Rhiannon clung to him, her tiny hands digging into the rock-hard muscles of his biceps, as before their very eyes the ground opened up and swallowed the cave, as if the hungry beast had gulped it down until all that remained was a crater and choking clouds of thick rock dust. It rose in great profusion, blotting out the stars and the watchers as well. There wasn’t a moment to lose.
“Do you trust me?” Gideon asked her, though he couldn’t imagine how she could in such a circumstance.
“Y-yes, I…y-yes…” she sobbed, trembling against him.
“Good, then hold on to me,” he charged, ignoring her hesitation. “We cannot remain here. I know a place, but we must go now, while dust and debris cloak our escape.”
“Go…how?”
“Put your arms ’round my neck and
hold fast
!” he said, as he spread his wings and lifted off through the dust and smoke and flames that now shot up where the cave had been. Gas pockets having exploded deep underground sent great columns of flame belching skyward, turning the dust cloud they soared through an eerie shade of pink.
Once he’d become airborne, Gideon wrapped one strong arm around her, as she buried her face against his broad shoulder, the eel skin stifling her cries. They were hardly safe and away. The minute they cleared the dust cloud the watchers were in pursuit, and Rhiannon cried out as snake lightning streaked past them.
“Gideon, please!” she sobbed. “Take me back down, I beg you! I fear I’ll fall!”
“We will both fall if one of those missiles hits us,” he said. “You must trust me. They cannot fire their lightning bolts upward. I must take us higher, out of their range until we reach the Forest Isle. My friend Marius, Lord of the Forest, is the guardian there. He will help us if we can reach him. He gave me refuge once before when they destroyed my keep.”
“But who
are
they?” Rhiannon sobbed.
“They are the watchers of the gods who torment me for finding pleasure in the body of a woman. You know the legend. This is what it means. This is what I am condemned to suffer through all eternity for the lust that they have cursed me with, Rhiannon. Their missiles will do bodily harm, but they will not kill me. They enjoy my torture too much to end my misery. Thus far they have visited none of it upon you, save by way of warning. Please the gods their leniency continues. We are not out of this yet….”
“But why am I spared? I should think I would share in your punishment.”
“I cannot presume to get inside their heads, but it may well be that when they saw you, your reaction convinced them that you were unaware…an innocent. I do not know. Hold fast to me now…there is no time for speculation.”
Mercifully, she said no more. Gideon, being a man of few words, had run out of them, along with breath enough to speak them. He’d spoken more since he’d met Rhiannon than he had in thirty eons. Besides, he didn’t want to tell her that the watchers would be waiting for them when they made their descent, and Marius was already under threat of reprisal for firing upon them when he made his last visit to the Forest Isle.
His wings were still smoking in places, and his eel skin was torn at the shoulder. Though his groin was still in pain, the wind whistling though his wings was playing havoc with his sex. He longed to soothe it, but he didn’t dare, not while he was carrying such precious cargo. She was so brave. Terrified though he knew she was, she made no protest, nor did she voice a complaint. She held her peace and clung fast with all her strength. If he didn’t know it before, he knew now that he loved her, most ardently, and in a way that he had never loved another, with a passion unknown to him.
It wasn’t long before they neared the Forest Isle. They had lost the cloud of smoke and dust and ash long ago, and just as he’d suspected, the watchers were circling below, waiting for him to make his descent. There was nothing for it but to do just that. They couldn’t stay aloft forever. Still, he was reluctant. He wouldn’t have been if he didn’t have Rhiannon to worry about. He was not opposed to taking risks. He had taken many over the ages. But this was different. He held the hope of his future in his arms. If anything were to happen to her because of him, he would never be able to live with it, not after all that had gone before.
He drew her closer, soothing her rigid back, for every muscle in her body was tensed against him. “We must descend,” he said. “It must be swift. The watchers wait.” There was no use to sugarcoat the thing, nothing to be gained in keeping the danger from her. He’d learned his lesson in the folly of that. “If we can reach the isle below we will be safe…at least for now.”
She stifled a cry. “I…I see them!” she shrilled.
“Do not look down!” he warned her. “Close your eyes, and hold tight to me. No matter what occurs, do not let go!”
The last was said with wasted breath, for her arms were strung so tightly around his neck he feared he’d strangle. Pulling his singed wings in close, he plummeted downward, heading straight for the three-winged creatures circling over the Forest Isle below. Down, down, he hurtled through the first wan streamers of a fish-gray dawn at a speed that flayed moisture from his eyes. The dawn breeze mingled with the wind his motion created tearing through his wings literally wrenched the seed from his body. He’d scarcely opened the crotch of his eel skin and freed his sore cock in time to let the wind take him. How he could come in such pain he couldn’t imagine, but this was the nature of the very curse that had put him in such a predicament. He could do naught but give in to the demands it made upon his body, but not his life, he decided. There had to be a way to take back his sexuality, a way to free himself from the curse of libidinous lust. And he made a vow as he streaked through the clouds like an arrow toward the Forest Isle below, that if there was a way to cheat the jealous gods of their delight in his torment, he would find it or die in the attempt.
