As a dutiful daughter and the youngest of five sisters, I have six times witnessed the wretched state of a woman in marriage. It is a life wasted in the pretence that children will make him kind, patience will make him sober and forgiveness will make him faithful. So, with this knowledge, I spent my youth in our farming village pleading that my parents might permit me to join the convent. They had no time for my begging and declined my request without consideration. My match, it seemed, had been made in my early childhood. I was to be a wife.
Aside from the nuns, I knew only of one woman who was free of the shackles of marriage. She went by many names, none of them flattering, and lived in the dense forest, just beyond the river that turned the wheel of our mill. They said she had made a deal with a demon, and lived as a sorceress or a fortune-teller or an oracle. They said that men that lay with her never begot sons even when they returned to their wives. They called her a whore and a harlot, but I could tell that even the strongest men were afraid of her. I wanted them to fear me too.
But the forest at night is not a safe place for a slight young girl; such as I was then. In fact, had I known the true dangers that lurked there, perhaps I might never have run there for shelter. I knew of bears, wandering spirits and slithering serpents; but not of were-wolves, or blood shadows or sleepless nymphs. It was not until the morn of my wedding that I fled, tear-stricken into the thick pine forest, bitter with anger towards my family, and terrified to be dragged back home.
I ran breathlessly through the tall, closely packed trees, staying off the path, though always keeping it just in sight through the thin grey mists. I was dressed for the festivities, in white sleeveless dress that came almost to my bare feet and my straw coloured hair braided with wild flowers. Soon the dress was stained with moss and mud as I tripped and fell over on stray roots and hidden stones. The fabric was soon damp with cold fog and trickling sweat. My feet were cut and bruised and encrusted with dirt, the palms of my hands pressed with pine needles that gathered with every fall. But I never stopped to dust myself off or feel my pains; I only got up again and ran faster. Far in the distance behind me I could hear my name being called.
Until the light began to fade, and voices too disappeared. I was exhausted. My whole body screaming that I should stop and rest. I didn't dare. The new sounds of the forest at night were terrifying; shrill howls of creatures in great pain and thin mournful singing in unidentifiable languages. I saw a chink of orange light up ahead. Relief flooded me. I was almost there.
The cottage was low, windowless and built of grey limestone, with a roof of shrivelled bracken and dried heather. Strongly scented smoke rose in wavering coils from the clay chimney pot. The solitary light that I had seen shone from a cast iron lantern fixed above the battered wooden door. A grey mizzling drizzle fell. I made my last shaky steps up to the doorway, almost too weak to stand. I gave a small polite rap on the door - then hearing another ugly animal sound - thumped on it frantically.
"Please let me in!" I cried. Truly cried, tears streamed down my face. I was tired, cold, frightened and thirsty. My body trembled in the now transparent fabric of my wet dress.
The door swung open. But nobody seemed to be there. An empty wooden chair faced a strong smelling fire burning brightly in the hearth. Gingerly, I moved closer to the fire in search of some heat. I eyed the room warily, making out the vague shapes of a kitchen table, a bedframe and a tattered cupboard.
I didn't see her, rather, I sensed her. Although the room appeared empty, it never felt that way. She seeped slowly into my awareness; I knew that she was a woman. I knew that she was very old. I knew that she meant me no harm. I knew all this without having the faintest idea of her location or form. Eventually, after some time, I realised that I had been looking at every spot in the room except the one where she was stood. As if my mind had not been able to understand that that place have existed until she allowed it to.
"Oh!" I exclaimed, as she suddenly came into clear focus. She didn't look old - no more than thirty - and was tall with a proud posture and fullness of figure. A deep red dress clung close to her shapely body and streams of jet-black hair cascaded over her shoulders. Her jewel-like blue eyes glinted through her dark tresses. At her breast hung a pendant made from a carved animal bone.
"Little Bride," her voice was strong, yet kindly, "There is no coven here for you to join. I can't smell a drop of magic on you. I'm sorry, you must go." Desperation filled me and I threw myself on my knees at her feet.
"Please, I need your help, I can not go back now. They will think me a witch even if I am not one. I heard there are deals you can make. Bargains that can be struck with demons."
She looked at me pityingly.
"But do you understand the nature of such exchanges? You only have one thing a demon would want Little Bride, and I am afraid it is not your soul."
I balled my hands into fists and stared straight into her glittering eyes.
"I can loose my purity under my husband and have my power stripped from me, or I can loose my purity under a demon and emerge powerful. That seems like a straightforward enough choice to me."
She smiled in spite of herself.
"You are a bold one Little Bride, perhaps we will make a witch of you yet."
And so I rose from the floor, determined to win my own magic.
***
"Your family will no doubt set off back into the forest to capture you at first light, we must be swift in preparing and performing the ritual, you will need your magic before daybreak." Kasita, the witch, explained the summoning spell to me as she washed the mud from my feet in a large copper pan. She rubbed sweet scented ointment into my many minor injuries.
