(c) A.L. Nathan

For Xylia Sylva, muse, friend and sister-soul, who told me to keep writing erotica despite my bashfulness.

(Previously published in Alchemica Erotica’s only issue)

They lit the fires of the Harvest Festival that night. Seven bonfires circled a raised clearing in the middle of the rice paddies surrounding their estate. The incandescence illuminated the festive ground and the outlines of revelers preparing to take part in a sacred orgy. The festive grounds at the nexus of these roads had once been a hill; denuded and sliced into half before it was consecrated to the Serpent God.

The paddies met the eyes as green oceans during the earlier part of the year, swaying in the breeze, half covered with water. Now, they were gold, fat with grain and reflecting the golden moons. The big silken tents in the clearing took weeks to be prepared – artists from neighboring cities had to be commissioned to paint sacred scenes of orgies of food and copulation. Now the illustrations trembled with the wind, coming alive in the flickering light of the bonfires, heating the blood of revelers and spectators alike.

Yxelta stood at the round window of the Consummation Suite where the shutters had been lifted so she could watch the revelry and feel the breeze upon her pebbled skin. She had never been down to the festival, not before her marriage when she had elected to keep herself virgin for her groom, and not after. Yxelta contemplated her fingers, manicured and lacquered gold, gripping the curved window ledge till she could feel the grain pressed against her skin. Two years had passed since their marriage and the night for which the Consummation Suite had been designed. Her husband was down in the fields celebrating with the revelers and the Second Wife who was in truth, the First Woman of the household.

She shivered a little. Tears slid down her frigid cheeks, glistening like translucent jewels. She knew most of the household was down there, while she was left alone, as always.

The spacious, circular wooden chamber gilded with gold curved around her as she moved towards the conjugal bed. The bed was circular, covered in golden silk. Overhead, iridescent silk tapestries tented it, swooping downward amidst a forest of pearl and jasmine chains which dripped from a ceiling carved like a sunburst. There were ornate etchings of desire on the wooden walls – strangely disproportionate figures mounting each other in tableaus of debauchery – and a round window opening out into the cool wind. This was once the scene of her most vivid fantasies of consummation.

But no consummation had ever arrived and the suite had been neglected for months as she buried herself in grief and bitterness. She could not pin down why she later returned to it or why she had insisted that the jasmines that adorned it during her wedding night be replenished every time they wilted. It became her solitary erotic retreat and the place she received the reports of her spies and fantasized about the way she would trick her husband into taking her maidenhead.

Half-crazed, her obsessions had made her.

Yxelta stared at her hands again. Her husband had no love for her, and so, she had taken to asking her maids to clip her fingernails short, blunt them before they were treated and lacquered. She had no need to keep them long and useless for a man’s desire because she needed them at her clitoris. Grief could have dried her up but instead it kept the honeyed silk of her intimate parts well lubricated and yearning for something she had never experienced.

Tonight, she thought. Tonight she would do it.

“Find a concubine. Find ten if you want!” he had barked at her on their wedding night, as they exchanged words so different from the ones she had imagined.

*
It was not an unfamiliar custom to her. After all she inhabited a nation where marriages were important ties between dynasties. She remembered Uncle Txardi, who had been the Court Accountant before he was chosen to be her mother’s concubine. She had seen more of him than of her own father. It had been Uncle Txardi who had taught her how to write, read, do arithmetic as well as settle accounts. When she was old enough to train her first team of racing Lizards, he had been the one to commission her chariot. She loved Uncle Txardi as much as she loved her mother and her siblings. But her mother had been First Woman in more than one way, and her father had still shared her mother’s bed and had still given her heirs.

“I don’t care how many men or women you sleep with, but I’ll never mate with you!”

