The Hive
Chapter 5: Surrender
Another Interruption from The Author
This chapter continues my style of exposition, with the usual flashbacks, flash-forwards, scene jumps and all the other whizz-bang gimmickry I love to employ.
As this is the last chapter, I think I’ll summarise, as simply as I can, the “forward” story thus far (or as much as has been revealed of it thus far), without all those time-jumps and implied facts. Feel free to skip it.
Rich Brunner is a forty-five-year-old divorcee from Los Angeles. He’s a highly successful accountant, who is pretty much retired. Since his divorce he’s become a sex addict, and it’s getting out of control.
His closest friend, Paul, advises him to see a top psychotherapist based in London called Lee Sanders. But she’s impossible to see, she’s very busy.
Now desperate, Rich bribes her receptionist to jump the queue. This works, and he goes to see her next day in London.
He is sceptical of her at first, as she seems a bit kooky for his taste. But in a single day-long, session she cures him. He is very grateful and loses his scepticism completely.
But on return to L.A. he feels strangely empty and almost sad. He tells Paul he’s fallen in love with her. Paul tells him to follow his heart and go back and see her if he feels that way.
He flies back to London without telling Lee, because he feels awkward and has feels he might be seen as a stalker, as Lee did not indicate that she saw him in anything other than a professional light.
She sees him loitering at a café near her home. He blurts out that he’s fallen for her. She doesn’t show any sign of either reciprocation or rejection, but invites him to her place, where she can “explain herself to him”.
At her place, she tells him about her childhood in an aristocratic British family, surrounded by servants. She tells him that she has always had predisposition to command, partly due to her upbringing, but more importantly because she feels she has always possessed the ability to read people’s minds, and subject them to her demands using an almost magic ability. As a student, she lived in a communal house, but soon took it over and ran it the way her own household had been run, according to strict rules, with clear-cut well defined roles for all the staff.
She decided to exploit this ability to command by becoming a hypnotherapist, treating various addictions.
Her career thrived. Then one day she was approached by Clare, a daughter of an ex-housemate who was being used as bait in a blackmail racket by her criminal pimp of a boyfriend. Through Clare, Lee learned about online financial domination, about which she had previously been completely ignorant.
Lee then describes to Rich a plan to create a society modelled on the strict hierarchy of a beehive, with Lee taking the role of Queen Bee. She also tells Rich that it was not love that drew him back to her, but a need to serve her, and become her unpaid financial aide. The society will be funded through the use of “money bees”, financial slaves, all serving “princesses”, who are financial dommes who supply income and new members to the Hive in return for commission payments.
Rich is aghast and repulsed by her insane plan, and leaves her, disillusioned, for London airport, preparing to fly home. But at the airport he has second thoughts, and realises that what she was saying was right: Whether or not it is love for her he feels, he realises that he will not be happy unless he does what she demands.
Rich begins to work as member of the hive, and is indoctrinated into its rules, which include sexual abstinence, through a form of brainwashing. The Hive is a mixture of monastery, religious retreat, addiction rehab centre, alternative closed community, and open prison. Either because of the brainwashing or because it actually suits him, Rich feels content here.
Meanwhile, Cat, a blogger, attempts to infiltrate the Hive by seducing Joanne, who works in The Hive’s gift shop in a nearby town. Joanne recommends Cat to Lee, who interviews her. Lee is not fooled for a moment by Cat. Lee instead seduces Cat herself, and tells her that she has plans for her to become a “princess” herself, as Lee can see that Cat, like Lee herself, has an ability to lead, and has attracted a lot of followers to her blog.
On being shown by his friend Joe the grim reality of the financial domination scheme and its effect on those trapped by it, Rich begins to feel disillusioned.
He intentionally goes into a “prayer cell”, in reality a two-way communication room connected to Lee’s home, to get his doubts allayed, and “re-programmed” into a complicit state. Once there, Lee re-programs him, but also informs him that Cat will be arriving there incognito, except to a select few senior staff members like himself. He is to show her how the Hive operates, and explain the financial side of things.
Cat seduces him, in an attempt to deprogram him. She has no truck with the mumbo-jumbo and brainwashing, and wants Rich to clear his mind so that he can help prevent the Hive from being destroyed, as it’s under investigation by the tax people. It appears to Rich that Cat is not being honest, and that she has some motive of her own.
