The Lion & The Owl II
TAGS: Present Tense, Ritual Violence, Consensual Non-Consent, Talk of Abortion, Celtic Britain, Druids, Drug Use, Homosexuality, Serial Fiction, Re-Post
II – The Owl
His life is defined by how much pain he brings his mother.
Twenty-two years ago, Ciniod, the oldest daughter of Duboni, left her princely father’s house to marry a coastal druid named Fintan. He didn’t know that she got herself caught the previous spring, and when her pregnancy showed, the duped Fintan celebrated his imminent fatherhood.
Her pains began a month early, on the autumnal, and since the unborn babe insisted on coming out ass first, the old druidess tending her pains cut Ciniod to liberate him. She reminds her son of this every time she passes gas because forced farts bring pain.
After peeling the caul from his eyes, Fintan named him Aedan.
Undercooked at birth, he’s a boney sort with alabaster skin and the jawline of a corpse. His fingers are long, his nails bitten to nubs, and his crown of curly black hair looks nothing like his mother’s and everything like her grandfather’s.
On that, he cannot grow hair on his face because his legs and crotch hoard it all. His pouty lips form a natural frown, and the tip of his broad nose is round like a pebble. His narrow feet, calloused from walking barefoot on the shingle beach, are his primary weapons against anyone foolish enough to pick a fight.
A son of druids, Aedan’s education came early, learning midwifery and the inner workings of anatomy from his father. If a druidess, high-born, or marsh girl finds herself caught, Aedan roots it out. He rarely speaks, and when he does, he reveals nothing. This social muteness drives away women but aids men foolish enough to reach under his robe.
Aedan’s taste for a cock up his ass is renowned, but his violent appetites confuse even the most willing warriors.
A long journey north brings him and his mother to her girlhood home on the Tamesas, where the reedbeds shiver and the crickets sing constant songs. The banks lack sand, and the water never waves, no matter how rough a breeze.
Ciniod reunites with her sisters and ailing father and shows off her only son, whose reputation precedes him when the head druid takes him to the women’s tents.
Aedan spends his first day in his mother’s ancestral home, digging out unwanted pregnancies. Most prove too far along, and he frees the undercooked with an agile hand. He deposits them in the tide and watches top feeders nibble at the cords around their necks.
He scrubs the blood and meconium from his nails but takes the smoke to rid it from his nostrils.
New voices annoy him, so he abandons the bonfire with its drums and strings and joins the horses in the fields. Hippos, the Greeks call them; his father taught him Greek words but has yet to introduce him to a Greek. He misses his father, their horses, and the brawny fisherman’s son, who chokes him until he comes.
Naked, he climbs atop the largest mare, and their snorts keep him company. It takes time to unbraid her mane, but it’s time well spent with his cock trapped between his weight and her rough back.
“Aedan,” a voice lifts his head. “Taller than the boy I remember.”
The wrinkled seer approaches, older than the thickest forest oaks.
Ostin is an aging druid known to most, yet no one knows his tribe. A smile reveals teeth browner than the deepest grass, and Aedan returns the sentiment, for his teeth get scraped clean daily with a cat bone and whitened by his piss.
The old man collects Aedan’s discarded frock and pitches it at him.
“You might be too young to take your father’s place, but you’re needed all the same.” Ostin’s twisted staff compensates for his left foot, long dropped. “The future must be divined, as the present is now chaos.”
The reason Ciniod dragged Aedan north was twofold: a selfish desire to see her family and her man’s absence leaving a void in tribal control along the Tamesas.
Her man Fintan kept the northern warlord Cassibelanus from acting on impulse, calming his heart on days when murder seemed the logical solution to a problem. Shortly after his departure, Cassibelanus lost control at the last tribal gathering. The strapping chieftain’s desire for the Trinovantian prince, Mandubracius, was never a secret. So, the man’s rebuke and eventual besting of him in a sporting fight for the crowds sent Cassibelanus into a rage.
Among the Belgae, plucked egos spurred wars.
