The Alder King

The air tastes different now that it's autumn. It's crisper somehow, full of the promise of ripeness and decay. I sigh out a lungful and my breath catches at the end. Tears well at the corners of my eyes. There's a palpable melancholy on the cemetery grounds. The silence is so perfect it's as though the world has been muted. I hesitate at the top of the steps, not sure if I'm really existentially prepared to be in public right now.

Richard puts his palm gently on my shoulder. His empathy is so finely tuned it can detect metal.

"You okay, Ag?" he asks, using that soothing, slightly patronizing tone he uses with frightened cats. I'm not offended.

"Yeah," I say. "I'm fine. Just, y'know. Everything." I don't have to say it. Richard knows all my pathos. The Bruce breakup, quitting school, the panic attacks. He can hear me crying through the the ceiling of his apartment. He knows when I'm fighting with my mom about living up to her ideal of womanhood. He knows how much I still love Bruce even through the red wrath of heartbreak. At one in the morning Richard has, more than once, gotten out of bed, dethawed a pint of Halo Top, and brought it upstairs for me.

"It'll be okay," he says. "Hey, c'mon, let's deface an imperialist's grave. That'll make you feel better."

Bellefontaine Cemetery is a stately boneyard in north St. Louis, a very old place steeped in ambiguous history. Richard has dragged me here. He has kicked down my door and pulled me out of bed, prodded me into my shower to wash the stink of depression off, wrestled me into his old reliable Honda, and hauled me here, insisting the fresh air will do me good.

I'm grateful, really, even though I think it's a fruitless endeavor. He's trying to be a good friend. But this excursion is more for his benefit than mine. He wants to spit on William Clark's grave. He's got a revolutionary streak to him. Richard would have flourished in Russia in 1917 or France in 1789.

It's as much arboretum as graveyard. Amongst the placid stillness of oaks and alders are scattered stark stone monoliths which mark the final resting places of such notable figures as Adolphus Busch (prodigious drinker), Sarah Teasdale (depressed poet), and William S. Burroughs (notorious killer). Captain Clark, explorer of the west and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Missouri Territory, is in the Northwest corner.

Richard consults the map he obtained at the welcome center from a kind, elderly volunteer, unaware of my friend's ulterior motives. He says of Clark, "You know he signed more Indian treaties than anyone in history? And broke them, naturally."

I stop, and Richard gets ten feet down the stone footpath before he realizes I'm not with him. He turns back and looks at me, cocking his head to one side, concerned. Richard wears glasses with a thick blue frame. His straw-colored beard is close-cropped, his neck freshly shaved. There is always a prepossessed air about him, from his pressed shirts to his cuffed trousers. Before he moved in with Caleb, Richard was a debonair man about town, often seen pensively smoking a cigarette outside the 3:00 am bars in the Grove.

"What's the matter?" he asks. "Afraid we'll get caught?"

"Nah," I say, although I am a little nervous about the ponderous, mustachioed security officer we saw on the way in, his pants weighed down by heavy belts lined with tactical pouches. "I don't hate Clark like you do, man. I kind of like him, actually."

"Really?" asks Richard. He seems genuinely surprised, like his position was universal. "What's to like?"

I shrug. I don't feel like arguing. "I dunno. I just wanna walk a little. Clear my head."

Richard opens his mouth, spooling up a practiced lefty diatribe on the nature of power and imperialism, but thinks better of it. That's how good of a friend he is, letting me get away with anti-woke positions like affection for William Clark, a man who if nothing else knew how to stay alive despite unfathomable hardship. If I had been alive in 1804 I probably would have died of cholera.

We part ways. I feel oddly wistful as I walk the lanes between monuments. There's a psychic weight in the air as thick as the midwest humidity which lingers well into fall.

Music cuts through the silence, a muffled pianissimo amplified to a racket by the pervasive quiet it shatters. It's coming from a shallow dell where a copse of trees cluster close together, shading the source from view. Someone is playing a yearning, sentimental waltz on a pan flute. It makes me think of a drifting bird separated from its flock, its quavering courage a fraction away from despair. Frozen in place, I listen, stunned by the eerie sadness of it, awed by the skillful, evocative performance.

The music pulls me in like a lodestone. I'm a sliver of iron helplessly attracted. The conscious, paranoid portion of my brain wonders if there's a psycho in the dell waiting to stab me, like a bizarro, metropolitan siren. But the music, so lilting and gentle, couldn't be the work of a psycho. Probably.

Wind whispers through the leaves as I slip between the trees. In a cozy space at the bottom of the hill, where dappled light filters between the shady canopy, I see the musician reclining against the fissured bark of a black alder. He stops playing and lowers the seven-piped flute from his lips.

