Mistress of Night and Dawn (36 page)

Unlike her, Aurelia thought, though she no longer carried any regret or guilt over that fact. She knew that she possessed the rare skill of letting herself go completely, of surrendering her body, soul and mind to the needs of her flesh and she knew that with no regard to her relationship with Andrei, for at least one night of each year, she would allow herself to swim free on the currents of lust and not be burdened in the slightest by any tie that she felt to him during her regular waking moments. It was simply who she was.

Her mind turned to her coronation ceremony. That was the one element of the evening that would be arranged by others. Tradition dictated that she would be taken with ceremonial ritual in front of the Ball’s revellers, but she would not know the identity of her partner until the ceremony commenced.

But as the Mistress-in-Waiting, she had already decided to break with tradition and knew that in the years of her reign, she would change much about the Ball. It would be both her desire and her duty.

The weeks of elaborate preparations passed in a blur until the fateful day finally arrived.

It was a clear night and the sky was peppered with stars that shone overhead like ethereal angels come to bestow their blessing on the proceedings. The sight heartened Aurelia and helped to settle her nerves as she took one final walk through the house to ensure that everything was in order, exactly as she had imagined, before the uniformed attendants began to welcome in the guests who would be arriving imminently.

She took Andrei’s hand and together they stepped through the front doors and onto the lawn, which had been transformed from its former plain clipped grass into a tropical paradise, thick with the scent of frangipani and aglow from the light of a hundred flames that floated in mid-air like wingless fireflies, no doubt cleverly held in place by some invisible mechanism created for the purpose by the Ball’s crew of skilful engineers.

Four tents had been erected in the garden, splitting the space into quarters with a fifth and final tent in the middle. The first was a homage to Aurelia’s initial steps onto the Ball’s path. Rope, with people suspended from it just as they had been at the exhibition she had visited with Siv, and trees that were close to life size but pruned with the same precision with which she had learned to care for her Bonsai. Walter had been recruited to assist with the technicalities and he had executed his brief with exquisite attention to detail. When they stepped into the space Aurelia smiled. She had asked Walter to capture that sense of peace and of groundedness that she always felt when she was tied and he had succeeded. In the centre of a forest of branches from which people hung, suspended in rope bundles like ripe fruit, was a tree that was not attached to the ground at all but rather tied to the ceiling with an elaborate harness. Tied to its base was a man and a woman embracing. The rope ran from them over everything, connecting all of the performers and all of the trees in one giant spider’s web. To Aurelia, it symbolised both the holding on and the letting go, the tightrope between connectedness and solitude, the laser edge that ran between restraint and freedom. A sign blinked overhead that read:
Earth. What constrains us also sets us free
.

‘It will be starting soon,’ Andrei said, reminding her that any minute now her presence would be required to initiate the onset of the proceedings. She did not need to enter each of the other tents to know that the displays would be exactly as she had designed. That beneath an artificial lake a dozen dancers were submerged and awaiting the arrival of Luba who would lead them through a dance of life and death beneath the words:
Water. What drowns us also sustains us
. That fifty or more naked bodies would be held aloft on the wings of seraphs beneath the words:
Air. What makes us fall also helps us to rise
, and another darkened room would soon be bright with burning bodies and the note:
Fire. What burns us also brings us light
. The final cavern was dedicated to the revellers themselves. It would be empty until the night reached fever pitch and the massed party guests would create their own magic and, by doing so, bring the fifth element into being.
Aether
.

The Ball was a celebration not just of sexuality but also of humanity, its inherent duality and the imperfection that brings both joy and freedom to those who allow themselves to feel, to live and to experience pleasure.

Aurelia bid Andrei farewell beneath the open branches of the hanging tree. At that moment, no matter what the Ball would bring and her responsibilities to it, she wished for nothing more but to stand still there forever, held tight in his arms within the forest of peaceful bodies and the gentle sighs of inward and outward breaths that were indistinguishable from the gentle murmuring of swaying branches.

