In the Hand of Khal Keresh

On the train from the capital to Reshesk, Demetrius fell asleep, and as he did, he had a dream he did not understand.

He dreamed that he was standing in a wooded area, the trees thick around him. It was hard to tell from the dimness if he were surrounded by daybreak or twilight, or if the mid-day sun were simply no match for the canopy above him. He was standing because he felt he should be running, but he didn’t know to where. No direction seemed better or worse than any other. There was only forest on all sides, disappearing into the misty grey distance.

He wasn’t alone, though. That was why he needed to be running, except he felt certain that running wouldn’t save him. Whatever it was he needed to run from, it was faster and it knew the territory. He could catch glimpses of it, but only from the corner of his eye; by the time he turned to look, it would be gone.

His heart was pounding and his palms were sweating, but he wasn’t afraid. He could feel hot, terrified tears rolling down his cheeks, but he somehow wasn’t afraid. This was something else.

Intriguing, said a voice he felt instead of heard, in a language he didn’t understand. Delivered to my arms on the iron hooves of progress.

From the corner of his eye, he saw it again, and this time he could see that it had antlers — a huge, glorious rack dripping with moss and bleeding velvet. He could smell it, a wild scent that seeped from his lungs into the rest of his body. It wasn’t looking at him like he was prey. It was looking at him like he was bait.

Wait, weren’t those the same thing?

Come closer, the voice said, and as though pulled by puppet strings, he felt his bare foot step forward.

The sharp blast of the train horn as it pulled into the station brought Demitrius up from sleep so sharply that it shook the dream right from his brain. He would not think of it again until later, and by then it would be far too late to run.

~*~

Reshesk was a remote village nestled back in a far province surrounded on all sides by either high mountain ranges or frozen northern seas, which was why it had been, as best Demitrius could tell from government records, ninety-seven years since anything approaching an accurate land survey had been done. He hadn’t even been able to get a reasonable assessment from extant documents of what Reshesk was like. From those available accounts, Demitrius was made to believe he should expect anything from an insular tribal community (almost certainly), to a xenophobic clutch of backward-thinking clansmen (quite plausible), to a roving band of shape-shifting cannibals (unlikely, but Demitrius wasn’t willing to rule anything out just yet).

Thus he was only somewhat surprised to see the train pull up at an otherwise empty platform. The train was a freight train, after all, with only a single car for ferrying passengers, and Demitrius had been its only occupant. There were no porters, so he had to haul his trunk and valise down to the platform on his own, quietly glad he’d heeded warnings to pack light.

Well, he was here. Now what?

A small clutch of children were playing in the grass not far from the station. Their clothes were plain but not dirty, and they looked altogether like a well-fed, well-cared-for bunch. He called to them and waved, until one of them, the tallest and presumably oldest of them, came close. The look in the boy’s eye was a skeptical one. This was not a place used to outsiders.

“Hello there, lad,” Demitrius greeted him. “Could you be so kind as to tell me the location of your … your mayor, or your chief, perhaps?”

The boy spat on the ground between a gap in his teeth. “Ain’t got one.”

Demitrius pressed his lips together. “Well, then, can you tell me who’s in charge here?”

“Old Man Gaspar.”

“I see.” Demitrius nodded, accepting that they must have had some different nomenclature for their hierarchies. “And where might I find Old Man Gaspar?”

“Dead.” The boy sounded unbothered.

“Ah.” Demitrius drew in a full breath and let it out before he spoke again. “Might you direct me to the nearest lodging-house?”

The boy frowned. “What’s that?”

Perhaps Demitrius was up against an entirely different set of vocabulary here. After all, everything changed faster in the capital, language included. “A place where travelers can stay the night?”

The boy looked back over his shoulder to his friends, who were paying keen attention to their peer’s interactions with this strange man. “Miss Aria’s got a big house, ain’t no one live there but her now,” one of the little girls said, or at least Demitrius thought she said. Hearing more than three words from one of them was an object lesson in just how bizarre the local accent was.

“I see,” said Demitrius. “And how might one find this Miss Aria’s home?”

The flurry of directions that followed was incomprehensible, due both to the shapes of the children’s words and their references to local landmarks, to say nothing of how they kept talking over one another. After several full minutes of over the creek what Leo drowned in and near where Barley likes to sit and left down by the old stone mill and no, dummy, you know you ain’t know right from left, Demitrius simply offered them a coin each to escort him there, and two coins extra to the two bigger boys for carrying his things for him. It seemed a small price to pay for eliminating confusion.

As they passed through the streets, Demitrius took in the town as it was presented to him. The buildings were on the whole modest yet well-kept, wooden structures sometimes layered with plaster. The townsfolk he saw looked plain but not impoverished, their simple clothes free of visible dirt and mending. He nodded at a few in greeting. Not one of them responded in kind. He felt unwelcome. Ah, well, it wasn’t the first time.

Traveling at the speed of the shortest legs in their group, it took them nearly an hour to arrive at a large home that was practically modern by the standards of the town’s other buildings. It had several glass-paned windows, though all of them seemed to be covered with dark cloth. There was a reverent air about the place, one even the children seemed to feel. As soon as they stepped inside the front gate, they all hushed up. Only the oldest of the group walked up to the door and gave a respectful knock.

A minute later, the door opened, and a ruddy man with a thick red beard answered. “What’re you brats up to, then?” he asked, not unfondly. The question died in his mouth, though, as he beheld the stranger. Demetrius supposed he did stand out quite a bit, with his fine suit and his tailored coat, and accompanied by an entourage of children to boot. “Who’s this?”

Before Demitrius could answer, a second man appeared in the doorway, this one much taller, with close-cropped hair so blond it made him appear bald. He narrowed his eyes at Demitrius. “Where’d you find him?” asked the second man, his voice low and dangerous.

“Came in off the train,” answered the lead boy, whose name Demitrius was realizing he’d never picked up.

“Says he’s looking for a may-or,” said one of the other children, pronouncing the word like they’d never heard it before.

Demitrius decided to get ahead of whatever impression he’d given the children. “If I may,” he said, taking off his hat and giving what he hoped also counted in this culture as a polite bow. “My name is Demitrius Daminovich, and I am charged to conduct a government survey of this village and the surrounding territory. There should have been an official letter announcing my arrival…?”

“Oh,” said a low, feminine voice from inside the house. “It’s entirely possible. My father’s death has put us all in a state.”

The two men in the doorway stepped out onto the porch, clearing the way for a rare beauty to emerge. She was a lovely creature, a young woman in her twenties, perhaps, though the harshness of rural life often made it difficult for Demitrius to accurately estimate age. Tall and statuesque, she had thick blonde hair pulled in a braid that ran halfway down her back. Her face was lovely, without a hint of makeup to disguise the natural ruddiness of her cheeks or the plump rose of her lips. She wore a black dress that covered her from neck to wrists to ankles, and a black kerchief knotted over her head: mourning garb. Though he hadn’t meant to, he had still just committed a terrible intrusion.

Even so, the woman gave him a smile, one that melted Demitrius’ heart. He gathered himself and thought back to what the boy had said earlier: “Then your father was Old Man Gaspar?”

Behind him, the children broke into a chorus of snorts and giggles at that, though the two men looked distinctly unamused; even the woman at the door brought a hand to her pretty mouth to disguise a smile. “The children called him that — and fondly,” she added, before Demitrius could begin to apologize for having used too familiar of a term. “Yes. My father, Great Chief Gaspar, passed quite suddenly almost two months ago, and we’ve had none since.”

“I see,” said Demitrius, who didn’t. Two months seemed a long time for a community to be without a leader, but what did he know? Backwater people did things strangely. “I’ve been sent here by the government to conduct a survey and census of the community.”

The bearded man spat through a gap in his teeth. “Government. Bah. Snakes, all.”

“Grisha,” the woman chided gently, and Grisha unhappily shut his mouth. “We of course want to be helpful.” She shot both men on the porch a pointed look. As protective as they clearly felt toward her, she clearly was in charge here. “How long will it take to do your survey and census?”

That was like asking Demitrius how long it would take to walk to an unknown destination — he’d only know once he’d finished. Still, he could at least provide an estimate. “Two weeks, perhaps.”

The men on the porch visibly did not like that answer, but the woman considered this, nodding. “And if some of us could help you with your work, would you speed it along?”

Much of the work was technical, and explaining it would take three times as long as actually doing it. Yet there were some elements that Demitrius supposed could be done faster with assistance. “Somewhat,” he answered, hesitant to commit more than that.

The tall man grunted. “Fine,” he said. “Get it over with. You’ve got ten days.”

The woman looked at him. “Rumi, that’s–“

“Ten days,” Rumi said again. “And if you can’t do it by then, get gone. Come back in the spring. Or, better, never.”

Demitrius frowned, doing the calculations. Ten days would be just before the equinox, and rural communities like this often had pagan superstitions about such celestial events. It was little wonder that an outsider like him wouldn’t be invited. “All right, ten days,” Demitrius agreed. He’d hardly be able to do the job up to his usual standards of accuracy, but so what? If the government hadn’t suffered from having inaccurate statistics up until now, surely it wouldn’t suffer after. “Now, to the matter of my lodging. The children suggested I might stay with a certain Miss Aria…?”

Rumi and Grisha became guard dogs at that suggestion, all but baring their teeth. “Now see here, you city viper,” Grisha growled. “You can’t just–“

But the woman put her hand against his stocky chest and kindly yet firmly hushed him. “I am she,” she said to Demitrius, “and you may lodge here.”

“No!” said Rumi, turning to Aria. “It’s improper to–“

“Then you and Grisha are free to stay as well.” Aria’s voice was soft but resonant; it made Demitrius think of mahogany. “You may also receive my hospitality while you make sure our guest does not overreach his.”

Grisha spat again, and Rumi folded his arms across his chest, but that was clearly the end of the argument. Aria may not have held her father’s place, but she clearly was her father’s daughter, and that gave her considerable sway. “Fine,” Grisha said at last, “I’ll go tell my wife to set one fewer plate for supper.” He gave Rumi a look that demanded Rumi stay, and Rumi nodded his understanding before Grisha tromped off.

Demitrius didn’t know if it would make things better or worse to insist that he would never commit an impropriety, especially not while on official business, so he kept his mouth shut. Even if Aria was such a sight to behold, Demitrius was a gentleman and would conduct himself accordingly. Ten days, then, and he would be on the train back to the capital, with this little town left far behind him.

~*~

The room he was shown to was quite large, enough to house comfortably visiting family — and, as Demitrius gleaned from the short tour of the rest of the house, as far from Aria’s room as possible. Rumi also made sure to note that his room would be on the same hallway as Demitrius’, while Grisha’s would be upstairs, just across from Aria’s door. Demitrius tried to treat these facts as useful information, and not the hostilities they were clearly intended to be.

He took dinner in his room, partly out of a desire to reaffirm his lack of ill intentions, but mostly because he truly had to get to work if he was expected to leave here in ten days. He began creating plans for the necessary tasks, trying to divide what others could do from what he must do. Now he had to pray he had help sufficient to the task to meet such a tight timeline.

When he could no longer get his eyes to focus, he stepped out onto the porch for a cigarette before bed. As he exhaled the smoke into the dark night sky, he thought about how different this was from the capital. He’d done his work all over its vicinity, but there was something about Reshesk that just seemed impossibly far. He might as well be on the moon, for all the distance he felt from his regular life. There was a peace to it, a gentle quiet he felt robbed of in his busy day-to-day. Compared to the bustle that made his tiny one-room apartment feel like a cell in a beehive, this was blissfully still.

“You must forgive them,” said Aria, startling Demitrius so badly he nearly dropped the cigarette perched between his fingers. “They’ve been protective of me since we were children.”

“Oh, I–” Demitrius shifted his weight on his feet. “I completely understand. Are they your cousins, or…?”

“Just friends.” Aria shrugged, still smiling. “Though we’re so isolated back here that everyone is someone’s cousin, if you go back far enough. Sometimes not even that far. I hope you don’t take offense to their behavior. I can’t remember the last new face we saw around here. But you, you’re from the capital.” She said the word with a certain reverence to it. “You must see new faces all the time.”

Yes, all the time, enough that Demitrius felt some days as though he saw nothing but new faces. “There are many people there,” he agreed, though that was something of an understatement. The entire population of Reshesk could likely be relocated into a single apartment complex there.

“And lights.” When Aria smiled, her face became bright. “My eldest brother went once, road the train all the way in, and when he returned, he said there are electric lights that shine like candles into the night. And automobiles! Have you ridden in an automobile?”

“Once or twice,” Demitrius said, not wanting to dispel her romantic notions with the news that they were in practice mostly jerkier, fouler-smelling horse-drawn carriages. “I prefer walking.”

“Then you’ll love it here. We walk everywhere.” Aria sighed a little, looking out at the dirt road that led to her house. “No one even rides horses. Why would anyone need to hurry? There’s nowhere to get to.”