Yxelta had known her betrothed since childhood and had sat beside him on many a festive occasion. Although there was a twelve-year gap between their ages he had always been kind to her, and talked to her as an equal. Perhaps that was his mistake, for she had fixated on her first love with stubborn obsession and her hero-worship eventually embarrassed both their families. At his request his family had tried to cancel out the wedding contract and had initiated negotiations to do so. It was not an unknown practice in their world, although often a lot of money and concessions were required in order to nullify any contract.

They would have succeeded too – Yxelta’s father had been swayed by the tributes offered in compensation. Yxelta, however, had responded by blackmailing her father with the secrets that she had gathered about him and his business practices. She had learnt espionage from an early age – Uncle Txardi had many specialized tasks as Court Accountant. He showed her how accounting could take many forms and this knowledge had caused her father to fear and dislike her. He wasn’t the only one. But her spies were her only friends and Yxelta was hooked on discovering the secrets of others. How was she to know that she had been fed those secrets, while others had been withheld from her?

Her husband’s family was not of royal blood like Yxelta’s and though they were rich, they were only half as powerful. Browbeating them into complying with the contract had not been difficult at all. He had been ordered back from his military posting in Shfvtle, a country that their government had recently annexed. She knew he probably had lovers there, but did not care. He loved her – she knew he did even though he was resisting their union like a terrified virgin. She had anticipated their marriage with impatience, sure that her love would be returned and that he would forget the women of Shfvtle after their wedding night, which would be a thing of wonder. She knew that she would have no need for concubines because unlike her mother and grandmother she loved her husband-to-be and was willing to be satisfied by only him. She would follow him everywhere, do anything for him. She would be the perfect wife.

Instead of a lover, she had faced an enemy in the consummation suite, facing her with the angry, hate-laced eyes she had not seen from behind their lavish wedding masks of stiffened, lacquered paper and bright enameled illustrations.

“I did not want this marriage, you know that!” he had spat out,

“I had already wed another in Shfvtle, but my father made me divorce her so you could be First Wife, because *your* family had threatened to raze all of our plantations and to sell off my sisters in retribution,”

“You were married?” she had gasped as she backed away from him in shock. This was the one thing her Spymaster had not been able to find out.

“Don’t pretend innocence, wife. Yes, I was married and tomorrow I shall re-take my vows with Lyxia, for she is First Wife in my heart no matter what our parents demand and mother to my heirs,”

“You can’t do that!”

“Of course I can. You of all people should know that, you little sneak.”

He stared at her in distaste.

“Customs, are made to be broken,” she had answered, sadness evident on her face.

“Exactly. Or bended if all else fails. Look, Yxelta, I’ve known you since you were a baby and you were once a nice girl, but I find your present behavior embarrassing and repulsive. And I’m not the only one. You’re a strange little freak. I don’t love you and I’m not attracted to you. My heart belongs to Lyxia, and I’d still be living in Shfvtle with her and our children if my father had not dragged me back,”

The pain of that piece of information bit into her heart, her lungs and caused a roaring sound to beat about her ears even as he told her she was free to choose her own concubines to pleasure her.

“But don’t you care if I bear children?” she asked in a beaten tone.

“Well, at least you’d have *some* children,” he had said

“I don’t care if you have them, but they are not to be raised in this house, nor are they to bear your name, or mine,”

Yxelta clenched her fists. The long, sharp nails hurt her palms as she made inarticulate sounds of dismay.

“You wanted this Yxelta. My father pressed for a dissolution of the marriage contract when he found out about his grandchildren, but *you* had to have your spoilt little way,”

“No one told me you were already married!”

“Come now, Yxelta. I know all about you and your games of intrigue. The irony is, I’m safer now from you than before we were married. I own your estates, and I have the right to take a second Wife and a right to determine my heirs. You should have respected the fact that I did not want you. If you had, we would not have come to this.”

“But I love you!”

He had laughed in disbelief and walked out of the consummation suite.

