Myrtle and the First Meet

Myrtle turned over again on her straw mattress. Sleep was not coming to her tonight. The stifling air of midsummer was compressing her little cellar room, a suffocating force from outside. She felt she was sleeping less lately than some of her friends who had husbands, and who wryly complained to her over laundry baskets of their nocturnal duties.

Something always had held her back from marriage; not any kind of disdain toward the life of a wife and mother per se, but more something as yet unrealised, palpable, that often bristled within her as she lay in her cot at night. A difference. An affinity with something she could not yet identify. Her suspicion as to what this was both terrified and exhilarated her. Certain others around her seemed to perceive this simmering force. Always women, always unspoken. The owner of the apothecary, Freida, always seemed to hold her gaze a little too firmly each time she went to pick up father's salve. Daisy, who brushed and mucked out the horses at the Lord's great house on the Hill, would often give her an indecipherable smile when passing her on the Mainway. In the previous week, Myrtle had gone to pick up some shoes for father's carthorse from the blacksmith's wife. As she reached for the shoes, the two women's fingers briefly touched; and Myrtle felt sure that for a split second, the iron had lit up and felt hot. She had lifted her eyes to meet the wife's, and seen something unsaid there; but it lasted only a fraction of a second before that woman had bid her goodnight and turned back into her workshop.

This momentary connection had caused something deep in Myrtle's innards to stir, and that whole hot night it flowed through her. She tossed and turned in her wooden cot, feeling as if liquor was coursing in her veins, but knowing she had imbibed nothing. Restless, in the smallest and darkest hours, Myrtle had risen and thrown her cloak over her sturdy form. She had crept from her cellar room beneath the alderman's one-room cottage and office, departing light-footed through the swinging gate onto the Mainway. She felt compelled, despite the nonsense of it, to visit Sabine, the blacksmith's wife.

Down the cobbled Mainway in the light night breeze, and left at the waypost, she slunk. Reaching the whitewashed South side of the blacksmith's home, Myrtle passed through the gate like a phantom, and approached the workshop door. Whatever force had guided her in her spectral approach now assured her that the workshop, not the main house, was where Sabine would be waiting to receive her.

She pulled the door handle towards her and beheld the workshop interior, lit, as had been her intuitive expectation. The light was soft, from candles. Sabine sat on a log stool at the smith's bench, an array of minerals before her. She did not look up at Myrtle's entrance, but smiled.

"You heard our Call."

Myrtle watched her delicately brushing through some black, gleaming powder with a small horsehair implement.

"It was you?"

"Not only me. All of us. We've been planning your Call for some months now, you know."

Sabine stood, her tall frame obscuring the candlelight from the raised mantle behind her. Powders in the colours of jewels stained the leather apron she wore, and Myrtle noticed with an odd feeling that she wore nothing beneath the workwear.

"You know what I'm speaking of, Myrtle. Something is within you that needs to be awakened. You are not the first woman in this parish to inexplicably delay offers of marriage. We watch when that happens."

Myrtle felt a lump in her throat, and swallowed with difficulty. "Yes. I know what you mean...and it's why I came...but who...are you?"

Sabine's grin widened. "What do you mean? You've known me since we were girls."

Myrtle could see this obscurity was deliberate. Sabine began to walk towards her, wiping her powdery hands on the leather apron as she approached, her grin kindly and knowing.

"Well, let's get on with it. We have an invitation for you. Have you heard legends of...nocturnal meetings in the Copse?"

Myrtle nodded slowly, but felt fear rise in her stomach. Who had not? But these were folktales only. Folktales that surely could not be true - of behaviour that would attract the Inquisitors. Ecstasies of dancing, divining, and charming...

Sabine, standing a few feet in front of her, seemed to register her trepidation. To Myrtle's chagrin, she chuckled. "Don't be afraid. It has been happening for hundreds of years. The churchmen can't behold us; they can't enter the wood during a meet. They lose their way and get spat out with no recollection of their original purpose."

This clearly caused Sabine some mirth. She continued to chuckle as she gathered up a small, earthen dish from the workbench. Myrtle could see more glittery, dark powder within, and wondered whether Sabine was going to use it to write some sort of letter for her.

"What is that?" she ventured.

Sabine approached her, standing close in the warm light, and removed another small brush from the pocket of her apron.

"This? This is a mineral conduit. It will awaken parts of you to the Energy that you will receive more of at the meet."

