Free Night of Fire by Vonna Harper

strong.”
    “Shit. Shit! ”
    She didn’t lose her balance when she sprang backward the
second time and somehow her feet found only smooth earth. Beside her, Taurus’
footwear made a muffled thunk. He squeezed her hand.
    “Ready?” he asked.
    “Ready.”
    As she sprang forward, she looked down. Taurus was right.
Her hem dragged through the flames, but it didn’t catch fire. He no sooner
landed when he grabbed her skirt. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “What’s this
thing made out of, some kind of fire-retardant material?”
    Before she could think how to answer the question she only
half comprehended, the old men started clapping. Taurus grumbled but took her
hand again and propelled them backward over the fire once more. When they
jumped forward the last time, he kept his gaze on her flowing dress.
    “I’ll be damned,” he repeated once they were done. “So is
that all we have to do?”
    Suddenly, joyously, she wanted to laugh. “Now it is our
time,” she told him.
    “For what I’m thinking of?”
    “Yes. Yes!”
    * * * * *
    “Wood is taken from many trees so that the fires celebrate
apple, alder, elm, oak, rowan, gorse, even thorn. But most important is
hawthorn.”
    “Why is that?”
    She and Taurus were sitting across from each other, naked
and alone. She doubted that he cared about what she was telling him, but he
needed to know this and many other things. Also, talking about sacred trees was
easier than asking him what he wanted her to do to please him.
    “On the morning after Bel-fire,” she continued, “when men
and women return from the Greenwood, they bring with them great budding boughs
of hawthorn, the spring tree, and other spring flowers. Some of those flowers
they use to dress themselves. The rest is left at every doorstep they pass
along the way.”
    Taurus cocked his head. Although they were so close that
their bent knees touched, he kept his arms by his side. “They dress themselves
in flowers and hawthorn boughs?” he asked. “That’s all they wear?”
    “Most. They have spent the night mating and nourishing the
ground. They want their families and neighbors to know what they have been
doing.”
    He whistled. “No getting around it, your people are
uninhibited. No hang-ups?”
    “Hang-ups?”
    “Never mind. I’m not interested in an English lesson, and unless
I miss my guess, neither are you. So now that we’re down and naked, what next?”
    “We mate.”
    “Just like that.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes then
looked down at his limp seed-maker. “Hm. We have a problem here. Nothing that
can’t be remedied, but I’d like to make it more than fitting tab A into slot A
if you don’t mind.”
    She frowned.
    “All right.” He sighed, and she wondered if he was
embarrassed. “Look, I just said I didn’t want to get sidetracked by the
differences in how we express ourselves, but that might be just as good a way
to start as any.”
    This time she nodded. If she put her hands on his
seed-maker, it should spring to life, but she didn’t think that was what he was
talking about.
    He pointed at himself. “What do you call it, a seed-maker?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because that is what it is, what it does.”
    “Hmm. No argument there.” He indicated the space between her
legs. “And your sex organ, what label does it go by?”
    Label? “That is my woman-place.”
    “That it is, all right. However, where I come from, the
woman-place is called other things. Would you like to learn them?”
    “Yes.” Strange how having him point at the dark hairs and
what they partly hid made her feel as if her woman-place was being walked on by
tiny, soft-footed creatures.
    “Good enough. All right, I guess I can be just as
uninhibited as you’ve been. Lean back and spread your legs. It’s Sex 101 time.”
    After a momentary hesitancy, she placed her arms behind her
and braced her weight on them. Then she unfolded her legs. He crawled close and
squatted between her