Gemini

a short story

He said; "I haven't got a thing to give you."

His eyes fell away from hers in such a perfect look of shame that for a sudden instant she was quite convinced it must be false, an act, and she was made a fool again. He was a professional actor.

But then he drew a deep breath to speak some more, with the firm thick flesh of his barrel chest expanding against her hand between them. She felt his words vibrating through her hand and through his hand that pressed so near her heart. "I feel so very old!" The soft drawl pulled and twined the five harsh words out almost into a melody. The graceful accent seemed exotic to her, foreign, full of times and places. But now she really felt the pain in it and realized that he, like she, was a poet true, regardless of the falseness in this world. The man shook his head again. He looked back to her eyes.

They lay there face to face, embracing lightly in the morning sun, the woman's blouse by now pulled off and tossed aside. Their knees were intertwined among her skirt. The man's gauzy sleeveless robe was open and thrown back; one arm was his new lover's pillow.

She lightly smiled and replied, her voice coming out surprisingly hoarse; "What? Do you think this is a girl here looking at you? You are a very beautiful old man!" Surely time had been quite generous with him. Her free hand was on his thickly muscled thigh – in fact, it was the fervent way that she had grasped him there a moment past that somehow forced him to stop and look away and make confession – so now she very gently petted where her hand lay, comforting as she would have done a grandchild. She stretched her toes to rub his ankle too, and leaned to press her mouth very tenderly at the center of his bosom.

His face seemed deliberately quieted and opened now and so she seriously returned his glance. And then it was a shock to find the man's spirit standing in there perfectly prepared to be examined through and through. The fellow was holding up his soul to another's gaze in simple courage such as one will seldom find. Mentally, she touched a finger to the being standing there within his eyes. Something suddenly happened like a high gate swinging wide. She now could gaze upon a lifetime of achievements and mistakes, a panorama full of pride and grief and much else too.

She looked a moment then withdrew. Here was a powerful earnest soul, but with much sadness. She felt her own nature rise up full of yearning, but would hers find a mate and twin in him? His spirit had a way of flowing forth in such brutal honest eloquent words, and it could touch so tenderly with such thick hands. And the long white curly locks that fell across the well-shaped face, the forthright white soft curly beard, the web of wrinkles round the sad deep glowing eyes and tender lips; this was a countenance that knew its soul full well.

She regretted now how carelessly she'd smiled and joked. Was he too old for her in truth? Was he too old for anyone?

They lay together on a blanket on the tiny bit of sandy beach where a still green pond was hidden by thick forest. Little ripples wove a tapestry across the water's surface, darting gleams of green that might have seemed to weave into the song of birds above. From the woods above, one narrow trail tumbled down steeply through some boulders to the tiny patch of strand. Brambles full of ripening berries crowded close at hand. Frogs were splashing among the crowded lily pads and cattail stalks while fish made spreading rings of ripples and peculiar plopping bubble sounds when they rose to catch a bug. Indeed, a humming cloud of insects swarmed out there above the still green pond, dragon flies darting in their midst, but she had lit four aromatic candles round their pleasure bed to clear the place, to make an altar space. She had knelt and said a blessing prayer with each she lit.

It was cool, an early morning in late summer with a pleasant breeze to rustle in the cattail fronds, and she had fetched him here to learn if he might be the one at last. Last night they'd sat together at the fire among the chatting jolly crowd and shared some lingering looks. For her to eat, he'd roasted little spicy sausages then burnt marshmallows just exactly right. She finally realized how absolutely fagged to bits she was and absolutely must go stumbling to her tent at once or die, but for a final moment she had reached and held the stranger's hand. She felt without a doubt his strength was real and deep. He let it flow into her weakness too, up through their clasping hands and up her arm into her quickening heart where it glowed warm and bright. Refreshed enough at least to fold her canvas chair and safely stumble off into the dark, refusing his request to help, she smiled to him a final time then sang to all; "Good night sweet friends! Good night!"

And then she dreamed. Wakening, she cautiously decided that a bit of dalliance would surely bring the truth to light. The first glow of dawn eventually came up, painting distant clouds with brilliant rays.