Their sex, and their subsequent discussion were caught on camera. Both of them, together with other members who met Cat, are reprogrammed so that they don’t recall their encounter, and Cat is re-introduced into the hive, this time as an actual member. But although Rich’s mind has been clouded, she is still fully aware of what has happened. She has made notes in a notebook which she leaves for Rich to find in his desk. Meanwhile she makes her escape by swimming across the river bordering the Hive, to freedom.
Again, Rich is brainwashed, this time into forgetting that Cat ever existed, as Lee wants to hide the escape from everyone’s knowledge.
But when he finds the book, his memory is jogged, and he realises the extent of Lee’s malevolent megalomania.
After yet another attempt to reprogram him in a “prayer cell”, Lee herself makes an appearance and manages to subdue him.
However, on her escape, Cat reveals all in her blog.
This has the effect of catapulting Cat into fame, and Lee, together many of the Hive members, including Rich, into notoriety. The revelation ruins her, and lawsuits fly. Her operation is investigated by various national and international government organisations. She goes into hiding in the countryside.
Rich returns to L.A. He agrees to meet Cat, who offers him a job working for her, in the same role as he had with Lee. Rich is sickened by her self-serving ambition.
Many months later, Paul meets Rich by chance, and talks to him about the Hive. At the end of it, Rich confesses that in spite of everything, he still can’t exist without Lee. So once again, Paul tells him to follow his heart and look for her.
Certain events in this chapter are implied but not described. You know what I’m talking about: The stuff that can destroy lives, the events that can take a happy child, and turn them into strange, walking ghosts, who bravely don the guise of normality, but when you look a little deeper into their eyes, you see that they carry inside them a tiny photo, a frozen image taken at the moment of a terrible crime. And they sometimes get confused by that photo, thinking sometimes that they’re not the victim, but the murderer.
I like to end my stories on an uptick; I just love a happy ending. But what kind of a happy ending can we get when the main guy, Rich, has lost everything, and his Goddess, Lee, has also lost everything, and we don’t even know if Lee could ever love anything except power?
This final chapter has turned out to be more romance than mind control. But hey, what bigger mind-fuck is there than when you fall in love?
Oakhurst Manor, Kent, UK, 1969
Rosie sat on the step of the back porch, listening to the music coming out of her brother Tom’s bedroom. She liked this song. She knew the words:
Oh, it’s the never-realised question:What is that we are part of?What is it that we are?
Dicky sat on the porch next to Rosie. Dicky liked the song too. Dicky was Rosie’s rag doll, which she still played with, sometimes, even though Rosie was starting to get a bit old for dolls. Dicky and Rosie were both ten.
She heard others up there with Tom. Tom’s school friends. Boys and girls, gorgeous boys with long hair. One even had a beard! Another boy had a Lambretta! And the girls were so pretty with their long, long hair and their multi-coloured skirts and tinkling bracelets.
She wanted to be up there with them, sitting cross-legged and listening to music, and laughing and lying curled up on cushions. She wanted to smell the incense properly, to watch the funny bubbles in the lava lamp drifting lazily up and down.
But Tom had asked her to go out of his room when his friends came, because they were revising for O levels. It didn’t sound like they were revising to Rosie.
So she practiced levitation. She stood up, shut her eyes and stretched her arms out. Then she concentrated all her mind on the soles of her feet, her bare feet, warmed by the warm porch step... and then she slowly raised herself up on tiptoes.
“Did you see that, Dicky! I did it! I levitated for ten seconds! Now your turn.”
Dicky wasn’t as good as Rosie at levitation, so Rosie had to help him, by lifting him up herself.
She hummed the song as it faded out:
The mind and its motionThe foot and its moveThe life and its patternThe heart and its love,Oh, it’s the half-remarkable question.
She heard clattering on the stairs. It was Matt and Ginny. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. She knew what they were doing, they were coming out into the kitchen garden to smoke. Mummy didn’t let anyone smoke in the house, not even Daddy.
They sat a little way from Rosie and smoked. They giggled. All Tom’s friends always giggled. Rosie never giggled.
Rosie watched them. Matt noticed her and smiled. Rosie smiled back, and then flushed pink. She was in love with Matt.
Then Rosie said a magic spell in her head, to make Matt fall out of love with Ginny, and into love with her, Rosie. It was a new spell she just invented, so she wasn’t sure if it was going to work.
Matt got up and came and sat beside Rosie.
