The Valley of Lesbos

by

Carvel Catherway

Publisher: Chaucer

Copyright 2011

1

The view at twenty thousand feet was pretty much what she supposed a view at twenty thousand feet should be. It was worthy of some attention but frankly didn’t interest her that much. It was all she could do to fight back the tears that sprang unbidden or suppress the shaking that took over her hands. She looked at the view now because so doing meant turning to face the little square of Plexiglas; her fellow passengers then seeing only her thick blonde hair, not the reddening of her eyes nor the rolling tears.

And it was worth a look. At that altitude the State of California might have been reduced to an exact model on which even the most substantial topographical features were rendered in miniature: the expense of scrub-strewn desert, stretches of thin brush and the occasional green serrations of the vineyards all set out below in exquisite detail.

The plane made a course correction that lined it up ready for the crowded west-coast air corridors and the horizon swung until the glistening ocean filled the window completely; the reflected sun so bright as to make the woman blink and screw up her eyes. Seen from a height that made the world look less than real even the mighty Pacific was a Lilliputian pond edged by a thin frill of white surf.

The earth tilted a while longer then the aircraft levelled off and the heat-hazed horizon settled to rest. With the sun reflecting directly off the sea at her elbow it was as though there was light everywhere; a brilliant, glittering contrast to the heavy grey skies over JFK into which the plane had lumbered just a few hours before. The woman thought there might even be some truth in the platitude that sunny climes made for sunny lives, even if things in her own life never lived up to the adage.

True since leaving the east-cost gloom the view below had raised her spirits. She was getting daringly close to feeling optimistic about San Francisco; a town she hadn't set foot in for almost three years.... no, she sighed to herself... four. Four long, hard years that aged her more than four. She might have felt a whole lot better if her return was a voluntary one, founded on hope and fuelled by welcome expectations. But not so. It was a place of flight both literally and metaphorically and she hoped that in its tangle of charming streets and busy boulevards she might finally lose herself. She would change her name, colour her hair, cultivate a new persona. Subtle changes perhaps, yet enough to make her someone else.

The cigarette was between her lips, the flame of her butane-lighter about to ignite tobacco - her eighth of the flight having got there without a conscious thought - when fingers touched her elbow, almost scaring shit from bowel. She let out a truncated cry shriller than the event demanded; one which said everything it was necessary to say about the state of the young woman's nerves.

'Christ, you scared me to fucking death!'

'I'm very sorry, ma'am, but no smoking please.'

Was that sorry for scaring the living and breathing shit out of her or sorry for the fact that she wasn't allowed to smoke any more? 'Why?'

The not-so-young flight-attendant pointed to an illuminated No Smoking sign by the side of the door to the flight-deck. Diana Fuller hadn't even seen it come on. The woman flashed a becoming but disingenuous smile and said, 'It's against airline regulations to smoke when the sign is illuminated.'

'Guess I just clean missed it. What's the problem, anyhow?'

'There is no problem. We're about to make our landing approach.'

'Surely not? San Francisco is forty minutes away, an hour plus if we get forced into the stack.'

The woman sighed. Her shoulders slumped wearily. 'I could check with the captain if you feel so strongly, but the regulation is that smoking is not permitted when the sign is illuminated.'

The sign had probably come on because some crew member activated it spitefully. Maybe the stewardess herself. Even the government was becoming increasingly ill-disposed to the tranquillising weed. A spokesman for the new Reagan administration had been expounding vociferously on the issue from the flickering tube of her TV mere minutes before she switched it off forever. And him too, thank God. Today was glorious. Flying conditions were perfect. The crew had given no indication that they were about to vector into a mountainside or attempt a landing on the deck of a Soviet carrier. If she wanted to smoke, she saw no reason why not. Besides, she needed her fix. Nicotine helped calm her. It was either that or the tranquillizers and she could no longer entirely trust herself with those. But surely she could get by for one more hour? Surely one more cigarette wasn't worth a row and attention back on the ground she could do without?

She slid the Marlborough back into the leather cigarette case, the one her dad had bought her for her eighteenth birthday; the last of the few things he'd ever bought her. He'd worked in the merchant fleet. He saw little of her. She had tried to forgive him but it was difficult.

'I guess I'm just a little edgy.'

This time the woman's smile showed a hint of genuine warmth. She’d expected the passenger to turn into a major pain in the ass but fortunately for her the war ended with the first skirmish. She hadn't wanted any trouble, especially not this flight. She'd slept badly, had a headache fit for the new President and her period started half an hour before the plane took off. A heavy one, too. 'May I get you something? A drink, perhaps?'

What the hell, it couldn't exactly hurt. 'Brandy and soda.'

The woman turned away and went aft to the galley. Diana Fuller reflected that she was all the things that flight-attendants were meant to be: infinitely patient, polite but regulation-quoting. Physically, too, she possessed the salient characteristics of the breed. She moved off down the aisle, weaving her way nimbly between the protruding elbows, slim and slight and very agile. Diana observed that her rump was small and enviably taught in the tight-fitting grey uniform skirt. Airline flight-attendant's asses always were. Ever see one with a big butt? She'd signed up for training with a small company herself once but had found that her size - she was five-nine - had rendered her ungainly. She kept bumping into things; tripping and stumbling and spilling. Those shortcomings of dexterity she might have overcome by the expedient of sleeping with the boss but drink got in the way before she even had the chance deploy the one weapon in her armoury that never failed – her staunchest ally, her hot and horny and well-travelled cunt. The whole episode had simply given her a peculiar idiosyncrasy towards female cabin staff.

It took better than ten minutes for the trim little woman with the neat ass – no let's be truthful, cute ass - to return with her drink. The drink was a double, swamped by ice, and thrust abruptly into her hand. It splashed over the sides. She took it without a word.

Booze helped. Helped more than the nicotine. But she made herself promise that this was going to be the first and last of the day.

She took a good gulp then a smaller sip to savour the muted fire. For or a second or so, it seemed that the interior of the plane misted over; as though there might be some problem with the cabin environmental process which caused atmospheric moisture to vaporise and just as suddenly be sucked away again. The feeling was accompanied by a momentary strangeness about the way time itself passed: things seemed to slow down and then speed up, a little like moving through treacle, or that strange state of insurmountable sloth that sometimes paralyses you in a dream. She closed her eyes tight but briefly and re-opened them. The jitters again. Nothing was amiss in their passage through the fourth dimension. The processed air was as passably clear as ever. Jitters and alcohol after those pills. The pills that had helped her sleep last night. God how she'd needed to sleep last night!

Lee McCorrister was seven years younger than herself and worked for a local construction company. He was tall and handsome and thanks to his line of work and an earlier penchant for athletics in high-school - which he flunked - heavily muscled and athletic. He was an orphan, never found out who his parents were, and had been brought up in a succession of foster homes. Unlike so many in those circumstances, however, he'd kept his nose clean and gained a reasonable foot-hold in the company that employed him. That first night presented him as something of a cliché in blue jeans and checked shirt, lacking only a hard hat. But he'd shown himself - ultimately, she remembered - to be a boy with unexpected depths, capable of loving a woman in the way she needed most.

Naïve cunt that she in retrospect considered herself, Diana Fuller hadn't even suspected his problem. She'd accepted without demur his explanation that the little punctures and bruises on his forearms were the inevitable results of rough work. There were brother and sister scars which, with a little leniency of interpretation, supported the claim.

That night was a Saturday. Of course it was raining. The lights of the shops and the fast-food outlets and the bars and traffic all melted into one constantly changing flow of colour reflected in the wet streets. The little bar was quiet for a weekend. Sleepy weather, sleepy night. He'd simply walked up to where she was sitting, admitted he was attracted to her and offered to buy her a drink. And then - rather sweetly, she thought - flushed crimson. Diana smiled back, graciously accepted. The boy became a study of relief personified. Modestly - she liked that, so different to the other guys in there - he'd tried to keep his bill-fold out of sight but Diana had glimpsed the thick wad of twenty-dollar bills and was suitably impressed. She knew that construction workers in the more prosperous developments could earn good money but until now she'd never guessed how much. A case in point, this shy young buck not many years out of school had a wedge like a Manhattan trader

'I think you're a very attractive woman,” he opened. “I mean truly beautiful. If I'm out of line then tell me, but I'd very much like to make love with you.'

It was out of line. Of course it was. Her heart sank. It was crude and bullish and insensitive; a skunk of an introduction and downright insulting. She should, if she were any kind of lady with any kind of self-respect, have slapped him hard across the face and told him to fuck off right there and then. But what made the defence of her dubious dignity difficult was that Diana had long ago abandoned any attempts at being a lady. Plus she was aroused by the cologne-smelling young guy - with whom she already sensed an affinity - to the point that the physical effects on her couldn’t be ignored. Her nipples were swelling under her clothes. She was getting an ache where it mattered most. Her hands were moving and fluttering nervously and she couldn’t bring her herself to avert his gaze. It was as plain as the nose on Lee McCorrister's face that the guy was expressing himself in the way that he best knew how; direct and straight to the point, unburdened by the kind of persiflage at which he would not be very good. She noticed from his jeans that there was no bulge up front and concluded that he was probably as embarrassed as hell at asking her. A practised stud in a pick-up joint like this would be as hardening up by now. Lee McCorrister clearly wasn't. On either score.

'I should kick the shit out of you for talking like that to me.'

'Oh, jees, God... I'm sorry... I...'

'D'you carry?'

'Huh?'

'Condoms. Cock-covers. I'm asking if you have any sheaths, buddy-boy?”

'Uh-uh, but I'll get a pack from the machine back there.' He gestured in the direction of the men's' room. 'You mean you'll... ?'

'I ain’t gonna get a better offer in this place tonight. And besides, you’re kinda cute. Buy me more drinks and talk to me. Seduce me before we fuck.'

Surprisingly he did talk. Diana opened up too. They quickly established that they had much in common and one great difference; he'd admitted that he was comparatively inexperienced. He'd had three girlfriends, made love only to one, and was currently outside of any relationship. She replied in the negative to the almost innocent way in which he'd asked if she were married, and he'd declined with a powerful adamance when she'd asked him if he'd feel more relaxed if he smoked something first. That was to be his first and worst lie.

Another course change, one that made her frown for it took the plane way out over the sea. There was a mild surge of power and it began a shallow ascent. Not right, surely? Why climb before landing? A bomb scare at San Francisco? Forcing them to divert to LAX? Though there had been no announcement. The sky beyond the little rectangle of Plexiglas was clear and pellucid, an aqua-marine tending, in the higher reaches to a breath-taking blue. The mist also returned but this time it had escaped and was consigned to the ground way down below where it rolled in a shallow blanket of obfuscating smog, scouring all detail from the green and brown landscape. It seemed to have risen up from nowhere.

The cute-butt flight-attendant made frequent trips between galley and flight-deck. For the first time she looked harried rather than indifferent.

The guy at Diana's side woke up. 'We landing?'

'Climbing.”

'Can't be.' He checked his watch, then looked around as though seeking a reaction from other passengers. They were unconcerned. Most were doing what airline passengers do: talking, sleeping, reading, listening to music, amusing their kids, drinking. He left his seat and made towards the rear of the plane.

That first Saturday night together she and Lee lingered in the bar longer than either intended, mainly because of the unexpected pleasure of each other's company, enhanced by the warm, peaceful ambiance of the place, but also because there was something teasingly erotic about the delay: a long, slow build-up to the inevitable fulfilment of sexual desire. Diana later discovered that there was another reason: one which had become evident when she'd been forced to help Lee overcome his shyness and coax him up between her legs; guide him into that opening into her which even now had grown expectantly wet in anticipation of his presence there.

Back in her apartment, with the drapes closed and the lights low, a country music station bleating out mournful tales of adultery and deceit - his preference, not hers - he'd undressed her before the awaiting bed, his breath catching nervously. Then, without waiting for her to respond, he stripped in an instant to reveal a sensually smooth chest and a hard, thickly-muscled body, tanned everywhere but for the pale outline of those ubiquitous construction worker shorts. Diana observed that the tan was fading as the approaching fall forced him most days into jeans and shirt. Constructions workers always looked best in shorts, she reflected: the young ones who were still slim and knotted in muscle, not yet victims to the acres of wobbling beer-belly that blighted the older exponents of the laying of bricks and the bolting of steel. Biggest surprise was that, again with that construction-worker machismo, he wore no underwear. The thing for which she was most eager thus appeared unexpectedly early. With great promise, it first cast its purple eye upon her nudity erect and standing to attention; an organ that she had already pretty accurately estimated even before she took it between her fingers and stroked its silken mass, was better than nine inches long.

And throbbing in her grasp. She felt its expansions and contractions, the pulsing of blood that added still more to its bulk.

'God, that's so good,” he moaned. “You're such a lovely woman. So beautiful, Diana.'

Cupid threw a handful of icy rain like wedding rice against the window of the apartment as Lee threw back his head and moaned a second time, eyes closed and languid. In the same moment, Diana Fuller sank to her knees and took his stiffened penis into her mouth. Her lips and tongue worked rapidly. With her fingers she rolled back the fore-skin and - like a greedy kid on a popsicle - slurped and sucked at the exposed head. It was broad. Hard. Sweetly wet. She licked up and swallowed down the first glutinous strings of semen. Sticky. Salty. Good!

'No, stop. You're making me cum too soon.'

Then it was her turn to stand, his to command. He hauled her to her feet and his hot, hard erection pressed against her belly. He yanked her on to him. His hands pressed under her shoulders, flattening the warm bare skin against his own. Lee's lips bore down on hers and forced them brutally open. His tongue forced roughly into her mouth. It stiffened and coiled and pushed and jostled and wrestled in a kiss that made the room spin. A kiss so mighty as to hide the fact that the hardness against her belly had waned to rubber: firm rubber, sure, but a slackening rod that was no deliverer of the penetration she so desperately craved.

All the same she whimpered and meekly called out his name. In response Lee made an animal grunt and threw her to her bed with a force that would have made for a violent landing were it not for the cushioning of quilt and mattress: a landing that nevertheless made the old springs squeak and the ancient iron bed-head - which she had herself assiduously re-painted - thud and scrape against the apartment wall. She landed as he intended; flat on her back, legs splayed wide. Vehemently, the powerful young man raised and further splayed her knees until the tendons strained. She slid down the mattress, dragging the neatly pressed sheets with her. They screwed into a ball under her back.

Diana closed her eyes and parted her lips in anticipation of an explosive entry only to find that none came. There was just a cool breeze from the partly open window that evaporated the sweat from her belly. No squirming, steely weight crushing down on her, making her immobile and body-splittingly subservient. Lee seemed to have gone. There came instead a moment of agonising expectancy then, even before she opened her eyes again, fingers were tugging at the labial flaps and prizing open her vagina; a solitary finger worming its way inside, twisting and moving in a slow ritual of exploration. She was about to protest that she wanted more than this - a hell of a lot more, for fuck's sake - when Lee's lips were suddenly at her portal and forming a wide, drooling kiss. There came waves of pressure and suction. Rubbery lips squirmed, lubricated in his saliva, in her flowing love-juices. Teeth nibbled and tormented. A tongue-tip pressed hard on the little trigger of gristle that was her clitoris and worked it from side to side, crushing it against its will into the hard bulk of pubic bone. Diana juddered and shook. Her hands flew out behind and above, gripping tight on the frame of the bed-head. She used its leverage to bear down as though in the act of giving birth. Her belly - so slim that it couldn't possibly evoke natal connotations - contracted into a taut steel cable. She concentrated pressure in those few key centimetres of her abdomen. Pushed back against Lee's lips and tongue.

Her cumming cry that cold and rainy night tore the comparative silence of the apartment like that of some wild bird. All sensation in her body focused on her womanly opening. She gushed and pumped and shuddered out her payload of slime. Diana remembered vividly that the silent kiss had turned into a series of audible laps that verged on the disgusting; that the air had become heavy with the scents of saliva and cum.

She juddered again, came again, reached down between her legs and guided him onto her, splayed and wet in readiness for his entry. An entry that didn't happen. Not right away.

The passenger returned to his seat and muttered something under his breath. He was visibly perturbed. He rummaged in a flight bag then threw it down in frustration. Diana smiled non-committally, took a sip of her drink then, breaking eye contact, resumed her contemplation of the world outside. Inwardly she was aching again for the feel of Lee inside her.

The ground-smog had grown more intense. Now it was as a huge field of rolling white like thick cloud glued to the ground. It might have been imagination or a trick of the light but Diana thought she saw a number of bright blue flashes reminiscent of electrical discharges flare up at random. More disturbing yet was that the smog held none of its usual sulphurous yellow: instead it was a pure, milky white. And all this was happening a long, long way from town. Ground fog in place of regular smog, what the hell. Not exactly the kind of weather conditions for which California was fabled but surely not impossible either?

'These people never tell us the truth,' lamented the passenger. 'You'd think our money would entitle us to the facts.”

She mumbled something incoherent and turned away, pretending to sleep. The images in her mind, her memories, were vivid. She wanted to hold onto them for as long as possible before they started to corrupt.

Faced with the duty of entry, Lee's erection slackened off to nothing. Frustrated but persistent Diana pulled him on to her and fought to steer him in, but there was nothing to direct. He apologised profusely, an act which demeaned him. She peppered him in forgiving kisses, all the while telling him it was all right. Only later into the evening, when the rumble of traffic below had subsided somewhat and the rain had picked up in intensity so that it pattered hard against the window at their heads, did she finally share with him that untidy roll-up; the thing that finally helped Lee to overcome his inhibition.

She teased and toyed with his penis as they smoked, continued to reassure and placate, conscious of the way the anxiety was beginning to evaporate from his voice until, when the sickly weed was doing its work and he finally relaxed, she rolled him onto his back, encircled his penis gently with her fingers and deftly set to work.

First she gripped him with her thumb and all four fingers and just manipulated: massaged and lifted and squeezed, all in no particular hurry. Then, as he began to firm up, she made a ring with her thumb and forefinger which she slid to and fro, speeding up: tightening her grip as she pulled and pushed. Now and then she paused to run her thumb over the tip of the glans and nip his foreskin. Sure enough, foreskin wetted. Penis stiffened.

She took him in her mouth again, going for it, sucking hard. Lee groaned. Then she snatched the butt of the joint from his fingers and tossed it into an ashtray, a moment afterwards pivoting him on top of her, parting her legs and pulling him abruptly in. He hit into her like the pile-driver he probably used at work and because apprehension had kept her dry, the penetration stung in a way that hurt deliciously. Suddenly he was in her. Filling her. Burrowing almost frighteningly deep. Her vaginal ring was not merely stretched but reamed brutally in a way that brought both torment and pleasure, its elasticity tested to the limit. As Lee McCorrister sheathed himself within her so his arms levered under her back in the instincts of sex and he hugged her tight and forced his lips on hers in a kiss that was open-mouthed and ravenous. So, too, when his body arched in the inevitable reflex, did his knees instinctively draw up beneath her. Those last few gasping strokes went deeper still.

In the final seconds, the actual moments of ejaculation, Lee’s whole body went rigid. He hugged her until she became a part of him. He held her there in the ultimate coital pose for ever before convulsing finally and releasing her. Only then did he back away. Diana’s sweat frosted his body. Hers, his. Semen sheeted in the instant of withdrawal, demonstrating the prodigy of his tribute. It's warm, salty stink filled the room.

So much for precautions, Diana thought. So much for a ritualistic sheathing up and sanitary disposal. She trailed her fingers through the gooey milk and resolved that she was going to take more of it into her. Much more. Whenever Lee had sperm to spare she would be its eager thief.

For a moment the lights in the cabin dimmed as though they were about to go out and then, as if in the same instant, resumed normal intensity. A number of her fellow fliers stirred. This time all three flight-attendants seemed harassed, ducking and dissembling their way through a volley of anxious questions, riffling bodily between the waving hands.

Shortly after the lights dimmed the aircraft wobbled. Just once.

These two trivial symptoms were all the passengers saw of the hell that had broken out a few feet away behind the sound-proofed door of the flight deck. The aircraft had begun to lose altitude before the climb which was meant to correct the loss. The measure worked for a while but then the descent started all over again, this time resistant to every angle of flap and every kilo of thrust. Even as the altimeter dipped still further the co-pilot, on the grunted expletive order of the pilot, ran up close to full thrust until the engines screamed. No effect. Still, terrain approached: not so much that the passengers would notice and begin to panic, but enough such that the flight crew were already saying their prayers.

At first the the captain had remarked that it was as if the aircraft were flying in a suddenly rarefied atmosphere: its rudder sluggish and unpredictable, and despite their airspeed, which was now also starting to drop, it was as if the sections were no longer producing lift. The co-pilot concurred. That was the point where the real problems began.

The radio link via which he had been discussing these things with ground control at San Francisco cut dead and was replaced by the faintest hint of static. Instantly the flight Engineer switched to a back-up channel only to find that this had died too, as had a further two back-ups and the VHF distress band. Logging on to LAX had no remedial effect either. The flight computer insisted on reporting that the airport did not exist. To make matters worse all satnav had failed and the digital beacon which would land the plane automatically in the event of an emergency totally disappeared. A satellite clock displayed nothing but a row of flashing dashes, and when the smog at ground level broke unexpectedly the aircrew found they were looking down not at the urban sprawl of the west coast but at... at... virgin forest...

The Captain was a distinguished looking grey haired man who had become a grandfather three days ago. He was planning on hiring a car in San Francisco and driving out to Sans Louis Obispo where his new grandson was reported to be sucking enthusiastically and raising the roof. He'd been saddened by the fact that he couldn't be on hand when his daughter gave birth but had insisted on taking a few days off when he got in town by way of compensation. His mind had been upon the welcome obligation just moments before. Right now, however, he was thinking only of the next few airborne seconds and how to stay that way, for it was as though his aircraft were torn from the established frames of reference for flight above the earth and deposited somewhere where the normal laws of physics didn't apply. He was thinking this, along with the stray and not particularly helpful thought that he'd never actually get to see his new grandson at all, when he gave the engines all they had left to give and hauled back on the yoke until it would tilt no more; thinking these things too as the red warning indicator came on, bringing with it the attendant rasp of the buzzer and the words, Overspeed Imminent, that flashed on an LCD panel.

The guy at Diana’s side emitted a womanish shriek and began clamouring for an attendant. He snatched at the woman who'd brought Diana's drink as she swept past him. But she didn't react, didn't even turn around and promise she'd be there in a moment.

'Something is definitely wrong.' he whined in her ear. 'We're in trouble!”

'Calm down, for God's sake. It's OK. We've probably hit an electrical storm or turbulence. It happens all the time.'

'Why won't they tell me? All I want to know is what’s happening, for Crissake.'

'The crew have their hands full. You're not helping. Panic is communicable. We're back into level flight aren't we? The lights are back on aren't they?'

He blinked. 'Yes.'

'So where's the problem? Keep this up and you’ll get yourself arrested. In any case it looks like the flap is subsiding.'

Only briefly agitated the rest of the passengers were settling down again, the cabin staff making the minimum of fuss. One mouthed something to her colleague who shook her head in return. A light pulsed above the door to the flight-deck and the attendant who'd served Diana, evidently the senior of the group, passed within. The others watched her then returned to their fetching and carrying. Cheap plane, years old, hardly ever grounded for maintenance. Of course things went wrong. Inevitably there were problems with relays that stuck and circuits that went paranoid. Minor things that didn't amount to much. The engine whine was constant - albeit high from the extra thrust behind the aborted ascent - and the craft's flight stable, if maybe a little twitchy.

Her mind went back to Lee McCorrister. Her memories of him were sweet and yet very, very painful. She didn't want to be disturbed from them.

They'd arranged to meet each other again in the same Blue Moon Bar later in the week. He was already waiting for her, glass in hand, when she arrived. She noted that his drink was non-alcoholic. A soda. This time, there had been precious little preamble. They sat very close to each other, a proximity which readily became an embrace, and Diana felt the bulge of his hard-on pressing against her thigh right from the start. Back in her apartment they began stripping each other and - too eager even to make it to the bed - copulated on Diana's old sofa, spread out beneath the window that overlooked the street. This time there was no hesitation on Lee's part. He entered her massively before she'd even finished getting her panties completely off; they dangled from the ankle of a leg kicked high in the throes of ecstasy, frilly pink colours raised to his triumph in the battle of sex. That second time Lee had been in full command. He needed no encouragement. He humped heavily and confidently, moving around to burrow ever deeper. When he climaxed - which to her delight was after she orgasmed twice - he kissed her and raked his fingers through her hair, still inside her, before sliding free and moving down to mouth her breasts and the hard little protuberances of her tingling nipples.

A few moments later she reached out to fondle him intimately and found to her astonishment that he was hard all over again. With the pleasure her touch brought, he was back inside almost before she retrieved her hand. Lee bucked and convulsed. A thin film of perspiration formed under Diana’s palms as they roved the steel-hard muscle of Lee's back. He was making love to her as though this were the first time man had had sex with woman, making up for a short-fall in the history of human procreation.

Afterwards they lay panting, he on top of her still, too exhausted to move. They slept a while that way. When they stirred, to Diana's exquisite delight, he went at her a third time, albeit slower and altogether more ponderously; each stroke of his penis a journey of physical empathy, almost reverent in its understanding of her cunt. It was quite dark by then. The only light in the apartment was the winking of red neon from the burger place across the street and the occasional flare of headlights from cars leaving the parking bays that chevroned the cracked sidewalk. With Lee's final straining emission came the words, 'I love you, Diana. I love you!' followed by the last convulsion of a body of whipcord and steel before it quiesced in satiety.

She levered him off her. Relaxed beside him. Her legs gaped open and her belly heaved. She gasped for breath. Her thighs were smeared in sticky, sliding spunk. Her back hurt from the pressure of his fingers where they gouged during the bear-hug that preceded his ejaculations; the hickeys on her breasts where he had mouthed too hard in the inter-coital episodes were beginning to sting and her nipples cried out with the pain left by his sharp young teeth.

Diana desperately needed to tell this young man that she loved him too and would have done so were it not that this was only their second date. Lee was just a kid of twenty who's main need in life was sex. Not a relationship. What ever he might aver to the contrary, not that. When he said he loved her he probably just meant he was cumming into her.

Silent, Diana pecked him on one cheek, prised herself down between his legs, and licked the cooling spunk from his belly. She licked it too from the thick tangle of hair where it seemed almost to foam; the sweet, supple penile tissue where it clung like an outer membrane. She straightened and forced his hands between her thighs and made him smear his essence over her breasts and belly. She turned about: made him stroke her rump; the smooth, curvature of her dorsal plain. Diana Fuller insisted they go to bed that way, sex-stained and dirty. They hit the sack and settled under a heavy quilt that shut out the rainy night. When the sun woke her she climbed upon him again, finding him sleepy and dry. Once more Diana took him into her mouth and set to work, not quitting until cock-flesh cramped and Lee's flat belly quivered and she swallowed down the last squirt his testicles had to offer; thinking that he tasted like cream this Lee, that she wanted to sustain herself on this ambrosia and nothing more.

Throughout, Diana badly needed to return his declaration of love. That she loved him was true enough: loved him like she'd never believed it possible to love anyone; loved him at first sight like the guy she'd been waiting for all her life. She wanted to tell him that with so much of his sperm inside her it was impossible for her not to conceive and that she was glad she was destined to do so. She wanted to tell him she'd be happy to walk down the aisle with him that way if need be, naked and smeared in his warm ejaculate, proud of the things he'd done to her.

But the only aisle was the aisle of this twenty-year old aircraft. It was taking her away from the life that might have been.

That illusory life with Lee.

Because among the tiny and insignificant lies Lee had told her one big one.

Just one.

The gasping jet engines roared up to a scream that made the metal floor vibrate beneath her feet. A judder ran through the fuselage which for a moment, in the depths of her reverie, made her think she was humping McCorrister again. There was a reek of jet-fuel. A sudden kick in the small of her back flung the half-drunk brandy from her grasp so that the plastic vessel rolled to the floor. The engines ran up to a howl that made her cover her ears with both hands until - just as it seemed that the god-awful noise was going to split open her skull - it stopped. In its wake came an eerie vacuum of silence, rapidly filled by the yelling of the people around her.

Just as the engine noise ceased, so the cabin lights went out again, all of them, and this time stayed out. The in-flight movie died and the ashtray on the back of the seat in front vibrated into a blur. The aircraft gave a sickening lurch forward, yawed unaccountably, then dipped its nose into a sixty-degree dive that - if the on-board instrumentation had still been operating and thus able to record it - would have registered as having taken place in a little under three seconds.

From behind there came a groan of tormented metal and something seemed to snap, as if great tension were suddenly released throughout the length of the plane. A young attendant was torn off her feet and slammed head-first into the forward bulkhead and - her thin neck snapping like a twig - killed instantly. A screaming child was catapulted into an overhead compartment, bounced from the head of a terrified woman, killing her outright, and lay silent where it fell. Its body slid down the aisle with the aircraft's turning moment in that awful instant of hiatus before...

...the plunge began.

It was a descent like the world's worst roller-coaster ride. Diana Fuller was slammed back in her seat by the incredible gee forces and pinioned there so she could hardly breathe. Vapour cocooned the outside of the plane and what little daylight there was left to enter through the twin parallel lines of the tiny fuselage windows was further diminished. The interior of the plane became a kind of weird twilight which added to the mayhem. Then, as more internal systems broke down, fog formed once more; this time inside the cabin. There was a terrible pressure in her ears. Blood streamed from her nose and ran from her ears. A second later the de-pressurisation left Diana Fuller completely deaf and from that point on the terrible events all around her took place in a peculiar silence, as though she were watching a soundless re-run of the aircrash rather than actually experiencing it.

She saw the guy in the aisle seat beside her unbuckle his belt, his mouth open wide in a silent stream, the front of his trousers darkened by a large and spreading urine stain. He was battling against the terrible force of acceleration to leave his seat. For a moment, as he made to stand, he was flattened back against his seat, bent backwards over the headrest, and then was gone, vanished from sight, hurled to the back of the aircraft with a force that crushed the life out of him.

The body of the child killed moments before flew in his wake. It fluttered its way in a sprawl of dead limbs between the occupied seats, bumping into them and bouncing off. It caught up momentarily on some as though paying a strange post-mortem visit. The passage of the child's body was like that of strewn newspaper caught in the wind. For a few seconds it visited Diana, landing awkwardly on the seat occupied a moment before by her presumably now dead companion. It was a boy of four or five years of age. He was dressed well in a pale green sports shirt and dark track-suit bottoms. For a second or so he looked at her, almost as though he might be about to make conversation. His head lolled to the right at a hideously unnatural angle, flapping around as though it were insecure, his black hair was ruffled and his pale blue eyes looked directly at her. Vacuous eyes. Dead eyes. The illusion that he might be about to speak was augmented by the parted lips and the way they seemed to move as though forming words. Then he too was gone, continuing his acceleration-borne journey.

Next it was a descent that was way past any hope of recovery as the aircraft accelerated to a speed beyond that for which it was designed. For a few seconds the force of acceleration equalled that of gravity and loose objects became weightless: liberated cups and trays floated randomly, magazines, a couple of paper-back novels, a woman's purse. As the aircraft continued to accelerate so these objects began a simultaneous like-minded drift to the ceiling and finally settled there, pressed against it.

The angle of the dive got steeper. The plane began to screw and twist from side to side. Vibration ran up to such an intensity that it shook Diana's body as though her seat had turned into an electric chair. Lockers burst open and their contents instantly shot up and to the rear of the dying plane. Beneath her feet metal twisted and buckled. The lining of the fuselage seemed to get farther away. The plane began to corkscrew, suddenly lightened and imbalanced by the fact that the starboard wing was now completely torn off. The result was absolute disorientation: it was impossible to tell whether the plane was the right way up or had turned turtle; for what felt like a long period of time impossible to be sure that it had not even flipped longitudinally and was hurtling to the ground tail-first.

And the hideous acceleration just kept on building up.

Fragments of debris swirled past the window. Something that might have been a heavy bolt impacted against it and made the Plexiglas star a million times so that it was no longer possible to see out. There was an unexpected brightening of the light on board followed by a terrible rush of air from behind which sent her hair flying out. Vessels burst in her eyes, releasing blood into her retinas. Everything in her field of vision turned red. For the merest instant she blacked out, wishing it might have been longer. The plane had sheared in half. She was about to be smashed to pieces, the bits of her body inextricably mingled with those of her companions. She envied the young stewardess; envied the dead child who had come to say goodbye.

Diana Fuller knew she was screaming even though she couldn't hear a sound for her mouth was open and there was continuous sensation in her vocal chords. She knew she had urinated copiously because her pants and the nice yellow dress she had put on specially for the flight were saturated. She believed she had massively lost control of her bowels too for the stickiness at her rear and the stench of shit rising above that of the jet fuel couldn't mean anything else.

But maybe it didn’t matter so much now. Nature had chosen to ease the suffering of death and allowed her give up her senses one by one. The deafness became absolute. The red veil filtering her vision intensified as though intentionally shutting out all sight of the destruction around her. She felt the rent of metal but did not actually see the seats a few rows ahead sheer away from the disintegrating fuselage and plunge into the void. She felt the heat of the fire from the fuel tanks on the remaining port wing but could not see the orange flames making their way to her across the fuel-soaked air-sections ; clamouring behind the starred glass, signalling that they were coming in to consume her.

Mercifully, nor did Diana Fuller see the chunk of broken trim that came hurtling towards her and impacted clean in the centre of her brow, making the red vision black, pushing her into yet another void; the void that might have been...

…unconsciousness...

…or preferably death...

…at last ...

…thank God.

2

Sky.

Black night sky.

She lay blinking up at it, mesmerised.

To be truthful it wasn’t actually black at all but a wondrous thing; an infinite, seething coruscation, a firmament of stars, planets and nebulae so precise that it was as if the sky had become a gigantic planetarium displaying the Milky Way in all its candid grandeur, down to every last speck.

She thought these things as she contemplated it from her bed of soft grass; careful not to move around too much in case the delicious tranquillity that had settled over her shattered like the dream she feared it might only be.

Overhead, unimaginably huge and ancient gas clouds – which she correctly interpreted as inter-stellar nebulae - made towering structures of vaporous permanence; cliff faces carved into the heavens. If she stared hard enough she could actually distinguish the discs of planets moving around their distant alien suns while other stars, bright spheres of white and yellow fire, endlessly travailed their own arcane paths. The majesty of creation itself might have been revealed that night; the Milky Way turned more wonderfully than it had ever done before and it appeared to be doing so for an audience of one. There was no-one else around here. At least no-one she had as of yet detected.

That was when the true paradox of blackness struck. The sky only seemed black because in contrast to the brilliance of the stars the interstellar void was black. Black as sable. Blacker than any night sky in the light-smearing smog of any city, meaning she couldn't she couldn’t be close to a town, even though she'd lived in those places all her life. To add to the mystery nor were the patterns of stars exactly familiar; the obvious constellations, Orion, the Plough, the Great Bear, were nowhere in evidence. It seemed that the cosmos had rearranged itself into some amazingly complex structure in which every pattern of stars harmonized geometrically with every other. The harmony of the spheres? She almost giggled. One could easily get a complex over this, beautiful sight though it was. But wouldn't that too be just one complex on top of another? The new thought ached. She couldn’t remember but thought perhaps it might.

So she sighed and relaxed back into the grassy bed, mildly irritated that she couldn’t figure out the second thing that made the sky so special: so different to the stars she'd gazed at a million times before. It was something easy, she intuited; something downright basic but she couldn’t quite get a handle on it. There was no major mystery about something so routine as a tranquil night sky; except for, and there was no denying it, its incredible beauty this time round, the unfamiliar patterns, its clarity and... for...for... for...

...hell... yes!...

It hadn't even been dark the last time she'd looked! That was.. .well.. moments ago! It hadn't been dark because it was still only early afternoon and she'd been thinking she'd never seen a bluer, more glorious sky. The sky had stayed that way, just as bright and just as perfect, even as something happened which had contrived to deprive her of her appreciation of its beauty.

That was something bad, very bad indeed, even if she didn’t know quite what just yet.

Diana Fuller gave a deep yawn that trailed off into a whimpering sigh and stretched out. It was tempting to nestle back into the cosseting warmth and go to sleep there, a desire made all the more acute by the fact that trying to remember made her head hurt like hell. She sighed a second time, and coming in on its concluding cadence, a soft breeze ruffled the tall grass and made its stalks and strands bend in secret whispers. The breeze caressed her cheeks with soothing fingers and confided in her that everything was going to be all right: that she was welcome here. Would be properly cared for. Nursed. It told her not to move around too much because movement causes pain and it is therefore better to lie still, to sleep, until pain is gone.

Wise advice for in addition to the terrible headache that seemed to be splitting her skull her hip was alternately numb and throbbing while, contrarily, one leg was devoid of sensation one moment and alive as though with a thousand gnawing insects the next. Her ribs hurt and twisting pain locked up the small of her back with grim, agonising tenacity. Nausea held her in its unceasing grip. All the same, Diana sensed that the nature voices said sooth: that there was indeed something intrinsically benign about this strange environment. Wherever and whatever it might be she would be just fine here.

Now the breeze changed direction and took time out to rake through her hair and kiss her hurting brow. She lay back, heeding the unheard voices, and watched sleepily as tall fronds of grass bent shadowy across the heavens, like busy fingers making adjustments to the stars. She tried to resist but her eyelids began to droop, the pain to seep away. The night sang a lullaby of breezes and silences against an almost tactile darkness that was growing ever more mellow. More complete.

She knew that song. It was a siren of death.

Diana Fuller struggled to get to her knees but the effort failed because the moment she got off her back the ship of pain that was anchored to her skull turned full rudder and slammed back into harbour, bringing pain to the shattered berth that had once had been her cranial vault. Agony worse than anything before! The perfectly detailed cosmos began an on-going rotation to the west without actually going anywhere, quickly blurring into a huge tapestry of indistinct grey, then more pain came to join in. This time it shot through her hip like a spear. The numb left leg collapsed and rolled her helplessly onto one side. She had no option but to lie there, slowly gathering reserves, eyes closed against a coruscation of blinding retinal flashes and bilious green spangles that must end in… end in... what?

Maybe she slept again for when the spangles cleared time had wound on. She'd shifted position and thereby altered her angle of view substantially. This time she was looking directly at the moon: a disk of brilliant silver in the crystal sky; an over large theatrical parody that bore down as though a hundred-thousand miles closer than the reality, its mountains, valleys and white dusty seas all plainly visible. It emitted a light that was a close rival to daylight and in some respects superior for it was pure and cool; a soothing ice-cream sheen that illuminated the surrounding terrain in a gleaming silvery-white, quite delightful to behold.

And what a terrain! The shift of angle had made all the difference for whereas previously her view had been obscured by the rise of a knoll, now everything was revealed.

She seemed to be lying in some sort of unbounded meadow or grassland. It stretched uninterrupted to a line of trees around a mile distant that marked the edge of a dense forest. Away to her right the meadow shelved away gradually before coming to an abrupt halt at a broad crag where reflected moonlight glinted brightly from a chalk cliff face. Closer to home, a cheerful little copse of elms and oaks boarded an enormous lake that stretched mirror calm into the distance. On the far bank a further ridge, this time dark and jagged, marked a significant change in terrain: not a place of grasslands and pampering breezes here but more akin to desert; harsh, barren and unwelcoming.

She turned her head. No ship this time, but pain attacked her neck like the executioner’s axe. Yet the reward justified the discomfort amply. Everything behind was bathed in that gorgeous moon glow; a world of downy, sericeous grassland blending in the far distance into open moor. Way over to the horizon there was yet another imperfect line that might have been more hills, though seemingly more grand this time; a mountain range, imposing and remote. A fantastic, dream-like, breath-taking place.

But wasn't this a time to act, not admire?

Diana rolled onto her knees, dug her knuckles into the earth and levered herself to her feet. The mere act of standing proved an undertaking of monumental torment but upright she was and surprisingly not even swaying so much, though her legs tottered wide and unsteady like a toddler who'd found his feet for the first time. The universe spun briefly again then came to a halt. A continuous buzz that until a moment ago she hadn't even been aware of faded from her head. There was the tang of vomit in her mouth and she noticed that warm, slippery puke was sliding down her chest.

Diana filled her lungs with the sweet air and made herself breathe regularly, a practice that for the first time in her life needed conscious thought. She ran a hand through her hair, probed her throbbing scalp and did her best not to cry: the erstwhile work-of-art-hairdo was a tangled mess smeared through with a gooey substance that could only be blood. She sniffed her fingers and the distinctive rich and coppery smell removed all doubt. Nor did the damage stop there for her dress hung from her in tatters, torn away at the shoulder so that one breast was exposed in the thin lace cup of her brassiere, and a rent had appeared at the waist exposing her pants and an expanse of slim white belly. A large square of fake silk dangled from the hem where something had ripped it away. The dress had set her back close on a hundred-ninety dollars; that she did remember. It was the first time of wearing because she had bought it specifically for an event she could not remember.

A quick search of the grass in her immediate vicinity confirmed that there was no trace of her personal things; the ladies pads she never went anywhere without, her purse - meaning that she was deprived both of her slender reserves of cash and her over-hot credit cards. There was a strange, amnesiac’s anxiety at the back of her mind too that kept insisting that something else of great importance was also gone. The feeling scared her.

And now that she was on her feet again sensation showed no mercy in the manner of its return: circulating blood roused idle nerves in the hitherto numb leg in a savage bout of pins and needles; she shuffled involuntarily, as though in so doing she might avoid this fresh discomfort, and on attempting to correct the dishevelled remnants of her dress discovered that a hideous dark bruise extended from crotch to knee. She whimpered. It was impossible to tell in the two-dimensional moonlight if the skin was broken or bleeding - until a timid fingertip exploration brought a whole new layer of pain. Intact but bruised like a watermelon. It even hurt where the gossamer material of her ripped dress whispered against it. This was the leg which had initially refused to budge and whatever had happened to it clearly wasn't good. A terrible pulsing pain came from deep inside that might signify a fracture and so taught was the skin from the bruising beneath that it seemed liable to rupture at any moment. Her hip wasn't right, though the mere fact that she was able to move indicated there was neither break nor dislocation. Her foot felt like nothing at all. The damaged leg might as well have ended in space. She felt under the sad tatters of her dress and below the stubbornly resilient lace-work of her bra to find that bruises and swollen tissue covered her ribs from one side of her body to the other. Diana yelped as she touched her tentative way along but so far as she could tell no ribs were broken.

One side of her neck was bruised and inflamed and much too sore to examine. Gloop on her fingers from the brief probe showed that blood had flowed there only recently. She tried to offer the usual supplication, ‘Oh shit,’ but all that came out was an incoherent gurgle.

Those were the physical symptoms. They were bad enough, yet there were others which were potentially worse. The loss of memory. She had no comprehension of where she might be or for what purpose and no recollection of how she came to be here. Only the basics remained: her name was Diana Fuller, she was female and a full-grown adult. This scant knowledge, precious though it might be, was the sum total of her wisdom.

And there was worse to come.

Fear, pain and shock - or maybe it was just the body’s natural purgative response - worked their misery and her gorge rose. She gagged twice, almost blacked out with pain, then blazed vomit. At first a thin ganglion of lava forced up through her throat then it was followed by a rush like a burst dam. She let it go. Heard it spatter and dribble around her. There was a hideous stench. Strings of acid dangled from her mouth and she instinctively wiped them away with the back of a hand. Her mouth tasted foul! Now that her stomach was evacuated it felt like some old tin-can rusting away in her guts. Her headache pounded, reminding her along with the foul taste, that the thirst she had until now failed to recognise was intense. God, was she dehydrating? How long since she last took fluid? The acid taste of vomit redoubled thick and sour.

But the lake beyond was a living and kindly thing that understood and even knew her name for it called out to her, offering inaudible words of encouragement. It spoke to her as a might a nature spirit. The lake was inland and so must be fresh. A small wood swept down to the very edge and ended in a cluster of healthy willows. Healthy specimens didn't grow near polluted water. Diana was needy in other ways too. Her skin was defiled by gore and dirt and the odours of faeces and urine rose up disgustingly from her mid-section. Besides, those injuries needed to be cleaned and bathed.

There was nothing – and no-one – around. The night was balmy and pleasant. The lowland terrain meant that there would be no icy run-offs. Besides, she somehow simply knew that the waters of the lake would be mild.

It hurt all over again, the effort of walking, if walking it could be called; more akin to the progress of some grotesque horror movie creature, all stiff-legged and zombie-like with crazily reaching arms that sought to keep her balanced. With the very first steps Diana’s head reprised its uncontrollable spin. Pain took hold of her everywhere until tears sprang to the surface again. The pluses were that, albeit after a fashion, she was walking again and with the upright motion more of the surrounding terrain was revealed.

Deceptively the ground sloped away gently on three sides, implying that she had regained consciousness not on flat grassland as she at first believed but on the peak of a subtle rise. The downward slope made her progress easier. She was grateful it wasn't the other way around. As she walked it was as if the thick grass deliberately bent aside to let her pass without straining yet not so far that it failed to brush her bodily. Tender. Light as silk, soft as mink. The grass seemed to get taller as she got closer to the lake. Its increasing height masked a slight gradient in the terrain. A hundred metres or so saw the grass beyond her knees, another hundred and it fussed around her waist. Soon it covered her breasts. She dared to make a whisper that bore some resemblance to a sound of relief. This was no coarse, wiry stuff. No scratching gorse nor resentful reeds. Soft! So gorgeously soft! A delight, like being teased with expensive furs. Moist, too. The grass deposited a sticky dew on her skin that seemed to ease the hurting of her bruises.

She paused. Half way there already. Her heart pounded from exertion. Sweat flowed as freely as bath-water. Her respiration sucked and grated and wailed like SCUBA equipment used at the wrong depth. She gazed a while at the placid waters, desperately craving their embrace. They lapped in the gentlest little licks against the shadowy bank. Not far now.

From habit she glanced down at her wrist-watch and at the same time cursed herself for her stupidity; it was gone naturally but there was an imprint on her wrist, indicating that she had worn one not particularly long ago. The sole measure of time from this point was the enormous moon which had shifted a little since she first set eyes on it. It was almost directly overhead. She tried a mental calculation but failed. She might have been walking an hour or only a few minutes. Who knew?

Her clothes, or what was left of them, clung to her all the more, glued there by sweat where they adhered painfully. The elastic waist of her panties cut into damaged skin and the gusset bunched annoyingly into her crotch, forcing her to repeatedly hitch it free. Her brassiere had turned into an over-tight halter of excruciating strangulation. She fully intended struggling out of her disgusting rags when she reached the lake, so why not now? What difference could it make?

Strands and knots baulked her attempts to dispose of them but her rags surrendered all at once and she was suddenly naked. A second later a breeze sprung up from nowhere and peppered her bruises in kisses, drying the cloying sweat. Fronds of sweet grass brushed like fingers wielded with the skill of the finest masseuse and the balmy night air settled upon her naked body as though it belonged there: as though this was the embrace of nature herself and was long overdue.

Diana rolled up her underwear in the remains of the dress and tied the whole lot in a tight knot that fit snugly in one hand. The bundle was an annoyance but there was no way she could simply dispose of it. When she had drunk and bathed she would have to move on. Eventually there would come the yellow sweep of headlights on the horizon or the looming bulk of a barn. Although she wasn’t sure what items lay in her agenda yet, hitch-hiking naked wasn’t one of them

But walking hurt so much less now her clothes were gone. There was just the swaying grass that bent in the moonlight, the warmth of the caressing airs, the welcome cover of night and the smell of fresh water close by. She flinched as that swathe of light did indeed come and then froze in a astonishment, gaping up in disbelief at the endless heavens. Her jaw lolled and this time it was not with pain.

No car headlight this. More like a jewelled scar on the black canopy of infinite space as a meteor crashed into the earth's atmosphere and burned up magnificently in a trail of glinting diamonds and rubies that stretched in a great arc over a third of the sky. There followed a silent display of astral fireworks, so bright that it lit up her face in a reddish glow before fading into a planet-long wisp of some cosmic substance like phosphorescent vapour. Diana gasped. What could it be? Was the end of the world truly nigh? Humanity about to be obliterated in a hail of rocks from heaven? Then it was gone. There came the sound of a cricket beneath the whispering breeze. Now the gentle waters lapped audibly. The stars resumed the myriad-lanterned semaphore and the moon shone big and round. Diana admonished herself for her silliness. The end of the world, when it came, would not be this way. The vapour faded as though it had never existed in the first place and Diana moved on.

Water's edge at last. She took a few cautious steps down the grassy bank. It was steep but not slippery. At the rim she crouched, extended a hand and raked her fingers through the delicious fluid. Just as she had expected. Cool but not cold. And another incredible sight - the reflected stars danced and collided and jittered between her fingers as though she’d stirred the cauldron of the cosmos and made changes in the nature of space and time. She giggled slightly hysterically as she scooped up handfuls and gulped them greedily down, slaking the raging thirst, glad that she had made it this far, relieved simply to drink. Stars spilled over her chest and breasts. Cooled her bruises. The water was crystal clear. The next handfuls she tossed over herself and allowed to course freely. She scooped them into her face, down her back and into the filthy mire of her hair. Water formed a gorgeous river down her body where it followed the convex curve of her belly and trickled through into the overheated ravine below. Drops found her centre and brought instant pleasure. She laughed aloud and tossed more into her face. Laughed as she doused herself from head to toe.

It was all getting a little manic now because this just felt so good. She rolled forward in a low dive and parted the water as silkily as javelin might enter a pool of oil, entering a world that was silent, slow and thrilling. She moaned aloud - her voice odd in the dense fluid. The skin-searing heat quickly left her and the slick liquid found her body's aching cracks and crevices with consummate skill. So good after the pain! A trail of bubbles strung out from her mouth. Oddly, more so since there was no taste of salt, so dense was the water that she found it difficult to stay submerged. Diana angled her hands, straightened and kicked out against her own buoyancy, diving all the time, determined to go deep.

So much better under the water. Her burns and bruises no longer stung. Her joints ached less. Her abused muscles regained some of their suppleness. The deeper she went the more her discomfort receded.

The bed of the lake swam into view as a flat plain of pure white sand dappled in moonlit ripples. Her own shadow appeared alongside in sharp focus and fluid profile; hair streaming behind, legs together mermaid-like, large breasts flowing bulbously. The white sand came up to meet her and her hands scrabbled at her shadow and stirred up a fine cloud. Diana pivoted onto her back, released bubbles from between pursed lips. The surface of the lake was a crystal roof that the bubbles rushed towards. If only could she could stay here! If only she could be like her shadow that had turned into a mermaid and stay longer than the human lung-capacity allowed.

The lake-bed stretched out on three sides in a broad expanse of pristine flatness, greyish white merging into the mist - mist, didn't that remind her of something? - that was the milky refraction ending her view. This might have been the world's purest bulk of natural water and yet it told her exactly nothing; except that she could move around down here without pain. That was enough.

Air gone and her lungs straining for as long as she could take, Diana Fuller rose to the surface just by ceasing to care. With no effort of limb she rode upwards and broke surface among the tiny ripples as a cork might bob in a bathtub. She reached the bank by indolently flicking her wrists and allowing herself to be borne there then reluctantly hoisted herself out. She found she could stretch and move her body under the tug of gravity again; could pose on the very rim of the lake, sweeping back her wet hair while the moon made her naked body bright in its silver-white glow. The breeze returned, noticeably warmer, as though she had stepped under a warm air drier.

Diana was already feeling substantially better, ready to face the rest of the night, by the time that she got back to the spot where she had tossed down her clothes and discovered that...

...her clothes were gone...

...every last stitch...

...even the awful soiled panties...

Now who would want those?

What stood in their stead was something that pushed the damaged goods of what was left of her mind close to the clearance sale of insanity: something that had no right to be there and couldn't possibly have got there in the time her brief swim had taken; a thing so incongruous and yet so of the setting that its presence seemed insanely apt.

The object, whatever it might be, hovered in the form of a nebulous ball of light; sometimes spherical, sometimes stretching out into the elliptical; plasma-like and not quite real. It gave off a light of its own and seemed poised somewhat unsteadily a few feet above the ground, held up by nothing. She couldn't hazard a guess as to its size. At times it seemed very close and at others – without appearing to move – far away.

She was about to hit the lake again when the object's substance suddenly rippled and produced a hum like the combined efforts of a million tiny motors. Before Diana could even react the object had expanded in her direction and engulfed her in a yellow warmth that brought with it a suffocating perfume of flowers.

The magnificent cosmos did yet another spin. This time the comforting meadow reached out its arms and took her so that, by the time the blackness of a dead faint was absolute, she was already sleeping on the softest of beds.

3

'I love you and I mean to marry you. You can't treat me like this, it isn't right, goddamn it. You told me you loved me!'

Thunder rumbled. It was late fall and the last of the browning leaves were casting off from the stunted apple tree that occupied the tiny yard at the rear of her apartment. The lightning flash which preceded it lit Lee McCorrister's face starkly giving it, for the fraction of a second the flash lasted, the look of a corpse. The future was always well signposted in the things of that present, but that was a truism she hadn't yet discovered. Simultaneously, rain burst in a saturating downpour that hammered at the kitchen window. She stared out through the uneven lats of the sagging bamboo blind, noting with magnificent irrelevance that she must replace it.

Lee's lip quivered. He was close to tears. Hunk was becoming jelly and she, wielding her feminine power, felt appalled that she was doing this to him. Appalled but spurred on.

'You should have told me, fuck you! You should never have let things get this far without telling me!'

She slapped him hard across the cheek. He didn't flinch, nor ball a fist in response. The parody of a defensive boxing clench that Diana Fuller threw herself into only made her feel stupid. Lee wasn't about to hit back. He was probably the strongest guy she'd ever had a relationship with and definitely the only one who wouldn't lay her out.

'I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that.'

'Damn right.'

'Get treatment, Lee.'

'There's no need. I...'

'I’m pregnant. While you were at work today I visited an abortion clinic. I’ve been seeing Dr. Moss for some time and he advised I should go there. I've already had tests. Several. The diagnosis is that the foetus is defective. The kid - our child, Lee - will have to be topped. I explained our circumstances. They told me they'd do the job first thing Monday. That's just three days from now.'

Lee swallowed heavily. 'I'll pay your costs.'

'I know you will.'

It hadn't come out right. It sounded heavy with an irony that just wasn't intended. What she really meant to say was that she did not deny for one second that Lee McCorrister was probably the finest man who had ever lived and that she loved him until it hurt, even now. She meant to say that she knew Lee would help her financially because he was incapable of doing other than demonstrating his love for her, or of acting in any other way, as best he knew how, than with her very best interests at heart. He took it at as inferring a pocket-book solution to life's crises. Diana did nothing to disabuse him. She hated herself for that.

She was wearing nothing but an over-stretched green jersey that came almost to her knees. Her blonde hair was tied up in a bun with a scrap of pink ribbon. She was barefoot. Her skin was dry from the four showers she had already taken since getting home to her apartment. There had been something about the examination which would make her feel dirty for the rest of her life.

The room where it was done was small and windowless. It was in decorated in a nondescript grey-blue, a colour-scheme as if ashamed to speak, and lit by corner lamps that bounced light back from the low ceiling. The room - cubicle - was as tacky as the waiting area of a tyre depot. It's primary feature was a ludicrous, tilted-back chair and a pair of high stirrups in which she had been forced to disport herself while the fat middle-aged doctor - not even a woman - had probed within and pronounced her fit to proceed. His white coat had been too tight. His breath was unpleasant. He'd smiled a lot with the self-assurance of a man who did cunts for a job, who was a cunt authority, and she had decided she that despised him utterly.

She'd already resolved never to set foot in that antiseptic-smelling shit-hole of a place again when he squeezed her shoulder and told her with calm assurance what to expect if she didn't come back to see him pretty soon. By that, he meant ten Monday. She'd be in the recovery lounge by eleven and in a cab home by twelve. The alternatives he would leave her to ponder, though he thought it probable that she would have reached the inevitable conclusion of her own accord before she left the building that same day. In fact, they could make the appointment for her right now.

His arrogance appalled her - even if she had been forced to admit that it wasn't really arrogance at all but common sense bluntly expressed. She'd wanted to scream at him that this was the responsibility of a woman alone; her choice, her body, her life. That as a man who had no power to conceive and therefore no knowledge of the intensely private miracle of creating new life, he had no right even to speak of such things in the presence of women. Except that it just wasn't true.

The nurse busied herself by folding up the sweaty Johnny behind her, thus confirming that the consultation was at an end and that she could either get dressed and leave now or stand there buck naked. She dressed hurriedly and went out to the reception desk where a woman in her fifties checked a diary, made a note of her social security number, took two-hundred dollars on account and told her that there would be more papers to sign when she came back on Monday.

'Pity about the weekend,' she sympathized. 'I tried to fit you in for three this afternoon but there just wasn't space.'

Three this afternoon. Wasn’t space! Like having her hair done or a tooth filled.

Tears hadn't been far away as she'd gone down in the elevator and hailed the first cab in the street. Its driver knew her. She'd spoken to him a couple of times in The Blue Moon Bar before she'd taken up with Lee . She didn't speak throughout the ride, not even as she thrust the bills in his hand and clambered out without waiting for change. He hadn't sniggered, nor had he passed comment. For that she was grateful, though the experience was still sickening.

