The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Pleasure Knight

The hauntingly beautiful towers and spires of Perfume Hill loomed over me on every side. Their midnight shadows caressed the white, paved streets like a woman’s hair does her lover’s naked, aching body late at night when all the world has gone to bed and only they are awake, locked in each other’s arms.

Lush, fragrant scents wafted over tall, graceful walls all around, emanating from a hundred thousand flowers of vibrant colors and graceful shapes. They smelled like every seductive, teasing, insisting perfume ever worn by womankind.

The silvery chain on the gate of the Flower Garden hardly produced a sound when I pulled it. There only came a sweet giggle and whisper from far off in the distance, like silk on skin, like kisses, lips on lips.

Above the wall, swaying gently in the late night breeze like the lazy, seductive movements of scantily clad dancers in some darkened chamber, were the innumerable treetops of this, the largest House on the hill. Behind them, far away, rose the Unicorn’s Horn, the impossibly tall, elegant, slender, white Tower of the Sibyl, the chief Lady of Perfume Hill.

For a stranger, a man to boot, to ascend the Hill of Women was either like being let into his sweetest dream, or willingly walk into the most dangerous forest in the Wild, filled with vicious creatures that would eat you alive. And finding out that none of your usual weapons could protect you against them.

That was, of course, how I felt. The faint, exquisite feminine sound of the doorbell went on and on. Why didn’t it stop? It was like when I was a kid and a gaggle of girls would look at me and whisper and giggle and I wouldn’t know if they planned to make fun of me and my clothes or wanted me to ask one of them to be my girlfriend.

I clung to the spot on my belt from where my sword used to hang, even though it would not have done me much good when faced with arrows from burning eyes, tackles from heaving bosoms, ripostes from smooth thighs, and the coup-de-graces of sweet words whispered in husky voices across succulent lips. Why had the Captains of Glory Hill sent me here? I was totally unprepared for this. Why? Why?

* * *

“Thank the Lady! You finally came!”

The young woman that appeared had no idea she was supposed to let the tall cast iron gate slide open and peer demurely out at me. Instead she scared me witless by shoving it as if it were a sleeping cow she had decided to topple. On the other hand, I would have been scared no matter what she did, so it didn’t really matter.

“I? Who?” I said while I licked my lips and looked around. You know, just to prove to her as well that I was utterly useless for this mission. At twenty-three I was too young and too inexperienced. With the world in general and the wily ways of women in particular. I wasn’t confident. I wasn’t charming. I wasn’t suave. I couldn’t churn out compliments on demand like I could fire arrows, couldn’t kiss hands like I could whack people over the head with large, heavy objects.

“We’ve been waiting for you for months, even weeks! Days, at least!” It gave me some comfort that that she seemed as naive as me. Some, but not much.

One side of her black skirt rode noticeably higher on her thighs than the other, and she was barefoot. She had messed up the button order on her dark, blue blouse, and her long, honey hair had not been ‘adjusted’ in front of a mirror before she came running to open the gate.

“For me?” I said.

“Yes, you!” Her eyes were blue and sparkling like a clear forest spring when the wind creates small waves on the surface and the sun makes them glitter. “Do you know how many dresses there are in this House?”

* * *

‘Unadjusted’ hair is even more irresistible than its more well-groomed counterpart. Take a woman’s head where, for example, almost all the hair is caught in a ponytail. What happens? All the men around her will be aching to lift that single, runaway strand from where it tickles her lower chin and place it behind her ear.

She wears her hair in a loose bun? Men can’t stop staring at it, waiting for it to unravel and come cascading like light or shadow down her back. Like most things they do, I suspected that those cruel, vicious, sweet creatures do it to us males entirely on purpose.

* * *

There was no way I could know how many dresses there were in this House. I didn’t know anything about the Flower Garden except that I was to come here and ask for help from the Lady of the House.

I didn’t know much about Perfume Hill either, having arrived just a few hours ago. Time enough to change clothes and a quick wash in my hotel room, and that was about it. Ladies like their men clean, and on this Hill it was all about what the ladies wanted. Even someone like me, who had never truly been able to feel the delight of a woman’s touch, knew that.

“The Lady Deep Shadow has... eh, I don’t know. Twenty of them? Thirty? Let’s say forty. Then, there are us five apprentices. I have only two dresses, but I know that Blossom has circa seven, and the Lady only knows how many Flame has. Say fifty? And the maids each have two for work. I hope none of the male staff have any, but you never know. That makes... I don’t know, numbers confuse me. Say a thousand! A thousand dresses! Do you know how important dresses are to women? Do you want me to tell you?”

I wanted her to tell me what it all had to do with me. I also wanted for her not to notice that I noticed how she bared her belly each time she lifted her arms to gesture. She was one of those women who express more of her opinions with her body language than her words. And I was, despite my problems, the kind of man who appreciated that. I tried to remember that her eyes were up there, resorted to a “Yes, please,” and listened to a long explanation of the need to go to parties, weddings, and rituals. Of how important it was to dress respectably and, this was very important I gathered, look better than your rivals.

I wanted to say, in my awkward talking-to-women stutter, that she would always look good, but I chickened out. Totally unlike Sir Suave, whom Glory Hill could have sent on this mission. Oh, why, why me?

“Well?” She placed her hands on her hips, making her stunning body look like a lightning strike.

Eyes are up there, Weed! “Well?”

“What are you going to do about them?”

“Them?”

“Yes, them. The moths that are tearing through silk and lace like a fox through a chicken coop.”

“Moths?”

“Yes! That’s why you are called the mothball man. You kill moths. With your balls. Eh, sorry! That didn’t come out right.” She blushed.

There was no way in which she could blush that didn’t touch my heart.

“I...” I said. “I don’t know anything about moths.”

“Then why do you work as a moth ball man, then?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t!”

“Then why didn’t you say so at once?”

“I didn’t know that I wasn’t a moth ball man!”

“Then, if not, what are you?”

“I am...” I took a pause, remembering that I had memorized a phrase that I thought would help me make a good first impression. In this case, it would have to be a good third, or fourth, impression. “My name is Weed, a Wanderer from Glory Hill. I have come to seek the help and advice of the esteemed Lady Deep Shadow. Will you take me her please, young maiden?”

“Young maiden?” Hands returned to hips. Intimidating in so many ways.

“Eh...”

“Even though I am still an apprentice, I am not a day younger than you, good Sir Wanderer.” Her lower lip pouted. “The reason I am not a full Lady yet is because my chosen trade is so much more demanding than that of a Wanderer. Running around in the Wild and sticking spears into people’s eyes. Hah! And as for me being a maiden or not, that’s seriously so not your business. Do you think so? Do you think that’s your business, Sir Weed?”

“No!”

“Then I...” She stopped herself as if I had said something truly momentous and not just done like all men before me: Been randomly tactless. “Sir Weed?”

“Yes.”

“Wanderer?”

“Yes.”

“From Glory Hill?”

“Yes.”

“Come to seek Lady Deep Shadow?”

“Yes. Were you expecting me?”

* * *

The young woman adjusted her black skirt so that it was equally short on both sides. She turned around and did the buttons on the blue blouse right, leaving the two top ones undone, then arched her chest forward just an inch or two. Slim fingers ran through the long, honey hair, untangling it. She lowered her eyes demurely and smiled at me in a way that could melt lead.

“No,” she said in voice that had read what ‘sultry’ was supposed to sound like. “Not at all.”

She giggled and fluttered her eyelashes at me. It was so obvious what she was driving at, yet it was like holding a steaming, hot sausage under the nose of a starving man. He knows he’s being teased, but a certain organ of his doesn’t really care. Her execution of the procedure showed me that this was a woman who had never made a habit of neither demuring nor eyelash-fluttering. That only made it more endearing, though.

The obvious lie on the other hand, not so much. But why? What was it about?

And why hadn’t the Captains sent me into the deepest forest of the Wild to fight ghouls with my bare hands? To herd giant fire-lions? To dive for dragon’s eggs? What is it about women and their games and intrigues? Couldn’t they just get together when they disagreed and pull each other’s hair, scratch and pinch each other until they sorted everything out? I would watch that.

“My name is Poppy and I am delighted to finally meet one of the famous Wanderers. So, brave and handsome Sir Weed: How can poor, little me help you?”

She wasn’t that little. Slim, well-built, just a few inches shorter than me.

“You can... I... Could you please take me to the Lady Deep Shadow? I need to speak with her. It is urgent.”

“But, Sir Weed!” She went on in her sultry voice. “It is late. Midnight is long past. Lady Deep Shadow must surely be asleep by now. It was just luck that allowed me to remain awake. Some evil dream that tormented me, perchance. It let me hear the bell and thus be able to greet this tall, rugged stranger.” This new mode of speech seemed even more foreign to her than to me. She went on, nonetheless. “Good Sir Weed, I am Lady Deep Shadow’s confidant. You may convey your message to me, and I will relay it to the Lady in the morning. I will make sure that you, and your, I am convinced, utterly urgent and important mission will get an audience with her first thing.”

“Uh...” I said. “My message is for Lady Deep Shadow’s ears alone.”

“Really?” Her hands found her hips again.

“Yes!” She might as well have been threatening me with a mallet the way I backed off. “I was sworn to absolute, total, utter secrecy, to never reveal—”

“But do you really...” She approached me by twice the amount of steps I had retreated, “...mean that this applies...” Somehow she had got me to back up against the tall wall surrounding the Flower Garden “...to me?” Her eyes widened. Boy, could those blue ever grow wide! “To poor, little me? Who only wants to help you? Who is completely enthralled by your manly charm?”

Her bosom was now but a foot away from my chest. I was as defenseless as a warrior who had lost his shield and dropped his sword due to accidentally cutting both his hands off. “I am afraid—”

“Sir Weed! You are the rudest man I ever met!” She put a hand to her gaping mouth.

Was she still just acting? I had no idea. None at all. All I knew was that I had to flee. A tactical retreat, as it was often called. I was, after all, overpowered.

“I really should get back to my hotel and—”

“You will do no such thing!”

“No?” I wouldn’t?

“Certainly not! You must stay with us as our most welcome and most...” She leaned forward, bringing her bosom within heavy breathing distance of my shirt. “...cherished guest.”

“I have all my stuff—”

“I am sure that we...” She started to finger my upper sleeve and I was caught as firmly as if she had me in a headlock. “...will be able to accommodate your every need. Perhaps even something a little more comfortable than those rough, gray pants, perchance?”

That was it. My resistance was beaten down, and I was ushered in through the gate. The clang as it closed didn’t sound ominous, but it sure felt that way. For good reason, as it would turn out.

* * *

They said that all the Houses on Perfume Hill had gardens filled with flowers and trees and brooks and bridges and fountains and statues and pavilions and benches. All in stylish good taste, all in pleasant, rural environments that were artfully crafted within the confined spaces of the encircling walls.

I saw at once that the Flower Garden took that to the extreme. On the inside was a vast landscape. The largest compound on Perfume Hill, they had managed to cram an entire civilized reflection of the Wild inside. Forests, groves, hills, steppes, swamps, they all lay glowing in the silver moonlight.

A few steps later, when I had followed Poppy down a gentle slope and almost disappeared in a deep forest, I turned around to discover that the wall was hidden by rows of trees. Trees that pretended they were not there for that very reason.

I didn’t notice any buildings. At all. That ought to have surprised me, but right now I was flabbergasted that I even managed to pay attention to the nature around me. I was walking behind Poppy, after all.

PAR -

Behind Poppy’s backside. She swung it like one who has never practiced the seductive walk before, but who has decided to give it everything she got. Who is also a quick learner. And who has certain natural advantages.

There were buttocks beneath the flimsy, black skirt. Firm and slender, yet so very feminine buttocks. They never stopped moving. They rested on a pair of thighs whose curves used the hem of the skirt to play peekaboo with my lust. Her ankles were studied like a pair of ankles had never been studied before.

The path we walked must have been designed to reveal all the marvels of the garden in the most dramatic way possible. I didn’t gasp and wow a single time. We crossed a bridge over a small, elongated pool that may or may not have been full of beautiful fishes in every color. Who cared about things that didn’t even have long hair or long legs?

Poppy stopped by a cast iron ladder so cleverly hidden in some bushes that I wouldn’t have noticed it even if she had been a hundred years old, hadn’t showered for the last ten of them, and worn ten layers of carpet.

I suddenly regretted my drooling. Not because thousands of hidden pairs of eyes somewhere up in the trees might have observed me ogling her. Because of my pants.

My pants were made for journeying through the deepest forests and over the tallest mountains. They had to be durable, soft, and supple. And rather tight. Also, the few women who had seen me naked, and about to demonstrate my problems to them, had commented that I was ‘well endowed.’ That combination could be fatal should Poppy happen to turn around and look down.

“So...” I said as the ladder went on and on, past the branches of a huge oak. I didn’t look up to see how tall the ladder was. I did not look up to see... anything. “What kind of place is this?”

“It’s fantastic!” Poppy seemed to forget all she ever knew about sultry voices. She also looked down a lot, but was very good at remembering where my eyes were. “This place has been the residence of the Lady Flower Girls for more than three hundred years! And some of the trees are even older than that! All the plants in the world are here! There are all kinds of secrets and treasures hidden between every bend of every path! I mean magical herbs and suchlike. Not gems and stuff, that would be the domain of the Low Women. They’re not really tiny, most of them, but they’re the experts on jewels and gold and seams and prospecting and mines and that. I guess you got some of them on Glory Hill? I mean, to get iron for all your steely weapons, right?”

We did, but she didn’t give me time to tell her about them.

“We in this here garden are the Flower Girls, also there’s the Weather Girls and the Healers, who are the senior Ladies and rule the Hill. Their Sibyl lives all the way up in the Unicorn’s Horn! And we got the Artisans, and the Lionesses and... You get it. You do get it, right?”

She gave me a hand up to a platform and a cast iron walkway that looked like the floor of some dream world. The forest was almost invisible in the dark. Nothing to see but silvery branches and long, honey hair.

“I guess,” I said. The way the Ladies of Perfume Hill had decided to organize themselves confused me as much as female matters in general, but I had read about them back on Glory Hill. And I knew the lionesses. A few of those most magical and excellent warriors had chosen to join the Wanderers, and they were hands down the best we had.

“So...” I managed to ask a question while she was busy drawing breath. “What do you think of that Bleak Hill?”

“What do I think of it?” She looked almost scared. “It’s the Dead Lands, the most horrible thing I have ever seen! They have ravaged and raped the Wild! It’s an abomination! And to think that evil, nasty, cruel disease is spreading down into the lowlands! It’s so horrible. Do we have to talk about that? We don’t have to talk about that, do we?”

Usually I avoided talking about the evil that was expanding to every part of the world. Especially since the Dead Lands were spreading down the entire expanse of the huge valleys next to Glory Hill, and we Wanderers were unable to halt it. Now I was just happy to have a normal conversation instead of being clumsily seduced for some nefarious purpose.

Unfortunately, she seemed to remember she was supposed to be doing just that.

“But, Sir Weed...” She adjusted her lips to sulking mode, fluttered her lashes like she was caught in a swarm of gnats, and made sure I followed her at a distance where I would have to bump into her should she stop. And that bump would happen a few inches before the rest of my body reached her.

Just when I had resigned to walk bent over for miles up here on these shadowy walkways, she tensed up. There was a shadow waiting by one of the trees. One that wasn’t woody and covered in bark. It was female and curvy and soft and draped in red silk and long, brown hair, brushed to gleaming as if on her way to a date or a party.

When Poppy saw her, she started and hesitated before going on, the bounce momentarily gone from her steps.

The other woman was leaning against a spruce, looking at us with one of the most hostile glares I have ever seen. The two women locked eyes and didn’t let go until we had passed each other by. I didn’t ask who she was.

* * *

Soon after, Poppy veered sharply to the left and headed straight for an enormous mass of branches in the crown of a tree with huge, dark, green leaves and tiny, oval nuts. Under a branch, through a cluster of greens, and then we were outside a small house made out of vines and leaves and branches. The walls were covered by leaves in layer upon layer, except where there were small window-cracks, half by design, half by chance. A sheet of rustling, rooty things as fine as threads hid what I suspected was a door. The leaf-roof looked watertight and thick.

And there were flowers, flowers growing everywhere, in every crack and nook and corner, of every size and shape. It told me that the inhabitant was a very resourceful, eager, young lady. Who truly loved flowers. I wished it were bright day so that I could see them in all their glory, but I could smell them, and they smelled divine.

But... If this was her house, how could she have heard the bell ring? We had to be far away from the gate. Or had she led me on a tour of the garden only to bring me back, close to where we had entered? I had lost all sense of direction, of course, so it could be.

Inside there were chairs, a table, a bed in an alcove in a corner, about a thousand jars filled with flowers, and a large couch that looked very soft and very deep. The vine floor gave way under my boots, and for a moment I was afraid I would fall down the sixty or so feet to the ground and break some of the bones I was the most fond of.

The room had slipped into that kind of messiness women only dare allow themselves when they don’t have a mother-in-law that might suddenly decide to pop by. Poppy didn’t seem to care what I thought of it, she just pushed me down on the couch. Down into the couch. It was so deep and soft I would hardly be able to get out without a struggle.

And I had a feeling that Poppy was ready to rumble.

* * *

I wouldn’t have minded that at all if I had been like other men. If I had been like any other man, I would have been deliriously happy to be seduced by this divinely beautiful girl. If I had been like any other man, I would have thought, ‘It’s just an act on her part, and there is some kind of hidden agenda here, but let’s worry about that afterwards, why don’t we?’

“Er... Is this my room? A guest hut?” I said, all evidence to the contrary.

Poppy lit a reddish candle that smelled heady, spicy. As it met the scent from all the flowers, it said “Hey, let’s mix and smell real sexy together, shall we?”

She sat down on the table in front of the couch and dangled her legs. Her naked feet managed to lay claim to the space I was planning to use when I closed my legs, and her toes and ankles were dangerously close to the insides of my knees and thighs, forcing them apart by pure intimidation.

“Dearest Sir Weed, this is my little home. And this is my couch. It is very big, and very, very comfortable. It has more than enough room for you to sleep on, or do anything you wish. Anything at—”

“I am not really used to—” I yelped in panic.

“Sir Weed! Please, be so kind as to not refuse my earnest offer? Surely, you are not such a rude ruffian, are you?”

I had no idea you could mesmerize someone just by energetic foot dangling. Apparently it was trivial.

“I don’t... It’s not proper for—” I protested, even though a certain part of my body was standing up to register its dissent. It still hadn’t learned from its many failures.

“But, dear Sir Weed, don’t you want to get to know me a little better?”

With that she leaned forward and let me see almost everything I could wish for. Almost being the key word. Countless men have been driven wild, some probably also insane, by almost getting what they wanted.

“Yes, yes, of course, sure, as you like it, right ho.” Stalling was not one of the arts I had perfected yet. “Why don’t you... tell me a little bit about yourself?”

“About me?” She put one leg above the other and was only a few inches from making me howl as if hit between the legs by the club of desire. What made it even worse, or better according to Mr Stiffy, was that it wasn’t conscious on her part. “Well, as I said, I am an apprentice to Lady Deep Shadow, but I believe I already told you that. Didn’t I? I did. So, around here my main responsibility is... No! I’ll start at the beginning. When I was a kid I so loved the flowers in our backyard. Really, though, it was mostly weeds and I guess my mother was just too happy to let me loose there. When I was ten, or nine, or eleven, I don’t know, what does it matter? When I was tennish, I was always covered in dirt and grass. Every evening. I had flowers in my hair and the muddiest feet this side of a hippo, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?”

I knew that her eyes were up there and her leg was down there, insisting I count every bouncy jump and kick and whirl.