Cassibelanus demanded recompense, but Mandubracius’s father, King Imanuentius, refused him, and the aging ruler died for this decision. Fearing worse things to come, Mandubracius fled to the continent in search of Fintan.
Aedan regards the old seer with disinterest.
“All sparks will burn out when Mandubracius returns with my father,” he says.
“You’ve found your voice,” Ostin interjects. “I recall when many believed you dumb,”
Aedan continues, “Then the Gods will show him our future through the guts of whatever tipsy fool you make him choke out in that circle.”
“Your father is dead, boy,” Ostin tells him.
Aedan’s heart slows to a crawl.
“You see, Mandubracius didn’t find Fintan.” Ostin sits on the grass, not an easy thing at his age. “He found the Roman wolf.”
Aedan’s stomach hardens. “The legions fled two summers past,”
“They left, boy,” Odin scowls. “They didn’t flee.”
Aedan thrusts out his jaw. “Who speaks of my father in the past tense?”
“Your mother’s brother, Taran, brought his head back.” Ostin finds the words. “He hands it over to your mother when the moon is high.”
A tear wets Aedan’s cheek.
The man who loved him unconditionally is gone. The man that held him as a boy, high on his feet so he could fly like a bird, no longer exists. The man who taught him everything and how to speak Greek—now seeks a new body to begin again.
“Swallow your pain, boy.” Otis barks. “You take his place in ritual and verse.”
Aedan cannot formulate a refusal.
“You’re my Ancalite,” Ostin declares. “You strangle the offering, and the Gods reveal the fate of your people as the sacrifice breathes his last breath.”
And with that, Aedan inherits his father’s druidic robes.
Morning comes, and his mother presents his father’s head like a token of her suffering. She wails loud and long while Aedan stands near with dried tears on his cheeks. His father never wished to leave their coastal home…it was her wish…
Twilight finds him naked beneath his father’s owl-feathered robe; the horned beak on its owl-feathered cowl tickles his nose. Fond memories of his father’s prominent nose, cobalt eyes, and his bottom lip so full and robust haunt him. He possesses none of these traits, his guilt for desiring them hidden behind an owl mask he cannot wear this night.
Inside the circle between high seer Ostin and the handsome druidess Eadaoin of the Bibroci, his sinewy body twists to the beating drums. He spins right, his cock bounces left, and the feminine wail of the tribal songstress hardens his nipples.
One sip of redcap tea takes him outside his skin. He flaps his wings and rises above the revelers. The mud shines in the firelight with the coming of blood, and melodic howls become terror-filled screams when a giant cat appears.
It is a golden beast like the one Heracles kills in that story his father told him as a child. Lion. Majestic, bush-maned, with a mouth full of pointed teeth. It bites into a child, tearing her to pieces as her parents cry.
Maw red with blood and strutting around the owl without fear, its orbit grows smaller with each revolution.
Excitement courses through his wings as blood’s metallic stench taints his senses. The beast lunges, and he takes flight until the sky beyond the bonfire glow becomes the sea.
Here, the Owl King is born.
He sinks into the depths, taking salty water into his lungs as if born to it. A distant splash opens his eyes, and through the froth are paws that lack claws. Visions of those paws forcing his legs apart bring him chills as a man emerges from the spume.
The strapping figure strokes toward him, hairless, angular, no longer a lion, his virility bone-deep. Dark green eyes capture. Thick lips spread in beautiful symmetry, revealing a mouth of perfect teeth.
The water curtain between them breaks with each slippery caress. Body to body, lips to lips, the chiseled beast is everything The Owl King wants and nothing he needs. He is drowning, but that doesn’t matter, so long as it’s pleasurable.
Night air slaps his face with the aroma of burning wood.
Silence follows, uninvited, as his long feet climb stacked stones. A willing lamb waits on the ledge, a bearded innocent sitting upon his heels with a belly full of porridge laced with root magic. Soft to the touch, the lamb weaves on his knees, coherent enough to remain upright.
Sinew cord in his hands, Aedan tenses it tight to test its strength; he will take this man’s life because he is The Owl King. The old seer waits below, the sharp blade in his hand raised to the stars.