He pulled her against him tightly and lowered his lips to her ear. ‘You’ll be the Mistress of the Ball when I see you next,’ he whispered. ‘But you’ve been my Mistress right from the beginning, since the first time we kissed. Nothing will ever change that.’

‘Nothing and no one,’ Aurelia agreed.

She knew the time had come and so she kissed him again on the lips and then turned and walked away, back to Madame Denoux and her army of attendants who would lead her to be bathed, costumed and prepared for the ceremony as the guests were finally allowed inside to drink, play and be merry until the moment arrived when she would finally become Mistress, no longer in waiting, and be forever wedded to the Ball.

Hours passed. Aurelia’s mind found that place of stillness that came to her so easily now and with her long hair washed and dried and streaming over her shoulders in a fountain of auburn locks and her oiled skin partially covered by the light robe that had been selected for her costume, so thin it was as gossamer as any spider’s web, she rose from the dressing table and her companions escorted her through the mansion’s passageways, down the velvet-covered steps and into the centre of the garden where she knew that all the Ball’s guests and performers would be waiting.

Somewhere a signal was given and Aurelia felt hands grabbing her ankles, waist and shoulders and, in a single swift movement born of months of elaborate rehearsal, her body was raised to the heavens and held aloft, at one arm’s length above the congregation. Her mind was in a whirl from the evening’s events and disorientated by the strong, insistent rhythm of the industrial rock music still booming from the large speakers that surrounded the garden, the bass tones reverberating like a feverish heartbeat and bouncing relentlessly in a closed loop. Aurelia, for a moment, suffered a strong sense of discombobulation, as if her soul had exited her body and that her naked form, held high above the wave of dancers and worshippers, was not hers, had nothing to do with her. She had briefly become both an observer at her own coronation and a migrant soul inside a body over which she no longer had any form of control.

Life paused.

There was a break in the music, a jump in the rhythm and the industrial sounds of frantic rock played in overdrive faded into the sinuous line of a powerful, vibrant melody played on the electric violin, albeit still to the beat of an unstoppable drum machine dictating its metronomic speed and direction. Aurelia guessed the beautiful red-haired violinist she had caught a glimpse of earlier in the evening was at the helm, her spectacular mane of flame hair bouncing about with every successive new note. The melody sounded familiar, classical even, but speeded up. Devilish, like a runaway train on a night track, soaring and hypnotic.

The hands holding her adjusted their grip. Two offered support for her shoulder blades, another two took care that her waist did not bend, while yet another two cupped her arse cheeks, raising her pelvis upwards, and further anonymous hands flying up from the mass of the crowd offered extra relief from gravity at the back of her knees while the final pair gripped on her ankles and opened her legs wide, pulling them gently apart so that her sex lips were now held open, her shining, engorged labia internally pulsing with untold cravings. She was slyly caressed by the softest breeze created by the crowd beneath her, which stirred the humid air as they whirlpooled across the grass.

A hand moved below her body. Then another.

Soon she was in motion, travelling above the sea of the congregation like a magic carpet, every touch just fleeting until another set of fingers moved her a length or so forward. She was surfing the crowd, transported like a fragile embarkation atop a sea of waves. Aurelia offered no resistance. She attempted to loosen her body, liberating her muscles so that she would feel no more than a rag to them, a feather to all those who were now allied in conjuring her effortless progress. She abandoned herself fully to the moment, knowing all too well that the end of the journey would be truly unforgettable.

At first Aurelia thought that she would be born aloft in a circle, traversing the perimeter of the audience from her elevated status, round and round and round until everyone was dizzy and she would be lowered into the heart of the faceless throng.

But just as she felt the crowd sway beneath her and her body almost floating effortlessly along without the help of their combined hands, she found herself still six feet or so in the air being carried forward to an unknown destination.

The sky was losing its darkness, the moon receding beneath a herd of clouds, but the heat stored inside her naked body kept her warm, reserves of passion and overwhelming desire running through her veins and under her skin, and bathing her whole being in a cloud of satisfying heat.

