Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (2 page)

Had she once felt at home in places like
this? It seemed inconceivable, but Emma knew it was true—though
they were far from the cheery subterranean apartments where she had
once dwelt in luxury with Ione, beautifully decorated natural
chambers lining a sultry stream of pure water…

The passage widened around
them, became gradually better lit. Ogling Manassa’s plenteous flesh
as chance allowed, Emma fought down a growing desire to break the
silence, full of questions and waiting for something to happen. She
let her imagination wander a maze of associations that arose
unbidden, shifting territories of experience that defied context,
fathomless but constantly suggesting something... She was about to
suggest a respite when Manassa
swung
without warning
to the bank of the channel
at their right
and
point
ed
.

“
What’s that?”

“
What’s what? Hey!” Emma
exclaimed. “
Ione, look!”
Her companion
swiftly
joined them
, frowning Emma to a lower
tone.

“
It’s a
bed
boat
,”
Emma
whispered
for Manassa’s
benefit.

They surveyed its upturned
bulk, a smoothly contoured form only partially visible above the
waterline. Lonely and unlikely, its presence magnified the native
tranquility of its environment to a sinister vacuum of stimuli, and
for a moment they probed the darkness in renewed
concern
for the proximity
of
men.

Without consultation Manassa
threw a leg into the stream to test its depth, then
waded out
to
the middle where it was deep enough to float her
bosom. O
btaining purchase on the rounded
prow of the boat
, she p
lanted her legs wide and threw her
weight
down
,
slowly righting it.
T
he headboard cabinets at the rear of the craft
disgorg
ed
volumes
of water back to the
channel and
Emma could see
the
mattress was gone.

She looked to Ione, who
shrugged
to cover her annoyance at the
stranger’s boldness,
and
they joined her
to
complete the recovery of
the
vessel
, bailing water from
its steadily exposed interior
till
they could
loft
it high enough to
drain
completely
. Manassa let it topple
recklessly
and
Emma
giggled at the resulting shower
despite her apprehension, earning a measured scowl from her lover.
They
peered inside.

“
Normally there’s a mattress
and oars,” Ione complained
.
“
But even
so
it might be of use
…
” The tall woman looked away for a
moment,
remembering something from long ago
Emma guessed, then shrugged and
vaulted
acrobatically over the side
w
ith a lateral whirl, wincing as her
knees came down on bare wood
. Taking
position up front, she directed the others to
follow with a nod.

Manassa aspired to
board
in the same
fashion
,
but failed
to account for the tendency of even
a
broad
boat
to roll from such a maneuver,
and Emma
whooped as she tripped and
tumbled
over the other side, nearly
capsizing
the craft.

“
Fuck!” Ione blasted,
toppled to an ignominious heap. She scrabbled back into position
with a snarl and Emma winced in expectation of her temper.
But
Manassa surfaced with a bawdy laugh,
filling the cavern with a friendly ambience for a moment, and Emma
saw
her lover’s vexation relent
to a veiled disdain.

A second effort
landed the big stranger
nimbly
within the bedboat,
and Emma
followed
her
on, chuckling quietly as she
closed and latched
the
headboard cabinets
at the rear of the
vessel
.

They drifted for a while
at
a pointlessly tentative
pace
, but
eventually
the stream bore
past
a
guttering
countercurrent and the boat
moved
decisively from there, oriented where
necessary by a strategic kick over the side
.
Emma had engaged Manassa in
carefully whispered exchanges when Ione was preoccupied, and they
began to converse more openly as the way broadened, distancing them
from the tangled vegetation encroaching on the channel at either
side, hiding potentially anything.

“
Are we going somewhere in
particular?”
Manassa
gamely inquired. Emma caught
Ione’s
calculating pause before she responded.

“
That depends. The priority
right now is determining where we are. And how we got
here.”

“
It’s getting easier to
see,” Emma reported, stealing an opportunity to examine Manassa’s
increasingly plain femininity.

“
So are we,” Ione noted.
“Sit down.” She turned to Manassa, continued in an even
tone.

“
Emma and I
were
part of a
community that once
existed
in secret down here. Do you
know anything of the hidden women
?
”

Manassa shook her head. “No.”

Ione slowly appraised the huge stranger.

“
We were betrayed by skulks.
Do you know anything about
them?
”

“
Huh-uh.”

“
But you
have
seen men before. You know what
they are and what they look like, right?” Ione pressed.

Manassa nodded. “Of course.”

“
Well then your complete
ignorance of their activities around your home is difficult to
understand,” Ione glowered.

“
Hmm. Yeah. See your point.
If we meet any maybe we could just ask’em whatever you’re
interested in,” Manassa offered. “Being real casual about it
naturally,” she amended as Ione’s demeanor went rigid.