With heart risen up into her throat, wondering at her hope, she threw together this and that then went out through the sleeping dew-wet camp and came upon the big fellow standing nude and barefoot, chanting at his meditations. Strong arms strained toward the growing light. The white mane tumbled down. She thought; A stallion! Stretching forth its neck and nickering! She felt her old eyes aching to be filled. She gave her eyes their way upon that totally male body, not even quitting when he turned and they both spoke.

Slowly then, a few words more. Might he wish to breakfast by their scenic lake? A twinkle in the words to let him know the pond was small. She knew he felt the gaze quite palpably because his manhood rose up strong. And then at that she was surprised to feel an ardent smile come to her lips, though coy and holding back from absolute consent, and yet inviting him to more than words would say. All and all, she was amazed to find within herself, even now, the sense to play this thrilling game.

And then he had grinned! He stepped up close so that she must expect embrace, expect to feel this massive nakedness at once, but then he only tenderly touched her cheek and took and pressed her hand likewise to his. He quickly pulled on sandals and this brightly colored clinging robe to come away. She'd let him lug the basket with the candles, blanket, honey, bread and other stuff on through the woods, and watched how slight the awkward burden was to him, and let him hold aside the fragrant dripping branches as they went. He might have picked her up as well if there were need. And finally when she clung to him and turned her face up to be kissed, he was as eager as a starving man.

But now he'd stopped because he wished to tell the truth.

She took his hand that cupped her soft old sagging breast and kissed its palm. She'd learned by now these fingertips could draw fire on her skin, or trembling cold as she had seldom felt. She knew his lips were hard or soft, how like a babe he sucked, as though to somehow coax forth mystic milk. She wondered at the rest. Nearly as long as those that trailed behind, long years stretched ahead.

He said; "I cannot even offer you a real love affair."

She looked away.

He said; "I have a duty at home. I hope you understand. I swore for better or worse and I can't walk out now when the worse has come to worst. There's nothing but a desert there, and yet I'd be a thief to run away. Today and tomorrow, this might be the only time that you and I shall ever have."

The woman cried out; "But I am so lonely!" Tears welled in her eyes; she blinked them back. One overflowed. He leaned to kiss there where it ran. If she had really wept, she feared he would have wept as well.

She felt his breath all warm and scented like fresh herbs when he sighed; "I know. I know!" A pause and then a whisper; "We can't let this go. Living like I do, this is the most joy I can even hope to find. I know the art of pleasure, truly well I do, and I shall show thee dear, so can't we say this is enough? We can't just let this disappear as though we'd never met. We would betray the powers who brought us here."

She answered silently, swearing to herself; Right now I will be happy!

And so she turned her face to him again and grasped the long soft locks to pull his mouth to hers. She pushed her tongue in roughly, fiercely, for that moment wondering if a man could feel like this when entering a woman's mouth. She felt a hand come up her skirt, pushing up between, tangled though it was in cloth, insistent for the intimate touch, and so at once she wriggled from the skirt and let him pull it off, then laid her knee up on his hip. She took and put his hand where it had nearly been before.

She felt the fingers slowly gently part the intimate flesh exactly as they should, exactly as hers would, exactly. Her hand went reaching for the Old Man for the first time then, and found he was the thing which pressed exactly on the aching spot as would some carven image with a cap of silk. She found how well it filled her fist. The stout twig well befit the tree, like all its parts. She could not help but grip quite hard and rub the silken tip hard on the tender spot so that his eyes came wide in wonder and he gasped. His fingertips inside her twirled kaleidoscopes of swirling bursts of color. She felt herself pulled close in firm embrace and felt a pinching at a nipple too but then a blinding lightening current shot her through. So then she scarcely knew whose skin was touching whose, which parts of flesh were hers and which another's.

His mouth went to her ear and roughly bit her there. She showed her teeth as any tigress would. She wanted now to cry out loud some crude outrageous thing, to cry the utterly abandoned phrases she had scarcely dared to use with any man, the words that really speak a poet's truth of sexual love, but panting breath could not take shape. The years had fallen by unseen.

