around my mouth.
“I talk to myself sometimes,” she said. I glanced up at her as she sat in the grass and dangled her legs over the edge of the bank. She plucked an autumn daisy and twirled it between her fingers. I ventured my question.
She was pulling the petals from the daisy. “Loves me, loves me not. Gracie? How should I remember? I’m too busy with parcel post to keep track of people’s comings and goings from this world to another. Loves me, loves me not…”
“What happens on Harvest Home?”
“‘What no man may know nor woman tell.’ I guess that’s the oldest saw in the village. You want to know about Harvest Home? I’ll tell you.”
She had put flowers in her hair, and the blossoms trailed down among the dark tendrils to her shoulders. She lifted the corn necklace at her breast. “This. This is Harvest Home. And these”-touching the flowers in her hair-”and this”-scooping some earth from the bank and lumping it in her hand. “It’s to celebrate this.” She opened her hand and looked at it, her voice curiously pitched.
She tossed the lump of clay and it fell near my shoulder. She rose and came slowly down the bank. I put my head down again. I could hear the light splash of her feet and felt a coolness on my back where her form eclipsed the sun. She bent, gently running the tips of her nails between my shoulder blades. I felt her hair brush against me as she came closer. I could feel her knowing fingers toying at the base of my neck.
“You don’t say what happens.”
“I’m not going to.” There was an allure in her voice, as though she wanted me to urge her. “It’s just what people do.”
I shrugged her fingers away. They immediately returned, kneading the cords of my neck. Despite the coldness of the water, against the sandy grit, I could feel a stirring: loin lust. I pulled away. “And Jack Stump. Is that what people do? Savage their fellow-man?”
“It was necessary.” She spoke lightly, as if the matter were of no consequence.
“Why not have killed him?”
“I could have. I’m very strong. Feel how strong.”
“You bitch.”
“Yes.” An affirmation, a caress, both.
With my head turned away, I called her other names.
“Yes. But feel me. Feel my skin.” She took my hand and invited my touch. “Feel how soft.” I snatched my hand away, swore at her. She accepted my abuse willingly, her fingers gliding over my flesh as I accused; and as I accused, beneath me I could feel myself growing harder.
I spoke angrily. She had silenced the peddler, had cut his tongue and stitched him. Still she caressed me. Yes, she answered in a small voice, she had done these things. “With these hands.” Ran them over my shoulders, down my spine to my buttocks, my legs. I pulled away. “Grace Everdeen died on Harvest Home.”
“Yes.”
I could feel my hardness in the sand, and as though knowing it, she murmured things that sent the blood coursing to where she commanded it.
“She didn’t kill herself,” I said.
“No.”
“She was murdered.” I looked at her quickly, saw the answer in her eyes. “You killed her.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
“Jesus saves. But not Grace. She came. To Harvest Home. Where she had no right. She was diseased. Unclean. She couldn’t be Corn Maiden, and she didn’t want me to be. She came to blight the crops. To blight Roger, if she could. But she couldn’t have him. I did. She came, and I hit her with my hoe. Here.” She had straddled me, her hair brushing my shoulders as she bent and laid her fingers on my temple, showing me the place. “I killed her like she should have been killed. She was put in the tree so she would be there for all the Harvest Homes that came after. So she could watch. You want to know what happens at Harvest Home? I’ll tell you. They make the corn.”
“They-”
“Make the corn! Not like in the play. But really-truly make-the-corn. Roger and I, we made the corn together. Missy is Roger Penrose’s child. We made her that night. At Harvest Home. Justin will make the corn. With Sophie. If Sophie can have a baby from it, it will be good. Then there’ll be a surer chance of good crops.”
“You had a baby and there was a drought.”
Her eyes flashed. “The drought was Gracie’s! And Missy’s the best thing ever happened to this village!”
I loathed her. Her fleshy weight made my stomach heave.
I spread my palms against the pebbles and thrust upward, toppling her sidewise into the water. A light danced in her eyes, a triumphant gleam. I rose to my knees and she uttered a tiny mewling whimper as she saw what her touch had erected. She put out her hand; before she could reach me I leaped up; she lay back with a moan. I stood over her, the sun at my back, my shadow slicing her in half.
With panicky little moaning sounds, she scrabbled to me, sliding her hands up along my thighs, seizing and laying her cheek against me; I could feel the bite of her red nails where she had forced me to power. I lifted my foot, placed it against her shoulder, shoved violently. She fell back in the water, her mouth wet and red, then came to a crouching position and raised her arms as if she knelt upon an altar. The goddess pleading to be fulfilled. I would not. I would not pleasure the goddess; I would destroy her.
Even as I moved toward her, I knew I wanted to kill her. I flung myself on her, my hands murderous as they sought her throat, fingers closing on her windpipe. I seized her chin, wrenched it from side to side in the shallow water. I half rose and, bending, dragged her into the deeper part, thrusting her head up and down, her tantalizing smile appearing amid a froth of bubbles. I drove her under, holding her submerged, watching her hair rippling outward, undulant as seaweed, snakes-Medusa’s head. I would obliterate it.
Again I drove her downward, held her there, watched the bubbles rise, saw the mocking smile, as though she defied me to do it. Her head drifted upwards, the cool, ripe breasts surfacing, the water draining between them. Then, scarcely realizing my intent, as she floated limp but smiling, I dragged her to the clay bank and propped her against it. She lay there, her breasts still rising and falling. She was not dead; but would be. There was another way, a better way. My body imprisoning hers, my hands began tearing at her dress, stripping it from her, shucking her bare. She had revived, but she did not understand what I meant to do. Her hands came up, caressing the back of my neck. She pulled my head close, her lips on mine, her tongue forcing its way into my mouth, her hand fumbling its way between us, stroking, manipulating me. I grabbed her wrists and flung her arms from her sides, using my knees to force her legs farther apart. She drew her thighs around the outsides of my thighs and pulled me in toward her. Her nails dug into my neck, my shoulders, and in return I flailed her breasts with my muzzle, using the beard stubble to abrade the tender skin. And then, fully aroused, I began ramming at her.
The light had not died in her eyes; their whiteness blazed at each thrust, her thighs sliding against me not in protest, but widening, opening herself to let me find her, to make me take her. Digging my feet into the ground for purchase, I felt my buttock muscles knot as I arched my back and drove myself into her. She shuddered and cried out then, but when I freed her hands her arms welcomed me in embrace. I wound my fingers in her wet hair and gripped, still wanting to kill her, not with my hands but with that other part of me that she had aroused. I worked at her and worked, then halted, watching her eyes roll, wild like an animal’s, holding her impaled on me, for I would not finish yet, and when I had mastered myself I worked again, rearing and plunging, and mixed with my curses and her passion were the sounds of our clashing bodies, muscles and tissue, the bulging noises I could force from her, the thud of my chest against hers, the slap of our wet bellies.
It became a duel. Willingly she would take from me, but I would not give to her. There would be no ecstasy for her, only pain. But her pain became her ecstasy. “Oh, yes,” she moaned, “my Greek, my Lord. Plow me, plow me.” A full-throated plea and the water ran from her body in rivulets down the bank, mixing with the dark clay, and I dug handfuls of it and, riding her, ramming her against the ground, I smeared it in her face, the substance of Mother Earth, rubbing it in her eyes and ears, stopping her mouth with it, forcing her cheeks to wallow in it, her shoulders and breasts, ever driving, thrusting, pulling back, and ramming her again, sucking the saliva up from my throat and spitting it in her face, the face of the Mother goddess, driving against her, twisting, to batter her pliant flesh, to drive the goddess back into Mother Earth and bury her there.