Lee said. 'Maybe it isn't necessary.'

'For God's sake grow up!'

'How can they tell?'

'I’ve had scans. The foetus has an insufficiency of amniotic fluid and other defects I don’t want to go into right now. It hurts to talk about it, you know? The chances of the pregnancy running full-term are low and the odds of serious malformation if it does are high. It’s because of your heroin addiction. For the first time in my life I really wanted a baby, now I have to travel to the other side of town commuter-time Monday morning and have the poor little bastard sucked out of my cunt. It’s all your fault. Christ, I wish I'd never even met you!'

Which was untrue because she loved him. Nor was it true about the heroin: she'd invented the line in a flash of vindictive cruelty in order to punish him. Worst of all it had come out funny. Even though there was nothing inherently funny in tragedy she found this a bizarre situation that alternately made her want to cry and snigger. Was this the start of madness?

Lightning flashed again, making Lee's face a pale, taught mask. Flashed again. Again. The sound of the pounding rain abated. In its place was...

...birdsong.

It wasn't lightning at all, of course. As she awoke from the dream Diana began to wonder where she had got the notion of lightning from.

Sunlight was all around her; more sunlight than she'd ever seen all in one place. The tall grass of the meadow was a translucent emerald and the clear waters of the lake a massive expanse of blue flecked with gold so dazzlingly brilliant that it almost hurt to look at. The sun shone down from a sky unmarked by even the merest wisp of cloud and across the lake the hills, by daylight, identified themselves as the margin of a sandy red desert that stretched off into the far distance. The wood that stooped to the water’s edge made a parasol of impeccable green. Everything was bathed in sunlight yet everything seemed so soft that it might have been made for a nursery: grass that didn't cut bare skin, pines that didn't protrude needles, water - she dimly recalled from the night before - that didn't drown.

Insects buzzed a few feet away; pretty, intensely active and it seemed utterly harmless little things that fluttered rapidly on wings of pastel-coloured silk. They darted to the water – their swiftly beating wings turning transparent against the blue - and back again. Their brief sojourn drew her attention to the thing that upon awakening she had thought was lightning.

A young woman.

A gorgeous, incredibly beautiful young woman.

Naked.

Stark naked.

Except for a metal pendant in the shape of a bee that hung on a fine gold chain around her neck. It was the pendant that was reflecting the light directly into her eyes. It flashed every few seconds like a beacon. Flashed whenever the girl shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Which she did frequently as though unsure about being here in the first place.

Diana swallowed and found it impossible to control the way her gaze roved unchecked over the naked young woman’s perfect body; settling where it liked, lingering to its fill and then moving on, having no qualms about briefly catching its owners eye before resuming its wandering appreciation.

The girl wasn't especially tall - a relief, because Diana found rival tall women threatening - but had all the natural elegance of a woman much taller. The curves, grace and elongated proportions were those of a catwalk model though in fact she seemed a couple of inches shorter than Diana herself. Her figure was sublime; legs in perfect symmetry to the slim waist, sensuously pear-shaped hips, shoulders square but not broad to excess, the breasts full and well formed. Very firm, their large nipples were upturned in the eager vigour of youth. The young woman’s skin was tanned over its every inch, indicating that she was accustomed to going naked and even from this distance - better than fifty metres - Diana observed that it was entirely unblemished. The hair was long, sleek and raven black, cut into a low fringe above fine eyebrows. It fell straight and glistening over the tanned shoulders, then hugged the gentle ogive of the back. More than gorgeous. Objectively fine, too. Firm, trim and exceedingly fit with the poise of an athlete about to let fly her javelin; thigh and calf muscles that bulged smoothly yet did not seem gross; strong and womanly biceps that either man or woman, each for their own reasons, would wish to snuggle between.

But there was something else. The eyes. Oh, those eyes!

Paradigm of a beautiful woman though she undoubtedly was, it was the eyes that held the attention most. Surprisingly for an olive-skinned girl they were of the brightest and most iridescent blue and though indeed large were made to seem even more so by their incredible clarity. Those hypnotic eyes, even more than the incongruous materialisation and the delightful frankness of her nudity, were the things that struck Diana most. She found herself aching to be worthy of their gaze.

Diana curled smaller in her bed of grass and instinctively drew herself into a little ball. Pale chin rested on bruised knees. She shaded her breasts with the bulks of her shanks and put a hand across her lower opening, despite natural the camouflage of the grass. Neither modesty nor fear was it but an engulfing feeling of inferiority to the exquisite body that posed before her.

Actually, Diana felt much better. The sleep had done her a world of good and her nocturnal swim had loosened up joints and muscles that otherwise would have seized solid by now. She was beaten to shit, her headache persisted and her memory was an impenetrable bank of fog but even then she was a whole lot brighter than the night before - despite being unable to remember what had spooked her so badly in the first place.

And now this.

The young woman returned her stare. Her expression revealed nothing of her thoughts. She blinked once and the blink was the apotheosis of twee; fine lashes and perfect lids shyly veiling the jewelled lanterns of the soul. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The perfect breasts rippled fluidly and the metal bee around her neck catapulted blinding light that blazed and dazzled. Then she was still again.

She also seemed as timid as a doe.

'Hi, honey. How are you?' Diana had tried to launch her voice as softly as she could but because of the bruising of her throat there was a gruffness that she’d rather not be there. 'My name is Diana. Diana Fuller.'

Diana flinched, almost called out in alarm as way over in the trees, startled by the sound of her voice, a bird squawked and fluttered, crashing its way out from the dense verdure of the wood. An odd reddish brown species she did not recognise it made a further cry of protest before winging a low escape that took it out over the lake then darted vertically aloft and vanished from sight. The girl remained quite still. Other than for that small and periodic shifting of her weight.

No answer.

'Do you know what happen to me? Who did this?” She gestured vaguely at her bare, battered self.

The ice blue eyes stared back in response. There wasn’t a flicker. Neither of guilt nor understanding.

“I need help, honey, and you can tell I need it quickly. I need a hospital, the sheriff, the police. How far is the nearest town? Where is your car?”

Still no response.

“Listen, you’re not going to leave me like this are you? Okay if you don’t want to get involved – I can understand that - but at least get me some help. I've been out here like this all night. I guess someone stole my clothes. If it was you I think I'd like them back now, please. I can tell you don't seem to mind going around nude - and were I so pretty I guess I wouldn't either - but those clothes are all I've got and I don't exactly relish the idea of crossing the state this way. I can’t remember anything of what happened but I’ve been badly beaten up. For all I know, drugged and raped too.” The tension that was steadily accelerating her flow now crept into her voice. She added desperately, “You must help me! Please!'

The weight shifting ceased. The girl became quite still so that even the pendant stopped its cyclic swing. She was frozen by something that might have been fear.

'Hey, honey, don't be frightened. I won't hurt you. The fact is that I'm the one who got hurt and I don't even remember how. Or by whom.' She held out one hand in invitation, stretching it to arm's length; very slowly, as though trying to catch a timid bird. 'Come, honey. Come and sit with me. What's your name?'

'You know my name.' The girl said, speaking flawless English with no trace of an accent, just like the London newsreader on TV.

'Huh?'

'You are have already addressed me by my name. Repeatedly, in fact.'

'I don't... don't... follow.'

Now she did move. The girl took two or three languid steps closer and threw up her arms in the time-honoured gesture of bewilderment. The large breasts shook and swayed. 'My name is Honey. I was named so in tribute to the bees of this meadow.'

Lucky guess of the century. It did the trick for the girl came closer still, to within a few yards. She stopped and toyed absently with her pendant while her free hand saw off an itch. Oh, jeez, she was scratching there! That special place where some light-footed insect had no doubt paused to sample her dew. Eyes drawn by the gesture Diana noticed for the first time that the girl was pubicly shaved - to the lustre of fine silk - and that not a speck of stubble marred her smoothness. Her vertical slit carved the swell of her pudenda with confident precision. Tall slit, Diana noticed. One that reached high up.

She realised she was ogling it, reddened with embarrassment then looked away only to be lured deeper still; way down into those beckoning eyes. The girl didn’t seem in the least bit put out.

'Your name suits you,” Diana offered.

'Why are you so pale? And those awful bruises. You say someone beat you?'

This kid might be on something. It would explain a lot, might account for the buzzing in her head she believed were bees. 'Yeah, beaten up. I guess I’m pale because not everyone gets to work in a place like this or to run about with no clothes on all day long. Makes sense, eh? You say there are bees?'

'A great many.'

“Sorry, kiddo, but I don’t see any. I had a dream... but never mind.”

“You may be certain that they are here. My bees are well-behaved, naturally. They come from good stock and are precision trained. But never mind them for now. I had hoped to tend them this morning as every other but clearly they must wait a while longer for their human company. You cannot stay here. You should not stay out here under any circumstances and most certainly not like this.” She tutted reprovingly, rather like a patient nanny with a temperamental charge. “Here, now. Let me take a good look at you.'

She slid beside her, all suggestion of shyness evaporated, seating herself very close, right by Diana’s side. The heat of her tanned skin radiated across the few inches that was all that separated them. Honey smiled and Diana's heart leapt, thinking that this was the smile of an angel: a flash of perfect white teeth, even whiter in contrast to the tanned skin, a smile that lit up the face of the most beautiful girl she had ever set eyes on. Their mutual nudity embarrassed her though not as much as the way Honey insisted on sidling closer still, the way she gently touched her shoulder and made her flinch.

'Dear me, so pale indeed, so hurt indeed. Let us see what we may see, my dear.'

She fingered the edge of the massive bruise on Diana's thigh, mercifully somewhat abated this morning, then ran her fingers across it very gently, stroking the fading but still purplish discolouration as though the act alone would make it better. In a way it did. There was something specially comforting in the young woman's touch. As she leaned in to check the bruises on her throat a resilient breast brushed her side. Its nipple was rubbery. Diana shuddered.

'Are you cold?' Honey quizzed.

'No. I'm just not accustomed to...well... you know.'

'I fear you have the advantage. Diana, you said?'

'Yes.'

'But not the Diana?'

'I guess not.'

She sighed. 'Indeed you do need treatment, you poor dear thing. A woman’s body should never be this way. It was unwise to come out here alone, though the consequences of even such rashness frankly surprise me.'

'Will you help me or not?'

Honey tossed back her head and laughed. Hers was the kind of laugh that made one want to hug her, a reaction that caused Diana to blush yet again.

'Now what sort question is that indeed? How could any woman fail to help another? The very notion, my silly dear.' The girl called Honey snaked a tanned bare arm around bare white shoulders and hugged her firmly but gently. Diana discovered to her horror that she enjoyed the intimacy. It was a display of affection completely asexual despite their mutual nakedness. 'We must get you back to the village. Ursula will examine you thoroughly.'

'Thank you. Thank you so much. Ursula is the town doctor?'

Honey ignored the question. 'Are you quite well enough to walk or shall I carry you?'

'I can manage.' Stiff, sore and unsteady Diana struggled to stand but the girl urged her back down again, frowning - if frown it could be called, since to frown meant to furrow the brow and Honey's perfect skin seemed incapable of any such defilement. Honey had got to feet too but in her case had done so with the litheness of a striking snake. She stood over the recumbent Diana with her legs open to brace herself and Diana found herself gazing up into the smooth folds of Honey’s soft labia and the ragged but luscious petals of the labia-majora. The epithet, ‘piss-flaps,’ which she would have used with her buddies seemed too coarse a vulgarity to even emerge as a thought down here.

'Steady, my dear girl, steady,” Honey cautioned. “I did not mean right away. The village is many furlongs distant and I fear today may be a hot one. You must you allow me to examine you properly. I do not pretend to be a Healer but there are many things I do know about female physiology.” She pursed her lips girlishly, considering a moment. “Indeed yes. It would be irresponsible for me not to take a good look at you.'

'Please, no. I....'

Diana tried to resist but found the girl’s kindly strength impossible to counter. Not hurting her in the least, her gasp was merely the result of what she was to see next, Honey nestled into an open-legged crouch that splayed wide and deep the magnificent cleft of that gorgeous cunt, slipped her arms under Diana's and by simply standing raised her erect as though she weighed no more than a child. In the second or so that the manoeuvre took Diana found herself locked in a skin-to-skin embrace; her own breasts pressing up against the spongy resilience of the girl's, belly flattened against the sheet-muscle resistance of the tanned Honey. It was the embrace that made Diana want to give herself up to this warm young body and the tiny, teasing pressure of a gristly little navel that made her gasp and shudder. She yielded. Only for one vital moment but found herself opening up nonetheless.

Honey didn’t seem to notice. If she did, she showed no sign. She had Diana fully in her arms and was turning her around gently, leading her off somewhere. Strong brown thighs wrapped themselves sequentially around hers, nudging her along. The hard metal of the bee-pendant felt hot to her breast. Honey’s body was a maw of floral scented skin and honey - yes, honey-scented - breath. Though she was in the clench of a full-grown naked woman, the experience aroused no revulsion. It brought instead a curious mix of warmth and expectation. The clutch of this young woman was like none she could ever have imagined: like being swept up by a being of composite Nature, in contact not with mere bare skin but the invisible outer layer of a woman who lived habitually nude under a life-giving sun.

When Honey gently released her, holding her steady by one hand for inspection in the full warmth of the morning sun, she thought she might weep.

'Now let me see...'

Diana quivered. Deep inside there was the familiar tingle that was the first kindling of orgasm. She tried to look away from her lovely lady and contemplate the glistening lake instead but every second of looking elsewhere was a second wasted. Honey’s gaze fixed fully on Diana in a reversal of the way things had been a few minutes before. This wasn’t exactly the same kind of admiration but it was admiration nevertheless. It felt good.

Honey let go of her hand and when satisfied that Diana would not topple, took a slow walk around her. Deliberately. Intently taking in every detail of her body. The attention was exquisite. Diana bit into her lip and held her breath so as to not whimper out loud. Above the shelter of the tall grass the sun was marvellously warm on her skin and the soft breeze that kissed every curve made her want to cry out with pleasure. No woman - no man either - had ever studied her in quite this way. She wished it could go on for ever.

'Lovely body,' Honey complemented.

Diana again quailed.

'Terribly white of course and.. hmm... that just won't do at all. I shall speak to Aurora about your spending this summer working with me. Would that not be nice? How desperately you need the sun, my dear! I have never approved of women working by moonlight, though I suppose there are those of us who must. And those injuries. Tut, tut.”

She shook her head then came at her from an unexpected angle and moved a hand widely spread across her belly, now stroking, now pressing. Goose pimples rose. Diana could do nothing to stop them

'Mercifully no serious damage but you must be terribly uncomfortable. Tell me if this hurts.' Fine fingers probed the blackening bruise on her hip then fanned out and pressed.

She flinched. She doubted Honey was capable of hurting her even if she chose to cut off her head with a blunt chain-saw. “A little, but not much.'

'And this?'

As though she were a mere the doll, the lithe fingers hitched around Diana's thigh and lifted, articulating the hip joint in tight circles. There was some discomfort, a dull ache, but no real pain.

'No.'

'Excellent. There seems to be more of a problem here, however.'

Honey moved to the top of the bruise on Diana's left thigh, arguably the worst of her injuries, and began to probe. There was a sharp stab of pain like someone jabbing at sunburn, and then the deft hand was cupped over her crotch, the middle fingers moving over her labia. Diana was about to call out and wriggle herself free when she realised that her genitals weren't the object of the exploration after all and that the fingertips were working their way along the tendons above her thighs, palpitating them quite expertly. Then there was a sudden, blistering explosion of white hot pain. Diana screamed and collapsed into the arms that were there the moment she needed them, sobbing into the tanned young breasts. A nipple rested at her lips and she made no effort to avoid it.

'I do apologise. I did not intend to hurt you, Diana. There is some damage to the tendons but nothing is torn or broken. I believe you shall be well after a few days rest. Now. One last thing concerns me.'

The strong but intensely feminine arms manoeuvred her again. Honey's hand moved to her good hip and lingered there a while. It gave a little pat of reassurance, a little stroke, before departing.

'I shall try to be not quite so rough.'

The hand returned to her hip but from the front this time, travelling along the flat plain of her belly. Rising. Honey's eyes stared directly into her own, sharp and clear, as one by one she felt the shape of each rib; tracing it from the point of inception close by her hunger-deflated stomach to its terminus round the far side of her body. She used both hands, feeling her way round with symmetry. The examination moved higher. Now Honey was touching between her breasts, reaching across them, the soft tissue unavoidably kneaded by the probing fingers. This part of the examination ended with the young woman testing the upper ribs and raising Diana's arms to feel inside their pits. Diana's embarrassment was matched only by a sickening feeling deep in her guts. Of course it hurt, her ribs were still sore, every last one of them, but what sickened her most was not the discomfort but the fact that she had just been felt out by another woman.

Or could it be something else?

'None broken,' Honey diagnosed. 'But there is a hair-line crack on the left seventh and a damaged ligature on the left fifth. You are actually quite lucky. It could quite easily be so much worse.'

'Who are you?'

The gorgeous face clouded in puzzlement. 'I have said. I am Honey, keeper of the bees. I...'

'What is all this about and where is this place?'

Honey grinned, then kissed her once on the cheek. Diana found herself closing her eyes and kissing back. The ensuing little skin-to-skin hug seemed entirely natural and in any case didn't last long. Honey took her hand and led her gently away, smiling back over her shoulder. Diana observed how her rump was deliciously formed, its cleavage deep.

'Perhaps we had best just concentrate on getting you home. Come with me.'

And then she was walking naked with a naked young woman. In the pure moment with so sense of the broader context of time or place, no knowledge of how or why. Just walking in the nude, hand in hand with a slightly shorter, slightly younger woman; a complete and utter stranger who was probably the most beautiful woman on earth. Walking on a morning the beauty of which complemented that of her companion.

The sky above was cloudless and the sun dazzlingly bright. Everywhere she looked, tall meadow grass spread far and wide, growing over land that rose and fell in the softest, subtlest of contours. The universal green was speckled here and there by tiny flowers of dazzling red or a deep, almost radioactive indigo. Occasionally there were clusters of sunflowers growing impossibly tall and full, their broad heads flecked in a darker pattern that gave the impression that they might be smiling. By daylight she saw that the lake was bigger than she had believed. It was a fresh-water sea almost that stretched out some kilometres. They were at the bottom of the slope and therefore unable to see the moors beyond, but the scent of moorland heather was fragrant on the air and there was a quality to the breeze suggestive of open spaces. Ahead the woods were green and fecund. The foliage of the trees was lighter than the surrounding grass. This was no stunted freeway-side copse. It was silent out there too. No traffic, no blaring horns, no sky-ripping aircraft.

Then something twanged unexpectedly as though discordant strings in some neglected part of her psyche were that moment strummed. The absence of something was the significance of that same something, though she had no comprehension of what it might be. Even what the feeling meant. Yet it was real enough. Somehow.

'Are you all right?' Honey asked.

'I Think so.'

'Only I thought I felt you shiver.'

'Someone walking over my grave, I guess.'

'What a depressing thought.'

Honey led her away from the lake and up onto a raised bank, previously out of sight, that formed a natural path above the grass. Here the growth was little more than a few inches high. Not only were both women bare as they day they were born but also very visible. The path wound round the water's edge - of course; it was an embankment to prevent flooding! - then split into two. The bifurcation was evidenced only by a minor change in the shade of green. Honey then took her to a much narrower path that led off into the woods.

'I am surprised you made it this far out without a guide,' she chattered. 'The ways here are far from clearly marked. A twelve year old girl wandered out here last summer. Curious child, of course, determined to see the bees. It took us three days to find her. Poor child was quite distraught. You may even remember the incident.'

She said she didn't, but then she didn't remember much of anything.

It was all like a dream which had borne her to an Alice in Wonderland kind of place where people were genteel and anything might happen. Could this place be England? Or somewhere like it? The rolling countryside and gentle manners were redolent of the sceptred isle even if she were making a judgement about a place she'd never actually visited. An English nudist colony! People who'd forgone clothing and the ways of the early twenty-first century in favour of simpler, franker times. But wasn't England always cold? Didn't rain fall and fog form on every day of the year? Tea and muffins naked on the lawn probably never happened over there.

Nor did one associate the gentility of Austenesque manners with the sight that greeted them as they entered the trees and rounded the corner of a tiny grove of willows, passing within. Bees. A dense, vibrant swarm of drone and honey bees that formed an unbroken wall on the path ahead. They filled an opening in the dense verdure so exactly that they might have been plastered there on a trowel. Contrary to the cliché, this was no seething mass: so densely packed were its elements that no room remained in which to seethe. More accurately it was a solid wall of furry bodies each around an inch and a half long that seemed to stand only by the sheer force of numbers, for it seemed impossible that there could be room in there for wings to beat. Each creature was the same tawny brown. Each one fattened to sickening surfeit. The noise, and for the life of her she couldn't understand why she hadn't heard it before, was the constant hum of a billion-volt electricity pylon, so terrifyingly loud as to make Diana Fuller let go of the girl's hand and cover both ears in dread.

Diana stopped dead in her tracks and tried to scream. Her mouth opened, the equipment seemed to function, but no sound came out. The heat that suddenly stung her legs was that of involuntary urination. She watched in fascinated horror as Honey simply strolled up to the swarm, still talking as though Diana were right behind her, and entered its midst. The swarm did not divide: instead it bulged around the girl's outline, making just the minimum amount of room for her to pass through. She kept on walking, her skin surely alive, surely cloaked from head to toe in insect fur and insect feet and fragile - fluttering, for God's sake! - insect wings. Honey was still talking, her voice fading, as the insect curtain closed behind her, leaving just the fleshy protuberances of her buttocks and a sun-browned heel. Then nothing.

Honey was gone. Dead or alive or unreal to start with but Honey was gone.

A reflex pulsed massively in the cellar of Diana's body, doubling her up so that her gorge rose with explosive force. Vomit gushed in a stream. She tried to straighten so as to run but a second paroxysm hit her and she threw up again, this time passing just acid and bright yellow bile. Yellow as the dress that was now gone. Yellow at the dress which she had left back at first base.

First base being the place to which she fled.

Diana Fuller turned on her heels and sped back out of the woods, doing her best to follow the path which had brought her here; ignoring the pain of her injuries and in defiance of Honey’s predictions. The instant she left the trees sunlight hit her full on and all the shades of green around her suddenly looked the same. The path? Which way?

She fell from the embankment; rolled three or four times, her final landing broken by soft earth. When she regained her feet - nothing twisted or broken - she pelted back in the direction of the lake, scything through the waist-high grass; not running straight but veering from side to side as might a hare pursued by slavering dogs. At the edge she flicked her body into a shallow dive and sliced into the awaiting lake. She forced herself down to the bright blue-tinged white sand of the bottom and grasped at rocks and weeds, gripping them tight, resisting her body's natural rise.

Bees that size and in such quantity killed. It was no way to die. Honey's corpse would already be a bloated mass of stings, discolourations and lacerations that burst open to ooze fresh puss. Diana's only safety lay in the water. She must stay here until her lungs burned as though she were breathing napalm and until the sub-aqua world began to blacken in the beginnings of unconsciousness. Then she must rise to the surface, re-fill , dive again. She must repeat this process until she knew the coast was clear.

Until the bees were gone.

Diana Fuller was no great fan of bees. That was the plain and honest truth.

4

There were no bees in her dreams, that was true enough too. Just snippets of things she only half-remembered whenever she started awake, which was increasingly often; more often than not prodded to alertness by gnawing hunger or aching thirst. How long since she'd eaten last? One day and one night so long as she could recall, probably considerably longer in between that she could not.

She'd retreated further along the grassland until the wood with the bees where Honey had died - if Honey ever existed at all - was just a splurge of green in the distance. There she took shelter in a place where the grass was so deep that she was barely able to see above it even when standing on tip-toe. This lair made a reasonably safe place to settle until the convulsions and blinding headaches subsided and where she might drift in and out of consciousness in comparative safety.

This time of awakening the main problem was thirst. It racked her often and the distance to the lake meant that it was difficult to slake. It was growing harder with each attempt. Diana didn’t drink much at all now: there were times when thirst raged like a fever at its insane height followed by intervals when she no longer seemed to care; when it was possible to slide back into the softness of that deep, velvety sleep.

The sun was going down in a vast orb of red that turned the whole of the eastern sky crimson. It began to set behind the hills on the far bank of the lake and turned the still waters into an inland sea of blood. Never seen so magnificent a sunset, true enough, just as she'd never seen a woman so beautiful as Honey. For a moment she forgot both thirst and hunger as in the dying moments of the day the whole sky flared up like a huge crimson furnace that stretched from horizon to horizon, turning everything below the colour of blood. The ball of red hovered spectacularly as though reluctant to go to bed then all at once gave a yawn of submission and dipped obediently below the horizon. In a moment, day was gone. Sunset faded on a nebulous wisp of twilight. Night was established on a single beat, wonderful and complete.

The cosmos returned in all its glory against that faultless black velvet backdrop and now that the slightly cooler airs of night began to settle, thirst ceased to be her main torment. The new torturer was hunger. It clawed at her innards as though disembowelling her from within, showing no mercy until it seemed her body might collapse in on itself. And little enough mercy even then. Diana Fuller was going to die after all. She knew it for certain; had become reconciled to the inevitability. She was going to starve with agonizing slowness.

So how long did it take for a person to starve to death? She recalled from somewhere that the length of the process varied greatly. A healthy person, properly hydrated, might last for weeks whereas someone in a weakened state might be gone in a few days or a week at the outside. And someone deprived of water would get there substantially faster still. Thus it might lie within her power to accelerate the process and have the business done with quickly by continuing to decline to drink: it was just that when they came those thirsts were abominable, hitherto sending her scuttling for the lake and its welcome surfeit. Perhaps as she grew weaker from lack of food it might become easier to resist that driven trek: to just lie back here and look up the moon. And die.

There was food in the woods. There had been the fragrance of citrus fruit there and she noticed that many of the inner trees were apple and lime, all laden. Honey too. Hah! The scent of it had been rich and sickly on the air. There the food must stay for there was no way she was going back; not to die in that terrible way the young woman had.

The moon stared down at her, ancient and splendid and indifferent as her eyelids closed and she drifted off into another troubled sleep. Sleep that was impossible to resist much as she tried. Immediately, the dreams flared again. There was no memory loss in this other world for the cab was taking her across Brooklyn, and she was huddled in a corner of the wash-down back seat of the yellow cab, staring out of the window and seeing nothing. Saying nothing either; just trying to make herself so small that she ceased to exist.

Dr. Clayton had been good to his word that the procedure would be completely painless and that there would be no after-effects. Physically at least. Sometimes there were psychological problems. If these were to manifest then they were to be addressed. She would be sent for counselling where women with training in post-abortion trauma would help. He doubted there would be any such problems, however; most women sailed through the procedure without any ill effects at all.

But how would he know? He was just a man.

So she'd lain back in that silly chair so high off the ground and slipped her feet through the chromium stirrups where a nurse in a pink uniform tightened the little Velcro straps which had held them and Dr. Clayton - kindly Dr. Clayton, that man of letters and mercy - pricked her with a needle so close to the cunt that it made her eyes water, and she stared up at they grey-blue ceiling before closing her eyes against the glare of the lights and experienced... well, nothing. A suction process was used which meant there was no cutting of skin. No brutal instruments, no scrapers or clamps, burrowing their way into her canals. As soon as the local had taken effect Clayton opened up his work space with a surgical speculum rammed into her vagina, deployed suction then checked with an endoscope to ensure that the deed was done - he had once bragged in a bar that his endoscope was the must cunt-travelled piece of equipment in New York City. For purposes of cleaning up he deposited spermicidal compounds; a belt and braces approach that ensured there would be no problems from lurking sperm. After a final look around with the endoscope he slackened off the speculum - a device which in fact still amused him after all these years, something which he thought so much akin to changing tires on wheel-rims, a thing which he had done with a certain prescience to earn a few bucks in his student days - and checked to make sure that the cunt was properly closed up. There were many guys out there, he often mused, thousands, millions who'd gladly pay a king's ransom to do the job he did; whose work morning to cocktails was cunts. Clayton had once given a highly humorous presentation at his golf-club during a drinking party in which he'd vividly described the wide variety of female petals which had passed through his fingers during his long and august career. The presentation had gone down well enough for the guys to ask him do it again the following Saturday. The encore had never happened. He'd taken that weekend away with his mistress.

Diana knew nothing of these things when he squeezed her knee and told her that the procedure was complete, and successful, but she could've guessed readily enough along similar lines. He'd told her to rest up a few minutes, during which he left the cubicle while the nurse ripped open the straps and massaged the circulation back into her ankles.

'It's comfortable in the lounge,' she said. 'It isn't busy this morning. Rest up there as long as you like.'

They'd given her pair of disposable panties, 'You'll only need those until the anaesthetic wears off,' and swapped the surgical johnny for a towelling robe. Her lower abdomen felt disconcertingly numb as the nurse steered her by one elbow along a short corridor and into the recovery lounge.

The lounge was as tacky as the rest of the place, more like the cramped reception room of a down-town massage parlour. It was small, windowless and lit by wall-lights and a couple of table-lamps which Diana, observed apropos of no particular reason, were screwed down. There were four fake-leather recliners and a long corduroy sofa scattered about with cushions. To give an illusion of the domestic a pair of drapes hung from a pelmet though there was no window behind. The untidy cluster of magazines on a coffee table was laughably trite. Of course, every one sat down and eagerly thumbed through Home and County after offing the family, now didn't they? One corner of the room hosted an aluminium trolley on which there was freshly filtered coffee and a hospital jug of orange juice. A pool-table would have reinforced the massage-parlour analogy but space didn't run to it.

The room's only other occupant was a slim and very attractive black woman who was evidently sleeping, curled up in a corner of the sofa. It was hot and stuffy in there. Diana craved fresh air. Beneath the stink of a cheap air-freshener was the ubiquitous clinic smell of disinfectant. Better than the county hospital, she reflected. The county had economised on the use of disinfectant years before: there the salient odours were of dirt and sweaty bed-linen.

'Stay as long as you like,' the nurse repeated, then simply walked out and left her.

Diana settled into one of the big recliners, one facing away from the sleeping woman, after observing that the woman hadn't actually been sleeping at all but merely pretending. The way best to achieve the mutually held desire of not feeling obliged to engage in conversation was simply not to look at each other. To her surprise it had actually been she who dozed; not long but sufficient to dream fitfully. She'd awoken in a light sweat and gone and poured herself an orange-juice. Discovering that she was thirsty - very thirst - she poured another. And another. God, what was the matter with her? Her thirst was intolerable. She hadn’t remembered it being like this.

Vertically overhead, the sun beat down without remorse. It was well into another day. The grass beside her was paper-dry and surrendered none of the dew which had passed between her lips before dawn. For Diana now the need was for sleep. Only sleep. Her thirst was killing her but the hunger had receded to a point where it barely rankled. Yesterday had been bad. She'd succumbed twice and gone down to the lake to drink, keeping an ever watchful eye on the woods. Today, thirst hadn't had the same effect. All she craved was sleep: deep, cool, wonderful sleep. Diana wasn't exactly sure but there may have been a couple more days between today and yesterday. If so she was lasting out pretty well, albeit reassured by the fact the dreams were increasingly where she spent most of her time, her reality, and that she believed it wouldn't be much longer before she flipped over into them for good. There was also something about them which implied a certain exigency. As though in those dreams lay the solution to a major puzzle.

The biggest pieces of that puzzle were just about slotting together when the sunlight vanished.

She was back in her apartment. In place of that fierce light, darkness was settling and turning the persistently grey sky black. The junk-shop glass ashtray with its fading gold rim - allegedly having once belonged in a British pub - and its plethora of twisted buts spoke volumes as to her disposition the rest of that afternoon. The near empty bottle of Cap'n Clipper dark rum she'd bought from the mini-mart downstairs told its own story. She was drinking it neat, her tongue searching for that special after-taste that only dark rum delivered, and was rendered miserable by the fact that its deleterious effect on her sobriety was nil. This despite the fact that it had started out as a full European litre. A good drink, she conceded, by any standards.

Lee was nowhere in sight even though he should have got back from work hours before. He'd promised to come home early. Lee had nowhere else to go since he'd given up his crumby room and moved in with her two weeks before Christmas. Throughout the early months of their relationship she'd accepted his explanation that some nights he stayed away from home because a job across town meant it was easier to sleep on site rather than commute. Especially when overtime, and hence money, was plentiful and he only took six or seven hours off between shifts. Lee hadn't lied then. It was just that the guys he hung out with slept on site illicitly. And shot up. In any case tonight was no stay-over. There had been no overtime for close on two months. Their money was getting low. Diana guessed – in the event correctly - that his supervisor was getting pissed off with him.

When the rum was gone she'd move on to gin, last bottle of booze in her apartment. If that didn't do the trick then she'd space out on the Prozac and sleeping pills she got from her doctor. Not many capsules. Four or five. The combination wouldn't prove lethal, even if it took her dangerously close to the edge, but it'd punch her lights out long enough to ensure a thorough escape.

Diana took another belt of the rum and went and stood and looked down into the street with its the gathering night and falling rain - a night not so different to the one on which she'd first met Lee - and found herself wishing she'd never been born. Or at least born as someone else: no role model in particular, just a different person: the nurse in the clinic perhaps, who'd gone to college and set a profession against her name, who went home every night to an average house in Queens; to her husband who worked in a credit union, to their two screaming kids and their mongrel dog, to dinner and TV and to rutting intercourse one night in three. She wished she'd been pretty much anyone other than Diana Fuller, born loser extraordinaire, deck stacked against her right from birth, who wasn't going to make it anywhere, any way. Ever.

After the Prozac, sleep bore her in its sombre arms until Wednesday. Sometime that morning she was awoken by the sound of the mail-man in the hallway downstairs and had observed through eyes blurred by drugs and alcohol, that the living room light had been burning all this time. There was no Lee. She was lying on the sofa in her underwear and her street clothes were strewn in a pile on the threadbare rug where she had flung them down. The apartment was cold. The drapes were pulled all the way back, letting in the thin morning light.

It was nothing to rival the light in that other place, however. When she looked a little closer she saw that what she had mistaken for daylight proved in fact to be the vast disk of that alternate moon, so much more huge than the one above New York. A moon not quite full any more for one edge was truncated, as though planed flat, marring its perfect shape. A moon that was beginning to wane.

Sun or moon no longer mattered anyway. Her sleep was so much akin to her sleep in her apartment that time; so skirt-brushing close to oblivion, that this time it seemed she might make it there after all.

5

'Try not to move her too roughly.'

'She weighs so little.'

'Poor child. '

'So thin, so pale, so still.'

In the moonlight, the woman who was clearly the leader of the group of four gave a softly spoken order the immediate effect of which was that the women backed away; all but one who knelt before the unconscious Diana and placed an object a little like a large egg-timer on the girl's chest. The opposite, symmetrical, end of the device she pressed an ear to, proving that it was indeed a primitive stethoscope.

The woman listened for a few moments, as she moved the stethoscope very slowly. Her brow was furrowed in an amalgam of concentration and concern. Like every other woman in the group, she was stark naked.

'Hhmmm. Heartbeat weak and irregular.' She flipped up an eyelid - the eye was rolled to the top of its ocular orbit - then slipped her finger tips between Diana Fuller's thighs, checking her pulse not on the wrist but through the femoral artery. 'Heart-side pupil dilated and pulse very stringy and feeble.' She held on a while longer, shaking her head. 'Quite stringy, I'm afraid. This woman's condition is far from good.'

The leader of the group was taller than the other members. Her hair was longer and fairer, visibly so even in the moonlight, sweeping over her shoulders. Hers was an altogether more slender - albeit big-breasted - figure and yet one which, because of her very height and that undeniable sense of poise, seemed to command authority. That she held sway over the others was in no doubt.

'Prognosis,' she snapped.

'We must get her back to the village immediately. I must cut the skin so that I may administer stimulants directly into the blood stream. It is her only hope. I shall make up a potion of nutrients and feed them into the patient's stomach through the hollow tendril of the winter-vine. We must keep her warm. The patient's skin is very cold. See?'

Ursula leaned back from the recumbent figure as though in invitation. Moving in close, the leader of the group obliquely observed that Ursula's breasts were small and sharply pointed in the way characteristic of academics. She observed this though she had seen Ursula's breasts a million times before. Perhaps they seemed that way particularly in contrast to the girl's which, despite the onset of starvation, were almost as prodigious as her own: vast hemispheres they were, milky in the moonlight, that tumbled over the thin chest. Thin chest indeed! The leader of the group pursed her lips and whistled softly at the ribs that protruded from the over-tight skin like hoops in a rotted tun and the shoulder blades that jutted skeletally. The long legs were a study of bone and atrophied muscle; the hips hideous, hollow excrescences. The mystery of the full breasts in relation to the starving carcass caused her face to cloud over in puzzlement - she was a woman who knew nothing whatsoever about tit jobs.

A young woman banished to the edge of the group began to cry. 'I am sorry, Aurora. So sorry! It is all my fault. I should have gone back. I assumed that she had gone a different way!'

Aurora straightened from her crouch and crossed to her. She took her in a comforting embrace and hugged her tight, while the girl buried her face in Aurora's shoulder and sobbed loudly. Child-like. Breasts pressed breasts, belly flattened against belly, hands travelled in reassuring caresses, but of embarrassment or reluctance to continue so overtly in the intimacy there was no sign.

'Hush, Honey. It was not your fault. You were not to know.'

'I should have returned when she did not follow me through.'

'She was not intended to be here. Diana was not due to arrive for another a moon, or so I interpreted the Ancient Codex. If anyone is in error it is I for my misinterpretation. Had it not been for your encounter then Diana would probably not have survived at all. We should have found a skeleton out here. Probably not even that much. Fresh bones soon get eaten by...' She chose not to think about it. She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. 'You must not upset yourself in this way. Consider yourself privileged in that you are a tool of destiny. Diana will not die, cannot die! It is impossible. Her death would contradict all that is written. Diana shall live.'

'But I could have told someone earlier! I went back the following day and... and... then did nothing. I forgot. I... I...'

'Hush, hush.'

Aurora hugged the naked young woman still tighter, enjoying her warmth and softness and the honey fragrance of her skin. An instinctive stirring within told her she wanted to lick the honey, only now wasn't exactly the best of times. Later, maybe, when she felt stronger and less contrite, more willing to be intimate. After Diana's recovery.

It was a long time since she'd made love to the keeper of the bees. Yet there was no avoiding the validity of her self-criticism. No-one exactly expected mental brilliance from so humble a girl, but knocking on Aurora's door eight days after the event, only just remembered, was a poor performance by even the most lenient of standards. If only she weren't always so stiflingly preoccupied with her cunting bees!

The Healer cleared her throat. 'Aurora, I believe we should move swiftly.'

'Quite so. Let us not cause the poor woman further undue suffering.' The leader of the group kissed the still sobbing Honey on one cheek and pushed her gently away. 'Come, dear. Enough of this. We need you.' To the rest of the group. 'Agnes, you will help bear stretcher. Ursula, you will do all that you can to ensure that my partner arrives home comfortably.'

'Aurora, her chances of surviving until...' 'Pah! Nonsense! It is written. Now, all of you. Be swift!'

The young woman called Agnes reached down beside her and picked up something previously hidden in the long grass. Physically she bore a close resemblance to Honey. She was broader in the shoulders and inclined to be more muscular, but her skin was similarly darkened by the sun and her shortish hair straight and jet-black. She bent straight-legged, feet apart, unravelling the thing on the ground: indifferent to the genital candour of the view presented to her rear; one observed by the rest of the women who paid it no heed either for they were intent on the unscrolling of the stretcher. No sophisticated thing, it consisted of two lengths of a reed similar to bamboo, almost white, stitched into a narrow sheet of woven reeds. Like the stethoscope it was crude but serviceable. When she was done Agnes stood with arms akimbo, awaiting further instructions. She made a splendid sight in that pose; young, athletic and powerful, her musculature well defined in the nude state, yet acutely feminine.

'A little water first, I think.'

Ursula produced a silver vial from a bag made of the same reed matting as the stretcher and poured a few drops onto Diana's lips. The drops coursed rapidly away. Ursula tutted and shook her head, turned Diana's head to one side, levered open the jaw and poured directly into the lolling mouth. This time Diana's tongue moved. Her throat expanded and contracted in the motion of swallowing. The smallest of movements quivered through her legs.

Aurora was about to say something when Ursula stopped her. 'Reflex, dear. Nothing more, I fear.'

'Let us go!'

Agnes took Diana's arms, Honey her ankles. With reverent care they transferred her to the stretcher and folded her arms across her chest. The stretcher made a perfect sling. Honey turned to lead off. Agnes followed on behind.

'One moment'

The Healer flipped up an eyelid, said nothing, then motioned the group to proceed. Within minutes the entire group was gone from the meadow and swallowed by the darkness of the woods. But for a small area of tamped-down grass, the sole sign of their activity, the meadow was as pristinely perfect as though no-one had ever been there at all.

Lee still hadn't made it home even by the Friday of that week. His things were still in the apartment, right down to the clean workshirt draped over the chair by his side of the bed. She'd phoned his office to find that he hadn't been into work since the previous Friday and that accordingly Lee McCorrister had gotten himself fired. No, he hadn't left her a message. No, they didn't know where he might be, for Crissake. Diana stayed put by the phone the rest of that weekend and prayed for him to make contact.

She had better than three hundred dollars left from the wad of bills he'd left her to settle her account at the clinic - you want to pay in cash, ma'am? - and had food enough in her apartment to last out the next few days. When that ran out she'd run down to the market on the corner to re-stock, but no way was she leaving the place for any significant length of time. Not until Lee got in touch. Diana just needed to know he was safe.

In fact she thought she heard him right now, though his voice was higher than it used to be and his accent curious.

'Delirium.'

'She wishes to speak.'

Ursula shook her head. 'No. These are nothing more than incoherent ramblings brought on by fever.'

It was stiflingly hot in the little room. Dark too but for the flickering orange light that came from a fire that roared in a stone hearth set into a recess. The room, which was circular, could not have been more than fifteen feet in diameter. The door was locked and the single window shuttered, adding to the sky-rocketing heat. This in turn caused sweat to ooze from the skins of the two women who stood over Diana Fuller. The blonde, Aurora, had tied back her hair in a pony-tail with a piece of rough twine. The arrangement gave some relief, at least made her feel more comfortable, but did nothing to quell the copious flow of perspiration streaming down her skin. It was worst on her back, for it was turned to the fire, her attention focused utterly on the patient. Every so often she took a cloth drenched in cold water and wiped herself, then did the same for Ursula. This last time, as the Healer rubbed her eyes and swayed from heat and exhaustion, Aurora sponged her down from head to toe. It was important that Ursula remain alert. Diana's life depended on that next thin thread in the web of destiny. The Healer's skill.

'Better, my dear?'

'Yes, thank you. Very much so.'

'How long will she be like this?'

Ursula sighed the kind of mournful sigh that would pluck the heartstrings of the hardest woman.'Oh, my dear, I so fervently wish I could do more! Her vitals are weak yet she is surprisingly resilient. There may be no change for hours. Days, possibly. It is quite impossible to tell.'

'And afterwards? She will be lucid? There is so much that we must discuss.'

Then Ursula realised what Diana actually meant, how dreadfully crossed their purposes. She abandoned her ostensible soothing of the patient's brow - actually she was feeling for skull damage - and gripped the Leader by both arms, her fingernails digging in deep.

'Aurora! Please! You misunderstand me most heinously. That was not what I meant at all! I am saying that Diana is dying. Then end is both inevitable and imminent.”

'My darling, modest Ursula. How you do insist on underestimating your abilities. How desperately all the women in the world, even its most learned, need guidance. There is to be no death for my precious Diana. Not for many, many years. It is written, dear. Written.'

'I cannot even begin to...'

'Enough!'

Sick to her stomach, Ursula turned her attention back to the patient. She had looked away for just the fewest of moments and sure enough - no miracle.

Aurora's eyes followed.

Diana still lay on the simple stretcher on which the rescue party had been brought her home, except that now it rested on the scrubbed wooden table that dominated the centre of the room. The table was long enough for her with mere centimetres to spare. The patient’s head was propped up on a sackcloth pillow and the wrists bound in bandaged poultices; the means by which Ursula ensured a constant infusion of whatever it was that Healers infused. A green-brown vine protruded from Diana’s mouth, terminating in a funnel-like object beside her head. There was also a half-full bowl of nutrient substance that resembled thin gruel. The opposite end of the vine reposed in Diana Fuller's stomach where Ursula had inserted it. She'd administered nutrients almost immediately and would do so again quite soon, once she was certain that Diana wouldn't sick it back up. The pulse remained weak, the heartbeat erratic; the pale skin had acquired an ominous blue-grey tinge, evident even in the warm glow of the firelight. The woman was cold to the touch; something else which made her shake her head again.

'I wish you would desist from doing that,' Aurora reproved.

'Forgive me.'

'Healers who persistently shake their heads make me nervous. Should we not cover her?'

'Never would I have believed I might hear a Leader suggest sacrilege, but frankly it is quite warm enough in here already. Besides, I need to monitor the colouration of the skin. That more than anything will indicate to me...'

'Indicate?”

'Nothing. I was thinking aloud, that is all.'

Aurora took a deep breath and it was one that seemed to come up from her very heart: one which made the large, bare breasts rise and fall and the flat abdomen sag with apprehension.

Ursula moved closer; fondled the sweat-greased curves of her bare buttocks, snaked an arm around her waist and squeezed. 'We are doing everything possible. Everyone is, one way or another. There is nary a woman in the village tonight who is not sleepless with fear at Diana's condition. You must not blame yourself. Forgive me if I speak out of turn but nothing in the field of all knowledge is more complex than the Ancient Codex. All my learning as a Healer is of little compared to that or the responsibility which accompanies it. You have spoken often in Council of an event encrypted in the most ancient of times which even now has come to pass in the manner foretold. To correctly forecast the very day is something no woman would ever expect. None of us could have been prepared. Not even our Leader'

'Diana shall be my partner, the co-progenitor of the next generation of Leaders. The responsibility to deliver her safely into our community is mine alone.'

'You are too hard on yourself. Too hard by far.'

'I could never love another woman so.'

Then Diana groaned. She groaned because the words I shall never choose any another woman had been the very last that Lee McCorrister had ever spoken to her and she'd believed in her delirium that he was speaking them again. The fingers of the right hand that moved so feebly on the emaciated belly represented the hand that was reaching out to him for the very last time and the faintest of moans that came from the barely parted lips was the ear-shattering scream which had reverberated from the walls of the hospital cubicle as Lee had slipped away from her.

In an instant, Ursula rushed to Diana’s side. Sure enough sweat was beginning to bead on the girl's brow. The pulse - for the sake of speed she took it in the throat - was stronger. The closed eyes, however, remained dark and cadaverous, circled in the dark colours of imminent death. Ursula pressed an ear to the cold chest - not quite so cold? - and heard the woman's breath stutter and falter in a way that meant her lungs were packing up.

She stroked her brow with the tenderness of a woman who truly cared and her heart leapt as Diana's eyes flickered open. There was a flash of comprehension and fear in eyes which were baby-blue and doll-like and over-large from strain.

'Hush. You are at home with your family, Diana. You are quite safe.'

Ursula curved an arm around Diana’s shoulders and lifted her a little. The gesture appeared to be to allow Diana a chance to study her surroundings but like all acts of Healers there was a second, coldly professional motive. Clear the airways. Use gravity to help clear shift any residual gunge and allow the woman a modest shot at coughing up any bile while she still lived. Discretely, she moved the vine to a corner of Diana's mouth.

The word, when it finally came, was precious little more than a whisper. 'Lee.'

'Where? Just rest my dear. You have been quite ill. You must rest if you are to fully recover. There is no cause for anxiety.'

Galvanized, Aurora stepped forward and took hold of the woman's hand. The fingers felt as frail as matchwood and the simple contact sent a wave of emotion juddering through her. Salt-tears and sweat dripped to the parchment white skin.

'I love you! My darling, for a time I almost believed you were going lost to us. I...'

'Aurora,' warned Ursula. 'This may not be what it seems. You must be brave, my dear.'

Then Diana gave a single gasp; a protracted exhalation which had nothing to do with the business of breathing, a gasp that seemed to go on and on and on. Aurora watched in horror as the baby-doll eyes glazed over and the feeble body relaxed in a way that was unnatural. Like meat. The eyes continued to stare though they saw nothing.

Ursula gently lowered Diana's head back to her pillow and rolled the lids shut. There was no further movement.

'Dead,' she announced. Softly.

6

Aurora started running the very second the Healer made her dread pronouncement and it was the kind of flight that implied she might be running - one way or another - for ever. Even as Ursula turned to her with that terrible look of anguish that threatened to scar her soul for all eternity, Aurora flung open the door of the circular little dwelling and fled into the grassy street beyond, her sweat-glistening body flashing in the orange light of the smoking torches the silently clustered women bore - patiently waiting. Women came alive as the naked Aurora fled though their midst but she broke to one side; ignoring their clamour and out-flung arms, closing her ears to their woeful pleas. At full pelt she skirted the domes that were the houses of the village and made it to the limits by jinking and swerving until, beyond the range of the lamps, her running form was swallowed up in shadow. There came a stretch of thick heather then she was into the trees and gone from sight.

It was no way to behave. Not for a leader of Lesbos. Not like this: sobbing aloud, tears streaming down her face; a woman of mystique and kudos reduced to a blubbering infant. Women had never seen their Leader this way. They demanded courage and expected strength; the kind of fortitude in the face of adversity she’d demonstrated in the past when trials and adversity beset their society. They were unprepared for her. Unprepared and incapable of understanding. They'd sympathise, to be sure. Worry themselves sick with best of them. But sympathising wasn't the same as knowing. Only one person was capable of empathy and that person had just a few moments before ceased to exist.

Dead. Diana dead! The Ancient Codex shown up for the crumbling-paged, fading-ink fallacy it really was; her own augury exposed as risible folly.

She slammed deeper into the trees, not slowing her pace a fraction though it was almost pitch black under the dense canopy of interlocking boughs; a progression that compelled her to twist and turn furiously as the boles of the ancient pines slipped by mere inches away. This was a territory she had known since childhood. One through which other women would find it impossible to lend pursuit. The forest stretched for miles and its limits were largely unexplored. It was a realm of myths and legend: a place where her cries of anguish would be heard only by occasional scurrying creatures or the birds of the air and where, as she progressed deeper, the light of day would barely reach. A suitable place, in fact, for the cloying self-indulgence of grief. With one exception. That Aurora must deal with before reaching her objective. A region that would tempt her as it would surely seduce her with fear.

She slowed to a loose-limbed trot, shook out her arms and legs as though they were the sleeves of a suit that didn't quite fit, halted, hugged her knees straight-legged and took several deep breaths. It took almost two minutes for her breathing to return to something like normal. When it did she started off again, for it had to be conceded that this was no place to linger.

Aurora had no clear plan, nor for that matter even a rough one, just a dim notion of flight which had taken form in the hours before Diana's death. All she understood was the need to escape; to duck the billion unanswerable questions which even now were loaded up and ready to be fired into the terrible trench of her grief. The rest of her life had been rendered barren and hopeless by some incredibly cruel and yet entirely fortuitous event. She had no solace to offer, no words to say, no stomach for her responsibilities. Yet the onerous responsibility of Leadership fell upon her alone: there was never any disciple to don her mantle, no deputy to warm the nest in her absence. No regent. All these things were down to Diana but Diana had looked at her and said something. Then died.

She closed her eyes again, and pressing back a fresh wave of tears. The needles of the pines made a prickly carpet beneath her feet and there was no sound among the trees but the light thudding of her own footfalls. She sensed each tree that loomed up before her as a faint breeze across the face, the way a blind woman might, and side-stepped effortlessly in the near darkness. So intense was the gloom beneath the canopy that, through this stretch of forest at least, there was no advantage to opening her eyes either by night or day. Only instinct made it possible to navigate a way through. An instinct that verged on the preternatural and that very few women possessed

Ursula considered the body that lay on the examination table and silently cursed such limitations of her skills that could not quite reach into that tenuous realm between life and death. She had, in fact, been looking at it for some time, unsure exactly what to do next. Unexpected death required dissection. The preparation of a Leader's corpse - a thing she'd hitherto been spared - necessitated removal of the internal organs for deep-forest burial. Especially the heart. Preparing the shell of the corpse for cremation posed fewer problems since it was mainly a cosmetic measure, but going inside was a thing she unaccountably baulked at.

Much of that reluctance might well be down to the influence of religious belief, or superstition as she perceived it, but it was a powerful inhibitor. In any case the surgery was too hot for opening up a body. Women were out in strength, wailing and screaming in the still night, their voices urgent and high with distress. Their hysteria had forced her to lock her door, which had made it hotter still. She'd tried pouring washing water on the blazing fire but without the through-draught of the door had simply succeeded in filling the place with smoke.

Ursula set down the glinting scalpel by the body's head. Her vision swam. A wave of nausea swept over her. Her hands were trembling too much to allow her to perform a dissection anyway. No one would blame her, would they? She never stood a chance of restraining Aurora. Aurora was much too strong and fast.

With two fingers she stroked down the lids over eyes that had become mere glass baubles and closed them for ever. Or had she? Gum might be a safer bet, the Healer considered. Emaciated corpses tended to open their eyes unexpectedly and stare, an occurrence that would undoubtedly bring cries of 'miracle' from those gullible slits out there. Best to gum them down once and for all then pour herself a gin that'd make a donkey drunk. Ursula backed away from the body. For some reason the thought of gluing up the eyes made her shudder. They opened again of their own accord a moment after.

After three more hours of dogged trudging Aurora did in fact get a chance to look at the world again, unsurprised by the faint greenish luminance that now tainted the perfect dark. To a height of three feet above the ground the boles of the pines emitted a weird phosphorescence; an unsteady, barely solid illumination so weak that it became invisible again when one looked directly at it. Collectively, however, the luminance of individual trees was almost sufficient to see her way by.

She quickened her pace. She was now approaching the Forest of Lights. Aurora needed to take care here for the region was truly dangerous. The Ancient Codex told of strange beasts and strange events that defied the very laws of nature. Though those tales were heavily embellished - the secret signs of hyperbola were embedded in the text for a Leader to see - she knew from experience that there was some measure of truth in all of them. As a teenager she'd seen things in the light that wasn't quite a light which were frightening. She'd vowed that when the day came that she enter the green flames of Leadership and the collars of the highest office were made fast about her throat she would decree an expedition to the Forest of Lights to chase down the beasts therein once and for all. Except that further study revealed that the Ancient Codex strictly forbade any such attempt: to disturb the things that guarded the glowing trees was blasphemy. Instead Aurora kept her own council about the Forest of Lights. And returned. Often. To places even more mysterious too.

That strange forest within a forest would never quell her tears but at least its dangers would keep her alert and its awesome power might afford the most acute test of her wisdom yet; force her to balance the reality of that which was against a belief in that which might yet be. Aurora could feel the weight of the challenge descending on her already.

Ursula pondered a little more. It wasn't far short of dawn and she still hadn't slept. The gin was her fourth and it was a particularly strong brew this year which she was drinking neat without the sweet, dark raspberry juice that traditionally accompanied it. Two made her giggle and three usually got her singing, but tonight the fourth was going down her throat like liquid fire and her system was reacting as though she were drinking butter-milk. Ursula often took a tipple at night, it was expected of Healers, but never more than one tumbler. Ordinarily even so abstemious a libation got her merry. Tonight she finished gin number four and immediately set up number five and still she kept on thinking.

The body of Diana lay exactly as it was when Aurora had fled, flat and sagging and lifeless. Frightened, hysterical women had pounded on her door again and demanded that the body be borne away to lie in state but Ursula had told them that there were things she had still to do; no, they could not see, for was newly dead and must first be treated, else the viewing was a violation. They'd acquiesced and backed away, heads lowered. They hadn't been back to trouble her since.

Ursula picked up the razor-sharp autopsy knife and hefted it's balanced, chromium weight. Better than a scalpel. Knife removed skin, knife cut internal ligaments that held the organs in place. That's what autopsy knives were good at - what this particular one had done several times before. Only, every time she advanced toward the body, knife in hand, it seemed to develop a quiver - which Ursula never pretended other than she knew perfectly well came from herself - and declined to hold to its proper course. She was seized too with an overwhelming sense of wrong that made her gaze guiltily down at the dead shape as though she were a despicable grave robber about to steal the moot trophies of the guts of the dead. After all her years of study, training and apprenticeship she should not be feeling this way. Emotional. Superstitious. Unscientific.

And ironically, the body itself beckoned, for it was an appetizing one that promised great professional intrigue. How come, when the rest of the musculature was sagging in the relaxation of death, that the breasts remained so perfectly shaped? What was the true extent of the damage to the brain beneath the skull beneath the scalp from which grew the hair that evidently only she could tell had been cut and shaped by implements quite unlike anything in their experience? What nature of matter where those tiny fragments, some beige-blue and lightweight, some metallic, embedded in the skin of the bruises? What would her analytical acids and alkalis yield? And the body itself. Starved to death, the bones clearly visible under the skin, the coils of intestine ripe for the plucking. What mysteries in that cadaver that hinted so much to one who knew the signs?