Demitrius hid a smile behind his cigarette. And here he’d been romanticizing rural life, while Aria was clearly dreaming more cosmopolitan dreams. Truly, humans were never happy with their lot. “Maybe you should come sometime to visit.”

A look of sadness passed Aria’s face, one that was covered soon after with a smile, but not before Demitrius noticed. “I dreamed sometimes of sneaking onto the train and running away,” she said, her voice a conspiratorial hush. “Off to the city, to disappear into the crowd. To see all the lights for myself. That is, I did when I was a child, of course. Not now.”

Demitrius didn’t believe her, but he knew better than to press the matter. “You have the stars, though.” He pointed to the cloudless sky, full of dots of light. “The lights in the city drown them out.”

“Oh.” There was that sorrow again, and this time Aria didn’t bother hiding it. “The stars are the reflections of our distant ancestors. I don’t like the idea of being somewhere they couldn’t see me.”

“I’m so sorry for the loss of your father,” Demitrius said, hoping she could hear his sincerity even through the perfunctory words. “Was it sudden?”

It had been sudden indeed, Aria explained, a wound that had grown quickly septic. Her father had lacked the strength to fight it, weakened with grief as he had been from when her older brother had been lost during a fishing expedition earlier that spring. And those weren’t even the only tragedies that had befallen the family — the brother lost at sea had actually been the third child, as the second brother had been killed some years before in a rockslide, and the eldest before that in a fever that had taken their mother and nearly taken an infant Aria as well. No wonder the matter of succession was so confused at the moment, as so many sons had been reduced to none.

“You’ve had such sorrow in your young life,” said Demitrius, though truly he did not know if he was enough older than she to say so.

“No more than some,” Aria said, a smile still perched on her pretty lips. “But the capital. You must tell me of the capital!”

Demitrius had never been a person shy to speak, and given the opportunity, he was delighted to tell her everything about city living that he could bring to mind. She listened, fascinated, asking clever questions and nodding along at his explanations. Her eyes sparkled in the dim light. She laughed at his jokes, and in a way that made Demitrius realize how long it must have been since the last time she’d laughed. The more they spoke, the more it seemed like a weight was being lifted from her shoulders.

For his own part, Demitrius couldn’t recall the last time he’d had such a lovely conversation. Aria was both beauty and brains, a combination that Demitrius found was quickly capturing his heart. He’d had a number of chaperoned meetings with young ladies who had clearly been groomed to be fine accessories, as lovely as sculptures and exactly as interesting to talk to. Aria was nothing like those delicate ornaments. She was vibrant, eager, sometimes even indelicate in a way that city women never would have allowed to show. By the time their conversation on the porch entered into its second hour, Demitrius was completely and utterly smitten.

Following a joke of his about streetcars, Aria caught her breath from laughing and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “Oh, I’d so like to see it all for myself,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

“You could,” Demitrius said, almost before his brain had processed the thought. When she looked up at him, brown eyes wide, Demitrius felt in her gaze the courage to push ahead. “With me, you could return with me. To the capital.”

“I…” Aria swallowed. “Could I?”

“Of course.” Seized by impulse, Demitrius captured her hands in his. They were neither small nor delicate, and he loved them all the more for it. “Though you’d be under no obligation to me once we arrived — there are boarding-houses for young ladies — I find your companionship invigorating. Refreshing. I should love to extend our time … perhaps permanently?”

Even in the dark, it was clear Aria’s cheeks burned bright pink. She looked down at their clasped hands and nodded. “Then … finish your work,” she whispered, a smile broad on her lips, “and tell no one about this, but when you leave, I shall sneak aboard and return with you and be your…” The word seemed to catch in her throat, as though she were too excited to say it.

“My wife?” Demitrius offered.

“Yes!” Aria gripped his hands in hers. “Yes, your wife!”

Demitrius opened his mouth to make her all sorts of promises, to swear that she would be cared for and never bored, to promise that he would learn to be a good and faithful husband to her. But the hinges of the front door creaked as it was pushed open, and at that sound, Aria and Demitrius became magnets of the same polarity. By the time Rumi stepped out onto the porch with a candle, they were safely at a distance from one another. “It’s getting late,” Rumi said, disapproval audible in his voice. “What are you doing still out here?”

“Mr. Daminovich was telling me of the capital, and I was showing him hospitality,” Aria said, her voice pleasant and even. She stood and smoothed her skirts, then took Rumi’s arm in hers. “Come on, you may escort me safely to bed.”

Rumi grunted, but he allowed himself to be led back in after only one more sharp glance thrown Demitrius’ way. Demitrius supposed he even deserved it; after all, he was planning on abducting their precious cousin-sister-friend, or whatever they were to her. In ten days’ time, though, it wouldn’t matter what they were, because he and Aria would be on the train together, leaving this backwater town behind them.

That he had just essentially proposed to a woman he’d only known a few hours did not bother Demitrius. His own mother and father had only met on their wedding day, after all, and theirs by all accounts had been a happy marriage. Why should the same not be true for him? He had no fantasies about effortless happily-ever-afters, after all. The happiest marriages he’d ever seen had been ones where both parties had entered willing to compromise, to adapt, to grow and change together. Demitrius could do that. He was more than willing to do that, for a rare creature such as Aria.

He retired happily to his room, his head already spinning with thoughts. He’d complete his work in ten days’ time, all right, and then he’d soon after be back home, with his new bride-to-be in tow, ready to start their life together.

~*~

He was dreaming again. He was aware it was a dream, which usually meant he could wake himself. Not this time.

He was back in the wooded place. He could hear the thing that was after him. It came on hooves and the rustle of leaves, except that the sound was always behind him, so no matter if he turned to face it, he could never see what was making the sound. He felt a hot puff of air on the back of his neck and spun on his heel. Nothing was there.

Turning so quickly made him realize that his feet were again bare. They were decorated, though, painted with red clay sigils, words in a system of writing he didn’t even recognize as language. He had metal cuffs around his ankles, far too delicate and lovely to be shackles. They were nonetheless holding him in place.

Awake, he would of course have taken in the whole sight at once. But this was a dream, so his gaze had to travel slowly up his own body. The sigils climbed up his legs, a beautiful and intricate painting that must have taken such time to apply. They went up further, past his knees, up his thighs, to his belly and back down again, where he–

There was something important there that his mind wasn’t understanding. Before he could look closer, though, he felt a matching clasp of iron encircle his neck. Someone grabbed it from behind and pushed him forward, until he was standing bent at the waist with his spine arched back. If that hand let go, he would fall forward. But it wasn’t letting go.

It was completely dark in the wooded dream place, but the thing behind him still managed to cast a shadow. There were antlers again, which now seemed impossibly tall as they hung over him. He could smell the moss and blood dangling from them. He felt something hard brush up against his rump, and he knew without looking that it was an erection, an impossibly large one, big as his forearm, perhaps even bigger. The powerful thing that had him was in rut. It wanted him.

He felt his knees grow weak. He felt an ache inside him, like the gnawing emptiness of starvation, except that it wasn’t hunger. He didn’t know what it was. He just knew that he had to fill it, or he was going to die. It was as simple as that.

Do you like your wedding band? asked the voice as the hand pulled harder on his collar.

Of course not; he hated it and wanted to be free of it. Which did not, of course, explain why he whimpered and pressed back against the massive unseen cock behind him. Was that going to be the thing that filled him? Impossible. It wouldn’t fit, and moreover, he didn’t want it to fit. He knew there were men who enjoyed such treatment, who even sought it out, and he did not wish to be judgmental, but it was simply not his preference. Not, of course, that he had ever had occasion to lie with a member of the fairer sex, or even to do more than catch the occasional chaste kiss, but he had thought considerably on the matter, and the thought excited him tremendously. And now he had his wedding night to look forward to, where he would take his beautiful bride and–

He cried out as something split him in two. That terrible, massive erection thrust into him hard, taking him so deep, it must have reached all the way to his heart from the inside. He was skewered as though on a spit, flooded with a phallus of unimaginable size.

The worst part was, that had been exactly what he’d wanted. The emptiness was gone. He was no longer going to die, because he was being fucked. That obscene thing with the antlers had mounted him, was mating with him, and it was as though his body had been made for such an intrusion. He felt like a final cog fitting into a machine, the last gear that made some great contraption work. He was being molded to it, shaped around it. The whole text of his body was being rewritten to be fucked like this.

His feet were off the ground now, his painted toes dangling as he was bounced midair on the thing’s massive cock. His mouth was open wide with his cries of pleasure, so wide that he thought he might see the head of that great shaft emerge from between his lips.

A fitting bride, the voice declared as a hand stroked his cheek — no, not a hand, an antler, warm and dry bone, but no less tender for its inhuman touch. Will you let me?

Let it what? He had no idea. And yet he nodded as it filled him, plunged into him, hollowed him out so that he was perfect for being fucked. He nodded because he was greedy, and because it felt so good that he would have agreed to anything. Yes, he would. Whatever it was this terrible beast wanted, this hideous monster, yes, the answer was yes.

He could feel the pleasure course through the thing’s cock at his agreement. That was good; he’d given the right answer. He’d given the right answer, and now in return he’d–

The pounding started faster, faster, as he was indecorously fucked. It pounded into him with obvious intent. It was mating with him, and as it had gone into rut, so he had gone into heat. Nothing else mattered, except that the awful, agonizing need didn’t come back. It needed to fill him, and he needed to be filled. As long as it was inside him, he’d never feel empty again. He cried out with pleasure, climax taking his body with all the force of being gripped in an iron gauntlet. Yes, the answer was yes, it would forever be yes, if this was his prize. He realized he was saying his marriage vows. As long as he would live, yes.

But the thing did not fill him, not yet. It did not spill all its wonderful hot seed into him, though he knew that was what they both wanted. It simply pressed and pushed and expanded him with that amazing cock. Somehow it always seemed capable of giving more, and he always wanted more. He was greedy for it. It did not exhaust him, but invigorate him.

You’ll be ready soon, the thing promised him, not a marriage vow but a placeholder. He could barely hear the words, though, over his own shouts of ecstasy. They filled the forest, echoing off the trees and back to his own ears, strange and familiar all at once.

~*~

The dark curtains on all the windows contributed to Demitrius’ sleeping unaccountably late, at least as he determined from squinting at his watch face in the dim room. He’d been having dreams intense enough that he’d tangled himself terribly in his sheets and nightshirt. What on earth had he been dreaming, that he’d gotten himself into such a state?

He couldn’t recall. Well, no matter. He’d never much remembered his dreams upon waking, for well or for ill. Either way, they wouldn’t help him about his day, and he’d better get to it if he had any hope of meeting his deadline. First things first, handling necessary business. He padded to the corner of the room with the chamber-pot, hoisted his nightshirt to the side, and began to relieve himself.

It didn’t go as planned. Instead of an accurate arc (he prided himself on his accuracy, even) into the vessel, he felt warm liquid begin to seep down the insides of his thighs and trickle onto the floor around his feet. For a moment, he didn’t even make the connection, and even as he did, his first thought was that perhaps the chamber-pot had a leak it in. It was only when he realized he heard no sound of urine hitting the vessel itself that he realized something was actually, anatomically wrong.

Horrified, he stopped urinating, though by that point he mostly no longer felt the need. He yanked aside his nightshirt and reached for his penis, bracing himself for his worst fear: that it had somehow become flaccid and useless, even before he’d had a chance to make proper use of it. He felt a moment of relief when his hand did not meet limp, withered flesh, followed by straight-out confusion when his hand met nothing at all.

He quickly lit a lamp with trembling hands, then looked down at the front of his groin. Where a perfectly acceptable penis had once emerged from a thatch of dark hair, there was only the dark hair. Demitrius ran his hand over it, feeling for some surgical scar, some hint of healed injury that might give him a clue as to what had happened. There was nothing. The flesh beneath the wiry pubic hair was smooth and unmarked, as though nothing had ever been there at all.

Heart pounding in his chest, he pushed his hand back between his legs, to the place he could not see even with the help of lamplight. He nearly cried aloud as his hand met sensitive flesh, familiar and yet much smaller. What had once been an organ the size of his whole hand now felt even smaller than the first joint of his thumb. Was that … could it be his penis? He was of course aware of the phenomenon by which external genitalia often reflexively drew themselves inward to protect themselves from cold or even injury. But never before had he known such an organ to outright shrink.

His testicles were missing as well. Perhaps they’d been retracted more formally, leaving only what felt like loose skin in their wake. Everything was slightly damp, presumably from his misaimed attempt at urination. His hand trembled as he followed the crease between them backward, until there came a point he could not coax himself further. He simply did not want to know the extent of the damage that had been done.

