The Seedbed

Anyone who finds this story slightly confusing might want to refer to my earlier entry The Gardener. Again, please vote and then comment.

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Hyacinth Coxcomb was having very strange dreams. Given the way things had gone yesterday, it was hardly surprising. She'd been sitting under her aunt's pergola, that morning, doing nothing more than watching the grapes ripen when her cell phone rang. To her considerable surprise it was Horatio Boxgrove, the middle-aged bachelor she was timidly pursuing. After a year and a half in which he never did anything more romantic than help her with her roses he suddenly invited her out for a day's punting on the marsh. Naturally she accepted at once and was waiting, sun bonneted and sun screened when Horatio's vintage Jaguar rolled up to the front gate. They drove back to his cottage, put a picnic basket into the punt and poled out into the dewy morning.

She was neither surprised nor disappointed when, instead of unpacking a mandolin and serenading her, he began a quiet, authoritative lecture on the fen ecosystem. This was Horatio. A gardener to the fingertips, his horticultural knowledge and passion were the pride of the village. Nowhere in the Fen District was there so successful a competitive grower of flowers and vegetables. He was—eccentric—and very dedicated to the well-being of rare flowers in the fen, common herbs and flowers in the village's gardens and the trees that lined the roads. Everyone around respected him but there was something beyond his intellect that appealed to Hyacinth. She thought it might be love.

The August sun sparkled on the water as they slid silently through hidden rivulets and came nearly within touching distance of some very surprised herons and ducks. Hyacinth was amazed. She knew Horatio only from his horticulture but now he showed her a side that possibly no one else had ever seen, that of a master of the fens and a naturalist able to blend invisibly into the wild. It was just a bit alarming, to believe that she knew him well and then to find out that she didn't.

By noon the high sun made it warm enough that Horatio recommended they find some shade for lunch and poled the punt over to the tip of the headland where the old Twerington Manor was crumbling into ruin. He pulled the small craft slightly up the bank and tied the painter to a stout stump. Then politely handing Hyacinth out on to dry land, he hefted the basket and led her into a grassy open spot among a grove of extremely healthy-looking trees. The potted meat was open, the rolls split and buttered and a bottle of Riesling uncorked when there was a rustle in the grass and out from the trees stepped a woman. She was possibly the most beautiful person Hyacinth had ever seen, perfect in face and hair and, it seemed, in the second trimester of pregnancy.

"Horatio," she exclaimed, "what a delightful surprise! And you brought company. My dear," she'd continued gliding over to take Hyacinth's surprised hand, "you must be Hyacinth. No, of course you don't know me, but your reputation precedes you. Call me Willow", and she gently kissed Hyacinth's cheek.

Standing up she called out "Come, everyone, Horatio is here and he brought Hyacinth, the one with the so-delicate touch."

At once the couple was surrounded and introduced to the crowd. Hyacinth was puzzled. No one seemed to have a last name or a title, only first names that were, without exception flowers or herbs. The women were named Iris and Rose, Saffron or Alder while the men, who rarely spoke, were called Basil or Sorrel, Linden or Chive. It was all very strange.

Horatio seemed quite at home among them and, given his normal reticence in the village, remarkably familiar, even affectionate. Not that Hyacinth was by any means a wallflower. The uniformly gravid ladies, who certainly were ladies of breeding, chatted companionably with her and seemed to know a remarkable lot about her. Quickly, Hyacinth was made to feel quite at home, too. By the time the shadows were lengthening and it seemed that Horatio should be working his way back to the punt the group instead all flowed up the steps and through the doors of Twerington. To Hyacinth's amazement, the interior of the old mansion was in far better condition than the exterior. It was as though someone preferred that the rest of the world continue to believe the place was abandoned when, in fact, it was lived in by quite a merry crowd. Drinks appeared, wine was poured, a lavish buffet presented and musicians entertained. It was well after dark that a tipsy Hyacinth was escorted up the stairs and into a luxurious guest suite. A hot bath and lavender-scented bed linen, along with the evening's strong vintages, put the girl quickly and soundly to sleep.