She swallowed down gin number five, vowing it would be her last, coughed violently, then grasped the knife firmly in both hands and advanced to the examination table. This time the knife was steady in the Healer's grasp. Ursula told herself there would be no more thinking - or drinking - until the cutting was done.

The ram-rod straight pines began to acquire a variety of distortions. Some were gnarled and involuted as though hit by lightning again and again and yet kept on living. Others divided into bifurcations of the trunk like conjoined twins. Many grew more or less straight but were marred by odd excrescences on the outer surface of the bark. Some contained holes in their already thin boles and a few bore odd growths that seemed twisted into shapes resembling faces. The more misshapen the trees became the more they glowed with that strange phosphorescence and the denser the foliage above grew. In the glow, the carpet of fallen needles was rich and deep and grey-green. There were none of the smaller bushes or ground-hugging creepers that characterized the rest of the forest, but there were clumps of mushrooms, some sporting specimens better than a foot in diameter, and a sporadic fungal growth that effected only the east facing sides of certain trees.

Then it happened again. A buzzing entered her ears. Her skin tingled from head toe as though she had trodden on the silvery eel that lived in the upper reaches of Lesbos's shallow river. Her head ached. Raw puke rose in her gorge. Aurora hastened, resisting the urge to run again for fear that she might attract the attention of whatever might be watching. Or listening.

Ursula paced around the body of the Leader Designate. She considered the best angle of approach, the best technique. She'd packed sawdust and straw around the edges, tucking it underneath, the better to absorb the inevitable blood and body fluids, and reasoned that no further hygiene precautions were necessary. Cutting into this one wouldn't be like opening up a well fed corpse. There'd be no layer of subcutaneous fat nor viscous accretions. Little mess. She'd go for the preferred Y cut taught to her by her mentor: two cuts from just under each shoulder blade, joining up over the breast bone and proceeding in a single spectacular gash between the rises of the breasts, through the navel and on over the pubic bone to the labial apex. It was a technique that opened up the whole of the torso in a complete, gruesome vista. Difficult to cover up cosmetically, one had to agree, but she would do her best with heavy lateral stitching - to prevent the body splitting open again later - pliant clay and make-up.

So here goes. Ursula put the point of her glinting autopsy knife to Diana's left shoulder and...

...froze.

The glass eyes were staring vacantly up at the soot-blackened ceiling, meaning that here was no accusation from the dead Diana. But Ursula peed herself all the same, just couldn't help it; just let the flow go where she stood.

Maybe another gin after all, eh?

While the Healer of Lesbos was getting blind drunk and singing to the rising sun, while the body still lay intact on its the dissection table, Aurora had penetrated so deep into the Forest of Lights that the eerie glow was everywhere she looked. Her tears had long since subsided and her body was taut to a hair-trigger readiness. Her mind was on one legend specifically; a legend she had always, albeit never in public, been quick to denounce. Spirits roamed. This place was very much a domain of spirits. They existed but a short way beyond the realms visible to living women. One might insinuate oneself into their company quite easily.

She had herself seen spirits here although the experience always happened in tandem with other things; she'd only ever seen them, for example, when she'd lingered in the area too long; they only appeared when the headaches, nausea and skin-tingling phenomena were simultaneously at their worst and if ever she tasted one of those giant mushrooms, then there appeared phantasms galore. Tonight she must cross the fabled spirit-region from one side to the other and must do so whilst newly stricken by grief. The legend that was making her pulse race ran to the effect that the spirit-region had power to summon the dead and needed but a single invocation to make the blasphemy be. To invoke was to blaspheme and yet the supernatural power of the region - if real, if not just some subterfuge of devils - allegedly held power enough to bring her beloved Diana home too.

Aurora speeded up. The rules were clear: what might be done in this place and what most certainly might not. Certain things were vehemently excluded, certain very simple things; right on the tip of the tongue things, almost inevitable things, simple abominations that must never be. The test of her mettle was could she resist? In this grief-disturbed state could she hope to stay the moral distance or not? She bit into her tongue and shook her head defiantly. Fresh tears stung her eyes.

Of course she could! Aurora was a born Leader of women, resilient and redoubtable. No power in all the roaring furnaces of hell could make her so feeble as to utter that simple, trigger word. Nothing could make her call out...

'Diana! Come to me!'

The sullied imprecation was on the air almost before she realised, sucked away again by the suffocating trees; gone as quickly as it came , leaving no trace of an echo. Aurora came close to allowing herself to believe that she had not made the utterance at all until the headache came at her like a flying boulder and her spine crackled as though that silver eel had stretched itself out there and shed its every last amp.

The damage was done. She slackened back to a stroll. She was trembling from head to foot. Real or unreal? Myth or fact? She was about to find out.

Here, deep in the Forest of Lights nothing moved, nothing stirred. The eerie green radiance neither waxed nor waned but continued to glow with the same unwavering fixedness. The vast roof of boughs and needles admitted no breeze and gave no hint of whatever wind might be blowing beyond; or of whether the night might be dry or wet, or indeed night at all. She was on the point of allowing herself the luxury of believing that no dread event would succeed her weakness when an icy breeze sprung up at her side, stirring the carpet of pine-needles into a frenzied little whirlpool, mere feet from where she walked; swirling as though with a purpose all of their own. Hairs rose on the back of Aurora's neck. A sudden lightness came into the pit of her stomach and with it a strange sensation eerily akin to that of floating weightless in the air.

Something stood beside her. She was sure of that even if she daren't look. Some manner of thing had coalesced from nothingness and taken solid form. Or a form solid enough.

'Darling, Aurora. I so feared I had quite missed you!' The words, from the right, pierced her heart like an arrow. Aurora didn't turn to look. Didn't need to. Just kept on walking. 'My darling, do you not hear me? It is I!'

The breeze intensified until it became a wall of throbbing air that beat an icy tattoo on her naked skin, bringing the temperature down to freezing. Or so it felt. In the sensation of the breeze was deception for her hair didn't move, not a single wayward strand, and other than for the tiny vortex of pine-needles, no others shifted. Aurora ignored the voice. Ignored it especially because, coming from a different place, Diana would never have spoken the way the illusion now did.

'Why will you not acknowledge me? I have searched so hard to find you!'

A glance. A shy peep. All sense of time had gone but knew she must be in the exact centre of the Forest of Lights by now; the luminance stretched beyond the tree trunks and up into the canopy above. The glow was brighter than twilight, and would have given the illusion of an overcast green sky were it not that it came from every conceivable angle. The light it threw was utterly shadowless, cold in character, complete in form; easily adequate to the task of illuminating the figure and features of an individual. Even the feet were clearly lit as they kept their steady pace, never slowing never speeding, taking the miles yet to be covered one patient stride at a time. The legs moved, the hips swayed, the breasts trembled and the arms swung gently back and forth, all in a prefect image of life.

The damage was done. A phantasm trod the way beside her. But she'd be just fine if only she ignored its presence and disregard its pleas, however much the latter might tug at her heart strings; however much the object at her side might learn to sound like the real thing. Just don't answer. Don't even think about taking a look. All night. Beyond dawn. Even though she craved to the depths of her soul, would risk the conflagrations that consumed a woman’s spirit in the realm of eternal suffering at the end of the living world, just to gaze upon the living face of Diana again. One last time.

'I said...'

She put her fingers in her ears.

Fine, but she didn't believe any of it did she? There were no such things as visitations from beyond the grave. The horned demons with their four barbed tits didn't really lurk in some other realm, busily shovelling coals on a fire that burned in the name of Aurora. Cows ate at one end and shit from the other and the fables written into the Ancient Codex were just so much of the latter, created to scare and subdue. Yet here was an example: one so real she felt she could reach out and touch it. So which should it be? Aurora flipped the coin in her head. It came down heads.

She turned and looked and the sight stopped her dead in her tracks.

Diana, pure and simple. The same girl who'd lain upon the Healer's table and died there.

She stood in all her naked splendour, long hair freshly combed and the lingering discolourations of her bruises quite gone. All signs of starvation were absent for she'd put on better than thirty pounds so that the full breasts complemented the voluptuous figure rather than rankled against it. The hips were full; her belly had acquired that slight convexity one associated with the classical nude. There was meat on her forearms and her thighs were strong. Whilst arranged in a way that made her undeniably gorgeous the features were a close approximation but not quite right: there was too great an adumbration, too much of Aurora herself. And the eyes were empty pools of black, lacking both irises and pupils. Not a perfect replica by any means. But close. So very, very close. Not real, Aurora. Remember? Just a thing from your own mind. Consummate wish-fulfilment.

'Go away.'

'What? How could you!”'

'I command you to leave.'

'I cannot believe you could be so cruel! Have I not returned from the very dead to be with you?'

'No-one returns from the dead. Resurrection is a myth. It cannot be. You are illusion. Imagination. A thing without substance.'

The object raised its arms in a gesture of despair. 'Then why do you take the trouble to argue?'

It was a good point and one she didn’t have an answer for. The Diana-thing circled a few paces until it was directly in front, strolling easily just as the real Diana might.

'Converse with me. Do not deny me my existence. Dead I was, that every woman in Lesbos knows, but the Forest of Lights has power to grant the miracle of resurrection. Who has true love that she may dare to call a woman back from the dead may see her wish come to pass.' There was a hint of conspiracy in the way she hunched her shoulders and leaned in minutely. 'Do not tell me you did not know this?'

Aurora moved off again, passing the now bright green stems of the trees, brow furrowed in contemplation of how many more were yet to be navigated. The tears started again. Flowed easily. So much like the real Diana was this thing that, even if only during the time when grief clawed its worst at her heart, it might, before the long night was done, persuade her of its sufficiency. Worse, the night was a phenomenon that made up its own rules. Didn't need to end at all if it didn't want to. By her side was one ghost that wasn't about to melt with the dawn, nor fade as the morning mist. This creature would endure so long as that steady green light fell upon it and as it learned to think as Aurora did would grow all the more convincing. Outside the forest, above the solid canopy, day would already be breaking as a feeble wash in the eastern sky, a dawn that couldn't permeate through. Well before noon the sky above the forest would turn into a cloudless blue and the sun a bright ball of welcome light intolerant of shades in all their variants. But with no power here. The phantasm could last so long as she remained in this most perverted forest region of all. If she weren't careful that might be forever.

'Speak to me.'

'Go to hell.'

'Acknowledge that I stand by your side once more.'

'You are unreal.'

'I am the only Diana. You cannot deny it. Back to the woman I love before my body cools in its grave.'

“Nothing may exist beyond the grave.'

'Yet such as I stand before you as proof.'

'Such as you are lies. Lies, lies and more cunting lies!'

'My, what fearsome denial. You are she who foretells the future. The one who gives solid form to that which as yet is not. Whose word is unquestioned. You, Aurora, Leader of Lesbos, told of my coming to reign at your side; sister, potentate, lover. Friend. Happenstance might truly have separated us had you not come to this place of miracles and undone death. I can live again, do you not see? Will live again, thanks to the power you posses and the wisdom with which you wield it. This thing was foretold through the very Ancient Codex itself. Therefore it cannot be any other than truth.'

'I am not without failings.'

'Indeed, but wrong neither, for I am here.'

'Not for long.'

Aurora broke into a trot, ducking and weaving between the trees. From the corner of her eye she saw that the phantasm momentarily lost her. Soon after, however, it was trotting alongside, keeping perfect pace. Aurora noted how the breasts swung realistically and how, after glancing down, the thick matting of pubic hair which had existed only moments before had vanished to reveal smoothly shaven pudenda so much like her own. The long, fair hair bobbed and tumbled. The thing was learning fast, but then it was just a thing from her own mind anyway, a part of which was beyond her control.

'But you have always believed,' it insisted. 'The doubts you entertained were never absolute. Am I right?'

'Go away.'

'Stop now and we may make love. Here in the soft bed of the forest. I will give to you all the love I have travelled down the centuries - and through a journey more tortuous still - to bestow.'

'You are not even solid.'

'I am as solid as you may permit. And even you cannot prevent me from being real. I am flesh and blood again, see? Have thrown aside the soil of the grave. Stop now. Make love to me. I love you, Aurora. Love you so much!'

'The real Diana would not have known any of these things.'

'There is but one. I am she. We learn many things we who walk alongside death. For example, I know that you came here many times in earlier years. Did so because you saw so much, more than you could ever attribute to imagination or hallucination. Did you not witness things beyond imagining?'

Aurora didn't answer.

'To you the mysteries of the Ancient Codex make plain reading. Whenever a myth must be perpetuated for the sake of the belief the Ancient Codex speaks cryptically in a way only a Leader may understand. It tells you that there is some truth in all the old tales: that each is a parable of things which have no simple explanation and yet which are. Generations of Leaders who come after you will gain prescience of those truths. Until then you merely need to be content to know that they exist. Is this not so? Of course. You are of me and I am of you. We are one. That is the way it is meant to be. The way the Ancient Codex foretells.'

'You are but illusion, damn it! You do not -cannot - exist!'

'Except that you and I know better, do we not? So, please, Aurora. Make love with me.'

It was a bluff and she knew it. The phantasm side-stepped her quickly that time because it had no form. If Aurora were to yield then it would dissolve before her eyes and her heart would break from the loss of Diana a second time in a single night. Yet there might be an alternative, one more terrifying by far than dissolution. The spectre might transmogrify. Show some sight, some aspect of herself, best not invoked.

Besides, it looked solid. More so than when it had first appeared. It gave off the scent of woman now and its footfalls were as softly audible as her own. Nor was there any mistaking the warmth of its phantom skin as it brushed close to her own. But only close. It couldn't actually touch until asked and the legend specifically forbade any such intimacy. Except that she didn't really believe it, did she? And therefore could do with impunity pretty much whatever she liked. Apart from those doubts. The doubts about her doubts. The Forest of Lights was special. There were things she had seen here which she would not care to dwell on.

The spectre kept pace for close on two more hours. During that time it ceased to speak, though it drew ahead and from time to time turned to look at her. Other than for these modest attempts to draw attention it settled into her rhythm. Now and then she was almost perversely glad of its company: had the thing, imagination or not, intended any harm it had had plenty of opportunity already. Besides, Aurora was getting tired. Her resolve was weakening along with her body.

The glowing trees began to thin, the columns of luminance no longer quite reaching the canopy any more before the Diana-thing spoke again. Was it getting worried?

'Will you at least acknowledge that I am real?'

'Never.'

'What must I do to convince you? As I am at your side now I may be through the rest of your life.'

'You will disappear the moment we leave the trees.'

'At least you said we. But I shall not fade.'

'No.'

'I perspire just like you. Feel this.'

Then it was done; the act like the word which had initiated the entire chain of events. She allowed the phantasm to take her hand - it was as soft and warm and as tangible as any - and felt the dampness of female sweat on a chest that heaved from the effort of running; a chest that was warm flesh and blood. Aurora halted.

The Diana-thing held Aurora's hand flat against its breasts, and yes there was a heart beating in there. The the woman thing, grinned a triumphant grin that was quite without malice. The eyes had taken on a proper form: the pupils correctly shaped, the black vacuity gone, and the expression in them was one of... love... even longing. It slowly removed Aurora's hand, holding it firmly in both hers, kissed the fingers and pressed it to her cheek. The skin was soft and smooth, the lips moist and promising. No mere apparition could be this real.

'Will you believe me now?'

She shook her head. The gesture carried no real conviction.

'Love me you shall.'

The tingling on her spine shifted so that its focus was deep in her belly. In place of grief came physical yearning, objective in its demand for satisfaction. Diana smelled so good: a fragrance of skin and tangy sweat. The breath that came from her, and Aurora realised that Diana was breathing heavily, from excitement, was sweet and saliva-smelling.

'The forest shall be our marriage bed. The floor of needles our coverlets, its trees our attendants. 'May I take you?'

She must say no! Refuse it's offer. Her only possible recourse was to say no. 'Yes.'

'May I... enter... you?'

'Yes.'

Diana let go of Aurora's hand and this time there was no attempt at flight. As she stilled in the perfect silence of the eerie glow, Diana approached and slipped her arms about her waist, flattening herself against her. Aurora's hardened nipples, already straining erect with passion, swelled to the size of cherries and scraped electrically against Diana's, bringing a different kind of tingle; one that took root in the sensitive tissue of her breasts and travelled down along her belly, coming to rest as a craving, a tormenting ache in the ravine of her womanhood.

'Touch me.'

The words were whispered in a voice that trembled but they were clear enough. The skins of their bellies briefly stuck together then parted with a soft squelch. Diana shifted position. She ran a hand over a hip, reaching down between the slightly parted legs - a gape which obligingly widened - and touched the smooth double folds of Aurora's labia. The pressure, the careful probing of the fingers, was exquisite. She called out, buried her face in the tender flesh of Diana's shoulder, biting involuntarily. The fingers travelled north to south then back again, grooving shallowly. Then the tip of the index-finger burrowed tentatively into the valley head where it found and rubbed the tiny hill of gristle that was Aurora's clitoris; pressed it against the unyielding pubic bone, straining it almost cruelly from side to side.

Aurora cried out. This time her tears were of ecstasy.

Deftly, Diana worked a second finger below the first. There was a pleasantly intrusive pressure in Aurora's softest of places, followed by a few moments of carefully gauged tantalus while Diana traced out the vaginal opening. Touching. Testing. Then came the ultimate delight. Two fingers entered her, crossed one over the other as though making a wish. They burrowed deep. Advanced and retreated at speed. At the same time Diana intensified her rubbing of Aurora's clitoris, the combined rhythmic movements bringing sickly, liquid sounds - the audible signature of Aurora's rise to orgasm. When it came, when she came, her body shook and her vaginal juices burst forth, lubricating the savagely probing fingers.

How could this be any phantom?

'We must lie together.'

As from their bellies, there came a further squelch as Diana withdrew and swept her to the ground in a single motion. The needles prickled a little at first - it was like lying on coconut matting - but the sensation soon wore off: or rather became absorbed as part of that general tingle that now quivered through her whole form. She was on her back,. She shuffled comfortable in the carpet of needles. Diana raised and parted her knees so wide that her thighs came to rest almost in a straight line, opening her up. Wide. Very,very wide.

She pounced rather than climbed aboard and hitched across Aurora's supine body arse-first as though mounting a horse the wrong way round, her knees splaying either side of the Leader's abdomen. She pivoted forward. Her rump ground into Aurora's mouth, giving a taste of depilated pussy that was sweetly real. Her lips clamped down hard on Aurora's own shaven slit and her tongue promptly setting to work. It probed deep, winding and exploring expertly in a way that brought her immediately to a fresh orgasm; a sequence of orgasms one straight after another, creaming Diana's lips with a surfeit of greasy effusion. At the same time Aurora let herself loose on Diana's cunt where she mouthed and licked ravenously, forming her lips into a funnel of suction that inveigled juices from the swampy interior. It was tops and tails. It was going like a rocket.

Diana tasted good. Greasy and bitter, with that ubiquitous sex-taste that invariably reminded one of old fish. But good! As Diana's tongue penetrated to a depth that seemed impossible, Aurora shifted her angle of attack to one she allowed only with a few special women, those she knew were suitably indulgent. Her tongue withdrew from the envelope of soft tissue that was Diana's cunt and migrated north an inch or so to a region where the flavours were so much different - coarser, baser. Altogether more vile. She fashioned her tongue into a stiffened dart, located the tight and rather niggardly opening of Diana's anus and pushed.

Diana gasped aloud. Her own chewing of Aurora's cunt went into the briefest of hiatuses before she resumed her assault with redoubled vigour; with her teeth this time, nipping in response to the sting of Aurora's entry. Aurora found this particular alley-way pleasingly tight; the pressures of the walls of Diana's anal canal were intense; so much so that it was as though the unnatural sheath was doing its best to repel her. But she persevered; levered and pushed, until something yielded and she went deep. Once in, she felt around. Satisfyingly, her target lay mere millimetres away. She reached it with a final, rather painful flick of the tongue that brought a sudden cramp, made a little scoop, then retreated.

The captured taste was strongly acid, its means of attainment foul. As she savoured the taste, Diana wriggled her rump and pressed her arse-hole hard against Aurora's nostrils, thus delivering the stink that matched the flavour. An impatient wriggle. Diana wanted more.

Aurora hurriedly gulped down her prize then went in again. This time she had the foresight to thoroughly wet her tongue and to force lubricating spit into the tiny hole. Diana seemed to reach a special kind of relaxation, too, for the way in didn't seem quite so constricted this time. There was more room to move around. She worked her tongue until familiar with all the curves and angles in the place, until her lips were wetted by in an amalgam of anal slime, saliva and... yes … shit. Now came a few calm moments of desultory manipulation. Exploring, twisting. Delving.

For her part, Diana broke off the incredible cunnilingus, thrust her rump and yelled out; meaningless sounds of pleasure. The reaming of her arse must have been a new delight for she tried her best to open herself and at the same time Aurora caught the heady stench of orgasm. Diana juddered violently, threw back her head and screamed at the glowing canopy above.

Then it seemed she had all at once had enough. She pulled herself away and un-straddled the recumbent Aurora, saying nothing, merely smiling down. She stood a few moments, feet either side, and swept back her hair. Aurora gazed directly up into the proud bare cleavage of throbbing crotch. Meekly, Diana came and lay beside her. She stirred the bed of pine-needles with her descending body. Something else an apparition couldn't do.

Again the forest became silent; not even the rustling of leaves for there was no breeze either. The strange green glow continued to radiate. It gave their skins an ethereal appearance. And the Legend was indeed true after all her silly doubts, for there was nothing unreal about Diana. Or her love-making! Truly had she returned from the dead. Maybe - the thought struck Aurora as one she should have considered all along - she had never been dead at all: the magic of the Forest of Lights had simply delivered her as part and parcel of the way things were meant to be.

'Not bad for the first time together, eh?' she found herself saying.

Diana flipped onto one side and shuffled close. She extended a hand and began toying reflectively with Aurora's breast; hefting and manipulating. Squashing. Pulling. A finger tested the sensitive band of the areola. It flicked the nipple.

'More is to come, Aurora, my love. Much more than this.'

Aurora smiled back. 'Quite so. But first we must get out of here.'

'Not yet. Stay a while. I like it here. It is cool and quiet.'

'There are so many women who wish to meet you.'

'I expect so.'

'And I only came here in the first place through cowardly flight. I imagined you had not survived. Ursula and I both thought...'

Diana shifted her fingers to Aurora's lips and touched them to silence then moved back to the breast, this time squeezing the soft tissue, towards the nipple, in a way that was delightful. 'Hush, now. It is as well you came. You saved my life.'

Aurora began to rise. 'But we are wasting time. There are things to do when we return to Lesbos. Celebrations, a marriage and the ceremony of your ascension to Leadership alongside me. Let us abandon this creepy place.'

'Soon. It is still the middle of the night. Let us sleep then make love again when we awaken.'

On her feet, Aurora shook her head. 'Dawn is passed. The sun is well up. I sense it. Your coming back to me took all night.' She grabbed Diana's hand and hauled her upright, dragging her away from the little clearing and on into the trees.

'Lesbos is behind us,' Diana protested. 'You are going the wrong way.'

But how would she know that?

'If we keep going,' Aurora said.' The Forest of Lights ends in around half a mile. I do not wish to go back all the way through. Beyond the lights is an open glade and a shallow stream. It will lead us around the edge of the forest and back to the meadow. The stream is fresh and there is fruit along the way. We shall soon be home.'

'Not that way, please, dear. You are leading us miles round. There is food and water in the forest if you know where to look.'

'Now it is your turn to trust me. I know what I am about.'

She tugged at Diana's hand, frowning at the way a grown woman resisted like a stubborn child, dragging her towards the last of the glowing trees. The glow was becoming distinctly fainter. It no longer reached quite so high along the stems. The first four or five feet emitted light now, no more, and in some cases it was close to ground level. The diminishing glow was also beginning to take on a different hue: less obviously green, weaker, fading in intensity as though its natural radiation was ebbing away. It's unearthly light was fading fast, their naked skins little more than backwashed shadows.

Diana's grip remained firm and strong. Almost bone-crushingly so. Aurora did her best to push the thought to the back of her mind but she couldn't help but feel a sense of relief as Diana continued to feel very, very solid.

'I do not like it here. I feel unwell.'

'Easy. It is but the dark. And to say you have experienced an adventure tonight is putting it mildly. You shall feel so much better after fruit and water.'

They approached the last of the glowing trees and Aurora tightened her grip on Diana's hand even further. The stunted pines were down to a few straggling specimens that barely glowed at all. Here the forest surrendered to monoculture birches that grew tall and straight and fresh-smelling, albeit sparse as the clearing loomed. There was more light too: greyish, cool and natural. The clearing wasn't strictly such at all for the boughs of the birches spread out in magnificent splendour, again interlocking with their neighbours, though they did so somewhat less consummately, leaving gaps where the gleam of dawn got through. This was the thinnest region of the great forest. Aurora had headed here because she needed some relief from the forest's sense of claustrophobia; hoped too that she might find some tiny spillage of daylight by which she could take a good look at her beloved.

'See, we are almost out. The stream is a but few hundred yards ahead. I can already smell it. We may bathe there.' The bones of her hand started to creak under the pressure of Diana's grip. She turned to face her.

Then stopped as though someone had instantaneously frozen her in a block of ice. Her stomach did a flip-flop. Something way down low in the mechanism of her psyche began screaming and just wouldn’t stop.

The circles of death were back around Diana's eyes. The irises and pupils were once gain absent, leaving only those awful pools of black. This was terrifying enough but as nothing compared to the rest of the transfiguration which had taken place. Flesh hung loose on jutting bones, barely held in place by overstretched sinew and distended muscle. Diana's belly sagged in a gaseous bag like a degenerating corpse and the thick blonde hair was almost completely gone, leaving only a few ragged tatters behind as though it had been torn out in clumps. All at once her face was lined and wrinkled and her deflated breasts dangled like empty purses of skin, plugged by wizened nipples. Diana might have been a thousand years older than the oldest woman who had ever lived.

Aurora dropped the hand and screamed. She screamed again when the object that clung to her palm proved to be a detached finger.

Diana - once again the Diana-thing - spoke in a cracked, desiccated voice like one stone grinding against another. 'I cannot leave the Forest of Lights.”

'But you were so real!'

'Only because you allowed yourself to believe it so.'

The thing reached out a hand, a hideous, bony object, more gnarled than the most deformed of the trees which had given it false life. A finger was missing.

'Come back with me. In the forest I can be as I was. We can live forever there.'

As Aurora instinctively took a step back, the Diana thing took a step forward. In doing so it past the last of the dimly glowing trees. Without pre-amble the flesh dropped from its bones in huge, putrified chunks, exposing glistening viscera that uncoiled of their own accord and spilled nauseatingly to the ground. Remaining skin reticulated and fell away like scales, leaving behind a stooped, yellowed skeleton. The facial flesh melted like winter slush to disport the bare bone of the skull and grinning, rotted teeth. The Diana-thing tumbled forward. As it fell it faded out of existence; ceased to be as the light of an oil lamp might die when its wick is choked. There was nothing left but empty space. The detached finger in Aurora's grip was also gone.

Aurora emitted one last piercing scream. The invisible ice-block of fear which had so imprisoned her melted in a moment. She turned and once more fled.

7

The village that nestled cosily in the heart of Lesbos was quiet that day. Deathly quiet. Silence hung in a pall so suffocatingly intense that even the constant background music of bird-song had ceased. There would be those in later years who would swear, hand on heart, that on the eve of the funeral of Diana all nature stilled in grief; that even the crickets of the fields and bushes dare not emerge from their nocturnal hiding places.

Which seemed out of character because, on the face of it, Lesbos was the kind of place which had no business grieving. It was too pretty by far.

It took the form of a sizeable hamlet of around a hundred homes set amid bowling-green lawns and well-tended flower beds, interconnected by footpaths of a brownish rubbery material, akin to Astroturf in appearance yet with the texture of brushed fur to the feet that habitually walked them bare. The paths formed attractive sweeps and loops as though set out in the summer palace grounds of a Renaissance Queen - a majesty, moreover, who loved to stroll. The village was bisected neatly down the centre by a shallow river that glistened brightly in the sun. Its sluggish flow was conquered here and there by several hump-backed footbridges made of dazzling white stone. Along each bank ran narrow beaches of yellow-gold sand that broadened out on the obtuse curve of the river's single meander; almost, in fact, the village's exact centre. Normally children played there. Whooped and capered and splashed in the cooling shallows from dawn to dusk. Today - only today - they were absent.

Contained within the loops of the footpaths, green spaces and flower beds were set out in the most intricate of patterns, sometimes making carefully elaborate crescents that swept broadly between individual homes - or clusters of homes - other times small, neat arrangements that made stings of colour. Lawns, beds and arcs of rose-hedging were complemented by randomly scattered trees: stooping willows that grew beside green-algae toad ponds and strange, delicately foliaged hybrids that morning abloom in pastel colours. Apple trees readily gave of their fruit as did peaches, limes, cherries and - densely clustered at the southernmost extent of the village where the sun was always at its hottest - a single but lush orange grove. Everywhere else blackberries, blackcurrants gooseberries and strawberries flourished in glorious abundance. Concomitant with such floral largess, the plethora of fruit made a riot of colour. Beyond the cultivated areas a margin of grass and heather halted abruptly at the edge of a dark and brooding forest, leaving no doubt as to where the precincts of the village ended.

The most remarkable features, though, were the homes themselves. They varied considerably in extent from one - easily the most massive at perhaps a hundred-fifty yards in diameter, clearly some sort of communal centre - to that which appeared to be the norm; much more modest single roomed dwellings nestled in snug groups of around a half dozen. All that was lacking was architectural diversity for the evidence suggested that the village's designer was an igloo fanatic gone mad. Despite great differences of scale, each structure looked exactly like every other and each was built to exactly the same pattern: a hemispherical dome of perfectly smooth white stone - so smooth that under the brilliant sunlight they gleamed like metal - set atop, and blending flawlessly into, a circular base of gold. So bright were these bases that they often physically hurt the eye to look at, suggesting that if they were not fashioned from solid gold then they were at least thickly leafed in it.

Because of the village's day of mourning most outside doors were respectfully closed and because they fit so perfectly it was impossible to tell where they might be. Only a very few stood open. They were weather-tight hatches set in the immaculate white, swung wide on indiscernible hinges until until against the outer walls. The windows were similarly configured. A few yawned. The majority were closed.

It was only when one took into account the trim circular, red-bricked chimneys at the summit of each dome did one realise that these structures were not designed after the igloo paradigm at all: only then did it become obvious that, incredibly enough, they were fashioned after the characteristic pudding shape of the female breast. In the same way, it emerged only from a distant view that the overall configuration of the settlement was itself strongly reminiscent of certain of aspects of the female form. The genitals. The line of the river with its single wide pool, flanked by gentle grassy rises and the thick verdure of the surrounding forest, symbolised nothing more completely than that which was unique to woman.

The whole village, it might be said, was a cunt.

Away from the settlement yet inextricably linked to it, were the means by which the women of the village achieved subsistence - if subsistence it could be called, for life was bountiful and easy. The women of the village were well provided for and content with their lives. Concealed in the forest narrow, interconnecting tracts debouched into clearings most of which had been established many centuries ago and had been under plough for as long as any woman could remember. On rich alluvial soil and in a perfect growing climate, farming was easy. Every harvest produced massive crops of wheat and barley brought home on wooden carts that creaked on axles bowing under great weight. The local maize was considered a wonder to behold. Deeper into the forest, larger clearings were made into meadows for herds of well-fed cattle, or left fallow for horses to graze. The whole agronomic system was linked by that network of twisting forest paths, unmarked and unrecorded, via which the women tended their collective farms in complete safety and entirely unobserved by outsiders. None of these features of work were visible from the distant hills beyond, not even with the aid of a telescope. From the village neither, for it was a tenet of village life that work and play be kept strictly apart.

It was an tenet, too, that life should be a business of joy. Except for one day. This day.

On the morning of this day the village had gained a feature which was new and which would be gone by the time darkness fell. On a small rise at the head of the bend in the river, not twenty yards from where village children normally played, there stood an abrupt hill made entirely of flowers. It too was a riot of colour, made only the finest summer blooms. Chrysanthemums, asters, roses, geraniums, pansies, poppies, daisies and lilies had been lovingly exploited in its creation, plus an intriguing variety of other species native only to these lands. Women worked through the night by the light of shielded oil lamps to construct it and had done so while the rest of the village slept so as to hide what lay beneath.

In the heart of the hill of flowers was a structure of dry timber, brushwood and charcoal, soaked through in lamp oil, that would burn with the ferocity of a smith's furnace. When the structure beneath was finished, the team of women who had laboured naked under a stunning moon, added an open wicker platform six feet square, raised on legs of thin timber and wrapped around with vines. Shortly before dawn they had set down the final floral arrangements and silently departed. Out of sight they allowed themselves the strongest of drinks before going to bed, heavy-hearted now that their sad work was done. Although they had no-one to tell them, for Aurora was still absent, they'd discussed their labours among themselves and concluded, sadly, that they’d done well. But if only Aurora were here to re-assure them!

Then came dawn. One unlike any other in living memory.

The sun rose without any of the usual accompanying human activity; the whooping band of children didn’t appear, the cute white ponies that most mornings towed wheeled wooden frames with rotating blades that kept the grass short - each led by a naked girl - failed to put in an appearance. The troupe of women, also nude but for flowery head-scarves and matching knee-pads, who so assiduously tended their beloved flowers likewise never came out. No-one swam, no-one collected fresh water, no-one sheltered beneath leafy trees to chat. No-one even troubled to gather up the windfall of fresh fruit which had accumulated during the night.

The chances were that only one woman in the world actually saw that dawn at all.

She was a naturally solitary woman who had kept her secret vigil through the hours of darkness and watched in silence as women toiled at the construction of the funeral-pyre. She had continued to look on with an increasingly eerie feeling as the normal business of morning failed to happen. The woman had secreted herself in the bushes of a high ridge that swelled above the south-western corner of the valley and had made herself reasonably comfortable there, even though her secret eerie was less than three feet from a sheer drop. And sharply angled. Twice during the night she found herself slipping forwards and was forced to dig herself in, using only her bare hands as tools. The village stood almost a mile distant from her viewpoint but her eyesight was devastatingly keen, sharp as an eagle's. She had no difficulty at all in making out every detail, watching every movement - or, now that the work-party had ended its shift, scarcity of movement.

Her name was Masha.

She was unlike any other woman. She stood a good few inches over six feet in height and her lustrous skin was the colour of dark chocolate from head to toe. The keen dark eyes were only a couple of shades lighter than the thick black hair in its tight rat-tails and the level eyebrows were so dark that they seemed to merge seamlessly into the mocha of her forehead. At the base of her hard belly, squeezed between two steely thighs, pubic hair grew thick and lush and had the consistency of rough wire wool. Physically Masha was expansive and powerful. Her shoulders were broad and strong and her muscular back tapered down to a slim waist and smallish rump whose buttocks might pass for two solid pistons of muscle. She was long-legged. The muscles of her legs were as solid as the biceps knotting her arms.

Physical strength was her forte. In this she excelled. Some time ago there had been jokes that Masha was physically strong enough to crack a walnut in her cunt. Tired of the sniggers behind her back Masha had confounded her teasers by doing exactly that. Three times in a row. The ostentatious act was one she came to regret later for it emphasised how different she was from other women; how freakish her stature and strength made her. The steady procession of women, especially the younger ones, who'd stopped by at her blacksmith's shop and interrupted her work with requests for demonstrations - requests which sometimes, just to the point of getting rid of them, she'd acceded to - begun to take toll of her patience.

But never mind. There were always times like these. Times when she could slip away from her work for a while and distance herself from the others in brief solitude. When she could hide up and watch the world of the frailer women go by while she solaced herself under cover of privacy with some forbidden treat or other. Like this one.

She drew in the last lungful of pungent smoke from a smouldering herb wrapped in a damp leaf. One that she used often, that made her head spin and made her feel good, a weed that was banned in the village. Aurora would chastise her severely if she knew, but Aurora wasn't there, was she? Her absence made Masha sad, even if sometimes the Leader was excessively stern with her. Frankly she liked Aurora best when she treated her that way.

When the weed was done she stubbed it out with a bare foot then retreated a few yards into forest. There she crouched on her huge shanks and defecated, wiping her backside with a handful of wiry grass. She belched, pissed furiously, then returned to her vantage point, still curious.

Masha had been gone from the village for almost a week and no-one had paid her absence much attention. It was the uncharacteristically errant Aurora herself who had commissioned the village blacksmith to change the wheels of the wheat wagons in good time for harvest, using stock which Masha had lain spare last winter. She was to re-shoe every pony and bring back the used shoes so that they could be melted down for re-manufacture. The cart-wheels were to be returned also, so that any reusable sections might be salvaged. Masha had accomplished all of this in a little four three days, working long into the nights. All she hadn't done yet - and the task fell to her alone as village blacksmith - was to strip down the old wheels for parts. This deliberate omission hadn't worried her. Masha knew her new stock would last through to summer and that there was in consequence no hurry to set to work. Instead, late on the last night she'd stacked them behind her blacksmith's shop under a hemp tarpaulin and taken off, quiet and swift and unobserved.

Masha preferred forest; preferred the solitude of tree and shadow. The blazing summer sun made her feel conspicuous, a phenomenon that just never manifest in the cool gloom of the woods; and she appreciated the towering height of the trees particularly for she never felt out of place there.

She just wasn't like the others. That was a fact. They were gentle and loving - true, until the time of her vow, they'd displayed their love for her in no uncertain measure through an abundance of sex - whereas she was intensely physical and inclined to be bellicose. She needed rough and tumble, to wrestle in the consummation of sex, and that was something that only ever happened meaningfully when she engaged in activities with more than one woman at a time. Her preference was for three or four.. Only recently Masha had received a prodigious tongue-lashing from Aurora for breaking a woman's ribs during one of her better climaxes and on the very same night earned further vituperation after twice making women bleed inside. The tacit imputations of brutality perturbed her greatly, to the extent that since spring she'd taken to satisfying her needs by alternative means. Masha had fashioned a chunk of raw iron into a bluntly tapered prong some eighteen inches in length by ten in circumference, rounded at the tip, filed smooth but for three outer ridges. To prevent rusting she had meticulously coated it in pure chromium. Every night she would thrust her dildo into herself, her vaginal muscles gripping bone-shatteringly tight, heaving and hauling as though she were swinging the hammer at her anvil. Surely no centre of woman, even one with fearsome jaws like hers, could wreck iron?

Then came the Diana experience. Women wept by day and sobbed into their pillows all night long. No-one smiled any more. Women were sullen and miserable. Masha chose to avoid them by staying put in her forest. Not even Aurora was at home to visit; the magnificent woman who had allowed Masha to make for herself a ring of pure platinum and had commissioned the village Healer, Ursula, to surgically pierce her clitoris and attach it for her.

Masha tugged her ring then and sent a sharp, delicious pain through her body. She tugged it a second time and her dew began to form, making her instinctively raise her legs where she rested, reach out for her beloved iron rod – that rod that, since her vow, had replaced the flesh of women - and take it within her.

It entered with a peculiar slurp as though her huge cunt were a hungry creature late in being fed. As she worked its cool bulk Masha saw a group of naked women emerge from the Great Dome and walk down to the river in solemn procession. They were carrying something which they bore aloft at shoulder height. Oddly enough, given that Masha had just been thinking about her, one of the women she immediately recognised as Ursula.

After Aurora, it was Ursula Masha loved most. Not merely was it she who had fitted her ring, but Ursula held the doubtful distinction of being probably the shortest, plainest and most physically nondescript of all of the women. Her studiousness Masha did not approve of although she was first to admit that it enabled her to enact her fabled miracles. Everything else about her Masha did like. Maybe she loved her so because she too differed from the norm; at one extreme was Ursula, at the other herself. Even so, Ursula was born of these lands whereas Masha was not: when physical emotional and occupational extremes were discounted this was where the difference lay. It was a poisoned gulf which was the hardest of all to cross.

Masha was a Janite, born if not bred. Her instincts, her passions, were those of the distant clan of Jane; the warrior woman who in times long gone had lain low the pernicious women of the desert. Masha had wandered into the village as a child; filthy, half-starved, scratched by thorns, bitten by insects, and had insisted on performing traditional Janite children's songs and dances, much to the delight of the local women. She had lost her way when wandering through the forest, a thing she had loved even then, and had been forced to stay with her new friends all through the savage winter that followed: the worst and longest in recorded history. Snow had come to the valley and covered it five feet deep and cut off the more distant forest tracks completely. She had been berthed with a family of two adult women and four girls with whom she had got along famously, so that by the time spring came and the exceptional snows melted she hadn't wanted to return at all. A small, armed party had ridden off to the lands of the Janites and not returned until mid-summer when they conveyed to the young Masha the sad tidings that her mother had perished during the terrible winter and that the leader of the Janites had granted permission for her to remain in Lesbos if such should be her wish. Masha cried alarmingly, a typically un-Janite reaction which had endeared her all the more to the adoptive Lesbians. She had been allowed to take up permanent residence with her new family.

In fact, as she learned in later years, the party dispatched to the Janites did particularly well. They stayed far longer than was strictly necessary as welcome guests regaled by tales of epic sagas from Janite history, fed, watered and made love to and generally made to feel as though their leaving too soon would bring great disappointment. They forged relationships with Janite women, renewed in subsequent summers, and for the first time ever the Janite leader made a visit, in the name of love, to Lesbos. Jane, tall and small breasted, naked but for her feathers and colourful plumes, had been greatly taken by the way that young Masha settled in and by way of reciprocation offered to take a local child in return. Seven gleefully volunteered, all friends of Masha. Aurora secretly selected the tallest and strongest. From Masha's accidental arrival thus there ensued an era of peace and co-operation between the Lesbians and the Janites unprecedented in history; one which led to the establishment of treaties, trade and protocols of mutual respect and support. Every second summer a Janite band would arrive with supplies of salted meat and leave - cunt-sore and hung-over with their narrow forest carts straining under the weight of grain.

At such times Masha chose to hide herself out here. She no longer considered herself a Janite and felt uncomfortable in the warrior women’s presence. She accepted that the temptation to go home with them would be as real as it would be unwise, for she would never fit in there again, never re-acquire their ways: not those they chose to display to the Lesbians but ways which were perpetuated in the privacy of their own forest clearings; cruel and extreme and arbitrary. Sure, Masha's mother had perished that winter, but not from the cold. Even when she grew older and learned the true course of events, Masha never told the Lesbians how her mother had died. Masha alone properly understood that there were fundamental differences between the two clans which would make them forever ultimately disparate. For instance, there were fundamental differences in physical development. Girls here did not attain sexual maturity until comparatively late whereas for Janites the savage lusting arrived much earlier. Masha experienced her sexual awakening in secret, concealing it through secret - and illicit – masturbation, but her drives were strong, her self-satisfaction noisy, and she was eventually discovered. Masha was moved in with an older woman. A herbalist who lived alone. She had been unhappy to begin with but after the first grim and lonely autumn during which she'd expressed no interest whatever in acquiring the skills of her would-be mentor, she discovered that the potions administered to her tamed her libido somewhat, at least so far that she could function among her peers again. Though there were still rules. Strict in the observance. She was never allowed to be alone with another girl, only to socialise in groups; rarely ever allowed out of the sight of an adult. Masha was forced to report once a week to Aurora, a duty which she had initially detested; only as time progressed did she came to see that the Leader was motivated as much by Masha's own best interest as those of the other women. When she finally came to appreciate this, the encounters become pleasurable. Masha found Aurora wise; able to control and pacify her with a single word. Aurora accepted Masha for who she was and never sat in judgement. Aurora also reminded her of the rules. She was very good at that.

Strange thing was that even as Masha matured in years and came to tower above her, dwarfing Aurora in height, physical accomplishment and sexual prowess, Aurora didn't look a day older. And that was another thing which she was to discover made her different. These fragile, pale skinned women in fact lived an average eight times longer. Simple as that. Aurora would still look young long after Masha had died of old age. They even counted their years differently: for them a year was an octet of the world's orbits round the sun whereas a Janite year was but one loop.

Then came Ursula. Whereas Aurora presided over her it was Ursula who most understood her. More than any other woman. Ursula had studied the science of healing and therefore appreciated Janite physiology. She never chided nor lectured but merely implored patience a few short years longer; to continue to accept the potions administered to her by Iris, her mentor. She had initially spared Masha the knowledge that Janites matured early because they had so much less of life: this she had left her to work out for herself, confirming the belief only when she reached the conclusion of her own accord.

Ursula, oh Ursula!

She thrust the metal prong in harder and faster, finding its passage more slippery with her thoughts of the Healer.

She remembered how much she had enjoyed the sight of the woman's small breasts - her own were tight and trim, the breasts of a warrior rather than a voluptress - and how the low, mellifluous voice had hypnotised her so many times. She looked forward to each of her monthly examinations, opening herself readily to the probing fingers which had placed things within her to suppress - or as she later found out, absorb - the blood flow that came from her at each new moon. Ursula always made her turn her head to one side and look at the shelves full of different sized jars and bottles, filled with liquids of varying colours - even, to Masha's delight, a few body parts preserved in brine - while performing this ritual. Masha had never known what Ursula's expression was during these moments, but knew full well that her own was always one of satisfaction.

No-one else, not even Aurora, knew about the sacrilegiously premature monthly flow. The rupturing of Masha's maidenhead by her own hand in her eleventh year stayed their little secret too.

By the time she was seventeen Masha loved Aurora but idolised Ursula. By the time she was adjudged mature, idolatry turned into rapture for it was Ursula herself who had taken Masha to her bed and instructed her in the ways of sex between women: Ursula who had then, for safety's sake, assumed credit for her deflowerment. That way no-one had ever known, no-one ever suspected. Ursula thus became her first woman and for a Janite in particular that was something she could not easily forget. It raised her in the estimation of her peers too; never before had a virgin been first-timed by a healer.

Masha blinked, remembering all these things, the motion of hand and iron becoming automatic. Maybe it was the melancholy nature of the morning that made her feel this way.

Ursula was before her right then, bearing her share of the load that was the corpse of Diana. Her tight little breasts were motionless in contrast to the billowing tits of her sisters; her deportment slight and bookish. Her ribs were visible beneath the wan skin of one who worked primarily indoors - pale skin, Masha loved that too - and her black hair was tied back with twine so that from a distance it looked irresistibly short.

Masha shuddered and thrust the darling rod in as deep as it would go.

8

Aurora kept on running until she put the evil trees of the Forest of Lights way behind her. She believed she had been running solidly for three days, though she couldn't be sure. She took her rest in what passed for the night and paused every few hours to drink modest amounts of water - too much swelled the gut and caused colic - and eat meagrely of the fruit that naturally came her way. She’d lost weight, except for her thighs muscles which ballooned out incredibly, her bare feet were caked in mud and there were streaks of dirt and tree-sap on her body from the rough undergrowth she’d been forced to wrestle her way through where the forest was at its densest, its most jungle-like.

Whenever she slept, which was increasingly rarely, she was haunted by dreams of the Diana-thing taking her in voracious sex in a way she powerless to make stop. The decaying flesh dripped from its bones while stinking gut uncoiled all about her. Always the dreams ended the same way: always she wound up making love to a grinning skeleton, its hideous twig-like fingers intimately stroking her body. Last night, after succumbing to exhaustion, she slept where she fell and the instant she woke took to her heels again. But she couldn't flee forever. The world wasn't so big a place that one could keep on running.

She changed direction during the night so that now the forest floor began to rise, telling her she was approaching the sea-cliffs. By now she was pretty certain she could smell the great ocean somewhere out there. Aurora decided that she would quit running when she made it to the coastal straits, rest up a couple of days, straighten out the hopelessly entangled vines and roots which currently served her as a mind, then head back. What happened next she'd worry about when she got home. She'd handle her grief then, too.

Except that she wasn't about to go anywhere near the Forest of Lights again.

No way.

'Carry her gently,' enjoined a girl. She seemed little more than a teenager. Her cheeks were stained with tears.

'It doesn't exactly matter an awful lot,' muttered Ursula. 'No-one can hurt her now.'

'We must show respect.'

'Respect for the dead,' said a third voice.

'Special respect for Diana,' added a fourth.

The way to the summit of the pyre wasn't exactly easy because the ladder built into the north facing side - away from the river - was narrow and not quite straight. It was also mostly hidden by a thickness of flower-bearing vines wound tightly about the narrow struts; vines which were slippery even though they were dry, even to bare feet. The brief ascent was made all the more arduous by the fact that it was necessary to walk in a straight line, one woman directly behind the other, Diana's body held aloft at arms length on its slender bier of willow.

That said, the body itself weighed very little indeed, as it was unlikely that a woman who had starved to death would, but it was a dead weight in every sense and kept trying to roll from side to side. Rigour mortis had worn off some time before - to be honest, Ursula hadn't even noticed its onset or for that matter how long the corpse-freezing stiffness had lasted - and the women of the funeral party had therefore taken great pains to bind the body in well. The lilies that appeared to grow from the creepers strung about it in an ostensibly random manner were actually to disguise the true nature of the lashings that held the cadaver secure.

Up front, Hazel led. Ursula had assigned her the task because she was the most sure-footed. She was also probably the most interrogative bitch she'd ever encountered, a foible the inappropriateness of which she was already beginning to regret.

'Is she properly embalmed?' Hazel asked.

'No.'

'But I thought Leaders had to be embalmed? The Big Book requires it.'

'You are referring to the Ancient Codex, dear, and the answer is no. Not for cremation. Embalming preserves the body, whereas the principle of cremation is to ensure the fastest and most thorough disposal.'

'Diana was never invested as a Leader.'

'Oh, I forgot,' Hazel said.

'How cruel a fate!' someone else intoned.

“May we please discuss this some other time? The moment is hardly propitious.”

Then, on a single caterwauling note, as though mere mention of ‘the moment’ were a sufficient trigger, the women, in unison so perfect that it might have been rehearsed, cried again.

At the very apex of the pyre, Ursula, bringing up the rear, stumbled. The corpse wobbled stiffly, as might a wax effigy, but thankfully didn't slide. There was a gasp of horror from up front which Ursula did her best to ignore. The freshly departed were always treated roughly, whoever they might be. It was the natural way of things. Ursula's skills were devoted to the preserving of life: treating the dead as though they were objects of reverence was not a notion she held with. Diana was dead. In that simple truism lay one of the great tragedies of Lesbian history, a disruption of the Natural Harmonies which would harm their community for all eternity. It was an incalculable tragedy, of that there was no doubt, but the swaying remains above their heads, the few pounds of organic matter the dissolution of which would shortly be accelerated by the roar of a funeral fire, was not the subject of love and majesty life had made it. Women needed some icon in death on which to focus their grief, that was all. It was primitive and wanton, but it worked.

On the top of the pyre things proved somewhat easier. Ursula was out of breath and needed to pee - hardly the place! - but the wooden platform was firm enough and flat enough and the only care that had to be taken was not to trample down too many flowers. The girls had worked hard, Ursula thought, not that it was a place she would care to linger the better to admire their handiwork; the reek of lamp-all was overwhelming and would attach itself to her senses for days after. All it took was a single spark, or sunlight accidentally focused. The kindling beneath their feet was dry as desert dust.

'She looks beautiful,' whispered Hazel.

Which wasn't strictly true either because of the way the poor wretch had died. The skin was taut about the skull, she'd had to gum the eyelids closed after all - only a light adhesive, for her reservations hadn't quite gone - and the body was just a fragile bag of bones ready for its final consummation. She'd done her best; plugged the openings, except for the mouth for the wadding had kept making the jaw loll open, and straightened out the limbs so that the muscles wouldn't contract peculiarly. But she hadn't gone inside; hadn't taken anything out. Ursula explained to the girls who assisted her that this was because it wasn't necessary and because Diana was to lie in state naked, meaning that there was no convincing way to hide the stitching. Technically that was true, but the real reason was that Ursula hadn't been able to. Didn't know why, just couldn't bring herself to perform the defilement of dissection.

Despite her professional detachment - she was a woman too, wasn’t she? - hadn’t she right to the same feelings and emotions as everyone else? - she too arranged flowers around the body; squeezed a small posy of lilies between the dead fingers interlocked over the chest, then strung a few buttercups in the fringe of the neatly brushed hair. Hazel fashioned together a chain of daisies with lightning speed and set it low on the body's waist in a manner which, on the living, not the dead, would have been erotic.

'There. She is even prettier now.'

As though at her command the shadow of the south-east ridge retreated as the morning sun rose upon its arc and shone down brightly upon the pre-funeral party, turning the bier of flowers into an explosion of colour. Sunlight poured upon the corpse so that lumps became apparent in the make-up spread liberally over the skin to give an appearance of life. It wouldn't stay pretty for long, Ursula thought, frowning. Not in this heat, not as the day progressed and the sun got stronger. The women were against it but there was no Aurora to give council so Ursula might insist - probably before noon - that the body be covered in a muslin sheet. Nothing heavy; something wispy-thin and translucent that would still allow sight of the dead form. She was pretty sure that no-one wanted to watch Diana's remains turn black.

With the back of a finger Ursula swept a clot of powder from one cheek and smoothed it in.

Odd. Warm skin. She'd had the body on ice, literally, all last night , the second night, and it would only have begun to accumulate heat that morning when she'd gone to retrieve it. True it had lain in the Great Dome for the purpose of being checked, powdered, hair brushed and finally strapped into the bier, but that was only for a couple of hours. Mostly before dawn. The skin beneath the powder hadn't looked particularly livid either, though that might in fact signify the start of the very tissue deterioration she most feared.

Ursula grimaced and stood back. Odder. Had Hazel's chain of daisies moved? Surely not?

'Keep still.'

'We must leave. Diana now lies in state. To linger is sacrilege. Our devotions to her memory are...'

'Shut up! Stand still!'

The women obeyed. Ursula had no particular authority to issue such an order but it was delivered so peremptorily that they complied all the same. The movement which had provoked her was slight, so slight as to be unobservable to the untutored eye, but it was there sure enough. Two movements, in fact.

First there was the miniscule bulging of the eyelids as the eyes, albeit only a few millimetres at a time, rolled beneath; second there was the twitching of the first finger of the left hand as though tapping out a minute code - a movement so slight that she'd only noticed it because of the way the petal of a lily moved, as though synchronized to an irregular pulse. The third movement Ursula registered only after a full minute of staring at the other two, and this - the weakest - was easily the most astounding of them all.

The corpse's belly rose and in fell in a respiration so slow and shallow that she was almost prepared to believe it just a trick of the mind; until, with a brief movement that might have lasted a hundred years, the body of Diana opened its eyes.

'The gods! The gods!'

Hazel screamed the loudest of all the little group and fled the pyre, scrambling her way down the rough ladder, spilling flowers, pelting to the sanctuary of the Great Dome; screaming still, her cries diminishing only as she rounded a corner and vanished from sight. Ursula sniggered despite valiant attempts not to. The rest of the party stood transfixed, gazing disbelievingly down. A shortish, very large-breasted girl broke their stunned silence.

Her tone was hushed. 'She lives. It is a miracle. She lives.'

'Steady.'

With the caution, Ursula took the busty little young woman by the elbow and led her gently back from the corpse. The signs submitted cogent enough arguments but Ursula was still far from convinced. Singly, any one of them might have indicated muscular contractions and the onset of decomposition in the sun's growing heat - except for the illusion of breathing, which was somewhat harder to explain away. Those things happening all together though was a coincidence that chance did not support. Besides, she'd checked for signs of life often enough in the hours immediately after death, always hoping against hope. And she'd almost frozen the body solid during the night. Which might explain why she failed to observe the rigor mortis? Or its absence? Most significant of all was that Ursula knew death: it had been an unwelcome visitor often enough before, especially long ago in the summer of The Disease when she was young and had only just perfected her craft. She'd seen more than her share of it then and had learned the rote of its calling card well enough.

The shrinking back of the eyelids might have been a post-mortem rictus, too, were it not for the fact that the blue eyes swivelled to look bang at her and the body took a breath so wrackingly deep that she actually heard the sound of air rushing through the mouth and into the lungs; saw the ribs rise and fall and watched amazed as they continued to do so.

Ursula was about to submit a rational medical explanation for those particular events when, amid the flowers and atop the hill that was destined to blaze that very dusk - a place she had pledged to leave quickly because of the risk of accidental immolation - she passed out cold.

From her perch half a mile away, Masha ceased her ponderous masturbation and watched in astonishment as that silly slit of girl Hazel fled across the green like a frightened kitten, and a minute later, the reassuringly upright figure of Ursula became an unexpectedly horizontal one. There was nothing much to indicate why that might be: the dead woman, she saw, was in her final resting place and the naked women who had deposited her there had by all account, standing over her, motionless, heads bowed, uttered their private valedictions.

