Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (13 page)

“
Alright. Fine. Get
ready.”

As they
neared
the intersection the water
accelerated to a
torrent, generating a
ceaseless, stuttering hum that refracted about the passage to a din
of guttural echoes
. Manassa leaped to the
pitched
shore
that
loomed suddenly on their right
, one massive
leg stamping ankle-deep in the mud to anchor her
balance
. Ione extended the oar and
she
caught it,
swung them hard, hauling the bedboat against a current that
would otherwise have
dragged
it irresistibly off-course.

Ione
and Emma sought handholds among a tangle of roots, staring in
exhilaration at the glinting blue figure of a gnome dangling
overhead from a short chain, eyes showering them with an aquamarine
brilliance.

“
We’re not lost anymore!”
Emma exulted to Manassa, barely audible over the noise. “The Lap
isn’t too far from here!”

They waited tensely, then
the next boat in their convoy arrived.
Manassa swung the oar
obligingly into
position when the
prow
hove into view and Ione rose slightly, preparing to shout
terse instructions to the women onboard. Timing would be crucial,
with little allowance for misunderstanding or
hesitation.

“
No!” shouted Manassa
a
n instant
later
,
snatch
ing
the
oar
back from a grasping
skulk
, who bellowed triumphantly at her, a
sentiment echoed by two leering confederates hovering possessively
over a trio of terrified slippers.

Ione screamed, lost her grip
on the bank.
Manassa’s
weight dropped precipitously, securing leverage on the
treacherous mud, and
the oar
rammed
the prow away to
send the marauding skulks lurching off on a furious tirade
of
complaint.

“
For it all then has to!
Keep get in time ever will!”

Ione was frightened to immobility, couldn’t
take her eyes off the commandeered bedboat as it was sucked away by
the current along with their women. One of the men wore a bright
green shirt, soggily tenting an erection.

The next vessel
arrived
without pause
, and
Manassa
dealt with it similarly
, sending three
more sporadically clothed skulks and four women on their
way
, but Ione cried sharply when the
third
craft
appeared
, teeming with raiders already
forewarned by the noise. They had lost.

“
Run!” she cried.

They
abandoned their position,
claw
ing u
p a
mudd
y
incline to
where it let onto a low
-
swept tract of
moist
scrub running just under the ceiling of the
cavern
. Behind them skulks were already
splashing up the bank, muttering in great excitement, numbers
mounting under the blue scintillation of the gnome.

“
This way!”

Ione led the others to a
ragged procession of root-lined passageways,
chose one of the tangled
openings
at random.
“In here!” she hissed.

They scrabbled on, already
breathless
,
moving
clumsily enough to beget dire tactical challenges to
evasion.
A warm current of air fanned
across them from the right, and
Ione
thrust in that direction without
thinking
, hurtled
o
nto a
stony declination
as foliage gnarled
impenetrably around them.

They found themselves in a
maze of trails leading generally downward,
steeped in the thirdhand emanation from behind,
and they stumbled on without plan, hoping
the
ir
pursuers
might
be similarly confounded by the terrain.

Ione abruptly slipped.

“
Oh fuck!” she screeched,
thrown jaggedly off-balance.

Manassa reached for her, was
dragged along
by inertia
, just managing to push Emma back from
a broad funnel
of
oily stone masked from view by a treacherous brow of shadow.
It was
canted at an irresistible angle and
I
one
was
unable to stop, nothing to grab,
voiceless with terror,
stumbling
–

–
to splash down in a
tranquil pool.

She
surfaced
, spluttering
in
shock,
found Manassa’s drenched countenance staring
back
. They were in a natural well, the
sinister
destination of many
innocent-seeming passages above
.

Ione couldn’t think, began to shiver despite
the warmth of the water. She dimly registered Emma’s horrified wail
as skulks muttered into proximity above. There was a squeak, then
her voice was abruptly stilled. Ione trod next to Manassa with
paranoid delicacy, terrified the men would follow them down. An
undecipherable scuffle issued from somewhere farther off, then
everything was quiet once again.

She was stunned, preserved from a totally
incapacitating fear only by the requirements of flotation. But
Manassa was soon looking around in interest, and Ione was restored
a little by the other woman’s infuriating readiness, where nothing
else might have served to blunt her panic.

“
Do you remember
this
from your journey to
the Lap?” Manassa whispered.

Ione shook her head, unable to speak.

They
circled the well
slowly
, seeking
a means of ascent
, but the oily
texture of the stone—hardly a natural feature of the place as
copious drip marks attested—rendered
it
a hopeless proposition.
The trap offered egress in just one direction; an
arched fissure at the waterline framing an ominous void.

