Isla moved over the fresh-mown lawn like shadow and slipped silently into the trees. The moon was nearly new, and only a very slight sliver of light was available to light her way. Even that was sometimes hidden by clouds. It didn't matter; this was
her wood. She knew it better than she knew her own soul. She moved carefully to avoid crashing too loudly through the brush, a few vines tugging at her nightdress as she passed but letting go like a lover holding onto his sweetheart's hand until the last moment as they parted ways. Halfway to her destination she stopped, straining to hear. Slowly she smiled.
"You're not as sneaky as you think." Her voice was low and warm and mischievous. "Not by half."
"Ach! Crivens!" A tiny voice came from a branch above her. "Does nothin' scape the hag o' the hills?"
She chuckled. "Not much. What are you doing?"
"Weell...seein' as it's one o' yer fancy days..." The silhouette of the Feegle on the ground in front of her rubbed the back of his neck, rocking back onto his heels then forth again to the balls of his feet.
Isla rolled her eyes, shook her head, then laughed again. Feegles might have been scared of "hags," but they knew their rules for High Sabbaths well enough. "I suppose it's good I always bring a spare." She leaned down and held out a bottle of mead that had been put away last year. "Blessed Be, Awfully Wee Mad Spike." She raised her voice a little. "
And all the rest of you scunners!"
"Aye, blessed be an' all that, Mistress," Awfully Wee Mad Spike said cheerfully, and both bottle and Feegle disappeared in the span of a blink. There was the quiet scurrying of tiny feet on bark, and the feeling of being watched in the woods diminished.
Diminished, but never faded entirely. One was never truly alone in these woods.
Isla pulled the hood of her cloak over her hair, disappearing against the inky black of night, and continued on her way. Another twenty or so minutes brought her to a clearing in the trees. A bonfire roared, making the naked branches cast twisting shadows this way and that. If there was anyone else in the clearing, it was difficult to tell. Near the fire were two bowls. Isla knelt in front of them, pulling back the hood of her cloak and dipping the fingers of her left hand in one bowl. She sang in a loud voice clear as water a chanting sort of song in an ancient-sounding language lost to most while she dragged her fingertips from the inner corners of her eyes alongside her nose, past the corners of her lips, to her chin, leaving behind streaks of deep red. The fingers of her right hand she dipped into the other bowl and dragged her fingers horizontally across her
eyes before crossing each eyelid and daubing the bright blue woad in vertical lines down her chin. At this point any onlookers would become aware of a steady drumming. The drumming hadn't
started, but had simply always been, low in the background as it pounded out the natural rhythm of the forest around them. It was heard, of course, but also
felt in the chest, the steady thrumming of the Earth that had always been and would always be if only man had heart to listen. But they never did, these days, did they?
Arise, child of the forest. It was impossible to tell whether the voice was in one's head, or coming from the trees all around.
Shed the trappings of man and become your true self once more.
Isla obeyed. Slowly she rose to her feet, unfastened her cloak, and let it fall to the forest floor. Just as slowly she pulled at the tie of her nightdress and let it slip over her shoulders, down her torso, over her hips, and let it pool around her feet. Despite the chill, and perhaps because of the fire, she stood silhouetted against the flames in the late September chill without a stitch on her body. The shadows of the forest began to shift unnaturally. Tall, ethereal
women and dangerous and wild-looking
men gradually appeared from between the trees, dwarfing the flame-haired little witch. Their faces were daubed with woad, though they had not smeared blood across their skin the way she had; they had taken enough blood into their very beings that the symbolism would have been lost on them. The drumming of Earth-life grew louder, more urgent, and was joined by the music of the long-forgotten thunder and rain of aeons past. Isla joined hands with the wild people, smiling and laughing and singing as they danced wildly about the fire, twenty or thirty beings all there together in worship and song. Her hair flew out behind her, streaming in a streak of orange that was easy to keep track of among all the browns and greens and blues. Together their voices raised as one in an eerie chorus of praise. Their feet worked in complicated patterns as they circled the fire together, hands clasped and raised high, then broke apart into twos and threes and fours, then came together again.
Just as gradually as they had appeared, the wild people began to disappear. They were never seen actually leaving the clearing, but the circle grew smaller and smaller until the dancers could no longer fit around it. Eventually only one other woman remained, clasping hands with Isla as they sang a hauntingly beautiful melody. The woman's voice was high and clear, complemented and harmonized perfectly by Isla's lower, richer voice lending something more of humanity to the ethereal Pagan psalm. Eventually the wild woman crowned Isla with a
circlet of leaves, flowers, berries, and other brick-a-brack most would have considered weeds. She blessed Isla with a soulful, yet somehow still chaste, kiss and Isla bowed to her.
And then she was gone. She hadn't walked off into the forest, nor suddenly disappeared. It was as though the wild woman had been slowly fading the entire time, and only now could the brain register that she was gone entirely. Isla was once again alone in the clearing.
"Child." A deep voice came from the other side of the fire.
Immediately Isla sank to her knees. "My Lord."
