The Shimmering Ones

This story features my recurring characters. You can find their backstories in my older works.

Here along the lake shore, among the crowds and the bonfires, the night was muggy. The gaggle chattered, laughed, and all pretended to ignore the ritualists who prowled in threes among them.

It was a heroic effort. The servants of the Shimmering Ones were so very difficult to ignore.

Aerin's shirt clung to his skin. He nabbed a roast chestnut from a wooden tray and coasted towards the water where the crowd was thinner. There he bumped into a slim, blacked-haired boy, with nervous blue eyes.

"Hi, Aerin." The boy gave him a shy smile. Aerin made a noise and downed the chestnut.

"Lumi! Hey!" He looked at the boy's wrist. "Trying your luck?"

The boy blushed. "I guess. Haha."

The Shimmering Ones are insatiable. They want regular sacrifice.

They were attractive people, their ritualists. Their customary Gifting Night dress highlighted that. A headgear of deer antlers, field flowers, and pheasant feathers; a beaded necklace; bronze bracelets and anklets; hempen thread tied around the waist; pearly body paint; and nothing else, nothing at all to cling to the skin.

Different kinds of forest spirits feed on different things. The Shimmering Ones crave human pleasure.

On Gifting Night their ritualists would stalk lake shores in their ceremonial... attire, looking for someone to seize and drag off among the trees, to hold against the mossy stone altars, and see how much pleasure can be wrung out of them, to the satisfaction of the shimmering spirits.

One of those customs of Kontaria that was whispered of and disbelieved in more respectable lands.

It's the little traditions that made the Gifting Night so special. Like the idea to gather on those lake shores in throngs, which perhaps hinted that the generous Kontarians didn't mind being sacrificed from time to time. Or the threads that people tied around their wrists: a red one announcing you especially wouldn't mind being sacrificed by a band of male ritualists, a blue one the same for a female group.

Lumi fingered the two threads, one red and one blue, looping about his hand. He glanced wistful at Aerin's own, naked wrists.

"You're good now, though," he said. "Got yourself a steady girlfriend."

"Yeah. Strange, huh." Gifting Night for Aerin had always meant marking his wrist, showing up bright and hopeful, and ending up horny and disappointed and tipsy. It was indeed strange, to watch this festival with no personal stake. And this night felt even more intense than usual; it was still so soon after the war. The Kontarians were determined to defy the violence that they had to endure. They needed to prove to themselves that their shimmering endured undimmed.

"Man, I'm jealous. Everyone's jealous."

Aerin blinked.

"Everyone's jealous?"

"I mean. The thing you did?"

"I didn't really do much anything."

"Well, you kind of wooed a princess of an enemy kingdom, while their prisoner, got her to escape with you, and now you two get to live back here in Kontaria? That's just legendary stuff, man."

"It wasn't like that at all!" Aerin nervously rubbed his neck. "Gabrielle had to escape. They were going to marry her off, to Titulus the fucking Crow Feeder of all people. And... yeah, okay, turned out we really liked each other, but it's not like she ran away just for me. I was conveniently there!"

"Okay." This was just Aerin's little oddity, always managing to find ways to downplay himself. Lumi looked at him now, playful blue eyes and messy auburn hair and a smile that was especially winning when Aerin was embarrassed, just like now. Lumi thought that if he was a Princess of Harmen, he'd elope with Aerin in a heartbeat.

Aerin shook his head, and looked over the crowd. "Have you seen her by the way? I lost her somewhere."

"Actually, yeah, I think she went off towards the... piers..." Lumi trailed off. Three young men strolled, tiger-like, past them. Their leader's searching gaze brushed past Lumi, whose eyes dropped to the bare, muscular body. But the ritualist roved on, flung his hair away from his forehead, and suddenly seized an older woman who was standing to the side of a group of her friends, flung her over his shoulder, and carried her off to the woods, his two companions quietly following, the woman shrieking, her friends cackling like magpies.

Lumi sighed.

"There's thousands of people here and only three dozen ritualists like. This is hopeless."

Aerin shrugged. "There's always some hope, I've learned."

"Fia says that you should try to catch eye contact with them, but Leapfrog says that no, you should be looking away."

Aerin's gaze shot past Lumi's shoulder, and at once returned to him.

