That was too much provocation, and I pounced upon him, which is what I think he’d wanted anyway. I lay heavy upon him, feeling his chuckling vibrate pleasantly against me. I eased his damp shirt open as far as the laces would allow, admiring the prominent collarbone and smooth, hairless flesh. Pushed slightly to one side, the opening revealed one pebbled pink nipple. I fastened my teeth upon it, working it, feeling him swell beneath me. I moved to the other nipple and enjoyed that one for a while as well. He was running his fingers through my hair, which was still as short as I had made it when we first met.
He had grown his somewhat longer, not long enough to tie back, as is the norm for all men, but long enough for me to hold like reins when I mounted him (although I had not actually articulated this thought to him for fear he would be contrary and shave it off once more). He seemed to like my short hair well enough, and it was the best-combed hair in the New World, although it rarely saw actual instrument. He fastened his fingers in it now and used it to tug me off his chest, lifting my face to his. As we were kissing, he rolled us. Closer now to the fire, Aleksey upon me, I could feel my shirt steaming and smell the drying material. It took my mind back to the story I had been telling him, and although I was kissing Aleksey, I was walking once more between the tepees and standing at the edge of the great forest, peering into the never-ending darkness and wondering….
“So…?” As ever, the annoying one appeared to be able to read my mind—when it suited him. “What was your conclusion? I know you must have thought about it until you had solved the puzzle. That is how your mind works. What was your explanation? You know how I love your theories.”
He was chastised for his cheeky comment for some time. It is a pity his punishment and pleasure were always so closely linked. One day, I must think of something he doesn’t like me to do to him and discipline him more effectively. Releasing his cock and letting its head rub up and down the inside of my throat was clearly not a very effective sanction. Pulling off just before he could complete was more amusing, and I smirked at his outrage as I stood up and said I had to check the horses before bed.
I knew what he was planning then. I saw the mutinous look for a moment, so seized him and turned him over onto his belly, pulling his hands behind him. “Niko, no!” He actually sounded genuinely angry. Good. I tied his hands.
I bent to his ear and whispered, “It belongs to me, Aleksey. No one else is allowed to touch it—even you.”
“Pissing will be a little difficult, Nikolai. Let me up. Now.”
“No. I actually do need to see to the horses. You will be quite all right until I return.” I then reached beneath him, unfastened his breeches fully, and lowered them off his backside, framing it with the material. He lashed out with his foot and kicked my groin very neatly. But he was barefoot, so I caught him by his big toe and bit into the sensitive part quite hard. “Be good.”
And with that I left him trussed up and shouting obscenities at me that would have made a sailor blush. They only made me laugh. Aleksey was funny; he appeared to switch from German to French to English when cursing without noticing. He’d had a very privileged education, I could tell.
He had untied himself by my return, which did not surprise me. But he had not relieved his need. He even whispered to me later that night when we were so enmeshed and in the throes of passion that I could not have rightly said who was in whom, “Itisyours, Niko—my body. I am yours. You know that, yes? I would not touch another man even to help him up if he fell. You do know this, yes?”
“What if he were an old man and could not then rise again without assistance? He would die lying in—”
“Stop it—sometimes even you must be serious.Iam serious. About the colony, the soldiers, I—”
“You are serious about the soldiers?Aleksey, I am—”
“You are very, very annoying! Stop it!” He hit me, which only made me laugh and thrust into him harder. “I want you to tell me that you acknowledge I would never—”
I kissed the back of his neck. “I know. I would not make a joke of it if I did not know that.”
There was a silence, and then he said somewhat testily (and muffled because I was pressing him down very hard), “And? You must say the same….”
“I have not been flirting with Redcoats, so I do not—”
“Oh, you are the very devil. You do not spend your time with the Mikky-makky just gutting animals. I know you go into their sweat lodges with them. I know you—”
“Do you know what I most wish we had brought with us from that accursed country of yours?”
“Huh? You are trying to change—”
“Your looking glass, Aleksey. I wish we had a mirror. Then I would remind you what I have to gaze upon all day—when you are here, of course, and not off fucking soldiers.”
