you can
have
other women.”

“Liufs Guth,” Gudinand whispered to himself. Then he said, “Not that it matters, but… is she pretty?”

I shrugged. “What brother ever can admire or even assess his own sister? Still, Juhiza
is
my twin, and people do say that we resemble one another.”

“And you are fair of countenance, indeed. Well… what can I say, Thorn? If Juhiza really is amenable to doing this extreme kindness for an absolute stranger, I can only thank and bless her. And you, too. How might we arrange the meeting?”

“Why not right here in this copse?” I suggested. “There are no prying eyes hereabout. And it might be of some significance—perhaps even make the cure more quick and sure—if you and she lie together in this place where I first witnessed your suffering. Who knows? That seizure may prove to have been your
last.
Ja, I think it should be here. And you two will certainly not want me around. So I shall not even come along to introduce her. I will simply direct her to this place, and send her here tomorrow night, at the hour you and I have been accustomed to meet.”

“Audagei af Guth faúr jah iggar!” Gudinand said feelingly: “God’s blessing on both of you!”

And that was how “Juhiza” came to meet Gudinand.

The next day, when I went to the lakeside copse at the appointed twilight hour, I of course wore my feminine garb—gown, kerchief, some beautifying but not excessive touches of cosmetics on my face and a modest but becoming number of the baubles I had bought in Basilea. Under my clothes, I wore the binding strophion around my chest to upraise and enhance my breasts, and a girdling band to clasp my virile member tight against my lower belly and render it imperceptible. I also wore my feminine sandals, because, every other time I had been with Gudinand, except when we were barefooted, I had worn my cowhide boots—so the sandals made “Juhiza,” at first sight, seem a trifle shorter than Thorn.

Some still-conscious trace of my male self kept trying to insinuate into my mind the accusation that I was doing nothing but disguising myself, as I had done in Vesontio to test the response of the riverfront prostitutes—and that I was being nothing better than a prostitute myself, soliciting the favors of an innocent young man for my own base purposes. But my female self put that troublesome idea firmly out of my head. Yes, I was taking advantage of this opportunity to consummate a union with the Gudinand for whom my admiration, affection and yearning had been building during these months I had known him. But I could not believe that to be an utterly
base
motive. After all, I was the only female anywhere who would willingly do this for him, to liberate him from his crippling affliction and let him henceforward lead a normal life—not with me, Juhiza, for I would be moving on eastward at summer’s end—but with some lover or wife of his own choosing, and in some higher employment than the miserable occupation he had for so long been enduring.

As for my male self’s nagging insistence that Juhiza was merely Thorn in disguise… well, it is true that both gods and mortals have been known to adopt the garb of the opposite sex, either for frolic or for mischief. The pagans say that Wotan wooed Rhind the Winter Queen by dressing himself in female attire, because Rhind scorned all male suitors. But I was not dissembling; I was female; I was entitled by nature to
appear
the female that I was and am.

Long ages before my time, the poet Terence wrote, “I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me.” I do not think I was presumptuous in believing, because I was both a man
and
a woman, that I was even better qualified than Terence to aver that “nothing human is alien to me.” So when I went as Juhiza to meet Gudinand, I left behind every doubt and uncertainty. I was a female and I would
be
a female. I was firmly convinced that, if I were a man, I could unhesitatingly have fallen in love with the young woman I was then. But I would let circumstances decide that. I would simply wait for the outcome of this encounter: to prove or disprove how authentic and successful a female I was.

Gudinand had admitted to being tongue-tied with strangers, and today he was most noticeably fidgety and flushed of face. However, the moment I introduced myself, he blurted in amazed admiration, “Why, you
are
almost identical to my friend Thorn. I mean your brother Thorn. Except”—and he blushed even redder—“Thorn is only a handsome boy and you are a most beautiful girl.” I smiled and inclined my head in maidenly thanks for the compliment, and he babbled on, “You are also just a little smaller and more slender than he. And… you have protuberances and curves where a boy does not.”

Well,
he
also had a protuberance, quite evident at the crotch of his trousers. And, I confess, I had been heavy-lidded with desire since the day before. Now my various female organs were all but palpitating. So I said brazenly:

“Gudinand, we both know why we are met here. Would you not like a clearer look at my curves?” His blush deepened almost to maroon. I went on, “I know what I look like underneath my clothes, but I have never seen you otherwise than full-clad. Why do not we both undress at the same time? That way, we will spare ourselves all the time-wasting feints and coynesses of new-met lovers getting acquainted with one another.”

I am sure that, if Gudinand had ever in his life had any normal social relations with any girl or woman, he would have been scandalized by my blatant shamelessness. But he appeared to take it for granted that I was a woman of the world and knew the proper ways of boy-meeting-girl, and he obediently if awkwardly began to doff his garments. So did I, not awkwardly but with provocative grace and slowness. As I revealed more and more of myself, Gudinand’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened and his breathing became a panting. I tried to seem in cool possession of myself, and to restrain my own responses at seeing him totally naked for the first time. But that was difficult. The moment I saw his fascinum—as ruddy, large and rigid as Brother Peter’s ever had been—I felt a warm, thick wetness issue from my female parts and ooze down the inside of one thigh. A little surprised at that, I let one of my hands brush myself there, and found that those parts had opened most invitingly. Also, they were so sensitive to that merest touch that I shuddered at the thrill.

Gudinand’s wide and wondering gaze roamed up and down me, from my face to my breasts to my groin, and the blush that had suffused only his face now spread midway down his chest. He moved his lips several times, and had to moisten them with a lick of his tongue before he could get out the next words. (I have to say that my whole body thrilled, then, as if he had licked me; though at the same time I worried that he might be getting so very agitated that it could bring on one of his seizures.) But all he said was:

“Why do you not remove that last bit of apparel—that band you wear around your hips?”