Over the enormous fire was briefly visible a pair of horns. As the man walked through the fire, it became more apparent that they were
antlers broader than a man's shoulders and taller than Isla when she stood ramrod straight. The man had the legs of a goat--or, more appropriately, a deer since he stood a little over
seven feet tall--with hairless tights, between which his manhood stood erect, as nearly as long as Isla's forearm and as thick around as her wrist. From the thighs and up, he appeared human and in his
face was a dark beauty even the most chaste of women might struggle to resist. He leaned down and gently tilted her face up to meet his gaze with one finger crooked under her chin. She kept that intense gaze and, as that finger put the slightest pressure under her chin, rose to her feet. Without his asking, one of her hands curled around his shaft--at chest height to her--and stroked him slowly.
"You honor me with your presence at this holy Sabbath, my Lord Cernunnos." She glanced downwards, then coyly back up at his face and licked her lips. "To what do I owe what is certain to be a great pleasure?"
Lord Cernunnos smiled beneficently and shivered at her touch. "And miss a Mabon celebration with the favorite child of the forest?" He leaned down to kiss her deeply. "My most dedicated high priestess?" He purred deep in his throat and shook his head. "Never." He sank to his knees in front of her, and even so was eye-level to her even without the addition of his antlers. "Your praises call to me across my island." He kissed her throat and rested his hands on her hips. "Not in centuries had that happened. Not in centuries has a human so loved their Earth as you and your William." His lips strayed to her breasts and one hand slid from her hip across the crease of her thighs, between them where two large fingers stroked gently at her sex.
Isla gasped and closed her eyes as he touched her. "My William is dead these many years." Her hands flew out to steady herself on his shoulders. "My God is my love."
"And your God loves you," he assured her, his voice muffled against her skin. "The God of Abraham leaves his people to suffer, turning his back to them and abandoning them in silence.
I am not such a god." Cernunnos pulled at her hips gently, and Isla was forced to spread her feet wide as she was brought to stand straddling his thighs. "My faithful are rewarded for their praise," he looked up into her face and smiled at the blood smeared from her eyes to her chin, "their sacrifice."
"I have sacrificed everything for you, my Lord," Isla assured him, shivering as his warm tongue lapped over her nipple. "Almost unto death. And I would, if it came to it."
"I know you would." Cernunnos pulled again at Isla's hips, this time guiding her slowly downward. "Which is why of all days, you deserve a reward for your loyalty on this Sabbath."
She whimpered slightly; despite her wetness, his shaft still stretched her to discomfort at first, and she felt this would be the part she could never get used to. Gods were selfish lovers, she had learned over the years, and her comfort tended to be a secondary or even tertiary thought in the depths of his ancient mind. Gradually she grew reaccustomed to it, and braced herself against his shoulders as she moved, rolling her hips as she took the tip inside her and kissed her god hard. One hand slid to clench in his hair and he chuckled at her brazenness.
"Oh little one," he sighed. "You never seem to grow used to the gratitude of a god." He stood, easily taking her with him as though she weighed nothing, and pressed her back against a tree.
"Would it truly be godly if I
could grow used to it?" Isla smirked when she made him laugh. She suspected that was one of the things he liked about her: her boldness, and her quick tongue.
The smirk was quickly wiped away when he pressed deeper inside her. Isla gasped and her nails bit into his shoulders as his cock slowly pressed into her while Cernnunos easily supported her with one hand.
"My Lord!" she gasped, letting her head hang back against the tree. "Please...oh gods please...!"
Cernunnos smirked, seeming to enjoy her struggle to form words. "Please--" a deep groan of pleasure
"what?"
"Let me...let me..." She couldn't do it. She couldn't form the words. Her brain had gone completely blank of most forms of language, and she was left instead to the base animal instincts of her body. But that was part of his godhood, wasn't it? Instincts and urges?
Without further explanation she pressed her strong thighs against his sides, using them to steady her as she slid down his throbbing shaft then up once more. Cernunnos groaned and gripped her hips, slowly thrusting into her. With each thrust was a gentle swell of her belly as his thick cock penetrated her cervix, over and over, slowly but surely, pulling moans from her throat as one hand still rubbed steadily at her clit. Isla's hands flew from his shoulders to his head, gripping his horns and pulling him suddenly down in a brazen move for a deep kiss.
Her daring at treating her god so only seemed to spur him on. Cernunnos picked up the pace, both in stimulating his priestess and in penetrating her, his teeth scraping roughly against her lip as they lost themselves in a carnal kiss.
"Fuck me," she begged breathlessly. "Fill...fill me with...your...divinity...My...My Lord...
Lord Cernunnos!" She cried his name aloud, cumming around him, pulling again at his antlers to bury his face in her breasts as she reached her satisfaction with him.
This seemed to break something in the god which had previously been holding him back. Teeth and lips and tongue wandered over her breasts, her nipples, as he gripped her hips and rear with both hands and pounded into her seemingly without concern for her comfort. Isla cried out wordlessly in pleasure, arching her back, gripping his antlers for dear life as her lord god used her to reach his pleasure, filling her with his seed, leaving them both panting and spent against the ancient oak tree in the bonfire clearing. He knew that she was unaware of their unannounced visitor, but the witch finder was of little consequence to him;
let him watch. Perhaps he could learn a thing or two about how to treat a high priestess of the Earth.
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