I
In the king's forest there rode a knight, who's name has been forgotten now.
Chasing poachers he rode far from the castle into woodland unfamiliar and strange to him. The day was nearing its end and he was growing weary when he came upon a glade. Within the tight ring of trees was a clearing seemingly untouched by any man before him, an indentation of greenery in the earth that sat shallow and flat. Here was a peaceful stillness, no birds sang and no insects swarmed and bit. In the centre of the glade, lit by the setting sun, was a tuft of soft moss, large enough to be as a bed. The knight had travelled far and so he tied his horse and lay upon the ground and soon fell into a deep slumber.
II
In his dream he was under a canopy of stars. As far as he could see was desert, beneath his feet dusty red earth plumed where he stepped. There was someone waiting for him there in that barren land. A woman carrying herself with grace and poise as she stepped towards him. Her green flowing gown was shot through with golden thread, forming whorls and labyrinths that made him dizzy to follow. On her head a crown of gold and jewels rested.
He knelt, his head bowed. He didn’t dare look at her lest his eyes betray the feelings of longing and shame that welled within him unbidden from dark places in his soul. She cupped his chin in her cold hand and tilted his head up so that his lips met hers.
They made love in the dust under the stars. Sometimes she would pull away a little, as if to check that he would follow after her. Testing him. The red dust stuck to his back as he sweated under the sunless sky. As he reached climax he felt as if something deep within him were being pulled out.
With a start he woke the next morning in the glen. The rising sun kissed his face and filled him with the warmth and memory of the night before. He rode back to the castle but could not banish the woman from his mind, and so returned to the glade the next night.
III
She was waiting for him again in his dreams then, and the night after that and so on. Each time he met her in a different place under the stars. Some with roiling clouds of lightning overhead and rain which drenched them as they lay together, some with a glittering endless sea. All barren of life aside from the both of them.
On the fourth night she took his hand and pressed it to her belly, let him feel that it was full and rounded with the promise of childbirth. He tried to make love to her gently, so as not to harm what he knew with an unexplained certainty was his child, but she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him into her with more urgency than ever before.
IV
When the knight returned to the castle the next morning he was asked to explain his absences to his peers and king. He remained silent about the glen and the woman who waited in dreams within it. The king declared that the hunt for the poachers would not bring fruit the knight was given a new task. One of petty diplomacy that would take him away from the castle and it’s woodlands for two days and two nights. He protested.
This was the time when the glory of the knight was waning. The sun was rising on a new world and the old one, the one of glory and heroes and conquest by force, was waning. It has been years since the knight had seen blood spilt. He was uncomfortable in the peace. No one looked at him with fear nor with reverence or love. No flowers were thrown to be trampled by his horses hooves as he left the city. He felt that beauty had left the world.
His protestations were overruled, and so he went.
V
When he returned he went to the glen as soon as he was able. He found sleep difficult, twisting and turning, he felt the woman to be just outside his grasp.
He only realised that he had fallen asleep and was in a dream when he heard sobs and lamentations. On the banks of the glade the woman wept and wailed. When he went to comfort her she looked at him with eyes red and aflame with fury.
He stumbled back from her then, afraid. He felt small and simple. His back hit a tree at the edge of the glen and found his arms pulled to tight against branches and tied there with rope, though he could not turn his head to see who was doing so and he sensed no presence behind him.
The woman regarded his supine vulnerable form with the same anger she had worn earlier but now a hunger too. A plea fell from his lips, the first word either of them had spoken to each other. It made her shiver, an animal vibration of anticipation. A cat ready to pounce upon a bird.
She reached into the earth and, seemingly from the soil itself, from it she drew a vine of branches and grasses. Twisted together at the base but limber near the end, where tails spread nine times, each be-throned with a cluster of thorns so that when she waved it they travelled like falling stars through the sky to bite into his flesh.
That first hit caught him in the left flank and took the air out of him. The thorns where they hit his skin grabbed flesh and tore with impunity, with grateful relish. Blood misted like morning fog in the rays of sun.
She lashed him many times with a firm arm. By the time she ceased his wounds were many. Blood ran down his body in rivulets, from his forehead and over his eyes to paint his world red with pain. She stepped close to him then, and put a hand on his chest to feel his quaking, feel his muscles tight with shock. Her hand found a deep wound upon his ribs.
Her touch, now so gentle, stirred him. Her fingers explored the wound and she wetted the tips of them in his blood, circling them around the edge, feeling where his inner and outer self met. She slipped them inside him and curled them, cupping his flesh in her hand. He gasped but offered no protest as her fingers travelled in and out of him, getting deeper every time.
When she felt his member stiffening against her swollen stomach she moved her hand downwards to it, filling his wound with her tongue instead, sucking on secret parts inside him. As he came he felt as if she had pushed her head right into him and had taken a bite out of his heart.
She was pristine when she stepped back, her white dress spotless. In her eyes now there was no anger or sadness. She untied him and held him with his head in her lap, stroking his matted hair, whispering things he couldn't quite hear but that brought him comfort. She put her breast to his mouth so that the milk that flowed from her nipple could nourish him and he closed his eyes and drank deep of her smell, her taste, her cruelty.
VI
When he came to this time the pain travelled with him. He writhed in the earth. His sabatons made ugly scars in the moss. He tore off his armour and examined his body for any trace of the whips bites, but his pale flesh only bore the old scars of battles long since won.
That morning those at the castle remarked upon his pallor and he rebuffed all concern for his wellbeing roughly. He rode his horse away towards the woodland that evening without a word. It was only chance that days later that king’s riders came upon a glade. Flies buzzed lazily in the rays of the dying sun, animals quivered their noses and crashed through brush, and there in the centre, upon a bed of moss lay the empty imprint of a man sleeping.
