Mummers' shall Play

The man and woman were young -- so terribly terribly young.

And their love for one another was equally youthful. Merely hours old it had already given birth to laughter and a thousand kisses. Each touch was now a burst of passion and every caress bespoke of insatiable lust and carnal desire.

Spring, that time of lovers had begun and it had graced the night with warmth. Pleasant scents of flowers, new grass, and the odd reek of wild onion rose up to them with their every step. While behind them, in the near distance, the fiery sparks of the bonfire rose to caress the moon and make jealous the pale stars. They blazed so quickly those sparks. Like the lover's passion they burned.

The blanket was old, smelled faintly of horse and hay, but it was soft enough to pad the ground and keep away the growing damp from their skin. The midnight hour was upon the impassioned youths and that still distant dawn had not yet given its warmth to chase away the mists. Like silent mournful ghosts still draped in funeral white the velvety fog crept about the edges of the tree line. The old mossy oaks seemed to shiver delightfully at that touch.

Upon their blanket, amid the night-bloomed flowers and tickling weeds, under the open heavens, the young lovers began to shed clothing. With a careless abandonment, they disrobed, making light of the risk of eyes being upon them. They knew that the others at the party were equally unabashed about giving themselves to the pleasures of the flesh and sweet wine, and so they paid no heeded thought to watching eyes.

But not all the eyes that watched were so innocent.

Above the frantic pair, the clock of the sky turned and -- to eyes that can read such a celestial timepiece -- the last moments till midnight passed with nary a whisper.

Though not without a whimper.

Within their nest of shed cloth the young lovers joined body to body in a wild abandonment of concerns. Worries that they would, perhaps, both regret in the days and weeks to come but which, for the moment, they cared nothing for. Tongues sought tongues, and hands wrestled with hands. Bodies, soon slick with passion-sweat, moved with a slick caress against each other and the ancient rhythms began. From times immortal the simple cadence of sex, handed down in the very blood and bones of the offspring it formed, was taken up and helped to pace their hearts beating and their breaths gasping.

Within the edge of the trees, a figure stood watching. It only watched.

For now.

But all around it younger creatures -- though most were still ancient by the measure of the petty dominance of time so loved by mankind -- began first to smile, then to softly giggle. At first, one, and then another, and soon all of them were creeping forwards, hidden with fingers of fog. They caught hold of the wet mist and pulled it along with them. First one, then another, and soon all began to dance. Twas the mummer's dance of the old times. Steps not known to mortals now, but taught to them long ago on such spring nights.

This night of merry fools.

So rare and special a night.

With moans of pleasure that sounded so similar to pain as to reminisce the torturing of saints, the lovers gave vent to their animalistic passions. Gone now were the gentler emotions. Love, that tenderness and pleasant drape had been tossed off like their clothing and they were now en-wrapped in the binding of lust's demands. Passion gave way to self-need and the desire to share became the desire to take. A harder thrust met a snap of curved hips. A biting nibble was challenged by raking nails. Words of love became demands for speed.

Thus carnally entwined the young lovers did not notice the dancers. Be-ringed they soon were, in merriment and soft laughter. Surrounded by beings that both celebrated their lustful union and fed upon the heightened emotions they gave forth, so uncaring of the voyeurs.

Still, the Harlequin watched.

Unmoved by the frantically fervent steps as his younger kin and kine, the Lord of the Dance walked from the trees only once the humans' exertions had been spent. The impassioned screams given to the night that echoes back with distant laughter from the fire were his cue. The night seemed to darken and flow out from under the trees behind him. His steps bore about them a haughty regalness as if perhaps he too danced but to a secret cadence and to hidden rhythms. Dances that no others had the age to know. As the Harlequin approach, a shiver shook the naked young man and the youth quickly drew about himself his shirt and shorts.

"I want another beer. How about you?" The young man asked his spent lover as he tried to dress.

"Hmmm."

