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TAMED PETALS
By
Desiree Erotique
© copyright September 2007 Desiree Erotique
Cover Art by Alex DeShanks, © copyright September 2007
ISBN 978-1-60494-070-2
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author's imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
To Robert, for the Once Upon a Time that began with a kiss one special moonlit night
Prologue
In time the Prince wed Snow White, and Rose Red married his brother prince. Together they shared the Prince's treasure which the dwarf had stolen. The girls' mother came to dwell in the castle of the home, as well, and transplanted the arbor of roses before the entrance of the castle. And there they all lived happily ever after for many years….
The real tale is not just for your ears, but for the ears of your children and their descendants. Sorrowfully, the time is drawn when not even the fortifications built some years ago around our tiny realm can withstand the assaults of the Christian armies. They would force you into slavery of the conscience as they did my mother's people and all the other peoples they conquer. Succeed they will in other realms, for their God is He who denies this world and all the pleasures of it and Who quells by terror and the propaganda of mortality. Our ancestors denied the immortal too long, enjoying that sin of brooding and so made us all vulnerable on the physical realm to the harms of the Great Lie.
But you have promised to leave with the coming morn, and of that I am content.
Those curious looks-sidelong and almost mocking-you've always shown. Your love is undeniable, your devotion solid. Yet, I have seen the curiosity over this passion which endures in my heart and reflects in my youth. As clear as the freckles on the cheeks of your babes is your faithful inquisitiveness. I am what I am, and nothing more, and all this by sheer faith. But faith is not foolish and I remind you again to recognize the frailty of the Great Lie. There were none to give me such warning. Had I not looked into the cold eyes of the living icon of the abysmal beast, and graced by chance to walk away, surely would I have gleaned that it is faith which fortifies. By listening to my warning, perhaps you shall come to understand. And mayhap, even, shall you appreciate my passion for your father. Passion that does not bow down to the priests of doom or the God of death or the proprieties set down through those considered virtuous by Christendom's standards.
Your father I kneeled before and he alone shall I kneel before in the future. And in that sacred woodland to which you flee, I will see him again. Yes, I am doubtless. And you know my words not the babbling of a mad woman. You know me too well. Ah, his arms, sturdy as oak, will embrace me, and his mouth shall I kiss again. They embraced me fiercely before, and against his chest shall my breasts swell again. The woodland spirits roused me, but it was he who brought me rapture. No impotent, white-palmed Christ can rouse my soul. No priest's threat of damnation can make me kneel. Only to your father do I yield, and only under his will do I quiver. Only his scolding has the power to make me repent. Only his hand can scorch me. His eyes unveiled me, his strong hands stripped me. Beneath his hips, strong and fine as a stallion's, were my misconceptions deflowered. Even now my blood courses hot to remember the touch of his lips grazing my flesh. How I look forward to the day my hands again will lace his stout neck and I feel his face against my cheek. His whispers again will croon against my welcoming ear. No lies of damnation will ever inflame me-only your father, my beloved, my Master and my life. I have seen the spirits who walk this earth behind the deceptive reflection. But I will be with him, my thighs moist and my arms open, whether I go with you on the morrow or if I remain to spit upon our would-be conquerors.
Such a fancy I have, and you can surely excuse me. For we have heard the reports from our messengers, of my sister, Guineveve, who has, at long last, found her prince to wed-a son of Charlemagne, no less. Alas, are we to be surprised by the sentries' report that she, herself, leads the troops of our enemies toward my home and people? Her triumphs are the triumph of the Pope. The Christians know of the location of our tiny realm and, with the power of her dowry, will invade and continue on their rampage to make all the continent fall before their bloody cross, with or without her. And I dare say that their crusades will endure long into the future for they shan't be content until all disbelievers are destroyed, or forced to bow to their religion, intolerance, and endless wars.
I cannot help yet wonder about the particulars involved in Guineveve's lucrative marriage. Not that it matters. It was meant to be, I suppose. Good cannot exist in this world without evil. Such is the existence our race has conjured up and stamped upon its universal conscience. I have met many other races over the years-the fey and the elves of lightness and lust, the trolls and the dwarfs-and not a one of these are as fatalistic as the race of man. Ours is truly the fallen. Fallen by deceit initiated by evil, fallen for the misconceptions we embrace and pass on from generation to generation.
