III. A BRIEF JOURNEY

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.
—from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll

Chapter 30: The Sound of Silence

[Summer Solstice, 1679 / 201-]
Oxford, Oxfordshire

WHY IS IT so noisy here, thought Amélie when she regained her wits and gazed about her. Not the music and the dancing. It was familiar and some of the tunes and the lyrics, to the extent she could hear them, were ones she was more or less familiar with. But they were so loud. The dancers were dressed a little strangely, she thought. Perhaps a little out of style, the more she looked at them. Old-fashioned, even.

It did not matter, at least not immediately. She looked about her to satisfy herself they had all made it safely—her beloved Gérard, Sandrine, and young Roger. They had been forced into the stones. Into. The word made her shudder. How was it possible one could be forced into a stone?

The truth was undeniable. Into. They had been fully into the festivities at the midsummer festival that afternoon and evening. Into was the operative word. Perhaps it was more accurate to say Gérard and Roger had been into her and Sandrine. Roger was no longer a virgin. Sandrine and Mistress Heathcoate had seen to that, in an afternoon engagement Sandrine had later described to Amélie in a fashion that led her to embrace Sandrine and repeat some of what Roger had managed to accomplish. For some reason, it was Sandrine’s description of Roger’s buns that had set her off. Strong, flexing, masculine. Well-shaped and firm to the touch. Responsive, too, Sandrine had explained. In detail. “And he’s juicy, too, Amélie, very juicy.”

The four were in a tangle behind one of the stones in the outermost circle. In the shadows but still within the warmth of the fire, augmented by the remaining warmth of what had been an extraordinarily hot day, albeit a seasonal one. In any event they were half-nude and sexually sated. They’d eaten and drunk earlier, and the men were recovering their strength from the working over the two women had given them. Roger, especially, had become adept at driving Sandrine and Amélie to repeated orgasms with his quick tongue and clever fingers. The boy was a danger.

Driven through the stones. They’d been driven through the stones. Amélie could not think of another way to describe what had happened, no matter how impossible it seemed. They’d already learned about the stones. The first time she and Gérard and Sandrine had visited they had experienced the warmth and the hardness of the stones. Each of them had discovered the stones’ ability to reach out and caress. Both women had climaxed, their breasts bare against the warm rock, enduring the slight scratchiness to feel the tremors in their loins and the stiffness of their nipples until they convulsed and shouted.

Gérard had been cautious in the beginning, for no man wishes to entrust his manhood to a rough surface. Yet when he’d watched the women writhe in passion and press themselves against the stones he’d been moved to embrace the stone himself. When he’d found himself aroused and stiffened and discovered the contradictory qualities of the surface without further apparent thought he’d undone his laces and buttons and pressed his turgid organ against the warm surface. The roughness seemed to excite him rather than put him off and he thrust twice, carefully, it looked to Amélie, and finally a third time before he convulsed and throbbed and spent himself against the warm rock. When he stepped back, an impressive wet spot testified to the vigor of his orgasm.

On another occasion he had entered Amélie from behind and fucked her to his own orgasm while she pleasured herself against the stones.

Amélie smiled to herself. When she turned to look at Sandrine she saw her own smile mirrored in the dark face. The two of them would find new ways to torture Gérard, if torture were the right word, and they’d use the stone to help.

Amélie turned to Gérard and held him tight against her for a moment. Right now she needed the reassurance of his strong arms and tenderness. When she put her head back to look into his eyes she saw wonder and questions and concern, but underneath those emotions she sensed the strength and confidence that had characterized her foster brother his entire life. Strength and confidence that had won the day for the two of them on more than one occasion.

Strength and confidence that had won her over physically when she’d first seen her father and her aunt making love on the upper balcony of the plantation house. That morning Gérard introduced her to pleasures she had barely begun to experience, pleasures she discovered were doubled or tripled in intensity when explored with a willing and loving partner. Gérard was all those things, and together they had commenced their life-long love affair.

Through Gérard she’d discovered the native men on the island were accomplished lovers who knew how to employ their considerable physical talents in the service of female orgasms. When she thought about it later she realized this talent was not necessarily a genetic characteristic of the natives. On the contrary, it reflected Gérard’s own character and his ability to make friends with men who shared the tenderness and kindness that informed his considerable sex drive and the skill with which he could eat her or fuck her to orgasm when he plundered her mouth or her sex.

She was not a fan of anal sex.

“Gerard, what just happened? Did we enter the stones? How is that possible?”

His usual laughter and light-heartedness was absent, but he did not look defeated. On the contrary, she saw adventure and a little wildness in his eyes, and she felt the tension in his muscles as he embraced her.

“We came through the stones, Amélie. Our need was urgent. You remember what was happening. Our need was urgent and the stones accepted us.”