“By the time I was fifteen I had my own herb garden, a carp pond, five shady lemon trees, and so many flowers you couldn’t count them. I know, because I couldn’t. When I was seventeen it was evident, even to those neighbors who didn’t have to deal with fences that were bulging in on their yards like dams about to burst, that I had certain skills. That meant I didn’t have to be a weaver like my mother, yay me!, and so I could move in here and work for Lady Deep Shadow. You see... Now, how can I explain it to a man? There are lots of Flower Girls all over the world, and we all got our own thing going. Soils. Magic herbs. Shaping of plants. Me, I’m a grower. Put a nut in the ground, and I will grow you a tall oak in three years. These vines?”

She gestured to the vines that made up her little hut. As she did, she nudged my thigh with her foot. She didn’t seem to notice. I did. I was on my way to wishing she would turn seductive again. ‘Weren’t you supposed to flirt with me?’ Yeah, that sure was a good line. Way to go, you treacherous, rigid snake.

“Grown them myself. As well as lots of other plants in the garden, and elsewhere. Yeah, that’s me. The other apprentices are different. Blossom is an expert in plant animation. Some say too much of an expert, but I don’t know.” She giggled. “Flame? Who knows what she does? And the Lady Deep Shadow herself, she can do everything. She didn’t get to be the mistress of Flower Garden when she was only twenty-seven just by luck. I will be twenty-seven in four years...” Same age as me. “...and I doubt I will even have become a Lady by then. Well, just goes to show. Some are luckier than others!”

She drew breath, but I was too distracted by her leg to speak.

“Look now! Look!” With that she pulled at a loop of a vine that had decided to crawl across her table. “Oh, I still get a kick out of this!” She looked at the plant as if at a lover or a child. “Grow, my dear. Grow! Be free, be strong, be alive!”

A tiny dot appeared on the vine next to her fingers. It grew into a small pea-like thing, before it squiggled and coiled out as a long, growing shoot.

“Look!” she repeated.

A small bud had materialized on the new stalk. It opened, and a large, pale, white flower appeared.

“For you, Sir Weed!” She handed it to me.

I put it under my nose. It smelled like kissing her would taste, I was sure.

She smiled and shook her long, honey hair. The look on my face must have reminded her of what she was supposed to doing.

“And you, Sir Weed, are going to be lucky.” Her foot moved closer to the thing I couldn’t hide unless I had a very tall, very thick, very hollow cucumber at hand. “Very, very lucky if you only tell me why you have come to see Lady Deep Shadow.”

With that she touched me. Her big toe pressed, softly, gently, barely brushing, against my big, hard, throbbing member.

I jumped as if a thousand gallons of icy water had been poured over my crotch.

“You will tell me, won’t you? Pretty, please? Remember that good boys tend to be rewarded.”

I swallowed. I breathed in and out. My loins were on fire. All my member wanted was to be touched again, to feel her presence one more time.

What did women have that turned men crazy by just their lightest touch, just their most delicate taps and pokes? I had no idea, so I just grasped at her leg to pull her toes back where they belonged.

“No!” Her laugh was a fake, coquettish one which only fueled the fire because of its insincerity. “Tell me first!”

I held my tongue. For two reasons.

One was that a few months ago I, out of hundreds of Wanderers, had been chosen, been given this honor, been trusted to undertake this dangerous journey through the Wild to come here. To be the one to ask for help in brewing the magical potion that could save us from the threat of the Dead Lands. The oracle had been crystal clear: If we didn’t find a way to ward them off, then Glory Hill, and the world with it, would fall.

* * *

The other reason? I had never gotten any pleasure from my desires before, only endless torment. I had no cause to believe that this time would be any different, not even with a woman as beautiful as Poppy.

I had never experienced what other men bragged about. ‘Coming,’ they called it.

Apparently this meant that, just as you were so needy that you just couldn’t take it anymore, you squirted some kind of warm, whitish liquid out of your manhood. It sounded disgusting, but evidently it was incredibly pleasant for the man. It was also said that you were released from that insatiable lust that so often consumed me.

I had tried. The Lady only knows how many times and how hard I had tried to make it happen. All alone in my room, late at night with my head full of women’s smiles and shapes and sounds and scents and soft, soft kisses. I had tried until I started to cry in my need. I had made love to women. I had done all the right things with them, again and again, all night long, but I had never been able to quench that fire.

* * *

Poppy pouted. Poppy looked straight at me with puppy eyes. Poppy leaned forward. Poppy extended a slender, graceful hand towards the quivering tent between my legs.

I leaped up off the couch, dove under her arm, and pressed myself against the wall.

“I am so very flattered and glad and delighted and everything...” I spoke as fast as my tongue could move, not daring to stop for breath. “...for your incredible kindness and this most exquisite proposition that you are, eh, putting to me, unless I am mistaken, which I may of course be, and forgive me in that case, but I really, really, really should be going now, and would you please be so kind as to escort me to the gate and, eh, I won’t waste any more of your time, please?”

She came over to me. Didn’t look angry despite my snub, which was a relief. Didn’t look ready to seduce me anymore, either. That was also a relief, even though my instincts told me the opposite. Instead she seemed concerned, worried, almost desperate.

“Weed!” She took my hands. No more ‘Sir Weed.’ “I am so sorry about everything, but you know, I thought... I just need to know why you are here!”

“I have sworn to—”

“No!” She tugged at my arms. “No! You don’t understand! Lady Deep Shadow is an evil witch. She’s even plotting against the Sibyl! You cannot trust her.”

“But I have sworn—”

“Stop saying that! Weed, come with me! Let’s run away and I can introduce you to my friends. The Lady Steel Rose will tell you everything. Don’t go to Lady Deep Shadow! I beg you!” She almost went down on her knees.

Once again she tried to fool me. Once again she played games with me. But, as it turned out, she wasn’t the only one who could act unconvincingly.

“You are right,” I said. “I will listen to you. Why don’t you show me out, and I will, eh, meet you somewhere tomorrow and we can, eh, talk about it some more?”

Her mouth fell open and she let go of my hands.

“Eh,” she said. “Sure, that’s a... great idea. But, before you go, why don’t you have a drink?”

“No, I—”

Too late. She had already turned around to fetch something that looked like a green fruit with a long neck, out of something that looked like a crow’s nest.

“Please, Sir Weed,” there was that ‘sir’ back again. “You surely can’t refuse my offer? I have brewed this drink myself. It’s made from the juices of some of our most succulent fruits.” She pushed the green pitchery thing into my hands as if she were peddling it in the market place and had to get rid of it before it went bad.

I was forced to take it or it would have fallen to the floor. Almost on instinct, I was soldier after all, I put it to my lips. Then I thought to myself: ‘You are not really this stupid, are you?’

“No thanks,” I said. “I really have to go.”

“No!” she shouted. “You can’t leave when I offer you... these!” With that she tore at her blue shirt and ripped all the buttons off.

It was the shock, more than the sight, of a pair of very fine breasts which made me jerk my hands up to protect me. Which in turn made me push the pot’s mouth straight into my own. Which in turn made the liquid inside slosh about. A few which-in-turns later, and I proved that I really was that stupid and got my mouth full.

It tasted like a refreshing drink mixed half and half with extra hot chili sauce. That was enough for me.

* * *

I broke free of the hypnotic power of her naked bosom, stormed through the door of fine roots, and ran along the cast iron walkway. In the confusion I lost the flower she had given me. It fluttered down to join the dying leaves on the forest floor far below.

She didn’t shout after me, but her barefoot steps set the metal road behind me ringing out and telling me I would be caught if I didn’t get away. Though what she would do to me if she got me I couldn’t tell: She had been sending out very mixed signals all night. It was the possibilities that I would enjoy that I feared the most. And that was just wrong.

We ran through the crowns of three trees, over two shrubberies, and around a large bend over the surface of a calm pool. I tried to take left paths, I tried to make rights. Couldn’t shake her. Soon I was as lost as a blind man in a maze full of stumbling stones and the occasional, and sudden, extra low ceiling.

I managed to escape by doing something that one really shouldn’t mess around with in the deepest of nights.

There was a fir tree with thick, thick branches running all the way down to the ground a little ahead on my left. When I came close enough I leaped off the walkway and straight into the sharp sticks and needles. I grabbed, I clutched, I got pricked and whipped, but I somehow managed to slow my fall.

It hurt as I tumbled down and hit the ground, but not as much as after any regular sparring bout. I even managed to land on my feet. Finally I was in my right element! I never found out if Poppy followed me over the edge, for I lost myself in the forest as quietly and randomly as I could.

* * *

Soon I had to stop with the running, though. I was getting tired. And kind of woozy in the head. That, or the plants around me started to play tricks on me.

First a tree placed itself straight in my path and let me smack my tender face on its rough bark. Then the very same path began to wobble like a boat when a herd of hippos try to board all at once. And the path was suddenly so long, and my body was suddenly so heavy, and I suddenly found myself crawling along only the Lady knew where.

Crawling straight into a pair of elegant, black, and shiny woman’s leather shoes. Equipped with heels that had to be far too thin and tall to be any good out here in the garden.

* * *

I tried to lift my head up higher. Ankles and knees as white as snow and smooth as butter. I tried even higher. Thighs, thighs, and more thighs, then a tight, green hem which stopped just as the hips and other interesting bits were about to happen.

No matter how far up they seemed to be, I still got the feeling that the owner, both of silky skin and velvety fabric, was rather short and petite, but there was no way I had the strength to confirm that.

“Oh my,” a voice said. Light, sweet, almost girlish, with a perpetual giggle to it. “I have been worshiped before, but this was quite unexpected.”

“grmphph,” I said.

“You even lost your power of speech? I am flattered.”

“Heshay!” I meant that to come out as “Help, I’ve been drugged.”

“Or maybe... You are not drunk, are you? Who invited you in? You sure are handsome enough for a night or two. What’s your name?”

“Wiff.” That might, or might not, sound like Weed.

“Oh, dear.” She lifted one of the black shoes that were too pretty for walking over mud and dead leaves, put it inside the collar of my shirt, and pressed the fabric into the ground. And with it, my head. “Now you made me nervous. I think I have to keep you pinned down here until you stop intimidating me.”

I didn’t sense much that made any sense right now, but I got the sense that this woman was anything but scared.

“What’s your name?” she said. “Take your time. I can spend all night looking at a prostrate man.”

I wish Sir Suave was here, and that he wasn’t so confused and dizzy. He could have replied that he wouldn’t mind spending all night in the company of such a dainty, lovely foot as now caressed the side of my head, as well as with the rest of the body it was attached to. Sir Sensible could have replied that he found her behavior a little unsettling, and would she please step away before he had to take action.

What Sir Me did was to give my tongue a good licking, cough a little, groan, then say: “W-W-Weed!”

“Weed who?”

I spent some time answering that, but to avoid all the mumbling and misunderstandings, let’s just assume I said “Sir Weed, Wanderer of Glory Hill,” all at once.

“Sir Weed,” the voice said. “Wanderer of Glory Hill... Well, in that case I think I trust you.” She pulled her foot away. “But what are you doing, groveling at my feet? Usually I have to insist. The first time.”

“Help me,” I croaked, dragging my face out of the earth. Her shoes were still close.

“Help you? Why? Did any of the girls drug and molest you? Shame on her!”

“No!” I still didn’t manage to look up. “Need to speak Lady Deep Shadow!”

“Lady Deep Shadow? Now? It’s still some time until dawn. Why did you get drunk with her apprentices if you wanted the Lady herself?”

I did not have the strength to tell her what had happened. Wasn’t sure I was willing to tell her anything at all. She seemed... Unsettling somehow.

“Need see Lady Deep Shadow!”

“All right!” The voice giggled as if I were a performing monkey. “All right, can you walk?”

I couldn’t.

“Oh dear.” Poisoned honey dripped from her lips. “Then I guess you must crawl. But that’s all right. I like it when men crawl for me. Can you see where I am walking? If not, then I will have to put my leash on you. I wouldn’t mind that, but you might. It is far more difficult get off than to put on.”

* * *

I tried to follow her down the path in the least humiliating way possible, but it was an endeavor doomed from the outset. Still, the early morning air wafted over me and scoured off layer upon layer of dizziness. Soon I was able to lift my head up high enough greet the rosy dawn as it spread across the horizon.

That was not all I saw.

Her butt was covered by a green dress so tight it could almost have been tattooed there. In the field of comparative chickology, I would say that Poppy had the largest curves, but that this one had been born to show off hers.

I saw the small of her back. And I saw the ponytail.

The glowing, red ponytail fell all the way down to the narrow, black belt which hugged a waist slimmer than my thigh. Thick hair, straight hair, silky hair. The kind that other women would kill to have.

The ponytail dangled. It goaded me to cross green lawns and blue streams on my hands and knees. I became dirty and scratched up, but it just became more glorious as the rising sun caressed it with its burning rays. I followed its hypnotic swing up cast iron ladders while I clung on for dear, still woozy, life while she giggled at my predicament. I followed it while hurting my knees on the metal walkways, and sometimes I even managed to look up all the way to the back of her head and the wellspring of the glowing mass of blessed hair.

But I did not get to see her eyes. Not yet.

* * *

Finally, just as I was able to get up on a pair of trembling, uncertain feet and noticed that she was almost a full head shorter than me, we came to a set of stairs. They spiraled around what looked, to my misty eyes, like a steep, steep mountain. The ascent went on and on, and for each of her light, sensual steps I had to take three. We kept turning and turning, and at last it occurred to me that we were in fact circling up the trunk of a tree.

A big tree. A tree so big that other big trees had to feel like straws next to it. I wasn’t sure I liked it, though. It was as if it enjoyed being a big and mean sylvan bully. All the other trees had to bend away from it to even get a chance to see the sun. Or they were toppled over by its enormous roots. It was the kind of tree you wouldn’t want to hide beneath on a dark night deep down in the Wild.

The smaller branches that were all around us were like whips, like swords, like needles, ever ready to stab me in the eyes. Like ropes that waved in the morning wind, just waiting for me to put my head in the wrong loop and so garrote me.

I was relieved when the walkway finally ended. We came out on a large, almost flat space where the most massive branches of the tree spread out to create a world of its own up here in its crown. The living tree floor was large enough to hold the courtyard of a mansion carved out of the still huge, central trunk of the tree. It was a tower more than ten floors tall, with knotholes for windows. They seemed to glow with the steady heartbeat of the soul of the tree itself.

The woman with the red ponytail didn’t even turn around to look at me, didn’t show me her eyes. Not even when she reached the door, a thick carpet of leaves, not even when she reached up to ring a small, silver bell. It sounded strange, the only metal object up here.

Nothing happened. She rang again. Still, no-one came. The woman began giggling as if to accompany the bell which she shook continually. It was as if she enjoyed tormenting and waking up she who dwelt within.

After a long, long time the vines that kept the leafy door shut were loosened and the door slid open.

* * *

She was tall, taller than Poppy. Almost my height, and she was all woman even though she was ancient. Forty years old or something. She had dark, brown, long, and wavy hair without a single gray, and she was wearing a dressing gown where the belt was tied with the loosest knot I had ever seen. The garment did its best to hide as little of the naked, chocolate brown female parts inside.

That would have been bad enough for a poor, young man like me, who had already been exposed to his share of the female gender this night, but things were not to stop there. Oh, no.

After a quick, slightly irritated yet mellow “Flame! Why are you bothering me so early?” she spotted me and my sorry condition. She did what one would expect every woman with a heart would do: Come running up to me, put an arm around me, and lift my chin with a gentle hand to look into my eyes.

To do that she had to stand close. Real close. That woke me as readily as a slap across the face. Strange, since there was nothing even remotely erotic about what she did, nothing but concern for me.

On her part, that is. I, being the dirty man I was, held a different opinion. In desperation I pulled my head free and looked around.

* * *

Inside the hollow, living trunk was a huge hall, so tall that it reached at least five floors up. Everywhere there was water dripping. Everywhere there were pools and bowls and basins that the water trickled into, then out of, on its long journey from the leafy canopy high above where it was slowed down and collected, then snaking it way down the irregular walls, and finally disappearing in small cracks and holes in the floor.

There were water lilies and other flowers growing in the pools. Thee mansion had no need for lamps, since each pool glowed and pulsated with its own color, all following the same, slow rhythm. They sparkled as a faint wind coming from outside made tiny waves across their surfaces. It was a dream house filled with the scent of feminine power and beauty.

* * *

“What’s wrong?” She brushed my hair and stared into my eyes. “You look... Not drunk. Drugged.”

“I...” I said.

“I found him down on the yearning lawn,” the woman called Flame said, her face still hidden from me.

“What?” Lady Deep Shadow, or so I sincerely hoped it was, exclaimed. “You made him walk all the way up here without help?”

“Oh, no,” Flame said. “In the beginning I made him come crawling after me. Then, alas!, he managed to get on his feet.”

At last she turned to look at me.

* * *

Flame could not be human. It was impossible for any woman to be that beautiful without some demonic heritage or mighty sorcery. Her skin was so pale and her eyes so green they would make any painter or sculptor cry himself to sleep, knowing he could never duplicate it even if he worked himself to the bone. She wore a face so innocent and sweet that even I, who had heard her cruel suggestions and had been trodden into the dirt by her, could not believe she had a single mean thought in her head. Was she some kind of strange fairy out of the Wild? The kind that lured males to them, imprisoned them, used them for mating, and them ate them?

“Please, sir, come!” The woman who might be Lady Deep Shadow led me over to a chair and sat me down. It was not a very deep chair and she did not loom over me trying to push her body down on me. A nice change of pace, for once. “I apologize for my apprentice. We are constantly trying to teach her those things her mother must have left out of her education.”

Flame curtsied, which made her ponytail swing back and forth like a sleek, silken scarf.

I wanted to reach over and stop it. I wanted to let it run through my fingers. I wanted to place my hands on her buttocks and pull her close with it, wanted to caress her body and look so deep into those emerald eyes that I lost my mind.

And she knew it. She lowered her lashes a fraction of an inch in response to my burning glare, and just knew it.

“My name is Deep Shadow.” The dark woman sat down on a chair a few feet away. “May I ask who you are and how I may help you?”

When a woman sits down she invariably adjusts her clothes. Pulls at the hem of her dressing gown to cover more of her legs. Closes it to hide her bosom. It’s a unconscious act, but men exposed to the practice don’t see it as such.

“This, my Lady Deep Shadow,” Flame said with mock reverence, “is the most brave and valiant Sir Weed, Wanderer of Glory Hill. We should be honored to make his acquaintance.”

“Stop that!” There was fire in Lady Deep Shadow’s eyes as well. “Make yourself useful and go and bring our guest refreshments, if you please.”

“Oh, I do want to please our guest.” She half-turned, making sure my eyes were on her, then sauntered away, getting lost among all the gleaming pools, her hair a red ribbon waving goodbye.

* * *

“Did that rude apprentice of mine introduce you correctly?” Lady Deep Shadow asked.

I nodded and smiled. Smiled for real for the first time since I had rung the bell at the gate. With Flame out of view and the Lady in a chair out of foot-caressing distance, I could finally relax. It wouldn’t last, though. Lady Deep Shadow was a beautiful, older woman, and I couldn’t even remain close to those for long without tensing up in one way or the other. Besides, Flame would soon return.

“I come from Glory Hill,” I said. “On the orders of the Oracle of Silver Lake. She... Apparently she made a prophecy about half a year ago. One that was important. Very important. Very, very,” I wasn’t sure if I should add another ‘very,’ but I did, “very important. It was decided that someone had to travel to Perfume Hill and seek help.”

“Seek help? From who? Me?” She looked confused.