Soon after Ursula tumbled, general confusion broke out. The girls of the pre-funeral party began milling around aimlessly at the top of their little hill, bending over the body again and again, shrieking and turning away, their arms flailing as though in panic. A second girl made a fast getaway down the ladder - this one Masha recognized as Alison, a woman of considerable mammary fortitude who had once paid her well in sex and other gifts to run up a necklace for her in that soft, yellow metal which she hated so much but which the Lesbians adored. Masha laughed out loud, just once, for this she accepted was no day for laughter, as Alison, top-heavy at best, got within a half-dozen rungs of the base before dropping like a stone and coming to a cushioned landing on those enormous breasts. Her feet butted the air to her rear, bulbous rump wriggling, then she was upright again and charging down to the river; which she blundered straight into, crossing without troubling to find a bridge, kicking up a spray of water as she ran. Only when the apparent confusion subsided did the one remaining girl stroke the body's brow, then bend to help Ursula to her feet. She did so by putting an arm all the way around her and steering her up. Close physical contact.

The vestigial remains of Masha's smile vanished. She extracted the massive dildo with an audible plop.

'Bitch,' she cursed, her voice deep and gravelly.

Then both women leaned over the body for some considerable time. All Masha could see were their two secretive backsides, grinning conspiratorially side by side. When Ursula and the girl finally moved, there were three women up there on the platform of flowers, not two. One of them was blonde and wore daisies in her hair. The other two were obliged to assist her, standing either side and each taking an arm, but there was no doubt but that she rose into a sitting position of her own accord and then got to her feet pretty much the same way.

At exactly that moment, Masha stood: why, she didn't know; probably there was some instinct in a woman that forced her to her feet when confronted by things unknown and threatening. Maybe it was part of some other earlier instinct that made woman strive to achieve combative superiority by the expedient of seeing more than anyone else. By making herself taller. Or just some simpler instinct of flight. Whatever the reason, it didn't improve her arithmetic: five women, four living and one dead, had gone up. Two had already run down of their own accord. Three were still up there and none were dead. Which meant that something very, very odd indeed had happened.

Completely forgetting her infallible friend, the chromium-plated dildo which lay in the grass beside her, Masha climbed the little hill to her rear, re-entered the forest and started her away back to Lesbos.

Aurora felt the change in the air immediately on stepping beyond the trees; there was a sudden coolness that made her shiver, a dampness that seemed to foreshadow things to come. These were the very border regions where nature ran wild. Beyond the forest it wasn't always possible to go naked for the temperature often dropped way below freezing or else the sun blazed with such ferocity that it burned and blistered the skin: at such times the abomination of clothing became one of necessity. Here, at the edge of the great sea, the air was cool and tangy. Aurora’s skin was growing sticky from deposits of salt and the air was getting colder by the second. The region was prone to heavy rain that lasted for days on end, saturating and incessant, which it was said was responsible for the lush vegetation that grew inland. That growth was in places impenetrably thick and home to snakes and lizards, many species of which were poisonous. In fact the coastal lands generally, even those closer to home, were but a thinly explored region which had already claimed many lives and had forced Aurora some years ago, after a young woman perished - dying horribly as the result of a snake-bite - to ban further incursions.

As she stepped from the final shelter of the trees and out under a dull, fraught sky Aurora sniffed the alien smells and hugged herself tight against the gathering cold. Goose bumps rose on her skin. She was hungry but accepted that hungry she must stay. Unless she might be lucky enough to catch a few fish or crustaceans, food around here was scarce. The light from the overcast sky was raw and harsh with ultra-violet and although it was no means bright she found that it hurt to look about her and that she was forced to screw up her eyes, instinctively shading them with one hand. Already they had begun to water.

Nevertheless the terrain was at least familiar. She had emerged from the forest too far north to find an easy way back, meaning that she would have to make a decision. The jungle offered the shortest route but was completely out of the reckoning: no-one had ever survived it. The desert to the north east took better than a week on horse-back to traverse and was inimical to all life. The forest she had ample cause to avoid; another brush with the phantom would shatter her frail sanity to atoms. So which way?

As she stood shivering, sniffing the coming rain, she decided. There were ruins not many miles distant from here, the remains of a settlement of great size and antiquity which she had visited several times in the past. Their eerie senses of abandonment and isolation had helped her in times gone by to seek the solace of nothing extant and to populate the desolate ruins in her mind with women who shared problems akin to her own and between them to find solutions. In short, staying there had helped her get her head together. The was ample shelter from the certainty of the coming rains and the promise of the tranquillity she desperately needed. Thereafter it would be best to follow the coastal track home then pick up the forest again once she was safely past the evil trees. The coastal track she actually found quite pretty: a winding, broadish stretch of heath sometimes atop a high chalk cliff giving a magnificent view of the ocean beyond, sometimes sweeping down to sea level where they were sandy bays and shallow, marble-bottomed lagoons, palm trees, figs, dates and coconut palms. There was an abundance of fresh water from the numerous ground springs and it was impossible to get lost, for the dense, brooding mass of the forest was always at one's left. The rain might be a problem though she could take temporary shelter in marginal the trees if it got too heavy. And perhaps she might be lucky enough to find another of those odd head-to-toe brightly coloured capes down there in the ruins; the type made of the shiny black and yellow material that weighed almost nothing and which screwed up into a tiny ball, fitting easily into the palm of hand without ever getting creased.

The ruins it must be, then, and without delay. She was tired physically and exhausted spiritually. She needed those few stolen days of being alone where she might attempt to reconcile herself to her fate. Diana gone; wouldn't ever be coming back; the Ancient Codex just a silly old book that babbled untruths. These were a counter-epiphany of realisations and they were delivered in quick succession. If she were to adjust to them without going completely mad she would need time to think things through.

The heath at the edge of the forest was uneven and strewn with small stones hidden in the wiry grass that dug painfully into her feet the moment she began her next trek. There was no protection out here; this was a raw world, no cultivated peach of a place like Lesbos. A hundred yards further on, the steadily rising heath fell away in a precipitate drop that suddenly opened out on to an enormous vista of sea and coastline. The white chalk cliff towered a hundred feet and made for a sheer descent alleviated only by a few bulky outcrops where sea-birds nested. The flora in which they made their nest was of a type she did not recognize; ragged and weed-like, lent colour only by an occasional dingy thistle. As she approached the edge, gulls flew out and circled her angrily, their alarm caws strident on the air.

Sure enough, the view was as spectacular as she remembered. Straight ahead the sea was an immeasurable ocean merging at its limit into the louring grey sky. Their coming together made a perfectly straight line, clearly delineating the limits of the world. Incredible place, pondered Aurora, that strange region beyond the reach of any woman where sky tucked snugly into sea. What would life be like out there where up and down became one?

To her left, the heath rose up in a convex headland that jutted out to sea, blocking all views but those of the sky. Nothing there but the start of the way back home.

It was over to her right, actually the north, where things became really interesting. About a mile away the sheerness of the drop was ameliorated by an extrusion of dark basaltic rock that spewed out a massive tongue from the earth beneath the forest, making a series of uneven terraces that shelved gradually down to the sea. This mass of rock was an excrescence which clearly did not belong and which reminded Aurora perversely enough of a pool of dark vomit frozen solid. Lumps and all. It was possible to climb down to shore sea that way - should one have an urge to stand meekly before the tide that crashed in great mountains of white foam remorselessly lashing the unyielding mass. Further down the coast, the cliff sloped away to a wide bay characterised when the tide retreated by an enormous expanses of flat, wet sand. From the bay a shallow, marshy river meandered into the lush interior of the headland: too indeterminate, too reed-strewn and rocky to successfully navigate. Around the edges of the bay were the ruins of what once had been a settlement and a large one at that. Hundreds of dwellings, some intact, many fallen into amorphous piles of stones, lined both sides of the bay. Those which were in grassland were in the most advanced state of disarray while those set atop the great blocks or shelves of stone were by and large still habitable. Aurora had stayed in them before and she knew a number contained artefacts. Some, such as the capes, she understood the purpose of, others she could not even hazard a guess at.

Most incredible - and Aurora paused, awed and humbled once again in admiration of their magnificence - were the great towers of brown-rusted iron that strode from one side of the bay to the other: buttresses supported by huge legs of brick so monumental as to clearly testify to the work of several lifetimes. Across the towers were slung incredibly thick ropes, some of which dangled loose, evidently having broken away, and swept down to the sand below, while the intact ones made great arcs that linked the towers together high above the surface of the sand. The towers looked huge, even from way back here, giving some measure of their actual size; great gashes in the material of the grey sky. Aurora stood gazing at them for long shivering minutes, hypnotized by their arcane splendour. Their purpose? Just to hold those massive ropes aloft? She shrugged her shoulders as she always did. Anybody's guess.

A lone gull gave a reproachful screech and flew in low, missing her hair by inches. It circled and came again, this time from the rear. A feathery wing-tip brushed her shoulder. Outstayed her welcome. Aurora turned north so that she was facing the towers. This time, close to the cliff's edge, she was especially careful about where she trod. Even if she went slow she was confident she’d make it to the bay before nightfall. Her travelling companions would be the sea-birds that swooped and dived and cawed resentfully and the fingers of the wind that stabbed at her with their bowel-loosening chill. By then she'd be glad to find the shelter of the ruins.

9

'Where am I?'

It was the second time Diana had asked the trite question in under an hour, the second time she got shushed by a soothing voice, calmed by a hand that so tenderly stroked her brow. She'd always imagined that if ever she recovered from an accident or life-threatening illness that her opening line would contain something more in the way of originality. It came as a disappointment to find that it did not.

'Quiet, now, Diana. You must rest.'

'Lee?'

'No, dear, not Lee.'

She expected it to be Lee because she'd talked to him just minutes before and had been overjoyed to find out that Lee McCorrister hadn't died after all but had actually made a full recovery. In fact he'd appeared to her as the very picture of health. He'd regained all of the muscle bulk he'd been so proud of when she first met him and perhaps even acquired a little more. His hair was neatly brushed, and so radiant his smile that it could not possibly have belonged to other than a person in perfect health. He'd rolled up his sleeves and displayed his forearms, demonstrating to Diana's inquiry that the puncture marks were completely healed, then lifted his hands, palms turned to her in a gesture of submission. She'd rushed to him only to find that he wasn't there after all and that she was lying in this unfamiliar place instead, looking up at the soot-blackened ceiling, too weak to move, rapidly forming the opinion that the room was excessively hot.

'I'm thirsty.'

Almost before the words were out a rough wooden bowl was at her lips and she was eagerly gulping down probably the clearest spring water she'd ever tasted in her life.

'Thank you.'

It was as well she did manage to relieve her thirst somewhat, for a moment after she drank she passed right out again and spent the next period of time - how long she couldn't say - looking for Lee. He was evidently hiding, or had gone out somewhere - bet your ass he'd already got another job! - for however hard she looked, there was never any sign of him. As the clouds formed and dispersed, as blackness - was Lee in there somewhere where she couldn't see? - came and surrendered to that ill-defined orange glow, Lee McCorrister quite rudely continued to elude her. When the blackness finally retreated all the way all there was that same little room as before and that same soot-blackened ceiling, this time lit in flickering firelight. Night had fallen. The bright pools of daylight had gone. Within a second of becoming conscious of her surroundings again she had already forgotten for whom she was searching.

Diana licked her dry lips, called out and tried to sit up. This time she almost made it. This time she didn't black out.

'Who... who... are you?'

The woman smiled convincingly enough but there was more of worry than warmth in her eyes. 'I am Ursula.'

'Where is this place?'

'You are among friends. Quite safe. There is no cause for alarm.'

She struggled up onto one elbow while the woman held her; in reality, albeit with the utmost delicacy, restrained her.

'Hush, hush.'

'I have to get home. I'm very late. Something bad happened and I need to get home as quickly as possible.'

'Which is?'

There was no pain, none at all, just a wonderful, slightly exhilarating sensation of floating. The woman, who ever she might be, had a point. Diana lay back down.

'I don't know.'

'Please relax, dear. Rest. Everything will come back when your body and mind are well enough to receive it. You have been very ill, Diana, more than you can know, but the crisis is passed and you are on the way to recovery. Memory will take time. When the body is sufficiently healed recollection will return.'

'You're a doctor?'

'My job is to heal the sick. My pleasure is to make you well.'

'But why are you naked? I mean, you're not wearing a stitch.'

'Nor you, dear.'

'I got robbed of my clothes a while back. They were one hell of a mess. And the woman who came looking for me, she was naked too. She took me to the edge of a wood and then I lost her. There was... oh, God...No!... bees!... killed by bees!...'

The woman was with her again, caressing her brow, holding down the hand that would, had it not been so weak, have beaten at the bees that only Diana could see.

'There are no bees. They are gone. No-one got killed. When you're a little stronger I shall prove that to you.'

The struggle against the non-existent swarm trailed off into helpless weeping and Diana remembered they really were long gone. Utterly defeated she'd lain in that remote meadow for days until someone had come to get her, if not this woman then possibly others like her. Of what transpired subsequently she could not recall; the events of losing consciousness under the hot sun and recovering again in this strange little room were concatenated in time, the one following on seamlessly from the other. That something had happened in between was certain but unknown.

'I'd like to get up.'

'No, my dear. Strictly forbidden. Sleep, dear Diana, sleep.'

She tried to rise, only to find herself propped up feebly on one elbow one more time. Her limbs had acquired the consistency of rubber and the attempt made her tremble from head to toe, sweat pop out on her forehead. Ursula took hold of her bodily and manoeuvred her back down, one hand tenderly cradling the back of her head. 'Dear me, no, no, no, no. Out of the question. You are not going anywhere. Why so much hurry?'

'I need the bathroom.'

'You mean you wish to bathe?'

'No. Bathroom.'

'Then I shall bathe you where you lie.'

'Christ no, I mean I want to pee!'

It was meant to be yelled, an exclamation as much at the mental obduracy of her host as at Diana's own lavatorial predicament, but it came out meek - barely a whisper - that the woman who called herself Ursula was forced to put an ear to her lips and ask her again.

'Pee?' Ursula repeated, without evident understanding.

'Pass water. Piss.'

'Urinate! Forgive me.'

Diana briefly pondered what sort of woman it might be who spoke perfect English but couldn't tell 'pee' from a pursing of the lips, when without further ado Ursula scrabbled in a corner of the room - actually not a corner at all, for the room appeared to be circular - returned with a bed-pan, hoisted her up and thrust it under her. She took her weight by clamping both hands under her buttocks then simply looked at her with an air of expectation.

Diana got the message. Despite her embarrassment, she released her burden. Strangely enough, with the first metallic echo, Ursula smiled.

'I do apologise, dear. I really should have been more considerate. Only it never occurred to me... not after such dehydration. Would you feel strong enough to eat? Something light, perhaps?'

With the echo of the last few drops, Ursula whipped the pan from under her, lowered her gently back down then turned away without waiting for an answer. Diana found herself noticing that the woman was small and slightly built and that her buttocks were particularly trim. Shouldn't that remind her of something? Standing at a bench strewn with equipment, the naked Ursula poured a sample of urine into a test-tube, thrust the bed-pan unemptied on a shelf, lit a candle with something that sparked like a tinder-box then held the tube in the flame with long wire forceps, swirling the contents occasionally. When she appeared satisfied that it had reached the correct temperature she forced a leaf taken from a Terra-cotta jar through the neck of the tube, held it there a while and finally retracted it. The end which had absorbed her urine turned purple. Ursula stood the tube in a wooden rack then blew out the candle.

She came over and kissed her on one cheek. She was radiant. 'Wonderful! No kidney damage at all. Shall I make you some broth?'

Diana shook her head 'No thank you. I'm not hungry. But, please, I think I would like to go home now.'

Ursula tousled Diana's hair and kissed her one more time. 'Oh, poor child. We have already travelled this route, I fear. You are in no condition to go anywhere. Not yet. Soon, my dearest. Soon.'

She went back to her array of things and rummaged around. This time she approached her with the same drinking bowl as before, lifted her head and held it to her lips. 'Try this. It will do more good than you can imagine.'

Diana did still feel a little thirsty. The water, smelling of mint and - somewhere in there - chamomile tasted delicious. She was about to ask the next in a list of a thousand questions when her eyelids slammed shut as though someone had kicked away the props and she was sound asleep before the next question had even taken root in her mind.

Masha's heart leaped at the news that greeted her when she trotted out from the trees and down to the little group of women who stood clustered around the entrance to the Great Dome: leaped even if the news was gift-wrapped in the most crass of idle talk.

'She lives,' said a woman with whom Masha had only ever had but scant dealings; a talkative socialite who wasn't responsible for any sort of cart or machine and who only ever wore the finest, most intricate of jewellery. 'Diana wasn't dead at all!'

Another woman shook her head grimly. 'I believe she was, but that such is the skill of Ursula that our Healer successfully returned her from death.'

Masha crossed the warm grass and joined them in the pool of shadow that had worked round to the front of the dome. Other women went in and out, mainly out, clearly excited, too busy to acknowledge each other's presence. Masha listened patiently to the conversation for a while before dismissing it summarily as ill-informed crap. Masha had seen the dead countless times. She did not accept that anyone ever came back, unless through forces which were not of this world. And there was one place she knew about which definitely wasn't. Could it be?

'It is said that Ursula never made any attempt to embalm Diana. No part of her was removed.'

A red-head started so severely that Masha saw a flash of suddenly raised pudendum. 'Heavens! Then she already knew!'

'Could be coincidence. Who would want to desecrate the remains. Why?'

'I spoke to Hazel herself less than a hour go. She was a member of the funeral party. She said that Ursula seemed quite unperturbed by Diana's death and that she had no respect for her dead body at all.'

'That's because Diana never was dead, you see.'

'Dear, girl, Ursula had the poor thing frozen up from dusk to dawn.'

The girl who had spoken last shrugged her bare shoulders. 'The Healer knows best. Obviously the freezing was to protect her until her return to life. Some part of the resuscitation process.'

It might have gone on like that if Masha hadn't cut in - a half-dozen silly little cunts who knew precisely nothing, gossiping and speculating endlessly in a way that would eventually bury the true sequence of events beneath a shit-pile a mile a high.

'Has anyone told Aurora?' she cut in.

'Oh, hello, my dear. How are you? I do apologise. I did not see you arrive.'

'I do not wish to appear rude Masha, dear, but sometimes you just do not listen. Aurora is missing. Quite gone. She ran away, bless her, four days ago and no-one has seen her since.'

'Obviously I know about Aurora's disappearance, but that wasn't what I asked. What I asked was has anyone told Aurora? I mean, has anyone plucked up courage to send a party out looking for her? If they had then Aurora might already be back. Then she would obviously know that Diana lives.'

There was a cowed silence which the fiery red-head with her tossing curves and ringlets eventually broke. 'I do not believe anyone has gone looking for her, no.'

'Why?'

'Aurora might have chosen any one of a number of different paths. She was last seen running off into the forest and from there she might have gone anywhere. Possibly even the forbidden area.'

'Then search. Somewhere. At least make a start,' Masha admonished.

'That is all very well for you to say but we are not Leaders. The Leader gives us instructions. In circumstances such as this we are bidden to await her return.'

Masha rolled her eyes. ' There have never been circumstances such as these. Diana has never died in Lesbos before.'

Irritated, the red-head stabbed a finger at Masha's chest. It impacted barely an inch above the tall woman's navel. 'We are all doing our best. We have no precedent to call on. By your own words no woman has ever faced this sort of situation. Since you are so critical of us perhaps you have something to suggest!'

'As a matter of fact that's exactly what I propose. To you women here and now. As village blacksmith and a Janite I may be pretty low in the pecking order, but since no-one else has latched on to the obvious then I suppose it’s be up to me to suggest it. Far be it for me, especially as a Janite, to presume to know the Ancient Codex better than anyone else here, but is it not written that the place where the dead may be restored to life upon a single imprecation is the Forest of Lights?'

The group of women froze. Their massed silence was so poignantly profound that it changed the very nature of silence until silence became so extreme that silence became an explosion of silence.

'Diana is returned from the dead,' Masha continued. 'Only because such is the Leader's courage that she travelled - unarmed and on foot! - into the heart of the land of the dead. There she braved the creatures of the nether regions and spoke the name of Diana among the very phantoms with power to restore, or take, life.'

'Then Aurora will shortly return.'

'If she isn't out there somewhere injured. Or dead. The Forest of Lights is the most dangerous place in the world. Only the most courageous woman who has ever lived would dare go there alone.'

No comment.

'Which brings me to my next question. Who will support me? Who of you...' Masha pointed an accusing finger at each woman in turn. 'Will saddle up and ride with me? Tonight? As soon as darkness falls?'

They slunk back as one, pressing up to the perfect white of the dome as if trying to hide themselves within the brick. All but one, the fiery red-head.

'I will. Others will come along too. That I shall make sure of.'

Masha sniffed at the rest with something approaching contempt. 'Then let's go inform Ursula immediately. We shall ride tonight whether she agrees or not. You women may ride with us or stay and gossip - like hens. The choice is yours.'

Aurora made it to the settlement by the bay two hours before dusk. The ruins were already huddled under a cloak of twilight by the time she stepped onto to the first of the black ribbons which were the pathways between the buildings. That came as no surprise either; darkness made a stealthy approach in a place that was heavily shaded and spent most of its time under dull skies. There was a strong smell of rotting seaweed from the bay and from the nearest of the ruins, a miasma of must and decay. A coarse, sinewy species of grass grew abundantly beside the pathways, sometimes sprouting up in thick clumps through the fragmenting ribbons - a phenomenon that seemed to underscore that ubiquitous sense of desolation. The paths - of hardened mud? - divided by arcane painted lines, were badly broken and pot-holed. Most of the pot-holes were brim full with rain water. Water had accumulated in large puddles elsewhere too, causing local vegetation to rot and fill the place with a fetid stink. Aurora frowned. The rains had already put on a good show. By the looks of that sky they were set for a spectacular encore.

She was traversing a narrow avenue close by the water's edge, moving cautiously and making an extra effort to keep herself alert. There was no danger of a human kind: the threat lay with snakes and alligators that might have got flushed out by the heavy rains from the overgrown swamps beyond; creatures abruptly displaced from their normal habitat, disorientated and hungry. She took some comfort from the discovery made on previous visits that even if disturbingly partial to flesh they were instinctively averse to fire and that the easiest way to make herself safe once she'd decided on a shelter and ensconced herself there was to get a blaze under way fast as she could.

She was heading to the houses at the very edge of the water. These she knew best. They were solid, comparatively intact and probably the most recently constructed, even if the evidence suggested they might be centuries old. They were built in a single dead-straight line, hugging close to the waterside. When the tide came in - sounding louder during the night, a deep, seductive surge - she could always hear the lapping of the sea against the retaining wall, making a lullaby that most times sent her quickly off to sleep. Each compartment in the row was very much like its neighbour and each featured the same salient peculiarity in that every distinct dwelling was subdivided into smaller chambers suggesting that their occupants were in some way unsocial. At the very end of the row, however, one such dwelling was knocked through into a single large living space and one end fitted with a hemispherical dome reminiscent of the architecture of Lesbos. The dome was made from a material unique in her experience in that it transmitted light in one direction only so that from within one had a grand view of the lower reaches of the bay, whereas seen from the outside, the walls were a solid black. Whenever she came back to the ruins it was to this shelter that she headed first. It was just that every year, things changed. Older buildings fell or lost a wall, changing a landmark, or the ancient pathways buckled and twisted yet again, creating slopes where previously there were none. Some years the intrusive foliage flourished, other years it was sparse. She was never quite sure, the ways were never clear.

A large and ominous speck of rain hit her squarely on the back and a gust sprang out of hiding to intensify that dreadful smell of decay, before dying away again. It seemed that the light had suddenly faded still further. There was a boom that sounded like thunder far, far out to sea, and a flash of sheet lightning above, diffused by the heavy cloud. Aurora waited for the next rumble. It didn't come. This was a strange place where strange things naturally happened.

A few yards ahead, the pathway broke up almost completely and only a thin strip remained while the wire grass grew tall and thick in an encroachment which would eventually lead to its complete erasure. The bit of path that was left was presently more or less covered by lying water. Aurora decided to abandon it for now and push her way through the grass instead. The path was potentially too dangerous; sometimes blowholes opened up without warning so that for all she knew an innocent-looking puddle might actually be twenty feet deep.

Lightning flashed again as she stepped into still deeper shadow and the breeze returned, constant this time, taking up a low moan. Overture, Aurora thought, to the storm's next performance. She rounded a corner between the crumbling blocks and her view of the settlement opened up a little.

Pretty much as she remembered, the ruins were a miscellany of stone structures, many of them far gone; just façades whose windows showed blank sky. Only a very few places were still usable. Further evidence suggested that the settlement had once been truly vast, perhaps miles in extent, for the black pathways criss-crossed the hill-slopes in a decaying grid pattern and passed way beyond until finally swallowed up by the overgrowth, indicating that they had once extended much farther still. On the highest slopes the ruins were least numerous. There the dwellings seemed principally to have been constructed of wood. Sections of timber bases survived, some even taking root or overwhelmed by fresh tree growth. Elsewhere the buildings were stone throughout - or something like stone - mostly without roofs. A cluster in the mid-distance reminded her of the stumps of an eroded mountain-chain. The spaces between were filled with rubble to a great depth implying that they had once been structures of impressive verticality; tall, imperious towers built to last a millennium, now close to obliteration.

What sort of community might have supported a village so vast, she wondered? What did its women do to sustain such a society? Though the bay settlement was long-abandoned it never failed to fascinate her. Often as she lay awake listening to the lapping waves she'd try to imagine the place as it once was: enormous, colourful and no doubt incredibly happy. The climate must have been better in those olden times too, for this was no comfortable place for a woman to walk around naked.

A stub of a wall came up on her left and obliterated the view. A few yards ahead the street made a right angle. Here, there was a wind tunnel effect: focused between two opposing walls the breeze was sucked faster so that it tugged at her hair and chucked grit in her eyes. Thunder rumbled again. She believed the row of homes was located down this street but couldn't be sure. Aurora needed to get in before dark. The light was going fast. She got to the right-angle then went left where the ground sloped down sharply to the bay.

Yes! This was it!

Across the way stood a jumble of fallen stones, collapsed walls and lush weeds that created a broad pool of shade cutting down the failing light still further. Beyond the jumble was the beige-painted bulk of the row of homes, precipitate at its northern face where house-side and plunging seawall were one. There was a way between the fallen rubble which she sprinted across, thus coming out onto something like a tiny concourse. To the west the twenty-foot wide seawall curved away into the distance and eventually disappeared into the gathering dark of the wilderness at the forest's edge. Southward, the frontage of the row was a narrow street across from a rubble strewn bank where it opened up onto a tiny wilderness that shelved up to meet the encroaching forest beyond. Aurora turned into the street and ran. Her bare feet slapped noisily against the hard cobbles. The wind, now straight off the sea, hit her with freezing force.

The doors were all the same colour and the shuttered windows alike. At the last door she pressed down on the barely even rusted handle and put her shoulder to the wood. Wood? Albeit stiffly the door swung open. Aurora stepped gingerly inside.

Dark. Perfect dark. Or it just seemed that way after the twilight outside. When she had stood there a few moments, listening and sniffing the stale air, she saw that it wasn't actually dark at all. As her eyes adjusted, chinks of light appeared around the edges of the malodorous black curtain which she had hung there herself three or four years before, covering off the tiny hallway. It didn't smell too good but at least she was out of the wind. Aurora took a deep breath, swept the curtain aside and passed through into the interior.

The house was damp and chilly. An unpleasant fustiness hung in the air. Cobwebs were everywhere. There were streaks of slime on the transparent dome where slugs had made their greasy passage. The old tables and chairs which she had dragged in from adjoining properties - when she was still little more than a girl - were arranged as she had left them, and the makeshift bed in the hemispherical dome was untouched. The sacking that served the purpose of bedding had grown very dusty but Aurora was of no mind to care. It would lull her to sleep readily enough.

Now the fire. Quickly!

Wood was stacked right beside the iron-grated fireplace, again where she'd left it last time round. It was damp. The light was poor but the greenish fur of a moisture-fungus was plainly visible. Aurora stacked a half-dozen logs in the grating, cringing at the thought of whatever insects might be partying down in the wet bark, then took a vase of lamp-oil from a stone ledge inset in one wall and sprinkled the contents liberally. There was no tinder in the place but there was a fire-setting device which she had found on her last visit. She clicked the red button. It worked first time. Her life might depend on that fire. Aurora watched, cold and horrified, as the wet logs gave a hiss of steam then seemed to quiesce. It was going to be close. She pursed her lips and whistled softly. The struggling fire smoked and crackled before taking hold. She tipped on more lamp-oil and stood back.

And then it was away.

The flames leaped high as though water were no impediment to the burning of wood. There was a delicious if rather acrid smell of cedar. Aurora held out her hands to the stretching flames then knelt in close and luxuriated briefly in their primitive warmth. When it had dispelled some of the chill she got up and turned her back to the fire, spreading its warmth about her body. In addition to heat the fire produced light, in the event lots of it, satisfying the second of primitive woman's most basic requirements. The flames were multiply reflected in the transparent dome, her own nude - and filthy - form flickering redly by its side. A few moments rest, thank the gods! Just one minute to get herself warm.

The device that produced flame was something Aurora had concealed well last time, despite a temptation to take it back home. It was a simple cylinder around six inches long made of a smooth, light substance, from which a stalk of shiny metal extended another foot. One simply pressed a red button on the end of the cylinder, waited until a series of rapid clicks had finished coming from inside, then watched as a tongue of intense blue flame leapt from the muzzle of the metal stalk. There was a hieroglyph of a flame on the side, together with a number of other markings which she could not interpret. Aurora had first discovered it rolling around on the floor of the neighbouring house, impressed by the irony that it had lain there for centuries but that she, oblivious to its existence, had been bringing tinder with her most of her life. Aurora had never admitted to the discovery, for never had such a dangerous weapon been fashioned. In the wrong hands the fire-tube could wreak havoc. Doubtless the women of the past had some reasonable use - such as Aurora herself just had, for instance, the most obvious of all - but where, she wondered, lay the sense in making the laying of fire so easy?

Minute up.

With great reluctance she tore herself away from the hearth and made a careful reconnaissance of the room. It wasn't too bad but chunks of the ceiling had fallen since last time and in places the dust was an inch thick. Well, that would have to wait. This was no time to be getting house-proud. There were only a few sticks of furniture and hence nowhere for even the smallest of creatures to hole up but she checked rigorously all the same. Spiders and other small creatures she could share a home with, even the intersecting slug-trails on the bare stone flags didn't phase her. Aurora's sickening dread was of more threatening creatures; cockroaches, stinging spiders, coiled, sleeping snakes.

After ten minutes scrutiny she pronounced the place clean then went and stood behind the transparent panel that served the purpose of a window. It faced out to sea. She gazed wistfully at the growing blackness of the bay beyond. Full dark was settling fast, the sand was down to a shadowy grey gleam and the sea beyond that, rolling closer, a dimly reflecting mirror. The sky was an unbroken mass of gloom without moon or stars. It wouldn't be long before she looked out on nothing but her own reflection and the roaring flames behind. Nights by the bay were not nights for going out. Her stomach rumbled. She did her best to ignore it.

Aurora yawned, crossed to the little dome, checked her bed for insects, then stretched out. Her stomach rumbled a second time and a pang of hunger clawed its worst but she closed her eyes and concentrated on sleep. There might be food tomorrow. Might. Her thirst wasn't too bad; the fresh streams at the edge of the forest had taken care of that. She'd be desperately thirsty when she awoke but in the safety of daylight she'd be able to boil up some rain water until it was more or less drinkable and in these wet and rainy conditions she might even find a few edible mushrooms. Anyway, that could wait. The next challenge was night. If only she didn't dream! If only the phantasm didn't come to haunt her again and if only she could fend off her crippling despondency at Diana's death one whole night!

If only she could sleep at all.

Aurora lay awake, yawning again, watching the patterns of the flames on the crumbling ceiling. No rest. It just wasn't going to happen. She'd see the dawn light through eyes strained by lack of rest, exhausted and enervated to face the coming day. Though her body was in a state of near collapse her mind raced randomly, throwing up images and speculative scenarios. No sleep. Just couldn't happen. Not tonight.

A minute later Aurora floated off.

10

It was getting dark back home too - sunlight draining away from Masha's home like water from a bowl - by the time the other women made contact with her again. She was dozing by her dwindling fire, aware that the leaping flames had declined. The old high-backed wicker chair was firm and comfortable: other women despised it, called it the torture chair, but to Masha the austere throne gave the firm support her muscular back and thighs needed. Only problem was that she so easily fell asleep there.

This time Masha wasn't quite naked. She wore a broad leather belt circled in metal studs, a creation which she had fashioned herself. From it hung three leather sheaths, presently empty, designed to accommodate daggers of varying sizes, and a calf-skin pouch fastened with a single leather thong where she kept her poisoned darts. Her bow and quiver lay on the floor beside her, as did the shining broadsword which she would strap around her waist on its own narrow belt before setting out. Her wrists and forearms were protected by leather and metal guards - open on the inner forearm - and her belly by a hardened leather shield held in place by slim straps over the shoulders. It wasn't full armour because she didn't like full armour, couldn't move freely with her body fettered, but it was enough to protect her most vulnerable parts and at the same time accommodate her weapons. With Masha's speed and reach she knew the simple panoply made her a formidable opponent.

The knock on the door caused her to start awake and utter a sharp cry. For a moment she was disorientated. She'd been dreaming. The dreams were of combat: the silver sword swinging swiftly, the blows of her twin-bladed battle-axe hard and decisive. In the dream she hadn't recognised her enemy, except to know that it was there, but she fought valiantly all the same; the archetypal tall, strong warrior woman, weapons in hand, crouching slightly, feet well apart.

The oil lamp with the beam that narrowed and broadened by moving a metal lever - again something she had fashioned herself - lay in her lap. She clutched at it tightly on starting awake, almost bending it out of shape.

Just Hazel. Silly slit Hazel and her friends come to apologise and bring presents of fruit and flowers. Feeble women. She rose to let them in and found that her limbs were trembling in anticipation of the things she had planned for that night.

Masha's dome was larger than most of the others because it was a place to work as well as a place to live. Though her anvil stood out in the open she did most of her furnacing and forging work indoors and all her more intricate things were done on the plain wooden bench that ran along a thirty degree arc of the wall of the dome. A huge double doored metal cupboard studded in enormous rivets was normally padlocked and bolted but this evening the doors swung open to reveal the contents. She'd gone through them in great detail that afternoon, pondering carefully. The spiked iron balls on lengths of two-inch chain, her skull-crushers, were too heavy by far for the women of Lesbos to wield to any realistic effect. Most of the swords in there were heavy broads and claymores with ornate cast iron handles, again massively inappropriate for weaker women. The thin blade axes on hickory shafts, her meat-cleavers, with their narrow stiletto-like blades were things the Lesbians might just manage with some degree of efficiency. They were light and razor sharp. In the hands of swift but not so strong women they just might possible inflict real damage. If only that should ever be!

The knock came again and a voice called out her name. Masha clanged the door shut, shot a heavy bolt and clamped down a padlock. At the door of her blacksmith's shop stood Hazel. She was silhouetted against the setting sun. The rays lit up her red hair from behind, making it almost pink. She was not alone and nor was she bearing gifts - those predictably fatuous, weak women tokens Masha so vehemently reviled.

'My.' Hazel cooed the exclamation with more than a hint of sarcasm. Her eyes widened theatrically, their catty green irises wandering. 'What an outfit!' Another seven or eight naked women were grouped behind her. They jostled in close to get a better look. There was a thick, sweet smell of women. 'It seems you were expecting us.'

Masha adjusted the heavy leather belt that hung on her bare hips. It pinched her flesh a little. The flesh of her lower belly moved from side to side under the leather shield. Her hair thick hair was sweaty from sleeping. She ran a hand through.

'So it is a party?' Without waiting for an invitation Hazel strode into the room, bold and sassy and - socially at least - ready to take charge. The other women crowded around the stoop. 'Well, if only I had known. This is real clitty stiffening stuff and make no mistake.'

Masha felt a surge of offence, but there was something about Hazel, her poise and her great beauty, which made her hold her tongue. Besides, she was still only half awake. Masha observed that Hazel's skin was smooth and soft; unblemished and quite perfect from head to toe. Her curves were exactly as a woman's should be. She was very, very attractive. And though she was being rude there was something about her which meant that Masha couldn't possibly take umbrage: it was as though in those few moments she sensed something different about her, a new seriousness concealed beneath the glib façade.

Hazel gave a coquettish grin, shook out her red hair and leaned forward. Her fingertips traced the shape of Masha's belt. A finger hooked itself into a leather loop and tugged suggestively. She winked. 'Want to show me some leather action?'

Masha grabbed her slim wrist, intending to squeeze, but didn't. 'This is no party. You think I sit like this every night? You think I haven't got important tasks to prepare for while Aurora is wandering around lost out there somewhere? I...'

Hazel tugged the loop again but more sharply this time, admonishingly, then let go. She cracked her once on the bare rump. Hard. Much harder than Masha would have thought possible. The skin tingled. Hazel straightened, her firm stance coming close to defiance. 'I promised you help and here it is. Warriors we may not be but women good to our word we most certainly are. We know your intentions for tonight, Masha, and we shall ride with you. Our ponies are ready. Yours is saddled up too.'

The warrior woman glanced quickly through the still open window. Her old brown raw-hide saddle normally dangled from a hook on the outside wall where it was weathered by the elements, its shoulder just visible through the opening. The saddle was gone. She swallowed.

'Listen, I fear I may have misled you. I was just making a point back there - I never really believed you'd take me quite so literally.'

'Then you should get to know us better. Incorrigible gossips we maybe, but loyal and determined women we are more than that.'

'You are also untrained women with no experience in the use of weapons.'

'There is no time to train - that we can do nothing about - but any woman sufficiently confronted can wave a knife. Besides, perhaps we shall not need to. Consider the possibility, Masha, that the dangers we face out there in the Forest of Lights are of a type that will not readily succumb to your sharp metals. Soft women we may be, even weak by your standards, but we have a fortitude which other women do not posses because our sisterhood is inviolable. Your strength, our resolve, who knows but that we shall make a formidable team?'

She lunged forward and hugged Masha tight. Metal studs pressed into her soft breasts. The woman did not withdraw. Didn't flinch. Her little hands worked over Masha's strong thighs and back and finally settled on the lower curves of her buttocks where they squeezed and petted. Hazel felt good. Oh, so good.

'We shall ride with you, even to the cost of our lives.'

Masha held Hazel a few moments longer then unwound her arms and lifted her away. Her voice thickened with something that might be emotion. 'Then if that is how it shall be we had better prepare well.'

She reopened the weapons cupboard, at the same time gesturing the rest of the women to enter her home. They came in one by one; soft, naked and all very pretty. They clustered around as Masha selected armaments and weaponry from an unexpectedly substantial cache and one by one began to equip her naked women's army; here setting in place a sword or tightening up a buckle so that it nipped tanned skin, there straightening a dagger against a creamy thigh.

Masha worked on them for better than half an hour, her frown never lifting. She wasn't satisfied, never would be, though she was deeply touched. 'Guess you'll all have to do,' she finally concluded. She stepped back and handed over an axe to the last of the group. When her women were ready, Masha set her own armaments in place and girded the heavy sword about her waist. She gripped its ornate handle tighter than was necessary. 'I guess that whatever might be out there will get more than it bargained for.'

For only the second time in her life, Masha wanted to cry.

It came cold during the night.

Really cold.

Aurora awoke shivering, hugging herself under the malodorous rag that passed as a blanket, wondering if she had been quite sane coming to this place so late in summer; wondering why she hadn't stayed put at home and met her trouble head on. Then she remembered: the awakening of recollection had lagged behind the awakening of her body, that was all.

Rain thrummed deafeningly on the transparent dome until it made her feel distinctly uneasy, for it masked all other sounds, and the fire had burned low in the hearth and although it still cast reflections, those reflections were mere shadows of the blaze she had created for the arrival of night. Even as she threw her rags aside, leaving her makeshift bed, her own reflected image was reduced to a dull, reddish-orange glow that might have been the shape of a woman, might not.

Aurora was hungry and thirsty. She'd taken off into deep forest that night without provisions, nor even the means to carry the fruit and drinking water to be found in the margins beyond the Forest of Lights. Her body was streaked in dirt and stank of sweat. She desperately needed to bathe, but it was cold out here. So chillingly cold! She shivered again. Goose-bumps rose on her skin. She crossed to the struggling fire in the hearth that smelled of damp stone and carefully deployed fresh logs. The fire spluttered, crackled, turned red. The room seemed to go colder still, darker for sure, before new flame licked the underside of the roughly hacked cedar and warmth slowly began to return. She held her hands close to the fire, first the palms then the backs. Heat was getting through, thank the gods! She shuffled into the tiny inglenook by the side of the hearth where she might gorge herself on the returning heat, ignoring the way the rough stone wire-brushed her skin.

The inglenook was barely large enough to accommodate her hunched body but she was determined to stay. It wasn't exactly a choking place, no gas-chamber of lung-scouring smoke, for the chimney above her head rose up straight and wide, creating a circulation of air that made it possible to breathe without difficulty despite the ascending smoke. Beyond, the black sky was impenetrable under thickening cloud and the storm-brewing night smelled of saturated, rotting vegetation overlaid by the tang of salt. This Aurora knew from experience meant that the sea had risen exceptionally high in the bay. The rank-smelling flotsam of seaweed and rotting vegetation was floating to the surface and getting swirled around in great bulk. Bad news: the higher the tide the worse the flooding in the swamps beyond. Creatures would try to escape. The surviving ones would be those that floated: snakes, alligators. Other animals, the higher types, would take shelter too. Their normal habitat under threat they'd instinctively migrate to higher ground and the smarter ones would seek out warmth and light; react with great curiosity to the smell of wood smoke.

Thunder rumbled a long, long way off, low and distant, more felt than heard and Aurora tried to picture what it might be like in that far jungle where it was always wet and dark. She had no knowledge of the terrain, no woman had for it was entirely unexplored. The sister of her mother's mother had ventured within many years ago but had never returned and no-one had dared go after her. Where did the jungle lead? What lay beyond? Were there other lands like her own, clans of women as yet undiscovered? Or did the jungle merely stretch to the rim of the earth where nothing at all lay beyond?

She shook her head, fighting off the clinging shreds of tiredness. She must stay awake – the struggling fire needed her tending. It spluttered and crackled in protest and picking up her thoughts and threatening that if she abandoned it, it would abandon her, leaving to fend for herself in the stormy darkness of night. A storm that sounded as though it might be closer than she thought; might bring with it those creatures seeking drier ground.

Maybe she had visitors already?

Aurora took a switch of dryish brushwood, held it to the fire until it caught, then crawled out of the inglenook and circled the room, proffering the burning torch at arm's length. It made a passable light. The floor was strewn with smashed brick and fallen debris; a million places where things might hide. But if they meant to nibble her skin wouldn't they have started by now? She yawned involuntarily. How tired she was! She was about to cross back to her bed when she heard a sound... the one she least needed to hear.

Aurora cocked an ear and listened, then listened still more intently, straining against the miscellany of sounds of the oncoming storm, quite forgetting all other things.

Tiny yellow-white flames crackled against her fingertips and pain lanced through her skin. She screamed and dropped the torch then gingerly kicked it into the open space in the middle of the floor where it would burn out harmlessly. The brushwood crackled a while longer, emitted a wreath of grey-white smoke and then extinguished, leaving a pungent though not altogether unpleasant odour. The room seemed darker than ever. The sound seemed to be coming from directly ahead but even as she strained to catch it again it seemed to move. Now it came from beyond the wall of the dome, almost dead centre and at ground level. It was a low purr, guttural and regular, something close to the noise a woman might make in contented pleasure; but sinister, or calculating somehow. She recognised it as the purr of a wildcat, knew it was making that noise because it was curious and that two things in particular had excited its curiosity - the warm smoky fire and her. Her body, her scent. Meat! That the creature was hungry was certain because the flooding meant that smaller animals had been displaced or killed off, making prey scarce. The purr was clearly an adult's, suggesting that like as not cubs needed to be fed. The combination of hunger and instinct would make the wildcat especially fierce. Anxious to kill swiftly.

She climbed onto the rough bed, drew herself up into a ball and pressed her chin to her knees, trying to make herself so small that she might not be noticed. There was a scuffling against the outer skin. A scratching. The purr became a throat-rolling wail.

The wildcat had sniffed her.

The unlikely platoon progressed silently but for the clinking of metal against metal, dagger against sword and sword against tack. They rode in single file, Masha taking the lead on a large piebald pony almost the size of a full grown mare, specially bred for her. The animal's head was obscured by light-weight metal armour painted black. The mount snorted often, sometimes pawing the ground impatiently and trying to break into a trot. Masha turned and glanced regularly over her shoulder to check her women's army: they were all competent riders but not good. They gripped the reins too tight and grabbed hold of the saddle horn more often than was necessary. For the most part they rode in a collective slouch, rocking against the motion of their ponies rather than moving with them. But they looked the part. Each woman had tied back her hair combat-fashion and the bare breasts swinging and rolling atop the light armour were wonderful.

For ease of riding Masha had swivelled her own combat belt around so that her daggers hung from the small of her strong back; removed her leather belly armour and strapped it to her saddle where she could recover it quickly should the need arise. Her reason for the need of such ease was Hazel. Though feisty, Hazel was no rider. She'd confessed to the skills deficiency in an anxious whisper as the other girls were mounting their mares, only she holding back and clinging in an almost child-like manner to Masha's side. That was why she now shared a saddle with her, cunt squashed against the creaking leather of the horn, back pressing into the dark woman’s warm chocolate belly. Masha had an arm round her, the reins were comfortably loose in the other hand which rested comfortingly – for both of them – on Hazel's thigh. The warmth girl's skin was good and the freshly-washed and scented red hair smelled sweet: before the party had gone more than a mile Masha had already acquired the habit of nuzzling its rich tangle. That Hazel appreciated these little gestures of reassurance was obvious: she nestled into the spaces created by Masha's own strong body, responding with tiny sympathetic movements to each surreptitious caress.

They were following a bare earth track that led up river and into a glade that narrowed on both sides as forest swept in. Daylight had failed over an hour ago. Their only illumination now came from a bright half-moon whose steady glow penetrated coyly into the glade here and there and the small shielded oil lamps on hickory poles strapped to their ponies' saddles. As it got darker the lamps bobbed and swung prettily, their fulvous glow holding back the advancing shadows. Eventually, as the trees enclosed them completely and the moon disappeared, those lamps would provide the only illumination they had.

The track made a curve to the left, Masha flicked the reins and her mount obediently responded. They passed into a broad spillage of dark and sure enough, they were here already. Suddenly the moon was gone. Hazel's silky body stiffened.

'Nervous?' Masha whispered.

'I am afraid so. And I am riding up front. Without armour.'

'You want to move behind me?'

Hazel shook her head. Fierce red locks, now almost invisible, tickled her chest. 'No. I could not stay on without help in a million years. Just look after me very well, that is all.'

'I'll do my best. But really you shouldn't worry. Our own forest is safe enough. It's only after a few hours riding that there is danger. If you were to dismount now and follow the path home no woman would think any the worse of you. Certainly not I.' She hugged the vulnerable belly a little tighter.

'Tempting, Masha. And if only life were really so simple. But the Forest of Lights - you know something about it?'

The warrior woman took in a deep breath that came out again as a languorous sigh. 'Only the things I've heard from Aurora's reading of the Ancient Codex. Well... maybe a little more. I never told anyone but some years back - Janite years - I rode out there alone. Right to the very edge. It's true; the trees do glow. A strange gleam, like moonlight on wet leaves, or the way that sunlight finds its way into the forest at dawn and makes it seem that the trees are aglow. Except that this is a dimmer light. Much colder. And the trees are different there; twisted and distorted. I stayed parallel to the edge for around a mile and although I don't believe I actually saw anything, my imagination played many tricks. Even Peg, my pony, seemed to sense something. She'd keep getting uneasy and shying away. More than anything I found it a spooky place. It was cold and very still and although the trees are sparse, their boughs interlock like a network of umbrellas so that a woman soon enough can't even see the sky. It's disturbing in every way. I took three days to find a way home.'

'You mean you were scared?'

Masha bristled. 'Of course not, but I was unsettled.'

They lapsed into silence. The girls' low chatter ceased too and as Masha checked again, she observed that some were actually dozing in the saddle. The forest was a soporific place, especially at night; silent, uniform and brooding. Masha reasoned that a period of relative indolence would do no harm but decided also that she wouldn't let it continue for long. Before dozing became real sleep she'd make them dismount and rest up properly. Distance was deceiving. In another couple of hours they'd have penetrated better than ten miles, sufficient for the first leg of the foray. As she was thinking these things, Masha slipped into a doze herself.

Aurora squeezed back into the inglenook and huddled over the acrid flames, her bed rag draped negligently about her in a futile effort to keep warm. Its folds hung dangerously close to the leaping fire. Smoke stung her eyes until they watered continuously, blearing her vision. Its sharp coils scoured the interior of her chest like scorpions. Mucus flowed from her nostrils. She sniffed it back at regular intervals. The cold had come on suddenly and seized her body like a pack of dogs intent on shaking the life out of her. The symptoms of the common cold were entirely alien to Aurora, for women such as she never suffered from cold. Being alien, the symptoms were terrifying.

The Diana sickness?

That's what it must be! The same shivering and cold sweats and lapses from reality which were destined to reunite sisters separated by death. Even now, as she leaned increasingly close to flames that seemed to emit decreasing heat, her mind was want to slip its leash and take her briefly, sketchily, to episodes in her life that might have been. Like the present one for instance. The waking dream that had come out of the crackling fire.

Diana was with her in her bed, winter snows piled high around the domes of home, watching the heavy flakes descend in serried slow-motion through the half-open window. Diana's hand rested on her breast and her slim leg was snaking its way between her own as Diana moved lazily. A fire roared in the hearth - an actual fire which gave off tangible heat. Aurora sipped from a glass of thick mulled wine; strong head-spinning, cold-warding-off stuff, black as ink that was made from wild brambles and left to gain strength throughout the autumn. Diana yawned, made a sleepy enquiry, then took a sip from Aurora's glass.

'Hmmm, more of that.'

'Of course, dear. As much as you like.'

'Won't it get me drunk?'

'I personally guarantee it will.'

'Still snowing?'

'Of course. Rest. Drink.”

Aurora turned her head on the soft pillow and watched the gathering blizzard. It was at its most intense now, almost as though the white winter sky were collapsing and drifting to earth in heavy chunks. The late dawn had broken some while ago and the sun, wherever it might be, was well on its way to its zenith, yet still the morning was shrouded in the gloomy remnants of daybreak. There wouldn't be much light at all that day. The intensity of the snowfall would see to that. What light there was thin, directionless and cold; an injunction to women to stay indoors. Stark contrast indeed to the glow of the oil-lamp which Aurora left burning all night.

She tugged the sheet up under her chin - crisp white sheets brought out of storage just for the season of snow - and settled Diana's roving hand back on her breast. A finger curled over the hardening nipple. She half-closed her eyes, watching on, conscious thought ebbing away, as the drifting flakes stirred her back in the direction of peace.

For the first time ever it was not Aurora's lot to rest alone through the time of the snows: this time her partner lay beside her, her body weaved into her own. With a consistency which had never once failed snow always came precisely on the day of the winter solstice, the falls predictably heavy and unremitting. Outside the temperature sometimes plunged to twenty below and froze over the little river into an artery of perfect ice. Even the shallow fall froze solid, as though time itself were in hiatus, the descent of falling water suspended in a moment that would last the winter through. Which in any case was never long. The snows never endured more than three or four weeks before a rapid thaw set in. The river would become a surging torrent that flooded the sandy beach, its level sometimes rising so high that it swirled over the footpaths either side of the bridges or smashed through into the orange grove to the south. Within the span of a week the snows departed and the spate returned to normal flow. The sun blazed high and yellow in the sky again. Women resumed their everyday lives.

It was just that those three-leading-to-four short weeks were always a time of acute loneliness for her. Women stayed indoors and slept and drank and made love, or just lazed until the sun returned. Amongst those who lived as couples, or groups, the short winter days flew by while for those who chose to cruise, the warmth and chummy ribaldry of the communal dome was unrivalled. Aurora got her invitations naturally, and was invariably forced to lie, claiming that she needed winter to sleep. In fact her instinct was to nest but she was thwarted and frustrated by the absence of a partner with whom she might shed the inhibitions of leadership and become her true self in the company of an equal. But not this winter. Not as she floated in and out of dreamy reverie and those delicate fingers soothed the shaven curves of her labia. Not as her own hand travelled down to meet the soft hemispheres of Diana's rump and took up residence there...

...not as the lying images of bliss evaporated in a moment and she was alone again in that alien place, the curls of her filthy bed-blanket beginning to singe.

Aurora screamed, snatched the blanket away and beat out the incipient flames with her bare hands. The illusion had seemed so real that she wanted to cry. Then she realised she was crying: smoke had wreathed its way into her nostrils and down into her lungs and her eyes were watering uncontrollably. She screamed and coughed then wriggled out of the inglenook and back into the centre of the room where it was dank and dark and more than a little frightening. This wasn't her home. Her secret shelter in a foreign place, perhaps, but nowhere that could offer her the comforts - or safety - of home.

The savage coastal wind had got up into a howl that shrieked amazingly through the broken ruins and the lashing rain had taken up an irregular kettledrum beat against the dome of her shelter. The wildcat's mewling was closer than ever, and no doubt because of the twin imperatives of the storm and hunger, had changed into an altogether more frantic cry; sharp and stressful and loud enough to make itself clearly heard above the ravages of the storm. Most chilling of all was the complexity of the call; a mingling of cadences and animal disharmonies, of low guttural rolls and high, feline whining. Especially chilling because no single beast could achieve it.

There was more than one wildcat out there!

Aurora screamed again. Her ragged blanket fell to her feet. She stood naked in the dishevelled room and her bladder opened of its own accord and pungent urine spurted onto her sole means of retaining her body's warmth. Ahead, dead ahead, the sheeting rain made running water patterns on the dome; beads, fire-light-reflecting pearls, small rivers that gushed and flowed, filling up tiny tributaries that formed spontaneously and just as quickly vanished. Behind them, low down, a foot or so above the low brick base, another pattern was taking shape. Eyes. Disembodied eyes. Sometimes peering in close, other times winking in and out of existence, but always fluid, always malformed and made less than corporeal by the rolling rain. And not quite even eyes at that but light thrown back from animal retinas in diamond shapes.

The wildcats had smelled her. Drawn by the wood smoke they had homed in on her scent and were even now being driven insane by the further scent which she herself had contributed just seconds before. Urine, the signature of the kill. Aurora flinched as a paw lashed at the dome. Sharp claws raked in a screech like a finger-nail against a chalkboard. A second, larger paw repeated the assault and this time the panel wobbled briefly inwards. Aurora tried to scream again but couldn't. Tried to back away to the fire, but found herself frozen to the spot. Her breath caught in her lungs. The room began to spin.

Hell of a way out, eh? Real way of cutting short those generous decades of life. Dinner for wildcats.

11

The stream was an unexpected bonus and even more so the abundance of edible wild mushrooms growing on its banks. Its presence was first detected by Angela, fifth girl in line, who had heard the sound of running water and whose keenness of hearing did not go un-noted by Masha. It was reached by veering off-track and heading north-west a few hundred yards up a moss-strewn hillside. Like most forest streams it was overgrown and therefore not readily spotted, but because it ran off directly from higher ground was fast-flowing, cool and clear. Masha ordered that they rest up in an area where the undergrowth was light and thorn-free and the trees comparatively sparse. Fresh drinking water was to be got from upstream, thus conserving the pre-treated bottled supply for later. Girls could bathe ten yards further down and the horses were to be watered ten yards below that. The most downstream point of the sub-clearing was designated an area for latrine purposes or for the washing of those parts of the body which played a significant role therein. Masha was surprised to find it was necessary to explain why.

Immediately on dismounting, the girls stripped off their armour, tethered their mounts and set themselves out in a circle, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Masha whipped up a modest camp fire over which a sinewy brunette by name of Wendy began cooking up mushrooms in a flat skillet produced from her saddle bag.

'One just never really knows,' she chirruped, turning over the blackening flesh with a twig, 'When the conveniences of home might prove useful.'

'We could have eaten them raw if necessary.'

Wendy grimaced and pretended to spit. 'Gahhh! Disgusting.'

'Likes her food, does Wendy.'

'I simply do not know where the little darling puts it. So slim and yet such a hearty appetite. Personally, I have only to look at food to gain weight.'

'Which I suppose means you shall abstain from our midnight feast, Gloria?'

'I did not actually say that, now did I?'

Women laughed.

'One merely concludes that some women are destined to be... ahh.. cuddlier than others.”

'You are very quiet in this, Masha, dear. What is your view?'

Eyes swivelled in her direction and the general banter abated, awaiting her response. Like it or not, the women saw Masha as their leader. When she spoke now, even on trivial matters, her words meant something.

'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse,' Masha said, feeling obliged to contribute.