Smiling, boasting to himself about his prowess without words, he rose to his feet. "I'll bring you one."

"Mmhmm"

Leaving her lying upon the blanket -- still trying to get his leg into his shorts -- the grinning youth departed without his eyes seeing the circle of ghostly dancers. Spirits that watched him and giggling at his bare flesh. At a gesture from the Harlequin, several broke free and followed the young man. A merry hour of misdirection they would lead him.

It was the woman that the Lord of Shadows was interested in. For now at least.

Her body a quiver, her legs parted to the moonlight, and with a contented smile, she gave no heed to the figure that soon stood over her. He gazed at her pale flesh and the first expression graced his chiseled features. No look so common as lust, but rather a desire to possess that bespoke of far deeper and great ties than a simple mating of flesh to flesh. He wanted her. He wanted her for more than a moment that this night of fools and spirits would give him. Till the midsummer's eve, when he would again grace these meadows, he wanted to own her, to take her.

To keep her?

He had done such in ages past. Many times in fact. So often that the women of those times knew not to lay within a circle of mushrooms, as this one and her lover had. Yes, those women had also known that the touch of moonlight upon their most secret of gardens could invite the eye of the Dancer.

But this one was young. Ignorant of the old ways.

Modern!

Smirking he lifted a hand, long fingers curling as if taking up invisible strings.

Her hand drifted down to the sprawl of sticky wet curls and caressed through the tangles. With languid haste, she searched for the flower bud of her pleasure and found it wet and tender to the touch. A minor spasm shook her and she wriggled on the blanket to the silent laughter of the surrounding shadows and spirits. The smile on her face pleased him.

At a gesture, the dancers began to prance.

"That was quick," she murmured.

The dancers began to whirl. Their steps, light enough to not bend new grass, danced with dew be-silvered toes in growing patterns that left glyphs of dangerous, forbidden designs.

With a whisper of agreement, the Lord of the Dancers eased himself down upon her supine body. He met her protesting words with his lips and she quickly relaxed against him. At least until he penetrated her. For no mortal man born of the daughters of Eve could equal him in either length or girth. Indeed the mares of the ancient unicorn herds -- now long lost to time -- had once watched him with both fear and desire. While it could be said that even the stallion males had known envy.

The shock of that dreadful impalement snapped open her eyes.

Revealed before her in all his majestic glory as the Prince of Midnight, his smile was tender. It spoke to her of total control. It whispered that she was his, but it also promised her gentleness. It was a lie, born of the many long endless eons of watching and taking women such as her, knowing that he was little more than a thing of myth to her. But in her frightened eyes, he too saw a need to be told that most silken of little white lies.

That he would be gentle.

Her fear needed, begged for his touch to be no harder than butterfly wings. The soft caressing of dandelion petals would have been considered rough to her terror-kissed spirit. And, for a moment, he gave her that. He eased himself in with a gentleness that bespoke of a caring that he did not feel and love he had never even felt the touch of. No, he was not like her. Not human. He was a primal thing. A carnal thing. And now, in a growing lust, he was a beast given form and that form was both terrible and beautiful.

"Please don't hurt me."

He smiled at her whisper.

"There will be pain. But you will beg for it to never end, my lovely." His lips parted and the sharpness of his teeth drew her eyes. That moment of distraction cost her.

With a thrust of his hips, the Harlequin took the lead in this dance. He also took away her breath, her ability to protest the shock, and even any thoughts of escape. The dancers now flying around them in an orgy of contorting bodies and wispy fog they cheered on their lord. He paid their adoration no heed, needing no spur to take from this maid what he desired. Fully impaled, her body bent under him, the Lord of all Dancers placed a kiss that drew blood from her lips with the fierceness of his need.

The mummers cheered all the louder smelling that hot iron scent upon the night air.