"You know, my great-uncle used to be a ritualist, and he says they're just following their whims. Like they let the Shimmering Ones decide for them, on the spot. And the Shimmering Ones want all sorts of orgasms from all sorts of people, so there's no system."

Lumi looked dejected. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."

"Anyway, good luck, I'm... I'm gonna look around and... I'm gonna..." Aerin's eyes wandered behind Lumi again, and his mouth twitched.

"You're gonna what...?"

A hand clamped down on Lumi's shoulder, so hard his voice twanged in his throat. Hot breath fell on his ear, and a low female voice crooned:

"A fit and shining offering."

And two other ritualists, strong and sturdy Kontarian girls, grabbed him under knees and swept him off his feet; and the first one caught him under his shoulders, and suddenly to his utter bewilderment he was being carried legs first through the crowd, past the bonfire, and into the dark woods.

Aerin was bent over with laughter. "Oh no, they got Lumi!" The captive boy slung his head back and his look was full of terror and delight. "We'll never forget your sacrifice man! You're a hero!"

The solemn procession disappeared among the trees. Aerin wheezed and ran his hand through his hair. There were so many good-looking naked bodies here, he was getting agitated. He needed to find Gabrielle.

*

There was a very small clearing among the old oaks, and there lay a single flat uncarved stone bathed in moonlight. They flung him onto it, and as the lead enchantress muttered out an ancient chant, in throaty Old Kontarian, her companions unceremoniously yanked his clothes from him, and he was confused on whether he wanted to resist it or not. But they weren't asking, and their fingers were very agile, and soon all he was left with were the threads tied around his wrist.

Someone's hands now pushed his shoulders to the cool stone. Flint clicked close by, and in the momentary thin flame light he saw clearly the three girls leaning down over him. His cock twitched, pointed at the sky. One ritualist patted it with her warm hand, and it swung stiffly side to side. There was an approving murmur.

Another dipped a bundle of wild sage in a stone bowl on the ground. "Enjoy this pretty treat which we bring to you," she said out into the night, and Lumi gasped as she sprinkled ice-cold water on his forehead, neck, down his chest and belly.

"What a squirmy boy," the ringleader laughed, and then lunged onto the stone and straddled his thighs, and her warm hands ran across his skin, blue in the moonlight and covered in goosebumps. She leaned down and drank away the small pool of water that had formed between his chest muscles. He recognized the girl, under the paint - her name was Efi, she was in daylight a carpenter's apprentice, and they'd talked once or twice and he rather fancied her and she seemed really sweet.

Now she looked down at him, moonlight stark on her crown of antlers and in her eyes, and soft on her breasts. She stroked his neck with her fingernail. His throat bobbed.

"Scared?" she purred. He swallowed.

"Nno," he said. His heart was hammering in his temples.

She cocked her head and smiled a bit, and then she took his cock in her hand and thumbed it absent-mindedly.

"Lying on the altar, yet still lying through your teeth. I'll make you atone for that."

He whimpered. She fondly ruffled his hair.

"Girls, this one's going to be so much fun."

*

The beach was strewn with thin bodies of fishing boats, down where the fire light gave way to the night. The lake was sparkling silver - except for one black gap, an enormous slender shape bobbing at the end of a wooden pier. Aerin glanced at it. A splitter. Must have sailed in after dark.

And there she was too, a barely visible, solitary figure seated on that pier. Even at distance and even at night, he knew her at once. His heart leapt, he hurried over.

As he got closer, he saw more detail - the blond hair he'd had to cut short during their escape, which was growing back nicely. Her linen sundress - she'd felt strange in them at first, after a lifetime in stately gowns, but had warmed up to them quickly.

But her bearing wasn't right. She was sitting slouched, her face hidden in her elbow. Maybe she was tired. But as he walked onto the pier, she lifted up her face and looked at the bonfires on the shore. Aerin stopped. Her eyes were shining. She wasn't crying, really. She barely ever cried. But she was clearly hurting, some suffering that she was trying to hide from everyone - including him, Aerin realised. He stopped. He wasn't at all sure what to do.

*

Lumi whimpered quietly as Efi took him, straddled atop his hips. Her companions explored him freely, their hands and mouths finding vulnerable nooks of his body. Efi watched him closely, noted every tremor. This was the trick. There's no one way to please every lover. Each is different. With time, they'll reveal themselves to you. But you need to watch and listen, follow the signs.