“Careful!” Rosie shouted at him, annoyed. He’d sat on Dicky.
“Oh, sorry!” He shuffled away, and picked up Dicky by the arm, which annoyed her further.” Who’s this?”
“Dicky.”
Matt held Dicky before his face, and said earnestly to him, “Sorry I sat on you, Dicky”. He looked at Rosie.” Does he forgive me?”
Rosie laughed.” He says, yes he forgives you, but don’t do it again.”
“I won’t. I won’t ever sit on you again.”
Ginny got up and came over. She tousled Rosie’s hair.” Beautiful girl. Isn’t she beautiful, Matt?” She kissed Rosie on the forehead. Rosie smelled tobacco and patchouli on her hair.
Ginny beckoned to Matt.” Come on, let’s go back up.”
No. Stay here with me.
Matt hesitated, and said slowly, “I’ll come in a while. I’m want to hang out here with Rosie.”
When Matt was high, he resonated with kids. He saw the world the way they did. In fact he found it easier to talk with Rosie than with Ginny.
The two of them chatted there on the doorstep, talking about magic and pixie rings and trolls, until Mr and Mrs Lamb came out into the kitchen garden, also to smoke a cigarette. Mr Lamb was their butler, and Mrs Lamb their housekeeper.
Rosie whispered in Matt’s ear, telling him about them:
Mrs Lamb was, like all housekeepers, stern and commanding with the staff. Mr Lamb always smelled of whiskey. Daddy used to get angry with Mummy for not upbraiding Mr Lamb when he would take sneaky swigs of Daddy’s best single-malt, but Mummy said you should be charitable to the weak.
Everyone was scared of Mrs Lamb. Even Mummy and Daddy. Everyone except Rosie. Mrs Lamb’s creased and careworn face would soften when she saw Rosie. She always called her “Little Gypsy Rosie Lee”. And sometimes “Poor Thing.” Rosie didn’t know why she called her that, because she wasn’t poor: Someday the whole big house would belong to her, and she’d be Queen of the castle.
Rosie liked to tease Mr Lamb because he was always so serious and sad. Nothing would make him laugh.
“Why don’t you put a laughing spell on him?” said Matt.
“I tried to. And I told him jokes, and made silly faces, but it only makes him even sadder.” Matt laughed.
Mrs Lamb came over. Matt stopped laughing when he saw her severe scowl.
“And what are you children laughing at now, may I ask?”
Rosie told her.” Mr Lamb. He’s always sad.”
Mrs Lamb looked over at her husband, who was standing in the sun like a stranded penguin, puffing on his cigarette and picking invisible specks of fluff from his immaculate coat-tails. She rolled her eyes.” Oh, you’ll never make him laugh. But he certainly makes me laugh.“
“What does he do to make you laugh, Mrs Lamb?”
Mrs Lamb twitched her mouth.” Oh, when he comes back from the betting shop after he lost all his wages, and asks me for a tanner for cigarettes. Or when he irons his trousers and stands in his underpants and shiny shoes with his skinny hairy legs showing.”
The three of them laughed at poor old Lamb. He knew he was the brunt of their mirth, and sighed.
Rosie called out to him.” Lamb, make us laugh.”
Mr Lamb called back: “It appears that I have adequately achieved that task already, no effort having been required on my part, Miss Rose.”
Rosie retorted, “Mrs Lamb wants to see your skinny hairy legs. Now.”
“With the greatest respect, I very much doubt that, Miss. Besides, there is a distinct chill wind today”.
“If you don’t do it now, I’ll turn you into a frog!”
“Perhaps later, Miss.” Perhaps when Mrs Lamb’s asleep and you’re all tucked up in bed, Miss.
Near Oakhurst Manor, Kent, UK, 2016
Lee stood outside the gate at the front of the long, Rhododendron-lined driveway leading to Oakhurst Manor, her childhood home.
She thought about going in, and telling the owner that she used to live there, and just wanted to see her old home. She’d been told that a Russian Oligarch lived there now. She could imagine the place: A huge flat-screen TV where the Tudor fireplace with the coat of arms once was; black leather sofas instead of the antique Chippendale armchairs. Guards with AK-47s, a fat surly cook, and household staff comprised of square-jawed muscular women and unshaven thugs with big moustaches.
She mounted her bicycle and rode on.