*
Delicate chains woven out of gold thread, white and yellow jasmines and seed pearls drizzled from the ceiling, giving the room the look of a fairytale lagoon. She had spent months designing this suite, conferring with various craftsmen and artisans on the building of this new wing attached to the house she had inherited at birth. The new wing also included a study for him, a master bedroom and a network of tunnels inside the walls, all a product of her vivid fantasies of consummation and married life.

She could not have explained why she felt the way she did about the man who despised her, perhaps it was because he had been such an important figure in her life for as long as she could remember. Because he had been so important to her she had imagined she was as essential to him. But she was wrong. Uncle Txardi had cautioned her to be more wary, and had urged her to approve the cancellation of the contract. But she had not listened to him and how could she? She had waited for her wedding night for far too long to give it up.

Outside, harvest singers ululated paeans to the fertile fields and wombs. She knew he would be there, with Lyxia. They would be dancing together, bare chest to bare chest, mask rubbing against mask even as their intimate parts combined in delicate friction, pubic hair messily entwined. They would be in the middle of the circle of gyrating nude revelers giving thanks to the Serpent-God who brought grain to their fields and placed babies in wombs. She knew what they would look like together, and the expression on Lyxia’s face as her husband turned her back towards him, mounting as he kneaded her breasts. She knew the way Lyxia’s mouth hung open as she approached climax and how his penis stood to attention, the exact shade of dark brown, the exact angle of erection, the way he abruptly inserted himself into Lyxia’s waiting warmth.

She had spied on them often enough, watching them as they moved together, envying the grace of their golden skin merging. Sometimes she hungered to be a part of that scene, even though what she watched drove knives of pain into her heart. She longed to lick off the beads of sweat on her husband. She longed to be a participator, noticed, caressed, fondled – even manhandled. Anything, just so she would not be what she was. Invisible, unnoticed, unloved.

She even knew their favorite position against the walls of their bedding chamber: Lyxia’s long legs wrapped around his stocky form as he slammed into her rhythmically. She had watched them from inside the hollow walls many times, even as she came with them, drinking in the moans and whimpers of her rival as though they were her own, weeping later with grief and shame for the obsession that made her watch them again and again.

She had become intimately acquainted with Lyxia’s body through her voyeurism and the woman had made her way into Yxelta’s fantasies. Now she suckled Lyxia’s blood-engorged nipples hungrily as their husband rammed himself into Yxelta from behind. Then, Lyxia’s dainty head would be buried between Yxelta’s fat, intimate lips, mouth working at her throbbing clitoris even as Yxelta’s husband sucked and kneaded her breasts, larger by far than Lyxia’s pert pair.

Yxelta flung herself on her back and stared up into the ceiling designed like a mandala, in spasms as her fingers worked busily. Sweat soaked the bed sheets clinging to her heaving form. Palpitations made her head pound, even as stray spasms occurred at intervals after the first intense orgasm.

When her head cleared she remembered anew what her Spymaster had told her yesterday.

Her husband had lied when he told her that he would never touch any other woman but his second wife. She knew it was a lie because she had been informed of the many times he had coupled with field hands. It happened whenever Lyxia bled or when he had tired her out with his frequent visits, or when his new position as master of her estates took him deep into their lands. Highly sexed, he needed to fuck at least two times a day. But never with her. She gritted her teeth at the insult. He wanted to prove a point. His pride.

She wondered if she should fire her Spymaster for not telling her earlier about her husband’s exploits. These couplings had taken place far away from the house, which was why she had not been able to witness them, her Spymaster had said. She wondered about her husband’s appearance when he mounted someone other than Lyxia. Would he slam them into the tall grass? Would his hands pull at their breasts while he mounted them like a rutting bull, driving their knees into the dirt?

She shivered as she imagined herself as a peasant, grabbed by him as she walked past: balancing a water-pitcher, an action that made her breasts stand out and her hips sway in suggestive rhythm. He would stare at her with his erection poking out of the leggings he wore when he went out into the fields. Then, he would throw her to the ground as she giggled, tearing away her threadbare skirt. She would part her taut thighs willingly and fold them to her chest, the action sandwiching her breasts, pushed between the thighs and poking out as he stuck his long tongue into her musky, unwashed peasant warmth even as he pulled off his leggings. He would move upwards then as he tore her dirty blouse off, licking, then suckling her coarse nipples that pointed at him as he pushed into her clinging passage.