“Yes.”

“Why? I don’t deal with martial matters at all, that’s the business of the lionesses. Strange. What did it say, this prophecy?”

She adjusted her dressing gown again. Was her legs ever long! I wish I could be on Poppy’s couch with Lady Deep Shadow in front of me. I wished I could kiss and fondle that flawless, brown skin. I wished I could pull her down onto me and use the soft couch to bounce her up and down on me until... Until nothing happened. Of course.

Did she make me suffer this much because she didn’t try to flirt with me? Was I thinking these thoughts out of sheer stupidity? Refusing those who came on to me and lusting after those who didn’t? And was I careful to remember that her eyes were up there?

“Sir Weed?” She had to remind me. How embarrassing.

“Oh, the prophecy?”

“Yes?”

“Eh...” I had, of course, not been present when the prophecy had delivered. Or put down on paper. Or read by the Captains. Still I had, eventually, been told it. Not just asked to deliver it in a sealed letter. I was proud of that. I cleared my throat:

“The Evil One. The Ruler. The Queen. The Great Mistress of the World. She has woken up. She is stirring. She is opening her eyes. Beware! She is in the Wild. She is in the Wind. She is in the Women. Beware! The Evil Sister has come to Rule. Release the Weed of man to the Lady of Flowers. Seek with her the Elixir of Life, or be destroyed.”

Lady Deep Shadow looked at me for a long while. This time I kept my eyes squarely on her face.

“Uh...” I spoke because I don’t like long silences. Especially after I have said something. “I guess you know who the Evil Sister—” Yes, stupid. Everyone knew that. “Uh...” I went on. “I don’t know what that Elixir of Life...”

As a matter of fact I didn’t know very much. When you are with a woman that looks as wise as Lady Deep Shadow, you feel that you will soon hit her with disappointment like that large stone you toss off a cliff when you think that no-one is down below. Her eyes were so serious and attentive!

“...is but I guess it’s some kind of magical potion? Or, the Captains guess it’s some kind of—”

I had never thought I would be relieved to see Flame again, but now she appeared between us carrying three small cups and some fine, white wafers on a silver tray. As well as a angelic leer, if that is possible, on her unearthly beautiful face. Perhaps I was more excited than relieved?

She first served her mistress, which meant she had to, or chose to, bend with her backside pointing towards me. Then she came over, grasped my eyes, and forced them to meet hers, like a little boy pushed into the boxing ring to face a prize fighter. The eyes came closer and closer. I opened my mouth, entranced. Her ponytail slid across her back as she bent forward, slithered over her right arm only to stop and dangle a few inches above my thigh.

“Please enjoy,” she whispered, “Sir Weed.”

The hair almost whipped me across the face as she turned around. When I managed to convince my brain that there were other things it could do than drool all over Flame’s back, I found that she had somehow left a cup and three wafers on a smallish table tray attached to the right armrest.

“Flame, what are you doing?” Lady Deep Shadow’s voice was weary.

“My job, to the best of my abilities.”

“Then don’t do you job. This is neither the time nor place for these games.”

“Another time and place then... Sir Weed.” She kissed the last two words at me.

Lady Deep Shadow sighed and adjusted her robe again. Lots of lovely skin was reduced to a few inches of lovely skin, and it was my time to adjust my garments. My pants, to be precise. Why, oh why had I been chosen for this mission?

I imagined an official letter from Lady Deep Shadow to Captain Fury, master of the Questors, wondering why his emissary went around with an incurable erection each time a female was around.

“Cheers,” was all she said at the moment, lifting her cup and taking a sip.

So did Flame, standing demurely to attention, head slightly cocked so that her ponytail could be draped over her shoulder and follow the shape of her firm breasts down to her waist. I hesitated, looked at my cup. Flame winked at me. I hesitated some more.

“What’s the matter?” Lady Deep Shadow asked. Did she seem a little hurt?

Getting that look from the only really friendly person I had met here today made me blurt out everything that had happened to me since I rang the silver bell at the gate, ending with Poppy trying to drug me.

* * *

“Poppy?” Lady Deep Shadow looked from Flame to me. “I can’t believe it! Poison? Still.. Is that why he was so out of it when you found him, Flame?”

“He was about ready for my leash.” She giggled.

I threw a quick look at Lady Deep Shadow. By the Lady, this was embarrassing.

“That’s enough, Flame. I am sure you have other duties to attend to than tormenting this poor fellow. Or some bed to seek out. Your own or someone else’s, I don’t care.”

Flame giggled some more, burned a hole in my soul with her emerald eyes, ensuring I would not forget her soon, and strode out of the trunk-house with her head held high. I wondered if she ever wore it otherwise.

* * *

“She’s my single, biggest headache,” Lady Deep Shadow said. “Completely unable to adjust, but the best herbalist I ever met.” She clasped her hands together. “Let’s talk, Sir Weed. Don’t drink if you don’t trust me, but let’s talk.”

I chose to taste the liquid. Mostly because I wanted to trust this sensible, kind woman, but also because I didn’t have a choice.

She was the only reason I had traveled endless miles of forests and rowed up enormous floods to get here. If she wasn’t playing fair, then my mission had already failed. Later, I also drank because the wine tasted like flowing joy.

“First, I believe I have to apologize for the behavior of my apprentices for the second time this morning. I have only five of them, and hope the rest don’t cause you any grief. The problem with Poppy is that she is very ambitious. To put it bluntly, she wants to be me. Have my power. Be party to all my secrets. Have her advice heeded on all matters. Who knows, maybe we will discuss this with her later? But enough about her. Right now I would appreciate it if you interpreted those words for me.”

“Words?” Another garment adjustment confused me. This time somewhere below her throat. Lady Deep Shadow sure had long, graceful hands.

“The prophecy.”

“Oh,” I said. “That.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “That. The reason you came here, no?”

“Uh, I am not... I wasn’t part of..”

She waited patiently, for a while. Some people wait patiently for too long and just make you feel more and more lost. Lady Deep Shadow interrupted me before I broke down completely.

“You mean that the old and wise men and women back home spent weeks mulling over the words, but that you were only given a quick summary of their conclusions? The light reading variant?”

I nodded.

“That’s good, because it’s far too early for me to learn anything complicated.” She flipped her dark, brown hair back and ran her fingers through the wavy curls. “I should get dressed. But it can wait. Tell me.”

“The, eh, Captains,” I said, “decided that it would be prudent to send the Wanderer actually called ‘Weed’ on this mission. Apparently, they couldn’t figure out what that word meant and decided to hedge their bets.”

“I normally don’t want weeds in my garden,” Lady Deep Shadow said, “but I guess one woman’s weed is another woman’s flower? We all know the Evil Sister and all her titles, and how she is ravaging the Wild, turning them into Dead Lands... But what is the Elixir you mentioned?”

“The Elixir of Life? They... Uh, one assumed that you would know.”

“Me?”

It was now bright day outside. The birds were singing all around. Including directly below me, which I had never experienced before.

“Yes. The Lady of Flowers. That would be you, right?”

“I guess. But the Elixir of Life? I don’t know. Sounds like something the Sibyl herself might cook up. Healing arts?”

* * *

Lady Deep Shadow stretched. Her breasts were large and, oh!, so present as they moved beneath her dressing gown.

They reminded me of a woman I had once made love to, blessed with breasts even bigger than hers. One time she had crawled on top of me and placed herself on my manhood. Far too slow she had moved, far too teasing to one who lay and felt he was about to burst. She had let me slide out of her, almost, before coming down on me again, over and over in her own good time. Her breasts would bounce and slide against my chest, naked, sweaty, juicy. She had picked up speed and her eyes had begun to widen. Tossed her hair. Moaned and groaned.

I had felt as if I was falling upwards towards some enormous void that I could not quite reach, no matter how long I fell. My hands had been on her thighs, trying to make her go even faster. My own groans, deeper and louder, like that of an animal, mixing with hers.

At last she had transcended and burst into her own inferno of pleasure. The way she had moaned, almost crying, the way she had closed, then opened, her eyes as if she could not believe what she was seeing, had made me ache and yearn to feel it myself.

It hadn’t happened. After the tremors had left her she had kept going, working on me like she was running mile and after mile to save someone she loved. She had bent down and let me taste her breasts. Let me lick her nipples, big and hard against my rough tongue. Pressed them so hard against my face that I almost slid out of her, that she could only ride the top of my shaft.

I had loved the feeling. Loved being smothered, loved how the breasts were so soft and warm against me. But I could not reach that final rapture and after a while she had slowed down. Exhausted.

I had told her I loved her. Told her I loved what she did.

She had nodded. Said she understood. Then she had picked up her clothes, covered herself. From then on everything had become awkward. But I still remembered her breasts, and I wondered if I might love Lady Deep Shadow’s just as much.

* * *

“The Captains think the Elixir is some kind of potion used to increase one’s vitality or strength, but...” I said.

“But you know that Wanderers are always concerned with martial matters. Elixir of Life? To me, that could bring a harvest beyond anything we can dream of? Perhaps. What do I know? I don’t think I can help you, though. Even though I wish I could. I really do.”

She made as if to rise, and I panicked. “But, but! The Oracle has spoken! She always tells the truth!” Now it was my turn to get out my chair. “We just need to find out what the Elixir of Life is! Maybe it is described in a book you have?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I have many, many books. Are you a scholar, perchance?”

“No, I—”

“So, how would you know where to start looking?”

“Uh... I thought you would—”

“Even though I just told you I don’t?”

“Sorry, I...”

“It’s fine.” She smiled. Was probably used to foolish apprentices.

“What about your garden?” I decided to try again. Making a fool of myself was kind of my thing. “Maybe you already got all the plants you need to make the Elixir?”

“Maybe I do? Are you a gardener? Or a herbalist? Can you recognize such plants, if they do exist? You have seen the size of my garden.”

She seemed honestly sorry for me and listened very patiently while I but-butted at her. I was even able to keep doing it until Flame somehow reappeared next to us and made me jump. Wicked smile on red lips, playful gleam in jade eyes.

“Didn’t I tell you to find something useful to do?” Lady Deep Shadow asked.

“You did. Then I got bored, and now I am back.”

“You are, are you?”

“I am. All done.”

Lady Deep Shadow looked at me for a long time. “If you have nothing better to do, then you can bring us something else to drink, Flame. Something even better. Come, Sir Weed. Look out of my window.”

She took my hand and led me over to a large crack in the enormous trunk. It truly was a room with a view. Someone had made sure that none of the enormous branches of the tree in any way obstructed the fabulous vista that was Perfume Hill and its graceful towers. I could feel awed by so much beauty. Or I could feel a little nervous that Lady Deep Shadow positioned herself behind me and that I could feel her dressing gown, but not her breasts, touching my shirt.

“What do you think of it?”

“Uh?” Your body?

“Perfume Hill!” I could sense her smile as if she had kissed my neck.

Perfume Hill was beautiful. It was as if the Ladies all had competitions going. Most beautiful building. Most serene garden. Most vivid colors. Most exotic fish in a pond. A tallest tower competition, even though they were the wrong gender for such compensatory activities.

From here I could finally see the Unicorn’s Horn in all its glory. I had noticed the shimmering, silvery tip in the moonlight last night, but now I saw the steep mountain peak it was resting on, and every, single foot of gleaming white marble, if that it was, like melting ice and crystals. The Sibyl’s palace.

“Look at the Unicorn’s Horn,” Lady Deep Shadow said. “At the Tower of Flutes. The Houses of the two most noble Ladies on the Hill. Look at them. Do you think the Healers would accomplish much if they didn’t get fresh batches of cureall clover each morning? From my garden? Or how would the Weather Girls keep the winter storms away without stillwind reeds? Reeds that thrive only in my pools? What if I withheld my assistance? For just a week? Wouldn’t they come begging for it? They know. Oh, they know. Yet, I have never refused them. Do you know why? Because there’s just as much power in giving a favor as in withholding it. You just have to know what to do when.”

I smiled and nodded, even though there was not much to smile and nod at. I could see what she was driving at, but I did not have to like it. Protesting was dangerous, but I decided to try bravery for once.

“Lady Deep Shadow! Don’t you know that the Dead Lands are growing? That they are everywhere in the Wild? Don’t you know that the lowlanders are being killed or enslaved if they don’t flee up on the hills? Don’t you know they even conquered Coal Peak and turned it into a city of living death? You can even see Bleak Hill from here! Please, Lady Deep Shadow! If there is anything you can do, please help?”

“Sir Weed.” I could hear how she took two steps back. I could feel how she closed the dressing gown tight at her throat. “I understand your concern, but I am not the right person. Why do you bother me and not the Sibyl? She is the ruler of Perfume Hill.”

I turned around to find her face as closed as her robe.

“Please,” I said. “Please help.”

She just looked at me and made no reply until Flame returned with new drinks and new ways of bending that turned my head. Then a smile forced its way back under her eyes.

“All right,” she said. “I will make an effort for you, Sir Weed. Let’s toast to that before we get to it, shall we?”

She nodded at me and drained her cup.

I did the same.

* * *

Shouldn’t have. Of course not. The drug hit me like a sledgehammer carrying the flu. It shoved me out of the chair and made me crumble on the wooden floor.

The last thing I heard was Flame giggling, sweet as a clear spring.

* * *

I had a dream.

I was floating above the world, as free as a cloud on a sunny day.

Almost.

Something held me in place. My body was shackled to a pair of enormous boulders by two long, wicked iron chains.

The wind invited me to play. The sun beckoned me up towards her.

I couldn’t join either of them, and so cried out in anguish.

After a while two figures appeared, gliding out of the sun. Two female figures. I was sure of that, even though they were pure light. As they descended, they started to circle, spiraling down towards me, closer and closer.

I shouted for them to come to me, to embrace me, set me free and take me with them up to the sun. But they did not answer.

When they came close enough to touch, I felt their heat, burning, glowing. I reached out with my arms to hold them, but they slid away. Instead their hands found the two iron chains. They grasped them, began to melt them with the sun’s fire. To set me free!

At first I cheered them on, then the heat became searing, unbearable. I yelled, I screamed at them to wait. Not to stop, because I ached to be free, but to be careful.

They went on. Perhaps they didn’t even hear me? The iron turned red hot. The iron stretched, became thin, weak, almost translucent. Then, the chains broke. They snapped, and I was free.

Free, yet huge, heavy drops of iron seared, burned, mutilated my body. My screams flowed away on the soothing wind.

Still, now I could float. I could go where I pleased. I could look down on the Hills and the Wild beneath me.

The two females went with me, fluttering around me like butterflies on fire. They rose, goading me up.

I could see more and more of the Wild until I could take in the entire, green globe beneath me, against the blackness of space with the moons and the stars and the blinding, majestic light of her. Of the sun.

Closer and closer we drifted. My skin got tan. I had to shield my eyes from the merciless fire, yet there was no way of stopping the ascent.

Higher and higher, until the sun covered half the sky, higher and higher until all around was light, light, light, and I was set on fire and everything became utter pleasure and utter pain, and I woke up.

To find that they had cut my balls off.

* * *

I didn’t realize that straight away when I woke up.

I was in what seemed almost like a bed in the hospital wing back home. Rectangular walls made a huge cage of cast iron bars, intertwined with living vines. These were thicker and older than in Poppy’s room. But the handiwork, I sensed, was done with less skill. Hence the need for the metal framework. Or maybe it was a cell. If so, then Lady Deep Shadow’s prison was the most normal hut in her House. Furnished with shelves, cupboards, chairs, a table, a wardrobe, and a bed all made of real, dead wood, it had everything required to calm the nerves of the most typical patient.

Since I didn’t feel like a typical patient I didn’t pay much attention. I was more concerned with my crotch being on fire. It was so painful that I think I spent more than an hour removing the duvet. Too bad, it was apparently a very lovely evening outside. The warm, lazy rays of the sun stretched and yawned their way in through the foliage.

Who knew that duvets were so hard and heavy and resistant to pulling? I could only conclude that things just couldn’t get any worse.

Something one should never do.

Bandages. I was naked except that my entire crotch was covered in bandages. Green, organic, hemp bandages. Removing those would not only be beyond painful, but also, if any of my suspicions were true, dangerous. If any of my suspicions were true, however, then I really had to confirm them. Really.

Evening turned into night as I got busy teaching myself a few new subjects:

What Pain Really Is.

How Stupid Am I?

Why Do I Do This?

How Many Layers Of Bandages Are Really Necessary?

When there was only one bandage left, I stopped. It was bloody, it was sticky, it was so tender that even I was sensible enough not to go on.

Besides, removing the other strips of fabric had answered my question for me.

I couldn’t say that I had been lucky, I certainly couldn’t do that, but things could surprisingly enough have been worse.

There it was. Flaccid, black and blue, but alive, attached, and whole. Yet there was nothing, nothing at all!, below it. Just a far too flat bandage instead of a pair of lumpy things.

I spent some time wishing I could swap destiny with a fellow Wanderer I had known, who had once ended his days down in the Wild, impaled on a brigand’s sword. After all, he had only had limited time to tell himself how much he hated how his life had turned out.

That ‘some time’ was cut short when the leaves in the doorway rustled and were pushed aside.

Flame entered.

* * *

She still wore brilliant green, but the dress had been dropped in favor of a voluminous satin blouse with long sleeves and a single button at the level of her breasts. A wide skirt fell down with an almost golden sheen in the light of the lamp she carried. In the other hand she had a tray with a plate of wafers, a large mug, and a piece of cloth. The ponytail hadn’t changed one bit, and swung from side to side as if daring me to challenge her and her sweet, innocent smile.

“What did you do to me, you bitch!” It felt good saying that. It felt real good.

She didn’t answer me, just giggled. Which didn’t feel nearly as good.

I decided to get up and showing her what’s what. When I had moved an inch I decided to never move another ever and let what remain what it was.

“Oh! Poor Sir Weed! Are you in pain?” She put her dainty hand over her mouth and gasped as if I had just smacked my head into a low door frame and she had cared.

“What did you do to me?” I repeated, adding some more colorful curse words.

“Look, Sir Weed!” She put the lamp down on my table and extended the plate. “I brought you something to eat and drink! You must be starving.” Her smile was a cheery as all nurses’ are.

I told her what she could do with the items. That shocked her.

No, she only appeared to be shocked. Gasping, breath drawn, eyes widening, all on purpose.

“Sir Weed!” She put the plate down next to the lamp and walked over to a small branch sticking out of the wall in a far corner. “Please mind your language!”

I didn’t mind it.

“Sir Weed!” She broke off the branch and plucked off the leaves. “Please!”

I didn’t please her.

“Sir Weed,” she said for the third time and came over to me. “I think we’ve had enough of this, don’t you?”

I didn’t think it we had had enough.

“In that case,” she said and bent the branch into an arc just above the bandage, “I have to insist that you stop.”

She insisted that I stop. I stopped. I stopped and I stopped, and I cursed myself in silence for a long, long time for being so angry it had bordered on stupidity.

“It’s for your own good!” She giggled, lifted the ponytail with the branch, and let it fall over her shoulder. I was not in the mood. “Lady Deep Shadow doesn’t like rudeness.”

She didn’t, did she?

“Now, Sir Weed. You need to regain your strength.” She came over with the mug. “You are not going to refuse to drink, are you?”

Was there hope in her voice? I lifted my head as high I could without disturbing my lower body, and drank from her hand like an abandoned calf. Tasted good, tasted healthy.

“Good boy,” she said. “And now, some wafers. Open up!”

I ate the wafers. Just to disappoint her.

“Very good!” She clasped her hands together with the innocence of a killer bunny. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I didn’t shake my head. I said “No,” instead. The pain from eating and drinking had been bad enough.

