The Apple Tree Ch 03

Rebecca watched Michael sleep in the predawn glow. Only his head and chest were visible above the blankets, a soft buzz accompanied every breath. It had been a month since she completed the Vigil, and still there was more to learn even though she'd come to the fullness of her magical powers. They had returned to the Tower hand-in-hand, and he had gently taken her virginity in the morning light. Her sense of heightened awareness not only gave her sure knowledge when her monthly period began, but also her fertile days. There were ways magic could enhance the act of making love but he wanted to be comfortable with it naturally before teaching her how to augment it.

His eyes opened and she took his hand as it appeared above the covers. "Sleep well?"

"Beautifully. And you?"

"The same. I'm ready for action."

He arched his right eyebrow and gave her a slight grin. She squeezed his hand a little harder and winked, lowering the top of her shift to show him her left shoulder and a hint of her cleavage. "Soon I think, my dear. I need to cover a little more ground with you before we indulge again. There's a lesson to be learned that's best learned by example than lecture." He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. "There are still ways I must protect you, but this time to the armor of knowledge."

Rebecca pouted, but helped him out of bed. He padded across the floor barefoot, and pulled off his nightshirt. They had shared the bedroom since she passed the Vigil, quickly becoming comfortable with her presence. He stood nude facing away from her and it reminded her of those rare times her father took a bath before local festival. His body was slightly chubby and she found the dimples on his butt cute. He dressed simply, stepping into sandals and turned to face her: "Aren't you dressed yet? We have a long morning after breakfast."

She dropped her shift and let him look at her naked. Her nipples hardened in the cool air; he smiled at her fondly, picked up a ring with the huge, blue stone from the night table and slipped it on his right index finger. With the circular gesture at her wardrobe, he moved toward the door. She pouted again, then draped a simple, orange dress over her shoulders before she followed him to the kitchen.

They shared a simple breakfast of porridge and hot tea. Magda bustled as she attended their needs, but as they finished a glance from Michael sent her away. "Dark matters and emotions are best faced in the daylight. We will use the scrying crystal, however we must still be careful. You will need to help me with the protection incantation before we begin. Since the story we shall view contains denizens of the Pit, we must keep from attracting their attention even though the two of us could handle them easily."

Rebecca made a show of licking her spoon in a sultry way. "Will we see something that might disturb me? Something that will make me want to leap in your arms?"

"You will see someone dear to you go through a very terrible part of their lives. It will tax your ability to control your emotions, but you must not lose yourself in their pain. Everything we see has already happened and nothing can change it.You must focus on the fact that those who know and love are now happy and safe. I have not told you the story before because it needed to wait until you reached your power. There is a lesson here you must learn about using your new found power, and more about your past that you need to know now."

He stood, took her hand, and led her up to his study. The furniture had been moved since the day before. In the middle of the room was a table covered by a black cloth, with the scrying crystal under a matching black cloth. Three feet away a brazier smoked slightly. Michael went to a sideboard for a small container: his fingers delicately picked out three grains which he threw on the coal to sputter and smoke. He closed his eyes and began an potection intonation which she joined that safeguarded them from all evil spirits, and she moved to trace a circle on the floor with the blue powder she got from the same sideboard. She finished before he did; he opened his eyes and relaxed.

Only then he pulled the cloth from the table revealing a clear globe. Smoke billowed and writhed within. Lifting his left hand, he pushed the vapors aside and revealed a dark scene. Demons danced around an ancient, withered tree; in the distance the tower where they lived was outlined in red by the rising full moon. There was no sound, however one could almost hear the whistling wind tossing the branches of the tree and the screams of the Damned. A nude woman was suspended by her wrists from a branch, her feet barely touching the ground. A man stood nearby, handsome and powerful, the wind whipping his long hair behind him. He grinned evilly with his arms crossed, contemplating his next move.

Rebecca gasped as the view changed and she could see people's features. The woman was barely younger than she when she took up her apprenticeship, and could've been her sister. The man looked like a younger version of Michael, his eyes blazing with a glow she had never seen from her Master. He pointed, and a demon with a long, ugly whip left a red mark on her buttocks, drawing a scream. Rebecca was appalled, yet felt a slight tingling in her body.

"The man is my brother Louis; the woman, your mother. The tree stood for centuries where your favorite apple tree stands now. This was before she met your father."

