Lost and Found

There was once a young woman who found her self lost in the woods. It was a chilly October, and the huntsmen were about chasing deer so the young woman had worn a cloak as red as April Cherries to distinguish herself from all that was in the forest. Like a child, the woman adored the texture of her cloak and the way it spread out from the nape of her neck when she walked with hastened step. It was warm and encasing, like a pair of wings.

One might ask why a young woman would travel alone in the woods on a late October afternoon. There are many possibilities -- she may have been coming from an engagement with a suitor; or she might have been traveling to market in the city to the north -- but in this case, the woman in the cherry-red cloak was collecting herbs for her ailing grandmother, the crone of her village. She had done this dozens of times since her grandmother had fallen ill and knew how to look for the best leaves, the best blood-red berries, the best bark.

This was a simple pretext, though. The young woman -- shall we call her Rose? -- would graciously volunteer to gather the plants her grandmother needed because she -- Rose -- had an adventurous soul. She would carry wards and a dagger into the woods, but soon stash them just off the trail because she enjoyed the sense of danger it brought to her. And she would go deeper into the woods than her mother had ever let her go. Deeper than her grandmother knew. Deeper, they said, than was sane. But deep she went to find the plants that would cure her grandmother's ailments, and the ailments of the villagers. For Rose was destined to become the wise woman of the village.

There are two dangers in a forest, even if you wear a red cloak. The first is the hunter who does not want anything but death. Other hunters shun him, or her, because a proper hunter hunts for food, and clothing, as well as for prestige. These scurrilous hunters hunt only for the prestige to prove their power. They are doe hunters.

The second danger in the woods was the wild beast that roamed the woods and killed the men and ate the children. While Rose had never seen this supposed beast, she knew that other had. They had been the only surviving members of hunting parties, and they had wild and terrified faces when they told of the horrors the beast had reigned. Rose's grandmother told her not to pay much heed to the tales, because the beast was surely the forest's protectors, and anyone who had been spared had only been spared to carry on the guilt. The hunting party had surely killed a doe, or a sow, or worse a bitch.

It was this beast that inspired Rose to an adventurous spirit. All the villagers warned her not to fail the path, but she paid them no heed. She loved the forest. She wanted to live closer in. She wanted to meet the beast face-to-face and tell him she loved his land. So she went to the forest for her grandmother, heart pounding with freedom and fear.

Today, this late October day, with the moon reaching its pregnant apex, Rose was determined to find the beast. Though she had started collecting roots and berries early that afternoon, she had been searching for the beast for almost three hours by the last sun of the year to no avail. And, as will happen when you wander the forest for hours on end, she was lost. She had no idea where she should go, but she could not cease her wandering. A strange tug in her chest compelled her.

As she walked, something slipped from beneath her feet, and she found herself upside-down, hanging by one ankle, skirts under her chin. If she hadn't stashed her knife on the edge of the wood, she would have cut herself free, but instead she hung there in mid-air with the blood pooling in her head. She got giddy, then dizzy, then sleepy and when she woke up, her bum had hit the ground with force and there were two men standing beside her chuckling.

"Well, well, what have we here?"

"It looks like we caught us a coney."

"Hm, coney is right." He leaned down beside Rose's dazed head, and sniffed her hair. "Smells delicious."

Rose made to stand up, but they pushed her down on her bum again. Sneering, they circled her like vultures closing in on a dead thing.

"Let me up!" demanded Rose.

"Oh, and it speaks too! Tell me, little coney, if we let you go will you grant us three wishes?"

They laughed.

"Yes! " Rose promised. "Whatever's in my power to give. Three wishes."

"I don't know, can we trust a talking coney?"

"I don't think so. We may as well keep it and take those three wishes any time we want. A caged coney is better than a free coney."

"No! Please." Rose knew full well what they wanted. Many times, she had wanted similar things. But she did not know them. They stank of unwashed skin and rotting flesh.

