The isle is isolated in the harsh North Sea; it can be found on something like Google maps but you would be forgiven for having never heard of it ... few have. Danish for administrative purposes, the people there are culturally a loose stew of Scottish and Norwegian; and all three countries ignore us. That, more than anything, is why ancient customs and ways have persisted. There was no radio or television until satellite dishes brought it first a few decades ago, and few on the isle can afford the luxury. What radio signals we can receive are Norwegian, and we listen mostly for the music. Farming and sheep, fishing and a local distillery producing a small amount of single malt sustains the locals, there are relatively few visitors.
God's will and fate had brought me. The previous vicar had served the tiny parish for nearly 60 years. With his passing it still took the denomination the better part of 2 years to send a replacement. I was a worldly and sophisticated man then, possessing advanced education. The isle was home to a doctor, the practice of Dr. Thomas Stewart. There was also a lawyer who lived on the isle for 2 months each summer. It was Dr. Stewart who initiated me into the circle of things and I can admire in retrospect his skill and insight regarding me. I know more now, and less.
My wife is Lily. She was a lovely woman, black-haired, olive-skinned, diminutive; on the slender side of voluptuous, the beauty of the Mediterranean, though she was British. She was reserved and a bit prudish when I met her. She had been an indifferent lover as well when we married, but her physical beauty compensated. It wasn't that she was cold, rather it was like she was a flower that had yet to bloom, become with a pleasant melancholy loneliness that hued of romantic tragedy. I loved her breasts, and I know that she was proud of them, of the effect her beauty had on me, and even on other men. She was prudish, yes, but not wholly foolish; she enjoyed being so desirable in a modest naive way. I was, despite her reserved nature, quite in love with her.
We had only been married for 6 years. I was 32 and she was 10 years younger when we were wed. Truth be told, the draw to the little isle had called to me for all of that time and more. I had served a stint here as a student, covering for the late vicar during a convalescent period, and there was something solitary, beautiful, and enchanting about this far off place; much like Lily. Lily was less enthusiastic, she saw the move for what it was, a lonesome sojourn to a secluded place. During this, we had been endeavoring fruitlessly to start a family. Perhaps, the weight of that drove my fervent calling to this place as a way of coping, for Lily just the stress of it accentuated her lonely despair, the floundering to conceive taken as a personal failure.
Dr. Stewart was a lean, vigorous man in his middling sixties, entirely charming in a bookish yet extroverted way. His history with the island was long and personal, He had birthed children, treated the sick and injured, shepherded the old and infirm to death. The sheer history imbued within him of the people, the places, and the stories was riveting. Lily was less enthusiastic, but she was a good and proper minister's wife and satisfied with her role of housekeeper; as the islanders warmed to her, she found a fledgling happiness.
Stewart and I would walk. Sometimes in the highlands, sometimes along the shore. The matters seemed unremarkable until the day he took me off to the bluffs for a chat. Stewart had an extensive library on primitive religions, on the rituals and ceremonies found in native cultures. From the Vikings to the Amazon, the Celtic druids to the tribes of the high Andes; there was a particular fascination with the practices and methods of the Christian inquisitions and the ways that suffering intersected with desire. I recall we discussed these things over a bottle of greek wine; the Christian eucharist, and the mission of the Church. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross and how it had forged the temperament of the early Church. I mused openly that perhaps the sacrificial rites of others tried to borrow from this perhaps to add to the strength and vitality of the community. It was something toward invigorating, influenced by the wine, to consider the sacrifice of nubile young women; one woman chosen from a community, honored and defiled, then slain and perhaps even communally shared. I said, might well provide a sort of soul and focus for a primitive society.
Stewart seemed amused. "Suppose it was your own wife, How would you feel?"
It gave me a chill; I sensed he meant more than he said. "I love Lily, it's sacrilege to even think about it" I said a bit indignantly.
"Hypothetically, of course. If centuries ago, it was your Lily was naked on some pagan altar, and you were handed a ceremonial knife. For the good of all, could you do it then? For the good of the community?"
"It's a hateful notion," I protested. But somehow I could picture it; Robin, the darkness, the knife descending into the olive skin of her naked breast, the welling of hot blood. It was curiously and shamefully arousing.
"It needn't be hateful," Stewart said reasonably. "Mostly certainly erotic, though, don't you think? Powerfully, darkly erotic. And yet it may be loving as well." Dr. Stewart shrugged and laughed through the warmth of the wine, dismissing the topic. "Quite a discussion, don't you think? Here in the very soul of druid country?" He dropped it; I was grateful but I did indeed find it arousing.
We discussed other things, and eventually returned to our homes, a pleasant afternoon away from the demands of the surgery. I liked Stewart. He was eccentric, but a gentle sort. His patients were devoted to him. When I let him off at his cottage, he touched my wrist. "Do this. The next time you're with your wife. Between the fifth and six rib, say, a deep cut from the side to the sternum. That will open her chest adequately. Just think about it."
"You're a filthy perverted bastard," I said, laughing dismissively. My face grew hot.
He laughed himself as he got out. "I am at that. You'll have to come see my library sometime."
I thought nothing of it the next morning when Dr. Stewart saw Lily as a patient. After lunch, Stewart and I walked to the square; he lit his pipe as we sat on a bench. "Let me see. You took off her nightie under the pretext of fondling her, you discovered that to get to her properly, you'd have to more or less cut through the mass of her breast. The idea inflamed you, and you made love to her a bit aggressively, yes? Pinned her arms over her head, bit her breasts perhaps?"
I flushed deeply. "That is indecent, Stewart," I gasped ... but I had in fact more or less done what he said. Lily's breasts were large, full and elegantly firm; they would have gotten in the way of any incision. And the secret exploration had aroused me.
"Yes, but accurate? And she surprised you, didn't she? She rather liked the truculence, multiple orgasms and all that."
That too was true; a first for Lily, who often had no orgasm at all. "She told you this?" it was something between a demand and an exclamation. "I know you saw her this morning."
Stewart laughed heartily. "No, no no ... She didn't ... You told me yourself, Jon; it's not so much that you're transparent, but the simple fact that most men have that dark impulse. A rare handful of women find it terribly arousing. If one is observant, he can recognize these women. Lily is one such a woman. I'm sure of it."
"Stewart, damn you, what are you getting at?"
He looked at me shrewdly. "You'll see. In good time, you'll understand me. You're a bit muddled by civilization, that's all. We're past the edge of society on our lonely little island. You'll see