She was a priestess, faithful daughter of the Earth and Sky, and yet she'd tramped a million miles on the journey here.

Lost, wandering out from disappointed painful childhood, she had gone with some beckoning call echoing to her ear. What called her on? At first it stubbornly remained unknown and so she tramped the dusty corridors of city life. An early marriage smashed, she had two children then to raise. It was her babies' echoing laughter where she heard the call again. It was the babies' faces where she first beheld the God and Goddess splashing gleeful in the bathtub in their manifested grace. She called them little Dionysos and Ariadne. She threw herself to mother them and soon picked up the poet's pen as well. She screwed her courage up to read a batch of poems at a party once; they were well liked; they drew admirers round and brought respected comment. She mailed some to a magazine and found herself in print.

She met a lady then, an old lady full of good humor, who smiled and almost winked across the tea cups, and asked about the Goddess and the God she knew.

She scarcely knew, she said, for foggy mystery lay thick on everything, lit only by her heart.

"Yes;" the old lady sighed; "the mystery!"

So then she found herself among that lady's followers and friends. It was a close-knit and good humored bunch of chums mostly, a dozen folk or so who'd help you out when need arose, and weep upon your shoulder when they must. Now and then a new one came or an old friend went and others hung about the fringe. They'd stroll the park and haunt the bookstores and cafes, her toddlers running after pigeons, dozing in a carriage by the table. There were some thrilling love affairs but no one stuck. It seemed there was no Orpheus who truly struck the harp strings to her tune.

The bunch of chums would telephone then toss stuff in the cars and drive about to pick each other up; then off into the country for a day or night or weekend or a week or fortnight even, if someone was inspired to organize the outing in advance. They found some lovely spots out in the hilly wooded countryside to camp. That's where they really wove their rituals and danced their prayers and drummed the throbbing drums. Her children grew with smoke and dirt and flowers in their hair, with mystic seers as their happy playmates.

The old lady knew a thing or two all right. She was a witch all right. She led them all to teach each other the Tarot and how to read the stars and omens in the flight of birds and rustling leaves and rain, to listen carefully with your heart open wide when you were spoken to, the way to mist your eyes and see the truth beyond what seems the truth. And too there were the carefully gradated smells of burning herbs and the various shapes of space that various sounds and colors and symbols open in the mind. They found the landscapes there, of course. They found the ways that gesture shapes a consciousness. Some of them learned to heal with touch, and other suchlike worthy skills. Sometimes you'd find the smiling Old One leaning close and whispering; "Now isn't this fun?" And they were led to even larger mystery.

It is amazing to discover that your soul is real. You find it's woven from the same stuff as the world, that all the world is somehow nothing else but soul.

The first night when the young one stood out in a meadow, every garment plucked off one by one, standing absolutely naked and defenseless then except for perfume drawn by a kneeling chanting man in sigils on her prickling, trembling and erotic skin, when she then sang to beckon in the shining Moon; that brought amazement full and true. The Shining Lady came and sang with her, spun one soul into the cosmic soul, sang visions of her journey on, even while the young one's limbs swayed through the ritual, while prophecies were shown to the other beings there. A witch was made that night. From that night on, the flowing branching spirit force, full in everything, stood out as clear as anything, and she could touch that power just as well as she could dip her fingers in a flowing stream. And too, in her heart's inmost place a gate out to the holy realm would open at a finger's touch if she just spoke the one word "love". Spirits of every realm now came and went before her shining eyes.

But the vision that was sung of her own future – though only broken swirling bits returned from memory – that was a mystery she did not wish but never could refuse. It told that she would walk ahead of others, oftentimes alone. One dark evening when the prayers began, a black moon low in the cloudy sky, their wonderful old witch had clutched her chest and cried in pain. Within the tiny space of half an hour, refusing to be moved out of their sacred place in the dark light, she'd spoken cheerfully to all and passed. Oh what a celebration they had then! Thanks and farewell! Tears and smiles. Mystery made manifest. So then the young one's turn had come to lead and she grew old.

