With thanks to Edmond Rostand's Cyrano, Scheherazade and all the forgotten storytellers who kept her alive for all One Thousand and One Nights.
*****
We had arrived at the cabin around sunset. The trees were cast in a golden light but we could not see the sun setting through the dense canopy. When we opened the door to the living room it was awash in orange that flooded through a giant picture window on the far side of the room. Across the lake and over the trees the sun had almost fallen out of sight.
It wasn't until the colour faded from the room that we realized the cottage was unheated. The old wood stove dormant.
"Dibs!"called out Susan as she ran for the only bedroom with her pack. "I need to get a sweater on, its freezing in here."
I looked at the old cast iron stove and opened it up.
"Shit!" a voice called out from the bedroom.
"What?"
"All my clothes are wet."
"How?"
"I don't care, can you turn the heat on?"
"Not for an hour, this old thing is going to take a little while. Get yourself under the covers or use your sleeping bag, it will still be warm from the car. I call you when things get moving." There was a bit more swearing from the bedroom and then a lamp turned on and quiet.
I warmed the flue and set up a pile of the driest wood I could find. Lighting the kindling, I left the door slightly ajar so that it could fill the now dark room with light and set the kettle on top.
The room was now dark and I lay out my sleeping bag and pushed the couch up against the picture window so I could look up to the moon and stars. The light from the bedroom went out and I heard a shuffle, Susan came to do the bedroom door. The soft moonlight fell on her naked body as she paused, realizing that I was staring at her.
Her face was lost in the shadow of her hair, shoulders standing broad and tall, her perfectly shaped breasts undulated in and out of the moonlight as she breathed heavily. Her nipples all but dark shadows. Her hips gently swayed absorbing the blue light and letting it slowly illuminate the sides of her legs.
"Move!"she quipped at me. I sat up and walked over to the fire. She ran across the room with three heavy footfalls and leaped onto the couch, hopping into my sleeping bag, pulling it up over her.
I walked to the stove and checked on the kettle which had still yet to stir. I moved it to the front plate and it hissed a little. My throat started to tingle, my senses opening up. The back of my mouth grew light and the feeling moved back along my jaw, down my neck and spread out across my neck and shoulders. My heart slowed a little and I sat down in the darkness listening to her breathe. She said nothing and everything, watching my silhouette in front of the faint orange glow emanating from the fire.
When the kettle whistled, I poured the water water into an old rubber hot water bottle that hung on the wall and sealed it up while quietly pondering this turn of events. Sometimes, as they are prone to saying, things are not as they seem. I stepped forward slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness as I moved away from the fire and into moonlight.
She pulled the drawstring of my sleeping sack fully tight. I could see her rust coloured hair, her nose and her cheeks protruding from the opening."Don't get any ideas Mister!"
"Here Susan, I was going to take this in for you but since you are here, voila."
"What is it?"
"A hot water bottle."
"What do I do with it?"
"Put it all the way down at the bottom of your sack or in ten minutes you will be sweating and that will just make things worse."
"Thank you."
She was shivering cold, and as I past the hot water bottle to her, her skin felt like ice. I reached over for two heavy wool blankets from the cabinet beside the couch, laying one atop her and the other over me.
"Just so you know, just because I am naked in here, doesn't mean you are getting any."
"Perish the thought, I have no interest in joining the ranks of the wives of King Shahryar.
"Who?"
"The Henry the Eighth of the Far East. Only instead of six merry wives, her married every woman in the kingdom, just for one night and in the morning had them beheaded, because he decided never to lay his trust in the arms of a woman again."
"Are you saying I don't trust men? "
"No, I would not dare, but like King Shahryar, you will never let them get close enough to you. Each morning he dispatches with his new wife, then goes to find another."
"Ahh, understandable but why does the King take such a hard stance against women?"
"Because once he had a Queen, whom he loved but when he left the castle she called all her lovers near and had a free for all. To which, the King returned early from his hunt and found the festivities raging, responded with an extreme rage."
She was still shivering and more worrisome, she was having trouble responding.
"Right," I said as I stood up, "This is getting a bit much, the longer your core temperature stays down, the more likely bad things are going to happen."
"What are you doing? You are not allowed to come in here."
"I wouldn't think of it, we had a deal." Moving between the wall and the back of the couch, I pushed it closer to the stove, five feet would be the perfect balance between warmth and not melting the sleeping sack or the couch. "Better?"
Without lifting her head from the sac she said, "no. Still freezing, down into my bones."
"What happened?"
"I don't know, all my clothes are soaking, I hopped into bed and just started to freeze. I couldn't get warm."
"We'll warm up soon enough, take this blanket for a minute. Let me go take a look at your pack." True enough, her whole pack was damp, at the bottom, a cheap water bottle had blown its top. Stupid, stupid. I picked up everything and slung up the clothes on the back of chairs and on the floor around the stove in the living room.
"What are you doing with my stuff?"
"A water bottle at the bottom of your sack exploded. No wonder you are freezing, hypothermia is a serious thing. I am assuming there is nothing precious in this lot?"
She shook her head.
"I'll put it up to dry by the fire, most of it should be good by midnight. I will stay up and keep an eye on everything while you stay in my sack. I am assuming this blankets will be my litter for the night."
"Well there is no room for you in here."
"As you wish your majesty." I rubbed her legs to get the circulation going but stopped before the waist. "Did I tell that there was woman in the Kingdom who lived by soothing the savage beast with a thousand nights of stories?"
"Oh god, no stories."
"Actually a story or two would do you good. You need something to really heat you up from the inside. Did I mention that I am writing a book to go along with those illustrations you saw the other morning?"
"Can't remember."
"Ah but I am, and now sitting here thinking of King Shahryar and the woman who tamed him, Scheherazade was greatest storyteller of all time, perhaps we can find you a good old story to warm you up."
"Less talk more action, please."
"Alright," jokingly I pretended to unbutton my jacket.
"Not that kind of action, let's hear a story, but I am warning you, if I don't like what I am hearing, off with your head!"
"Can I make it more interesting? After all Scheherazade did have some motivation."
"Again, no sex."
"No, if I manage to warm you inside and out, would you answer a question for me?"
"What question?"
"I am still composing the idea of it in my head. Deal?"
"Maybe, let's hear these stories and then I will decide."
"Alright, when I was young, much younger than you my good King Susan, there was a house in my quarter where two women lived. The first who rose in the morning always pleasant and smiling, the other woman, a perfumer of great note woke up in tears and vexation.
"One day the happy woman visited her neighbour to procure her services. "I have been blessed with much happiness year after year and yet I cannot bear to enter another winter without the smell of my rose garden following me morning, noon and night."
"Absence," said the perfumer,"sharpens the mind and warms the heart."
"I have no want, I live in a great happiness, my bed is warmed with bliss and when my husband and I are together in it, the sheets testify to the supreme pleasure of our kisses and embraces, of our joys and amorous sighs. When he is inside of me, it stops me completely, touching me from top to bottom and he does not take leave until he has visited every part of me. When his crisis arrives, then he takes position right in the heart of me and floods me with its tears. My fire quenched, our passion appeased, we fall into deep sleeps and in the morning I awake with the smell of my roses to embrace me."
"The perfumer sighed and sat quietly over her tea.
"What troubles you neighbour?"
