Greenwood Magick

She swung her day pack down onto the dense moss in the shade of the madrona tree and watched the meadow grass stir in the sun.  The cool touch of the breeze on the back of her sweaty neck felt like fingertips. 

She turned to him.  "So we found it again." 

He nodded, smiling.  "Where would it have gone in eight years?" 

She grinned back.  "Wherever it was the last couple of times you were so sure we'd find it." 

He looked around the small meadow.  Roughly oval, scooped out of the south-east side of a mountain high in the foothills, it was fenced behind by a ten-foot stone ledge.  In front, it dropped fifteen feet or more to a steep slope below, so you could see out across the valley between the tops of a few tall firs and the sun fell unobstructed on the grass and wild-flowers that covered it.  To either side, a sparse forest of huge old trees created an impression of vast and mysterious interior space. 

The meadow itself was almost level, punctuated by a small clump of trees in the middle under which the two were standing. 

"This place does seem magickal," he said, "Like it could hide if it wanted to."  He turned to her.  "Must be our intention that let us find it again." 

"Must be."  They stood quietly for a moment, looking in each other's eyes. 

"Well," she said.  "It's past noon, let's get started."

They spread a light blanket on the moss and then undressed, piling their shoes and clothing at the base of the nearby tree. 

She walked naked out into the sunlight, feeling how the resilience of the moss under her bare feet gave way to the crisper softness of the grass.  She was suddenly conscious of her weight bearing down on the beauty beneath her, and silently apologized for inadvertent damage. 

The light breeze played with the short hairs on the back of her head, and the sun's heat enveloped her.  She savored her nakedness, the feeling of sun on her breasts, the breeze touching her pubic hair, the animal sense of exposure, and a feeling of physical wholeness. 

She turned back to watch him walking out to join her.  He'd unbound his hair and it fell thick and beautiful around his shoulders.  She loved the line of those broad shoulders, the definition of the muscles on his arms, and the unconscious grace of his stride (until he stepped on a sharp twig and grimaced), and the way his cock and balls swung around as he walked. 

She took a breath of satisfaction and became aware of the scents on the air.  She closed her eyes for a moment.  "Smell," she said to him. 

He sniffed, concentrating.  "What?" 

"Grass, flowers, fir needles, loam and I don't know what all." 

"Girls are lucky with the estrogen," he said.  "I only get a tenth of that." 

"Poor boy," she said.  "I'll have to stimulate your other senses."  Looking at his so familiar face and body, she felt an animal thing move in her.  "Hey, is this what you want?" 

"What?"  he asked.  And then, looking at her, he answered seriously.  "Yes, I do."  He seemed about to say more, but in the end he just looked at her, and she saw his answer. 

"Me too," she said.  "And I think the timing is good." 

They chose a spot, and she put on her priestess crown and he his horns.  Standing, looking out over the valley, she began.  "Before all else," she said, "I honor Earth," reaching down through the grass past a tiny red flower until her fingers touched the ground, "and Sky," now standing on her toes and reaching up towards a distant galaxy. 

They cast the circle around the whole meadow for their magick, not so much to ward it as to bring themselves fully into it. 

"Earth mother," he called, "rich and abundant in this season of growth, be with us here.  Make my sperm wild, her eggs fertile and give us a healthy child." 

"Air, spirit of inspiration," she called, "carry our energies through the barriers of our habitual defenses, and help us open our intimacy wide."

"Fire," he said, "heat of our passion, spirit of transformation, flow in our blood, burn in our hearts, help us conceive our child in the center of a star." 

"Water," she invoked, "spirit of emotion, essence of our blood, deep as the sea, wash away fear and carry our love on your flood." 

They stood for a moment looking at each other. 

"Great and lovely goddess," he said, his voice slightly unsteady.  "Please join us here.  You whose breasts are soft and supple, who gives your nipples to everyone.  Your skin smells like the grass and the flowers, and your cunt is like heaven on this earth, sweet and pretty.  Deep within you the mystery of your womb is the beginning and the end of all things; we come from you and we go to you, and your wisdom guides us through all our lives.  Please be here now, fill us with your love and desire, and grant us a part in the mystery of new life." 

"Great phallic god," she said in her turn.  "Wild and strong, protector and teacher, horny and gentle, lover, father, and loyal friend.  I call on you, bring your heavy balls and your hard cock and wild passion and deep, steady love.  Make us fertile with great buckets of cum from your cauldron of plenty!" 

He looked at her quizzically, one eyebrow raised at this last, but she noticed that his cock was stirring.  She felt her blood quicken and the sunlight seemed to be flowing through her. 

"Spirits of this place," she called.  "Ancient and beautiful ones, great and small, we honor you.  Be with us here in friendship.  Help us in this ritual of life and love.  Share with us the desire we feel, and help us work ancient magick to bring a new life into the world." 