What kind of illness could do such a thing? How on earth had he contracted it? He needed to see a doctor at once. His job could wait — in fact, hadn’t they wanted him gone before the festival? He would be glad to oblige. The very next train, and he’d be on it, back to civilization and to the finest medical professionals. He didn’t care if he became a curiosity, one for the medical journals. He simply wanted, well, his manhood back.

He cleaned up his lower body and then the floor with his nightshirt. He could launder it later, or throw it away entirely, he didn’t care. He dressed himself in light trousers, hating the awkward way they fit. He did his best to fasten them without bringing his hands close enough that it would remind him of what he had lost. He realized he was clenching his jaw and willed himself to relax. He would accomplish nothing by frightening the townsfolk. He would simply say that he’d considered their situation and agreed to come back at a later time. Yes, that was it. Instead of rushing, he’d find a season that worked better for all of them. They’d be thrilled, Demitrius was sure. They’d probably even help him carry his bags to the station. He would be gone with the next train. He had to be.

As he emerged from his room, he heard noises from the kitchen. It was Aria’s house, so presumably those were her noises. He’d have to apologize to her, to swear to her that he’d return, to give her whatever token she needed to know he’d meant everything he’d said the night before. He’d come back for her. Assuming, of course, that he’d make any kind of a husband when he did.

Before he could even begin to mount an explanation, though, Demitrius turned the corner and saw not Aria, but Grisha and Rumi. They stood by the stove, hands around steaming mugs of some hot beverage, as Rumi stirred a pot of what looked like porridge. When they looked at him, it was with almost friendly grins, though given their reactions to him the day previous, Demitrius didn’t trust those at all. “Looks like you won’t have to rush your work, city viper,” said Grisha, and Rumi laughed like this was a funny joke.

Maybe it even was. It was just that Demitrius wasn’t in on it. “What do you … what?” Demitrius was having a hard enough time this morning without vague statements from men he was certain hated him.

“Have you looked outside?” asked Rumi.

Now that he mentioned it, no, Demitrius hadn’t. All the windows he’d passed had been covered with black mourning fabric. Demitrius turned to see a door against the far wall, leading from the kitchen to the outdoors. He hurried over and opened it.

The weather the previous day had been cool but pleasant, a crisp early autumnal air. The blast of cold that hit him now nearly pushed him back off his feet. There was a least half a foot of snow on the ground, sparkling white except for trails where folk had already trudged, going about the day. How on earth had that happened? There’d been no sign of a storm anywhere, and all the almanacs had assured Demitrius that first snowfall in even this northern territory never occurred until much closer to the close of the year. Where on earth had this come from?

“It’s worse up by the mountain pass,” Rumi said. He was dressed as though he’d already been out, in a heavy overcoat that had drops of snowmelt on the shoulders. “This should be gone in a day or two, but there? High as your chest, and someone said they heard a rockslide.”

The mountain pass. There were several, but somehow Demitrius knew it meant the one the tracks ran through. “The train…” he whispered, feeling the icy chill of realization sink into his bones.

“Close the damn door!” Grisha barked with such authority that Demitrius felt himself obey before he’d even comprehended the order. “City folks don’t know the value of keeping warm.”

Demitrius was going to protest that he absolutely knew the value of keeping warm, that even though the city never took much snowfall, there were still nights of bitter cold where the unwary and unlucky froze to death even in their own homes. But Grisha was right, he had been letting in the cold, so Demitrius let it go. “How long, then, before the tracks are cleared?” He hated how weak and frightened his voice sounded.

Rumi shrugged. “Always takes a while. We’re out at the far end of the line. And we’ve already sent in the bulk of the contracted timber logged this season. Wouldn’t be surprised if no one cares about us again until spring.”

Spring? No, that wasn’t possible. Demitrius shoved his hands in his pockets so it wasn’t clear how much they were shaking. “But is there…” He bit the inside of his mouth hard, trying to calm himself. “Are there paths around the mountains? By horse, perhaps, or even boat?” The sea was not that far, after all, and surely a community like this would not only have fishing vessels.

The two village men snorted quiet laughter. “It’d take you longer than spring either direction,” Rumi said, folding his arms across his chest. “Why, did you have somewhere important to be?”

Demitrius frowned, uncomprehending. “Wasn’t I supposed to leave in ten days’ time?” he asked, hearing the edge of panic in his words.

“Seems like Khal Keresh wants you to stay,” Grisha said with a knowing smirk as he began to ladle out the porridge into bowls.

“Who?” Demitrius asked.

“Sit,” Rumi said, taking one of the full bowls and pointing to a chair at the table. “Eat. It’ll get you warm inside.”

Demitrius didn’t want to sit, and he certainly didn’t want to eat. He did both, though, because it seemed easier than telling Rumi no. It was almost insult to injury that the porridge was incredibly good, milky and spicy and hardy in a way Demitrius had never tasted before. He took the first spoonful to be polite, but wound up finishing the bowl almost immediately. As soon as it was done, another bowl landed in its place, and Demitrius set into that one the same. The world was terrifying and something was going horribly wrong with his body, but at least he could eat about it.

As he did, he considered how quickly Rumi and Grisha’s attitudes to him had softened. Not twenty-four hours previous, they’d been ready to throw him back on the next outbound train themselves. Now they seemed almost smug about his being trapped here.

Perhaps they’d caught wind somehow of his plan to run away with Aria, and thus found it amusing that there would be no running, at least no time soon. Well, the more fools they, then. Demitrius still had every intention of being the hero she needed to take her away from this place. If he needed to wait for the spring thaw, then he would. He would not let them or anyone stop him.

And speaking of Aria… “Is she awake?” asked Demitrius, as there was only one ‘she’ in the house.

“Resting,” Grisha said, filling a large bowl and putting it on a tray. “Long night last night, with the snowfall and everything. I’m taking this up now.”

For a moment, Demitrius had the wild thought of asking if he could be the one to deliver his beloved breakfast in bed. Grisha clearly would never have allowed such a thing, though, so Demitrius just nodded. Whatever he had to say to her, it could wait. It would have to wait.

~*~

At least his sudden reconfiguration of his genitals did not seem to come with any other ailments. Demitrius did not feel feverish or nauseated or fatigued or in any other way physiologically distressed. Save the psychological upset, he really did feel fine.

He retreated to his room after breakfast and locked the door behind him, then wedged a chair under the knob just to be sure. Once he was as alone as he could manage, he lay on the bed and began to explore his changed body with his fingers. He was hardly a physician, but he did have a basic scientific education, which meant he was not ignorant in the ways of human anatomy. He pressed at his groin with his fingertips, trying to see if he felt something beneath that might have suggested a tumor — or, even, his retreated genitals. But no, everything felt as it should be, with nothing sore or misshapen, besides, of course, the obvious.

He almost wish it had hurt worse. If he’d been bleeding, for instance, or possessed of a spot that caused him agony, then at least that would have gone some way toward an explanation for his condition. In the absence of comorbidities, he was left without even the slightest clue. It was as though some clever thief had robbed him in the night and replaced him from navel to thigh with a woman’s body.

Or at least with what he assumed to be a woman’s body. Demitrius had had the idea of chastity until marriage drilled into him from birth, and as such, he’d barely so much as held hands with a member of the fairer sex. The last close encounter he’d had between a woman’s legs had been his own birth, and one could scarce expect him to remember that. The scientific education of his youth had touched upon the general contours of what to be expected there, contours Demitrius had expected to learn someday, though certainly not from this angle. He had only the faintest sense of whether or not everything was in its right place. That was something he had expected to be taught one day by his wife, not to learn through self-study.

As he explored, he had to keep on guard against any sensations that caused him pleasure. Pleasure was distracting. He would not indulge himself in it. And besides, it would be useless knowledge, because surely his condition would reverse itself. Perhaps it was only the mountain air that had such an effect on him. For that matter, how did he know that all the men of Reshesk were not similarly equipped? For all he knew, this could be a perfectly normal adjustment made by a body, one that would sort itself out after he’d acclimated. Or he might even been hallucinating, having strange visions that would subside shortly. Why, he might even have his penis back in a day or two, or even that very night! And then wouldn’t he feel silly, if he raised an alarm about it in the interim?

No, best to keep all this to himself. No one else would benefit from knowing. He didn’t need to cause any fuss.

By the time he emerged from his room again, Aria was awake and reading in the back parlor, with the curtains pulled back just enough to let in light. When she saw him enter the main room, she stood and looked for all the world as though she wanted to run across the room and embrace him. She kept her place, though, book clutched in her hands. “Good afternoon,” she said, her eyes bright but her face drawn. “Rumi says you’ve heard the news.”

“About the trains?” Demitrius asked, and Aria nodded. “Yes, they — he and Grisha — told me it might not be cleared until the spring?”

“They exaggerate,” Aria said, though she didn’t sound sure. She sat down in her chair again and gestured that Demitrius should take the one nearest to her. “I apologize for the dreariness. The last thing Father would have wanted was to be mourned in such a fashion, but traditions are traditions.”

“I see,” said Demitrius, who really didn’t. He didn’t understand anything that was going on around here. He hadn’t understood it even before he’d started either detecting or imagining changes to his body, he wasn’t sure which, and now he was utterly at a loss. He wanted to reach out and cling to Aria, because she was the only thing here that made sense to him. The fact that he couldn’t grated against his skin like sandpaper.

Aria’s pretty mouth worked into a smile. She must have been wearing cosmetics the day before, because the lines of her face now seemed less distinct, her lips less rosy. She was still uncommonly beautiful, of course — Demitrius couldn’t imagine ever thinking otherwise — but without makeup, in this light, there was a stronger edge to it he hadn’t seen before. It only made Demitrius fall in love with her more. “Father hated the curtains. When my brothers died, I’d catch him in this very corner, reading with the fabric tucked back just so.” She pointed to the way she’d gotten the heavy black material to bundle itself out of the way of the daylight. “He said they’d be sad to look back from beyond the forest’s edge and see us miserable on their account.”

“The … forest’s edge?” Demitrius repeated, not sure if he’d heard her right.

Aria smiled a little to herself. “Our dead are always with us. They haven’t gone far. They’re always watching us from just beyond the edge of the forest, in all the places daylight cannot reach. Khal Keresh keeps them there with him, until they fade into memory and become the distant stars.”

That was the second time Demitrius had heard those words. “Is that … a name?” he asked, hoping he’d get more of an answer from Aria than he had from Grisha.

Aria’s answer was to point to the wall behind Demitrius. Demitrius turned to see that the extra light made clear that the walls of this room were decorated with mysterious carved sigils. He’d noticed racks of enormous deer antlers mounted in other rooms, but he’d chalked them up to hunter’s trophies of some stripe. On closer examination now, though, he could see that this particular rack was hung with charms and bells and other objects he couldn’t identify, all tied with brightly colored thread. Beneath the rack was a table that held several objects, including small bundles of sticks and half-burned candles. Demitrius was himself a committed atheist from a staunchly nonreligious family. He had no idea what he was looking at, only that it felt sacred and very, very old.

“Khal Keresh is the guardian of our people,” Aria said, her voice low with reverence. “The lord of the forest, the prey who is also the hunter. He watches us in life and cares for us in death. We owe everything to him.”

Demitrius shut his mouth before he could ask her do you really believe in all that? It seemed rude in the extreme, and more to the point, so what if she did? People believed strange things all the time. Demitrius himself had owned a pair of lucky socks that he’d worn to every one of his university exams. Was that any less ridiculous than believing in a forest god? At least a god was an idea that had real power. Socks were just socks. He’d worn them to threads years ago.

“Long ago, when we came to this place, our people were few and sickly,” Aria said, taking on the cadence of a practiced storyteller. “They had no one to protect them, and no way to survive the harsh winters. So the elders of the people took the most beautiful of all of them, a virgin girl, and bound her in a forest clearing, praying that a god would take her in exchange for his protection.”

Demitrius felt his heart stop in his chest. A girl in the middle of a clearing, held in place by forces she couldn’t understand, knowing she should run but unable to do so. Why did it sound so familiar?

Seemingly unaware that Demitrius was having any reaction at all to her story, Aria continued: “Khal Keresh came to her and took her for his bride, and she gave birth to his sons year after year, until there were ten of them. Those sons were strong and smart. Khal Keresh taught them how to cut down the trees and fish the waters and hunt for game in the forest. The strongest and smartest of them was chosen to lead the people, and he became the first Great Chief. When he died, his son took that place after him, and his son after him, all the way down to my father.”

“And now you?” Demitrius asked.

Aria shook her head. “A woman cannot be a Great Chief.”

“Why not?” Demitrius could hear the affront in his voice. He didn’t know what being a Great Chief entailed, but he was certain that whatever qualities were needed, Aria had them in spades.

“Because…” Aria sighed and gazed out the window, letting that little bit of sunlight fall across her lovely face. “Khal Keresh is male. More than that, he’s maleness itself. The Great Chief is his representative, and sometimes even his avatar. During ceremonies, I saw my father possessed with the spirit of Khal Keresh.”

