Free The Book of Shadows by James Reese Page B

arms. Her eyes were shut, but was she asleep? Was I? Was this supreme wakefulness in the guise of sleep?
    If only I’d had the good sense to hold Peronette awhile, calm her, steal a kiss or two, and send her back to her cot. If only…But no…. I liken myself, at that moment, to those mathematicians whom I have always envied and never understood; looking upon complicated arithmetic, they see answers where I would see mere symbols, signifying nothing. But that night, I saw the answer; and so set to work upon the equation:
    Her forehead at rest in the crook of my neck. I kiss the crown of her head, and then…
    â€¦This is difficult. I cannot be sure what was dreamed and what was real that night. I do know that I…I did things for the first time. Did things to myself and to the sleeping Peronette. ( Was she asleep? I will never know.)
    â€¦At first I kissed her innocently, but then something overtook me. The first of those kisses is the one I remember—the one I placed on Peronette’s head, the one I set there as sweetly as a priest places the Body of Christ on a celebrant’s tongue. As for the others…
    Alors , I knew from recent and fevered dreams just where to place the kisses, and so I set to preparing each spot. I caressed, smoothed, and heated the skin with my fingers. I have the faintest recollection of doing this, of feeling the shame yet not being able to stop, of hearing my heartbeat and doing what I did despite that deafening drumming…. I was rushed by lust, perhaps asleep yet never more alive ….
    First her neck. Then her cheek, and her lips. The lips again, and again…. And then my hands sank to raise her nightshirt and—with my eyes, with my hands?—I saw her, all of her. I cupped her breasts and their supple weight surprised me. I kissed her breasts; their dark tips flared at the touch of my tongue. I slid daringly down the smooth slope of her stomach to her navel. Another kiss there. Downward still. To the secret of her sex. I heated her thighs with my hands, and kissed her there. She opened to me. I kissed that mouth. I drew her wetness. I took her with my tongue.
    I explored. And I discovered again that Peronette was… different from me, very different indeed…. But it was all so confused. Wakefulness and sleep. Desire and dream. And I was so unsure—so very content, yes, but still so unsure of it all.
    I lay atop her. That much I know. I know I pulled Peronette up toward me, my hands beneath her buttocks. I know that I pushed down upon her. Drove down. Into her. I know that what I did caused her some measure of pain, but I know this too: she did not resist.
    I do not remember the nightsalt coming. But it did. And it, mixed with Peronette’s blood, would be the viscid proof of my devilry.
    Only when I woke, suddenly, Peronette asleep beside me, in my arms, only upon waking did I realize that the screams I heard were not my own. My heart blew apart like a bomb, and so rattled was I it seemed my skin might slip from my skeleton! I was not screaming in dreams of my own device, no…These were the real and wakeful screams of others…
    The very first came concomitant with a stroke of thunder, and I mistook it for same. But the rest, coming in quick succession, were unmistakable. Screams. Coming ever nearer, in the company of their source:
    Agnes, a novitiate, a stolid girl of good faith, from St. Malo, ran from cot to cot, screaming, nonsensically. It seemed the novitiate, for whatever reason, had determined to check on the sleeping Elizaveta. And in the infirmary, by lantern light, Agnes saw upon the girl the “marks of our Lord’s Passion.” The stigmata.
    What had been the Great Silence ceded now to far greater Chaos.
    My heart raced from the nearness of the screams, but my head…My eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness…. How was it I’d come to be outside, for surely those were stars shining all about me, a