'Hey, not so loud! Our company may not appreciate your culinary inclinations and foot blisters never really did go with my figure.'

'Blisters on that sweet arse of yours is what...'

'Keep it clean, girls.'

'Spanking is for doing, not talking about.'

'Now there speaks a girl who just cannot get by without a stinging bottom. Would you care for a few flat-handers now, my dear?'

'We should alarm the owls.'

More giggles.

'I want my mushrooms underdone.'

'Granted.

'You shall regret that choice, Angela. You see if I am not proven correct.”

'Sorry, dear? How?'

'Sorry as in wild mushrooms are not like cultivated ones. Sorry as in what you shall be if you fail to cook them thoroughly.'

So it might have gone on, for these were above all social creatures who adored idle chat, if Masha hadn't called them gently to order with the enjoinder that they get some of the unexpected largess in their bellies then curl up for the night. This was the easy part. When they got going again, which would be soon because there wasn't time to squander, things would get considerably harder. They’d be closing in first on the Forest of Lights and then the singular dangers of the territories beyond. They would need to ride fast over harsh terrain and the hazards facing them would be formidable. Masha wasn't going to make any more rest stops. The quest was to find Aurora. To achieve that object the party would ride until it dropped, women and ponies alike. This was no holiday.

The little speech seemed to do the trick, for her troupe of women fell silent and the smiles of playful camaraderie melted from their faces.

'I don't mean to worry you any more than is absolutely necessary,” Masha concluded. “But that's the way it is,'

She unfurled herself from the awkward crouch into which she had settled - not her usual cross-legged, cunt-splaying posture for that embarrassed her unaccountably, but rather a prudish side-saddle squat - and straightened to her full, even terrifying, height. She half-turned to leave.

'Where are you going, Masha, dear? You are not intending to desert us, are you?'

'Mushrooms,' she lied. 'Delightful forest cuisine and a credit to Wendy's culinary skills, but a lady has need of the stream.'

'Watch those nettles, Masha,' someone said. Masha failed to catch who. 'My poor little vulva itches like crazy already.'

Masha smiled emptily. 'I'll get by.'

Hazel had said nothing through the brief and fatuous exchange, which was untypical of her, but now she scrambled to her feet and slipped into the warrior woman’s shadow..'You will not mind if I tag along?'

Masha could use her company tonight, that was the truth. She briefly studied the slim body with its fine breasts and delicate little nest of pubic hair and found herself wanting this sweet young woman. Badly. She had misread her all the time she had know her, believing her a sharp and sometimes arrogant socialite with a ready tongue and volatile disposition but realised now that she had been quite wrong. She saw another side of Hazel. There was the purest of affection in her and a dependent vulnerability that she found deeply attractive. Seductive. Masha possessed the strength, Hazel the need for the protection only a truly strong woman could provide. They were made for each other. The temptation was acute.

'Not this time. I don’t expect the next few minutes to be exactly pleasant.”

“I do not mind. I would like to be with you.”

“I think not. Maybe Wendy was right after all,' Masha lied.

“I do not believe you. I think you have some other need and I want to be she who satisfies it.”

A pause, their eyes exchanged data, words were no more than noises now, but safe ones to hide behind.

“The only safe forest mushroom is a well cooked mushroom. Now douse all but one lamp to conserve oil and don’t let anyone wander off.”

She turned her broad back and with a few swift strides passed beyond the ring of lamp-light to be swallowed up by the darkness. All at once, silence reigned. Masha's address to her troops had hit target sure enough but there was a second reason for the sudden broodiness: each woman was thinking the same thing. That Masha had quite literally vanished, both visually and in every other respect. She was silent to a degree which suggested eerily that she might already be miles away: there was no swish of foliage nor cracking of twigs, no little screams as delicate body parts caught up in tangles, no splashing from the stream. Masha was a big woman, to be fair, a giant, and thus rightfully entitled to make better than twice the commotion of any Lesbian. But she didn't. Not a sound.

Among the group of women glances were swapped with lightning rapidity. What Masha had just done was easily the most frightening thing so far.

She'd counted ten. Ten eyes meant five cats. Sometimes there were less as creatures prowled the periphery of the building, searching for a way in, but when the killer feline group was congregated, pawing and throwing themselves against the dome, there was no doubt but that there were five.

Sometimes Aurora even sensed she smelt them: a strong whiff of that overwhelming zoo-stink that made her want to vomit. She'd rolled her blanket and kicked it away because she knew that her own scent was driving them mad but now, despite the fire, she was shivering with cold from the onset of illness. She hugged herself. The goose-bumps made her skin feel like sandpaper. Snot streamed down her upper lip and over her chin, even finding its way into her mouth, but she no longer made any effort to brush it away. She was fighting the desire to lie on the rough stone floor and go to sleep in equal measure and it seemed she might be losing on both fronts Even as she considered her inevitable defeat, the two largest and strongest of the wildcats hurled themselves at the dome in a sudden cacophonous flurry of activity, their heavy bodies making it delve inwards more than ever. Their claws, lashing and striking out at the thin but tough plastic, traced out parallel grooves. Perversely the sight made Aurora think of a child in its womb, kicking up a fuss and eager to be free of its restraining membrane.

Then the attack halted. The prowling began all over again. Aurora swallowed dryly as she realised that the dome hadn't resumed its original uniform convexity but instead sagged inwards, flaccid and stretched, like the belly of a woman who had given birth too many times. The bastard see-through skin, whatever it was, wouldn't hold out much longer. Next attack might breach it.

A beast brushed close, rubbing its fur against the dome. It defecated, thereby staking out a claim. In the fire light - and her fire roared way up inside the chimney because she'd kept on stacking it, log after log until they were all gone - she caught sight of its markings: not the dark ocelot that might be expected but the distinct tiger-stripes of a particularly large and mean cat indeed. It was now just a matter of time before one of the better physically endowed and more determined members of the pride broke through. The rest would follow in a second. Five cats meant that there would be intense competition for food and that she would be torn to pieces in a minute. Death might arrive swiftly but it's savage delivery still begged the unanswered question as to how much pain she might endure in the final moments. Plus there were secondary issues worthy of consideration. Whereabouts, for instance, on her naked and highly vulnerable body would the first fangs rive? Would a clean bite to the throat take her out swiftly in a geyser of blood, or would the attacking beast go for the tempting flesh of her breasts, tearing them from her chest like meat from a roasted chicken? Would the second attacking cat rip its nourishment from a thigh, gnawing down to bone, while her breasts were being devoured and before unconsciousness overcame her? Or maybe the pride might pin her to the ground and disembowel her, its members vying to string out the last of her intestines. Maybe one cute pussy would opt to chew her face off.

Fire.

She had heard that wildcats were meant to be afraid of fire, although there was little evidence of that now. Maybe, because of the dome, they couldn't feel the heat and didn't realise there was fire in here. Her big problem with that defence strategy was the rain outside. Any fire set outdoors would fizzle out quickly, giving her precious little time to escape. In any case, where the hell was she supposed to escape to?

Without warning, the larger cat lunged again, this time hitting the dome shoulder-on. There was a loud crump as the stressed material surrendered and a trefoil-shaped split appeared. The beast backed off and resumed its ritual prowling, unaware that it had breached its quarry's final defence. The split was ragged but definite. One cat needed but to realise that it could squirm its way through for a flap of the material to tear away completely and admit the entire pride.

The darkness of the forest was absolute but to Masha it offered no deterrent. She made her way swiftly past the sleeping ponies and down among the trees, left the semi-thicket and located a cluster of tall, straight birches some distance from where her party rested.

Masha moved with ease because she was a practiced huntress, accustomed to stealth, and because her race was blessed with a night vision far superior to that of the Lesbians. She walked flat-footed, as though wading through deep snow, sensing with each footfall exactly what lay beneath. Sometimes Masha completed her tread, other times allowed a foot to come rest elsewhere where it wouldn't impact on something that might make a sound. Despite this complexity, her progress was quick and sure. It was a skill she had been born with and one which she had honed to absolute perfection over the years. Although no more than a hundred yards from her party she wouldn't make a single sound they'd overhear and not one woman would ever have any idea of what she had been about. Even the horses wouldn't stir. She was good at that.

Well into the cluster she halted and looked around. Her night vision resolved everything in indistinct shades of grey, as a normal woman might perceive objects by moonlight, but it was sufficient for her needs. Masha decided on one tree in particular. It had three of four smaller boughs sprouting at a height low enough for her to reach without needing to climb. Like her troop before her Masha had shed her armour but, unlike them, retained her leather belt with its sheathed array of knives and daggers. With a movement so quick that the average woman would not even have detected it she tugged the lanyard of a sheath, grabbed the knife within and extended the blade to arm's length, scything through a protruding bough in one swift motion. She stripped away the outer bark to reveal fresh, slightly moist wood, then sliced off a couple of excrescences and whittled the surface smooth. The result was an eighteen inch length, six inches in diameter, already taking shape. Masha rounded off both ends, tapered one down abruptly then paused to admire her handiwork. The purpose of the emerging object was unambiguous. With a minute grunt of satisfaction, Masha hefted the device, checked its strength and weight, considered it from all angles and concluded that it would suffice. The entire process had taken less than a minute. When she was done she unbuckled her belt and let it drop.

Her headache had been building up in intensity throughout the impromptu meal and the desultory conversation which had accompanied it. She had noticed also that the faintest of quivers had come into her hands and that her respiration was shallower than normal. And rapid. Her mind kept wandering on to Ursula and the things she had done for her and as physical yearning thickened into a stronger brew she found also that her attention was being taken more and more by Hazel. This created a conflict. Hazel was more attractive than Ursula, of that there was no doubt, cruel and ungrateful as it might seem. Masha's interest was switching massively to the red-head and it was an interest that took in part a prurient form. She knew from the many hints Hazel had dropped that her sensual body was Masha's for the taking whenever she chose: that last one had been the most overt yet; that the full breasts, and lightly swollen thighs, the rounded hips and the soft, sweet vulnerable centre were territory in which she would be most welcome.

What Hazel didn't know was of Masha's recent vow of celibacy, broken only in respect of those controlled engagements with Ursula, whose peremptory manner and physiological skills brought her sexual satisfaction without any of the risks of open sex. Sex with Hazel, however, was a prize she wanted. Badly wanted. A satisfaction she ached and tingled for. It was just that Hazel's delicate, dewy orgasms - for all she considered herself a cunt of some prodigy - were no match for the savage Janite.

On the other hand Lesbos was getting farther away, wasn’t? It's laws and protocols became less imperative with each mile. And things were changing fast in that she had already garnered to herself some of the authority of Leadership and in so doing started a trend which was clearly gathering momentum. Masha was close to a point when she might gain some small authority to impose rules back home, where the dispirited Ursula, third in command, indicated she held no interest in the responsibilities of Regency. It might be that the women of Lesbos would come to consider the periodic sacrifice of a woman to Masha's massive libido a fair price to pay for the preservation of an orderly community: that Ursula's particular skills might find a new role in the stitching back together of her playmates.

The truth was plain enough to see; already just thirty miles into the forest these women were powerless without her. Masha already had her power. They knew it, accepted the fact and did not resent her supremacy. Masha could take Hazel whether Hazel wanted her or not, and she could go as far as she liked; out here, in the depths of the woods, where the screams of her abnormal penetration would be attributed to other causes. Hazel dragged off by some wild thing. A bear. Masha fighting valiantly to save her... look at the blood!... albeit in vain....

Except that Masha was developing feelings for her. Things in Lesbos could never be so simple and straight-forward as her Janite mind liked to paint them

The giant woman swayed on her feet, massaged her sweating scalp through the thick-black locks, then licked sweat from the palm of her hand. She ran a hand over the steel muscle of her belly, into her tangle, and slipped her fingers into the mush and grease that lurked expectantly within. Masha rubbed herself vigorously, withdrew her fingers; tested the taste they had acquired. Warrior woman's cum! Thick and sour and foul-smelling. Her headache throbbed again. Sweat rolled between her shoulder-blades and tickled like a teasing finger-tip as it traversed the sacrum and passed into the tight gape of her buttocks. More sweat squeezed out through the pubic hairs.

Now the urge for satisfaction was uncontrollable and it was well that Hazel wasn’t here. Raw animal lust was driving her mad. So long as the urge endured, her quest to rescue Aurora would be quite forgotten and the women in the forest under her care become targets of her imaginings that were as the petals of a flower; to be enjoyed, savoured and then crushed to essence in an epilogue of pleasure. Masha's thighs began to shake. Her body smashed into the control-room of her mind and demanded that her legs take her back to the awaiting girls.

Especially the oh-so sweet, sweet Hazel.

Actually, Aurora was quite beautiful in a ragged sort of way. Her long blonde hair blackened by dirt and hanging in a wild tangle, skin streaked in filth like war paint, she posed with her arms by her side, feet parted, in a stance of uncomprehending defiance. Except that she wasn't defiant. Merely transfixed. Nor was she uncomprehending for she understood perfectly that in the next few minutes the wildcats were set to tear her limb from limb.

Despite the mental fug of her cold Aurora saw that if she were to stand the remotest chance of getting out of this business alive she must act now. She needed to abandon that silly naked come-and-get-me pose because no-one was about to leap in with swords flashing and axes swinging and deliver her from dire peril. No-one would because no-one knew where she was and even if they did would never find strength to make the distance, let alone rescue her. She wasn't about to be swept up into the saddle in a strong woman's arms: the only girls to come and get her were four-legged and striped.

Problem was, she couldn't move. Terror held her rigid. Even as urine ceased to course steadily down her legs and her bowels involuntarily evacuated their last sips of dirty water, Aurora was utterly transfixed by fear. The cats had stopped their prowling and abandoned their random charges and the head of the pride had taken to sniffing around the slit which had opened up in the Perspex. A large tongue lolled and explored. It was beginning to get the message. To the rear of the lead cat the rest of the pride waited patiently as though sensing that the quarry would soon be theirs. Waited for their cue.

Seconds to go. Just moments.

Get the hell out of there!

The voice seemed to come from nowhere: it was clear and well-defined, albeit with a hint of an echo as though the words had been uttered in a very large room. Only when it rang out the second time, now babbling out words she could not understand, did she perceive that it came from herself. Aurora had taken to yelling aloud, her incomprehensible verbiage rapidly trailing off into the shrill scream that that moment woke her from her the suspended animation of fear. Her hands were pressed to the sides of her face. Her scream pitched close to the key of hysteria.

But she kept it going even when reality came back, for its effect was that the cats backed away until they were once again visible only by the tell-tale gleam of their eyes. Floating diamonds in the watery night; briefly cowed and confused. It wouldn't be long before they recovered. Until then the advantage had passed briefly to Aurora..

And cats don't like fire. Remember?

She resumed a screech but it was more controlled now, a survival tool instead of a death-cry. Aurora reached behind her, dragged a flaming log from the fire and tossed it onto the bed that stood in the centre of the dome. Flame flashed with the movement of the burning object through the air, blowing back onto her unprotected hand and forearm. The skin stung painfully, seemed to shrink over-tight around the bone, reddened and blistered. The burning log landed dead centre on its target where, temporarily starved of oxygen by flight its payload of flame sputtered and died. Aurora watched anxiously. She stopped screaming now. Needed all her senses. Then there was a wink of light that travelled outwards from the smouldering log and the rags upon which she slept burst spontaneously into flame.

Now her rivals in the quest for survival were visible again in a wedge of light that broke free of the damaged dome. They were indeed a pride of five; large and striped, signifying the bravest and most courageous of the species. They had grouped close together, shouldering into each other and Aurora observed with some surprise that they seemed to be protecting a member of their group which was obviously heavily pregnant. Wild these creatures were, yet in some ways civilised.

The scream became genuine again as pain suddenly seized her shin; the same stinging agony as the burn. She stepped quickly aside. Though folded, the blanket on which she had inadvertently pissed, was itself well alight, having caught fire from some flaming fragment which had detached itself from the log. Singeing her dangling hair a little, she leaned in close to grab a corner that wasn't yet ablaze, then dragged it slowly, very deliberately across the floor and deposited it by the side of the flaming bed. In its wake a few other objects began to kindle. A little dry brushwood smouldered smokily then crackled into scintillating fire. Debris caught red and something that she had mistaken for fallen plaster flared up swift and fierce. In the few moments it took to back safely out of harm's way, the passage of the burning blanket turned into a trail of flame.

Aurora risked another glance through the Perspex. It was getting harder to see out because the flames leaped high, obscuring her view, and because it had suddenly grown very bright in the room, thus overwhelming the night beyond. Nevertheless she saw that the wildcats had retreated again. Much farther this time. They had backed away maybe twenty-five yards and were cowering in the shelter of a bush, giving her that one slim chance. Aurora turned away and made towards the door.

Then froze in her tracks.

Where the door had once stood there was now nothing but a sheet of flame seething from floor to ceiling. It boiled and rolled internally, flicking out hellish blue tongues and plumes of black, suffocating smoke. Given its invitation to spread the fire had broken free of the hearth and journeyed along the entire width of the interior wall, devouring it greedily. It was gaining in strength behind her too; she felt its fierce heat on her back and heard the crack and rustle of its advance. To her left was a wall, not yet ablaze, but impenetrably solid. To her right a narrow corridor of relative calm, marred only by a low trail of fire along the floor. At the end of that corridor was the extreme edge of the transparent dome, as yet untouched.

Problem was the dome was almost as solid as the wall and the fire was advancing rapidly on her from front and rear.

Which way?

A further complication presented itself in that it was becoming difficult to breathe as the red-hot fumes seared into her lungs, displacing what little usable oxygen remained. Perversely her instinct was to pant and the more she gasped for air the worse the pain grew. There was a stink in there too which hadn't been present before; something in the failed lining of the walls and ceiling had chemically altered over the long years and was now emitting toxic gases.

At least she wasn't cold anymore, some sinister being inside her taunted. And the wildcats were at this moment less of a problem than before. The upside of this new dilemma was that the fire was losing essential oxygen and would burn itself out almost as rapidly as it had begun: the downside, by then she'd be charcoal.

Aurora pressed a hand to her genitals and managed to pass a few more drops of urine into her fingers which she immediately clamped over her mouth and nostrils; the ammonia in her urine would absorb some of the fumes - though not much - and its alkaline stink would help keep her conscious a while longer. She ducked as something aflame whizzed past her shoulder then ducked again, almost sprawling full length, as there came an almighty screech like a billion fireworks let off all at once followed by a sound like an iceberg exploding. She was assailed by a fusillade of flying objects. Some cut into her back and made her cry out in pain. Next there came a terrifying whoosh of air and fire as the conflagration found an unexpected and abundant fresh source of fuel and flared up to new heights.

There was one other effect - Aurora suddenly found it much easier to breathe. Even as fire leapt above her, closing what little gap remained, she sucked in welcome lungfuls and took in deep rasping breaths. She wretched infecundly and shook her head to clear the green spangles which had formed before her eyes then dropped on all fours and crawled slowly towards the source of the oncoming rush. She stayed low. For some unaccountable reason there was no significant degree of fire down there, even though she could feel it snapping at her hair and licking at the bare skin of her back. Something bruised her knee. She felt blood begin to flow. Something else, something alight, settled onto her hair, forcing her to sweep it away with her bare hands and beat out the flames. Then there came a silence that she just wasn't prepared for, succeeded by an almighty hiss like escaping steam. The flames suddenly diminished and smoke dominated instead. But different this time. White and less choking.

Aurora had crawled to within feet of the dome and was once again breathing good air. Something wet splashed onto her skin and pained the burned flesh intensely. For a moment, cold returned. She kept on crawling, passed over something raised and sharp that lacerated her hands and feet, rolled over a low, hard ridge, rolled a little more and came to rest on her side.

Rain, icy rain, pounded her body. She coughed up phlegm and rubbed her eyes free of the blinding effects of the smoke.

She was outside. She’d rolled ten feet or so down the grassy embankment that butted on to the house and come to rest no more than six feet short of the vertical drop over the seawall and directly into the bay. Looking back she saw that the transparent dome was completely gone and that giant tendrils of flame reared from the broken interior, locally turning night into fierce red day. The flames spat at the foul night only to be beaten down by the siling rain and turned into columns of thick, noxious smoke. Even as Aurora watched, the remaining flames shrank back to mere flickering tongues.

More by chance than skill and in rank defiance of the odds, she'd escaped her confinement relatively intact. Her burns would need treatment and her abused body would soon start to give her hell but she was successfully out of there. She manoeuvred herself into a sitting position in the deliciously cool mud and fingered a clump of blackened hair. Aurora guessed she was no oil painting.

Not that the wildcats cared.

She saw them again, by the light of the dying fire, pacing and prowling in the vicinity of the bush that gave them shelter. They were still agitated but less frightened than when she last looked, when the fire was at its height.

One of them, that big feisty bitch of a pride-leader, was staring in her direction.

12

Masha threw herself to the ground and set to work but even in her moment of lustful surrender contrived to do so silently. She squirmed her shoulders into the thin moss, flattened her back to the earth, raised her knees and spread them wide. Her enormous slit was gaping and rank with the fetid stench of cum. The wooden prong was grasped tightly in her clenched fist. The force of her grip made the unseasoned wood creak.

Now! Do it now. For the Gods’ sakes do something to alleviate this craving!

She hesitated - the brief delay heightening her expectation and hence the satisfaction it brought - before plunging the huge green-wood prong into herself with a violence that made her hiss through clenched teeth and her dark, dinner-plate eyes roll in ecstasy. A sound escaped like the squelch of bloodily ripped flesh, the loudest sound she'd made yet, then a barely audible growl followed by a thin whimper squeezed from her throat. Her vast shanks strained wide in the darkness. She shifted her grip until she held the crudely fashioned dildo by its free end, palm curled over its knobbly protuberance, then shoved hard with the heel of one hand.

The dildo drove in with the thudding force of a gunshot and all at once its taper widened her out to its full six inch diameter. Her steely dark vagina broadened in a fresh-straining instant to the width of a woman in the final stage of child birth and even yet a powerful arm flexed, continuing the object's motion until it vanished completely within. The wooden prong entered to its full eighteen inches but even that wasn't enough: Masha stretched out two fingers, urging it deeper still until it disappeared beyond her reach. There was nothing more she could do.

With an effort she took her body down from the iron rictus that held it paralysed, lowered her knees and grunted bestially. Paroxysms of pleasure shook her body: one wave after another made her writhe and shake. She ground her buttocks into the earth until the iron muscles forced a warm depression. Though no-one could see it because of the near perfect blackness of the night her whole body was a vast naked conglomeration of steel muscle and flat belly glistening in a serous layer of sweat, persuaded into running beads now and then by the involuntary twitching of swollen muscle or the quiver of strong tendon. Her lips were parted, exposing the tips of her white teeth. She breathed shallowly and rapidly, the flat brown belly rising and falling in her diminuendo of ecstasy - then reached down between her legs and began to explore.

Though the dildo had passed way beyond the fleshy portal still her vagina sagged and lolled open, retracted by its unnatural girth. She examined the long, fleshy petals of her labia majora with her finger-tips and at the same time stabbed a thumb roughly at her saturated clitoris. Her belly contracted and squeezed the intrusive probe still harder. Again, albeit muffled by tissue, there came the creaking of wood. She jabbed at her clitty a second time then accelerated the torment; stabbing the stubborn little hood flat, pushing... rubbing... rolling in a motion that became rhythmic.

Masha's belly rose and fell. Her legs moved and squirmed sinuously with the approach of orgasm. With her free hand she grabbed her own small - relatively - hard breast and began to squeeze and manipulate; stretching the hardened nipple from side to side; wrenching it in erotic circular motions against the sensitive collar of the aureole. She convulsed internally. The dildo slid partly from her, leaving a handle - wet, slimy and glutinously oiled - that was easy to grab a hold of. Her fingers left her cunt. She gripped the handle with all her blacksmith strength and began to push and pull as though working the old leather bellows back home; sliding the cum-smoothed probe into herself and withdrawing it quickly in preparation for a fresh up-stroke. With each pull, Masha hauled the dildo out to the taper so that when she thrust again it was with that sudden, delectably painful reaming followed by a plunge through the vaginal canal itself.

She orgasmed five times in rapid succession. The sixth took a little longer, but it was easily the best. She bit into her lower lip so as to silence the impending cry. Blood trickled. Each time the probe moved within, each time she came, she contracted her vaginal muscles crushingly tight until her steel belly was wracked in sexual pain. She was thinking of Hazel. Masha couldn't help herself... Hazel's hand delivering that rhythmic push-pull, Hazel's teeth on her leathery nipple, Hazel's little fingers flicking the trigger of her clitoris. It was as she envisioned Hazel shifting position and swinging her small rump across her face, opening herself up, that Masha squeezed with a final amazing force, only to cringe with disappointment as she felt the wood inside her crack and splinter just a quiver short of that final, electrifying orgasm. Masha's vaginal grasp on the dildo went slack despite her best efforts to recover it. There was a sharp stab of pain below the region of her belly, timed to the final aborted upstroke. The probe went light in her hand. She hauled it out for the last time.

Damn!

Damn and shit!

What sort of frig was that?

If only she hadn't lost her treasured chromium tool out in the forest that time; the one which she had worked so hard to fashion. That was a frig-stick guaranteed not to fail when needed most - when women weren't to be touched and the expertise of her own hand assumed a vital importance.

Masha wriggled uncomfortably, unsatisfied and thwarted, flinging the broken tool as far as it would go. She cursed her stupidity as it crashed into the trunk of a birch and disintegrated with a loud crack. She pivoted onto her belly and began rubbing her cunt into the soft earth, her buttocks clenched with tension. There came a sort of a shiver and a feeble, watery orgasm and then she was off boil again. Hell, she hadn't even got there. Not properly. She'd be randy as hell again in another hour and she couldn't keep slipping out into the forest.

She cursed aloud, rolled onto her back again, thrust bunched fingers into herself and reached around within. The tight, wet tissue yielded readily to her exploration. There were splinters in there, all right. Masha could feel them. One was embedded into the vaginal wall and itched like mad. She scissored two fingers around it and tugged. The end had spread out into a barb that tore tissue. Blood ran from the little wound. Another still larger splinter had mercifully failed to embed and came out easily enough, but there were fragments which she either could not get a grip on or else which were intractable. Not that she could do much about them now. She needed smaller fingers. Like Hazel's? The thought made Masha tingle anew despite her bleeding.

In perfect darkness she got to her feet and broke into a trot, not heading back the way she had come but jinking off down angled terrain that brought her to the edge of the stream. It broadened out somewhat here and was a little more sluggish. The bottom was soft sand. Masha waded out, constantly shifting her feet so that her weight didn’t cause her to sink, then crouched low and splashed herself liberally in the cooling water. Not cool. Cold! Icy as high mountain run-off. For a few minutes at least it would also quell her passion.

When she was certain she had washed away the last traces of grass and soil she bathed her genitals and douched liberally inside her cunt. Finally she stood, pissed as copiously an old horse and exited the stream. Back on the bank Masha gathered a handful of soft moss, squeezed it into ball and plugged it in herself up to the depth of the splinter wounds. A last handful of water removed evidence of the palliative process. She returned to the scene of her masturbation, clipped her knife-belt back into place and headed carefully back to her troop. Her encounter with the bough had been intended to satisfy her sexually - for a while, anyway – but it had only whetted her appetite. Her stomach rumbled with anxiety as she re-entered the glow of the solitary lamp and quietly settled down among them to sleep. Or try to sleep.

It was staring straight at her.

The beast flopped a tongue over its lips, leaving Aurora in doubt as to what it was thinking. She wriggled in the deliciously cool mud as though a layer of sodden earth might protect her from marauding predators. Absurd!

Unless... yes, of course…

The Leader of Lesbos slid first onto her side, then turned face down, then rolled languidly, covering herself from head to toe. The mud stank gaggingly of rotting vegetation but she could live with that. Especially since the cats were searching for the scent of meat, not rotten seaweed. The mud darkened her flesh, too: despite the fact that cats saw exceptionally well in the dark, the change in colour just might give her a few seconds advantage. Might at the very least confuse them long enough for her to make her getaway.

Odd, thought Aurora, rising slow as a sloth and aware that the thought meant that she was close to hysteria; she had spent her entire life in the active pursuit of pussy and now here she was avoiding it.

Mud-streaked, her hair fell across her eyes, briefly taking away her sight. She swept it away, careful not to wipe the camouflage from her brow. Big-sister pussy was still looking at her but it was obvious now that she was less than sure. The way she tilted her head questioningly to one side was unexpectedly dog-like but conveyed the animal's confusion clearly enough. And the temporary light was failing rapidly as the sheeting rain continued to extinguished the flames. If anything the rain had intensified with the removal of the moderating effect of that fierce wind and given Aurora a further advantage: cats didn't like getting wet either.

'Losing it, eh, sister?' She whispered. 'Guess you gals just cannnot hold it against an evolved species.'

It was a stupid thing to do because one thing she didn't know was just how efficient a wildcat's hearing was, though it seemed unlikely that any sound would travel far over that of the rain. Besides, the real test - it made her want to pee to think that her life depended utterly upon it - was how the striped bitch might react when she started to move.

Which was now.

Aurora slipped one foot gingerly past the other, careful not to swing her arms which she kept firmly pinned to her sides in the hope that doing so might further disguise human motion. Even then she could not tear her eyes from the cat; even now was staring back over her shoulder as she turned to move away, screwing them into a mud-smeared squint to minimise their gleam. Okay so far. Three steps. Four. Aurora breathed a sigh of relief as the cat sat back on its haunches, clearly losing interest. Its upturned nose twitched, sniffing at the air in an attempt to relocate the scent of meat. It was still watching her, there was no doubt about that, but all it was getting now was that smell of earth and putrid vegetation. It just wasn't sure and to the cat's way of thinking getting any wetter did not justify further examination. If vegetation chose to get up and walk, then it was welcome to.

For Aurora the pressing need was to avoid any sudden motion that might induce a revival of interest. And to stay continent. Her bladder demanded relief but to piss just then was to die just then. And the rain was already working on her camouflage suit. She glanced down just in time to see the pinky-white flesh of one knee poke through.

The houses were less than ten yards away and although returning to her previous lair was clearly out of the question the rest of the row hadn't caught ablaze and from the way the fire was dying out rapidly it seemed unlikely that they would. That she was going to have to find safety before shelter, however severe the night, was obvious and it was obvious too that the only way to do that was to get out of the way of the cats.

With a last glance over her shoulder Aurora, now just a shadow herself, slipped into the shadows of a doorway and disappeared from sight. The door was hanging off its hinges and leaned across the entrance, which in turn forced her to scrabble across, bruising herself on a metal fitment. It was pitch black inside. The layout unfamiliar. The floor was strewn in debris and wreckage. The fronds of an incursive weed pushed up through the stone floor brushed her legs as she stumbled across. Aurora felt her way around, groping in the darkness as might a blind woman familiarising herself with the layout of a new home.

A window in the opposite wall, filthy with years of grime, admitted a light that was insufficient to see by and revealed itself at first only as a dull gleam that seemed to hover in thin air. The centre of the room was bestrewn in fallen masonry and the ancient hearth had evidently collapsed into rubble years before. Sharp wiry grass that almost cut her fingers grew in what had once been the grate. A door led off into another room but was wedged solid and defied all Aurora's attempts to wrest it open. From somewhere, rain water ran cold and dirty, forming wide puddles. The cats might negotiate the fallen door, might not. She couldn't take that chance.

The staircase she found by accident after tripping over a fallen newel and sprawling full length on the stone stairs. The fall winded her. The darkness spun and Aurora believed she was about to pass out. She'd banged up an elbow so that it hurt like fuck and scored a graze in the soft flesh of her belly that was soon going to make its presence felt. For a moment she wanted to cry, but the unexpected discovery was very probably the deliverance she sought. She scrambled up, feeling her way in the darkness. It was narrow and lined by solid walls on both sides. She discovered by blundering into them accidentally that the staircase curved along the fifty or so steps she counted. The risers narrowed on the inside of the curve and forced her against the outer wall in order to retain her footing. Shit. The staircase ended in nothing.

Aurora groped around, trying to make some sense of the dead-end. Stone and more stone; smooth stone turning into a ridge inside of which was something that felt like crude brick-work. An old infill. She was about to give in and make her way back down when the feel of the brick turned to unplaned, splintery wood. Someone had left a hatchway. The number of stairs meant the hatchway could only lead out onto the roof. If she were able to get through then she knew for certain that there was no other way up there.

She explored again, struggling against excitement. It was encouraging to find that no battens had been nailed across but discouraging to find that the little door had no handle. She fingered two small, badly rusted hinges, measured out the centre point in the darkness and felt her way across from there. There was something after all. Aurora touched the tiny key and the latch beneath it, cursing as she forced the rusted key only to have it snap off in her fingers. The latch fared little better, moving perhaps only a centimetre before it too disintegrated. She was ready to cry again when the thought struck her that the hinges were on the inside and that the lock was rusted to shit anyway.

She lashed out with the heel of one hand and just hoped to the gods she hit wood and not brick. She did, but the force of the blow was inadequate: the old wooden door rattled but did not budge. She tried again, more forcefully this time, then put her shoulder behind the blow and struck a third time.

There was a crack of cleanly breaking wood. An irregular length went spinning out into the night. Rain blew in, lashing her face. She used the heel of her hand again on an adjacent slat and it too surrendered. Within seconds she had demolished the hatch and was worming her way through and out onto the roof beyond. One of the rusted hinges, still in place, rendered a deep gash in her side. Involuntarily, Aurora cried out. Then she was free, scrabbling to her feet on the flat water-logged roof, taking the full vengeance of the rain storm as it lashed into her.

The cats would never venture up here, she was pretty sure of that, though to be sure she located the broken lats and leaned them approximately back in place, more or less covering her means of egress.

The roof of the row of homes was long and narrow and surrounded by a low parapet wall that ran along the whole of the outer perimeter. Here and there the shadows changed indicating that parts had fallen away. In the black night Aurora could not make out the sea but it made its presence felt sure enough for it surged and lapped below, and up here, above the shelter of the bay the breeze that came off it was keen and bitter. This time Aurora did pass water, shivering wrackingly and relieving herself where she stood, her flow blown back against her legs in a warm and therefore unexpectedly welcome spray. At the far end of the roof where her own shelter had been smoke still rose against the downpour. The flicker of red fire was stubbornly persistent. Cracks were visible in the roof's surface, put there by the fierce heat. Water swirled towards them.

The roof was going. The structure was now clearly undermined. It was an area that needed to be avoided but the fact was that, dangerous or not, she had good cause to venture down there.

Aurora crossed to the land-facing edge where the cracks in the surface were at their fewest and stayed in close to the low wall. Below, there was nothing to be seen at first until she drew close to the dying flames and scanned the ruins and bushes beyond, red and shadowy in their glow. The cats were still there. They continued to prowl around, albeit not venturing far from the bush they had chosen as their own shelter. Their attention appeared to be taken principally with each other. They nuzzled, and brushed and played, their growls reaching her above the sound of the rain. Only the leader remained solitary. It was standing again but this time looking from side to side. As she watched, it strolled towards the failing fire and stood there, nose twitching, before returning to the pride and resuming its vigil. It did not look up.

Aurora backed cautiously away from the edge and breathed a sigh of relief. The bastard had lost her! To keep her scent at bay she padded to the opposite extremity of the roof, splashing through puddles she could not see and avoiding those she could. At the edge she made a swift reconnaissance of the new environment. Things were looking up. She hadn't seen it at first in the darkness but this end of the roof accommodated a three-sided structure made from the same material as the homes. By chance - or perhaps design - the open side faced away from the sea and thus leeward. It was easily large enough to accommodate her, though its interior smelled unpleasant. She quickly ascertained that it was empty and dropping to her knees crawled inside and huddled up against the far wall. The constant wail of the wind was immediately muffled, but the rain drummed on the flat stone roof with intense ferocity.

It was dark too. Worse than outside. Utterly, impenetrably, disorientingly black.

Wrapping her arms around herself, shivering from shock rather than cold, Aurora drew her knees up to her chin and rolled into a ball that would help her body to conserve heat by shielding her major organs. And now that she was no longer occupied by the chase, her injuries had time to complain too. The dozens of burns, bruises and lacerations hurt like hell and the warm trickle against her left side, from which rose a sickening coppery smell, indicated that she was losing blood. How far the night had yet to go she had lost all notion of. And daylight wouldn’t exactly bring peace either.

Naked, injured, hungry, she must sit the rest of the interminable night out in this most tenuous of sanctuaries for elsewhere in the ruined settlement by the bay nothing awaited but death. She must stay awake too. Sleep was equally deadly: under its vile coating of mud and crud her skin was already as cold to the touch as a dead woman's, yet she had lost all sense of cold. Hypothermia was setting in. Sleep meant death.

'Excuse me, but should we not be setting out again??'

Surprisingly, Masha had slept well. She was nestled into a bed of soft downy moss to the edge of the group and sleeping like the proverbial baby. The woman who had woken her was the nondescript little cook called Wendy. She shook her by the shoulder, very gently, as if secretly afraid of the giant woman. Her hair hung un-brushed about her face, and her belly, rounded by her crouching posture, was streaked in blades of grass glued there by the morning dew.

'I am sorry to disturb you, Masha, only you did say that we should only sleep a few hours. It is daylight. We can see the sky through the trees.'

Wendy's cunt was splayed somewhat by the open-legged crouch and smiled dryly at her from the centre of the thick, curling tangle of untamed foliage where it lived. Wendy's petals were modest affairs; trim and unassuming, not really acquiring any significant pout until they bordered onto the small vagina where they peeped bald and shy through the thickness of hair. Masha seemed to contemplate them for a very long time although when she finally located Wendy's direct but somewhat vacuous gaze there was no indication that the girl considered anything amiss.

Masha yawned, rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, then leaned even closer into the open valley of the girl's legs. Wendy obviously didn’t resent the powerful black woman’s excess attention because she didn't budge an inch. Nor did she particularly care that Masha's shift of position was just a rouse to get an enquiring sniff and a closer look. Serviceable Masha thought, but unaccomplished. A rubbing finger and a licking tongue would no doubt bring this girl to ecstasy.

'Someone should have woken me earlier. We're losing time.'

'You were gone in the forest so long last night. Everyone assumed you were still tired.'

'Long? I wasn't long at all!'

'It seemed that way to us. You are bleeding, my poor dear. Look. Are you quite well?' Wendy pointed with a daintily crooked finger.

Masha glanced down and observed the tendrils of dried blood on the insides of her thighs with embarrassed horror. Each meandered exactly north, leaving no doubt where they had come from.

'A Janite’s monthly… err… thing?” There was doubt in Wendy's tone and nothing was to be gained by telling a lie.

'No.'

Wendy lowered her voice to a husky, surprisingly sexy whisper. 'Then why did you not speak of your womanly needs? Why sneak off into the trees for a sordid frig in that awfully solitary manner? Any woman here would simply love to partner you. But I, my dearest Masha, I above all others would simply adore it.' Masha realised then there was nothing accidental about her pose after all; her squat was deepening intentionally and the warm cunt artfully drawing closer to her face. 'I am younger than the others. Fresh. You can tell, yes? My scent is sweeter by far. Circumstance has denied me sex for almost a week and my present companions are too intent upon their quest to consider intercourse. Well... perhaps that is not quite true. There have been offers. But the truth is that is you who fascinate me, dear Masha. You interest me more than all other women put together - so tall, so strong, so much in charge. I shall do anything you require of me. The next time desire takes you off into the woods you simply must take me with you.'

Masha looked on in silence, concluding that if such as Wendy were easy to underestimate, then the rest could turn out to be very tricky indeed. Wendy's words had brought a physical reaction too, for the oestrogen-laden odour of willing cunt wafted stronger across the intervening space and her folds suddenly glistened wetly in the feeble forest light. Masha was about to offer some excuse when Wendy pivoted forwards on her haunches with an exaggerated 'oops' and contrived to break her fall in such a way that her cunt ground firmly into Masha's mouth. There was a taste of salt-grease and urine. Wiry hair scoured her lips, one finding its way between her teeth and staying there.

'Well, do excuse me. I seem to be interrupting something.'

Masha lifted the girl aside - she was light and thin and the frail bone beneath the smooth skin felt good - to find Hazel standing close by. Her hands were on her hips and her feet were apart, giving Masha a clear view of her own, prouder, cleavage. Hazel's hair was a wild, unkempt tangle made that way by a night spent in the forest away from her customary combs and brushes and womanly preparations.

'I fell,' Wendy mumbled.

'Fell indeed! I must confess I interpreted the incident rather differently. Do forgive me if I have chosen an inconvenient moment but I merely intended to...”

Masha got swiftly to her feet. 'Cut that out, the both of you. None of us have time for that sort of thing. Aurora needs us. This silly play-acting is a waste of time.”

'Actually, it is not I who is wasting time,' Hazel said, somewhat sourly. 'The ponies are watered and ready to mount. Every one of us is back in armour again. See?' She flicked the knife in its sheath and wagged the buckle of her leather belt. Masha found the little display mildly erotic.

'Plain as day. Wendy, go and join the rest. Now.'

The girl scampered off.

'We'll have to watch that kid,' Masha confided.

'Rather, you will. Will you take breakfast?'

'No. Let's ride.' Masha strode back to the rest of her armour, set it quickly about her body, then crossed to her pony. Hazel trotted after her.

'You must help me up.'

Masha put a foot in the stirrup, swung a long leg easily over the pony, and settled into its saddle.

'I say, do you intend to leave me here?'

She reached down, swept an arm around Hazel's waist, hauled her up in a single consummate motion and hugged her to her own body, her arm slipping into its familiar position about Hazel's soft belly.

'I was only teasing back there.'

Masha remained silent, but swung her pony round in a half-circle to face the rest of the women then signalled them to mount.

'Teasing,' Hazel went on. 'But not without a pang of envy, I confess. If anything is between you and that girl I should like to know. I cannot pretend that there is cause for you to owe me fidelity, but some hint I would welcome.”

'Wendy threw herself on me. Literally. I have no interest in her whatsoever.'

'Me?'

Masha felt a rush of excitement. 'Maybe we should talk. Later. Tonight, perhaps, when we next make camp.'

She cantered her pony to the head of the assembly and checked each woman's tack as she rode past. Hazel seemed to have had a thorough job done despite the fact that she herself knew nothing about riding. The women were dirty from their night of sleeping rough, but their armaments were neatly in place and their equipment correctly stowed. Masha took position at the head of the queue and established a pace: faster than she had planned, to make up for lost time. They left the semi-clearing and passed back into the trees, following a trail that only Masha could discern. As the trees thickened, so the light dimmed again.

'Looks like we should have ample time to talk,' Hazel commented. 'I have not dared raise this before, but since there seems to be at least a possibility that you and I might form an alliance in some way, then it only seems fair to do so. I have heard that there is some manner of restriction on your sexual activities. Some sort of law. Is that true?'

'Yes it is.'

'You are banned from sex?'

'More or less.'

'Why?'

'Because of what I am and the way I am made. A Lesbian is no match in sex for a Janite.'

Hazel laughed. 'That I heartily dispute!” Suppose that, for the sake of argument, you and I were to have, shall we say... sex... together. Then we would be committing a crime. Do I interpret the situation correctly?'

'Not necessarily. Aurora's instruction was that I am not to hurt another women in the sexual act. She never specifically forbade me to make love. It was I who elected to take a vow of celibacy.”

'Hurt is a most subjective term, of course. If I were to ask for rough sex and at the same time challenge you that I could give - almost - as good as I got, then there would be no breach of the Leader's edict?'

'Technically, I suppose not. It would depend on when rough sex crossed the border between pleasure and pain. If I actually hurt or injured you.'

'Which again, discussing this hypothetical sex-act, would be for me to decide?'

'Essentially, yes.'

'Then let there be no further misunderstanding. Do you desire me – do you want to have sex with me - or not?'

Masha swallowed. Perspiration had starting passing from her forearm onto Hazel's belly. There was nothing she could do to make it stop. The reflex said more than words.

'Yes.'

'There is an argument that a woman so ready to risk her life for Aurora, and to persuade other women to do likewise, would expect abrogation of a rule that excluded her from a need so fundamental to her well-being as physical love. I know Aurora well. She would be the first to agree. Whatever her reasons for issuing the edict there is no doubt that she did so from that which she believed to be in your own best interests. At least as much as those of others. Then. At that time. A person so enlightened as Aurora would accept that times change. You have new friends, now Masha, my dear, dear Masha. One intimate friend I may personally guarantee. Love, as expressed through woman-to-woman devotion, is all that really matters. Aurora would readily espouse that view too: under the circumstances, be quick to bless what you and I are about to embark upon.'

'I hope you are right, Hazel.'

'I know I am. And in any case do you not forget something?'

'Such as?'

'The Leader of Lesbos took to her heals and fled. No woman on the face of the earth actually knows where she is, however well I suspect such as you might guess. No-one evens knows for sure that the Leader of Lesbos still exists. The gods forbid, but Aurora might already be dead. Her deputy, Diana, is unaware that she is deputy, and the proxy - Ursula - is a Healer who cares not a dewy frig for leadership. Which makes you, Masha, my love - power of life and death over this little band of girls and all - present Leader of Lesbos. Make a choice in that gorgeous head of yours. Decree that you will fuck me hard in this forest tonight.'

Again Masha declined to answer, but squeezed her moderately tight, evoking a little cry of pleasure. She stabbed a heel in the pony's flank to make it pick up speed then checked over her shoulder to ensure the girls had responded to their cue. They had. A broad path, a purely natural phenomenon for no-one ever rode out here, opened up ahead. Masha estimated that if her women's delightful arses held firm to their saddles she might recover the better part of the morning. She noticed also that, with the increased speed, Hazel's large breasts flopped and swung freely, the peak of the right one sometimes brushing her forearm.

'There is something else I wish to ask.'

'I thought there might be.'

'The blood, dear.'

'What about it?'

'It is vaginal, yes?'

'A girl surely can't keep many secrets round here. Wendy quizzed me about that too. A woman deprived of sex still has her needs and sometimes those urges are so strong they drive her to distraction if not dealt with. Everyone seems to have waited anxiously for me to come back from the forest last night, even if they were pretending to sleep. No doubt everyone was wondering what I was up to.'

'That is untrue. You made not a sound. We were worried about you. To some extent we were also frightened for ourselves.'

'Points taken. I don't mind telling you, in some part because I'll probably need your help, but I ran up a dildo from a length of tree and bough and... well... relieved myself with it. It broke inside me and splintered. Some fragments are still in there. Finer fingers than mine'll be needed to get them out.'

Hazel let go of the saddle horn to stroke the back of Masha's hand. The release of her grip made her slide sideways in her seat. Masha tugged her straight again. Bodily.

'I am so sorry,' Hazel said.

'No need to apologize. You never claimed to be any sort of horse-woman.'

'Silly, dear, dear girl. I mean I am sorry that in the company of so many women who care about you you found it necessary to slip away and seek gratification in such a manner.'

'It wasn't so bad.' It wasn't so good either. 'It's just that those splinters keep itching.'

'Tisk, I shall remove them. I promise. Never will it be necessary for you to resort to such appalling devices again.'

Masha rode on. The ponies’ hooves set up a sleepy, muffled rhythm and the clink of armour and weapons on the naked bodies of the women at her rear made a pleasant descant. The forest smelt of pine and heather, the tang of horse and the musky fragrance of women’s bodies which were becoming lusciously dirty. Hazel seemed confident. Masha wasn't quite so sure.

It was a quiet, still morning: the kind of stillness that might have been made from the daintiest Dresden china, so thin and fragile that to smash it to fragments required no effort at all. Grey light, dull and dismal as an old army blanket came in through the open window of Ursula's untidy little home and proceeded to sneak its way around her secret, arcane things making everything look cold. Surprisingly, Ursula had let the fire burn out during the night. The lack of a fire in the hearth, together with that miserable pre-dawn light, made the cluttered little place a trifle depressing. It was unusual for Ursula to be so careless, Diana thought. She had remembered even from the depths of her delirium that the fire was in some way important to her recovery.

'I'm thirsty. I need a drink.' The words sounded over-loud in the fragile silence that bent but did not break, for there was no reply.

Diana stirred. Her limbs were stiff. She knew she was lying in a different position because she was looking directly through the window at the slowly lightening sky. The hard bed on which she had seen through her illness was no longer in evidence, and as she moved her limbs exploringly, she discovered that this time she lay on a narrow but comfortable couch made from old, cracked leather. Her coverlets were light and fleecy but made her over warm, adding to her thirst. She allowed them to fall away then straightened out as best she could in the confined space.

Yup. She was still naked. Buff as the day as she was born. That didn't seem to matter a whole lot because Diana recalled that was the way things tended to be round here: every woman she had witnessed on those brief ascents from delirium had been bare-arsed one hundred percent. Thing was, she wasn't delirious any more. Her fever had gone. Her limbs were responding to her commands pretty much as they always had done. There was no pounding headache and the clawing hunger had completely disappeared. She was weak, sure. No doubting that. Her spindly legs indicted that she had lost a hell of a lot of weight and the attractive curvature of her belly had shrunk away to a hollow of skin between the bulges of her hip bones. She shook her head, clearing away the fog which had taken to condensing in there Her hair swept thickly about her shoulders in a clumsy fall. It was dull and unconditioned. Hell! How long had she been sick for it to grow out like that? There was also an itching anxiety at the back of her mind as though there were something important she kept forgetting to do. Images, also. Eclectic and discordant which Diana knew were somehow connected with that anxiety. There was a vague recollection of a small apartment; clothes strewn around an untidy bed, things - woman things - in a bathroom cabinet, a sofa draped in a chequered rug on which events of major significance to her had taken place. There were blurred scenes of city snow and flashing neon lights. Of course! Brooklyn! Home, for god's sake! She had to find her fucking way home!

Diana swung her legs from the bed and levered herself upright by pressing down on the leather couch. She made it to the vertical but found she was trembling like a kitten in the path of a hurricane. The floor lurched. The walls of the hut retreated then came back again.

And where was that place she needed to be? Forgotten again, goddam it.

She took a few tottering steps. Her emaciated muscles were quick to re-adapt themselves to the function for which nature had fashioned them, but they creaked and groaned like rusted piano-wire.

'Ursula, I need a drink,' Diana repeated.

But of Ursula there was no sign. Other than herself the place was devoid of human occupation: there were just the endless shelves of glass jars and bottles filled with those pale coloured liquids, slate-like in the early light, and the benches and cupboards strewn with peculiar-looking surgical implements. The two chairs that faced each other before the fire, Ursula’s habitual perch the one to the right, were empty. The door was unlocked. In fact it was partly open. A strip of light six-inches wide showed the early morning beyond. Diana got close and sniffed. The air smelled pure and good, like that place up in the mountains she had visited one time... another memory! Another isolated notch on the bed-stead of returning memory. She rested her finger tips gently on the edge of the open door then put an eye close to the slit.

Jesus H. Christ! Where on earth - if on earth at all - was this place?

The burns could have been worse. Whatever vegetation had mulched into the mud she'd disguised herself with must, lucky for her, have possessed some of the same healing properties as the mud treatments back home. It'd dried out in the shelter and proved easy enough to scrape off when tested. The skin beneath, whilst pink and sensitive to the touch, wasn't too badly blistered after all. Ursula would fix it easily enough when she got back home. A stone jar of salve and a couple of potions. That's if she ever got back home.

Aurora had dozed off a couple of times during the night - that she knew because the rest of the hellish night had gone by so quickly - and although she was still so cold that she was shivering like a shitting bitch, the feared hypothermia hadn't quite set in.

That was a mercy true enough, albeit a small one, for she was dizzy with hunger and thirst, ached in every muscle, and still ran a streaming cold.

The rain had stopped sometime during the night and the tempest slackened off to a stiff breeze that brought with it an intensified odour of decomposition. What she could see of the morning from the restricted viewport of her shelter showed Aurora that the sky was dull, like dirty metal, and that the light it gave was weak and depressing. The smell of burning had gone also, replaced by something akin to a doused bonfire. Neither, however, were more objectionable than the dung-like miasma of the mud caking her skin. She rubbed her nose with the knuckles of one hand as though trying to brush away the smell then, joints and muscles protesting equally, rolled from the agonizing crouch in which she had spent the night and crawled on all fours into the rectangle of light marking the edge of the shelter.

The roar of the sea was down to a fraught surge. Waves heaved against the sea-wall below, proving that the flood-tide was still at peak. The young day was indeed dark and laden and burdened with the threat of more rain, and there was an eerie stillness which suggested that the awful storm was just taking a nap and would be back in a while to finish off what it had started the night before.

'Real mess, girl,' she murmured to herself. 'Got yourself in one hell of a predicament this time.'

Then tears ravished her again, tears for Diana that came unbidden and untriggered. She saw in her mind's eye that look of peace, of a fruitless struggle thankfully given up, that had settled on the fresh corpse. But life goes on, dammit. That big stone mill just keeps on grinding however we might will it to stop. The more we try the smaller it grinds: the dead slip from us and the days beyond their passing bring fresh things... like... we come to a place to die and find ourselves fighting off wild beasts with valour beyond comprehension... like... with death a fruit within our grasp, life is never so keenly felt.

Aurora took in a deep breath of the stagnant, swampy air. Bile coughed up from the depths of her lungs, the shit she'd breathed in during last night's fire, and flew out in a spinning yellow globule, itself a symbolic purgative act. It was time to head back to Lesbos. She'd better seek out a safe path before the storm resumed.

She was stiff at first, and ironically, only felt the cold again when she started to move. Her eyes and nose continued to stream but she was unsure how much of that was grief for Diana, how much her cold and how much the simple effects of smoke inhalation. To the west the sea was a vast, amorphous bulk of cold grey, seething and subtly changing that pressed down hard and liquid on the great bay. The steel hawsers of the metal towers swayed in its current as though stirred by a wind, and a bulk of wave-surging water nudged deep into the swamps beyond. The sea was dotted with flotsam: mainly uprooted trees, bushes and clumps of wiry swamp-grass, but there was also the occasional animal corpse. Bloated and blackened. It was an angry, hostile scene.

She crossed the roof to the east side where the cracks from last night's fire had already widened and in so doing drained away some of the surface water. She took great care to avoid them. The cats, thank the gods, were gone; the grass around the bush under which they had sheltered was tramped flat by their heavy paws. Frequent and copious droppings showed that they had waited there for some time but there was nothing to indicate where they might have gone; the sodden grass hadn't otherwise retained any obvious tracks and the low sweep of the hillside beyond was thankfully deserted all the way up to the tree-line. Something else, however, made her frown. When, moments later, Aurora realized what that something was she involuntarily took a step back.

A thin column of smoke, almost too slender to discern from the general greyness of the sky, was rising dead straight into the air. She couldn't be sure but she guessed it was probably located some two-or three miles into the forest: the tree-covered ridge close by indicated that it could not be more than a mile from the outer edge.

Someone was out there.

13

'Hello?'

There was no answer. To be frank Diana Fuller hadn't really expected one, for the diffidence in her voice was present to an advanced degree, so much so that a query that should have been positively bellowed came out as a timid bleat. The query should have been bellowed because that seemed like the only way it'd ever make it through some possible unseen chink in the stone edifice that bore intimidatingly down. The vast white stone dome with its figure-reflecting gold base probably curved fifty feet or more into the air and was easily two hundred yards across. So far as she could tell it comprised solid, impeccably fashioned stone and offered no way in whatsoever. She'd walked around it twice. Of a door there was no intimation.

'Is anyone about?'

That, too, was as twee as landing on an alien planet and pleading ‘take me to your leader,’ but it was the best she could think of. Besides, walking naked around the place didn't exactly help: her confidence would have received a boost from a pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt. Even little white panties would have helped restore her sense of personal dignity somewhat - which was taking one hell of a beating right then from padding around bare-foot and bare-assed in the damp morning grass between those inexplicable white domes; like some scared school-kid locked out of the shower-block for a joke, down to the buff, anxious and scared. That other anxiety, that inexplicable sense that she ought to be somewhere else that very moment, also kept asserting itself. It brought with it flashes of a different place: traffic and pollution, bustle and noise. Faces she couldn't quite make out. On balance, of the two places, she preferred this.

Quite prettily the early greyness was starting to melt as the sun eased above the horizon and the first almost horizontal rays struck the sides of the uniform white domes, turning them yellow-red. High above, an early-rising sky-lark began an intricate and soothing song. The large, brightly coloured flowers that grew close against the buildings - appearing all the more plentiful because of their reflections in the gold bases - seemed to open to the music, their delicate petals turning to find the light. This was no Brooklyn.

Brooklyn!

God, she remembered!

Diana held onto the thought, forcing herself to grip the fragile memory tight. In there was her little brown-stone apartment overlooking the fast-food place and the rain that ran down the windows. She counted the things she kept in there, her possessions, studying each one carefully as though it represented some amazing new concept. At the same time, under her breath, she repeated Brooklyn over and over again. The images stayed clear for a few moments, only to dissolve again. The endless repetition of the word became as a mantra performed for its own sake, all comprehension lost. Good pitch, but not enough. She was still saying ‘Brooklyn’ even though she no longer knew what it meant, her pronunciation growing erratic, when that other sound just beneath the birdsong drove it finally from her lips.

