The Fire in Starlight Read online

  SONG*

  Two birds flew into the sunset glow

  And one of them was my love, I know.

  Ah, had it but flown to my heart, its nest!

  Two maidens down to the harvest go,

  And one of them is my own, I know.

  Ah, had she but come to me here, it were best!

  Two stars remembered the long ago—

  And one of them was my heart's great woe.

  If it had but forgotten, and paled in the west!

  She rested the book against her chest and gazed up at the dark ceiling. She saw again the silhouettes of cows grazing against the dying light as she drove down the lonely road, contrasted by Magnolia leaves gleaming intimately in her headlights, and the encouraging crowd of stars that greeted her when she stepped out of the car.

  "I'm going to love living out here,” she whispered, scornfully ignoring the part of her that was frightened and homesick for the city's illusion of companionship, where other people often lived right behind your walls and beneath your feet. She knew she was much safer alone out here in the middle of nowhere, yet she had made the rounds of the house twice before she got into bed to be absolutely sure all the doors were locked. She had also left the porch light on, mainly for her own reassurance; its illumination would only make it easier for anyone trying to break in, a stupid thought she angrily suppressed. Maybe if the windows and the French doors had come with curtains she would feel less vulnerable and exposed, but she would just have to get over her irrational paranoia because fabric would only ruin the view, and made no sense whatsoever in a place where her nearest neighbor lived miles away. She would simply have to drag her childish feelings along behind her more mature reason. Curtains weren't necessary, there was no one looking in on her where she lay in bed wearing only a skimpy white T-shirt. She had always hated sleeping with anything much on, and she wasn't about to begin now.

  She lifted the book, randomly opened it up to another page, and began reading softly out loud again...

  STILLBORN*

  Amid the sprouting seeds flowers, too, are growing,

  And so they drink the rain

  That the sky sends upon the sprouting seeds.

  The threshold of thy cottage is so wet

  Because last night such heavy dew hath fallen.

  Woman! take up thy life once more

  Where thou hast left it,

  Nothing is changed for thee, thou art the same,

  Thou, who didst think

  That all things would be wholly changed for thee.

  No dirge doth echo through the dwelling-place,

  One cannot mourn as dead

  That which hath never lived.

  Well, that certainly was relevant to her situation. Her wonderful relationship with Steve never really existed objectively, only in her stubborn imagination. The poem was clearly about a stillborn child, but she had similarly nurtured the idea of being with her one true love and soul mate for seven years in the womb of her soul; she could relate to the sentiment.

  Yet had I made for him a dirge so sweet!

  Telling therein, that he was all thy hope,

  And that he did not well

  To go ere he had looked upon the world—

  To think so ill of what he ne'er had seen.

  Woman! while thou didst bear him, hast thou ever

  Told him of graves? or spoken of the sorrow

  Of barren wombs?

  Didst thou not tell him of thy womb's rejoicing

  Over his life?

  And that spring sometimes comes upon this earth,

  And that some souls there are, that do remember?

  Nay, thou didst think on sorrow

  While thou hadst joy within thee;

  And sorrow frightened him.

  Thou didst not tell him, that thy cottage-windows

  Looked toward the plain;

  That rivers love the flowers upon their banks,

  And that the storks come home;

  That there are birds that sing, and men as well,

  And that their songs are sweet.

  Nay, but thou spak'st to him of graves, and so

  Their rest grew dear to him.

  Now can I make no tender dirge o'er him;

  I never saw him live.

  Return thee to thy hearth,

  And think of him before thine empty hearth;

  Saying, while thou dost muse of him:

  "How empty is my hearth!"

  Toward thy husband stretch thou forth thy hand

  With gentle smile, that he

  May smile again, and think of Death no more.

  For Death it was not

  That passed through this thy house—but it was Life

  That would not take up her abode therein.

  Thou didst but ask him from afar:

  "Wilt thou indeed be mine?"—

  As one may ask the stars,

  The stars reply: “Nay, we belong to no one."

  Thou didst but say to him from afar:

  "I love thee!"

  Even as one may say it to the sky;

  The sky makes answer: “Nay, the love of men

  Is nought to me!"

  Go, woman, to thy daily work again—

  Nothing is changed for thee.

  Amid the sprouting seeds flowers, too, are growing,

  And so they drink the rain

  That the sky sends upon the sprouting seeds.

  The threshold of thy cottage is so wet

  Because last night such heavy dew hath fallen.

  * * * *

  S he woke up and thought wildly, Who turned on the outside lights?! It was her fourth night in the house, and she had forced herself to become brave enough to sleep in the dark, yet the back porch was lit up by a bright white light that had cut into her psyche and roused her from a dream she sensed she hadn't wanted to leave even though she couldn't recall any details. It took her a few sleepy seconds to understand the full moon was staring down at her house and land. The illumination was so intense, impenetrable shadows were outlined with the sharpness of a sword's edge. She propped herself up against the pillows and lay gazing out through the French doors, glad of the silently demanding company. If the moon had the power to swell ocean tides, it certainly wasn't far-fetched to believe it had the same effect on the blood flowing through her brain, stirring up exceptionally vivid dreams.