Where she led, that was the difficulty. Even her own twins, grown into strong youth by then with independent minds and soaring hearts, they took their mother to task when it came out. Consulting none, she'd screwed her courage up again and penned an advertisement for the city paper. A month went by; she took it from its hiding place and wrote a check and sealed the envelope and pressed a postage stamp onto the corner. "Do The God And Goddess Call You?" That was the headline, bold in print however small and crude the type, there in the column with the churches. There were her name and telephone. Somewhere in the rich poetic paragraph, she'd even dared to place the true word "witchcraft". That true word in particular stared out stark from the soft white page into a realm of blind cruel souls. She advertised she was "accepting students for a modest fee".

Some moments of the following years became, almost, a walk through Hell. She was a lightening rod for good and ill. Cursed and ridiculed by turns from pulpits and television screens across the state, sifting through hopeless crazy applicants to find a hopeful few, she persisted at the job.

It was a good thing that the babies were well grown. Her erstwhile long lost husband reappeared, waving monstrous lying papers in his hand to try and take them. She had to face police with pistols drawn and show the children well unhurt and lift the boy's shirt to show there were no scars. She must coach them both to speak convincingly. Struggle and worry beyond belief. She had to plead her priesthood in a court of law. She prayed for guidance earnestly and constantly and was inspired to carry on through all.

At last, the final blow, a man appeared with lovely rhymes and fresh bouquets and smiles that burned her lips. Even the old lady came in a warning dream but she was standing now face to face with the hungry beings at the far tag end of hope. She fancied herself in love at last. She fancied love can't lie. It was a trap. At length she was betrayed, bereft, a fool with empty hands and purse and bruises on her tear-stained face.

But all in all, despite the worst, the thing went well. New friends appeared to help in countless ways. New ones learned and taught her too just as they should. They laughed and cried by turns. With turning years the awkward burden grew more easy slowly.

At last one moonlit night, to her surprise, thirty-seven trusted well known folk arrived when she expected eight. To her astonishment, a priest and priestess she had made bade her to stand at the altar, still and gazing to the stars with implements of sovereign power in her hands. The fire took hold, rose up in its central place to blaze out on the scene. Green leaves rustled on their boughs in sweet assent. A drum was tapping softly and the panpipes sighed. Outside the firey light, among the trees, a deer stood still to watch. The priest knelt down to kiss her feet and knees, her womb, her paps, her lips, her brow. Anointing her prickling, trembling and erotic skin with perfumed oil then smoke and light and clear water and dark earth, with prayers of praise and invocations of divinity, they set a silver crown alight with jewels upon her head. When it was done, they held her while she lay among their arms and wept.

So now at last the whirling years turned kind. Time seemed to spin down nearly to a stop. She felt herself almost daring to relax.

One Hallow's Eve a television fellow came to interview the chief high witch. She felt it was an offering of peace, or hoped it was. They taped it on the comfy sofa in her parlor by the flowered drapes. She wore a very modest dress. Followers and friends were loitering nervously about behind the camera for support. When it was done, her daughter's kind husband stepped up with a handkerchief to blot the sweat away. The television people aired her carefully constructed ninety-second speech two times that Halloween. Death is not a fearful thing because there's love. Mystery should not be feared but sought; its wonder is the path out of our doubt and pain. She wrote it up, expanded somewhat, for a Pagan magazine in Boston. A local Christian minister came by for tea.

And more. They had this annual magic campout now, the tenth year running, rain or shine, peace or war. There was a modest registration fee. They had two reams of flyers mailed and passed from hand to hand by June, posted in the bookstores and organic grocery shops. They put it on the internet. It was ten days at the start of each September. One night each year they did a wondrous powerful summoning of Sky, next night a summoning of Earth, and on the next, a call for all the troubled beings in this middle world to come and take the blessing. Many were astonished with the beauty. It seemed the forces whom they conjured made the whole thing stay on track.

And there were fine lectures, demonstrations free by volunteers. Authors read from manuscripts. Musicians played and dancers danced. There was art for love of art. There was a bulletin board with sign-up sheets; all got a chance. Druids and yogis and Lakota taught each other chants. Friends brought friends and teachers brought their students. People came from far away.