He chuckled. “I like it when you curse.”
“I know you do, which is why I don’t do it. It is very bad for little boys to be given—” When roused enough, Aleksey was almost as strong as I, and sometimes more willing to inflict injury to me than I was to him—but then I guess he reasoned my body could not be scarred worse, whereas I did not want to ruin his perfection—so he was well able to reverse our positions, thrust me onto my back, and ruin my fun for a moment, until he straddled me and took me back inside, only now in complete control of my pleasure, riding me as if to war once more, lying low, wild and unrestrained. We came together, his spill projected, wetting my face and landing in my eyes and hair.
Our heartbeats seemed very loud as we came down, drumbeats in the darkness. Perhaps that sound propelled me into the inevitable dream I had that night. It is not a good idea to wander uncertainly between lies and half-truths before bed.
At first it was a relief not to dream about statues of old kings talking in a crypt as they tortured me. I was instead running through trees until I came to a place of open ground, open only because it appeared to have been blasted by a firebrand hurled by an angry sky god. The trees were blackened and burnt to stumps, the earth dark and boggy. But lying all over the ground were the people of the Black Crow: the men, the women, and the children. They were wholly unmarked, and so I went to try and rouse a boy, for I was a child in this dream, and I knew him from another time I could not remember. I picked him up but then dropped him, and as I cried out in horror, a great black cloud of crows rose from the bodies and took flight in the frosty air. He had been as a shell, so light even my thin arms had borne his weight with ease. He was hollow. Unmarked yet hollow they lay, white upon the scorched earth, men, women, and children, all that remained of the great Crow nation, their spirits now returned on strong wings to their ancestral lands. I turned back into the dark trees and then felt hands upon me, warm and loving, and Aleksey murmured, “It is just a nightmare, baby. Hush. They are not torturing you.” I kissed his hand and held it warm in mine, turning into his embrace and finding comfort, only half-awake.
When morning came I could not separate dream from memory. Had I actually run into that clearing as a nine-year-old boy? Is that why I had been beaten—because I had returned screaming about hollow people and the hand of God striking them down? I did not know. But the image of the empty bodies upon the dark ground stayed with me, and I was out of sorts and angry with myself for being so disturbed by things that existed only in the mind—whether dream or memory.
I wish now I had seen that nightmare as an omen and heeded its warning.
Chapter Two
IWOKEwithout the usual tangle of warm limbs I was accustomed to. The bed was cold, but I could see Aleksey across the small room, sitting at the makeshift desk I had fashioned in the corner. He was surrounded by his memories. They were prettier than mine. When I had freed a young king from his tomb, I had inadvertently liberated a large portion of his country’s crown jewels as well: he’d been wearing them for his lying in state, and they had not yet been removed from his body before the sealing of his tomb. In all the agonies of that awful flight from Hesse-Davia, we had only been aware of them really many days later, and then he had been too busy helping me in my wounded state to do much more than wrap them in a cloth and push them to the bottom of his pack. So we had a coronet, made, Aleksey assured me, of solid gold studded with emeralds (the Hesse-Davian color, green being prominent on their flag). We had seven rings (originally eight), as each of his fingers had been dressed so in death. These bore a variety of gems also set in gold. He had a vast necklace, more a chain of office, I suppose, which consisted of heavy gold coins on twisted gold ropes. He had his medals—twelve in all and all in solid gold or silver—and a sword, ceremonial, to bear the king to the next life in the ancient halls of his fathers, and so this was gem studded too.
On arrival in the New World, we traded one ring for things we needed to survive: some tools, seedlings, household goods. Now we made what we needed, but then we could not have withstood that first winter without that initial trade. I was not well enough to hunt or build a cabin without the weapons and tools we bought. But we had traded this remarkable gem only in a large colony at the seaport and then traveled far away to this remoter spot. I saw the jewels as nothing but deadweight and would have thrown them into the deepest part of the lake had I been allowed. But Aleksey seemed to need them. When he was sad or upset about something, he got them out and studied them, as if trying to trace in their flawless beauty the path that had brought him from where he had once been to where he was now. Which is probably why I disliked them so much.
