Love You Forever

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Part Thee: The Great Dark Decision

Aideen and I left the house on a night in July to seek out the enchanctress Reenan. We brought our special kit, under the instruction gypsy Fifka-- pouches of sundry ingredients, watertight leather slippers, a walking stick. We crafted bog shoes with vines, twines, and pliable stems. We crossed the road and scrambled through the rough path if that's what it could be called. Through high grass, across deep drains, and through thick wood. We skirted treacherous bogholes. It took nearly four hours to reach the waste, Aideen helping me every careful step, me using my blackthorn walking stick for extra balance.

It was a warm, close, bright night of the full moon. The grove is in a small hollow surrounded by a great bog, a bog so great it's called a waste. The waste, like everything above the road until the other side of the mountains, is part of a commonage. It's owned by everyone and no one, a young relic of colony days. There was no turf cutting there. There was no grazing there. There was no road or house around for miles. On the north edge of this bog was a great rock shelf dotted with sundews and bladderworts and hearty pimpernels. Brave golden gorse, purple and white heather, polly holly grew. Short lines of sallies grew where they once served as fenceposts years before. Carpet moss and blood moss clung and hung. Lichen draped around the bark, the rock, the earth. On the east and west sides were sizable cliffs and slopes. They were so unpredictable and craggy and covered with furze that the people of Bonnakeen had a name for falling off-- getting cliffted. On the north side two great rounded crags rose above us, tipped with dark silver clouds.

I had not been here since I was a boy. We descended the thirty foot rock wall from our Northern approach. A small feat for Aideen, a dangersome task for me. Aideen made her way down and put her hands together in the air for me to step down onto. I faced the wall and began to climb down. My leather slippers that gripped the wall were perfectly tailored for my foot, and the resin that fitted the roughened sole helped me cling, but the rock was slick. My knees quivered with weakness, and I damned my age as I hadn't since the years before Aideen entered my world. My left foot slipped off the wall, followed hastily by my overexerted right. I clung a sharp lip of slaty stone with my left hand and gripped a sturdy gorse vine with my right. I thanked my aged and leathery hands like never before. The dead spines of the gorse would have cut deep into a young sprite's soft fingers, but instead bent and ground into dust under mine. My right knee was bludgeoned by the damn wall, and both knees bled, but I hung only a few feet from Aideen's eager palms.

"Come to me Denny," said Aideen without fear. She never shrieked when I slipped, never winced at my blood. She knew what to expect and knew that our adventure would not go too far astray.

I felt her hands emanating her warmth toward me. To fall onto her, to step into her palm, seemed only the right thing to do. I let go and slid down the wall until my right foot was poised in her interlocked fingers. Aideen's slippers sunk into the wet, muddy bog earth. I pressed my cheek against the wall's cool dampness and she lowered my foot to her belly, her knee, the ground. I lowered my right foot, but it could not carry any weight. My walking stick was too thin for the soft ground. As soon as any weight was applied it would sink three feet in.

Aideen tied her ash and ivy bog shoes on, and mine on under hers for extra sturdiness. Taking my stick, I whittled and split the end like a Phillips screw. We crosshatched and tied more sticks across it from the scattered trees, and used a sally switch that Aideen fetched from some yards away to tie in a circle around the cross sticks. Gorsevine was woven in between to make a bog shoe for the walking stick.

Meanwhile Aideen tore and tied some blood moss to my wound. She knew it would absorb the blood and disinfect the opening. She knew one day when tobacco was low men would smoke it and think of better days. She took me on her back.

By tying her shawl, my shirt, and a large kerchief of mine together, we were able to form a sling that I rested my legs in, leaving Aideen's hands free to hold the stick. She picked her steps carefully across the bog. It would be difficult to cross without the bog shoes, impossible with me on her back. There was evidence at the surface of certain bogholes that it would be impossible for a horse to pass here. Even some deft-stepping mountain goats left unlucky skeletons behind. Many others remained buried, victims of the greedy ground in this sublime nature. With no thickets or streams between us and our destination, and only bogholes and soft ground to navigate, Aideen took adequate care and still made time better than we were making before.

