The Key to Eve
a fantasy
8
The Migration
PERI WOKE in the soft and comfortable bed, next to the soft and comfortable woman who owned the cottage. He’d worked hard for her the previous day, rethatching her roof and making sure the house was prepared for winter. She had repaid his kindness enthusiastically.
“Now come to bed,” she’d said huskily. “There is more thatch for you to part.”
She pulled off her dress and pointed at the thick bush of hair between her legs. Peri was experienced by this time. After three years of wandering north and south, he understood exactly what she wanted.
“Ah, are you my Eve?” he asked as he fell to his knees in front of her and parted the abundant hair to reveal the delicate fruit inside. At the moment his tongue touched her nubbin, she squealed.
“Ah! Whatever you like, Wanderer. I can be Eve as well as Zelda. Call me by any name, but do not stop doing what you are doing!”
Peri got the message and worked his tongue more frantically on her sex until he was flooded with her juices. He wasted no further time divesting himself of clothes and dove into the woman with his rigid cock instead of his tongue.
“Yes! It is so rare that I have one so young and virile to rut with me. You’ve plowed my fields, now plow my fertile passage. Plant your seed deep inside me!”
Peri did his best to fulfill her desires, pumping and straining until his own fulfillment arrived and multiplied her next climax.
“Don’t go to sleep yet!” the woman said. “Lie back and let me ride you. I will milk another helping from you before we sleep!”
And that she did. Peri’s body rose to the action and took over all his mind as well as his meat. He plunged into her repeatedly as her breasts swung over him and he captured one nipple then the other between his lips. Each time he gave a suck, Zelda screamed her pleasure. It surprised Peri that the neighbors, merely a few hundred yards away, did not come to see what was making the woman scream.
Then his balls were full and he began to pour his seed into her again. She collapsed on top of him and both went into deep sleep.
In the morning, Peri found, the bed was still comfortable. The woman was still lush and naked. But he had no further desire for her. He glanced down at his dick and it was flaccid. The woman awoke and looked sleepily at him, then opened her eyes wide. She looked at his groin and breathed a sigh of relief that there was no further demand on her body. She snatched her dress and began cooking a goat sausage and a dozen eggs. It was enough to feed an entire crew, but between the two of them, they finished every scrap. They were cordial to each other, but it was obvious that it was time for Peri to leave.
“Farewell, sweet… uh… Miss. Good harvest to you.”
“Goodbye,” she said, smiling vacantly.
Peri headed out on the road. The cottage was out of sight when Peri began to search his memory for her name. There was only emptiness there.
Peri’s fortune had changed since the days of his youth. He still wandered wherever he would, following the migration patterns north in the spring to help with planting, cleaning, and fertilizing wherever he could find work. In many instances—though surely not all—his workday ended between the legs of a willing partner.
There had been farmers’ daughters, farmers’ wives, at least once a farmer’s mother, dairy maids, seamstresses, shopkeepers, candlemakers, barmaids, shepherdesses, and a wise woman. For each he had done a hard day’s labor or two and was paid with a hard night’s congress. But it seemed all wanted to also help him on his way—often as quickly as possible. He occasionally received a ruri or two, a new pair of britches or a shirt, a hat, a blanket, or even a chicken. The last, he shared with a family of coyotes he stayed with.
Indeed, he was still most comfortable with the animals he met along the way. He often inquired of them how their families fared, what they thought the weather would be, and what was happening in their neighborhood. He was called upon to settle a territorial dispute between an otter family and a beaver family. He stayed with them as long as practical.
“Br’er Bruin,” Peri said politely to the large brown bear he met along the path. “Have you news today?”
“Br’er Talker. You are the strangest of men. But I’ve had no one to talk to in a week, so your company is welcome.”
“I’ve noticed a berry patch just up the slope here,” Peri said. “Shall we sup together?”
“Splendid idea. Perhaps we’ll also catch a fish or two before we nap.”
They went companionably up the slope and began picking and eating the late summer berries.
“’Twill be an early frost this year,” Br’er Bruin said. “I need another layer of fat around my middle before I find a cave. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll find a Ma Bruin to share my nap with. Will you find a mate to lie with this winter, Br’er Talker?”
“Probably. They seem to want me around for a night. Then I need to leave. They are never interested in me in the morning—nor I in them. I wish I could find my one true Eve.”
“Ma Bruin is much the same way. As soon as she has cubs growing inside her, she doesn’t want old Br’er Bruin around any longer.”
“I’m sorry you don’t have better luck.”
“It’s not so bad. Last spring I mated with six females. Two of them were just six years old! Feisty cubs, but playful. Sisters and I may have left both of them with cubs of their own growing. Who knows. They wandered off after they’d had their fill of me.”
“I don’t think any of my females reproduced,” Peri said. “I’m sure I’d hear about it if I left any young ones behind.”