The rest of the crowd – all those who were no longer carrying her aloft, although she knew that every single soul in the room had at one time or another been instrumental in the aerial progress of her journey – followed her.

The music faded in the distance as she was carried further into the heart of the dying night, the whole congregation trouping behind her, like a caravan of penitents at the climax of their pilgrimage.

Her carriers slowed down.

Despite their delicate care, the strain on her neck muscles was beginning to tell and Aurelia was obliged to move her head sideways and, as she did so, her gaze alighted on the group of Ball participants nearer to the carriers. She recognised Siv, who in a typically casual costume of pale-pink denim shorts and a tight black shirt stood out from the opulent satin gowns, chiffon and painted nudity that decorated the other guests. She was walking hand in hand with both Walter and Tristan. Her smile was beatific. There was also Madame Denoux and Miss Morris. And Gwillam Irving and Number 1 and Luba, the beautiful Russian dancer, and Florence, and so many faces she had no names for, but faces she had seen at some stage or another on her journey to here. Some were missing: Lauralynn, Ginger, Edyta; she tried to recall the names of those absent and those present, but her mind was in too much of a state of feverish excitement to concentrate.

The crowd parted and a path through the grass emerged. Aurelia was carefully lowered to the ground, the grass like a soft carpet under her bare toes. The carriers retreated, and as she steadied herself and her long legs renewed acquaintance with
terra firma
, on each side of her, like a military escort, Siv and Madame Denoux placed themselves alongside her and gently took hold of her hands. Silence fell over the nearby encircling crowd.

Aurelia was led forward.

There was a bed of white flowers draped over golden sheets waiting for her at the end of the brief journey down the garden, almost like an altar set inside a flimsy white wooden platform which creaked slightly under her as she cautiously set foot on it, her balance still unsteady.

She lay down on her back, half fearing the blanket of flowers might be rough and disagreeable to the skin, but it had all the softness and comfort of cotton wool.

‘Part your legs,’ whispered Madame Denoux before retreating.

Aurelia obeyed the instruction.

Closed her eyes.

The firmness of a man’s warm and sturdy legs brushed against the inner skin of her thighs as he positioned himself between her legs.

The deep silence reigning over the garden where she now lay, legs open wide in offering, was disorienting, the loudness of the music, the tinkle of voices all banished to another dimension, as if the whole soul of the Ball had been suspended in time and space.

She felt the hard, fleshy tip of a cock pressing gently against her opening, rubbing against her, coating itself with her wetness. A man tenderly caressed one of her breasts. Aurelia shuddered.

From the moment she had been presented to the crowd, she knew she was going to be fucked and that it would be a fuck like no other.

The moment had come.

Slowly, the tip of the cock passed her lips, unstoppable, rigid with life and lust. Then it retreated briefly, almost hanging in wait before her cunt.

Then he advanced. Breaching her fully, occupying her fully in one rapid thrust, investing her, fitting as if he belonged there.

Aurelia kept her eyes closed.

It was Andrei.

The one she had broken with tradition to choose.

She recognised the way he filled her, as if she could blindly perceive the very contours of his shaft, its veins, its ridges, the way it beat like distant heart, the way her body wrapped itself around him, gripping him, holding in a vise of her own making. All the training she’d had to undertake had taught the nerve endings both inside her and throughout the surface of her skin to distinguish between different lovers with canny accuracy.

Her heart jumped.

His familiar scent suffused her. A low hum rose from the congregation, like a muted choir, a drone, an invocation as Andrei began to move inside her. Slowly at first and then with mounting energy, rough and rapid thrusts that bucked against her, every repeated contact orchestrating the rise of her desire and emotions.

Although this was not the first time she had made love with others present, she also knew there had never been such a large audience. More than a couple of hundred at least. But it no longer bothered her. Self-consciousness and words like shame or guilt had long been banished from her life. Instead it served to excite her more, something she had never thought would ever happen.