I said primly, repeating what Wyrd had told me, “A decent Christian woman is expected always to keep wearing at least one of her undergarments while doing—what we are about to do. It will not impede our pleasure, Gudinand.” I spread wide my arms. “Come, let us give pleasure to one another.”

Now with his eyes downcast, he muttered, “I… I do not really know… well… how that is done…”

“Be not embarrassed. Thorn already told me that. You will find that it comes easily and naturally. First…” I took him in my arms and eased us both gently down onto the soft grass, lying on our sides, our bodies pressed close together. And immediately, startlingly, with no more excitation than our closeness, Gudinand experienced what must have been his first-ever sexual release.

I could only assume that he had never once indulged in what the monks of St. Damian’s condemned as “the solitary vice,” or that he had ever even experienced a succuba-inspired dream resulting in self-pollution. Because his fascinum gave a mighty throb against my belly and spurted nearly up to my breasts a most incredibly copious, warm, almost-hot jet of that fluid. When it did, Gudinand uttered a long, loud cry of surprise, relief and unfeigned joy.

What is more, I cried out, too. Without having had any other stimulation—merely from the realization that I, as a female, had so easily given this young man such pleasure—my own body emulated, in its fashion, what had happened to him. I felt that indescribable gathering and rushing and bursting inside myself, and my body convulsed almost as if I were in the throes of a falling-sickness fit, and I too gave a long, loud ululation in accompaniment. I had not been as long deprived of sexual enjoyment as had Gudinand; but this
was
the first time I had engaged in it since I last had lain with Deidamia.

There ensued a rather lengthy and quiet interval, while we lay as we had been, still tightly clasped together—indeed, almost glued together by our exudations—and gradually the thrillings of our bodies and the gasping of our breathing subsided. At last, Gudinand murmured shyly in my ear:

“So that is how it is done?”

“Well…” I said, with a small laugh, “that is one way. It gets even better, Gudinand. This having been your first time, you were, let us say, a bit too eager. Now your body will require a short rest before that can happen again, and I promise you the next will surpass the first one. In the meantime, let us simply play with each other’s… well… let me demonstrate. And you do to me, more or less, what I do to you.”

So I showed him every means of mutual sexual arousal that Deidamia and I had taught to one another—and the numerous variations and gradations she and I had devised—though this time the partners’ functions were reversed: I being Sister Deidamia, so to speak, and Gudinand being Brother Thorn. For me, this encounter was exhilarating enough, simply because it was my first as a genuine female, but I believe that the seeming capability of Gudinand and myself to keep on changing our identities in such dizzying variegation—at least in my own imagination—gave an additional zest to my raptures.

After a considerable while of our doing everything
but
the conventional joining of man and woman, I held Gudinand away at arm’s length and said, “Your fountain seems inexhaustible. But do save some of it until I can show you another way. These variant couplings are enjoyable, I know, but—”

“Enjoyable…” he gasped, “is a pale word… for what they are…”

“Still, they are but variations. According to what you told Thorn—and he told me—your falling sickness can only be cured by your sexual initiation. And I would take that to mean your initiation into what Christian husbands and wives and priests regard as the sole and single normal, orthodox, decent and allowable manner of sexual intercourse. If the conventional manner
is
the one necessary to rid you of your affliction, we really ought to employ it at least once.”

“Ja, Juhiza. And how do we do that?”

“Look here,” I said, and pointed. “This place of mine where you just now had your finger. When next your organ has raised itself into a fascinum, you put
it
in there, but slowly, gently, to its very hilt. And then… well… akh, Gudinand, surely you have seen street dogs and farm animals do this thing!”

“Of course, of course. Then… let me see… you will have to raise yourself on elbows and knees, while I—”

“Ne, ni allis!” I snapped, rather angrily, for that was the posture in which I had been used by the vile Brother Peter. “We are not street dogs! Akh, in time, no doubt, if we lie together on other occasions, we will try that variation also. But, for now, I will show you how the devout Christian men and women do it, as soon as you are ready again.”

“Very soon,” said Gudinand, smiling beatifically. “Just the thought of it—see—is already arousing me and… akh,
Juhiza!”

He gave that exclamation because I had embraced him with one of my arms and rolled him prone atop my supine body, while with my other hand I guided his only-limber but quickly hardening organ.

“Liufs Guth!” he cried, as it slid in, stiffening even more quickly as it did so.

I likewise made several fervent exclamations, then and thereafter, but, if they were coherent words at all, I do not remember what they were. I felt whole-souled gratification when Gudinand was inside me, and I cannot say whether I experienced such sublime joy because I felt so much affection and desire for Gudinand, or whether it was simply because now I knew what I was doing, and
wanted
to be doing it.

Also, in this particular position: the male partner atop the female—a position as novel to me as it was to Gudinand—I could enjoy two new stimulants to my arousal. Though Gudinand tried not to lie too heavily on me, his chest now and again brushed tantalizingly against my eagerly upthrust nipples. And I could feel, as I never had with Brother Peter in the street-dog position
he
always insisted on, Gudinand’s heavy male scrotal sac thumping voluptuously against the delicate frenulum below my orifice. Furthermore, and best of all for me, having Gudinand lying on top of me meant that his every thrust rubbed his lower body against the cloth band under which was my own sometimes-male organ. It was not now being male; it remained limp and passive; but it had become tender and sensitive to an almost intolerably exaggerated degree. Gudinand’s rhythmic rubbing against it added such a stimulus to all the others I was feeling that I was soon quite delirious, nearly to the point of swooning.