And too, by now she almost was a guest. Her people let her run the main events, accepted new ideas, but mainly took the problems of the thing out of her hands.

And then three winters past she got a new idea. It took some weeks to bring the governing committee round because the registration fee must be increased. The campground had a big canopy with a stage. They'd hire professional entertainment. She finally had to bring the trump card out. She finally had to slap the kitchen table so the coffee cups jumped and tell them, "Well, see here! I got this in a vision!" So far it had gone pretty well. They had a harper that first year who wove a spell of peace and purity that lingered powerfully on through the magic spells. Next year it was a fiddler and his little band who made their feet to stamp and dance so that the workings hummed. But still she felt the vision unfulfilled.

He was a visitor. He was a journeyman philosopher, paid to work. He claimed the curious title "talesman" on his letterhead. She'd checked the title in a book.

By this year he'd got a large bouquet of various stories in his head, old ones and new, each one possessing some particular dose of truth. Some of them rose from far beyond the veil of time, with others being recent memories. The thing was, he could herd a flock of folk there down the paths of foreign realms so every person looked about and found a bit of treasure for themselves. The key was that he felt them listening. Even deep in trance, he'd open up his heart and feel each twist of hope and joy and fear and doubt among the crowd. And then he felt his senses were the senses of the tale, so that the story found a way to spool out as it must for them. And then again, sometimes he'd simply follow blindly where a spirit led, and simply try to paint some puzzling mystery he was shown, scarcely guessing at the scenes and characters himself.

She heard of this performing artist from a friend who said he was quite good, a real magician. She telephoned long distance twice. She tore apart the envelope when it arrived and very carefully studied the photograph. The picture made him look near mad.

She finally hired the man to stand before her crowd of followers and friends and strangers this very night. He would speak for one long evening outdoors by the fire, if weather would permit, in just the way his predecessors did in olden times, to see what wise ghosts might be conjured up and made to speak. That was the deal they struck, exactly. That's what she printed in the schedule of events. Three hundred dollars he was being paid. The large fee was consideration for the miles that he must come and for the fact he would be sleeping in his truck. In any case, she thought attendance this year would be up again and he had sent some very good reviews.

Then yesterday he had arrived. The old priestess sat beneath a shady tree, bending over a glass of lemonade. She watched the actual flesh and spirit of the fellow climb out painfully from the driver's seat of a dark green camper truck. A hundred yards of emptiness shimmered between. The big fellow looked to see what gaze was on him, and she was taken by a sudden subtle undeniable power. She looked into the fluid web of life and saw its countless strands all knotted up. But then he stood up straight to look at her. She straightened too and saw dissolving knots come open to the beautiful unutterable reality beyond.

So now, where insects buzzed and cattails swayed and berries ripened in a new day's sunlight on their tangled vines, the woman who was old and young and great and small and bent and straight and he and she was nearly knowing all at once. In a mad carnival of shooting flame, all past and future spun within her eyes. She danced with mad abandon in the fire and All was fast approaching the explosion into One.

But then a jagged detail of this world today stuck fast within the gyre. It struck a nerve and she jumped back. The woman saw or heard or felt: a group of revelers were coming close.

She knew it clear. It woke a startled horror in her heart. A little troupe of happy men and women going for a naked swim on holiday, their sandals plopping on bare feet and towels down bare backs, now strolling through a dappled shade. Had laughter reached her ear? Had spirits spoken there? The seeing in a single instant point of time slammed shut the gates of the eternal realm of joy. She had awaited this one hour in trembling hope, and waited in that hope for years. She had dreamt of a loving man each and every time when she had reached to comfort her own self in lonely solitude. And now she thought their sacred privacy was lost despite due invocations of the greatest gods.

Her hopes were vain. Her works were vain. What were the candles for? What was the jumbled hocus-pocus of her whole life ever for? It seemed insoluble cruel mystery. And thus she felt she was found out committing great stupidity, and she grandmother of the clan. She felt enraged. She felt betrayed.

