Chthon (5 page)

Her laugh was the echo of candlelight and thicket streams. “Am I then so devastating?”

You compelling creature, he thought. You play with me, and I am helpless.

She reached her arms around him, standing close to replace the hvee in his hair. The light perfume of her body intoxicated his senses. She was timeless; she was perfection. “You have found no woman to compare to me,” she said.

Protest was useless; even her vanity was rapture. No mortal woman could rival the splendor of her person.

“You must not forget me,” she said. “I shall kiss you again.”

Aton stood, hands rigid at his sides, feet rooted, half afraid that if he moved a muscle he would topple. The woman of the forest placed those cool fingers on his elbows, the gentle pressure evoking a responsive tingle from tight shoulders to clenched fists. She raised her sweet lips to his, holding him in ecstasy. The kiss: and desire and chagrin suffused his mind.

Gossamers pinioned his body. Only his voice found volition: “But tomorrow you will be gone,” he heard it say.

She dismissed him. “Go, go now. When you find me again, you will be ready.”

“But I don’t even know your name.”

She waved him away, and his clumsy feet turned him around and marched him from the glade. 

•    •    •

What had occupied Aton’s idling imagination up to this point now became more urgent. His attitude changed. Interested in the distaff sex only in a speculative way, until awakened by the forest nymph, he now contemplated a program of self-education that went somewhat beyond that provided by his tutor. He planted hvee in a preoccupied manner—the plants flourishing even so—and pondered ways and means.

He waited impatiently for dusk, then pounded along the old trail leading to the farm of Eighty-One. The wild plants had grown up thickly, obscuring the way and reminding him of the infrequency of his visits to this place, now. How long had it been since he’d laughed and fought with the dissimilar twins, Jay and Jervis? Since he’d let young Jill tag along, recipient of masculine unfairness? The childish games had fallen off and the barriers of status had grown, though he told himself that such things made no difference to
him
. And wasn’t he coming, at this time of problem and dissatisfaction, to talk it out and make plans with his friends? The twins were more worldly than he. Man-talk would get it out of his system, make the strangeness go, set his confusions to rest. The old companionship would dissipate the nameless unrest he felt.

The house of Eighty-One rose out of the darkness; thin squares of light edged the closed shutters. Aton skirted the steaming hog pen, his passage eliciting the usual incurious porcine grunts. The warm animal smell brought a sympathetic wrinkle of the nostrils, though he had long since ceased to find it objectionable. He came up to the rear of the house and tapped the twins’ window with the measured signal of old.

There was no response. He poked a finger behind the loose shutter and pried it open, peering in as far as his angle of vision permitted. The room was empty.

He banged the wall in futile anger. Where were they? How could they be gone when he wanted to talk? Knowing himself to be unreasonable and a trifle snobbish, he grew angrier yet. He knew that there were other things in the boys’ lives beside himself, particularly since it had been months since his last visit, but the proof of it was irritating. What was he to do?

The shutters parted on a window farther along the dark wall and light flared out to strike the bushes and beam into the night sky. Aton stepped up to it, then hesitated. It could be one of the parents. They, perhaps more conscious of the difference in Family status, and not wanting trouble with the forceful Aurelius, discouraged the association of the children. Aton waited, holding his breath, as a head poked out: ebony outlines, features indistinguishable. Then a long braid flopped over the sill and dangled its ribbon below.

“Jill!”

She spun her head toward him, trying to penetrate the gloom. “That you, Aton?”

He ducked below the spilling light and caught the swinging hair, giving it a sharp rug.

“Ouch!” she yelped, exaggerating her pain. She caught at his hand and disengaged his fingers. “That’s Aton, all right. I’d know that jerk anywhere!”

He got up to face her squarely. “Jerk, am I?”

Her face was very close to his. Her even eyes, pupils black in the shadow, looked back with unexpected depth. “When you jerk my hair—”

He had missed the pun. Embarrassed, and unwilling to admit it, he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers.