Perhaps she should trick him, disguise herself as a farmhand the next time Lyxia bled?

Yes, that would be one way to do it. Then she would be the participator not the spectator. Then she would bear him the heir he didn’t want and destroy him. But the image made her laugh, even as she rubbed her rear on the bed sheets and dropped her legs. She sucked her index finger; sticky and pungent. Then, Lyxia turned around, letting her taut nipples rub against the golden silk of her marriage bed as she arched upward like a cat getting her rump patted.

It sounded too familiar, like one of the tragedies she had read about in her youth. She couldn’t do that. That was like being trapped inside someone else’s story and she didn’t want that for herself. She was obsessive, not suicidal. Besides, something had changed inside her after she had heard of his bucolic copulations outside of the marital bed. He was no longer her hero now, for he had lied.

But she was still hooked on the perverse image of him, fucking different women, in different positions. Those images remained long after the sting of rejection began to ebb.. It made her wonder what the actual act would be like and tonight, she decided, she would find out. No longer would she be a fool, waiting the night when her husband would claim her maidenhead.

She had waited long enough. No more would she be only a spectator to a love that never belonged to her.

*
Yxelta stood up and ripped away her thin nightshift. She took up the festive mask that she had decorated earlier with the consummation colors of white and gold. Looking at herself in the mirror, she cupped her breasts, large but still bearing youthful firmness, pointed downwards, tipped with dark brown. Downwards her palm moved – over her rounded belly, the womanly swoop of her hips and her plump labia, furred with black, and glistening with ripe secretion.

She had prepared herself to join the Harvest Festival this year, and had told her most private servants about her intention to let herself be deflowered in the orgy. Taking a deep breath, she moved away from the image of herself, ready to open the door of the Consummation Suite. The door opened before she reached it and her Spymaster walked in. She moved back, embarrassed despite her resolve, but did not cover herself.

“You sent for me, your Excellence,” he started in apologetic tones, looking straight at her consummation mask and not her bare body.

“Yes, I did, Spymaster, but I specified that the meeting would be tomorrow morning”

He looked away from her in discomfort, and then spoke

“I assumed you wanted to discharge me, for not telling you about…”

“Yes, I did,” she replied, then looked at him in speculation

“Why did you come tonight instead?”

“I came to ask your Excellence to reconsider,” he said.

“And why should I? You deliberately withheld information when you have been paid to deliver it! And that wasn’t the first time,”

“I only did it because…!” he burst out, and then kept quiet, back rigid as he looked at her mask.

“Because…?” she prodded him, as she moved closer to look him over with speculative eyes.

” I didn’t want to upset you,” he muttered.

“Then why did you tell me, at all?” she asked.

“I decided my earlier action was the wrong one. By trying to save you from being hurt, I had allowed your agony to be prolonged, your Excellence,”

“How so?” Yxelta eyed her Spymaster in his gray cotton tunic which was hooked from collarbone to crotch before falling to his knees. His spine remained stiff and his eyes looked away from her naked body. She was not fooled; she had seen the tent in his loose cotton trousers. Curiosity and recklessness drew her forward to dip her moist fingers into his trousers.

“You are too y… young,” he gasped, as her fingers confirmed her suspicions that he was thicker in width than her husband.

“…and too beautiful to remain unconsummated for so long, your Excellence” he then said in a sigh as she removed her fingers from his burning phallus in a sudden movement.

Despite her perverse fantasies, this was the first time she had ever touched one and her fingers tingled at the shock of the heat and the smooth feel of him. She brushed aside his obvious lies about her appearance, and focused on what she knew his intent to be.