Below, lightning danced between the watchers; a deadly ring of crackling death they must pass through to reach sanctuary with Marius. It did not bode well until missiles of a different kind began zipping past them, so close they disturbed Gideon’s feathers, and in one case, tore two loose.
Arrows!
Marius was firing on the watchers from the strand. The creatures’ lightning bolts turned toward the centaur then. Marius had drawn their fire just long enough for Gideon to soar through the winged circle of arcing, snapping snakes of blinding light.
Gideon heard the shriek of a watcher who had taken one of Marius’s arrows. He watched the creature soar off with the aid of another, while the third still hurled down snake lightning until the twang of the forest lord’s longbow string released an arrow that came too close for comfort, sending that watcher off as well.
Losing consciousness, Gideon aimed for the protection of the trees that edged the strand, and fell from the sky with Rhiannon clinging to him into the open arms of oak and rowan, ash and pine that cushioned their fall and cocooned them in their lush foliage.
Gideon’s vision blurred and he groaned, as from the back of his mind a voice said,
What say we take him now? He has nowhere else to go.
No,
said the other all too familiar voice,
his trial has just begun.
He’ll never last,
the first speaker said.
Did someone laugh? Gideon strained his ears to overhear more, but all he heard was the joyful sighing of the Ancient Ones’ foliage as they cradled him to sleep.
“A
re you sure he is all right?” Rhiannon pleaded, giving the centaur a wide berth, “He doesn’t look all right. He is so very pale, and his lips are blue. Why are they stroking his wings like that? They shouldn’t be stroking his wings. I like this not!”
“Come away, my lady,” the centaur said. A
centaur
! Whatever next? She’d heard of the lecherous beasts, half man, half horse in legends, but never thought them real.
“I’m not a lady,” she corrected him. “Well, yes, I am a lady, but not a
lady,
you know, a society lady.”
“That matters not,” he replied, nudging her toward a clearing and a rambling lodge, with a barn and paddock behind. “I address the lady who is not a
lady,
yet is. It is perfectly acceptable for me to call you ‘my lady.’ You see, we have no class distinctions here.”
“I can see that,” Rhiannon said, casting a backward glance toward the forest, and the trees that had all but swallowed Gideon whole. She could scarcely see him at all now. “Forgive me, but are all the prince guardians…cursed?” she asked him.
“Not all,” he returned. “Simeon, Lord of the Deep, is the only true prince. He rules the water for the sea god, Mer. The rest of us are princes appointed by the gods; a token served with our curse, and because they needed guardians for these godforsaken spits of land formed in the great cataclysm, and couldn’t get them any other way but by coercion. We live out our sentences here as it were, you see. All things come at a price with the gods, my lady. They are a jealous lot, demanding much. I much prefer the Ancient Ones, like those who cradle your beloved. Their justice is swift and pure.”
“How many…guardians are there?” Rhiannon queried.
“One more, aside from Gideon and myself,” said the centaur. “Lord Vane, guardian of the Isle of Fire. But there are more who occupy other hemispheres.” He stopped in his tracks, prancing in place, his feathered hooves clopping on the forest floor. How ruggedly handsome his human half was, with his dreamy amber-colored eyes and wavy mane of shoulder-length chestnut hair kissed by the sun. His face was all angles and planes, a study in light and shadow. His was a raw, primeval beauty, a true creature of the wild. The other half of him was frightening to view, like a horse that couldn’t be broken, a hulking feral beast. It seemed to be under control, they were one entity after all, but she gave it a wide berth nonetheless.
“Look here,” he said. “I am called Marius, and since Gideon is indisposed at the moment and cannot give us a proper introduction, mightn’t you do the honors?”
“My name is Rhiannon,” she murmured.
The centaur clouded. “Named for a goddess of Otherworld legend,” he reflected. “A lovely name, ’tis true, but it will not serve you here. The wood nymphs will be jealous.”
“I can hardly do anything about my name!” Rhiannon said in a huff. What sort of fellow was this centaur to speak to her thus?
Marius threw up his hands in a gesture meant to unruffle her feathers. “You take me wrongly,” he said, “’twas meant as a word of warning. Wood nymphs are jealous creatures by nature. When mortals take on the names of gods and goddesses—even, and especially, Otherworldly deities of myth—the nymphs are envious, because such privilege is forbidden them. Your name is known throughout all the kingdoms, and revered. I mention it to put you on your guard.”