“Then, I will leave you to get some more sleep.” She turned around like a gust of wind, making her ponytail and skirt whirl up and around, almost straight in my face.

That... affected me. Somehow.

Wasn’t that impossible when you lost your balls? I had heard something like that, but didn’t really know. Good thing she was leaving, though. Very good.

* * *

“Oh, I forgot,” Flame stopped and looked at me over her shoulder. “Completely slipped my mind. Lady Deep Shadow asked me to clean you.”

“C-clean me?”

“Yes...” She purred. “After all, you have been through a lot while you were out. Sweating and all that. It would be terribly, terribly rude if we let you lie and fester. Unhygienic. I really have to clean you. All over.”

Oh no, I thought. No, no. Oh no, no, no.

I was forced to spend a lot of time thinking ‘no,’ because Flame spent that same time using the lamp to heat water in a small basin she fetched from a cupboard. All the while we waited she didn’t take her eyes of me once. Her smile was so sweet and her eyes so clear and beautiful that I almost fooled myself into thinking she was sincere.

At last she put a few drops of some kind of oil into the smoking water. The room was filled with the scent of women getting dressed and putting on makeup before a royal ball. Oh, no. She soaked the cloth, a jet black velvety thing, in the basin and came over. No, no.

The first thing she was washed was my feet. That felt good. She had gentle hands. It felt kind of like the rubdown we used to get back at the barracks after a tough exercise, only far less energetic.

I could live with this if I hadn’t known things were about to get worse. When she came over to wash my arms I became acutely aware of how light and smooth her touch was. How silky green her blouse was. How good it felt when she accidentally brushed against me.

I didn’t dare move any part of my body except for my eyes. They shifted from her emerald ones to the ponytail that never seemed to rest. The worst part of it all? Whenever she went over to the basin to soak the cloth, I wished for her to come back.

She washed my brow, my cheeks, my ears, my nose, and the scent of utter femaleness filled my head as if I was drowning in a sea of smiles and giggles and light touches.

It became hard to remember that I had been maimed. Hard to remember that Flame was an evil, crazy woman. Hard to remember that what was beginning to happen shouldn’t be possible.

* * *

It all came tumbling down when she passed the cloth back and forth over the upper part of my chest. The scent was still overpowering, and the satin sleeves caressed my belly with every move she made.

“Don’t look down!” I screamed at her in my mind. “Just please don’t look—”

She took in all of my body from under her long, thick eyelashes, as demure as a maiden who has never been alone with a man before. She saw The Trunk, and the expression she faked was as shocked as if she had happened to walk in on me naked. Yet, she went on.

When she reached my abdomen I didn’t care what my body told her or didn’t tell her, didn’t care about the pain its treacherous movements caused me. When she reached my left thigh I was moaning on the inside, grasping the sheets with desperate fingers, curling my toes. When she reached the right, there was no question of keeping any kind of sound internal.

I wanted Flame, I needed Flame, and I didn’t care about the consequences one way or the other.

* * *

“And...” she said at last, when she had circled in on the area in question. “...let’s stop there. We don’t want to disturb your wound, do we?”

She stood up, went over to the basin, put the cloth away, and started to wash her hands. That accursed and holy ponytail dangled down her back like a jeering, red silky monkey.

“No! Please!” I said. Only I didn’t say it. I groaned it.

“Excuse me?” She looked at me with so much feigned, innocent ignorance that I couldn’t insist she knew exactly what I meant.

“Can you...”

“Yes?”

“I need...”

“Yes, Sir Weed. What do you need?”

I could tell how much she enjoyed this just by the faint trembling in her voice.

“Touch me?” I asked.

“But, Sir Weed, I have already cleaned you.”

“No! Touch me... there.”

“There, Sir Weed?”

“Touch my... manhood.” I swallowed.

She looked down my body again.

I didn’t. I could feel The Thing. How it pointed up along my belly. How rigid it was, how it swayed to the rhythm of my heart, how the pain under the bandage was defeated, quenched by desire.

“But, Sir Weed!” She began drying her hands now, still wide-eyed, still acting.

Why couldn’t she just stop it! Why couldn’t she skip the ‘But, Sir Weed!’ nonsense?

“You are wounded,” she said. “You should leave that spot well alone.”

“Please,” I begged. “Please touch me!” I felt as needy as never before. I knew that absolutely nothing would bring me relief, that if I managed to convince her it would only prolong and increase my agony. Still, I couldn’t help myself. Were all men this stupid? “Please? I need it!”

She put a finger on her lower lip and looked up at the ceiling as if she was contemplating the matter. Did she for one second think I believed her, or did she just enjoy my whimpering? And did her ponytail hang down on one side like swinging, reddish strands of pure gold by accident, or was she using it to control the pace of my throbbing?

“All right Sir Weed, but on one condition.”

My first idea was to shout ‘Yes!’ and worry about the whatevers afterwards, but I managed to control myself. “And what’s that?”

“That I get to remove your last bandage,” she said. “Slowly and gently.”

That didn’t worry me nearly as much as it should. “Yes, yes!” I tried to move my arm to beckon her over. I stopped moving my arm. Ouch. I ought to be worried, all right.

“As you wish, Sir Weed.” She fetched the cloth and pulled up a chair. Shook her ponytail. Adjusted her skirt. Showed me a pair of hands with blood red, long nails.

When she leaned over the lower part of my chest, her soft, warm belly and cool, silky blouse both pressed against and tickled my skin. Once again she grabbed and flicked her ponytail, with the result that it landed across my throat and fell to rest there. Like the hot irons of a torturer, impossible to ignore.

She looked down towards my legs, but I had no way of seeing what she was going to do. All that was left for me was wait in utter agony.

It didn’t happen until I had drawn three deep breaths, each sending bursts of pain down into my crotch. That’s when I felt a small, almost imperceptible, little tug on the bandage.

“Ouch, Sir Weed,” she said. “This thing really, really sticks to your poor skin. We have to be careful. Oh, so careful.”

I was convinced I didn’t have a single hair left down there, but that’s what it felt like. As if she were using pincers to pull hair after hair out of the most sensitive part of the male body. I was also convinced that the only reason she did it so methodically was to torment me as much as she could. At least, that’s what her giggling told me.

She stopped after number seventy-eight or seventy-nine, not that I knew what I was counting. Jabs of pain, perhaps? The bandage itself couldn’t have been pulled off by more than half an inch. My manhood had had enough and started shrink.

“Did you change your mind, Sir Weed?” she asked.

“Uh?” I said, hoarse from roaring in pain.

“Don’t you want to be touched anymore?”

I should have said ‘no!’ Hopefully that would have sent her out of the room and given me some relief. I didn’t. Just the sound of her voice, just her sweet scent, just the feel of her ponytail every time I breathed, made me have another go at stupidity again. “I do, I do!”

“Mhm,” she said.

* * *

A few moments later I felt something very light brush against my shaft. I knew what it was. The black cloth. She was probably holding it by her thumb and index finger, maybe even by their red nails, swinging it, letting it caress me, up and down the shaft.

It felt so good. Women have claimed that I have a very long rod, but right now I wished it was several feet long so that there was no end to what she was doing.

“Ooops!” she said from far away and after a long while.

The cloth fell on top of the head, like covering up a glistening work of art.

“I am sorry, Sir Weed. I dropped it.” She pulled it off, pulled so lightly that I felt I was inside the most careful, gentle woman in the world.

I expected the cloth to start teasing the shaft again, but it didn’t. Instead she started to tear at the bandage.

Sixty-four stings of torture later, she once more asked if I was satisfied.

I wasn’t. The Lady curse me, but I wasn’t.

She giggled and told me that I was a very brave and valiant Wanderer.

* * *

Soon I felt a slight pull on my semi-rigid member, and she made a small, surprised noise.

“Oh, Sir Weed! Can you believe what just got caught in my sleeve!”

I could. I could believe that this ‘what’ was the thing being lifted and released, shaken from side to side, pulled at, rubbed against, played with, made hard as a bar of steel, all by the touch of a finely woven, silky tube of fabric.

“There!” she said after an eternity of this. “I finally managed to untangle us. Good, then we can get on with business.”

The business, apparently, was pulling off another half-inch of bandage. Another question followed, and so did another desperate affirmation on my part.

I suddenly became acutely aware of Flame’s long blood red nails, when she started using them to touch me on each side of my base, pinching lightly as if testing the skin of a fruit. A few more pinches and my wilting vegetable returned to full, glorious health.

She kept on poking and prodding me with her nails alone, scratching lightly, pushing me, egging me harder. Touching almost enough for me to ascend up to the sun, missing just that final, little push that would make me forget everything.

I couldn’t control my voice, I couldn’t control my breathing, I couldn’t stop my body from shaking and my feet from wiggling, and I ignored the raging pain from the lost balls as I lay there groaning and moaning beneath her touches.

Suddenly, though, there was no more pinching.

* * *

I waited, my eyes closed.

No, no. The pain would come. A hundred imaginary hairs would be pulled off.

But... It didn’t happen.

“Uh?” I said when I realized she was as unlikely to act as my rod was to shrink again.

“Yes?” A long, drawn out ‘Yes’ that was.

“Please?”

“Please what, Sir Weed?”

“Touch me? Please?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Can’t?” What did she mean? Of course she could!

“I need to peel off the bandage first.”

“Why? Why!”

“So that you heal faster, Sir Weed.”

“Then do it!”

“You want me to tear at it?”

“Yes!”

“Sure?”

“Please, please, please do it!”

* * *

I don’t know what was the most humiliating. Listening to my own voice as I begged, getting excited by the giggling that just wouldn’t stop, or yelling at her to go on tearing each time she pretended to be concerned over my pain. I did know that it was all worth it, though, when she put all five fingers on my still raging organ.

At first she didn’t seem to know what to do with it. A light touch here, a little stroke there. They still made me howl, though, but then the hand closed around me. Or tried to close. Maybe her fingers were short? Or maybe my member just was this thick? I didn’t remember, I had stopped touching myself a long time ago.

She giggled at my animal noises, then turned around to look at me for the first and only time during the ordeal. It was the look a particularly arrogant warrior might give a vanquished enemy just before the coup-de-grace.

I became aware that she had just given me a bucket-full of chances to save myself, but that I had rejected them all. Something bad was about to happen to me and I would do nothing but cheer her on.

She turned back again and her ponytail spread out across my chest like a sheet of silk, as if her blouse just went on and on. Her hand moved and every motion, up or down, moved my soul along with it.

There was nothing else in the world but Flame and my desire right now. I did not care about her evil actions, about her cruel smile or wicked plans for me. All I knew was that with every touch or stroke I belonged more and more to her.

I had no idea if she started to grip me harder or if she moved her hands faster. All I knew was that I was soaring up towards the sun and that this time nothing, nothing at all!, would stop me. Up, up, up!

Except... Except that the sun remained far away no matter how quickly I rose, no matter how much of my mind I was losing as I thrashed and sweated myself into insanity.

From out of nowhere I heard her voice, heard Flame speaking to me, teasing me, in control of me. “Do you want it, Sir Weed?”

“Yes!”

“Do you?”

“Yes!”

“Then let it happen.”

“Yes!”

I shouted ‘Yes!’ a few more times, but ‘it’ never happened. The sun was impossibly distant. I could never, never, never get close enough.

Flame giggled, but that only fueled the fire even more. If it was at all possible. “Not like that, Sir Weed. You have to beg me.”

“Please!”

“Louder.”

“Please!”

“Please what?”

“Please let me come!”

She laughed. She laughed until she cried. There was nothing I could do to stop her, so long as her hand polished my rod.

Then her head moved downwards. Moved and so pulled the ponytail over every, single sensitive inch of skin on my chest.

Lips. Lips on my smooth head. Lips down the back. Lips closing on, encompassing, cradling, soothing, teasing me.

Tongue. Tongue doing more than five, or ever five hundred, fingers could ever do.

Her lips moved and her tongue moved, and in a single, glorious moment I crossed the last, vast abyss of space and plunged like a snowflake into the sun.

It went on and on, that final moment of bliss. I laughed, I cried, I moaned, I roared, I promised Flame everything, I told her how much I loved her.

Afterwards I could not understand what had happened to me. All I could think was that if this was it, if this was the reward that men got from their women, then there was not a single thing I would not do to feel this again.

* * *

It was over. It was over, and for the first time as a grown man I could well and truly relax. That is, until Flame tore off the final inch of bandage in a single, soul-wrenching yank, and sent me screaming.

“Well, Sir Weed?” She sat up, her face as innocent and unblemished as ever, her ponytail without a single strand out of place. “That was worth it, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t answer, just followed her with my eyes as she returned to the basin to soak the black cloth again. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“You sweated just as much in half an hour as you did during your entire surgery,” she said and proceeded to clean me again. “But this is the last time. I am not doing this again.”

I took a few, deep breaths, then asked. “Why? Why did you do this? Both things, I mean. The castration and the... sucking. And, isn’t it impossible for a man without his... to do what I just did?”

She just giggled and went on cleaning me.

“Answer me!”

She didn’t.

I tried grasping hold of her. The pain convinced me to stop trying.

When I was clean, soft rod and all, and she had taken a vicious delight in cleaning the red, ugly wound, she put the cloth away and fetched a small jar from a cupboard. It contained a yellowish goo of some sort, and she pried a gob out with her fingers.

“This will hurt a little,” she said and began to smear it on the wound.

It hurt. Not a little. Not at first. After a while, though, the touch became almost pleasant. Then I got used to it. Then I enjoyed it. After a long while of such enjoyment I did something I had just sworn to myself I would never do again.

“Please?” I said.

“What?” Giggle.

“Please touch me again?”

“Nope.” She went over to the basin and washed her hands. Then she picked up her tray, winked at me, and strode out of the room. “I am all done here.”

“Please!” the clown with the fresh hard-on shouted as the footsteps of her small, shiny black shoes were lost in the night sounds of the Flower Garden.

* * *

I spent a lot of time thinking about what had just happened. No, first I spent a little while trying to fight the pain and touch myself in order to get relief, utterly failing to do so. Then followed some feeling miserable, then falling asleep, then waking up to what looked like a drab, rainy day, then actually starting to think.

My first reflection was that I was not in some prison cell buried fifty feel below ground. That someone might actually hear me, should I scream for help. Someone who was not Flame. Or Lady Deep Shadow. Or Poppy, or any of her other apprentices, or... So, no shouting, eh?

My second thought was that my crotch didn’t hurt as much as last night. In fact, there was only a persistent murmur down there.

So, if I got up I could sneak out the door of the cast iron cage, find the wall that surrounded the Flower Garden, climb it, jump down on the other side, and lose myself and any pursuers in the city. I had no idea what I should do then, but I sincerely hoped it would involve me moving out to a small, isolated cottage in the Wild, some place where there never, ever, ever came any women.

My plan worked all the way up to the ‘getting up’ part. Moving apparently meant feeling like I was continually kicked in my missing balls. Leaving the bed took so long that if I moved towards the door at the same speed, then there would be moss growing on me before I saw the sun.

I got up on my feet, but my crotch had not yet healed. Not by far. Still, standing up I could see a set of clothes on a shelf over by one of the walls. They wouldn’t help me much, though. I wouldn’t be able to walk over there with steps longer than the nails of my pinky toes. I wouldn’t be able to bend my legs to fit into the dark blue, sharp-looking pants. Wouldn’t be able to endure the fabric pressing against my groin.

A lot of time was spent deciding to, then actually going through with, visiting the toilet which was hidden away at the other end of the room. After all this time I had no choice, but I wish I did.

There was a small pool of water that apparently was for drinking. At least I decided it was. Eventually I was able to get back on the bed and feel, if not content, then at least able to be philosophical.

* * *

The questions ‘What were these women doing?’ and ‘Why were they doing it?’ as well as the essential ‘Why were they doing it to me?’ weren’t immediately resolved, but I did manage to make a few deductions which would make me, if not my philosophy teacher’s pet, then at least on the receiving end of an acknowledging nod.

The yellow goo Flame had smeared on my wound had healed it. A lot. Fast. She could only apply the goo after she had torn the bandage off. She did not peel the bandage off until she had made me beg her. Which had required me to be ready to beg. Conclusion? She had already planned the mouth and manhood thing before she came into the room.

Now, call me an amateur when it comes to females, but I have recently, very recently, found out that it was the male who got the benefit of the mouth and manhood thing.

Corollary? The mouth and manhood thing had some nefarious purpose. Another corollary? She would not have left until I succumbed to my desire. Final corollary before I became a mathematician on a roll? I could think of far worse ways to fall under the spell of an evil siren than to be sucked into it.

Maybe... Maybe there were alternatives to the female-free cottage in the forest? Maybe I could play along? See what kind of secret information I could learn if I chose to submit to a few more rounds of oral manipulation? I did have a quest, after all, and the answers to my questions lay inside this House. With Lady Deep Shadow and, by extension, her apprentices. In fact, it was my sworn and solemn duty to work as hard as I could to let myself be subjected to this treatment as often as I could. Just the thought of being touched by Flame again was enough to make me...

...pretty embarrassed over the stiffness of my naked body when Lady Deep Shadow stepped into the room and wished me a good afternoon.

She carried a tray filled with food. Rancloes, pancakes, and chopshop, if I was not mistaken. It ought to make my body relocate its cravings from my groin to a point a few inches higher up.

Maybe it was her dress that prevented that? A white, flowing, light thing, decorated with roses and forget-me-nots, still a little wet from the rain outside? Was it the droplets that made her lazy, glossy, brown curls glitter? Or the floral perfume?

So many options, so long a time before I managed to pull the duvet over my rigid shame.

“Are you hungry?” She put the tray down where Flame had put hers and smiled, looking like a nurse trained to be motherly and ignore whatever idiosyncrasies her patients might exhibit, thank the Lady. “It’s officially too late for breakfast, but I told the cook that you overslept today.”

With Mr Stiffy now put away, I felt brave enough to work myself into some long-awaited, rightful indignation. “What have you done to me!” I didn’t add the word ‘bitch.’ Somehow I got the feeling Lady Deep Shadow would be far more offended than Flame.

“Excuse me?” The nurse’s smile was still on.

“You cut my balls off! Why did you cut my balls off! Who gave you permission to trick me, to drug me, to cut my balls off?”

“Sir Weed.” Her face was blank now. “You just had an operation. That’s all. Soon—”

“You castrated me!”

“Did we, Sir Weed? Didn’t you only last night take great pleasure from the services of my apprentice? Could a eunuch do what you did?”

“My balls are gone!”

“Yes, Sir Weed. You have said so. Many times. You had an operation. A complicated, expensive operation. Paid for by me. An operation which set you free. So, Sir Weed: Why are you then accusing me?”

“Set me free?”

“Yes, Sir Weed. Am I right in claiming that what happened to you last night has never done so before?”

My face told her both ‘Yes’ and ‘How did you know?’

“So, by performing this operation, for free, we have liberated you, have we not? Did you not enjoy what my apprentice did to you?”

I had. A lot. Yet...

“But, but! Why didn’t you... You could have asked!”

She smiled as if trying to reason with a child who insists on staying up past midnight eating candy.

“Would you, would any man, have consented to this operation?”

‘No way!’ said my face.

“Then how can you blame us for doing it without your agreement?”

How could she be so wrong and me unable to refute her?

“Then...” I tried another line of inquiry. “Why did you—”

“Decide to help you?”

“—do it?” I insisted.

“I decided to help you since I am always on the lookout for good men. Brave men like yourself. Men with skills beyond that of the common man. Perfume Hill may be a woman’s city, but you would not believe how much brutality and violence is hidden beneath the silken surface and the lipstick smiles. Simply put: I need a man like you to protect me, Sir Weed. How does that sound?”