"Boy's so quiet," she said. "I bet we can make you scream for us."

The way he bit down on his smile, that was a sign.

*

Gabrielle remembered the book. A huge leatherbound and illustrated tome of religious poetry kept in her mother's chambers. Her favourite picture was the one with the little imps dancing around in hellfire. Even as a small girl she'd found it cheerful rather than scary.

It's the Kontarians who had reminded her of that, distant black figures bustling among the bonfires. The sound of drums bounced off the water's surface; the air was infused with pinewood smoke and juniper incense. The Kontarians celebrating their Shimmering Ones.

Our Shimmering Ones, she corrected herself. Us Kontarians. She sighed and rubbed her eyeballs. They'd accepted her with open hearts, she'd done the ritual and everything, there was no reason for this idiot feeling she had, there was no reason to—

She started. A plank creaked close by. Aerin approached her. Shit. The boy was trained as a scout. He walked like a cat. She shoved her thoughts away and fixed her face into a smile.

"Hey," she said, "check out this—"

He plopped down behind her, and engulfed her with his shoulders. He leaned his head against hers, and said nothing.

She tensed up. Yeah, he'd caught her. She tried to find something to say.

But it didn't seem like she was expected to say anything. There was just his presence, his quiet support. A silent minute passed, and at length he felt her muscles relax. She leaned back into him, and sighed. Together they watched the fires gleam.

"Went on a hike with old Uradech again today," she said at last. "Learning to tell the good mushrooms from the ones that kill you."

"Can I trust you with my life yet?"

"Not really. The milk caps are tricky." She paused. "His granddaughter went with us, too. She's like eight years old. Can already tell every sort at a glance. It's the same with everything I'm figuring out. Woodworking, preparing food, mending clothes - well, I guess at least I'd learned how to stich back in Harmen."

This wasn't new. For nineteen years she'd been a princess, of a great noble house in the Kingdom of Harmen, living in a palace and everything. Now she suddenly found herself in this great old forest that was most of Kontaria, and had to learn all the basics of everyday life. And constantly having to ask and be shown everything chafed at her pride an awful lot.

But this is not how she usually dealt with this. Some sarcasm, a bowl of rye wine, or a good hard fuck was her cure of choice. Not sitting alone on piers.

"I think you're doing good. You learn fast."

"I guess." She shrugged, turned her head to the ship at the end of the pier. "This is a... slider. No!" She raised her hand before he could correct her. "Sliders are the ordinary ones with one sail. The huge fuckers are called splitters, right?"

"There you go. Yeah, that's a splitter." Aerin looked at the carved horse head at the ship's prow. In the back, he could barely make out a single guard, leaning on her spear. The two triangular sails were rolled up now. The whole thing was a hundred and fifty feet long, ocean worthy, narrow and quick like a son of a bitch. "With good winds, it can make the two thousand miles to Akkand in ten days, you know?"

"Fuck. How did it even get up here through that tiny river?"

"The saying goes, a good captain will slide a splitter up a stream of piss."

She perked up.

"I wonder where it's been. Gods, it's just so cool. Seems like a forest in the middle of nowhere, but you're always just two weeks away from gnawing on fresh oranges, watching the caravans return the desert, and... don't you want to see it?"

"Yeah, I've been pestering Yngrin to send me the next time he has horses to ship!"

"I'm tagging along somehow. You know, this is so wild to me. Because Harmen's all inland. It's just carts and carriages trudging along cabbage fields between the same old towns..." She stopped. He felt her tense up again. "Fucking Harmen."

There was anger in her voice, unusual anger. He held her closer.

"Gabbie, what is it?"

"Nothing. Just pisses me off that I had to grow up there. All that court intrigue, and the angry religion, and the angry warrior culture, and you've got to marry well, and honour this, and honour that, and honour and respect and shame fucking everything, and..." She stopped herself, before her voice had a chance to break.

"Hey, it's okay. It's okay. You got away."

"I know, Aerin. It's just, sometimes..." A long moment passed. She really didn't want to say it. But still, it spilled out. "Sometimes, I miss it."

The splitter creaked, and bumped against the pier. There was a distant happy shout as the ritualists snatched another victim. Gabrielle looked back at Aerin, at his surprised face.