My knee pained me. The knee cap was fractured, if not broken. I lost myself as I stared down at the reddish brown and black pattern of the bog. I lost myself as I stared up at the grey clouds and the bright white patch that the moon hid behind. I lost myself as I stared at the looming hills ahead. We grew closer and closer to the green-black circle of hollies. Sometimes I lost my sight of it as Aideen turned away to skirt another great boghole, but our orientation always returned. The air got warmer and thicker and closer as we approached, and the first muffled moan of thunder shook through the great hills.

I hated this part of the world, the cross old bog and the great waste, and it was only up a hill from my farm. But I looked on, and I remembered back, to a happier time, to a happier place, where Aideen and I first made love.

**************

When I deflowered Aideen she was still eighteen, and I was eighty-three. It was the spring in May and we walked down an old

bohareen

that wasn't frequented much anymore. It ran from our road to the manor house and eventually to the main road across the river at the bottom of the valley. The Bungard family had to flee in 1916 after the house was attacked. Though their influence was still felt throughout the valley, their presence was nothing it had been before. We walked down to a sloping field surrounded by stone ditches and young oaks. If someone had a spyglass on the hills across the river we would have been a sight that day!

The cocoons had hatched in the weeks before and the golden butterflies fluttered from the daisies and dandelions, the pimpernel and the bachelor buttons. I laid her down in the soft milk grass and we kissed eachother gently. I pulled her close to me by the small of her back. We nuzzled and held eachother close. We kicked off our shoes and dug our toes into the grass and the earth.

Sometimes a cloud passed overhead, casting a moody shadow over the valley, absorbing the sun's heat so that all we could feel was the island moisture and the cool sea breeze in the air. Aideen tasted like the sea all over. She sat over me and taking my member, rubbed my head between her labia, over her clitoris, up and down. I kicked off my pants and took off my shirt, and only then she lifted off her light spring dress. She got me hard enough that she felt I could break her. She lowered herself onto me and a delicate furrow came across her face. She looked into my eyes for help. She couldn't break herself, so I moved upwards into her. Her strength to resist gave out and she let herself fall onto me. Her back stiffened and a breeze came up. I felt her nipples harden on my chest. She felt me harden inside her. Aideen sat up and looked down to see the warm glowing blood trickling around my abdomen.

She rose and fell, spreading the blood and letting herself open to me and the world. After a few painful moments she was holding me tight, biting me, rocking and grinding. I felt that she was the one taking my virginity. I came into her soon, and she mixed a pink potion as she ground on me. She was invigorated by my slippery cum and used it to help her climax. All the while I twitched and moaned under her. She was mine and I was hers, and she brought herself to a late orgasm as the sun burst hot on her back, casting her shadow over me. And as she collapsed on top of me, another nimbus eclipsed the sun.

Aideen's knees were muddied and scratched, her vagina sore and sensitive and brand new. We put on our clothes and walked slowly back to the house, up the

bohareen

and down the road in our bare feet.

**************

We trudged on the slow ground, finally approaching the circle of hollies as a thunderhead awoke me from my reverie. It was a large circle of perhaps thirty old hollies and a stone ditch around them. There were fourteen large stones on their side forming the ritual stone circle. At the altar stone was a figure in a green velvet gown with a black velvet cloak. She was looking down at the altar stone, preparing some kind of incense and elixir. Aideen carried me up to the altar. I dropped down onto my left leg and took the stick for support. Aideen and I both opened our pouches and took out the ingredients: acorn, holly leaf, green hazel nut, salmon eye, berries of Bonnakeen. Reenan did not look at us as her wrinkled hands took the ingredients from ours, examined them, and handed them back. Scraggly grey hair poured out of her hood and hung in front of her bowed head, obscuring her face. She took our holly leaves and placed each in a small mortar hole with fresh water.

Lightning now struck the peaks and sides of the great southern crags behind Reenan. There was a shudder in Reenan's droning mutter that made it noticeable for the first time. She spoke some form of Welsh Gaelic, or Latin, or was it Irish? There was no telling. The midnight hour was approaching. The moment of the full moon was approaching. Reenan took the acorns and popped off the caps, took the bonnakeen berries and placed them in the caps, took the young green hazelnut and placed it in the cap. We did the same. She squished the pink juice out of the berry so that it dripped down the soft nut. We placed the amalgam fruit on the altar.