“
Does that actually strike
you as a likely outcome in a confrontation with a bunch of
stiff-dicked strangers? Just chit-chatting about whatever?” Ione
turned away. “You couldn’t understand them, anyway. Skulks don’t
make any sense.”

Manassa appeared to think it over. “Well, we
haven’t met anyone threatening yet, and Emma said you have no past.
Like me. So why worry about things till it’s clear we need to?”

Ione looked away bitterly.
“We
have
a past,
or pieces of one at least.”

“
They just don’t make sense
exactly,” Emma hurriedly qualified. “But we know about skulks well
enough,” she promised Manassa. “And there’s good reason to be
afraid if they’re around. Trust me.”

The stream split to accommodate a small
island mounded to the cavern ceiling with gauntly outflung arms of
sweating shrubbery and they fell silent as its bulk drifted
secretively by.

Ione continued to question
Manassa for a little and E
mma withdrew,
simply waited to see what information she would extract.
For this was her lover’s way; the various
leverages of secrecy had long served her as a doyenne, one of the
rare women charged with independent leadership of their
kind.

But after a while Emma grew
bored with her exclusion from the interview, which Ione conducted
in a steadily unfriendlier tone. Regarding
Manassa’s whimsical visage, free of any guile she could
detect, Emma
made an intuitive
decision
.
Capturing
water in a cupped
palm
with an overboard
scoop
, she slurped it
ostentatiously, overriding her partner’s tense control of
decorum
.

“
Hmm… Seems okay. But maybe
we should try to find the Lap, just to be safe…”

Ione
glared
.

“
What’s t
he Lap
?” Manassa
demanded
,
brow
lofted by Emma’s little drama.

“
A huge subterranean
reservoir that’s specially protected from contamination,” she
explained. “See, skulks fouled our home
w
ith soap. D
umped
it
upstream of our aquatic salons
,
‘cleaning’ us out by tainting the water till it was undrinkable. We
fled through the caverns, but they hunted anyone who attempted to
find a fresh supply, capturing us a few at a time.”

Ione turned to face Manassa, spoke for a
moment with totally uncynical dismay. “They closed off tributaries
to hem us in as we tried to escape. And finally they surrounded us
as we slept…” she trailed off emotionlessly at the memory of that
confrontation.

“
What happened?” Manassa
prompted, eyes wide.

Emma shrugged, stared
helplessly about.
“
The doyennes ordered everyone that was left to flee to the Lap
in small groups
.”
She cringed
at the shriveling
disorientation that arose at any consideration of their history
beyond that point.
“And that’s the last
thing that makes sense to me…”

Ione blinked and turned away from them both.
They were silent for a time as the bedboat drifted on.

The green radiance disclosing their path had
brightened steadily, was now almost painfully intense. Emma could
see it originated directly ahead, a frenetic scintillation on the
water.

They entered a broad chamber, from the depths
of which emerged a brilliant fan of emerald light. Ione gripped her
arm with a compulsive urgency and Emma’s breath caught. Far beneath
their boat lay an unmoving form, a muscular man staring up. Its
features were clean, precise, rigidly handsome; a functional mask
that fascinated and alarmed even from a distance.

“
A creature of the Gnomon,”
Ione whispered almost reverently, channeling an apocryphal
knowledge.

“
A gnome,” Emma nodded,
stirred by its masculinity. She wondered how it had come to inhabit
such a desolate place.

They stared down in squinting wonderment at
the jade light beaming from its eyes, destined to illuminate a vast
underground territory by elaborate voyages of reradiation. The
shadow of their bedboat collected above them in a blot, hovered
forth oracularly as they drifted high over the gnome’s motionless
body, left it regretfully behind.

The boat was moving
at
some speed further down
the channel when Emma saw the
lower
half
of a woman
sprawled
on
the muddy right ba
n
k.

“
Look!”

“
Kick us over,” Ione
commanded, rising cautiously.

With some awkward
maneuvering they drew abreast
of
her position
and
debarked, newly alert for men. Ione
pulled
the woman
by the ankles from the
stream and they
rolled her over,
letting water drain from her lips
.

When she was empty, Manassa
leaned down and kissed her, breathing her first breath. The
woman
woke
coughing,
stared about
uneasily
.

“
Who are you?” Ione
demanded, flushing at what she had witnessed.

“
How did you get here?” Emma
more gently inquired, gathering a mass of bedraggled brown hair
away from a fearful countenance.

“
This? Better to then forget
and however…”

“
Uh… what?” Manassa
replied.

“
Left easy stiff doing who.
How for been,” the woman anxiously qualified.

“
What is she talking about?”
Manassa questioned.

Emma sighed. “Nothing, probably.”

“
Gone, gone and ever for
held in never!”

The woman muttered
chaotically in this fashion, and they listened for a
while
, interrogating her in progressively
simpler terms till it was
obvious they were
wasting their time.

“
She can’t do better than
nonsense,” Ione sniffed, standing.