The man by then was gone too far in her to see at once. He only knew the woman who lay sheltered and spread open in his arms had cried aloud and that her cry had changed. But then he realized some great enormity had come to pass. What was the cry? Anguish and pain! He forced himself to freeze his ministrations. He had been thrilling to the woman's joyous dance, his lusting body all consumed with wrapping into the writhing shape so that she danced in him. But suddenly the panpipes had been struck out of the piper's hand. Now, when the beauty that forsook him for so long was his again, the spinning clay went off the wheel and somehow shattered on the wall, broken like his heart had been before.

He was bereft, ashamed and full of pity too. So he cried out; "Dearest, what have I done?"

"Coming!" she only stammered, wrestling with his penetrating hand. And so the time was lost in weird confusion.

He had not felt that coming through the fire that way was giving her the slightest pain. Indeed, he had been startled from the ecstasy of art. And so he thought to seek some new notes on this instrument of theirs, to pick her up again, to stride with her toward completion. But then when he reached on further toward some place to softly squeeze, his shoulder now between her twisting legs indeed, when he had bent to tease just at the very tip end of a very puckered teat, she shoved his face away as well.

The woman was frantically shaking her head and wrestling in the tangled stiff embrace. She stammered, pointing with a shaking hand and scarcely holding back a scream; "They're coming! People coming! Through the woods!"

Dumbfounded then, he let her go. At last she stilled, but with her limbs drawn up like a rabbit crouching, staring past him with flame-lit eyes. He looked up to the forest, disbelieving it was so. They were there.

The little crowd of people stood and stared. Some pressed forward for a better view.

If truth be told, he did not comprehend her panicked shame. His honest impulse on the moment was to cover up the lady as he could, perhaps to lightly lay himself upon her, then to look up over his shoulder and speak some terse brief greeting in a very sharp voice. Surely they would get the point. These folk were naked Pagans, were they not? Are not all acts of love divine among such folk? Did not the smoky altar candles stand as perfectly obvious signs of the sanctity which was so lewdly broken? By all the powers of justice and of joy! Each and every one of them must fuck a thousand times more frequently than she and he! But the holy dancer curled her soul and body up and seemed to want to vanish clean away. Therefore he rose onto his knees and faced the gawking crowd. His hands clenched and unclenched in lingering frenzy.

His robe hung open and his manhood still stood up. His face and chest were still hot crimson flushed. A dunce could read from that what they had been about, but his lover clung behind his back, pressing very tight with arms about his waist and face behind his shoulder, hiding her sigils of their passion. At least, he thought, she seemed to find no fault in him.

One of them spoke, some stupid chuckle and a joke up there in the forest verge. Another one apologized. Some stared at his cock so that it further swelled into its proper shape, speaking to him inwardly of pride before fools. One of them turned and turned about. One actually bent to pluck some berries from a bush as any monkey might have done in stress. But they did not leave.

These folk were strangers to him but perhaps they were the lady's friends. That seemed unlikely. Or else she knew not one and they were toadies of her fame, fascinated with this living picture of an ancient Goddess caught in copulation. He thought he ought to shout and wave and shoo them off like hens but he was stuck there in a web of doubt. He'd hired out for the job of showing holy secrets to these folk. And there were times before in younger days when he had freed his nobler self to dance proud passions naked for a crowd. Deep in his soul still stood the prancing antlered stag at rut. The writhing tangled two-backed body they had stumbled on; was it a weird grotesquery to them or sacred myth? What was his duty now? He knew not what to do except to sniff the spirit wind and try to sense the thing, and meanwhile shield his doe-like lady from the glare.

But then a startlement. Shoving hard upon his shoulder, she leapt up. He felt her choose an instant first before he saw what was the choice. He turned to bellow like a wounded bull but found the rending cry stuck in his throat. His hands reached out but they were empty of all gifts so he must let her go. He saw the fleeting soul and body, saw a candle knocked aside and yet left burning as she went.

And then, to his astounded joy, the lovely being fluttered up and flew. She was transformed.

But then again, as slow as anything can ever seem, the spirit's arcing dive into the pool seemed achingly slow. That instant at the peak seemed like the curving form which had so lately spread so open in his arms were hung upon a darting ray of green green light, alike some dragonfly caught on a silver pin.

But then again, the waters opened to receive her.