It was a ridiculous superstition and one Natalia believed the priests and government had conjured to deflect blame from themselves, for the poor state of things in the community. With all her heart she wanted to grab Sophie and run, leaving this place and its rigid patriarchal society far behind.
But where could they go? Surrounding communities were in dire circumstances as well, and females were scarce. Tomorrow would be a particularly dangerous time to wander, for males from other communities would scent virgin blood and come sniffing around, hungering for a mate. In these times, women were carnal prey, and they could easily wind up in a worse situation.
“Mistress Natalia, what do you say?” Rae asked. “We are women now, fully eighteen. Please tell us the truth. Do you believe in the prophecy?”
Natalia automatically slipped into academia mode, choosing her words carefully. “While we may find it difficult to understand the role of faith and magic in what we know to be fact, as women of science, we—”
“You call yourself a woman of science?” Sophie scoffed. “You can’t even look at him.” She gestured toward the statue before her. She’d climbed the five steps on its opposite side and now stared across his still, carven body with narrowed eyes.
“What do you mean? I pass this way every Worship Day,” Natalia protested. “And come down from there.”
Sophie ignored the command, her pretty mouth twisting. “Yet you never look at
all
of him, I’ve noticed.”
If Sophie has noted my reluctance, how many others have?
Natalia couldn’t help wondering. “Very well,” she said easily. Under the pressure of her younger sister’s gaze, she lifted her chin and forced her eyes to the statue.
He
lay on his back in glorious repose, arms at his sides, biceps bunched, elbows slightly bent. His hands were huge. One was slightly open, its blunt-tipped fingers lifted as though it were seeking something.
Her eyes slid over the strong column of his throat to broad shoulders, and then she ventured on to the territory below, something she normally avoided. It wasn’t that he was unpleasant to view. No, only that she considered him a temptation, one best avoided.
But now her reluctant gaze roved smooth muscled pectorals, each tipped with flat nubs. Then on to his ribs and the slight depression between them on the way to his pelvis. Bracing herself, she forced her eyes to linger over his most commanding and remarkable feature. Her heart thumped in her ears. Hastily, she moved on to brawny tree-trunk thighs, then to his well-formed calves and large feet.
She straightened and caught her sister’s gaze, relieved it was done. “There. I looked. If you are satisfied, can we all return to the institute now?”
Sophie laughed at her, throwing her arms wide. “You are such a prude, Nat!” she declared, keeping her voice soft. “You can’t even
look
at his male organ without blushing, can you? It’s little wonder you’ve never been asked to wed with that sort of attitude.”
Sophie was frightened and angry over what was to come tomorrow, and it was making her mean. That’s all this was. Natalia refused to retaliate, and tried not to let it wound her feelings.
“Are you going to kiss him or not, Sophie? It’s getting chilly out here,” Leona complained, drawing her cloak closer.
“You came here to
kiss
him?” Natalia echoed. “To kiss a statue? That’s what this is about?”
Sophie shot her a glance laced with defiance. “You don’t think I could be the one to awaken him?” she asked coldly.
When did I become the enemy?
Natalia wanted to ask. But she only shrugged, not wanting to egg her sister on. “Tomorrow will be soon enough to find out, don’t you think?”
Her sister looked disappointed, as if she’d wanted a fight. But there was anger there, still simmering and waiting to boil over. It was so unfair that she would be forced into such an abhorrent situation on the morrow!
“Besides, it would take more than a simple kiss to ...” Rae began.
“Hurry up. Mistress Natalia is right in what she said before,” Leona interrupted. “I don’t want to be caught up here.”
“Girls, please—” Natalia begged. “Of all the pranks you’ve ever pulled in all the years I’ve known you, coming up here after curfew is the worst. Let’s return now, while we still can.”
Although Rae and Leona looked uncertain, Sophie ignored Natalia, kneeling on the altar at the far side of the statue. Touching the altar was a sacrilegious act in itself that made the other two girls gasp. Touching
him
was inconceivable, except during festival. Even the attendants who bathed him were careful to wear gloves.
They held their collective breath as Sophie laid a hand in the center of the statue’s chest to balance herself. When nothing happened, Natalia drew a relieved breath. Though she hadn’t realized it, some part of her had apparently feared that her sister might actually cause some change in him. After all these years, the community’s superstitions had affected her as well, it seemed.