The song was every bit as melodic as the lark's though clearly human in origin. It was high yet full, sensuous rather than a screech, and rose and fell in a series of rapid and subtle cadences. It was underpinned by a sorrowful lamentation and yet simultaneously rendered in a mathematical intricacy of point and counter-point so meticulous as to be quite without flaw. The song reminded her of the music of Bach: that it was sung by a woman was undoubted. Moreover a woman who knew how to sing. It was coming from somewhere beyond the bulge of the great dome, and because of an echo from the three smaller equally uninhabited hemispheres to her rear acquired a tonality which made it almost surreal.

Forgetting her reserve, Diana quickly skirted the bulk of the building. Then halted. Blinking. The view had changed significantly. She was gazing down a shallow slope leading down to a glistening river with lush, open grassland beyond. The grassland halted abruptly in a dark line of trees at the edge of forest. Nothing to see. More accurately she saw nothing even though the singing had grown louder. The song of the lark now lay below it.

Diana trembled as she took a deep breath and plucked up courage to follow the source of the sound. Her knees knocked and there was a peculiar fluttering in her belly; not because she was scared but because the song and the way it was sung were so powerfully sensual. So... Erotic? The words she could not distinguish. Only when she breached the belly of a smaller dome in which a concealed door swung open, a human silhouette visible against the now bright river a few yards beyond, did the clarity of the sound improve. They weren't words at all. Just vocalizations. Incredibly intricate and convoluted but just meaningless sounds. Scat, but none of that old 60s crap.

She slowed her pace, her bare footfalls soundless in the moist grass. There was a further change in angle that made the rising sun reflect dazzlingly from the shallow river. Diana screwed up her eyes and shaded them with one hand. She went still, stock still, but for the knocking of her knees. This time her stomach did a flip-flop and her bladder told her it was time to bail out.

The sight that coalesced from the back-lit shadows revealed the author of the singing and it was a sight that exceeded the song by a thousand degrees of pulchritude. To describe the entity that stood before her as a beautiful black woman would have been as niggardly of praise as to describe the universe as an interesting place, for never before had Diana cast eyes on a thing of such soul-blistering beauty. Worse, and the element that made the whole experience even harder to accept, made her breath solidify in her chest, was that Diana saw that beauty not in gradually revealed stages, but completely and all at once.

The woman was standing with her back to her, naked as the day she was born. She was in the act of washing herself from a roughly hammered metal bowl that balanced on a wooden pedestal. The woman wasn't using a sponge but moved glistening droplets of water around her body with the flats of both hands; first down the curvaceous taper of her sides and hips, over the scrumptious dark-chocolate bulges of her rump then, out of sight, around the swells of her breasts. The latter act forced her into a back-leaning pose, feet splayed, the river bright through the leggy gape. Her elbows pistoned seductively against a back-drop of a million jewels. Thick jet-back hair, tied into long rat-tails, swung down her back and brushed the dark skin. Her hair seemed to make geometrical patterns against the subtle ogive of her spine that mirrored the counterpoint of the song. The dark skin gleamed in the early light and despite its mocha tone it had a sheen like fine satin. It was taught over well-toned muscle, unblemished, and seemed entirely at home in its natural state. To cover such delectable skin, Diana found herself thinking, would be not far short of criminal.

She cleared her throat silently then discovered that she had unknowingly covered both breasts with one forearm and placed a hand stupidly over her cunt. She felt physically weak and insipid - a body that should be sheathed in textiles - but accepted that this was one place where nakedness didn’t seem to matter much and where looks, though typically stunning, were fundamentally uncompetitive. She forced her arms to her sides. Her nipples were embarrassingly swollen and erect but that she couldn’t help either. She swallowed down saliva; hoped she'd at least be able to call out in a steady voice. Which, in the event, she did not.

'He... hello!'

The song ended in a shrill scream. Two birds hurtled from the bushes on the far side of the river and darted crazily into the air, chattering angrily. The black woman teetered as she spun round in a startled flail of delicious ebony limbs, caught the pedestal with her rump and sent the bowl of water tumbling to the grass. There was a sudden, overwhelming aroma of jasmine. Only then did Diana observe that this had been no dirty wash after all: the herbally treated water made soap unnecessary. And the effect of those herbs was immediate; Diana's eyes rolled with the mesmerizing fragrance and her nipples stood out even more. In its bed of moist tissue her clitoris stirred. What was happening, for God' sake? She was no goddam dyke!

'What in the names of the Twelve Gods of Lesbos...? You scared six kinds of shit out of me!'

The crudity was incongruous if not exactly iconoclastic. Diana smiled thinly. The swearing did nothing to lessen her inexplicable arousal. Jasmine strengthened on the air and she had an almost overwhelming urge to tweak herself low down. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you. I guess you didn't hear me coming. You seemed engrossed.'

'I always wash at first light, before anyone else is around. I have done so since I was a girl. But I expect you would not know that, would you?'

Now its initial anger had departed the speaking voice matched the body perfectly. It was low and lilting and... well, yes... sexy. Its owner didn't need to speak loud for her voice carried naturally, full of latent strength and character. Diana sensed instantly that this woman's personality was as hypnotic as her songs. She spoke at least a couple of octaves lower than the pitch of the song but the sound was just as riveting. Diana made to to smile and found one came readily. With the sudden shift in position the young woman now stood with her back simultaneously to the rising sun and its reflection, thus completely in shadow, nothing visible of the front that went with the gorgeous back. Even though she was reduced to a vague shade the woman’s personality somehow crackled across the intervening space like velvet-gloved electricity. Diana began to develop a feeling that she needed to be in the presence of this woman. Why, she wasn't sure.

'I'm afraid I don't seem to know much of anything. Like who I am nor even where I might be. It might seem like a dumb kind of a question but where is this place?'

The shadow took a step forward. The voice pitched itself lower still. Chocolate cream. Thick and dark and rich. 'Home, of course. That is what everyone is saying, so we know it must be true, do we not?'

'Which is?'

No answer.

'What is this place called?'

'Names mean little, my dear. The only name we ever need to hear is Home.'

'Home should at least have a title. I know mine has, it's just that I can't remember, and I suspect that this place isn't really home for me at all.'

There was a sigh that brought a further scent of jasmine. 'Ursula warned us it might be this way. Would it come as any comfort to learn that you are among friends? People who care about you and love you and know you well?'

'I just don't feel I belong here. I....'

The black woman moved out of the glare of the sun, and although still dazzled, Diana watched in awe as her form once again condensed. There really was something hypnotic about her: she was so perfect. Like many of the women around here she wasn't over tall, perhaps three or four inches shorter than Diana herself, but exquisitely, perfectly formed. Her body slinked in a natural curve, the jet-black rat-tails of her hair tumbling over modestly broad shoulders that rounded beautifully at the extremities of the blades. The breasts were voluminous, even a trifle overwhelming, but again like so many of the local women, held their pointed hemispherical configurations wholly unassisted. The aureoles were dark discs and as broad as saucers, the nipples great chocolate knobs located exactly in their centres. Again the sheen of faultless skin came from a belly that undulated softly from an eye-shaped navel to a dense, wire-wool of pubic hair. The thighs were muscular, the hips broad. Even the slim feet that pinkened somewhat towards the soles and toes were delicately feminine. Diana observed that the woman's toe-nails matched the chocolate colour of her skin.

Diana flushed crimson at the realisation that she'd made an obvious and exquisitely languorous body-pan and as she caught the black woman's eyes her heart almost stopped. Those eyes were great almond pools that held her transfixed. Ate her. Diana didn't move a muscle as the girl strode languidly across. She hadn't even realised she'd started to walk.

'So home must be given a name, eh?'

'I believe so.'

'And suppose that name is not quite what you expect?'

'This isn't fair. You're speaking in riddles. I'll bet you know I have been ill.'

'Very ill,' the woman qualified. 'Tell me. Do you like this place?'

'Of course.'

'Do you find it beautiful?'

'From what little I've seen, yes. Very.'

Another step. The perfect woman now stood a mere foot away. She took hold of the tips of Diana's fingers and raised her hands gently. Across the narrow space Diana found the girl's body-warmth reassuring. The smooth, calf-like skin that deftly massaged her fingertips seemed to draw out her fears and disarm them. The woman's presence was balm.

'Then answer me this. Candidly. Do you find me beautiful?'

Diana simply gazed into the big eyes. The knocking had gone from her knees and the flutter in her belly decelerated into a rhythmic churning. Never a symptom of desire. She'd never admit to that.

'You are very beautiful,' she admitted.

'Then you do find me desirable?

'I feel I have nothing to fear from you.'

'Then we have made a start at least. Enough, I think, to name home.' Her voice dropped to a sibilant whisper. 'This is Lesbos. Home is Lesbos.'

'You mean...?'

'Is it really necessary to explain further, my dear? My name is Fumi. I am a working woman of the village, no Leader or Healer. My pride is that I have given birth to two girls both of whom have grown into happy and contented young women. They work in the fields, planting, tending and reaping - as do I. They are as at peace with their work as their mother and all the generations before us.'

That was impossible. No way could this woman be the mother of grown-up children! Her face was without wrinkles, her eyes unlined, and her body had the fresh tone of youth. She even smelled young. Diana guessed she couldn't yet have reached her mid-twenties. Lesbos? Lesbos?

'I gave birth to my daughters in the same home as that in which I myself was born and where as like as not I shall one day die. We are Sisters of the Earth and live together as a family. This is Fallowday. My daughters are sleeping in our home, though you are most welcome there. I know that they will be overjoyed to meet you. Simple women we are, I fear; earthy but pure to our toil. Our house is yours. Does the mention of home still frighten you?'

The knocking of her knees had resumed. Surely to god this could not be? 'You bet it does.”

The smooth brow furrowed briefly. The woman let go of Diana's fingers and made a palms-open gesture as though weighing thin air. 'Of what?'

'That you women are all... lesbians.'

'What else would dwellers of Lesbos be?'

'Listen, I don't mean to offend. Everyone here has been very kind. I'm quite sure I would have died without the attention that's been lavished on me. It's just that I'm very confused. And frightened. If I'm going to be able to go along with this, whatever it may be, I suppose I'll have to impose on your patience even more.'

She shuddered as the warm brown hands settled on the peaks of her hips. Goose-bumps spread with the speed of an electronic message. The fingers pinched her once then slackened.

'Dear girl, imposition is the farthest thing from any woman's mind! I would be delighted to have you take breakfast with us. Come. Come home with me. Now.'

The warm hands tugged at her hips, insinuating forward movement, steering her in a way that made no allowance for refusal. The woman grabbed her by one hand with a grip like iron, though it didn't hurt, and led her as an adult might a child. Which was exactly how she felt: the strengthening sun girlishly good on her bare skin, the morning breeze whispering about her body. Now that Fumi had ceasced singing, the sky-lark's song was audible again; a profoundly restful, almost soporific sound. The deliciously cosseting grass beneath her feet - softer than the world's most expensive mink slippers - was gaining heat quickly, and the sky above turning Caribbean blue. This place may not be paradise, but it sure as hell didn't stop far short.

'Humble but home.'

The woman dropped Diana's hand and there was no temptation to run. She beckoned to the open door and Diana saw that it was held open on snug cantilevered hinges indicative of a highly sophisticated engineering design. Of the interior she saw absolutely nothing for there was no light source inside and the bright daylight without overwhelmed the gloom of the interior completely. But their were smells. Or, rather, fragrances. Jasmine wafted again and behind it came something close to incense wrapped in a cloak of spice. There were women-smells too; young, fresh bodies. Diana quailed at the return of her prurient cocktail of excitement and apprehension.

Fumi’s lips broadened into a thick smile. Utterly devastating. 'Don't be shy, Diana. Our home is yours.'

She was more conscious of her nudity than ever as she embarked on the single step that carried her inside.

Aurora cut herself again on scrambling back through the wreckage of the houses and out over the fallen door which had successfully thwarted the lethal curiosity of the cats. It wasn't much this time, not exactly a gut-spilling sabre slash to the belly; a gouge about an inch and a half long inflicted on one arm by the rusted stump of a protruding nail, but it hurt. And the nail was rusty. As soon as she made it outside she pulled the lips of the wound apart so that blood flowed copiously - a tip to avoid infection she'd picked up from Ursula - then, the moment she began to shiver, let the wound return to normal. It continued to bleed.

Outside she had the advantage of gloomy daylight by which to survey the terrain, if advantage it could be called for the devastation – both of things natural and woman-made – was considerable. The only structure undamaged by fire or storm was the monumental sea-defence wall which grew out smoothly from the terrace of wrecked homes. It was mere yards from where she stood.

Beyond the row of ruined homes, blackened and further damaged by fire, the semi-scrub leading back up to the trees had been well and truly ravaged by the severity of last night's storm. A number of trees were smashed and fallen at the forest's edge, making the hitherto straight line of the border ragged while, closer, juniper's were uprooted and roots and creepers that didn't even grow this far seaward bestrew the place like scattered worms. Wide, shallow pools had appeared at the foot of the slope and the ground was marshy and difficult to negotiate. There would be stinging insects and snakes and if these things weren't bad enough, the column of rising smoke which she had spotted at first light some two or three miles into the forest indicated that she might expect company of a human and doubtless inimical, kind any time soon.

Aurora picked up one of the uprooted creepers and studied it. It seemed fresh enough. Nothing like it grew in Lesbos but she knew from past experience that the wiry vine was harmless. The plant reminded her of a giant asparagus with smaller creepers leading of at one end to form a stringy head. She gathered up a few ground-growing leaves from one of the few areas that wasn't flooded, pressed them onto the wound then wound the creeper around her arm and tied it off into a tourniquet. The leaves possessed mild healing properties but the tourniquet would have to be loosened periodically to forestall gangrene. The measure was crude but effective and would at least stop her bleeding like a stuck sow. Much of last night's mud still caked her skin where it had dried out into an inflexible shell that was beginning to crack and flake but hadn't yet peeled completely away. It could stay. Apart from camouflage both to sight and scent the thin coat provided some insulation from the cold sea airs. Her hair was another matter: untethered it had become a dense, shaggy tangle thickened by mud and dirt, that kept falling across her eyes. Aurora tore off a scion of the creeper and tied it back in a pony tail, doubled over to keep the trailing end short. She pulled the twine tight. She hadn't come across a cape and was damned if she was going to hang around looking for one. She was going to have to get used to being wet and cold.

She paused a few moments and took deep breaths, gathering her thoughts and attempting to fashion incipient panic into a worthwhile plan. Nourishment and water, necessary now more than ever because she felt so weak, so thirsty, would rapidly become a problem. The mushrooms had turned to mulch and were thus inedible and there were precious few practical alternatives to consider. Poisonous snakes and eight-foot gaiters might perversely solve the food problem, but with herself as main course rather than diner. The flood run-off was contaminated and vile. The rain water which had swept into her shelter during the night and which she'd slurped up eagerly hadn't tasted much better. It slaked her initial thirst but made her vomit so that thirst now clawed at her throat worse than ever. The upside was that there was fresh water, crabs and shell fish in the shallow pools on the coastal route home. If she kept up a good pace she might even be eating like a queen - she was a queen, what the hell - by nightfall.

Provided she didn't get whacked by the kind of wild-card the settlement by the bay slapped down that very moment.

A knuckle flew instinctively to her lips and she bit it to suppress a scream.

Directly ahead, around thirty feet away, the coarse grass bowed in a sinuously moving arc as though tracing out a letter 'S' that didn’t quite know when to stop. The S kept going, next migrating round her in a circle as though it were aware of something - aware of her - and was closing stealthily in. The chatter coming from the grass could only mean that the author of the motion was a rattler, or some perverse variant thereof, and she was certain that it had sensed her. The fear the realisation delivered was instantaneous and instinctual: the legacy millions of years of evolution-generated terror released in a moment. Aurora's buttocks bunched like compressed steel. She clenched the mounds together intractably, tensed her whole body, as though rigidity might offer some defence. All higher thought vanished. There was but agonising fear like that of a terrified primate; there was colour, scent and the timing of flight.

The grass stopped moving. Aurora flung herself back, bare feet crunching on razor-sharp fragments of the shattered dome, leapt to one side, scrabbled mindlessly over the debris and twisted wreckage and angled her way awkwardly but surprisingly swiftly up and onto the ridge of the sea-wall close by. The entire manoeuvre she accomplished backwards, not daring to take her eyes from the hiatus in the grass. That blood dripped was undoubted. Whether a rattler was capable of being attracted by it she did not know. Nor did she wish to hang around long enough to find out.

The snake slithered off to the left, veering randomly. It parted company with the longer grass and became visible over a patch of brown earth. The silver coils, revolting and swift, bore the creature along at a speed Aurora could never hope to match. Every muscle in her body knotted in terror as the snake halted, swayed inquisitively, forked tongue darting, then lashed like the crack of soundless whip. Gone. Vanished from sight. Under a rock? A hole in the ground? A rabbit warren? Who knew? She emitted a little cry of disgust, skin crawling as each nerve-end sent out its own separate alarm.

Snakes of that size never came this close to the sea. She know this from her many visits here in the past, but the great storm had changed everything and now there was no longer a safe way out of here. Nature had written new rules last night and hadn’t troubled to consult her on the changes. Rain had displaced snakes from their native swamps and deposited them in the grassy margins of the bay, not merely too close for comfort but right on top of her; escape through the soft, safe, low ground – no longer safe anymore - was out of the question. She'd have to hug close to the sea wall and go all the way around then eventually pick up the coastal path only after rounding the pregnant swell of the headland beyond. It would be wet and bitterly cold that way round. The fresh-water run-offs would need a wide berth for they would offer a temporary home to gaitors.

Never in the field of self-destruction, thought Aurora, had a would-be suicide taken such pains to stay alive.

After a last look to make sure the snake hadn't returned, she turned to survey the rest of last night's damage. The hemispherical dome no longer existed. All that was left was an unexpectedly poignant tangle of charred and heat-twisted material, piled at the end of the row. The pile was loosely held together by a scrawl of tangled metal which had once been the supporting frame. To the rear of the wreckage the now unprotected interior of her secret hideout for many years was reduced to a blackened shell in which only the outline of the fire-place was still recognizable. The walls were covered in charcoal and the floor a foot deep in ash. Transom beams had collapsed and the ceiling above the high dwelling-chamber had vanished to reveal a hollow underdrawing which had acted as a fire-box during the height of the conflagration. Of her raggedy little bed and the very few personal items there was no sign. The realisation saddened her: a chapter in her life had ended so close on another; there was poignancy in that just as there was poignancy in the knowledge that the damage done to the ruins had erased yet another cryptic piece of history, leaving one less clue upon which to build an image of those forgotten women who lived so long ago.

There was another poignancy too, and one of an altogether more urgent kind. She'd soon be as dead of the rest of them if she didn't get her muddy arse moving fast.

Aurora set her back on the place for the last time and turned to face out to the rocky bulk of the headland. It was a great, brooding turtle-back indistinct in the distant haze, but she could clearly distinguish the bright stripe of the raised beach a hundred feet above the shore-line, indicative of massive earth movements some time in the geological past. Perhaps those movements were the reason why the great village lay in ruins? The sea wall on which she stood curved ahead for around a mile and a half on a faultless geometrical radius that highlighted its artificiality. It was twenty feet wide all the way along and dead flat. Much of the surface was covered in dense green seaweed which would be abominably slippery under foot. Between, there were shallow pools and patches of algae. For some reason the clearest stretch was that abutting the houses where she now stood: her bare feet had a firm grip on the coarse stone which was a luxury she would have to forego as she progressed long the bay.

To the turbulent west, the sea shouldered into and bounced off the parabolic wall with the determined and sedulous force that only a mighty ocean in a state of change could bring. Angry waves jostled and collided and their disintegrating crests were exceptionally high: the powerful sixth wave of each cycle swept over the bulge and threw up clouds of spray that beat like a fresh deluge on the sea defence. There was no beach for the better part of a mile then the land seemed to rise all at once and joined with the headland. There was little relief, though, for it became a foot-lacerating expanse of shingle.

Inland the flooded grassy little plain deteriorated into gorse and bluff. Tiny lakes gleamed where none had been before. She was thinking that it seemed exceptionally peaceful out there and that she was a fool to tackle the sea wall when the scaly shape of a gaitor rose and fell in one of the temporary pools not a hundred feet from where she stood.

Out on the sea wall she was better than ten feet high, making further defence unnecessary - no gaitor could snap so high - but she stayed close to the water's edge all the same. Here the gathering wind tugged at her possessively as though trying to dislodge her. It flapped at her belly and snatched at her hips, slapped her face and stole her breath. Made her gasp for air. Out in the bay, the swell was rising again. The waves broke in white horses.

The storm was coming back. Aurora didn't stand a wet cunt of a chance and she knew it.

14

On going inside the circular little home the first thing that struck Diana was the raw smell of woman. It was not in any way unpleasant – no rancid gag of unwashed armpits, nor stomach-churning odour of overloaded sanitary towels - but strong it was. Three women lived in a confined place which had stood shuttered through the night, the door only opened within the last few minutes as Fumi had gone out to wash. Their body scents had accumulated into a background fug that made Diana's nose twitch the moment she stepped within; for that reason alone grateful the two sleeping women hadn't noticed her arrival. Surreptitiously she sniffed again as she took up position - feeling stupid and helpless - in the middle of the room. Fumi followed her in. Bade her sit at a diminutive table.

'Do not feel shy. Make yourself comfortable. At home.'

As Fumi leaned bodily over her, her slim belly went deliciously taut with the unavoidable stretch and her full, warm breasts swept close to Diana's face. Diana shrunk back. The idea of reaching in her moment of helplessness to fondle the curvy chocolate buttocks flashed mischievously and mysteriously across her mind only to be banished by the glare of light that suddenly came from nowhere. Fumi had triggered some mechanism that threw open the shutters of the window under which the table stood. Fresh air rushed in displacing, to Diana's regret, the accumulated woman-smell. But not quite everything. Not every scent. Something else hung on the now moving air, sensuous and exciting.

'Wake up, girls. We have a visitor.'

Fumi sat herself on a creaking cane chair across the table from Diana. In that pose, her breasts looked bigger and darker than ever. Diana watched, lips pursed, as they swung and undulated in a slowly dying rhythm, the nipple of one brushing a crude earthenware pot that stood on the table, shoving it back an inch. Diana realised she was staring again. She looked up at Fumi in time to catch not admonition but a full smile and the dying trace of a wink.

'You are most welcome to appreciate me, dear,' the black woman whispered, leaning forward a fraction. ' I thank you for doing so. I am flattered. We are all girls together here. Enjoy as much as you like and for as long as you like. It is perfectly natural so to do. I have been looking at also and I would never feel shy.'

Diana felt the blush spread down her neck, thinking it might have travelled farther for all she knew for being naked meant there was nowhere it could hide. Blushes apart, this was an area where a woman scored over a man: the signs of a woman's arousal were confined to a subtle hardening of the nipples and the rising of little goose bumps in her areolas. Or a tell-tale seepage intimately deep. None of these things were obvious. On the other hand the male totem of sexual engagement was the hard rod that jacked up unambiguously of its own accord and left no doubt as to its plain intent. Except that, as with her own arousal, the symptoms weren’t always what they seemed to be: a man might get piss-proud without sexual interest, a hilarious embarrassment in same-sex company that a woman's physiology spared her. Maybe it was a little like that now: she was getting all worked up and dewy in the company of this naked black woman even though the idea of touching her was anathema. No... That wasn't exactly true... Diana felt she did want to touch but only because the woman was so physically perfect in every way: because the superb body fascinated her. The dividing line between admiration and arousal wasn't so clear as people thought.

A reluctant groan came from the darkened depths of the double bunk. It was followed by a yawn that trailed off to a squeal.

'I need to sleep, dearest mamma.'

'No woman has need of so much sleep as you, my darling. You and your sister get yourselves up out of bed forthwith and do not display such rudeness to our guest.'

Diana was about to protest when Fumi gestured her to silence, her left breast billowing magnificently with the sudden motion. It's nipple pointed around. 'I jest,' Fumi said. 'Those are good girls really, even if they like their beds far too much.”

The young woman was already up and swinging her long, dark legs over the edge of the bunk, hopping easily down. Her sister slid out from the bunk beneath almost unnoticed.

'She says this,' said the older girl. 'About a woman who sets off to her work an hour before sunrise every day but Fallowday. Where is the justice in this world, one asks?' The girl took a step forward and stuck out a hand. Her sister hovered by her side, somewhat unsure. 'Honoured to meet you, Diana. I am Grethel.'

Diana shook, a little taken aback by the strength of the young woman's grip. The skin was warm and resilient, the fingers long and elegant, and for one who did physical work the nails were immaculately manicured. Clearly, these were young women who took pride in their bodies. They were naked - what else? - and wore their nudity as though it were an expensive evening gown; publicly and to the expressed purpose of being admired. Again, she found herself thinking that it would be sad to cover such beauty with so inferior a thing as cloth.

Both were tall - taller than herself - slim, and but for the taught, manageable bulges of their buttocks, almost ram-rod straight. Grethel's breasts were larger than her sister's but small by the local norm. Proudly peaked and upright, held firm by steely pectorals, they barely trembled as the girl shook hands. The salient features of both girls were the legs; in each case exceptionally long and strong like the legs of the finest Zulu women in the world. This close, too, their fragrances were overwhelming: there was a mixture of thin sweat sweetened and scented by the herbs that had no doubt been used to anoint their bodies; young persons' sweat, fine and healthy and redolent of fitness and physical excellence.

'Pleased to meet you, Grethel.' Diana said in a quivering voice. Her hands were trembling, forcing her, when the hand-shake was done, to fold them primly together in her lap. She was becoming increasingly breathless and had to force herself against panting like a dog on a hot day. Her head spun not just from rapid breathing but from the presence of so much sensual beauty concentrated in so small a place. Concentrated all around her. These women didn't mind if she touched them. Wouldn't object if her fingers roved, or if she stroked and pressed and petted and felt until she knew every hard muscle that lay beneath the uniform dark skin. The girls took up position around the little table, thus making an intimate semi-circle. Their flat bellies gleamed within sniffing range, their oval navels like staring eyes. There was a waft - not unpleasant - of cunt that had lain unwashed throughout the night and a sense-disorientating blast of those sweet-smelling herbs that made her head spin all over again. She almost believed she could hear the lithe young bodies singing to her.

This time her blush was crimson and stretched right down to her throat.

'You like my daughters,' Fumi commented flatly.

'They are very beautiful young women.'

'It is good that you should feel that way. My youngest is my most shy. Isn't it always so?' To the other girl. 'Lela, you have not yet said good morning to our visitor.'

Lela slid out from the shadow of her sister both literally and metaphorically, her face erupting into a smile of dazzling white teeth and deep, black eyes that suddenly sparkled. Diana believed her about to utter a shy welcome when instead Lela sprang - a whipcord creature of bare skin and firm muscle - wrapped her arms around her and planted a kiss crushingly on the lips, tongue prising its way into Diana’s mouth.. The curtsey-like dip of her body made the hard little breasts sweep across Diana's own and their nipples engage aggressively.

She tried to pull away but the kiss silenced her. The powerful grip of the young woman in any case made resistance pointless. But then she seemed to surrender in the space of a moment and began kissing back; open-mouthed, eyes closed. She found to her amazement that her hand wandered of its own accord and moulded itself to Lela's taught rump where it rubbed and squeezed. Lela gave a little wiggle that made Diana accidentally touch something moist and very warm. The kiss broke. Lela's athletic body lashed again. She was all at once upright, standing demurely at her older sister's side. A smile illuminated her face.

'I am delighted you approve, Diana! I had so feared I might not be worthy.'

There was no mirror to confirm it but Diana knew that the people who worked in the factory where blushes were made had gone into overtime and that she was by now fire-house red. Blood rushed noisily through her ears and her cheeks were fiery enough to fry eggs. During the clench, the fragrance of the herbs in which both girls evidently anointed their bodies invaded her senses until it was as though they permeated every cell in her body to change the very way it worked. The effects were swift. Now Lela's voice seemed to come from a great distance and the words themselves arrived in a different order to that in which they were sent, though they made perfect sense. The room seemed all at once exceptionally large to the point that one instant she felt alone while, the next, the house had become minuscule and the three naked women seemed to be pressing in on her.

Ah, if only they would! If only that buck-naked black girl would hug her again and let her touch her again!

Her hand was still vaguely petting the air where an instant before Lela's fine backside had been when Diana brought it guiltily under control and turned to Fumi, ready to face the woman's wrath. Instead, Fumi smiled. There were tears in her eyes. Diana wanted to reach out and paw her breasts.

'We are indebted to you, Diana,' she said, oddly.

'I'm sorry. I apologise.' Her words came out slurred as though she were getting drunk.

'For what?'

'I guess for groping your daughters. I don't know what came over me.'

'Poor dear. I expect you must be tired, yet. Such adventures as yours would exhaust woman. Would explain too why the influence of such mild tinctures could have so powerful and rapid an effect.”

'I don’t understand.. I mean...”

Fumi seemed to know something Diana herself had yet to grasp. She sighed softly. 'Be warned that it is the shy ones a woman must watch most closely. Quite, mischievous is my little Lela. Do you feel dizzy?'

'A bit.'

'Burning up to have sex?'

'I guess.'

'Grethel, Lela - you little vixen. Please leave us. Go bring water so that I might make fresh tea. Diana must be thirsty.'

'I'm not, really, I would rather....'

'Trust me, dear, you will soon enough appreciate our special tea.'

The farther away she got from the shelter of the village by the bay the colder it became. The wind whipped in fresh off the sea, no longer subdued by the pincer movement of land on two sides, and spray lashed with increasing savagery, so cold as to banish the breath from her body in terrible, freezing hiatuses of the senses. The sky darkened again. Solid banks of dark cloud came crashing in on the opposing currents of land and sea and began to mingle; one rising atop the other as lightning flashed and seared within, protesting the forced union. The clock was running backwards. Though still early morning, dawn returned at speed and close on its heels returned the deadly black night. Storm and all.

Ahead and slightly to one side the gorse and moor-grasses rustled agitatedly at a forty five degree angle that never lessened, indicating to Aurora that a wind of gale force - one of those great maelstroms of rushing air which, in her opinion, probably accounted for the final abandonment of the settlement, even if it failed to explain what had become of its inhabitants - was on its way. In immediate confirmation the sky directly above flashed in a jagged, branched lightning fork that took up most of the atmosphere. Simultaneously there was a stink of electricity and her skin began to creep. A second flash came, then a third. It was going to be a storm of monumental proportions set to dwarf last night's mere overture.

But those rolls of thunder, deeper and louder than the devil’s belch, that ought to have followed on strangely never arrived. Instead the wind tuned up from a lamenting howl to a piercing shriek and the fresh cold it brought along bore down on her skin with freezing intensity. Chill factor.

Her fingers and toes had felt numb for some time but with the fresh onslaught the numbness spread rapidly. She could barely feel the drenching bursts of salt spray or the flying twigs and torn foliage that flayed her like whips. All that mattered was wind so strong she was forced to lean into it to stay upright; and the intensifying, paralysing cold. Aurora barely even noticed as icy talons clawed at her bowels and released them without her consent. The brief surge of warmth on her arse was welcome as was relief from the pain which had riven her guts in the moments before.

More lightning. Something lit up silvery straight ahead. She attempted to stop in her tracks but found it impossible: merely to keep in one place she was forced to bend and stagger first one way then another, like a drunk. The shrieking wind seemed to be playing with her.

Another snake. The biggest, plumpest python she’d ever seen slithered onto the sea wall and quested its way along. Mercifully it hadn’t sensed her. On the land side of the embankment a hillock rose up almost level with the surface. The wet trail of the snake was clearly visible in the grass indicating the means by which the creature had slithered its way up, presumably attracted by the hard surface. It was moving quickly and sinuously, a wiggle of disgusting coils along the edge of the walkway. Every so often it turned its head to the right and seemed to consider the boiling sea. Curious. Its forked tongue darted.

She estimated that the freakish monster of a reptile was around fifty feet long, and at its centre, its broadest, an incredible three feet in diameter. It was less than a hundred yards ahead. To a monster so large, a hundred yards meant nothing. Were it to sense her and turn, it was capable of springing in a fraction of a second so minute that no human nervous system would even register the occurrence. The jaws on the two-foot head would open and keep on opening, toothless but for the grim reptile fangs, and the ten hundred-weight weight of legless body propel the gaping maw down on her in that same unregisterable instant, plunging her into the stinking sheath of stomach and muscle. To a python of this size she was small prey. There would be no need for it to first crush her in its vast coils, though she found her self hoping against hope that if the worst came to the worst it might. A comparatively swift death. Infinitely preferable to digestion in the acid-bath of the creature's cylindrical gut, pummelled and softened and made malleable by the writhing pressures within.

For a moment the huge snake paused. It raised itself as though into a striking position. Its upright front section was as thick as a tree-trunk and swaying from side to side. Behind, its coils reeled themselves inward, instinctively minimising the surface area exposed to danger. The whimper, low but sustained and completely beyond her control, that Aurora made posed no danger since she knew that snakes were deaf. Or hoped they were.

She tried to back away but couldn’t; faced with a choice of death within those toothless jaws or pounded lifeless by the mountainous waters of the sea there was no contest. It was just that she couldn't move at all. Couldn't budge to throw herself over.

The head, when it turned, was a vast, scaly abomination; something monstrous, something from another time. The bright, black eyes were fearsome angled slits with diamond centres that contemplated her with a comprehension unlike that of other creature on earth. Eyes, sure enough, that functioned like those of any other creature except that they focused light on a ganglion of predatory instincts without thought or sentience. A biological machine.

Its tongue flicked again. It stayed out as though the creature were tasting the air. The python's stare became all the more malevolent until it seemed the thing were actually staring intelligently at her, though she knew it was impossible. Registration of prey on the other hand, in its mechanical twist of nerves, was all too probable. To her horror the beast began to sway from side to side. Prelude to a strike. It began to lean... lean... backwards, high and haughty... grotesque and hideously tall... the coils behind it went taught... the suddenly erected tail tip twitched as though seeking fine balance...

...and then...

...and then the sixth wave of the cycle came crashing in against the sea defences like never before, bringing with it the great boom of sound the lightning had omitted. Struggling day became water-logged night. A great cataract broke from above. It swept Aurora from her feet and skittered her belly-down along the surface of the dike. She lost sight of the snake as it too, actually in the act of striking, was swept away, but found it again for sure as her body hit a huge cylinder of scaly gristle then bounced off.

Then there was nothing but water. It swirled all around, bringing a confusing silence. It bore her up and suddenly down again like a rag doll. This might be some temporary swamp pool or the depths of the bay, she had no way of telling until the water disappeared as swiftly as it came and she hit the unyielding concrete with a thud that took the last of her breath and made the world spin anew, her vision turn dizzyingly green.

It was over!

She clutched the kerb of the swamp-ward side of the sea-wall and fought against her body's downward momentum: resisted the physics that would send her sprawling down to the level of the snake. In the forming pools beyond it slithered and whipped massively, searching for an inland path. Aurora watched as its silvery back slipped from view.

When the monster was finally out of sight she struggled away from the edge and sprawled flat on her belly, regaining both her breath and her senses. The raging gale still tugged at her. Hah! The biggest snake ever, to be sure! There would be others. Now that the bluff had flooded, any further snakes that might have been displaced would do as the first did: seek the sanctuary of the dike-top. Maybe coming this way wasn't such a good idea after all.

“Yeah, I remember now. I see it all. Everything is real. I’m going back there, aren’t I?”

A voice answered but it made no sense because it was a riff of tune rather than words and it came that way because this was a trip: a classic sixties acid ride on the pure stuff grandma used to bring home. The world was full of music. The mellowest of many themes was the colour of Fumi's skin. The fancy lights that danced around it were whatever she said next.

Diana's memory had returned in full and not an episode, not a detail of recollection, was lost. Lee’s death of in that noisy hospital cubicle with the grimy sheets was as vivid as though it were happening right before her. The little apartment with its rummage-sale furnishings appeared in sharp focus; as did the panic flight to San Francisco and the air-crash that aborted it - the crash which she had miraculously survived. Diana remembered the alien terrain outside the aircraft's windows shortly before the loss of control and concluded that the Boeing had somehow strayed massively off course. All the details of the replay were there as though, emotionally detached, she were watching a movie of someone else's life presented as evidence in a bizarre court-room, she the advocate who had taken the floor and was submitting a running commentary. Yes, that was it! There was a way back, Diana argued. It had but to be found amongst the evidence already presented, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. She put it to them that the women here already knew how to help her and that they must remember they were under oath and must speak only the truth.

She babbled all these things excitedly to Fumi but Fumi wasn't listening. Perhaps Diana just wasn't doing so well at making herself understood above the effects of the trip, although it seemed to her that what she was saying was coming out lucidly enough. Fumi held her close, her skin warm and strangely reassuring against hers. The large breasts were dark pillows of comfort into which Diana nuzzled gratefully, the broad lips that swept regularly over her neck and shoulders were visitations of angelic bliss that made her wonder with each sericeous stroke whether her will to go home really was so strong after all.

'Hush, Diana, my love,' soothed Fumi. 'The mushrooms, I fear. That vexatious little girl of mine had them on her lips, that is all. She chews them during the night to give herself the kind of dreams a girl likes best. I expect you are not accustomed to them. Though you are as sweet. So pale and thin, but so utterly charming.'

'I must get to San Francisco.'

'Of course, dear. Yes of course you must.'

'The airline, don't you see? The airline will have to compensate me!'

The woman chuckled deliciously. 'Lines in the air? You certainly have it bad, my sweet. Never mind. The delusions will pass.'

A warm hand settled on her brow, stroked back through the unkempt tangle of her hair and gently tugged.

'Momma?'

'Hardly.”

Another scene. This time a real court. Diana was just seven years old and the judge - a cold, hard-faced woman with straight grey hair and steel-rimmed glasses that frightened her - finished speaking and tapped the bench with a fancy wooden hammer. Momma, who had been sitting with two other women, looked kind of sick all the time the people in the court were talking. Sweat stained the armpits of her peach-coloured shirt even though Diana hadn't remembered it being hot that day. Her mom had looked oddly at her while different people asked whether she loved her daddy. She had told them that she did even if that wasn’t quite true, because daughters were supposed to love their daddies and if she had said she didn't they might think her bad. Right? This seemed to upset momma. She burst into tears. Burst into tears again as the judge brought the gavel down a final time and two women led Diana away. Diana only ever saw her mom one more time after that. Ever.

'Hush, now. Do not cry, angel. Perhaps I should get you out into the fresh air. Are you remembering things? Well, even a simple farming girl can get things right, sometimes. A powerful force, the Lesbian destiny, that events must work their course even when the Leader is gone.'

Lesbian.

Not a seven-year old anymore. Wound forward to her last year in High School and the thing which had shamed her so grievously then but didn't seem so bad now compared to things life had ladled out since.

Clear as day, solid as the real thing, the old scene re-enacted itself.

'Shit, I'm starting a fucking period.'

Carol Myers had been her best friend right through high school. Girls, especially bitches, referred to them as the scary twins though the epithet had always been something of a misnomer: Carol was the boisterous one; her own reputation for vitriol a mere rub-off. Maybe people were to some extent justified in thinking of her that way because Diana was undoubtedly the only one - boy or girl - ever to hold sway over Carol. She was the one who had her ear and could persuade her to do things. Besides they really did look a whole lot alike, despite there being no filial relationship; once you took away Carol's red hair and mischievous green eyes.

Diana learned some years after they went their separate ways that someone had done literally that: Carol had been murdered by the side of an interstate, scalped down to the bone and her eyes gouged out, amongst sundry other mutilations.

But all that was way in the future. The moment was now, that time in the nineties, and it was a highly pleasant one.

Carol lived with her mother in a big place off Brewster, out in the suburbs where the roads between the blocks were landscaped into broad, lanes fringed by trees. French style. The Myers' home stood at the centre of a cluster of three houses at the very end of one such lane and could be reached only by climbing the steep hill atop which it stood. Ordinarily, this didn't pose any problem since the architects who built the place were rightly of the belief that anyone who lived there would only travel that road by means of the world's better classes of rolling iron. For two girls on foot, though, the trek was a soporific one, made worse by the humidity of the still air beneath the trees. They arrived hot and breathless, thirsty and uncomfortable, their clothes sticking to them.

'Fuck this,' Carol complained.

The thick door to the porch swung closed behind them. They stood in the cool gloom of a huge hallway shielded outside by discrete shrub-hidden railings and metal security bars that slid electrically across the door whenever its lock was turned.

'Mom's out, anyway.'

Carol plucked a panty-crease from the crack of her ass then did the kind of thing that someone like Carol was expected to do: standing in the hall she peeled off her shirt and jeans, kicked away her trainers and posed in her too-tight panties and lycra sports brassiere that didn't match, scratching herself. She squealed and wriggled and grimaced, reaching behind her back.

'This tit-strangler always makes me itch, ya know? Mom insists I wear it, the bitch. Says at my age tits need looking after or else they'll droop early. My mom says hard tits shouldn't be taken for granted because without the right kind of support they won't stay that way for long.' There was a rip of Velcro as she set them free. The dark blue brassiere slackened like an elastic band let fly. Carol unhooked it from her shoulders a strap at a time and let it fall. It tumbled to the Wilton carpet as though a crippled insect. She shimmied the tight breasts.

'Oooohhhh... that's sooooo... goooood!'

'Fuck it, Carol, what if your mom comes back?'

'Shit, no way. She's gone over to Denton. Has to see her lawyer about divorcing my dad. Won't be back till eight tonight. I mean like earliest. So what are you worrying about?'

'These places have CCTV, if you're going to start walking around naked like that and all.'

'System is off, honey-buns. Mom doesn't like it. I guess she thinks it might catch her out some day screwing some stud of a tennis coach and fuck up her divorce. Wanna smoke something?'

'No.'

Carol began rubbing her breasts; smoothing the skin and massaging - with the emphasis on her grubby finger-nails - where it itched most. 'Bastard brassiere'll give me sweat spots, you just see.' She bent down, picked up her jeans and rummaged in the pocket. She extracted an elastic band, grabbed her hair into a pony tail then doubled it over into a bun and tied it back. Diana observed that sweat was flowing freely down her back. 'Guess I don't want one either. In heat like this it'll just make me throw up. Think I'll get a vodka with a lot of ice. You'll have one of those, won't you?'

'Sure.'

Carol sat her sweaty ass on her mom's polished oak telephone table with a disrespectful thud and began reaching into her socks, scratching around in there too.

'You dressed in kind of a hurry didn't you?'

Carol looked up at her quizzically and paused in her scratching. 'Huh?'

'Odd socks.'

'Oh, yeah... well.'

Both were white sports socks, the same kind that she herself always got from the K-Mart, but the left one was topped by a pattern of broad red and blue rings, the right by thin ones.

'Didn't think anyone would notice. Here...'

She peeled them off and made a hugely theatrical act out of tossing them in Diana's direction. One passed by Diana’s nose on a close orbit, delivering an odour of foot. Diana batted it away with a feigned cry of disgust. Carol grinned smugly. It was all just a little assing around: the foot-smell wasn't really so bad; nothing about Carol ever smelled bad, the sock was a little sweaty, laden with the signature of a Carol who had gotten too hot, that was all. She really didn’t mind.

Diana studied her friend with affection. Now that she was down to her panties, her naturally mischievous boyishness was belied by the small, fine breasts of forthcoming womanhood. Half of her was the kid at home taking advantage of her mother's absence, the other half - visible in the same view - the lovely, potentially beautiful young woman she would become. The green eyes were clear as a lagoon. Carol was a girl who would never hide anything from her best friend, never lie nor dissemble and never speak other than her true mind. That candour always made Diana feel especially comfortable in her company.

Still sitting on the phone table she hooked her thumbs in the waist band of her panties, executed a deft little bunny hop then, naked a split second later, sat back down with a sticky plop.

'Hhmmm, so cool to the cunt,' she announced.

'I don't believe it,' Diana commented, watching the slight but rhythmic movement of her hips that followed. 'But the girl has the gall to rub herself off on her mom's furniture.'

Carol wriggled some more, stopped, then started again. But faster. As though she meant it.. 'Aww, it's only a frig.'

'Frigs stain, dear.'

'Squirt of wax and she'll never know the... uh!... difference.' She was picking up speed. At it for real.

'Yeah, sure. Now that I really can imagine. Carol Myers, no less, getting out a can of polish and doing some waxing. What next? Carol Myers cutting grass? Carol Myers baking brownies and sitting babies? Carol Myers going to church? Carol My...'

'Hush the fuck up. I think I'm going to come!'

Diana really did go quiet. She'd watched her friend bring herself off plenty of times before - in fact she'd lost count of the number of times she'd seen her masturbate all the way; Carol was just one of those girls whose fingers were rarely out - but never in a setting so audacious. She trembled and wriggled from side to side then, with an ass-hitching movement that just didn't seem right for an orgasm, broke wind with a plaintive gasp muffled by wood.

'No, just a fart, I guess.'

'Honestly! I thought you really were frigging off!'

'Wonder if I did one earlier?'

Next, she held the rumpled panties to her nose and sniffed ostentatiously. Her face wrinkled in an expression of not altogether plausible disgust that made Diana chuckle. 'Poo! Stinky!'

'Carol, for fuck's sake!'

The green eyes sparkled with mischief. 'It's only sweat. It ain’t shit.'

'You'll never get to be débutante of the year behaving like that.' But then she guessed that Carol wouldn't choose to delight the society ball in any case. She liked her best of all for that. A girl who lived in a palace and yet had no airs nor affectations, a princess who swore and got dirty and didn't care who saw her that way.

Diana felt an even stronger affection, a real warmth, as Carol sat there, twirling the off-white panties rotor-like on an extended finger.'Still want that vodka?'

'Sure I do. And I guess I'll die of thirst if I don't get it.'

'Kay, then.'

She flicked the finger and her panties went spiralling away. Diana grinned at the twin buttock-shaped condensation marks on the polished wood left by her lovely ass the moment she stood up. Carol padded out of the hallway, aggressively rubbing the pinkish marks on her rump. She rounded a corner and disappeared from view.

Diana pulled her shirt from the waist-band of her jeans, wishing she'd turned herself out this morning in something a little cooler, something easier to wear; a simple shirt and those thin cotton shorts she'd bought out of her allowance last week. Ordinarily she'd have done so, except that coming up to Carol's place always made her feel that she should make a special effort; hence the brand new Wranglers and the styled shirt with the freshly ironed collar and neat buttons. Carol's mom was a whole lot like her daughter and would never have expected her to adopt anything of a pretence, it was just that Diana didn't want to let herself down in a place of affluence; even if everyone knew that the days of such wealth were numbered. Besides, Mrs. Myers really did seem to have this underwear hang-up and Diana suspected it suggested deeper feelings about clothes. Girls who turned out like tramps in Carol's company invariably got a cool reception and didn't last long as acquaintances. Diana believed that some of her own success in the Myer's household was attributable to her always dressing to a certain standard. So she always went that extra mile.

But if only Ev could see her own daughter right now! Diana giggled aloud.

“Hey, where have you gone?”

“In here, honey-buns.”

Carol had gone in through the kitchen but now her voice came from the family- room. Hell, but the house was like a maze.

She went down a plushly decorated little passage-way and paused a second to check herself out in a heavy, gilt-framed mirror that was the centre-piece of the opposite wall. Christ, she even looked hot. Her cheeks were flushed and her forehead bright red. Dark stains had appeared under her armpits. They looked awful and the smell that was starting to rise from there wasn't so good either. It had felt a cooler when they first entered the hall but now the air seemed to be hotting up again. She noticed that there was no hiss from the gratings to the air-conditioning ducts situated just above the floor meaning that the unit wasn't switched on and that it was going to get a hell of a lot hotter by midday. Carol was no doubt much more comfortable naked and Diana wanted to get like her. Problem was this wasn't her home. Nor could she could be one hundred percent sure about Carol's promise that the cameras were off. Carol wouldn't give a shit if she did strip and would probably laugh if she even bothered to ask permission, but the risk of getting caught out on a four-frame-per-second MPEG resting her not so clean pussy on someone else's lemon and white moquette was not one she wanted to piss about with.

Truthfully she'd always hoped that Ev might take pity on her and that the Myers's place might one day become her own, especially since the two were generally considered inseparable. Maybe it hadn't happened because Ev knew that she and Carol were about to get waifed themselves.

Diana stepped inside the family room. A wall of heat from air warmed by sun-facing windows hit her. The room was large, split level and filled with sunlight. The whole of one wall was given over to patio doors that slid across each other to give access to the marble-tiled patio and blue ceramic swimming pool beyond. The water of the pool glinted invitingly under the sunlight, so sleek and still as to give the impression of water which had gone to sleep. The sight made Diana ache. An ache for a different reason came from the knowledge that the glassed doors were well and truly locked and destined to stay that way. Wisely, Mrs. Myers never entrusted her daughter with a key.

Carol was standing, completely naked and perfectly at ease that way, in the centre of the vast room. A Steinway grand, topped in a rather trite but nonetheless expensive fashion by a silver candelabra with red wax-twist candles, stood at a cynosure angle on the upper level of the split floor, clearly the principle feature of the room. Bare and scruffy, Carol leaned against its glazed walnut with her head bowed. She was engrossed in inspecting something midway between her crotch and midriff. Her pose was a corrupted variant of the classic which resulted in one knee being flexed forward, the weight on the toes, exposing the grimy sole of a foot.

'I think I'm getting a fucking rash. Just knew I would.'

'Tried soap and water?'

'Nope. Heard about it, though. Just a passing fad, so they tell me.'

Diana joined her at the piano. Elegant instrument and naked girl made an incongruous though undoubtedly erotic mix. Her feet had swollen with the walk up to the house and her sneakers hurt. Unfair, this; Carol so bare, she so stiflingly muffled.

Carol Myers swivelled around and proffered her slim, tanned belly and Diana noted how the hairs curled black and luxuriant in her vee. She was secretly envious of the growth; considered it a totem of full womanhood with which she had yet to be invested. Her own were a wispy line of sparse verticality lacking both length and density - teeny pubes, she guessed. Kiddie fluff. The rash was visible, sure enough; a crescent of reddish pin-prick mounds in no particular order that resembled a mild case of poison ivy.

'You think I'm getting acne?' She sounded worried.

Diana shook her head. 'Uh, uh. Acne is different. Acne is big purple spots filled with yellow puss that burst open unexpectedly, usually inside your clothes or in some guy's mouth. Acne gets you all down the back or if you're really unlucky turns your face into a mess of weeping pustules. Besides you're too old for acne. The cure is sex. Lots and lots of fucking till your pussy goes numb. You and I don't get acne. Let me see.'

Diana probed the skin of her friend’s belly and found it hot and sticky to the touch. Tough gristly muscle - tomboy muscle - lay just beneath the surface. The rash felt like a peppering of buckshot or maybe a fresh crop of superfluous nipples as yet unripe for harvesting.

'Insect bites. Ants.'

'You serious?'

'Got them on your feet too. That's why you were scratching inside your socks so much.' Diana released her belly and pointed. 'I can see them from here.' Carol obediently looked down in a way that made Diana laugh again.

'Hey, this isn't funny!'

'Naw, ain't so bad. You been running around outside in the buff again?'

'Sure I have.'

'Well, then. It's high summer, dear girl. What else can you expect?'

'You sure I don't have the crabs or something, honeybuns?'

'Crabs get you in the cunt. I don't see you scratching there. Of, course I don't deny the possibility either that you might have the odd tree trunk wedged in your old fuck-hole, or maybe a basketball player or two, but if you had the crabs you'd be yanking at it like a bitch in heat.'

'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which reminds me. Why are you still dressed? Mom switched the air conditioner off a million years ago. Says we can't afford it in a place this size any more. It's going to get pretty damn warm in here soon. Always does.' She leaned back against the piano, supporting her weight on both hands. Her bare rump pressed up against the locked keyboard. 'Oohh, that's coo..ooo...cool.'

'Stop it. You're making me feel worse. Real hot and sweaty.'

'So strip. What's the problem?'

Diana undid her top button, wiped perspiration from her throat and stopped right there. 'What if your mom really is watching?'

'From Denton?'

'Just suppose surveillance isn't switched off after all. Like I know it’s hard to believe but still switched on as in your mom don’t trust ya?”

Carol rolled her eyes. 'Oh, that again! Cynical too! It's off, honey, you better believe it. Look, if it'll set your mind at rest I shall now demonstrate. And I'll get us those vodkas while I'm about it.'

She trotted across the huge room. A small bar with an array of shelves behind smoked glass - mostly empty, which made Diana frown, wondering where the vodka was about to come from - occupied one corner. Normally it was lit by concealed lights but today they were out. Three leather bar stools on tall stems stood before the mahogany-topped assembly. Diana had always considered the notion of a family-room bar an affectation verging on the decadent but readily forgave the Myers: it had come with the house, and was thus no quirk of the owners' personality. The Steinway probably arrived by a similar route since neither Carol nor Ev played and Carol's dad was largely considered an asshole supremo who had no interest in music beyond the symphony of the till.

Most people would have walked round the bar and gone behind by the conventional method of lifting the hatch, but not so Carol. Her preferred means of access was to hop up onto the middle stool, swing herself across and drop down behind. Around half-way, ass first, her legs spread involuntarily to display a rear view of Carol's future husband's port of entry. She had a respectable but by no means magnificent cunt, though she knew how to use it well enough. Diana thought of her as compact. In the labia majora stakes her own succulent petals won hands down, or cunt up, despite her paucity of foliage. It was thus a fairly contrite vertical slit which had winked at her for a second and made her wonder yet again why it was always the narrower tunnels that bore the most traffic.

'See? Told you.'

But did they? And immediately Diana felt cheap and repelled by her own thoughts. Carol was her friend. A gorgeous one at that. A tom-boyish beauty beyond all criticism. Something tugged at Diana’s emotions and she knew that Carol had grown into more than a mere best friend; had become as a part of herself which she would protect and defend with her last breath. There were no tales of Carol having ever been screwed by a guy - and such news travelled fast – no legends and no locker-room braggarts, so her assumption of promiscuity was unfair. Unless it happened over in Denton? Yeah, must be in Denton.

Carol had reached below the bar and was a holding a small black box aloft. A USB cord ran from the side.

“Fuckin’ hard drive, see?”

'Guess you're right, but...'

“So will you join me in a naked drink? Several naked drinks.'

She waved the litre bottle of real Russian vodka as one might attract a dog with a hunk of meat. Unopened, the meniscus of clear liquid swirled primly at the neck and the generous bulk of transparent fluid caught and refracted the sunlight. Only vodka could do that, Diana thought. Only something so unpretentious looking that it might be water could have a kick like no other liquor on earth.

What the heck. 'Fucking ace, Carol, darlin’.”

Dangling vodka made niceties irrelevant so she tore at her clothes like getting naked was a matter of life and death; didn’t even care as stitches ripped in stuff that had cost her far too much money. Ordinarily she might have been mildly proud of her satin underwear - the thin cups of the bikini style brassiere that outlined her nipples, the low hip-hugging sling of the panties - but Carol didn't notice and Diana didn’t care. They were tight and uncomfortable and sweat made them stick to her skin so they came off with a snap like a towel swipe.

Mere moments after Carol had opted to get bare, her clothes lay together in a malodorous pile. She grimaced and kicked them away, a gesture of which her friend would most certainly approve. A breeze came from somewhere - warm, a convection current from the rapidly heating glass.

She moved close to her friend. Both of them naked and feeling at ease that way. Diana’s bare skin sensed Carol’s, and Carol’s bare skin recognised hers. As was as if there bodies were together in the same invisible pocket of shared air somewhere.

“Get the fuckin’ cap off that fuckin’ bottle.”

.

15

Far, far away there were no such things as clothes, nor had there been any so long as anyone could remember. Fumi uttered a low growl of delight as Diana's fingertips stroked the upper reaches of her pudenda and combed through the ragged margins of her tangle. She insisted on calling her Carol, which was a mystery since Carol had never been involved with Diana: quite the reverse, Carol was presently a member of the expeditionary party which had gone off in search of the Leader. Not that it mattered. She could call her Madame-shit-with-sugar-on so long - as the evidence suggested – they were about to make love.

Coolish morning air wafted through the window which Fumi had closed again all but for a six inch gap as the embrace grew intimate, but Diana's body was burning up from the effects of the drug. Fumi reproved Lela in no uncertain terms the moment she stuck her head round the door to inform her that fresh water was outside and then had told both her daughters to get lost.

It had happened because most every night, as many young Lesbian women did, Lela chewed the desiccated flesh of the pink-and-white mushroom that grew on the banks of the river in that special, shaded place that emerged from the forest to the north. The river pattern was complex there: the forest reaches were only around a half the later volume and augmented by a delta of subterranean streams that bubbled out over ancient scree and exposed sandstone bedrock. The fabled mushroom grew in this one spot and nowhere else. Its effect on the nervous system was to produce vivid erotic dreams accompanied by keen orgasms. Girls took the drug in their woman-forming years, gradually building up the dosage. Fumi had been a keen user herself. What Lela had done was to transfer a mouthful to Diana during that great slobbering kiss, the effect of which was to transport her instantly into raptures of erotic delight from which Fumi was about to benefit. There were moral implications, of course. Diana was joint Leader of Lesbos, was in a vulnerable state and betrothed to Aurora. But nature would take its course even if Aurora wasn’t here. Fate had decreed, with a little help from Lela, that it should be she who officiated over Diana's awakening. In a way, it was her duty.