“And that’s your excuse, Spymaster? It hardly seems adequate,” she said, grateful for the presence of the mask that covered her face, struggling with both humiliation and desire. She moved backwards as the cool wind that rushed into the suite from the open window played with her engorged nipples and her sensitive genitals. Her Master Spy eyed her now, not hiding the flames in his eyes.

“I suppose you knew my plans for tonight,” she mused

“Yes indeed, your Excellence,”

“And I suppose you’re here to provide me with… an alternative?” she asked.

He blushed a little at her boldness and nodded.

“Lishoun,” she said then in a tone of voice that sounded alien, strange even to her. His head snapped up in shock at the sound of his name on her lips,

“Your Ladyship?”

“I know you’ve been watching me from inside the walls. I know you’ve been doing so every time I spied on my husband and his wife,”

His eyes bulged in shock.

“How?”

“I mused about your strange behavior yesterday, Lishoun. Why did you tell me after so long? Why didn’t you inform me of my husband’s prior marriage? Why did you say that I wouldn’t have known because he committed his acts far away from the mansion? So many questions you left unanswered, Lishoun. I pieced together the things you said, and I went back inside the walls. I found your hidey-hole yesterday, Lishoun. Didn’t your spies tell you?”

Lishoun looked down, unable to answer.

“I know you’re under my husband’s employ, Lishoun. He wanted you to service me tonight, didn’t he?”

“Yes,”

“Won’t you tell me why?”

“He knew, about you in the walls…”

“Because you told him,”

“I’m sorry, your Excellence, but I’m on his payroll now. He didn’t mind really mind you in the walls, though …”

Yxelta stared, reddening at the implication,

“Didn’t he?”

Her Spymaster looked uncomfortable,

“No, he didn’t, in fact he liked the idea of you watching. But you were not quiet enough, your Excellence. The Second Wife heard you two nights ago, and became hysterical. I’m sorry. If I displease you, I will leave,”

Yxelta remained silent. She hadn’t been unnoticed after all, but part of some obscure gratification her husband had derived. Under his power all along – wasn’t that what she had wanted? To be claimed? She shivered as she realized, for the first time in her life how she had allowed these things to trap her, bind her. Humiliation slipped into her goose bumped skin as she recapped all the things she had done to others and to herself when she thought she had not been watched.

She stared at the man who had been chosen to be her husband’s proxy. He was well-built and not unpleasant to look at. She had known him as her Spymaster for many years now, a present from her Uncle Txardi. She gulped in air, cool and healing, and remained silent as the proxy waited. She could walk away from this house right now, walk away from the trap she had woven for herself. But he stood there, patient, and still erect. His eyes were black, and they traveled over her body, burning with heat that promised her something she had never tasted.

Weak-kneed, Yxelta threw herself back onto the round bed where she had pleasured herself so many times. She raised her torso up with her elbows, then with one hand removed her mask, a strange marriage of cowardice and bravado making her stick to the script she had plotted earlier, when planning her revenge,

“How did you like the show I staged for you tonight?” she asked. Lishoun stared at her, caught between shock and desire. Finally, he moved forward and grated out,

“It was exemplary, your Excellence,”

“I’m glad you approve, Lishoun. Now don’t you have a task to fulfill?”

“Are you sure you want to go through with this, your Excellence?”

Yxelta nodded in a sharp downward movement of her head.

“Yes, yes. I’ve suffered long enough…and what else do I have left? I certainly don’t want to be deflowered in a field of strangers. Don’t have the stomach for it, after all,”

Her voice shook a little as she contemplated her body. Lishoun looked at her with something approaching compassion, even as he began to remove his clothing.

“Your Excellence, are you sure?” he asked again, in a softer tone of voice.