“Oh.” It was the politest response Demitrius could muster to such claptrap. Obviously there were other explanations for such behavior: psychoactive substances, or ecstatic trance, or even sheer flim-flammery. He could accept that people believed in such things, certainly, but he found he was beginning to chafe against being expected himself to behave as though they were true. “And who will be the next Great Chief then?”

Aria hesitated, still staring at the world outside. “My family’s bloodline is the oldest and most direct, but not the only one. If you’d asked me a few days ago, I would have said one of my uncle’s sons, perhaps, or an even more distant relative. And I, by rights, would become his wife and the mother of his children.”

No wonder the poor thing wanted to escape so badly. Being married against her will, and to a close cousin at that? What brutal, backward behaviors these people practiced! “That’s terrible,” Demitrius said, feeling bold enough to reach across the distance between them and take her hand.

She took it gratefully, squeezing his fingers with the strong, sturdy hand of a village woman. No dainty hothouse flower, she; why, Demitrius supposed she could best him at physical feats any day of the week. The thought charged him with excitement. “But now…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Things have changed since you arrived.”

And for the better, Demitrius was sure — putting aside, of course, the case of his own strange condition, which he wouldn’t even bring up, as he was increasingly certain that departing from this place would put him to rights immediately. Best not to mention it, lest he scare her off for nothing. That aside, though, he was pleased to hear that his appearance in the town had made a difference. Clearly he had brought some beacon of civilization to them. His travel here had been for the benefit of all.

That his strange condition could be put aside in his mind was something of a curious feat, but he attributed it to a well-developed mind-over-matter attitude he’d always cultivated. Speaking with Aria had convinced him that this was only temporary, as fleeting as an allergic reaction. Remove the stimulus, and the allergy would clear. Remove him from this strange context, and he would go back to normal. Life would continue as before, unabated.

“Was she all right?” asked Demitrius, voicing his thought before he’d even let it pass his conscious mind.

Aria frowned with confusion. “She?”

“The girl.” Demitrius waved his hand vaguely. “In your story. Your great-great-however-many-grandmother. Who had the sons of your” –he couldn’t remember the name– “deer god. And ten of them. She must have been terrified, the poor thing.” He did not linger on why this had sprung unbidden to his mind.

Aria’s pretty frown melted into an equally pretty smile. God, she was lovely, every part of her. “The first time, she was brought there against her will, yes. But every subsequent time, the tale says, she returned to the forest gladly, into the arms of her true love.”

Well, Demitrius thought, at least that was nice. It had a happy ending.

~*~

Dinner that evening was strange, in no small part for how many people came to the table. As was understandably appropriate for a chieftain’s home, Aria’s house had a great room with a long table meant to seat twenty or so guests. More than that were there that night, some with their chairs wedged in at awkward angles, others crammed on benches. They were young and old alike, men and women, of no discernible category so far as Demitrius was aware. He didn’t know how or even if they’d been invited. They’d simply showed up, some with dishes in hand, for a great meal.

There was no chance Demitrius could have missed it either. He’d tried to sneak back off to his room about the time the eighth or so guest had arrived, only to find Grisha’s meaty palm on his shoulder, pushing him down into a chair. His escape foiled, Demitrius resolved to be as good of a dinner guest as possible.

If he’d had years, he couldn’t have prepared himself for the meal. It was loud. He’d come from a reserved family, and himself first an only child, then an orphan child, passed around from small apartment to small apartment. Family dinners had been polite but on the whole grim affairs. Even holiday meals and gatherings had only been able to produce so much of an uproar, and that rarely cheerful.

This was pandemonium, as far as Demitrius was concerned. There was laughter and warmth. Children ran around the table, causing chaos until being scooped up by one adult or another, seemingly regardless of actual parentage. One even found her way onto Aria’s lap, a mop-headed little urchin with dirt smeared on her cheeks, which Aria wiped away with great tenderness. What a wife she would make, and what a mother besides! Demitrius could not help letting his thoughts wander to when such a table — smaller, of course, more appropriate to city life — would be surrounded by their own growing brood. He wondered which of their children would be sun-haired like their mother, and which would take their father’s darker features. They’d simply have to have several to find out, wouldn’t they?

As for the conversation, Demitrius could hardly follow it. Several of the townsfolk spoke in a dialect he only half understood, and even the ones that didn’t spoke with that strange accent, which got unhelpfully worse the more they drank. Demitrius found it best to nod and smile and speak only when spoken to — which, to his relief, was not that often.

At least, not until well into the meal, when everyone seemed to turn at once toward the stranger in their midst. “And what’d you say you job was?” asked an older woman with a cheerful face.

“I…” Demitrius swallowed. “I work for the central government. We’re conducting population surveys, updating the records. Many are outdated by a century or more.”

“To tax us, no doubt!” barked a younger man, and they all had a laugh at that.

“Well, taxation, yes,” Demitrius said once the noise had quieted again, “but also to provide. The government wishes to provide for its people. To bring new roads, new infrastructure. Electricity, even!”

Rumi snorted. “Electricity! Who needs it? Can’t trust it.”

“It, well, it can be faulty yes,” Demitrius admitted. “But when it works, it’s a marvel. Flipping a switch instead of lighting a candle or a lamp.”

Though he had always found electricity to be a life-changing discovery in many ways, Demitrius was finding the crowd here much harder to sell on the idea. They simply didn’t trust it, they said, not in the way a candle and a match could be trusted. That was simply because they didn’t understand it, Demitrius was certain. Once the government installed electrical lines for them, they would be grateful. They might even forget they’d ever once used candles at all.

“And have you begun your government survey?” asked a man with an eyepatch. That whole same side of his face was heavily scarred. They surely lived hard lives here. Demitrius thought it remarkable they could smile at all, with such difficulties.

“Not yet,” Demitrius admitted. “With the snow, and … well, I hardly have boots for–“

The words were barely out of his mouth before the table erupted in offers of clothing — and they weren’t offers, really, so much as declared intentions to bring the stranger what he needed to endure the unexpected weather. What a change this had been from his frosty reception only a day previous! Perhaps this was one of those towns where they simply needed to warm up to strangers. Now they were welcoming Demitrius with open arms.

Seemingly the only one who kept silent through all this was Aria, who sat at the head of the table and smiled over the proceedings with a paternalistic air. Surely that had once been her father’s place — where else could a Great Chief be expected to sit, after all? She inhabited it with such grace, though, that it made Demitrius angry to think of her having to cede it to a husband unworthy of its place. Very well, then, though it might be poor payment for the hospitality, Demitrius would be sure to make sure their most precious resident was swept away to a place where she would be regarded with all the honor she deserved.

Demitrius wanted so badly to reach for her, to take her hand and declare to all assembled that they were in love, and that no one would separate them ever. But he refrained, in large part for how he did not wish to spoil their exit. When they slipped out, it would need to be without suspicion. As soon as the trains were running again, they would vanish together.

As the meal came toward a close, a slender, almost waifish man rose from his seat. Immediately the table settled down, all eyes on him. “I am Dreyi,” he said as he bowed to Demitrius, his words almost incomprehensibly accented. “I am the town–” The word he said there meant nothing to Demitrius, whose visible confusion amused the crowd. “I keep the stories. I am our memory.” And with that, he began to sing.

Demitrius had never heard such a sound in his life. The song made him think of a river, how it began slow and easy, then sped up and crashed over the rocks of many swift words, only to gentle again on the other side. Dreyi’s voice was pure and lovely, and his range was exquisite; he could float with a falsetto that could rival the finest countertenors’, then drop the pitch into his chest, where it rumbled and resonated. Demitrius could not understand a single word, or even know if what Dreyi was singing even were words. They might have been imitations of the twitters of birds and the rumbles of bears, for all he knew. His voice stilled the whole room, such that even the rambunctious children settled and listened with perfect obedience.

Demitrius began to feel ill. It happened slowly, starting only with a pain in his belly that he at first attributed to how much they’d encouraged him to eat more and more of their rich food, and to drink more of their wine and ale. But that pain grew into a greater discomfort, until he felt perspiration break out across his brow. He was burning up inside his clothes. The room had become hot as summer to him. Sweat began to gather and roll down his skin beneath his garments.

The strange thing was, Demitrius somehow knew it was the song. Not the food, not the alcohol, not even his strange condition from earlier (which he had nearly forgotten about, thank goodness), but the song was making him feverish. There was some tangible aspect to it, something to which he was … allergic, maybe? His heart had begun to pound. He was afraid he might vomit.

Could anyone else tell? Demitrius couldn’t focus enough to determine their reactions. He could barely keep his own eyes open. The song took him over like a cloud of noxious gas, as deadly in his ears as poison would have been to his lungs. He wanted to block his ears, but he couldn’t lift his hands. He couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t do anything. He was paralyzed, frozen to his seat, forced to listen as his breathing became shallow and his eyelids became leaden. One slight nudge of the bench, and he felt the whole world thrown off-center–

“Steady now,” said a man’s voice he didn’t recognize, just as heavy hands caught his back. Demitrius fell into them, and then there were more hands on him, stretching him flat. Demitrius wanted to scream in protest, but how could he? There was no more air in his chest. There was no more blood in his veins. He was a little statue, not a person but a person-like thing cut from soft wood by a clever whittler’s knife.

Up, he felt himself hoisted, and then he felt the temperature drop sharply. His sweat-soaked garments froze immediately around him, but he himself was still burning up. He was being carried from the house almost like a coffin on the shoulders of pallbearers. No matter where he moved, the song stayed with him, even growing louder as the night air curled around him. Maybe it was what was holding him up and not hands. He couldn’t open his eyes to check.

Inside him the heat was getting worse. It was as though someone had placed a coal in his stomach — lower, even. It burned up from his groin, a fire that threatened to consume his whole body. He was made of wood, after all. Like a candle, like a lantern, he could burn.

The words to the song were changing. He was starting to understand them, little bits here and there. It was a song about the girl from the story — and of course it was a story, how could it be anything but a story — and the terror as she felt her limbs iron-bound by her elders in that clearing. She was so frightened. Of course she would have been frightened. Her people had been forced to choose between having all of them starve, or sacrificing one of them. They hadn’t even known to whom they’d been making the sacrifice. It had been the same as baiting a trap and seeing which creature approached first.

There was a bonfire. He couldn’t open his eyes to see it, but he could hear it, could smell it. There was a bonfire they were bringing him to, except no matter how they moved, the sound never got closer. It was there already. He was the bonfire. It was in him, and he would break open like a bomb any second, tearing everything apart from the inside out. He would destroy himself. He might destroy them all.

Somehow he knew that from the distance, just beyond the treeline, a dark figure was watching. He could feel the shadows of its antlers as they passed over his burning, dangerous body. He could smell the antler velvet.

Suddenly he felt his body drop, and the scent of wet earth rose all around him. He was in a grave. They were going to cover him with dirt. He supposed he couldn’t blame them. He was dangerous, after all. He had been dangerous from the moment he’d stepped off the train. He was going to explode, and he would take them all with him. Unless they did something like this.

He felt the first clumps of dirt fall on his face. They were cold, probably at least half snow by now. He lay there, feeling his heart hammer in his chest, and every beat of it sounded fainter and fainter still, like the chugging of a retreating train already departed from the station, with no hope of return.

~*~

With a gasp that almost became a shout, Demitrius sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the sheets. He was panting like he’d just run a marathon, body flooded with adrenaline. He just couldn’t remember why. What had frightened him so?

“Oh, you’re awake,” said an almost bored voice from beside the bed.

Demitrius turned to see a towheaded youth of perhaps eleven or twelve, clearly in the leggy throes of adolescence, mending a pair of pants. He’d been there at dinner, seated among the rest of them, presumably with his parents.

Dinner. Right. That was the last thing Demitrius remembered. “What … what happened?”

“You fell asleep at the table,” the youth said, barely looking up from his task. “Doctor says you’re fine. You just need a couple days’ rest.” The youth shrugged. “Guess you got it.”

Demitrius’ whole body felt leaden. “Days?” he asked blearily.

The youth nodded. “Yeah.” He put down his mending and stood from the chair. “Miss Aria said to tell her when you’re up, so–“

“Wait,” Demitrius said, and the youth turned. He had clearly been a beautiful child, and one day would be a handsome man, but the in-between stage was not doing him any favors. “Please, just wait a moment. What’s your name?”

The youth pressed his lips together and exhaled hard through his nose. He was clearly debating whether or not to answer at all; the affection other townsfolk seemed to have gained for Demitrius was not present in him. “Everyone calls me Rabbit,” he said at last, “on account of how fast I run.”

“Rabbit, then.” Demitrius nodded. “I’m Demitrius. But when I was a boy, people called me Demi. You can call me that if you like.”