'Hush, hush, sweetheart. Snuggle up to me. Take my nipple between your lips, yes?'

Carol's breast was close to her, just inches away. There was a smell of skin that hadn't got showered since yesterday or maybe even the day before. The breast was so close because Diana had leaned forward to massage the skin of her calves and hadn't noticed Carol approaching her.

'You too?'

'No. Just sweat.'

'Drink this.'

Carol produced two giant wine goblets in which ice cubes clinked then poured vodka over both, making the ice creak and crack. She knocked down hers in one and immediately poured another. Diana snatched up her own and drank from it greedily but was unable to match her friend. A moment later her throat was on fire. She doubled over again, this time in a paroxysm of choking.

'What the fuck did you put in it?'

'Vodka, why?'

'What else?'

Carol shrugged. 'Just ice.'

'Jesus, it's good, but your mom'll kill ya when she gets to find out you've been at her booze.'

'No, she won't. The vodka is mine.'

'You're kidding.'

'As I verily live and breathe.'

'But how in the name of...'

'Know Richie? Works at Leasing’s Old Mart?'

“Fleecing Old Fart, my mom calls ‘em. Sure, I know Richard.”

Of course she did. Everyone knew Ricardo Perez. Barely turned nineteen, might have passed for twenty-three, he had the looks of a celebrity and the build of a sire bull. Rumour had it he was slung like one too but it was reputed he hadn’t made much progress with girls. His dad made him work the groceries franchise all hours that god sent. When Richie did get time off it was almost as though he were under house arrest. Girls pondered and talked, their speculation fuelled by school shower-talk of tales of a penis twelve inches long when resting. And on duty, if ever, who knew?

'Well, I got it from Rich. He took the bottle from the back of the store and gave it to me. Potato chips too.'

'Just like that? A fifty-dollar bottle of the best stuff?'

Carol grinned, pleased with achievement, downed a third of her glass in one and emitted a satisfied burp. 'Things never come so easily in life, dear girl, didn't anyone ever tell you that? Of course Rich had his price. Know what it was.'

'Oh, my god!' Diana shrieked with laughter. 'You never did!'

'Yup.' Another sip but not enough yet for it to be the booze doing the talking. It always took a while for Carol to get tanked.

'You never. I don't believe it.'

'And there'll be more. Plenty more. Richie and I have entered into a business partnership.'

'As in screwing for booze. My god!'

Carol grinned mischievously. 'Who said anything about screwing? My mom sends me there when we run out of shit. They tend to be mostly old bastards who use Leasing’s so maybe I'm the only bit of cunt he sees who's younger than ninety. He could never take his eyes off me and whenever I bent over I caught him staring at my ass in the mirror. So one day, when it was quiet, I went in wearing a cheer-leader skirt and no panties. The thing I needed was so, so low down on the shelving. Know what I mean? I could practically hear his cock spring stiff. I smiled nicely, paid up, made like nothing had happened and left. Didn’t go back for a week just to keep him on the boil. Next time he was like a panting dog, practically climbing over me and asking how I was and saying how much he liked my hair. I wanted to laugh and ask if he meant my head or my cunt but I led him on and he got braver. I could smell booze on his breath. I knew I’d picked a good time. I stroked the back of his hand and kinda fluttered my eyelashes a little and that was when he came straight out with it and told me he’d seen my cunt and wanted to fuck me.'

She imbibed again. The fiery booze finally coloured her cheeks.

'No way!'

'Uh huh. I said I'd meet him that night when he got off work. He got all nervous and flustered and said that it'd have to be in the woods round back. I told him sure so long as he looked after me. I'd want a present.'

'Carol!'

'S'no big deal. I was there at ten. He was waiting already. Looked like he’d been there for hours. He started saying how he'd admired me for so long and how lovely he thought I was and how pleased I was going to let him make love to me. We sat in the grass together and he put his arm around me then kissed me on the cheek.'

'Oh, sweet. Guys I get usually start pawing me all over.'

'Sweet, yeah. Anyway, he looked like he was starting to settle down for the night so I unzipped him, took out his cock - it went hard in a second, you know? - and jerked him off there and then. Didn't take a minute. Came all over the back of my hand with the first few rubs then he just sat there groaning.'

'Hell, What possessed you? What a waste! Your chance to fuck the legendary Richie Perez!'

'Didn't want to. Besides I kind of think it was his first time, so he probably wouldn't keep hard. I don’t do babies.”

Diana ran the cool glass across her brow. The thought struck her again that maybe Carol didn’t do any guy at all but the dirty talk was making her throb all the same. 'Jesus, I'd never dare if I lived to be a hundred.'

'So there you go. It’s not exactly prostitution, is it? And why should I give a shit even if it was? Whatever they say, Richie Perez is an ordinary schmuck, I admit, with a bigger boner than most guys. What I like about him is that he’s a schmuck who can get booze. And know what? Next time it’s one of vodka and one of rye and I suck his cock.'

'Jesus, Carol.”

She grinned. “Okay, but I spit. I don’t swallow.”

“Well, we all got the hots for Rich but I don’t know anyone who’d go this far. I mean, not just for booze. How long do you think it’ll last? When his dad gets to find out he’ll beat the poor fucker to death and you’re in deep shit too. You know how the old bastard is.”

'I guess that's his problem.'

Sipping more vodka, her thoughts loosening up, Diana contemplated her naked best friend and arrived at the amazing conclusion that despite all her bluff and bravado Carol really was that rarity among rarities - a virgin. Whatever guy finally took in their lawfully unwedded bed would need more than just a set of balls like Perez.

But why the fuck was she worrying about all this stuff anyway? There was serious cooling off to be done. And serious drinking. She drained her glass then coughed until the room spun. Her voice was a feeble croak.

'More.' She wagged her empty goblet.

'Easy cum, easy go.'

Voice failed, Diana nodded.

'Easy cum all right. Sure as shit that.'

Carol took their glasses and padded dutifully back to her trophy. Diana massaged her stomach as the colourless liquid burned an agonizing path through her gullet. She thought she was going to throw up but fortunately the feeling subsided. Carol hadn't yet answered the sixty-four thousand dollar question.

'So it’s true?'

'Huh?'

'What they say. That Richie Perez carries a tree trunk in his shorts.'

She broke off in the sacred act of pouring out booze, full goblets, no ice, meaning that both of them would be totally smashed not long from now. With a smirk she held up both forefingers some distance apart.'

'Oh, my god, no! Not possible.' She shrieked with girlish laughter. Her hands flew to the sides of her face.

'I kiddeth thee not. And he doesn't wear shorts. At least not that night he didn't.'

'But you’re not serious about next time. I can tell.”

Carol came back with their elicit drinks and smiled the smile of a girl with not a care in the world. She stood very close so that their arms brushed as they drank.

'No you can’t ‘cause I am. Sucking,' she said, softly. 'Fellatio, osculation of the penis, swallowing the big rod.' Unexpectedly Carol's hand came out to Diana's bare hip where it squeezed urgently and remained. 'But I'm doing this just for the pair of us, right? I mean you and I. So that we can get booze and party up whenever we like. I don't want you to think that Perez is going to be my boyfriend or anything and that we won't be able to see so much of each other any more. It isn't like that. Not at all. All that happens is I give him a Thursday night cock-suck that doesn't mean shit to me then I'm home by eleven. If you wanted to call me and ask if I'm okay that'd make me happy.'

The sudden vulnerability took Diana by surprise. It was either completely out of character or had been there all along and she’d simply failed to notice.

'Sure. No-one splits up the scary twins, kiddo. Everybody knows that.'

Carol stood her glass on the Steinway, where it was fated to leave a ring. It was half-empty again. One of Carol's problems was that she had no booze control. Her own glass went flying from her grasp, spilling its contents over the carpet, the young Diana barely having time to reflect on the horrific occurrence before Carol's tomboy arms wound tightly around her and her slim, fit body slotted itself against hers. Diana reacted instinctively to her best friend's torment. She returned the embrace, caressing Carol's back and fondling her bare rump. Carol buried her face in Diana's neck and began to sob. Never before had the pair been so intimate, never before had Diana kissed the flaming red hair.

'Hush, hush,' said a voice.

Diana gazed up into the dark face and the wide brown eyes that seemed to engulf her. The sculptured hand with the brown fingers stroked her softly. Broad, velvety lips kissed her cheek. She was nestled into the warm flesh as a young child might nestle into its blanket, telling Fumi everything.

'My mom says we'll probably have to move away,' Carol went on. She was beginning to get drunk now. 'This place'll get sold off under the community property laws and if that happens we'll never see each other again.' The embrace tightened both ways. 'No way do I want to leave you. You and I are like sisters. You are the best friend I have ever had or ever will have. I love you!'

Diana hooked a finger under her best friend's cheek and gently tilted back her head to look into those cool green eyes, the first time she had ever seen hurt in there. Why the surprise? Surely she must have cried a lot as a kid.

'Hey, Carol. That isn't going to happen. These things sometimes take years to work out. By that time you and I'll be old enough take off and get an apartment together and if even if you did have to move out soon then we'd still keep in touch.'

Carol sobbed harder. The last part was feeble and just made things worse. Accidentally she bit into Diana's throat. The sharp pain made her shiver. 'No, no, no... it never happens like that. People just say.'

'Not for us. Listen, let's make a deal. Either one of us moves away from here before her eighteenth birthday and she takes the other with her. I want to be with you too and it isn't as if I have a whole lot to lose. It might mean you'd have to break away from your mom...'

Carol straightened and her body went rigid. She raised herself to her full height. Diana quailed as her breasts squashed against hers but her friend didn't seem to notice. The embrace unwound itself and Carol's hands moved to the small of her back where they gripped tighter still, finger nails pinching in a way that almost made her grimace.

'I would. I will. Of course I will. Do you really mean it?'

'Yes. I promise. And you too.'

'Promise.'

'Then the pact is made. Get some more vodka and we'll drink to sisters, then I guess we'd better find a mop and clean up that spillage before it stains.'

Her blood rushed hot and tingly as on a sudden impulse she brought her lips down on Carol's and kissed her hard. She was expecting Carol to recoil, their relationship shattered before the wax on the pact had sealed, when instead she melted weepily into her arms, moving around in the curves and cleavages of her body. The hand that came to rest on her breast did so because it seemed natural for it to alight there, not because there was any specific intention to dyke-grope.

'Oh, Carol. That's good.'

'Stay over.'

'Can't.'

'Why?'

There was no reason. Diana shrugged. 'Okay. Sure.'

The movement of the shrug worked Carol's fingers so that a nipple got itself touched. Diana quivered low down. This wasn't right. Not because of what Carol was doing - in her anguish she was oblivious to the implications of their intimacy - but because of the way Diana herself felt. Carol was indeed the best friend she had and ever would have. She meant more to her than a sister, and except for now, for these few shared moments of secret vulnerability, offered her more strength and protection than the toughest of brothers. She understood that teens were by nature promiscuous and undiscriminating and that sexual satisfaction between same gender partners did not necessarily, at their age, forebode a lifetime's predilection. The school's counsellor had reinforced these views when in a moment of weakness she'd confessed to sudden rushes of physical interest in one of the girls she showered with after basket-ball. Others admittedly she found repulsive. It wasn't unnatural, the counsellor had told her. The feeling usually passed. Not so for some, of course, but there was no crime there either. The counsellor had told her that her own concern was that she viewed Diana's appetite for boys as excessive and that if anything she almost welcomed some contrary interest. She’d have to be careful, of course. If those feelings became known there’d be repercussions. She and her classmates were all minors in law, remember. If Diana got worried or needed to talk then she, as student counsellor and most importantly as a friend, was always available.

The woman's concern impressed and reassured her and she'd fully intended to talk to her again: until the next day when her English teacher insisted on re-seating her in class. She now sat up front between two guys, one of whom had screwed her and another who was itching to. There were tensions and distractions. She accepted that she was probably going to have to take Michael Hicks into her if she was to get any peace; screw him out, shame him into leaving her alone. Worse than that her teacher, Mrs. Ormes, was one of the few adults she respected but overnight had acquired the view that Diana Fuller was a devious and insatiable dyke. Diana vowed she'd never trust anyone again except Carol Myers. And maybe, just a little bit, Carol's mom.

She was only starting to feel so physical now because this wasn’t just any girl - it was Carol. Her Carol. Both of them were wound up by the heat and made uninhibited by booze: both were teenagers and it was natural for teenagers to feel randy most of the time; Carol was splendidly fit and very, very attractive - especially now, naked... vulnerable.... drunk... dirty...sexy.... and Diana had taken the step of admitting to herself that she loved her. Carol confessed to loving her too. She finally admitted to herself that she ached and throbbed for the feel of Carol’s bare flesh.

“I mean it. No-one is ever going to split us up. No man is ever going to take you from me, either. I don't need a boyfriend. I'll ditch them all for you. You get me?'

Carol's hands travelled, sweeping widely - breasts, hips, back, shoulders - shaping themselves to the fluid contours of Diana’s form. They came to rest cupping the sides of her face. She pulled her down on to her. A kiss flared. Wet. Tongue-searching. A sexual kiss.

'I fucking love you!'

“And I fucking love you too.”

There was a sudden stab of delicious pain. Diana cried out as Carol brutally thrust two fingers inside her and began to move them. A thumb brushed her clitoris. She turned instantly wet and reached into her friends' thicket where she fumbled amateurishly: thick hairs, already wet, the slender groove of the pudendum, then she was fingering her best friend's clitoris in return, moving south, feeling her way inexpertly. Carol called out and quirted her slim hips. Something wet and warm and soft gave way. Warmth and moisture suddenly engulfed the inquisitive finger. There was the broad, bony ring of Carol's pelvic girdle, muffled by vaginal tissue, and an abyss beyond that seemed to go on forever.

The inside of Carol felt a whole lot like the inside of herself; familiar territory once inside, where it was an easy matter to bring delight. But she was determined to show Carol how much she loved her; determined to go deep. She squeezed two more fingers alongside the current inhabitant of her friend’s cunt, stretching her wide open. The three fingers at the same time plunged deeper than a solitary one ever could

Carol shuddered, cried out then gave a low grunt and twisted herself round so that she balanced on one foot. The other leg climbed her partner’s body and wrapped itself around. A heel butted Diana’s arse. The change of position enabled Carol to shove her hips forward, her cunt swallowing Diana's fingers to the knuckle. It was a capture like suction. Diana began to thrust and withdraw; better than any penis. Inexhaustible. Wet noises glooped and licked. She creamed up noisily and shivered herself into a convulsive orgasm. Threw back her head. Screamed. Diana’s fingers continued to pump. She gushed still more.

Exciting though it may be, the problem was that none of this was real. Her sexual encounter with Carol had taken place years back, less than three months before Carol and her mom had moved out of Diana's life for ever, their sworn pact no more than alcoholic words on empty air. Real as it all seemed, Carol's hacked remains rotted in a chipboard box in a county cemetery somewhere, the flesh long dissolved from the yellowed bones. The true reality was that the unlikely couple had retreated to Fumi's narrow but comfortable bed, niched privately away from her daughters' bunks. The black woman submitted willingly, sliding onto the coarse blankets and opening herself up to Diana’s eager probing. She mumbled something then reached out, finding her way into Diana and bringing immediate gratification. But Diana was too eager. Too nervous.

'Easy, sweetheart. Relax.'

Fumi wriggled her fingers free then lowered herself cunt-first on to the recumbent blonde. Abdomen ground against wet abdomen, clitoris brushed clitoris. With terrific force Fumi rubbed and ground, quirted and writhed, hips heaving at speed. She grunted and reached out for Diana's breasts. Squeezed hard.

'Oh, God, Diana, Diana... Diana!'

The voice was the dead Carol's again. Now it was high with tension. Ecstasy. Diana couldn't see her because sunlight streamed into her eyes from beyond the wall of glass, but the carpet was soft under her back and buttocks and Carol's weight was dexterously poised so that it brought no discomfort; just an incredibly sensual pressure. Her girlish breasts were in Carol's grasp.

They came together, girl into girl, a single unifying spasm of delight, Diana transported in a way no throbbing-glans male had ever achieved for her. Her opening orgasm was followed by more in a stuttering sequence that seemed to string out into one everlasting climax. No guy could ever make that kind of distance - the single-orgasm physiology of the male didn't go that far - but Carol just kept on pumping into her, she into Carol, a hand working her breasts, thumbs busy on the rubbery humps of the nipples, her own instinctively reaching out for her partner's meagre but resilient mounds, twisting and manipulating in a way that just an hour before she would never have believed possible.

Thus they made their first love. Hot and oozing sweat, teeth pinching and nibbling; roving, exploring each other, beginning to slow only as their glutinous orgasms grew slackened. Stopped only when the last rubs turned naggingly dry.

'I can't do any more,' Carol panted.

'Me neither. You want me to get on top of you?'

'It's your turn tonight. When you stay over. Right now I'm pooped.'

Filtered by the wide screen of the security glass, the sun burned down hard on Carol's back. The skin was hot to the touch as Diana left her breasts and worked away around to the curves of her hips and pulled her down.

'Umph, you got me.'

Their arms formed a mutual cradle;their bellies pressed together stickily lubricated, messed up by dirt, sweat and girl-cum. The combined aroma of their bodies was strong and sweet, almost sickly, underlain by the salty tang of sex. They settled finally into a belly-on-belly huddle that was quite delightful. Carol's weight was distributed along the length of Diana's body as though she weighed almost nothing. Diana hoped the huddle would last all afternoon.

'If only your mom could see us now.' A half hearted, saliva-dripping kiss flared and died.

'Mom's had her moments, too. Only with her it's sporting guys. Always younger ones. You want another drink?'

'No. Don't leave me.' Diana gripped Carol's small buttocks possessively tight. 'Later.'

The girl settled back on top of her, scooping her lightly in her arms. She placed soft kisses on Diana's throat then rested her head on her shoulder.

'The third-rate tennis-pros who come in every summer call my mom 'easy Ev'. They laugh behind her back. I've heard them talking. I can tell you those mothers are mean operators. They take summer jobs in snobby shit-holes like this, where women hang around places like Pastures Country Club. Bored, spoiled bitches, all the wrong side of forty. Those bitches think they are still attractive to younger guys who take advantage by fucking as many as possible - some of them are still tasty looking. But it's not just twat they're looking for. Money gets taken out of purses, 'gifts' accepted - to keep quiet - credit card numbers get copied. I guess it's a little like taking vodka for a jerk-off,' she finished. 'The trick is not to let things go in reverse.'

'Maybe you shouldn't talk about your mom like that. I like Evelyn.'

'She’s old enough to know better. It's as if she has to prove she’s still attractive after splitting up with my dad, though what the fuck that has to do with being attractive is anybody's guess. Mom is pretty. She doesn't need to mess with the likes of them. She could write her own ticket and get any guy she wants. Maybe mom doesn't need to be flattered by younger guys but she does need to screw them, and my god, how she screws!'

Diana never knew that. Not until then either did it cross her mind that Evelyn Myers probably wasn't in Denton at all. Carol yawned boozily and wriggled herself comfortable.

'Think I'll go to sleep, now. Don’t move, honey-buns. Just don’t move a muscle. Stay right where you are'

Working its way around, the sun seemed to be growing stronger by the minute and because of the way Carol pressed down on her what little air there was failed to reach her. The half-drunken pillow talk was great and she loved it, but pillow-talk was for pillows - later on that night when they snuck into each other's beds and made love again - not for an itchy wool carpet under blazing sun in the middle of the day. Though she loved the embrace, the effects of it were rapidly becoming unbearable. Nor was sleeping here, naked and sex-stained in each other arms, a particularly good idea.

'Sorry, darlin’. I gotta get up. I'm fucking burning down here.'

Carol sighed like an airship losing all its gas at once, reluctantly hitched herself off and got to her feet. She reached down, took Diana's hand and helped her up, then trotted away without a word and started pouring out more vodka. The latest payload brought the bottle two-thirds down. Diana wasn't about to decline.

'You realise what we just did?' she tested. Gently.

'Yup, sure do. Best fuckin' fuck I ever fucking fucked. Best fuckin' thing I ever fuckin' did. 'Part from one.'

'Which is?'

'Our promise to each other. Our pact. We made it good - sex and pact - and there is no way either of us is going to back out. Right?'

Next drink. Throat burning, floor heaving. Diana raised her glass, this time a highball tumbler, and belched. Never renege. 'You betcha.'

Fumi also gave her something to drink.

It was cold and sweet and tasted vaguely of coconut. It might have been a billion times stronger than vodka for it wound the day on to late afternoon.

She and Carol were naked still and by now very, very drunk. The sun had shifted so that the glass wall stood in shade but it was still hot in the room, the air still stifling and hard to breathe. They lay together on a broad lemon and white sofa facing centre-wards. Neither had bothered to wash, meaning that neither was exactly fragrant and the addition of ingested alcohol added its own pungency. They'd made love to each other a further twice and had taken great pains to make sure that they did to each other those things they liked best; things they had done readily and with almost no mutual coaxing. Diana was more than a little surprised to find that Carol was turned on by anal masturbation but slipped a finger in there willingly enough, pleased by the fresh wetness that formed around Carol's other, more conventional, way in.

When enthusiasm and energy were spent, they moved to the huge sofa, snuggled into each other and spread out there. A large swathe of spreading gloom signalled the onset of evening and the arrival of cooler temperatures. Like the five-sixths down-vodka, the sun was rapidly heading ground-ward: a vast stain of red fading out to the blue of approaching night. Conceived in insobriety their plan was to take a quick shower - together, obviously - sober up as best as possible with strong black coffee, dress passably neat and then appear to be engrossed in MTV by the time Evelyn got home. But the best laid of schemes of mice, men and newly fashioned lesbians had ganged badly awry and the mutually spinning room turned into solid sleep.

How long, neither knew. Diana lay with her head resting on Carol's neat breasts while Carol's legs were scissored around her; eager cunt drawing satisfaction from the skin-to-skin contact. Neither saw the door of the family room swing open but both stirred in time to hear the cheery chirrup of Evelyn Myers as she made her bustling entrance.

16

When Diana opened her eyes Evelyn Myers was no longer there. Nor the family room of the Myers place; nor the suburb of that upper-crust part of town so long ago. Rather she was contemplating herself, or almost herself, posing regally in the open door of the black woman’s home, haloed in daylight that seemed intensely bright to eyes still drugged.

Her other self had brushed her hair and changed its style . It was dead straight and parted simply down the centre. Longer too. From somewhere she had acquired three slim gold collars which were located around her neck, one on top of another. She posed with an air of great authority, one hand resting on the door frame, the other on her hip. Her ankles were crossed and the pose was generally suggestive of impatience. Or annoyance? Her doppelgänger must have suffered recently for it was covered in bruises and something like surgical tape adhered to the left side and hip. A bandage - fresh and gleaming white – adorned one forearm.

Then Diana, the real Diana, not her animated reproduction, was suddenly falling; dropping back into an awaiting softness while still pondering that other self. Fumi was gone, too, or going - her dark form receding into mist. Diana observed that the woman was trembling and calling out something. Fumi's hands were chopping at the air in urgent supplication and her jaw working vigorously. The bed was still warm from the welcome heat of Fumi's body and Diana wriggled comfortably into it, watching the show. Where was Carol?

'Aurora! Please! Forgive me! I did not know.' Fumi almost yelled at Diana's other self, her voice so loud that Diana pondered what the grave matter might be.

The other Diana broke her pose and took a single languid stride into the room. The three gold collars clinked.

'I thought you were dead,' Fumi apologised. 'I mean to say... I... we... all of us... hoped you might be safe. I am sorry. So sorry!'

The second Diana spoke softly but with a sense of authority which was riveting. Her speech had miraculously improved for it left her lips with the most precise of diction, wrapped in an elegant and sexy English accent. 'Perhaps someone might like to explain exactly what is going on here?'

Fumi moved to face the other Diana. The contrast between the two could not have been greater: the blonde, tall, willowy and fair; the black, curvaceous, gleaming and mysteriously sensual. This was an aspect to the juxtaposition which Diana found amusing: here were two completely naked women, one with authority, the other subservient and both evidently at loggerheads. She giggled aloud. Her other self glanced sharply in her direction.

'Diana came to me,' Fumi defended herself. 'I did not go looking for her. I was outside early this morning, singing and bathing - perchance the only woman about at that early hour. I expect my song attracted her. But she came to me entirely of her own volition. Surely, that is no offence? We both grew friendly.'

'So I see! Which does not fully account for Diana's present condition, now does it?'

A quiver ran through Fumi's gorgeous body. She hung her head and her rat-tails spread across her shoulders. 'The fault lies with one of my daughters. I must ask that you forgive her. She is inordinately fond of the erotic hallucinogen and transferred some to Diana. Accidentally.'

'How accidentally?'

'In a kiss.'

'My! Real little party, was it not? How nice if I too should have received an invitation!'

'I would have sent for you immediately, Aurora, had any of us any idea where you were.'

The blonde tossed her hair haughtily. 'Diana was to be mine!'

'We have done so little. That I vow. You must understand that the general belief here is that you were lost to us. You left without a word - there is no precedent for such an act on the part of a Leader. Diana's awakening took place just as you foretold, except of course that the mechanism was different because of your absence. Surely you cannot blame me?' She held out her hands like an unsure child seeking the reassurance of its parent.

Diana's other self gave a sharp cry of pique, shook herself bodily and then - to Diana's surprise because she had believed her above so primitive an act - stamped a foot in temper. Point made, Fumi petrified, the blonde seemed to mellow in an instant. She took Fumi's hands and held them.

'You are quite right, of course. You must understand my frustration. I have waited so many years,' Then she grasped the glistening black arse and squeezed. 'I forgive you. Readily so. But those daughters of yours!' Her other self, the one called Aurora, rolled her eyes in mock frustration. 'The sooner you get them paired off, my dear Fumi, the better, I think.'

The blonde gave her one stinging slap to the rump then left her. She was coming this way. As she drew closer Diana saw that it wasn't her other self after all; the woman was different, though the similarity was remarkable. But better looking, it had to be admitted. Though Fumi had proved quite irresistible there was a sensuality about this woman, even in her present somewhat battered state, which was electric. Her forehead was high and her features finely chiselled, her figure an idealisation of what the womanly form should be. The breasts were full and upright, the waist slim, the hips well-rounded. But the eyes! Oh, my god, the eyes! They were the palest, purest, most iridescent blue. Bluer than an Alaskan sky on a clear midwinter's day. Cooler and a sharper crystal. The pupils were black holes that bored through the perfection.

The woman hovered close by her bed, then bent low. 'The gods! It really is true. You live.' A hand stroked her cheek and felt as though it belonged there; an extension, somehow, of the hand of Carol Myers. Diana instinctively nuzzled it. 'Yes, my sweet. Live and breathe and love me.'

Diana opened her legs obediently, expectantly, but the blonde - Aurora - swung them shut again. She scooped her up in fine strong arms and hugged her tight. Diana was instantly assailed by fair, silky hair and sweet-smelling skin; body warmth and woman-muscle, simultaneously both feminine and commanding.

'My darling, I love you,' Aurora whispered.

So could this be Carol after all? Not hacked to pieces but spared by a kindly god and returned to her intact? A new, improved, re-worked Carol Myers? Though this woman was a complete stranger there was an aspect of familiarity which was indisputable but Diana decided that Carol she could not be. Carol could never been so feminine, nor so gentle. Carol had never spoken so well nor conducted herself with such poise: Carol had gained weight and turned into a butch les who'd dabbled in prostitution, done time and gone badly wrong. Hers had been a lonely life ending in a squalid death from which no-one would wish to return even if God allowed it so.

'You are coming with me,' she insisted. 'Coming home. 'I have waited so very long, my love. So long.' The lips were thinner than Fumi's as they formed themselves into a kiss but equally warm. She knew their flavour. She licked her own. The taste was familiar. Diana tried to say something but the words just weren't there. She felt exceptionally light-headed as though she'd been at that vodka again from all those years ago. She wanted to giggle but found she couldn't be bothered.

'Home with me right now.'

Next thing they were outside.

Fumi was gone, the dark little herb-smelling home gone, the ghost of Carol Myers gone.

She was walking through luxuriant meadow, held upright by the tall blonde, a guiding arm firm about her waist. The grass was warm beneath her feet and the morning sun vital on her skin. The light seemed very bright. She shielded her eyes. Instantly, Aurora's hand left her hip and joined her own, widening the shade.

'Poor thing. And on your first conscious day. Dear me.'

The woman steered her around the brilliant sweep of the great dome and out into the very heart of the village.

From a distance, Masha looked on. She was still wreathed in the four garlands of red and white flowers which grateful women had placed upon her, albeit now fading, though she'd discarded everything else. Since her return from the Forest of she'd incorporated a variety of iconic accessories into her usual wardrobe: ornate daggers on belly-hugging pig-skin belts, burnished chest armour, studded collars or fine mail. The practice, however, she had soon come to view as an affection of vanity and had ended it with a burgeoning sense of shame. Such histrionics weren't necessary, for women had mobbed her wherever she went, insisting that she tell and retell the tale of her championship of the Leader. Their requests exciting her first, she'd responded to them with alacrity, but by now the thrill was beginning to pall. Same story, no embellishments, though she was sometimes tempted to add a little. The story was to be written into the Ancient Codex, Aurora had already decreed it so, there to remain forever in the tenets of Lesbian history: a deed of extreme heroism that future generations might extol. There was, therefore, no further need to play-act. Masha had been exceedingly brave, a fact admitted by all. No-one would question her valour or the extent of her worth to Lesbian society. But it was done, a thing of the past already. And it was time to move on.

Except for her private memories.

That day she'd drilled the frightened women on mercilessly, leading with a whoop and a war-like cry and a wave of her heavy claymore as the band's horses galloped from the edge of the forest and out into the flooded clearing that opened up onto the chilling vista that was the ruined village by the bay. There she picked out the figure dotted against the skyline almost immediately, little more than a moving speck against the vast expanse of sea and sky. She hauled on the reins and spurred Peg into a gallop, forcing the rest of the women to raggedly follow suit, screaming out their fear. Masha recalled how snakes had slithered and gaitors snapped as they steered the ponies up on to that wide stone track at the extremity of which Aurora teetered, close to collapse.

To her dying day, Masha would believe that they got there - and out again - just in time. A great bank of inky black cloud swept down towards the sea and thunder boomed massively in the distance. The air shook. The first globules of rain burst against their skins, not as humble rain drops but more like bloated sacks of water that opened up copiously against their cooling flesh. Roughly she'd forced Hazel from the saddle and just as roughly bundled her across to another woman - a woman reluctant to take her, who'd briefly mouthed back - while a moment later, Aurora collapsed weeping into her arms, exhausted and beside herself with relief. Masha had swept her up even before the faint took hold.

Another moment later the rain came and it came like the thunder that propelled it, a rumble of sound quaking in from the erupting sea. Masha had never thought it possible that a full grown and physically capable woman might drown in the open air, but she'd given the notion credence sure enough right then as water hammered against her, instantly flattening down the straggly hair of the girls of her platoon; forcing its way chokingly into their mouths and nostrils, the frightened ponies repeatedly snorting and tossing their heads, trying to break free. Water beat and pounded and streamed down them. Masha screamed out an order but doubted it even got heard above the boom and hiss of the downpour.

Nevertheless the girls followed on, staying close. They reached the end of what Masha realised was a badly cracked seawall with probably not much longer to go, and took up a difficult, rock-strewn path that led back to a seaward tongue of forest: an appendix that spat ever-narrowing toward a barren, sea-battered headland. High rocks brooded beyond. No way out there. Aurora struggled against her in the saddle, semi delirious. She tossed her head from side to side, muttering words of protest. Masha silenced her with a kiss and a squeeze and tugged the reins landward, leading the platoon back to the gloomy shelter of the trees.

That was the one and only point when she fervently believed they weren't going to make it. The boom and roar of the storm suddenly escalated in intensity to a level that was deafening and there a came a vibration through the ground, felt even through the galloping ponies, that could only mean an earthquake was on its way. Masha searched frantically around for the great clefts that would open in the earth - tunnels to hell set to bar their way and swallow them down. She was waiting for the ground to vanish under her when the rumble was replaced by a surge of water that appeared from nowhere, the first seawall breach, and water cascaded under her pony; fast, swirling currents straight off the sea. She spurred Peg again. Checked anxiously over her shoulder. The others riders were lagging behind, strung out instead of grouped. Masha waved wildly, gesturing to the trees. Yelled until her lungs felt set to burst.

Slow as a watched pot the ground began to rise and then she was into the trees and had located a track, one that wound upwards, still riding hard. She got to a rise and halted, turning Peg around in a tight circle. The riders followed her, one after another, the spaces between their arrivals terrifyingly irregular. All made it. Every woman breathless and dishevelled, saturated, their mounts steaming under the pouring rain that found its way through. But every one of them accounted for, every one of them, thank the gods, alive.

At the base of the track the water continued to rise, advancing towards them sedulously. They'd gained maybe twenty feet in height, no more, and it wasn't enough. Masha knew they must ride where the trees were at their densest, buying time against the coming flood until they attained true high ground and the sanctuary of thick forest. She signalled them on again. Her heart beat frantically in her chest. The now unconscious Aurora slid precariously in the wet saddle.

Just days back but it all seemed so long ago.

Hard to imagine Aurora, despite her dressings, as the near-lifeless thing that she clung onto: hard to believe in the existence of the terrific storm and the accompanying deluge that had wrested land from land and turned it back to sea. Masha watched as the couple strolled naked in the pampering sun, on soft grass and under sky-lark's subtle songs, to take up a life of conversations, gentle manners and intricate social protocols. She wondered if her own purpose in life were done. Yet those brief hours of brave combat against the elements made it all seem worthwhile

Later, hours later, when they had rested and tended to Aurora - and to each other as best they could - the Forest of Lights came again, its second appearance far worse than the first. This time Masha balked at the recollection for there were things in there which would rip her sanity to shreds were she to allow herself to remember. Best if her mind didn't rove that way at all. Suffice it that she had never quite felt the same since. Her health was, she suspected, not so robust as before.

The main culprit was her cough. It came for her at night, often waking her three or fours times before dawn. Some nights it didn't come at all, but most nights it did. With the coughing she frequently spat out a strange yellow bile - the form and shape of illness - that she hastily disposed of in the embers of her blacksmith's fire. Most nights the coughing was accompanied by splitting headaches and she found herself shivering with a cold that wasn't even there. Even on warm nights. Summer nights. Accomplices of the cough were aches in her joints and an irresistible tiredness that came for her most afternoons. The faintest crows feet were also appearing around her eyes.

In the life of a Janite only two things were ever feared: illness and ageing. The Forest of Lights had probed her and elicited these things, thus arming itself with the tools of her destruction.

She continued to watch as the two blondes descended the bright grassy slope and pondered that they were indeed a perfectly blended couple, the very twins foretold by the codex. Destiny was restored to its proper course and she, Masha, the instrument of restitution.

Masha grunted and ran a hand over her hair. It was cropped short now. Down close to bristle. The style made her look even more warrior-like. She'd been forced to cut it right back that way because of the fire; that strange, hideous, green flame which had licked at her that question-answering night. The deed done, she concluded that the style suited her, however arrived at, and that she'd keep it this way. Whatever. Did style really matter so much anymore? Wasn't style for women who had statements to make?

Masha began to walk, staying perhaps a hundred yards behind the two blondes. Indeed, they were beautiful. Quite literally made for each other. The two pale rumps bumped and ground as they crossed the meadow, bumped time and time again. Sensually.

Just stay back, Masha. Your place is in the pages of history, dear girl.

17

One glance inside allowed Diana to take everything in at once and to conclude that this was no place for either privacy or self-indulgence. Aurora's home was lighter and altogether more spacious than either Ursula's or Fumi's, but equally open in design. It was white painted and clean, all but for the charmingly soot-blackened fire place, and whereas Fumi's home sported a bare earth floor, Aurora's was carpeted in a deep-piled greyish material that felt very much like straw to toes that met it bare. There was a table and three chairs; utilitarian, made from a very light pine with no particular finesse. A pine cupboard stood against one wall, curved to follow the circular configuration, and the sole concession to any real comfort was an ancient leather sofa from which horsehair poked through a pattern of tears. The acme of interior design was a broad circular platform topped by a mattress, pillows and sheets. Aurora's regal bed. Now hers? Other than for these frugal things it was evident that Aurora was no collector of furniture and her home was no palace. It was Spartan. Functional. Perhaps comfortable in a modest sort of a way. There were no pictures and no ornaments, reinforcing Diana's forming view that these women set only limited store by things artistic.

Aurora ushered her in and closed the tight-fitting door after her, effectively sealing them both in; thus demonstrating how some degree of privacy was achieved in such places. Or, at best, shared privacy. The room was warm but not unpleasantly so. Cooler air blew in though it was impossible to tell from where.

'Together at last. Alone at last!'

Without ceremony she flattened Diana against the dead-smooth door, clamped her hands to both sides of her face and kissed her ravishingly. She worked her tongue in her mouth and to her ineffable surprise Diana allowed herself to do the same.

When the kiss was done, Aurora made a little sound of contentment then touched her shoulders and massaged soothingly. 'Better?'

'What happened to me back there?'

'Someone laced your drink. Or kiss, more accurately. Those girls got you stoned. I am not entirely certain that it was unintentional either. You may get a headache, and almost certainly a thirst, but they'll both wear off.'

'I hesitate to ask because you obviously know me so well and the last thing I want to do is cause offence...'

'Speak freely, dear.”

'Who are you and where the fuck am I?'

The fingers shifted position. The hands came to rest either side of her neck and Aurora began to toy with her hair. The directness of the question seemed to sicken her. Softly, 'My name is Aurora. I am the Leader of... this place.'

'Lesbos.'

'Fumi told you that?'

'Yes.'

'That is a beginning. How much else do you recall?'

'Before this morning nothing, although there are traces of things in there that might be dreams and again might not. Before that I remember as far as high school. Afterwards, nothing. Nothing at all. The years in between are a complete blank. Most of my life is gone.'

The beautiful blonde frowned. 'Memory should be returning now. You and I should be sitting down to some pretty serious talking - this is something else I do not fully understand. Evidently you were more ill than we supposed.' In the nick of time she stopped herself from adding. ‘if that is possible.’

'What happened? Why am I here? Where - and if necessary when - is here, and why are all of you women naked?'

'Questions most pointedly asked. There is no doubt that you are owed an explanation and that a few simple truths are a debt long overdue. I could woo you with hints of the truth and ease you into the wider picture gradually but it is not in my nature to dissemble to the one I love. So here it comes, like it or not.'

Still pinning her against the door, as if holding her captive there, Aurora rattled off an explanation - headlines only - omitting certain quadlibets, such as her supposed death, chance escape from autopsy and living immolation. When she finished, Diana turned even paler than before. She was a whole new definition of white.

Her lips were dry. 'I am glad you broke it to me gently.'

'I think you had better sit down.'

'You could be right.'

Aurora steered her to the horse-hair sofa and made her comfortable there. The old leather creaked. A spring groaned. As though Diana were a guest whose visits were commonplace, Aurora busied herself about domestic tasks, albeit minor ones. She took a cloth and began wiping around the window, though that was just a rouse to enable her to open it a fraction more. The pale girl needed air, but opening the door where she might readily be heard from the street beyond was out of the question. She poured sparkling water into two crystal goblets and cut up fruit and bread on simple, well-bleached wooden plates. Snack prepared she went and sat beside her partner, maintaining a respectful distance. Diana was engaged in staring at some vortex in the universe visible only to her, that seemed to be situated a foot above the floor. She was silent, didn't touch the offered food.

'I can almost hear the wheels turning,' Aurora prompted.

'I find it impossible to accept any of this. You must understand, I simply don't remember.'

'Recollection will return in time. Eat, Diana. You must eat something.'

She picked up a slice of orange and sucked. It was the sweetest, juiciest specimen she'd ever tasted in her life. She finished it and started on another.

Aurora smiled. 'Good?'

'Hmm....'

She sipped tentatively at the water then greedily quaffed it in one, still gulping at the empty glass.

'I shall get you some more.'

She snatched her glass as though grateful for the interruption and crossed to the table with its sparkling carafe. Diana sensed her new friend was feeling nervous and fidgety herself, longing to sit close to Diana yet unable to keep still for longer than two consecutive thoughts. Her hands were shaking. She gave Diana a fresh drink but did not return to her side. Instead she seated herself at the small table under the window. Not unlike, thought Diana, watching, the way Fumi had.

Aurora cleared her throat. 'I still have not told you everything. There are things you should know about you and I which make us both very special and yet which, because of your amnesia and the fact that you do not even know who I am, pains and embarrasses me to discuss. You are certain you recall nothing of me?'

'Not a thing. Except that you are somehow remotely familiar, though I don't know you from Eve.'

Aurora was dead-pan serious. 'Eve? Could she be a mutual acquaintance?'

'Forget it.'

'As you wish. It goes like this. You and I are sisters - not in that we were given birth by the same woman - but in that we are twin souls destined from the beginning of time to be as one. I am desperately in love with you and I hope that you will rediscover the love it is proper that you should hold for me. My own, for you, is the most profound which could ever exist between two women. It is made no less keen by the fact that I really haven't known you very long at all.' A furtive glance. 'Let me qualify. I haven't known you physically. Not to be with. Not to talk to. Though you have filled my dreams from the moment I was old enough to think.'

Aurora bit off a chunk of grainy black bread and chewed thoughtfully before swallowing. Diana watched her Adam’s Apple bob and thought it quite pretty.

'This place is Lesbos. Fine, that you already know. Doubtless you also get the gist of the way things are around here. What you certainly do cannot know is that we are the oldest, wisest and most successful of all the clans of women in the world and that our civilisation is thousands of years old. We are completely alone, separated from our nearest neighbours, the Janite women, by a distance of some three hundred miles. They rarely visit us, nor we they, though there was a time when we were firm friends. We are a completely self-contained community who live together according to the three great dictates of the Twelve Gods - to live in Peace, to live in Harmony, to live in Love. Home to us is a complicated system of meadows and downlands by the edge of a vast forest. We are watered by the river of Lesbos and fed by the fruits and crops which grow there and the animals that graze beyond them. Every generation of Lesbos is governed by a pair of women - twins, as most people would say - of which I am one. It has always been so.

'Lesbian history is recorded in the form of a very, very old tome called, 'The Ancient Codex.' Of all the great wisdom it conveys, its most important teaching is how little things have changed down the long years and how little they ever will. In fact there is only one disharmony alluded to and that, sadly, occurs within my reign. I was the only blonde woman - the signature of the holders of the sight that makes the Ancient Codex comprehensible - to be born alone. I thus came to life without my twin. Nevertheless the beat of Lesbian destiny is a strong one and the power of the force of Nature which governs our lives is not easily assuaged. The Ancient Codex tells us that this rent in the way of things will be stitched by one who shall come into our midst and that I shall finally have my partner. I know this cannot be any other than truth for the Ancient Codex is infallible. It is the basis of all our laws and morality and the text upon which we have lived our lives from the first days of women. Of my own reign it tells of a partner who comes from afar, from a place none of us know. Her coming will be foretold by a comet in the heavens that crashes to earth. That event has come to pass, and only very recently.'

Not taking her eyes off the point in space, Diana said, 'I know nothing of these things. They are a total mystery to me. The Ancient Codex... destiny... this place. Until today - until this morning - I had never heard of Lesbos.'

'But you will trust me?'

Diana sighed and lay her head back against the old leather. The sofa moaned. She turned her attention away from the vortex in space and considered instead the clear blue trapezium of sky through the partly open window. Nothing about this could be right. Some Utopia where women went naked under an eternal sun, a definitive code of morality unerringly accepted by all. Such things didn't add up. There were issues yet to test. 'So let me see if I have got this straight. The women live separately from the men, yes?'

Aurora said nothing.

'I mean I haven't seen any yet. No men.'

The faintest coloration entered the blonde's cheeks. 'There are tales. Stories. Things before the Ancient Codex came to be written. None of us set any store by primitive myth and legend.'

'Men are no legend and you know it. Even if just for the purpose of having babies...'

'A woman bears fruit naturally. Her belly rounds in the hosting of a child. It is an entirely natural process which blesses some women but not others, and is settled upon her at whatever age. Women are self-supporting and self-propagating. They have no dependence upon some other species.'

'You’re telling me that men don't exist here?'

Aurora popped a piece of crisp fruit into her mouth and munched audibly. 'I'm saying there never were such beings as men. Such beings are fantasy pure and simple, a myth created in times before the wisdom, when women learned to live in empathy with nature, to take the blame of adverse fortune. Men were an ignorant superstition forged by simpler women than ourselves. An invention. Let us move on to consider other matters.'

'Wait. I don't understand. You can' t possibly be suggesting...'

'Other matters, please, my dear Diana.'

And she knew it was pointless to argue further.”

'Let us consider the status of our women. We have no illnesses, or do only very rarely, when Nature is for whatever reason displeased with us. The principal divinity of the Twelve Goddesses goddess is Nature herself, our mother earth: we, as Leaders, are her manifestation in womanly form. She cares for us. Provides for all our needs. Her wisdom is the sum total of all the knowledge which is written down for us in the form of the Ancient Codex. My dear, dear darling, towards yourself the teachings are quite specific. They tell of great celestial disturbances emanating from a realm far distant from ours. They describe a bridge between two disparate existences created solely for the purpose of restoring the balance of Lesbian destiny. This chapter - significantly of twelve verses and my favourite - is as infallible and incontrovertible as every other. It cannot be wrong.'

Clear as mud, too. 'Then my role as you see it?'

'To stand at my side, to lead alongside me - to lie alongside me - to guide and watch over the women of this community. Our world.'

'And just suppose for the sake of argument that I didn't go along with that? What if I didn't accept it at all? What if I said that all you just told me is a heap of... how shall I put this?... shit?'

The women was clearly doing her best not to show her shock. She shook her head and smiled but for the first time the smile held a certain falsity. The silky blonde hair tumbled prettily. 'What must be shall be. It is foretold.'

Diana rose from the sofa and strode deliberately across to the naked woman. She stood with her hands on her hips and glared down, the apotheosis of defiance. It was a false, pathetic, world in which Diana would ever fit, not in a million years. Diana Fuller could just never cut it here and was about to make that plain.

'You've said your piece so now you can listen up while I say mine. Just cut out this fucking dyke bullshit and get me on a bus to the nearest goddam town! Thank you for your help but all you ever had to do was send for an ambulance anyway. I am not your queer sex-slave and I'm not staying in this weird shit-hole a moment longer. Get me some clothes then get out of my fucking life!'

Aurora blinked emptily.

18

Many lanterns burned bright, dispelling the darkness that had settled like a blanket over Lesbos' heart. There was no moon that night but the sky was lit with the billion lamps of the stars, some almost as large as the oil-burning lanterns the women held aloft, so truth to say it wasn't really dark at all. The suffused starlight gave a passable imitation of the best of harvest moonlight back home; home no longer; that place she had left behind forever.

In the exact centre of the village, on a broad, immaculate lawn adjacent to the sandy beach and the river's single meander, the lanterns bobbing on their poles were at their most thickly clustered. They cast a mellow, fulvous glow on the wooden throne set in the midst of the throng of women. Dotted in precious stones the throne threw back the lamplight as though emulating the jewelled sky above. Stars beneath her, Diana thought, stars above. She settled herself on the hard, perfectly smooth throne, sitting straight-backed and proud, nervously gripping arm-rests carved into the shape of cats' paws.

It was the night of her Investiture as joint Leader of Lesbos. Because it was late in summer, the night was a cool one. Lesbos would never actually get cold, apart from those brief weeks of the winter snows - that she knew from the twelve months which had already elapsed since her arrival here - but there was a goose-bump freshness that betokened the coming autumn. The memory of that earlier life had stuck, possibly forever, in the groove of her final high-school year, though the loss of the subsequent decade no longer concerned her. Lesbos had given her superior memories, ones which she would cherish for all eternity.

The year had seemed exceptionally long, undoubtedly, for it was one that measured eight years by the standard to which Diana was accustomed. Aurora had explained the mechanism of the octal cycle of the Lesbian year, aspects of which initially puzzled her and caused her some concern. Recently, for example, she'd commissioned Masha to make for her a mirror of immaculately burnished metal which she'd hung - again in a way reminiscent of the traditions of her earlier life - above the fireplace in her home, now hers and Aurora's home. In it she'd checked assiduously for those first furrows in her brow or insidious crow's feet round eyes so relentlessly thrashed by the sun. There were none. If anything the blemishes that she remembered from her first few weeks in Lesbos, which she presumed had been with her for some years, had vanished. It was as though instead of ageing, Diana had actually grown younger; but not merely a reversal of time, rather a retreat to an idealisation of the physically perfect Diana which had never existed in the first place. In that first year she'd taken to wearing her hair the same style as Aurora's, even acquired some measure of her tan, though not as enviably deep. And, in the way that couples do, had come to hold herself like Aurora, walk like her, talk like her; albeit without any attempt at mimicking that impeccable English accent. All she lacked were the three gold collars about her throat, the symbols of Leadership. Those she was about to acquire.

Someone plucked a stringed instrument and in the same moment a creature fluttered across the complex pattern of the stars in a whisper of wings, so soft as to be almost inaudible. A bat. Autumn was indeed on its way.

Around her throne, the circle of girls parted and Aurora passed through, moving gracefully in her direction. She was naked as ever but for the acquisition of a short ceremonial cape about her shoulders, purple by day, black as the wings of the startled bat by lamplight. She stepped up beside her on the low dais and bent over her. Something glinted in her hand.

'I place upon thee, my beloved Diana, the three sacred rings of governance, there to betoken for ever more the respect owing to thee in thy highest office and the adulation of all women. I claim thee, Diana, as my bride, my partner in the deity unto the end of time.'

Aurora kissed her sedately, once on each cheek, then set the first collar about her throat, clicking together the rough metal clasp behind her neck. Her breasts brushed Diana's shoulders in the simple act. Then came the second collar. The third. It was done. Aurora straightened and stepped aside, took Diana's hand in hers and bade her stand.

Diana arose not to cheers but silence, for the most meaningful part of the ceremony was yet to come. It chanced also to be the truest test of Diana's worth. Here she would pass through the trial unscathed to emerge literally a goddess, else would die. It was good night to die, the giant Masha had told her, but she had no wish to.

Ponderously, regally, she strode beside her beloved Aurora, holding hands again, this time at shoulder height. The circle of women parted a second time and rearranged itself into two parallel walls of naked scented bodies between which the ensuing passage was just wide enough for a pair of women to pass. The pyre of the eternal flame was as yet unlit. It was an amorphous shape, a shadow, that marred the way ahead. Even as they approached, two women, each bearing a flaming torch approached from either side and touched flame to kindling. There was an instant crackling of fire and an acrid tang of wood smoke. As Diana drew close, now mere feet away, she could feel its heat against her skin. Already the flames were reaching up the central stack and spreading; thickening, out to the full eight feet circle of the base of the pyre.

Another step.

There came a whoosh of air and a sudden reek of oil as inflammable liquid ignited, at the same generating a terrific, intimidating heat. Sweat broke out on Diana's brow, her belly, her breasts. The flames seemed to be licking very close. She almost imagined she could feel her skin beginning to singe.

'Be brave, my sweet,' exhorted Aurora.

Internally some critical mass in the process of combustion was reached and the fire gave a gigantic cough and surged upwards. Now it was a towering pillar of flame that stood before her, broad and solid, so bright as to seer the retinas; so hot that stray wisps of her hair were indeed already burning.

'Go forward. Do not hesitate. To hesitate is death.'

Aurora touched the small of Diana's back then backed away. At the same time the watching women withdrew as though on some unheard command. Diana closed her eyes and started to walk. The heat became intense, the light of the fire was still visible as an orange brightness that permeated through her closed eyelids. There was silence but for the crackle and roar of the pyre and the suck of the passages of air that fuelled it. Incineration lay just one short step away.

Diana took that step.

Then the light was gone. She was seized head to toe in an icy draught that made her shudder violently. There was a temptation to hug herself against that sudden winter in microcosm but she forced herself to resist: Aurora had warned that she must progress through the flames calmly, her arms by her side, no sudden movements.

Another step. A third. Now the cold was intense. Diana opened her eyes. The flames were gone, or more precisely, were not flames at all but a rather a moving, almost organic, cold green light, the internal mechanism of which resembled the heart of a fire. Vaguely, through the tunnel in the timbers and brushwood left for her to walk through, she saw the wavering forms of the waiting women, now reformed into a circle. They too were unmoving and silent. All but one. It was Aurora. She stood out from the rest, raising her arms very slowly in invitation.

Diana realised she had halted and began walking again, lent courage by her beckoning darling. The green light began to thin until a sprinkle of stars became visible above the waiting women. Then she was free, moving over open ground, the temperature rising once more.

Still beckoning, Aurora wriggled her fingers agitatedly in the time-honoured gesture, signalling that she must hurry. The heat returned and was intense again and she knew even without turning to look back that the fire had returned to its earlier blast-furnace conflagration. It clawed blisteringly at her back. She picked up speed a little and walked directly into the awaiting arms. They embraced her then rapidly bore her away, half dragging half carrying her... back, back, way back from the roaring inferno. When she was finally safe Diana collapsed trembling in Aurora's firm grip.

'Well done, my sweet angel. Truly now you are as I. The Flame of Leadership burned cold as only it may for a true Leader of Lesbos.'

Aurora's arms were still around her, scooping down over her. They alighted on the twin bulges of her buttocks just as Diana fingered the collars about her neck. They were cool to the touch. From curiosity she swivelled them about, searching for hotspots. There were none. She noticed also that the rough metal catches, all three, and the diametrically opposed hinges were absent. The collars were uniformly smooth as though they had been put there in a single hoop and her head screwed back on afterwards. More than that she sensed other changes. Massive ones. Fundamental changes in herself.

When she looked up into the sky again, this time the patterns indeed made perfect sense. Each sun and each orbiting planet held its special ordained place, a fragment of a much larger cosmic mechanism fraught with deep meanings and special, esoteric significances. Move just one and everything changed, everything in the world... she had long since stopped saying earth... in relation to everything else. Aurora had changed, too. She had become an integral part of Diana herself, no longer just a friend and lover. For the women of Lesbos Diana instantly knew a far greater destiny, impossible for her to form into words, yet whole and complete in concept. There was a path for the evolution of the species of woman beyond each, however valuable, individual component.

Close to tears Aurora kissed her once rollingly on the lips and stroked her hair. In the flickering glow of the fire her smile was a contented one. She held Diana's hand aloft like the gloved paw of a prize-fighter and turned her around, the better to receive the adulation of the assembled thong.

'Hail Diana!' Aurora called in a voice that carried into to the very forest itself. 'Love be to Diana, Leader of Lesbos!'

Diana raised both hands to the crowd in triumph. A goddess. 'Celebrate me, celebrate us!'

And celebrate the Lesbians did. The celebrations continued throughout the night, women not even beginning the drift back to their homes until sun-up. The Fire of Leadership had subsided to just any old bonfire, though it still roared fiercely as girls sang and danced around it. There was music. Drink flowed like spring rain: wines she'd never tasted the like of before, muddy and cloudy-looking, yet so sweet, so pure to the taste, so strong. She'd got a little tipsy herself and spent most of the later hours of the night close by Aurora's side; fondling and kissing her openly, talking in mutually seductive whispers about the years to come. More adventurous couples made love in the open air, often before small but fiercely enthusiastic audiences, who'd goaded them noisily on. She and Aurora had made themselves comfortable by the darkly gurgling river and watched the displays of love, the cries and moans of passion a background music to conversation that sometimes planned, sometimes wandered. They must give birth. That was likewise written. They linked arms and toasted the pledge in sipped wine as both Leaders solemnly accepted this further responsibility upon their mutual destiny.

They talked until the sun was well above the horizon and the ashes of the bonfire had grown cold. Diana and Aurora were the only two women not yet sleeping and it seemed that they had no intention of doing so. Diana was reborn that morning. She knew in every cell of her body that it was so.

Something else was equally certain. Masha was ageing. She was sure of the fact. Now, some mornings, especially when the dew on the grass was heavy or rain fell, her bones creaked as she rose from her solitary bed and the ache in her back often nagged until midday. Still she laboured at her anvil and still she worked the glowing irons expertly in those long tongs, the thick leather gauntlets protecting her hands from the searing heat. The only real practical difference was that now, every afternoon, she took a break and went sat by the river and contemplated the ripples or on a still day, when the current was down, gazing at her own reflection. The biceps were no longer quite so large; her thighs remained bulbous but strings and sinews were jutting from their backs. She could see them now, reflected in the still waters. Her perfect black hair now lacked lustre. The lines which had appeared on her brow worried her the most, for they were a certain sign that Masha was aging faster than any other woman she knew. Not that this came as any surprise either. She'd always known it would be this way, yet somewhere at the back of her mind there was always the hope that her mentors might have got things wrong; that, in the company of the Lesbians, away from the Janites, as her war-like tendencies diminished so might her proclivity to age at a faster rate than the rest.