Sophie’s hand slid higher, to his shoulder. None of them spoke now, but none could look away. The statue was so large and Sophie so petite by comparison that the two of them almost appeared to be different species.
As she watched the glide of Sophie’s fingers, Natalia’s fingertips tingled, and she curled them into her palms. A sudden shocking desire to trace his polished blue-white valleys and smooth the mounded marble of hewn muscle swept her.
“I wonder if he can feel me touching him?” Sophie whispered, her voice rough with suppressed emotion. As always, the forbidden excited her.
“What if he’s ticklish?” Rae giggled nervously.
“Hurry, Sophie. Get it done. Before we’re missed,” said Natalia.
“Don’t rush me.”
Natalia recognized that stubborn tone. Now her sister would likely move at a snail’s pace just to thwart her.
Sophie’s other hand moved, caressing his face, tracing the hard smoothness of his jawbone. “I love a man with a granite jaw,” she crooned, playing to her audience.
“Actually, it’s a form of marble,” Natalia said tonelessly.
Leona snickered. “Godking Marbelous.”
Natalia glanced at her in surprise, and the girl’s expression changed to one of chagrin “Apologies, mistress. But I didn’t coin the nickname.”
Natalia was aware of the ditties woven and sung about him in secret among the students, making sport of his astounding male proportions. But at the core of all the teasing was fear, as well as a supreme awe, and a belief in his ability to save them. “Best not to repeat them, however,” she said. “There are penalties even for such minor infractions, as you know.”
“You won’t tell tales on us, though, will you, sister? Always so loyal and steadfast and good.” Sophie traced her thumbs over his closed eyelids, then shaped his brow. A delicate forefinger traveled the carved blade of his nose.
She leaned down. But instead of kissing his lips, she ducked her head at the last minute and her tongue darted out and she swirled it around a distended nipple.
Natalia crossed her arms, immensely disturbed. “Don’t,” she choked out.
Sophie shot her a look. “Why not? I’ll do worse with him tomorrow. Before a much larger audience.”
Rae tittered nervously again, her eyes darting between them.
“Shush,” said Leona, elbowing her. “There’s no shame in the ritual,” she reminded her, parroting the words she’d been taught all her life. “It’s only a quarter hour or so of attempted mating, then you’re done. You move on with your life.”
Even though every fiber of Natalia’s being rejected the necessity of the wedding sacrifice, she said nothing. Their religious education had indoctrinated them. They wouldn’t try to escape with her even if she were to offer them the opportunity. They would only turn her in to the authorities for a heretic. And she wouldn’t run alone—wouldn’t leave Sophie behind.
She would be here to help her through whatever lay ahead. Tomorrow, all the other boys in her class—the entire community in fact—would watch Sophie fornicate for the first time in her life. Naked. In public. With a stone god. Sometimes Natalia understood those who resorted to visiting the drug huts before the festival.
“Then we can wed,” Leona added, sounding thrilled at the prospect. Her eyes went to Sophie. “I know who Sophie would choose.”
“Gentleman Cato perhaps?” Rae teased.
Titus Cato?
Natalia looked at her sister, who was studiously avoiding their eyes. The boy Rae spoke of was one of her students, a senior in third-period Medicinals. At the institute, male students were properly addressed as gentlemen. But there was nothing gentlemanly in the way this boy behaved toward women, including her whenever they came in contact. He was a handsome, conceited ruffian, with few aspirations and even less intelligence. Could he truly be the subject of her sister’s girlish dreams of romance?
As the only spinster over the age of twenty-seven in the community, Natalia was obligated to join in the marriage auction tomorrow night. Failing their attempt to awaken the statue tomorrow, these girls would be fair game afterward for the highest bidder who offered to husband them. However, they could refuse, and by doing so would enter the breeding program.
Leona glanced at her. “What’s it really like, mistress? The sacred ritual?”
“I don’t know,” said Natalia. “I was excused.”
“So you’ve never ...” Leona gestured toward the statue.
“No,” Natalia said firmly. “I was never a candidate for sacrifice. All must be virgins.” The girls exchanged looks, which she assumed meant they wondered if she’d ever actually lain with a man.