  She had been so busy since she moved in the days had flown by. She still had much to do—and a lot to buy—but for now she was very pleased with the room in which she spent most of her time. The rest of the house would have to wait. She told herself that everything would fall into place later, gradually, when she had a life again, whatever that meant. She didn't know anyone in her neighborhood yet. Her mother, and now her best friend, were dead, she had never known her father and her lover was history, she was an only child and she had never been big on casual acquaintances. She was more alone than ever, yet in a strange way she was enjoying her own company.

  The moon shone directly through the French doors, forging black bars across her diamond-paned comforter. It was very cold in the house (she kept the heat turned down at night because it helped her sleep more deeply) yet she couldn't resist pushing the sheets and comforter off her to expose the thin white T-shirt clinging to her torso. She peeled it off impulsively, and the vision of her breasts bouncing into freedom inspired her to kick the blankets away completely. She was only thirty-three-years-old, still quite young, she reminded herself, and she hadn't felt naked like this in a long time. Essentially (if not literally) Steve had always been on top of her; she hadn't experienced her flesh with such intimate, urgent clarity in years.

  Suddenly, Sofia felt passionately in love with her body. She began caressing herself with both hands, marveling at the silky smoothness and warmth of her skin. She was beautiful, she could have any man she wanted...

  This trite (and not necessarily true) thought comforted her yet also depressed her, and she pushed
it away impatiently. She didn't want to think about dating and all the effort she would have to make to get to know complete strangers again, forced into mouthing polite conversation in the unlikely hope she would be inspired to share her deepest thoughts and feelings with them in the future. She didn't want a man to take her out to dinner, she wanted him to fuck her, really fuck her. He wouldn't just coolly bang her the way Steve had, he would somehow penetrate her on all levels of her being. He would fuck her like she had never been fucked before, no hesitant tenderness or political correctness holding him back...

  The bars of shadow cast by the moon across her bed were so black they almost looked substantial. She gazed down in growing arousal at where the darkness intersected with her thighs, her pale skin absorbing the moonlight. It was almost as though she was being put in a haunting form of bondage...

  She reached behind her and pulled a pillow below her head as she pushed herself down the bed, deliberately placing herself directly beneath the checkerboard pattern of light and dark. Her heartbeats quickened as her excitement mysteriously deepened ... her beautiful and vulnerable naked body was lying across an altar adorned with ritual black stripes slicing across her breasts, belly and thighs. Insubstantial as they were, the shadows exerted a evocative pressure against her flesh as she willingly laid beneath them. Her body was remembering the dream that eluded her because her pussy was warm and wet, waiting for the man who wasn't there and yet was ... she scarcely needed to exercise her imagination to see his face above her sculpted by moonlight and darkness ... the face of the man who had painted the black lines across her naked body as part of a dark rite they were both willingly a part of ... She had seen this man before, in the daydreams she desperately indulged in the last few times Steve made love to her—a fiercely handsome man with features shaped by other centuries, yet his penetrating stare was hard, totally present, and she distinctly made out his timeless goatee—black as the shadows cast by the full moon— around his firm, determined mouth, and even though she knew he could easily smile, he wasn't doing so now...

  Her clitoris felt energized by the full moon over her house as she pressed three fingertips against it, losing herself in a waking dream, her eyes focused on the empty space just above her in which the energy of her imagination merged with invisible forces to create the man she desired more than anything. He wasn't smiling because he was too intent on fucking her, one of his strong hands pinning both her wrists above her head as he penetrated her, his other hand clutching her throat. He didn't comfortably bury himself inside her; he pulled all the way out of her body and forced the full experience of his erection on her pussy over and over again, stroking her hard and deep. His eyes never left hers; she saw that he was completely aware of what he was doing as his grip tightened on her throat and aroused her more than any man ever had. Her intense excitement rose from the mysterious core of her being—from the dark depths of her soul in which her clitoris glowed like the moon, her body absolutely submissive beneath his as he put all his strength into possessing her. Even her sex was powerless to cling to him as his cock stabbed her more swiftly and violently, her legs seeming to levitate around him as she willingly opened herself up to his thrusts, as if there was truly no limit to how far he could drive himself inside her. He was cutting off her breath, and with a small, insignificant part of her mind she was amazed by how real the fantasy was. It didn't feel like her own hand wrapped around her throat, and the man's face was so distinct her body didn't doubt for an instant he was really there with her. The impenetrable darkness of the night allied with the moonlight was using her own limbs to work a powerful magic on her. In the end it didn't matter at all that she was the one bringing herself to a climax with her fingertips as she stopped breathing altogether for a few divinely taut seconds. She climaxed so fiercely she couldn't make a sound as she was overcome by the terribly transcendent certainty that there were other men waiting to take her like this ... that he was only the first, and always the last...