The Owl King waits for no seer.
Aedan slips the cord around the lamb’s neck and crosses his arms. He tugs each end with the power of a running horse, jerking the hefty lamb upward, lifting his backside from his heels. He won’t drop this kill—no—Aedan arches his back until the lamb’s legs kick like his flailing arms.
His erection stabs the lamb between his shoulders as a newfound joy soaks his brain. His smile, rarely seen, forces onlookers to turn away. Though used to ritual murder, this feels unsavory. Even the seer stands slack-jawed. Violence is no stranger, yet Aedan’s delight wrenches his seasoned stomach.
Suddenly, a pointed spear drives past The Owl King’s chest, its sharpened point pokes a clean hole in the lamb’s crown. Disappointed, he drops the dead lamb, who falls past his feet and goes fetal before hitting the dirt.
The seer cuts the lamb’s throat, and The Owl King is no more.
Aedan wakes again underwater, a brawny arm collaring his throat and a hard cock stabbing his cleave. He drives his head backward, striking another. Behind him, the lion-turned-man drifts off in a stupor, a ribbon of blood curling from his nose.
He swoops in and swallows the man’s hefty arousal, tasting apples and honey as it stabs the back of his throat. Greedy hands grasp his muscular globes, squeezing tight until hot brine floods Aedan’s mouth.
He sinks into the darkness, a trail of milky white curling from his lips.
Aedan wakes to sun-warmed air.
The ceremonial land lacks revelers, their tents gone with the night. Alone on the platform, he watches the druids tasked with butchering the lamb finish their grisly work; after removing the bones, they will burn the flesh for the Eaters.
“You’re not your father’s son,” says Ostin, leaning on his rod.
Eadaoin falls to her knees. “What did you see, Ancalite?”
“He saw nothing,” says the bitter seer. “The Gods tasted his murderous glee and showed him his destiny, not ours.”
Aedan rolls to a handstand and then tips over, landing on his feet before the Bibroci woman.
“What did you see?” he inquires.
Water bleeds from her eyes. “My tribe in chains among the wolves,”
“My tribe will pleasure the wolves and swim the seas,” he boasts.
“That is your fate,” Ostin says, limping away. “You’ll be the last Ancalite to die, but you’ll die, nonetheless. Every one of you will die.”
“We’ll be free,” he yells.
“Free as an owl in a Roman cage can be,” Ostin’s final words.
Aedan is no man’s mistake, he’s his mother’s child.
He enters Ciniod’s mourning tent uninvited and kisses his father’s head, now stinking of decay even with the flowers in its mouth. The perched owl moves one step left, her eyes hidden behind feathered lids, reverence to her new king.
Ciniod rises from her rugs.
“Our Gods gave your father to the Romans,” she whispers.
“You dare mourn him,” he accuses through his teeth. “When you mocked, nagged, and cajoled him across the water to his death.”
Ciniod starts. “I loved him!”
“You loved him so much you sent him to die!”
“They attacked our kin across the water!”
“Your kin, your fight!”
Taran enters with a fist, but Ciniod raises a hand to him.
“Matrimony is a shared life,” she declares. “Best times and bad, two remain one.”
“And with you, the best times are always bad.” Aedan steps into her. “My father died because of you. Not Gods and not the Romans. You. You defeated every alternative he brought and gave him no peace until he did what you wanted when you wanted and how you wanted.”
“He died with honor,” she growls.
“He died for nothing,” Aedan growls back.
“What did you see last night?” she asks, suspicious.
“You took my father from me,” Aedan says. “And I will never forgive you for it.”
A second passes before spite becomes her. “Fintan’s not your father, boy,”
“How dare you,” he gnashes.
“Oh, I dare far too often!” She turns her back on him and, with a sigh, adds, “You’re a product of stupidity between me and my brother.”
Taran’s head pivots from Aedan to Ciniod and back to Aedan.
“You may carry your anger to your deathbed,” she speaks to her son’s glare. “My life continues either way.”
Aedan slips behind her.
“I hate you, mother,” he whispers in her ear. “I always have and forever will.”