Rabbit didn’t look to be in the mood to call Demitrius anything, but he nodded. He was listening.

That was good. Perhaps from the mouths of babes, Demitrius could get a handle on his present situation. “Rabbit, I seem to have…” Demitrius searched for the words; he hadn’t been awake long enough to have all his bearings about him. “I feel as though I’ve gotten myself into something. Something I perhaps shouldn’t have.” Rabbit’s expression didn’t go anywhere, which Demitrius took as assent. “I’m starting to think it would be better for myself and for everyone here if I just … took my leave.”

Rabbit folded his skinny arms across his chest. “Train’s out.”

“I know,” Demitrius said, trying not to sound too peevish about it. “But that can’t be the only way one can leave the village.”

“Train’s out, road’s out, sea’s iced over.” Rabbit ticked off each of these escape routes on his fingers. “Come winter, we’re Khal Keresh’s.”

The fact that it was still technically summer, at least astronomically, seemed to have little sway in this argument. After all, Reshesk was far enough north that Demitrius supposed there were barely other seasons but the coldest, darkest one. “And you believe in this Khal Keresh?” Demitrius asked, trying not to sound too insultingly skeptical.

“Seen him,” Rabbit said matter-of-factly.

“You’ve–” Demitrius’ eyes widened. “You’ve seen him?”

“In the trees. With Mother and Father.” Rabbit pointed off in a direction Demitrius supposed meant the forest, though he didn’t know how that way was more or less forest than any other direction. Even the path to the sea was wooded, Demitrius knew from the maps. They were surrounded. “He sends game my way when I go to hunt. Once he held off a storm until I found the path home.”

It was almost sweet to hear a child speak with such simple faith about matters. That was the way gods worked, after all — successes retroactively applied to their intervention, failures blamed on a lack of supplication. It was simply that no god sent game, just as Demitrius’ socks had not given him top marks in his exams. He had done that. “I see,” said Demitrius, who did not. “And you think your Khal Keresh controls all of this?” Rabbit nodded, as frankly as if Demitrius had asked if he’d believed this room had a floor. “To what purpose?”

Rabbit shrugged. “Doesn’t your god do the same for you?”

The question was so absurd, Demitrius barely kept from laughing. “I don’t have a god,” he said, as kindly as he could.

“Oh.” Rabbit pressed his lips together again, considering. “How come?”

How come indeed? “Where I come from, we don’t have gods,” Demitrius explained. “We have science and reason. And sometimes churches and rituals and holidays, yes, but those are for beauty and culture. Not for belief.”

“Oh,” Rabbit repeated. “What’s a church?”

Demitrius was having to back up far more steps than he’d anticipated. “A place to worship. Where do you worship your god?”

Rabbit pointed in the earlier direction. “The forest.”

Demitrius supposed he should have expected that one. “Well, not all places have forests.”

Rabbit screwed up his face. He obviously didn’t like considering that. “I’d die.” It was not a dramatic statement at all. It was simply to him factual.

“You’d … die?”

“Without a forest.” Rabbit scowled, as though ridding his mouth of a bad taste. “Mother and Father are there. How can I join them one day without a forest? My spirit won’t know where to go. I’ll never see them again. I’d die here instead.”

Now that was a wrinkle Demitrius had never considered. Aria didn’t seem quite as stalwart in her faith as Rabbit did, but she clearly believed. And here was Demitrius, promising to take her to the capital, where the closest things to a forest were a few fine parks. If Rabbit believed his deceased parents were in the forest, surely Aria thought the same about her late father and brothers. Had she considered that separation, in her haste to depart for a more exciting life?

Demitrius was starting to rethink his hasty marriage plans. Perhaps it was good that they’d been snowed in. They could make a formal departure, perhaps give her a chance to say good-bye to the spirits of her ancestors in her own way. Brides left their homes all the time, after all. It wasn’t as though he was making her do anything unheard of. Best do it in her own time, that was all.

Rabbit shifted his weight on his feet. “I’m going to tell Miss Aria you’re up.” And before Demitrius could say anything in response, true to his name, Rabbit exited the room all at once.

Well, that at least afforded him a moment of privacy. Demitrius hastily went over to the chamberpot and made use of it according to his new physical configuration, which he was dismayed to see hadn’t gone anywhere. As he undressed himself to do so, though, he realized the nightshirt he was wearing was unfamiliar to him. It was voluminous enough from his middle downward, yet curiously tight around his chest.

His chest. Oh no.

Demitrius’ hands flew to his chest, where he was horrified to find himself clutching two breasts. They were small ones, barely enough to even cup his whole hand around, but they were there. In a panic, he tore his nightshirt off. His frame was a slender one, such that his chest had never been anything but flat — yet here they were, two budding breasts, with pink nipples erect in the middle of them. He bit his lip and boldly touched one, then regretted his decision immediately as it felt as though someone had connected a live wire from that nipple to his…

To his what, exactly? Demitrius reached between his legs to where his phallus had once been. The little nub that had replaced it was erect now, more than slightly sensitive to the touch. He touched his new breast again and felt that same connection. Oh, it was good. Of course he’d touched himself before, but those occasions had been largely out of necessity, like scratching an itch. This made him whimper.

What was he to do? He needed to get dressed. Aria was on her way. He needed to find garments and cure his unclothed state. He absolutely needed to stop rubbing himself between his legs. So why wasn’t he?

He leaned against the wall near him, letting the chill plaster cool his flushed skin. Perhaps he could accomplish this quickly, he thought. Just … enough to dim the urge, nothing more. He bit his lower lip hard to keep a moan from escaping. How horrible! How horrible, and yet it only made his little phallus harder, and the skin between his lower lips sopping wet.

Barely standing on his shaking legs, his eyes darted around the room — and when they landed on the rack of antlers mounted over his bed, nothing was enough to stop that moan. Why did seeing those antlers make him feel this way? Why did they made him feel empty? It was as though there were a hole inside him, a cavernous hunger that something needed to fill. He rubbed himself faster, somehow knowing that no matter how good this would be, there was still something missing. He could quench the fire inside him temporarily. But it still burned.

A knock at the door startled him. “Demitrius?” called a voice, Aria’s voice. Aria was on the other side of the door, the unlatched door, and here he was, nude and filthy. She could come in and find him like this. He couldn’t conceal his arousal. All she’d need to do was to turn the knob.

“Don’t!” Demitrius cried out, pressing his whole body to the wall now. The coarse texture of the plaster teased against his sensitive skin. “I’m … I’m not decent!”

“Oh, my apologies,” Aria said, and Demitrius could not countenance the stab of disappointment he felt that she would not be bursting through to catch him in the act. “How are you feeling? You slept so long. You must be hungry.”

He was hungrier than he’d ever been in his life, though not for food. His eyes fell again on the antlers. What would they feel like against his skin? “I am, yes,” Demitrius said, keeping his voice steady through sheer force of will.

“Are you all right?” Aria asked through the door. He could almost feel the way she lifted her hand and pressed it to the wood, as though to somehow touch his chest. His breasts. She could put her beautiful, strong fingers on his breasts. She could part those soft pink lips and press them to his nipple. “You sound unwell.”

Oh, Demitrius had been struck with a terrible malady indeed, one he could by no means recount. “I’m fine, only…” He cleared his throat. His voice sounded high and thin to his ears. Or perhaps he was distracted from proper hearing by how hard his fingers were rubbing between his legs. That might have an effect on a man’s voice. He didn’t know for sure, but it was possible. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

“All right,” Aria said, though he did not hear her footsteps retreat. Instead, he heard a sweet sigh. “I was worried about you. You’ll forgive me for stepping away for just a moment and leaving Rabbit to mind you.”

Of course he’d forgive her. He’d forgive her anything. Especially if she put those clever fingers on him — or, heavens, in him.

As though guided by the thought alone, Demitrius shoved his fingers back and up between his legs, back to the source of the wetness. God! He nearly fell to his knees, and barely managed the few steps needed to take him closer to the door. He leaned there up against the heavy wood panel, thighs fully parted, two of his fingers up against a slit he hadn’t known he’d had. Slick with arousal, his fingers rubbed wetly up against the new folds of skin, which were still far too tight to push much further between. Oh, that wasn’t enough, but it was better than not touching himself at all. He began to move them roughly back and forth, imagining they were a–

No, he refused to imagine that. That was beyond improper, it was obscene, it was a violation of nature and morality alike, it was wicked, it was — oh, it was making him wetter. Fragments of forgotten dreaming came to the surface: thoughts of being impaled on a phallus ten times as large as the one he’d lost, impossibly huge. Wouldn’t that be so much nicer than fingers? Wasn’t that what he really wanted?

“Demitrius,” Aria said, her voice soft and low. Every syllable she spoke seemed to resonate through his body. “Are you thinking of me?”

God, did she know what he was doing? Demitrius’ breath froze in his throat at the mere thought — and in that silence, he heard a shuffle of clothing, a rustle of breath. Merciful heavens, was she…?

“Yes,” Demitrius gasped. He pressed his cheek to the door, praying for it to somehow disappear, to remove the barrier between their bodies. He wanted so badly to hold her, to taste her, to do all manner of things to her. She was water, and Demitrius had lived his whole life in a desert. “Yes, I am.”

Aria’s smile was somehow audible in her words. “I’m thinking of you.” Her voice was heavy with air. “I’m thinking of touching you.”

Demitrius’ knees were barely managing to hold him upright. Through the door, he could hear the little pants of breath from her lips, as well as the rustle of clothing and the touch of skin on skin. He could hear her. “Please,” he gasped. It was the only word he still knew. All others had been pushed unceremoniously from his head by the thought of her, uncrossable inches away from him. The thought of her had driven him to ecstasy; the thought of having that ecstasy shared with her had driven him nearly to madness.

“I want to be with you,” Aria promised. Her voice was as deliciously rough in his ears as the plaster had been against his skin, precious friction for even more of his overwhelmed senses. “I want you so much. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you.”

The best Demitrius could manage was a whimper of assent. He had thought he’d known what desire and pleasure were. He’d had no idea.

“I want to press my bare body to yours.” Aria’s voice was growing huskier by the word, full of needy breath. “To tangle with you in our marital sheets. I want it so much I can hardly think. It’s agony being so far from you. I want you. I want only you.”

Demitrius whined again as he worked his fingers as best he could against slick, swollen skin, unable to touch the cavernous yawning inside him. “I want you,” he gasped, eyes shut. The fever he’d felt at dinner had nothing on the way she was making him burn. “I want you inside me.”

“Yes,” Aria said immediately, giving no indication that this might be a curious request from her future husband. “Hot and warm and deep–“

Demitrus’ fingers worked with almost bruising pressure against his little nub as he climaxed. He was unable to keep a sound from exiting his mouth at that, a cry that might have sounded like pain to anyone who could not see the absolute pleasure washing over him. He could feel the soft, wet muscles inside him clench in sweet spasms, and even in this delicious relief, they seemed to say it’s not enough. He was calmed for now, but he needed more. He would need so much more.

As he came to his senses again, he could hear heavy breath from the other side of the door. He pressed himself to it, almost able to feel the weight through the door as she leaned on the other side of it. “Did you…?” he asked softly.

There came a low, sweet laugh. “Yes,” Aria said, and he could hear her smile form the word. “And you?”

Demitrius pulled his hand away from his … well, there was no denying what it was now, even if he didn’t like to think the word. But the topography and the sensations alike had made his new anatomy clear. “Yes.” Perhaps he did not know the nature of his malady, but he could surely tell its symptoms.

And thank heavens, of course, that this was as far as it had gone. Surely all manner of these physical changes, though substantial and frankly startling, were at best cosmetic. Cosmetic changes were reversible — would often, in fact, reverse on their own, or so he was fairly certain. Bodies changed cosmetically all the time, as anyone who had survived puberty knew. At least he was no doubt still the same within. As long as he was still the same within, all could be restored. And he was surely the same within.

Demitrius wanted to make some comment, any comment, about what had just transpired between them, but before he could so much as open his mouth, Aria shushed him. He could hear a rustle on the other side, the sound of smoothing skirts, followed by a noise of greeting that wasn’t meant for him. “Yes, he’s up and feeling well,” she said after a moment, her voice distant as though she were looking down the far end of the hall. “Will you set another place at the table? He’ll be joining us once he’s readied.” Whomever she had addressed made no noise in reply, but the quiet that followed suggested understanding, even assent. A few seconds later, and Aria’s voice came louder than it had before, addressing Demitrius as though she were expecting to be overheard: “We’ll not wait on you to start eating, then.” Her footsteps retreated shortly after.

Demitrius, alone, was left naked and shivering. With the fire of arousal retreating, he was suddenly aware of just how cold the room around him had become. He scrambled for his clothes, finding himself frustratingly perplexed by buttons and fasteners that had once been so familiar. Nothing was familiar any longer, not even his own body. He had become almost a stranger to himself.

