Xavier and Boudica, her colt by her side and her foal safely inside, had stayed. We were together again.
WEFOUNDno bodies. We assumed they had all been put into the water, even those he had used to try and repair his ravaged features. I did not tell Aleksey what I had found in the backwater at the base of the falls, neither the bodies nor the… gold.
In that still pool, churned perhaps by the vast tumult it had been through for so many miles, the silt had finally given up its treasure. Gold had lain in abundance in the grit, large nuggets as big as my fist, and so many chunks of good size that as I had lain there, facedown, floating in that horrible soup, they had shone even through the murk of the decay.
I think the Jesuit had found the gold and that initially he had wanted the colony and the fort cleared out so he could stake a claim to it and take it. Perhaps he had also wanted tales of such horror to surround the place that it would be haunted and thus none would ever venture near.
But then his madness and sickness had increased as the disease had taken him, and he had confused his greed for this with lust for sacrifice. I don’t know. Perhaps he just wanted to be healthy again to enable him to get the gold and enjoy its power. Perhaps he did not know of the gold, and I am surmising all this in the safety of my cabin on our little lake in the forest. One thing is for certain: I cannot ask him now.
Of our whole party, the colonists and the soldiers in the fort, only Aleksey and I survived to return home. They are all dead. At least… I assume they are…. I saw the devil dead. I saw the demon child dead. The witch? I cast her over the falls. But I managed to survive it, and I believe that in some ways our histories were the same. She was a survivor….
Chapter Fourteen
WEDIDnot leave the area immediately, which may sound strange given how much I hated the place and the associations it now had for both of us. Although, truth be told, the falls retained no fear for me now, other than that they would hold for any sensible man—respect for their power, awe at their remote beauty. But we needed some days to prepare for the return journey and to indulge a very pleasant activity—eating!
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 stickintohim. 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.
ALEKSEYISalways 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.”