  Sofia lay across her dream bed as though she had just fallen from a great height, her heart pounding. There was no question about it, she had just had one of the most intense orgasms of her life. It's a scientific fact that almost all parts of a woman's brain are active during sex. There might not have been a cock inside her, but her every mental and physical synapse had been involved in the experience. Only when her pulse slowed down to a more sedate pace did she feel a little disturbed by the morbid nature of the visualization that had turned her on so much. She had read enough to know that most women indulged in dark fantasies; they were common aphrodisiacs even for the most theoretically sedate housewife. However, autoerotic asphyxiation was definitely one of the more dangerous kinks, and she felt vaguely ashamed about filling the room meant for an innocent little girl with such violent images and feelings. But that was ridiculous since this was her bedroom now and, she had to admit, she was seriously enjoying the erotic vibes she was discovering in it. The moon was slowly moving away as the earth turned, only the very foot of the bed still glowed with its attention, yet still she lay naked above the sheets reluctant to let go of her dream man.

  It wasn't until she began getting cold that she got out of bed, intending to use the bathroom, but a shaft of moonlight pulled her over to the French doors like a cosmic leash. Her forest was positively flooded with light. The outline of every single branch was so sharp that a few yards away between the trees she distinctly saw a shadow move. She stepped quickly away from the door and pressed herself back against the wall even as she told herself not to jump to conclusions, that the shadow could have been anything, a deer, a young tree swaying in the breeze, anything.

  She walked quickly into the bathroom and closed the door, turning on the overhead light, bathing herself in normalcy. She sat on the toilet for much longer than necessary, psychoanalyzing her reactions. Obviously, she was feeling guilty about her intensely masochistic fantasy and punishing herself with the much more rational delusion of an intruder wandering her property. She was pathetic. This was the sort of profoundly wishy-washy behavior that had kept her trapped in the wrong relationship for so long, and if she wasn't careful, she would continue making the same vital mistakes over and over again no matter who she ended up dating.

  By the time she wiped herself clean and flushed, she had decided it would be wrong (not to mention impossible) to censor her fantasies. If she imagined a man cutting off her breath while he fucked her, then so be it, there had to be a reason for it, and she couldn't deny something that aroused her so much whether she ever really experienced it or not.

  She slipped back into bed mentally chanting, There's no one outside! There's no one outside! She shivered as she pulled the sheets and the heavy feather comforter up to her chin. It was three-thirty-three in the morning, and she had lost all the delicious body heat she had accumulated sleeping. She wished there was a fireplace in the bedroom. Now that would be cozy, if dangerous.

  The moon remained demandingly bright, and she couldn't get back to sleep no matter how hard she tried, so she switched on the bedside light and opened The Bard of the Dimbovitza to a random page again...

  In the Moonlight*

  Tomorrow,

  The days of gladness will be done for me;

  Heavy and overcast my soul will be,

  And day will seem like night for me to-morrow.

  His spade he cast aside,

  And told us all the story of his grief.

  And thus he spake to us: “I had a daughter,

  Gay silver spangles she was wont to wear.

  "Father,” she said,

  "Which is the way that leadeth to the plain?

  I love the plain, when the moon looks thereon,

  And I would have the moon look, too, on me."

  I followed her, one evening,

  My child I followed down into the plain,

  And then I saw how the moon looked on her,

  While she held converse with a dead man there.

  She gently
stroked his head, and gave him drink,

  And showed him all the loveliness of earth.

  Between them stood the cross from off his grave.

  I heard the dead man ask her:

  "What dost thou all day long upon the earth?"

  My child made answer: “I await the night."

  Then he went hence, bearing his cross away,

  And hence my daughter went, bearing her grief,

  Then dead upon the earth I stretched my child,

  That so she might be one with him, the dead,

  Yea, then I slew my child.

  Tomorrow,

  The days of gladness will be done for me;

  Heavy and overcast my soul will be,

  And day will seem like night for me to-morrow.

  Sofia quickly set the book back down on the nightstand, but she didn't turn off the light.

  Chapter Four

  T he sun glimmering between the trees lured her outside after she finished her toast and tea sitting in the big green chair by the cold fireplace. Last night's violent climax and shadowy fears seemed more unreal than the dreams she couldn't remember.

  It was a gorgeous day again. The sky above the trees was a deep and brilliant blue that very soon would be dabbed with the luminous light-green paint flecks of budding leaves. Spring would be here in a few weeks, and on such stunningly clear days the temperature was an ideal sixty-five degrees in the sunlight, a touch cooler in the shade, or if a wind was blowing in from the southeast across her neighbor's field.

  Sofia followed one of the paths leading away from the house, amazed she didn't have to drive anywhere to take a walk through the woods. She explored a little every day unless it was raining. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita didn't appear to have done much damage here. She had come across a handful of fallen trees, but for all she knew they might have been that way for years and not been downed by the storms at all. It thrilled her that she had yet to reach all the borders of her property, which the aerial map had shown was completely fenced in.