This part of the quiet country road widened out from a single narrow lane into two lanes. It actually became more dangerous for cyclists here, because now the cars would speed up and race along at seventy miles per hour, and try and overtake tractors on blind corners.
Sure enough, as she came round a bend, a car was approaching her on her side of the road! She swerved into a ditch. The driver screeched to a halt a few yards behind her and ran towards her.
“Jesus fuck. Are you okay?” Then they froze. It was Rich.
“My Queen—Lee. Lee. Oh God.” Rich, completely overcome, sat down on the road and wept.
Lee shook her head.” Oh no. This can’t be happening.”
They sat by the road. Lee had scratched and bruised her thigh and shoulder against a hawthorn tree in the hedgerow when her bike had come off the road. Her riding shorts were torn and bloody.
“I’ve been looking for you for two months. I’ve been all over England. Everywhere. And then I just stopped looking, and prayed instead. I prayed to God, I prayed to you. I’d found out where you were born, and I just had this picture of you, standing at the doorway of your ancestral home. It was so clear. Like you were calling me. And now I found you.”
Lee said, “Richard. I didn’t call you. I don’t want to see anyone, from... from my past. Richard you have to go.”
“But you did call me! Maybe you didn’t even realise it. Maybe it was the pheromones. But whatever it was, I’m here. As soon as I stopped looking for you, I found you.”
“But why? Why did you come? You shouldn’t have come. I’m no good. I’m not your queen. I’m just, just a fucking freak.”
Rich laughed through his tears.” Yeah, you are. And you’re still my Queen. So whaddaya gonna do.”
Lee couldn’t ride, so they left her bike there and she got in his car. Even after two months, he still tried to get in the left-hand side at first.
“Where to, My Lady?”
“Richard. Please stop playing games. My house is a few miles along this road. I don’t live there, I’m renting it. From my sister. She lives abroad. And when you’ve dropped me off, I want you to go. Back to America.”
“What if I like it here in England? Hey, I had a Marmite sandwich the other day. I like Marmite.”
Lee sat quietly, lost in thought. Then she suddenly asked him a strange question: “Richard, do people ever call you ‘Dicky’? As a nickname, I mean.”
“Nope. They call me dickhead sometimes, but, no, never been called ‘Dicky’. Why?“
“Oh, it’s just, I was just thinking about a friend of mine, when I was a child. He was called ‘Dicky’".
“Really? Was he a good friend?”
“He was the best friend I ever had.”
“Really? Was he, what, like your first Love or something?”
“He was my first, and my only Love.”
“Ohh. I doubt if I could live up to that. Wanna know who my first love was?”
“I can guess. Some girl in your nursery school?”
“Almost. We were seven. She was, even at that age, a slut. Becca Shindnik. God I shoulda married her when she asked me.”
“She asked you to marry her? When?”
“I told you: when we were seven. I told her I liked her, and she said to me ‘get down on one knee and propose to me, and I’ll marry ya.’”
“So, what happened?”
“I didn’t do it. I was wearing my best pair of pants and the playground was all wet and muddy. I was worried about what my Mom would say if I got them dirty.”
“And you’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Yeah. But anyway, that’s why I always wear jeans now. In case she asks me again one day. I don’t care what happens to my jeans.”
Lee laughed. She couldn’t stop. Then the laughter suddenly turned to overwhelming grief, and she sobbed and choked and gasped for breath, and still she wept uncontrollably. She wept for herself, she wept for that little girl, that sad, lonely little child.
Marmite
Lee allowed Rich to come in for tea before he drove back to London. But she was insistent that he leave.
Rich thanked her as she handed him tea. He recognised the cup and saucer from the first time he had met her on her boat.
“Do you still have your places in London? Are you just here to get away?”
“Yes, yes I still have them for now. But I might need to sell up. The legal fees, creditors... oh, well, you probably know more than I do.”
“I’ll do what I can to help. If you want.”
Lee was silent, lost in thought.
“Lee, what do you want? Tell me. Please...“
“What do I want... If you must know, I want to turn back the clock to before I became, what I am. Before I was abused, before I became an abuser. To before I abused myself with heroin, humiliated my boyfriends, destroyed lives. I just want to run my house properly, with everyone and everything in its proper place, not to leave the house to rack and ruin, to ruin every life I touch.”
“Ok. I’ll get onto it.”
“Oh, shut up. Richard, you don’t know me, you’re just a stupid addicted fool. I’m a murderer. I killed three men. And the men I don’t actually kill, I destroy.”