"Get up then," one agreed. Rose stood, but as soon as she did, the one behind her back grabbed her hands toward him and fastened them together with a length of leather. He didn't even give her time to brush herself off.

"There's how you tie a coney, son," he said, showing his partner the handiwork. "Now, let's see you skin it."

"What!" protested Rose.

"Be quiet, now, little coney, and stand still. Or this'll really hurt."

The younger one, the hunter's son, removed his dagger from its sheath and placed it against Rose's cheek. With a grin and a guttural, inbred chuckle, he pressed gently and a drop of blood sprang to her face, trickled down her chin like a tear. It was, of course, soon joined by proud silent tears from Rose's eyes.

Soon enough, the knife left her face. The scary boy licked her cheek clean of the blood while she whimpered, but more came forth and ran down her face again, dropping onto her dress. These blood stains were of little consequence, as we will soon see, because the boy's knife was cutting through the leather lacings of Rose's bodice. As each was cut away, she felt her breasts fall forward from their casing.

The urge to squirm and run caught hold of her mind and did battle with her reason. She twitched her hands and jerked her arm away, but the older hunter from behind was wily and quick, and she was soon held fast again. His son placed the dagger beneath her cheek bone again, and drew a more definite line -- she would be scarred -- then went back to her bodice.

With the point of the dagger, he punctured the hem of her bodice where the skirt of the dress met it. With a sawing motion, he sliced through the stitching until he could fit his hand between her skirt and her undergarments. This he did, and ripped the skirt away from her front. Meanwhile, his father performed the same task from behind. The ragged skirt fell away from her bodice and left her legs exposed. With no time wasted, her undergarments had soon joined her skirt, and her nether-bush was now exposed to the air.

Again, Rose's instinct to run fought a difficult battle with her reason. She needed to escape; they would do dangerous things to her in this woods, where she was lost, and they would leave her for dead. Unless, she reasoned, they took her to their cabin in the woods and made her their slave. Then she would live out the rest of her days in captivity. But alive.

She was thinking this, paying little attention to the denudation that was becoming her fate. Her breasts were exposed to the chill Samhain air, a breeze teasing her nipples hard with icy fingers. The men were chuckling and murmuring lusty nonsense. Then she felt a rough hand on her breast and yelped. Another hand -- dirty and smelling of sewage -- closed over her mouth. The filth on his hand stung her cheek. She could feel the other three hands on her body, working her like a thresher works the land, but careless.

Rose could do nothing to stop them, no matter how she struggled and squirmed. They had her fast. The leather strap around her wrists bound her well; she could not untie herself. The hands groping her body also held her in place; she could not move and when she did, they smacked her. They moved her to the tree that had been her downfall, placed her back against it, twisted her arms. The young one -- who was older than she -- held her by the throat now, not the mouth. She rasped a plea for mercy, but they did not hear.

"You want her first, Pa?"

"No, son. This is your first kill. You can have her."

"Thanks Pa."

"That's m'boy!"

He turned back to Rose but was too late to block a knee in his groin. He went down hard, with a castrated wail, and Rose took off into the forest. They had not removed her boots, so she could run. She crashed through branches head on because she could not move them. They were close behind her, and the sun was going down, and there was no way she would find her way out of the woods before dark, even if she did lose them. Rose was lost, but she ran like it mattered.

As their prey crashed through a bush, she tripped on a root and landed hard on her shoulder. They were on her and hauled her back up to her feet. Their hands rained down on her soft, pale skin and she begged them to stop, to let her go. But they were doe hunters. They had long since lost their humanity to the feral nature of the woods and to their own greed for power. They did not stop.

They did not stop, that is, until they heard the noise from behind. Rose was the first to see it. The two hunters were focused on tenderising their prey, or looking at each other petrified.

The beast was more terrible than she'd imagined. He had the hungry jaws of a starving wolf, which salivated and growled at the intruders. He had sharp tusks as a boar does, but white and shiny with smartness. His back was hairy and arched like the powerful back of a boar, too, but his paws had the unmistakable, jagged claws of a wolf, twisted claws like hobnails. He was angry. There was a sound of rain on leaves, and then Rose smelled the strong stench of urine.