Demons darted in from time to time to rake her sweaty skin with their long fingernails, pinch her nipples and legs, and slap her ass. Louis wore a white robe and his eyes glimmered at her torment. From time to time he reached out with his right hand and lifted his palm toward the sky, elevating the branch and pulling her a foot off the ground to dangle and kick before letting her back down. Rebecca's mother gradually stopped resisting, and her muscles went slack.

A gesture of command, and two demons grabbed her legs and picked them up until her feet were level with her waist. His robe disappeared revealing an athletic body, well muscled, with a large erection projecting its desire. Three demons came over: one knelt before him reaching out with its long, thin forked tongue between razor sharp teeth to circle and lubricate his member; another was farther underneath and the two forks of its tongue encircled his testicles; the third went behind him and its forked tongue extended between his buttocks. One of the demons holding the woman attempted to push his long-nailed finger into her slit: a jolt of electricity from Louis' finger ended that. He let them tease the insides of her knees, calves, and thighs with their long, sharp fingernails.

Rebecca found it difficult to control her thoughts. She was nauseous, revolted to see her mother treated cruelly, yet a small part of her was stimulated. Michael watched impassively and she could sense only a slight, sad tinge to his normal peaceful demeanor.

A wave of his hand the evil magician dismissed the demons attending him, and he strode forward to impale his victim completely in one quick thrust. She began to struggle again but he paid no attention, pistoning his hips rapidly. The demons watching were obviously cheering, waving their hands in the air and promenading with their impossibly huge erections bouncing as they danced wildly.

The last stroke he held a long time, obviously emptying himself. Suddenly, the rope and the demons disappeared and he left her slide off of him, sitting down hard on a gnarled tree root. She looked up at him with a dull look, completely spent, completely devoid of hope. He stood over her as his cock slowly returned to normal and it wobbled, completely spent. Then with a flash of light, his robe returned and he rose to the air, passing into the distance like a bow shot across the face of the angry red moon.

"This is why I kept an eye on your family while you were growing up. My twin and I were completely unlike. I felt it my duty to repair the great damage he did while he was in the world, and it is only now I believe that task is done."

"I can't believe it. Why didn't you tell me you had a brother?"

He shook his head. "You didn't need to know until now. I've never told another soul about him, nor wanted you to know should you choose not to go through the Vigil." More scenes played across the scrying crystal: deeds of Louis' intimidation, brutality, and exploitation. Her home village appeared, and Louis knocked on the front door of her house. Her mother was holding an infant, while a small boy with dark hair and flashing eyes played at her feet. Words were exchanged; the boy left with the man. "In many ways it's good you never knew your brother. He was nothing like your mother and everything like his father."

Rebecca shook her head in disbelief. She put her hand palm down on the table to steady herself. A look at Michael revealed concern in his eyes and yet strength and love as well. He put up his hand when she took a step in his direction: "When I'm finished I'll hold you, dearest. This story needs to be finished first."

The Globe revealed Louis' study. He waved his arms frantically in repulsion, shouting at the center of fading light as shadows ate away the illumination. The last to go was a circle around his defiant face, which faded into oblivion. "Louis and I had the same Master, trained together, and kept the Vigil the same night under the old tree by the river where your apple tree stands. Yet this is how he ended."

"But you said self-control was the most important thing in using magic. Louis had self-control through all of this evil?"

"At first he did. For a while he mastered himself while he manipulated demons and wreaked harm on others. Slowly but surely, as you saw, the Darkness devoured him."

"What about my brother?"

"My brother never saw his son as more than a pet or plaything. The only lessons your brother received were to hone the edge of his cruelty, no self control, and he was a thoroughly spoiled child. He could channel great power, but he used it foolishly, and did not see his 20th birthday. I won't show you his ending: he decided his magic could force the Queen of the Harpies to give him oral sex."

Rebecca's eyes went wide and disbelief. "And he failed?"

Michael shook his head. "No, unfortunately he succeeded, but he never realized what would happen when he let his guard down. He assumed his mastery of war magic would see him out of any peril. He lowered his guard with his pants at his ankles after throwing the Queen to the ground when she finished pleasing him. Once free of his compulsion, she ordered her minions to attack. He managed to destroy enough Harpies the islands have been free of them ever since, but he was overwhelmed in moments and nothing was left but tiny pieces of flesh."