Myrtle felt nonplussed. Sabine dipped the brush, almost tenderly and with reverence, into the dish, then tapped it gently on the edge to dislodge a cake of powder. A strange heat seemed to emanate from the brush tip, which Sabine held inches from Myrtle's heavy cloak.

"Are you ready to receive it?" Sabine's direct question took Myrtle aback, and, mystified, she simply nodded once more.

"Excellent." Purred Sabine. "Open your cloak."

Myrtle froze. "I --"

"I know, Myrtle," whispered Sabine with her enduring grin.

Myrtle forced herself to swallow again. She lifted her hands to her cloak clasp and popped it open. Unnerved, yet with an increasing feeling of compulsion, she slowly pulled the heavy wool back from her shoulders, exposing her bare body beneath. Sabine's eyes lit on her ponderous breasts, always a source of self-consciousness. Myrtle tried to stand slightly bent at the waist, so her pubic mound would recede into shadow in the dim light.

Sabine appraised her, still with a kindly smile, and perceived her slight movement.

"Yes. Don't be so shy...you will be showing that off soon anyway, in celebration."

Before Myrtle could digest this matter-of-fact statement, Sabine was inches from her face, and raising the powdery brush. She brought it to Myrtle's left breast, and in a tortuously light movement, brought it down across the nipple. Myrtle gasped. The powder was emanating a heat that felt almost like a sting on her hyper-sensitive skin. She cried out in pain, but quickly the sensation gave way to something totally alien. A white hot feeling of pressure enveloped her nipple. It began to throb and tingle. Sabine drew the brush across to the right nipple, and the feathery touch imparted the same hot powder on this side of her body. The pain again caused her to yelp, and Sabine caressed her shoulder with her free hand. "It's okay, just wait a few seconds...you'll feel the pleasure of the Energy."

Myrtle looked down at her engorged nipples, the grains of the hot black mineral caking on her skin. Her breathing had become rapid at the initial stinging sensation, and the pace was maintained as she began to feel her nipples taken over with a creeping feeling of exquisite sensitivity. Her expression melted into slack passivity and her eyes shone. Sabine took hold of the heavy cloak's outer folds and drew it back across Myrtle's bare breasts, popping the clasp ends back into place. And closing her eyes, the blacksmith's wife began to whisper in a strange tongue. Her hands moved in from Myrtle's shoulders towards the protruding lumps of her inflamed nipples. Ever so gently she rubbed her palms over the fabric, pressing it very slightly into the awakened skin. Myrtle gasped. The feeling of pleasurable pressure was enormous. She comprehended the Energy at once; it poured from, and through, the glands of her body, filling her veins, and flooding her extremities. It reached her vagina and clitoris, awakening these organs as if they were sentient; fluid flowed from within her onto her inner thighs.

Far too suddenly, Sabine's palms were removed, and she was looking into Myrtle's eyes inquiringly. "You are awakening now," she assessed, looking satisfied.

Myrtle regained her conscious vision, perceiving Sabine's face still before her. Her breathing slowed, but the flush persisted on her freckled cheeks.

"Is it magic?"

"Yes, that is what some would call it. There is so much more for you to feel, and celebrate, with your divine body, Myrtle. Come to the next meet in the Copse. Our sisters will be delighted to witness your initiation."

"What will I have to do?"

"We will guide you. Come on Midsummer's Eve. You will be led by the Energy, you won't get lost. Nothing in the forest will harm you. Come with your skin bare. We will all welcome you. Goodnight."

Myrtle felt herself guided gently to the workshop door by Sabine's hand in the small of her back. She turned on the threshold and whispered thanks to Sabine, who smiled in her genuine way again, before closing the heavy door behind her.

Myrtle felt unreal on her silent walk home, again convinced the unseen force she had just felt was smothering the sound of her movement; nobody walked on the Mainway, but the few cats she passed did not even seem to hear her coming.

She passed through the alderman's gate and through the cellar door, into her familiar little lodging. Standing before her cot, she unclasped her cloak and let it fall to the floor. She was confused to see that the dark powder had vanished from her nipples; yet, they remained almost bizarrely swollen, a dark pink colour stark against the whiteness of her breasts. She lay in her cot and slowly drifted into sleep, feeling a convergence of confusion, anticipation and a deep certainty that something that was profoundly hers was going to come into her possession this Midsummer's Eve. Her dreams were a fabulous display of forest imagery, imbued with the beauty and power of nature; and her coverlet brushed against her engorged, charmed nipples as she slept, conjuring unconscious ecstasies.