But I ramble. You have each come to age and have exchanged tales more bawdy than the one I offer. Tonight, before your departure I will satisfy your inquisitive minds with all the details you've so often begged for. And once the tale is told, I suspect the sun shall be up, and then shall we kiss farewell. Go, go directly to the wood you know about. I shall join you there, at the time of my choosing, escorted by one who waits to greet you in the wood. He vowed this a long time ago. But first I wish to see you safely on. I also wish to see the face of my sister, when she and her warrior husband find me alive and young. For I hear it is not so for her anymore. I suppose the part of her which is still human truly believes the lies of the Church she serves… and which serves her in turn.
My sister will not find you, and that is revenge sublime. But revenge is not what I have sought. Desire for such petty things as revenge died the day your father asked me to be his bride. If this indeed is a time for reckoning, then it is merely the benevolence of the Gods.
Yet, it is an ironic thing indeed that the ugliness of this crusade of the Church found its perfect proponent in one as physically desirable as my sister. Were it not for her famous beauty and that disposition which enchanted the world, and likewise, her legendary prince, you would not even have been conceived. It is to Guineveve then, she whom my mother called Snow White, that my happiness and gratitude are indebted. It is true, all those strange incidents you've heard hinted of by one manner or another. And yet, my children, this home, comfortable and secure, I owe completely to my sister and that fickle affection she so creatively honed. Perhaps, most of all, it is that of the meeting of your father. Everything that makes me content do I owe, in a strange way, to Snow White ….
Chapter One
As you've heard, there was indeed a time when gratitude was the last sentiment I harbored toward my sister, a time when I cursed myself for ever loving her.
But I had loved her ever since she'd been born. That was only a few months after my Papa's death. And as Mother could not love me, my heart yearned for someone to shower my affections upon, someone to give in return all the affection I was denied. We dwelled alone in the forest cottage you have passed by whilst hunting, the same forest to which even to this day the Christian timber men avoid. Our nearest neighbors lived in the village beyond its borders. I had loved Guineveve from the time I'd helped the old village midwife deliver her into the world. I was not even yet four years of age and had to seek the woman in the wee hours before sunrise. But there was no one else to aid the old woman, as it was some holy day for the Christians, and all the proper village ladies were fasting and praying. When one is that young they do not question a parents' request for help. And to confess, I hoped my concern for Mama would entice her to love me. But after the little pink and crying infant was born and the midwife had placed her in Mama's arms, I knew by the glow in Mama's eyes that no, that could never be.
Nevertheless, Guineveve was a lovely babe, with a head covered with blonde down. And I fell in love with her the first moment I held her.
It was just days after Guineveve's birth that Mama turned me out of my little room and consigned me to sleep on a pallet in the pantry room. Some days later Mama had me fetch the village priest to come to the cottage. The faith of Mama's father returned to her at that time and she confessed her sins to the priest and had him christen my sister. At his fretful insistence, I was forced to kiss the iron cross he carried and induced to speak my loyalty to his Christ. To this day I do not recall what it was I said-I've no patience with these fools now-but I know it contented my mother. And soon enough the ladies of the village came to visit her and see little Guineveve. I could not fathom then the change of their dispositions, until I overheard Mama speak to them about her noble father and the sumptuous castle she'd been raised in. Beginning that day, a lucid comprehension began gradually to take shape in my view about the workings of the world.
Perhaps it was more that circumstances had rewarded me with a precocious proclivity. Our mother had never got along well with my father. I knew of her liaisons with other men long before an age that children should have to comprehend such facts. While Papa was working all day in the heart of the forest, these men would visit Mama. She was very cautious with me, hiding me in the closet shortly after they'd arrive. Faceless men all to me, with coarse manners and eyes I never trusted. But one in particular did not seem so coarse, and his fine features and regal manners I never forgot. Mama referred to him simply as the gentleman. He had flaxen hair and long hands and fingers as fragile as a courtly woman's. And then those blue eyes, too light for comfort, that I was to recognize later, in his daughter, Guineveve.
When I was older I remembered Mama's liaisons with bitterness. Had Papa been steely with his affections or abusive I would have understood. Her misconduct I fully believe, however, arose from her inability to forgive Papa for having lost his property and estates. He had refused to be converted to the new religion. He'd been pressured by both reward and threat from our Frankish conquerors, but he did not yield. But fearing retribution, Papa had moved us into the little cottage in the forest. It was abandoned and almost in ruins then, but soon he had refurbished the abode into a pretty home. He provided food and sustenance by cutting wood which he sold in the village. None of the villagers, grown superstitious with their conversion, dared to broach the forest which had been long ago consecrated to the old gods. I did not care if the forest was haunted by this god or that spirit. It was our home, and I was happy most of the time. For it was cozy, and my Papa had been a merry manner, and made me feel loved when he was home. Not even the train of men who came and went during the day diminished that certain happiness.