“I thank you for the warning, then,” Rhiannon said.
“Eh…there is just one more thing,” Marius continued.
“Yes?”
“The nymphs are quite smitten with Gideon. They have been since time out of mind. Oh, there’s nothing to it…nothing serious. Again, I mention it only to give you fair warning. You are very beautiful, and as I say…they are very jealous creatures. But I rule here, so all is well, eh? Just keep your distance from them. It would be best.”
Rhiannon nodded. “Forgive me,” she said. “Have you always been…thus?” She was still finding it difficult to believe she was conversing with a centaur.
Marius laughed, causing handsome lines to form on his angular face. “Since I was cursed by the gods,” he said. “Oh, but I am not always the four-legged beast you see before you now, only at certain phases of the moon. I’ll be quite myself tomorrow, with the rising of the new moon.”
Rhiannon was dying to ask him how he came to be cursed, but thought better of it. That would hardly be polite. Besides, she was worried over Gideon, and that odd business about the wood nymphs didn’t sit too well either.
“What is wrong with Gideon?” she insisted. “He isn’t going to…?” She couldn’t form the words.
“No, my lady,” the centaur said. “The watchers haven’t killed him. He has been lightning struck. It isn’t the first time, believe me, and if I know Gideon, it shan’t be the last.”
“But his wings…they are very…sensitive, and the trees…Are they enchanted? I have never seen trees move like that.”
Marius nodded. “They are the Ancient Ones. Spirits have inhabited trees since the beginning of time. They will not harm your Gideon. There task is to nurture, to heal, and to protect. The oaks will give him strength; the ash will give him continuance. The rowans will boost his faith, for it is threatened, and the pines are perhaps the greatest healers of all. Pinesap will soothe his singed feathers and set him to rights. Let the ancient ones minister to him. All will be well. “
“My Gideon?
” she said, having heard little past that. How good it sounded. She needed to hear more.
Again, Marius smiled. “He loves you,” he said flatly. “Oh, he may not know it yet, but he does. I know him for eons, my lady. What’s needed now is rest, for both of you. Let me make you comfortable out of the watcher’s view. I shall keep vigil. No harm will come to either of you in my keeping. Then once you’ve both had your rest we shall see what is to be done.”
“What do you mean?” Rhiannon asked him.
“You cannot return to the Dark Isle,” Marius said. “I saw the flames, the clouds of dust and smoke. The cave is gone. There is no more shelter there, no place for you to hide. It is a barren wasteland; it always was. The cave was his last refuge, and when the aftershocks come, it will likely sink into the bay altogether. You are left without shelter, and as long as you are together, you are fugitives from the watchers who enforce the curses of the gods.”
Rhiannon accepted the Lord of the Green’s hospitality, which included a delicious cup of sassafras root tea beside the hearth in the centaur’s cottage kitchen, prepared by Marius’s mute faun, Sy, since Marius could not enter himself in his present form. On such occasions, he told her, he either kept to the forest or availed himself of accommodations in the barn in dirty weather. Sy was an engaging creature, well-mannered and eager to please, though he wasn’t the cleverest entity she’d ever met, and it was no great feat slipping away from him after a time. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Marius. There was no question that he had saved their lives, but something untoward was going on in the forest with Gideon—something the forest lord didn’t want her to see—and she meant to find out what that something was.
Marius was absent most of the day making his rounds, for the isle was quite large, and he was a skilled hunter no matter what the quarry. This time, watchers were on the agenda, and he wouldn’t return until he was certain none lurked about. It was a small matter to send Sy off on an errand to pick her some wildflowers, for he was a simple sort, and she had totally beguiled him. The minute he was out of sight, she went back to the wood in search of Gideon.
The sun was sliding low, and it was cool and dark in the forest. The mingled scents of bark and fern, pine and mulch, with overtones of mushroom and herb, and rich, fertile soil rushed at her as she padded deeply in. The very air was like an aphrodisiac, with a pulse all its own, tantalizing the core of her sexuality, binding her to Nature and the sultry wood. She breathed it in deeply.
Rustling among the trees stopped her in her tracks. Straining her ears, she listened for the author of the noise, but there was only silence. She resumed her cautious pace, and a tittering stopped her again. She hadn’t imagined it. Disembodied voices, buzzing like bees and giggling musically, drifted toward her from all directions. Again, the sound ceased the minute she stopped and continued the minute she moved on, padding deeper into the wood.
