Acer
Acer began, during those tear-filled days and nights, to bring my tray for both his turn and what had been Amaro’s. Acer, you might recall, had always been the most jealous one, with the sour attitude. Since their agreement to release and compensate me, he’d clearly struggled, fearful I would leave them. Now, he seemed to have come to some peaceful resolution of his feelings. He would ask permission to remain in my room while I ate, and sat on the floor by the door, with what could have been a slight wry smile on his lips. When I finished, he’d inquire about whether I wanted more or wanted a sweet treat for dessert or a tisane. He’d bring me whatever I asked for and would ask for nothing in return.
When it came time for me to climb the oak, he walked with me and bid me a good evening then returned to the house.
By and by, I found myself looking forward to his room visits. It was said when a Mereling lost a true love, he or she was more likely to find another than when the relationship severed by death had been a contentious and loveless one. I found this to be true for me. My love for the shepherd boy had primed me, in a manner of speaking, to love Amaro. And Amaro had primed me to love Acer. I noticed the ways he was the same—his guilty deference at first, his careful attention to bringing my favorite dishes, his willingness to be critical of himself—and the ways in which he was different—his shorter, more muscular body, the way his lips fell naturally into a pout when he sat in repose.
Finally one night, I asked him up to my perch and found, to my delight, he still moved slowly and deeply in his thrust. The memory and the motion in me awakened my desire, and I arched to meet him, deliberate, grinding. All those years before, I’d licked him from head to toe and offered myself passively to him. This time was mutual. Our tongues found each other’s lips, necks, and nipples. Our hands grasped, clasped over our heads. Our bodies moved to wring every molecule of space from between us. We finished in guttural utterances and pounding mutual orgasms.
Afterward, I asked him to tell me a story. I’d become curious, at long last, about all of them. Each individual. It was too late to ply Amaro with questions of his childhood, of who his parents were, of what games he played as a youth, what he loved, and how he came to be the man I knew, but I could ask the others.
“What story?” he said, looking challenged and confused.
“The story of who you are,” I said, propping myself up on an elbow to watch his face. To watch the struggle there my question seemed to have awakened. He grimaced, blinked, and sighed deeply.
“We were not treated well when we first came to this village,” he said then lapsed into silence.
After many seconds, I prompted him again. “Then you, too, are not of this place?”
“Our parents sent us out into the world from the town where we were born. Four boys. Amaro with his first beard fuzz, me with my voice cracking, Sal a tagalong, and Shug who had to be carried half of the time because he had barely turned three. Our parents sent us away so we’d escape the enslavement that would have been our lot in our birth town. Our ancestral village had been overrun and plundered by warring people from the north. They put all the native people of the area to work for them, either building homes and fortification walls or toiling in the fields. We’d once enjoyed our land of abundance. Now, it was our conquerors who enjoyed it, while we worked ourselves to death for their comfort.
“Our parents were part of a circle of resistance, and the authorities had found them. They knew it would be simply a matter of time until they’d be taken into custody for meeting secretly and planning a rebellion, remanded to the town square, and executed to warn any others foolish enough to think of asserting their wants or needs to be free people. We were sent away so at least we, their children, might have a chance at a normal life. If such a life, with one’s parents slaughtered and everything familiar locked off in the past could be said to be normal.
“Night was our friend, then. Without your light, we had only stars to guide us. Because Amaro and I had studied the heavens, we were able to find our way. Our captors pursued us once they realized we had all failed to turn up that morning to complete our appointed tasks.”
He drifted off into his own memories, his eyes closed, and at first I thought he’d fallen asleep. I traced circles around his nipples, and he sighed, so I continued on my way and drew a line directly to his cock, which began to show signs of being awake even if he didn’t. Slowly, I circled it and stroked his balls with the lightest touch. He rose to the occasion, and I straddled him, slipping his ragingly erect member as far into my aching loins as I could. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.
“You never finished your story,” I chided.
“We ran,” he said, breathing heavily and thrusting upward. “We ran from one village to the next, through the woods by day, on the roads by night, following the stars south.”
“Never sleeping?” I asked, grinding my hips in a circular pattern. Circles seemed to be the shape of the moment.
“Rarely.” He matched my motions, holding my hips, pulling me down. “When we dared, we’d stop by a river and sleep under a fallen tree. Amaro and I took turns,” he grunted, the pace of his gyrations quickening, “sitting watch.”
“You two,” I said, matching his speed, “are heroes. You brought all four of you to safety.”
“We did,” his voice tightening, he expelled the words as the paroxysm of his orgasm took him over, “what we had to do. Not heroes, just survivors.”
Over the next few weeks, I teased further details from him of their trek to safety; how they learned to catch fish with their bare hands, and taste the plants and herbs along the way carefully. When they found a new plant, one of the two older ones would taste it first, and they’d wait a day before anyone else dared. How they were almost turned in to the authorities when they made the mistake of telling a woman who gave them dinner in exchange for helping her with chores they were fleeing oppression. Little Shug won them the reprieve, by crawling into her lap and asking, “Will you be my mother?” It brought tears to the woman’s eyes. She told them she’d once had a little boy like him, but he’d died of the whooping cough, then she made them a bundle of bread and goat cheese and told them to hurry off before her husband came home.
The more he told me of their trials and tribulations, the more tender my foreplay, till I touched him as lightly as a feather. Each time, he responded. Each time, I chose the moment to unite. When we came together, my nerves were shattered crystal—not from distress, but from the pureness of the moment.
Acer declined gradually but inexorably. He began to tell the same stories over and over. His old anxieties returned, and he started to question me whenever we were together. What had I been doing since the last time? Who had I done it with? How had I done it? Who were the other people I talked to?
Then his memory dropped down another notch. He seemed delighted always to see me, but forgot my name. He took to peering at me, trying to remember my relationship to him. He remembered our lovemaking, though, and would ask me to do the things I’d done before.
Finally, he remembered only that I was familiar to him, as were his two remaining friends. Everything else forgotten. And shortly after he’d reached that state of forgetfulness, he forgot to wake up. Another piece of me followed a Mereling into the Underworld.