*

Myrtle crept gingerly into the clearing. Her heart was beating at a thunderous pace, which surely would belie her. She had agreed to come to this wild place, yet trepidation was tugging at her very feet as she placed them, one after the other, on the plush grass. They're surely here already, she thought. As I emerge timidly from between the trees...they will be viewing from behind the thick black trunks around the perimeter.

Myrtle continued to walk forward over lush Summer groundcover. Her bare body was brushed by the gentle Southerly breeze as it whispered through the Copse. Or was that something else whispering? She reached the centre of this wide glade. The bright moon, eclipsed throughout so much of the dense English forest by a foreboding canopy, beat down boldly in this open space like a cosmic sentinel. She stood nude, breasts trembling and nipples keen, in the night air, and waited for the rendezvous to begin.

I am absolutely mad, she realised with alarming clarity. Myrtle knew the absurdity, the danger of what she anticipated was going to happen. At least, she was certain there was to be some illegal activity undertaken in this clearing on this Midsummer's Eve. Daughter of the alderman, she knew what risk she took. He would not be able to protect her if she were discovered here, though he himself was not a dogmatic man; he privately aided her in deflecting various proposals of marriage, despite her advanced age of twenty-four. Images of a smoking stake loomed on the inside of her eyelids momentarily, causing her to perceive a sudden chill against her skin. But she remembered the purring words of Sabine in the smith's workshop. Neither churchmen, nor presumably men of the law, could stumble across this magical place when a meet was occurring.

Standing exposed in the breeze, she began to feel the eyes of her concealed audience. She had known they would be awaiting her; yet she felt a sudden shame at her nakedness. She did not know who Sabine's "sisters" were. Who was perceiving her there? She might have suspected some elaborate joke, if she was not able to so clearly feel, with some sort of keen sense, that the unseen force she had felt in the workshop those few nights ago was thrumming away strongly in this clearing.

A sudden voice made her stumble backward.

"You have come, Myrtle. We've awaited you for some time now."

The voice had a very familiar deep tone, a woman's voice. It was rich, velvety and melodious, and had a seductive force that Myrtle felt was here supplemented by some unseen craft. She could not place it, though she realised this was a person she knew from somewhere -- a thought which made her feel an edge of fear. She looked directly to the opposite side of the Copse, from whence it was issuing. Its origin was hidden by the dense darkness between two enormous tree trunks.

"We need to view you properly before the initiation begins," lilted the disembodied voice.

"Please lie on your back."

Myrtle, trembling despite herself, slowly bent and lowered herself to the grass, dewy but warm against her skin. She felt bizarre to be lying prone, naked, on the Earth, yet down here the benign force thrummed its loudest. It caused her to relax.

"Good. Now bring up your knees to your chest, and part your legs."

Myrtle was alarmed, but knew this process was to lead her to enlightenment, to the intangible something that she'd always wanted to acknowledge inside herself. She did as she was bid, holding her milky white knees right up to her chin, and spreading her legs apart. She felt wide open, and exposed, in the most exhilarating way, to her unseen audience. She was keenly aware of her slow breathing, her relaxed body, caressed by the warm wet grass beneath her, as she began to hear whispers from the entire circumference of the clearing. The unseen viewers were examining her sex. She could not make out any of the words they used, but thought she caught some muffled, appreciative laughter.

After only a minute or two -- though Myrtle felt oddly refreshed, as if she had been meditating for much longer -- the voice arose again from across the clearing.

"Very lovely, Myrtle. You will make an excellent sister. We will now begin the rite. Please stand and ready your hand."

Myrtle stood as bid; however, she did not understand the instruction about her hand. She held it ready at her side, presuming she would be required to hold something, or perhaps offer blood from it. To her surprise, a figure stepped forward from the darkness opposite her, and she perceived the origin of the voice. Her eyes widened.

Walking toward her was the village grocer. Her name was Hanna, and she was known to be the most humble of women, never with much conversation to offer; but Myrtle recognised her low voice, now enriched by some charm. She was walking slowly forward in a stately manner that Myrtle had never witnessed her use before, and Myrtle registered that Hanna, oddly, must be a sister of high importance at the meet. Hanna wore no clothing. Her skin gleamed in the moonlight, her torso more than her tanned arms, her breasts bouncing lightly as she stepped. The thicket of curly hair between her legs gleamed; it had been cut back from the lips of her vulva, which Myrtle regarded with a sudden blush.