“Oh, shut up and service me. And call me Yxelta when I’m at it. Let me imagine you’re in love with me, Lishoun. Let me pretend that at least one person on this planet loves me,”

“That won’t be hard, Yxelta,” he assured her, right before he gave her the first innocent kiss that young girls dreamed about while burying his fingers in her thick, black hair, hanging loose around her face. His hands moved around her waist, stroking her back until she responded to him, slowly, curving her body against his. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks and let his hands roam over her body in reverence. Slipping his tongue into her mouth, he deepened his kiss as she let herself imagine that this was love and that the intimate suction between their mouths; the hands stroking her and spanning her waist meant something more than what it was. She wrapped her arms around his back as he moved above, fingers reverently parting her; mouth covering one of her ripe brown papaya breasts. A long finger tested her entrance as he suckled on both her nipples; pressing her breasts together with one hand. Yxelta gripped at the golden sheets with both hands, arching towards his mouth as little shivers moved her muscles.

Her moans coalesced into a small shriek as he recreated her fantasy, folding her thighs upwards the way she had done earlier, pressing them against the sides of her chest; exposing her to the cool breezes and his intrepid tongue. He licked around her vulnerability in elaborate swirls before nipping at the sides of her labia with his small teeth. Yxelta closed her eyes as he utilized all the skills she never knew he had, to bring her pleasure. This should be enough, she thought, even as her body shuddered and she wailed at the different textures assailing her womanhood, not knowing that what he did to her was even possible.

Later, he moved upwards to push her thighs further back against the sides of both her breasts, pushing at the sides so they stood out even further, causing her thighs to spasm at the strain. She moved her head from side to side as tension and pleasure contorted her body. His lips and tongue moved her nipples upwards, nudging the breasts further between her two thighs, slapping the sides to watch them jiggle. Yxelta watch his eyes, watching her body contorted in this obscene way for him, a flesh-and-blood interpretation of the woodcarvings that encircled them. He was drinking in the sight of her body with a look of satisfaction mixed with something harder, and colder. When he caught her looking at him the expression changed and he reached down to kiss her till she forgot that look, and allowed herself to be fondled till she no longer cared.

Much later, the feel of Lishoun sliding in and out with his timed penetrations became the only world she knew. Despite the cool wind blowing from outside she felt like she was bathing in heat, on her skin and inside her well-lubricated sheath as her muscles pulled at his member, reluctant to let it go as it moved in, out and against her tightness. The pulsing seemed all around her as he panted, whispered words of love and rained kisses on her face even as he drove deeper and deeper into her until she dissolved into liquid, and became a woman who felt that this was enough, this was all anyone should ever expect.

*
The harvest-singers ululated in counterpoint as the orgies grew more feverish, and more convoluted outside the Consummation Suite. The sound drowned out the crickets and the praying mantises – a usual accompaniment to moonlit assignations. The orgies in the field continued until dawn when the more privileged revelers collapsed in a drowsy tangle of arms and legs inside a silk tent padded with divans and painted with erotic tableaus on the inside and outside. A year had passed since the night Yxelta had allowed Lishoun to do his master’s bidding.

Stroking his damp hair, she cradled him against her chest. He whispered endearments to her nightly, and was her companion during the day; following her everywhere, making her feel less lonely even as he kept a watchful eye on her like the watchdog that he was. She had given up her forays in espionage, which had been revealed as a farce, and now helped the Second wife run the household during the day, handling the accounts, working at tapestry and needlework in her free time. It should be enough, but she had something now, something that was stronger than anything she had ever felt for him growing inside her. It had been four months since she stopped bleeding, and she knew that soon it would be beginning to show. She remembered her husband’s words on that now-distant wedding night,
“I don’t care if you have them, but they are not to be raised in this house, nor are there to bear your name, or mine,”

She knew now he was much more ruthless than his words on that night had shown, for he wasn’t the hero she had grown up worshipping. She knew now the potential of what he could do to her offspring. She had to take steps, to make the decision she had not been strong enough to make last Harvest Festival.

“Lishoun?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“If I was no longer your Excellence would you still love me?”