"What must I do?"
"You will need to draw a pentagram within a circle of salt. I cannot help you with this, you must perform the whole ritual yourself or there is the risk that the powers will partly or wholly transfer to me instead." She gestured for me to stand and I did so. Then she moved to slip my dress over my head - I stopped her.
"Little Bride, you cannot expect this to work if you are so attached to the notion of modesty." She chided. I lifted my arms obediently and she lifted the sodden fabric from my body, hanging it to dry by the fireplace. She regarded my youthful body for a moment; my long, elegant legs; my slim, girlish hips and my pert breasts with their milky white flesh and their rosy pink nipples. She continued her teaching, while washing the remaining dirt from my body with a wet rag, "You must light candles at the five corners of the pentagram, sit safely in the centre of the circle and recite the summons perfectly. You're lucky that this spell is in your native tongue, otherwise I would not even let you try." I gasped, as she rubbed the cloth across the point of my nipple. She ignored me. "Lastly, the demon will try to tempt, frighten or force you out of the circle, so that he will not need to fulfil his side of the bargain. You must not yield." I nodded firmly.
"I will not yield. I will stay in my circle." At that moment, she began to rub her wet cloth against the thatch of hair between my thighs. I was frozen in place.
"Now, I know you have no experience of men, but you need to know how to become relaxed and aroused, or this shall be thrice the ordeal that it ought to be." I didn't move or say a word as the moist fabric worked to part my inner lips and move against my entrance. "How you are now is no good, you are too stiff. You need to sink into it, become malleable." I couldn't will myself to relax, but as she moved her friction to my little bud, my body gave an involuntary tremble. "That's it," she soothed, "Follow those feelings, let them soften you," She dipped the rag into the sweet water, then once it was saturated, wrung the water out over my breasts, so that it ran down in meandering rivers over my stomach to my sex, then dripped from my lips to my thighs. Then she again pressed her scrap of wet fabric to my sheath, persisting in grinding it back and fourth over my waking clit. I let my eyes slip shut and tried only to experience the strange pleasure. Kasita's fingers, soft from her oils and the perfumed water slid gently between the petals of my rose. I flinched away slightly. She stopped.
"He will not be gentle with you Little Bride, if this is too much for you, you ought go home to your husband." Alarmed, I took hold of her hand and brought it back to rest between my folds. She smiled, satisfied with my decision.
Her fingers traced delicate outlines over my slowly swelling clit, and around the edges of my opening, until my moisture sprang fourth. She spread my wetness with her thumb over my tender bud, while those gentle fingers stretched and explored my slit. Then sunk, silky and slow, inside my narrow chamber. Her fingertips fluttered at my dimpled roof - and while I twisted and shuddered slightly, I did not squirm away. Warm tingling tendrils of newly felt pleasure spread from the spot that she excited, so that my clit tingled and a low heat built in my stomach.
Then with her two deft fingers neatly tucked together, she started to pound into me. Plunging her fingers in and out of me. I was suddenly breathless, just standing still on my wobbly legs took enormous effort, as filled me over and over. Peculiar, beautiful heat rose through my body and I moaned with abandon as it swept through my skin. Beads of my arousal dripped like perspiration down the inside of my thigh. I felt my body reaching for... something. But pleased with my apparent progress, Kasita retrieved her fingers and rinsed them in the water.
"You are as ready as you can be this night. I will stand guard over the cottage outside in case any of the villagers are foolish enough to wander the forest after nightfall. It is time now, gather your strength."
***
The weather outside had worsened, with cold rain falling in sheets and a wuthering gale battering the tiny cottage. I had never been taught to read, but I copied the illustration in Kasita's leather-bound book, painting the strange symbols onto the stone-flagged floor with a white pulp made from bird's droppings, lichen and crushed chalk. With my pentagram mapped out, I set the stubby beeswax candles in place and carefully sprinkled the course sea salt from its frayed sack. The wind blew plenty strong enough to whistle through the wooden door, scattering the grains and breaking my circle, reducing my flaming candles to mere embers on their wicks. Perhaps it wouldn't work? I persevered, tipping the kitchen table onto its side to act as a shelter from the wind. It wasn't perfect, but I feared daybreak would be difficult to anticipate in the harsh weather and hastened to begin.
I sat, cross-legged and nude in the centre of my protective circle. My body gave an occasional shudder in the chill, and goosebumps covered my bare flesh. The incantation was simple and repetitive.
In exchange for a witch's magic, I offer my body for the pleasure of the Prince of the Azure. I offer my body for the pleasure of the Prince of Azure, in exchange for a witch's magic.
I whispered it at first, feeling foolish speaking with no-one present, but as the gale roared louder I found myself shouting simply to be able to hear myself. Upon my seventh recital of the mantra, the candles withered and the wind hushed itself to silence. There was only the sound of the rain on the roof. I strained my eyes through the pitch black.