Hanna stopped some twenty feet from Myrtle and smiled, throwing her arms wide. "Come out, sisters!" she called in her beautiful, rich voice.

Myrtle's mouth fell open as she watched a large group of nude women emerge from the dark outer edge of the Copse. Very many of them were familiar to her. She felt her eyes widen as she witnessed shopkeepers, devout religious women, and laundresses she knew from around the parish take small steps forward, and form a wide circle around her. All were utterly naked in the night air. Breasts of all kinds moved with the steps of their bearers, some dainty ones almost imperceptibly, some full ones lolling heavily. The women were of different ages, but all between about eighteen and fifty summers, and all strikingly beautiful in their nudity. Myrtle's eyes lingered on the curvy, full and mature body of the local headmistress, before they moved to her immediate neighbour; Myrtle saw it was Sabine, the blacksmith's wife, giving her a knowing smile and a slight nod. On Sabine's left was a small group of young milkmaids, in their nineteenth year, hired recently up at the Lord's house. They stood sheepishly, slender bodies and small breasts pert in the breeze, peering at Myrtle from beneath their eyelids. She guessed these were fairly new initiates.

Hanna regarded her with the same welcoming smile, and spoke again.

"I see you looking at the beautiful bodies of our sisters. We meet here frequently to celebrate the sensations that the Energy blesses us with, as its daughters. The first stage of the initiation requires you to give pleasure to all our sisters, in order from most humble to most esteemed, to show that you are willing to indulge in these blessings with sisters of all ranks. I will tell you what to do. Are you ready to begin?"

Myrtle processed this information, and felt her body begin to tingle. She had longed, since that night at Sabine's home, to feel the bliss of the Energy in that erotic way again. Her nipples had remembered the legacy of Sabine's charm for about two days, jolting her with pleasure whenever they brushed fabric, only slowly losing their engorgement. Was this the essence of the Energy, the force that flowed within her, and that the sisters would teach her to manipulate?

"Yes," she croaked, wrestling with an embarrassing feeling of arousal that was rapidly making itself known. A heavy blush appeared on her cheeks and a momentary panic struck. Would this large audience see her arousal? Against her will, she felt her nipples harden. Her vagina became moist and tingled with anticipation.

Hanna spoke in a knowing tone. "Yes, you are ready. Begin, sisters."

One by one, the women in the circle moved to form a widely-spaced line. Myrtle saw the group of milkmaids in the front, nerves and excitement clear in their eyes. They approached Myrtle, and stopped when the first maid, dark-hair falling about her shoulders, was directly in front of her. Hanna spoke up, obscured behind the queue of women.

"Take her rosebud in your fingers and pleasure it. Only a few seconds."

Myrtle did not understand. Rosebud? But it became clear by the way the maid before her moved. She opened her legs slightly and stood in anticipation, smiling shyly. Myrtle suddenly understood. The button was the tiny organ that women did not speak of, but caressed gently in their cots. The source of the most profound pleasure. Myrtle felt her arousal become pronounced as she comprehended this young woman's sex. She must have been a few years ahead of her in parish school, but didn't remember her. Myrtle, who usually had looked with quiet lust on the young men of her village, had on occasion felt a confused arousal when regarding the women. Here in this Copse, it did not feel unnatural at all, but the thrill of what she was about to do, and the idea that she was to be inducted into a sisterhood who could freely indulge in such proclivities, caused her to shudder with anticipation. Slowly, she lifted her hand, and reached forward to the downy pubic mound of the maid before her. She touched the silky lips of her vulva, and the young woman shivered, but appeared to be trying to maintain stoicism in the face of pleasure - which must have been what was required of her. Myrtle slipped her fingers between the lips and marvelled at the sensation of moving velvet. She delved into the warm folds, searching for the clitoris. She knew she had found her quarry when her thumb and forefinger gently pinched the round hood of skin. She could feel the swollen gland beneath. The maid before her breathed in sharply, but maintained eye contact. Myrtle felt a warm joy at the sensation of serving, giving pleasure, in this very public way. She rolled the sensitive bud between her forefinger and thumb several times, causing it to swell and pulsate. When she removed her hand after about ten seconds, the swollen rosebud was visible outside the lips of the vulva. The maid grinned at Myrtle, eyes wet with pleasure, and walked away to retake her position in the circle.