“There’s a human maiden looking for a mate down in the warm lands a piece. She’s making it very hard on the males who want her, though. They have to pass some kind of test. Too much work for me. If a sow doesn’t present after I sniff her a bit, I lose interest. Her loss.”
“Humans often play games when they are mating. I’ve never really understood them. Perhaps I’ll check this one out.”
Br’er Bruin and Br’er Talker ate their fill of berries, then went to the river to find fish. That night, Peri shared the warmth of the bear’s cave and bade him farewell in the morning.
With Br’er Bruin’s prediction of an early frost, Peri turned his footsteps southward, picking up work in the fields and towns as he went. He finished packing down a new clay floor for a shopkeeper who fed him well as she looked at him with hungry eyes. Before she could pounce, though, Peri slipped out the back and chose a comfortable patch of pine needles in the woods for his bed.
It wasn’t that he no longer had a hunger for the women he met, but he was used to it now. He’d had enough of women. He didn’t look down upon them. How could he after he’d happily participated in their mating rituals and sunk his tool into their willing pussies? He was simply tired of it all. He was certain now that he would never find his Eve and the old witch’s curse would haunt him to his grave.
When he’d encountered the witch, he knew nothing about women and the acts they wanted from men. He was amazed they didn’t all want the same thing. Nor was it only mating positions that were different. Some wanted him to come in their mouths, on their breasts or bottoms, or in their bottoms! He’d learned of women who wanted their toes sucked, who wanted their nipples twisted painfully, who wanted to be licked, who wanted their tongues in his mouth, and who didn’t want to see him at all as he plowed them from behind.
But none of these things were the key to their hearts. In the light of day, they turned from him, perhaps a little embarrassed, and sent him on his way. They sent him with food, money, clothing, and good wishes. Still, they sent him and never saw him again. And he could not remember, for the life of him, what their names had been.
“Br’er Cottontail. How is the family?” Peri asked when he saw the large rabbit in the path. The coney stopped where he was, nose twitching while he chewed a particularly tasty bit of flower.
“Mmm. Family. Lots of kits. Ma Cottontail is ready again. Must eat a lot. Have to breed like bunnies!”
“I understand. Do not let me interrupt your dinner.”
“Come to our burrow and spend the night. Kits would love to cuddle up with you. Ma Cottontail and I haven’t had a minute without them in two moon cycles. Eat some flowers. The purple ones are very tasty. Then come and stay with the kits.”
“You want me to babysit?”
“Someone needs to watch to make sure they don’t wander out in the owl’s path. They won’t leave you. Tell them human stories. They’ll go right to sleep.”
“Well, I’ve nothing pressing. The purple flowers, you say? Thank you.”
Peri and Br’er Cottontail munched and talked amiably. The flowers were quite tasty, but Peri supplemented his diet with a bit of jerky he’d been given after his last job.
“Big doings down farther toward the summer land. They say a war is brewing. Dogs and cats fighting each other. Careful there. Dangerous.”
“Oh, dear,” Peri mused. “I wonder what the matter might be. There’s always a little rivalry, but never a war.”
“Everyone wants the key,” Br’er Cottontail said.
He led Peri to the burrow. Ma Cottontail scarcely said a word to him as she hopped out of the nest and joined Br’er Cottontail rushing out of sight. Peri didn’t think they were very far away before they were… fucking like bunnies. The kits, now almost grown enough to be out on their own, nonetheless cuddled up against him and he told them a story he’d heard from some marmots up north. They were soon fast asleep.
The advantage of sleeping with the rabbits at night was that no one wanted to fuck him and they were not the least embarrassed by his presence in the morning. Br’er Cottontail and Ma Cottontail looked particularly satisfied in the morning and had harvested a good number of the tasty purple flowers to feed the kits. Peri thanked them for their hospitality and began to wander south again.
As days passed, Peri continued to meet and greet animals on his journey, he heard more and more strange things happening in the village called Tumwater.
“All I can say is I’m glad I don’t live down that way,” said Br’er Baker. He’d enlisted Peri in grinding grain into flour for his dough. “People’s gone crazy. It’s that witch’s fault, you know. Now don’t get me wrong. I appreciate one who can cure a blight or protect a grain bin. Couldn’t get along without witches. But this one has a daughter who has caused such a stir men go there just to fight over her. Not good for the town or the people.”
“Who is this girl?”
“They just call her the witch’s girl. That’s all I know. Could be the old witch, casting a glamour spell over herself. They say that if a man finds the cat with a key on its collar, he’ll win the fair maiden. Now, people are hunting cats as if the fur trade was booming. If you have a pet, you need to keep her indoors. Won’t last a minute outside and then you’ll have mice running all over.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” Peri said. “I need to find my way there.”
Fortunately, the baker’s wife was ill and not at all interested in Peri. He helped the baker for a couple of days and then wandered south toward Tumwater again.
