Nocturnal Rendezvous

Twilight.


And so, amidst this dusky hour she made good her escape. Easing herself down slowly from the rafters where her pallet lay and setting muted foot upon the flooring below. Her father, snoring before the hearth, was unaware when his daughter slipped through the door of their humble cottage and made speed through the fields. Over a fence, across the road and onwards, advancing steadily towards the forest that lay just beyond their humble village a modest stretch of perhaps a mile or so.


Her heavy breath was muted by her heart, a constant murmur that resounded within her ears as if she were in some vaulted passage. The leaves which brushed by her skirts and bodice swished and rustled, the wind whispered among the trees carrying the tunes of night-pipers and their nocturnal melody. At last she reached the grove amidst the forest breast, making good time in but a half-turn of the clock.


She found him waiting.


Draped in the faint light of a lantern he sat, seemingly oblivious of her approach, until at once his hazel eyes gazed up. He smiled, warm and inviting, giving cause for her bosom to drum and pound in intensity with each step she neared closer. Her nose tickled with the smell of pine, a familiar scent, his scent, revealing at once his trade as a wood-cutter. If the great size of his limbs were not indication enough.


“Anika?” he whispered, though he knew the answer already.

“Yes Ervin, it’s me.”


He leapt to his feet, almost running, arms outstretched until finally they met in warm embrace. Her coif fell away, allowing her brunette hair to be loosed and drape to the small of her back. He held her tightly, fiercely, as the sands of time refused to drop so that they could be in the moment for but an eternity longer. Finally they parted, but only a little, and shared a kiss.


“I missed you,” she confessed, eyes misting amidst the tender moment.

“And I, you,” he avowed in turn before casting his gaze downwards. “I’m sorry. I would have sent for you sooner but something happened.”

She kissed him again and smiled, resting her head against his chest, “I forgive you.”

“Just so?”

She sighed contentedly, “Just so.”


It had been some months since Anika had heard from Ervin. This being their first meeting since his sudden disappearance. Her first thought was that perhaps their regular nightly rendezvous had been discovered. But there had been no change in her father’s behavior, who surely would have done something had he learned his daughter, now in her nineteenth summer, had given her virtue to Ervin rather than her soon-to-be husband Jurgo, the blacksmith. Her mind soon gave way to other possibilities but all fears had been dissipated when he had left a ribbon tied round the signpost of their village. Their signal to meet. Though she yearned to know the reason for his vanishing, hoarded desire dulled her inhibitions towards inquiry and guided them instead to the pleasures of a more amorous encounter.


Her hand, reaching, yearning, graced flesh sensitive to her delicate touch. The slightest gasp escaped his lips and drew him to remove her apparel and she in kind to his. Amidst the light of the lantern their shadows joined in congress, rhythmic movements accompanied by ecstatic sighs and bestial respirations. Though Ervin was not a gentleman by birth, he was one in the spirit of tumblings. He ushered her arrival first before allowing himself the courtesy of release. They soon collapsed together in a loving heap, panting and perspiring from their activity.

Her baser needs met, Anika soon bid to press for answers, “Ervin?”

“Hm?”

“What happened? You were gone for so long I worried that you-”

“Anika,” he interrupted, rolling onto his side to face her. “Do you love me?”

“Of course,” she answered, though the question caught her off guard.

“Would you be with me forever? Instead of…” his brows lowered, anger brewing in his voice as if uttering the name of her fiancée was a foul blasphemy. He managed to say: “Him?”

“Yes, yes, Ervin, you know I would but it’s not that simple my father, he-“

Ervin stood, abrupt and sudden. He began pacing, gesturing.

“But what if it could be? What if it could be that simple? Would you be with me? Forever?”

She joined him, her hand resting upon his broad shoulder azure eyes searching his, confused at this sudden denial of reality. They had been over this before, had accepted it. But now Ervin was different. Defiant even, in the face of fate itself.

“If…” she hesitated. “If it were, then you know I would choose you a thousand times over.”

“You swear it?”

She nodded, “I swear it.”

He smiled slightly, and then pounced down to his belongings where he retrieved a small jar which contained a odd sort of concoction the color of dark green perhaps brown. He removed the lid and a most potent odor emitted and assailed her senses. She recoiled, holding her nose.

“By the Monad! Ervin what is that?”

His answer: “Simplicity.”

He rubbed the ointment on her forehead, then her temples.

“Ervin this-“

“Trust me,” he told her.

She assumed, as he continued to rub the salve all over her body, that it was some strange woodsman rite. Some folk magic or tradition that would perhaps “bind them together forever” or some other form of wishful thinking. But soon her skin began to tingle, then numb. Her mouth became deprived of saliva and she took to feeling dizzy, faint. By the time she realized something was very wrong, she had already fallen to the earth immobile. The last thing she heard before the world descended into darkness was the whispers of her lover Ervin.

“Sleep, my love. You will need it. And come the next full moon, we will be together again.”

The next voice that came did not belong to him. Too ferine was it’s manner, too guttural it’s tone. As if a beast were mimicking the soulful speech of man.

…

“I’ll be waiting.”