Northern Gothic Tale No. 2

The dark young boy led them into the woods at night. The first frosts had eliminated most of the parasites. Hair protected some ears but others showed, not cold, but secretly red as their possessor's hearts drove the blood hard to all their furthest responsibilities. They had not travelled far enough from the community to escape the smell of local pine burning in fireplaces before the leader stopped and instructed openly, "Knock down that skinny birch." A boy walked to it, seized the trunk at the height of his chest, and threw himself away from it expecting his efforts to be comparably counter matched by the mild strength of the grounded young tree. But the trunk snapped at the site of his hand and a few feet below and above before the white bark on dead wood fell from showing the lunar brightness into darkness on the natural, open burial ground, on which the boy then lied.

The dark one acknowledged the fall with a half mouthed smile while he shouted to produce the pot that he had said would be necessary. Clanks rang out when a girl pulled a stainless steel cooking pot out of her backpack. She took the lipstick and make up out of the pot and returned them to her bag. She brought the pot to the instructor and held it in her arms like a child and an offering. "Can you hear that stream? Find it and fill the pot. Bring it back."

Others had been individually ordered to gather kindling or twigs or logs or to build a perimeter of cairns. (A strong boy built a cairn straight up with 6 stones the sizes of basketballs and footballs.) The builders finished simultaneously when bearers of wood and water returned and existed for the first time inside the completed perimeter. The leading boy sparked a flame in his hand three seconds before the wood was orchestrated appropriately in the center then knelt as others rose. The location or existence of the match was never distinguishable to the others but there was a flame in his hand and then there was a blaze from the dark.

***

A supine girl, whose eyes were hidden from the fire by her bent legs, scratched at the bugs she thought were causing the itch between her breasts. What crawled on her was on the overhang that her bottom and bent legs created. She produced a phone, and between the moment she pressed its activation button and its illumination, the phone rose from her fingers in the care of another's as silently and irrevocably as the airborne ash from the wood fire which also produced the light that then found her black eyes. Close to the constructed border, she saw a white bottom on standing legs emerging from night blackened indigo denim. The jeans were being pushed down by the hands of another from behind.

A young boy looked up at Orion. He recalled feeling cowardly and inadequate compared to the ancient and modern warriors and hunters. He wanted to justly kill as indiscriminately as he admired those who did. The scape in his sight fell from the old twinkles thrown upon the black to the young people faintly lit in the dark. He sipped the lukewarm and bitter tea from his mug then watched the firelight expose a black, left hand ascending from its natural hang and swing. The arm paralleled the right leg until the leg regressed in its stride. The arm continued to rise until it paralleled the ground and the fingers then found the lit back of the neckline of another and ventured past its ridge to where it was lightless.

Some damned each other and others shook warm hands with themselves*. One girl sat on the ground, side saddle like, with her empty cup next to her. The girl was a known virgin. She was often teased and lauded for this fact, as she was attractive and social, and did not lack in opportunities to invalidate it. She found a knee, not to pray, but to raise herself. She scanned the scene for company. She wished to descry an individual as apparently chaste as herself. She spotted, across the enclosure, a sizeable boy standing alone. She could not know his history but inferred, based on his inaction, and the fact that she had never noticed him before, that he might be as inexperienced as she was. Intoxicated, and quickly accepting this presumption, the girl woozily rose and planted her feet on the dirt and debris.

The dark young man watched over this flock. He found equal delight in watching the pairs and threesomes fornicating and studying the individuals masturbating. He let his own thing hang as he momentarily lacked an attractive destination for it. Before boredom approached, he spotted an unspoiled girl launching herself off the dirty ground. He saw that her gait was totally determined, but he could not perceive her intended destination. Her pace quickened to a charge, and as the young man observed, she at once embraced, charged through, toppled, and dispersed the pile of stacked rocks previously arranged by an especially strong boy. She was neither lifted nor dragged away.

***

No mugs still held the nectar from the night before when the sun started rising, but a few beers were tossed around and consumed. The members retracted and the participants stuffed their limbs back into their old cloth and stitches. Those present noticed that a few who were there the night before were there no longer and looked to the forced opening between the still standing cairns as if it could provide an explanation. The dark young man slept soundly then still. The others found their feet and gathered their things and cleaned the site and one shook the dark young man's foot to wake him for departure, and he was the last to leave that orchestrated and broken perimeter.