“What? You actually killed people? Who? How?”
“My boyfriend, George.”
“You told me he died in his sleep.”
“He did. But I got him addicted to gear.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t make you a murderer.”
But Lee wasn’t going to let him exonerate her. “I am. I hypnotised a man into killing his own brother, and then into jumping off a bridge.”
“I don’t—did you really do that?”
“Yes. Remember I told you about Clare? It was her pimp. I had him killed by his brother. His own brother.”
“No, that’s not possible.”
“It is possible. I could have had you killed. I even considered it. So now, do you believe me? Am I still your fucking Queen now?”
“Yes. Yes I believe you, and yes, you’re still my fucking Queen. And I don’t think you’re a murderer. My guess is that guy, that pimp, had it coming. If his brother killed him, he was screwy in the first place. All you can do with your power is bring out the true person. I’m the only guy in the world who really understands you. Even you don’t get it.”
“You want to do something for me? Kill me. Your Queen commands it. Just kill me. I don’t have the guts to do it myself. I’m serious. It’s my one weakness—I’m too strong to be able to kill myself.”
“Oh Lee, please don’t talk like that. I couldn’t live without you.”
“So then you have to die too.”
“I don’t want to die. But I would kill myself if I couldn’t be near you. My life is in your hands.”
“I can’t destroy any more lives. Just go, Richard.”
“Okay, I’ll go. For now. But not until you hear my offer. I’m no good with assisted suicide, but what I am good with, is money. So listen: I want to buy back your ancestral house for you.”
“Oh, Richard, I wasn’t serious when I said—”
But Rich continued, thinking out loud, talking out the finances:
“I figure, after all your bills are paid, you’ll have at most two million in assets. My place in Beverly Hills is worth around five mill, I can sell that real easy. But we’re still about twenty million short. So, we go get investors. The National Trust. English Heritage. Yes. We both have a lot of wealthy contacts, good for at least another ten mill. The Princesses, I can persuade them to come in, Claudia needs to add something in the UK to her portfolio. She’s worth a couple million, at least. And Cat, she’s perfect. If people know she’s involved, it’ll be easy pappy. We’ll be turning them away.”
“Richard, I don’t know if you’ve gone completely crazy. Please stop.”
“No, it’s not crazy. I’m talking about a theme park.”
“A theme park?”
“Yes. It’s like a Downton Abbey. People pay to sample authentic life in a real aristocrat’s country house. Rich people can come and be treated like guests of the household. But other people come and work there for free, as servants. Chambermaids, Gardeners, Kitchen staff. No wage costs. Like with the fucking kibbutz in Israel, they get all this free labour from all these piss-poor bum students who want to sample Communism. No wages to pay, no tax to pay.
And we can throw festivals, get school history trips... wildlife conservation people...”
“Oh Richard, you’re...”
“What? What am I?”
“ You’re such a bloody Jew.“
“Thank you.”
The Queen Was In The Parlour
Rich ran up the broad steps, two at a time, his pigskin slippers flapping loudly on the marble. He cradled the fluttering candle in his hand from the breeze. Fuck if he knew how freezing this place got in the winter without central heating he wouldn’t have started this whole damn thing.
He knew that once Cat was on board, the rest was easy. And he knew that she, and all the others, Claudia, Joe, all of them would get in the act, because, hey, this is business. And he had put together such a brilliant plan that nobody said no.
Lee kept away from everyone. But that didn’t matter, the guests and staff knew that the crazy aloof recluse, the Mistress of the house, she was actually here, in one of the gazillion rooms. They’d point and nudge each other when she made her appearance in the herb garden or rode her favourite dappled mare, or went down on a rare visit to the laundry room with a special request to fix one of her garments.
Verisimilitude. That was the buzz word while the project was put into action.
There was to be no electricity, no Wi-Fi, no phones. Communication was strictly by voice, face to face, or by post. No medicines to be brought in, except on doctors’ orders. No plastic! Leave your credit cards, your sportswear, your roll-on deodorant at home. No A/C, and no damn radiators!
And people flocked. Rich turned down fifty times as many people as he accepted. And each guest, each staff member, was personally vetted by Lee, or by her trusted housekeeper, Mrs Jones, who came highly recommended by a certain Royal family. No, they didn’t take anyone’s money. Billionaires fumed at being rebutted, when their increasingly outrageous bribes to stay at Oakhurst Manor were turned down. Movie stars lucky enough to stay there would brag about it when they got back to their twenty-first century lives.