It didn’t matter. Aria loved him. She loved what he was. He could be what she loved. He could be the man she wanted to marry and to hold. There might have to be some negotiations, but surely she would understand. She was an understanding woman. He knew it.

As he buttoned a shirt that no longer quite fit as it once had over the shape of his chest, Demitrius began to see the shape of his dilemma. He couldn’t take her away from this place, from her traditions and everything she loved. Neither, though, could he leave her here, at the mercy of cruel systems that had fixed her lot since birth. Nor could he leave without her, for he was certain by now that he would die if removed from her presence.

The one option that this left loomed large in his mind as Demitrius opened the door to his room and proceeded to join his love and the others for the meal.

~*~

A few days later, Demitrius was declared recovered enough to wander around the town. To his surprise, he was permitted to do it unaccompanied, though when Rabbit offered his services as a guide, Demitrius accepted. After all, Reshesk was not large by standards of the capital, but neither was it some tiny hamlet. Getting lost was a real possibility.

As predicted, the snow had melted from the town streets, but the moisture that lingered and turned the paths to mud made Demitrius grateful he’d brought appropriate boots for patches of mud. What he hadn’t brought was a coat equal to the temperatures, but Aria had seen to that, giving Demitrius a heavy woolen coat that had belonged to one of her brothers. Demitrius was grateful for it in many respects, not least because it covered his … that was to say, his…

He had no idea what to call it. His condition. The strange and sudden malady that was reshaping his body. Which was impossible, of course, which meant there had to be some other explanation. At the moment, his best guess was some kind of hallucination, perhaps brought on by some strange late-year blooming plant, or even whatever they used to brew their tea. As soon as Demitrius’ constitution acclimated to whatever was triggering the hallucinations, they would stop, and all his parts would be revealed to have been in the same places they’d been all along. It would be fine shortly. Best not to think about it.

Still, he preferred to wear the heavy, shape-disguising coat. It made him feel more comfortable, that was all.

They were a hardworking folk, the townspeople, and Demitrius saw their labors as he passed through the streets. Some few of them acknowledged him as he walked by, but most were focused on their various industries. Several were shingling roofs or plastering walls, presumably defense against the winter that had so early come this year. Great plumes of vapor puffed from their lips as they worked, the whiteness of their breath a twin to the whiteness of the snow on the far mountain peaks.

If he’d been equally industrious, he supposed, he would have brought his survey tools along with him. His government job felt impossibly remote to him, though, as far away as he was at present from the capital. At any rate, it wasn’t as though he were in any sort of a rush, not if the trains might not be operable until the following spring. He would have time.

As they began their approach to what seemed like the center of town, Demitrius saw that many people were gathering, hanging garlands and other decorations from every post. “What’s this about?” he asked Rabbit.

“Equinox,” Rabbit answered, as though that should be sufficient explanation. “And the new Great Chief.”

That was right; though Demitrius had all but lost track of time since arriving, he was reminded of the reason he’d been on such a tight timeline in the first place. “And the next chief, that’s been decided?”

Rabbit shook his head, then shrugged a little. “Dunno.”

“And…” Demitrius cleared his throat, trying to sound casual. “Aria will be forced to marry whoever it is?”

Rabbit shrugged again. “Dunno.”

Demitrius pressed his lips together. “Don’t you think it’s cruel, that she should be forced to wed someone she doesn’t love?”

An adolescent boy, Rabbit had clearly never put thought into such things. “Dunno.”

Demitrius sighed hard through his nose. “And don’t you think it’s cruel, that a god should demand such things?”

Rabbit turned to look at Demitrius, and Demitrius was startled for a moment by the wisdom in his young eyes. “The world is cruel. Nature is cruel. Khal Keresh offers kindness where it can be found.”

“Oh,” said Demitrius, who had no rebuttal to that.

Rabbit led Demitrius to the center of town, right up to the town square, where there was what looked to be a section the trunk of a massive tree, twice as tall as the heads of everyone surrounding it, and wider than two people holding hands could surround. A curious decoration, Demitrius thought, but not out of line with the way the locals seemed to worship the forest. Besides, its tree of origin must have been massive, and Demitrius could understand wanting to commemorate that.

As they walked around the side of the wood, though, Demitrius could see that one side had been carved by some expert hand — and as his eyes fell on the full carving, he felt his heart stop. He bit his lower lip and drew together all his strength to keep from toppling there, in front of everyone, on the muddy ground. Demitrius knew in a moment that the figure he gazed upon was the antlered god the townsfolk prayed to, depicted towering over all of them, fully naked and erect, his massive phallus proudly front and center of the display.

Demitrius immediately turned up the collar of his borrowed coat, hoping any flush could be attributed to the wind. “My word, that’s … it’s…” He felt compelled to cover Rabbit’s tender eyes, to protect him from the obscene sight. That children could look upon this display! What on earth were the townsfolk thinking, to place such … such pornography in their midst?

“Khal Keresh,” Rabbit said, sounding almost bored, which was the opposite of the scandal Demitrius was feeling. And of course, why would he react otherwise? He’d probably seen it thousands of times in his life, until it was merely part of the landscape. “My mother’s great-great-grandaunt carved it.”

And to treat the pornographer as a part of proud family lore? Demitrius was beside himself. What an offensive creation! Surely that was why he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the perversity. Yes, that was it: the raw perversity of a phallus that looked as large as Demitrius’ forearm. He watched in horror as one of the townsfolk approached it and touched the great carved shaft with oil-slicked fingers, rubbing it up and down while murmuring something to herself. In front of everyone, she gave it caresses she might have given a fleshly lover, rubbing the god’s powerful tool as the wood absorbed the oil and darkened. “What is she…?” Demitrius’ sentences were failing him midway.

“Praying for a child,” Rabbit told him. Demitrius could remember being a boy Rabbit’s age, tittering with his schoolmates as they snuck peeks at pages of salacious prose or even the rare pinup girl pilfered from a father’s belongings. Sex to him had seemed so mysterious then, enticing for how forbidden it was, yet a source of laughter for how uncomfortable it made him and his friends. And here was Rabbit, watching a woman erotically stroke a statue with no hint that anything might be amiss. Demitrius did not know how to respond to any of this.

A moment later, two other women came over to join the first woman, laughing and chatting as they laid colorful sheafs of wild grasses at the statue’s hooved feet. They looked to be the same as the ones that decorated the square, hanging from posts and eaves and windowsills of the surrounding buildings. “And they?” Demitrius didn’t even know what he was asking anymore. He wanted and didn’t want to know at the same time.

“Same.” Rabbit nodded.

“And do the women of your town have, ah, trouble with that?”

Rabbit nodded again. “That’s why we have the Equinox.”

The ordinary word seemed to take on a sinister weight as Rabbit spoke it. “What does that have to do with anything?” asked Demitrius.

“It’s when all the women get together and pray to Khal Keresh to make them pregnant.” Rabbit might not sound so casual about this in a few years, Demitrius figured, but for now he spoke as though such things little interested him. “If he chooses them, they will. Then the babies are born in summer, when it’s warm and they’ll survive easier.”

Demitrius supposed he couldn’t fault the logic there, especially since the summer was still technically upon them, and everyone was already bundled up against the chill. He took a deep breath and told himself to stop being prudish. These were rural folk, who had learned to live in such a harsh environment. Of course pregnancy and childbirth concerns would be factored into their lives, the same way they might manage the mating of their flocks and herds. And they lived such hard, short lives, to boot. Perhaps it was only natural that exposure to such things would happen at a younger age. It didn’t make it right, of course, and with enough awareness of the civilized world they would no doubt one day put a stop to such a practice, but it did at least make it explicable.

At this, Demitrius realized he’d been staring at the statue — that he’d been staring the whole time, in fact, his eyes fixed right on that generously carved cock. He moved away with what he hoped was an inconspicuous, dignified turn. “What shall we see next?” he asked, and in that moment he was proud that his voice sounded entirely calm and casual and not at all like he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

Walking away from the square, though, Demitrius was struck with the urge to turn back and look. He had seen that figure somewhere before, he was certain of it. But where?

~*~

He remembered that night, when the dreams came again.

He’d never remembered his dreams, not in the way others did; they dissolved upon waking, leaving only the faintest impressions on his memory. But he knew now, in this dream, that he’d been here before, in this very clearing, waiting in this very spot.

A figure emerged from the edge of the darkness around him, stepping out from behind the trees. Its antlers were the first things that Demitrius saw of it, and then the rest of its body. It was larger even than the carving in the town square had been, and its phallus larger proportionally. It was an enormous thing, a club that swung between the creature’s furred thighs as it strutted toward him on sharp black hooves. Erect but too heavy to stick upright, the creature’s cock dangled so far down it nearly touched the ground, and where seed dripped from the head of its enormous shaft, seedlings popped their heads up through the frozen earth.

“Khal Keresh,” Demitrius heard himself saying, and it turned to look at him, its giant ears twitching with the sound of its name. He’d guessed right.

Pretty thing, it declared him without moving its lips. Its eyes were a deer’s eyes, black and deep. Demitrius knew that if it opened its mouth, he’d see fierce and terrible teeth. You’re almost ready.

“Ready for what?” Demitrius asked.

Instead of answering, Khal Keresh pointed at him. Demitrius looked down at his body, though it was no longer recognizable as his body. The buds of breasts that had started to form had been replaced by large, soft mammaries crowned with plump pink nipples. His hips and belly, once stick-thin, now rolled with soft fat. Dark hair cascaded over his shoulders, and as Demitrius lifted his hands to his head, he realized it was his hair.

“How?” gasped Demitrius, feeling tears of panic begin to prickle at the corners of his eyes. “What have you done to me?” This wasn’t his body. He didn’t want it. He couldn’t want it. He wanted the illusion to end. He wanted everything to go back to normal.

Shh, Khal Keresh whispered, moving in close in a way that simultaneously shocked Demitrius’ system and made arousal drip down Demitrius’ newly plump thighs. I’ve cultivated you. Domesticated you. Its head was a deer skull now, its face stripped of flesh. Demitrius couldn’t look at it for long. Made you fertile.

Now those tears were rolling hot down Demitrius’ cheeks. He slapped himself across the face. This was a dream; he needed to wake up. The pain from the first blow didn’t work, so he drew his arm back and prepared for a second.

Before he could strike, though, Khal Keresh grabbed his arm with a strong, warm human hand. I’d never let you get hurt, it promised. A long tongue slipped from between the skull’s jaws and licked at one of Demitrius’ nipples. Demitrius cried out, his body shaking with a cluster of sensations he couldn’t distinguish. He was sobbing openly low, weeping as that throbbing began between his legs. His fingers hadn’t been enough to satisfy that yearning. Something bigger might, though. Something the size of…

Khal Keresh’s cock was there, prominent and hard, just like it had been in the carving. And in the same way as had happened with the carving, Khal Keresh guided Demitrius’ hand gently to its erection. It made a pretty sound as Demitrius made contact with flushed skin. He wanted to pull his hand away, but the creature held it there. He could feel a pulse beneath its skin, and he knew that blood and semen alike coursed through the veins there.

Openly sobbing now, Demitrius pressed his face to the massive erection before him. He found himself opening his mouth, pressing his tongue to it, lapping up its salt and musk. He pressed his breasts to it, feeling the new contours of his frame. Wracked with fear and horror at his own physical state, the only thing that made sense to Demitrius was to worship. And so he did, rubbing the phallus in the way the woman in the town square had rubbed the statue’s, as though begging for something. But what? “Please,” Demitrius whimpered. His voice already sounded so unfamiliar to him. He was losing everything he once had been.

My vessel, Khal Keresh said, and somehow Demitrius knew it wasn’t addressing him. How could he be a vessel for a god? Only those with the god’s blood in their veins could be a worthy home. You will stay for my vessel. My vessel will stay for you. The world is changing. There are new dangers beyond the borders of the village, beyond my realm. I have taught my children to protect themselves from the forest. You will teach our children to protect themselves from the iron wheels.

“What do you mean?” asked Demitrius, but he wasn’t dreaming anymore. He was very awake, and hands were grabbing at his arms and legs, and another was throwing a sack over his head, and then he was being carried again, out of his bed and into the freezing night.

He tried to struggle, but he had never been an athletic lad, and the hands that held him had been toned and trained on hard rural work their whole lives. They held him aloft as though he were merely a piece of slightly unruly timber, struggling at his bonds. They had him, and he was filled with the sudden certainty that they were taking him to his grave. He tried to shout, but the panic coursing through his body froze his throat. His chest heaved in short, frantic bursts. Every inhale brought the sack to his mouth. He felt as though he were suffocating.

When they put him down, though, it felt as though it were atop some sort of table. He could tell he was indoors from the stillness of the air, but he had no idea even what sort of room or building they had him inside. His wrists were roughly lashed together behind his back, and his ankles similarly tied.