That... That sounded insane. “But, my quest! I am a Wanderer.”

“Your quest,” she said, “has brought you here. Maybe that’s what your oracle meant for you?”

“No, that’s not what the prophecy means!”

“How can you be so sure? You’re a young, foolish man. I am neither, and I recognized you for what you are the instant I saw you. I saw the need in you, Sir Weed.”

“The need?”

“The need to become the Pleasure Knight.”

Pleasure Knight? I didn’t get it. Had no idea what she meant. I told her.

“Deep inside you, Sir Weed,” she said patiently, “there is an unfulfilled yearning to feel what you were meant to feel, to dedicate yourself to what you were born to do. To serve and protect your women. Flame showed you last night, and I will today.”

“Show me?” I asked. I didn’t dare ask ‘how.’ I didn’t want to know if I would end up cheering her on. Why did my body hate me so much?

“You should eat your breakfast while it is hot.”

“Answer me!”

“You do like pancakes, no?”

“Answer me!”

“Sir Weed.” Her eyes became as dark as a bottomless pit. “You should eat. The cooks will not be persuaded to prepare another meal for an ungrateful, little boy such as yourself. You can fulfill your destiny willingly, or you can fight it. Your choice.” She picked up the tray and made as if to walk out the door.

“Wait!” I shouted.

“Yes?”

“Leave the food.”

She nodded as if I had said something very clever, came over, put the tray next to me on the bed, and sat down beside it. “Let me help, Sir Weed. I bet you are still raw from the operation. We did our best to be gentle, but still... Pancakes with or without chopshop?”

“Uh...” I said.

“Tea?”

“Uh... Yes, please.”

She filled two small, wooden cups with something whose smell told me that the Flower Girls knew how to grow the best herbs, as they should. Darned good tea, it seemed.

“Cheers, Sir Weed,” she said and drank.

I hesitated.

She just smiled and took a sip from mine as well. “Nothing wrong with this,” she said. “No need to help you in a clandestine fashion anymore.”

I believed her. Or maybe I just didn’t care. If they wanted to knock off more of my body parts, they would surely find a way to do it.

Sitting up was still a painfully complicated process, but the tea was almost worth it.

“Would you like your pancakes with or without chopshop?” she repeated.

* * *

I ate everything on my plate. Every last crumb. How long had it been since I had tasted anything but stupid, thin wafers?

Lady Deep Shadow behaved like the perfect hostess, cutting up my food, pouring tea, talking about the flock of geese she kept in the garden and which her huntsman would prune every now and again to make sure there was enough chopshop in the House for everybody. Including big, strong men such as myself.

When I was done she put everything but the teacups away. We each held on to ours. and she sat down closer to me and kept talking.

I sensed danger immediately.

She wore the light, flowery dress, and I wore the edge of the duvet across my lap. In particular, none of us wore anything underneath: Her soft buttocks were not creased by the presence of panties. Her breasts didn’t need a bra to stay up and be very, very big. The sleeves were short and her skin was dangerously close to mine.

“I am tired,” I managed to say. “And I got a headache. I should get some sleep.”

“You need to stay up a little to avoid getting bedsores. Sit for a while, maybe take a few steps.”

“My heads really, really hurts.” What I meant to say was ‘My manhood really, really wants you to see it standing up. And evidently it is in charge.’

“I know,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yes. It’s because of the pressure you are under. Let me loosen the knots in your neck. That will ease the tension.”

She touched my left shoulder and I knew from the way I shivered that I had lost the first bout.

Yet, the battle was not over. With my right hand, my long, thick, muscular hand that could knock a man across the floor, I pushed her away. Barely. With a huge effort.

“What?” she said. “Why did you do that?”

“I... Just tired.”

“No, Sir Weed. You are being very ungrateful!” Lady Deep Shadow was not faking her displeasure. Not at all.

“No, I—”

“First you insult both poor Flame and me for regaling your with a gift that will make your life so much better. Then you argue with me, and now you slap my hand away and refuse to let me ease what little bother you experienced after the operation. Had I known you were such a selfish, rude man, I should never have let you into my House!”

I should have retorted with “Well, then! Send this ungrateful punk away! As fast as you can!”

I didn’t. I have been taught to be polite at all times, and towards women in particular. So, I said I was sorry.

“Good,” she replied. “Now, think before you act the next time around, Sir Weed.”

Her face slowly turned from showing hurt and anger to understanding and overbearing. Once again she touched me. My hands, which could have snapped her arms in one sudden movement, lay restless and defeated by my sides.

* * *

“Just a moment,” she said. “I need to get into position.” With that she climbed onto the bed, being careful not to jolt me, and sat down behind me, one brown leg on each side of my pale ones.

And she didn’t wear any panties!

Her hands found my neck and touched it on each side. “Now, Sir Weed,” she said. “Try to relax.”

If there was one thing I didn’t do, then it was ‘relax.’ First of all, what I was used to in terms of massage was to have some veteran Wanderer who had lost a leg or two, and so couldn’t enter the Wild no more, punch and twist and stretch my body in an effort to work off some of his anger and frustration at his fate.

Pinching with the whole hand and rubbing me up and down the back might be the preferred alternative in more civilized societies, but to me it felt more like foreplay. I hadn’t been tense before, but now that certain parts of my body decided to wave the flag, my neck became one, big, painful knot.

Her voice didn’t help. She kept talking about her garden and the work they were doing there. About the business she was doing with other Houses. About her journeys to other Hills. About how a mighty Wanderer would fit her perfectly as a bodyguard. A big, tough man to protect her soft, innocent, helpless female flesh.

Her scent decided to join in the attack. It didn’t ask for, didn’t demand, sex. Didn’t knock me on the head with desire. All it did was tell me that a beautiful, curvy, confident, mature, hot-blooded woman was sitting right behind me, touching me. Without panties on.

I pulled more of the duvet onto my lap, but realized I was about to lose again. I, who could defeat ten women like her in combat, was brought low by a few minutes of caressing.

“You have a fine, muscular body, Sir Weed,” she said after a while. Her fingers were trailing down the bumpy parts of my stomach.

“Uh, I do? I mean, thank you very much.”

“I mean it.” She kept those fingers moving. “My late husband was not anything like this. He was my bookkeeper. Good with number, but...” She took a short pause and moved her warm hands up towards my pectorals and my nipples. “...not so much with proportions.”

“You don’t say?”

“You are just right, Sir Weed. How’s your neck now?”

“Fine! All fine now!” ‘Please let me go!’ I wanted to add.

“That’s good. Then I can relax as well.” She sighed and leaned against my naked back.

Yup, her dress was thin. Was real thin. And her breasts covered a lot of area when they squeezed up against me. They were warm. They had nipples.

I could feel her hair, those luxurious, sleek curls, falling down my side as she pressed her cheek against me. They tickled and teased with every movement she made. And she made a lot of movements.

Long, slow, tender movements with her fingers. Up and down my chest, across my abdomen, on the inside of my thighs.

The duvet had fallen off sometime back when. I managed to remain frozen for a little while, but Randy Rod kept screaming at me to touch her back and wouldn’t stop until I began running my hands up and down her silky legs and the outside of her thighs.

“You have warm, gentle hands, Sir Weed.” I felt her breath against my back.

“Thank you,” I said. I had been taught manners, after all.

“When you are healed, it is I who will sit on your lap, and you who will massage me.”

I didn’t answer that. Inside my head an old trooper called Defiance was still standing. His foes, Lust, Desire, and Horny, were busy whipping him to death with their enormous steel rods. But he hadn’t stopped breathing.

“Let me just feel how that wound of your is coming along.” She ran a gentle, probing finger over the mending skin. “Hmm... Doesn’t feel too bad. Healing cleanly. You might be a little sore for a while, but you’ll do just fine, young man. Juuust fine.”

Lust and his comrades broke Defiance’s skull like a rotten egg, splashing the sweaty, shameful yolk of surrender all over my body and brain.

“Will you...” I began, then licked my lips.

Lady Deep Shadow didn’t say ‘Yes?’ in a sweet, innocent voice. Thankfully.

“Will you... Could you please do what Flame did to me?”

She did giggle, but hers was a short and genuine one.

Perhaps Lady Deep Shadow was a good woman? If you only rubbed her the right way, that is?

Yeah, right. Perhaps I shouldn’t be judging character while my rod was nodding like a bob after a fish has just taken the bait?

“I could do something like it.” She began to fondle me in earnest now that I had asked for it. “You see, Sir Weed, I am a selfish woman. What Flame did to you is something a female does to reward her male for his services. I am sure you will be a wonderful Pleasure Knight for me and give me lots of occasions to reward you, but right now I am simply imagining what this thing can do for me. Not just for you.”

She let her fingers slide up and down the shaft. All I could do in return was to sob and rub her legs as if charged with polishing them until they shone.

“I am sure...” She pushed away from me, got off the bed, and stood before me, near. “...that you will not disappoint me.” Her eyes burned.

I knew that she wanted me even before I saw the two, hard points high up on her dress and the dampness that had left wet spots further down. Or maybe that was from the rain?

She bent down to kiss me and I am not sure which one of us was the most hungry.

I couldn’t put my arms around her and pull her close to me as I wanted to, but I did manage to embrace her, gingerly, and let my fingers intertwine themselves within the lush curls that just wouldn’t stop caressing my naked torso.

“Take off your dress!” I said when we had to breathe. I could not remember when I had last kissed a woman this way. Maybe never.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want you to see me. I am so old.”

“You are not old,” I said. “You are sexy!”

“Thank you, my Pleasure Knight.” She kissed me again and, after yet another long moment, pushed me back on the bed.

That sent a howl of pain through those two guys who were not between my legs anymore, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t care because she had turned around and pulled her dress up, only to let it fall across my belly. The most important part of me was now inside, alone with her in this flowery tent where it was so dark and so warm. Her hand came visiting, probing, finding my rod, feeling it.

“Why, my Pleasure Knight? I do believe you are ready for me.”

I groaned out a reply. Wanted to reach up and touch her hair, caress her back, but the pain was just too great. All I could do was groan some more and let Lady Deep Shadow do as she pleased. Not such a poor solution in any way.

She shifted, pulled at my rod, and then my head rubbed against her skin, her slick, soft skin. Again she shifted, and I was deep, deep inside of her.

“Take it easy, my Pleasure Knight. " Her voice was husky. “I want time to enjoy this.”

I nodded, but she couldn’t see that. I moaned my assent, but wasn’t sure she understood. I am not sure I did, either.

“Slowly, my Pleasure Knight,” she said and shifted again, almost pulling me out of her. “Not yet.”

I couldn’t have any of that, so I arched my body as best I managed, trying to follow her, but soon only my head was still in the world of bliss.

“Slowly...” she repeated and sank down again.

I whimpered.

“I can feel how close you are.” She breathed and turned around to look at me, so beautiful with her big, brown eyes. “I feel it,” she repeated. “Oh, my Pleasure Knight. You will be so good to me. Oh, so good to me, my young buck.” She pulled up again, all the way up to where I just couldn’t follow, even though my back was bent like a bowstring.

“Let it happen!” I groaned. “Please, let it happen!”

“Soon,” she murmured and slid back down my shaft again. “Soon, soon.”

“Please, now!”

She waited, then pulled away again. “Oh, dear Lady!” Now it was her turn to moan. “Dear Lady, it has been so long! So long!”

“Please!”

“No...”

“Please!” I wanted to let wound be wound, get up, push her down on the bed, and thrust my hips and groin and belly and thighs and legs and chest and arms and feet and every single part of me against her again and again and again until the wonderful thing happened, this wonderful thing that I needed now, now, now!

But Lady Deep Shadow wasn’t playing that game. She was moaning and gasping, moving up and down on me and telling me how good I was.

Time passed, a long eternity, and I just couldn’t tell if I was deep in ecstasy or agony.

* * *

“Are you ready?” she asked after a pause that was longer than normal.

“What?”

“Are you ready?” She turned around. There were small pearls of sweat running down her flushed cheeks.

“Yes!” I said. “Yes!” I shouted.

She rose, then sat down again. “Will you be my Pleasure Knight, Sir Weed?”

“Yes!”

She rose, then fell. “Do you promise?”

“Yes!”

Rose, then fell. “Do you swear by the Lady herself?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

She began to rock up and down, using my lap to help her bounce. Wasn’t I injured there? I couldn’t recall. I only knew that the feeling, the sacred feeling, made me scream and yell and holler. My member began to jerk and twitch inside her, helping us along, making Lady Deep Shadow bend backwards so that her long hair whipped across my body, and I fell into infinity.

Then, there was silence.

* * *

She did not slide off, did not release me, just sat there as if contemplating something. I didn’t mind that, being inside her felt still very pleasant and oddly comforting. But the silence...

After a while I couldn’t take it anymore, and asked one of those stupid questions men always seem to come up with. “D-Did you like it?”

She didn’t answer at first, just seemed to straighten up a little.

“Yes, my Pleasure Knight!” she said at last. “Yes, I did.” She slid off me, lifted my feet and helped me back on the bed. Then she bent down over me and kissed me as her dress fell back into place. Her brown eyes were tender now. “You did mean what you just swore to me, didn’t you?”

Swore? Had I made an oath of some kind? Whatever it was, it was just one of those things a man will say to get his release, I guessed? But, was it a wise move to hesitate in answering, seeing as something hard slowly replaced the tenderness on her face?

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”

“Good,” she said and kissed me again. “Very good. I knew you would fit well in my House, just as you fit well in me.” She reached down and started to play with my soft snake as if she was fingering some tassel on her dress. “You truly are blessed by the Lady, Sir Weed. Longer than most men, but not too long. Not so long as to cause your lover discomfort. Oh, but your girth, my Pleasure Knight. Your girth was made to please me. Oh, it’s been so long.”

She repeated that, over and over, as she showered me with kisses and played with my body, all of it as if it were hers to explore. It went on, the pleasing and comforting, until the Huge Carrot somehow decided that it was standing-to-attention time again.

I kissed her back with so much passion it almost overflowed. It felt so good to finally be a full man, despite what they had taken away from me. This couldn’t surely be anything but the reason I had been sent here, could it? This couldn’t be anything but the destiny planned for me? To be Lady Deep Shadow’s Pleasure Knight and help her find and make the Elixir of Life and so defeat the Evil Sister? And... And there would probably be a lot of good love-making as part of it, right? A lot. I should probably send a note back to Glory Hill with the next caravan, letting them know I had arrived and had... great success.

“Ready again so soon, my Pleasure Knight?” she asked.

“Yes, Lady Deep Shadow.”

* * *

“Very good.” She purred. “In fact, you have been so good, both with that mighty rod of your and especially your sworn promises, that I should show you my gratitude.”

She kissed me a final time, got off the bed, tossed her curls up in the air, and went over to the basin Flame had used.

Flame? What was the deal with her? Why had she sucked me? And why did Lady Deep Shadow allow it, if she was so possessive as she seemed? I had no clue. Not that that was anything new.

Lady Deep Shadow replaced the water in the basin by pouring it out through the cast iron wall and filling it from another, constantly overflowing mug. Then she added oil, soaked her own cloth in the water, and proceeded to do what the redhead had done last night, but in a far more human way.

With caring and passion and a smile on her face whenever she happened to tickle me, she actually did give me a good, yet gentle, scrubbing. She spent a lot of time down between my legs, both caressing and teasing me, then put the cloth away and looked at me as I squirmed and shook in my weakness.

“Remember,” she said. “As long as you stand by me, as long as you are faithful to your word, you will be rewarded.”

With that she bent down and kissed the head of my big, yearning rod. A long, sensual kiss. A kiss that would have goaded the man to attack her lips should she have kissed him like that on his mouth. A kiss that spent so many heartbeats receding, fainter and fainter, that I felt I was going mad.

I whimpered out something inaudible.

“Hush,” she said. “Don’t you speak a single word.”

You don’t ever have to tell a man that. Tell him to just lie still and think of nothing as a beautiful woman kisses and bites, sucks and rubs, closes her lips and flicks her tongue on him. I shut my eyes and fell into a world composed of images of the future. I saw myself as the Lord of the Flower Garden, standing next to my Lady, helping her, guiding her, being her strong, uncompromising protector. I could do that. I could do that better than most other men. I was a trained warrior, after all.

And when the day was done, I would lay down in a bed besides my beautiful, sensual Lady and make love to her. I would make her moan, I would make her cry out, I would make her sweat and thrash as I ran my manhood into her again and again until she could take it no longer, until she... Until I...

Oh by the Lady! Oh, my Lady. Oh, Lady Deep Shadow! Your lips, your sweet, soft lips! I will be your Pleasure Knight for ever and ever, and I hope this so much and now, and your lips, and now I am doing it. I am doing it! Yes! Yes!

* * *

As she lay down beside me, cushioned by her full breasts, I kissed her a thousand times. She smiled and let me go on, let me slowly lose my flush, let me prove my desperate need to show her how much I had enjoyed what she had done.

Finally she kissed me back, got up, and smeared some of the same kind of goo on my wound as Flame had used. It didn’t hurt as much this time but felt just as icy cool. It had to be potent stuff: The wound had not opened even when I had ignored it in my throes of passion.

“Time to take your sleeping potion and get some rest, my Pleasure Knight,” she said when her touches made me hard again. “Tomorrow morning I will show you my garden. Our garden, my Pleasure Knight.”

I got a little disappointed. Just a little. I didn’t know how often other men could achieve whatever-you-call-them, but I was sure I would have to empty myself at least ten or twenty times before I was satisfied.

She fetched me a cup with something that tasted like shade on a hot day, helped me put it to my lips, wrapped her arms around me, and nestled my cheek against her large breasts until I fell asleep.

* * *

Back when I had followed Poppy to her hut, I had not grasped how large Lady Deep Shadow’s garden was. How many different kids of herbs and flowers and trees there were. How many streams and bridges, birds, and insects. How many pathways and bends that revealed even more colors and more wonders.

To be honest, I still really didn’t care. It was the single largest, most extensive collection of plants in the world outside of the Wild, and I treated it as background. Background to a beautiful woman, and this time it was Lady Deep Shadow.

We had woken up together with glorious sunshine coming through the cracks between the leaves in the wall. We had made love, and it had been just as good as yesterday. A maid had arrived with breakfast and we had eaten it on the bed, naked. We had fed each other, we have kissed, talked, and laughed. Later, the maid had brought Lady Deep Shadow a black dress which was completely unable to hide the shapes of the things it covered. When I followed her out of the hut I could not take my eyes off her.

I had put on my new clothes. They were blue and more the type that women think look good on men than the practical sort.

My wound had all but healed now and I could easily climb down a ladder from my small hut. It was resting on a branch extending from the enormous tree that supported Lady Deep Shadow’s own mansion far above. Soon to be our mansion. The tree was still dark and looming, but I didn’t care on such a lovely day as this.

* * *

We stopped by many sights, and each time she forced me out of my ogling state and made me pay attention.

“This is badger’s tooth, Sir Weed,” she would say, pointing to a flower that looked like it would tear the hand off any man who tried to pick it. “I guess you have tasted it?”

I had. I had never actually seen the small, feisty, grayish flower before, but when a Wanderer needed to run for three days straight, then a tonic of badger’s tooth was the drug of choice.

“I call that a money plant,” she said. “Combine it with bull’s horn, and you got a concoction that keeps the Hill’s convicts working at twice the speed and thrice the strength for sixteen hours a day until they wear out. Which I guess is just what they deserve.”

“They die?” I asked.

“Hearts can’t take it. Better than being hung right after their trial, I guess.” She shrugged. “And they get to make amends for their crimes. This garden was cleared using that very method more than three hundred years ago, I believe.”