Lishoun was silent for several moments before answering with careful words

“Always, love,”

“Prove it then. Let’s leave this trap of a household. Run away with me to Shfvtle. Perhaps if we work hard enough we can make a respectable living together. I’m smart, and I’m not afraid of hard work,”

Lishoun went still.

“We can’t run away, Yxelta. I can’t do that.”

Yxelta’s eyes closed. Even though this answer was predictable, a familiar feeling of disappointment, long unfelt, returned to her like a friend. She had somehow nurtured the hope that he would respond in a different way. It would have made everything so much easier if he wasn’t the man she knew he was.

“And why not?”

“You’re a lady of the Royal House – it would not be fitting for you to debase yourself that way. Think of the dishonor!”

Yxelta jerked away from Lishoun.

“And you’re too comfortable with this lifestyle, aren’t you, Lishoun? My husband pays you too well,”

Lishoun looked away.

“You’re a coward, Lishoun, and a money-hungry sycophant.”

She climbed out of the hollow they had made in the bed with their vigorous exertions that night. She walked away to look out of the window where dawn began to lighten the sky, and color the rice paddies around the raised ground where the festival was held.

“Yxelta, I’m sorry, truly. But I do care for you, and I’ve enjoyed satisfying you, giving you pleasure. I do love you, you know,”
She shut her ears against his smooth words. Lies, she had known they were lies from the beginning, but she allowed him to play her body and her mind, because she needed the lie. Not anymore.

“That’s so kind of you, Spymaster. Love in your own limited fashion? That’s not enough. That was never enough for me. Couldn’t either of you bastards see? That could never be enough,”

“Yxelta,”

She stiffened her shoulders and allowed authority to slip into her voice,

“You are no longer granted leave to call my name. Leave me! You’ve done your job. Now leave me alone.”

He stood beside her for a while. She allowed sobs to rock her body, fueled more by the coals of her changing form than any sense of his betrayal. He tried to rub her shoulders, but she jerked away. After long moments, he left. She stared at the many-colored stars in a golden sky and wondered if she had the bravery required for what she had planned.

*
By the time the revelers from the harvest festival straggled into the mansion, Yxelta had left the Consummation Suite for good. Behind her was an outstanding inferno that burnt the bed, the furnishings, jasmine flowers and the pearls that hung in graceful chains from the mandala ceiling. The fire consumed that entire wing of the mansion, inclusive of the master bedroom she had spied on for so many months.
A full year later, the man who had been her Spymaster was appointed Lyxia’s Head Concubine. Her husband had been offered the daughter of a business partner. The girl was now about to become the Second Wife, First in the Household. They rebuilt the destroyed wing but everyone agreed that the household would be much better without the Consummation Suite, result of the deranged former First Wife’s fancy. No one was saddened by her demise. After another year, the memory of Yxelta was submerged beneath the flurry of renovations and parties held year-round by the current First Wife because her husband no longer had the time for her. The number of wives grew to five and Lishoun was appointed Head Concubine, a respectable position that required his screening and selecting of new concubines to service the Master’s growing household.

*
Somewhere in the mountains where the moons look more silver than gold, no Harvest Festivals are celebrated. There, a stoic group of goatherds lived in stone cottages with conical roofs. A few years ago, a single, soot-faced traveler had knocked on the door of the village midwife. She stayed with them, learning all they had to teach her, and entertaining them with tales of the unbelievable lives of the nobility down where the weather was less cruel but where hearts grew wicked. They doted upon her daughter, who charmed everyone with her smile and her intelligent eyes, and missed both of them when the mother decided to travel over the pass to the Other Country. The rich gifts she had given them had helped them through many a harsh winter, but they loved her for the stories of her experience and the things of value she had taught them in return for their gift of knowledge. I know this story is true because I was one of those villagers, listening as she told me the story of her life. And I will listen to her advice, Arhan. I will never settle for something that isn’t enough.