Were it not for the cooling dew that gathered upon his skin as he drove himself within her, or perhaps the excess of moisture that his body gave forth, he might well have spilled far more of her life-giving fluid upon the ground. No mortal woman was meant to take such a mighty spur. No daughter of Adam ever could lay claim to having bested such a beast.

Still, it was only his brevity spared her life.

Or perhaps it was the passing of that midnight hour and the eternal clicking of the great heavenly clock towards the dawn that he must flee before. Certainly, his haste was not any action of his body. No mere desire to spend being beyond his control as that of a fragile man. Nay had he a mind to do so, he could take her in such a dreadful hammering fashion till she grew old, gray, and withered away to smiling bones.

His spending was enormous.

From within her were pushed aside and cast back out the earlier pitiful drops of white spew her willing lover had so carelessly given to her. They were soon nothing more than a sticky wetness upon the blanket that was buried under the diluvian flood he poured forth. Into depths, she knew not that she had he filled her. Her belly swelled, trying to contain that which it never could and she gave a mindless scream that tore the night and sent the moon hiding behind the clouds.

Orgasmic, and yet far too animalistic were his sounds. Together with her cries, they wove together to form a song that spilled forth and sang out into the darkness. The sweet cries of the dancers added to this sound and the revelers at the distant fire looked up and realized that, perhaps, the night was not as tamed as they had thought it to be.

Pulling himself from her womb, the Dancer watched her shudders with panting pleasure. He smiled seeing the white flood that flowed forth.

Her belly, however, didn't shrink with the wet emptying of his seed. Instead, it was growing and she grabbed at its swelling in horror. Wracked in growing pains the young woman wept at the horrible ... impossible! ... idea she could not escape.

The Dancer took up a merry dance. The moonlight came back to caress his black and white be-checkered skin. His white hair flew wild in the growing breeze. The majesty of his beauty took on a moment's childlike glee as the woman at his feet screamed.

And screamed again.

To the struggling form moving within her swollen belly the Lord of Spring called out a greeting.

"Come forth my April child! Come forth and dance with your father upon these damp moors."

As if even within her womb the changeling child could hear its father's entreating calls, the child began to move all the faster.

The young woman again screamed. In the distance, there was a name called out that the night wind carried to the Harlequin. He glanced away for only a moment, annoyed by the distant mortal's concern and fear. Had that man cared for this woman, forsaking his own drunken thirst, then the Dancer could not have approached. So his cries now were, in the Dancer's opinion, in the poorest of taste.

The crown of a head emerged.

With one last scream, the woman passed out. She was spared by this the impossible birth of her child. Perhaps her sanity was thus saved.

The child folded itself from within its mother and -- both blood and semen be-slimed -- soon stood before its sire ... only a few hands shorter than the tall lord.

The Dancer smiled.

With a gesture, he motioned for his newborn to take its place among his followers. Grinning, ignoring the woman that had born it and that now lay at his feet, the changeling child rushed to join its fellows, that welcomed it.

A glance at the silvery moon showed Harlequin that he must soon away, but first ...

Taking up a small twig from by his feet, the dancer waved it like a conductor directing the skills of a trained orchestra. And the reaction the night gave to him was similar. The clouds above stopped and began to roll back across the night sky. The fog, so think if hid all but to the trained eye, drifted back into the forest and the snaky wisps hugged tighter to the wet ground.

His naughty children brought the young man back to the clearing of dancer dried grass. The man fell drunk next to the woman, waking her in shock.

The woman sat up, looked at her flat stomach, at her lover, and then up at the Dancer's still bare, wet cock.

"How?"

Leaning in, the Lord of all Dancers smiled.

"April Fools."

His finger toucher her between her eyebrows and she fell back upon the blanket. "Ah, my lover, sleep well and dream of wicked faeries no more."

And then -- with only a nod to the unborn twin of his newest child, still resting secure within her belly -- the darkness of the forest leaned out and kissed him, taking him with it back into its shadowy embrace.