“I was inducted into the breeding program at eighteen, a year before
he
came. Participants are regarded as tainted by other men’s seed and therefore unsuitable, regardless of technical virginity.”
Sophie had paused in her task to listen, and now Rae joined in the conversation. “You must’ve had the seed of over a hundred men between your legs by now,” she said with a youthful forthrightness Natalia found discomfiting. “What’s
that
like?”
Although what went on within the program was not openly discussed with non-participants, these girls were of age now, and Natalia decided to speak to them more frankly tonight than she might have at any other time. Sophie and her companions might pretend sophistication, but they were frightened of what was in store for them.
“It’s cold, clinical, like any other medical procedure,” Natalia explained easily. “It’s done with a syringe by one of the priestesses. Temple officials keep records so that brother will not breed with sister and that sort of thing. But donors are anonymous.”
“It sounds awful,” said Rae.
“That’s what you get for refusing to take a husband,” said Sophie. “I for one am always up for trying new things.”
“Then why don’t you pucker up?” suggested Leona.
“Yes,” added Rae. “Get on with it. It’s getting cold out here.”
“All right,” said Sophie. With dramatic flair, she flipped her golden hair over her shoulder, so the girls would have an unimpeded view of the impending spectacle.
Prolonging the suspense, she bent low to the statue’s ear and murmured something low and soothing to him that the others couldn’t hear. Then she finally, finally pressed her mouth to the uncompromising line of his lips.
Natalia’s heart fairly stopped. Not because she was shocked, but because it seemed like a defiling.
Why,
she wondered,
when she doesn’t believe?
Leona attempted to appear unfazed, but Rae openly gaped, awed by Sophie’s daring.
Eventually, Sophie’s lips parted from his, leaving them wet and glistening. She lifted her head and stared down at him. Natalia found herself, along with the other two girls, leaning in and holding her collective breath.
But his eyelids didn’t flutter. His lungs didn’t pump. His phallus didn’t stir.
“I suppose you just don’t excite him, Sophie,” Leona murmured. She sounded almost relieved that he hadn’t come to life.
Sophie shot them a saucy look. “It’s not what I can do for
him
. The question is, what can he do for me!”
“Well, you’ll get nothing from me if you keep stalling,” said Leona.
“What do you mean?” said Natalia. “I thought she was just going to kiss him. She’s done that. Let’s go.”
“Hush, Nat,” said Sophie.
“There is more to our wager, mistress,” Rae murmured.
More?
A
ll eyes fastened on Sophie’s hand. It cupped his cheek, then traced the thick column of his throat, ran over shoulders twice as wide as her own, then moved lower over his chest, down his ribs and flat pelvis.
“Surely you ...” Natalia’s wide-eyed gaze darted for the second time in her entire life to his most defining feature—his phallus. It was the size and length of her forearm.
In all the years she had passed
him
on the way to temple, she’d never once studied it for any length of time. Still, like every member of the community, she had been schooled on its exact dimensions. The girth of the shaft was precisely 7.6 inches in circumference. It was tipped with a crown swollen to 8.3 inches around. Forever tumescent with unfulfilled desire, it angled upward from his pelvis to an intimidating length of 9.252 inches.
Sophie’s hand reached for it.
“For gods’ sake,” Natalia whispered frantically. “Wait until tomorrow. They’ll give you sedative creams that will ease the difficulty. They’ll monitor you, make sure you are not injured in your attempt with him.”
She started forward, but Sophie whipped around with a hateful look. “You’re not my guardian any longer. I’m eighteen now. An adult, ready to take a husband. If you can’t keep quiet, then go back down the hill to the dorm.”
Natalia’s gut clenched as her sister’s fingertips found the cool marble pillar distended from the apex of his thighs. “Don’t,” she breathed, her voice cracking. But her plea was whisper soft and whipped away by the wind.
Why did it matter so much that she not do this?
Because it seemed cruel. Wrong. Hurtful. To use him in this way without his permission. But he was made of stone, so this made no sense, and Natalia tried to shake the feeling.
He’s a statue, nothing more. Statues cannot feel.
She repeated that mantra in her mind over and over.