His eyes are so green they seem to reflect the grass and leaves around us. His face is strong-featured, lips wide and expressive, handsome in a primal way. A long mane of thick black hair falls around his face and down his back, braided with twigs and stems and acorn caps. A majestic rack of antlers protrudes stag-like from atop his head, curling into ten sharp points. Nestled on his brow is a diadem of pliant wood twisted around holly leaves and glossy shards of bark. His skin is a rich tan, like fresh earth. His arms are corded with muscle, his bare chest thick with the same dark hair. Standing, I see he is very tall, towering over my own five and a half feet. He is also naked, and despite the dark fur at his hips and thighs, his eminent manhood is clearly visible.

I am too afraid to speak, too lost in the hypnotic green of his eyes to run away. The musician smiles, showing me rows of perfect white teeth. His canines are very sharp, a predator's. He speaks to me in a language that sounds extremely weird, the syllables and consonants mashing together in ways I'm not accustomed too. His voice is baritone and sonorous. Seeing that I don't understand, he frowns, and tries again in another tongue. This one sounds more real, emphatic with rolling consonants, but I still don't get it. It sounds like German or Dutch, maybe.

The musician grows frustrated and snorts out his nose. He puts a hand on his chest, indicating himself, and speaks slowly. I don't get it, but it sounds like this:

"Ehr-ahl-koh-neg."

I repeat the phrase back to him, and he nods, smiling. Then he holds out his hand, palm up, long fingers towards me. He wants my name. I hesitate to give it so easily, like it's something to be guarded jealously, but as he crooks a finger my voice rises helplessly from my throat.

"Agatha."

He nods and says my name to himself, rolling the syllables around. I get that sensation like being on a roller coaster when the bottom falls away from you. I am weightless, plummeting towards the unknown.

"Agatha!"

It's Richard's voice this time, cutting through the dell, shattering the moment of terror. I spin to look for him, and a ferocious wind whips up around me. Stray yellow leaves, the first to fall, lift from the ground in a whirl. My hair blows across my face. There is a rushing in my ears. I feel dizzy and my feet tangle up with one another. The blanket of grass cushions my fall and I inhale the fresh, clean scent.

Richard grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me upright. He shakes me like a rag doll and my eyes fly open. There is genuine concern on my generally sardonic friend's face and it makes me uncomfortable.

"I'm fine," I mumble.

"What happened?"

I don't tell him, of course. My head is stuffed full of cotton. I decide that I probably passed out. The musician was a product of light-headedness triggered by poor nutrition. "I didn't eat breakfast today. I think I fainted for a second."

I push Richard's sympathetic arms away more vehemently than I need to. He clucks his tongue, sighs performatively, and stands up, swatting the dirt from his trousers. When I try to stand my legs are wobbly, like the first time you get up after lying sick in bed all weekend. I can feel Richard, with pursed lips, silently diagnosing my admittedly fraught condition, though he kindly keeps any cutting remarks to himself.

"Did you do it?" I ask to change the subject. "Spit on Clark's grave?"

"Alas, no," he says. "Too many sycophants around. Another time."

I get my bearings and we leave, not taking the path now but zig-zagging among the tombstones in an attempt at a shortcut. We don't really talk on the way out. Richard is still sulking about me pushing him away, but I know he'll get over it.

The pan flute's slightly sad melody echoes in my skull while we walk. I envision the tall musician whose hypnotic green eyes coaxed my name from my lips. I begin to doubt my passing-out hypothesis.

Ehr-ahl-koh-neg. I repeat that phrase to myself, not understanding, but not wanting to forget.

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

I'm exhausted from talking to mom on the phone. The cats are being extremely naughty. Gideon has vomited up his supper, Horace is tearing up the couch, and Penelope insists on bonking my ankles incessantly. I give in and fill their dishes with more food. The cat situation is admittedly growing untenable.

Mom still thinks Bruce and I should get back together. She thinks I should re-register for classes in the spring. I don't know how I can convince her that it's not going to happen, that Bruce is the one who left, that I'd rather eat strychnine than go back to pursuing a Masters in Accounting, that I'll die before I get my CPA license. Tonight's conversation was nothing new. I'm not even crying about it. I'm not even really angry, either. Just drained.

My pillows are nice and cool. I like to leave the window open beside my bed, the one that faces the alley. I snuggle into them hard, shutting my eyes and trying not to think about Bruce. He makes me furious. So smug, so judgmental, so superior. But despite everything, I still want him.

Not for his body, really. He isn't

that

handsome. His face is nice, his chin square, his beard well-manicured, but he's sort of doughy in the midsection. No, it's his wit, his charm, his confidence. His willingness to demand what he wants from me, my willingness to comply.