But it wasn’t working out that way.

Masha got up and made her way back to work. She was still stronger than any other. That advantage remained hers. But for how long? As everyone she knew stayed fixed in the prime of youthful life and Masha began to grow that crop of wrinkles, her breasts sag, her hair thin and more of it turn into the wisps of old age, how long could she hope to maintain her physical superiority?

This evening she shut herself in, shutters unopened, and slumped into her favourite chair. The work that was to be done would have to wait. Masha needed to think. What of her future? How would the society of Lesbos cope with a phenomenon so far beyond its experience - that of a woman who had declined in their midst to become elderly and infirm? Eventually senile? Masha fell into a doze as she contemplated these things.

Then the winters came, the short icy blasts, the heavy snowfalls and sub-zero temperatures. Then another winter.

It had started as a mild cough two octal years ago which, though irritating, in no way seemed to threaten. Each winter had made her cough worse until, by that second snowfall, the hacking at her lungs was so severe as to double her up in pain and turn her brow cold and waxy. During the worst moments of coughing, when it was beyond her control and the great blackness opened up, consciousness sometimes slipped briefly from her. Ursula called it bronchitis. She said there was no cure but that the return of sunshine would lessen the discomfort. She would give her potions to ameliorate any pain and something to help her sleep when the paroxysms came at night. Ursula could make life more comfortable but the one thing that lay beyond her skills was the ability to change that thing inside her that made her physiologically different to her sisters. She had no way to arrest the process of growing old nor repel the ailments that came with it.

This, though unavoidable, depressed Masha. She yearned for those summers a few years back when she'd flitted with great skill and agility through the forests, bow in her hand, quiver on her back. She'd hunt again when summer returned, though with decreasing success: her eyes weren't up to it anymore, and the latency of reaction between the sighting of quarry and release of arrow had grown too long.

The fire in the hearth burned low so that a distinct chill entered the unusually large confines of her home: the size of the place meant that it got colder faster. Diana had left just minutes before. She'd trudged through the snows naked to be with her, huddling besides Masha's failing fire. Diana had tipped on extra coals but Masha hadn't bothered to stir them around.

'You must take your potions,' the Leader admonished, albeit sweetly. 'They really will help, Ursula assures me. And her abilities are nothing short of legendary, my dear. This is the woman who brought me back from the dead, remember? Literally. Now take some. I quite insist.'

Masha gulped down the gritty, yellow liquid. It tasted bitter. She swallowed the glass down to please Diana but was resolved not to take any more that day. It didn't really help. The only thing that did was sleep - when the coughing would allow it to settle on her. Nor did Diana's transformation, for she'd not visited her with any malicious intent, quite the reverse, exactly help Masha's state of mind. Without doubt, Diana appeared younger then when she had first arrived in Lesbos and had developed into a thing not of mere beauty but of an indescribable gorgeousness fit to rival even Aurora herself.

'Why so sad? You know that the bronchitis is always at its worst in winter. It'll lessen. So will the melancholia.'

'You know why.'

'Indeed I may guess, but it would be better if you told me. Perhaps I can help? Sometimes just the act of telling can ease pain.'

Masha broke down, sobbing on Diana's cold, bare shoulder. She told her, all right. Told her everything: the way she wore her sense of helplessness, the shame of her growing vulnerability in a woman born for warriordom. Diana insisted that she return home with her to stay awhile with she and Aurora but Masha refused. She felt more comfortable in her own home, she lied, with her own things. Then Diana knelt before that sentinel wooden chair of hers, took both her hands and squeezed.

'Vulnerability is something you and I share,' Diana confided. 'I can sympathise more than most. Many years of my life are missing. Sometimes half-memories swim to the surface like bubbles in a stagnant pond, but they are warped and twisted. Memories I cannot trust. I would love to know more of my life before I came here. And how I came here.'

Which immediately put Masha in a dilemma, for she knew a way. 'You have the wisdom of a Leader,' she explored. 'The Ancient Codex speaks to you.'

'Yes, but in parts meanly. There is nothing there about my early life, only that I came from a place far distant. It hints at something beyond our understanding and yet for me, if my memory were complete, I would know that mysterious place well. You and I have a very great deal in common, Masha. We were once both outsiders.'

Masha nodded. If indeed her years were to be prematurely numbered despite the Healer's reassurances, and if indeed Diana were resolved to reconcile herself to her past, then the opportune moment was now. Or soon after now, when the winter passed and her cough abated.

'Then there is something I feel I must tell you,' Masha said.

19

Diana slept not a wink that night. She made love with Aurora as a huge fire roared in the hearth and dried flowers and crushed herbs in wicker baskets filled the warm room with scents reminiscent of summer. The wick of the single oil-lamp was shagged down low and gave off a tawny, subdued light that barely contested the fiercely flickering flares and shadows of the firelight. The window was partly open for it wasn't quite dark yet and Diana lay staring out through the six-inch crack, watching the dense phalanxes of broad, potato-chip snowflakes parachute leisurely to earth. Aurora's hand was clamped over her right breast, Aurora herself drifting in and out of sleep. She flattened her hand over her partner's and pressed down, making the grip a possessive one. There was something unconsciously symbolic in the act.

Masha had intrigued her. In turn Diana had come to understand a great deal more about Masha. Aurora's elevation of Masha to the rank of Constable initially caused her some concern, for the dark giant was of Janite stock and as she saw things, a threat of conflict, if any were to come, would most probably originate with the Janite clan itself. She was unsure whether Masha's fidelity might stand the ultimate test - that blood might yet prove thicker than water - so she had embarked on a study. She'd quizzed a great number of women, especially those who knew Masha well and most especially Ursula. Her findings were that Masha was trusted absolutely, unwavering in her devotion and had freely undergone the most arduous of all trials purely in the name of Lesbos. Diana had thus poured long over the Ancient Codex, too; reading, searching and making interpretations way into the night. There had been no ill portents.

An illicit excitement coursed through Diana as she confirmed these things.

At the very end of her study Ursula confided that Masha's bronchitis was in reality much more severe than she would ever reveal to her. That Masha was dying. It wouldn't happen this winter, nor the next, but her time in the world was limited and from here on her degeneration would like as not be swift. In fact, Ursula had given her one more productive summer. The latter bombshell she'd dropped only that day.

She was still pondering on these things, that Constable was a mere sinecure anyway, when darkness finally settled and the night beyond the window became an impenetrable swathe of nothingness. Only a couple of stray snowflakes drifting in as though attracted to the fire, like moths to a candle, and melting to extinction in moments - prophetically like the life of Masha - gave any indication that anything was out there at all.

And how would Masha be sleeping, Diana wondered? Cold and shivering beneath a single blanket, for her pride refused her more, the fire stuttering and faltering, frost icing the hemispherical ceiling of her home now that her furnace was, in accordance with custom, quenched for the brief winter. Masha sweating despite the cold. Shivering. Would that wracking cough bring up still more dark bile from her failing lungs?

Diana tossed in bed and threw herself first on one side then the other, relinquishing her hold on her lover’s breast only to greedily snatch it back again, for it brought comfort. In her head morality clashed with practicality and in some cobwebbed corner of her mind a potential trade-off began to take on a shape that seemed more or less acceptable. Masha knew a way to restore Diana's memory. The plan was to be implemented as soon as the sun returned, so long as her health held up. She would need a couple of months to recuperate' of course, and build up her strength for the path to the restoration literally led deep into the little known regions of the forest and to a place she'd hinted at that lay beyond. There too dwelt a possible cure for the ageing blacksmith’s terminal malady - provided, because of her great powers - a Leader of Lesbos agreed to assist.

So now, as Aurora's fingers re-visited Diana’s own breast in the instincts of sleep, the plan solidified and caused her pain for its realisation meant that she must conceal her true attentions from her beloved Aurora. Her darling, darling Aurora. She leant over and kissed her forehead in the dark but determined all the same that when first light came she'd slip from between the sheets and visit Masha again.

Thus she lay awake watching as the long winter night slowly turned to icy dawn.

Lying to Aurora was something she disliked intensely, but she made a good start all the same. She kissed her and ruffled her hair.

'I shall not be gone long. A few days. Perhaps a week.'

'I shall feel so alone. We have not spent a day apart in two years.'

Sixteen as others than the lesbians counted.

'I shall miss you so very much.'

'And I you, my darling Aurora. But you must understand, I have studied so much of Lesbos and yet know little beyond the confines of our village. I must explore.'

“I understand, but be careful. You shall not be out of my thoughts for a single moment.'

'Nor you mine.'

Sixteen years by that other way of reckoning, the way she remembered from her teenage years. Ephemeral by Lesbian standards, a quarter of a lifetime by the other. A journey to the grave's edge for Masha. That was how the Lesbians came to be so wise beneath that superficial frivolity and silliness; their society so stable. The number of years without physical deterioration inevitably brought wisdom.

She swung herself up, gave Aurora a last wave, then tugged at the reins, clicked her tongue and kicked the pony into a trot with a flick of a heal. She was riding bareback. She preferred it that way. In her time in Lesbos, Diana had become an accomplished rider, though she had never travelled particularly far. That part of it was no lie but her heart was heavy with the pain of deceit as she turned into the shallows of the river and kicked up a spray that scintillated in the bright sun. She was riding without arms or provisions; for her mind was set on exploring the inner reaches of the forest where she could live easily off the land and take shelter beneath the balmy boughs of Lesbian trees. That was another lie, too.

She made her rendezvous with Masha around an hour after sunset By then the moon was a huge yellow dinner plate rising beautifully above the dark line of the trees. Masha was waiting. She was mounted atop her powerful mare, at the same time holding the reins of another two; one for Diana, one to be riderless, laden with provisions and weapons rolled into innocent looking packs. They would take her own pony as far as a clearing Masha knew where it could graze and water by a running stream until collected on the way back. Masha didn't utter a word until Diana rode up close. Even then only in a whisper.

'I wondered whether you might come at all.'

'I have thought of little else since you first put the proposition. I was unsure I had found the right place.'

'Aurora?'

'As we agreed. She believes I have gone exploring. You must never tell her about my lie.'

'I would rather die.'

And Diana knew that Masha meant it.

She dismounted and tied the reins to the saddle of the awaiting mare; she’d no intention of riding so far out bare-back. She clambered up and onto fine, hard leather that was cool to the skin and cool to the cunt. The mare tossed her head. She snorted and pawed the ground with one hoof, impatient to be off.

'Do you think this will work?' Diana asked.”

'I’m quite certain. Trust me.'

Masha led. Soon they were under the trees. It was already dark and the moon quickly ceased to be visible. Masha said they would ride without lamps the first few miles, just to be safe, but Diana was having trouble making out where she was, or for that matter where the path led. She gauged her passage only by the hoof-sounds, keeping very quiet to measure how they came: muffled meant that she was off-track and riding out into the undergrowth, sharp and clear meant that she still followed Masha's lead. She couldn't see the phenomenon just then but had been able to under the moonlight; the saddening extent to which Masha stooped, her broad shoulders rounded and her hitherto ram-rod straight spine settled into a slouch. Some of the once proud musculature had given way to softer tissue - fat - and Masha's waist was visibly thickening, her belly distending. The chocolate skin had acquired paler patches and there were circles of pathological yellow about her eyes. The backs of her hands were peppered in darker brown liver spots. The killer cough itself had gone into remission and was barely even affecting her now - the warm, dry months of summer had seen to that - but both knew it would return as summer gave way to the damper conditions of autumn.

Diana smiled to herself in the darkness for she was certain now that she’d finally found a way to repay her debt. She had thought long and hard and concluded that, especially in view of the favour Masha was to bestow upon her, the saving of Masha's life merited this one act of pure blasphemy a million times over.

In Lesbos that same moon faced no such occlusion. It travelled aloft like a gigantic bauble propelled by a will of its own took up a centre stage position above the proscenium of the shimmering lake. It shimmered because of the fire-flies and June bugs and sting-less mosquitoes that scurried above its surface in search of motes, at the same time confused by that other cosmos that lay beneath the water.

This, thought Aurora, trying hard not to weep, was where it had all begun. Because of the place if not the occasion - for she had no comprehension of the occasion - Aurora's melancholia pressed down heavily. That she would miss Diana was inevitable, so maybe that crushing sadness wasn’t really so difficult to explain after all. But deep within she sensed another, as yet undiscovered, dimension.

Ursula sat on the same grassy knoll very close by. Her petite fingers, toyed with the shaven flux of Aurora's pudenda; tracing and teasing, sometimes prizing a way in. But Aurora stayed dry. Ursula let go of her then pressed herself up close. The cool summer grass was good beneath their skins.

'Come, Aurora. It is only for a few days.'

'So Diana said, yet something is bothering me.'

'She is a highly competent woman. She will be quite safe.'

'I fear I do not entirely share your conviction, Ursula dear, though I wish I did. Have not you noticed something odd about Diana these past few weeks? She is listless and broody. Not at all like herself.'

'Of course. Such temporary traits we must accept with equanimity. In her present condition there is often a tendency to brood and frequently a strong compulsion to wander off alone. It is part of the syndrome.”

“Condition? I fear you have the advantage of me. My darling Diana is unwell?”

“Not at all. I have examined her several times and there is no doubt. The Leader is pregnant.”

Aurora swung round. She was so close her nose brushed Ursula’s and the Leader’s breath was sweet in the Healer’s face. The long hair rose and fell and flared and caught the moonlight. 'You surely cannot mean...?'

'It had to happen sometime. Soon, I would think now that Lesbian destiny is again on course after the terrible rift. Nature heals Herself as she heals us and what better tonic than the birth of a new princess?”

'I simply never thought... I mean I really did not give the matter any consideration. Nature will of course prevail but it had always been my assumption that I would be first to conceive.'

'Conceive you shall. You both must conceive,' Ursula corrected. 'That is Her way. Whoever takes first turn is of no importance. Giving birth is not a contest.'

'How long have you known?'`

'I last examined Diana three days ago. She came to quiz me again about Masha. The moment she came into my surgery I saw that something was different about her. Women have a special look in the early stages of pregnancy: their eyes have a contented, far-sighted quality. They seem to glow. Though my examination proved positive I did not convey my diagnosis. I am unsure whether Diana is as yet able to handle the fact of spontaneous conception even though her physiology is obviously now fully adapted. I thought it best to leave the telling to you.'

'Her trip. Does it pose any danger?'

'No. A few days alone in the forest will be of considerable benefit. It will afford her body an opportunity to adapt to its new state. Her pregnancy is in its earliest stages and at this point a Lesbian foetus is at its most robust. Later she will need care. Truly so.'

Aurora considered the stars that glistened on and within the water. 'I believed I had said or done something to upset Diana. She seemed much preoccupied of late. Even short-tempered. Could you be mistaken?'

The healer hook her head vehemently. Her short hair had turned greasy and moved stiffly. Aurora didn't mind. Ursula had had a busy time in recent days and therefore little of it to devote to herself. 'Eight pregnant women all in one week? No, there is no mistake. The time of renewal is without doubt upon us and I shouldn't be at all surprised if in the next few weeks you yourself do not...'

'Well I never.'

'Besides. I did make sure. I told Diana I needed to test her for viruses before she went into the forest. I asked her for a urine sample and conducted a pregnancy test from it. There is no question. Sometime in autumn Leader Diana will give birth.'

'There will be celebrations such as Lesbos has never seen! You said Diana came to ask about Masha?'

'She was very concerned. She wanted to know every detail of Masha's illness. Every woman I have seen this week told me that Diana has been asking about her.'

'Indeed. She professed concern at the possibility of Janite infiltration. Diana is being very cautious though I do not share her concerns.'

'More to the point she was close to distraught when I made clear to her the seriousness of Masha's diss-ease. She almost demanded I produce some miracle cure.'

Aurora touched her gently on one elbow. 'Can anything be done?'

Ursula paused before answering and when she did her words were preceded by the deepest of sighs. Her head seemed to shake by itself in the moonlight. 'If only such were possible. It is in my power to make the woman more comfortable but only to a degree and only if I have her full co-operation - which I do not. Masha will not submit to palliative treatment. In the final analysis, the physiology of Janite women is fundamentally different to ours and the most salient difference is that their lifespans are far shorter. It is not so much the chronic bronchitis per se which is fatal but rather the process of ageing which causes it to be so. Masha is already an old women by her own physiological standards. It is inevitable that she will die within the next few months.'

Aurora saw Ursula brush a tear from her cheek. She took her in her arms, thinking that she somehow seemed different too. Wasn't she more mellow than usual? Didn't those compact breasts seem a little fuller?

'You must not reproach yourself. You have done everything possible. We all knew when we took Masha into our midst as a young girl that this day would eventually arrive. We must deal with it as best we can. Masha is still among us so let us not begin composing her eulogy. Besides, I am worried about you. Never before have I seen you so...' She knew before she started that it wouldn't be easy to put the feeling into words. '...so... tired.'

Ursula lolled onto Aurora's shoulder and bit her there gently. 'Oh, Aurora, I I simply no not know how I shall cope!'

'Why, my dear? What is the matter?'

'I am pregnant, too!'

20

Even after riding for two days and two nights still they hadn't got close. They rode by the edge of the scrolling surf, making good time when the tide rolled out, able to go at speed over a vast beach hardened by water. At such times they galloped under the hot sun, the ponies lathered and foaming, riding towards some new bend in the coastline curve of the forest; rounding it to find - more forest. When the tide came back they were forced onto a coastal track. Forced own to pack-horse speed, or even pushed into the edges of the trees where the thin track disappeared completely.

The incoming tide also brought cold and damp. Sometimes rain that was sticky with salt. As the light failed on that second day Diana and Masha dismounted in the sanctuary of a thin clearing and Masha broke open a Hessian pack as if with great purpose. She was sallow-looking. Her chest wheezed as she spoke. The period of reemission, cut dramatically short by the deteriorating climate, was at an end. She proffered a piece of rolled-up cloth.

'Here, put this on.'

Diana took the cloth and discovered that it wasn't cloth at all, but a material more like ultra-strong paper rolled into a ball. It unfurled into a full length cape which she settled gratefully over her nakedness. Masha's own proved short and laughably tight but it kept her warm nonetheless. And dry.

'These have been in my possession for some years,' Masha admitted. 'This is the first time I have ever warn one. Do you condemn me for my blasphemy?'

'There is no blasphemy. This is no place for women to go naked.'

Especially not dying women, Diana thought.

So they wore those capes all through the night, sloughing them only when the sun burned away the morning mist and they were galloping along the broad sands again, trying to make up the lost hours of sleep; glad to be riding as Nature decreed once more. Diana insisted on keeping to Masha’s rear so the black woman couldn’t see the way her face often twisted in anguish and her lips moved in something like a silent prayer.

Despite her exhaustion she’d slept badly the whole night, often awoken by nightmares of the worst kind; those evoked by the fright of an unexpected and very real discovery. Still weak from broken sleep, she breakfasted with her guide on cheese and sausage, noting that Masha ate far less than usual. When the plain but plain welcome repast was done they broke camp, swiftly saddled and rode out.

Staying behind Masha made the cause of her anguish plain to see; to her if no-one else.

The Lesbians had no written form for the perfect English they spoke; even the Ancient Codex was written up in a complex system of hieroglyphs which, despite Aurora's expert tutelage, had taken Diana better than a year to master. Masha therefore simply could not read the simple legend emblazoned on the backs of the capes; so bold and sassy that it hit Diana right in the eye and sent her senses reeling. The material too had puzzled her since it was something she'd never come across before. Light and foil-thin, practically indestructible; something that felt like it might be based around a polymer compound yet gave the protection of metal. Way beyond this society’s technology. That fact she might ponder safely over with no threat to her sanity but there was simply no doubting what was printed on the back of her cape when Masha turned round, prompting Diana to slip hers off again to check. And double check.

The fluorescent yellow letters on a black background clearly spelled out words in plain twenty-first century English. San Francisco Fire Department.

Masha dismounted on the beach. It was the afternoon of the third day. The sun was thirty degrees above the horizon, a bright ball of yellow in the unblemished blue sky that made the sea topaz and turned the wet sand into a dazzling strip. The day was warm. The light breeze which had accompanied them so far had abated and the smell of the forest to the east was fetid and unpleasant. Diana felt far too hot under the ultra-violet enriched sun but Masha complained of cold. She coughed wrackingly; bad as during the winter weeks.

'Is there anything I can do?'

Masha gestured in the negative. A helpless wave. 'It's nothing. It'll pass. You'd better dismount, too, Diana. We're almost here.'

The beach widened into a shallow bay that swept gracefully inland. There were rock-pools where crabs and other crustaceans scuttled for shelter at the women’s approach. Palms and coconut trees grew close to the water's edge, starting at a second narrow and dazzlingly white beach that began where this one finished. A fresh water stream crested a grassy ridge, almost in the exact centre of the little bay, and disgorged sibilantly into rock pools. A wading crane doddered stupidly. It was a pretty place, Diana thought. Less ordered and cosseting then Lesbos. Probably with fewer rules, too.

Only when they finally tramped off the beach and crested the grassy ridge did Diana see the ramshackle wooden shack and the wisp of blue smoke that rose above it. The shack was impeccably hidden from the coastline, though that was the only impeccable thing about it.

It was made of un-planed planks nailed unevenly to a timber frame and there were gaps through which the structure of the frame itself was visible. Fresh leaves and shoots had taken root and were growing from the gaps to swivel westward in search of the evening sun. Some of the planks were missing. Filthy, well worn sacking was nailed across in a crude repairs. The window retained just one side of a double wooden shutter, which leant outward on a single remaining hinge, and if ever there had been a door there was no sign of one now, for a larger piece of sacking - torn to rags at floor level - dangled across the opening in its stead.

The shack was bordered by a fringe of gravel. Beyond that lay uncut field grass strewn in litter. Some of the litter was immediately identifiable and more than a little disturbing: fire-ash, animal bones, faeces and a rusted iron bathtub filled with rainwater. Not visible at first, but obvious enough when they'd walked far enough along the trodden path, was a rustic pen round back where two emaciated sows rolled and grunted in a foot-deep layer of shit. Diana gagged.

'Where the hell are we?'

'This is the home of Creesa, a wise-woman.'

'I never knew people lived out here. I had believed our nearest neighbours were the Janites.'

'Lots of women live in the forest. Mainly in places such as this, close by the sea. No-one much wants to live in deep forest. Most of these women have lived here for years. Some are Janites. Others...' Masha shrugged under her incongruous fireman's cape. 'Well, who knows what they might be?'

'It is she who will restore my memory?'

'Creesa shall be the instrument of that process in part, yes.'

Masha let go of the ponies' reins. They immediately began watering and grazing but didn't wander.

This close the smell of shit was everywhere; animal, and - Diana's nose wrinkled at the realisation - human. Fresh human. Masha leaned under the filthy door-rag and called out something in a tongue she did not recognise. Surely the Janites spoke the same language as the Lesbians? She quaked in disgust as Creesa emerged.

Creesa was a thousand years older than oldest woman Diana had hitherto ever set eyes on. She hobbled out through the door, supported by a stick, in what looked like an habitual crouch. Like all other women she was naked but there the similarity ended: wrinkled skin hung in wizened pouches from arthritis-twisted bones, thin hair dangled from a pink scalp - grey and too long, tufted and matted in filth - and two deflated breasts swung pendulously, empty and flat. Disease-twisted hips protruded through thin skin. The old woman's belly swung like a pound of lard in an empty sock and when she smiled she did so gummily; a landscape of grinning age broken only by three or four rotted tooth stumps. The eyes were dull, the whites yellowed with age and illness.

Could it be, it struck Diana with a sudden horror that made her shudder, that Masha might leave life looking this way? Was this how a Janite was destined to appear in the weeks before eternity?

The bileish eyes settled on her, to her further horror scanning her appreciatively head to toe in her blithe nudity. There was no alien tongue this time. 'My, my. What a pretty girl. What a treasure you have brought me.'

Masha came back to her side. Diana found the presence of so much illness suddenly disconcerting, her own abundance of beauty and health almost an embarrassment.

'Don't worry”, Masha whispered. 'The old woman is slightly mad but quite harmless. Her experience is greater than anyone's and we shall depend on her knowledge to begin the process. We must stay the night. She will want to touch you for her reward, but there will be no sex. She is beyond all that.'

Diana's gorge rose as she stepped into the stinking hovel.

Aurora swept a hand over Ursula's belly, feeling, for the first time ever a roundness there. The slight woman was lying on Aurora's broad bed and looked so very different - so contrasting to the tall, blonde whose place this normally was. Her nipples were enlarged, albeit not with sexual expectation, and her aureoles were both darkened and beautifully emphasised.

Ursula was, in fact, very slightly drunk. Aurora had prepared a dinner which had somewhat out-faced her but had insisted, given her condition, that she eat. Ursula helped it on its digestive way with an excess of rye wine - the strongest brew known - and she chose to drink it neat. It differed from other wines in that instead of fermented in ceramic jugs it was piped through metal coils and pipettes, fashioned according to an ancient method set down by Masha. How would they ever replace the blacksmith? Ursula, who knew about such arcane processes’ termed this means of wine production ‘distillation’.

She drank from a dainty, floral patterned bowl that rested between her breasts. She raised it to her lips, drained the contents, then waved the empty bowl in the air.

'I want more!'

'You have already consumed far to much, my dear.'

“More!'

'Too much drink is bad for the infant. You might prevent its birth.'

'Nonsense, dear, my baby is fine. And thirsty.'

She wagged the bowl again. Aurora grabbed it, took it from her and set it on the floor. 'No more.'

'Then if you deign to water me, kiss me instead.'

Aurora smiled. She would always hold Ursula especially in her affections and her tipsy demand was easily readily acceded to. She lowered her lips to the Healer's, but Ursula wriggled away, pressing Aurora's shoulders down.

'Not there, silly. Here.'

Aurora found herself directed to the base of Ursula's slight but rounding belly by small fingers that curled around her head and expertly lined up her lips. The slender legs divided wide, bringing a scent of excited woman. A prim little cunt swam into Aurora's view and was welcome there. Did the pregnant ones taste sweetest after all? Wasn't this a theory she should test first on Diana? Nonsense. Diana would always taste sweetest, pregnant or otherwise; Ursula always her favourite second. She would make a fuss of Ursula's child as she would spoil Diana's horribly.

'Hello, in there.'

Ursula laughed aloud.

And then Aurora's lips were deftly kissing the upright folds and her tongue searching the smooth contours of her labia, working through the stubbly hairs; prising a way inside. It lolled in the wetting tissue awhile, stabbed out at the clitoris, bringing more wetness, then reached out into Ursula's special place. Aurora folded her tongue dart-like in that secret way she had perfected over the years, and lunged. A warm, wet portal opened to admit her. Ursula groaned, working her legs, her slim, pregnant abdomen going taught. She thrust and Aurora obediently responded. She wriggled her tongue. Ursula convulsed, filling the Leader's mouth with gooey slime.

'Oh, wow! Wonnnn...derrrr....fullll! And now I shall do the same - hic! - for you.' Aurora began shifting position but Ursula pressed her back down. 'After more wine.'

Aurora craved the Healer's expert lips on her own sweet-spot but there was no way she was about to be blackmailed. 'Strictly forbidden.'

'How unfair. You have already had more than I.'

'Indeed so, but I am not pregnant, now am I, dear?'

Ursula wobbled herself up into a sitting pose and gazed down into the fine, tanned face haloed by blonde hair that swam in and out of focus.

'Not pregnant, eh? Would you care to wager?'

21

Diana chewed her way through a disgusting bowl of stew, fighting back the urge to be sick. Bits of rancid fat floated on the surface and what passed as meat in that foul concoction proved more often than not too tough to get her teeth through. She did her best, gulping bits down whole, and tried not to grimace too obviously at the objectionable taste that formed in her mouth, telling her nervous system that this stuff wasn't fit for a pig.

It was after dark by then. The hovel was lit by two flickering candles made from bowls of animal-fat into which wicks had been inserted and ignited by tinder that produced more smoke than spark. The candles stank. Diana had almost vomited when the old woman went outside shortly before full dark, took a prolific dump in view of her house-guests, wiped her straggly anus with the fingers of her right hand, then come back inside and started mixing up stew without troubling to wash.

At present Diana was sitting alongside Masha in a corner of the shack on a filthy rag which was to double up as their bed. She hoped that things would get better. They were to spend just one night there then rise before dawn and ride again.

The old woman had assured her that the answers to the riddle of her past would be found in the place to which she directed them, but only after she had prepared Diana first. She'd cackled her missing-toothed delight when asked how, only to be told that the deed was already done: special plants that worked on dormant parts of the brain were blended in with the stew she had eaten that night. Parts of her brain which were not functioning correctly would be replaced by parts which normally lay dormant. Bridges between the areas that did the remembering and the areas where the memories were stored would have to be forged. That process would be accommodated by associations made in the place Creesa was sending her to.

'It is the place of the Iron Towers,' she said. 'Everything that has happened to you will become clear when you arrive there.'

Diana's mouth was already open and words of contemptuous disbelief taking shape there when Masha abruptly waved her to silence. She was about to say that Creesa was a malodorous old hag, quite senile and insane, who knew nothing about anything: that she had told her a pack of lies and fed her on food that was shit and would do nothing but make her throw up, all for the purpose of touching up a young woman who otherwise wouldn't deign to piss in her face. She was about to offer these opinions, and more besides, when Masha's next words made her think again.

'I know that place. I know it reasonably well. I assisted Aurora there when she experienced some difficulty.'

The old crone laughed again. 'So tell me something I don't already know! I was there! I saw it all! This time you will ride down the south-eastern slopes and enter the jungle directly. Do not attempt to go by the way of the iron towers - the sea has come home. There is a path through. Ride where I have directed and it is impossible to miss. There, this girl's memory will be given back to her.'

'How can you be so sure?' Diana cut in.

The woman crone had propped herself on a simple stool, sideways on. She left it and began rummaging among junk piled up at the back of her shack. She returned and handed Diana a rusted dagger with a chipped blade.

'This is a weapon,' she announced, with a degree of stating the obvious that raised further questions about her sanity. 'It will easily take the life of a frail women such as I. If you do not find the truths I have foretold you may return here and plunge it into me. Thus...'

Creesa pressed the rusted point against the brittle skin of her belly, then passed the dagger to Diana. She cackled again.

'If to remember is your desire then you will have no reason to kill me. Merely be sure first that your desire is to remember. Before you sleep tonight consider whether it may not be wisest after all to ride back home at daybreak and let the past be done. Things gone may be recalled but not revisited, only the future can ever be. In your fervour to recall things as they were give thought to the likelihood that you may discover that which is best not known.'

Creesa settled herself back on her stool. This time she faced Diana directly. Her bony legs were opened wide, flesh drooping from them like washing on a line. Her genitals gaped, slackened by the years, surrounded by wispy remnants of pubic hair.

'Thus have I done my part. Now you must pay me sweet, beautiful girl. Come stand before me.' Creesa gestured her into the dirt-smelling delta of the sagging legs. 'Let me touch you. It is many years since I have stroked so lovely a woman as you.'

Diana shot a glance at Masha. 'You must do as she says. It is her right.' Masha rolled over into her side, turning away from them, facing the wall of the shack; settling into sleep. Her broad, bare back formed a barrier.

'Come, my dear, come.' The grinning old hag was growing impatient. She waved her into her orbit. Into touching range.

Diana got to her feet and went and stood close, barely a foot away, not moving. In the encirclement of the legs there was an odour of urine; the sweet and sickly variety she associated with the very old. The woman lowered her voice.

'Oh, yes, so fine. So very, very pretty.'

She looked at her a while, enjoying her beauty, her gaze roving freely, then reached out - very gently, Diana thought - and touched the swell of a buttock. There was no sudden grab, no greedy squeeze: the pressure of the touch was barely discernible. Her hand rested there; withered and old and dry on the satin young skin.

'I believe you are prettiest girl I have ever seen. Easily the prettiest I have ever touched. Do you fear me, my dear?'

'No,' Diana answered, simply and truthfully.

'Do you resent me being this close? Do you object to the way I feel you?'

The hand moved. It took its time. It felt the depression at the small of her back and worked up her right side, stopping just under the swell of her ribs. Diana said nothing. Of course she objected! She wondered too how bad the grope would get. Although, to be truthful, if things stayed like this then maybe the experience wouldn't be so bad after all. The old woman was almost worshipful in her admiration. And there was something vaguely uplifting in the sensation of such overt appreciation; being gloated over in a way that could never happen in a place like Lesbos where beauty was taken for granted. The awful old crone seemed to be deriving genuine pleasure from her. The risk was that the hag might lapse into crudity and begin... well... pawing and poking.

'I was young once. Never so lovely, I admit. Never had a body like this. And your hair, Diana.' The hand left her side, fingers now riffling through, testing its natural silkiness. They raked to the very top and combed her scalp. 'Do you enjoy life in Lesbos?'

'Of course.'

'And yet you must learn of what went before?' The hand went back to her hip. It rubbed her there, made her sway. Creesa was stronger than she appeared.

'I... hhmmm, that's rather good, actually... I feel incomplete with so much of my life a blank. I am a Lesbian now. Physically changed into the Lesbian ways. There can be no going back and I would not wish to. Only for my own peace of mind do I seek my past.'

'Then I hope that what you find is agreeable. Do you remember men?' The hand curved round her belly, acquainting itself with each contour. A gnarled thumb paid attention to her navel.

'Discussion of the male of the human species is strictly forbidden. Aurora reminds us that men are foolish myth. My sisters are spared such sophistry. I only admit to the knowledge because you obviously have some comprehension of the subject.'

'But do you miss them?'

'I cannot miss what does not exist. And the very concept is repulsive. All women’s needs are met by women.'

'Do you really believe that men are myth?'

She shouldn't be saying it because the words were blasphemy, but what the hell the woman was mad anyway, and so far as she believed no Lesbian even knew that Creesa existed. There would be no consequences. 'You are indeed a wise woman, Creesa. I belief I have some recollection of copulating with males which may be other than spurious. Somewhere in this world there may even be tribes of men, just are there are tribes of women. Perhaps even clans where men and women somehow contrive to co-exist.'

'Ah! You still crave the penis in you!'

'I most certainly do not desire any such thing! The proper companion of woman is woman.'

The twisted hand moved upwards, callused and grotesque, where it moulded itself to the shape of a breast and lingered there, softly palpitating the tissue. There was no attempt to work on the nipple. Nothing so base. When it was apparently sated it swept out across the partner breast and onto the swell of her shoulders. Stiff fingers massaged tense muscles, toyed with her throat; then slid down one arm and traced out the shape of the elbow. Diana’s elbow was healthy and undistorted, perhaps that was the attraction? Diana discovered in the same moment that Creesa's other hand had become active: it had moved to her left hip and fondled her briefly there before working down the rise of her thigh. Outwardly. Not moving into any intimate region.

The woman was so gentle. So respectful. If only she didn't stink so bad!

'Turn about. I wish to study you.'

Obediently, Diana turned full circle. Slow and sassy. The hands stayed put on her body so that the turn resulted in a slow stoke.

'Quite perfect indeed,' Creesa sighed. 'What would I not give for such a body? Or to lie beside it.' Diana was directly facing her again. She stiffened. Masha slapped her rump mildly and chortled. 'Don't worry, my angel. I am not asking for you for sex. I see that would be obscene. Besides, sexual desire and I parted company many years ago.' She leaned forward and sniffed Diana's bare skin. 'Oh, you smell so sweet!'

Creesa’s hands worked her rump then pulled her abruptly on to her. Her belly pressed up against the old woman's hideous breasts. Diana was about to fight back and wriggle herself free when she saw that no further advance was to be made. Rather, the embrace was conspiratorial.

'I thank you for this pleasure. It is payment, that is true, but I feel I would like to show my appreciation in some additional way. Tell me, Diana. What else may I do for you? I have many talents.'

It wasn't necessary to ponder. Not for one moment. 'Masha is ill.'

'I know. She is dying.'

'I have brought with me the kindling of the Flame of Leadership of Lesbos.'

The old woman squeezed her tight. 'No, no, no, my dear. That cannot be! You must not even consider the possibility.'

'I am prepared to commit mortal blasphemy to save my good friend.'

'Blasphemy to you, Diana, if not to women outside Lesbos. What I am saying is that on no account must you make any such attempt for your endeavours will prove fatal. The flames will not burn green. Masha will die within them.'

'There is but a slim chance of success, I accept, but what alternative is there? I was not of Lesbian form either but the flames worked upon my body. Transformed it. I must allow the risk.'

'And what of Masha herself? Does she know of your plans? Does she agree? The risk is hers, not yours.'

Diana shook her head silently. She suddenly felt, and looked, very young.

'Then I must tell you that she will never consent.'

The hands on Diana’s body felt matronly rather than intrusive. Made her want to confide. But the strength of the wise-woman’s rebuttal brought her close to tears. Creesa squeezed her buttocks firmly yet soothingly in a way that made her belly surge forward again.

'Then what may I do? I know of nothing else!'

'Dear Diana, were I able to halt the onset of age then I would not be as I now am. But those diseases that ageing brings I may take away by taking them upon myself. This arthritis, this terrible twisting of my bones. I was not always such nor will I remain so. I took upon myself the unease of a woman who passed through here last winter. Took it so fully that she rode away nimble and erect. In time the sickness will leave my bones too - it will do me no lasting harm - and I shall stand upright again. Old but no longer crippled. I may perform a similar act for your friend. '

The hands finished their wandering and returned to rest folded in Creesa's lap. Only now that it was over did Diana appreciate how thoroughly - distracting her through conversation - the old woman had fondled and explored every inch of her body. There was only one place she hadn't visited.

'Masha's illness lies within her lungs,” Creesa said. “The sickness is eating her life away. The voracious disease is becoming hungrier with each passing day. My pledge to you is that, in addition to returning your memory, I will soak up the killing cough of your friend and spit it from my lungs before you see your first sundown in the place of the iron towers.'

Should she let this continue or not? Was this magic or bullshit? The test, Diana reasoned, was in whether her memory returned. If one were proven, the other might also be true. She found to her amazement that her hands were resting on the old woman's shoulders and fondly touching the dry wrinkles.

'You will want something of me.'

'Something small. A token of our agreement. Something that will delay you from your sleep only a few moments longer. I give magic. I must have my reward.'

'Which is?'

'Can you not guess?'

Masha had claimed she was beyond sex, and Diana had nothing else in her possession worth giving. She had already paid the woman for one favour with that exploration of her body except for... of course...

'You wish to feel inside me.'

'Is that really too much to ask? To save the life of such a friend? With the illness removed, Masha shall live many years more. Janite years.'

Diana tightened her grip on Creesa's shoulders, parted her legs and tossed back her head. Her hair billowed and tumbled, the big breasts moved in the old woman's face.

'Then it truly is a small favour.'

Creesa went immediately to work and in so sensitive a region of her body the long fingernails were - at first - scratchy and uncomfortable but not so much so that she couldn't put up with the sensation for as long as needed. She felt them gouging through the shaven folds of her pudenda, followed by fingers that moved deftly and expertly for those attached to hands so distorted. They felt their way across the delicate purse of flesh that was Diana's awaiting cunt, pressed against the hard pubic bone beneath, then tweaked open her lower lips and passed within.

There was no rubbing, no delving, no eager digging. Rather once more came that pleasant sense of exploration. A finger prodded her clitoris from its fleshy bed then grooved knowledgeably on through her fragile ravine: a second stroked her peritoneum before venturing to touch the tight crater of her anus which, for the moment at least, it permitted to stay closed. Again, only after each delicate outer millimetre had been examined, a stubbly twig prized open her vaginal ring and - demonstrating the most exquisite of good manners - entered. Rather than intrude it seemed to empathise with the layout of her vagina; passed gently through up to the knuckle and halted there, making no further movement. It might have been acclimatising to its new environment. For a while there was an oddly expectant pause during which Diana felt a warmth spreading through her belly, then the little finger of the same hand, suddenly and with surprisingly nimbleness, stretched out and stung sharply into Diana's anus. She had the strangest sensation of being held like a bowling ball.

She gave a little wriggle and quirt despite herself, despite the grotesqueness of the notion of having sex with a creature such as this. Wetness dribbled. A mere reflex, Diana assured herself, for there was no excitement. Stillness descended for a while then little muscles twitched deep down in her belly and the bony probes seemed to have met their wants and slowly withdrew. No discomfort lay in their wake.

It was as though Diana had not so much been groped as mapped out with acute anatomical precision; as though the old crone had absorbed a complete understanding of, and affinity with, her form

'There, now, my sweet. That wasn't so bad, was it?'

It hadn't been. Not at all. Diana smiled. 'You were most gentle. I thank you for the delicateness with which you handled me.'

The old woman laughed louder than intended. Masha snored once and stirred in her sleep. Creesa covered her mouth fleetingly. 'Now go and lie beside your friend. Rest. Tomorrow will bring much that is new and much more that is old. I sincerely hope you will be able to handle both. I shall cure Masha before you ride.'

Astonishing herself, Diana gave the old woman a peck on each grimy cheek, absented herself from the enclave of the elderly legs and went and spread herself out on her bed-rag. She moulded herself to the slumbering Masha's back and closed her eyes. She heard Creesa moving around for a while, things getting shifted about, then silence. Sleep came to collect her moments later.

Aurora didn't feel pregnant, although never having been pregnant before meant that she'd no real idea of how pregnancy should feel. But she did feel tired.

She'd awoken in the earlier hours of an overcast morning, desperately hungry, and whipped up a bowl of oat-meal cereal topped appallingly with sour-cream and ginger. She gobbled half down in one before her stomach turned over and she threw the lot back up again, barely making it to the front door in time. She lay down for another hour, got up, walked around her little home, tidied things, dusted things, dog-tired yet unable to get back to sleep.

Three days, now. Three days since her beloved Diana had gone off. She missed her an awful lot and was starting to fret for her return. How long had she said she would be gone? A few days? A week? At the very minimum a few days were more than two. That added up to today. But Diana wouldn't be back today. Probably not for considerably longer. That was something Aurora instinctively knew.

When she had washed herself, something that for some reason she was now doing four or five times a day, she went and stood before the mirror which Diana had had placed over the fire-place and studied her reflection. Nope, she didn't look any different. Or did she? There just might be that extra bulge in her breasts and her aureoles did look a fraction more distinct. She believed her waist was a mite fuller too, though that might be imagination. Whatever, her nipples felt sore whenever something brushed against them And she was going off sex. Honey had plucked up courage to invite her round again - it had been years since they had last made love - but Aurora prevaricated, saying that she felt dreadfully sleepy and would stay indoors to rest. Which was only a half-truth.

Women don't show the signs so early on, Ursula had reassured her, but Aurora was unconvinced: Ursula offered that opinion with her mouth full and a feather duster in one hand. She'd been working all night and her home was cleaner and tidier than Aurora had seen it in a million years. Again out of character was that Ursula had been practically burning up for sex and had arranged sessions with four different women that day alone. Aurora observed that the two foetuses preserved in glass jars on her shelves were gone.

Oh, the gods! How listless she felt!

It was still very early. She slammed the window shut, thus plunging the place into total darkness, and threw herself supine on her bed. Even with her eyes closed she could not find sleep.

Maybe that was because the dreams last night had disturbed her so much: Diana not in the forest at all but some wild place where there was great danger. Diana in the company of - her imagination had tried hard to furnish her with the image of a human male, though she was unsure whether it had got the anatomical details right - a man. Diana making love to a man! Here the image was particularly abstract since she had no notion of how the practice might go.

Maybe she experienced such unease because of the physical changes taking place within her. Maybe the danger she sensed all around Diana was an illusion brought about by some anxiety rooted in herself which had become externalised. She hoped so, for the last dream in the sequence had disturbed her more violently than all the rest put together. She dreamt that Diana died a second time. That she would never see her again.

That could not be be right, surely?

Not dead again?

Heavy thoughts and onerous worries pressed down so that for a few minutes Aurora actually did fall into doze and the next dream in the sequence leapt at her like an attacking bushwhacker. In this dream, time had rolled on. Diana was long dead, her heart buried in deep forest. Aurora dreamed she was married to Ursula and that they were passably content together, though she kept thinking on what might have been.

It was well before dawn. Already the rousing touch of the old woman was at her elbow. Diana had had the benefit of only a few hours sleep snatched last night after her exploration by the wise-woman, though luckily it was a heavy sleep which left her feeling rested if not exactly refreshed. She washed hurriedly, and with good reason declined breakfast - last night's stew again, cold and congealed in its pot, more rancid then ever – excusing herself by claiming that her anxiety to be under way had stolen her appetite. That wasn't even remotely true. Diana was ravenous, having eaten only a single bowl of that disgusting dinner the evening before. But the thanks which she expressed to the kindness of her host were genuine enough.

Even though sun-up was still some way off the embryonic morning was already light. The sea threw back the glow of the eastern sky and cast it into the little clearing, dispelling the last of the shadows in a bluish backwash. The old woman had seen to their horses some time last night and had saddled them in readiness, despite her crippling arthritis, before Diana and Masha even emerged from the shack. Diana met the morning gently but Masha was torn from rest by a cough that roiled up from depths of her lungs and gripped her in the worst convulsion so far. But Creesa had swiftly intervened. She steered the big woman to her feet, dusted dirt from her body then tugged at her arms as though wanting her to do something she could not find words to express.

Masha hacked again.

'We shall have to take that cough and sell it for a dime, now won't we?' Creesa said, as though to a child.

Dimes? What did Creesa know about dimes in a world where there was no such thing as money?

'Now be a good girl and give Creesa a kiss before you go.'

Masha turned her head to one side and coughed again; leaned all the way down - an incredibly long way - and pecked Masha curtly on one cheek.

'Not like that child. Properly, now!'

'I cannot. This cough. It is unpleasant.'

'Nonsense, girl!'

Creesa reached out and put her gnarled hands to the sides of Masha's face, pulling herself out of her crippled crouch as she did so to reach Masha's lips with her own. Diana noted how, with the change of pose, the old woman's buttocks draped hideously loose and baggy, hanging like empty sacks of skin from the off-centre hips. She found herself shuddering that such a thing had pawed her last night. There was a distinct smack as the old-woman's lips clamped themselves over the blacksmith's.

And then something odd happened.

22

Masha's eyes widened as though in surprise. There was a sound like rushing air or the inflation of a huge pair of bellows: a sound that seemed to go on and on and on. For a moment it was though Masha had physically shrunk, only the bulging eyes remaining the same size, then expanded again; not merely returned to normal but conspicuously puffed out as though she had herself had become the bellows and was taking in air to her full capacity. Diana was in the act of taking a step in their direction when the kiss disconnected and everything went back to normal. The place, the foul food, the unnatural exploration of her body, the ubiquitous and overpowering stink of shit in this goddam shambles of a place; wouldn't all these things inevitably combine to create some sense of unreality?

'There. Now that wasn't so bad after all, was it?'

Same homily as the night before, thought Diana. Bet she says that to all the girls. Creesa had proved kinder than she'd dared hope; that was true enough, and wiser too than anticipated, but Diana was in no mood to dawdle here any longer than necessary.

Creesa turned and came over to her. Hell! Was she destined for the same treatment? But Creesa merely smiled and winked and stuck out a hand and shook.

'Thank you,' she said. 'I thank you for allowing me to share your beauty. For letting me touch you. You must visit again soon.'

Diana lied that she would and then they were all outside, Diana surreptitiously watching where she trod, mounting up and ready to ride. She gave the old woman a last wave, noting that she wasn't doubled up any more - hadn't been, in fact, since that kiss - then took up trail behind Masha, staying close at her pony's quarters. They were going a different way.

Masha splashed through the little stream and headed into woodland to the north: thin woods, sparse trees with lots of low, mossy undergrowth, increasing daylight shining easily through the few boughs above their heads. Masses of blue-bells were already colourful in places the sun could reach.

They had been going for less than two minutes when Diana heard an ear-splitting, terrifying coughing to their rear, one that echoed and re-echoed through the glade. Creesa. Diana went icy cold: true to her word Creesa had indeed absorbed Masha's cough, for Masha wasn't coughing at all. She did spit, however; a habit she'd acquired only with the greatest reluctance, and at Ursula's insistence, as a means of hauling up the awful yellow bile that regularly clogged her lungs. Diana observed that the whirl of sputum, when it landed, was clear.

'You feel well, Masha?'

The big woman rode on without turning. The broad shoulders were discernibly squarer and the powerful back definitely straighter. The trim bare buttocks were flattened nicely into the creaking leather of the saddle. Diana wasn't completely sure in the early light but it looked like some of the disease had disappeared from her skin; that it might once again be a close approximation to that rich and glossy chocolate of which she was so proud.

'Sure. Fine.'

'You are not coughing.'

'Nope. Got it all up. Sea air must be doing me good, I guess. Think I'll ride naked again today - unless it gets really cold. True character, the wise-woman, eh? She hurt you much last night?'

'Not in the slightest. It seemed that she was trying to - I don't quite know how to put it - understand me rather than use me.'

'Old magic, Diana. I do not pretend to understand it either, except in so far as I know it works. If Masha says she will make you remember then remember you shall.'

'It surprises me that on-one else in Lesbos even knows she exists.'

Masha laughed shortly. 'There are a few who swear she doesn't. She invited you to visit her again, yes?'

'But that is common courtesy, of course.'

'I will wager that if we were to turn round right now, this very moment, and ride back there would be no sign of Creesa - or her shack, or her two sows, her litter and filth, her stream. I would even bet that we wouldn't find her clearing again because it quite simply would not be there. Women can find Masha only when they have a need to. Her old shack doesn't always appear in the same place. There are three possible locations travelling this way where she is likely to appear. That was the second. We past the first yesterday.'

Diana considered for a moment. 'Then who, or what, is she?'

'A woman. Only a woman. One perhaps a little like a healer such as our own Ursula. We are in a place where things aren't always as they seem. A sort of border land before the place of truth. It is into a region of the place of truth that Creesa has sent us to complete our mission. I first came across her when I was a child of six. She was very kind to me though I don't suppose she remembers. I used to come out and fetch and carry for her - when, that is, she appeared in the fourth place, the one close to the lands of the Janites. Creesa would have us believe that she is of Janite stock herself and I am first to admit that there is some similarity, or was when she was younger. But she is no Janite. I know she is a woman, of that there is no doubt, but a woman of what kind I do not know. One thing is, however, absolutely certain.'

She left the statement hanging in the air, clumsily inviting Diana's

query.

'Which is?'

'That if we have encountered Creesa, and stayed the night with her, we are but a very short time indeed from discovering the truth. That I can vouch for.'

Diana looked back over the shoulder. They hadn't been riding long but the view was subtly different to the last time she'd looked. The trees seemed denser where the clearing had stood and the beaten-down path was no longer in evidence. A solid bank of hawthorn stretched across their way, running downhill, thick and conspicuous from the higher ground to the east to the sea below. They was no way they could have ridden through that.

For a moment, just a bowel-loosening instant of fear, Diana wanted to go home.

They stopped at noon and rested up in a pretty woodland clearing where there was lush grass and clumps of heather, not yet turned purple, abutting a dense, glorious spread of blue-bells and dazzling white daisies. The early overcast had melted away. The sun streamed through, making patterns of light and shade dabbling the glade in pools of yellow sunlight. Photosynthesis had evidently got something stirring in the low growth for there was an incredible scent of onions; floral rather than culinary, and sometimes a waft of violets. They had dismounted and tied their ponies securely - Masha warned of cliff faces not far away, making this no place for the beasts to wander - and were each settled in the downy grass, leaning against the trunk of a tree. Diana observed that the trees were elms and oaks.

'How far now?' she asked.

Masha bit into a hunk of cheese extracted from her saddle bag and chewed. It had lasted well enough, though the bread that went with it had turned stale and was running to mould. The drinking water in their canteens would soon need topping-up but Diana could hear the trickle of a stream not far off and surmised that replenishment would pose no problem. The thought struck her that the old woman hadn't offered them food and water to take along because, on the basis of what Masha had told her, it might cease to exist before they'd ridden a mile.

'We should be arriving at the bay after another three hours riding. I had not known about this way, I must admit. It is considerably easier than the paths I have ridden before.' She stopped chewing and looked at her food, distractedly. 'It is now that I must ask whether you have considered the old woman's advice. Whether you wish to continue or to find a way back.'

Diana's gaze held firm, her big eyes blue and cool. There was a firmness there that spoke of Leadership. 'We shall proceed. I have not come all this way merely to be thwarted.'

'I had hoped that's what you would say. I expected no less.' Masha spat. A whorl of spittle strung itself out over a clump of heather. It was bubbly from its passage through the air but again translucent and clear. A flower was visible, naturally coloured, through the globule of spit. Masha arched an eyebrow in surprise.

'It cannot be.'

'Now perhaps you know why I asked you how you felt back there.'

'You mean I am cured?'

'So Creesa said. Completely, if she is to be believed.'

'Creesa speaks only the truth. But she would never remove an illness without payment. It is not the way of wise-women. She must take her reward and the price for removing disease is an appropriately high one.' She dropped her voice to an urgent, interrogative whisper, leaned away from her tree and took both of Diana's hands in hers. 'What did she take from you, Diana?'

Her cheeks flushed. The fact of intimacy with so old a woman embarrassed her. 'It was not so serious nor her price exactly high. I had considered other things at far greater cost. I let her put her fingers inside me. Merely that, no more. She did not hurt and I do not feel any the worse for my experience. I expect that a women so old and ugly, living in such isolated squalor, has little opportunity to appreciate nurtured pulchritude. I merely met her simple wish in return for one of a higher order.'

The vanity of the Lesbians! Their narcissistic beauty! Potentially the downfall of their entire clan!

Masha looked away. 'Thank you Diana. I am eternally in your debt. Words can never adequately express my gratitude for all you have done for me.'

'Please, dear. It was nothing.'

'Forgive me. I am somewhat taken aback.' Parallel tears rolled down the black woman's cheeks, appearing simultaneously. 'But come. We must mount up and ride again. My pledge to you will be fulfilled before the end of this day. You will remember everything, know everything, before the sun sets tonight.'

Masha grimaced the moment her back was turned in the act of saddling up. Lesbian vanity! The true price was beyond Diana's comprehension! Creesa travelled the world through her magic. There were beautiful women in many lands quite unknown to the Lesbians and Masha was at liberty to take a pretty girl whenever she wished. Very petty women, easily as beautiful as those in Lesbos and who would not merely allow Masha to fondle them but gladly indulge, willingly indulge, in any sex act that might come into her magical mind. Creesa was a practitioner of the old arts and therefore one of the most sought after women in creation. There could only ever be one reason why Creesa would want to reach into a Lesbian Leader. Into her vagina. She had stolen Diana's child. It would be with her now, in some other part of the world, way beyond her reach; a half centimetre of mucous-like tissues and nerves, developing its first fishy eyes. It would grow to maturity, nurtured by her magic, from foetus to baby without ever being born. From baby to child, from child to beautiful, perfect young woman. The most powerful tool of magic imaginable. Even worse, Creesa had robbed Diana of her capacity to give birth. Made her barren. Masha wanted to openly cry, but her stern nature was such that she could but weep. Her true heroism in the setting back of Lesbian destiny on its proper course was a lie after all; she had merely transferred the tragedy from one generation to the next. There were two Leaders now, but only Aurora would give birth. Diana would eventually die without issue.

'Not long to go now, Diana, my love,' she repeated, back still turned. 'Not long to go at all.'

And she meant it.

Meant it, too, when by early evening the bare earth track came to an end and they paused together, side by side on horseback, looking down into the depths of a river valley that culminated in a broad, sandy bay; considered together the density of the jungle-like foliage and the sickening mass of fallen ruins that stretched out for miles. Ruins ten thousand years old and more.

But she was more puzzled than sorry when Diana's eyes fixed on the iron towers and she convulsed with laughter, pointing things out and burbling meaningless words about San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge; doubled over in hysteria, her hair a wild tangle that caught the nauseating wind that riffled up from the bowl of the valley below. She looked down at the sight for some minutes during which her laughter only gradually trailed off. All the time she made comments and observations that held no meaning whatsoever for Masha as though she were talking mainly to herself. Finally she swung her pony around so that the scene lay to her rear. The heavy sky seemed to press down low and the dark clouds amass of their own accord. A shaft of sunlight faded off the towers as though some stage-hand had doused them on a hidden cue.

Diana's pony pawed impatiently at the ground and reared to be off. She held it back on a tight rein.

“Diana, are you...?”

“Perfectly, my dear. Never better.”

“Then you remember?”

“Absolutely everything. Every last detail.” She shifted her grip on the reins and turned her pony in a tight circle. Diana's blue eyes were enlarged with beauty, with bliss - with knowledge. “Come I shall race you home.”

And then she was away in a frenzied rumble of hooves, snaking back along the thin trail they had made on their arrival and taking the turns tight.

Masha shook her head in confusion, spurred her own mount's belly with her bare heals and galloped after her.