I should perhaps have been upset by her attitudes, but in fact it was my stiff rod, Dirty Dick, that caused me the most discomfort. It had appeared during breakfast and refused to go away as long as Lady Deep Shadow’s scent, brown eyes, and delicious buttocks were anywhere near me. And, since we walked hand in hand, there was no chance of them going anyplace. She even had to tell me, and this I am ashamed of relating, that: “No, we will not go up in your hut to make love again right now. Maybe later.” To be honest, she even had to deny me thrice. But she did not seem to mind very much.

In fact, I did not shut up about it until Flame met us at a crossroads in what looked like a thick forest somewhere in a deep, deep valley of the Wild. The shadows only gave her ponytail and green eyes the chance to look mysterious and ominous. She wore a tight, tight top, also green, and a black skirt that was so short it seemed to invite me in. I didn’t shut up because it was awkward to meet her again. On the contrary, her unearthly beauty only drove me even wilder, and I almost had to walk bent over from then on.

No, I kept quiet because of a sense of decency, insecure of how Lady Deep Shadow would react when we were not alone. She seemed very possessive. Very, very possessive.

I liked that. I had never had a lover before. I had never been desired like this before.

At the same time she had known about, even arranged, the treatment Flame had given me. Was it only a test to see if the operation had been a success? Or, would she share me with her apprentice? Flame gave me an innocent look that told me she might be ready for anything.

The two women started talking among themselves as we walked, not caring much what I did or thought as long as my arm didn’t leave Lady Deep Shadow’s. I did not care either, as long as they didn’t leave my fantasies.

They seemed close. Just colleagues? Or maybe friends? Would they... Might there be a chance, an itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny chance that they might... Perhaps...? Share me some time? Could be? Oh, that would be... That would be twice as wonderful! Oh dear. But walking bent over like this, rubbing my head against my underpants? Ouch!

I followed the two women out of the deep wood and into a field where tiny white and yellow flowers grew. If I hadn’t been too busy smelling the women, listening to their beautiful voices, and stealing candid looks at them, I would have noticed that there were a thousand different species of flowers there, all looking almost identical.

We passed over a large lake on a creaky, yet sound, bridge with intricate wood carvings on the railings. If I hadn’t been too busy drooling over bare legs and thighs and bouncing bosoms, I would have been able to appreciate them.

At last we came to a small hill. It was deep inside a forest, and so low that the surrounding trees towered over it. Green grass covered it, but nothing else grew there. Nothing but a single, strange tree at the top. And something that looked very much like a person lying down, resting under its branches.

* * *

“Sir Weed, my Pleasure Knight.” Lady Deep Shadow stopped at the foot of the hill and looked at me for the first time since Flame had joined us.

Flame, though, had made sure I knew that she knew I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

“Do you remember,” Lady Deep Shadow went on, “the attempt on your life when you first came to join me?”

Did I? I couldn’t, really. But I did remember that disagreeing or arguing with Lady Deep Shadow was risky business. “I am sorry, I have been so confused these last few days, and—”

“You were half-dead when Flame found you, remember?”

I still didn’t. Not the half-dead part, anyway. At least I now understood what she was referring to, and so could say “Yes.”

“You were the victim of the actions of a cruel, vicious woman, an ambitious bitch that stops at nothing, nothing!, to hurt me!” She was furious. Face flushed, hands shaking. “And you, my dear Pleasure Knight, was nothing to her! Just a nobody, a person to be murdered, sacrificed to her evil plots! But justice has been served. Look, Sir Weed! Look at the filthy wretch!”

We took a few steps up the hill, and I saw that what Lady Deep Shadow had said was technically true. Poppy was filthy from being covered in earth and mud, and she was so wretched as a woman could ever be.

* * *

I have heard that, deep down in the Wild, there grows a special kind of plant. It’s called the gutfig and brings forth a fruit that both smells and tastes wonderful.

When a bird or animal eats it, however, it gets an irresistible craving for water. It drinks its belly so full it eventually ruptures and the liquid spills over into its guts. As the creature lies dying the seed starts to grow and sends a sapling out of some orifice on the victim, sprouting small white and blue flowers. While the creature is being eaten alive from the inside, roots are burrowing out through its skin and into the dirty, creating wounds that do not bleed, because there is no more blood left. Soon, the first small, delicious fruit are dangling from new, thin branches, ripening.

I had hitherto suspected the gutfig of being the ultimate bogeyman used to scare kids when they were taught not to eat any old kind of fruit lying about. Not anymore. It was real. At least it had to be a close cousin of the one who was now growing out of Poppy’s ravaged bellybutton, stitching her to the ground with its eager roots.

This strain of plant didn’t eat up its host immediately. This strain kept them alive for a long, long time.

* * *

Poppy’s eyes were open, but what she saw, or thought, if she even could see or think, was beyond me.

I let go of Lady Deep Shadow’s arm, didn’t dare approach the tree together with the two others. My manhood shrunk as if being struck with a hammer and then plunged into icy water.

Poppy, that beautiful, lively, charming woman, lay crumpled up like a big, twisted rag doll. A rag doll in intense pain.

Horror stopped me dead. Shame stopped me. I had placed her in this predicament as surely as if I had forced the seed between her lips, jammed her mouth shut, and punched her in the guts until she swallowed.

Flame started to giggle when the woman at her feet uttered an almost inaudible groan.

“Sorry for laughing,” she said, “but it’s so wonderful to see you are finally able to devote all your time to your beloved plants.” She clapped her hands in delight.

Lady Deep Shadow had followed Flame up to the tree. She looked down at the suffering woman, then up at the white and blue flowers.

“Why, I do believe some of these have ripened,” she said. With that she picked a fruit, small and violent red, and started to eat it as daintily as if she was wearing a thick layer of lipstick at a formal dinner party. “Mmm... This was very good. Do you want one?” She faced me. “Just make sure you don’t swallow the stones.”

She flicked the fruit’s core away. It landed in some bushes.

For a moment everyone was waiting for me to answer. I wasn’t ready. Not yet. My sense of self-preservation was battling it out with my sense of decency. Horror, fueled by what I saw not twenty paces away and the two smiling, beautiful women next to it, struggled to choose side.

“No, thank you,” I said after the eternity couldn’t last any longer.

“No?” Lady Deep Shadow’s face tightened.

“No, I don’t feel... very hungry.”

“Sir Weed, please join us and eat the fruit from this tree. It is delicious.”

“I’d rather not.”

“In that case...” Lady Deep Shadow employed that voice women use on their men when they have an audience. The ‘wait until we are alone’ voice. “I will remember your choice.”

Silence fell. One that would have lasted for hours if Flame had not stepped into the taut line between our eyes. She didn’t seem worried in any way, just a girl delighted to steal all the attention. “Don’t rush it, Lady Deep Shadow. Poor Sir Weed doesn’t know what’s going on outside the wall, out on the Hill. He doesn’t know Poppy was a spy, doesn’t know who she is working for, doesn’t know how jealous Lady Steel Rose is of you. Give him a few weeks, and he will be eating these succulent gutfigs out of your hand, my Lady. Won’t you, Sir Weed?”

I hesitated and said: “I am confused.” It wasn’t the bravest thing I had ever uttered, but bravery wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I contemplated attacking the two women but, apart from the fact that the idea was complete anathema to me, I had a feeling it wouldn’t work out as I imagined, my martial training and skills aside. I could defeat Lady Deep Shadow as easily as all that, I was sure, but I was convinced Flame would be ready for me. She would be eager and curious to see what would happen, as if she ached to jump into an enclosure where she kept a chained up, starved, enraged bear and she was armed with a long, pointed stick.

“You’ll make it clear to him in time, won’t you?” Flame went on. “Or perhaps I could put him on my leash for a little while? I am sure I could turn him around, and fast. A few days at my feet and you would be enlightened, would you not? I just finished crafting a special kind of earrings just for you, Sir Weed. I bet you would love me when I wear them, don’t you think?” She winked at me.

I had no idea what she meant, except that she had given me a short time to breathe. I had to do something, get away!, run!, but most of all I had to be alone and think.

* * *

When I was a page I had auditioned for a play, hoping to be awarded the role of Fireblade, the Hero of Triple Peak. I had tried out for the part along with some other, ambitious boys. The master of the theater hadn’t said anything, but the next day I was encouraged to audition for Shoeray, his simplistic sidekick who gets killed early on. So, I did that. The day after, I read the few lines of a foolish shopkeeper who gets in Fireblade’s way and also gets killed early on. Even earlier in fact. And by Fireblade. During rehearsals I found myself playing a silent bystander somewhere in Act II. By the premiere I was working behind the scenes, assistant to the boy who was in charge of the props.

The reason I tell this story is to point out that, when I pretended to be exhausted and faint, I might not have convinced Flame. Or Lady Deep Shadow. Or Poppy. Or the tree rooted in her guts.

It did get me back to the prison cell that was my room, though.

* * *

I spent the rest of the sunny day feeling like an idiot. That is something I can easily do for hours, but time was short and I needed to deal with a few, other pressing thoughts.

One of which was that Lady Deep Shadow was an insane, evil woman. Rather, both Flame and Lady Deep Shadow were insane, evil women, and I had no wish to be the judge of their ‘most insane and evil woman’ competition.

I wanted to get out. And if I was to get out, I had to bring with me the one woman I had met who had not been evil and insane. The woman I had ratted out. Who was busy dying. Who might be damaged beyond repair.

There was only one thing to do now, however, and that was to wait for night to fall. Later, when a maid brought me dinner, I pretended to feel awful, then wolfed it all down as soon as she had left. When Lady Deep Shadow stopped by later in the evening I snored as if trying to scare away all the birds in her garden as well as her.

It finally became dark, but I waited until that time when everyone in their right mind ought to be asleep. Before I left, I still checked all the cracks in the leaf walls to see if anyone was observing me. There was nothing right about the minds of anyone in this House.

That included myself, I mused as I discovered that the doorway was unbarred, sneaked out in my old, gray clothes, and climbed down a nearby ladder. Unfortunately, I thought as I moved into the garden, walked on tiptoes, kept my eyes and ears alert, and promptly lost my way, that might also include poor Poppy.

I had counted on getting lost, and so I had laid what I referred to as the ‘bumbling idiot’ plan. The garden, as far as I understood, was laid out as a broad belt covering a large section of the hillside of Perfume Hill itself. The Unicorn’s Horn was almost always visible, which gave me a way of telling what was ‘up’ and ‘not up,’ as well as ‘left’ and ‘right’. Poor Poppy, I had noticed, was in the ‘upper right’ part of the garden.

Which let this idiot get away with bumbling in a smaller area only. Thus I stood a fair chance of finding Poppy after only a few hours of blind stumbling about. If I found the deepest forests and looked for open patches, that would also help. The gutfig tree had been on some sort of knoll surrounded by tall trees after all. Every time I saw one of the small huts high up in a mighty tree, I shied away, keeping to the shadows.

* * *

It was while I was caught in a huge clump of very tall, very thick, very resilient, very, very thorny bushes that I heard a woman crying out softly in the night.

It had to be Poppy. She was still alive! Perhaps her mind was safe as well?

I managed to free myself without spilling more than a pint or two of blood and merely poking out three or four eyes. Then I bungled around until I found a path that sort of wound itself in the right direction.

The voice became clear and clearer. Poppy! I almost decided to run towards the sound, heedless of the noise.

I didn’t, and for the first time since I rang the silver bell at the gate I had made a smart move. Soon it was clear that this was not a woman crying out in pain. She was deep in need. Poppy? Surely not! Or?

The sound now came from the right side of the path, and I was unsure if I should seek it out or just keep going. It was probably just an apprentice or maid up in her hut with her lover.

Yet the sound seemed to come from a small clearing. Was Poppy’s little hill there? I could not hear a man’s voice, only the rustling of trees.

Was it Flame with her? Had the redhead pulled some kind of trick on Poppy like she had on me? First hurt her but now making love to her? I wouldn’t be surprised.

I was surprised. The woman in question wasn’t Poppy. It was the full-figured apprentice whom we had seen when Poppy brought me to her hut, whom we had passed by in silence. Blossom?

Back then she had viewed us with an inscrutable, almost hostile look. Back then she had been wearing a dress. Back then she had been standing up. Now she was down on all fours on a small patch of lush grass surrounded by towering trees.

Below her, behind her, across her back, wrapping its branches around her throat and neck and arms like a gentle lover’s embrace, forcing her legs apart like an eager lover might, was a bush. A low, thick bush with dark, green, glossy leaves and thick branches, rustling even though there was almost no wind.

The woman hardly moved, except when rocked by the bush. It was rocking violently, rocking insistently, rocking with a kind of rhythm that that no human lover could keep up for long. The bush had one, final branch. Short, thick, knobbly, gleaming wet in the moonlight.

Somehow, I got the feeling I shouldn’t be there. Somehow, I wasn’t able to move an inch.

After a little while the woman began to whimper. “Don’t stop! Don’t let me go! My love, my love, don’t ever...”

She fell silent and her body started to quiver and shake. If the branches wrapped around her neck would have let her, she would have tossed her head from side to side. She groaned. A long, drawn-out groan followed by sobs as if she was about to break down and cry.

Her tremors eventually subsided, but the bush refused to stop rocking. She did not seem to mind, and I was not sure she would be able to free herself if she did.

Soon she began to whimper again. “So good, so good! Don’t stop my love, don’t stop. I need more, more. All night long for me, my love. All night! Don’t stop.”

What was this all about? A bush? For real? It was crazy. But, on the other hand, she was a Flower Girl and had a special affinity for plants. Maybe a very special, very close affinity? Perhaps I should be asking myself, ‘Why not?’

Her breasts, large and soft, hang down, dangling back and forth, and I caught myself staring at them more often than I liked. She went back to moaning, and I went back to finding out I had been betrayed once more.

I was hard. I was watching a woman being made love to by a bush, and I responded to that by getting aroused by her voice and her mammary glands bouncing. I could think of only two things worse than this. The first was contemplating watching them while touching myself. The second was watching them while actually touching myself. I did the first, but not the second. The scene where I explained to Poppy exactly why I was delayed in rescuing her and so caused her even more suffering and permanent brain injuries was one I did not want to see played out.

I left the busty apprentice to her preferences and sneaked back into the forest, heading up towards the Unicorn’s Horn and to the right. Soon after, I found the right clearing with the little hill, with Poppy, with the tree living in her.

* * *

I was glad it was dark. The sight of her emaciated body and the large, burst tumor that had once been her stomach almost sent me reeling.

I walked up the knoll, watched the faintly rustling leaves of the tree, taking care it wouldn’t hit me if it tossed a fruit at me, watched her head to see if there was still life inside. As I went down on my knees beside her, I reached out with my hands to touch her sunken cheeks. Her eyes were feverish, her skin tight over her skull. her hair lank, her throat and shoulders bony. Lifting her would be like lifting a cat. A gutted cat.

There were ants crawling all over her. There were straws, leaves, needles on her skin and torn skirt, as if she already was part of the garden soil.

A thought struck me. Lady Deep Shadow hadn’t sent Flame away for being rude to me that first night. She had been told to torture Poppy and ask her the why and what and how about me. On my word.

My fault. This was all my fault.

* * *

As soon as my fingertips touched her, her eyes lit up and her head turned to look at me.

Apparently her idea of getting back at me was to scare me so bad I got all the brain injuries I feared she had suffered.

“Poppy!” I whispered when I was able to breathe again.

Her eyes were like a pair of crystal blue pools after a pair of naughty boys had tossed big lumps of poisoned earth and muck into them.

“Poppy! Are you there? I am so sorry. Poppy, I am so sorry!”

She opened her mouth. She tried to speak. She licked her lips and tried again. Took a deep breath, closed her eyes, moved her tongue around in her mouth, then said: “Weed.”

“Yes!” I said. “That’s me. It’s me. Me, that is.”

“Yeah. I messed up. As usual.”

“What? Huh?” I asked because I had no idea what she meant, not because I couldn’t understand her even though her mouth sounded as if full of earth and gravel. Not that it was anything funny about that. Not at all.

“My pick up line: Show you my tits! Classic. I laugh so hard my leaves fall off.”

“You... You...”

“Still got a sense of humor? Don’t have much else.” Her eyes rolled.

If this was a joke, then it was of the kind where someone slips on a banana peel, pratfalls down the stairs, and gets beaten up by three guys heading into a bar.

“I do make a beautiful tree,” she wheezed. “Way to go, Poppy.”

“W-What did they do to you?”

There was a pause. Then she gave me a smile like a clown’s mask intentionally crafted to scare kids.

“Guess,” she said.

“Yeah, stupid of me,” I said. “Look. Listen, Poppy. I am going to get you out of this, all right? I haven’t got an axe or anything, but I am strong. And angry. I can carry you, tree and all, out of here and across the wall. And I will. Trust me, I will.”

She smiled again. Even though she looked like a corpse when you pull the edges of its mouth up, I could feel her warmth.

“Very romantic. But you can’t. You will rip my guts out. Not very romantic. Go to Lady Steel Rose. Get help. If not for me, for you.”

She seemed spent, her eyes glazed over, her muscles slackened. No wonder, that.

I sat by her for a little while, stroking her hair, kissing her cheek, just being close until she relaxed and, as far as I could tell, fell asleep.

I kissed her a final time, rose, then turned around to look for the encircling wall.

I didn’t see no wall. Instead I saw Flame, standing at the foot of the knoll, smiling up at me in the moonlight.

I didn’t see that smile. I didn’t see her green eyes and red hair. I didn’t see her holding a black metal collar in one hand and a leash in the other.

The only thing I saw were the pair of thick, golden hoop earrings that dangled on each side of her face. I saw them, fell forward on my face, and worshiped my Goddess.

* * *

The most humiliating thing wasn’t that she made me take all my clothes off and get down on all fours. It wasn’t that I had to stick my head out and wait as she put the collar on me. It wasn’t that she talked to me as if I were a dog. It wasn’t that she giggled as she tugged on the leash. Not that she did this in full view of Poppy, should she be awake. Not that I walked on all fours down the paths, up the ladders, along the walkways, and into a hut I didn’t know if I had been in before or not.

No, the most humiliating thing was that I wanted it. That everything Flame did to me, made me do for her, was good and right and proper and so sexy I could barely endure it. My rod was so hard a blacksmith would be envious of my work. My eyes adored her, couldn’t let her go. Lovely sex fairy from the Wild. The small woman with the wonderful green eyes and the sleekest, reddest hair ever worn by female.

And, the earrings. Oh, Lady! How they shone golden in the moonlight, like bright blood in the reddish light inside the hut. How my mind followed their every movement. How I wanted to feel their smooth surface bounce against my skin, to kiss Flame’s neck, put my manhood through them, have her chain my wrists with them.

I had stumbled, I had been pricked, I had banged my head, and yet all I had seen and felt and cared about was her and them. Why did my pain matter? She was my Goddess, my everything.

It was just right that she should sit on the large chair, the throne!, in center of the room, which was made of some black, solid material that was as hard and heavy as iron and as smooth as polished wood. It was too big for such a small woman, but she filled it up with her beauty and her presence, looking down at me with eyes that burned.

I had no idea what she wanted me to do, so I got down on my knees and waited, watching every little swing of the golden hoops on each side of her beautiful, innocent face.

At first she closed her eyes and sighed, letting the end of the leash pass through her hands. It was as if keeping me at her feet brought her the same pleasure it gave me. After a while she opened her eyes and touched one the hoops.

I wanted to bark.

“Come.” She tugged at the leash. “You can take care of my feet while we wait.”

