1.

One of the priestesses took off her robes, that night, and stepped into her closet, where five of her slaves rushed out from their cages and carried off her things. When they came back into the light, she was relaxing on the bed, reading an immense, gigantic historical tome, and humming softly to herself. Knowing their jobs (it was the only job they had, since they were sixteen), they pushed a water bucket forward to her bedside, and waited. After twenty minutes, she swung her legs over the side and doused her feet in the bucket, splashing the water around, playfully, as she continued to read and hum to herself. The men added dry soap, scents, and a few minerals, and focused diligently on their task.

The storm winds blew outside. Before they were finished, she raised her feet a few inches over the basin, and then rested her soles along its edges, on either side. The men took out their towels, and carefully dried them off – and they were about to retire again, when she suddenly swiveled one of her feet off the edge, and pinned the head toweler down under her foot. Stunned, terrified that his time had come, he couldn’t move a muscle. After a very long, tense minute, she looked down at him, lifted her sole off his body, and absentmindedly wiped her toes back and forth across his face.

Later that night, she picked one of the men to join her until morning. As her hand reached down below the bed, they all backed away, slowly, except for one – one who was too scared to move at all. This was the man she wanted.

Up on the bed, between her legs, slowly, carefully, and gently, he chose his spots, and started to lick. As time passed, she began to swell and open up like a rose, and he, haltingly, moved lower. The rain tapped on the wooden shutters outside, and she went on reading her gigantic book. By the time she felt she was ripe enough to shove him bodily inside her, all the rest of the men had fallen asleep for the night. Her scent, fluids, and hair surrounded him – poor man – and it wasn’t long before his job was done. She pulled him out, and left him there, sticky and crusty in her juices, until the next morning, when she licked him off and returned him to his cage. And so he lived.

What was his reward, though (apart from the joy of serving one of the high priestesses)? There was a life to come.


2.

A few raindrops began to fall over the lawn, and many of the women held out their hands to catch the drops. Some of the youngest girls stuck out their tongues, swallowing the first misty droplets as they fell from the sky, the leaves, the apple-tree blossoms. Everyone got to their feet, and looked up at the threatening clouds moving, high above them, across a gray, stormy sky. The shower would last until the next morning, murmured one of the women, and a few of the others covered the tops of their heads with shawls and coats.

 Their husbands, without waiting for instructions, scurried back into their pockets, shoes, or knee-high church socks, now quite damp from the early raindrops and dew. The women reluctantly took up their clothes and articles, and with difficulty stuck their wet and grass-stained feet into their morning socks. Among them was one initiate, a young girl who, during the storytelling, somewhat bored by the history of her village, sat on the grass and waited impatiently for the evening, when she and her new husband would finally be alone. 

A quarter way through the hour-long story, the light broke through the buttons of her breast pocket, and her hand, smelling faintly like the soil and grass, with light grassy streaks crossing the palm, groped about for his tiny body. When her fingers found him, he felt a strange rush of joy and fear, because In a moment, he thought, I will see her face.

But he didn’t see all of her face. Her hand stopped just in front of her lips. As he looked up, he saw her nostrils, expanding and contracting, and the little sensitive hairs inside her nose. There was a low whistle as she breathed, and then, before he could even turn his head, her tongue wrapped around him and sucked him inside her mouth. For the next three-quarters of an hour, she slurped and sloshed his body around, in and out of her mouth, like a little piece of candy. For the first few minutes, he could only think about his aching muscles, and the disgusting feeling of her wet tongue, forcing him in and out between her smacking lips.

But then, as time passed – and as he often had no choice but to drink down mouthful after mouthful of his young wife’s saliva, or, say, to swallow the stray pieces of her lunch that she picked from her teeth with her tongue – he gradually forgot that it was his body in her mouth. And soon, a feeling of pleasure, at first very dull, but then (like the sound of her smacking lips) growing stronger and stronger, overtook him. He started to share in her pleasure, and realized, with a funny shock, that he was the reason she was happy – or at least the reason she was able to pass the time pleasantly during a long story. 

Then it was only a short time before he submitted and gave in completely to her. That was the first time – but that original realization would come back to him again, and again, and again, until his death. 

Some of the middle-aged women, who had lived with their husbands for over fifteen years at the very least, thought privately to themselves as they walked back to the manor house. Awkwardly fitting their damp socks into their shoes, they wondered, There are some things I believe, and others I find hard to believe. Some of the sacred myths are worth hearing and studying. But, they thought, as the boot squeaked on, and they pushed themselves up, I wonder how many myths and how many stories I’ve lived in my own life, stories that are better than all the great myths put together – and as good as the old stories are, they can’t explain everything. 

Inside the big stone and wooden house, that night, there was much feasting and drinking, laughing and lovemaking. As they went to bed, each to their separate chambers, the moon rose huge, pale, and yellow over the rainy mountain, just before dawn, and illumined all the ruins, stones, deserted chambers, shrines, warm houses and festive decorations through the narrow valley and all along the tree-speckled hillsides, now soaked with the spring shower. Each of them, men and women, fell cozily to their beds, and the men slept where they could – next to their wife, on the pillow, on top of her chest, stomach, between her legs, inside her sock, or under the bed, dropped among her personal items. The hearts of all the men, but especially the women, beat uncannily and excitedly on that sacred day, and began to slow down only as they slipped off, stage by stage, into the otherworld of their dreams. But what could these people dream of, people whose own lives were made up of the stuff of dreams?


3.

Sometimes, a visitor would come by horse or foot over the mountaintop, and look down into the valley. A few young maidens would greet him along the forest borders of the town, and lead him down into the village. He would stop at the shops, stores, taverns, and houses, and eat the food, joke with the children, and trade and talk with the adults.

Or so it can be imagined, because, in the complete, six-hundred-year-old annals of the village, there is no record of any such visitor.