And then his captors retreated, leaving him alone in this unfamiliar place. He was wearing only a nightshirt, a borrowed garment that hardly disguised the shape of his body. Somehow that was more terrifying than the abduction: the idea that they now knew. All those hands that had held him down and carried him to this place, they were attached to people who had seen him in this strange state, and now Demitrius could no longer lie to himself about its being a hallucination. He could feel his erect nipples poking against the linen fabric. They had all seen. They all knew. And soon he would…

Soon he would be ready. He wanted not to know what the awful antlered vision in his dream had meant by that, the same way he’d wanted to believe that what was happening to his body could have more mundane explanations. He was almost past the point of ignorance, so he held on to it dearly. What loomed beyond was knowledge, great and terrible and inevitable.

“Demitrius!” came a harsh whisper, a voice he recognized immediately despite its breathy rasp.

“Aria!” he shouted, before realizing he should probably take his cue from her. He dropped his own tone to match hers: “Aria, what are — what is — help me!”

There was a little rattle at that, one that made Demitrius think of locked doors. Again they must have been on opposite sides of one. He marveled at how she’d found him. “I can find the key. Somewhere. I can find the key to the room and get you out.”

The relief he felt at hearing that didn’t stop his heart from thudding in his chest. “What are they–” Demitrius remembered to whisper. “What are they going to do with me?”

“Don’t worry.” The door rattled again. Was she trying keys? Or just confirming it was locked? “I’ll get you out. I’ll get you out and let you go.”

“Go?” Hadn’t all his avenues for doing that been cut off by the weather. “Go where?”

“I have a mule,” Aria answered. “It won’t go fast, but it will go faster than we can on foot, and it’ll take you over the pass where the train tracks run. I can get you supplies. Three days, maybe more in these conditions, but there are settlements on the other side, ones that can take you back to the capital.”

Demitrius shook his head, though he wasn’t clear whether she could see him or not. “Come with me.”

“I can’t.” Aria’s hot whisper sounded full of regret. “I can’t, I can’t leave. You have to go without me!”

“No!” Demitrius bit at the inside of his cheek. He had to keep his voice down. “I won’t go without you! What if they do this to you?” He didn’t even know what it was they were doing, but he assumed if they could do it to him, they could do it to Aria. They might hesitate, because she was one of their own, or they might even do it even more eagerly. He couldn’t count on that.

“They won’t,” Aria promised, but her voice sounded strange and far too unsure to Demitrius’ ears. “They won’t, but I can get you to safety — but you must get away alone. Please!”

“No!” Demitrius hissed again. “I won’t leave you! I won’t leave you, my love!”

“It’s too dangerous here!”

“Then it’s too dangerous for you!” Demitrius countered.

Aria made a frustrated sound. “You need to go! You need to save yourself!”

“I won’t leave you!” How could Demitrius possibly have lived with himself, running like a coward to save his own skin, leaving behind the woman he’d once promised to love forever? What kind of a man would he have been? His own wretched condition, even his own life didn’t matter! He would not abandon his true love! “I won’t ever leave you!”

There was a silence after that, one so abrupt that Demitrius was certain someone else must have been coming, that she must have hushed herself for reasons of subterfuge. Demitrius all but held his own breath, aware of the hollow around him. The silence began to ring like a high pitch; he shuffled and strained against his bonds just to make some sound to fill his ears.

At last, he heard a latch’s being opened, and the creak of a heavy door on its hinges. Demitrius wanted so badly to believe it was Aria who had opened it, but he didn’t dare chance it. He’d once been deer-hunting, when a boy, and he’d remembered the way the creatures had stood stone-still when they’d suspected danger might be upon them. He felt a rare kinship with them right now.

He sack was pulled from his head, but it didn’t matter, because the room was in total darkness. He couldn’t see who grabbed him as his head was yanked back and his mouth was pulled open. A thick, sweet liquid was poured into his mouth, and Demitrius was faced with the choice to swallow or to choke. He swallowed, feeling its warmth as it trickled down into his stomach. It burned like alcohol — no, like kerosene fed to the fire inside him. As it hit his belly, it blossomed, until the heat became unbearable. As the fire overwhelmed him, he cried out, feeling a thousand unnamed sensations at once. Then he collapsed, and the world became quiet again.

~*~

When he opened his eyes the next time, he could see stars, and he was naked. He was naked and deep in the forest, lying atop a little rise in the earth. The darkness around him was almost total, yet the starlight was somehow enough to give him vision. He was lying in the middle of a circle made of the same grasses he’d seen the women tying to the buildings, cushioned by a bed of soft moss.

He looked down at his legs and gasped as he saw them covered with terrible bruises. No, not bruises, he realized, but some sort of paint. He reached for the marks and found them nearly dry. Some of the marks appeared to be sigils; others were simply swirls and lines, artistic patterns. They traveled up his legs, up to his abdomen, and then all the way to his chest — circling his now-substantial breasts — and out along his arms. There were other things there, too, at his wrists and ankles, but they weren’t heavy iron shackles. They were instead woven grass bangles, light as air, and they rattled prettily every time Demitrius moved his limbs.

There was something dark cascading over Demitrius’ shoulder. He grabbed it, and for a moment he didn’t know why his head hurt. It was his hair. His hair was now long enough to reach down past his shoulders, and it had little flowers and leaves woven artfully through it. This was no accident; someone had spent time making him look like this. But why?

He then recalled Aria’s story, the story of the girl in the clearing, offered to whichever god would take her in exchange for that god’s protection. At the time, he hadn’t believed in gods. He hadn’t believed in a lot of things. Now he didn’t know what to believe.

Could he run? He doubted it. He was barefoot and had no idea where he was, nor what creatures lurked in the forest around him. If he ran, if he got their attention, it would be over for him in an instant. A single hungry wolf or bear or … he didn’t even know what kinds of things could be found in these woods. He could stay in place, then, until morning. The temperatures were freezing, but Demitrius could see the heat roll in vapor off his skin. He could survive this, and then the daylight would come, and he would run.

It was a good plan until he saw the shadow, and then the antlers that cast it.

They were just at the edge of his vision, so faint he didn’t know how he could distinguish the rack from the darkness around them, nor how they could cast a shadow when there was no light. The antlers were attached to a figure that seemed to have the general shape of a man, but Demitrius knew it was no man. His dreams fully revealed to him, he knew what was approaching him: Khal Keresh, guardian of the forest and these people, come to take his due.

It wasn’t quite, though. That became clear as soon as it began to move. In his dreams, Khal Keresh had an odd gait, like a four-footed creature trained to walk on its hind legs. This figure moved like a man, stepping forward with an even pace. As it got closer, Demitrius realized it was the height of a man — and a fairly tall one at that, but not the impossibly large beast Khal Keresh had been. The sounds it made as it stepped on the forest floor were the sounds not of hooves, but of bare human feet. And its cock was–

Well, its cock was within the realms of human possibility, though still quite an instrument. Demitrius could see that the antlered figure’s body had been painted like his was, even to the point of having swirls of the paint up its thick and bobbing shaft. Demitrius found himself biting his lower lip to keep back a noise. Perhaps if he didn’t move, he thought, if he stayed as still as a prey animal, he might outwit this predator.

No, the figure had him in its sights. It approached with almost reverent slowness, its gaze never leaving Demitrius. As it stepped closer, that gaze became clearer. It was not the look of a predator. It was the look of love, one he’d seen before, clearly on the face of…

“Aria?” Demitrius asked, the word barely air.

The figure nodded once — and oh, oh God, it was Aria. Naked except for a glorious antlered headdress, Aria stood before him, except as much of a woman as Demitrius was now, she was a man.

And what a man she was, at that. Broad-chested and thick-thighed, she stood before him as a paragon of masculinity. Her chest was furred, and she had even grown a trim beard, one that made her already shapely face all the more comely. Where the designs on Demitrius’ body seemed to coalesce around his navel, the ones Aria had been painted to emphasize the power and size of the cock now jutting out from her legs. He couldn’t stop staring at it. Even when his body had been what it had been before, it had never looked like … like that.

Aria took another step forward on bare feet, jolting Demitrius from his reverie. “You have called to me,” she said, and Demitrius was startled by how her voice was now a sonorous baritone. The whispering earlier must have disguised the change in pitch from him, but in speech there was no mistaking the difference. “My bride, you have called to me, and I, your husband, am here to answer.”

Demitrius could not keep back the moan that slipped from his lips at that. He clapped his hand over his mouth, but it was too late; the sound seemed to ring throughout the forest, being whispered again and again on the rustling of pine needles.

“Don’t hide yourself from me, my love,” Aria said. “I want to see my beautiful bride.” That headdress must have been so heavy, but she moved with perfect balance and poise with it, as though the great crown of them weighed nothing. Perhaps it was as nothing to her now.

From the trees around them, Demitrius saw more movement. He snapped his head to the side, fearing some kind of danger — though he almost laughed to think there might be more danger out there than he was in at present! What he saw, though, were only more human figures, ones that slowly stepped from behind the trees into the clearing. As he looked out across the dim scene, Demitrius noticed two things about them. First, they were the townsfolk, many of whom he recognized, especially the distinctive builds of Grisha and Rumi. Second, they were all as nude and decorated as he.

A hand alit on Demitrius’ ankle, making him nearly jump out of his skin. It was only Aria’s, though, and in the cold night air, it was warm and tender. Her touch had always been so tender to him. She had never wanted to hurt him. She wasn’t going to start now. “They’ve come to celebrate our union,” she told him, smiling. She had such a handsome smile now.

“They … what?” Demitrius asked. His heart was thrumming in his chest as fast as a rabbit. He had not seen the boy Rabbit among the approaching crowd, but he somehow knew with great certainty that all the children of the village knew what was happening right now. They’d perhaps known everything all along. Here, this was just another part of life. At present, Rabbit had all the unenthused dismissiveness of an adolescent toward any traditions of his parents, but he would come to see his place in it, in time, and to join.

Aria let her hand slip up Demitrus’ leg, caressing the bare skin along the lines that had been painted there. “This is a great day.” Aria’s fingers moved up from his knee to trail along his inner thigh. “A new Great Chief has come to the people. I am taking my place among them as Khal Keresh’ representative. He has made me what he needs me to be. And he has done the same to you.”

No. That was ridiculous. Even here, even now, Demitrius’ desire for a rational universe was still fighting for some mundane explanation for everything. A strange and heretofore undiscovered disease, perhaps, or even surgeries so clever they demanded no recovery time and left no scars. He absolutely refused to believe that such a deity even existed, much less could do something like this to him.

And yet, it was impossible to argue when Aria pressed her fingers to the juncture between Demitrius’ legs. He could feel there a great wetness that was his own. As she pressed against those warm, sensitive folds and parted them with ease, Demitrius could not help letting lose another cry. How embarrassing, to make such noises! What a shameful beast he was!

Aria clearly felt no shame about it, though, not as she caressed his lower lips, working him open with tender, loving touches. “You’re so beautiful,” she said to him, her voice full of love. “I will be your husband, for as long as life allows it, if you will be my bride.”

He had to run. He somehow had to figure out how to run. If he ran, he could perhaps make it through the forest. He could keep going until he found the railroad tracks. Then he would only have to follow them until he found someone to take him back to–

Back to what? That was the question, wasn’t it? He’d been so focused on getting back what he’d lost that he’d not actually counted how many of those things he’d actually loved in the first place. The capital? Its rattling automobiles? Its unreliable electricity? His tiny apartment in a run-down building? An empty bed and a half-stocked pantry? A job he could do well, but had no love for? A few women he could someday marry but would not love? A lonely life and an even lonelier death? Was any of that really worth dreaming of return?

“Say you will be mine.” Aria stretched her body out along Demitrius’ atop the grass. She had always been tall, but now she was measurably taller than he, even without the great crown of antlers above her head. She pressed herself to him until she lay atop him, bare skin to bare skin. He could feel the enormity of her cock snug between their bellies. “He has fashioned us for one another. He has made us ready for our perfect unity.” Her strong hand reached up to touch his cheek, to cup it with such affection that Demitrius’ heart threatened to burst with love. “Say that you love me.”

“I love you,” Demitrius whispered, and it was true. He could hear how true it was. From the moment he’d met her, he had been dizzy with love for her. Their bodies had changed, but that had remained the same. “I love you, I swear, I love you.”

The smile that blossomed on Aria’s face as she heard those words was so sincere and grateful that it made warm tears flow from the corners of Demitrius’ eyes. “Then we are one,” she promised, and leaned in to kiss him.

There arose a cheer from around them, but Demitrius was barely listening. He threw his arms around Aria’s shoulders, pulling her strong body to him. God, he loved her. She was so smart and clever and curious, and she considered these things virtues where the people around her so often did not. No bride or groom from among her people would have satisfied her. No wonder she had wanted to run away to broad world beyond the borders of the forest. If Khal Keresh wanted her to stay and lead his people, he would have to offer her something out of the ordinary, something that would satisfy her desire to know more while still giving her a reason not to go.