Reenan pointed her gaze upward, but we still did not get a glimpse of her face as she peered through a shroud of grey toward the moon behind the clouds. She brought a withered hand in front of the shroud and placed the eye of salmon on her protruding tongue. Aideen and I did the same. Reenan pulled her tongue into her mouth, and as we did so she reached out to our throats and held them so we would not swallow. She removed her hands and with her blackened nails gently drew our eyes to a close. We felt her place the nut in our right hands and close our fingers around them. We saw red lightning through our eyelids and felt electricity in our bodies. The rumble nearly knocked all three of us to the ground. We thought we felt the first drops of rain, but it was Reenan spraying us with the wet leaves of holly. She placed the leaves in our left hands and closed our fingers around them until the thorns pricked us, a strange sensation to my hide-tough palms.

With the next strike of lightning I began to see. I saw the grove we stood in, and in it I saw a little black haired child in green and a red haired child in white. There was also a little fair haired boy in his oversized cap and suspenders. They all were playing in the sunshine, climbing on the stones, chasing butterflies and eating blackberries that make their mouths and fingers sticky and purple. They all played London Bridge and fell onto the ground with their soft hands resting gently on their chest, fingers laced and the grass grew up around them, the briars grew in from the fringes of the circle around them, and the snow fell on them, and when it melted away the next year only their small withered skins and bones remained.

I felt a thud and opened my eyes as soft rain started to pour down. I looked to my right and saw Aideen looking over at me, smiling --beaming-- at me so that her cheekbones looked like little crab-apples.

"Rise, children," said Reenan.

I think we had both forgotten where we were completely, and our hearts were filled with anxiety again to face the witch.

"Swallow the eye," said Reenan.

"Is it done?" asked Aideen to Reenan.

"The bed is almost made. So when it is time to sleep you may, but first you must chew and swallow the eye." Reenan's voice was surprisingly clear and friendly. It did not sound like the raspy grumbling we heard from her mouth before.

We chewed the gummy thing and swallowed it down.

"Now you must crack the nut and eat it."

We uncapped the hazelnut, put it in our teeth, and popped open the soft shell. We used our teeth and tongue to separate the starchy husk from the watery meat, chewed and swallowed.

"Now you must eat the holly leaf."

We placed the thorny leaves delicately in our mouths and chewed, avoiding the piercing of the barbs. The bitter tea taste filled our mouths and cleansed the salmon from our palate.

"There's only one more thing..." Reenan she sweetly, as she pushed back her black velvet cowl. Her appearance was shocking. Though she had gray hair down to her waist, she had long roots of shiny black. She had one glassy gray eye, forever opened to its limits, with crow's feet that branched across the side of her face to her ear, while her other eye was a sultry dark blue beauty. I noted several more things of the same peculiarity. Her nails had healthy quicks and half-moons, but they grew out into scraggly claws, and her beautiful smile had in it just one snaggled canine. I imagined what surprises distinguished the supple body underneath her garb.

"Maybe you'll see, faithful Denny Doyle," said Reenan.

Aideen looked at both of us with questions written all over her face, but that confused look soon turned to concern and jealously as she saw that I was staring at Reenan's body, and she was coming around the altar on my side. Aideen was able to perceive all that was happening between us three, and as if Reenan's garb was suddenly transparent, we could see her nakedness. Her body was supple, indeed. Medium breasted, short black pubic hair and a pale, flat stomach. But from her belly button a spiraling scar grew and turned black. So too did crooked spirals grow from her nipples, and branching scars grew down her legs. It was mesmerizing to both Aideen and I and Reenan smiled as if to say "What fun is the Holly moon if I can't enjoy the festivities of the flesh myself?" Aideen was jolted from her hypnosis.

"What was the one thing Reenan?" asked Aideen. But Reenan persisted. "What was the one thing we had to do to finalize the act?"

Reenan stopped, surprised by Aideen's will. "Very well, persistent child Aideen," said she as she glided back to her side of the altar. "Before I will give you further instruction you must prove to me your love for each other."

"How do you mean?" asked I.

"Your girl. She knows, Denny."

Aideen looked at me softly; she let her hair fall down over her shoulders. Her eyes were helpless and ashamed but she knew better than I that we had to follow through with Reenan's wishes. She unbuttoned her tweed jacket fashioned for a man.