"Nice doggie, er, piggie, er, beastie," whimpered the younger, higher-pitched than a girl. "Y-you don't want us, no!"

"No!" agreed his father. "Take her! She's succulent; we're stringy. She's got lots of fat on her, so you can keep yourself warm with her. Take her!" He grabbed her bound arm and hauled her up to present her to the beast, naked and shamed.

The beast sniffed at Rose. Snuffled steamy breath on her, and she flinched. It turned to the hunters and roared an unimaginable roar. The younger fell to his knees, but the older made to dart off. In an instant, the beast had him in his jowls and was shaking him to death. Then it gored him with its tusks and with its teeth. It ripped out his heart and liver and devoured them. Then it turned to the younger, gave him the same treatment. The screams that the young hunter yelled, haunted Rose as she watched the two hunters die gory deaths before her.

Bloody-mawed and savage, the beast turned its attention to Rose. Tears fell from Rose's cheeks. She never should have left the path that everyone walked. The beast was a defender of the forest, and she had cut a human-sized swath through the forest. She had taken living plants from the wood. She had offended, and he would be unmerciful. He would eat her heart and liver and leave the rest for the crows.

A drop of blood fell from the beast's tusks. The beast sniffed again at Rose. He could smell fear and shame. He watched the little ape as water wet her cheeks, mingled with the blood there. Her teeth chattered. He sighed and lowered his head.

And then he spoke.

"I have watched you. I have heard your longing for the forest, felt your need to be wild. Let me take you to a safe spot. I will grant you your greatest wish."

Rose nodded, and the beast picked her up in his maw with gentle care. She was nervous at first and shook and held herself tense until the points of the beast's teeth felt comfortable, comforting. The beast made no snapping twigs or rustling noises to distract her from the beauty of a sleeping forest, and in time Rose fell asleep.

She woke at night in a glen. The earth was soft and mossy and soothed her battered body. The sky was cold and starry and the Blood Moon shone in on them. She was not afraid. She was not cold.

Rose turned to find her rescuer, the beast, and saw that he was a man. He was tall and in the moonlight she could see he was brown-skinned like the trunk of an old oak tree, with a full wiry beard as black as pitch. He was as strong as a man should be. And he had antlers. Rose felt a sense of free-falling awe in her chest and she dropped to her knees.

The horned man stepped toward her. She felt his hand, large and strong, on the crown of her bowed head. A squeezing pressure on her lower pleasure field. He knelt in front of her. With sudden certainty, Rose wanted to give herself to him. She knee-walked toward him and rested her head on his chest. A sigh escaped her lips. He stroked her hair.

"You have always been good to the forest," said the horned man softly, stroking her hair. "I have known your gaze since you were much smaller. No one stares as intently at the wood as you do. And I have desired you from afar. Tonight, let our desires be one, little doe. Little falcon."

"Yes!" Desperate wanton lust rose in Rose's soul with a rapidity comparable to a virgin bride's. And, indeed, she was. No amount of lying on her back, no tryst behind a woodshed or in a spring-sodden meadow. No book, no dream, no woman, now man could prepare her for what she was about to experience. None of these had even prepared her for the flooding river of desire that ran the course of her body and threatened now to overflow its banks.

She had never paid much heed to stories of pregnancies by God. It was usually some misdirection when anyone with eyes could see the girl had been with the butcher, or the barber, or -- once -- the apothecary. Rose had never known how much she wanted it. Perhaps she hadn't wanted it until now.

"Lean forward," instructed the Horned One, and Rose's body obeyed. With her rear in the air, and her cheek pressed to the gently moss of the forest floor, she waited for what she felt certain would come next. A playful breeze tickled her pale haunches and she groaned. She breathed hard, and soon felt horn at her wrists. The Horned One was sawing through her bonds with his antler. He was freeing her. As his ivory rocked back and forth against her hands she began to smell her own arousal. When the leather snapped, she felt his muscular hands on her curvy hips and breathed hard.