And all this with no publicity whatsoever, except for Cat’s blog.
Richard reached his Lady’s door and knocked four times. Not too loudly, not too quietly. After keeping him waiting for five seconds she called to him, granting him entry to her bedchamber.
She was sitting up in bed, propped up against four giant pillows, in a turquoise and red Chinese silk nightshirt. Her hair was loose. She put down her book beside her.
The room was warm, all reds and oranges and glowing yellows, lit mainly by the fire, but also by many candles in tall candlesticks. The logs threw sparks and crackled in the fireplace. She had heated sweet-scented amber and neroli oils, and Rich suddenly felt as though he were back in a prayer cell. But her intoxicating power here was many times greater than it ever was in The Hive. Here was her place, her true domain.
She patted the side of the bed.” Come here Richard.”
“Thank you.” He sat, and gazed at the glowing fire.
“Are you scared of me? Now that I’m finally letting you into my bed, you’re shy.”
“No. No I’m not shy. I’m thinking. I’ve imagined every inch of you, every pore of your skin, the sweet taste of your juicy pussy. I know every eyelash on your porcelain eyelids. I’ve travelled the infinite space inside the ocean of your eyes. I’ve felt the rolling curves of your waist, over the smooth, firm, muscles of your ass, down, around, up between your velvet thighs. I’ve kissed your neck a thousand times, felt our tongues entwined like two snakes.
“I’ve touched your womb, deep inside you, my strong and sturdy cock gripped tightly in the wet fist of your womanhood. I’ve rested my arms on you, and felt your breath on my armpits, inhaling me as you envelop me in your arms, your legs, your pussy. I’ve sucked at your pink nipples, and rolled them and nibbled on them. Night and after night, day after day, since that first day.
“Golly!”
Rich burst into laughter.
“’Golly’?” After that damn speech? That’s all you can say?
“Well, it was a bit unexpected!”
“Not for me it wasn’t.”
“Well it was lovely. Now can I make a speech?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Here it goes: Fuck me, big boy!”
Rich collapsed with laughter on the floor.
Lee adjusted the eiderdown.” Short and to the point. That’s what I prefer.”
“Okay. Big boy’s gonna fuck you, potty-mouth. Is this big enough for ya?”
“Oh my. Really. I had no idea. I want it.”
“You’re gonna get it. Move over.”
“No. I want it. Here.” She pointed to her parted lips.
She kneeled on the bed and pulled him towards her. She clamped her lips over the bell of his dick and sucked. Real suction, pumping ever more blood into him. He felt as if his dick would explode and spatter blood everywhere.
“Holy shit...”
She pulled away, brushing a hair from her mouth.” Yes. I’m pretty good, aren’t I.”
“Yes you are, aren’t I...”
“Mmm. On your back.”
He crawled quickly onto the bed and lay down. She straddled his head.” Now. My turn. Don’t let me reach orgasm.” She pushed herself forcefully down onto him, her pelvic bone hard against the bridge of his nose.
And then Rich finally tasted her pussy. It was like nothing he’d imagined. In fact altogether she was like nothing he’d imagined. Not a regal queen, but a dirty sexy woman with a filthy mind. Filthier than the filthiest hooker he’d been with, sly and irresistible like the deadliest femme fatale. And to top it all, as funny as hell.
Sweaty, dirty, sex. He came, for the first time, in her tight fist. The second time, deep in her pussy, pumping her from behind, her cool ass cheeks pushed against his belly, gripping and mangling her little tits till they were all scratched up.
And then, finally, they fucked, lips to lips, chest to chest, arms pressed out against each other, thigh on thigh. And he her touched her womb, deep inside her, and their orgasms shook them and made them cry out, loud, long, and low.
Later Richard stood by the fire, some distance from her, supreme contentment and love in his heart.
“This is what I dreamed, my Lady, and now it’s become reality. Or is this still a dream?”
For answer, Lee crawled slowly out of the bed. She walked to him, her naked body flickering gold, lit by the flames. She held out her arms perfectly straight outwards, smiled serenely, and closed her eyes.
“Watch.”
She stood up on the tips of her toes. Then, slowly, silently, she floated up, an inch, a foot, a yard above him.
He fell to his knees.