Fuck. Now I'm cranked up, and only one thing will do. A book I read once called it "the easement of spinsters." Possibly

Cold Mountain

. I always liked that phrase. I guess I'm a spinster now -- nearly thirty, unmarried, in need of easement.

I slide my pajama bottoms down beneath the sheets. I'm lying on my side, curled up almost fetal, my right hand tucked between my legs. My clit thrums when I brush against it. I'm picturing Bruce behind me, his hard erection pressed into my lower back while he touches me. He tells me to come. I do, crying release into the pillow.

Now I'm sweaty and panting in the aftermath. I feel sort of embarrassed. I need to get up and brush my teeth, but I never make it that far. I fall asleep.

In my dream my pajama bottoms are still missing. I'm only wearing a thin flannel top. It's chilly among the alder trees. A narrow path leads between them, welcoming yellow lights hanging from branches. Allegro violin music emanates from a small cottage with a thatched roof. Smoke puffs from a chimney. A wooden door opens a crack.

Without seeming to walk at all, I'm at the cottage door, peering in. It's a single room, with a crackling hearth, hand-carved chairs and board, game hanging from hooks in the rafters, root vegetables gathered in a basin, honed knives gleaming on a rack.

He is here, as I knew he would be. The musician. Ehr-ahl-koh-neg. He plays a bespoke violin, fashioned from the alders and carved with the patterns of root and leaf. Other instruments line a shelf: his pipes, a drum made of dried elkskin stretched over wood, a spiralling ram's horn.

He smiles when he sees me, showing those white and perfect teeth. He lowers the violin from his neck and beckons me to come closer. On his table is a pitcher of mead that he pours for us. He crooks a finger beckoningly, drawing me closer, putting a cup in my hand. I drink deeply of the draught. It's sweet and sticky and warms my belly.

We don't speak. It's like I've forgotten how. Words aren't necessary. I have no modesty and neither does he. We look at each other with unvarnished want. He admires my Donald Duck, shirt-and-no-bottoms aesthetic. My tiny nipples poke tents in the pajama top. I admire his confident nudity, an enlightened lack of clothes. He wraps his strong arms around me, folds me against him. I bury my face in the thick hair of his chest, inhale his musk. I feel his member swelling against my thigh. I'm absolutely drenched.

I look into his eyes, so rich and green, an endless forest behind them. Their timeless depth is mysterious and unsettling. They're a viridian sinkhole. He blinks slowly, runs his tongue along his pristine teeth and expressive lips. He smiles wolfishly.

He makes a space between us and runs the back of his hand down the side of my face, across the valley of my breasts, gliding down my belly. He cups my sex, making me gasp. One of his long fingers slips easily inside me. I grab his thickening manhood with both hands and squeeze.

My knees quiver as he adds a second finger, pointer and middle now, crooking into a come hither motion. I find his taut balls and caress them gently. His erection has grown tremendous and waves through the air like a dandelion stalk. The musician gropes my breasts and ass alternately with his free hand. The butt of his palm massages my clit. He presses at my body like the tone holes on his pipes.

I'm so close. I crank his cock with both hands. His fingers stoke my cunt to boiling. We come at the same time, and suddenly my voice is restored. I bury my face in his chest and cry out. He spurts his cum onto my belly abundantly. His fingers dig trenches in my supple ass. When I'm almost spent he slides his fingers from my sheathe and brings them to my mouth. He watches me suckle and clean them, revelling in the taste of myself.

He grabs my face in both hands. "Agatha," he says in his rich, melodious voice. Then he kisses me, bending low to reach my face. It's a possessive kiss, insistent, his tongue easily breaching the threshold of my mouth. He tastes like bergamot. I feel lost, dizzy, going limp in his grasp. My eyes droop shut.

A sharp pain in my neck snaps my alert. I scream incoherently. Gideon is beside me, staring hungrily at my face. Fresh blood is on my neck from his claws. Morning light streams through my window. I'm a sweaty mess, my sheets absolutely soaked. I feel groggy and lethargic, like I haven't slept at all.

My phone vibrates. It's Richard, checking that I'm okay. I text back a terse assurance and toss the phone aside. Red numerals flash on my bedside clock radio: 6:30. I've got work in an hour. I flop out of bed and crawl to the bathroom, using the sink to lever myself into a standing position.

I look positively dreadful. My black hair is matted with sweat and standing on end. The flannel shirt is so wet it's practically transparent. My rosy nipples are painfully hard. I poke one testingly and flinch, recalling my dream-tryst with diamond clarity. My sex warms at the memory. There's a silvery sheen on my tummy. I touch it curiously.

My hand comes away sticky.