Resting her hands on the ground above her head, all the while feeling the Horned One's breath on her sex, she rubbed the blood back into them. In a long wide stroke, the Horned One licked her slit and her lips and caught the sensitive insides of her thighs with the edges of his gentle tongue. Again he licked, and again. And soon he was lapping at her sex like it was a salt lick.

It was as if the moss desired her too. Rose could feel the sweet tendrils move -- nibble at her breasts as they swung low on the ground. She moaned and the Horned One grunted his approval. With this approval, she shivered. Gently, He probed her labia for her honey pot and played circles around the edge. Rose tried to push back, to spear herself on his tongue but he was too strong and held her easily in place. Her breasts swung faster against the moss and she gave a little cry for the nibbling and grasping.

She began to whimper as the Horned One teased her honey hole's rim. Desperately, she pushed back but he would not give. He was as stone, but warm, fleshy. Real. And he gripped her moonlit buttocks so firmly. And the moss tendrils pulled at her breasts al the harder now. The more urgent her need, it seemed, the more urgent was theirs.

Rose began to moan loudly in frustration. She was afraid she'd cry. She was afraid she'd get angry and shout at him. She was afraid she'd leave. She placed a finger to her clit and rubbed but he took her hand and held it away. All the while His patient tongue circled her lubricious spring.

When his tongue left her slit, Rose let out a sob. She stifled any more but had begun to shake. The Horned One calmly placed His flesh horn at her opening. He spread her lips and slowly slipped inside her.

A long, low cry escaped from Rose's lips as she felt her slim body expanded. As He withdrew, her well collapsed making her feel uncomfortably empty. She squeezed as hard as she could to try to make Him stay, but still He withdrew and without stopping, thrust His thick tusk back inside her. When He again withdrew, she spoke her will, "Please, faster." Indeed, she thought she might die if He didn't fuck her faster. And He did.

The Horned One took her hips in His hands and made her love pit wide and deep. He steadily fucked her in and out, and grew speedier with each thrust. Soon, Rose was moaning loudly against the loving moss. She was close to coming, so she began to rub her pearl with two fingers. The Horned One puller her back against his leather satchel so she felt it in her throat and the moss heard it. And she screamed again. And her world exploded in a rainbow of pleasure. Her mouth was wide open, and her free hand was gripping the moss. And the Horned One continued stroking her insides with his prong.

He bent over and growled in her ear. A bestial growl. It was the love of a wolf for a bitch, of a boar for a sow, of a hart for a hind. It was the kind of love that occurs in spring, unless you're human.

The Horned One fell back on his haunches and lifted Rose with Him. He sat against a tree and bounced her small body in His lap. Rose screamed a silent screa as she felt her strength give way to His will. Up and down she bounced, her apples jiggling in the moonlight. Rose reached up behind her lover's neck and bent his head to bite his jaw. He growled against her shoulder and maneuvered his large tongue over her shoulder and collar bone.

Without warning, He rose. Rose experienced a moment of disorientation. The sky spun; her love well screamed at her in pleasure; she felt twisted for a moment, and then she was against a tree and he was pounding her defenseless body. Harder and harder He fucked His new mate. She grabbed onto his horns, still slick with his kill's blood as he rammed her against the tree. She put the tip of one in her mouth and sucked the blood off. He watched her do it, watched her become savage. Then she let go and he planted his mouth on hers, mingled the dead men's blood in each other's mouths and came away red-faced. He lunged at her lips again, and they came together, bodies blending. Hollers and helps and wails.

Sex juices overflowed Rose's riverbank and streamed down the Horned One's flesh tree, dripped from his pine cones, rained on the lusty moss at his feet. Amid the blood on His tongue, Rose tasted cedar and oak and apple. She felt his come gush against the walls of her warren and she shivered again. And again. And again.