They stood there for a moment looking at each other.  Then she stepped forward and put her arms around him.  They just held each other, feeling the touch of soft skin and hard muscles, sliding hands over the terrain of each other's back, sweating in the hot sun. 

"I love the smell of you," he murmured. 

"Fuck me," she told him.  "I want your child." 

They kissed, tenderly at first, then more sensuously, then with an animal urgency.  He broke off and led her back under the trees.  Glancing sideways at his waving hard-on, she felt an erotic thrill — as if she were a young girl, as if she hadn't known that cock intimately for years in every way they could think of, as if she were his captive and he were taking her now for the first time...  her breath came faster, and her whole body seemed to pulse. 

"God, do it," she said, turning him.  "Now."  She pulled him down on the blanket.  He grinned at her, covering her, pinning her wrists, kissing and biting at her neck, her breasts, her nipples.  She struggled in protest, wanting him so badly.  He released her wrists and kissed her stomach, and then she arched her back as his tongue parted her labia and slipped tantalizingly up towards her clit. 

"No," she gasped, grabbing his hair.  "Later.  Come in me first." 

He came up, his face so tender, but with that wildness in it too, that lost look of male arousal.  She guided his cock into her and he started thrusting.  Giving herself over to the feeling of it, the fantasy and reality of penetration, she closed her eyes and moaned.  When she opened them, she met his eyes gazing down as he pounded into her harder and harder. 

His look was so full of love, she felt it like a wave pouring over and through her.  She saw his face begin to lose focus and fill with ecstasy as orgasm rose in him, sooner than usual.  She reveled in an animal part of her that welcomed his gush of semen and at the same time she felt a vast tenderness at the lost, boyish vulnerability in his face as he cried out hoarsely and shuddered.  It lasted a long time and seemed unusually intense. 

She held him tightly as he lay on top of her, his breath slowly returning to normal.  She felt his cock softening inside her, and she felt full of love. 

Then he reared up and looked down at her.  "Goddess, I love you," he said and kissed her on the neck.  He made his way down her familiar body, kissing and nibbling, licking the salty sweat of her armpits, savoring the healthy animal smell of her, tugging at her nipples, mouthing her breasts.  Eyes, closed, she writhed a little, giving herself up to the sensations, letting go of thought. 

His slow progress down her body had a lovely inevitability, and when finally (finally), his tongue once again slipped down between her legs, she moaned with pleasure.  He buried his face in her, feeling as he always did that her cunt, simple and familiar as it was, held a great and sacred mystery — that it was an altar of femaleness at which he was privileged to worship. 

Knowing what she liked, he teased her, varying the intensity in a pattern that gradually built.  She for her part, who usually knew what she wanted and how to ask for it, found herself exquisitely helpless, unable to speak, unable to voice the urgent demand that was building in her.  When she couldn't stand it any more, it was too late, she was jelly, an amorphous mass of inexpressible desire.  Then, finally, when she thought she might pass out, she felt it coming, out of the woods, up from the moss, down from the mountains, a wave of pleasure that broke over and through her and washed her utterly away. 

When she opened her eyes again, he was holding her gently and kissing her forehead.  She could smell herself on his cheeks, and a faint scent of his cum.  Love for him welled up in her and she hugged him tightly.  They lay there for a while, side by side without speaking. 

She looked up through the pattern of the branches to the blue of the sky, and then turning her head slightly, out at the vista of hills and mountains in the distance.  The silence was punctuated only by the sound of their breathing, the breeze rustling the leaves from time to time, the intermittent buzz of bees in the flowers, and the occasional voice of a bird in the distance.  Such a sense of peace filled her. 

After a while, she sensed something at the edge of the forest.  A bull elk stood there watching her, its antlers like small trees.  Looking into its large, dark eyes, she thought she should be alarmed but all she felt was gratitude. 

When she opened her eyes again, the light had changed.  She sat up.  They must have slept for hours.  It felt delicious.  She checked for bug bites, but the insects had left them alone.  Beside her, he stirred.  She bent over and kissed his ear and he opened one eye. 

He sat up and shook out his long hair.  "Wow," he said.  "So much for making love all afternoon.  So much for prolonged, languorous sex.  One world-stopping orgasm each and we were out cold." 

"Are you complaining?" 

He grinned at her.  "Not me." 

"Me neither." 

Later, in the car on the way home, as she sat with her feet up on the dashboard watching the trees flash past, she suddenly said, "Hey —"

"What?"  he said, glancing over. 

She paused a moment.  "I don't think I'm imagining this." 

"What?" 

"I think I feel it."  She looked at him, scared, tentative and happy all at once.  "I feel a change.  It's happening.  I think it worked." 

She saw the same wonder reflected in his eyes at this most sacred magick. 

(originally published in 2004 in Widdershins volume 10, issue 2).