All at once, the tree trunks gave up different sorts of watchers, as from behind each one close by, pine and oak, rowan and ash, a wood nymph emerged, trailing yards of filmy spider silk spangled with the evening dew. Their leader reeled to the fore, her every motion seeming a dance step, a voluptuous, though lithe creature with diaphanous chestnut hair, and eyes the color of mercury that had a way of changing color. Meanwhile, the others gathered around, but kept their distance as their obvious leader whirled and spun and danced around Rhiannon, who had stopped in her tracks. So these were the wood nymphs who were so “smitten” with her Gideon. They were exquisite. Rhiannon couldn’t imagine any male resisting any one of them, least of all a fallen angel cursed with ravenous lust. The pang of jealousy those thoughts sired was far worse than the glancing blow she’d taken from the watcher’s lightning bolt earlier.
“So, you are his new love, then?” the dancing nymph said. “A mite thin for his taste, but then, considering his situation, I imagine he settles often.”
Her sugar-sweet voice dripping venom made the wounding crueler. “Let me pass,” Rhiannon said.
“I am called Vina,” the nymph said, sweeping her arm wide. “These are my sisters…figuratively speaking, of course. We shan’t hinder you. We only want to have a look. Gideon won’t mind. He sleeps. What are you called?”
Rhiannon was clever enough not to answer that question so readily. This was a dangerous enough situation without inciting a gaggle of wood nymphs to jealous rage. She was hopelessly outnumbered. Where was Marius? Even the faun, Sy, would have been a comfort then, neither were anywhere about. She knew where Gideon was, but she needed to pass the nymphs to reach him.
She kept walking. “I really need to pass,” she said. “Excuse me…”
Vina seized Rhiannon’s long, loosely braided hair and fingered its texture. “Lovely, this,” she purred, “and so long! Wouldn’t the lower forms have a grand time snarling this! That’s what they do, you know, the lower fay…snarl hair. We nymphs, on the other hand, do not sink to such childish levels for our…amusements.” She twirled around Rhiannon, wrapping the tresses around her like a rope. “See what a fine cocoon it makes,” she tittered on. “Or a blanket even”—she gave the braid a sharp tug—“or a
leash!
” she triumphed, jerking Rhiannon to a standstill.
“Let me go!” Rhiannon cried, trying to loosen the braid that the nymph had cinched in tightly around her neck. “I cannot breathe!”
“Oh, be still!” Vina said, giving the braid another sharp jerk that all but closed Rhiannon’s throat. “We shan’t kill you, foolish chit. But we are what we are, and we will have our bit of fun!”
One by one, the nymphs took their turn swinging Rhiannon about by the tether they’d made of her long hair. Her arms were bound to her sides by the rest of the braid, and twice they’d brought her to her knees before she was able to work her forearms and hands free, and take hold of the hair rope that was choking her. It was no use. It was cinched so tightly she couldn’t budge it.
“Let me go, I say!” she got out through clenched teeth.
But the wood nymph danced on, while her sister nymphs followed, twirling Rhiannon about until her head reeled dizzily. Familiar hands groped her body. Rhiannon beat them away as best she could with her motion curtailed, but they groped her still as the nymphs led her off in the opposite direction. The undergrowth was thicker there. A tangled snarl of briar, thorn, and woodbine carpeted the forest floor. Sharp nettles snagged the hem of her sleeping shift rending tears that left her nearly naked, openings for the groping hands to enter and finger her pubic mound and turgid nipples. They knew exactly where to stroke and what to seize, these she-wolves of the wood. In spite of the nagging concern that they were taking her farther away from Gideon, and in spite of the anger and fear roiling in her, Rhiannon could not stay the waves of scorching fire that spread through her belly and thighs. What enchantment was this?
When the nymphs closed the circle they’d formed around her and their caresses became more urgent, Rhiannon groaned, straining against the tether her own hair had become. Everything seemed so far away, as if the fringes of her peripheral vision were closing in on her. She saw nothing but a foglike swirl obscuring Vina and the others. Their tittering voices ringing in her ears seemed to be coming from an echo chamber. It was a coarse, mocking sound that raised wave upon wave of cold chills along her spine. At the same time, pulsating heat rushed though the epicenter of her sex as the nymphs stroked and laved and probed and fondled.
They had taken her to a little clearing and backed her up to an ancestral oak that stood in the center of it. There, they circled her again and again, taking sexual liberties with her in their turn, and with each other. Each outcry Rhiannon made in protest caused the noose around her neck to tighten, for indeed it was a noose, and she’d begun to fear that it would soon cut off what scant breath still remained in her lungs.
“P-please,” she choked, pushing them away. “Why are you doing this? I beg you…let me go!” But it was no use, they were too many, and when Vina spread her legs and probed her nether lips feeling for the hardened bud of her clitoris, Rhiannon’s breath caught in her throat in spite of herself.