I had no idea what we were waiting for, but I hoped it wouldn’t happen for a long, long time. Just crawling the few remaining feet over to the base of the throne felt marvelous. I didn’t need the pull of the leash to guide me, but I loved that she used it. The collar was rigid, hard, tight, and made me feel I belonged to Flame with my every breath.

Her shoes, the black ones with the heels too thin and tall for the garden, were as clean as if they had been polished just after she came in. Had I done it and already forgotten about it?

I looked up at her, towering above me on her throne. My Goddess.

She gave me a most imperious smile. “Take off my shoes, pet.”

“Yes, Flame,” I said.

“Lady Flame,” she said.

“Yes, Lady Flame.”

I reached for one of the shoes, but she kicked me with the other one. Harder than necessary to be playful, but not too hard not to still be elegant.

“With your teeth, pet,” she said. “Animals don’t have hands.”

Animals don’t, and I was an animal. And I loved the taste of the leather on my lips and tongue, loved it because it belonged to Her, loved it for being so close to Her skin, the skin I was not worthy of touching.

The shoes were tied with bows with pairs of silken bands across her insteps. I had to bend down with my lips and teeth and grovel for a long time before I was able to properly catch one of the ends and pull the knot open. I was allowed to loosen the other one when she shifted on the throne.

“Are you done, pet?” she asked when I looked up at the golden hoops that she had been so wonderful as to mesmerize me with.

“Yes, Lady Flame,” I said.

“Good. Then take them off and put them beside your throne. One by one.”

She didn’t have to tell me not to use my hands. I used my cheek and nose to push them off, then lifted them with my mouth as gingerly as a mother wolf does her puppies. I wouldn’t miss the chance of smelling and tasting the leather once again. Besides, what dog wouldn’t do this for his mistress?

“What now, pet?” she said as I returned to kneel before her.

Was I allowed to speak? Really?

“I... May your pet kiss your feet?”

“Ooo... That was my plan as well, pet. But I have changed my mind. I think I will use you as my footstool. You don’t mind me resting my feet on you, do you, pet?”

It was, as far as I was concerned, the best idea she had had since she blessed me by wearing those earrings.

Her ankles were dainty and light, and she wrapped them around my neck so that I could kneel with my head up and just look at her beautiful face.

And she, she looked back at me, fingering the end of the leash, letting her ponytail slip through her hand, moving her head just a little to make the earrings shift and sparkle in the red light.

“I own you now, pet,” she said. “You didn’t listen to Lady Deep Shadow. You tried to free that charming spy Poppy, and now I own you. You had your chance to become her consort, but Lady Deep Shadow will never trust you now. Not without me and my leash. Not without the mancatchers.” She fingered her left hoop.

Is it possible to get caught in a trance just by watching a woman fiddle with a circle of gold? I didn’t think such thoughts at the time, though. I just thought: ‘Won’t you please do it again, my Goddess!’

She didn’t. She just sat there and looked at me, and we were both content for a long, long time.

* * *

Later, there were sounds behind me, but didn’t turn around. I was facing my Goddess, so how could I? There was a voice speaking. Lady Deep Shadow. How could I feel anything towards her when all my attention and my life was given to Her on the throne?

“I saw your signal. So... He did it. I am so disappointed. By the Wild, it’s treason!”

“He tried to do it,” my Goddess said. “But what could he do without your help? Rip her out of the ground?”

“Idiot man! Do the mancatchers work?”

“Oh, yes. Perfectly. He let me put the yoke on him as if it were a medal. Good, eager pet. Look at him kneeling. He’s so beautiful.”

“You traitor!” Lady Deep Shadow said.

Did she speak in an angry voice? Perhaps. Did she speak to me? Maybe. I didn’t turn around. I was watching my Goddess.

“Look at me, you traitor!”

Why would she think I could ever listen to her, or anyone else, with my Goddess near?

“Flame! Give me the mancatchers! I want him to look me in the eyes!”

“Not so fast,” my Goddess said. “He’s your Pleasure Knight, remember? You can punish him all you want, just keep him alive and able to fulfill his destiny. You got to find a way to control him.”

Lady Flame stopped speaking to the other person and regaled me with her attention. “You do want to be controlled, don’t you, pet?”

“Yes!” I put all my devotion and love into the yell.

“Then jump up and put your feet on the armrests!”

She cracked the leash as if it were a whip. I didn’t feel it tugging as I was already busy finding my balance after leaping onto the two slim, polished, and engraved armrests on each side of her body.

She fingered something hanging down under the armrests, and I noticed that she was attaching a chain around my left ankle. Then another one around my right. Why? I wasn’t going to make move unless ordered to.

“Bend down, pet,” she said. “Bend down. I don’t want you to tower above me. No, pet. Not like that. No resting on your knees. You are a strong, young man, you can endure an uncomfortable position for a little while. Do it for me, pet?”

I could, and I would. She wanted me to.

“Now, grasp the top of the throne. Both hands. Stick them into the cavities in the thorny canopy. Very good, pet. Very good.”

I was still sort of towering above her. Leaning over her, to be precise. Her hands felt my thigh and buttocks up and down. I waved my rod back and forth, trying to show it to her, hoping she would notice it.

“You hard, pet? Are you needy now?”

“Yes,” I groaned.

“Then why don’t you bring it closer, and I will give it a kiss.”

Lust somehow penetrated my insatiable desire to only obey my Goddess, and it was that lust that almost made me break my spine bending forward while she giggled and shied away from my throbbing, eager member. At last, when I felt I could take it no longer, she deigned to give me what I craved. A small touch of her lips.

“One more, pet?” she asked as I drew back, sobbing with pain and delight.

“Yes!” I croaked. “Please, Goddess!”

“Oh? Oh, you’re such a good, good pet. I will be good to you in return. Come closer.”

I did, and this time she didn’t twist away from me. Instead she began to shower my head with small kisses, to brush her lips up and down the shaft, to flick her tongue at it.

“Do you see, Lady Deep Shadow?” she asked after a while, putting a small hand on my belly to keep my rod a few inches away from where it so desperately needed to be. “He hasn’t even noticed that I have taken the mancatchers off. You can control your Pleasure Knight through his rod, not just the hoops.”

She was right. Her ears were naked. I didn’t care. I needed more kisses.

“Let me demonstrate.” Flame pulled her ponytail, which had its own way of controlling me, up from behind her back. Then she slapped me with it.

“Sir Weed?” she asked and let the strands circle my rod. With the other she did something to the chains that locked my legs.

I must assume I groaned in the affirmative, because she went on. “The door is open, Sir Weed. Perhaps you would like to jump down and run away as fast as you can? Break free? But if you do, I will not be able to do this...” The hair caressed me like ten fingers wearing silken gloves. “...anymore. What do you think, Sir Weed?”

Somewhere deep inside, Sir Weed thought that he was making a huge mistake by begging her not to stop. It was hard to hear him, though, for the Pleasure Knight was screaming at him to shut up and not spoil the fun.

“...!” I said.

“I didn’t catch that, Sir Weed.”

“Do it!”

“Do it, who?”

“Please do it, Lady Flame. Please touch me!”

“He’s pathetic,” Lady Deep Shadow said from somewhere close by.

“He’s just a man. Cute, sweet, lovely. Ruled by his lust like all men. Poor Poppy. No-one is going to come rescuing her anytime soon. All because this hot-blooded Wanderer couldn’t get enough of this. And this.” With every syllable she slapped my manhood with her hair. “And this.”

I felt like crying, felt like burying myself in the nearest ditch, then piss on my own grave. I didn’t cry. Of course I didn’t.

I groaned, gasped, and begged.

And Flame, she did what she had promised. Took me deep inside her mouth and gave me about twenty heartbeats of intense pleasure in which my rod jerked and jumped and squirmed and filled up her mouth.

When she was done, she slid down off the chair and disappeared from view.

Two things struck me at once. One was my conscience, which wanted me to run until my heart burst or I escaped this horrible House. The other thing was a terrible cramp from bending in an uncomfortable position for far too long, listening to the call of my pole instead of the complaints of muscle and sinew.

That delayed my hasty retreat for some time. When I finally was done with the painful acrobatics of poetic justice, I turned around only to see my Goddess standing in the doorway, looking at me.

* * *

She was tall, she was dark-skinned, she had long cascading curls, and she was wearing the blessed golden hoops.

“Now it’s just you and me, Sir Weed,” the woman I had once thought of as just Lady Deep Shadow said. “No! Don’t get down on your knees. Stand still!”

I didn’t move a single muscle. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to. Instead I just followed her flushed face with my eyes and wondered how she would let me worship her. All she did now was shake her finger at me.

“You! Sir Weed! You dare...” She took a pause, looking away. Unhappy.

That worried me. “Please, my Goddess,” I said. “Please let me help! If there is anything I can—”

“But you ruined it! You decided to help that bitch!”

“Please, I won’t do it again. Please, I will kill her for you? Please, I—”

“Please? Please? That’s just the mancatchers talking.”

“Please, my Goddess?”

“Stop saying that! I can’t believe I let Flame talk me into... I can’t do this!” She sat down on some kind of furniture. A couch or bed, as if I was able to care.

Then she took the strange earrings off and looked at them as they lay gleaming on her palm.

I felt as if I had suddenly been thrust into a shady tent after staring at the sun for hours. The rings were sexy, no doubt about that, but they were hardly enough to... Why was I wearing a collar and leash?

I reached up to take them off. And found I couldn’t. I tried to tear them off. Couldn’t. Not with all of my strength. There was some kind of lock on the collar, engraved with a sigil of sorts, but my fingers just couldn’t get a grip on it.

My eyes followed the leathery leash and found that it was fastened to a ring at the base of the horrific throne.

Dark iron or ebony it was. Deep purple, velvet cushions. Red, evil gems gleaming. Carvings that suggested blood, captivity, torture. Flame’s work. I was glad she was no longer with us. Who had put this monstrosity in my room? She? I?

For this was indeed the cell I had woken up in after my surgery, but the leash was too short to let me leave it. It wouldn’t snap no matter what I did to it. I knew it. The throne wouldn’t budge however much I tried to lift it. I knew it. Lady Deep Shadow also knew that. But did she know that I knew? Should I break down, try to free myself, fly into a rage, or see if I could draw upon my vast experience from the theater and fool her?

“What just happened?” I sat down next to her on my bed. I could reach that. And the toilet, thank the Lady. “I am so confused.”

“If you say so.” Her face was closed. There was something seriously wrong with this woman.

“On the one hand,” I said, “you have been so kind and understanding with me. Helping me with...” I motioned towards my white snake. That fool was sure to stick his head up again soon. Even now when I, in effect, was fighting for my life.. “Offering me anything I could wish for. Becoming my lover, my friend. But...” I swallowed and tried to make my eyes flit from side to side the way a repentant sinner might. “...when I saw that girl, Poppy. She was... I mean, she’s a spy and deserves a good whipping, but that tree... It was so...” Here I had to choose my words carefully. “...strange to me.”

Lady Deep Shadow looked at me for a long, long time. I tried to give her the earnest-puppy eyes.

“As so you decided to betray me? That... You deserve to be chained up like an animal! If I didn’t need you... How could I ever forgive that kind of treachery?”

“I guess,” I said after my brain had tumbled a thousand possible answers around and shaken one out, “that I just haven’t lost all commitment to my old life. I am a Wanderer and an intensely loyal person. All my adult life is supposed to be spent bringing Glory to the Hill. Now you have offered me a chance at a more worthy life, but I still cling to the old one.”

“You do, don’t you.” She edged a few inches closer to me and put a hand on my shoulder.

I could have killed her right there and then, but it would not amount to anything. Other than being subjected to whatever Flame could think of when she eventually returned.

“All right, my Pleasure Knight,” she said. “I will give you one last chance, like Flame advised me to. But I don’t trust you yet, and I am not going to take the leash off.”

“So, I either have to stay here in the room, or be led around the garden like a dog?” It just slipped out of me.

“You think I am being too strict with you?” That was not a yes/no question. That was a ‘no’ question.

“I just want to earn your trust again.”

“Oh, you will be given many chances to do that. Look, I will even make you a promise. When I am satisfied that you are true, I will let Poppy die. Then you come with me and eat the fruit of her tree. Agreed?” Her eyes were soft again, as if we were two lovers whispering compliments and secrets to each other over a romantic dinner.

“Agreed,” I said.

“Good, good,” she said and let the other hand trail down my belly until I started to curse my insatiable body. “I am sure we can work this out in a very short time, my Pleasure Knight. And I really do have a soft spot for you, you know.” Her hands did things to me that made me stop cursing. “A very soft spot,” she whispered in my ear as the hand on my shoulder teased itself down my back to caress my buttocks. “And you have this thing for me.” She slapped my manhood playfully.

“I want...” I said, feeling every sensible emotion being sat on by the urges of the caveman. “I want to be inside your soft spot. I want to kiss you and run my hands through your hair and knead your breasts and do you and do you until I am soaked in sweat!”

“Then do it, my Pleasure Knight! Do me like a man should do his woman!”

After that we stopped talking. Our mouths were busy being pressed together. Every breath we drew was needy and gasping and late as if we were both suffocating. She wouldn’t let go of my buttocks, and my fingers found her thighs and spread them wide.

I was naked. She wore a dress, but it was just as light and flimsy as the two previous ones. I grabbed it in front of her crotch and ripped a hole in it, then thrust my manhood through. There were no obstacles left to get what I wanted, what I needed.

She wrapped her arms around my neck at the same moment that I grabbed her buttocks and heaved her up off the floor. And sat her down. Onto me. There was no hesitation, no fiddling about to try to find that place where men and women are created to fit together as one. I slipped right in.

Just being inside her, just feeling how I filled her up got me close to eruption. Lady Deep Shadow was a tall woman with long, long legs, but I was still taller and had to lift her up and ease her down. I didn’t mind, didn’t mind one bit. It just felt so good to know I was this strong. It was like lifting a sack of dark, golden wheat, again and again, yet a sack of wheat that kissed me with such heat that she gave me blisters on my lips, scratched my back, setting it burning, pulled at my collar, choking me, and squeezing and twisting and tugging at my manhood until I came, until I came with a violence that shook me so bad I tottered, stumbled, almost fell while carrying her in my arms.

“Don’t put me down, my Pleasure Knight.” She heaved for breath. “Don’t even think about it. You are not going to stop until I have had enough!”

I didn’t want to stop so I carried her over to the bed, the leash almost taut as I threw her down on her back and lay down on top of her. I forced kisses from her, looked into her brown, beautiful eyes, played with her hair, and massaged her breasts.

What makes men love women’s breasts so bad? The shape? The feel? How you feel so privileged, like a little boy who is allowed to put his hand in the cookie jar only once a week?

“Oh, my Pleasure Knight,” she said with moist eyes after a while. “You are ready again!”

Ready I was, but perhaps not so quick this time? Maybe I was able to savor the flight to the sun a little longer before I was consumed in the fire?

“On my back,” she whispered.

“Uh?”

“Toss me around and do me from behind! Do it now!”

Well, what could I do? I pulled out and sighed, even though I knew it would not be more than a few moments before we were joined again. Then I flipped her around on her belly, still not excited enough to be rough.

There was that dress again! Why did it crop up all the time?I tore another hole in it and lifted her bottom up. There! I was back in her sex.

I started to move in and out, slowly, enjoying how wet and sleek and ready she was. I tried to take it easy this time. I promise, I did. I even bent over her and fondled her breasts, played with them, buried my face in her hair. When she gasped and groaned for me to “Go harder, go faster,” I pretended not to hear.

The male mind isn’t created to restrain itself, to prolong love-making for untold hours. Male lust is like a chained-up dog that can smell the deer and hollers out his frustration by the door. When the woman finally lets him into her forest he goes straight for the kill.

“Good boy, good boy!” she moaned. “My Pleasure Knight. So good, so good.”

I slammed my body against hers, felt every least bit of friction as I slid in and out, in and out, my manhood caught on the seesaw of endless pleasure.

But it wasn’t enough! Not fast enough, not hard enough! I needed more, more, more!

I swung out of the bed, dragging her body along with me. I was still inside, refusing to leave her. The leash was wrapped around my torso, but I didn’t care about that, didn’t care about the pull on my throat that made it harder to breathe. All cared about was her intense groans.

I stood on the floor, behind her where she rested on her knees. Her bottom would have fallen off the bed if I hadn’t been slamming against it, lifting her up a few inches with each violent thrust. Drops of sweat trickled down my body, and I half expected them to boil away. I could smell Lady Deep Shadow, could smell woman in heat, and I wanted more of it.

There was no stopping now, never stopping, keep going thrashing into her until she begged me to stop, told me that she couldn’t take my male lust anymore. Not stop now, not when I was almost there, not when I rode the wave, not when that wave came crashing down with an enormous noise of thunder and I kept clinging to her hair until the last tremors had passed away.

“More?” I yelled as I let go.

“Yes, my Pleasure Knight. More, give me more.”

* * *

It was bright day outside when she left at last. She promised me that she would return, that she would set me free soon. Very soon.

I managed to wash my sweaty, exhausted, hot body in one of the basins before I collapsed on the bed.

My sense of bliss lasted about as long as it took me to regain my breath.

What was I doing? Did a woman become good and kind just because she let me make love to her? What were they, those diabolic, golden hoops that had made me such a willing slave to both of them in turn? How could I even pretend to accept that?

And what about Poppy? Didn’t I care about her? Was I thinking I was doing a good deed banging Lady Deep Shadow to get her to kill the younger woman at the end of the day?

Maybe I was, even though I hated myself for it? Maybe this was my only option? Maybe I could manipulate her somehow, and turn her from an evil witch into a benevolent Lady. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Poppy, if I only could change Lady Deep Shadow’s mind. I had made her start trusting me again, hadn’t I? Wasn’t she close to loving me?

Seriously?

It had to be the love-making that made me think this way. She said I was her Pleasure Knight. What did that really mean? Was all this sex draining away my free will? Was I slowly becoming her slave? Would I mind that?

I fell asleep with foolish, passionate thoughts in my head.

When I woke, it was to a stark, gray reality.

* * *

“Sir Weed? My Pleasure Knight?” Her voice came to me at night.

I sat up in my bed, the leash dangling from its collar.

She was standing under the leaves in the doorway, measuring me with dark eyes, looking strong, beautiful, well.

I knew at once that she was going to test me. That scared me, but I was resolved to go through with it, no matter what she threw at me.

“Yes, Lady Deep Shadow,” I said and added, even though I knew I wasn’t going to be that lucky: “Have you come to make love?”

“Not I,” she said. “I need my beauty sleep. But you wish to earn your place as my Pleasure Knight, don’t you?”

“I do.” Better agree. Much better.

“Some day, my Pleasure Knight, you will begin your duties. One of them is to serve and protect my associates.”

Oh no.

“They will require you total obedience.” She looked at me for a reaction.

I went with a decent impression of ‘confused expectations.’

“And Flame assures me that there is only one way to drill that into you.”

“You mean...?”

“Yes. Be the best Pleasure Knight you can be. Make me proud. This Lady is a dear friend of mine, one who deserves your utmost respect. I will be terribly disappointed if you embarrass me, so you won’t do that, will you?”

I wouldn’t.

“Good. Very good.” She smiled tenderly. “I knew you would understand.”

I did. I understood all too well.

“He’s ready,” she said as she slid away from the opening to let my Goddess in.

* * *

I loved everything about her. How the hoops glittered despite the dim light. How she strode in with her white hair trailing, her thin body hidden beneath a thick, black, floor-length dress. How she sneered as if a disgusting maggot was writhing on the floor before her. How she didn’t deign to address me by name or appellation. Just ‘you.’ I wasn’t worthy. Surely I wasn’t worthy. How she didn’t talk to me, just gave me orders. Why would a Goddess want to talk to a worm? How she made me sit on the throne. How she refused to touch me as she chained my wrists and ankles to the armrests and legs. Why should I be allowed to move when my Goddess didn’t want me to? How she put on thick, leather gloves before she even got close to my crotch. My filthy flesh would surely soil her beauty and divinity.