He had done exactly that. Demitrius had always been the bait. He was the anchor that would make Aria stay. He would not leave her, and she would not leave with him. And together they would–

Demitrius felt a shiver run through his body as Aria parted his thighs. “Let me come into you, my love,” she said, and Demitrius felt something press between his legs that was not her fingers. “As you love me, let me love you.”

Despite everything, Demitrius could not keep a tremble of fear from his body. “Will it … will it hurt?” he asked, his voice a soft whimper.

“For a moment, perhaps,” Aria admitted with a small nod. “Once, and then never again.”

It was more than could be said about most things. Demitrius took a deep breath, letting the night forest air fill his lungs. As he exhaled, he surrendered himself to love. “Yes,” he whispered. “Love me.”

What pain came next was so fleeting that Demitrius could hardly call it pain at all. It was more a surprise, the stretching of a muscle after a long sleep. Then there was only the sensation of having the great growing hunger inside of him filled. He cried out once more, grabbing at Aria’s back for some kind of anchor. He marked her skin with his fingernails, but she only smiled as she sank her shaft inside him.

God, she was big. She was so big he felt as though there must not be anything else left inside him. Only her great cock was left, impaling and filling Demitrius with her warmth. He could feel the wetness coursing down his thighs as he opened himself to her. Only in his dreams had he ever felt such a sensation before, and this was not a dream. He was finally wide awake.

Aria gave him a gentle questioning look: Was he all right? Demitrius could only nod eagerly in response, clinging to her strong back as words failed him. Of course he couldn’t speak; she was so deep in him, he expected he might find her shaft in his throat. Everything that he was was hers, inside and out, and would be for the rest of their lives. He was his husband’s and she was his.

Around them, the other bodies were moving as well. Demitrius turned his head just enough to see that they had all lowered themselves to the forest floor and were now assuming copulating positions of their own. Some lay in pairs; others in clutches of more than that; one or two stood aside alone, watching as the others took pleasure around them, seeming to bide their time. The sounds that rose from them were ecstatic, almost prayerful. These were offerings made to Khal Keresh, to the forest, to their ancestors, to life itself. They did not hide the pleasure that was being brought them, but gasped and panted and moaned and wailed as the sensations of their bodies called them to.

There was nothing to feel shamed about, then, as Demitrius found himself crying out once more as Aria started moving inside him. He had been so worried about what pain might be that he had not given thought to what pleasure might come instead. This was perfect delight, her cock filling him, her body pressing his down to the earth.

Aria dipped her head and took one of his prominent nipples in her mouth, a sensation that almost overwhelmed Demitrius with lust. It had felt so good to touch them himself, but here it was a thousand times better with her. He could feel the softness of her lips, the wetness of her tongue, the gentle bite of her teeth against the sensitive flesh. As he learned to love this body, he began to realize how little particular affection he’d had for his old one. It had served him well enough, to be sure, and it had from time to time even brought him enjoyment — but it had never brought him pleasure like this.

As he began to settle himself against the mossy forest floor, Demitrius found he could get Aria even deeper inside him the more he relaxed. So he relaxed, letting himself melt into the sensation of being taken so deeply. He parted his thighs further and lifted his hips, and his reward was the surprise of learning just how much more of Aria’s shaft could still fit inside him. Every thrust into his body jolted him with ecstasy. Her cock was perfect inside him, as though he’d been made for nothing but to sheathe it. And he supposed he had.

He was startled when he felt his body moved not vertically, but to the side, as Aria rolled them both over. Her cock fixed firm in him, keeping their bodies locked in unity as Aria came to rest on her back, with Demitrius straddling her hips. “I am your husband and your god,” Aria said, letting her hands roam over his sides. “Worship me as I worship you.”

Demitrius could do nothing else. Knees kissing the soft moss, he began to ride her. His first movements were slow, testing his leverage, trying not to do anything wrong. But he could do nothing wrong. She loved him, and he loved her, and so everything he did would be right, if he did it with love. With that in his heart, he began to move.

He discovered quickly that she had been almost too tender with him, too gentle in her loving. She had pressed her cock into him as though he were a fragile thing. She had been holding back on his account. He was not fragile, though. Khal Keresh had made him not to be handled daintily, but to be handled, to be worked. To be fucked. It was such a scandalous, brutal word that it made him thrill to think it. He was being fucked. He was being taken, and he would not be satisfied until he was taken completely, inside and out.

Around them, the copulating crowd drew closer. With his position now, Demetrius could see them more clearly. Some of them women were beneath their men, while some were atop, like he was. Some of them were on all fours, getting taken from behind in the way beasts mated. Demitrius moaned at the thought of being mounted like that, bestial and raw. They could do that. They could do anything now. They were husband and wife.

To his greater surprise, though, he saw that the bodies did not adhere to rules of matrimony, nor to rules of sex. He saw Grisha’s wife, whom he had met at that dinner, beneath a different man entirely, while Grisha lay in the grass, grinning and stroking himself as he urged her on. He saw Rumi kneeling behind a young man, holding the young man’s cock as he didactically guided the nervous-looking lad between the thighs of a smiling matronly woman. They were not ashamed of their bodies, nor were they beholden to any social taboos. They took and gave pleasure without shame. Demitrius was struggling to remember why he thought they should in the first place.

A hand on his calf took him by surprise, and when Demitrius turned to look, he saw a round-faced young woman there, caressing his leg. He turned to Aria, to make sure this touch was acceptable, but his husband only smiled and nodded. Others could touch Demitrius as they wanted, and as he wanted them to. Nothing could change change how Demitrius belonged to his husband, his true love.

Using the young woman’s touch for leverage, Demitrius started to rock faster on Aria’s shaft. The young woman moved closer and extended her hand, which Demitrius took, giving him greater leverage to move. He rose up further on his knees, then brought his hips down with a heavy fall, thrusting his husband’s throbbing cock inside of him. He moaned as he could feel the head of it press up against his deepest parts, the parts he now knew were inside him. They had been placed there so he could be a good wife to his husband. Demitrius wanted nothing more.

The young woman cried out something in a language Demitrius did not speak, but he heard Khal Keresh’s name, and he knew this was a cry of praise to the god who made their very lives possible. Others took up the cry, punctuating it with thrusts of hips and movements of hands. What good was a church? They were sterile places, cold and removed from anything that could or should be called God. This was life. They were life, and they were among life.

A song rose in the night, and Demitrius did not need to turn to look to know that it was Dreyi singing as he had before. It made Demitrius burn again, only now the fire did not harm him. It did not have to be quenched. It was him. He looked down at Aria with absolute trust, rocking his hips with a force of worship that clearly both surprised and pleased his husband. He wanted to please his husband. He wanted to worship his husband, to take his cock and his seed. He moaned as another pair of hands joined the young woman’s, these belonging to an older man who gripped Demitrius’ ample breast with tender roughness. Demitrius cried out again, feeling a wave of pleasure wash over his body. It coursed through him, a climax that left him not satisfied but hungry for more.

“Yes,” Demitrius gasped, looking down at Aria. She was so handsome, with her strong body and her bearded face and the great antlered headdress that marked her as the people’s Great Chief. He couldn’t imagine a more perfect, consuming love than what he felt right then. “Yes, husband, yes. For as long as life allows it, yes.”

Aria gripped Demitrius’ thighs and pulled him down so that her cock was buried as far inside him as it could. She gasped and let out a roar, and as she did, Demitrius could feel his insides flooded with her seed. He was her wife, and he had been created for this. The first time he had come to this, it had indeed been against his will, but every time from now until eternity would be gladly, into the arms of his true love.

As he fell forward against her body, he felt her hands come together behind his throat. When they pulled away, she realized he had placed a ring of grass there, one as light and yet as binding as the ones around his wrists and ankles. It was at last his wedding ring, and he received it with joy. He bent down to kiss her, full of gratitude both to her and to Khal Keresh himself, who had brought them both to this place.

After a moment, Demitrius could feel her cock soften and slip from him, bringing a gush of seed after it. As much as leaked from between his legs, however, he knew ten times more had been deposited inside his womb. He gazed at Aria, who brushed her hand against his face and smiled with pride at her love, who would soon be the mother of her child.

Fingers brushed against her slick slit and lower lips, making Demitrius moan and writhe atop his husband. Aria only chuckled at this, drawing Demitrius’ hair away from his face. “Khal Keresh has made you perfect indeed,” she remarked, smiling at her insatiable wife.

He could feel another cock rub against the cleft of his buttocks, not as large as his husband’s, of course, but clearly substantial and eager. He looked at Aria and drew in a sharp breath as that cock nudged up against his entrance. “Is this all right?” Demitrius asked softly, not wanting to cast aspersions on his new husband’s ability to satisfy him. It was just that he was learning so much about what it was to be both full and hungry at once.

Aria nodded with pride. “My seed has already taken root in you,” she assured him, her words making him shiver. The fire in him had not cooled, but relocated and concentrated, until it burned inside his belly. Their god-blessed union had already begun the process that would in time bear fruit. “And I would not keep your sweetness to myself.”

Before Demitrius could say anything in response, he felt that cock push hard fully inside him, making him moan and writhe atop his husband. Already he could feel another stirring in his husband’s loins, as the spent shaft beneath them gave another jerk of interest. He did not know who was taking him, nor how many times he would be taken before the last night of summer ended and the first sun of autumn rose. He only knew that as that sun rose, he would be held safe in the embrace of his wonderful husband, the Great Chief of her people and the father of their many children to come.

~*~

Reshesk was a remote village nestled back in a far province, which was why the train tracks that led there stayed snowed over until spring thaw. Two months past that, as days were growing long and temperatures rising, two men arrived on the train. Their dark grey suits and felted hats marked them as outsiders among the bright grasses and colorful blossoms of the season.

Guided by helpful but otherwise disinterested townsfolk, they were directed toward a tall, modern-looking house with glass-paned windows. Someone was in the yard, hanging out sheets to dry over a clothesline, hidden from their view by the fabric. “Hello?” one of them called from the gate. “Hello, if you wouldn’t mind?”

From behind one of the sheets emerged a beautiful, heavily pregnant woman whose simple clothes did nothing to disguise or downplay her condition. She had delicate features and soft pink cheeks, and her dark hair was piled atop her head with a few summer flowers woven through. She looked a bit surprised to see them, but that was to be expected; after all, an out-of-the-way place like this did not gather many visitors. She approached, one hand resting tenderly on her round belly.

“Hello, madam,” one of them said, doffing his hat. “We’re looking for the, ah, chief, was it?”

“My husband,” she said, her pride in the words visible on her smiling face. “Great Chief Arius is out on the hunt and will not be back until the day after tomorrow.”

“Ah.” One of the men looked to the other. “Well, perhaps you could help us?”

The woman nodded, her expression pleasant. The second man pulled a black-and-white photograph from his jacket and handed it to her. It was a portrait of a somber young man, his suit starched and his hair neatly slicked away from his face, who gazed at the camera with something a more poetically inclined viewer might have called loneliness. “This is a colleague of ours, Demitrius Daminovich, who disappeared last autumn. The last project he was tasked with was the survey of this village. But we’ve been unable to determine what happened to him, or even if he arrived here at all.”

“Of course.” The woman studied the photograph, her face fixed in concentration as she considered the man’s features. “Was he a friend of yours?”

“Ah, well–” They exchanged another glance between themselves, this one a bit more hesitant. “An acquaintance, more like it. He was a bit of a loner. But a good man, yes, a good man.”

The woman nodded her understanding. She rubbed her thumb briefly over the surface of the photograph, then handed it back. “Yes, I recall now, he did arrive last year. But storms were on the horizon, and we feared he might get snowed in. We told him this, and he thanked us, and he got back on the train he’d arrived on, resolving to come again at a warmer part of the year. We have not seen him since he left.”

The men sighed. A dead end, and no idea about where to go next in finding their lost colleague — and no hope that he’d gotten any of his survey work done before his disappearance. Someone more prepared than they would have to come back to complete the task at a later date. It would likely not be anytime soon, though; when they returned to the capital, they would make an official note that a little hamlet like this was hardly a top government priority, a note that would further suggest immediate resources could be better spent elsewhere. After all, this clearly was a minor, fairly stable community. How different could it be from a century previous?

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” said the woman. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the washing.”

“Of course,” said one of the men. “We’ll not take more of your time.”

The other man, a father himself, nodded. “And congratulations on your impending arrival, Miss … ah…”

“Demeter,” the woman said by way of introduction, and if anything about their interactions with her struck the men as curious, well, those things were simply not curious enough to comment upon. Presently the two were on their way, back toward the train station, and from there to return to the capital, leaving the remote little town as it had stood unchanged for hundreds of years.

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