The contact was light, but that unpremeditated action surprised him as much as it did her. Jill had always been the tagalong, the drag, the interference in male affairs, the baby sister. Her unconcealed interest in Aton had always bothered him, his irritation accentuated because he was never able to admit his displeasure. He had responded with cruelty, angry at himself for that, but able to think of no alternative.

This was no forest nymph. These lips, while not wholly unresponsive, were untrained. They lacked finesse. There was no magic—except that he was kissing Jill and finding her unrepulsive. He wondered whether he should stop.

She was the one to terminate it, finally, lifting away her head and taking a breath. “Too late for that salt, now,” she said. “You already banged the bomb.”

“I was looking for the twins.” He was unable for the moment to rise to the repartee. Had he, in reality, been looking for this girl? The thought upset him.

She nodded, one braid brushing his face. “I figured it. They’re playing checkers with Dad, up front. Want me to fetch one of them for you?”

“Checkers? Both of them?” Aton asked, trying to keep the conversation going while he settled an obscure but powerful internal conflict.

“Both together. They keep losing, too. Jerv is getting mad.”

Aton had no comment. The silence lengthened between them, awkward, uncomfortable. Neither moved.

Finally he put out a hand, holding it there, letting her interpret his meaning, and not certain that there was any meaning there.

“Well,” she said, and this seemed to make the decision. She took his hand, leaning on it as she brought her foot up to the sill. Her firm legs and thighs showed through the material of skirt and slip in silhouette, stirring a guilty excitement in him.

“Wait a minute,” she said, withdrawing. Had she changed her mind already? He seethed with disappointment and relief. But in a moment the light went out and she was back. “They’ll think I’m in bed.”

Aton helped her down, placing both hands on her waist just above the swelling hips and lifting her away from the high sill. She was heavier than he had thought, and they stumbled together and almost fell as her feet touched the ground. She was nearly as tall as he.

They walked together past the pigpen, this time drawing no remarks, and went on down the remembered trail, selecting this direction by silent consent. Aton’s mind was whirling. It seemed impossible—yet she
was
a girl, with a body budding into womanhood. She had always liked him, and now she had chosen to express that liking more directly.

They found themselves beside the ancient hideout. The bushes had overrun the entrance, but the main space seemed to be intact. Aton squeezed through first, feeling carefully in the pressing dark, in case there were lizards. He brushed away a few loose burs.

She joined him silently. They would talk now, and she would try to get close, as she always had, and he would push her away automatically, and she would toss her head and giggle….

She found his head, turned it, and placed her mouth against his. His hands came up to push at her chest, touched, and jumped away. Without interrupting the kiss, she caught hold of his shirt and pulled herself closer.

They broke, and she lay back, her form just visible as his eyes acclimatized. “I thought you were just teasing, before,” she said. “But you aren’t, now, are you? I mean.”

“No,” Aton said, uncertain whether he was being mocked.

“All my life, it seems, I’ve been waiting for you to do that. And now it’s done.” Had she meant the kiss?

Aton studied her as well as he was able. She was wearing a summer blouse, gently mounded, and a darker skirt that blended with the ground. She had kicked off her slippers and her white feet stood out, the toes wiggling. “I might do more,” he said, half afraid she would be angry, though he had never paid any attention to her anger before.

“Aton,” she murmured, “You do anything you want. You—” Her voice cut off, as though she were afraid she had said too much.

“Jill, I won’t make fun of you any more—ever,” he told her, trying to stave off an excitement he did not understand nor wholly trust. He was sure, now: this had been her original intent. But did she truly know what it involved?

“You never made fun, Aton. Not really. Not so I minded.”

He placed his hand on her blouse, deliberately now, pressing on the softness beneath. She did not object. He stroked, interested but not satisfied, and afraid, despite his bravado, to do more. Then, carefully, he tugged the material loose from her waistband. “Do you mind if I—?”

“Anything you want, Aton. You don’t have to ask me. Here.” She sat up. He lifted the blouse over her head, seeing her small breasts rise as her arms went up. She wore no bra.