"I don't regret running away, fuck no. Everything is so much better here, even if I don't know any fucking mushrooms. It's just..." She slammed her hands on the boards. "I don't know. It's fucking stupid. I'm fucking stupid."

Her eyes shone, her lip curled. She was breathing fast. He rested his chin on her shoulder.

"Tell me," he said.

"Hm?"

"You left behind everything you had. Everything you knew. When you say you miss Harmen, what is it that you see? Tell me all about it."

She sat rigid, and didn't respond. It took a while to uncoil. But eventually she did, and she told him.

The blue slanted roofs and the spiky towers of her home Castle of Lhamedos. The linden alleyways in the grounds, and how they caught the morning light in July. The smell of freshly baked bread, and that old commoner woman who always used to give her its fresh end with fresh butter when she was very little. The capital city seen at night from the battlements of the Royal Castle, a million points of light divided through the middle by the black river. That one song that she really liked, the one that the minstrels always used to play at Lhamedos, and that played at the ball when she was first presented at the royal court and which then soothed her nerves with its familiarity, and which she'll now literally never hear played ever again. That tutor that was very kind, even though he did say that having impure thoughts would certainly lead her to hellfire. All the friends she'd made, all the boys she'd covertly fucked, some of whom she'd even actually liked. Princess Danielle of Lhamedos, Princess Elena of Lhamedos, the younger sisters she never really got to know well, and who probably would grow to despise her for the dishonour she brought to the family name. His Highness, Prince Berengar of Lhamedos. Her Highness, the Lady Arianne. Gabrielle had only realised it after she'd ran away, but... even after her conduct was discovered and they'd sent her to her confinement at Behem Castle... some part of her had always remained sure that one day, her parents and she would reconcile. That maybe one day they'd accept who she was. That there was a way back.

All of that only took a few minutes to say, but in the end, she was exhausted. She sniffed.

"It's a shit thing, Aerin, to love something that hates you."

His fingers brushed her hand.

"I mean... I think I get it. It was your place in the world."

She straightened up and pointed to the bonfires, to the free people who never gave even a passing thought to shame and honour.

"This is my place. Not fucking Harmen. This is all I could ever hope for, this is a happy ending I never imagined would come true, and still I get these feelings, I..." her fingers curled under his. "I fucking catch myself daydreaming that I'm somehow allowed to return there, like an ungrateful bitch. I fucking hate myself sometimes."

He grabbed her shoulders, turned her around to face him.

"I love you," he blurted out.

She slackened, completely.

"Oh," she said.

He hugged her hard. "I love you so much. You're amazing. You can't even help forgiving all the awful people that wronged you. I wish you weren't so hard on yourself. But I love you all the same, girl."

She let out a single choking breath. She waited a moment until she was sure of her voice.

"You know, when I daydream about Harmen..." He groaned.

"You're really going to leave me hanging there? Just gloss over what I said?"

"Aerin, gods damnit, will you let me finish?" He looked at her with reproach and sighed. For the first time that night, she genuinely smiled. "You know, when I daydream about Harmen, I never dream I just turned time back and went back there, just as it was. No, I imagine that... somehow I'm allowed to visit, and that you're allowed to come with me. And nobody wants... or maybe nobody can do anything about it. In my dreams I'm never alone, you're always there with me. I'm showing you around." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Otherwise these fantasies would be completely pointless, because, Aerin, I may love Harmen in some way, but I love you a lot more." Her eyes shot open, and she scowled at him. "There! Happy now? Fucking satisfied?"

He chewed on his smile. "Yes."

"'Just gloss over what I said?' I was crafting a wonderful courtly speech! The impatience of this boy—" He put his arm around her waist, shaking with stifled laughter.

"It was the best speech I've ever heard," he muttered.

"Pearls before swine!" She looked at him. They looked at each other, with glittering eyes. "Gods, I love you so fucking mugh-"

A kiss broke her off. A feverish, bloodthirsty kiss, a kiss that made them topple over and tumble on the boards, and clutch hair and knead flesh. She knelt back up and he had to follow her, as she was holding his lip in her teeth. Then they were swaying together, holding close.

"The gods are crazy" she said. "With one stroke they take all I had, and lavish me with the most amazing thing I've ever got."

"Yeah, Kontaria is pretty amazing. I'm sure—"

"I mean you, stupid. Of all the boys in Kontaria, I just chanced into the kindest and the soundest and the hottest one."