But now she dreamed. The people in the party changed before her eyes. Their clothing dissipated like mist in a breeze revealing the bodies of Greek immortals. The strangest thing was that they were green and where hair should grow, there was moss or foliage. Hamadryads! Wood nymphs! Smiling seductively, they took her hands, stroked her arms and face, and unfastened her clothing. Naked, Hyacinth danced with the nymphs and with Horatio. He guided her out the French doors and onto a velvet lawn where he took her in his arms and kissed her deeply, passionately. As he ran his hands over her trembling body, she felt as though she'd been struck with fever. The heat made her languid and she leaned back in his arms, pressing her hips against him.

He lifted her up and laid her on her back on a garden bench and knelt between her thighs, reaching around both the woman and the bench to pin her down tightly. She struggled excitedly and in her struggles came awake to find that she was indeed pinned down immovably.

An enormous epiphytic orchid was perched on top of her, its green-tipped roots wrapped around her, binding her in delicious helplessness to the sheets. Aghast, her eyes widened as a huge blossom opened and hovered over her virgin sex. The enormous stamen, its anther laden with pollen bent down and began to gently, sensuously stroke her labia. Hyacinth moaned. She could feel herself becoming first moist and then ravenously wet and bucked her hips up against it. She could not tell whether this was dream or reality but didn't care. All she knew was need.

The plant responded. Plunging deep into her body, it began to piston relentlessly up and down, in and out, the rhythm driving Hyacinth to higher and higher arousal. At last she screamed wordlessly in her new-found ecstasy and immediately fainted. When she awoke to a brilliant dawn, she was alone in the bed but the covers were kicked away and there was a suspicious golden powder decorating the sparse hair on her mons.

Hyacinth gasped and jumped out of bed to view herself in the full-length mirror. There in the silvered glass she saw the red marks where the roots had held her immobile, where they'd circled and squeezed her breasts. She saw, too, the sticky powder that adorned her thighs and her lower belly.

"I've been pollinated!" she gasped in realization.

"So you have, my dear little seedbed," a tall, green, nude woman stood in the bedroom door, "and so you will be again and again. It's only fair, Hyacinth, that a mortal woman should be plowed and planted just as we have been by a mortal man. Yes, Hyacinth dearest, we are carrying Horatio's children just as you will carry Orchid's. It is a little experiment in hybridization with the goal of extending the hamadryad range into more temperate regions. Congratulations, fertile one. You, too, will be the mother of the new species, just as we are. And the world will never be the same."

"Hamadryads? I thought you were just myths!"

"Never underestimate myths, child, they nearly always have a grain of truth in them. And don't look so pale. You will have Horatio to yourself for company. We will only need him in the spring. The rest of the year he's yours. Of course, we will need you in spring, as well. Fortunately, infant hamadryads are born as seeds and get planted. They require no rearing beyond water and sunshine. And here at Twerington they will get plenty of both and both of you will live out your very long lives. Cavorting with immortals has that affect, you know."

"I'm going to live here? With Horatio? Forever?" Hyacinth's emotions were boiling in conflict. She was being given Horatio but both of them were going to be used in breeding experiments. Twerington Manor was going to be theirs (and she could see it repairing itself through the window) but they couldn't leave. They would be young and live for centuries, perhaps, but at the beck and call of these strange beings.

"What if I refuse?"

The hamadryad chuckled deep in her throat. With a movement both languid and powerful she stepped up to the confused young woman, took her face in both hands and kissed her deeply. It tasted of vanilla and honey and seemed to go on for a long, long time. When the kiss broke Hyacinth was gasping for breath, and her pulse was pounding.

"You won't. You can't, not now. Before being pollinated there was a chance that you could but of course you didn't know then. Now, Hyacinth, you are ours. Come out into the garden."

She took Hyacinth's hand and led her downstairs. They stood on the front veranda of the mansion. As Hyacinth looked about her, the curling paint continued to fall away and the wood underneath grew new, healthy bark. Twerington was coming alive.

Hyacinth looked out over the fen to see an upside-down punt floating away.Everyone will think we've drowned, she thought.I'm marooned here, to be bred forever. Then a large, warm hand took hold of her bare buttock. She looked up to see a perfect, green, male face leering down at her. His other hand cupped her breast and twisted gently on her stiffening nipple. Electricity ran from the nipple down her torso and made her thighs quiver.I guess I could get used to it!