It was a jacket she had found it year before on a stone by the small waterfall down the road from our house. A bar of soap sat up in the stream, held back by a ledge of a rock from coming over the edge off the four foot drop and plunking down into the little pool below. It had the effect of making more bubbles than usual in the pool. Aideen took the tweed jacket and dropped it in the pool. She scrubbed and dunked and wrung it out in the soapy water. She draped it over a nearby branch and started to wash herself in the cool clean water, first her hands, then her face, then her arms, her armpits, her feet and ankles up to her knee. The water was dripping down her chest and breasts making her dress all wet. It was such a dreary day turning drearier, but the thought never came to mind that the tinker who surely left his best coat would be thinking of it soon, and would be turning back to get it. Aideen took off her old rags so that she was in the nude. Some ferns obscured her from sight if someone was coming down the road, but if someone were to pass her by they could not possibly miss this water goddess bathing alongside them. She did not think of that either.

She washed herself, spending time between her legs with her slender fingers parting her throbbing cold pink lips. The nipples on her swooped chest stood out in the same cold pink as did her rosy cheeks and mouth. Maybe a passerby would think she was roses in the snow. Likely not. The snow had not begun to fall and springtime did not linger. She washed between the flesh of her bum and around her peachy hole, and as she was ready to finally enter one opening or the other she heard strolling steps and the bark of a dog. The child Aideen poked her head through the ferns and saw coming over the hilleen two well-dressed tinker vagabonds, one in a coat and one without, and a wolfhound walking beside them. One twirled a twist of sally branch and the other held a hazel walking stick, never touching it to the ground.

They were barely in eyeshot, so Aideen put on the fashionable tweed and quickly crossed the road as far over as she could without being pricked by a briar. With the slight bend in the road they could not see her walking two hundred yards ahead, and in her bare feet they couldn't hear her. Once she found an opening in the brush, she hopped the ditch into our western field, from there she ran with her knees well bent like a hare, her sheer feet avoiding cowdung in the soft wet grass. She hopped over the garden stile, walked to the porch and opened the door gingerly with such great excitement and pleasure and humiliation all at once.

Here she was before me, all wet in an expensive tweed with her arse showing out the back, her hands deep in the hip pockets, her hair draped over the broad shoulders. A sight of beauty and passion and she hung the jacket and warmed herself by the fire and her cold body was for me that night. What a girl was Aideen, what a blackguard. I would love to have seen the tinker's face when he saw the old dress in the place of his fine coat. It would bring him half the warmth and none of the respect of the tweed. And somehow our house was undisturbed by the tinkers that year, while all the other homes in the house were being scavenged in the night or solicited in the day by some con tinker or other.

It was that wet, embarrassed passion that appeared to me now as the mist fell on her rosy hair. She undressed, and so did I. Her fair unbridled bosom glowed between the lapels and struck my soul so that it was her beauty that was the lightning and my rolling blood that was the thunder. I began to strip. I took my raggy coat and shirt off my bony shoulders, but when I stooped over I felt the pain in my knee. Aideen let her dress fall around her shoulders and down to the ground where it gathered around her bog shoes. She wiggled one small foot out of her slipper, the other one out of the other so that she was only in her panties and socks.

Little beads of water, suspended on her copper wire, began to penetrate its shine. It soaked into her locks, making them straighten and darken. Reenan stood poised with her wrinkled hands gripping the altar and holding her head before her body. Her blue eye darted back and forth from one of us to the other, and each of us could feel when the eyes were on us. Aideen felt the gaze and felt a warm empowerment. I felt the gaze and felt a cold fear.

Aideen felt only the magical power of our love on this stage by the altar in the circle in the valley of waste. I felt far from home, far from our little open fire in the smoky house on the road down the hill. With Reenan beaming her mysterious gaze at her, Aideen took the opportunity to wash all my worries away. She bent at the knee and closed her eyes, biting her lip so hard it turned white. With her left hand she grabbed and pulled on her labia through her panties. Then itslid down her panties, over her clit and into her pussy. Two fingers stayed there, massaging her sensitive button with small wet circles. Her knees bent together and her back arched as if to keep the skillful hand at bay, but she pulled from herself a twitching orgasm and little puppy barks. Slowly she returned to us from her trance but she was still drugged by desire. She took two steps toward me, keeping her fingers inside of her. The blood pounded back into her bitten lip so that it hung swollen like a spring fuchsia.