Aton cupped one breast in his hand, feeling its delicate texture, running his thumb over the nipple. Holding her that way, he brought her sitting torso to his and kissed her again. This time there was fire. His tongue reached out to taste the sweetness of hers.

She sank back slowly, and he followed her, kissing her cheek, her throat, her breast. She brushed her fingers through his hair. “Salt—who needs it?” she inquired softly.

He forgot caution and put one hand on her knee, just below the spreading skirt. Her legs parted a little, and he slid his hand up over the kneecap and against the inside of her thigh. The flesh was smooth and very warm.

Throbbing anxiety took him. She had let him go this far; had he reached the limit? If he should expose himself, if he dared, would she take flight and bear a story to her parents that he could hardly deny?

His hand moved on, sliding past boundaries he had hardly dared imagine before. Abruptly it met the junction of her thighs. The soft down told him that she wore no underclothing here, either. Shivering with tension and excitement, he explored farther—and found a thick moisture.

Blood! he thought, shocked. I have trespassed and I have hurt her and now she is bleeding!

He snatched his hand away and lay beside her with the drumbeat of his heart filling the hideout. What have I done! he thought.

Visions of consequence obsessed his mind. The outrage of Eighty-One, the shame of Five. “Why did you do it, you lecherous juvenile!” they would say. “Don’t you know you must never never never touch a girl
there
?” Would they have to take her to a hospital? How would he ever get her back to her room?

The passion in him died, blasted away by his crime. His eyes stared into the faint cross-lace of branching shrubbery above, limned against the starry sky—a sky not one whit colder than the clutching terror in his heart. What have I—what—she’s only thirteen!

Jill’s hand touched his arm. “Aton?”

He jumped. “Believe me, I never meant to—”

“What’s the matter with you, all of a sudden?” she demanded, rolling over to peer into his face.

Didn’t she
know
? “The blood. There’s blood.”

She stared. “
Blood
? What are you talking about?”

“Down—between—I felt it. I never—”

“You’re crazy. It’s not the time of the—” Suddenly she giggled. “Blood? You mean you thought
that
was—? Haven’t you ever done this before?”

He lifted his head, finding her hot breasts close under his chin. “Before?”

“You don’t know!” she exclaimed, the thoughtless child in her ascendant over the dawning woman. “You really don’t! And here all the time I was looking up to you, waiting for you. I thought you were the big boy.”

Aton cowered behind his raging shame, unable to reply.

Abruptly she was the woman again. “I’m sorry, Aton. I guess you don’t get out much. Here—I’ll show you how—”

But he was on his hands and knees, scrambling away from her, barging out, finding the open night and running, sick with shock and embarrassment.

Three

Aton became a handsome, outwardly confident young man of twenty. He never spoke of his plans; on Hvee it was taken for granted that the son of high Family would advance to his father’s fields. At last he received the summons he had known would come.

The living room of the house of Aurelius was generous and comfortable. A substantial hard-backed wooden chair, almost a throne, sat in a corner, parallel to the entrance; no one could exit without passing under the survey of that grim relic. A plush full-length couch lay against the far wall, seldom used. Above it, placed on the wall so that it faced Aurelius’s chair, was a color photograph of a handsome young woman: Dolores Ten, dead these twenty years and more, in childbirth. Aton had never been able to face that picture without experiencing a deep and painful guilt, compounded by another and rather different emotion that never found conscious expression.

Aurelius Five was old, far nearer to death than his chronological age required. In health he would have been a powerful man, competent, determined, and scheduled to live another fifty years at least; but he was not in health, and only the power of his mind remained. He had exposed his body to the foul spring swamp (‘spring’ by convention only, on seasonless Hvee) too many years, and the incurable—locally—blight had taken hold. Aurelius, being what he was, had refused to spend a long convalescence on far-distant Earth, away from his farm. He had left the planet once, only once, and vowed never to do so again, and now he was in the process of dying for that vow. Aton, knowing something of the prior circumstance, agreed with the principle, though he never took it upon himself to tell his father so. They were not that close.