Ione stared in resentment as Manassa quietly
eased to its lip, listened carefully, then disappeared within.
Silence accumulated in the other woman’s absence, a shimmering
sound next to nothing.

She was glad for the obscurity of the dark,
which hid her face and its shameful dismay, unable to confront the
notion that if Emma had been present she would have been obligated
to venture in before the smaller woman, and maybe Manassa too; a
feat of courage that seemed unimaginable at the moment. She felt
the alienation of awakening return, seeping insidiously into her
mind to blot away identity.

“
Emma…”

She called piteously up to her companion, but
halted in despair at the croaking reverberation of her plea, a
taunting admonishment for weakness balefully orbiting the well.

Manassa
emerged suddenly from the arch
,
stalling Ione’s pulse for a terrified moment
before her silhouette conformed to a cognizable image again, and
Ione decided she would always hate her for that tiny but total
crisis if nothing else.

“
It’s shallow ahead. And I
think we’re safe for the moment
,
but–

Ione
met the other woman’s glinting gaze. Manassa spoke calmly,
delivered the dread message.

“
We’re not
alone.”

She merely nodded, unable to
speak, forced herself to move, to get on with whatever was going to
happen and
swam
into the rift after the other woman
.
Together they rose into a small, sandy grotto
line
d
with
alcoves
.
Within
each a s
kulk stood
imprisoned behind
a curtain of
thick roots
. Their
motionless forms were limned by a faint
greenish hue.

Manassa stepped up onto a
dry prominence at the center
of the tiny
cave
. The ceiling overhead was low,
unbroken stone and there was no obvious
means
of leaving. Ione stared
in
quiet misery at the
eyes peering back at them and issued a single, unhappy
word.

“
Peckermen.”

Manassa turned to her. “What?”

These men were not
captives
,
Ione knew,
but
rather
conspirators in
a
game
that secured
sexual gratification
for them.
Women trapped by peckermen had just
one, tortured
path to
liberty;
Ione bleakly regarded the
jaunty
erections
offered out to the lair.

“
You’re familiar with this
situation
?
”
Manassa
prompted
.

“
Yes
,”
she
answered heavily
. “They’ll keep us
here till we play their game. And win.”

“
How?”

“
You can’t
guess
?
It’ll be
more obvious when it’s time
,
”
she
promised, propped up a little by the other woman’s
ignorance.
Manassa
chewed her lip
thoughtfully.

The peckermen were
quiescent, watched them with a faintly expectant air, and
a
fter a
careful
examination of their prison
Ione
finally
decided to rest.
There was nothing to
do, no evidence that Emma was around. She lay for a while listening
to Manassa’s untroubled respiration, waiting for unconsciousness to
blanket the awful proposition of her life.

But sleep would not
come
. The peckermen stared patiently back,
biding their time for now. A
nd Ione,
who had known
the lure of
skulk company before,
surrendered to memory
instead
…

In the
deepest
subterranean
places lurked men that practiced fringe rites of
sexuality, things only whispered about in the societies of hidden
women who shared their lonely realm
.

Ione was not a woman of
anyone’s society, hidden or otherwise. Denied
the company and safety of her sex for reasons beyond
understanding, she
was
almost always alone; a long, agile form seen only in passing
by the other women.

But i
f she didn’t have
friendship or
love
there were diversions at
least…

Her first encounter with a
skulk of the
blue waters
was a gentl
e
one. She
spied
him floating with placid unconcern
near a maze of little pools she had recently
explored
. When he noticed her, his reaction
was curiously mild. He watched her for a while, then left to find
stimulation elsewhere
.
Handsome and lithely built, he moved with sublime ease, a
swimmer of skill comparable to her own. Ione warily followed him
the third time they met.

When she touched his body
for the first time he was
startled, but
after a little he
reached for her
tentatively
and they
drifted on a slow, radial current, exploring each other in
silent
fascination.
Smiling, he turned away from her finally, drawing her arms around
him to clasp at his chest. Then he dove, taking them down,
effecting their travel with a steady sweep
of his limbs
as she grinned helplessly
behind him.

They surfaced from time to
time as needed to breath
e
. And when he was tired they
retreated to a
romantic little
pool warmed by the water of a deep-ranging flue,
kissing by the delicate emanation of a blue-eyed gnome gazing
sentimentally down
.

Her new friend had developed
an
erection
in the
intimacy of their sw
i
m, and Ione could only stare at it in longing, uncertain how
to proceed. A
simple
reciprocality of action suggested itself after a little, and
with a shy look she turned her back, pulling his arms around to
cross
under her breasts
,
felt his
hands wonderingly enfold
them
. Then she dove.