She didn’t have to touch me more than a few times before I was able to comply with her wish and present my rigid member to her. It was hers to do with as she saw fit. Slap it, prick it, cut it off, destroy it, or enjoy it in every possible way. As long as I was able to make her happy, then I would be happy. Delirious.

And I was. Without further ado she wrenched my rod towards her face and jammed it in her mouth. She sucked me with quick, angry movements, as if she wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

How could I not oblige her? As soon as I started to squirm and come, she stopped her work and just swallowed. That reduced the pleasure for me, but why should I be allowed any pleasure?

I didn’t get any. The whole thing felt like I was squirting diseased blood, and not something wonderful like the other times.

She staggered back, clutching her throat, retching as if I had poisoned her. The look she gave me was full of hate. I deserved it, having emptied my disgusting fluid inside her. Curse you, Weed, and your evil, vicious ways.

* * *

She got up and sat on the bed, staring at the wall, not rewarding me with a single look.

I waited, patiently. There was not much else for me to do with the chains locking me in place, but I didn’t fight or stir. I loved my Goddess, didn’t even want to think about going anyplace she didn’t want to have me.

When she at last rose and came over, she prodded my manhood with her gloved hands. It responded. Of course it responded. That was its duty.

She mumbled something I didn’t catch. Oh, how I would have loved to have heard! The hoops sparkled. I loved them so!

She ordered me to arch my body off the seat and point my rod towards her. I obliged. There wasn’t much I could do to please her chained up like this, but at least I could push my buttocks as far up from the velvet seat as I possibly could.

She mumbled something else and produced a small jar from her dress, smearing her gloved fingers with something not unlike the healing ointment Lady Deep Shadow and Flame had used on my wound. My Goddess used hers to oil up my pole. Oil it up well and good, like she was greasing an axle. The miserable slave was not worth a single, gentle touch.

When I was as hard and slippery as a bar of wet soap, my Goddess turned around and lifted parts of her floor-length dress, making sure I wasn’t allowed more than a glimpse of her blessed ankles. The dress covered my loins like a heavy shroud. She spread her legs and I sobbed in delight, knowing I was about to get to please her.

“Shut up!” she said, hoops dangling.

My joy was intense when she lowered herself onto me, and I began to help her with my movements.

“Sit still!”

So, I remained motionless while my Goddess moved up and down like she was trying, and failing, to sit a weasel to death. When I came I got the same feeling of squirting bad blood. I hoped I had not disappointed her, but I knew, I knew!, I had.

She never let me know, only pulled away from me, adjusted her dress like it needed a good whipping, and marched out of the room.

“That useless, lying bitch!” I heard her snarl as she left.

Left me alone. Without any hoops to look at. It took me just a few heartbeats to break down and cry.

What had they done to me? What had they subjected me to? I had been used, just like a tool in a garden shed. Just like the animals and men of the Dead Lands. What had they done?

* * *

I fought against the chains, but they were wrought by Flame herself. Somehow I knew that! Their sigil locks looked just as strong as the one on my collar. I was never going to break free of this throne, not even if I tore myself to shreds. Was this the future Lady Deep Shadow had in store for me? Would I willingly, happily, serve and protect that old hag who had just used me?

I remained furious for a long time, but then I turned to tears again. I just wanted to get away, go home, forget this place. Yet I couldn’t.

I was going to stay chained here until Lady Deep Shadow came. She would not set me free until we concurred that she was right and I was wrong, and that I would be eager to serve in this manner again. Well, I guessed I had the rest of the night and all morning to calm down and prepare to agree with her.

When she did arrive, I guessed I had guessed wrong, and about more than one thing. First of all, she came within the hour. Second, she didn’t look disappointed despite the fact that the hag hadn’t seemed pleased when she left.

She looked devastated, flustered, shaken, and came straight up to me. “Sir Weed, how are you? Oh, I am so sorry. I had no idea that my friend would...” She stopped by the throne as if she wanted to embrace me, but found it hard when I was chained up.

“This... Being a Pleasure Knight is a labor of love! I told her that. Told her she had to be good with you. How can you serve and protect someone who mistreats you? Oh, I am so sorry!”

What? Lady Deep Shadow apologized? Was it even possible?

“Sir Weed, my Pleasure Knight?” she said. “Say something! Speak to me.”

“I...” My mind struggled like a drowning dog. “Please, Lady Deep Shadow. Don’t... Please don’t trade me around like some beast? Please?”

“Is that what you call it?” She stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “You think I treat you like an animal? That’s a cruel accusation. And from someone who...”

She went on like she used to. That was oddly comforting, somehow. Hearing her apologize was like watching a pig dancing ballet. Lady Deep Shadow would never admit to being in the wrong, not truly. She would trade me to all kinds of women who all found me disgusting, so that she could turn me into a kind of magical, unwilling bodyguard. She, and everyone else, would use those vile, golden hoops on me. Again and again. And, she would not save Poppy. However I looked at it, I lost.

I had to do something to try to win, if only to save my dying self-respect. And if that meant an overdose of hypocrisy, then...

* * *

“I am sorry,” I said. “It was just... She was... She didn’t show me the kind of love you do. I...” Now came the hard part. “...missed you, my Lady.”

“You missed me?”

“Yes, my Lady. I missed you every moment she was with me. I just find it hard to be with someone who is not you.”

“Oh, my dear, dear Pleasure Knight! You are so wonderful. I promise, I will be there next time, all right? I will even hold your hand.”

Yeah, right.

She fished something out of her pocket. It was a small, black, oval piece of metal with a fiery pattern that glowed all of itself.

“Come, let’s get you down off this awful thing. It was all Flame’s idea. I never really liked it. So, let’s see. If this works...”

She touched the metal oval to the chain that bound my left foot. It glowed, loosened, then split apart into two parts, clanging as they fell and hit the floor.

I could not believe it. Yes, my leg was free. And, didn’t my collar have a similar sigil on its lock?

I tried to give Lady Deep Shadow my most grateful smile. It seemed to work, for she returned it with a tender wink. More chains fell, and my right leg was free.

“I think you need to rest, my Pleasure Knight,” she said as she pushed the key to the small, metal knot on the chain that had captured my left wrist. Then came the brief glow before the links fell, hit each other, and made a sound like a mournful percussionist who decided to quit playing just then.

“I think I do,” I said.

I was, of course, lying. During this brief moment I had made a decision. I was sure that the collar had the same kind of lock as the chains. Maybe I could break free!

I would try. I would gamble everything on one attempt. If it didn’t work, well, then I would hang myself using the leash before Flame came to find me. At any rate, Lady Deep Shadow would have died for what she did to Poppy. She was no lioness, she had never been taught to fight, she didn’t know the rules of my trade. And we played by my rules now.

Lady Deep Shadow moved the key over to my right wrist. I let her. She pushed it against the lock. I waited.

The lock glowed. Chains began to fall.

I acted.

I reached the key with my left hand before the chains had tumbled past the right armrest. Plucked it out of her fingers and pressed it against the lock at my throat with a big, friendly, innocent smile on my face. All before she had time to say a word.

“Oh, thank you so much,” I said, in a vain hope of not being branded a traitor in case the collar failed to open, “I don’t have the patience to...”

It did open, on a hinge by the ring where the leash was attached. Then it fell down on the velvet cushion behind me.

* * *

The best thing was that I didn’t have to smile anymore. I could be angry. Very angry.

“What—” was all she managed to say before my hand jammed her mouth shut and I dragged her across the room by her most recent, flimsy dress. Mothball man, indeed. Her eyes probably just went on widening, her face most likely turning more and more confused. I didn’t care. I didn’t have to.

“Listen to me!” I dropped down on top of her, my knees pinning her arms to the wooden planks. She might have struggled, but I didn’t notice. This was my time.

When I removed my hand, she drew a quick, violent breath.

“No screaming,” I said, fingers back over her mouth, stifling her.

The next time I removed the hand she gave yelling a second go. I did not allow it. A third try failed, but after that she just glared at me.

“We will talk,” I said and freed her mouth.

“Traitor! Take your hands off me, or I will make you suffer ten times as bad as that bitch—”

Again, hand over mouth. “Sorry,” I said. “What I meant was: I will speak and you will listen and say ‘Yes, sir!” to whatever I say. Got it?

Those lines had worked on me when my officers had used it during training, but Lady Deep Shadow didn’t say ‘Yes, sir!’ She just glared at me like I had boiled her puppy dog.

I decided to plunge on. “Right now we will go and free Poppy. Do you understand?”

“The Wild swallow you!” she cursed.

I wondered what Sergeant Heavy would have done if I made that reply during an exercise. Whatever he chose would have worked on Lady Deep Shadow, I was sure. It would have worked on anyone, but unfortunately I was not Sergeant Heavy. What could I possibly do in the convincing department? If she called my bluff, I couldn’t get her to do anything. And, I realized as her stare made that call, Poppy would die if she did nothing.

Right. Time to stop bluffing. Time to mean it.

“If you don’t save Poppy,” I said, “I will kill you.”

“Do your worst!”

So... Mean it, it was. For real?

I remembered Poppy with the tree growing out of her belly, her skeletal body, the pain on her face. Yeah, I would follow through. I had to.

* * *

I put one hand over her mouth. She had probably gotten used to that by now. Then I used the other one to pinch her nose shut. That was something new.

“Blink your eyes,” I said in a monotone voice that I knew would have frightened me, “when you are ready to cooperate.”

She tried to breathe. No could do. She fought to break free. Nope.

I waited.

She struggled. Panicked.

So did I. Was I really going to go through with this? Poppy! I had to! Poppy! Lady Deep Shadow’s face seemed to move in and out of focus as I killed her. It was as if I were the one choking, desperate for air.

She blinked. Finally!

I removed my hands, and she spent the mandatory time gasping and coughing before she spoke.

“You tried to kill me!” She couldn’t believe it.

Neither could I, but I could pretend I did. “Yeah.” My voice was as flat as a dead, poisoned lake.

“Murderer!”

I could choose between getting into an argument with her or getting things done. “On your feet. We’re rescuing Poppy.”

I grabbed my clothes and put them on while keeping within grabbing-at and sitting-on distance of her. For once my rod was soft, dangling between my legs like a silly joke.

She got up, her body unable to choose between looking enraged or deflated.

“If we can’t, then I kill you.” I pushed her towards the door. “Lead on. You know the way.”

“I need some acids,” she said.

“Acids? Why would you need that?”

“Of course I need acids! You idiot men are all the same. You don’t know the first thing about the arts, yet you run around playing at being bosses. If you want me to rescue that slut of yours then I need my acids to kill the gutfig.”

I had no idea if that was true or not. “Where are those acids, then?”

“In my workshop,” she said.

“Where is that?”

“Tree,” she said.

“You better not fool me!”

“No.”

“Or I kill you!” Why did I keep saying that? “Move!”

* * *

The night was darker than the previous ones, the moon and most of the stars more or less hidden behind a light layer of clouds. That suited me fine. I had no wish be seen, and no need to find my way by myself. Lady Deep Shadow was to be my eyes tonight.

We stole along a walkway. After a hundred paces or so, she found a ladder and began climbing down.

I followed close behind.

Just as I thought: ‘She is just reaching the point where it would feel safe to jump down and start running,’ she did just that. Not bad for an ancient woman of forty, or some other extreme age.

I fumbled after her, but she had a few feet on me. Which was, and this was typical of my kind of luck, enough to allow her to disappear from view in the dark forest that she knew better than anyone. Not to mention me.

Wow. I was doing just great. All right, I could still hear her as I plunged into the wilderness after her, but it was still not good enough to get a passing grade on the prisoner transport test. Wonderful. All this farce needed right now was for her to yell...

“Help!”

Yeah. That.

“Help!”

I wanted to shout the exact same thing, but I would probably just get a pointy branch down my throat from some hateful bush or other.

“Help!”

* * *

Help did come. And it came to me, in the shape of a big lawn.

I burst out of the trees, and in the dim starlight I saw her running with hitched-up dress not more than five paces ahead of me. Luckily, I had been forced to play a lot of kickball as a page. Kickball was one of those popular, manly games where you are supposed to hurt your opponent and then pry a ball from his cold, dead hands, getting extra points from kicking him in the nuts. My strength had been Brutal Tackles From Behind. As Lady Deep Shadow found out.

By the time she managed to spit out the worst of the grass and dirt she found her arm yanked up behind her back and a very angry voice hissing, “The workshop! Now!” in her ear.

The man behind the voice wasn’t really angry, he was just terrified that Flame might have heard the shouting. It still worked, though.

I didn’t let go of her for even one moment after that, and we soon reached the enormously thick and tall tree that carried her mansion far above us.

She led me to an opening between two of the giant roots. It was completely dark inside.

“Let me go. I have to light the brazier,” she said.

What could I say to that? ‘I am afraid you are going to disappear into the dark and so I am going to hold on to you until morning?’ I fell down on “All right, but if you try anything, I will kill you!”

I let go of her hand, but not her hair. It was probably still a mass of sexy, lazy curls, but I didn’t check. Not now.

“Do you mind?” she said.

“Yes!” I answered.

“You’re hurting my hair!”

Only a great effort of will prevented me from saying, “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry! Are you all right?” and choosing “I don’t care. Make light,” instead.

She did so by taking a small fist of powder from a brown earthenware jar from a shelf by the opening and tossing it into the bowl on top of the tall, slim brass base.

The brazier flared up, and the fire turned out to have the same color as Flame’s hair. I got goosebumps. That small, slender woman scared big, tough me senseless.

The workshop was a rather small, incredibly cluttered room built inside the tree just like her vast mansion high above. Tree shelves, tree chests, tree work benches, tree chairs, tree nooks, wavy tree walls, tree shadows, everything was made of living wood. Every available space was filled with all kinds of jars, bottles, books, and instruments that a poor warrior, and man, like myself had no idea of how to interpret.

All I could do was follow her around with a tight grip on her hair. I didn’t enjoy anything about this. Not the cramped spaces where I had no control. Not the dark opening where anything might appear. Not remembering her shouts and imagining what they might bring. And certainly not that it felt as if I now had collared her. My one consolation was that it would all come to an end soon. Somehow. I also didn’t like how she looked around as if she was trying to find a way out of the fix she was in.

“I will kill you!” I growled. Again. For some reason.

In the end she found three small bottles of something I had no wish to either taste or smell. Could be cough syrup, liquor, and perfume for all I knew.

“Got it,” she said.

“To Poppy,” I said. “Now.”

She nodded. When she was done nodding, she crashed straight into her brazier, toppling it. It fell. “Sorry!” she yelled.

There, I thought, goes a worse liar than myself. To think they even existed!

Smoke rose from the smoldering, powdery coal. Thick, noxious, reddish smoke, and lots of it. Why, one might be inclined to think of it as the red, hot cloud of a warning signal?

Right! There was only one thing to do, and hang around gaping at the smoke was not it.

‘It’ was to think ‘By the Wild, Flame is coming!,’ bend Lady Deep Shadow’s arm behind her back, and yell at her to get me to Poppy as soon as possible. Or I would kill her. Which I said about five times until we at last reached the little knoll.

* * *

Nothing had changed much since the last time I saw Poppy. The tree was perhaps a little taller, the crown a little wider, the fruit a little more numerous? Could be?

Poppy herself looked if anything even more emaciated, a corpse that was only living through her feverish eyes. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. The grass around her seemed almost rotten, poisoned by the gutfig’s roots.

“Get to it!” I shoved Lady Deep Shadow towards her, following close behind to keep within tackle-distance.

“It’s a complicated—”

“Then do it fast!”

“I have never—”

“Do it! If she dies, you die.” That was a nice variation on the mantra I had recently acquired.

“I don’t want to die,” Lady Deep Shadow said.

“Join the club!”

“I want to be young again, to live forever.” She uncorked a bottle.

“Well, you can’t. So, shut up!”

“We could be so good together.” She poured the acid around the trunk of the tree that had ripped Poppy’s belly apart. Smoke rose like fine vapor.

“You, me, and all the other hags you want to whore me out to.”

“That was a mistake. I am talking about love.” The second acid quenched the smoke from the first with a loud hiss. The trunk of the tree seemed to grow thinner, deflated, and began writhing as if in pain, shaking Poppy like a rag doll.

“If you don’t know what that is yet, you’re all out of luck, you old bitch!”

* * *

“Well,” Lady Deep Shadow said, pouring the last acid into the hole. “It’s done. Too quick, with no preparations, but... It’s done. Let me go.”

“The tree is still there!” I said.

“It’s dead. That’s what the acids were all about. Pull it up. Be careful, or you rupture what’s left of her guts.”

“I will kill you!”

“No, you will kill her. This is what you wanted, and totally against my wish. I could have saved her the right way, tomorrow, as a compensation for what the Vampiress did to you. Instead you ruined it all.”

I reckoned that if I were to listen to Lady Deep Shadow’s complaints, I might as well go chain myself to that throne again, collar and all. Instead I pushed her down on the grass next to Poppy and sat on her while I began examining the hole in her belly.

Hunting in the Wild has been a favorite pastime of mine back at Glory Hill, as opposed to kickball. I knew my way around animal guts, but was still not prepared for this. Poppy looked like she had been infested with the world’s largest tumor, an enormous fungus growing on both her and the tree, a decaying corpse vomited out of the ground. Dead, burned roots were still attached to her. I had to pull them off, one by one.

Poppy looked at me like I was a mix between the man bringing her the largest cake ever baked and the man who broke into her larder and ate it afterwards.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said with as much authority as the man who sweeps the bakery floor.

The tree, not attached to Poppy or the ground anymore, toppled over and fell. I picked it up and tossed it as far as I could. Which, I am proud to say, was pretty far.

When I was done, nothing at all happened. Except that Lady Deep Shadow complained of how uncomfortable she was. Poppy did the same with her limited options of expressing herself.

It was, I decided, time to leave. Someone far smarter than me had to take over. Her friend, whatever her name was again?

First, though, I had to stop Lady Deep Shadow from bothering me. I know I had promised to kill her, again and again, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

I had no rope, but I had learned that her dresses were easy to rip to shreds. Soon I had her tied up and gagged with her own garment. That should have been enormously satisfying, but the last thing she said was “I’m going to get you, Sir Weed. You will be mine, and next time I will never let you escape the leash.”

I shivered, but did not relent. Instead I left her lying there in the tall, lush grass.

With Poppy in my arms I went in search of the wall. Soon I realized that the real problem wasn’t finding the thirty feet tall structure which was cleared of any convenient, easily-climbed trees from which hung sturdy, ladder-like vines.

In fact, I had to walk halfway around the garden, following the looming, gray brick structure before I came to a cast iron gate surrounded by pink, fragrant flowers. Was it the one I had entered? I had no idea: That was a thousand years ago.

The gate was locked.

That, I decided, was not a problem. That was an excuse.

* * *

I put Poppy down, gently, on the grass and began kicking at the lock. It resisted. I liked that.

Finally, after working up a sweat and a warm, red face, I was able to do what I did best. Break stuff.

In the end it turned out it was the iron bars that gave, not the lock. When I found that out, I had the door down in ten kicks.

I picked up Poppy. She stared through me into nothing. There came a wheeze from her throat, which I took to mean she breathed.

I was about to start walking, to move out of the gate, to leave this cursed place for the city outside, when I heard a voice I both hated and desired behind me.

“Turn around,” Flame said and giggled. “Turn and face your Goddess.”