“We were at one with the stones,” Sandrine broke in. The two turned to look at her. “Think about what we were doing. Think about what the stones have meant to us.” She laughed. “Why does it surprise you the stones would have accepted men and women entwined in such a fashion, who had reached climax separately and together. Men who had spent themselves in the women. Women who had accepted the men, who had welcomed their manhoods, who had died impaled on their thick stalks.” She took a deep breath and Amélie thought she heard a soft chuckle. “Well, I exaggerate, but only a little,” Sandrine added.

“The stones know us, know who touches them,” Sandrine continued. “They do not accept everyone. If they did, people would be lost all the time, and they are not. We know that. Does the time or the date or the full moon matter?” She shrugged. “Who knows? Right now it is not important.” She looked around. “Where are we?”

“We are not in the same place,” Gérard said. “Look behind you. Those are not the same stones. They’re smaller. They look more worn, even if they are still more or less in a circle.” It was difficult to tell for sure because of the number of dancers they saw inside the circle, but it appeared that at least some of the stones were no longer in place.

Amélie watched the dancers. Their movements, their clothing. She articulated what all of them had started to realize. “These are not the same people we were with.” Certainly the four of them did not know everyone at the festival personally, but they’d seen many of them. There were regulars at these festivals, Mistress Heathcoate told them. Some, she’d commented, did not seem to have a life other than at the festivals.

“Their clothing is different, Sandrine, no?” Amélie pointed at the nearest group of revelers. Do those styles not seem a little outdated to you?”

Sandrine laughed. “You know, we were always at least a year behind in our styles on the island, but these are more than that. Perhaps what our mothers or even our grandmothers might have worn.” Amélie nodded.

“It’s so loud!” Roger had his hands over his ears. He looked from one to the other. The women nodded. Gérard gave him a hug. He looked around for the musicians. Despite the noise of the music he spotted them on the far side of the clearing. The clearing seemed to be larger than it had been, even if the circle of stones appeared to be in the same place as before. He froze when he looked carefully at them.

The musicians had instruments he recognized, even if some of them did not look quite right. There were fiddles and viols and a couple of instruments the musicians blew into. He didn’t recognize them. The tunes were old ones, most of them, although from time to time he heard ones that were new to his ears.

It wasn’t the instruments that had caused him to freeze. They were more or less what he was used to. No, it was the metal sticks in front of the performers. He could not see what they did or what their function was. It took a couple of minutes for him to realize the sound, the music they heard, was not coming from the musicians directly. They were too far away for the group to hear them over the singing and dancing and chattering of the crowd that separated them. Instead, the music seemed to come from large standing boxes or receptacles placed at various locations around the clearing.

Gérard turned back to the little group. He cleared his throat.

“I do not know where we are.” He stopped. “No, that is not correct. We are in Oxford, or nearby, and those appear to be the same stones we know. But they are not the same.”

He was about to continue when a man approached them. He was dressed as the others, that is, in a style that seemed a little antiquated. There were some oddities about his dress. His foot coverings, for example, were more or less like the ones the group wore but seemed to be made of some strange material. Not cotton, not wool, not leather. He extended his hand to Gérard.

“Hello, my name is Jonathan.”

Gérard shook hands. “My pleasure. I am Gérard. These are my foster sister Amélie, and our friends Sandrine and Roger.” The other three greeted Jonathan. When he heard Sandrine speak he paused.

“Your accent is unusual. You are not from Oxford, no? A foreign student, perhaps?”

Sandrine laughed. “Not a student, no. My friend and I,” she motioned to Amélie, “work in a print shop. Gérard is enrolled at B— College. We are from, well, it doesn’t matter. In the Caribbean. I was born in Martinique.”

“Ah,” answered Jonathan. “That explains it.” He was silent for a moment. His look was penetrating but not discourteous. “Ladies, will you excuse us for a moment?” He turned to Gérard. “May I have a word with you in private, Gérard?”

The two walked a few paces away. Around them the music was beginning to slow. It was dusk now, but to Gérard’s surprise there was still light. Not from the torches, those were familiar and he had not been surprised to see them here. No, it was the light on the horizon. Was the city aflame? If so where were the flames and why did he not smell smoke? No, there was some strange force at work here.

Jonathan pointed to a vacant bench Gérard had not noticed. Another change from the clearing and stones he and the women knew. There were no benches where they came from. “Came from.” A strange way to think about it, but Gérard realized it described exactly what had happened.

“Gérard,” said Jonathan when they had seated themselves. “Whatever you may think of me I am not a threat or a danger to you.” Gérard stared without speaking. He was not afraid of Jonathan physically. Jonathan did not appear to be overweight, and for all Gérard knew he might be physically fit, but his own experience in swimming and wrestling and fighting gave him the confidence he needed.

“You do not threaten me, Jonathan.” He kept his voice level and his eyes clear and open. “You do not threaten the women, either.” He put his hand on Jonathan’s knee. “I will protect them. From anyone.” There was something in his eyes that said he was not dissembling or bragging. He was telling the truth.