And that is why I’m leaving you.

That is why I can’t marry you.

THE END

A column by (c) A. L Nathan ( 2004)

I feel it difficult to separate writing, and literature from the sensual, sexual aspects of human nature because writing is a sensate and intimate act no matter the genre. When I tried to explain this to someone, they automatically assumed that it meant writing one-handedly, which doesn’t sound like a very efficient way of going about it, in my opinion. I prefer to write, both hands on the keyboard, fingers moving at high speed as words pour out of me and elaborate pictures swirl about in my mind. No, for me the act of writing equates the act of creation, something both spiritual and holy, and linked to everything that makes us human. You have to be aware of your senses, and your surroundings, and transcribe it down into words.
As a word-child I have ever felt this pull. The same thrill I have when reading a new book is translated whenever I write a new story. It is a thrill that is almost forbidden, almost sexual. For me, the link between the two is a mixture of spiritual and earthly, sacred and profane. It calls up images of marriage which from an early, traditional upbringing I had seen as something sacred, something linked into the mysterious act of procreation which was a mixture of both love, and creation.

The image of the marriage bed back then, was veiled in shadows and secrets. It represented a place in which in some mysterious act of induction occured; transforming the bride into both wife and mother. It is an image which is recorded in the arcane tomes of Alchemy, and which I refer to in the name of this e-zine. Consider this image against the various discourses masked in online erotica, whole sites and categories dedicated to…”slut wives” and thinly veiled rape fantasies in many bondage and gang-bang type fiction.

It is a splicing of both the “Angel in the House” and the “Monster”, a violent deconstruction and defilement of the Madonna, which has very little to do with sexual liberation and has a lot to do with… well, who knows? I’d like to say a subconscious hate, but the truth is very probably more complicated. This is not to say that I find any literary value in these pieces I’ve read, but it does provoke thought from a discursive angle.

C.G. Jung and various fairytale scholars have touched upon what may have tickled at the back of the minds of many of us, that the interplay between the male/female protagonists of these fairytales touch on something deeper than most of us may have imagined. For me, this isn’t very far away from the picture I cradled: something intimate, personal, and private. Erotica, I posit, can be a celebration of words and the very human condition of being sexual. I do not limit this to heterosexuals alone. These images are also found, once again, in Alchemy.

However, this is not always the case in our society where erotica is stygmatized as being a mere function, much like an auto-erotic spasm or a public latrine. And this is what I often feel when I read some of the less seminal (there’s an irony in some terminologies, yes) works on the internet, that focuses on the fluff, on the more underdeveloped of fantasies which seem adolescent to me.

In fact, before the internet, I had very little idea of what erotica really meant other than my own imaginings and timidly handwritten tableaus, and the words of people like D. H. Lawrence, Anais Nin and yes, writers of various genres: Historical, Romance, Speculative Fiction and Literature. Because I read in various genres, I saw erotica as being a composite of all these, but sexier. And my own fixation on mythic and spiritual themes made me wonder how much more could be told.

But you do not often see these subtleties, these dancing between themes in erotica. Often it seems to be a banquet of extremes, or a choice between this pigeonhole or that. Every now and then, though, I do find myself pleasantly surprised by stories of depth, and angles both mythic and spiritual. But often, on both sides of the fence, these lines are drawn, though they may not have always been separated in ancient cultures. I suppose this `zine is one of the ways in which I am trying to dance between the lines of these extremes, only this time I am inviting others to dance along with me in this masque of words.

And I know there are others out there asking these questions, trying to define the lines in their own ways (and words). Sure, erotica can be nice when it’s just about the thrills, but by adding these nuances, it becomes something better.

In future issues, I shall talk about related themes in this column, dancing between the motifs of sexuality, mythology and yes, alchemy.

Ed: Unfortunately, that was the first, and only issue of Alchemica Erotica. I would love to resuscitate it, someday, but for now, this will suffice.

Posted by A. L. Nathan