She shook her head, gave a nervous laugh, and settled in cool gloom. "And I thought the boys of my home village were dangerously stupid."

He gave a grim chuckle, and shook his head. A familiar look told her it time to figure something out. Rebecca thought for a moment, tapping her foot. "My brother found out the hard way about using great power without great self-control. Your brother learned the cost of self-deception: it seems to always have to pay attention to your motivations and control them, as well as calculate the cost to others as well as yourself." The older man nodded, with a grin on his face and a glint in his eye. "But there is more, isn't there?"

"Yes, there is. You've seen some of our futures, especially the ones that are more likely now. Tell me, how many magicians have we studied have had families?"

The wind coming through the window detoured around the circle of protection. It still made her shiver a little bit anyway and she thought. Then Michael's eyes told her: the crystal began playing another scene, set at the tower like the one they inhabited, a household like many she had known growing up. The woman was tall and handsome, with red hair and dancing blue eyes. Four children grew up there: three daughters and a son. They left to find their fortunes in the world, and shortly after the woman died. Rebecca could feel the void she left in Michael's heart. "How did you do it?"

"It wasn't easy, but I would do it again without hesitation. Julia was my first student, and we worked well together. As you know, I'm very careful how I practice magic, as was she. We took care to raise our children without magic, living our lives in a mundane way. There was never denial of who we were or what we did, but we never used magic around them, and made them do what every other child does."

"You mean you went decades without magic?"

"Yes. I'm older than I seem to be. For 30 years, Julia and I made home, doing simple magic on request to help our neighbors, furthering our study gradually while small ones were asleep. None of them showed talent or inclination for magic, so it was easy to send them on their roads."

She paused and thought for a moment. "You talked about the need to shield yourself from other magicians and malevolent powers."

"It took years to set that up before we had children. It wasn't easy because our magic had to be very subtle. There were many times I had to travel alone, undoing the evil of my brother Louis, yet none of it was here, and I was as economical as I could be in my casting, which kept from drawing attention to me. Unfortunately, magic cannot cure every disease. When Julia died, the children were gone and their children far away. Since then, I've devoted myself to my Art."

Rebecca needed to take a walk; he felt her need and nodded, letting her break the circle and leave without a word. Michael knew where she was going.

The sun was high in the sky and it was late summer. The apple tree was heavy with fruit and soon Bela and Magda would be picking it. She could sense Bela in the deep woods away from the river, and Magda napping in her room. The river was flowing quietly with no dangers in sight, so she shed her shift and waited into the water. Its touch was refreshing, and helped soothe her as she digested the day's revelations.

After an hour, Michael arrived with a basket. "It's a good day for a picnic," he began smiling.

Emerging from the water, drops of water trickled down her body and her hair was wet and limp. "What have you brought us to eat?"

He gestured her to sit on the grass at the base of the tree, and pulled out a small jar. She sat with her legs parted, leaning back against the trunk, the fuzz between her legs glistening. Golden liquid dripped on her thighs, sticky and sweet, and Michael's tongue tickled as it lapped up the honey. More sweet balm crept into her delicate crannies and he made his main objective cleaning her.

While she reveled in the sensations spreading upward, she opened her magical sight to see what was around her. There was something new: a rose colored barrier that encased them and shielded them from any hostile attention. She could feel her own body responding to his tongue; she could also feel his delight as he tasted her sweetness and pleased her. She can also feel the heavy fruit, ripe and full of juice, the energy of the grass growing verdantly around her, the endless flow of the water as it made its way gently to the sea. The vibrations of Mother Earth reveling in the sun's kiss traveled through her and brought her to a pinnacle of ecstasy she couldn't believe possible.

It took a long time for her to recover, shuddering in his arms under the apple tree. A bird sang, and its mate answered from a distance. Rebecca wished the moment would last a year, it was so sweet. She opened her eyes to look at his face, his mouth and beard wet and sticky with honey, her aroma lingering around him, his mind and body at peace. "I have more to learn about magic; will another year bring me to a point I can take a leave of absence?"

Michael nodded and smiled. "Let's travel a little: there are parts of the world I want to show you in person. The entire world is a textbook and a laboratory. The journey itself will have much to teach us. There are also dangers we must dispel before our future is safe."

He stood but she did not. Feeling her purpose to reciprocate, he opened his magical sight and relaxed so he could revel in the symphony of bliss she would give him.