And then came a day that Papa arrived home early. It was unusual for him to arrive even before the first gleam of twilight broached the western sky. He found me locked in the pantry closet, and once he'd released me, came upon Mama and the flaxen-haired gentleman in the marriage bed. Wielding his axe, Papa ran the naked gentlemen from our house. He pursued the man for some distance, and I heard Papa shout angrily after him from the copses.
Never once did Papa reproach Mama about the gentleman, however. He only scolded her for locking me in the closet. From then on there was a solid coolness between my parents. It lasted until the day some time later. Mama ran into the house that evening, breathless and in tears. She had taken Papa some bread and a jug of ale, and found him dead beneath a fallen tree. At hearing her news I threw my arms about her swollen belly and wept.
It was some weeks afterward that she delivered Guineveve. And with the babe's christening, my status as a daughter seemed to be on par with that of a servant. I was the little maid who slept in the pantry, and had to wear only dresses weaved of remnants from old garments. But I did not mind so much, for I was allowed to feed and bathe my sister. It was to me that she spoke her first words and, clasping to my hand, took her first steps. Mama pampered Guineveve and dressed her in gorgeous, costly gowns, but it was I who played with her. It was my shoulders that her sweet, fragile arms embraced, and my cheek that her petal soft lips kissed most often. Mama soon took work as seamstress to the rich merchant ladies of the village. For a time she seemed contented, and spoke kindly to me whenever she had cause to address me. One spring she constructed an arbor over the door of our cottage, and rooted roses of different shades to either side of the arbor. During the summer these roses grew and rapidly vined out over the trellis of the arbor. She pruned them often, so that half the arbor stayed covered with white roses, while the other half was red. And to my amazement she told me that the two shades represented her daughters.
"Blooms for my Guineveve, you see," she told me, "white, and untainted as the new snow. And scarlet there, for you, my husband's little Rose Red."
For a time Mama even had a suitor, the son of the mayor of the village. But alas, the young man died in a hunting accident. Mama's contented mood seemed to have died with him, and her sour manner toward me returned. Even so, I credit our mother her due. It was solely for the labor skill of her nimble fingers that Guineveve and I did not starve or go without shelter or clothes.
What coins were left over after stocking the pantry shelves and purchasing necessities, Mama spent on Guineveve. Only the best cloths for gowns, and silk for chemises, were good enough for her Guineveve. As she grew older, Mother provided her with milk lathers for her hair and honey creams for her skin. Only shoes of cobbled deer skin was allowed to grace Guineveve's feet, and of course, there were jewels for her throat and rings for her dainty fingers. I need not say how envious I was of the favoritism our Mother showed Guineveve, and Mama did not fail to remind me often that I could never hope to be as pretty or intelligent as Guineveve. Harshly she compared us whenever she found fault with my housekeeping. I could not, however, feel animosity toward my sister. Despite the difference of our Mother's affections, Guineveve genuinely seemed to appreciate me. And at nights, after Mama had retired to her bedchamber, and I had crawled into the pallet in the dark pantry, I prayed in gratitude to my father's gods for Guineveve.
All this changed during my eighteenth year, when a brutal snowstorm descended one evening over the landscape. It swept through the boughs of the forest trees with the ease and vitality of water through a sieve. The bitter wind brought a snow that piled up to the windowsills of our cottage. We were thankfully stocked with candles, wood and flint and enough food. But that evening, as the wind howled about the foundations, a scraping sounded upon the door. Our hearts raced with terror. No wise soul would have challenged that snowstorm. We were just done eating supper and Mama told us both to hush. She listened, we all did, and the scrape turned into a knock, heavy and urgent. I would have thought Mama content to let the stranger think the house was empty so he might go away. But when the knock continued, her newfound virtues concerned her. It was not charitable, she whispered, to ignore someone in need. And so, positioning herself protectively in front of the trembling Guineveve, Mama ordered me to unbar the door.
I looked at Mama for a moment, all the hopes of ever gaining her love were as foolish, it seemed, as the stranger outside the door. As the knock grew louder, she clenched the little silver cross at her breast and told me again to unbar the door. I was trembling as much as Guineveve, yet I obeyed. No sooner had I lifted the bar, than did the tempest blow the door in. And there, beneath the raining snow, stood a great bear.
If this creature had not spoken to us immediately, I believe I would have run straight to the shelter of the pantry. And at his utterances our Guineveve collapsed in a faint to the hard floor.
"Do not be afraid," the bear spoke, his large brown eyes settling upon Mama. "I will not harm you. Please, give me shelter and the warmth of your hearth, goodwife."
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